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Title: Fleeting Moments
Author:
sparklinglemonade
Rating:
M
Summary:
Noah Puckerman isn't a good person – he's an ass, a studly sex-shark – but when it comes to Quinn Fabray he tends to have his moments.
Genre:
Angst/Drama
Chapter:
Forty Four

Temper

He's the only person she'll have a real temper with – she'll ignore him and yell, scream and smack him. It's never a lot, never enough to hurt him or to piss him off (too much), so he lets her and he takes it because it's the only time he really sees how bad she hurts.

He thinks it's stupid, to be honest, that she's still this terrible. He wants to tell her that he's upset too – he's always going to be upset about it, but he's able to live his life without being a wreck all the time, he's able to help her and she should be able to help him. Their relationship, whatever the fuck it is, shouldn't be all take – it shouldn't be all him, all the time.

She should be okay by now, shouldn't she?

He wants to ask someone – his mom, Finn, fuck, he'd settle for Berry, just someone - and make them tell him that this isn't fucking right; that she should realize that she's being an idiot and fucking herself up – that he's upset, too, that he fucking matters, too. He wants her to know that he's just as hurt as she is, but he's starting to realize that what they did was better than either of them thought. He wants someone to tell him he's not a total asshole for feeling like this – for feeling like she's being selfish as fuck, for feeling like she should build a fucking bridge and let him help her get over it.

This is…okay, right?

To be honest, she's an idiot, now. She let everything else upset her and forgets that if she had…if they hadn't given her up they wouldn't have any semblance of a them – even if this one is really shitty and skewed, it's still them. If they'd kept her, which he thinks about a lot (more than he should, more than he wants to, more than he thought was possible, etc.) he now realizes that it would've been awful. Sure, they would have loved her and they would've been the best parents they could have been, but…he wanted to give Beth the world, not some crappy apartment in the Heights. He knows giving her to Shelby was the best decision, and he hates fucking saying it because he wishes it wasn't, but it was. It really was.

She screams at him, tonight. He doesn't pay too much attention, because it's usually always the same thing: "How could you let me do this? How could you let me take this away from us? How the hell could you be so stupid – you let me get rid of our child!"

She yells a lot about opportunity – about how she's taken them from him, from her, from them. How if she hadn't done this, there'd be so many more opportunities for them, for their future. She says things about this other them a lot – this them that doesn't exist, and that never could exist. It's the idealistic them – happy, married, with Beth in her arms, never fighting, never jealous, never wrong, beautiful, dreamy version of them that could never happen unless they both got lobotomies. She clings to the hope of dream them, though – even if they'd never exist outside of her mind. Even if the real them could be so much better than the dream them could ever hope to be. He lets her yell about it though – about shit she can't change, and given the chance (and in the right mind) probably wouldn't. She knows she doesn't really want them right now – she wants the idea of them, the idea of knowing someone would be there for her when she felt like shit, someone who would deal with it when she fucked up because they loved her like no one else could – a sucker, in short.

He was a sucker for her, but he wasn't fucking stupid. There couldn't be a them until there was a her again, that much was clear. There was whatever there was right now, there was this, and that was it…hopefully it wouldn't always be it, but…he doesn't want to think about this just being it. Them not…happening. He's no fucking pussy; he just knows what he wants after all this shit is over. He wants them – he wants her and him and them, fighting over stupid little things and fucking in public places, and teasing and scheming and loving. He wants her to be her and him to be him, and them to exist – but wanting is wanting. He better get what he wants on this one – that's all he's got to say.

She lets her temper get the best of her, tonight, though – she yells the same things, and describes the same life, and cries the same tears as she does every night. She pounds on him with the same fists, she kisses him with the same lips: she's stuck, and he doesn't know how to un…stick her anymore. So he lets her, and he hopes that eventually she's get herself out – at this point, it's kind of a pipe dream, but he has hope - the only thing he has is hope, and that's got to count for something.