A/N: First of all, this hasn't been proof read, my apologies. Second, I forced my muse out for this, because I felt that the lot of you that are getting alerts for this or are just reading it for the first, second, third of even forth time deserve this update. I love every single one of you. Thank you, thank you, thank you for supporting this work of angst. I really appreciate it.

I'm also working on a new project, involving Cherry of course, which I hope to get out in late January of February. If any of you are interested in knowing me, review and tell me or send me a private message and I'll lead the way for updates.

Once again, thank you for being so patient with me. I less than three you.

Two months.

It had been two months since they'd last spoken.

They don't greet one another when they pass each other in the halls. She doesn't glance at him during Glee Club and clings to Puck for dear life. He suffocates himself in a world of sorrow, unnecessary angst and self hatred and blames it all on his somewhat inevitable break up with Tina.

Everything's the way it should be, they force themselves to believe.

But every time she opens up a page of her notebook, she notices that she has his name doodled in the margins on the fresher pages, and that Noah's is no where to be seen. And it's so wrong, it's so wrong because he doesn't deserve the space or the blue ink. He isn't worth the time she spends singing Someone Like You as she stares at herself in her mirror.

And yet, somehow, he does. Because in the madness of that stupid day when she found herself strolling into the choir room with her fingers laced together with Puck's, she noticed his sour expression. The pain and heavy hints of jealousy were painted clear for all the world to see. In his eyes, the corners of his lips that were tugged into a frown, the way he jumped out of his seat and practically ran out of the room when Mr. Schuester excused them for the day.

Of course, in the hours following the incident, she found a little joy in seeing him suffer. Because he was a coward, because she could replace the memory of her singing Smile with Finn Hudson in the choir room with the image of Michael Chang sulking around the halls of McKinley as she strolled past him with her arm hooked around Noah Puckerman's. Being she was finally getting hers. Because she was happy and he wasn't and karma was a glorious thing.

The high of angered bliss lasted for that day and that day alone. It lingered in the back of her mind for a week more, but on the forefront of her thoughts were dozens of questions she simply couldn't answer because the answers she had guessed didn't really make any sense at all.

She had eventually decided to not think about it at all two weeks after that, because it kind of made her heart sting a little too much and she was finding it harder and harder to not sing Adele to herself in her car after school was over and Puck wasn't coming over to be her acoustic accompaniment and make out or she wasn't going over to his place to help him babysit.

Rachel should have been happy. Puck was wonderful, perfect even. The butterflies in her stomach did flips and fluttered like maniacs whenever his lips brushed against the sensitive spot on her neck. He was a vocal match, a wonderful vocal match that didn't mind singing along with her whenever she asked him to watch a musical with her on Fridays. He liked her and only her, he made her feel like she was the sun and he and his heart were revolving solely around her. He made her feel like she was the brightest star in his sky.

And it was good enough for her, if not more than enough, and she relished the feeling and cherished his company and the feeling of her hand his his every single moment they were together.

But the moment Tina walked into the practice room without Mike anywhere in sight, only to have Mercedes shoot daggers at the boy when he finally showed up ten minutes late, something inside of her changed.

She doesn't make a show of it, though. There wouldn't be any point. She simply watches him suffer quietly, from afar, and all too soon, she finds herself suffering with him.

It sort of starts to show, the burden on her shoulders. Her hair isn't as in place as it should be everyday, she doesn't raise her hand or call Mr. Schuester and the rest of the club out when they she isn't at least their first choice for a solo, she's matching her argyle sweaters with her checkered skirts and there are bunnies on one sock and stars on the other when she changes her clothing after getting slushied for the millionth time.

She likes to think he notices these things and sees a little of his current self in her. He, of course, starts blaming himself for her strange behavior that no one else can wrap their hands around.

And when he miraculously starts to visibly heal and return to his former self (at least on the outside), she realizes that through all of this, he still cares for her as much as he did that first day in the choir room when she was curled in a ball against the piano's leg with dry tears framing her face.

It's enough to make her better herself, but it isn't enough to stop that dull pounding in the back of her head at had gotten louder and softer and louder again as time went on. No, it's between too loud and a little too soft. They're both back to square one again, she realizes. Only he's the shattered one of the two and she has no idea what to do about it, if it's her place to do anything about it at all.

She's sitting on her bedroom floor with Noah's head rested on her lap, sound asleep, when she, Rachel Barbra Berry, realizes something that only makes her want to kick Puck's head off of her body and replace it with someone else's:

Weak is still a word she could use to describe herself. And now Mike, as well.

"Hey, Rach?"

She looks down at the uncharacteristically quiet and hushed boyfriend on her floor and on her lap, a curious glint in her eyes and a hint of a smile on her lips because his gaze always manages to do that to her, whether or not she sure she wants it to.

In a whisper, he says, "I love you," and she suddenly thinks of Mike. She wonders how those words would sound rolling off of his lips, instead of thinking of the fact that Puck has just said those three words to her for the very first time. Her head still lowers itself down and she peppers his jawline with a series of light kisses that make one half of her heart soar and the other half of her heart clenched ever-so-painfully.

"I love you too, Noah."

She wants to cry at the sound of the words leaving her lips, so effortlessly.

She wants to cry because she means it.

She chooses to smile back at the boy below her instead, forcing herself to revel in the moment itself and not everything it implies and the weight those three words will now carry.