The Music In Me
A Glee Fan Fiction
Chapter 2

"Please do not hate me for my idiot best friend," Rachel said as she entered her room, tossing her bag onto her bed and heading straight towards her dresser.

Brittany was lying on her bed, legs bent at the knees as she balanced some AP textbook against her legs. She glanced up at her roommate, adjusting the glasses that now covered her green eyes as she frowned at the girl who was searching through her dresser for something or other and who had just disrupted her reading.

"I mean, I tell him every single time he meets somebody that he needs to behave and he can't go on some rant just because not everything their own is authentic and that he isn't the genius he believes himself to be and he can be wrong about whether an item is real or not, and he just nods his head and agrees with me and then the next time we're with somebody who isn't a male, he does exactly what I warned him not to do. Sometimes, I swear that boy doesn't want me to have any female friends," Rachel shook her head, grabbing two pieces of material in her fist and slamming her drawer shut.

Brittany rolled her eyes, pushing her chemistry book aside as she zipped up her grey and black specked Victoria's Secret hoodie that she'd paired over a navy camisole with orange and blue Houston campus shorts, a pair of orange fuzzy socks covering her feet. This girl lacked both a filter and a mute button, and Brittany doubted she'd be able to make it through a month with her, yet alone an entire school year. But she had to tough it out so she might as well make the best of it.

"It's whatever-I mean, my brother's the exact same way. He's so tactless sometimes," the blonde shrugged.

Rachel carried her things into her closet, resuming their conversation.

"Sam's a sweetheart, but Kurt? I swear that kid was born without a filter. He speaks his mind, which is great, but it's a little embarrassing when he gets rude, like he did before. I mean, honestly, I couldn't tell if it was fake or not and I couldn't care less. If you say it's real, I'm gonna believe you, though, because it doesn't affect me and it makes no difference," Rachel said, pushing open her closet door and stepping out.

"What's the deal with you and Sam? Or is that too personal?" she wondered.

"Sammy and me? Oh, we're just best friends. And don't worry about getting too personal-we're gonna be living together so we might as well get to know one another, shouldn't we?" Rachel asked, pulling on a pink zip-up hoodie over her pink tank top that she'd paired with yoga shorts and pink fuzzy socks. She fell onto her bed and pulled her legs up under her.

"Your friend Kurt doesn't like me very much," Brittany said slowly.

"Kurt's friends with whoever I tell him we're friends with, because he's afraid I'm gonna ditch him or something. Besides, it's not that he doesn't like you. He has problems with fake anything," Rachel shrugged. "We should get to know at least the basics, and if we want to be friends, we're friends. If we aren't, that's whatever," she went on.

"You're a little too nice to be believable. I feel like you should come with a warning that says to proceed with caution," Brittany said slowly.

"Sammy says the exact same thing!" Rachel said brightly.

Noah Puckerman did not fall for girls. He didn't do relationships and he didn't do love. If he dated a girl, it was because she was good in bed and he wanted a little more of that action, and all of his relationships were with people who understood that it was all about the sex. He didn't care about personality or depth. He cared about looks.

Which was why it didn't make sense that he couldn't get that Rachel chick out of his head.

Sure, she was definitely a solid nine on a scale of Chloe to Kim Kardashian, and she had those Jewish good looks the girls at Temple had until they turned sixteen and got a nose job for their birthday from their rich parents. She had curves that could break necks and the clothes she wore teased him in more ways than one. But there was nothing about her that made her look easy-she was the type of girl who was clearly waiting until marriage, and that was something Puck didn't do.

Maybe it was just the fact that he had always been one to like a challenge, and if he got to mess with another guy's head while trying to get a girl that usually wouldn't spare him a second glance, it was even better. But there was something that made it impossible to get her off of his mind, and that was killing him.

The entire time he had set up his dorm room, his thoughts had been focused on her, and he'd spent the entire day lying on his bed, tossing a football, catching it, and repeating the process, while she ran through his head in that tiny little pink tank top she'd been wearing that broadcasted that brunettes did it better-and since, in his past experience, he'd only really been with blondes, or girls who had bleached their hair to be blondes, he was more than willing to give that hypothesis a shot. Especially if it would annoy that blonde haired surfer kid who was hanging around her.

"Hey-Noah Puckerman, right?" a voice broke Puck out of his Rachel-centered thoughts and he shot up on his bed, the football landing on his bed and bouncing onto the floor as he studied the newcomer to his room.

The kid was tall, with the build of a safety for a football team. He had jet black hair and dark eyes. He was Asian and every bit as tall as Puck was, and he was wearing the football jersey that Puck had gotten as soon as he'd arrived around his neck as he carried two boxes full of stuff and had a large duffel bag swung over his shoulder as he entered the room with the ease of a cat.

"Call me Noah and you're dead. You're Mike Chang?" He asked as the kid dropped his stuff onto the bed.

"Oh, right-you prefer Puck. Yeah, I'm Mike," He smiled at him, beginning to unpack.

Puck laid back against his pillows, ignoring the fallen football. He was trying to think of a casual way of seeing if this guy knew who Rachel was and what he could tell him about her, because if Puck was going to get her, he was going to need to know a thing or two about her, particularly her relationship status with a particular blonde haired surfer boy.

"Oh, I heard you met Rachel Berry," Mike said, removing his clothes from his bad and into his dresser. "Apparently Sam was at Johnny Rockets-a ton of the football players work there-and he was complaining to Kurt about this new guy. They text me, because they figured it was my roommate-this place only takes in so many new kids each year, after all," Mike explained.

"How does Sam complaining about me have to do with me meeting Rachel?" Puck asked the question that was bothering him the least first. He mostly wanted to know what Sam had been saying about him, but that would look like he cared and he didn't want people to think he cared about what others thought of him. That ruined the image he was trying to build.

"He's always with her-never leaves her side. And if he's not with her, he's with Kurt or Kurt's with her. The three of them are like a cult or something. They transferred together from their old school and they don't let anybody else in unless they all agree-but Rachel's word is law. They both do whatever she says. If Kurt wasn't gay, everybody would probably think she's banging them to get them to listen to her like that. Well, the stupid people might-everybody else knows Rachel thinks of them as brothers," Mike went on.

"So she's not dating Sam?" Puck asked casually.

"Nah," Mike shook his head. "He wishes she was-he's had a crush on her for years. He turned down Quinn Fabray for her. He even turned down Santana Lopez, but that wasn't too surprising to everybody, since Santana and Rachel were best friends at the time," Mike filled Puck in on the gossip of the trio.

"There's four of them? I thought you said the three of them were always together?" Puck wondered.

"For the longest time, Santana was their fourth wheel so they were a car or whatever metaphor they used. But she transferred out before the end of last year and Sam threatens anybody who mentions her in front of Rachel. She was really torn up about it-apparently there was this big fight or something," Mike shrugged.

"Interesting," Puck said, leaning over the edge of his bed to retrieve his football, resuming his game of tossing the ball towards the ceiling, catching it, and repeating the process.

"When are you going to grow a pair and ask her out?" Kurt asked Sam as they changed into their pajamas.

Any other straight male sharing a room with a gay teenage boy would probably change in the bathroom or when he wasn't in the room to avoid any awkward situations. But, Sam wasn't like any other straight teenager. If he was, he would have made a big deal about sharing a room with Kurt when he came out of the closet like his original roommate had done halfway through their sixth grade year. Which was why it wasn't weird for Sam to strip off his shirt and pull on one of the few baggy tee shirts Rachel hadn't stolen from him or to remove his jeans and replace them with a pair of athletic shorts.

Just like it wasn't a big deal for Kurt to take off his many layers of designer clothing and replace them with comfortable pajamas in front of Sam. The blonde was aware that not only was he not Kurt's type, but that Kurt had never once even thought about him that way before. So, why should Sam assume that Kurt was going to check him out? It was just like when they had sleepovers with Rachel and she'd change in front of them or they'd change in front of her-except Sam would try to sneak a peak with Rachel.

They were so close to one another, it didn't matter. They were practically a family-even if Sam longed for just a little bit more with Rachel. Rachel saw the boys as brothers-a fact Sam hated to remember-and Kurt saw them as siblings. Sam even considered Kurt to be his brother. But Rachel most definitely was not his sister. Not with how he thought of her.

It wasn't that he had dirty thoughts about Rachel-he threatened any other guy who thought of Rachel that way, so how could he do just that? But he longed for a chance to be Rachel's boyfriend.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Sam lied smoothly, shaking his head.

"You were staring at Rachel all day and you're annoyed that there's a new hot piece of ass on campus now that's going to become a part of Rachel's life. And don't argue that you aren't jealous of that Puck guy, because you didn't shut up about him the entire time Rachel was in the bathroom at Johnny Rockets or while she was inside getting fro-yo at Pinkberry's," Kurt rolled his eyes. "And you were ten times more flirtatious with her today than I have ever seen you before. I was tempted to make you a sign that said Captain Obvious," He replied as he fell onto his bed, hugging a throw pillow to his chest.

"I wouldn't ask out Rachel. For two reasons-and the first is that I don't like her like that. The second is that I wouldn't do anything to mess up the friendship the three of us have," Sam replied as he crawled into his own bed.

"The only true part of that you said was that you don't want to mess up our friendship, and I actually honor you for that. But the match-maker in me who only wants Rachel to be happy has to say that you're a complete and total idiot," Kurt said, throwing his pillow across the room, right into Sam's face, causing him to fall back at the shock of Kurt's actions.

"Kurt, I like her, okay? But she's not going out with me so I might as well just move on and get over it. You remember what she said when Santana asked me out last year? She told Santana that she shouldn't be too upset, because it wasn't because I wasn't interested-which it totally was-but it was because I just didn't want to risk our friendship. She said that none of us could ever date because we were like family." Sam groaned.

"You do realize that you turning down Santana was a major cause of everything that went down between them last year, right?" Kurt raised his eyebrows. "Because no matter what Rachel said, the entire school knew it was because of your crush on her. I'm honestly surprised Santana ever made a move on you when she knew how you felt," Kurt sighed.

"Can we stop talking about her? Because she makes me want to break all my rules about never hitting a girl," Sam said, clenching his fists tightly.

"Alright, we will talk about you asking Rachel out instead," Kurt stuck his tongue out.

"So, that's the story of how Sammy and Kurtie and I all became best friends," Rachel said brightly, finishing up her hour-long story about how the three of them became who they were today. And she had told Quinn the shortest version she possibly knew. "Your turn-tell me something about you, and something that's actually about, well, you, 'cause that was the best way to describe me there possibly is," She beamed brightly as she leaned back against her Victoria's Secret body pillow.

"If I tell you this, you have to promise not to tell anybody, alright?" Brittany said without a moment of hesitation. It was clear she wanted to tell the story, but that she wasn't sure she could trust anybody enough to tell then.

"The only people I have to tell are Kurtie and Sammy, and I don't tell them anything my girl best friend tells me in confidence," Rachel assured her with a smile that caused the blonde to stop for a minute, a thoughtful expression on her face before she smiled right back at Rachel, nodding once in confirmation at the brunette.

"Best friends...I like that," She smiled. "Anyways-I'm here on a scholarship. So is Puck, actually. We're not poor or lower middle class or anything, we're pretty well off, actually," Brittany explained.

"But my father is super religious. My step-mom is much more liberal, which is the only reason I got to come here in the first place. I was home schooled for most of my life and I wanted a change, so I applied here. I got in, but my parents wouldn't pay because the thought of me living in a co-ed dorm halfway across the country from my parents at a co-ed school that wasn't even Catholic totally freaked my dad out. So, I applied for a scholarship and I got in for cheerleading and my grades, thank god.," She stopped there and took a breath before she continued.

"Anyways, my dad didn't really care about Puck going, especially since he knew that my step-mom was going to get the final say in whether Puck went or not anyways. He's only on a partial scholarship anyways, since my dad was willing to pay for most of his tuition. It's a double standard, but it's mostly because he feels like Puck's the son he always wanted and he knows that Puck's mother is actually the final say in anything he does in life. Anyways, I couldn't go, but Puck knew how much it meant to me-this entire thing was my idea, after all. So, his mom talked my dad into letting me come on a one-year trial basis. If I kept my grades up, stayed on the cheerleading team, remained a virgin and didn't get into any trouble with boys, alcohol, drugs or partying, I could stay for the rest of my high school experience." she explained in a rush.

"That's nothing to be ashamed of, you know. Sammy and Kurt are here on scholarships, and it's because they can't afford to come any other way-well, Kurt's father would have figured out a way to come up with the tuition if he could have gotten a partial scholarship, and Sam's parents would have figured something out, but Kurt was blessed enough to be offered a full ride. Sam...wasn't so lucky," Rachel bit down on her bottom lip, and Brittany got the impression that she had said too much.

"But...how's he here than?" She asked. "Or did his parents have to figure something out?"

"Oh, no, he ended up with a full scholarship. What he doesn't know is that at first, he didn't get it. He got a partial one, but I know him and I knew he wouldn't let his parents pay for him to come to such an expensive school when the public school was fine, it just wouldn't look as pretty on a college resume. Anyways, I was offered a full scholarship and my fathers made me refuse because they didn't want me taking the spot from somebody who really needed it. When I rejected it, I asked if there was any way it could go to Sam," Rachel whispered. "He doesn't know and he can never know. He hates it when I do things for him," She said hurriedly.

"That's sweet, that you care about him so much," Brittany said softly.

"I love him-he's my best friend. And I know he's going to be depending on a college scholarship to go to college. Being at a school with such amazing academics and such a great football team is going to really help him out, especially with all the opportunities this school offers him. He'll stand out much more than if he'd stayed in Ohio," Rachel rolled her eyes.

"There's nothing else going on between the two of you?" Brittany wondered, raising her eyebrows.

"No, of course not-he's like my brother. It would be disgusting," She made a face. "Anyways, I feel like I cut you off. Finish your story?" She offered.

"Right, well, because my father is so strict, he refuses to spend a ton of money on me to have anything that could spoil me. I have what is needed to survive and that is all. That's why I carry around the fake Coach bag. With my allowance, that's what I can afford if I don't save up and I live in a super wealthy neighborhood. The only people I know are the spoiled brats that go to my church and they have everything. They're just too stupid to recognize a knock-off, so I've been getting away with it. I'm not poor, I do have money. But back in my hometown, I appear to be poor. I'm tired of being the pauper in a place full of princes and princesses," She sighed.

"Did you know that twenty five percent of the kids here are on full scholarships and there are another twenty five percent who are on partial scholarships? The other fifty is half made up of kids who's parents work around the clock so they can afford the tuition. There's only about twenty five percent of the students have parents that can easily afford the tuition and sent their kids here because they want to be here, or because they don't want to worry about their kids for the majority of the year," Rachel informed her.

"Seriously?"

"Britt, it's nothing to be ashamed of. Everybody has something in their life that they aren't crazy about, but that's what makes us human. Our flaws," Rachel replied.

"What's your flaw?" She asked.

"Well, I went out and sweet-talked my way into getting a belly button ring-of course, I did have a fake ID, but they seemed iffy about believing it," She rolled her eyes. "And I have a tattoo-nothing all that bad, just a couple of gold stars in a shooting star pattern on my back," She shrugged.

"No way!" Brittany gasped.

"I went through a rebellious phase-my dads still don't know," Rachel shrugged. "Sammy hates it-he hates it when girls have any sort of a piercing on anything other than the one on their ears and he despises tattoos," She rolled her eyes.

"Something tells me that no matter what you did, that boy would still love it," Brittany said with a knowing smile.

There was something about Rachel Berry that just pulled a person in and made it close to impossible to hate her, ever. She was nice to everybody and she always had a smile to greet people with. She listened to other people's problems and she offered advice, without making everything about her-of course, that last part had taken years of training from Kurt and Sam, who had gotten tired of her making everything end up revolving around her, because as special as she was, even she wasn't that special. But, still, there was something about Rachel that pulled people in and forced them to like her.

Brittany had plenty of reasons ti dislike her, after all. While they both came from wealthy families with fathers who could buy them whatever they wanted, Rachel was the one who ended up being spoiled rotten and receiving everything she asked for. Her fathers seemed to go out of the way to give her whatever she wanted, and the only thing that she considered to be her flaw was that she had gone behind her fathers' backs and gotten a belly button ring and a tattoo, both of which were something that one of her best friends hated and refused to acknowledge her ever having gotten done.

Sam could easily hate her for getting everything she wanted in life so easily, while he had to work his ass off to afford the things that he wanted. And maybe his parents would help him out, but he refused to ask them for help, because he knew what the financial situation was for them, and he wasn't going to make them feel bad about themselves because they had to say no to him and his younger siblings from time to time. He could hate Rachel with a cold dying passion because whatever she wanted was merely handed to her as soon as the request left her lips and she usually got something extra as well.

And Kurt could hate her for being so talented that every time there was a solo or a lead, Rachel got it, because her voice was the best voice a high school student could ever even dream of having. He could hate her because she could easily afford the newest trends in designer clothing, yet she opted to buy clothing from cheaper stores, even if the clothes were nice and lasted forever and looked similar to the expensive designers. He could hate her for having the full support of her fathers in whatever she did, while his father made awkward attempts at trying to understand and support him in all that he tried and did.

Mike probably wished that he could hate her, since all he had heard about since entering his room and bringing her name up was her. Puck hadn't shut his mouth about Rachel Berry since he had met Mike, and while Mike had been the one to bring her up, he hadn't wanted to spend hours on the topic. Besides, he had been going to school with her since sixth grade and he didn't have half as much to say about her as Puck seemed to have to say, and he had only met her one time for about five minutes, while she had been talking to his sister, rather than himself, and surrounded by her guardian angel Sam Evans and her gay best friend Kurt Hummel.

And Puck wanted to hate her more than anybody because she was making him act like a pussy. She was all that he could think about, so when he and Mike started talking to get to know one another, she was all that he was able to talk about. She took over everything that he was and that was where his focus went. It disgusted him and he wanted to hate her for the way she looked in shorts and the way the words on her shirt had teased her with their meaning and how they were stretched across her chest. He wanted to hate her for the way her hair fell into her face and how long her legs seemed for a short girl.

But the problem was, she was impossible to hate.

Brittany couldn't hate her because she was just so understanding.

Sam couldn't hate her because she was so humble and modest.

Kurt couldn't hate her because she was so god damn adorable.

Mike couldn't hate her because she was always so nice to everyone.

And Puck? He couldn't hate her and he couldn't figure out why.

There was nothing about her besides a hot body that should keep him so enticed.

Yet, there he was, at one thirty in the morning with only her running through his mind.

He had apologized to Mike for ranting about her and made the excuse it was because she was the only girl he'd seen since his arrival.

Mike had known it wasn't the truth just as much as Puck had known it wasn't true.

But neither of them had said anything and hey chose to accept that and move on.

Because if they didn't, they would have a reason to hate her.

And with a reason, they would need an excuse for why they couldn't hate her.

That was the god damn problem with Rachel Berry! Everybody wanted to hate her because she was overly ambitious and over bearing. She was talented and she knew it, constantly making sure that everybody remembered that about her as soon as they had met her. She was filthy stinking rich and carried around expensive, designer accessories.

She just made it so easy to hate her, with the way she gave compliments wrapped around an insult. She couldn't let somebody know they had done well without telling them at least three ways they could improve for the next time. And she couldn't listen to somebody talk without putting in her own story about the topic to get some attention.

But, nobody could say they hated her. They could say they didn't particularly like her-if they were stretching the truth a little. They could say that they weren't her friend, and be telling the full, honest truth. But they knew as well as the people they were talking to and they didn't hate her, and they never would be able to hate her.

While she made herself so easy to hate, she made herself seem so hard to hate at the same time. Because to hate her for her many faults would be a shame when that meant they didn't like her despite all of her wonderful traits. She was full of oxymorons and contradictions. There was nothing about her that made any sense.

And that was the reason behind the lack of people who hated her.

She was just so human that nobody could admit to hating her. She had her flaws and she accepted them. As you got to know her, she would verbally make them all known to you, because she wasn't ashamed of them. She would be the first to let you know that her faults made her who she was.

Rachel Berry was one of the most human-like people in the world, because for every good thing about her, she had a fault to keep it in check. She was full of checks and balances, and it was that quality in her that made it so impossible to hate her.