4
Never Alone

Started writing this. Had my iPod on shuffle. "Need You Now" came on. I died.

It took three-and-a-half hours.

She drove around for three-and-a-half hours—from four in the afternoon to seven-thirty in the evening—looking for this boy. She drove around in a torrential downpour, nearly getting into five accidents, because she had to call up every gleek, Cheerio, and football player to try and TRACK DOWN THIS BOY BECAUSE SHE COULD NOT, FOR THE LIFE OF HER, FIND HIM.

He'd walked away not ten minutes before she got into the car and drove off in search of him, but it was like he'd teleported or suddenly developed super-speed or flew away. It was absurd! She was on the verge of just parking on the side of the road and breaking out the Hebrew prayer book Daddy kept in the glove compartment because she was so worried out of her mind.

She'd searched the water tower, the bleachers, the school, the park, the bridge, the stores, the mall, the park, the field, the—OH, MY GOD, she looked damn near everywhere. The only place she didn't look…obviously was exactly where he was.

"NOAH!" she shrieked furiously, slamming the car door with enough force to violently shake the frame. She stomped through the thick sheet of rain just pouring down on her and glared—glared with the fury of a thousand supernovas—at the boy who was sitting on her porch. "What the HELL?!"

He barely lifted his head to look at her, and that half-assed action just yanked the fight out of her. She was ready to give a thundering tirade about him worrying his family and friends, letting them believe he'd gotten struck by lightning and was half-fried and lying in a ditch somewhere, but her words just seemed to flicker and die like a candle.

Wordlessly, she sloshed across her lawn and sat down on the step next to him, wearily disregarding the fact that they were less than a foot away from sheltered roof of the porch.

She didn't ask him if he was all right because she knew he wasn't. She didn't ask how long he'd been there because that was a pointless question. She didn't ask if he wanted to come inside because if he already refused to sit under the porch roof less than a foot away, then he probably would still be content sitting in the rain. She didn't ask why he chose her house because he'd mostly likely shrug and avoid answering.

So she decided on:

"So it's unseasonably warm right now, don't you think?" she asked, spitting out the rain that had slipped into her mouth. "I mean, o-otherwise we'd be dying of hypothermia right now. This climate change phenomena is really getting scary, now that you think about it. It feels like March in January. In a couple of years, we actually might be having Christmas in July. Or...in our case, Hanukkah... I wonder if the seasonal shift would also affect the structure of the months. I wouldn't think so, but ever since people have tried to stop using 'BC' and 'AD' and the removal of the Ten Commandments from the Supreme Court, there are so many things that the world can change on a whim now. Names of months are such trivial matters that I doubt many would dispute it."

He sighed, and she took it as progress.

"Theories suggest that—"

"Aren't you gonna tell me to get outta the rain because your vocal chords are gonna shrivel up?" he interrupted.

"All things considered, I'm actually more concerned about pneumonia," she replied flatly. "Or, you know, the sudden explosion of Old Faithful, revealing to the world the super volcano that it really is..."

He snorted and she nearly got a crick in the neck when she turned to look at him. He wasn't grinning or chuckling. But the little, itty-bitty smile was touching the corners of his mouth, and she almost felt as proud as she would've been if Barbra herself had just given her a standing ovation.

That...was not good.

At all.

"Ma and Bekah okay?" he asked quietly, wiping his hand down his face.

"Last time I checked in, they were fine—although once Daddy arrived, they complained that he was suffocating them with his concern, but they were fine nonetheless," she answered. "They were mainly worried about you."

He sighed and leaned back onto his elbows. It honestly wouldn't take years of training to tell that in spite of his seemingly relaxed position on her porch steps, his shoulders were tense, his fingers often twitched, his breathing was slow and even but shallow, and his jaw probably hadn't unclenched for the last four hours or so.

And it worried her just a little bit more that instead of simply noticing those things, she wanted to be the one to fix them.

So instead of reaching out to comfort him—hold his hand, grip his shoulder reassuringly, or even rub his arm—she pulled the emergency poncho around herself a little tighter and turned back to facing her lawn and the street.

Finn, she reminded herself adamantly. I am still with Finn.

Damn to hell this gravitation pull, ironic attraction to bad-boy images, and their alleged natural Jewish attraction to each other. Those were such…"galactically stupid" notions—to quote A Few Good Men.

"I came to your house 'cause I knew that rat-bastard wouldn't think of coming here," he explained suddenly. "He hated your dads mostly 'cause they're gay."

It stung. It always stung. No matter how many times they heard it, people's rejection of her family stung. She would always hold her head up high and proudly defend them, but that didn't make her invulnerable to pain. "I always thought Eli was a good man who just got…lost in a bottle."

Puck scoffed and shook his head. "He was a son of a bitch, drunk or not."

Rachel glanced up at the dark, wet sky. "You won't be like him, Noah…if that's what you're worried about.

He suddenly lurched forward, shooting up off the steps. He was halfway across her lawn by the time she'd caught up to him and grabbed his arm.

"Wait, where—"

"You're not getting it!" he blurted out, spinning around and staring at her. Even with the streetlight, she could only barely see his expression through the darkness and the rain—and the expression wasn't anger. It was fear. "I told you before!"

"W-what?! I—"

"Sophomore year—in your room, remember? When you were trying to convince me to do that god-awful song and we talked about our sucky impulse control?"

Dear God, this boy had the memory of an elephant. But she had one too.

"Yes, of course! You try to be cool a-and nice, but you end up finding yourself spraying another student with a fire extinguisher!"

"Exactly!" he cried. "That's how it starts!"

"What are you saying?!"

He ran his hand down his Mohawk and raked it back up to rub his forehead. "I can't control myself sometimes! I don't leave the house with a goal to beat up a fucking minimum of five people—it just happens! And that's how it starts! I've got his fucking genes, and I'm gonna end up an abusive asshole and live up to the future everyone expects me to have."

"But you're not like that anymore! I haven't seen you throw anyone into lockers all year so far, and I most certainly haven't seen you beat anyone up!" she protested, reaching out to grab a fistful of his shirt as if that would hold him in place.

"Bullshit! I haven't heard his voice in over a decade, but as soon as Ma opened the door and I heard him, I blink and all of a sudden, I feel my fist trying to carve a crater into his skull! Like, what the hell?! And it all just fucking comes out, and I can't stop, and sometimes I don't even want to stop!"

And as he stood there, staring down at her as his chest heaved against her clenched fist, she couldn't help making the comparison and realizing that there honestly wasn't a comparison at all.

It wasn't that she was trying to belittle Finn's insecurities, but his problems just paled in comparison to Puck's. And she realized that her reassurances had been focused on the wrong boy. Finn wanted a personal cheerleader, Puck just needed someone.

"And every time I fucking think about it, I see his face and I hear him saying that he loves me but that he doesn't want me! Like what the fuck?! Does that even make sense?! And everyone knows! Everyone in this goddamn town knows how much of a fuck-up he is and how fucked up I got in response to that, and now they're all betting on how much of a fuck-up I'm gonna end up being since it seems to be this sick, hereditary shit to fuck up in life! Like it's my destiny!"

Finn worried about not succeeding in life—being a football star, a singer, an actor. Puck worried about living his father's life.

"And I thought that maybe I could try and redeem myself by being a good dad a-a-and helping raise Beth, but then I fucked that up too by falling in love with her mom only to find out that I actually wasn't in love but that it was some even more fucked up psychological issue of wanting to be with the mother of my daughter or some other shit I accidentally saw on Dr. Phil! I can't fucking get it right! I keep screwing up even when I'm trying to do something good! It just fucking happens!"

What can you do when your good isn't good enough and all that you touch tumbles down? My best intentions keep making a mess of things, I just wanna fix it somehow. But how many times will it take? How many times will it take for me to get it right?

And then she cried. She cried as he kept yelling in her face because he was… He was furious. He was in a rage. His arms were flying around as he gestured like a madman, making huge dollops of rain smack against her poncho. But he was crying too. He was so furious, and he was so…sad.

And everyone was too caught up in their own selfish, asinine problems to see exactly how far off the rails one of their own had gotten.

She let him yell. She didn't care about her neighbors, she didn't care that they might both die of pneumonia, she didn't—she didn't give a shit.

She just let him yell.

And when he finally choked off in the middle of a sentence, she slammed against his chest, wrapping her arms around his waist and hugging him as tight as she could until he finally gave up and wound his own arms around her and rested his forehead on her shoulder.

It didn't stop raining. Even after she pulled him into the house, shoved clothes into his arms, and pushed him into the guestroom shower as she took a shower of her own, the rain was still coming down in huge drops that pounded against her roof. She eventually called her fathers, and they told her that since it was still raining too hard, they would stay and fix Bekah and Aviva a nice, hot dinner, so she took a cue from them and fixed up a sandwich with as much meat as she could stomach feeding anyone. When he came downstairs, she pushed him into a seat at the dinner table, fetched the first aid kit, and started to nurse the cut above his eyebrow as he snarfed down the sandwich.

He swallowed the last bite at the same time she finally set down the band-aid.

"You don't have to do this," he muttered uncomfortably.

"You've done so much for me already," she said quietly, gently pressing the band-aid down in place. "I think it's high time that I started returning the favors, don't you think?"

"Berry, you don't owe me shit," Puck grumbled, ducking his head.

She brushed her fingertips against the bruise on his cheekbone. "As a matter of fact, Noah, I do."

"I said we weren't even friends. Even if you don't hate my guts, you shouldn't give a shit about me."

"I would think that after three years, you would know that I don't like it when people try and dictate what I should and shouldn't do or care about. If I choose to care you about you, then you're just going to have t-to suck it up."

"So does that mean you're gonna marry Finn?"

She paused and met his eyes. And then she blinked.

"I can't, Finn, I'm sorry."

He stared down at the box in her hand, brows furrowed in confusion as if her saying "no" had been the furthest thing from his mind. They were in the choir room during the free period before glee. She'd debated with herself the entire Sunday after Noah left, and she vacillated between wanting to do this before or after rehearsals. But her need to answer his question outweighed her need for him to be a hundred percent during glee.

"Why?" he asked quietly, still staring at her hand. "I thought that…that you'd want this."

"I-I-I do," she said earnestly, taking his hand and setting the box in the middle of his palm, "or at least I did."

He finally looked up at her face with a lost expression. "What changed?"

She owed him the truth, and she would give it. Just…not all of it.

"I realized that I can't do it," she answered. "I could say 'yes' and plan the whole wedding, but the moment the rabbi asks, I don't think I can say that I do want to marry you. Not this young. We…still have our whole lives ahead of us, and getting married is a milestone that's not even supposed to be on our radar yet. We'd end up skipping over so many different hurdles and missing out on life experiences. We're too young, Finn. I can't have a husband who's still busy growing up."

He suddenly brightened. "But we could still be engaged! We'll just wait until we both have steady jobs and careers before we get married! That's a good plan, right? I know people have used that strategy before, and it worked. I mean, we'll get an apartment together and do, like, a test drive of the married life, you know?"

It took her a solid four seconds to realize that she was staring up at him in mild horror, her mouth hanging open a little.

"W-Why are you so eager for this to happen?" she asked.

"Because I love you, Rachel. I-I need you. You're the one who makes me feel like…like I'm not lost in the world," he answered, gripping the box so tight his knuckles turned white. "Everything…is right when I'm with you."

She'd loved this boy for three years. Three years, and all it took was three minutes to tear all that apart—three minutes of a litany about an entirely different boy.

"Finn, when you go the store and you ask for a half of a pie, the clerk will give you a legitimate half of a whole pie—not half of a quarter or a third, a whole pie. If we stand on that altar, the rabbi will ask us—not in the exact terms—if we are complete enough to give half of ourselves away. Because when you love someone, you won't give them a half-assed version of yourself—you owe it to them and to yourself. We can't stand up there and give each other halves of our whole beings because we're not even whole ourselves yet. Do you understand?"

He blinked at her. "No."

"I need to be whole to give half of myself away, Finn. And neither of us are whole. We can't become a complete pie if we're not complete halves."

"Rach, you know I suck at math—especially fractions," he said in a pained tone.

Oh, dear God.

"Finn, you need to grow up," she said bluntly. "We're in high school. I haven't even been accepted to NYADA yet, and you don't even know what you want to do with your life. You wanted to be a soldier, but then you disparaged the entire organization by calling your father a loser and—"

"Wait, what?"

Oh, no. That slipped out?

"I-I-I-I mean—"

No. No. No, no, no, no, no. She was not going to take that back. If this boy wanted to be with her, he needed to be able to handle an argument. Especially this one.

"Actually, yes," she said firmly, lifting her chin defiantly. "I think it is incredibly disrespectful of you to call your father a loser."

"What?!" he demanded incredulously, narrowing his eyes at her. "He left us! He was a druggie!"

"He was a victim of post-traumatic stress disorder, Finn!" she cried. "He was sick! He left to spare you and your mother from seeing him get worse! And I don't condone the fact that he didn't seek help, but for all we know, he might have tried, but the treatments didn't work! You have no right to insult that man!"

He gawked at her outburst but quickly shot back, "You don't know what it's like to—"

But she cut him off as soon as she heard the first six words. "No, I may not know what it's like, Finn, but the only person who can legitimately call his father a loser is Noah because th-that horrible excuse of a man never fought in a war. He was just a self-centered jerk who threw away a good life for a cheap drink and a fantasy! Your father went to war to fight for something, and he came back with a sickness that couldn't be healed! He left to protect you and your mother from watching him waste away into a shell of the man he used to be, and you have the gall to call him a loser. Dying of a drug overdose isn't an honorable death, but when you take into account all of his previous actions—when you take into account the man he was before—you have no right to call him that!"

"It's just the same!"

"No, it's not! You have a mother who loves you and supported you through the years, and now you have a loving stepfather and an amazing stepbrother and a team who loves you and would stand by you—and you dare to say you have nothing 'special' in your life?! Where have you been?!"

"That's easy for you to say! You're talented, you have these two amazing dads, and you actually have a future!"

"And once again, you are belittling the people who love you! When are you ever going to think you have enough?!" she cried in frustration. "You've lived an easy life, Finn! You've had your share of issues, but I don't think you've ever sat back and thanked God for what you actually have! You don't have a little sister you had to help raise as if she was your own daughter! You've never had to deal with real abandonment, real rejection! You—"

"Why do you keep comparing me to Puck?! What is it about this guy that keeps reeling you back in like a hooked fish?! He slushied you for a year and a half, called you a drag for three years after that, and still rolls his eyes when you start going off about Broadway!"

"He apologized, whereas you never did even when you openly admitted to egging my house!" Rachel finally thundered. "He calls me a drag, but he calls everyone names, so I hardly think I'd be the exception and he at least keeps the severity of his insults to a bare minimum! You were dating me when you agreed with Santana that I dress like rapist bait! And he may roll his eyes, but then he asks the occasional question that tells me he's paying attention whereas you just completely zone out and I could start talking a-about Furby and Flubber's love child, and you still wouldn't hear a word I say!"

"He's an asshole! Stop making him out to be this secretly-awesome guy, Rachel!" Finn shot back. "He cheated with two of my girlfriends and—"

"You can't talk either!" she retorted. "You cheated on Quinn with me and then you stole her back from Sam only to dump her!"

"For you!"

"Like that's supposed to make me feel better?!" she shrieked. "Like that's a valid reason for breaking a girl's heart?!"

"At least I told her the truth—I didn't lead her on or use her!"

"Like you used me as your ticket to a scholarship during sophomore year?!"

He threw up his hands and walked around the choir room before facing her again, his face red and his eyes narrowed in anger. "So what now?! Are you gonna go back to Puck?! He'll only cheat on you with some Cheerio or a cougar and then he'll break your heart! He's a loser, Rachel! He's a juvenile delinquent who only cares about his Mohawk and his badass image! He's just gonna end up like his—"

She blamed it on the fact that she tended to get tunnel vision when she was angry. She could only see Finn standing in front of her through a red haze of pure rage—that's why she didn't see the fist that suddenly appeared and smashed right into her ex-boyfriend's face.

The six-foot teen was sent flying back into the chairs on the risers.

"GOD, I've been dying to do that!" Blaine said triumphantly, wringing his hand and grinning breathlessly.

Rachel turned to see Kurt, Santana, Brittany, Sam, Mike, Tina, and Mr. Schue standing near the doorway with mixed expressions of pride, smugness, shock, horror, and…glee.

"Does this count as phase three even though we haven't even started it?" Brittany asked, out of the blue.

"Nah, Brit-Brit. Consider this the cosmos taking over and announcing 'mission accomplished,'" Santana answered with a smile.

"Can we eat the marshmallows and kisses then?"