I'm so sorry that took so long. I've had it sitting on my computer for two weeks now, and I just kept forgetting to post it.
Chapter 9: Good Housekeeping, The Badass Way
With all the excitement of the morning's espionage-influenced activities which had culminated in the suspension of Karofsky and two less important boys, plus the promise of compensation to Noah's mother for the damages caused by the delinquents in question, Rachel had completely forgotten about her earlier promise to Noah that she would return with him after school in order to meet his mother. It wasn't that she didn't want to keep her promise, and it certainly wasn't as if she didn't want to meet his mother, but she still felt a certain amount of anxiety when she began to give the appropriate consideration to the pressures that she would endure as a result of the encounter. After all, being someone who liked to be prepared for any and all contingencies, she normally had much more thorough investigations into the various "dos and don'ts" of any potential scenario.
Firstly, how was one even expected to act when meeting the parent of one's romantic interest for the first time? She had seen the subject explored often in movies and in television, but in almost every case, the subject was male and being introduced to the parents of the female. And, even less similar to Rachel's own experience, the subject was often much older than she, and preparing to enter into either an engagement or a marriage with the woman in question. It seemed that Rachel had no model on which to base her future experience with Puck's mother, and no time to as extensively research the incident as she wished that she could.
Furthermore, the idea of meeting Noah's mother when she and Noah were supposed to be in a relationship that was purely casual in basis presented a whole new set of complications. Did Noah expect her to get along with his mother because he enjoyed her company, or did he want her to dash his mother's hopes that they would be together forever as a way to let her down easy when the inevitable breaking off of their relationship was to occur?
She didn't know, and she was rapidly becoming anxious about this whole affair. If not for the fact that Noah had dealt with an admittedly high number of stressful incidents for her in the past day, she probably would have found some reason to cancel. But, no, she felt the need to repay the favors that he had bestowed on her, and she wasn't going to back out of that just because of a bit of discomfort. She liked to believe that she had more honor than that.
Unfortunately, due to her anxiousness and her frenzied attempts to prepare even the slightest bit, her performance in Spanish class was abhorrent, and her in-class writing assignment for English was no less abysmal. After handing the pages in to Mrs. Taylor, she sat down and realized that she had no recollection of what she could have possibly written about. She was completely unable to focus on any lesson without her thoughts straying to the inevitable meeting and dinner that would follow.
Oh, God, the dinner. She absolutely had to make certain that she chewed with her mouth closed, because she often forgot and allowed her jaw to flap open for the world to see. It was only slightly embarrassing in the company of her fathers, but in front of Noah's mother it would be an unforgivable faux pas. Something that she would possibly never recover from. And, of course, she absolutely had to make sure not to jiggle her left leg under the table like she was for some reason apt to do in situations that made her nervous (she made a conscious effort to still the limb which was, at that very moment, bouncing noticeably beneath her desk). Also, of course, she had to remember to hold her utensils in the correct way. She always had trouble remembering the proper way in which to hold the knife.
There was just so much to remind herself of! And not nearly enough time to prepare.
Puck had almost been shocked into either a heart attack or suicide because of the totally random meeting-slash-peptalk with Quinn at his locker earlier, so he was definitely not expecting Finn to accost him in the locker room about the same fucking subject. Which had been none of Quinn's business, and it was even less Finn's business. A few days ago neither of them had wanted anything to do with him and Rachel, but suddenly it was like they were a free buffet.
He was also sort of pissed because it was pretty much accepted between he and his secret baby mama that he wasn't allowed to talk about Quinn to Finn, and Quinn wasn't allowed to talk about him to Finn (the rhyming names thing seriously had to go. One of them had to change it, or get a nickname, or something, because that shit was just annoying). But apparently Quinn had broken their rule, because it was pretty damn obvious that she had gone to Finn to get him to guilt Puck into ditching Rachel or something. Which was admittedly a smart move because Finn was the only dude who could guilt Puck into anything. Plus, Finn probably hadn't even known about him and Rachel the first time. There was no way he would have figured it out the second time unless Quinn had told him (very slowly) all about it.
"Dude," Finn said, and Puck could tell just from that one word that this conversation was going to be seriously stupid. Because really, all of their conversations were seriously stupid, but especially the ones that started with Finn trying to look all tough and angry and morally superior or whatever.
"Dude," Puck repeated, trying to sound more sarcastic. Sometimes if he was lucky, Finn would forget what he was going to say and would pass the whole thing off as a joke, which Puck really fucking wanted at the moment. He did not want to talk about Rachel and he did not want to talk about Rachel with Finn even more than he didn't want to talk about Rachel. If that made sense.
Yeah, that totally made sense.
But apparently luck only extended to guys who didn't knock up their best friend's girls, because Finn kept going. Quinn must have made him memorize the speech or something.
"I heard you're dating Rachel. Which is fine, because I have Quinn and I love Quinn a lot and she's pregnant so I have to love her…wait, no, she's pregnant so I love her even more because there is a person inside her body so I love her for two people. So, you know, it's cool if you want to date Rachel. I guess. But seriously, don't be a douchebag. Because you are a douchebag, especially with girls. And Rachel is really cool, and we sort of need her in the club, too, because she's got the best voice in the universe, and she's going to help us win Sectionals."
Puck sighed and looked down at the ground. Somewhere in that pathetically adorable (not adorable, holy fuck, not adorable. He was not referring to his best friend like he was a fucking bunny rabbit or some shit. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck Rachel. Just fuck her) rant of nothing was an actual point. And that point was: don't hurt Rachel, because she doesn't deserve it.
Paraphrasing was an essential skill to have when you were friends with Finn Hudson. Or with Rachel Berry, incidentally (only apparently his paraphrasing skills were breaking, because otherwise incidentally wouldn't have happened). And Finn had a point, as much as Puck hated to admit it. His dating record was shitty at best, and usually ended with girls crying, or throwing up, or mailing him vials of their blood, or some other really fucked up shit.
"Dude, I'm not going to hurt Rachel. This isn't a Santana thing, or a Felicia thing, or an Adriana thing, or a Connie thing. And hopefully not a Caroline thing. This is like, we're sort of friends, a little. And we have something else too, you know? Something a little different than friendship, but not really."
"That's called dating," Finn said, like he was the one who should be frustrated with Puck's stupidity, or something.
"Yeah, but not really. I mean, come on. This is high school. Dating isn't about friendship, it's about getting laid on a semi-regular basis. Or at least, if you're not a stud like me, getting some under-the-shirt action on a basis that's regular enough to keep your balls from falling off. No offense, but your experience with the prayer beads and the pregnancy isn't exactly typical. But Rachel's actually pretty cool, so this isn't just me trying to get laid. This is me hanging out with a cool chick while sometimes kissing her."
"I don't want to think about you and Rachel kissing," Finn sighed dejectedly.
"Yeah? Well I don't want to think about you and Quinn kissing. Because, ew. Not because I want her or anything."
The fumble for an explanation probably would have made things worse than they already were if it was anybody but Finn to whom Puck was speaking. But since Finn was Finn, he just nodded and cheerfully accepted whatever explanation was thrown his way.
Which sort of made sense. After all, two words: Hot tub.
Rachel had spent the fifteen minutes between the end of school and the commencement of glee club creating a list of questions that she needed to present to Noah regarding his mother's possibly sensitive conversational topics so that she could memorize it and carefully pick her way through the conversation as if it were a minefield. She had determined after several hours of consideration during her classes that it was really the only polite way to do it.
"You're shitting me, right?" Noah asked with a sigh when he saw the list (admittedly, she had imagined that the length would be something he would have an issue with, but she couldn't very well leave off anything that was absolutely vital, and a careful review of the questions had revealed that it was all vital).
"This is an important endeavor for the both of us, Noah. I think it's safe to assume that your experience with bringing girls home to your mother has been fairly limited. And it may be even fairer to assume that if you did indeed bring a girl home, it was probably on a day when you believed that your mother would be out of the house, and it was probably not an encounter that either woman would want to go through again."
Noah sighed and said, "Okay. So?"
"So, I'm simply anxious to give you an impressive encounter so that your mother will feel her confidence in you lifted! If you can manage to date a talented Jewish ingénue like me, Noah, I believe the implication is that you can date anyone! And surely that is at least one of the things that your mother hopes for you during your high school career. Certainly, my fathers have been informing me for months now that if I want to have boys over when they're not home, it's acceptable as long as I don't get pregnant, and if I do get pregnant, I'm strongly advised to give the baby up for adoption rather than choosing abortion as an alternative to raising the child. This may be because my inability to find a boy who likes me is severely crippling to my self confidence, and they're willing to relinquish some control in their desperation to boost it."
"That's…really sad."
"I am entirely aware of that," Rachel sighed.
"Well, do you want me to come over and meet your dads or something? You know, make them feel better about you and guys, or whatever? Because for the record, you're totally cool enough to have a stud like me date you, and I think they should recognize that about their own daughter."
"That's admirably sweet of you, Noah. Let's see how this dinner goes first, shall we?"
Noah rolled his eyes and groaned, reluctantly returning his gaze to the gold-star-covered list in front of him.
So Puck had basically changed his mind about dinner with his mom the second Rachel came up with that stupid ass list, but he didn't say anything. And he wasn't nervous because he thought Rachel was going to, like, completely blow it and freak the hell out of his mom (kind of like how she freaked the hell out of everyone else), but because she totally wasn't going to. She totally was going to blow his mom away with her chatter and her goals and shit, and then after she had left his mom was definitely going to ask him why he couldn't be motivated and awesome like her.
And, shit. He really didn't want to deal with that. Like, at all.
But what the hell was he supposed to do? So he waited with Rachel outside for her dad to pick them up while she talked and talked and basically vibrated with all this extra energy that her body probably just couldn't hold because it wasn't nearly strong enough to keep it all in, or whatever, and he worried about his near future and the lecture he was sure to get. Especially since he was going to have to explain why his truck had to be towed for the second time in two days.
Although there was always the hope that his mother would be a little too fuzzy on the wine to understand what the fuck Rachel was saying, and the dinner party would go just as horribly as Rachel was assuming it would, and then his mom would be too fucking confused to lecture him about anything.
But no, that wasn't fair, and it would only give Rachel an excuse to be nervous and overprepared about everything, because then she would have, like, a reference point to a time when she wasn't quite prepared enough, and there was no way he was going to let that happen because he would possibly die of annoying if he let that happen.
So then he started getting nervous and hoping that his mom wasn't drowsy on wine so she could understand Rachel's crazy just as much as Rachel wanted her to be able to.
And what the fuck, because suddenly he was nervous about shit. And really, who did that? He wasn't supposed to care about any stupid shit like that, and suddenly it was like he was Rachel's male clone or something which, seriously, was just so fucking stupid.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
"Are you all right, Noah?"
He realized he was muttering to himself a little (which was another thing that Rachel did, and even though this one was a coincidence it was still sort of annoying).
"Yeah. Fine. Just…uh, thinking about football."
"Understandable. The amount of pressure you boys are under is enormous. Especially when you consider the fact that there are athletic scholarships to think about, and rival teams attempting to make a mockery of the great name of William McKinley."
"I don't even know who that is, so I really don't care about that," Puck grumbled. Rachel was about to respond with probably something about his unintelligence, which was okay because then she'd back it up with something about how he was hot, but then she jumped to her feet and grabbed her bag.
"Here's my father, Noah!"
Puck looked up to see that a car had pulled up to the curb, and a black man was waving at Rachel from within. Talk about your revelations. Rachel waved back eagerly before dragging Puck over to the car by the arm.
"Hey pops," she said with all that crazy peppiness multiplied by ten. "This is my friend Noah from glee club. Is it all right if you drive me to his house so we can practice?"
"Is this going to be like the time he came over our place to practice?" asked Rachel's father with evident amusement, looking Puck up and down like he was calculating the odds of Puck trying to get with his daughter.
"Daddy, I already told you, all we did was practice," Rachel insisted. "Just because you weren't home at the time, it does not mean that my intentions weren't completely honorable."
Rachel's dad sighed with what was obviously not doubt and was definitely disappointment, and Puck could totally see what she had been talking about earlier, how they sort of hoped that she was at home sexing it up when they weren't around just so that they wouldn't feel like she was a total reject loser or anything. Only Rachel hadn't taken the opportunity to make them the happiest gay parents alive. She told her dad that Puck was a friend, which Puck knew from experience was never a good thing if you wanted to get anywhere fun with a girl. Friend to them meant someone you went shopping with and watched sappy movies with. Friend to them couldn't be dynamic and cool like it was for guys. Unless you were Santana and Brittany, but that was different.
"Uh, yeah, we were totally just practicing," Puck said convincingly. "I could barely move my fingers the next day after all that strumming."
It was only when Rachel's dad looked over at him with barely-concealed amusement and unconcealed horror that Puck realized just how dirty that could be taken.
And then he just laughed.
Rachel waved goodbye to her father as he pulled out of the driveway at Puck's house a few minutes later. Puck waited until he was gone to say anything, because he had already embarrassed Rachel and himself enough for one day. But then as soon as her dad was gone, he turned to her, ready to be all calmly cold and shit, except what came out was a lot less badass than he had planned.
"Dude, why'd you tell your dad we were friends?"
It was either really mean or really whiny. He couldn't tell. It all sort of depended on how she'd take it.
And, predictably, she thought that it was the way worse one: whiny.
"I'm so sorry! Was there something you were trying to tell me that I missed? You know I'm terrible with social cues. Especially non-verbal ones."
"No, that's not what I meant. I mean, we're totally dating now, right? Just because it's pretty much a 'hell no' to like, lasting more than a few months, we're still dating. And your dads would totally be psyched about that, wouldn't they?"
And then he sort of realized something. Rachel was trying not to look at him, was acting all shifty-eyed like Puck sometimes did when his mom was asking him about his homework, and generally looked like she didn't want to talk about it at all.
"Holy shit. You're embarrassed."
"I'm not."
"You fucking are. You're embarrassed to date me. What the hell?"
"It's not that, Noah! I think you're a wonderful person and I would normally be so pleased to present you to almost anyone, but…"
"But I'm not good enough for your stupid gay dads?"
"That's not what I meant, and anyway, their sexuality has nothing to do with it Noah, so I'd appreciate it if you…"
"I'd appreciate it if you weren't fucking embarrassed."
"Will you let me speak?"
Her voice had risen in pitch a lot, so Puck knew it was time to shut the fuck up and let her talk. She didn't usually get like that, but when she did, he had seen her do some crazy stuff, and he totally was not willing to be on the receiving end of that crazy. He was pretty sure that Mr. Schue would be traumatized for life after that time at practice when he'd accidentally implied that Mercedes had a more natural singing voice than Rachel.
"Okay. Fine. Sorry."
"Look, Noah, it's not that I'm embarrassed. I just don't want to get my fathers' hopes up. They met in high school, you know, were friends for years before they realized that they were in love with one another. They always say to me that high school is the time when everything feels like it's going to last forever, but things rarely do. Except they did. Do you understand, now, why I might not want to tell them about our arrangement? As casual and fleeting as it will turn out to be?"
Puck felt weirdly sad, a little. He thought of Rachel's dad and his big smile and how he clearly cared about Rachel a lot. He didn't even seem a little bit annoyed when she talked forever about glee club and crammed about as much information as you could possibly cram into a five minute ride. And then Puck thought of how everyone at school was all 'our friendships are going to last forever', even though he knew from his mom and his cougars that they probably weren't.
And there was something in his head that was getting a little jumbled, but the basic idea was that it sort of sucked that everything had to be so messy all the time. Especially for people like Rachel.
"Yeah, okay," he said instead of saying that. "Yeah, I get it."
Rachel sighed with relief.
"I don't want you to think that I'm somehow embarrassed to bring you home," she admitted. "Because I'm not. There is nothing embarrassing about you, Noah Puckerman. Well, there isn't much that's embarrassing about you."
Puck smiled a little, but only because it was pretty clear that she was trying, and he didn't want her to feel like that effort was wasted on him. Because it wasn't, because he was pretty stoked that she cared enough about him to try at all, since most people didn't.
But, fuck, he hated the sentimentality of this whole shitstorm. He was really not looking forward to introducing her to his mom. It was going to be like an episode of Grey's Anatomy or some shit, but without the blood and the car wrecks and whatever.
He made a promise to himself that if either of them started crying, he would just get up and leave. No amount of ass was worth that.
Noah briefly showed Rachel around his house, pointing out which rooms were used for which activities and divulging funny anecdotes about his family members that made him seem almost normal. Some stories were told with a smile and some with a tone of disdain, but there was no hiding the affectionate undertone to all of them.
There was no one home – his sister was at a friend's house for the afternoon and his mother was presumably working, although Noah wasn't entirely sure – but the house still had a comforting, cozy quality to it. It was easy to imagine it being habited by the small family, his sister doing homework at the kitchen counter, his mother – frazzled and frustrated – telling Noah to do his homework for the thousandth time, while Noah lounged on the couch with his X-Box. Not exactly a picturesque scene, but as Noah was so vehemently trying to teach her: not everything had to be perfect.
It was very dark, however, and Rachel set about rectifying that as soon as Noah left the room to go to the bathroom. She turned on some lights and pulled the curtains back from the windows and tied them in place. Some of the pillows were strewn on the ground, so she put them back on the couch where they belonged and made sure they were straightened satisfactorily. Then, she picked up the old pop tart wrappers that were on the coffee table and carried them into the kitchen to throw them in the trash.
On the kitchen counter on a pad of yellow paper was a list of chores that Noah was supposed to complete before his mother returned home, and Rachel didn't think it was too presumptuous to say that Noah probably would not be doing any of them. Since the first one was simply: clean up your breakfast, Rachel dispatched of the cereal bowl, toast crumbs, and the empty glass that had congealed orange juice stuck to the bottom, wiping down the counter with a sponge when she was finished. She wondered how it was at all possible that he could leave his breakfast behind, knowing that his mother would not have the time to clean it up. It wasn't as if it took a lot of time to clear his plates. There were many things about Noah that she knew she would probably never understand, but this was one thing that just baffled her senses entirely.
Even for a teenage boy, it was completely incomprehensible. She sighed and tossed the sponge back into the sink.
She turned to see Noah standing in the doorway, his expression unmistakably one of horror.
"No," he said simply when she started to explain her apparently unorthodox actions. "You are not cleaning my kitchen."
"Your mother left a list of chores, and I thought that…"
"No, see, this is what I was afraid was going to happen. You know she bitches at me every day to open the curtains when I come home? Every day. She's going to take one look at this living room, and she's going to basically blackmail me into marrying you. Or she's going to hire you as my maid, and as hot as you would look in one of those outfits, you are the last person I want going through my stuff on a regular basis, because I seriously don't need any more lectures on how uncultured I am."
"Who gives you lectures on your lack of culture?"
"The point is that I don't need my mom thinking you're a gift from God, so…"
"Noah, you can't honestly tell me that you've been a delinquent thus far without realizing the easiest way to get your parents to appreciate what they have instead of being angry about what you've done?"
Noah looked at her, and it was his turn to be suspicious.
"What are you saying?"
"Well, as you might know, my family is currently involved in a number of pending lawsuits regarding my neighbors and their rather conservative views of what defines an 'appropriate' time to practice my singing, and whether the appropriate place is my backyard, at midnight. Yet despite these legal troubles caused by my unwavering drive and determination to succeed, my parents never once think that they are losing something more than they gain by having me in their life, because I am in all other aspects a model daughter."
"You're saying that they don't get pissed because you clean shit up?"
"Not only that. I do what they want with a smile on my face. If they ask me to take out the garbage, I drop what I am doing and I take out the garbage. Doing something without being asked is also key."
"You're shitting me. You're trying to tell me how to be a good bad boy? You?"
"If you considered my hypothesis more closely, I think you would realize how valid my points are. Think of how happy your mother will be when she comes home and sees these curtains pulled up. She will be ecstatic that you've remembered something she obviously spends a lot of time worrying about. And cleaning up your breakfast, Noah? How hard is that really? Just a few minutes every day…"
"Yeah, but then she'll start asking me for more shit."
"Will it really take more time away from your schedule than the lectures do?" Rachel asked pointedly, and then she knew that she had him. "I can see that I make a valid point. Come on. Let's clean this kitchen and maybe then next time when you come home with a failing grade, you won't have to worry about the safety of your beloved X-Box Live account."
Puck could not believe that he was cleaning his house with Rachel Berry. Cleaning his house at all was like the stuff of nightmares. Cleaning it with Rachel was a torture he never would have dreamed up on his own. He didn't even want to think about the fact that he was sort of having fun, because if he did that, he would have to acknowledge the fact that he was absolutely losing his fucking mind.
"Kurt of course acts as if he has it all figured out, but it's clear that he doesn't. I wouldn't normally take an interest, except that he finds it so pertinent to always point out to me when I'm wrong about stuff, and it's hardly fair for me not to return the favor."
"Whatever. Kurt's just weird about stuff like that."
"True, but I find it antagonistic on most days."
"I thought you were friends?"
And suddenly Puck realized that he was totally fucking talking about shit. And not just boobs or Modern Warfare, but shit. It wasn't exactly deep, but it wasn't at his shallow-as-hell comfort level, either. And it wasn't like Rachel had even offered to do anything for him in exchange for him actually listening. It was like after the day before, he had suddenly turned into a nutless, quivering pile of ooze who was more than willing to talk about friendship problems with a girl he hadn't even been to second base with yet. You do one nice thing for someone, and this is what happens, Puckerman.
"We are friends. But that goes for all of the club as well, I think. We are friends on some level that is not quite on the same level as our real friendships. Admittedly, I don't have much expertise in the area of real friendships, but I'd like to think I have some idea of how it works. Kurt is very fickle with his affections for the glee club. I suppose that he is afraid of getting hurt, although I do not like to speculate."
"All you've done is fucking speculate," Puck groaned. "Can we go upstairs and make out or something? This goes above and beyond my housework duties for, like, the next ten years."
Rachel sighed and leaned her broom against the mop in the hall closet before consenting, "Fine. But only until your mother comes home. We will have to keep a careful ear out. I will not allow her to think that I am some harlot out to seduce her son."
"Trust me, she won't blame you if she catches us making out. She'll blame me."
"Well, we can't have that either, can we?" Rachel asked pointedly, and then she led the way up the stairs to his room.
And something about all of that last part of the conversation was totally fucking hot, although he wasn't sure exactly what it was.
Although seriously, it wasn't like it mattered.
They heard his mom pull up a few hours later, while they were sitting on his bed and watching some Family Guy (which Rachel kept scoffing about, but she was laughing a little at some parts, so Puck figured that meant she really liked it and was just too much of a girl to admit it). Rachel immediately leapt off the bed as if the sounds of the tires crunching on the driveway were wired to like, an electrical device in her brain or some shit.
"We should be downstairs when she comes in," she hissed as she grabbed blindly for his arm. "Running down the stairs and looking guilty as she enters the house is not the first impression I want to be making."
Puck couldn't help the smile, although he tried to hide it. When Rachel glared at him, he threw up his hands defensively and said, "Come on, it's a little funny."
"It isn't. At all. Noah, I want this to go well! Come on!"
She dashed out of the room before he had a chance to even think about getting up, and by the time he got downstairs, his mother was opening the door and Rachel was seated primly at the center counter in the kitchen, her math homework spread in front of her.
He tried a few times to figure out how the hell she could have done that so fast, but each time his brain insisted that it was impossible. So he stopped thinking about it, because it was starting to freak him out.
"Oh!" exclaimed his mother with surprise when she saw Rachel sitting at the table. Her tired face immediately lifted, a bright smile flashing as she turned to Puck with a questioning stare. He sighed, giving in to the misery that was going to make his life hell for the next few hours. He'd spent the past few making out with a hot chick and taking occasional breaks to watch Family Guy, which was pretty much his version of heaven, so he guessed it was only fair that he had to deal with the shitty stuff, too.
"Mom, this is Rachel, my girlfriend," he ground out, the words sounding weird. He'd never actually introduced a girl as his girlfriend before. The closest thing had happened after his mom had walked in on him and Santana one day, and after a few seconds of stunned silence Puck had said, "Mom, Santana. Santana, mom. Close the door". Santana had snuck out the window after and that had been the end of that.
This was different. And probably better. Definitely less awkward, at least.
"It's wonderful to meet you, Mrs. Puckerman," Rachel said brightly, jumping up from her seat and sticking out her hand like this was a job interview or something. "I was just helping Noah study for our math test tomorrow."
"Really? You got Noah to study?" his mom asked, turning a grin on him that was really annoying only because he used the same smile all the time and it was not cool for his mom to use it.
"Yeah, it's fucking hilarious," he muttered, pushing past his mother so he could go into the kitchen and maybe stick his head in the oven. "I thought I'd bring Rachel home to meet you since, you know, you're always judging me for the chicks I date."
"I always judge you for the whores you date, Noah," his mother said jokingly, and he groaned.
"Mom, come on. Whores? You couldn't tone it down for one afternoon?"
"You're worried about me embarrassing you in front of your girlfriend? That's adorable! If I was any meaner, I'd probably be tempted to embarrass you on purpose for payback. All those times you've scared off men I've brought home."
"That's different," Puck insisted, but Rachel was shaking her head at him and he knew that meant that he should probably shut up. And if he thought about it, she was totally right. That was not the argument to get into with his mom while Rachel was standing right there. Especially since that was something that always led to them screaming at each other and shit.
"Mrs. Puckerman, I just wanted to say that you have an absolutely lovely home," Rachel said brightly. Then Puck's mom seemed to notice that the house was actually clean. Puck thought it was possible that Rachel did that on purpose, which was sort of scary because of the totally easy way she said it. Like it wasn't even a big deal or whatever. He couldn't even be sure that she was manipulating his mother into noticing. Maybe it was just an innocent comment that she made to be polite, but then again, she could have said a bunch of other things that wouldn't have brought up the clean part…
And that chill up his spine was totally because he was cold. Not because she freaked the hell out of him and also turned him on at the same time. Not at all.
"Noah, did you do all this?" his mother asked, giving him this weird look.
"Oh, dude, mom, come on. I didn't do this to impress Rachel. Don't even give me that."
Rachel fixed him with an amused expression, but he wasn't sure what it was supposed to mean. Then he turned and looked at his mom and saw that she was wearing the exact same fucking one. He almost cried. Almost.
"Come on, Rachel," his mom said. "Let's go sit in the living room and you can tell me a little bit about yourself."
"Certainly Mrs. Puckerman! That sounds absolutely delightful."
Rachel smirked at him over her shoulder as they headed to the couch, and Puck decided that it was official.
This was his Hell.
