Puck decided against telling Lauren where he had been when he had gotten her "I'm horny" text on Monday. He didn't really have a good reason why. He wasn't doing it to spare her feelings like Rachel had for Finn. It just didn't come up, so he saw no need to rock the boat. The next day in Glee, Finn was a little quieter than usual and held Rachel a little bit tighter against his body, but didn't say anything about the day before to Puck, which he was grateful for. He also saw Rachel looked a little sadder than she had before her big revelation on Monday that her boyfriend was psycho, but the waythe two of them interacted indicated that she hadn't mentioned her thoughts to him yet.
The next few days passed without incident. Puck pretended to care about all the mixer details a bit more than he did, because whenever Rachel called him or pulled him aside in the hallway to discuss it, she seemed a bit more cheerful than when he saw her in Glee. Puck had figured out that when it came to ways to distract Rachel Berry, letting her be in charge of something was at the top of the list. Also, he liked that, even though she never made any mention of them meeting in person again to discuss things, when she did call him, if he kept her in a good mood, it would often lead to them spending more time on the phone, discussing other things.
"I think Quinn doing an R and B number was a bit of an easy out for her. I wasn not surprised because she took the obvious opposite. Does that make sense?' She asked him Wednesday night. So far, Kurt, Mercedes, Quinn, and Finn had performed for their Glee assignment. Finn's had been the most impressively performed so far, but seeing as how he did some really girly Broadway number that Puck wouldn't have known about in a million years, he had to assume Rachel was involved in the song choice and preparation, and Finn using Rachel for help on his schoolwork was the opposite of surprising.
Since Mr. Shuester took at least twenty minutes after each person's song delving in to why they had chosen that as their "opposite of expected", they had only had time to do two songs a day. Since for this assignment, everyone had to perform, as it was a comptetition, Mr. Shuester had decided to roll it over into next week as well. For Puck, this was appreciated since he hadn't even thought of a song-choice yet.
"I don't know Rach, I can't even think of an obvious opposite." Puck replied, sitting in his room on the other end of the line, fiddling with his guitar. He wasn't exactly sure when it the last two days he had started using her first name, but it had just kind of kept slipping out, so he went with it. The fact he was even on the phone with a girl at all was odd to him. He and Lauren texted. That was all his attention span usually could handle with the opposite sex when they were clothed.
"Well, Noah, maybe you could if you didn't give up after five minutes to play that disgusting shooting game you boys are all so fond of."
"Give Halo a shot!" He retorted.
"You sound like Finn. He tells me that all the time." She giggled. Puck wasn't sure why, but that kind of pissed him off.
"I'm not like Finn." He growled. The other end of the line was quiet for a beat.
"No, Noah, you're not." Rachel said apologetically. There was an awkward silence. Neither one knew why the distinction that Puck wasn't at all like her boyfriend was so important to both of them of them, but they both felt it was. Rachel, never one for silence, spoke up first.
"I mailed out all of the flyers to the temple members with teenagers today." She had called the rabbi and insisted that they could have everything planned and ready to go by this Saturday. The rabbi hadn't objected as long as their sister temple's teen coordinator didn't mind, and she hadn't, because it's hard to say no to Rachel Berry when she sets her mind to something.
"Cool." Puck said nonchalantly. He also had done his homework. He had discreetly spread the word to all of the Jew network in their high school (excluding Rachel of course), that there would be another liquid besides pool water there for them to have fun with. He wanted Rachel's party to be popular. He figured new members of the opposite sex and a pool added to the fear factor of saying no to Puck might just doing it, but with Rachel's lack of social status, he just wanted to be safe. He knew having a large amount of people at the party would make her (and possibly god, right?) happy. She didn't need to know how it got to be that way quite yet.
"How do you want to decorate?" She asked.
"Huh? Do I look like Kurt?" Dude, seriously.
"No." She chuckled. "How about if you pick the non-karaoke music, since I doubt my exquisite Broadway collection will be appreciated by the masses, and I'll do the decorating."
"That works." He compromised. "When are you going to come over to hang your girly crap? And what are you going to tell Mr. Paranoia?" Another beat of silence.
"Well, I'll tell him the truth. He won't mind because I'll do it when you're not there. I'll leave temple an hour early Saturday." Puck decided not to touch how wrong it was that she could be alone at his house, but it became uncool if she was alone at his house with him. He didn't feel like getting into the heavy emotional shit again. He was sick of her being sad.
"Skipping temple? What a bad Jew!" He teased, attempting to lighten the mood.
"Oh, yes, so naughty," She laughed, but then stopped abruptly. "Right. Bye!" She squeaked, before the line went dead. Puck just stared at his phone. What the fuck?
"Oh, yes, so naughty," Rachel laughed into the phone, while twirling around in her desk chair. However, she stopped abruptly when she caught sight of the pissed off looking giant holding a math textbook standing in her doorway. Shoot! "Right. Bye!" She squeaked before slamming her phone shut and walking tentatively towards her boyfriend. She reached to hug him and he walked past her into the room.
"Was that…?" Finn pointed at the phone. Rachel knew who's name was at the unspoken end of the sentence.
"Well, yes, but we were just-" She started.
"being naughty?" Finn finished for her, his voice ice cold.
"It was a joke!" She threw up her hands exasperated. "He told me I was being a bad Jew by leaving temple early Saturday to decorate for the party!"
"Wait," He raised his voice a little. "You're skipping temple, which you never do, to go to his house."
"He won't even be there!" She matched his raised volume.
"Why should I believe you?" Finn's question caused Rachel's mouth to hit the floor.
"Because you said you forgave me for the only time I have ever not been worthy of your trust…AND I DIDN'T EVEN LIE TO YOU ABOUT IT THAT TIME!" Rachel knew, in a way, she was being dishonest, because she had had Puck over on Monday in secret, but that nagging guilt would have to save itself to be dealt with later, because right now, she was pissed. Unfortunately, she couldn't stay pissed when she saw the way Finn's eyes had started glistening. Was Finn Hudson crying?
"Rach, you're right, I'm sorry." He choked out. Yeah, he was definitely crying. Rachel felt her heart break at the sight. She cared about his well being so much.
"It's ok." She watched him sink on to her bed, letting his math book fall on the floor, and sat next to him, trying her best to get her tiny frame around his incredibly large one as much as she could. After a few minutes, when he had regained his composure, she let him switch their positions, so he was holding her. Whenever they used to cuddle like this the first time they dated, she used to feel safe and protected. Now, she kind of felt like Finn wasn't so much protecting her from the outside world, as much as trying to trap her in his arms, so she couldn't run away into the outside world. She didn't like that feeling.
The rest of the week was mundane except for the entertaining Glee performances. As Rachel sat in the choir room Friday, she realized she had been too busy planning the mixer to pick out what piece she would astonish everyone with for her performance and she wasn't even sure what she could possibly do at this point that would surprise anyone. Her first thought after that was that maybe Puck could help, since he seemed to get a side of her to come out that was a little less uptight, and a less uptight Rachel Berry was certainly surprising. She glanced over at him and saw him clapping and hollering appreciatively as Lauren finished a cleaned-up version of Wu Tang Clan's song, "C.R.E.A.M.". Rachel had approved of her choice. In addition to it being very surprising to hear Lauren start rapping, it also saved Rachel the pain of having to listen to her attempt to sing.
However, watching Puck go "Fucking fantastic babe!" and give her a quick kiss as she sat down made her all of a sudden find Lauren's performance rude and offensive. She couldn't explain it. Well, she was starting to get a really bad feeling that she could explain it if she let herself, but of course, that was out of the question. She idly wondered if Lauren had ever gotten to hear Puck helping his sister make dinner over the phone. She doubted it. Puck wanted Lauren to think he was a badass. He apparently didn't care if Rachel knew he still had a little bit of Noah in him and she loved when he proved it when he did things like tell Rachel to hold on so he could help his sister cut stuff up for a salad "before she chops her hand off and I have to clean up the mess. My ma would kill me".
Rachel felt Finn's hand squeeze her own, and it brought her back to the choir room, where her teacher was dismissing them. She had been so deep in thought that she had missed Lauren's song-choice analysis, but she sincerely doubted it had been anything soul-searching. She followed Finn out the door and tried to ignore the tug in her chest when she looked down the mostly empty hallway and saw Lauren pull Puck into the empty girl's bathroom.
Sorry it's quite shorter than the last chapter, but I wanted to devote the entire next chapter to the mixer. Rachel and Puck might have more to remember than karaoke…
Thanks again for the reviews! And in response to couragetcd: That's the thing, as much as I don't mind Finn bashing for the sake of Puckleberry, I find it a little insulting to the couple sometimes when fanfic writers feel they have to dumb Finn down or make him a horrible guy with no heart in order for her to see that Puck is the better choice for her. I think it kind of means more in ones where Finn (and Lauren in this case) are both still the semi-decent people that they're written as on the show, and Puckleberry will still choose each other.