A/N: For you, KittyGoddess415!!!! (And also because I think I'm in love with Puck myself - I can't stop writing about him!)
Rachel Berry was like a human tornado. She swirled from one spot to another, a flurry of words, attitude, and shiny chestnut locks. Except for when she sang – then she was more like a prophetic angel. Her cheeks would turn pink, her chest would heave as she belted out whatever it was she happened to be singing – watching her was like being transported to another world. In that world, Puck wasn't a fuck-up, he hadn't knocked up his best friend's girl, and he hadn't spent most of his life being a grade-A asshole to everyone he came in contact with. In Rachel's world, he was the guy Rachel thought he could be all the time. Her belief in him let him become anything he wanted instead of what he thought he had to be. But as the last lilting note left her body, the house lights would come back up, and he would be transported back to the real world. It was his world – the one he was forced to deal with – and she couldn't be part of it. No, Rachel wasn't meant for Lima, Ohio. The fact that she was even there in the first place seemed like a cruel joke. She didn't belong. She was too much...too strong for a cow-town like Lima. So tucking his feelings for the big-voiced girl with the tiny body aside, he realized he had three obligations in life: Be the best father possible to his daughter, stay by Quinn's side because she deserved at least that much, and keep Rachel at arm's length so that when she left Lima for the last time, he would barely notice that she had gone.
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Puck watched her from his new vantage point in Glee. Having always sat in the back row, he was forced to move to the front row once he and Quinn started dating. Their hands together, fingers locked, he noticed that the longing glances Rachel used to shoot Finn were long-gone. Instead, those big brown eyes focused on Mr. Schue's every word, rarely looking around the room. He made wisecracks a few times, hoping to get her to turn his way with a smile or a laugh but she never did. Not once. Instead, he was greeted with Quinn's glowering at him, telling him to grow up.
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When Mr. Schue finally assigned him to sing a duet with her, he played it off cooly, even though he was happy to get a solo for once. Quinn was just happy that her boyfriend was finally getting a solo since her ex-boyfriend was the one who always got them before. He knew from singing back-up to a Rachel/Finn duet that they'd be forced to practice a lot and they'd be dancing around one another, gazing into each other's eyes, the whole time they sang. So he was surprised when she sang to his forehead, or his ear, even to his shoes but never to him. During their third practice after school, alone in the auditorium, when she refused to get any closer to him than three feet away, he told her that the song fucking sucked and walked out. After they finally performed it for Mr. Schue and the club, he was relieved that it was over with. It was only later that night, lying in his bed, that he realized that he wasn't Finn...she only sang like that to Finn. It both hurt him and relieved him at the same time. Had she been singing directly to him, he would have fallen back into her world and that's the last place he needed to be.
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He watched her the day he and Quinn brought their baby girl into meet the Glee club. She looked uncomfortable, he could tell. As the baby was passed from person to person, he was caught up in bragging about how adorable she was and how she had his good looks. When the baby got to the spot where Rachel had been sitting, she wasn't there. It made it easier. He wasn't sure he could stand to watch the girl he shouldn't love hold the baby girl he would love forever while the girl he was trying his damnedest to love looked on.
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Against his better judgment (and despite the fact that he found the whole idea completely fucking gay), he left his baby girl with his mother so that he, Quinn, and the rest of the Glee clubbers could spend several weeks at music camp. He was really beginning to enjoy his time with Quinn by then. When they spent time alone, he was happier than he had almost ever been, save that one week last year when his girlfriend had been a different girl who lived in a completely different world from him. He was pumped at the opportunity to sneak out of his cabin and head over to Quinn's for a little rendezvous out by the lake. But when he snuck inside the girls' cabin, his eyes connected with Rachel's. For just a few seconds, he was unable to look away. For a few seconds, everything in his fucking world was forgotten but the moonlight that played off her sparkling gaze. Then Quinn appeared, breaking Rachel's hold and they snuck away together, leaving Rachel staring after them.
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He wanted to break something the night he and Quinn were hanging out at the mall and they ran into her and her boyfriend, Lark, Lake, Luke – whatever the fuck his name was. Instead of just walking away, Quinn decided to stop and chat. He could smell Rachel's scent – a combination of shampoo, body wash, and an unidentifiable perfume – and it made his stomach hurt like he'd been sucker-punched. When Quinn was finally done talking after about a half a fucking hour, he looked at Rachel only to see her staring at him. Their eyes locked for a moment and he felt his heart clench. Later that night, Quinn told him that she loved him, loved their daughter, loved the family they had created. Her words made him realize that he was living the life he was supposed to live and didn't belong in that other world.
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Graduation day was a day he thought he would never actually see. But then he'd become a father and had a reason to go to class. So that day, after diplomas were handed out, he dropped to one knee and proposed to the girl he loved but wasn't in love with. After Quinn gave him a tearful "yes" and hugged him tightly to loud applause, his eyes searched the crowd of their peers and was shocked to see tears streaking down her cheeks. For a split second, he wished she were crying for him and not because women always stupidly cried at engagements.
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The night of the "Glee Goodbyes" party at Mercedes' house, he barely saw her. She seemed to flit from room to room – whatever room he wasn't in and frankly, it pissed him off. But then he ran into her in the hallway when the party was almost over. She looked horrified, her eyes wide, when they nearly collided in the narrow hall. Not sure of what to say, he said a bunch of impersonal platitudes, wishing her well in New York and telling her he knew the world would love her talent. But when he pulled her into a hug – the first time they had touched in a very, very long time – he couldn't let go. He felt her body tremble in his arms and his chest became so tight that he thought he was having a heart attack. When she walked away with a whispered goodbye, his shirt was wet, matching the wetness on her cheeks. He almost ran after her, almost grabbed her hand, to ask her if she was going to miss him as much as he would miss her, but he didn't. He had been waiting for this moment for a long time – the moment she would finally leave Lima and be out of his life for good. Lima with one less person, especially if that person was larger than life like she was, was bound to make his life easier.
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The next evening, when he knew she was on a plane to New York, the burning in his chest was so tight that he told Quinn he wasn't feeling well and went to bed at 7pm. His long-held hope of barely noticing that she had left hadn't worked. He knew only too...and knowing was a fucking bitch to deal with.
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As he got out of his car at the post office a month later, he decided to flip through the wedding invitations one last time before dropping them in the box. His eyes settled on her name and address and he almost pulled it out of the stack and threw it away. He was definitely moving ahead with his plans to marry Quinn and be the father that was there for his daughter but it would be a lot easier if he didn't have to say his "I dos" in front of the girl he was afraid he would love forever but could never touch. Instead, he mailed the invitation anyway because if he hadn't, Quinn would question him and her bitching wasn't worth the trouble.
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The day of the wedding, he was surprisingly calm because he'd been preparing to live this life with this woman since the day he found out she was pregnant. He hadn't seen Quinn because she was getting ready at her parents' house. Four hours before the wedding, Quinn called him to ask him if he had gotten the mother-of-the-bride gifts. Swearing under his breath because he'd forgotten, he hopped into his car and headed to the mall, Quinn's voice still echoing in his head about what to get and where to get it. Not paying attention, he nearly shit himself when his body collided with Rachel's as she was tearing out of Hallmark in her typical trademark tornado-like fashion. His tongue felt like sandpaper as he tried to formulate words. He hadn't expected to see her. She hadn't RSVPed. In fact, she hadn't responded at all. Like a douchebag, he asked her if she'd be at his wedding later in the day. He watched as her eyes became distant, watery even, and she sucked in a breath. And then she laid her hot hand on his arm and said the words that turned his entire world on its fucking head. She told him that she wouldn't be there because she couldn't watch the man she loved marry someone else. Before he could even pull himself out of the haze her admission had caused, she was gone, lost in the Saturday mall crowd. Her words bouncing through his head, coupled with the fact that the spot she'd touched on his arm burned like it had been doused with hot oil, were the only proof that she had even been there. He stood there stupidly, the words she loves me, she fucking loves me replaying over and over in his head until he felt dizzy. Then he made a decision: he couldn't marry Quinn.
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He felt like shit when he called Quinn's house an hour later, already on his way to being drunk off his ass, and told her that he wasn't going through with the wedding. She began screeching, her nasally voice reaching octaves he had never before heard. He explained to her that neither one of them were in love with one another...they loved their daughter and had forced themselves to believe that that love was enough to build a lifelong foundation upon. She screamed again, and he could hear her throwing everything she could put her angry hands on. He checked into a hotel, away from everyone, and drank until he passed out. Rachel's words were his only companion other than Jose Cuervo and Jack Daniels.
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When he sobered up the next day, he wanted to run to her. He knew he was an asshole but even he wasn't that big of an asshole to chase after one chick after he'd dumped another practically at the alter. He knew he had to wait until the hooplah over his cancelling the wedding died down. So he stayed in Lima...but his heart was on a plane back to New York.
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She was everywhere. He would see a woman with her hair color and his heart would pound. His waitress would have her brown eyes and they would send blood rushing to his ears, his entire head hurting from the pain of her not being there. He even had to stop watching his favorite pornos because every girl became her, every dick became his, and every forced moan sounded like her voice with his name on her lips....
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One morning, four months after the wedding that wasn't, he felt his grip on reality about to fucking snap. He drove as fast as his piece-of-shit car would take him to the airport and bought the first ticket to New York that he found. Several hours later, he was walking to her dorm door with a speech prepared. When he knocked and she opened the door, the only thing he could ask was why she had waited until the day he was supposed to get married to tell him that she loved him. She didn't stop as he pushed his way past her and came inside. He asked the question again because at that moment, that's the only answer he needed. Nothing else mattered. Her eyes, nervous and pooling with unshed tears, focused on his as she told him that she had nothing left to lose. She knew that if she told him, at least it was finally said and she could hopefully learn to breath again without the weight of her love for him pressing against her chest. She asked how Quinn and the baby were and he blurted out that he hadn't married her...that he couldn't marry Quinn when he loved Rachel. He realized that marrying for love was a lot more important than marrying for duty. He gazed at her as her eyes began leaking tears and then she was in his arms and they were kissing and everything else, every bit of the shit he had endured, became totally worth it.
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He watched her face later that night as he slipped first his fingers, then his tongue, and finally his dick deep inside her. Her face contorted with pleasure and passion as he slid himself roughly in and out of her, whispering the words he had wanted to say for two years with his mouth and conveying the words he was unable to express with his body. Even as he moved inside her, he was overwhelmed by the fact that for once, he was finally making love to the right girl, not the wrong one. He watched her mouth form a perfect "O" as she came apart around him, her eyes rolling back in her head and words of eternal love escaping from her lips.
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He nervously gazed at the end of the aisle as her fathers took her hands and began walking with her. Dressed in white, she was a vision to behold as she slowly paced her way up the aisle. Her fathers passed her hand to him and he took it, their gazes locking on one another. It was then that he realize that her world – the world where he was a good man who could do anything he wanted to do as long as she loved him - was now their world, and he didn't even have to get her to sing to get there...