A/N: So enough people who reviewed Refuge asked me about Matt and Puck's ranking system. It forced me to think about it, and then to write this as a companion piece to Refuge. It might help if you've read that one, but it's not entirely necessary.
We'll call this one a 'Hard T rating', because Puck and Matt are teenaged boys...
----
"Dude, no way. It's the hands."
"Hands? What the..."
"Seriously. Her hands are so...small. They're like, little weapons of pleasure," Puck insists with a smirk. Rachel's sitting at the piano with Kurt next to her, and she's playing a little melody as she talks.
"Okay, but they're really tiny. Like, how do you think she'd use 'em?" Matt asks.
At this point, Puck reaches for the blank notebook that's sitting on the music stand. "Pen." Matt hands him a blue Bic, and Puck uses his teeth to pull off the cap, then spits it onto the floor next to him. "We gotta write this down."
"What?" Matt laughs. "Dude, this is so messed up. What if she finds it?"
"It's genius, man. We'll do it for all the girls."
"Yo, we see these girls every day, and now you wanna start thinking about who'd be a better lay? This seems like a bad idea."
"What's wrong, Rutherford? Afraid that you won't be able to handle thinking about how good they are without having a problem?" Puck asks, smirking as he writes on the page.
"Fuck off."
Puck just laughs and he and Matt both look over to the piano when they hear a blatantly wrong note. Rachel gasps and then giggles, laying into Kurt about ruining her song. The boy looks far too pleased with himself for having pissed her off. Puck actually thinks that's kind of awesome. Kurt's always pushing Rachel's buttons like that, and even when it's jokingly, it's always a little fun to watch her freak out.
"What are you doing?" Matt asks, looking at the book on Puck's lap.
"This is gonna be fucking sweet, dude. I have a system. There are some seriously nasty chicks out there, man. And I weed out the garbage, don't get me wrong, but I'm trying to figure out a better way to like, reduce the risk that I'm gonna end up with a stalker or, like, VD," Puck explains. Matt laughs a little bit. "So like, check it out. Here's what we'll do."
"You're serious about this," Matt states, because he's just realizing it.
"Yeah, man. It'll give us something to do during practice."
They both laugh, then bump fists when Mr. Schuester walks into the room and claps his hands, commencing their rehearsal.
So that's how it starts.
----
The next day, they take their spots in the back of the room as usual. They're both early for practice, which has never actually happened before. The only person there before them is Rachel.
"Noah! Matthew!" she says happily, surprise written all over her face. "You're here early. You're here on time!"
"Yeah. You know. Gotta...get comfortable and shit," Puck says, taking note of how her lips look when she puts this kind of gloss on them. They're dark pink and shiny.
"Pardon me?" she asks, hand on hip.
"I just sing better when I'm all relaxed. Making an effort here, Berry," he continues. Matt reaches into his bag for their notebook. (They call it 'Our Notebook' because 'The Notebook' just sounds gay because of that stupid movie.)
"And you're taking notes?" she asks. Her face lights up and Puck thinks he's going to panic.
"We've got important stuff coming up," Matt says. "We just all need to be prepared, right?"
"That's very admirable of you both," she says with a smile as she walks over to the other side of the room and takes her seat.
Puck grabs their notebook and takes the pen from behind his ear. "That was fucking close."
"Dude, this is gonna get us into so much trouble," Matt says, shaking his head.
"Whatever. It'll be fine." Puck opens to the page he was writing on the day before. All he's got are all the girls' names written down. "So here's what I'm thinking. We've both had some experience with some of these girls. That'll set the bar."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
(Puck and Matt are pretty much best friends, but Matt can be a little slow on the uptake sometimes.)
"Look, I've been with Quinn, we've both been with Santana. I've made out with Rachel. You get the idea."
"And I slept with Brittany," Matt says proudly.
"What?" Puck asks a little too loudly. Rachel is listening to her iPod, so she doesn't even flinch. "When the hell'd that go down?"
"Summer. You know she wears that little red bikini like, every day?"
Puck makes a disgusted noise and pulls a face. "Dude, that's gross."
"Fuck you, man, she has more than one," Matt says, furrowing his brow. Puck gets the idea he should drop the subject. "So, what, between the two of us we've messed around with all the girls except Tina?"
Puck laughs, then nods. "And Mercedes."
Matt makes a face. "Actually..."
"What?" Puck laughs. "When?"
"In the summer. Remember she came to our ball game? We went to that party after." He shrugs his shoulder, but smiles a little. "We just made out a little."
"Chocolate thunder, huh?" Puck mumbles, cowering a little bit when Matt slugs him on the arm.
"You're a fucking dick."
Puck laughs and smiles proudly. "I know."
"Okay, so how are we doing this?"
"Well there's stuff that's a given. Like, you know, body, face...uh...mouth..."
"Totally mouth," Matt nods as he smirks. "Flexibility."
"Right on." Puck's writing all this down quickly, and his writing isn't neat at all, but it works for what they need it to. And honestly, it's probably better if no one else can read this.
"Voice."
Puck turns to his friend with a furrowed brow. "Seriously?"
"Nothing worse than a bad voice saying your name, man," Matt says, and Puck doesn't know who the guy's talking about, but he thinks he might have to ask about that later.
"Okay, so we know who's got the best voice," Puck says. And he really doesn't know why he's using this thing first, but whatever. They both look over at Rachel, who's quietly singing along with the song she's listening to. "And mouth."
"You think she has the best mouth?" Matt asks, clearly amused.
"Dude, you don't know what she can do with her mouth," Puck says lasciviously. "It's been a while, but the girl can kiss. And those lips? How'd you like having those wrapped around your..."
"Okay!" Matt laughs. "Jesus, you're gonna get your ass kicked. She's sitting right there."
"Whatever. She's listening to Celine or some shit. She's like, dead to the world."
Finn and Mr. Schue walk into the room, and Puck closes their notebook quickly and passes it to Matt before Finn can ask what they're working on. Finn sits next to Puck and starts talking about something.
Puck isn't really paying attention. Maybe it's just because their work for the day was cut so short, but he thinks it's kind of fucked that Rachel Berry's at the top of the list.
----
"Underwear," Matt says seriously, walking up to Puck at his locker one day.
"What the fuck?" Puck whispers, looking around. A guy cannot walk up to another guy and say the word 'underwear' and nothing more. That's just not cool.
"For the list. Underwear totally has to be on there," Matt explains.
"Fuckin' right," Puck says. He grabs their notebook from where it sits in his locker and writes that down on the page. "Good call, man."
They make it to practice and notice that Brittany and Rachel are going over some choreography. The guys share a look, both of them smiling, and then take their seats in the back of the room. Brittany bends down at the waist, and Puck raises his brow and looks at his friend. She's wearing those red cheer bloomer things, and Puck has it on good authority that she doesn't wear anything underneath them. That's pretty hot.
"We need a rating system, though," Puck insists. "Like, what do we do? One to ten? That's how I usually work it."
"Naw, man. One to six. We just rate 'em against each other."
"That feels really fucking wrong," Puck says with a laugh. He smirks and looks over at his friend. "I love it." Rachel does this high kick thing and he nearly falls off his chair. "Holy shit."
"Dude," Matt mumbles. "Flexible!"
Puck mark's Rachel's name down in the flexibility column. And okay, this is like, the most crack system ever. But they're in the preliminary stages. They just need to sort the girls out and see who can do what. They'll get around to actually grading and stuff later.
"Did you see?"
"See what?" Matt asks.
"Panty!" Puck hisses, like it should be obvious. "We need to know. You know, for research."
Matt laughs and nods his head. "Yeah. Research."
Their notebook is quickly abandoned when Rachel has Brad start playing one of her latest solos and she starts dancing around the room. It's still just the four (five, if you count the pianist) in the room, but Brittany's picking her split ends or something. For whatever reason, no one notices how intently Matt and Puck are watching Rachel 'perform'.
Truthfully, she's just moving around a lot, and they're gathering information. The more her skirt flares, the more Puck leans forward in his seat.
The song ends with a flourish, and Rachel does this elaborate dance move, and her skirt is this close to flying up so he can see her ass. But it doesn't. Fuck his life.
"Oh, come on!" Puck groans at the same time as Matt shouts, "dammit!"
Rachel turns around, looking completely confused, and stares at them. "What was that? Is something wrong?"
"No! Nothing!" Puck says quickly. "You just uh...you sounded really good. Why don't you sing it again for us?"
Matt laughs, then they both sit back, shifting in their seats a little any time Rachel spins around. They're both desperately hoping to get just one little peek at her panties. Just one.
That quest ends in disappointment.
But it seems that an hour and 45 minutes of staring at Rachel's ass has left Puck feeling...
Whatever.
All he knows is that he wakes up in a sweat the middle of the night and all he can think of is Rachel. He closes his eyes and tips his head back as he moves his hand south. There's no way he'll be able to sleep at all if he doesn't take care of things.
He should not be doing this and thinking about Rachel. But he is.
And it's totally hot.
----
One day in rehearsal, most of the club is just kind of sitting around while Mr. Schue works with Rachel and Finn on their leads for a new song. This is how it goes, usually. They'll get a new song, and Rachel and Finn will learn their parts, then everyone else will join in and work on harmonies, then comes choreography and all that shit.
And it used to be annoying to just have to sit there and wait and watch Rachel make eyes at Finn.
Things are different now. For one, Rachel and Finn are merely friends, nothing more. And Puck heard from Brittany, who heard from Tina, who talked to Rachel, that Rachel isn't even into Finn at all anymore. So that's awesome. (For whatever reason.)
And also, now Puck and Matt can sit with their notebook out and take notes on the girls.
For instance, they've already decided that while Santana isn't bad in the sack, she's a huge bitch who complains about literally fucking everything, so that knocks her down the list a bit. Quinn is still a freaking prude, even though she had a kid. She hasn't had sex since that night with Puck, and while that certainly wasn't the worst time he's ever had in his life, he remembers very well that she had no clue what she was doing. He's not a jerk, okay? He knows that's totally understandable for someone's first time. But then she started praying afterward.
Praying. Naked. Laying next to him in her bed with the picture of Jesus on the wall. And praying.
And even though she's less of one these days, she's still kinda a bitch too. Like, she'll glare at you if she catches you looking. And yeah, her body is pretty much back to normal after having the baby, but her confidence isn't. Puck actually feels bad about that sometimes, and since, you know, he's not a total dick, he'll tell her when she looks hot. It's a shame, kind of, since that confidence was a big part of what made her hot in the first place.
Brittany is gorgeous for sure, and Matt won't give a whole lot of details of their 'encounter', but he says it was really great. Puck thinks that his friend is probably staying tight lipped about the whole thing because it actually means something. He doesn't ask. And Brittany might not be the brightest girl in the world, but she's a total sweetheart, and she's generally nice to everyone. Not to mention, she's got an ass like no other (and yeah, T&A are their own category on the list, because it seems pretty important.)
Tina's a bit of a mystery, mostly because she keeps to herself (and to Artie) and she's the only girl who currently has a boyfriend. But Puck and Matt saw Tine and Artie making out at a party a couple weeks ago, and judging by appearances alone, she ain't bad. And if she's not wearing her chains and black goth-y clothes, she can actually look pretty hot. Now that she's dropped the stutter, the whole picture is a little better, too.
Puck doesn't even try to rate Mercedes, because he has this image of her ripping off his nuts if she ever found the list.
Matt doesn't have the same problem. So he's in charge of her.
"I still say personality has to be a factor. Not just 'bitch' or 'not a bitch'."
"What the hell does personality have to do with it though?" Puck asks.
He realizes that this, right here, is why people say he has no standards.
"Um. A lot," Matt insists.
Puck rolls his eyes and sighs before writing it down on the page. "Fuck. Fine. If you get personality, I get hands," Puck bargains. Matt rolls his eyes, but nods.
Puck really doesn't understand why Matt's been so reluctant to include hands on the list anyway. After all, talking about hands is how this all got started. And besides, hands are definitely important to the whole sex experience. And if Matt doesn't think so, then he's seriously missing out.
"So Rachel has the best personality, for sure," Matt insists nonchalantly.
"What!?" Puck whisper-shouts. "How the fuck'd'you get there?"
"It's true! Tina's too quiet, Mercedes is a little terrifying, Quinn's a bit of a bitch, San's a lot of a bitch, and Brittany's...different. Rachel is just the best of all of them."
"I don't see it. She's fucking nuts, man. Like, check-your-closet-before-you-go-to-bed nuts," Puck argues.
"I dunno," Matt says, grinning at Puck. "I'm starting to think that wouldn't be so bad, either, her hanging out in my closet."
Puck clenches his jaw. He doesn't know why. It's different when he talks about her like this.
He sighs and watches Rachel as she closes her eyes and belts out a line of the song. "Really? Rachel?"
"Yeah, she's, you know, kinda intense, but she's really nice. And she'd do anything for any one of us," Matt explains. "She's like, just...nice, dude."
"Nice doesn't count for shit."
"Sure it does," Matt insists. "Think about it. If she's this generous in public, imagine what she'd be like in bed."
Puck breaks into a smirk and watches Rachel as she gives Finn some pointers. Her tongue pokes out of her mouth just a little bit, then she licks her lips and laughs when Finn messes up his lyric.
"Her mouth is fucking incredible," Puck mumbles. Matt doesn't hear him. "She'd totally go down. I bet she'd fucking like it, too."
Matt laughs and shakes his head. "You know, every time I start feeling bad that we're doing this, you say something like that and I feel like less of a douchebag."
----
Rachel's sitting next to Puck in practice one day, and she's wearing this light purple button down shirt that has cute (shut up; it's the only word he can think of) little silver buttons on it. Matt's on his other side as they all kind of goof around, singing this stupid song that none of them are really serious about.
Rachel leans towards him, looking at Matt as she smiles and sings the lyrics. Puck glances down the front of her shirt. He stops singing, because his mind pretty much goes blank.
After the song's finished, he grabs their notebook and quickly writes down Rachel's name in the T&A category.
Matt doesn't argue.
(Puck might not have ever gotten to touch Rachel's boobs, but that doesn't mean he didn't spend a hell of a lot of time looking at them. And thinking about them. And peering down her shirt just now only reminded him that, while not the biggest, her boobs are totally awesome. Just a handful, he assumes. Perfect.)
----
"I saw them!" Matt cries triumphantly one day, rushing into Puck's bedroom.
It's a Saturday, and Puck's plans include playing Halo before going to a party in the evening. He doesn't know what in the sweet fuck Matt is talking about.
"Huh?" Puck asks distractedly.
"Rachel's panties."
Puck pauses the game and looks over at Matt. (And if he's feeling jealousy, it's just because he wasn't there to see, too, not because he doesn't want anyone else looking at Rachel like that.)
"What? When? What the fuck?"
"A bunch of us went for brunch this morning. I tried your cell, but you didn't answer, and I texted you too. Anyway, Rachel was wearing that little pink and grey plaid skirt. You know the one?" Matt asks. Puck knows the one. It's particularly school girl-y. "She got up to go to the bathroom, and I figured, you know, if I called her name and she turned around real quick, it might work."
"You fucking bastard genius," Puck says reverently, shaking his head. "And?"
"Black, dude," Matt says, eyes wide in appreciation. He grabs the football off Puck's desk and tosses it in the air a couple times. "And like, the boy cut kind. You know? That make asses look really good?"
Puck lets out a sigh (okay, he's way too jealous right now) and flops back on his bed. "You're a lucky son of a bitch."
"Damn right," Matt says. He notices their notebook sitting on Puck's desk, and he tosses it onto the bed. "Mark it down. Totally hot. Honestly, I expected the worst underwear ever from that girl. Is it weird that I think she's way sexier now?"
"You just saw her panties. I'd send you to Kurt's place right now if you didn't think she was hotter," Puck says. It sounds bitter, he knows, but he doesn't really care. As much as he's enjoying the thought of seeing Rachel in those panties (and he's enjoying it a lot) he's pissed he wasn't there to see it first hand. "Dude, this is totally fucked. I think our system is bogus."
"What? Why?"
"Because fucking Rachel is in the lead!" Puck says, holding up the page. "She's like, ahead in all categories. That can't be right."
"I dunno, man," Matt says. "She's pretty awesome." He sits down and grabs their notebook so he can read it over. "Naw, look. She's not best in the body category."
"Yeah, but Santana is, and honestly, been there, done that. And I like tiny girls," Puck says. Holy shit, is he defending Rachel's position on top? (Oh, that gives him a visual he doesn't exactly hate.) "Remember, I wanted to put her first, but you convinced me to put her second."
"If I didn't know any better, I'd think you want Rachel to be your number one." Matt's wearing this shit eating grin, and Puck punches him on the arm as hard as he can.
"Fuck you."
----
She's walking down the hall one day, and it's the first time all year that she's worn that little black skirt.
The little black skirt.
The little black skirt that, when she sat on his knee, he knew it wasn't beneath her at all, that it was just her underwear and his jeans coming between their skin. He'd had to sit in the bathroom long after she left so he could get his blood flowing somewhere other than just below his waist.
He's totally checking out her ass and thinking about that day when she turns around to face him.
She gives him this kittenish little smile, and he thinks she remembers that day and that skirt pretty clearly too.
----
He and Matt walk into the choir room and Rachel's singing some R&B song (Energy by Keri Hilson, he later learns, because Matt Googles the lyrics).
He's absolutely like, captivated by her. She's hot as hell right now, moving slowly around the piano as she sings, closing her eyes tight sometimes.
She opens her eyes, and she's only a few feet away from him as she sings "Seems only like yesterday, not even gravity could keep your feet off the ground when you were with me" and he swears that this should not be nearly as sexy as it is. Especially not with Ginger (what he, Matt and Mike have started to call their pianist) half the band, and Matt in the room with him and Rachel. But her lips are kind of pouty, and her eyes are all big and brown, and if he didn't know any better, he'd think she was trying to seduce him right now or something.
Then she turns away from him and walks back to the front of the piano, and the song ends, and she starts talking to Ginger about the song.
He needs to sit down. Matt doesn't say anything to him about it, just grabs their notebook, pulls it open, and underlines Rachel's name in the voice category three times in red pen.
----
He and Matt are standing at Matt's locker one day at lunch, and Puck missed the day before because his mom had to work and couldn't get out of it, and his sister was sick, so he had to stay home and take care of her because there was no one else. If it wasn't for the puke, it would have been an awesome day. He basically just set her up with a bucket, checked up on her a couple times an hour, brought her a light lunch, and played PS3 the rest of the time.
Rachel walks up to him, smiling, and rests her hand on his forearm. He looks at it like it's the weirdest thing he's ever seen (definitely not though; he loves her hands, remember?) then looks at her face.
"Welcome back. How is Hannah?" Rachel asks. Her hand is still hot on his arm. He looks at it again.
"She's fine. Not puking anymore," Puck explains. Rachel grimaces a little bit.
"Well, I'm glad to hear it," Rachel says, smiling sweetly. (Her 'normal smile' made it to the top of the smile category. Her 'creepy stalker smile' was third on the list. Yeah, even her creepiness is up in third.) "So you're coming to practice, right?"
"I'll be there," Puck says.
"Me too," Matt adds, though this conversation is clearly not about him. She raises her books and clutches them to her chest. Matt reaches for her hand. (Puck swears he sees red.) "You get your nails done or something?"
"Oh! Yes. Dad and I got manicures last night. My cousin Ellie is getting married this weekend. I'm singing at the wedding," Rachel explains, smiling proudly.
Puck's pissed that Matt's still holding her hand. Hands are his thing, dammit. (The fucking grin on his buddy's face right now tells him this is all just to piss him off anyway.) "Let's see," he says.
Does he honestly care about her manicure? Not really. Does he take her hand and run his thumb over her knuckles as he looks at he nails? Totally. Does he quickly change his mind about not caring? Absolutely.
"Looks good, Berry," Puck says. Then he figures enough of this shit, and lowers their hands, hers still in his, and weaves their fingers together as she stands there in front of him. "You have really cute little hands."
She blushes. Puck smirks. Matt tries not to laugh.
"Thank you, Noah," she says after regaining her composure. "I'd like it back now though, please."
"Go for it." He shrugs and she slips her hand out of his like she could have done all along.
"I'll see you boys in practice," she says, turning on her heel and walking away.
Matt starts laughing and Puck grabs their notebook from Matt's locker, and he underlines Rachel's name in the hands category three times in red pen.
----
They meet at Puck's place when they decide that they're ready to do a final tally. The research section of their scoring system is complete. All categories are filled and ranked.
They just need to make a few minor adjustments.
As Puck sits in his bedroom at his desk (he hasn't used this thing in ages; now seems like as good a time as any) and looks through their notebook, he knows exactly how this is all going to shake down.
He's still totally shocked that Rachel is at the top of the fucking list.
When Matt arrives, he's got blue raspberry slushies and a bag of Doritos. Puck isn't complaining about that.
They pour over their notebook, looking in the margins and laughing at the stupid shit they've written over the last month.
("Santana's too selfish, in every possible way. She won't blow you." "Mercedes kisses like crazy, but looks at me like she wants to hurt me." "Quinn eating popsicle = HOT." "Brittany in jeans, bends down, ass crack. Kinda hot." "Rachel can open her mouth really wide." "Tina = OFF LIMITS!!!!!")
So it goes like this:
Rachel's at the top of the list, number one in almost all the categories, except two. (She's number two with an asterisk in the body category, and not really ranked in the 'sex skillz' category, because they're both pretty sure she's a virgin, but they give her points there because if she treats sex like she treats everything else, she'd practice until she got it perfect, and the thought of that is pretty fucking hot.) Some girls (Brittany and Santana) get bonus points for things like J's, H&B (see? they're discrete!) but Santana loses points for being just a little bit of a slut. (Matt gets a playful slap in the face for saying, "Dude, like you're one to talk," to Puck after he writes that down.) Then there's even dirtier stuff that they added, because they're dudes, but doesn't really count towards anything. They can't rate the girls based on taste if they haven't tasted all the girls. ("I bet Rachel'd taste sweet," Puck notes. "Wouldn't it be fucking awesome if she tasted like berries?" Matt asks. They both think about that for a second, then Puck throws a football at Matt's head.)
So they assign a different amount of points per each category. For instance, Body is worth 10 points and Personality is worth 8 (Puck wanted it to be 5, but Matt wouldn't give in). Hands get bumped to 7 points from 4 after Brittany massaged Matt's shoulders one day in practice as she sat behind him. T&A, in their own category, are worth 8 (4 for each body part). Voice is 10, Underwear is a cool 7 points, and Mouth is good for another 8.
You get the idea.
Whoever leads in each category automatically gets the highest number of points available, then the guys discuss the rest and grade accordingly.
This is fucking genius.
"Dude, Rachel's got 75 points out of a possible 80. That's fucking insane," Puck says, checking his calculator again. (They're using a calculator! He doesn't think he's used one of these things since the eighth grade.)
"We knew she was gonna win."
"Yeah, but 75 fucking points? Next is Brittany at 63! That's a huge fucking gap."
Matt just shrugs his shoulders, then they both laugh and shake their heads as they do the math on the rest. It goes like this: Rachel, Brittany, Santana and Quinn tied for third, Mercedes, and Tina is last, only because they didn't rate her in a lot of categories out of respect for their bro. Eventually, Puck crosses out the number next to her name and replaces it with N/A, and Matt nods his head in agreement.
They sit there afterward, looking over their month of work and the results, thinking back on the process. They're both really proud of this.
"So," Matt says after a few minutes, crossing his arms and smiling, "who gets Rachel?"
Puck feels his blood boil.
"My list, my girl."
"The fuck, dude!? I helped!" Matt cries.
"It was my idea!" Puck reminds him. "And I just totally did all this math by myself."
"I brought snacks and drinks." Puck furrows his brow. Who fucking cares about snacks? They're talking about Rachel, here.
"Okay, look. Here's what we'll do. Do you really want to date Rachel?" Puck asks. Matt thinks about it for a second, hen shrugs. That's a no. "Right. So neither of us can like, actively pursue her. Honestly, there's no way a girl like her is just down to fuck anyway. And I'm sure as hell not gonna date her just so I can have sex with her."
Huh. He thinks that's some personal growth shit, right there.
"So we know she'd be amazing in bed, but we can't confirm it," Matt says, finally understanding. Puck shrugs his shoulder and Matt nods. "Alright. Deal."
They shake on it.
After Matt has left, Puck looks through their notebook again until he comes to the last page with the final totals. He realizes he's written Rachel's name way too many times in the last month. He's memorized how it feels to move the pen on the page to write it out.
Fuck. That's so girly he wants to check and make sure his balls are still there.
But he's not a girl. It's not like he's drawing hearts around her name or writing P+R 4Ever on the front of his binder.
This was all done to see who, of all the girls in the glee club, would be the best in bed.
So you can't blame him when he lays back on his bed and he imagines Rachel is there with him.
----
Rachel's sitting at his desk, indian-style, with her legs pulled up onto the chair. She's studying for a history test while he reads a book for English. Yes, he's reading. For school. Reading an actual book. She's got this thing where she threatens to withhold certain things if he ditches his homework. And whatever. Most of the time when they hang out after school, she's doing homework. He figures if she's not paying attention to him, he might as well do some work too.
"I need a piece of paper," she says after they've sat in quiet for a while. "Would you mind terribly if I borrowed one?"
"Rachel, you can have a piece of paper. I don't need it back," he says, smirking at her when he looks over. He's laying on his back and if her skirt wasn't strategically placed to cover her, he'd be dropping his book and grabbing her instead.
She reaches for a notebook and opens it up to the back, where the paper isn't written on, and tears out a couple sheets.
When she closes the book again, she catches sight of her name on one of the earlier pages. When she sees what's written there, she can't believe her eyes. She leafs through the pages, and she swears she's never been angrier with him.
"What is this?" she asks curtly.
"What?" He looks over and sees what she's holding. His heart falls. Shit. They've been dating three months and this has never made it into conversation. "Nothing!"
He jumps up to grab the book from her, but she holds onto it like it's a fucking Grammy or something, and he can't rip it away from her. Okay, he totally could, but he's not going to.
"Noah. What is this?"
He takes a breath and winces as she starts looking through the pages again. "It's...it's stupid guy stuff."
"Whose writing is this?" she asks, pointing to something she knows he didn't write.
"Matt's."
"Is this some sick joke? What are you...?"
"No!" he shouts. He sits down at the edge of his bed and pulls her chair closer so she's sitting between his legs. "It's...okay, look. Matt and I get bored sometimes in practice, and we wanted something to do. And then we were talking about you one day, and..."
"You were talking about me!?" she yells, shoving at his shoulder.
"This is way, way before you and I got together!" he explains. "I said that I liked your hands, and we started talking about...stuff. So we came up with a system."
"A system? Of...of grading us?" she asks, appalled.
"Something like that," Puck says nervously. He realizes he's sitting with his legs spread. Not the smartest thing he's ever done. This could get painful. "It's not as bad as it sounds."
"Santana does doggie?" Rachel reads, her eyes filled with anger.
"Okay, I didn't...it wasn't like that about you, Rach," he says. He made sure their comments about her were, for the most part, relatively clean. "And look." He turns to the last page of their work. "You're first over all."
"75 points?" she asks quietly. "That's pretty good." He smiles and nods. He might make it out of this alive. She reads down the page and then her eyes snap up to meet his. "You said Santana has a better body than me!?"
Fuck.
"No! Matt did!" he cries, ducking when she throws the book at his head. He reaches for it and pulls open the page again. "And look, you got 9.5 points and a star next to your name, baby," he says sweetly. (He thinks the star might totally seal the deal.) "And you came out on top in like, all the other categories."
"This is disgusting."
"Kinda. But we're guys," he says with a shrug. She takes the book from his hand and glances at the page. "See? Even my own system told me you were perfect for me."
He lays it on thick, because he thinks she might have every right to be pissed for this. And then he thinks he sees her smile.
She reads a short paragraph and hands the notebook back to him. "Do you really feel that way about me and sex? That I'm enthusiastic and I'd want to perfect it?"
He smiles and pulls the chair even closer, sliding his hands up her thighs. "Well, we've only done it a few times, but I'm right, aren't I?" he asks, his voice low as he stares at her lips. He resists the urge to shiver at the thought of those times they've been together. She's amazing already.
She runs her hands through his hair and then they settle on the back of his neck. "I really don't want to read the rest of this, do I?" she asks. He shakes his head and tosses the book across the room. She uncrosses her legs and slides forward so her knees are on either side of him as she sits on his lap. "You're absolutely repulsive."
"I know." His hands move up to rest on her hips to steady her.
"And if you ever talk about me like that with the guys now that we're dating, you are going to seriously regret it, Noah. I mean it. There is a sexual harassment suit written all over that little book of yours," she says seriously. He just nods. She leans forward and kisses him. "But I was first?"
"Always first, babe," he murmurs against her cheek.
"While I think it's wholly inappropriate that this ranking system of yours even exists, I'm certain that you aren't just dating me as a result of some ridiculous, mathematically unsound, charting process."
"No, that's not why I'm with you," he insists. He almost wants to laugh. He can tell she's battling between thinking the whole thing is gross, and thinking it's sweet that even before they were together, he ranked her above everyone else.
"But since I'm first, I suppose your little system can't be entirely faulty," she says. There's a little gleam in her eyes, and he smirks at her before he presses his lips to hers. She moves forward so her hips roll against his, and he slides his hand down onto her ass. "It's too bad your mom's home."
He groans and closes his eyes. But he can't help himself. "Why's that?"
"I'm feeling very..." She stops to think of the right word, and he pushes her against him a little more. "Enthusiastic."
"You're so evil," he mumbles. She gets off his lap, leaves one last kiss on his forehead, and pushes the chair back to the desk. He flops back on his bed and tries not to be pissed when she laughs.
"Payback, sweetheart."
-Fin-