He swears to god, he's going to kill her if she doesn't shut the fuck up for five seconds. Rachel's been flapping her trap since they left the church.
She's been going on and on and on about how lovely the service was, and how beautiful the flowers were, and how fantastic the vegan meal was. He was at the wedding. He knows what happened. And he's pretty sure she's bullshitting about the vegan meal. It didn't have meat in it, so how good could it really be?
They've stopped at the 7-Eleven on the way home because he needs beer for the game tomorrow and she suddenly decides she needs the latest edition of InStyle and a grape Slurpee. At least he'll get a few minutes peace.
He's standing at the back at the fridge, trying to remember who likes what kind of beer, when she comes to stand next to him with her Slurpee and whispers "Don't panic."
Puck figures this another one of her fucking crazy overreactions like "Don't panic, but they're out of vegan cheese" (for the record, he'd never fucking panic over that). So he doesn't even look at her when he sarcastically says "When you say that, it makes me panic."
If he'd bothered to look at her, he would've realized he should be panicking.
"Noah, I think that man has a gun." He lets the fridge door flop closed with a thud that startles the guy up the aisle from him. The guy that just pulled a gun out of his hoodie.
In an instant he takes in the gun, Rachel's big brown eyes, widened in panic and fear, and he moves like lightning to get Rachel behind him.
When he hears the gun go off, he just pushes Rachel to the floor, covering her with his body. He just lays on the floor, protecting her, his right hand under her head, his left hand braced on the floor. He's trying to figure out where the guy with the gun has gone, when he hears the cashier hand over the money and the door chime go off.
He can hear the cashier asking if everyone is okay and saying that the cops are on the way. There's an old man at the front that seems a little shocked and is sucking on his oxygen. He's being helped by a woman in scrubs.
He turns back to Rachel. She's shaking, the way she always does when they watch a scary movie. That's when Puck feels the wetness seeping into his dress shirt. He shifts off of her slightly.
His eyes are glued to the expanding patch of red on her black and white dress. Something about applying pressure to a wound comes to mind and he presses his hand to her stomach. He hears someone yell out "My girlfriend's been shot." and he can't believe that bastard shot two girls.
When the woman in scrubs approaches them, he realizes only one girl has been shot. His girl. It was him yelling.
As the woman presses his hands more firmly into Rachel's stomach, her eyes slide shut. He barely hears the "I love you" slip from her lips.
It turns out the woman in scrubs is a senior resident at Mass Gen. She rides with them in the ambulance to the hospital where a surgeon immediately takes Rachel to surgery.
They check him over, but there's nothing physically wrong with him. They give him a pair of scrubs to wear and provided him with a bag for his clothes. Now he has a bag of clothes that squelches with the sound of her blood sitting next to him in the waiting room. He can't get over how thick her blood felt, how long it took to wash off his hands.
He can't be the fucking tragic guy who lost the love of his life at 24 in a convenience store robbery because he was too busy picking out what kind of beer he wanted to drink while he watched Sunday night football.
He might joke all the time about wanting to kill her for five minutes quiet, but she's everything.
He's known her since they were 15. He's been fucking crazy about her for years. He doesn't even know when he fell in love with her, he just knows that it happened.
And he was gonna (is gonna, dammit!) spend the rest of his life with her. He's got the ring that belonged to his Grandma Connie, and he's just been waiting for the right moment. And now he can't think of a single fucking thing that was wrong with all the moments before this one. Moments when she was awake and smiling and didn't have a goddamn hole in her stomach.
It's been seven hours and he still hasn't heard a fucking thing. He's been on the phone with his mom and Rachel's dads, who are all on their way here.
He's talked to Matt and Santana. Matt's calm and collected and tells him he'll call Kurt and get the old glee phone tree going. Mr. Schuester was right about a lot of things, but he was wrong about this group of friends. No, they don't remember the solos they got or didn't get. But they sure as hell remember everyone's name. They live all across the globe, but they live in each other's back pockets.
Santana jumped on the first train from New York to Boston. She'd stopped by the apartment to pick up some stuff for Rachel, and she'd arrived at the hospital about an hour ago.
He doesn't know what happens to him, but the minute he sees her he breaks down. He just sits there with tears streaming down his face while she holds him, her arm around his shoulder, her other hand pressed against his neck with her thumb against his cheek. He can feel her tears falling on his scalp.
Two hours later they finally let him see Rachel in ICU. There were some complications and she's still at risk, but they've taken her off the ventilator. She's still hooked up to a million other machines. He can't believe that they need all those machines to look after this tiny woman in front of him. There are tubes everywhere.
She's so pale and her lips are the same colour as her skin. It's terrifying.
He kisses her so gently on the forehead. He doesn't think in the history of their relationship he's ever kissed her more gently.
Her eyes flutter open and she breathes out "Noah."
"I love you so goddamn much that it hurts to fucking breathe just thinking about losing you. And I'm so goddamn sorry I couldn't protect you, but I'm never gonna let anything happen to you again. And when you get outta here, and you're all better, we're gettin' married. I'm not taking no for an answer."
Her voice is raspy, but she manages to form the words "You don't have to."