A/N: I started writing this as a one shot. Yeah, now it's 13 chapters and I'm not done yet. So since it was meant as a one shot, the writing style is a little different than your average chapter story. There will be time jumps all over the place, so don't take timeline too seriously. Also, I'll tell you right now, it's going to be a journey...just so you're warned.
----
The first thing he notices when he gets to the bus station is Rachel Berry standing there with a big bag slung over one shoulder and a huge rolling suit case at her side.
"Where're you going?" he asks before even saying hello.
"New York," she says, unfazed. "You?"
He shrugs. All he's got is a duffle bag, his guitar, several thousand dollars in the bank from his summer working and the sale of his truck, and an urge to get the hell out of this town before it's too late.
"Dunno. What's in New York?"
Her eyes meet his and she smiles, but it's not the smile he's used to seeing. "Everything?" she suggests.
He laughs softly and nods. "Want company?" She doesn't say anything. She doesn't say no, most importantly. "Where're your dads?"
"Busy," she says softly.
He looks at her, because she never really says anything softly, and he notices that her eyes are a little red, and her cheeks are a little chapped. He thinks she's been crying, but he supposes that makes sense if she's just said goodbye to people and stuff. He knows his mom cried like a freaking baby before he left the house. She refused to even drive him to the bus station, but at least she called him a cab.
He buys his ticket and they wait together, neither of them saying a word, until their bus is called.
He loads her bags on and watches her as she steps on the bus, and she's wiping a tear from her cheek, so he thinks something's going on with her. And Sad Rachel makes him feel bad.
He just doesn't know her well enough to ask her what it is. Maybe they've spent the last couple years as acquaintances, getting along well enough and even laughed together a few times. They hung out a few times, too, in groups and once or twice on their own. It's not like they're best friends, but they've always (always meaning, since sophomore year) gotten along okay. She doesn't hate him and he doesn't want to strangle her.
He doesn't know what to say to her when he sits down and she doesn't look at him.
So he just settles his arm on the armrest next to hers so their elbows are touching. He figures that's about as much comfort as he's allowed to give her.
And that's okay, because it seems to work.
----
"So what's your big plan for when you get to New York?"
They're in the middle of Pennsylvania and she's leafing through some girly magazine. "Find an apartment, I guess."
"You don't have one yet?" he asks in shock. "You don't have like, a 47 step plan on how to take over the city?"
She doesn't say anything for a second. She closes her magazine and looks out the window again.
"No."
----
The bus drops them somewhere in the middle of the city, and he sees her smile for the first time in hours and hours.
"We need a hotel room," she states, hitching her bag up over her shoulder. She notices he's clutching the handle of her rolling suitcase. She decides it's nice of him to carry it for her.
"We?" he asks.
She rolls her eyes and starts off down the sidewalk. "Yes, we. And don't even think of getting any ideas!"
He laughs and follows her.
(He doesn't know it yet, but this'll become a theme.)
----
She washes the bus travel off her face and steps out of the bathroom to see him laying on his bed with the remote control in his hand.
She shakes her head, snatches the remote from him, and takes his hand.
He doesn't even get a chance to grab his cell before she pulls him out the door.
She's going on and on about New York and all the things he needs to see, and somewhere between coffee at Dean and Deluca and riding the Staten Island Ferry just for fun, he starts to think that it actually makes a lot of sense for the two of them to end up going rogue the week after graduation.
----
"I'm so tired," she says, flopping back onto her bed once they get back to the hotel.
He takes off his tee shirt and unbuckles his belt, then unzips his fly and lets his jeans fall to the floor. She doesn't even look at him twice.
"Today was crazy," he says with a laugh. Honestly, it feels like he's a million years away from Lima.
Which, let's face it, is exactly what he was going for.
She smiles again and reaches for her toiletry bag and pajamas, then slips into the bathroom.
She tries not to think too much about how this is all happening, how she's here with Noah Puckerman, of all people.
But maybe it's perfect that the person she knew the least in her old life is the person she knows best in her new one.
----
Five minutes.
The light is out and they've said goodnight to one another, and from their 20th floor hotel room, they can barely hear the sirens and white noise below.
But she only lasts five minutes before she talks again, and he smiles in the darkness because frankly, he's been expecting it.
"What are you going to do, Noah?"
There it is. The question he's been waiting for all day.
"Dunno."
The answer is a lot scarier now than it was in Lima.
----
She's awake and showered and dressed, and there are three cups of coffee in the room. One in her hand, two on the bedside table.
He wakes up and grumbles about the amount of sun pelting into the room, and when he looks over at her, he almost laughs. Her entire bed is covered in newspaper, her coffee now sitting between her legs as she sits cross-legged, and she's got a bright pink marker in her hand.
"Oh! Noah! You're awake," she says when she notices him rubbing sleep from his eyes. "I brought you a coffee."
"Thanks," he mumbles. "What time is it? How long have you been up? Where'd you get all that?"
"It's nearing 10:00, and I've been up since shortly before 7:00. I went to the hotel gym, came back here and showered, went out for breakfast to that little diner we saw yesterday a couple blocks from here, and then stopped at Starbucks before heading to the newsstand for every major New York paper."
Annnnd there's the crazy.
He's sipping from his cup and looking over at the pages spread around her. "What's that?"
"Apartment listings!" she says happily.
"Pass it over," he says. She practically claps and reaches for a purple pen before he shoots her a death glare and she gives him a green one. "Guess I can't live in a hotel forever." But, he thinks that sounds pretty sweet. He just knows that the money he has isn't going to last too long, no matter how he slices it. He's going to need a job, too, and... "Holy shit, Rachel. These places are fucking ridiculous!"
"Yes, some of them are quite pricey," she says regrettably. "However some of the smaller bachelors and studios are affordable. Try Brooklyn. Things seem to be a little bit cheaper there."
So he does as she tells him, and yeah, she's right. Cheaper. Not cheap.
He switches on the television to ESPN and Rachel scoffs, but she's smiling, and whatever, he just likes the background noise.
She turns down the volume and he listens to her calls as she sets up appointments to go look at apartments. He figures she knows what she's doing, so he pulls out his cell and does the same, only instead of like, writing down all the information in a tidy little notebook, he scribbles times down next to the listings in the paper and ignores her when she rolls her eyes at him.
After he's finished his coffee, he pitches the cup into the trash and that's when he realizes she's had two coffees. Caffeinated Rachel isn't necessarily something he wants to have to endure, but he doesn't say anything about it.
He showers and pulls on some clothes, and she's waiting and ready to go when he steps back into the room. She's not bouncing off the walls or anything. He breathes a sigh of relief.
----
"This place is..." she says, looking around once the landlord has stepped out to 'give her a moment to decide.'
"A fucking shit hole?" Puck offers. "There's no bathroom in here."
"It's at the end of the hall."
"You're not fucking living here, Rachel."
So she doesn't put in an application, and she follows Noah out of the building, and she smiles to herself because it's nice to not have to do this alone.
----
One of the places he looks at actually isn't bad. It's right next to the subway line (like, the windows rattle when the train goes by) but it's bigger than the other six places they've looked at, and there are no nasty stains on the carpets or anything.
Rachel grins at him as he fills out the necessary application form, and she says 'aww' when he puts his mother down as a reference, and he resists the urge to smack her on the arm.
They're walking back down the stairs (five flights, but he thinks he could handle it). Rachel's behind him and she squeals and presses herself up against him and grabs onto his arm.
He turns around just in time to see a rat run across the landing behind them.
"Jesus fucking Christ," he mumbles.
Rachel giggles, but she's still hanging onto him, and so he takes her hand and gets them the fuck out of there.
----
They stop for food at a little corner diner, and he bites into his burger and tries not to think about doing this over and over every day until he finds a place that doesn't give him crabs just by walking in the door.
"You know," she says, swallowing a bite of her sandwich, "if we lived together, we could find a nicer apartment. We could afford something better."
"You wanna live together?" he asks skeptically. That either sounds like an awesome idea, or a really, really terrible one; nothing in between. She shrugs and he thinks about it for a moment before smiling across the table at her. "Yeah. Okay."
----
It takes them three days to find something, and it's not much.
It's a one bedroom plus 'den/office' in Brooklyn. The view is actually kick ass, and though it's crumbling a little, there's exposed brick on one wall, which Rachel loves. The kitchen is little, but the appliances aren't ancient, and there are no rodents or anything else creepy crawling around. And the landlord isn't a freak, which Puck's pretty stoked about.
They sign the lease on a Wednesday and move in on a Thursday, and she doesn't even have to fight him for the bedroom.
He doesn't hate his little den/office. It's 150 square feet of heaven, and she laughs when he tells her so.
----
She like, absolutely refuses to buy anything second hand, so they go to Ikea and buy a bunch of stuff that they need, and then spend the rest of the day cursing (him) over the instructions and deciding (her) where everything should go.
He dusts off his hands when the last piece of cardboard is tossed into the dumpster, and she stands in their living room, with its navy blue couch and dark wood coffee table and television stand, and she announces that it's perfect.
----
"I need a fucking job," he says seriously one day when they're sitting in Battery Park. She's stretched out in shorts and a camisole, her flip flops sitting on the grass next to her, and he's rocking badass aviators he scooped for six bucks from some kid near the South Street Seaport the other day.
"What would you like to do?" she asks seriously, not bothering to open her eyes.
"I dunno," he answers, and he's starting to feel like every time she asks him something, he answers with those words.
"I think you need to find your passion, Noah," she says.
She makes it sound so easy, like someone who's known all their life what they wanted to do would.
"Yeah, but who the fuck knows when I'll figure that out?" he asks, and he's laughing a little but, holy shit, he needs to figure that out. "In the meantime, I need a way to make money."
She sits up and moves in front of him, legs tucked beneath her and hands on his knees. "Well, let's see. What are you good at?" she asks. He thinks it's rhetorical. He's right. "Well, music, which might not make you a ton of money, but if you built your repertoire, you could certainly play some shows and earn something, at least." He nods. "You're...large. You could be a bouncer!"
For some reason, she finds this hilarious. It sends her into a fit of giggles.
"I'm not going to be a bouncer, Rach, come on," he says, laughing a little bit. She's cute when she laughs.
"Why not? You could kick people out of bars for a living!" she says excitedly.
"The hours are shit and I'd have to deal with drunk morons all the time," he explains. She seems to see his logic, because her face turns pensive again. "But like, I could wait tables or something. I mean, fuck, how hard can it be?"
She smiles and nods her head. She thinks that a boy who looks like he does could stand to make a lot in tips.
On their way home, she pulls him into an Italian restaurant about five blocks from their place. There's a help wanted sign in the window, and she politely asks the manager for an application.
He gets the job. It's not much, just a waiter for the lunch shift, and he gets off at 6:00, which kind of sucks because that's when, you know, people come to eat and stuff.
But on his fourth day, he makes a $20 tip on one table and some chick writes her number on the bill, so he figures it might not be so bad after all.
----
When his manager asks him if he'd mind getting rid of his mohawk, Puck runs his hand over his head contemplatively. But he agrees because he needs his job and he's not 16 anymore, so maybe it's time for a change anyway.
Rachel sits him in front of the sink in their tiny bathroom and runs her hands over his scalp as she shaves his head for him.
She stands next to him, both of them looking in the mirror at his new hairstyle. Her lips are in a tight line and he looks at her questioningly.
"I think I miss it," she admits.
He gets that smirk on his face and his eyes sparkle.
"I knew you loved the 'hawk, Berry."
----
Rachel finds work in the little coffee shop around the corner and he's her first customer. She pours him a drip coffee (the extent of her abilities, five minutes into the job) and he hands her a $5 and tells her to keep the change.
----
tbc...