A/N: I'm madly in love with the idea of these two right now. These are actually outtakes from a Puck-centric fic I'm writing, but that storyline has no real influence on what's going on here - this is a stand-alone oneshot focused on MQ. There will be a follow-up, eventually. Reviews are love.

you'll see a side of love you've never known

It starts on a Tuesday, a perfectly ordinary morning.

She's standing by her locker, feeling moody, arms crossed above the bump of her baby – she's waiting for Puck, wants to yell at him. She can't remember exactly why she's angry with him anymore, but she knows it's a good reason.

"Hey, Quinn."

She blinks, realizing belatedly that someone is standing about a foot away from her. "Mike, hi."

He holds out a travel mug that has an MTV sticker on the side. "You look like you could use this."

The scent of coffee is easy to pick up and it makes her temper flare; she's pregnant and everyone who's ever taken eighth grade biology knows that means that she can't have caffeine.

"Whoa, Q." He holds up his hands as if in surrender, a smile tugging at his lips. "It's decaf."

Her anger dissipates so quickly that it's as though it was never there at all. They've been in the same circle of friends since middle school, but she's never really noticed his blue-and-purple plaid shirt and his easy smile the way she does in this moment.

"Thank you," she says quietly, feelings a rush of warmth toward him that has very little to do with the mug she's currently cradling in her hands.

She smiles the second he gets up to dance.

Mr. Schue is rapping and everyone's grinning, and Brittany's killing dance moves the way she always does, and even Artie is grooving in his wheelchair – but her eyes follow Mike, and he shoots her a brief-but-genuine grin when she gets up to dance, too.

She tries to follow his lead, to mimic his movements with her body, but the way he moves…she's not sure she's ever been able to dance like that, not even when she wasn't held back by the life she's carrying.

When the song ends they're all still laughing and singing (ice, ice, baby). Everyone's hugging or giggling or fist-bumping, or whatever it is that they do. Quinn catches her breath, one hand pressed lightly to the small of her back for a moment.

And then Mike's right beside her, his hand touching her back and then her arm. He doesn't say much, but he does smile at her, and the look in his eyes asks: you okay?

She tilts her head a bit as she smiles back at him, a wordless reply to his silent question.

She's okay.

Maybe she's even better than okay.

The first time she's attracted to Mike Chang, she dismisses it as her baby hormones making her crazy.

The second time she's attracted to him, she writes it off as proximity.

The third time, she is sure it's all just a coincidence.

By the fourth time, she has run out of excuses.

"Yo, MC," she says playfully to him one day in the hallway, landing a gentle punch to his bicep.

He turns to her, his eyes soft but tinged with surprise. "Sup, Q?"

She plants a hand on her hip. "Where's my coffee?" she demands, quirking her eyebrows.

"Oh," he laughs, "is that like a thing now? I'm supposed to bring you free decaffeinated beverages every morning?"

"It should be," she confirms.

The bell rings. Quinn has Shakespeare first period and she has a test so she can't be late, but before she walks off she gives Mike a pretty, flirty smile – and it's been so long since she's smiled like that that she almost doesn't recognize the feel of it on her lips.

He lingers after glee practice one day. Quinn is slipping their latest sheet music into one of her binders and everyone else is leaving, hurrying home. Mike stays. He doesn't even pretend to be busy with something; it's clear that he's staying just because she is.

"How's it going, Q?" he asks her when she stands up. She appreciates the way his eyes don't automatically drop to her stomach when he says it.

"Good," she sighs. "Mostly, anyway." She looks into his eyes. "What about you?"

He moves closer to her and takes her books gently from her hands, intending to carry them for her. She feels herself blush a little. Finn used to carry her books, but only when she told him to. Mike does it because he wants to and maybe because he knows that she sort of needs it now, what with her feet aching and her back hurting.

"I'll walk you to your car," he suggests.

"Puck's car," she corrects softly as they walk toward the door.

"Ah, yeah, right." He flashes a grin at her and something warm lodges in her chest. "How is it, living with Puck?"

"It's…okay."

Mike slows his pace a bit, as if he wants to buy them more time to talk. "You miss home?"

"Kind of. No. I don't…I don't know," she confesses. "I do and I don't. I just wish Puck had interests other than Super Mario. And that his mother didn't hate me." Tears spring to her eyes, unbidden; embarrassed, she ducks her head and tries to blink them away. "And sometimes I really just want bacon." It's meant to be a joke but it comes out of her throat sounding all tight and serious.

He stops walking altogether, turning to face her. With his free hand, the one not holding her binder and textbook, he reaches out and tentatively, delicately, tucks her hair behind her ear. "You could come over to my place and hang out sometime, if you wanted."

She knows from the way he says it that it's a measured, calculated offer. But it's also an honest one, and that's what has her saying, "Yeah?" a bit more hopefully than she probably should.

"Sure thing." His grin reappears. "But I gotta warn you, I have dance parties in my room all the time. It's kinda a party scene."

Quinn giggles. "Consider me warned," she says with a nod.

Mike leans a bit closer and her breath catches in her throat as he whispers conspiratorially, "We even have bacon."

"Tell me something, Quinn."

She glances over at him. They have study hall at the same time so today they made the joint decision to share a table. Mike's got his sock-feet up on another chair and Quinn's sitting crossed-legged in her own chair, one of her hands resting on her baby bump.

Abandoning A Doll's House, she asks: "Like what?"

"Like anything."

His voice is low when he talks quietly and it's surprisingly sexy. She exhales slowly and lectures herself not to blush. "I don't know what to say."

"Anything, really." He shrugs at her across the table. "I want to know more about the infamous Quinn Fabray."

Her cheeks get hot. She presses her palms against them.

"Okay," Mike bargains, "I'll go first."

"Okay," she agrees.

"When I was little…I really wanted a pet panda bear."

"You did not."

"Of course I did!" he laughs. "They're like puppies, but better."

Relaxing a bit, she stretches out her legs, resting her feet on the same chair his are on. "When I was little, I really wanted a pet polar bear. I liked how they were all white and fluffy and cute."

"We were kid geniuses, huh?"

She smoothes her hand over her stomach reflexively. "I guess so."

"Your turn." He sticks his pencil behind his ear and waits. "Tell me something."

She smiles, and she does.

They're partnered together for a dance routine for Sectionals.

She likes dancing with him; he makes even the simple movements look particularly good.

But most of all, she loves the way he touches her throughout their choreography. He lets his hand linger over her stomach sometimes. He's never tentative with her but he's never pushy either.

It's just…comfortable.

He's the one who finds her crying on the steps of one of the school's little-used entrances during their lunch hour one day.

"Quinn." He just says her name, and nothing more. He touches her head lightly when he's standing beside her, and slides that hand down her hair and then onto her back as he sits next to her. He doesn't ask questions, he just waits.

"I don't know," she murmurs, wiping at her eyes. "I don't know why."

Sometimes it all just catches up to her and everything just hurts. Her life now is so far from anything she ever wanted it to be. She misses being a Cheerio and having parents and the way everyone used to admire her, but most of all, something inside of her just seems to break whenever she thinks that of all the things she used to be and all the things she is, a good mother was never and will never be one of them, at least not right now. She's too young and too selfish, and there are days when she hates herself for giving her daughter up and hates herself even more for wanting to keep the baby in the first place.

"I don't know," she repeats.

Mike's hand moves in steady, soothing circles over her back. "That's okay," he tells her, and it sounds like a promise. "It's okay."

"Sometimes I just really want to keep her," she confesses, a sob breaking loose and spilling over her words, mangling them.

"You could, Q."

She gasps a little. "I couldn't. I can't. But I want…"

Mike slips his arm around her shoulders and tugs her toward him. He lets her lean into him, supporting her weight and her problems all at once.

"I know you could," he tells her soothingly, but there's conviction behind the words, too, as though he really means it.

She rests her head against his shoulder gratefully and reminds herself to breathe.

They play hooky from school that afternoon. Quinn's never skipped a single day of school, not in her life, but Mike presses a kiss into her hair before he whispers the suggestion into her ear, and when her heart skips a beat she figures she doesn't have much left to lose.

She sits at his kitchen table, her legs hooked around the rungs of her chair and the pillow from Mike's bed providing some cushioning behind her back, sipping water as she watches him make them bacon cheeseburgers.

It's so easy to smile around him.

She goes over to Mike's house after school three days later, tired of watching Puck play video games.

They attempt to help each other study for their respective tests the next day, but Quinn gets sleepy about half an hour in. Mike puts on a movie and she ends up lying across his couch and falling asleep that way, feeling cozy and content as she drifts into dreamland.

"Mike, can I ask you something?"

"Sure," he says, looking over at her.

They're in the auditorium with the rest of the glee club, sitting while Mr. Schue directs Rachel and Finn around up on the stage.

"Have you ever thought about having kids?" she wonders.

He shrugs, easygoing as always. "Hasn't everyone?"

Quinn glances around. They're sitting a little further back than everyone else, and all the others are either watching Rachel and Finn or involved in their own conversations. She reaches for Mike's hand and places it carefully on her stomach.

He shoots her a quizzical look and she shakes her head a little as she whispers, "Wait."

Then she feels it, and she glances up at his face, watching the way his eyes widen and light up at the same time.

"Was that a kick?" he whispers back.

She nods.

"That's kind of…really amazing." He doesn't move his hand away.

A smile blossoms on her lips. She's never really had anyone to share this with before.

"Yeah," she murmurs. "It is."

He brings her a nice big mug of decaf coffee one morning and asks, "So, what's our opinion on Rachel Berry's Crazy Idea of the Week?"

She laughs at the way he refers to them as a unit and takes a sip. "I trust you to make our decisions," she shrugs.

He gives her a drive home to Puck's house one afternoon and ends up staying. They turn on the tv (to America's Best Dance Crew, his favourite) and Quinn lies across the length of the couch with her head on top of a pillow that's resting on his lap.

She watches the screen longingly. "You should teach me to dance like that."

Mike laughs and winds her hair lightly around his fingers. "Maybe after Baby Fabray's born," he suggests.

Quinn rolls her eyes. "Obviously."

He threads his fingers through her hair again, massaging her scalp a bit, and she makes a contented noise at the back of her throat, closing her eyes.

"Have you thought about what you want to name her?" he asks softly.

She squeezes her eyes shut a little tighter. "No. I'm giving her away."

"Right."

She can tell he wants to say more so she forces herself to ask, "What's the point of naming a baby you're not keeping?"

Mike shrugs. "You give her a name that you love. To let her know that you love her."

She sighs and opens her eyes to look at him. "I don't know what that would be," she admits.

"You have time to think about it." He smiles at her and suggests, oh-so-innocently, "Though Michaela would be very pretty, I think."

Quinn breathes out a surprised laugh, still gazing up at him. "I am not naming my child after you."

He pinches her nose lightly between two knuckles and teases, "But you want to, I can tell."

Puck wanders in, then, and gives them a startled look. Quinn ignores it as she conveys the message his mother left with her – Puck's little sister needs to be picked up at her friend Anna's house at six thirty.

He nods and thanks her distractedly and Mike jokes, "He's still on Mission: Threesome, huh?" referring to Puck's current quest to get Santana and Brittany to agree to have a threesome with him. Quinn giggles, unable to stop from doing so.

Puck shoots them another look before scoffing a little and heading up to his room, giving them some privacy.

Mike watches his friend go before he looks back at her. "Do you think he cares?"

"About what?" She lets her eyes flutter shut again and enjoys the feeling of his hands in her hair.

"About us," Mike clarifies, as though it should be obvious.

She blinks her eyes open and wonders carefully, "There's an us?"

He shrugs, kind of bashfully. "We've been hangin' out."

"I know, Mike. I've been here."

"Both of us have been," he replies, a mischievous glint in his eyes. "The two of us."

She elbows his leg and orders softly, "Watch your show."

She runs out of energy at glee practice one day. She's exhausted and it just catches up with her, causing her to double over and brace her hands against her knees as she breathes. She needs a break.

Finn is at her side in a split-second, and Puck is there the beat right after. Brad stops playing the piano and she hears the sharp note of concern in Mr. Schue's voice as he asks, "Quinn? You alright?"

Puck leans down toward her and Finn runs his hand along her back, but she pushes them away, waves them off. Her back hurts so badly and she's hormonal; annoyed and teary-eyed and tired, she leaves the room.

Mike follows her without thinking twice about it.

She whirls on him in the hallway, glaring. "What are you doing?" She waves a hand toward the choir room. "People are going to talk."

He steps closer, slipping a hand into her hair and then moving it to cup her neck when he pulls her into a comforting hug.

Against her hair, he asks knowingly, "Since when does Quinn Fabray care what people think?"

She presses her face into his chest and murmurs, "Since never."

He nods and says something that sounds suspiciously like, "That's my girl."

America's Best Dance Crew becomes something of a tradition for them.

Quinn goes over to his house every time there's a Saturday marathon (her homework goes ignored). Mike's parents greet her kindly and by name and they don't seem to mind that she and Mike eat at least half the popcorn in the house and spill a bunch more on the living room floor.

Sitting next to him on the couch with one of his sweaters pulled on over her t-shirt, she feels happy and giggly and calm.

"I want to do that," she says wistfully, and Mike rolls his eyes.

"You can dance, Q."

"You don't know that."

"Yes, I do. I've seen you in glee and I remember you in all those Cheerios routines." He waggles his eyebrows at her and uses a goofy voice when he says, "I've seen you, baby, shakin' that ass."

She shoves very lightly at his shoulder even as she giggles girlishly. She focuses on the television screen and reigns in her hormones.

She loves that when she's with him, she just feels like a teenager.

Towards the end of her pregnancy, she becomes a bit of an insomniac.

Sleep evades her. No matter how she moves, she's uncomfortable, and sometimes Puck snores.

One night, she grabs the cordless phone and perches outside on the steps of the back deck, and she calls Mike before she can over-think it.

"Puck?" he murmurs sleepily when he finally picks up.

Quinn sighs into the phone and makes herself be brave. Lightly, she says, "Hey, MC."

And, god, she can hear the way he smiles when he replies blearily, "Yo, Q. What's up?" A beat, and then he asks a little more urgently, "You okay?"

"I just…couldn't sleep." She's abruptly embarrassed. Mike's not her boyfriend; she can't just call him for a conversation at two o'clock in the morning. "I'm so sorry I called."

"Nah, it's okay." She can hear bedclothes rustling as he moves. "The baby keeping you awake?"

"That, and Puck's snoring." Nervously, she bites her nails.

He laughs quietly. "Hang tight, okay? I'm going to come get you."

"You – what? What? You're going to come get me?"

"Yeah, we'll go for a drive."

"And do what?" she snaps.

Mike yawns and then answers, "I know a Mickey D's with a drive-thru open 24/7."

They get Oreo McFlurry's and they drive out to the lake and they talk until nearly six a.m., when the sun begins its ascent into the sky.

"Thank you," she says sincerely when Mike pulls into Puck's driveway. It's seven o'clock in the morning – they have to be at school in an hour and a half. "I can't believe I deprived you of all that sleep."

Mike shrugs, drumming his fingers against the steering wheel. "It was my pleasure."

She arches one of her eyebrows. "You love me." She's not sure what makes her say it, but she does, and she doesn't want to take it back.

He looks at her, smiling but serious. "I could," he agrees, his voice soft.

Her head spins and her cheeks flame. "This whole night," she murmurs, searching for escape, "it felt like a dream."

Mike's gaze stays steadily on her face. "Good morning, Quinn."

He gives her a little space after that, but by next Monday they're back to their usual routine of coffee by their lockers in the morning.

"What's your class, Q?"

"Chemistry," she says, biting back a smile when he automatically reaches out to take her books.

Mike leans against the wall of metal doors. "You have a partner or can I volunteer for the job?"

(One night, she falls asleep on his bed, her head resting on a pillow next to her open Calculus book.

Mike lays a blanket over her and sleeps downstairs on the couch, like a gentleman.)

"You are such a bad influence," she jokes when he drops her off at Puck's in the middle of the next day. "I've skipped so much school ever since…"

He lifts his eyebrows and prompts, "Since?"

She looks up at him through her lashes, "Since us."

"What's the deal with Mike?" Puck asks her out of the blue one night. She's lying in bed while he changes into PJs, one hand rubbing her stomach as she silently begs their baby to settle down and stop kicking so much.

She shoots him a scathing glare. "What do you mean, the deal?"

"You two have been spending a lot of time together, that deal."

She struggles to sit up and is momentarily impressed when Puck reaches out automatically to help her out. She braces her hands behind her on the mattress. "Jealous?"

He sighs as he sits next to her, his eyes darting to her baby bump. "Maybe."

"We're friends," she shrugs. She doesn't know whether or not she wants Puck to be jealous.

"Yeah, duh, Quinn. But Chang's never…"

Her heart flips and she realizes how she feels, then: she does want Puck to be jealous but even more than that, she does want Mike to like her.

"He's never…what?"

Puck shrugs. "He's never been like this with a chick before." He meets her eyes with a surprisingly gentle gaze and reaches out to touch her chin briefly. "You're a catch, Q, you know that?"

She struggles to be casual as she asks, "You really think that's Mike's opinion on the girl his friend knocked up while she was dating another of his friends?"

"Dunno," Puck mutters, getting up to turn out the light. Just before he does, he tells her, "But it's sure as hell Mike's opinion on you."

It's possibly the sweetest thing Puck has ever said to her, in some convoluted way.

She's waiting for Mike in the choir room, humming softly to herself and picking out notes on the piano – she used to play, when she was much younger.

He leans in the doorway as he watches her.

"What?" she asks without glancing up, her fingers skimming over the keys.

His voice is extra-soft. "You're the kind of girl they write songs about."

She bites her lip. "Why?"

(She knows what the obvious answer is: once she was destined for somewhere far from here but she got pregnant, threw her life away; she's just a sad, damaged tragedy of a girl.)

"Because of your smile," Mike says.

She tips her head back, leaning it against the wall. She's tired, so she and Mike are sitting out this particular round of rehearsing and just watching everyone else instead.

He reaches for her hand and gives it a lingering squeeze.

"I'm okay," she promises. "She's just kicking so much." She rests both hands on her stomach and smirks a little. "Puck thinks she'll be some kind of rock star soccer player."

Mike laughs and reaches over, massaging one of her shoulders in a way that feels wonderful.

"Maybe she'll be a dancer."

It happens on a Tuesday evening.

There's an event at the synagogue that Puck is being "dragged" to, and Quinn thinks the Catholic, unwed, very pregnant sixteen-year-old probably shouldn't attend. She waves goodbye to the Puckermans at 7:15 p.m. and fifteen minutes later Mike shows up, claiming that he's her entertainment for the evening.

They drive to a park that is empty and pretty at dusk, and they sit on the swings, pushing themselves back and forth lightly with their feet.

Just chilling and talking, like always, there is nothing particularly important or special about the moment.

Except that as the sun burns a beautiful pinky-orange light through the trees around them, Mike leans over and kisses her, his mouth pressed to hers, gently and deeply all at once.

She leaves and he lets her.

She takes a cab home.

She decides she's too tired and too pregnant (and too busy avoiding Mike) to go to school for the next three days.

Mike drops off coffee on Thursday morning. On the styrofoam cup he's written i'm sorry, Q.

Her reply is a text message that contains the truth, because she owes him that much: i don't want you to be sorry.

On Monday, when Quinn returns to school, the shipment of their costumes for Regionals arrives.

They all rush off to the washrooms to change, and Quinn and Mike happen to re-enter the choir room at the same time.

He looks so good, in his black slacks and shirt and his gold-coloured tie. She knows that they all match but right in that moment it feels like he matches her and only her. He bows grandly to her, a hesitant smile on his lips, and she giggles in spite of herself as curtsies as best as she can.

(It's ridiculous that in five days she's managed to miss him so much that her heart has been aching for a moment like this one.)

"You look ridiculous," she tells him haughtily, even though he looks everything but.

Mike looks at her and really sees her, she's sure of it.

"You look beautiful, Q."

He shows up at the Puckerman house that night with a soft, perfect-to-cuddle toy polar bear and, "I really am sorry, Quinn."

She blushes. She's wearing ratty old pink pyjama pants and one of Puck's shirts. "No more apologies, remember?"

"I shouldn't have – "

She looks into his eyes. "You should have," she says quietly.

Mike grins and then tries to quell it as he hands her the polar bear. "I named him for you. Ice Cube. You cool with that, Q?"

"I'm cool with that," she says, a soft grin of her own sneaking onto her lips.

"You could keep him. Or maybe give him to your little girl, so she could have a pet polar bear like you used to want."

She hugs Ice Cube. "That sounds perfect."

He keeps his eyes on her, drinking her in like he can't get enough. "You look like a song right now."

Quinn steps forward and lifts herself up on her tiptoes and kisses him.

Ice Cube and the bump of her baby keep them further apart than she'd like.

But somehow, she's never felt closer.

fin