These strange steps

11

She's been listening to the original recording of Chess in the dark for the last three or so hours, when the doorbell rings and she drags herself off the bed and blearily opens the door.

Puck gives her a small smile. "Just wanted to see if you were okay."

She shrugs, and lets him into the house because he's a fixture. He might as well be a chair that she sometimes sits in. That's a terrible thing to think, probably, but she doesn't really have the energy to do much else.

She's America. Quinn is Russia.

"So," Puck says, gently sitting down in the comfortable chair in front of the never-on fireplace. "That was a fucking disaster, right?"

She looks at him for a long moment and then starts laughing.

He mimes wiping some sweat off his forehead. "There we go. Better."

"Oh, my God," she exhales slowly and then rubs at her face. "The last thing I needed was to have an episode after my manager and my... fuck buddy duke out which one of them is screwing up my life more."

"Quinn won that round hands down," Puck says, leaning back a little and stretching out his legs. "Which-you know. I've fucked a lot of buddies, but I wouldn't say any of them ever leapt into the fire for me like that."

She gives him a look, but he's not prying; he's just saying, and then glances out the window for a moment.

"You think it'd be okay if I like-talked to her about Beth, some time?" he finally asks.

Her not-really-sister is a topic of non-discussion.

Relevant NDAs have been signed by Shelby, her fathers, and anyone else who knows and who they could find, including Jesse-currently starring in a revival of Aida, as far as she's aware-and Mr. Schuester. Who probably is Will to her now. Or he would be, if she had any intention of ever taking him up on his repeat Facebook invites to come and show a Glee club how it's really done.

"With Valium and zero enthusiasm, kids!" isn't really the pitch he's going for, and so her decline is considerate, not dismissive.

She doesn't think about Shelby, much. Losing the mother she never have barely even blips in relative comparison to the things that have faded from her life that she did once have. That baby is literally nothing to her, even though she's seen pictures from time to time, when Puck flips open his wallet to pay for gas or a bag of vegan crisps before she can slip him money.

Although, calling her that baby-she's close to being nine years old now, if she's not nine already.

Quinn has a nine year old.

She forces herself to stop dwelling, because Puck is waiting for an answer, and finally just sighs. "I don't know."

"But-would it be okay with you if I asked her? I mean. I'm guessing I'll see her again, sometime," Puck says, tentatively.

She clamps her lips shut and finally just says, "I don't know. I'll try to find out. If and when she calls."

Puck doesn't do anything but look at her for a long time, and then reaches forward for the remote and says, "The Browns are playing."

"I hate baseball, Noah, you know that," Rachel says, tiredly.

Puck laughs and moves around the coffee table to sit down next to her. "That's fine. Ohio's best football team probably won't care if you don't give a shit about baseball."

She hates football too, actually, but that's not really the point.

What she doesn't hate is Puck's legs up on her coffee table, explaining the rules to her for the ten millionth time, and after the first ten minutes of playing time (which in reality take almost forty minutes to pass) she half-heartedly calls out, "Go Browns!" when some ... running guy ... runs.