Getting Good at Starting Over

[countpuckula]

For not the first time since this idea had popped into his head Puck was wondering if this whole plan was stupid. Sure, his mother had been driving him crazy, but what did he really think living with Rachel would do to him?

Alright, so here’s the story. His final year of high school should have been awesome; he should have ruled the school and flattened any punk who dared say anything about him not being a badass, but then Shelby had showed up with Beth and everything had gone to hell. She had let him see his daughter, let him spend time with her and bond with her and even fall in love with her, Shelby this time, not Beth. He loved them both and started to make up this whole little fantasy family in his head, where they would hook up for real and he would continue his pool business and they would raise Beth together. Unfortunately Shelby wasn’t down for this at all and had skipped the state again, taking his baby and his heart with her.

Of course nobody had noticed. Everyone had been so worried about Santana and Quinn and even the marble-mouthed foreigner that nobody could even understand, and Puck had just faded into the background. Then graduation came and everyone went the separate ways. Rachel and Kurt to the bright lights of New York, Quinn to Yale, Finn off to boot camp and Puck... on the long road to nowhere.

He still had his pool business, but there were only so many pools in Ohio, and only so many months that were good for swimming, so when Finn had joined the army Puck had taken his place at Burt’s garage. For the following year that was his life, making what money he could, still living with his mother, and becoming more and more like the person he had never wanted to be. Almost a year to the day since graduation it had been a fight with his sister that had finally driven it all home.

A Lima Loser. She had called him a Lima Loser. He had become what he had always swore he never would, the one person he swore he would never be like: his father. That very day he had given Burt his two week’s notice, had closed down his pool cleaning business and had made all the arrangements. Two weeks later he stood at Rachel Berry’s door, dufflebag in hand. He had buzzed all the other apartments in the building simultaneously until someone let him in so she wouldn’t know he was coming until they were face to face.

Raising his hand, he knocked on the door.

Comments

[acontrollist]

Senior year hadn't been ideal for anybody. Rachel was, as always, optimistic on the first day but it all pretty much crumbled very quickly. First, she'd been informed that Juliard, the college she and Kurt had been banking their future on, had no theater arts program (which...really? That makes no sense). But that was alright, because there was NYADA. Which...oh God, she was never gonna get into that without the proper credits. And then there was the Class President debacle and getting banned from Sectionals and of course, having to see the mother that walked away from her every day didn't make anything any easier. Then there was, of course, the nerve-wracking heartache brought on by her late NYADA admission's letter.

But through it all, there'd been Finn. Losing Nationals because of their kiss should have been a sign, really, that she was hanging on to something that wasn't meant to be. But she loved Finn and love is supposed to conquer all. Love is supposed to be enough. So even against her better judgement, she'd agreed to marry him. She'd come so close, too. Until, "...and while I'm in basic training...".

Wait, what?

Finn had not only talked to a recruiter, but had decided to join the Army (he was almost done with his application process, he'd said) without saying anything to Rachel. His vegan, pacifist fiancee. Well. Rachel Berry is no one's war bride, or widow and New York Penthouses don't have widow's peaks. So that had been it. The wedding dress was returned, the ring is God knows where (because Finn wouldn't take it so Rachel flushed it. It was too big anyway). And for once, she'd done something for herself and moved on.

Which, to be honest, she's very happy about. Her apartment is perfect, tiny and nicely decorated (not entirely in stars, thank you very much), she's maintaining a 3.9 GPA while auditioning and hanging out with Kurt and Santana (yes, Santana Lopez) and now Blaine in her spare time. Currently, though, she's lounging on her couch, hair pulled back lazily, wearing a UCLA sweatshirt (stolen from her Daddy) and a pair of loose jeans (yeah, she's wearing jeans now) when she hears a knock on the door.

Which, ya know, not weird. She's friends with the older couple downstairs (she sang at their 50th anniversary dinner and now they bring her leftovers whenever they have them because she's kind of leaving the Vegan thing behind) and the young lady next door has two lovely little boys that she babysits when she needs the extra cash. So, closing her textbook, she pads barefoot across the hardwood and swings her door open to-

"Noah." Now, don't get her wrong. Puck's a good friend. He's one of the few people she kept up with that were still in Lima when she left. They talk pretty often, since Hannah calls when she needs "girl talk" still and Rachel feels weird talking to Hannah and not Puck. But...he was also living in Lima the last she checked. When she sees the duffel bag, though, she immediately moves to let him in. "How long?" It's not even a question of if he needs a place to stay or not. It's not a question of if she'll let him. It's only a question of how much more food she'll need to pick up and if she'll need to call her landlord.