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.