So this was originally going to be a Sam/Quinn story but it's just a lot more Puck. Kind of meh, but let me know.
"Like we used to be when we was teenagers
But then of course everything always happens for a reason
I guess it was never meant to be
But it's just something we have no control over and that's what destiny is"
[Wait, they don't love you like I love you.]
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Lima, Ohio was always black and white. When she was thirteen she decides one day she'll run away and join the circus because she's sick of fucking grey. It's not just the scenery. It's the people, the way they think. Everything. Quinn considers Puck to be the one spot of colour in the rest of the entire grey spectrum. He's a little like a dying star, they always burn brighter when they're about to die, and Puck burns so bright in her mind she wonders how much of a bang he'll go out with.
(She wonders if she'll stick around long enough to save him.)
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Noah Puckerman always cared about everything and nothing. Everything in the way that he wants to shock and spook and maybe even scare all those people that never quite cared enough to believe in him. Nothing as in the way he wishes so desperately his heart didn't ache when he sees his friends' fathers at his games when his own father can't even remember his birthday. Nothing as in the way he wishes he didn't feel a little lost when Quinn tells him even though she's having his baby she's still staying with Finn. Nothing as in the way he wishes he knew how to be without her.
(Maybe he only cares about everything.)
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She was never going to get out of this unscathed. Puck had been broken by an absent father and expectations of nothing for so long s he guards his heart with thorns that leave scars long after he's gone. Quinn was a smart girl. She should have known better.
"Remember when I loved you?" He asks her one night when there isn't a cloud nor star in the sky and it scares him that something so big can be utter blackness.
"You loved me?"
(He never said it.)
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Sam Evens arrives and he's blonde and kind and a gentleman. He loves her just enough and her parents approve and he's exactly the type of guy everyone imagined her ending up with. She could love him, but he has one minor flaw. He's not Puck. (Sometimes she really isn't sure if this is a good or bad thing.)
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Puck dates a million other girls and tries,
(Harder than he'll ever admit)
And fails to find someone quite like her. He settles for Britney. She isn't sharp and quick witted and fierce, but she's blonde and blue eyed and a cheerleader. He breaks up with Britney. She's too much and too little like Quinn.
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"Run away with me," he proposes on the night of their graduation. Everyone else has gone to Santana's to drink and smoke and fornicate but he just wants to be with her. She's the best high he's ever had.
"Run away…with you?" She remembers wanting to join the circus when she was thirteen years old. But the difference between thirteen and eighteen is vast and is made up of expectations and unplanned pregnancies and giving most of her heart to a tiny little baby girl she gave away and broken hearts. She thinks about it, as if deciding just the right way to say yes without really having to commit to it.
"Sometimes I wish I could."
"So just do it, we'll join the circus or become rock stars or go to Paris or London on New York. Let's just pick somewhere and go."
"No."
(She imagines running away with him means running away to a life of colour and she's not sure she can handle that.)
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In the end it is her that runs away and leaves him behind to wilt away in all the greyness that is Lima. There's nothing graceful or poetic about it. About any of it really.
(It's just a story of a boy and a girl and a best friend and an unplanned pregnancy and running away and giving up most of your heart. It's not exactly a story for the record books but neither of them really know how to be anything else.)
She runs away and takes only the clothes on her back and a cheque her father gave her on her eighteenth birthday. She goes to New York because it reminds her of Glee club and duets, and "Beth what can I do," and him.
(Everything reminds her of him.)
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Seventy-four days, twelve hours and forty-six minutes since she left she returns.
"What do you want?"
(She's not sure she even really knows anymore.)
What she didn't want is to hurt him, she never meant to. Never meant to hurt anyone, it just happens sometimes.
"I didn't want it to be this way," by means of explanation.
(It is almost enough.)
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They make love and he holds her in the space between his arms and wishes they could stay like that forever. But that requires a special type of innocent bravery, the kind he never had and she gave up along with her daughter and most of her heart.
"Stay," he asks. Begs.
"I can't," she wishes she could.
"Why not?"
Because there is life and reality and a baby she wishes she never gave up and there is also moving on.
(Because this could be everything, you know it could.)
But it's not.
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She's gone when he wakes up and he's never loved and hated her more. There's a note on the back of a music score. It's the one he always kept by his bed. Beth. On the back of it is one word, sorry.
(She really, really is.)
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In the end she didn't stick around long enough to save him. The bang she always assumed he would end with turns out to be more of a slowly fading one, the way a rose that was once so beautiful wilts away until its nothing. She spends the rest of her life in black and white until finally she can't stand the grey any longer. She dives into the Hudson one night at twilight when the sky is grey and the river is pitch black and there's a single star in the sky and she's sure it's him. She hits the water and sees and explosion of colour. It gets hard to breathe and she sees him and just like that she's falling in love all over again.
(Truth is she never stopped.)