A/N: Hello, all!

This is a Finn/Puck slash story, so if that's not what you were looking for, that's what you've got now. There's nothing too explicit and it's mostly a tragedy piece, so I hope you're in the mood to cry. Because if you have tear ducts, you probably will. Just saying...

Also, special thanks to Hortense for reading over this story and offering her ever-insightful opinions!

Set in Season One, about a month after "The Power of Madonna"

Not Alone

Act 1

In the day or two after it happened, Puck decided what he hated the most about it, besides the obvious, of course, was how everyone lowered their voice as soon as they saw him anywhere around. Like his ears couldn't take any fucking volume. Like he was some delicate pansy-ass who needed to be babied and like he spread around eggshells for people to walk on wherever he fucking went.

Shit.

He especially noticed it in that nurse at the hospital where they took him and his sister for "smoke inhalation", even though Puck hadn't even made it within fifty feet of the building before some cop bear-hugged and then sat on him until Sarah found him. The nurse spoke to Ms. Hudson in that low voice about "keeping an eye" and "not letting him take things too fast" and about how Puck had "lost too much."

"His mother and his pregnant girlfriend?" she'd asked Carole, and Finn's mom nodded sadly, her make-up running into the wrinkles beside her eyes as she looked over to where Puck and Finn sat together.

He still couldn't believe the dude had come. Apparently all it took to mend those burned bridges was the complete and utter destruction of the girl, the event, the damn evidence that had gotten between Puck and his best friend in the first place. All it took was a call.

"Don't," Puck began, his voice sounding strange in his ears and amidst the sirens still wailing all around him, "hang up, dude. Please, Finn."

"Puck? What's going on?" Finn had replied, crunching like he had food in his mouth. "You sound funny. Give me one good-"

"They're dead," Puck spat, cutting off all of Finn's extra, meaningless words. "Fire. At my building."

"Oh," Finn replied in a grunt, like someone had socked him in the stomach just as he tried to reply. "Fuck."

"Just..." Puck sighed, wondering how he could possibly feel so devastated and so detached all at the same time. "Be here? Be..." he choked, squeezing Sarah's hand as the EMT pushed an oxygen mask against her face. "God..."

"Yeah," Finn agreed. "In five, bro. I'll be right there."

"It's a clusterfuck," Puck warned him.

"I'm..." there was a little mumbling, and then Finn came back. "Me and Mom are out the door. Want me to stay on the line?"

"Sure," Puck nodded, practically punching the EMT when the dude tried to shove an oxygen mask in his face too. "Fuck off!"

"What?" Finn asked as the dude accosting Puck held up his hands and backed off, turning to take care of Puck's little sister again.

"Not you, Finn," Puck whispered, leaning heavily against one of the ambulance doors and trying to estimate how many seconds before his legs gave out completely. "How far out are you?" Puck hated how small his voice sounded. Even when he mumbled, Puck's voice rang large, and that was one of the many things he liked about himself. Or used to.

"Four minutes, dude," Finn replied. "My mom's driving, so we don't have to worry about me hitting another public servant."

Suddenly curious and needing the distraction from the lights and the noise and the acrid smell of burnt lives, Puck asked, "Whatever happened to that mailman guy?"

"Just a concussion," Finn insisted. "But I have to pay all his medical bills before my mom lets me drive again. Or maybe that was the judge who said that..."

"Thank god for juvie court, huh?" Puck mused, feeling everything go fuzzy around him. It was kind of nice. He wasn't even drunk and here he was, the world slipping away from him one burning, aching breath at a time.

"Yeah," Finn agreed. "So, what did you think of the song Mr. Schue picked out for us this afternoon? I thought it was kind of ... stupid. I mean, the fifties were kind of cool or whatever, like I Love Lucy or something, but the music? We might as well sing something like they had back when Shakespeare was writing musicals."

"Seriously, dude?" Puck asked, his lips curling up in defiance of how heavy the rest of his body felt. "Shakespeare?"

"He was the guy that wrote plays, right? Like Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story?"

"Has Rachel been talking to you lately?" Puck asked, pointedly not looking over at the remains of his home as he spoke to Finn, falling into the other boy's distraction willingly.

"Yeah," Finn agreed. "But she's with that Jesse kid now, so I kinda figured she'd shut up, but apparently we're team co-captains, which means I have to know everything about everything musical, like right now..."

Puck was about to reply, but Finn breathed into the phone, "Fucking hell," and he knew his friend had seen the building. He wasn't sure how it had happened, or even that it actually had happened, but then Finn was running toward him and wrapping big, long arms around Puck's shoulders and then they were both crying and collapsing to the ground.

His wet face next to Puck's and his legs awkwardly splayed all over underneath them, Finn asked, "She was...?" and Puck nodded into his friend's shoulder. "And your mom?" Another helpless nod. "And the baby?"

Puck pulled back a little to give his friend a glare that told him he was being stupid, because really, Finn Hudson needed the reminder now and then, but the question was just too difficult to answer. The baby. Quinn's baby. "Gone," his voice cracked, heavy with tears and snot. His baby. Puck hoped it was too little and too buried inside its mom to understand what had happened. He hoped Quinn hadn't been too scared after pushing Sarah out of the building and then getting trapped inside. He hoped she knew his little sister, just about their little sister, was safe.

Puck also hoped his mom had never woken up. She probably hadn't. She'd been taking these stupid sleeping pills because her job was all stressful or whatever. Someone had to remember to go shake her awake every morning so she could get ready for work, and more often than not, that someone was Puck. Why did he have to pick that night to go to his fight club? He hadn't been to it since Quinn moved in and he knew it was stupid, but since football had ended before Sectionals, he missed getting hit.

If he hadn't gone out, he could have done something. He could have smelled the smoke before the alarms went off. He could have woken his mom up. He could have gotten Quinn and the baby out. He could have been the one trapped inside the five-alarm apartment fire. He should have been the one who died.

Later, lying in Carole Hudson's bed with Sarah on one side of him, Finn on the other and Carole in Finn's room, Puck told his friend all of those thoughts in heavy, guilty whispers, hating the way his tears fell in lock-step with Finn's. The boy hadn't left his side since meeting him at the ambulance and now, at eight o'clock in the morning, both dead tired, they lay, holding each other, facing each other, crying quietly as Sarah slept curled up against Puck's back.

"Don't say that," Finn whispered back. "Don't even think it. Things like this...happen the way they're going to happen, dude. That's what my mom says now about my dad dying. People leave. People die. And it sucks, but it just ... is. You can't drive yourself crazy over it, dude!"

"Yeah," Puck agreed, setting his head down, half on his pillow and half on Finn's shoulder. Exhaustion settled in as Puck asked, "If everyone leaves, how can anyone ever have anyone else? I thought, with Quinn..."

Finn set his forehead against Puck's and grabbed the back of his neck not in restraint, but in comfort. His eyes dark in the dim shaded light and his breath almost cool against Puck's overheated, grief-stricken skin, Finn replied, "Yeah, bro. I thought so, too. I guess you just have to appreciate what you do have when you still have it. Learned that when I was too much of a jackass to appreciate being with Rachel."

Taking a few seconds to mull that over, Puck nodded just barely, closing his eyes, but placing his hand over Finn's on the back of his neck, trying to appreciate that even though his mom was gone and so was Quinn, he still had Finn. He still had his little sister. And she needed him to keep it together.

The lesson felt a little less clear when Puck woke up alone, the sounds of two women arguing floating to Carole's room from out in the main area of the house.

"...that little deviant! I should kill him for putting my Quinnie in that unsafe building. Where is he, Carole Hudson?"

"Mrs. Fabray!" Carole yelled back, deathly serious. "I know this is an insanely hard time, but if you think I would let you take your grief out on that boy...!"

Puck couldn't take anymore. Ten minutes later, Finn found him crouched on the bottom of the shower stall, still in Finn's borrowed pajamas, water falling down all around him. Puck couldn't have told you whether the water was too hot or too cold, but he could tell that it wasn't right. He guessed it would drown him just the same either way. Plus, he had learned soon after his father left that running water masked the sounds and sights of crying really well.

Climbing into the shower, Finn didn't take off his pajamas either. He didn't turn off the water. He just knelt in front of Puck and wrapped those long arms around him again. "It's not your fault," Finn insisted. "It's not, Puck."

Somewhere in his brain, Puck knew his friend was telling the truth. And in that split second, a wave of gratefulness rushed through him, making him return Finn's hug and realize that Quinn's mom was wrong and it was just a horrible accident. He thought he heard something about oil paints and turpentine and an explosion and not up to code and six deaths total, seven if you counted the fetus, which Puck did, once he figured out what the word meant.

Then, Finn was crying along with Puck, one arm around the other boy's shoulders and their heads leaning together. "She was awesome, wasn't she?"

"Yeah."

A few seconds later, Puck couldn't remember whether he had asked the question or answered it, since he was consumed with thoughts of Quinn, especially her smile. "Really awesome."

"And your mom..." Finn sighed, hugging Puck closer, which made him feel like he couldn't breathe but that was okay because his mom was gone and breathing didn't matter anymore. "She was always nice to me, man."

"Yeah," Puck replied. "She was ..." Gone. Dead. Pfft. Ashes. "...Mom." Dust.

"I'm so sorry, Puck," Finn whispered in his ear, wet lips close to Puck's shower-slick skin.

Letting his head drop forward, Puck replied, "Thanks," hugging the other boy closer like he was a fucking life preserver in this shit storm. "I don't... Fuck. I don't know what I'd do without you, Hudson. Thanks for being my friend again."

Finn nodded and met Puck's eyes, blinking rapidly in the shower stream as they stared at one another. The moment grew tense and meaningful and Puck didn't want it to mean anything, because at that point anything was too much and so he did the only thing he could think of - he kissed Finn gently on the lips.

The other boy made a startled little noise, but he didn't pull away like Puck expected (needed) him to. Instead, Finn let the kiss go on and on, pressing back against Puck's lips just enough to make Puck sure it was intentional. It was stupid and fucked up, but Puck didn't care anymore. All that mattered was that Finn was warm, and cared about him, and was still alive.

After a while and a few deep, urgent kisses, Finn pulled back and turned off the water, whispering, "Let's get you dried off, bro."

"Yeah," Puck agreed, his voice croaking. He let Finn take care of him, drying him off and dressing him without shame in some of Finn's clean basketball clothes - a t-shirt and gym shorts, because those would actually fit, as opposed to his fucking special-order big-and-tall jeans. Finn wore something similar, Puck thought maybe so Finn wouldn't make him feel underdressed by comparison. When they were dressed, Finn folded him into another hug and a few more kisses, hands lightly cupping Puck's jaw as their lips met.

Pulling back, Finn asked, "Do you want to go out into the living room? Mom has Sarah watching cartoons. She's been waiting for you to wake up." Eyes ducking downward, Finn confessed, "We've all been waiting."

It was only later, curled around his little sister and ignoring the TV, that Puck realized Finn was being way too cool about the kissing. Shouldn't he be doing his stupid Finn freak out about now? When he'd first started seeing Quinn, he'd freaked out about kissing her for the first time, until Puck got him to calm down and understand that while kissing a girl as pretty and as popular as Quinn was awesome, it wasn't something to freak out about. Finn was his boy and he'd built up the guy's confidence one freak out at a time, even while teasing him about things like his grades and joining glee club.

Why wasn't he freaking out? Had Finn kissed some other dude already and hadn't told Puck? Had Puck done such a good job on Finn's ego that even a sexuality crisis couldn't get through to him? No, that was crap. Finn had freaked out just a month ago about sleeping with Santana.

Maybe Puck was hallucinating. Maybe Finn wasn't saying anything because there was nothing to say. Maybe all the shit that had happened in the past twelve hours had broken Puck's brain. Pretty soon he was going to start up debates with Mrs. Hudson's fichus, wasn't he?

Then why, when Finn joined the two remaining Puckermans on the couch, did the guy put both arms around Puck's shoulders and lean his big potato head against Puck's? Why did he whisper in Puck's ear, "I'm right here, bro. Not gonna leave ya." Was he just being the awesome friend that Puck didn't deserve? Or did he think he was Puck's boyfriend now? Fuck.

Just before lunch time, Carole showed a policewoman in and turned off the TV. "Guys?" she said softly. "This is detective Greenwood."

"Hey," Puck nodded, nearing to clear his throat again and having a surreal moment in which he realized that it took him about a hundred times longer than it normally did to scope out the detective and rate her on a bone-worthy scale. And then, he was caught up in trying to figure out whether to be ashamed or proud or indifferent about this personal failing, and didn't hear what the lady said. "What?"

"I'm so sorry. We've identified your mother from her dental records. She expired in the blaze."

"Tell me something I don't fucking know," he muttered, hugging Sarah tighter despite her protests.

"What about Quinn?" Finn asked, his voice still perilously close to Puck's ear. "Quinn Fabray? She was staying with the Puckermans."

Shaking her head (had she always been blonde?), the detective said, "I'm sorry, sir. We've verified her remains as well."

"What about..." Puck started, sighing to clear his thoughts, "...the baby? Is there anything I can ... bury?"

"I'm sorry," the lady said, shaking her head again. Well, damn it.

Puck buried his face in his little sister's thick, dark hair - just like his own when it grew out - and sighed. He felt perilously close to losing it again and he just wanted the stupid cop to go away. He wanted everything to be untrue. He wanted to go home.

It didn't help that, tears falling and whispering, Sarah echoed Puck's thoughts. "...home, Noah. I wanna go home!"

"I know," he replied, eyes lifting as Finn got up and showed the detective out, speaking to her in a quiet voice. How had Puck never appreciated before what a good guy his friend was? How had Puck ever made fun of that quality? How could Puck call himself a badass, sitting here, holding his sister and crying in grief? "I know."

Two more acts yet to come this week. I hope you liked the first one, and I would really love it if you'd leave a review! Thanks!