Disclaimer: No claim of ownership towards Glee, the characters, Daughtry or the song 'Rescue Me'.
A/N: Senior year, getting into fights, failing classes, not making the grades to graduate, someone needs to listen to the plea and do something to help. Someone possibly will.
Puck hauled himself from the dumpster, bleeding, battered and bruised. The crowd circling him and his nemesis chanted his name, mocked him. Puck knew that he was going down but he wasn't going to give up without a fight. From his pocket he pulled out something shiny, dangerous…..
Coach Beiste shoved Puck into the locker room ahead of her. "How could you be so stupid?" she yelled at Puck. "I don't care if it's fake. The fact that you're carrying a knife of any sort is beyond stupid," she shook her head in disgust. "You know what, Puckerman?" she stared straight into his hurt, angry eyes. "You don't have to live this life, you can make things better. You can make you better. You have the tools, you just need to want to use them, need to want to make it work. It's not too late to ask for help, I know a few people out there," Coach indicated the halls of McKinley with a nod of her head, "who would do anything to help you to succeed. They're your friends, they love you. Let them help you."
Puck watched Coach's retreating back, his jaw clenching and unclenching in time with his fists opening and closing at his sides, his eyes bright with tears he refused to allow to fall. He knew she was right. Coach Beiste was always right, well, who was ever going to argue with that Badass Mama? Puck knew he was going to have to ask his Glee-mates to help him out. He didn't want to do to Beth what his dad had just done to him. What sort of a loser dad does that? Ignores the fact that you're alive for ten or fifteen years then turns up and asks you for money. Asshole.
Puck sighed heavily and took himself off to the auditorium. He needed to get himself straight first before he went to beg for help. He couldn't have the others seeing him like this. The only person in the whole school who had ever seen him with tears in his eyes, besides Coach Beiste today, was Quinn. He couldn't let the others see him like that, he couldn't lose his badass, hard man rep, not like he'd lost everything else. Not like he'd lost Quinn, Beth, the chance to be a family.
On stage, guitar in hand, eyes closed, Puck could imagine a different scene before him than the empty seats of the dark auditorium. He started playing softly, releasing the emotions, the words he wanted to say to her but couldn't. The words he needed to say to her but daren't. He'd already ruined her life once before, he couldn't take the chance that he'd screw everything up for her again. Better for her to go to her fancy college and for them to part as friends. Puck knew he'd never love anyone else as he loved her but she didn't know that. Better that she never know that.
"Our story's old,
Older than the wind,
It's been this sad for years,
How can we pretend,
When we all know just how it's gonna end
Rescue me,
In the middle of the ocean,
Crashing down, it's always hard to breathe,
Some say its easier to give up on it,
I say it's time to rescue me
Lost and lonely people staring back,
Afraid to try,
Some of them here, the same as you and I,
The differences are all but left behind,
So I need you now
Rescue me,
In the middle of the ocean,
Crashing down, it's always hard to breathe,
Some say its hard to make the changes,
Rescue me and I'll never be the same,
Rescue me,
In the middle of my darkest hour,
Time will tell,
I never really had the power,
Some say it's easier to give up on it,
I say its time to rescue me
We gotta get out,
How foolish have we been
To say it's all been a waste of time?
We may lose, and we may win,
But like the sun we will rise again.
But until then
Rescue me,
In the middle of the ocean,
Crashing down, it's always hard to breathe,
Some say its hard to make the changes,
Rescue me and I'll never be the same,
Rescue me,
In the middle of my darkest hour,
Time will tell,
I never really had the power,
Some say it's easier to give up on it,
I say its time to rescue me,
Rescue me,
In the middle of the ocean."
Puck blew out a deep breath and left the stage, head down. Now he could ask for help. Now he could let his friends see him, he knew he could get through it without losing it. Now that he'd got the emotion out.
Puck never saw the lonely figure hunched low in the dark, in the back seats of the auditorium where she'd been hiding for the past hour wondering how she was going to live without seeing him everyday. He didn't know how much his song had touched her, how long she'd prayed for him to feel the way about her as she did about him. She stood and made her way to the choir room, she had an offer to make, she had someone to rescue. And she thanked God for the chance to do it.