Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 80th cycle. Now cycle 81!

"Bumps in the Road"

In Gen2!World: G1!Quinn/Jesse, G2!Puck

Berry-St series

(all series now listed under the communities tab in my profile)

Jesse had spent the next two weeks seeing Quinn grow continually more uneasy, stressed… He was not in that choir room with her, but with the way she'd tell him all about it, he could almost pretend he had been. It was not going well. The atmosphere in the choir room was still nothing prone to improvement, and as much as she did try to change that, she was getting so frustrated that she couldn't find anything that would work. She could hardly believe that they had managed to go all this time and not lose anyone, either for having quit, or been forced out.

"They want to be there," Jesse would tell her, while she sat there, rubbing at her temples.

"They have a funny way of showing it," she groaned, resting her forehead to the dining room table where she was trying to concentrate on her homework and failing miserably.

"Hey…" he reached over for her hand, and she yanked at his arm, pointing somewhere it took him a few seconds to understand meant 'rub my shoulders.' He sprang up, happy to oblige. Her head stayed down, but he could tell it was helping some, so he kept working his hands against her shoulders and upper back. "You're very tense," he tried to put on a funny sort of voice, hoping it would cheer her up, but he heard a sharp little noise out of her that made it clear: no funny voices. He cleared his throat, thinking. "Okay, so you and I, we've got something they don't have."

"A real tough time getting home?"

"Not that one," Jesse shook his head.

"If this is a sex thing, I am not…"

"Well, I wasn't going to suggest it right now, but good to know," he tried not sound too amused. "What I was going to say was that you and I we're the only ones who've seen three of these worlds."

"So?" she asked after a beat.

"So we've seen these guys three ways. That's fine. But maybe the solution isn't in looking for what makes them different, it's in what makes them the same." Again, a pause.

"Okay?"

"If you had to pick one person in there to knock some sense into them, to make them rally, who would it be?" She sighed.

"Well, Finn used to be able to do it, but there's no way we can get that out of him without some serious work." He had kept coming, despite how infuriating it had been, she had to hand him that. But even with that, he clearly wasn't in any place to stand up and do anything to smooth out the rough edges in their group. So, barring Finn, she had to find the ace in the hole, the one they'd never see coming…

She sat up so fast that Jesse jumped back, still mid-shoulder rub. There was every chance that this would flop, but something in her gut told her it wasn't as crazy of an idea as it seemed on the surface.

X

Quinn had not been to this house before, not in this world, but she knew her counterpart had been. She realized it was potentially an intrusion for her to present herself here, knowing the other Quinn's history with the Puckermans. Did Puck's mother know about the baby? She must have, and still…

Thankfully, she would soon discover that neither Puck's mother nor his sister was there, only him, which just might have managed to both diminish and eliminate the damage. But there was still Puck, and although she'd come there to speak with him, the look on his face when he saw her…

"Can I come in?" she asked. They had spent some time together since she'd come into this world, obviously, but never alone, and now here they were. He stepped aside and she walked in, but once he'd shut the door, she could see he didn't know what to do with himself. She made him nervous.

"Do you… Are you thirsty or…"

"I'm alright," she shook her head. "Thanks." He shrugged. "Do you want to just sit or…" He indicated the living room. "Right," she breathed, and they went to sit.

"You don't have to pretend, you know?" he said. She didn't know what that was supposed to mean, and he could read it on her face. "I know who you are. I know you're not Quinn, not the real one from here." She blinked. "Mike told me everything."

"That's why you joined the club," she said the words just as she thought them. He didn't deny. "Well… okay…" she resettled in her seat. That might make this easier. "Puck, I need your help."

"With what?" he asked.

"Well, the Glee Club. It's… It's not going well."

"Yeah, no kidding," he scoffed, picking at a spot of loose threads on the sofa's armrest.

"But we need it to, so we can go home and the others can come back." He looked up to her, his eyes dipping in a 'yeah, good luck with that' look. "Listen, I know that you all went through something really… horrible…"

"Do you?" his look hardened now; he didn't want to talk about it.

"I can't begin to try and imagine what it must have been like for you, and I'm so sorry. But we need you."

"I never said I was going anywhere."

"Didn't think you were," Quinn promised. "What I mean is we need you to help knock some sense into the rest of them, so we might actually have a shot at this. Right now it's so hostile in there, they can't even stop for a minute to think about making themselves better, about working as a group."

"And you think I can change that?" he stared in disbelief.

"I've seen it before," she stared right back. He looked back down to the armrest. "Puck, what happened with you and Finn?" It was a dangerous question to ask, but it needed asking. When the other boy's name was brought up, Puck tensed. "I know it can't have only been about the other me, the baby…" Puck's fingers snagged in the loose threads. "I'm sorry, I know I'm asking a lot of…"

"Fine," he cut her off. "I'll do it," he said. "Just don't ask any more questions." She blinked, sat up.

"Alright, I won't," she swore. She didn't know what he planned to do, but at this point, she was desperate enough to leave it up to him and not worry that it might all blow up in her face.

THE END

A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.
In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are
always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!