A/N : I owe everyone who has me on alerts or reads my stories a massive apology but my muse is holidaying in Hawaii so am trying to work through that by writing drabbles. I shall be using an automatic word generator and hopefully, at some point, I can crack on with my other stories. Doesn't help either that beyond subtext, there's been virtually no Quick on Glee. Sigh.

The aim will be around 500 words on each and there's no real thread to them, I don't think. At least not deliberately. I'm going to mean this time around and ransom the next chapter until I get a minimum of five reviews. It seems to be the only way, given loads read my stories but few review. It's like oxygen to writers, after all.

1

Revived

Set pre-pilot

Puck had been heartbroken most of his life. How could he not be after his childhood?

Long before his father finally left them, he was cheating on his mother, although he didn't know it at the time, drinking excessively to the point where there was little money left for rent, pawning their possessions off to pay the loan sharks and as it turned out in the end, knocking up the latest fresh out of high school barmaid and running away with her and his Nana's treasured pocket watch.

So after watching his mother get more and more jaded, whilst his father failed him and Bekah so often, he realised that love was for losers and sex was the only thing that made sense to him. Two people getting each other off and feelings be damned. Hence the cougars, hence girls like Santana and Brittany who would never love a guy the way they loved each other, hence random cheerios, hence random college girls who should know better.

Of course he had hidden his heart so long that when it started beating again, he didn't recognise it. When he realised why it was beating, he could have cried with frustration. Not literally, he was too much of a badass for that, but the emotions that ran through his mind when he worked it out?

They forced him to punch a locker, push Wheels down the hallway, kick the wall and shove Jacob and his dweeby friends in the dumpster. This earned him daily, after school detentions straight for a week with Ms Pillsbury. Missing football practice was worth it because it meant she was no longer in his periphery and didn't distract him. They let him believe his heart didn't work, just the way it was meant to be. Before her eyes. Before her lips. Before her legs. Before her ass. Before her giggle. Before her ponytail. Before his heart forgot its role in his life.

Why did his heart have to be revived by the one person so out of his reach? Why couldn't it have been that loud, obnoxious dwarf that liked the sound of her own voice? It would have meant his mother wouldn't always look at him like he was his father incarnate and how disappointing that was for all of them. Even Santana would have been a better option. No, it had to his boy's girlfriend.

But he was Noah Elijah Puckerman, he didn't care about anything and no one could prove otherwise. He'd just bury this, like he did everything else, until like had happened previously, it'd come to the fore. Not now, but in the future.

Little did he know he wasn't the only one battling with hearts and what they demanded but like him, she was also good at pretending. It's how they both got through life.