This time, it's sink or swim.
They spend the year apart.
There is no Puck-and-Quinn, or Quick, or whatever the hell the Glee Club deemed their couple name to be. They do not exist. They are a distant memory of sophomore year, a stain on the perfect record of the once perfect Quinn Fabray.
Puck dates Santana, then Lauren for most of the year. They break up in New York, for reasons unknown to most of the club. Puck doesn't even mope around, but instead finds some random New York chick to kiss after they lose Nationals.
Quinn dates Sam, then Finn again. It is a disaster the second time around, Quinn reverts to her old self, bitchy and insensitive to those around her. She breaks eventually, in New York when she cuts all her hair off and decides on a new start. Maybe it was the fact that Beth was nearby, but mostly it was because she hated herself again.
When they are back in Lima, cleaning out the choir room for the summer, it's just them in the back room. They don't talk, because they that's just what they do. Sure, some snide comments here and there were appropriate, but a conversation? Out of line. Blasphemy. The events of sophomore year were to be forgotten and never mentioned again.
She brushes up against him as she tries to squeeze past. There is sheet music everywhere, on the floor, tossed on the shelves. Mr. Schuester has become a sort of pack-rat. The room is hot, and Puck has tossed his t-shirt on the floor and is standing there trying to organize in just his cargo shorts.
Quinn is trying not to notice, because that would be very wrong to sneak a peak. But she does, and she sees the cool curves of his muscles on his arms, his chest, his stomach. That perfect body she used to curl up against at night, her belly between them. But that was gone, a broken promise, a cover up.
"Excuse me," she mumbles, because it's the polite thing to do and now that they are no longer close, Quinn has to be polite. They were not Puck-and-Quinn. Or even Puck who is friends with Quinn. They were simply classmates, teammates, nothing else.
Puck tries to move, pushing himself against the shelves, but instead hits it too hard, sending what was on the top shelf tumbling down. Quinn yelps, but cannot move out of the way as it topples onto her head. Sheet music, lots and lots of sheet music.
Quinn tries to move, but slips on a particularly slippery music book, and she's wearing those wedges she'd become so fond of, and slides, falling down right on her butt. She huffs, the pain seers through her tailbone. Puck is looking down at her, mildly amused and offers her his hand to help her up.
She takes it, because she's wearing wedges and a dress and standing up on her own could be disastrous. But before he pulls her up, her eyes catch sight of something. Quickly she drops his hand and starts to pick up the sheet music, one after another she finds them. "What are you doing?" Puck is asking, trying to drop to her level to see.
But she won't look at him, the tears are welling up in her eyes because apparently that's what she does again, cries. She shakes her head, trying to make the tears disappear, but they don't, they just keep falling.
As Puck squats in front of her, she scrambles backwards. Through the door and out into the choir room. He furrows his eyebrows, looking to see the pile she left behind.
He doesn't understand, but knows Quinn well enough that it's got to be something really big to have her react like that. She's the queen of cool, hiding her emotions under a snarky
Quinn is out of the choir room by the time Puck settles himself onto the floor, knocking his head back onto the shelves and gathering the music in his lap. It's all there, Sweet Caroline, Man's World, Shout It Out Loud, Papa Don't Preach, Bad Romance. And then he finds it, at the bottom of the pile. Puck's stomach drops, he feels sick, he feels dirty.
Puck throw it on the floor, swearing, and runs out of the closet and choir room much the same as Quinn.
The sheet music for Beth forgotten on the floor.