Author's Note: This was written for the following angst meme prompt:
"Every single person down there is ignoring your pain because they're too busy with their own. The beautiful ones. The popular ones. The guys that pick on you. Everyone. If you could hear what they were feeling. The loneliness. The confusion. It looks quiet down there. It's not. It's deafening."
(Buffy the Vampire Slayer, "Earshot.")
There's a lot of fics blaming Kurt's friends for not doing more. Maybe they're too busy keeping their own heads above water a lot of the time.
Ideally, I'd like to get through all the Glee Clubbers, so hang with me. Reviews are much appreciated.
Quinn won't even look at him.
Fine, he thinks. He's Noah Puckerman, he's a fucking stud, he's the goddamn man. Quinn wants to pretend like nothing ever happened? Two can play that game. Whatever. No problem. He nearly breaks the camera in ben Israel's reject friend's hands when the fro-haired punk comes up to him, his deformed buddy shoving a lens all up in his biz, ben Israel's weedy little voice talking about Quinn and a vasectomy and crippling fucking depression. Homie please.
He can play along with the vasectomy bullshit (he'd asked; the doc gave him a look like he was insane, but it's kind of funny, right? Kind of a joke). Quinn, though, he doesn't need to talk to anybody about that, and he's not going to. Quinn isn't talking, right? So neither's Puck.
( He hasn't done shit with his summer pool cleaning money, actually. He'd planned, a while ago when Beth was still in Quinn's stomach, to use that money for Beth, to buy all that baby shit for his little girl, teddy bears with bows on them and books that sang when you pressed the right button and tiny dresses. He'd scoped out a baby goods store or two back when Quinn was pregnant, and it had shocked him how little all those newborn clothes were, how soft and delicate, all ribbons and lace and a profusion of Barbie pink. )
He ignores Quinn, and Quinn ignores him. They might or might not have English class together, but Puck skips all the time anyway because school is for suckers. What has school done for him? Has it made him less of a Lima loser, gotten him the girl, landed him a dad figure or whatever it is Finn's always crying on about like a chick? What is school ever going to do for a guy like him?
Half the time Puck does sit in class, he has no idea what they're fucking talking about anyway. Who gives a fuck about proving whether or not a rectangle touches a fucking pair of circles or whatever? Class is so completely unrelated to his life that walking through McKinley feels like walking through the dust fields of Tattooine. He thoroughly does not care. His complete and utter lack of giving a fuck stretches through him.
( The last time he gave a fuck was when the nurse put Beth in his arms at the hospital. They'd cleaned her up, wrapped her up in a blanket and put a little hat on her tiny head, Barbie-pink. Carefully, he'd cradled her, looking over at the nurse nervously in case he was doing it wrong. The nurse had smiled in encouragement and patted his shoulder, and Puck had looked over to Quinn.
Limp and still shaking with exhaustion and whatever incredible battle hormones must have coursed through her body to make her birth that baby in so little time, Quinn was still radiant, still Queen fucking Fabray. She'd smiled at Puck, too, tears welling up in her eyes, and he'd smiled back in wonder and looked down at his little girl, their daughter together. Beth with her mother's liquid green-hazel eyes, her mother's snub nose, the perfect Cupid's-bow shape of her mother's lips.
He did that cliché thing he'd seen on sitcoms where you stuck your finger in a baby's hand and they'd wrap their freaky alien fingers around it and squeeze, except his heart stopped when Beth did it. He had cared then, fiercely, ferociously, he had given ten different kinds of fuck then, held Beth close and listened to her soft small breaths and the flutter of her heartbeat, held her as long as he could before they took her away. )
On their first big exam in Geometry, Puck spends forty-five minutes drawing incredibly elaborate, shaded-in dongs in varying states of erection, making sure to create a diverse portfolio of wieners on every page. Some have moles, some are super hairy, some are cut and some are uncut, some are so veiny they look like a superhero's throbbing arms, all are taken from various mutant dicks he's seen in fucked-up porn. He tosses the test carelessly on Mrs. DeWitt's desk, almost flings it at her old ass, really, and takes a moment's snickering satisfaction at the outrage that makes her pale face blanch beneath her age spots.
First time he's laughed outside of Fight Club since school started.
He spends most of the school day anywhere but at school, but just about the only things Puck tries not to miss are football and Glee. In football he can pummel somebody and not get the cops called on him, and Glee's full of enough freaks and losers that he feels pretty all right about his own status as top dog, man about town, big man on campus, etc.
Being around such a bunch of spazoids is bound to make anyone feel pretty good about themselves, frankly. Just because he quit tossing Hummel into dumpsters and advising a Candyland theme for his eventual gay hooker agency doesn't mean Puck actually likes him, or any of them. Rachel's flat, Tina's freakish, and Mercedes is too goddamn preachy by half. Finn's his bro, for now, but he's always and forever gonna be a moron, and Mike thinks nobody notices his prissy facial expressions whenever anyone points out that Kurt's pretty much a chick with a dick, and Artie's a complete sweater-vested non-entity.
Quinn won't even look at him.
But Santana's always giving Puck the eye, always good for a quick fuck in the janitor's closet or a sleepover with her girlfriend at Chez Puckerman. When he's fucking her or fucking her and Brit or fucking one of his pool-cleaning clients, he knows what the hell he's doing and who he is. He wraps it up, of course, he damn sure learned his lesson there, but there's not a pussy in town he hasn't plowed, not a MILF or cougar whom he hasn't had screaming his name, raking hungry furrows down his back.
( Doesn't compare to the girl he'd had to get buzzed first, the one he'd had to spend half the time reassuring that she wasn't fat, she was perfect, she was beautiful, she wasn't fat at all, she was tight and slim and perfect, and he didn't exactly have a thesaurus in his head to work with here but she hadn't seemed to care.
None of them, not San or Brit or any of the Missuses, compare.
He'd whispered things he actually meant in her ear, taking down her hair so he could wind those skeins of gold around his fingers as she shivered and arched beneath him. None of them, none of them compare to the only girl he's ever fucked and loved at the same time, careful and sweet and slow as she squirmed and sighed beneath him, her lips parted like her legs were parted. He'd shaken with the tremendous effort and self-control required to go slow for her. Her eyes on him, the sound of her delicate voice husky with desire, the curve of her warm slender hips in his hands, the way she tightened around him like her pussy was bound and determined to suck every last drop out of his dick — )
He gets drunk one night, like really fucking drunk. Chugs too many damn cans of some caffeinated boozy drink that fucks up his head but nice. He's too wired to go home, too drunk to make any sense, and after he's suitably impressed all the guys from Fight Club with his superior chugging abilities, he stumbles out of the house party and back into his car.
He remembers, memory flashing sick and slow as his hands tighten around the steering wheel, how stressed Quinn had been about money, how she probably still has to pay off some of those doctor's bills for sonograms and ultrasounds and Jewish baby tests. That's probably why Quinn won't even look at him, because she's stressed about money, right? She'd barely wanted to look at Finn back when his punk ass was still bitching about not being able to find a job, and he doesn't know where she's living now, if she went back to her mom's house or what, because he knows for sure he's persona non grata in New Reformed Cheerio Quinn's Perfect Life. Her mom's a selfish simpering cunt, though, so who knows, maybe she thinks making Quinn literally pay for her mistake is a good idea.
That's probably it, Puck figures, and the sound of the steering wheel creaking under his grip makes him twitch. Yeah, he's sure that's it, he knows it with the certainty of the damned, dumb and drunk, and he's got his pool-cleaning money, but he knows that's not enough to pay off even one of those bills in full, so he slams his foot on the pedal and floors it down the road.
He needs money. She needs money for their baby, which she gave away, but she still needs money. He's no loser, and she might not want him and she might not want Beth because Beth came from him too and she doesn't want any part of him, but he'll still give her what she needs. He takes care of his family, and Quinn is his family. She's his baby's momma, she'll always be Beth's mother and for that much he'll always love her, he'll always look after her. The road's a streak of charcoal in his blurry vision, the moon's ripe and round, and then there's the crash of impact, tires squealing, people screaming, shattered glass and shouting—
( One night, when his mom was asleep and Quinn was knocked out on the couch, Puck had snuck into the kitchen and made bacon. He'd picked up a pack after school that day because Quinn'd been craving the stuff the way zombies craved brains for like a week, and his mom was being pretty passive-aggressive and snippy about it. Torn between Quinn and his mom, he hadn't said anything, just kind of looked at the dinner table and shoved food in his mouth so it didn't look like he was siding with either one of them over the other.
His mom was just pissed that her first grandchild's mother was a shiksa, anyway.
So he'd whipped up some of his contraband bacon, set it on the coffee table in front of the sofa, knelt by Quinn's side in the dark and woken her up. She was all bitchy and tired and hissing her usual lines up until the smell of bacon hit her nose and she literally stopped ranting mid-word, her eyes wide in the dark, glinting in a stripe of moonlight from between the window-blinds.
Quinn ate the whole fucking pack. Puck just kept making it for her as she devoured that shit with an intensity usually reserved for coming up with new and exciting ways to call Rachel a troll. She'd seriously almost cried when he said there wasn't anymore, but he sat down next to her, honestly impressed, and slung his arm around her shoulder, tucking the blanket in around her. For once, she'd let him, her head dropping wearily against him.
If his baby's momma wanted bacon, she'd have all the bacon she wanted.
That was one of the few times Quinn had ever let him touch her stomach, only the thin fabric of her nightgown separating his splayed hand from her warm skin. It was the first time he felt Beth kick, like a little womb ninja practicing her katas in utero. "Man, now she's gonna like bacon. I'm such a bad Jew," he'd said to disguise the terror and awe he'd felt, and Quinn's tired giggle was sweet as wind chimes as he felt his daughter move — practicing her no-doubt badass forms, obviously. )
The fake cheering when fake Mr. Schuester fakely says "Welcome back" annoys Puck, but whatever, Puck fakes like he's lapping up the applause he's due now that he's returned from juvie. He glances around just to check out people's reactions — Hummel has barely changed expression, New Kid looks dazed and confused, Tina's moon face is tilted up at the ceiling and Quinn's pursing her lips.
"Wow, what a catch," she snits, "I can't believe I ever let you go."
Puck won't even look at her, and when he wheels his community service past Kurt and around the corner like his ears aren't still burning from that bullshit, he doesn't even notice the unremarkable sound of yet another loser getting slammed against locker doors.