A/N: Set before their sophomore year in high school.
Reflection
Puck doesn't really understand Santana completely.
Truth be told, he doesn't think he wants to.
And with all honesty, he believes that she doesn't want him to.
So Puck couldn't care less whether he understands her or not… just as long as she allowed him to make out with her as much as he wanted.
That's what he liked so much about their relationship… or whatever it was that they had. Whenever things got too serious or too emotional, it could always get fixed by a good make out session. No need to deal with those pansy-ass issues. Just kiss and make up… then kiss again… okay… little to no making up, more kissing… and damn, she was one good kisser.
As far as Puck was concerned, there were three things that kept them together. One, the crazy attraction they had for each other. Two, the popularity their tandem as a couple got them. And three, damn, she was one good kisser.
It wasn't until the summer before their sophomore year that Puck began to realize that his girlfriend actually had a soul, that she was so much deeper than she let on.
They were inside his bedroom, making out on his bed. He could sense that she was not into it. More than once, she would stop responding and just stare blankly into some random object in his room. He would snap her out of it, she'd apologize, they start making out again, and then she blanks out again.
After the third or fourth time, Puck rolled to her side, heaved a sigh. "Okay, San. What is it?"
Snapping out of her reverie, she turned her brown eyes toward him. "I'm sorry… huh? What's what?" She placed a hand on his neck and motioned to pull him in for a kiss, but he balked.
She shot questioning eyes at him.
"I'm not kissing you until you tell me what's causing you to space out like a frickin' alien every now and then."
Santana raised an eyebrow at his threat. "You won't kiss me? Really? Ever?" There was a glint of amusement on her eyes as if she thought it impossible that he would be able to resist her.
Puck bit his lip, seriously considering what he was getting himself into. "Uhh… yes," he skeptically said, feeling like a total idiot.
To his surprise, her eyes softened and took on a look of complete sadness and despair that it almost broke his heart. Almost. Finding his girlfriend's sorrow quite uncomfortable, gaining some confidence about his no-kissing threat and quite frankly, wanting to get this over with so he could go back to kissing her again , he traced a finger along her jaw line and said, "Come on, Lopez. Tell me."
"He came back," she said in what was almost an inaudible whisper.
Puck creased his brows. "Huh? Who did?"
"My dad."
He really had no idea what to say so all he said was, "Oh."
"How dare he, right?"
To that, he only nodded. He realized how little he knew about her. Up until that moment, he didn't even know that her dad was gone or why he was gone.
"I'm glad that you're nothing like him," she said. "You are who you are. And you don't pretend to be something that you're not. That way, people know what to expect from you so they don't get disappointed." She paused and then looked him straight in the eye, and asked. "Do you think you'll be a good dad someday?"
That question snapped his attention away from wanting to get back to the kissing part and getting the talking part over with. It got him to think. "I want to be," he replied truthfully. "I sure as hell don't want to be like my loser of a father. Doesn't even have the backbone to take care of his own family."
Santana gave him one of the saddest smiles he'd ever seen.
There were a few moments of comfortable silence, before she breathed out a sigh. "Too much emotion. Ugh. I hate it. Let's go out and do something crazy. Climb on a rooftop somewhere and drop water balloons on random strangers or something."
The idea of causing some mischief overshadowed the suddenness in her shift of moods, and Puck found himself going along with it.
But he couldn't forget that moment that they shared. He tried to bring it up several times, ask her about her dad, her past, but she just shot him down, telling him that she didn't do emotions.
Eventually, he decided to just shrug it off. If anything, however, it cemented his belief about how much alike he and Santana was – abandoned by their fathers, disappointed by people they love, putting on a strong front to defend themselves from the chance of that ever happening again.
So yeah… he still didn't understand Santana completely, but he knew her more than he let on. She was, after all, just a reflection of himself.
A/N: I started writing this as a flashback to my next chapter in The One That Got Away, but eventually figured that it could stand as a one-shot, so I uploaded it as that. Anyway, hope you like it. R&R - it's the right thing to do... hehe... ;)