A/N: I decided to take a trip back in time to season 1 and find some Puckcedes moments to write about. I'm still working on my Samcedes story, but it kind of helps if I focus on something else while writing it. Starting another story is basically the only way I can finish chapters of the first one.

This one starts in the present, and it's all basically from Puck's point of view. I hope you guys like it.

Big thanks and a huge shout-out go to Jessimae888 for giving me some serious help shaping this story. If you're the type of reader who does searches for Puck and Mercedes fics, then you've read her amazing story, "When a Badass Loves a Diva." And if you've read it, then there's no way you don't love it as much as I do. Thank You sooooo Much!

Disclaimer: I do not own Glee or the characters of Glee.

Chapter 1

Admitting the Problem is the First Step

I, Noah Michael Puckerman...am an asshole. I've been an unapologetic, unremorseful, self-proclaimed asshole for basically all of my teenage life. I admit to it freely; and trust me, I own that shit. Hell; for awhile now, I've been proud of my ass-holery. The way I see it, when you're good at something you tell the world...so I brag about my swagger; and I use words like sex shark and badass to describe myself. But calling a spade a spade, it basically boils down to me being an asshole.

But today, I finally feel like shit for being an asshole. Today I realized I'm the kind of asshole who falls in love with his best friend's girl. And I also realized that I handed her to him on a silver platter by being- that's right- an asshole.

See, five months ago, I graduated from William McKinley High School in Lima Ohio. I spent the summer hanging out, working, and saving money…then I moved here to LA in September. My roommate is the girl I'm in love with, her name's Mercedes Jones-but I been calling her Lil Mama since tenth grade. She's one of my best friends' girlfriend, and we were all in Glee club together.

Now usually, being in the same after-school club together doesn't really result in enough friendship for two people to wanna be roommates after graduating. But Glee was different than the other clubs at school. Us New Directions got picked on, like, all the fucking time…asshole jocks threw slushies at us, everybody and McKinley treated us like shit every chance they got, and people ignored our asses whenever we sang at assembly or in the quad. If that wasn't enough bullshit, the whole motherfucking school basically spent as much time as they could getting all up in our damn business. Going through hell as a group like that is kinda like when frat brothers get hazed together or when military troops go through boot camp. Getting to the other side of that kinda shit as a team makes you a family or whatever. So we all got real close real quick.

Before we left Ohio, Mercedes got a job working as a session artist for a small record company out here, and I had already been planning to move to California and expand the pool cleaning service I've been running since I was 15. So we moved in together and share rent on a two bedroom condo. We don't really see each other much, since we both stay so busy. Pretty much the whole time we been out here, both of us have each been doing our own thing.

Most of the time Mercedes is singing background on tracks sung by lame-ass auto-tuned motherfuckers who don't sound like shit compared to her. The rest of the time she's auditioning for jobs singing with bands at parties and clubs, combing the trades for places having open mike nights, taking classes online, and using a combination of Skype, Yahoo!Messenger, an Oovoo to keep her relationship with Sam going. She's the busiest chick I've ever met.

I clean pools all day, and sometimes I take a non-speaking acting role in a low-budget movie being filmed around town somewhere. I used to bang this chick who was a waitress with dreams of being cast in a soap opera…She got me the gig. At night I basically go clubbing, pick up chicks, and pass out business cards to anybody that looks like they own a pool. For awhile, I was really into dating struggling actresses and models and anybody with a budding reality TV career, but lately that shit quit being fun.

I guess my problem all started last week on Halloween night, when me and Mercedes decided to hang out together and have some fun. See, her boyfriend, Sam joined some Rapture Club in Lima where they sat in a restaurant talking about a confusing-ass book with a long-ass name every Wednesday night. Mercedes told me she tried to act like the shit was interesting to her, but she couldn't even fake it after the first few weeks. So on Halloween night, he was busy with the club and wouldn't be done at least until after 11. I was getting over a cold, so I didn't even make any plans. I could have taken one of my chicks to a party where everybody wore lingerie and called it a costume, but I didn't feel like it. So Mercedes and me went out.

We went to this abandoned factory, where some out-of-work actors were staging a production of Rocky Horror Picture Show. Mercedes and me decided to dress up as Brad and Janet. I had to actually go out and buy some plain white boxers, since my taste in underwear usually run to leopard print speedos or none at all. Mama looked sexy; she wore a plain white slip, a small silver chain, and a pair of high heels. I wasn't around when the Glee club put on Rocky Horror at school, but I had heard plenty about her costume… I was curious, so I asked Jones why she didn't come out as Dr. Frankenfurter. She just told me her costume was too big now. So we paid our $20 cover, got our bag full of props and shit, and sat down in the audience.

That shit was hilarious; we threw hot dogs and sprayed water guns and tossed toast up in the air. It was the first time since I'd been out here that I had a good time without being fucked up or inside some skank. I wondered why it was so easy to have a good time with her when I usually had to try so hard with all the chicks I been dating. That's when I realized I had some feelings for her past friendship.

Puck in the past would have probably tried to pull some outta-sight/outta-mind shit on Mama, and snuck into her life on the sly. But I've done that shit before, and it ain't worth it.

First of all, Mama had a little bit of drama with Sam and another ex-boyfriend last year and it fucked her up in the head. Mercedes ain't the type to cheat, but she sorta messed around on ol' dude by kissing Sam. When the shit hit the fan and she admitted to getting some action on the side, Mama felt so guilty she made Sam wait like 6 weeks before she would date him at all. It really made Mercedes miserable to find out she was capable of that kind of thing, and I don't wanna put her through that shit again.

Second, Karma's a crazy big-titted bitch and I'm pretty sure I used up all my best-friend's-girlfriend free passes back in high school. I'm not going anywhere near a girl who belongs to one of my boys anytime soon, cause I ain't trying to have a fucked up adulthood…believe me, my childhood was bad enough.

Plus, if I ain't said it already, Sam's my boy. All the Glee dudes are bros, and we keep it live like 100% of the time together, but me and him got more shit in common than we have with the rest of 'em.

Like, for instance, Artie and Mike…those two are the kid genius types, and their whole lives they've been all about skipping grades and joining academic teams and shit. I don't hate on 'em for getting off on studying...I mean, I don't understand it, but I'm not making fun of them for the shit either. But, see, me and Sam both struggled just to pass tests and get promoted. We each failed a grade back in elementary; him cause he was dyslexic and the teachers were too stupid to diagnose him, and me cause I wasn't the best reader in the world. So we're both older than the rest of our classmates. That's some serious shit to bond over.

Then, there were times when we both used to resent the hell out of Finn. Sam always felt like Finn took his quarterback position unfairly, and I used to hate how Finn got more attention than me at school. We both got Finn's back now or whatever, and we're both pretty much over it but it was kinda cool to talk about that stuff with somebody who really got it.

You know, I probably wouldn't have even graduated if Sam hadn't made the rest of the Glee boys stick with me when I needed help…when they were all getting so crazy about the fucking drama with the Glee girls and Whitney Houston and NYADA auditions and shit, Sam basically made it his business to rally the troops just for me.

And seriously; don't even get me started talking about how, when everybody else is rambling on about show tunes vs. popular music and solos and who the hell gets to lead what fucking song…me and Sam just sit in the back of the choir room and make TalkingTom videos to email to each other.

My point is, I can't do that shit to him… Sam loves his girl, plus, if I'd been more like him three years ago-instead of such a huge asshole- she might still be MY girl.

So now I'm trying to figure out how I'm supposed to hang out with the girl I want, without being a completely shitty friend. Next week, all of us Glee grads are gonna show up at McKinley to help out the new crop since they're putting on a musical this month. I need to spend a little extra time in that piece, anyway, since my asshole-in-training little brother needs checking up on. I'm not really feeling going there and watching Sam and Mercedes be all hugged up together, but I ain't really got a choice about it.

It just really sucks that, right when I start trying to be a better person, I get tested like this. Whatever the fuck I do, I'm gonna end up either unhappy or an even bigger asshole! So I got no clue how to handle this shit. This might just be the kind of situation where I need to just wait it out and hope something happens to make Mercedes fall in love with me. Or maybe I'm overlooking something that could help me get inside her head. If I'm gonna be spending time trying to figure out how to undo a whole lifetime of doing shitty stuff, I guess I should start from the beginning…

A/N: Any comments? Questions? Criticisms of any kind? I could use it, I'm just saying!

I'm going to use the next chapter to talk about how the asshole-ery got started, and some of the reasons behind it. I've been kicking this stuff around in my head for awhile, so I hope you guys enjoy it!