It's not Puck-centered, and I consider that progress. This is partly inspired by Indie Tangles, and then written because I've always wanted to explore their friendship. It seems like betrayal runs deeper then Quinn with these two, and yet, it didn't turn out that way exactly. I'm not even sure about this, but I had to get it out. This may not even be a one-shot. Review please.
Disclaimer: Don't own.
When his best friend's dad leaves, he looks at him differently because stuff like that just doesn't happen to people like him, and well it's a tragedy, really.
(Then his dad dies, and he learns karma's a bitch.)
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He meets Puck when he's five, and he's no girl, but he knows immediately they'll be best friends forever. It's before girls and school and they both still have fathers, so they spend their days tossing a football back and forth, and convincing their parents to buy enough slushies to last them a lifetime.
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His dad's always been in the military. He remembers watching movies on tv, his dad pointing out guns he's shot or places he's been, and fear has no place yet. Daddy's a hero and Mommy has a sticker on her bumper that says military wife, and everything's fine.
(When he's older and wiser, he'll look back and remember the way his mom would sit by the phone for hours and then jump when it rang.)
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He gets a seven deadly sins lesson from Puck when he's thirteen. It's ironic because they may be best friends, but they're complete opposites, so abandonment in any form should be dealt with differently. It's not. Pride, lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, and wrathall in that order, and he would call his friend a badass if he didn't have such a hangover.
Actually, it's only six. (Not for long.)
Because a drunk Puck is a mean Puck, and two hours into their experiment with excess, he yells at Finn that his dad might have left him on purpose, but there's a scotch bottle in Finn's kitchen that proves Finn's mom will, too. It's bitter and spiteful, and when they wake up the next morning, they both pretend it never happened.
(Envy is like rage. It destroys everything, except silently.)
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Quinn Fabray comes out of nowhere, while their busy trying to find their footing. They're all friends first, and the blond beauty fits into a spot that has long been blurred.
He falls for Quinn, and things that haven't already shifted in their friendship, finally do. (When he's older and wiser, he'll look back and remember the way his best friend stared at her.)
By the time he gets roped into Glee, their friendship is too strained, and he doesn't think he can hold onto the tattered edges of what used to be, anymore.
Rachel Berry comes out of nowhere, and he honestly can't help himself. He thinks he should have known. (Because even Quinn can see Puck's floundering, and she's always had a thing for lost causes.)
Who knew all it took was a week, two wine coolers, and three pounds to throw everything from the frying pan right into the fire. He's not stupid, despite popular opinion, but he is selectively blind, so if he watches Puck call Quinn a MILF in the middle of a crowded hallway, well that's how his best friend has always been, right?
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He's always hated Geometry, so when this screwed up triangle turns into a fucked up square, well, to hell with it.
Puck dates Rachel and sings Neil Diamond and everybody practically drops to their knees right in front of him, and he wonders what it means that he's left standing with the gay kid, and Santana. It's only for a week, and maybe if it was two years earlier, he might have asked Puck what happened, but it's not, so he doesn't.
Sectionals is close, and they need a handicap bus, and really, denial was easy when they weren't standing right in front of him, covered in cupcake batter looking for all the world like they're ready to screw on the counter top.
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When Rachel tells him, he suspects its only half because she cares about his well-being, but he still blows that shit wide open in the middle of Glee practice, because damn it Puck, best friends remember.
Teenagers are never very sympathetic, so they just label Puck a bastard, Quinn a whore, Finn the victim and refuse to let any of them forget it. (It probably would have been more humane to burn them at the stake.)
The thing is Finn, has never been this guy. And it actually hurts him to watch the football team pummel Puck into the ground, or the Cheerio's to cough skank at Quinn's back. So, when Puck shows up at his house soaking wet, bleeding, and looking like a kicked puppy, well not even the devil himself could slam the door in his face.
Apparently it was a rough practice. At least that's the story he gets while he's putting ice in a zip lock bag and trying not to ball his fists. (Later, he'll get the actual story. The one that starts with the defensive line jumping him on the way to his truck, and ends with them shattering out all his windows.) For the next twenty minutes Puck apologizes, and explains, and apologizes some more, and forgiveness is not so out of reach anymore.
But when he turns around he realizes he's furious, and not at the team. No, he's furious at Puck because Finn might have dropped the ball when it came to Puck's dad, but Puck hasn't even attempted to pick it back up since the night he got both drunk and mean.
It's satisfying to hear the crunch of bones when his fist makes contact, and then it's not.
His hand, his head, his chest all just hurt, until Puck slams his front door, and then he's just numb. Because betrayal is contagious, apparently, and Finn is suddenly thatguy. There are no winners, and that hint of separation that started when Quinn came, well now it's this wide, gaping chasm, and he doesn't even have the energy to figure out a way across.
(It's a tragedy, really.)