A/N: So three writer friends and I (StarGleekBelle, Momaboutown and Different Child) have decided to challenge ourselves. Each Monday one of us prompts, and each Wednesday 500+ words are due. We will each post our one-shots on our FF sites. This is a writing exercise/project, but please feel free to read and review if you are so inclined ;-) And make sure you check out theirs too!

Prompt: The exact moment(s) that two best friends fell in love

Characters: Santana (13) and Puck (14)

Words: 619

Date: July 4, 2012

It had been a month since Santana had seen him. She'd heard on the streets what he had done. Taken out of court in shackles wrapped around his ankles, he shuffled his way to Juvie for a month long sentence. The streets of Lima Heights adjacent were buzzing with the story, and as Santana kept her distance on her stoop, she listened to every word. She heard how Puck had attacked that jackass Monroe and nearly sent him to the hospital. She heard that Puck escaped with only a black eye while Monroe's ribs were bruised and his lip was swollen. Santana smiled to herself. She remembered in that dark alley behind their junior high school Puck giving him the swollen lip, but the damage to his ribs belonged to her.

As Puck was finally released from Juvie that day, he remembered back to the fight that had landed him behind locked doors for the first time. No one got away with calling his girl a slut or a whore. Santana Lopez was a lot of things, but she was neither of those. He knew that better than anyone. He remembered the tears in her eyes when he found her underneath the bleachers of the junior high. He didn't recall ever seeing her cry before, and the vulnerability made her even more beautiful than he'd ever thought before. He arranged the meeting with Monroe, never expecting Santana to show up, but the toughest girl he knew would never let anyone else fight her battles for her. He'd landed some good punches before she pushed him back and took over, and as he watched his best friend turn her tears of pain into blazing fists of street justice, his admiration of the girl suddenly turned to love. And over the last month, it had only blossomed with her absence.

As she got ready for school that morning, her heart beating in excitement to see Puck again, the doorbell rang and Santana ran to it, her mother and father already gone to work. She opened the door and smiled at the older boy leaning against the doorframe.

"Miss me?" Puck teased with a raised eyebrow.

"Maybe," she grinned, turning to walk up to her bedroom, tantalizing him with the sway of her hips as she climbed the stairs. It had never done anything for him before, but this time it drove him wild and he followed hungrily behind her.

As she entered her room to grab her backpack, she felt Puck's hand seize her own and he snapped her around to face him. She found herself so close to the taller boy that she could feel his heart beat against hers, and she gasped with the sudden intensity of her feelings.

"I missed you," he whispered and he ran a shaky finger through her hair.

"Thank you, Noah," she said breathlessly, her eyes never leaving his. "For what you did for me. No one has ever protected me like that before."

"Well, they should," he declared. "Because knowing you were free was worth every minute I spent in lock up."

Before her sense of reason overcame the sudden flood of emotion, she found herself kissing him, slipping her tongue desperately between his lips. She had kissed other boys this way before, but never had it felt like this. She wasn't sure when she had fallen in love with her best friend. She didn't know if it was when he had consoled her as she cried, if it was when he fought for her honor, or if it was when he took the blame for both of them. All she knew was that she loved him now, and she always would.