Senior Year

Quinn drives down the road with the windows down and the radio turned off. She taps the steering wheel anxiously with two fingers. She knows the path she drives very well, living at the house for a while during her sophmore year, after her father kicked her out, and driving there a few times in the last couple of years as well. She doesn't need to think about the drive at all in fact, she knows the way so well. She does it on a sort of auto pilot. Which works for her, because she needs to focus on what she must say once she arrives at her destination.

She wished there was a way around this surprise meet up. She tried every way of finding one, but there was none. No one could talk any sense into Rachel. Everyone had tried, her fathers, Kurt, even Tina.

She was risking a lot today. Although, not really, because high school was over and it didn't really matter what anyone in Lima other than her small group of friends and her mother thought. Still, though, she wasn't ready for her life to change, or for the way the people in her life saw her to change. So she would have to be careful with her argument, if she could. As she saw the name Hudson on the mailbox as she pulled into the driveway, however, she knew she would make whatever argument she needed to to get the job done. She was desperate, or she wouldn't have come to him, and desperate times call for desperate measures.

Quinn straightened out the creases in her skirt with her sweating palms as she walked to Finn's front door. She had text Kurt earlier, who she had previously told as little of her plan as possible to get the minimal amount of help she needed, to make sure Finn was home, and not with Rachel. Kurt was currently on his way to Rachel's house to occupy the girl, and to make sure she didn't interrupt Quinn's talk with Finn in any way. Kurt had mentioned something about a musical marathon. No doubt still trying in his own way to slap some sense into Rachel, making her watch what she was so eagerly giving up. She was grateful for the boy's help, and she knew he would keep his mouth shut. He loved Rachel, too, in his way, and wanted what was best for her.

She took a deep breath, put on her best HBIC face, and knocked loudly on Finn Hudson's front door. She placed both hands on her hips as she waited, glare trained on the door, ready for it to open.. She knocked again, this time kicking the door as she knocked so it would be louder inside the house, and took up her stance again. After a moment, the door swung open to a dopey faced Finn.

"Quinn? What are you doing here?" He asked looking around, confused.

"Rude." Quinn responded harshly. "First you make me wait forever for you to answer the door. Then you don't even invite me in." She glared up at him expectantly.

"Oh, sorry. Yeah, come in." He stepped to the side and held the door open. "I was playing a really intense round of Call of Duty." He said this as if it were an acceptable excuse.

"Amazing." Quinn said coldly, pointing him towards the couch to sit down. He was smart enough to do as he was told, and took a seat.

"What's amazing?" He asked nervously as Quinn stood over him.

"It's amazing that the girl you supposedly love is about to throw all of her dreams away for you, and you're at home playing video games." Finn looked down at his hands in his lap.

"Oh."

"Oh? Really? That's all you have to say?" Quinn's hands were back on her hips, which she gripped tightly, fighting the urge to reach out and slap the boy in front of her. He wouldn't make eye contact with him, which only further fueled her anger. "I asked you a question!"

"I don't know what you want me to say. You know I tried to talk to her. We all have. She's Rachel. She's stubborn. I tried to change her mind." Quinn scoffed.

"You didn't try. You barely had a conversation with her." Quinn moved two fingers to Finn's chin and forced the boy to look at her. "But you're right. No one is going to be able to talk her out of deferring for a year. That's why the time for talking is over." Quinn released his chin and replaced her hands on her hips. "We are now in the time of taking action."

"What do you mean?" This obviously made him even more nervous.

"You have to do something. If she isn't willing to go without you, you don't give her a choice."

"I don't understand."

"Shocker." She deadpanned. "You need to take yourself out of the equation, Finn."

"What like break up with her? I can't do that. I love her."

"Prove it." She challenged. She was. She was standing here proving it. "If you really love her, you wouldn't let her stay here, Finn. Sure, now it's just for a year, but what happens when you don't get in anywhere next year. After you and Rachel are married? Maybe she gets pregnant, then you're raising a family. She will never go, if she doesn't go now. I think if you're honest with yourself, you know that. You're afraid of losing her. I get that. Believe me, I really do, but if you really love her, you'll set her free." Silence engulfed them for a long time. Quinn moved over to the couch at some point and sat next to Finn. She knew exactly what he was feeling. She was feeling it, too.

"She'll try to stay anyway. Get me back." He almost whispered after a while.

"So go somewhere she can't follow you. Do you really want to stay in Lima while everyone else leaves onto bigger and better things anyway?"

"What's stopping her from just wallowing in Lima after I'm gone, hoping I'll come back?"

"Figure it out. Be mean if you have to. Do whatever you have to do to get her to New York City." Quinn wasn't asking, and Finn knew it. He also knew she was right.

"I'll do it." Quinn sighed a breathe of relief, relaxing her body. "But I want to know what there is between you two?" She felt her body instantly tense again.

"What are you talking about?"

"Don't do that. Don't lie to me. Everyone acts like I'm this big idiot, and maybe I am, but no one is that stupid, Quinn, or oblivinous."

"Oblivious." She corrected.

"Whatever. I knew for sure when she wouldn't marry me without you. I mean you, of all people. Why would it be so important for someone that she had spent most of her time knowing, hating, and that hated her, to be at her wedding? I suspected a little before that, mostly because of the jokes everyone would make when you guys weren't around and the ones Santana would make even when you were. I never really payed attention until that day, though. You didn't see her when she found out about your accident, or the days and weeks after that. Since we're basically over now anyway, I might as well go ahead and admit that her and I have never been the same since then. She pulled very far away, and then came crashing back into me harder than ever. Something happened between you two back then, I don't know what, but... Like she stopped believing she could have you so she threw herself into me. I may be just a dumb jock, but I'm not blind, or deaf, or completely inept." Quinn sat now with her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands. This was too much. She couldn't handle hearing about how Rachel cared about her, and their past together. Not on top of letting her go. Finn put his hand on her knee. She swatted it away, but he only replaced it on her back. "I'm not the only one letting Rachel go here. We kind of shared her. We might as well be able to share this." Quinn hated herself for it, but she burst into tears. Within an instant, Finn's arms were around her and she was sobbing against his chest while he cried above her.

They sat crying like that for a long while. Eventually sobs began to quiet, shakes became quivers, and tears lessoned. Sometime after that, when Quinn felt reasonably confident she could keep it together, she pulled herself out of Finn's arms. She sat up, wiping at her eyes.

"I..." Finn tried to say something, but Quinn looked up to shoot him a glare that let him know they were no longer talking. She straightened out her skirt, and stood up. It was eerie how quickly she went right back to HBIC.

"Get it done." She commanded, turning to walk towards the door.

"I"ll do whatever I have to do." Quinn had her hand on the door. "She loves you more, ya know." Finn said suddenly.

"You're wrong." With that, Quinn closed the door behind her, and fought the urge to run to her car. Finn was wrong. Rachel had always loved him more, or she wouldn't have had to just go through any of that. As she slid into the driver's seat, she reminded herself, desperate times call for desperate measures. The important thing was, Rachel was going to New York, whether she liked it or not.

Quinn drove once again on auto pilot. She fought breaking down long enough to drive out of sight of Finn's house, but then she lost it all over again. She didn't even realize where she was going until she was pulling into the familiar driveway. By this time, she was nearly hyperventilating and could barely see through her tear filled eyes as she ran to the front door, knocking loudly and persistantly.

"Quinn?" Puck asked as he opened the door, and saw the sight of the hysterical girl. "What the hell? Get in here." He grabbed her hand and pulled her into the house, closing the door and taking her into his arms. "What happened? Who's ass do I need to kick?" She shook her head against his chest as she continued to cry. "Don't shake your head at me. You can't stop me. I don't care who it is, I'll..."

"Puck!" Quinn had to yell and pull herself out of his arms to get the boy's attention. "No one did anything to me. There's no one to beat up."

"Oh." He responded, pulling his crying friend back to his chest. "Then what is it?" Quinn stepped away again, looking around the small house.

"Is your mom home?"

"No, she's working, and my lil' sis is staying over at a friends. We're alone. What's up?" Quinn walked around the couch and plopped down, putting her head in her hands. Puck took the seat next to her, instead of the one at the opposite end of the couch, and placed his hand on her knee. Unlike when Finn had made the same gesture, she didn't swat his hand away.

"If you try to cop a feel right now..."

"Come on, baby mama, you really think I'm that insensitive?"

"Yes."

"Fair enough, but I promise to stay a gentlemen, at least while you're still crying." He nudged her in the side playfully. "Now tell me what has you so upset."

"Everyone's leaving." She lied. It wasn't everyone that was bothering her, just Rachel.'

"Did you and Joe finally have the inevitable break up talk?" She raised her head to look at him like the idiot he must be if he really thought Joe had her in this amount of disarray. "Another boy then?" Quinn was about to tell him how stupid he was when one corner of his mouth pulled into a grin. Realizing that the boy was just giving her a hard time, she actually started laughing, shaking her head.

"You are an idiot." She spoke her thoughts aloud.

"Not as much as you might think." He gave her a look that instantly made her laughter stop. "You'll see everyone again. They aren't leaving forever." The way he said everyone, Quinn knew the boy was aware it was only one person that had her such a mess.

"Isn't that kind of the point, though? That everyone..." She played along, thankful that she had someone she could at least kind of talk about Rachel with. "... does leave forever? To follow their dreams? Some people are just bigger than Lima and all the other people in it, even if some other people are getting out and doing better things with their lives or trying to make themselves better people, more deserving people. Some people are still bigger than those other people and all the people... They have to go because it's the right thing to do, even if they don't think so themselves, and even if it doesn't always feel like it to the people that care about them, and I..." Tears were falling harder from hazel eyes again as her voice quivered during her rant. Puck interrupted her full fledge freakout by taking her face in between both her hands and forcing her to look at him.

"You're doing the right thing, Quinn."

"Are you sure, because I..." She pulled her face from his hands and looked at him confused. "Wait, what do you mean?" She hadn't told Puck anything about her plan to get Rachel to New York or her conversation with Finn.

"Finn called me freaking out right after you left his house." As soon as he had opened his door to find Quinn, he was pretty positive he knew exactly what had her so upset. As much as it hurt his own heart to see her so upset over someone else, he would always comfort, help, or protect the blonde in any way he could. That's why he feigned ignorance on the whole matter, because he knew it wasn't something she was willing to talk about, or even could.

"Oh God." She put her face back in her hands, feeling the blush creeping up her neck and into her cheeks. Of course he knew she hadn't been talking about everyone. He was probably still on the phone with Finn when she knocked on his door. She had obviously came here right after leaving Finn's, making it more than obvious the real reason behind her tears. She shook her head in her hands. She might as well have just told him she had feelings for Rachel. Her mind began to race over things she could say to cover her tracks, lies she could give the boy that would make him think she was here about anything other than Rachel. She didn't want anyone to know, especially now. It would be pointless since she could never have Rachel anyway.

"Stop trying to claw your way back into the closet over there." Puck knocked one of her elbows off her knee, making her head fall. He meant for it to make her laugh, but instead she glared at him annoyingly.

"I don't know what you're talking about." She denied through clenched teeth, looking back to the floor.

"I thought you might say that. Regardless, I'm still right about you doing the right thing. You did an amazing thing, actually. Finn will finish your plan, and everyone will go to the big city to be a big star just like everyone always wanted. But, that doesn't mean that you have to lose everyone forever. They'll be around. We all promised to come back on holidays and stuff. You aren't losing anyone for good."

"It won't be the same." Quinn almost whispered.

"No, I guess it won't. You did just pretty much make Finn a single man, though. And you have that metro pass from New Haven to New York I went with you to buy..."

"Which to everyone else we say?" She interrupted him.

"That Rachel actually bought for the two of you, not the other way around." He repeated the lie she had made him practice multiple times since the day she had been helping him study geography and he had ridden with her to get the passes. Quinn blanched at the sound of Rachel's name. Of course, she knew that was who they were talking about, but it made her uncomfortable to be said out right like that. Puck must have noticed how the name made her tense up even more because he quickly continued.

"I'm just saying, I know things will be different, but you could make them really different, like different in your favor. You could go into the city on weekends and breaks and stuff and now you'll both be single and I know that she..."

"Noah!"

"You never call me that."

"I know, but I really need you to shut the hell up."

"You could tr..." She interrupted him again, this time with a raised hand in his face as she shook her head and stood up.

"No."

"Why?"

"More reasons than you can ever understand." Quinn wiped at the tear streaks down her face, her tears finally calming for the most part. Puck's face, however, twisted into one of painful knowing.

"I bet I understand a lot more than you think." He met her eyes, but quickly looked away. Was that tears she saw forming in his eyes before something in the corner of the room became so interesting to him?

"How do you figure?"

"I know a little something about loving a girl that you can never have and that you'll never be good enough for." His eyes flashed back to her for only a second, then returned to the corner. Realizatiion swept through her. It was her he was referring to. The guilt and hurt she felt for him must have been obvious on her face. "Don't go beating yourself up or nothing like that. I'm just saying, I know what it feels like. I also know what it looks like when said girl doesn't love or want you back. And I know that in your particular situation, that isn't the case. You're... person..." He quickly corrected himself, almost saying girl to which he knew Quinn would have probably punched him. "Your feelings aren't one sided, that's all I'm trying to say." Quinn let out a loud sigh, standing up and grabbing her keys from where she had thrown them down in the middle of the floor. She walked towards the door, but stopped to look at him once more when her hand wrapped around the door knob.

"When you really love something, you set it free." She looked into his eyes to see a shared sadness there.

"Yes, you do." He mumbled as she walked through the door and closed it behind her. It was a lesson he knew himself all too well, and was reminded of once again as he let the girl he had loved for the last three years walk away for far from the first time, and long from the last.

Author's Note: Obviously, I decided on the torture option and gave you guys a flashback. Haha. Sorry, sorry. I wanted to kind of give a better picture of where the guys' heads were at when they were a little younger. Also, I always pictured something like the Quinn/Finn scene going on bts in cannon and really wanted to put it here.

Next chapter will be the confrontation. I do believe the end is nigh, as much as I hate to let it go.

I'm so happy to have a reader from Argentina! I'm a small town girl in the US and that is just awesome to me that someone so far away is reading something I'm writing. Thank you so much for your review, and your English doesn't seem to be bad at all, so don't worry.

To all the positive reviews I got, thank you all so much. You guys all give me something to look forward to and the inspiration to keep going with the story. I'm glad that most of you like my version of Puck, and understand that it really is just my version of the character. My Puck really is a big sweetheart. I have no intention of writing a faberry wedding for this story, but if I did, it would be Puck walking Quinn down the aisle.

As far as Finn goes, I like his character, but I do think that he gets glorified more than he deserves. He didn't ever stand up for Rachel for a long time. He was really selfish, and usually only acted to his best interest. I think his character grew, though. In the third season, I felt like he really loved Rachel and did a lot better. Again, this is only my opinion. I hesitated to even state it because I'm sure someone will try to make it into some ridiculously immature argument, but for those of us who are adults and can talk as such... I always enjoy hearing other people's take on the characters and the show in general.

It's just easy to make Santana the bitch, you know? Haha. She's a loveable bitch, though, for me anyway. Santana had to kind of knock Rachel down a peg and let her know that she had gotten there first. I also think for Santana it was a little bit about the fact that Rachel would never have sex with her, but she did with Quinn after Quinn did with Santana. That's hard to explain. Ha. Like it stung Santana that Rachel wouldn't sleep with her so she had to tell her that even though it was Quinn she finally did have sex with, Santana was still the one that taught Quinn everything she knew to do with Rachel. Like in some distant, twisted way it was still Santana bringing Rachel pleasure so the rejection wasn't as bad. I don't know if that made any sense, but that's how I look at it anyway. Sorry I suck at explaining things lol.

Now for all this negative bs that has no place here. I honestly do not know how some of you can call yourself glee fans, and be as mean and bullying as you are. I feel like you must have just completely missed the point of the entire show. Calling people names, wishing death on characters, being so close minded to anyone's opinions but your own, being rude and overall negative, all of it goes against everything that glee is. I don't know what purpose you think any of it serves, but I assure you there is none. Regardless of your opinion of Puck, or anything or anyone else in the show, that is the show. It isn't this story, and the things you say aren't true for this story or these characters. I've had to repeat that so many times that I question how and why you read fanfic at all if you are so rejecting of other people's ideas and opinions. I do not need you to read this story, and I certainly do not need your hate, nor do my other mature, peaceful readers. As for the guest that remains anonymous, for the most obvious of reasons I'm sure, that was rude to PinkDrinks: that is uncalled for and completely unnecessary, as was the earlier statement about all the hatred you harbor towards a fictional character. Don't be a bully, and lose the hate, at least here. I sincerely hope this is the last time I have to post something like this in my author's note. I would rather not turn guest reviews off for the sake of the other guests that post, but I will if I have to.

I have no idea why achele was referenced or Cory considering that no one and no where does this story mention either. And no one has mentioned death to people or characters besides you. These are your individual issues. Deal with them. This isn't the place. I know I said this before, but this is the last time I will continue this argument. I sincerely hope that you seek help, talk to someone, something. Be positive.

To everyone else, I'm sorry. Both that this is even in the author's note, and for the reviews that made it necessary.

As always I love and appreciate your reviews. You are all amazing. Remember to smile today. :)

Update soon!