Puck was pacing the infirmary floor. He couldn't believe he'd let Santana trick him into agreeing to spill the beans. Damn her and her supportiveness. He wanted to bail, but it was too late now... Crap!
Santana entered the room slowly, her arms crossed over her chest. She had no idea what was going on, but there was something big going on. And if anyone, Puck, Quinn, whoever, needed her help then she'd be there for them.
Puck froze when he heard footsteps entering the room. He had no idea how he was going to start this conversation, so he just continued to stand there and waited for her to speak.
Santana had no idea how to start. She was completely in the dark about what was happening, and it made it difficult to know what to ask, or what to say. So she kept her opening as neutral as she could. "So...what's going on?"
"Hello, to you too," he said sarcastically, turning around to face her. "Shut the door."
Santana looked at him for a second, considering whether to object to being bossed around, but decided in the end to just do it. "There," she said, once the door was shut. "Puck, what the hell's going on?"
He still didn't know what to say, so he flopped down to sit on the nearest bed and blurted out a very frank answer to her question.
"Quinn left last year because I knocked her up. She gave the baby up for adoption. She just told me on Friday night."
"You...she...wait, what the hell?" was the best Santana could manage. "Is that why...I mean you two weren't even smart enough to..."
She shook her head. "Fine. Not important. What did you say to her? When she told you?"
Thanks Santana. I wasn't kicking myself enough, about that, or anything. He couldn't help the sarcastic thought, but at least he hadn't verbalized it.
"What did I say?" He parroted. "Not much... I mean what was there to say?"
"What was there to..." she repeated, trailing off. "Jesucristo, Puck, what do you even mean? The girl you slept with got pregnant, has probably been emotionally fucked up since she found out, and you're asking me what there is to say? Should I write you a list?" She turned away from him, breathing hard.
"I'm sorry," she said quietly. "I know you're dealing with this the best you can. I've got no right to take it out on you like that."
"No. Go ahead," he snapped back at her. "What was I supposed to say? What would you have told her, if you were me? What could I possibly have said, to make things better, seeing as you clearly know everything?" He jumped down, off the bed, and resumed his pacing. He turned to glare at her. "It's easy to be judgmental, when it's not happening to you, isn't it?"
"Fine!" Santana shouted. "Let's start with the obvious!" she didn't like being attacked. "How about - I love you? How about - I'm sorry I knocked you up? How about - are you okay? What can I do to help?"
She ran a hand through her hair. "I get that you're pissed. But this happened to her. She had to feel that life growing inside her for nine months and then give it away. As pissed and hurt and heartbroken as you are, you can't possibly imagine what she's been through." She sighed, the anger going out of her. "Look - I know this has to have fucked you up, Puck. A lot. But she's got it worse. I'm not saying you've gotta be lovey-dovey with her, but you at least have to talk to her. Tell her everything's going to be okay. If she's sleeping in our closet, she's clearly not doing okay."
"I did tell her that!" he told her, like it was some sort of confession that she'd dragged out of him. He hadn't wanted to tell Santana any of that. He'd asked her here to give her the facts, so she'd not go after Quinn with these questions. To make it easier on the girl. "The parts that are true, anyway."
"I can see that asking you to come here was a mistake, now," he said quietly. His words hadn't come out as cold as they should have. "I just thought you should know. I'm sorry." At least she was keeping her word and not pitying him, and he was glad that Quinn had people looking out for her.
The fight went out of her. "I'm sorry," she tried again. "I don't mean to jump down your throat. I guess I just - I get Quinn, you know? After a year with her, I get how to tell that she's hurting. I have a harder time with you. You're tougher to read. But that doesn't mean you're not. And I had no right."
She shook her head. "Which parts are true, exactly?"
Puck sighed. "It's not your fault. I spend at least 85% of my time acting like I don't actually have feelings than be hurt, in the fist place. So I shouldn't complain when people believe it." He shrugged and hopped back up on the bed.
"That I loved - no, love - her and that I want to make all of this better for her," he sighed again.
Santana hopped up on the bed beside him and ran a hand through his hair, without any self-consciousness from her crush getting in the way. "Boys," she said musingly. "If you could actually talk about your feelings, things would go a lot easier for you."
"Knowing Quinn - well, as much as anybody knows Quinn - there's things you need to tell her, if you want to make it better for her. She needs to know you don't hate her. That you're not going to leave her. There's not much that terrifies her like the thought of being left alone by the people she cares about." She sighed. "And what about you? What do you need right now?"
Puck unconciously leaned into the touch. He'd rather die than accept an offer of comfort, from most people, intentionally.
He would have rolled his eyes at Santana talking about Quinn like she knew her better than he did, if she hadn't just been trying to help. Instead he just nodded, like he was taking in the "new" information, she'd given him.
What did he need? To be able to know his daughter, maybe... Or possibly a time machine. Why was she acting like she even cared what he needed? Nobody did. Not her, not Quinn, not Doc... He didn't matter to anyone, and he was just going to have to learn to deal with that. Simple.
He shook his head and stared at the floor. "Nothing... I'll be okay... I have to be."
She kept her hand on his head, for want of anything else to do. When he tried to blow her off with the "I'll be okay" line, though, she shook her head.
"See above, about boys not talking about their feelings," she sighed. "Look - there's no way you're going to be able to make her feel any better if you can't even be honest with yourself. Just - pretend I'm not even in the room if that makes it easier. Just let it out."
Puck was silent for a long time, and began picking at a loose thread on his jeans. "I can't," he finally announced to the floor. "I... I don't know how." He frowned at how strange the statement was, but it was true. "I've never really been asked how I feel about stuff, before... I just... I don't know..."
He couldn't help that his own feelings were so difficult for him to vocalize. He'd just not been brought up to talk things out. Doc was great, as a principle, but as a parent... Well. Puck had learned that kind of deep-rooted repression from someone.
"I don't know how to put it out there... I just know that... that I'm really sad," he confessed, feeling a strong sense of shame, for telling anything about his emotional state.
Santana was patient - it was hard to watch him process and not at least try to help, but she knew this was something he'd have to get through on his own. "You'll learn," she promised. "It's hard, and not very pleasant sometimes, but you'll learn."
"There," she breathed softly, running her hand through his hair again. "That's it right there. That's so good, Puck - not that you're sad, but that you said it. This is the part of you that you need to show her. So she understands where you're coming from. How you feel. That under the anger and the hurt is just plain sadness. Because if there's one thing Quinn will understand, it's being sad."
Of course he was sad... How could he not be? He didn't really understand how Quinn would not know that, anyway... He wouldn't tell her that, for the sake of it. It wouldn't help either of them, he was certain of it.
"But I don't wanna be sad," he told Santana. "I wish I could just be angry about all this... I wish I could stop caring, ya know...? I mean, I tried. I keep trying, but I can't be mad at her when it's my fault that it - the thing that makes me sad - happened in the first damn place." He scrubbed his hand over his face. "I don't know how to deal with all of this, San." Puck went back to tugging at his clothing.
"Of course you don't." Santana looked sympathetically at him. "Angry is easy. Angry feels good, like you're righteous. It's on the surface. Sad is hard. Sad means you have to come to terms with it. Go through the hard stuff."
She sighed, moving her hand to his back. "You'll learn," she promised. "You and Quinn, neither of you deals well with sadness. But fault doesn't enter into it - whatever happened between you involved you both, and she's got to own her share of it too."
He shook his head, adamant about holding onto his guilt. "No, she left because she didn't want me to be part of it... even though I should have been, that I'd have wanted to be. I'm not someone she wanted to share that with. That's my fault," he said, completely sure of what he was saying. He was definitely capable of being angry with himself.
"I see you've got it all figured out," Santana kept her voice as jocular as possible under the circumstances. "Is that why she told you she left? Or has she told you why she handled things the way she did? If she hasn't, you might want to clarify that before you go pinning it on yourself."
"She said... She just that she was scared, and wasn't ready for a kid... Which makes sense. But it doesn't explain why she didn't tell me, and let me be involved in the decision... There's no way I can not take that personally." He said, frowning at the floor. "But it's fine. There's nothing I can do about it now, and you know I don't do regret," he faked nonchalance, as best he could.
"Of course you take that personally. How could you not? But you need to dig a little deeper than that, Puck. In yourself, and in her. What exactly was she scared of? And why?" She rubbed a circle on his back. "And please don't give me the no regrets speech. You're a guy, but you have more emotional depth than that."
He didn't want to do this anymore. What was she, his therapist? She was worse than Jesse. He pulled his knees up against his chest and wrapped his arms around them, in an unconscious self-comforting gesture.
"The girl I love, didn't want me around to decide whether we should keep our child... There's only so much digging into the reasons behind that, I can do, without totally plotzing." He stared blankly at the wall in front of them, and began rocking back and forth, not noticing that he was doing that, either.
She was out of her depth. What the hell had she been thinking, trying to play armchair shrink? She didn't know how to deal with the way he was reacting, the knees to his chest, and the rocking. If she hadn't thought it would make the situation worse, she'd have gone to get...somebody. Anybody. She was hopelessly floundering here.
"I don't think," she said softly, "that those reasons are what you think they are. I think you'll find, if you ask her, that she was so scared out of her mind that talking to you might never have occurred to her. You, of all people, know how profoundly fucked up Quinn is."
She exhaled softly. "The way I see it, Puck, you have two choices. One, you can not ask her. And then you can, forever and always, have to wonder why. It'll eat at you, but that's your choice. Your other option is to ask her. Even if you don't like the answer she gives you, at least you'll have an answer. You won't wonder forever."
Puck just nodded, and kept rocking. He was sure he was right. Nothing Santana could tell him would convince him otherwise. It was his fault that Quinn didn't want anything to do with him, and he wasn't sure that he could take finding out exactly what he'd done wrong.
She was totally at a loss now, and regretting that she'd walked into this meeting blind. At a loss for anything else to do she just looped an arm around his shoulders and sat quietly beside him.
Puck stopped rocking and leaned into her - deliberately, this time. She'd already just watched him lose his shit - several times over - and although he felt ashamed, he figured there was no more harm to be done by admitting that he needed a hug.
It was a bit of a relief when she felt him lean into her. Seeking comfort was an improvement over the repressed emotions she knew he was hiding. She didn't say anything - there wouldn't have been anything she could say that didn't sound pitying, and so she just tightened her grip around him and sat in silence.