I know. This should be the last chapter of Lives of Illusion and I swear it started out that way and then… well I got this amazing idea that I am so absolutely, unbelievably excited about. I've decided to broaden my horizons and not just write Puck. It's going to be about everybody, and their loves, and lives, because Glee angst/happiness is definitely made of win. It's completely out of order but I kind of like it like that. Anyway, review?

Disclaimer: Don't own.

12/10 - I've recently been posting on AO3 under the name Mamihlapinatapai, and while doing such, have been doing some editing. Today, because I'm crazy, I've decided to update everything on here. The changes won't affect the story line, it's just to clean everything up a bit.

He has a best friend. His name's Finn. (He never stopped saying that.)

The thing is: they never really had a choice in the matter. Their mom's met in that baby birthing class with all the breathing, when they're still just fetuses with four toes, and everything just sort of fell into place. He's older by two months, and grew up slightly faster then Finn, but they honestly can't survive without the other.

When he turns sixteen, he gets drunk off the scotch bottle on top of the fridge and ends up near the state line. Without pants. At midnight.

It's terrifying and exhilarating, and there's a number on his palm with the name Holly on it that he could probably call, but he doesn't. He calls Finn, and makes his best friend drive an hour to come pick him up. It's funny, because he kind of expects a lecture. Finn's always been the responsible one, but when Finn drives up, he rolls down the window and winks.

"Need a ride, pretty lady?"

That, right there, is their friendship in a nutshell.

-o-

When he's sixteen, his English teacher comes to school with a hangover, and to get out of actually teaching he just puts a quote by some dude on the board and tells them to write at least a paragraph about what it means to them. Some desire is necessary to keep life in motion. He's sixteen and pissed off and hung over too, so he writes bullshit on the top of the paper, and doesn't come to class for three days.

(He still gets an A, because hello hot badass football player here.)

Anyway, he's seventeen when it predictably comes back to bite him in the ass, because screwing the two girls your best friend's in love with definitely falls under the keeping life moving category.

Quinn's first, because he's always been more like his father then he cares to be, and his old man married his best friend's girl. (Or at least that's what he gathers from the pictures under his mom's bed that don't have his dad's head cut off.)

When he first meets the girl she has a halo over her head and a smile on her face, and it's really her fault that he immediately thinks she's pretty. When he's six his mom found charity like some people find god, and dragged him along to the nearest homeless shelter where Quinn and her mom are spending their weekly day helping the unfortunate or something.

(They spend the whole time asking each other questions, and by the time he has to leave he knows her favorite color, food, holiday, ice cream, tv show…)

They're in middle school when she's drops all her books right in front of him, and he's got his hands full with the cheerleader who's acting like he's the best thing since toasted bread, or however the hell that phrase goes.

Finn's been chivalrous since he came out of the freaking womb, so he bends down to pick them up and drops his in the process. Quinn lets out a laugh that sounds nothing like it did when they were six, and the moment happens too quick to be anything but unimportant. But two weeks later and she's on his best friend's arm, and, well, isn't that just the most disgusting thing you've ever heard.

-o-

She's not drunk when everything falls apart, because Quinn may be a Christian but she's been drinking since she was pretty enough to get the high school boys to buy it for her. He's not drunk because he is one of those high school boys.

Her mom's been instilling body issues into the girl since she learned how to add and subtract calories, so two extra pounds on the scale throws her into a state of severe desperation.

(Though, when he looks back on it later, he begins to think that maybe she was desperate for another reason, but by then it's all over so nothing matters.)

Two lines on a stick shatter the pieces he's being struggling to glue back together since his dad left, so he says to hell with it and calls her a MILF in the middle of the hallway.

They spend ten minutes in an empty Home Ec room, and he can't even deny that he loves her anymore.

Finn finds out because nothing has ever been his for long, and just because he's sorry doesn't mean he didn't enjoy it at the time. But he wisely keeps his mouth shut, and pretends that he didn't see Finn in the corner of his eye before he punched him. He also pretends that he couldn't knock him out with one hit. (Dude, fight club remember.)

Quinn gives birth to the baby in April, and he's there because she's never been that cruel. After they give her to her adoptive parents, he crawls into her bed and doesn't leave until she's discharged. It's funny that when he begins to imagine spending the rest of his life with her he doesn't flinch or cringe, he just wraps his arms tighter around her and feels his heart speed up.

(Does anybody else think that fate's trying to tell him something?)

-o-

He meets Rachel Berry on the first day of freshman year when Derek Hutchinson throws a slushie his way and he ducks just in time for her to walk up and introduce herself. His thoughts go like this: Damn she's hot. Oh shit she's going to cry. That skirt is ridiculous. I think she just tried to kill me with her eyes. And then he flinches, because she definitely looks like she's trying to kill him. But instead she stalks off, and then the hallway laughs in unison, so that's the end of any Rachel Berry thoughts that don't include slushies or slurs on her locker.

Their relationship is an afterthought. (After Quinn calls him a Lima loser in the hallway, that is.) She's annoying, and makes him want to simultaneously stab out his eardrums and set himself on fire, but she's hot like sin, and Puck's never missed an opportunity to make something awkward. (And yes he is referring to that night during freshman year when he and Sophie Henderson practically had sex in front of a whole room of people.)

He's pretty confident that it'll be nothing more than sex, because the whole never-ending talking thing only stops long enough to get her shirt off, and seriously that's the only time he isn't planning ways to suffocate her in the back of his mind.

And then he's like shit, because knowing Berry's favorite color or how soft her hair feels against his chest late at night was never part of the plan. He didn't plan for Rachel's uncanny way to get under people's skin without warning.

And then he's sitting in an empty bathroom watching her wash slushie out of his hair. He can't even come up with any other excuse for why he's focused more on her voice then her rack, so he tries to disappoint her, and well she's Rachel and somehow makes him feel like an ass.

So, he quits football, stays in Glee, and buys a dictionary, because if he's doing it then he's doing it right.

Everything falls apart. Maybe because he's always sucked at keeping things together, but probably because he won't stop looking at Quinn and she won't stop looking at Finn.

Three years later, and there's a ring on her finger and a ring on his, and aren't they just the luckiest bastards.

He meets her two months into freshman year, when he sneaks out by the dumpsters for a cigarette. She's standing there eyes closed, one leg on the wall behind her. He doesn't even notice she's moving until he realizes that the cigarette that had been previously between his lips has taken residence between her lips. And all he can really think is: holy shit that was hot.

Here's the thing: Santana Lopez... well she's evil. And self-destructive and doesn't expect anything out of him. She's his mirror and everybody knows it. Santana was the last person he ever expected to have feelings for, except may be extreme hate, but you have to care to feel anything, right? And he didn't, she was just a way to blow off steam.

But sometime between sticking his tongue down her throat in an abandoned janitor's closet, and punching Eric Stevenson for rubbing up against her at a party he decides that yes, he cares about this girl. What's most disturbing is that he really doesn't mind it that much.

They're friends first, and fuck-buddies second, but he still learns her favorite color and the way her hair feels just because he can.

Four years later, when he runs into her in a grocery store in New York, he'll wonder what happened to that girl.