Disclaimer: I do not own Glee. I only own this particular idea, the execution thereof and an overactive imagination.

Try Again

When Ms P – it didn't matter who she married or divorced – suggested he not graduate with his class Puck thought she was crazy. Graduation was less than two months away, and contrary to what people (and Puck himself) had spent years believing he actually would graduate. Sure, his grades weren't anything to brag about, pretty much all Cs, but he'd pass every one of his classes.

Still, her crazy aside Ms P was a nice person, and so he'd kept her mouth shut and let her finish. Good thing, since five minutes later she didn't sound half as crazy.

His current grades would get him nowhere – or maybe, if he was lucky, into some lame ass class at OSU. Ms P believed he could do better, however, and had a plan all worked out. If he re-enrolled as a junior right then he'd have one more year to get his grades up (something she'd been certain he could easily do) – with attendance and a tutor – and that in turn could get him into a good college.

He'd talked it over with his ma, Artie – who'd tutored him before – and surprisingly enough Hummel. Kurt... Kurt had been the most supporting one, and the one who'd given him quite a few new things to consider. And so Noah Puckerman had gone from senior to junior.

His second try at senior year had been much better than the first. Pretty much all of the kids he'd bullied back in his stupid days were gone, meaning he'd been able to go through his days without the guilt that'd hit him whenever he saw one of his victims flinch. Jewfro was gone too, giving him additional peace, as well as everyone he'd been a bully with. He'd had Glee, football, and Artie and Tina. In the beginning Blaine had been there too, but with Kurt out of the state the hobbit had soon ended up going back to Dalton. Friends and a no harassment policy had been the excuse, but everyone had known it was really about Sebastian. ("Everyone" not including Kurt until a month after the fact.)

It had embarrassed Puck, back then, just how happy he'd been to see the hobbit go. Embarrassment had turned to shame when he'd witnessed Kurt's breakdown upon finding out, and then... And then he'd understood. Sitting in the Hudmel couch, holding a sobbing Kurt and battling the rising warmth inside he'd finally understood.

He'd been happy to see Blaine go because he wanted Kurt for himself.

The Puck he'd been when starting high school would never have felt that way. The Puck he'd been his first senior year would never have admitted those kind of feelings. The Puck who was working hard to not only graduate, but to do so with the grades necessary for a good college? That Puck could and did.

It was that Puck who bought flowers for Ms P after he was accepted to college – with the goal of becoming a math and music teacher – and offered a football scholarship. And it was most definitely that Puck who got on a plane out of Ohio the day after graduation, his guitar in one hand and the other free to claim Kurt's.

~The End ~