Not Quite An Angel On Your Shoulder (1/2)
Title: Not Quite An Angel On Your Shoulder
Character(s)/Pairing: Puck, Quinn, Finn, Puck/Finn friendship, Finn/Quinn friendship, eventual Puck/Quinn, some Finn/Rachel
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 12,000
Status: Complete
Notes/Warnings: And this, my dears, is my contribution to the Puck Big Bang. The plot for this fic was based off of the storyline of an unlaunched Quick RP on tumblr, created by puckfasa and used with their permission. As for WARNINGS? Minor character death.
Summary: Puck could remember the accident, the horror that went through him when he realized the truck was going to hit them and the way Finn grabbed his hand in the moment before the impact. Now, his body is in a coma, Quinn's practically living at the hospital, he's a ghost, Finn's the only one that can see him, and all he can think is that senior year supposed to be like this.
One second everything was okay and the next, it wasn’t.
Puck remembered the way his eyes went wide when he saw the truck run the red light. The way Finn shouted for him to look out and the terror that coursed through him when he realized in that split second that he couldn’t do anything. There was no time to move. No time to get out of the way. This truck was going to hit them and there was nothing he could do to stop it. He felt Finn’s hand encircle his wrist and made a mental note to mock him for it later.
He remembered closing his eyes and…
Nothing.
It was black.
He remembered nothing else about the accident. All he knew was that one second, he closed his eyes, waiting for the impact, and then... Nothing. The next time he opened them, he was standing, unharmed, in the middle of the street on the corner of Milk and Elm. The road was clear. No mangled cars. No blood. No cops or paramedics. If he didn’t know any better, he would have thought that the accident had never happened.
Then again, maybe it hadn’t. He’d had dreams before that had seemed so real that he’d woken up confused and struggling to separate reality from fantasy. Maybe he’d just had one of those dreams again. If that was it, though, it didn’t explain why he’d woken up in the middle of the road. Sure, he’d gotten drunk and passed out in some weird places before, but he hadn’t gotten that drunk since Rachel’s party last year. Back then, he’d found himself in her dads’ bathroom, hugging a loofa to his chest. He’d never woken up in a road before. Even drunk, he’d had enough self-preservation to not do something that stupid. Hell, he didn’t even have a hangover.
He mumbled to himself, running a hand over his mohawk as he looked around. A couple of kids ran down the sidewalk, laughing and yelling as they turned the corner to go towards the park. They probably wanted ice cream. The trucks stayed parked in the lot all day come summer and it was fucking hot outside.
He’d actually kill for an ice cream right about now, he thought. The heat sucked.
“Where the fuck is my wallet?” he muttered as he searched his pockets. Empty. Not even a paperclip. He always had his wallet. Right back pocket. He could feel the stretch in the old denim jeans, the extra sag to the fabric from having his wallet shoved in there all the time. He never forgot it. Could never chance having his ma find his fake IDs.
He shook his head, confused, as he started down Elm. Finn’s place was only a five minute walk from here. He’d go and make the guy drive him back. Help him find his wallet. And his phone. Fuck. He was missing that too? Fucking great. Okay, so make Finn help him find his wallet and his phone. Maybe get the guy to buy him an ice cream while they were at it. At the very least, maybe Finn could explain what the hell happened last night. He didn’t remember drinking, but maybe he’d managed to just get that drunk.
Finn was in the front yard when he got there, running through some basketball drills completely half-assed. Dragging his feet. Missing shots.
“Dude, you suck.”
Finn jumped, throwing the ball harder than he needed to and they both watched it sail right over the basket and over the fence into the back yard. Puck snorted.
“I think you missed,” Puck snorted as he walked up the driveway. Finn still hadn’t faced him and he rolled his eyes. Frowned as he got closer and noticed the cast around Finn’s left arm. No wonder the guy couldn’t make a basket. He could barely aim right with two arms, let alone one. “The fuck happened to your arm?”
Finn was pale when he finally turned to face him, eyes wide and mouth hanging open. He extended a hand towards Puck, reaching out to touch him, but Puck moved back a step to avoid it.
“What the hell are you doing, Hudson? I don’t swing that way.”
“Puck… I…”
Something twisted in Puck’s stomach as he watched tears gather in Finn’s eyes. Fuck. What the hell was going on?
Finn reached forward again, this time, with his hand shaking like a leaf. Puck stepped back again and tripped over his own feet. Fell backwards.
Right through the lamppost.
Through the lamppost.
Puck stared at the rod of metal protruding from his stomach. No blood. No pain. It was just there. Sticking out of his stomach like it belonged there when it fucking didn’t.
He looked up to Finn, both of them shaking now, and lifted a hand to touch the pole.
His hand passed right through it.
He was pretty sure his stomach fell right out of his body then. He stared at his hand and at his stomach before he rolled to the side and off the pole. He didn’t feel so much as a tickle. By the time he got to his feet, he was surprised that his legs could support him. Then again, could he really be surprised by anything anymore? He’d just passed right through something like he was that Kitty chick from X-Men or…
A ghost.
Oh, God.
“I’m not dead,” he said. “I’m not. I… Finn, please tell me I turned into a fucking X-Man or something.”
“I-”
“Finn? Sweetheart, are you alright?”
They both startled at the voice as they spun around to look at Mrs. Hurley across the street, watching Finn worriedly. She didn’t even seem like she saw Puck at all.
Okay, so he wasn’t an X-Man.
Fuck. He was dead.
Oh, God.
He was dead.
He wasn’t even eighteen yet. He still had another month to go before his birthday in August. And Beth. He was never going to see his fucking kid again.
His breath started coming fast (did he even need to breathe if he was dead?) and he started backing up. He was dead. He was a ghost. Fuck.
“Uh… Yeah, Mrs. Hurley. I’m fine. Just…” Finn’s eyes drifted back towards Puck and Puck met his gaze, panicked. “Just thought I saw something. Must be the heat.”
“Well, if you’re sure… Go get some water. You don’t want to make yourself sick.”
Finn nodded and gave her that grin he always gave people when he was about to start freaking out. “Yeah. Good idea.”
“Tell your parents I said hello!”
“’Kay!” he shouted back as he started towards the house. Paused before he passed Puck. “I don’t know if I’m crazy, but come inside.”
Puck followed him into the house, watching as Finn stuck his head under the faucet in the kitchen. Saw the look that crossed Finn’s face when he looked up and saw that Puck was still standing there, some mix of fear, sadness, and hope.
Fuck hope. He was dead. What the fuck was there to hope for?
“What happened? The car accident… That wasn’t a dream?”
“Hold on,” Finn told him as he turned to his phone. “I need to call Quinn.”
“Quinn? What the hell would she know?”
Finn held up a hand to silence him, but he didn’t turn his back to him like he usually would if he was calling someone. Figured. Not like a ghost could blab about whatever was going on.
“Quinn? Yeah, it’s me. I was just calling to…” Finn trailed off, listening to whatever Quinn was saying and nodding along with it as he wandered into the living room. “No change? Not even for a second? Nothing weird?” He paused, listening, before he sighed. “I was just asking. Call me if anything changes? Thanks.” He hung up and heaved another sigh as he ran a hand through his wet hair, staring at the floor.
“Finn-”
“The truck hit your side of the car. Smashed right into you. We…” Finn swallowed thickly as he started rubbing at the cast. Traced a signature that looked like Brittany’s. “The car flipped. I broke my arm. Had a concussion from when I hit my head on the dash. You-”
“-died.”
“The impact broke your arm. Fractured your leg. You… You hit your head, too. Harder than I did. It hit the steering wheel and the airbag didn’t go off. Your ribs broke and there was some kind of compression thing going on with your lungs because of the damage. One got punctured by a rib…”
“I get it.”
“No, you don’t. You… The doctors said you didn’t get enough oxygen. Add in the head thing and…”
Finn finally looked up at him then, eyes glassy and Puck would be mocking him for acting like a girl if he didn’t kind of want to start crying himself.
“You’re in a coma, Puck.”
Puck froze. Blinked. Blinked again.
He was in a coma?
He wasn’t dead?
Oh, God. He wasn’t dead.
He heaved a sigh of relief that probably sounded more like a sob.
He wasn’t dead.
---
“I don’t get it,” Finn said as they sat on the living room floor. “If you’re not dead, how are you a ghost?”
“I don’t fucking know. I’m not an expert on this shit, Finn,” Puck snapped back.
He was being an ass. He knew that. But… Fuck. He’d been in a coma for two weeks. Two fucking weeks and everything had gone screwy. His car was totaled. His mom was half-way into a bottle. Sarah was practically living in Brittany’s sister’s room. Quinn, who hadn’t spoken to him in a year, was at the hospital more often than she wasn’t. Finn had apparently gone all Ghost Whisperer: Comatose Edition. Rachel wasn’t singing by his bedside which he was half-happy about, half-insulted by.
What? His Sleeping Beauty impersonation didn’t warrant a song? The chick would sing about a broken nail if she could. She’d written a song about a fucking headband and he didn’t get anything?
Were there even any songs about being in comas?
“How are you going to get back in your body? Can you?”
“I don’t know, Hudson. Once again, I’m not a fucking expert. Maybe… I don’t know. Can I possess someone or is that just a dead-ghost thing?”
“Maybe?”
Puck sighed and began to pace the room. He walked through the coffee table without much more than a glance. Okay. Still weird, but at least he wasn’t dead. He could live with the ghostliness until he woke up.
“Quinn said there was no change?”
Finn shook his head. “Nothing.”
“She’s sure?”
“Yeah. She doesn’t leave much, dude. This whole thing really scared her. Rachel said she was freaking out when she got to the hospital. Something about hair dye and tattoos.”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
Puck frowned, confused, because that didn’t seem like Quinn. Sure, he’d seen her around a few times this summer and she’d seemed sort of off and her clothes had been taking a turn towards punk, but then again, they hadn’t spoken for the better part of a year. He didn’t know what was going on with her.
Still…
He could drop in. Check in with her and try to get back in his body. Maybe she’d be able to see him too. It couldn’t hurt…
But the hospital was all the way on the other side of town. He couldn’t even sit in a chair without falling through it, so catching a ride with Finn was probably out. He’d have to walk. Fuck.
Puck groaned at the thought of it. He could still feel the heat and walking all the way over there was going to suck. He wanted to just get-
-there.
What the…
This wasn’t Finn’s living room. He’d been there a second ago and then he blinked and he was in a hospital room. His hospital room. “What the…” He could go wherever he wanted by just thinking about it. Sweet.
Maybe not so sweet. Crap. He looked like a mess. Finn had told him about the injuries, but hearing about it and seeing it were two different things. He wasn’t surprised to see the bruises, but they managed to make his body look even worse. His left arm and leg encased in plaster. He could only imagine the bandages underneath his hospital gown, because shit, the doctors had cut him open to fix the hole in his lung. His chest was going to be scarred. Badass, but it was going to take some getting used to.
If there even was anything to get used to. He still didn’t know if there was any way for him to get back in his body. If there wasn’t… God. Would he have to watch himself die? Watch his mom pull the plug? Would he have to watch his own funeral? Would he even stick around that long or would he just disappear when his body…
God, he was going to be sick.
He was a fucking teenager.
Puck exhaled slowly, trying to push back the nausea. He doubted he could throw up like this, but either way, he really didn’t want to test that theory. Breathe. Focus on… Quinn. Focus on Quinn.
Wait. Was she reading to him?
He stepped closer and, sure enough, she was. Curled up in a chair beside his bed, she had his collection of Harry Potter books piled on the nightstand. She had better be keeping those hidden when the others visited. The last thing he needed was them knowing about that obsession.
“’I mean,’ said Malfoy, raising his voice a little more, his gray eyes glittering malevolently in Harry and Ron’s direction, ‘if it’s a question of influence with the Ministry, I don’t think they’ve got much chance,’” she read, “’…From what my father says, they’ve been looking for an excuse to sack Arthur Weasley for years… And as for Potter… My father says it’s a matter of time before the Ministry has him carted off to St. Mungo’s… Apparently they’ve got a special ward for people whose brains have been addled by magic…’”
She kept reading for a while and he got lost in it, listening to the soft tone of her voice and remembering the good days they had when she was living with him. The days where they just sat around, doing nothing. He’d keep his head in her lap, one ear pressed against her belly while the other listened to her read to him. He missed those days. There hadn’t been enough.
He whispered her name when she finished the chapter and reached for her water bottle, but she didn’t react. He tried again, this time a little louder as he knelt beside her chair, but she acted like he wasn’t even there. Maybe it was only Finn that could see him, he considered as his hand phased through hers. Nothing.
She picked up the book again and opened up to Chapter Eighteen.
“’Umbridge has been reading your mail, Harry. There’s no other explanation…’”
Puck sighed, circling around his hospital bed to stare at the beeping monitors. They didn’t make any sense to him, but he figured the numbers he saw was good. He had to be stable at this point, right? Maybe he could try lying in his body or something. See if that changed the numbers or whatever. Maybe he’d get lucky and it would snap him back inside like some kind of puzzle piece.
“Don’t be a pussy,” he mumbled to himself when his nerves kept him from moving. “Just get up there and lie down.”
He took a deep breath, holding it in as he laid his right hand down in line with his body’s. There was a shock, some kind of tickle that didn’t pick up on the monitors, but it made him let the breath go. Okay. A tickle was good. That meant there was still some kind of connection, right?
He took another breath as he maneuvered himself up onto the bed without losing the connection at his hand. Laid down and it held him. There was a tickle and-
He fell through.
How he didn’t keep falling through the floors below him, he wasn’t sure and he didn’t really care. He just lay under the hospital bed, swearing.
Maybe one more time. Maybe it just needed a kick start.
He ended up on the floor again.
The same thing happened the third time.
The fourth.
The fifth.
Umbridge was inspecting Hagrid’s class by the time he finally gave up.
He sank down on the floor next to Quinn’s chair with a sigh and listened to her read, one hand lifted up through the bars on the bed to touch his body’s hand. The tickle it gave was as comforting as anything right now.
While she read, he stared at her. There wasn’t much else he could do. He couldn’t lay his head in her lap like usual without phasing right through, so he stared. It was probably a little creepy, but whatever. Unless Finn showed up, no one else could see him. He was free to do whatever.
She looked good. Better than she had the other times he’d seen her this summer. The punk look she’d been moving towards had looked hot, but it wasn’t her. The dresses and the little sweaters were Quinn, even more than the Cheerio’s uniform she’d gotten back into for part of junior year.
She looked good now, back in her own clothes and not looking as angry as she had been for a while. She looked like Quinn again.
The characters were just arriving at the Department of Mysteries when she stopped and looked at his body sadly. “You’re too quiet,” she said softly. “You’re not quiet, Puck. You’re supposed to be interrupting me and fidgeting. You’re supposed to be grumbling about how awful Umbridge is and how they should have just fed her to the squid.” Something in her voice cracked at the end of her sentence and she ducked her head. Her shoulders shook for a moment before she looked back at the form in the bed, eyes teary and teeth biting at her bottom lip. “You need to wake up.”
He tried. God, he fucking tried and he did it five more times, hoping that it would work this time around. He just wanted her to stop crying.
“Great work, Puckerman,” he muttered to himself, bitter. “As if you haven’t made her cry enough already.”
He tried once more just as Finn appeared in the doorway. The guy jumped as Puck walked through the bed and dropped back down to sit next to Quinn’s chair. “Shut up and pretend I’m not here.”
“Kind of hard,” Finn shot back. Quinn jumped at his voice and dropped the book to the floor.
“You scared me,” she said, hand over her chest. “Is knocking that difficult, Finn?”
“Sorry.”
Quinn sighed. “What were you talking about?”
“Huh?”
“What’s hard?”
“Oh. I… I just meant…” Finn looked a little panicked and Puck cringed. He needed to hold it together before someone tossed him in the psych ward or something. If he said he was seeing him… “It’s just hard to, you know, see him like this.”
Quinn’s face fell a little as she looked back to the body in the bed. “Yeah,” she murmured. “I know.”
“You okay?”
“I don’t know.”
---
She’d been sitting in the tattoo parlor when Rachel called her, hysterical and going on about trucks and red lights and they’re hurt. She’d run out of there so fast that she’d left behind the CVS bag holding the hair dye. Sped the entire way to the hospital with Rachel on speaker phone.
“Finn’s mom called me. Finn and Noah… It’s bad, Quinn. It’s really bad.”
In the end, Finn was mostly okay. A broken arm and a concussion, but he walked out of the hospital the day after the accident. That same day, Puck flat-lined because of a complication and they had to rush him back into surgery. He was stable now, but he still hadn’t woken up. She knew that wasn’t good. She’d watched enough movies and read enough articles since the accident to know that prolonged comas were never good. The longer the person stayed like that, the lower the chance was of them waking up and if they did wake up, there was always the possibility that there’d be brain damage.
She didn’t want to think about that, but as every day went by with no improvement, she got scared. He needed to wake up.
Quinn sighed and stood from the chair so she could get another water bottle from her purse. The room was too quiet. The others came by whenever they could, Finn more than others, but even when they were here, it was weird. Puck was never this quiet unless he was upset about something and even then, he’d be making biting little comments.
Having him like this… It wasn’t right.
She circled the bed, straightening the blankets and fluffing the pillow just so she could feel somewhat helpful. Drew another dot on his cast like she’d been doing every day. Eighteen dots for eighteen days in the coma. She’d clustered them all by his thumb, neat little lines of seven. They were part-way onto the third line now and it made something in her chest twist as she put the pen down.
“Someone needs to cut your hair,” she told him as she touched his head. They’d had to shave his mohawk off after the accident so they could stitch up a cut. Now, his hair was growing in like it hadn’t since they were kids. A little longer and it would start curling. “I know how much you hate your curls.”
He didn’t offer her any kind of response and she bit her lip. She hated this. Hated seeing him like this. Hated not knowing if he could even hear a word she said.
Save for a few moments, she’d ignored him since Beth was born. Ignored his texts. Made her mom turn him away if he tried to come by the house. She’d see him in the hall at school and try and pretend he didn’t exist. Pretend that sophomore year didn’t exist.
It never worked, though. She couldn’t forget and she didn’t think he could either. Their little girl, the one she’d wanted to keep but had been too scared to. The one she knew he hadn’t wanted to give up. Guilt bubbled in her stomach for all the ways things could have been different if she’d just admitted the truth from the very beginning.
“I’d take care of it. You too.”
“This parent thing? We can do this.”
“I want to be with you.”
“Yes. Especially now.”
Things could have been different. They could have been different.
“You’re such an egghead,” she mumbled. The name wasn’t funny anymore, but she still tried to pretend it was, simply because it was a memory of a happier time.
She knew she’d been a wreck this last year. Somewhere along the way, she’d lost herself. She’d become so focused on trying to get back to the way things had been that she’d lost sight of who she and everyone else had become. No one was like they’d been at the beginning of sophomore year. They’d all grown up in some way and going back… It wasn’t possible. All any of them could do was keep moving forward.
“School starts up again next week,” she told him as her finger found a patch the nurse had missed when she was shaving him. “I know you don’t like school, but isn’t this a little melodramatic? It’s senior year.”
The beeping of the monitors was her only response, but when she closed her eyes, she imagined she could hear him laughing.
---
By the time school started up again, Finn wasn’t sure if he was happy or sad about it. On one hand, it was school, so kill him now. On the other hand, though, it gave him something to focus on that wasn’t the constant presence of his best friend’s ghost. Puck was almost always there, hanging around and trying to act like shit was normal when it wasn’t and they both knew that.
“You’re not coming to class with me, right?” he asked as he pretended to rifle around in his car. He tried to make it look as innocent as he could, but he was pretty much talking to himself in the middle of the school parking lot. Just keep your voice down and no one will notice, he thought. Yeah. He could do that.
Puck snorted. “Dude, I didn’t go to class when I wasn’t a ghost. You think I’m going now?”
The guy had a point. “What are you gonna do then?”
“Drift? I don’t know,” Puck said, shrugging. “Hit the hospital. Check on Sarah. Whatever.”
“Sit with Quinn?” He sent his ghostly friend a knowing look, grinning softly, and returned to shoving stuff into his backpack. “If you’re not haunting my ass, you’re usually with her.”
“Because she’s usually at the hospital. I’m still trying to find a way back in my body. Or do you want me to stay like this?”
Stung, Finn jerked his head to look at Puck. “You know I don’t, dude.” He wanted Puck to actually be in his body and be awake. Having Puck there with him but not? It managed to make the whole coma-thing harder and easier at the same time. Yeah, he got to talk to the other teen, but every day Puck reappeared next to him, muttering and annoyed, was another day that Finn lost a little hope that his friend would ever wake up.
There still hadn’t been any progress on his body. The wounds and broken bones from the accident had mostly healed over and the casts had been replaced by braces, but that was it. According to the doctors, Puck’s brain scans hadn’t shown any change and they all knew that the longer Puck stayed like that, the less chance he’d have of waking up. He’d been like this too long and the doctors couldn’t tell them why.
Finn rubbed a hand over his head, sighing, as the warning bell rang. “Dude-”
Puck was already gone. Disappeared just as silently as he always did. Great.
He knew this was hard on Puck too. Puck was the ghost. He was the one that kept trying and failing to get back in his body. Finn just hoped he figured it out soon. He wanted his friend back.
---
“He kind of looks like he’s sleeping.”
The soft voice shocked Quinn out of the daze she’d been in as she stared at Puck’s still form and she spun in her chair. Wide eyes fell on Shelby and Quinn’s mind short-circuited. She hadn’t seen this woman since they signed the adoption papers. Rachel had mentioned in passing that Shelby had moved to New York, but… “What are you doing here?”
Shelby stepped fully into the room, but she still looked out of place. “I moved back,” she said as her eyes drifted between Quinn and Puck. “Your principal hired me to head another glee club. I’d wanted to talk to you both after I saw Rachel. She told me about the accident. How’s he doing?”
“The same,” Quinn mumbled as she closed the book in her lap. She’d finished Harry Potter the week before and spent another day searching Puck’s bedroom just to find out that those were the only real books he owned. In the end, she started Pride & Prejudice, figuring at the very least that Puck might wake up just so he could tell her to stop. “The injuries are healing. He’s just not waking up.”
Shelby hummed some sympathetic noise as she circled around to the other side of the bed. She sat and… God. What was Quinn supposed to do with this? She hadn’t seen Shelby since that last dat at the hospital and now she was here. Seeing Shelby just brought back memories of Beth and it hurt.
She stood up just to busy herself. She fixed Puck’s blankets. Righted the teddy bear Sarah had bought that had fallen over. Laid her hand on his cheek just to make sure he wasn’t warm. It was stupid, but an infection had set in during his first week in the hospital and it made her paranoid. These days, she was always checking to make sure no fever had popped up.
“I wanted you to both be a part of Beth’s life.”
Quinn froze, eyes wide as they shot to Shelby’s face. She wanted… She meant they could… “What?”
“I want you to both be a part of Beth’s life,” she said again as she touched Puck’s hand softly before pulling back to get her phone. She handed it over after a minute, smiling softly as she presented Quinn with a photo of Beth.
Oh, God.
Quinn stared at the photo of her daughter, trying so hard to not fall apart. Between the stuff she’d been going through and everything with Puck, this was just too much. Beth was beautiful. When she was born, Puck had said that Beth looked like her, but now… God, Quinn could see so much of Puck in that little girl. Sure, she had Quinn’s hair color and her eyes, but she also had Puck’s curls and that same puppy dog look he used to give her when he would ask if they could skip school and stay in bed.
Beth was perfect.
She might have started crying as she stared at it, but what else was she supposed to do? After everything… She wished Puck could see this. See her, the baby they created together.
“I want to meet her,” she finally whispered as Shelby forwarded the picture to her phone.
If she closed her eyes, she could pretend Puck was standing next to her.
“We’re gonna see her, Q.”
---
It took everything Puck had to not follow Shelby home when she left the hospital that day. The girls had set up a time for Quinn to go over after school tomorrow to actually meet Beth, but he could have gone. He could have seen Beth right then, except something held him back. Maybe it was nerves or maybe it was the way Quinn sat down next to his body and started describing their daughter almost as soon as Shelby walked out of the room.
“She’s beautiful, Puck,” she said, face wet. “You need to wake up so you can see her.”
God. He fucking tried. He spent the rest of that night and most of the next day trying everything he could possibly think of to get back in his body. He tried methods that either seemed outright crazy or ones that had already failed him before. So maybe he was hoping that they’d work this time around. Whatever.
He just wanted to be able to see Beth.
He wanted her to be able to see him.
When she was born, he’d only gotten to hold her for a few minutes. He’d only had a few minutes to snap some pictures and try to commit to memory the way her nose scrunched when she woke up. The way she felt in his arms. He’d left the room when the nurse took her back, wandered out until he managed to kind of fall into Schue’s arms, and broke. For months, he’d known that Beth would never really be his and it had hurt, but actually having her there and seeing her? Knowing that he’d probably never get to see that perfect little girl again? He’d felt like he was dying.
Ten minutes before school let out, though, and he was still the same ghost he’d been for a while now. He sighed, kicking at the bed as if it would make a difference, and closed his eyes so he could focus on being next to Quinn.
Seconds later and he was standing in the middle of her desk, eyebrows raised as she kept writing notes.
Right.
Through.
His.
Crotch.
It would have been funnier if she could see him and go that shade of red she used to go whenever he caught her doing something Chastity Ball queens shouldn’t do. He still got a laugh, though, because he definitely heard Finn choke in the back of the room.
“Suck it up, Finnocence,” he said as he stepped into the aisle and headed down towards his friend. He dropped down to sit cross-legged on the floor, his left knee poking through the leg of Jimmy Butler’s desk.
Finn glared at him for a moment before he turned his eyes back to his notebook and switched over to a new page. He scribbled something down and tapped the side of his desk in a silent message for Puck to stand up. He did, leaning over his friend’s shoulder to read the note.
What are you doing here?
“Shelby’s back,” he replied. “She’s letting Quinn see Beth today. I wanted to go.” He rolled his eyes as Finn shot him some kind of wide-eyed look that was probably supposed to be some kind of shock and surprise, but looked more like someone had grabbed his junk. “Dude, stop that. Everyone’s gonna think you’re staring at Jimmy.”
Fuck you.
“Not my type.”
Why didn’t you already go? Why are you waiting?
Puck turned his eyes to the floor and shrugged. “I just…wanted to wait for Quinn.”
Finn nodded, as he turned back to his paper, looking like he understood what the teacher was saying for once. Funny. The day Finn understood Calculus was the day Puck passed Geography.
Maybe she’ll be able to see you. They say kids are, like, attuned to that stuff. Spirits and past lives and shit.
“You need to stop watching Ghost Hunters,” he said. “That shit’s rotting your brain.” Seriously. Finn and his obsession for all things supernatural. He’d never understand why Finn was still so into the ghost stuff when he had his best friend haunting him, but whatever. Let him do what he wanted. He could be a fucking ghost whisperer for all Puck cared.
He was gonna see Beth today. That was all that mattered.
---
It had taken weeks before Puck figured out the trick to getting into a car. So long as he focused on being with the person driving, he could stay inside. He wasn’t sitting comfortably in the seat, but if he held his attention, he could do it. He did it with Quinn that day, but not without issues. The idea of seeing Beth had his mind so preoccupied that he fell out of the car more times than he would have liked to. Finally, he got fed up and just focused on Shelby’s address instead and waited for Quinn to pull into the driveway.
She was shaking as she got out of the car, straightening her dress and running her fingers through her hair nervously as she walked up to the door. “Breathe,” she told herself, voice soft as she knocked. “Just breathe.”
He stood beside her, feeling nine kinds of useless because he couldn’t do anything. Sure, he had his hand hovering over her back, but it wasn’t like she could feel his attempt to comfort her. Hell, he was just as nervous as she was and, now, he couldn’t get Finn’s fucking idea out of his head.
What if Beth could see him? What if she could actually…
Shelby opened the door, smiling as she let Quinn inside and led her towards the living room. “How are you?”
“Good,” Quinn said.
“Nervous?”
Quinn nodded. “A little.”
Really? Because Puck was a hell of a lot nervous and no one even fucking knew he was there. Except maybe Beth. Fuck. Did ghosts need to breathe? He hoped not. He’d kind of forgotten how.
She was right there. His and Quinn’s baby girl was three feet away from them, standing up in her playpen and she was… Fuck. She was even more perfect than she was in the picture. Looking at her now, she was…everything.
Beth smiled his smile as she saw Shelby, hopping slightly as she held onto the wall of the playpen. Her eyes drifted over to Quinn, curious. Then, they turned to him.
Fuck.
She was looking at him and-fuck it all-he wanted to cry.
“Hi,” he finally choked out as she continued staring.
“What are you looking at? Seeing ghosts?” Shelby asked, cooing in a baby voice as she picked Beth up and brought her over to Quinn. Beth took her eyes off him then, turning her focus to her biological mother and Puck realized at that moment that Quinn was still shaking.
“She looks like you,” he told Quinn needlessly, smiling as he took a spot by the blonde girl’s side and watched as Shelby continued talking and Beth grew more comfortable with the strangers in front of her. She reached out to Quinn eventually and he smiled wider, teeth showing now. “Take her,” he said at the same time Shelby did.
“You’re sure?” Quinn asked, sounding nervous, and Puck remembered that she had never gotten to hold Beth. Not really. She’d sort of held her when the nurses laid Beth down next to her, but she hadn’t allowed herself to actually take that little girl in her arms properly. It was like she’d been afraid that she wouldn’t be able to let go if she did. This would be the first time she actually got to hold her daughter.
Shelby nodded and transferred Beth into Quinn’s shaking arms carefully. Beth settled into them after a few seconds, staring at Quinn, wide-eyed, now that she was closer. Her hand touched Quinn’s cheek and he watched as the “head bitch” fell apart, holding Beth to her chest. He’d kill anyone that said Quinn didn’t love that little girl, that she hadn’t cared when she signed those papers. Quinn loved her more than anything and even if he’d doubted that for instants in the past, any proof anyone could ever need was right there.
“Beth, can you say ‘hi’?” Shelby asked.
“Hi,” Beth said to Quinn, voice soft. She turned her head, eyes on him as she smiled again. “Hi.”
He broke.
Part 2 >>
Character(s)/Pairing: Puck, Quinn, Finn, Puck/Finn friendship, Finn/Quinn friendship, eventual Puck/Quinn, some Finn/Rachel
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 12,000
Status: Complete
Notes/Warnings: And this, my dears, is my contribution to the Puck Big Bang. The plot for this fic was based off of the storyline of an unlaunched Quick RP on tumblr, created by puckfasa and used with their permission. As for WARNINGS? Minor character death.
Summary: Puck could remember the accident, the horror that went through him when he realized the truck was going to hit them and the way Finn grabbed his hand in the moment before the impact. Now, his body is in a coma, Quinn's practically living at the hospital, he's a ghost, Finn's the only one that can see him, and all he can think is that senior year supposed to be like this.
One second everything was okay and the next, it wasn’t.
Puck remembered the way his eyes went wide when he saw the truck run the red light. The way Finn shouted for him to look out and the terror that coursed through him when he realized in that split second that he couldn’t do anything. There was no time to move. No time to get out of the way. This truck was going to hit them and there was nothing he could do to stop it. He felt Finn’s hand encircle his wrist and made a mental note to mock him for it later.
He remembered closing his eyes and…
Nothing.
It was black.
He remembered nothing else about the accident. All he knew was that one second, he closed his eyes, waiting for the impact, and then... Nothing. The next time he opened them, he was standing, unharmed, in the middle of the street on the corner of Milk and Elm. The road was clear. No mangled cars. No blood. No cops or paramedics. If he didn’t know any better, he would have thought that the accident had never happened.
Then again, maybe it hadn’t. He’d had dreams before that had seemed so real that he’d woken up confused and struggling to separate reality from fantasy. Maybe he’d just had one of those dreams again. If that was it, though, it didn’t explain why he’d woken up in the middle of the road. Sure, he’d gotten drunk and passed out in some weird places before, but he hadn’t gotten that drunk since Rachel’s party last year. Back then, he’d found himself in her dads’ bathroom, hugging a loofa to his chest. He’d never woken up in a road before. Even drunk, he’d had enough self-preservation to not do something that stupid. Hell, he didn’t even have a hangover.
He mumbled to himself, running a hand over his mohawk as he looked around. A couple of kids ran down the sidewalk, laughing and yelling as they turned the corner to go towards the park. They probably wanted ice cream. The trucks stayed parked in the lot all day come summer and it was fucking hot outside.
He’d actually kill for an ice cream right about now, he thought. The heat sucked.
“Where the fuck is my wallet?” he muttered as he searched his pockets. Empty. Not even a paperclip. He always had his wallet. Right back pocket. He could feel the stretch in the old denim jeans, the extra sag to the fabric from having his wallet shoved in there all the time. He never forgot it. Could never chance having his ma find his fake IDs.
He shook his head, confused, as he started down Elm. Finn’s place was only a five minute walk from here. He’d go and make the guy drive him back. Help him find his wallet. And his phone. Fuck. He was missing that too? Fucking great. Okay, so make Finn help him find his wallet and his phone. Maybe get the guy to buy him an ice cream while they were at it. At the very least, maybe Finn could explain what the hell happened last night. He didn’t remember drinking, but maybe he’d managed to just get that drunk.
Finn was in the front yard when he got there, running through some basketball drills completely half-assed. Dragging his feet. Missing shots.
“Dude, you suck.”
Finn jumped, throwing the ball harder than he needed to and they both watched it sail right over the basket and over the fence into the back yard. Puck snorted.
“I think you missed,” Puck snorted as he walked up the driveway. Finn still hadn’t faced him and he rolled his eyes. Frowned as he got closer and noticed the cast around Finn’s left arm. No wonder the guy couldn’t make a basket. He could barely aim right with two arms, let alone one. “The fuck happened to your arm?”
Finn was pale when he finally turned to face him, eyes wide and mouth hanging open. He extended a hand towards Puck, reaching out to touch him, but Puck moved back a step to avoid it.
“What the hell are you doing, Hudson? I don’t swing that way.”
“Puck… I…”
Something twisted in Puck’s stomach as he watched tears gather in Finn’s eyes. Fuck. What the hell was going on?
Finn reached forward again, this time, with his hand shaking like a leaf. Puck stepped back again and tripped over his own feet. Fell backwards.
Right through the lamppost.
Through the lamppost.
Puck stared at the rod of metal protruding from his stomach. No blood. No pain. It was just there. Sticking out of his stomach like it belonged there when it fucking didn’t.
He looked up to Finn, both of them shaking now, and lifted a hand to touch the pole.
His hand passed right through it.
He was pretty sure his stomach fell right out of his body then. He stared at his hand and at his stomach before he rolled to the side and off the pole. He didn’t feel so much as a tickle. By the time he got to his feet, he was surprised that his legs could support him. Then again, could he really be surprised by anything anymore? He’d just passed right through something like he was that Kitty chick from X-Men or…
A ghost.
Oh, God.
“I’m not dead,” he said. “I’m not. I… Finn, please tell me I turned into a fucking X-Man or something.”
“I-”
“Finn? Sweetheart, are you alright?”
They both startled at the voice as they spun around to look at Mrs. Hurley across the street, watching Finn worriedly. She didn’t even seem like she saw Puck at all.
Okay, so he wasn’t an X-Man.
Fuck. He was dead.
Oh, God.
He was dead.
He wasn’t even eighteen yet. He still had another month to go before his birthday in August. And Beth. He was never going to see his fucking kid again.
His breath started coming fast (did he even need to breathe if he was dead?) and he started backing up. He was dead. He was a ghost. Fuck.
“Uh… Yeah, Mrs. Hurley. I’m fine. Just…” Finn’s eyes drifted back towards Puck and Puck met his gaze, panicked. “Just thought I saw something. Must be the heat.”
“Well, if you’re sure… Go get some water. You don’t want to make yourself sick.”
Finn nodded and gave her that grin he always gave people when he was about to start freaking out. “Yeah. Good idea.”
“Tell your parents I said hello!”
“’Kay!” he shouted back as he started towards the house. Paused before he passed Puck. “I don’t know if I’m crazy, but come inside.”
Puck followed him into the house, watching as Finn stuck his head under the faucet in the kitchen. Saw the look that crossed Finn’s face when he looked up and saw that Puck was still standing there, some mix of fear, sadness, and hope.
Fuck hope. He was dead. What the fuck was there to hope for?
“What happened? The car accident… That wasn’t a dream?”
“Hold on,” Finn told him as he turned to his phone. “I need to call Quinn.”
“Quinn? What the hell would she know?”
Finn held up a hand to silence him, but he didn’t turn his back to him like he usually would if he was calling someone. Figured. Not like a ghost could blab about whatever was going on.
“Quinn? Yeah, it’s me. I was just calling to…” Finn trailed off, listening to whatever Quinn was saying and nodding along with it as he wandered into the living room. “No change? Not even for a second? Nothing weird?” He paused, listening, before he sighed. “I was just asking. Call me if anything changes? Thanks.” He hung up and heaved another sigh as he ran a hand through his wet hair, staring at the floor.
“Finn-”
“The truck hit your side of the car. Smashed right into you. We…” Finn swallowed thickly as he started rubbing at the cast. Traced a signature that looked like Brittany’s. “The car flipped. I broke my arm. Had a concussion from when I hit my head on the dash. You-”
“-died.”
“The impact broke your arm. Fractured your leg. You… You hit your head, too. Harder than I did. It hit the steering wheel and the airbag didn’t go off. Your ribs broke and there was some kind of compression thing going on with your lungs because of the damage. One got punctured by a rib…”
“I get it.”
“No, you don’t. You… The doctors said you didn’t get enough oxygen. Add in the head thing and…”
Finn finally looked up at him then, eyes glassy and Puck would be mocking him for acting like a girl if he didn’t kind of want to start crying himself.
“You’re in a coma, Puck.”
Puck froze. Blinked. Blinked again.
He was in a coma?
He wasn’t dead?
Oh, God. He wasn’t dead.
He heaved a sigh of relief that probably sounded more like a sob.
He wasn’t dead.
---
“I don’t get it,” Finn said as they sat on the living room floor. “If you’re not dead, how are you a ghost?”
“I don’t fucking know. I’m not an expert on this shit, Finn,” Puck snapped back.
He was being an ass. He knew that. But… Fuck. He’d been in a coma for two weeks. Two fucking weeks and everything had gone screwy. His car was totaled. His mom was half-way into a bottle. Sarah was practically living in Brittany’s sister’s room. Quinn, who hadn’t spoken to him in a year, was at the hospital more often than she wasn’t. Finn had apparently gone all Ghost Whisperer: Comatose Edition. Rachel wasn’t singing by his bedside which he was half-happy about, half-insulted by.
What? His Sleeping Beauty impersonation didn’t warrant a song? The chick would sing about a broken nail if she could. She’d written a song about a fucking headband and he didn’t get anything?
Were there even any songs about being in comas?
“How are you going to get back in your body? Can you?”
“I don’t know, Hudson. Once again, I’m not a fucking expert. Maybe… I don’t know. Can I possess someone or is that just a dead-ghost thing?”
“Maybe?”
Puck sighed and began to pace the room. He walked through the coffee table without much more than a glance. Okay. Still weird, but at least he wasn’t dead. He could live with the ghostliness until he woke up.
“Quinn said there was no change?”
Finn shook his head. “Nothing.”
“She’s sure?”
“Yeah. She doesn’t leave much, dude. This whole thing really scared her. Rachel said she was freaking out when she got to the hospital. Something about hair dye and tattoos.”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
Puck frowned, confused, because that didn’t seem like Quinn. Sure, he’d seen her around a few times this summer and she’d seemed sort of off and her clothes had been taking a turn towards punk, but then again, they hadn’t spoken for the better part of a year. He didn’t know what was going on with her.
Still…
He could drop in. Check in with her and try to get back in his body. Maybe she’d be able to see him too. It couldn’t hurt…
But the hospital was all the way on the other side of town. He couldn’t even sit in a chair without falling through it, so catching a ride with Finn was probably out. He’d have to walk. Fuck.
Puck groaned at the thought of it. He could still feel the heat and walking all the way over there was going to suck. He wanted to just get-
-there.
What the…
This wasn’t Finn’s living room. He’d been there a second ago and then he blinked and he was in a hospital room. His hospital room. “What the…” He could go wherever he wanted by just thinking about it. Sweet.
Maybe not so sweet. Crap. He looked like a mess. Finn had told him about the injuries, but hearing about it and seeing it were two different things. He wasn’t surprised to see the bruises, but they managed to make his body look even worse. His left arm and leg encased in plaster. He could only imagine the bandages underneath his hospital gown, because shit, the doctors had cut him open to fix the hole in his lung. His chest was going to be scarred. Badass, but it was going to take some getting used to.
If there even was anything to get used to. He still didn’t know if there was any way for him to get back in his body. If there wasn’t… God. Would he have to watch himself die? Watch his mom pull the plug? Would he have to watch his own funeral? Would he even stick around that long or would he just disappear when his body…
God, he was going to be sick.
He was a fucking teenager.
Puck exhaled slowly, trying to push back the nausea. He doubted he could throw up like this, but either way, he really didn’t want to test that theory. Breathe. Focus on… Quinn. Focus on Quinn.
Wait. Was she reading to him?
He stepped closer and, sure enough, she was. Curled up in a chair beside his bed, she had his collection of Harry Potter books piled on the nightstand. She had better be keeping those hidden when the others visited. The last thing he needed was them knowing about that obsession.
“’I mean,’ said Malfoy, raising his voice a little more, his gray eyes glittering malevolently in Harry and Ron’s direction, ‘if it’s a question of influence with the Ministry, I don’t think they’ve got much chance,’” she read, “’…From what my father says, they’ve been looking for an excuse to sack Arthur Weasley for years… And as for Potter… My father says it’s a matter of time before the Ministry has him carted off to St. Mungo’s… Apparently they’ve got a special ward for people whose brains have been addled by magic…’”
She kept reading for a while and he got lost in it, listening to the soft tone of her voice and remembering the good days they had when she was living with him. The days where they just sat around, doing nothing. He’d keep his head in her lap, one ear pressed against her belly while the other listened to her read to him. He missed those days. There hadn’t been enough.
He whispered her name when she finished the chapter and reached for her water bottle, but she didn’t react. He tried again, this time a little louder as he knelt beside her chair, but she acted like he wasn’t even there. Maybe it was only Finn that could see him, he considered as his hand phased through hers. Nothing.
She picked up the book again and opened up to Chapter Eighteen.
“’Umbridge has been reading your mail, Harry. There’s no other explanation…’”
Puck sighed, circling around his hospital bed to stare at the beeping monitors. They didn’t make any sense to him, but he figured the numbers he saw was good. He had to be stable at this point, right? Maybe he could try lying in his body or something. See if that changed the numbers or whatever. Maybe he’d get lucky and it would snap him back inside like some kind of puzzle piece.
“Don’t be a pussy,” he mumbled to himself when his nerves kept him from moving. “Just get up there and lie down.”
He took a deep breath, holding it in as he laid his right hand down in line with his body’s. There was a shock, some kind of tickle that didn’t pick up on the monitors, but it made him let the breath go. Okay. A tickle was good. That meant there was still some kind of connection, right?
He took another breath as he maneuvered himself up onto the bed without losing the connection at his hand. Laid down and it held him. There was a tickle and-
He fell through.
How he didn’t keep falling through the floors below him, he wasn’t sure and he didn’t really care. He just lay under the hospital bed, swearing.
Maybe one more time. Maybe it just needed a kick start.
He ended up on the floor again.
The same thing happened the third time.
The fourth.
The fifth.
Umbridge was inspecting Hagrid’s class by the time he finally gave up.
He sank down on the floor next to Quinn’s chair with a sigh and listened to her read, one hand lifted up through the bars on the bed to touch his body’s hand. The tickle it gave was as comforting as anything right now.
While she read, he stared at her. There wasn’t much else he could do. He couldn’t lay his head in her lap like usual without phasing right through, so he stared. It was probably a little creepy, but whatever. Unless Finn showed up, no one else could see him. He was free to do whatever.
She looked good. Better than she had the other times he’d seen her this summer. The punk look she’d been moving towards had looked hot, but it wasn’t her. The dresses and the little sweaters were Quinn, even more than the Cheerio’s uniform she’d gotten back into for part of junior year.
She looked good now, back in her own clothes and not looking as angry as she had been for a while. She looked like Quinn again.
The characters were just arriving at the Department of Mysteries when she stopped and looked at his body sadly. “You’re too quiet,” she said softly. “You’re not quiet, Puck. You’re supposed to be interrupting me and fidgeting. You’re supposed to be grumbling about how awful Umbridge is and how they should have just fed her to the squid.” Something in her voice cracked at the end of her sentence and she ducked her head. Her shoulders shook for a moment before she looked back at the form in the bed, eyes teary and teeth biting at her bottom lip. “You need to wake up.”
He tried. God, he fucking tried and he did it five more times, hoping that it would work this time around. He just wanted her to stop crying.
“Great work, Puckerman,” he muttered to himself, bitter. “As if you haven’t made her cry enough already.”
He tried once more just as Finn appeared in the doorway. The guy jumped as Puck walked through the bed and dropped back down to sit next to Quinn’s chair. “Shut up and pretend I’m not here.”
“Kind of hard,” Finn shot back. Quinn jumped at his voice and dropped the book to the floor.
“You scared me,” she said, hand over her chest. “Is knocking that difficult, Finn?”
“Sorry.”
Quinn sighed. “What were you talking about?”
“Huh?”
“What’s hard?”
“Oh. I… I just meant…” Finn looked a little panicked and Puck cringed. He needed to hold it together before someone tossed him in the psych ward or something. If he said he was seeing him… “It’s just hard to, you know, see him like this.”
Quinn’s face fell a little as she looked back to the body in the bed. “Yeah,” she murmured. “I know.”
“You okay?”
“I don’t know.”
---
She’d been sitting in the tattoo parlor when Rachel called her, hysterical and going on about trucks and red lights and they’re hurt. She’d run out of there so fast that she’d left behind the CVS bag holding the hair dye. Sped the entire way to the hospital with Rachel on speaker phone.
“Finn’s mom called me. Finn and Noah… It’s bad, Quinn. It’s really bad.”
In the end, Finn was mostly okay. A broken arm and a concussion, but he walked out of the hospital the day after the accident. That same day, Puck flat-lined because of a complication and they had to rush him back into surgery. He was stable now, but he still hadn’t woken up. She knew that wasn’t good. She’d watched enough movies and read enough articles since the accident to know that prolonged comas were never good. The longer the person stayed like that, the lower the chance was of them waking up and if they did wake up, there was always the possibility that there’d be brain damage.
She didn’t want to think about that, but as every day went by with no improvement, she got scared. He needed to wake up.
Quinn sighed and stood from the chair so she could get another water bottle from her purse. The room was too quiet. The others came by whenever they could, Finn more than others, but even when they were here, it was weird. Puck was never this quiet unless he was upset about something and even then, he’d be making biting little comments.
Having him like this… It wasn’t right.
She circled the bed, straightening the blankets and fluffing the pillow just so she could feel somewhat helpful. Drew another dot on his cast like she’d been doing every day. Eighteen dots for eighteen days in the coma. She’d clustered them all by his thumb, neat little lines of seven. They were part-way onto the third line now and it made something in her chest twist as she put the pen down.
“Someone needs to cut your hair,” she told him as she touched his head. They’d had to shave his mohawk off after the accident so they could stitch up a cut. Now, his hair was growing in like it hadn’t since they were kids. A little longer and it would start curling. “I know how much you hate your curls.”
He didn’t offer her any kind of response and she bit her lip. She hated this. Hated seeing him like this. Hated not knowing if he could even hear a word she said.
Save for a few moments, she’d ignored him since Beth was born. Ignored his texts. Made her mom turn him away if he tried to come by the house. She’d see him in the hall at school and try and pretend he didn’t exist. Pretend that sophomore year didn’t exist.
It never worked, though. She couldn’t forget and she didn’t think he could either. Their little girl, the one she’d wanted to keep but had been too scared to. The one she knew he hadn’t wanted to give up. Guilt bubbled in her stomach for all the ways things could have been different if she’d just admitted the truth from the very beginning.
“I’d take care of it. You too.”
“This parent thing? We can do this.”
“I want to be with you.”
“Yes. Especially now.”
Things could have been different. They could have been different.
“You’re such an egghead,” she mumbled. The name wasn’t funny anymore, but she still tried to pretend it was, simply because it was a memory of a happier time.
She knew she’d been a wreck this last year. Somewhere along the way, she’d lost herself. She’d become so focused on trying to get back to the way things had been that she’d lost sight of who she and everyone else had become. No one was like they’d been at the beginning of sophomore year. They’d all grown up in some way and going back… It wasn’t possible. All any of them could do was keep moving forward.
“School starts up again next week,” she told him as her finger found a patch the nurse had missed when she was shaving him. “I know you don’t like school, but isn’t this a little melodramatic? It’s senior year.”
The beeping of the monitors was her only response, but when she closed her eyes, she imagined she could hear him laughing.
---
By the time school started up again, Finn wasn’t sure if he was happy or sad about it. On one hand, it was school, so kill him now. On the other hand, though, it gave him something to focus on that wasn’t the constant presence of his best friend’s ghost. Puck was almost always there, hanging around and trying to act like shit was normal when it wasn’t and they both knew that.
“You’re not coming to class with me, right?” he asked as he pretended to rifle around in his car. He tried to make it look as innocent as he could, but he was pretty much talking to himself in the middle of the school parking lot. Just keep your voice down and no one will notice, he thought. Yeah. He could do that.
Puck snorted. “Dude, I didn’t go to class when I wasn’t a ghost. You think I’m going now?”
The guy had a point. “What are you gonna do then?”
“Drift? I don’t know,” Puck said, shrugging. “Hit the hospital. Check on Sarah. Whatever.”
“Sit with Quinn?” He sent his ghostly friend a knowing look, grinning softly, and returned to shoving stuff into his backpack. “If you’re not haunting my ass, you’re usually with her.”
“Because she’s usually at the hospital. I’m still trying to find a way back in my body. Or do you want me to stay like this?”
Stung, Finn jerked his head to look at Puck. “You know I don’t, dude.” He wanted Puck to actually be in his body and be awake. Having Puck there with him but not? It managed to make the whole coma-thing harder and easier at the same time. Yeah, he got to talk to the other teen, but every day Puck reappeared next to him, muttering and annoyed, was another day that Finn lost a little hope that his friend would ever wake up.
There still hadn’t been any progress on his body. The wounds and broken bones from the accident had mostly healed over and the casts had been replaced by braces, but that was it. According to the doctors, Puck’s brain scans hadn’t shown any change and they all knew that the longer Puck stayed like that, the less chance he’d have of waking up. He’d been like this too long and the doctors couldn’t tell them why.
Finn rubbed a hand over his head, sighing, as the warning bell rang. “Dude-”
Puck was already gone. Disappeared just as silently as he always did. Great.
He knew this was hard on Puck too. Puck was the ghost. He was the one that kept trying and failing to get back in his body. Finn just hoped he figured it out soon. He wanted his friend back.
---
“He kind of looks like he’s sleeping.”
The soft voice shocked Quinn out of the daze she’d been in as she stared at Puck’s still form and she spun in her chair. Wide eyes fell on Shelby and Quinn’s mind short-circuited. She hadn’t seen this woman since they signed the adoption papers. Rachel had mentioned in passing that Shelby had moved to New York, but… “What are you doing here?”
Shelby stepped fully into the room, but she still looked out of place. “I moved back,” she said as her eyes drifted between Quinn and Puck. “Your principal hired me to head another glee club. I’d wanted to talk to you both after I saw Rachel. She told me about the accident. How’s he doing?”
“The same,” Quinn mumbled as she closed the book in her lap. She’d finished Harry Potter the week before and spent another day searching Puck’s bedroom just to find out that those were the only real books he owned. In the end, she started Pride & Prejudice, figuring at the very least that Puck might wake up just so he could tell her to stop. “The injuries are healing. He’s just not waking up.”
Shelby hummed some sympathetic noise as she circled around to the other side of the bed. She sat and… God. What was Quinn supposed to do with this? She hadn’t seen Shelby since that last dat at the hospital and now she was here. Seeing Shelby just brought back memories of Beth and it hurt.
She stood up just to busy herself. She fixed Puck’s blankets. Righted the teddy bear Sarah had bought that had fallen over. Laid her hand on his cheek just to make sure he wasn’t warm. It was stupid, but an infection had set in during his first week in the hospital and it made her paranoid. These days, she was always checking to make sure no fever had popped up.
“I wanted you to both be a part of Beth’s life.”
Quinn froze, eyes wide as they shot to Shelby’s face. She wanted… She meant they could… “What?”
“I want you to both be a part of Beth’s life,” she said again as she touched Puck’s hand softly before pulling back to get her phone. She handed it over after a minute, smiling softly as she presented Quinn with a photo of Beth.
Oh, God.
Quinn stared at the photo of her daughter, trying so hard to not fall apart. Between the stuff she’d been going through and everything with Puck, this was just too much. Beth was beautiful. When she was born, Puck had said that Beth looked like her, but now… God, Quinn could see so much of Puck in that little girl. Sure, she had Quinn’s hair color and her eyes, but she also had Puck’s curls and that same puppy dog look he used to give her when he would ask if they could skip school and stay in bed.
Beth was perfect.
She might have started crying as she stared at it, but what else was she supposed to do? After everything… She wished Puck could see this. See her, the baby they created together.
“I want to meet her,” she finally whispered as Shelby forwarded the picture to her phone.
If she closed her eyes, she could pretend Puck was standing next to her.
“We’re gonna see her, Q.”
---
It took everything Puck had to not follow Shelby home when she left the hospital that day. The girls had set up a time for Quinn to go over after school tomorrow to actually meet Beth, but he could have gone. He could have seen Beth right then, except something held him back. Maybe it was nerves or maybe it was the way Quinn sat down next to his body and started describing their daughter almost as soon as Shelby walked out of the room.
“She’s beautiful, Puck,” she said, face wet. “You need to wake up so you can see her.”
God. He fucking tried. He spent the rest of that night and most of the next day trying everything he could possibly think of to get back in his body. He tried methods that either seemed outright crazy or ones that had already failed him before. So maybe he was hoping that they’d work this time around. Whatever.
He just wanted to be able to see Beth.
He wanted her to be able to see him.
When she was born, he’d only gotten to hold her for a few minutes. He’d only had a few minutes to snap some pictures and try to commit to memory the way her nose scrunched when she woke up. The way she felt in his arms. He’d left the room when the nurse took her back, wandered out until he managed to kind of fall into Schue’s arms, and broke. For months, he’d known that Beth would never really be his and it had hurt, but actually having her there and seeing her? Knowing that he’d probably never get to see that perfect little girl again? He’d felt like he was dying.
Ten minutes before school let out, though, and he was still the same ghost he’d been for a while now. He sighed, kicking at the bed as if it would make a difference, and closed his eyes so he could focus on being next to Quinn.
Seconds later and he was standing in the middle of her desk, eyebrows raised as she kept writing notes.
Right.
Through.
His.
Crotch.
It would have been funnier if she could see him and go that shade of red she used to go whenever he caught her doing something Chastity Ball queens shouldn’t do. He still got a laugh, though, because he definitely heard Finn choke in the back of the room.
“Suck it up, Finnocence,” he said as he stepped into the aisle and headed down towards his friend. He dropped down to sit cross-legged on the floor, his left knee poking through the leg of Jimmy Butler’s desk.
Finn glared at him for a moment before he turned his eyes back to his notebook and switched over to a new page. He scribbled something down and tapped the side of his desk in a silent message for Puck to stand up. He did, leaning over his friend’s shoulder to read the note.
What are you doing here?
“Shelby’s back,” he replied. “She’s letting Quinn see Beth today. I wanted to go.” He rolled his eyes as Finn shot him some kind of wide-eyed look that was probably supposed to be some kind of shock and surprise, but looked more like someone had grabbed his junk. “Dude, stop that. Everyone’s gonna think you’re staring at Jimmy.”
Fuck you.
“Not my type.”
Why didn’t you already go? Why are you waiting?
Puck turned his eyes to the floor and shrugged. “I just…wanted to wait for Quinn.”
Finn nodded, as he turned back to his paper, looking like he understood what the teacher was saying for once. Funny. The day Finn understood Calculus was the day Puck passed Geography.
Maybe she’ll be able to see you. They say kids are, like, attuned to that stuff. Spirits and past lives and shit.
“You need to stop watching Ghost Hunters,” he said. “That shit’s rotting your brain.” Seriously. Finn and his obsession for all things supernatural. He’d never understand why Finn was still so into the ghost stuff when he had his best friend haunting him, but whatever. Let him do what he wanted. He could be a fucking ghost whisperer for all Puck cared.
He was gonna see Beth today. That was all that mattered.
---
It had taken weeks before Puck figured out the trick to getting into a car. So long as he focused on being with the person driving, he could stay inside. He wasn’t sitting comfortably in the seat, but if he held his attention, he could do it. He did it with Quinn that day, but not without issues. The idea of seeing Beth had his mind so preoccupied that he fell out of the car more times than he would have liked to. Finally, he got fed up and just focused on Shelby’s address instead and waited for Quinn to pull into the driveway.
She was shaking as she got out of the car, straightening her dress and running her fingers through her hair nervously as she walked up to the door. “Breathe,” she told herself, voice soft as she knocked. “Just breathe.”
He stood beside her, feeling nine kinds of useless because he couldn’t do anything. Sure, he had his hand hovering over her back, but it wasn’t like she could feel his attempt to comfort her. Hell, he was just as nervous as she was and, now, he couldn’t get Finn’s fucking idea out of his head.
What if Beth could see him? What if she could actually…
Shelby opened the door, smiling as she let Quinn inside and led her towards the living room. “How are you?”
“Good,” Quinn said.
“Nervous?”
Quinn nodded. “A little.”
Really? Because Puck was a hell of a lot nervous and no one even fucking knew he was there. Except maybe Beth. Fuck. Did ghosts need to breathe? He hoped not. He’d kind of forgotten how.
She was right there. His and Quinn’s baby girl was three feet away from them, standing up in her playpen and she was… Fuck. She was even more perfect than she was in the picture. Looking at her now, she was…everything.
Beth smiled his smile as she saw Shelby, hopping slightly as she held onto the wall of the playpen. Her eyes drifted over to Quinn, curious. Then, they turned to him.
Fuck.
She was looking at him and-fuck it all-he wanted to cry.
“Hi,” he finally choked out as she continued staring.
“What are you looking at? Seeing ghosts?” Shelby asked, cooing in a baby voice as she picked Beth up and brought her over to Quinn. Beth took her eyes off him then, turning her focus to her biological mother and Puck realized at that moment that Quinn was still shaking.
“She looks like you,” he told Quinn needlessly, smiling as he took a spot by the blonde girl’s side and watched as Shelby continued talking and Beth grew more comfortable with the strangers in front of her. She reached out to Quinn eventually and he smiled wider, teeth showing now. “Take her,” he said at the same time Shelby did.
“You’re sure?” Quinn asked, sounding nervous, and Puck remembered that she had never gotten to hold Beth. Not really. She’d sort of held her when the nurses laid Beth down next to her, but she hadn’t allowed herself to actually take that little girl in her arms properly. It was like she’d been afraid that she wouldn’t be able to let go if she did. This would be the first time she actually got to hold her daughter.
Shelby nodded and transferred Beth into Quinn’s shaking arms carefully. Beth settled into them after a few seconds, staring at Quinn, wide-eyed, now that she was closer. Her hand touched Quinn’s cheek and he watched as the “head bitch” fell apart, holding Beth to her chest. He’d kill anyone that said Quinn didn’t love that little girl, that she hadn’t cared when she signed those papers. Quinn loved her more than anything and even if he’d doubted that for instants in the past, any proof anyone could ever need was right there.
“Beth, can you say ‘hi’?” Shelby asked.
“Hi,” Beth said to Quinn, voice soft. She turned her head, eyes on him as she smiled again. “Hi.”
He broke.
Part 2 >>