Puck’s hands had been pulled from the man’s arms, his knuckles bruised and cut. He’d been hauled off his back, sat down in a seat, as ten armed guards led the gunman away. He’d watched some expert technician disarm and examine the gun in the corner of the room before that too was taken away. Then other officers had started marking spots on the floor and stretching tape measures between the blasted holes in the walls. He thought maybe someone was talking to him; but it wasn’t Lauren. She’d been taken outside with the first wave of police. He guessed her parents were probably out there. The thought cut deep into his heart.

There was someone talking to him. It was a police woman, but she was different to all the others, not dressed the same, more casual and approachable. She had her hand on his arm and was saying something about shock. Oh right. Puck thought about it for a second and realised that would be the obvious conclusion. He hadn’t spoken, probably except for cursing, since the cops had arrived. Yeah; that’s what they must think. But it was wrong. Puck turned so that his shoulders faced the lady, and with a quick glance at her face; not quite believing what he was about to say, looked at his hands and began to talk, cutting across her mid sentence.

“I need to confess something.”

It was all his fault. All his own goddamn fault.

“Just fuck off, alright?”

Puck wishes there was a door he could slam, but instead settles for stalking back down the central tiny hall of his dad’s ground floor flat, to the room he’s forced into for one long weekend of every month.

“Don’t use that kinda language at me, boy.”

The voice is low and quiet, trying to appear even more threatening, but Puck can see through it. He’s been playing this game for the last thirteen years.

“Or what?”

There’s a thump of something being thrown behind him in the tiny half lounge, half kitchenette, half doorway. Puck reaches his door and throws it open, letting it crash against the wafer thin wall in reply. The paper behind the door handle, covered in disgusting miniature pink bouquets, is already stained, rusted and scored through from this routine.

“I’ll show you what.”

Another scraping sound, followed by a tinkling of empty bottles being shuffled over. Puck rolls his eyes and goes into his room, closing the door behind himself and throwing the small bolt across. He’d put that lock on himself, four years ago. It had been a long time since he’d allowed himself to be stupid enough to get caught by his father when he was in one of these moods. In any rate, he was usually too drunk to make it from the sofa to the bedroom.

The room is dark, with the blinds closed to the rusting fence and neighbouring squatters, and Puck walks, slowly and carefully, picking his way around unseen obstacles to the bedside table, flicking on the lamp. The light throws out onto a tiny bed, still the same one he slept in from when he was five or six, a tiny table with no chair, a cluster of old curtain rails balanced in a corner, and his suitcase, opened and partially repacked, lying on the bed with the rest of his clothes strewn around it. There were clothes there he hadn’t worn since puberty; childish T-shirts and shorts, small grubby trainers. But this time they weren’t being left behind in the cupboard in the corner, which backed onto the boiler and was slowly filling with mould. No. This time everything was leaving with him. Tomorrow, when he could finally walk out of this house and never have to come back. Breathing slowly he reminds himself how good it feels to finally be legally free.

There’s another sound out in the hallway, but he ignores it, throwing some more posters and pictures from the peeling walls into a rucksack.

“Noah?”

This time the voice is high and pleading, propped just outside the door.

“Noah, come on. I promise I’ll not say anything you don’t want me to. I just wanna see you.”

Puck says nothing, just keeps packing.

“Noah. Noah? Are you even listening?”

The voice is edging towards harshness again, never able to keep it at bay for more than a few minutes.

“Come on; come out now. We’ll have a few beers, watch the football. Like proper men, together.”

It almost makes Puck laugh, the irony and insanity of it.

“Noah Puckerman!”

This time his name is accompanied by a heavy thump at the door. The bolt rattles.

“Now! Or I’m gonna fuckin’ break this door down and drag you out here myself and put some manners in you. And don’t think I won’t do it, cause God knows you’ve seen me do it before…I bet you did, didn’t you? Has your mother told you all about it? I bet she has, the little bitch. Her and that man of hers. But you’re still mine…cause you’re never gonna get away from me, you hear? Always; I’m always gonna be in your head. Cause you’re just like me, my boy. Just the bloody same.”

Puck bunches his fists in front of himself. How does he always manage to say just the right thing to get right under his skin? Why can’t he just slide it off his back?
‘Cause you’re just like me…’ echoes a voice. No, chants Puck; no, I’m not. I’m like me, like myself, I’m like mum, and sometimes I’m someone even I don’t know, but never, never ever ever am I gonna let myself be like you.

There’s silence at the door, then a small click. Puck throws another sweater into the suitcase, but then stops. The bottom of the door is edging forwards. Then there’s a clatter and he looks down, seeing the shining bronze of the door bolt resting just by his feet.

And there’s his father, framed in the doorway, picture of a stereotype in his greasy vest and cap.

“Don’t think I’m stupid, son.”

And this time, at last, Puck is frightened. He’s cornered, with a different form of his father; not blind drunk, almost sober, but still as enraged. He’s holding something in his hand; a screwdriver.

“I took the liberty of making sure I could get in to every room in my own home. I hope you don’t mind.”

Neither of them moves. After all these years they understand each other; the conflict can't start from nothing. However small it may be, there has to be a spark. And then his dad glances down, and sees the suitcase, and the childish clothes and the photos.

“Going somewhere?”

Puck glances left and right worriedly. He wonders, if he could get round his father, whether he could just leave everything in this room behind and make a run for it now. His phone lies on the table. Slowly, he reaches for it and puts it in his pocket.

“I asked you a question.”

His father takes a slightly unsteady step into the room, letting some of the clothes lying near the door pile up against his shuffling feet. He bends and picks a photo of the football team from the bed. His father’s slightly shorter than Puck is, but they share the same hair colour, and the same build. Puck’s mind sees the same picture his father is holding reproduced on the wall of the sitting room, with a date of eighteen years earlier.

For once Puck can't tell if the tension needs him to speak or not. His father is still studying the football picture, his squinting eyes watering as he strains to see the faces. Then he pulls back and waves the photo at his son.

“Why didn’t you show me this?”

“It’s mine. I didn’t think you’d care that much.”

“I didn’t know you’d made the team. When did that happen? How many games have you gotten?”

Question after meaningless question about the life he tries to keep separate from this existence. But Puck answers them all, aware of the fact that his father seems to have calmed down a bit over the subject, seems to have forgotten the suitcase.

But then his father waves the photo once more to emphasise a point, and another picture, stuck tackily to the back of it, suddenly comes away and drifts slowly to the floor. Puck watches as his father bends awkwardly to retrieve it. And then he realises what it is.

“What the hell is this?”

The light goes once again from his father’s voice. The picture is them; all of them, all the glee club together, right after winning Regionals. Puck had only brought it with himself that weekend, to remind himself of the good times, of the Nationals which were coming up. In it his arms were round Lauren and Rachel, and he looked properly happy. Finn was in front of him, with Quinn, lifting the trophy above Artie’s head. Confetti was drifting down on them.

“It’s…it’s Glee Club, dad.”

“Glee Club?”

The anger returns to replace the lightness.

“Yeah, we won Regionals. We’ve got Nationals in New York at the end of the month.”

Puck’s voice treads carefully.

His father squints again at the photo. Puck can feel the man’s anger building, but knows he hasn’t yet got a motive for it, a target. But then a cracked and calloused finger comes up to the shining faces on the paper. It points at Rachel.

“Who’s this? Some nice Jewish girl?”

“That’s Rachel.”

“Uh huh. And this?”

His finger moves over Puck’s head to Lauren.

“What about this one?”

“Lauren.”

Puck’s teeth have clenched.

“I see.”

His voice is overrun with coarse sarcasm. The finger moves down the photo, to Quinn’s smiling face.

“And I think I know this one, don’t I?”

Puck breathes through his nose.

“Yeah; yeah, I do. Because she’s the girl you knocked up, you stupid bastard, isn’t she?”

His face turns to the photo again, finger moving to Finn’s face.

“Looks like you couldn’t even keep her though, could you? Woman has your baby and then rejects you. That’s gotta hurt. You must really be the loser I always knew you’d turn out to be. I mean, the effin’ Glee Club? And you manage to lose a girl like that for such a pair of lookers.”

His fingers split from Quinn’s shining hair and drift back to either side of Puck’s head.

“At least your mother knew that when she tied me down it was the best she was ever gonna manage. Christ knows, if your mother had looked a bit more like that we might have lasted. But this girl…”

He taps the photo on the suitcase.

“She saw right through you; saw all the things I missed, and got out before it was too late, huh?”

His father was looking him dead level in the eyes now.

“No Lima Loser for her, eh?”

White hot rage floods to the entirety of Puck’s being. He takes a step forward, ready to tear the photo out of his father’s hands. But his father is quicker this time, and takes a step back, back into the silhouette of the door, still holding both photographs. A small smile reaches the corners of his mouth.

“I heard she gave it up. Heard she couldn’t even bear to keep it knowing that it was yours. My bastard son’s bastard child.”

Puck launches himself at his father, grabbing him by the shoulders, but yet again the man is too fast, and he strikes out a fist, catching Puck in the stomach and forcing him back against the bed. The suitcase overturns, overbalances and falls, emptying itself onto the floor. He curls instinctively, but not before his father’s foot can break against his arms and cannon into his chest, driving out all the air, leaving Puck sucking for breath on the floor. Eyes shut in the darkness; he hears the door swing to, and a new click.

“Oh,” comes a horribly victorious voice from the other side, “just so you know, I also thought it might be a good idea to put a proper lock on the door. One that works from the outside.”
-
Nothing about the room has changed when Puck wakes up hours later. The bedside lamp still throws a dim light into the tiny room, his clothes are still strewn across the floor with his upturned suitcase on top of them, the door is still closed. Without moving from where he is, propped against the side of the bed, stomach smarting with this new bruise, Puck forces himself to think. He has to leave, now. His phone rubs against his leg from inside his pocket. But he doesn’t want to call anyone. He wants to do this on his own, to make it final. His final escape.

Picking himself up he goes first to the door, gently trying the handle. It is still locked. He turns and crosses to the window, drawing up the blind. Outside the night is dark, permeated by the unhealthy glow of light pollution. No lights are on in the house next door. Puck tests the window. It sticks fast for a moment, but then, with a burst of grime and filth which sends a plume of dust up into the air, it swings open. Puck coughs, choking on the smell and the dirt. Backing away from the now open window he turns and grabs his rucksack from the bed, stuffing a few more mementos and clothes down into it, as well as the handful of cash and coupons his mom had sent with him. Dropping it out of the window onto the paving slabs with a quiet thud, he goes to switch off the lamp.
Something stops his hand just short of the switch. He goes back over to the door. A small rectangle of paper has been pushed under it, blank and white. He bends and picks it up. It’s folded, and as Puck goes to open it a shower of smaller white and coloured squares tumble out of the bottom, drifting to the floor. He opens the paper fully. A few of the smaller pieces have stuck inside it, creating a collage of colours. He shakes it and they come loose, following the rest down to the floor. Puck looks at what he is left holding. It’s his football photo. Except now there are dirty fingerprints all over its surface and biro scribbling around its edges. One line forms an arrow which points to his own half smiling face.

“This is the son I wanted” reads the scrawl along the top boarder. Puck feels sick. Without looking he knows what the ripped pieces on the floor are.

He feels that switch flipped inside himself; his hands and face start to grow hot. He wonders how much it would hurt to break down the door. To throw himself down that hallway and charge into that bedroom. But then Puck looks around and sees the clothes and the posters, and lastly the pieces of the Glee picture lying like snow near the door. And they remind him that he’s changed from the angry man he used to be, back to someone who he in his childish days would have looked up to. And he can't ruin that for the sake of such a man.

Breathing deeply he bends to sweep up the fragments of the photograph, placing the creased football picture on the small table, and catches pieces of arms and faces and background. Gathering them in one hand he pushes them deep into his pocket. He’s about to turn and leaving, to climb out that window for good. A slight breeze comes in through the window pane and lifts the photo on the desk however, drifting it backwards until it hits the small pile of coloured paper and blunt pencils which lie there, forgotten from Puck’s earliest memories of this house. In a sudden flash he sees his mom picking up one of his drawings from that very table and smiling at it. He sees the man who used to be his father, a distant relation to that he could hear now snoring in the neighbouring room, pining drawing after drawing up on the refrigerator, then along the walls.

And this time Puck can't resist. He walks forwards, knees to the floor, pulls a sheet from the pile, and begins to write.

“Goodbye.
If you’re wondering where I’ve…
Don’t bother trying to look for me…
Courage.
It’s what makes me different from you. Because every day I cope with whatever life throws at me, instead of hiding from it like some stupid…And I know where I get it from. Because I saw mom have the courage to leave you, and the courage to raise me on her own. And I saw twice the courage in any of my friends in Glee Club that I saw in any of the football idiots. I saw it in Quinn when she decided to give Beth up and move on from me. I see it in Lauren every day and I love it in her. I see it in Kurt, and Finn, and Santana, and Artie, but you don’t know any of them. And you never will. Because you are never ever going to be part of my life again. You can beg, you can fight me, you can…
I see it in EVERYONE. EVERYONE. Even myself. And that’s what proves to me that I was never really your son. Never such a coward.
So you know what, dad? It’s like I said earlier. Just fuck off. Leave me alone. Forever. Because EVERYONE in this world means more to me than you could ever do. Rot in hell, do what you like. I don’t care. Because I have new families now. And you can't guilt me, or trick me, or hurt me, or them, anymore.
So goodbye. When you read this I hope you put your fist through something, I hope it hurts. I hope it goes on hurting forever, until the last of your Lima trapped days. But whatever happens you are never going to see me again. You’d have to kill me before I’d come back here.
Like mom, I’m taking my courage. And I leave all the crap of my life here for you. Because you deserve it.
Noah.”

Puck breathes, unclenching his hand from the pencil, looking at the dark marks on the paper, the deep scrubbing outs and smudges. It half expresses everything inside of him. But it’ll have to do. He stands, twisting a drawing pin from the wall above him, and seizes the picture of the football team from the desk. Quickly but carefully he tears his own image from it, leaving that arrow pointing to blankness. Then stabbing deep and quick he tacks both the remaining photo and the letter to the back of the door. He tears the clothes from the bed with his newly free hands and throws them to the floor, shoving the mattress after them, kicking over the table and ripping the remaining pictures from the walls. Turning off the light and leaving himself in the darkness, Puck pulls the plug from the wall and adds it to the pile. Then throws the remaining torn picture of that horrible likeness, that same kit, that same hair and build, on top of the heap.

Climbing over the bones of the bed he reaches the window again, and climbs up to pass his legs over the ledge. They hang down in the cool darkness outside. A dog barks a few blocks away. Looking back over his shoulder, Puck can see the whiteness of the letter against the peeling wood of the door. And then his slips down the few feet to the ground, picks up his rucksack, crouches and runs past that next window. Then he’s on the sparse front lawn, going past that beat up saloon car, out onto the pavement. And now he can properly run, and never have to look back.

Back in the choir room, Puck sees everything before himself, as clear as daylight.

“It’s all my fault. It’s him.”