Finn Hudson had always been Noah Puckerman’s best friend.  

They met when Noah was dropped off at preschool halfway through the year and he would sit off from everyone else and not say much to anyone.  He’d glare, steal crayons, and then break them on purpose to get put in time out.  It didn’t seem, to Finn anyway, that Noah was being a “bad boy”, he just maybe didn’t like people, and Finn could understand that.  They all mocked the boy’s curly hair, his ratty clothes, and the fact he couldn’t write his own name, or say his ABC’s.  Finn learned his name a few months ago, though he imagined that Finn was easier to learn than Noah.  

During Kindergarten Finn learned that Noah didn’t celebrate Christmas.  

Noah had come to school for a week with a weird hat on his head, and everyone kept asking him what it was and he’d never answer them.  So Finn asked his mother and she explained that it was likely Noah was Jewish.  It was Chanukah, although she said she wasn’t sure why he was wearing it every day to school, perhaps he was proud of being Jewish.  She explained the entire holiday, that she knew, to him and Finn stopped at the store after begging his mother and brought a little bag of chocolate coins to school with him the next day.  So maybe it wasn’t gelt, or maybe it was, all he knew was it made Noah smile.

It was that Christmas when he learned Noah still couldn’t write very well.

He had gotten Finn a card, and had signed it in huge letters, like his pencil was in control and not Noah himself.  He then started to watch him closer, struggle with words, with sounds, with everything. No one else seemed to notice, so Finn would try to help and Noah accepted it.  It was this gesture that got the attention of the teacher who decided Noah needed pulled out for some special reading class.  By that spring Noah knew his alphabet and could read certain words.  Finn was proud of him, a feeling he wasn’t aware of but when he saw how happy Noah was when he figured out a word, it made him happy.  

By first grade Noah didn’t let him help and he was coming to school in long sleeves.

Noah hadn’t been allowed to spend the night but twice over summer vacation before first grade.  He would always say that his mom needed him, she was pregnant with his little sister.  So he needed to be the man of the house, which Finn didn’t understand because Noah had a father.  He didn’t read any better, he stopped wanting Finn to help and he saw a lot of his spelling tests, he failed.  He would overhear his mom talking to Noah’s mom when they would play together, telling her that she feared for Noah’s future.  That he seemed so smart, but that his grades were so bad, and he just didn’t seem to like to read.  Finn thought it wasn’t that he didn’t like to, he couldn’t.  Who liked to do something they couldn’t do?  So he mentioned it to his mom, and she told Finn that the school wouldn’t let Noah pass if he couldn’t read.  Finn just thought they didn’t realize he couldn’t.

Noah got angrier as the year wore on, and Finn found bruises under his shirt.

The question as to where they came from earned him a fist to his eye and Noah refusing to look or speak to him for a few days.  Eventually he saw first hand where it came from and he pulled Noah from his dad’s clutches to his house where he stayed most of the time for the next few months. That was until Ariella was born. He saw his best friend melt the first time he saw his little sister and he found himself a little jealous.  He smiled as he heard Noah whisper to her that he would protect her, no one would ever hurt her.

When fourth grade rolled around, and Ella turned two, he realized Noah couldn’t keep his promise.

His best friend crawled into his window that night, his eye and lip were bleeding, he was shaking and doing something he didn’t do often, cry.  As the year wore on, and Noah’s grades continued to suffer, they blamed it on his attitude and the way he’d act up in class.  Finn thought he knew the truth, that Noah wasn’t acting up because he was a bad kid, he knew his best friend still couldn’t do the work they gave him.

Though he did find one thing he was good at, the best, math.  But when middle school rolled around, he stopped trying altogether.  His attitude, even Finn knew, was bad, but as his best friend he had to stand by him.  Then one day, out of the blue, he told Finn he wanted to be called Puck and two days later he showed up to school with his hair cut into a mohawk.  Something his best friend was aware that he did without his mother knowing.  In fact, it seemed his mother stopped noticing anything after Noah’s, or Puck’s father walked out on them.  He wanted to give her a break and blame it on her job, but she worked the same amount as his own mother, yet Carole Hudson seemed to know more about what Noah was doing than she did.  When he found Puck sleeping in his truck between freshman and sophomore year, he knew that his mother did notice but didn’t care.  He told Finn the heat and water were off, and his mom took his sister to their Aunt’s house.  

He was left alone.

Puck barely attended classes by then, even during their fight over Quinn, Finn still kept an eye on Puck.  He only saw him once every few days in their math class, a class Finn knew Puck would breeze through but the boy refused to try.  He would just tell Finn he didn’t need a diploma, that he didn’t need school, he would expand his pool cleaning business.  Finn thought it was amazing that his former best friend had started a business at thirteen and because of that kept food on the table, well when they had one.  Things were strained between them until Beth was born, Puck’s daughter.  The daughter Finn thought was his, Puck gave her up for adoption, the act he knew in his heart, Puck didn’t want to do.  But he couldn’t take care of her, he was barely taking care of himself.  But that didn’t stop him from wishing that he could Finn knew, or from crawling in his window again.

Things between them changed forever that night.

They didn’t talk about it, Puck would look at him a certain way and Finn would look away with his face burning.  Then he’d glance back at his again best friend and the boy would be smirking. Finn wasn’t sure if that made him mad, or just relieved that at least Puck acknowledged what happened.  He wanted to say losing Beth changed Puck, and it did, but at first not for the better.  He was a little more calm, but he seemed too calm, too relaxed.  He’d snap sure, but it was like he was just on auto pilot and Finn was slowly watching him die.

Then he ended up in Juvie and yeah, this time Finn was mad.

He was at his door the day he got out, his mother barely made eye contact with Finn as he tried to smile in greeting her.  He quickly realized nothing would come of it and walked up the stairs slowly, the house was silent.  Not what he expected the first full day after Puck got out of jail.  He didn’t even know he was out until he saw him at school, and he was so quiet.  His eyes didn’t focus on anyone, and he put on this act but Finn saw it.  He opened his bedroom door and he was met with a sight he would have seared into his head forever.  His best friend, the biggest “bad ass” in Lima, Ohio, was curled up on his bed. But that wasn’t what shocked Finn. The medical supplies, thrown around, he recognized a lot of it, his mother was a nurse and she once dated an EMT. He also knew most people would clean up something that reminded them of something as horrible as whatever happened here.  But Finn, even as his eyes burned, even as he kicked off his shoes, pulled off his jeans and crawled into Puck’s bed.  Even as his best friend rolled over to face him and Finn pulled him against his chest, Finn didn’t say a word.  He knew, without Puck ever having to tell him the details.

He almost lost him.

He took him home with him that night, that house and his mother were the last things he needed right now or ever.  He told his mom what he found and she just, hugged him, and told him to go lay down in Finn’s bed.  It was then, when Puck was upstairs and out of range, that’s when Finn broke.  He sobbed at the thought he almost lost him, and at fact his mother didn’t seem to be able to care.  It was like when the ambulance took him away she just simply shut the door.  Thinking his best friend woke up in a hospital alone, solidifying that no one cared, it made Finn not be able to breathe.

His mom called Ruth Puckerman and got the story from her, and matter of factly told her that Noah was going to be staying with her for the foreseeable future.  When his mom told him that Puck had taken almost an entire bottle of anxiety medication and some pain pill that Finn didn’t hear the name of, he felt sick.  He almost lost him, and that’s all he needed to know.  Not how, no he wanted to know why, why he would choose that without even letting Finn know how low he was.  As he climbed the stairs with each step he made a realization.  He did, he tried, with every action since his father left Noah was crying for help.  Losing his daughter though, it seemed to be the one thing he couldn’t brush off.  He had expected to find Puck curled up in his bed but instead he was looking at a framed picture Finn had of when they were five. Finn closed the door behind him and sat down, manhandling Puck into his lap even despite protest.  He fought him, fought his hold, fought the urge to breakdown in the only pair of arms he would later tell Finn he’d ever felt safe in. But he lost, he lost the fight, Finn felt it leave him and Puck give into being held.  He promised his best friend he was here, he saw him, and he wasn’t leaving.  

Carole got Puck the help he needed the next day, within four he was started on medication and within a month, Finn saw Puck again.  He wasn’t the same asshole he was, granted he was yes, still a jerk at times, but as senior year wore on he realized he wasn’t Puck as much as he was Noah again.  It was after they almost lost Quinn, after one of Puck’s bad days did they talk about what happened the day Puck climbed in Finn’s bed after signing papers for Beth.  By talking about it, well that really means repeating it, and again the next morning.  Then it became a thing they did when they were alone, any time they were alone. Neither of them put a name on it, they didn’t need to, it was just well, them.

He told Finn first he was failing, they had always just pushed him through before, or Finn found out he slept with teachers for a passing grade.  But this was a high school diploma, something Finn found out was important to his best friend.  He tried to help him, he tried to study with him but no matter how many times Puck said he read the chapter, he knew nothing of the content he’d just read.  The amount of spelling errors, even of simple words, baffled Finn as he read a paper Puck had written for English class. The content, what he had written, it was good, very good, but it was like he hadn’t learned anything in the last thirteen years about spelling, grammar, or punctuation.  He would misuse words, especially ones that sounded the same, spelled different.  His teachers all claimed Puck was lazy, and Finn saw flashes of elementary school and he wondered if Puck still couldn’t read.

When Puck was asleep in his bed one night, he put all the things that he struggled with in google. The very first thing that popped up was something he never thought of, dyslexia.  He stayed up all night reading everything he could find and crying, though trying to cover it up.  All this time, no one saw this, the teachers, Puck’s mother, himself.  He read they were visual learners, and the next day at school he approached Puck’s teacher that stood between him and his diploma. He got her to agree to a retest, with Coach Bieste’s help, the only condition was that she read it to Puck.  

He passed, and Finn struggled to find a way to explain to him why.

Halfway through the summer he told Finn he wanted to go to college, or more specifically, go with Finn. He had been accepted to some college in Texas and he was dreading the thought of leaving him behind. It didn’t take much convincing, his mother knew the things they weren’t telling her, or each other.  She gladly gave them each a graduation present of cash to get them an apartment and rent for a couple months until Puck found a job.  The moment they left  Lima, it was like Puck was a different person.  He was so relaxed, it was like he could breathe again. At some point during the drive from Ohio to Texas Puck told Finn he loved him in the bed of some crappy motel after doing the thing they never talked about but in a way always did.

The first semester was hard, and Finn could see it wearing on Puck the dead end job he found.  He remembered that he had wanted to go to school, be something no one thought he could.  But each time he brought it up, Puck shot it down and wouldn’t talk to him the rest of the day.  He knew he still saw himself as stupid, and Finn knew he had to explain it to him. It took him until Christmas Day to find a way to explain it.  He knew he couldn’t give him a pamphlet, he couldn’t read it, and telling him without being able to really explain it all to him wouldn’t work.  So the next morning, after their first official Christmas together, he sat a box, a wrapped box, on top of Puck and woke him up.  He wasn’t happy about it, well until he realized he had another present.  Finn had to tell him that no, he didn’t forget like a dumbass, this was planned. Inside the present was a manila envelope and a DVD and he laughed at the confused face Puck gave him.

He placed the laptop beside of him, took the DVD, smacking his boyfriend in the arm when he asked if Finn had finally made that porno he’d been wanting.  He had found a copy of a short movie, explaining dyslexia, and assuring his boyfriend that he wasn’t stupid.  He watched his face throughout the forty five minute video, surprised he was so quiet.  Inside the envelope was papers, papers to go to school the next fall, after getting tested in January.  He’d set it all up because Finn wanted Puck to finally see himself as Finn always had. But Puck was silent as he held the papers in his hand and Finn was afraid he was mad.  That was until he practically tackled him on the bed, causing them to fall off and roll into the floor.  But Finn didn’t care, that light that he hadn’t seen in Puck’s eyes since he was six years old, it was there, that hope.  He proclaimed Finn the best boyfriend ever, then gave him the worst rug burn yet.

He knew it’d be a long road, that he’d have to help him but he knew he could do it.  Because as long as he could remember he was Noah Puckerman’s best friend, and the only person who truly believed in him.