This chapter was hard for me. Really hard, and I still don't think I'm happy with it. School has started back up again so I haven't had any time to write anything, but last night I spent an unacceptable amount of time watching GA speecheson youtube and there was George with his dead dad and Alex with his dying wife and it was just much, much too sad. So I wrote this. Which isn't that sad, but ya know. Whatever.

Anyway, I'm not sure how soon I will be updating anything because I was a little disappointed about the response for LOI's sequel and that makes me a bad updater. Let me know what you think though.

He's the one who finds Mike first.

Huddled in a corner of a dark hospital supply closet with a fist full of cotton swabs and his fingernails carving half moons into his other palm. Puck doesn't do this, doesn't know how to do anything but put his hand through a wall and hope like hell that his body overrides any pain he should be feeling.

But it's Mike, the guy who proposed to Britney on a freaking merry-go-round and she's gone and Puck's left and so he finds him first.

When the door spills light into a room that's far too dark, Mike flinches, and there's a metaphor somewhere in that but Puck's far too tired to find it. So he slides his body into the crack and it worries him that Mike doesn't exhale until the door is pushed shut again.

There are words for this, Rachel's been googling them since they got the call, but they all sound fake and insincere and there are more than five fucking stages of grief, and they sure as hell don't start with anything but anger. So Puck sighs, shifts, asks the air above him what it needs because that's much easier.

The air pauses; gasps like it's suffocating and the sound makes his heart hurt a little. There's a muted thump as Mike lets his head fall to the wall behind him, and suddenly he's just talking like they're kickin' it in Puck's living room after a game and four beers.

"Remember when Finn had cancer, and before surgery he would lock himself in the bathroom for so long Matt thought he was cutting his own tumor out with a razor blade."

Puck can't see him, but Mike lets out a little whoosh of breath after he says it, and it's funny in a terrible this is how messed up we are way.

"Yeah, Rachel kept trying to find a screwdriver to take the doorknob off, and no one could convince her that it wouldn't work."

"And then all of a sudden you disappeared, too. Everybody was freaking out, and Quinn was threatening harm to your future children which just made Rachel cry; it was complete fucking chaos. And then you two just come strolling into the kitchen like you lost track of time or some shit."

Puck's not sure where Mike's going with any of this, but this is more words than he's strung together since Puck first got to the hospital, so he keeps quiet.

"You said something to him. He told me about it later; made me promise I wouldn't say anything."

And then it's like a light bulb clicking on, because Puck knows what's coming, and it was probably less terrifying when he didn't.

Because Mike, in his silently desperate way, is asking him to recreate a year old speech about surviving and being strong and letting the worst of it pass; a speech that Puck had written on his hand and memorized before he ever set foot in Finn's bathroom.

He's unprepared for this, and the silence must be louder than he thought because Mike pleads 'please' like this won't break them both.

So he does, he bullshits a speech in a closet with his widower of a friend; and somehow they both make it off the dirty floor a little more at ease than when they first sat down.

It's fucking ridiculous.

-0-

And all any of that means, is years later when he's laying on stiff white hospital sheets, and his lungs are slowly, painfully expanding like they're afraid they'll be forced to stop again, he spends the entire two days of his suicide hold trying to remember what he said.

And on the third day, when he's still can't get past: "I get it," Mike walks in with coffee and a release form. No one has been allowed near him since Matt dragged him out of the pool and blew air into his chest, and when he asked the nurses said they were all forced to go home.

Apparently, Rachel's in no condition to operate heavy machinery and Mike drew the short straw again.

(Which really means, Santana rigged the game like she always does because Mike has always been a little more adjusted than they were even in with a dead wife.)

Hospital policy says he has to be pushed in a wheelchair like a fucking invalid, and he's just pissed because no one should have made Mike come back here, not again. By floor seven he's bouncing his knee like he did the night before he jumped into a frigid pool and the words form before he can stop them.

"Did Matt get the blood out of his pool yet?"

It's an innocent question; when it's your blood that could possibly be caked over cement on your friend's pool deck, it's an innocent question. But Mike smacks the emergency stop button on the elevator so hard Puck flinches and then groans low in his throat. His lungs pretty much feel on fire all time now, and he just wants to go home but Mike's looking at him like he murdered Britney in cold-blood all those years ago.

"No, Noah. Matt didn't get the blood out of his pool yet. Because in case you haven't noticed we've all been a little too busy reopening half-closed wounds to worry about that."

"Matt actually refuses to sit in the same fucking room as Santana, which is hard considering she's sleeping on your living room couch and he spends his time in your office. He dropped Amelia off at his parent's house. And Quinn, well Quinn has been doing okay, except for the fact that every time someone says something about how she should stop cleaning the oven and sit down she yells loudly about Jewish things that no one but Rachel understands until we leave her alone. Artie's staying in my guest bedroom and Tina's living in a hotel room across town because every single time she sets foot into any of our house's while Artie's there Julianne cries and hides in the cabinets under the kitchen sink."

"And Kurt. Kurt's dad is dead, Puck, but instead of being able to grieve he's making sure Finn isn't the next one to try and drown himself in a fucking in-ground pool."

If Puck was a man; if Puck wasn't a coward he'd stop Mike now. Because he's pacing like a caged animal in the length of the elevator, but before he can decide which he is, Mike stops and drops to the floor. His head falls back to the wall in an eerily familiar way that makes Puck's lungs hurt again.

"Rachel refuses to unlock her bedroom door. I'm not even sure if she's been eating."

There are a million things he could say, but nothing comes out except: "Why are you telling me this?"

Mike sighs like Puck should know this by now. "Because, I want you to know that I get it, okay. I've been there; I'm still there some days and it's been years. But you can't do this, you can't leave us to survive on our own. Mercedes did it willingly and -"

And Puck understands now, because their group has dealt with loss their entire lives, but there's a difference between dropping dead on someone's kitchen floor and purposely sinking yourself to the bottom of a pool.

"We're here because of you. Matt's mom spent half of his childhood on the fifth floor of this hospital getting pills shoved down her throat. It kills him to even pull into the parking lot of this place. But he did it, because it was Britney, and Finn, and now you. Don't make us come back here again okay. We won't survive it."

Five minutes later, when Mike can finally push himself up off the floor, and Puck isn't white-knuckling the armrests of his wheelchair. Mike smacks the emergency stop button and they spend the rest of the ride to the lobby in silence.

But when the doors open, Puck can't help it, so he lets out a small whoosh of air that is half chuckle and half something kind of tragic.

Mike looks down at him from behind the chair, his eyebrows knitted together in confusion.

"It's nothing, you just- you gave me the speech."

He doesn't think Mike will get it, doesn't think he will understand what he's saying because that was a year ago and Puck barely remembers it.

But then the corners of Mike's mouth turn up slightly, before he lifts his head to stare straight ahead.

"Hell yeah I gave you the speech. And it was a damn good one, too."