Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 59th cycle. Now cycle 60!

This is a shift day. There are two updates today.

"We Two Brothers"
Puck & Jake, Will

A/N: This story and all stories for two weeks (days 1240-1253) are dedicated to
a very dear and awesome friend on the occasion of her birthday ;) Here's to you, Anne!

He must have been three or four years old, the day he had heard his parents talk. He was too young to understand very much, but somehow part of that conversation had stayed in his mind. Maybe it was because he had heard his mother swear, and that had a way of staying with him. She had come home that day, finding him and his father in the yard, and she looked downright livid. He had thought for sure he must have done something wrong and he was about to get punished. But it wasn't with him she was angry, it was his father who'd done something wrong. Back then, pleased as punch that he was off the hook, he had pointed a finger at his father with a laugh and taunted him because 'he was in trouble.'

"Go in the house, Noah," his father had cut in, so he had gone, but he had stayed at the door, keeping it open enough so that he could hear them; it wasn't hard seeing as they were shouting.

His mother had been going on about some waitress, using words he knew he would get the smackdown of a lifetime for using. And then she had also mentioned a baby.

If he had been just a little older, he might have connected the dots, understood that this baby was his father's baby, with another woman, which made it his sibling.

It would be years before he could see that day under a new light, and it would be Will Schuester who carried the torch.

When he had gotten the call, he could sense his old Glee Club director was apprehensive about bringing up whatever it was he was calling for. He had tiptoed toward the subject, making sure to explain along the way how he knew it might not have been his place to get involved, but Puck had cut straight to the chase and told him whatever it was, he was off the hook and he could just tell him. So he had.

There was a boy at McKinley starting to make waves. The way he described him, it was like he was talking about him, how he used to be. The impression was not such a long shot because, as Schuester would inform him, this boy's name was Jake Puckerman.

He hadn't needed much else to decide to make the trip down to see him. He had his faults and he owned them, but if there was one quality he upheld it was that when it came to his family, he could be depended on, without fail. He had not once laid eyes on this Jake boy, but if he was his brother – which had been confirmed – then that was all he needed to know.

He had always wanted a brother. He loved his little sister, though even when they were younger, and especially when she had been a baby when it was easier to pass off, he would pretend like she was a boy so he could say this was his brother. He had always wondered if he would have had the brother he wanted if his father hadn't been the jerk who ran out on them. Now as it turned out, his father had come through, just not in the way he would have expected.

From what Schuester had told him, Jake already knew about him. That would be his mother's doing, if she had to guess. The infamous waitress would have known about him somehow. It made him wonder if she was the woman who used to put cherries on his pancakes at this diner his father always took him to when he was little. The time would have been right, and by the amount of Saturday or Sunday mornings they had spent there, always served by the leggy black girl, it wasn't completely unreasonable. What had she told Jake about him? Did she assume he was just like their father? His reputation had a way of following him, but he had done so much not to be like his father, and the last thing he wanted was for his brother to think he was anything like that guy.

When he had first walked through the doors into McKinley that day, he had found Schuester and asked that he showed him his brother. He wanted to see the kid before he actually talked to him. The teacher had pointed him out, and looking at him he could definitely see their father in some aspects, and from what he remembered of Leggy with the cherries, that could be her kid, too.

They didn't look like they would be brothers, him and Jake, not right away. But he was better placed than anyone to look at this boy and see all these things he had felt, and done… He didn't need identical noses or complexions to see the familiarity. Jake was heading down a bad route, and short of impending teenage fatherhood to knock his senses into order, which he didn't suggest, he would have to play his little brother's guardian angel.

From what Schue had told him, his brother had quite the voice, so if Glee Club could do for Jake what it had done for him, then he was all aboard for giving him the talking to he'd need to give it a shot. He didn't expect success, not to a hundred percent. He expected something closer to getting told to screw himself before the kid stormed off, but he was going to try anyway.

Schuester had told him to wait in the choir room. When the door opened and his brother was led in, Jake was already complaining, thinking that he was being taken to the principal. But then he had turned and, for the first time, his brother and him had laid eyes on one another. He could see it in his face; Jake had as much of a shield around him as he'd had back then. He held on to the persona he portrayed, like no one would see through it. But Puck could see through it just fine; it was a perk of being family.

THE END

A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.
In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are
always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!