Ladies And Gentlemen, Listen Up Please: Puck (16/29)
Title: Ladies And Gentlemen, Listen Up Please: Puck (16/29)
Pairing: Rachel Berry/Quinn Fabray, Santana Lopez/Brittany Pierce, minor Artie Abrams/Tina Cohen-Chang
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Nothing owned, no profit gained.
Spoilers: AU
Summary: “Sometimes, people are born a little different.”
When Finn Hudson up and vanishes, it takes all of one day for the school to slide into an uproar.
Noah Puckerman can’t exactly fault his peers for being stressed out-he, more than anyone, cares about what has happened to his slightly-dim best friend-but he does wish they’d go about it with a little more decorum. Really, it’s pathetic to erect a floral-and-football arrangement of a shrine outside his locker before the week is up. Pathetic, and desperate, and he wonders who they think they’re impressing.
Plus, hello, morbid. Puck usually finds that sort of thing mildly amusing, if only because it leads to the discomfort of others, but this feels unnecessarily extreme. Finn isn’t some faceless, random asshole on the street; he’s Finn. And Puck, though he really isn’t interested in admitting it on national television or whatever, is getting worried.
Puck doesn’t do worried, so…there’s that.
The first week is rough, but in a way, simple. It’s not that long, in the grand scheme of things, which means Puck is able to convince himself that Finn is just out sick, holed up in his bedroom with a stack of Playboys and Sega to keep him company. He does not, it goes without saying, actually visit the Hudson home to test this theory, mostly because he doesn’t actually believe it in the first place.
It is, he has learned the hard way over the years, so much easier to lie to oneself with one’s eyes firmly wedged shut.
He isn’t the only one walking around like an ostrich, either. In fact, the school-and by extension, the surrounding town-seems to have divided into two opposing factions. The first consists of the desperate jackasses who cripple Finn’s locker with well-meaning debris, the people who can’t go half an hour without firing longing sighs and lingering glances in the direction of the missing boy’s assigned seat in geometry or…whatever.
Puck spends a lot of time wanting to deck these people.
The second group is made up of people like Puck himself: those who don’t believe-or don’t want to believe-that Finn is actually missing at all. Some might call these people delusional, and Puck can’t say he totally disagrees with that assessment, but the thing is, it’s ten thousand times better than focusing on the alternative.
Fuck it, Finn is the best friend he’s ever had. If the kid went and got himself horribly murdered or something, the victim of some new-age hate crime, Puck is never going to forgive him.
It’s the sort of event that has him gritting his teeth and shaking his head as he walks mindlessly through the halls each day, because Finn would be That Guy. The one to get some magic comic-bullshit power and immediately get fucked up over it. Finn would be, and Puck kind of hates him for it, because if it were Puck? He’d have gotten up and done something about the mess that was becoming his life-and he would have done so before it wound out of control.
He doesn’t exactly know what he would have done in Finn’s place, but he’s a badass, for God’s sake. He would have thought of something.
That first week passes at a snail’s pace. The second goes a little quicker, and by the fourth, he’s barely able to tell one day from the next. At first, he feels like this is okay; it’s better, in a way, because he can stay busy with skipping classes and drilling the guys during practice. Plus, at the end of the day, there’s always some cougar with great tits waiting to make him forget everything. It’s better than sitting on his bed, staring out the window and wondering what became of the one guy he’s ever called brother. It’s better than slumping around the house, sucking on a Dr. Pepper (he’d prefer a beer, but his mom’s been home weirdly often lately, taking care of nine-year-old Allison and her stupid little kid flu bug) and looking too emo for words.
It goes without saying that Noah Puckerman also does not do emo.
By the fifth week, he’s just praying for an excuse to cause trouble. Any rumor of where Finn might have gone, or the barest whiff of the bastard who undoubtedly fucked him up, and Puck will be on the trail like a damn shot. He’s pretty positive there’s nothing healthy about how often he imagines grasping some faceless asshole and kicking his teeth in until there’s nothing but a lump of ruined ground chuck where his nose and lips ought to be.
There are stages to the grieving process, he knows. He can never remember what order they go in, but he thinks denial, anger, and depression can be interchangeable. And if any shrink dares to say otherwise, he’ll beat their dumbass face in too.
It doesn’t take long for the other emotions to drain away, leaving only the anger behind to get bad. Really bad. It actually reaches the point where even football doesn’t feel like enough; practice has a hollow edge, and games are stupidly structured. He can’t seem to hit nearly enough people nearly as hard as he needs to-and it is, he feels, a need more than the usual mild desire. It eats at him at night, leaving him staring at the slowly rotating fan blades above his head as his chest constricts with the temptation to bolt from his window and pound some hobo until he lies dormant.
He’s sent home twice in one week for blowing up at innocent passerby-one nerd, who, for his Team Edward sweatshirt, kind of deserves it, and one teacher, who mostly doesn’t. It’s not exactly a suspension, but he has the sneaking suspicion it might evolve into such if he can’t get his head on straight soon. The problem is, no matter how many times he tells himself to be cool, the fire inside seems only to burn hotter and brighter.
If Finn were around, he’d know what to say to diffuse the temper Puck feels spiraling swiftly out of control, but the fact is, he’s alone.
Alone and in shambles, and he isn’t going to try therapy or any pansy-ass bullshit like that, so he settles for his own brand of treatment: drinking himself under the table the second his mom steps out the door and burying his dick in the first woman who will have him.
He knows it’s bad when he’s got Mrs. Fienstein bent over her kitchen table, screaming his name like it’s God’s as he pounds her senseless, and he still feels like shit.
His mother gets tired of asking after him and receiving the same grunt and shrug in response. His sister gets tired of being shouted at whenever he enters a room. His teachers get tired of jerking him bodily away from whichever douchebag has chosen to yank his chain on a given day. And Puck? Puck is just tired. Tired, and anxious, and stressed to a capacity no amount of sex or booze will help.
It’s easily the worst few weeks of his life.
The day everything snaps and comes tumbling down is no different from the others. He has spent hours trudging through school, sneakers squealing against ugly tile, biceps flexing threateningly each time another student so much as glances his way. He has skipped three of his six classes and dozed through the rest. He’s pretty sure he missed lunch, and doesn’t care; his appetite, the desire to cook and devour four meals a day, has completely vanished. It’s as if Finn and his monster-sized self took it with him when he-
Bailed?
Was kidnapped?
Got himself killed?
Puck shakes his head, growling under his breath. One fist shoots out, connecting with a metallic clang as it slams into the locker of a freshman girl. She cowers under the weight of his glare and scurries off down the hall like the mouse that she is; he tamps down the urge to follow and swing a fist into her.
Noah Puckerman is many things, but girl-hitter, he is determined never to be. He is not his father. He will never be his father.
It’s not a thought process that in any way improves his mood. Eli Puckerman was, put simply enough, a bastard and a half. A cocaine enthusiast with a rock star pedigree and a distinct penchant for fucking, fighting, and fleeing, there isn’t much of worth to be noted about the old man. Usually, Puck prefers to pretend he never existed in the first place; the idea that he was actually fathered by Zeus, or Keith Richards, or the Easter Bunny is far easier to swallow.
Today, he’s having trouble forgetting reality, which is just a bitch. Not to mention the very last thing he needs.
Until, at least, the doofuses in masks corner him behind the school less than ten minutes later. Then that becomes the last thing he needs, and really, Puck just hates everything right now.
“What?” he snaps before they can speak. His hands are braced against the rim of the dumpster, head bowed as he forces the steadiest breaths he can manage into his lungs. His mohawk practically tingles with the intensity of their eyes-five sets belonging to five assholes, each one physically more imposing than Puck himself.
“Hello, Noah,” the one wearing a Captain America mask greets him, hands folded almost daintily against his front. He looks like a ten-year-old practicing for Comic-Con. Puck instantly wants to smash his face to bits.
“It’s Puck,” he settles for grumbling, proud of his restraint. He isn’t sure how long it will hold out, of course, but it’s something. Proof that he hasn’t completely gone over the deep end.
“It’s Noah,” the asshole corrects him. One of his buddies, channeling The Flash, snorts.
“Could save the trouble and just call him the motherfucker. I mean, isn’t that what you are? Mother. Fucker.”
Can’t fault the man for truth, Puck thinks ruefully, almost amused. If not for the masks, this might actually feel like just another bantering session with the team.
In fact…
“Johnson, is that you?” he asks, pumping as much instinctive venom out of his tone as he can. “Dude, you look like a fucking toddler. Should have gone with the Krueger look.”
“Shut the fuck up,” the boy snaps, and Puck gets the feeling this is going to be more than your average everyday testosterone showdown. A wild energy brews within his belly at the thought, something strangely like ecstasy. He smiles.
“I’m just saying, man, there are levels of loser, and I think you just invented a whole new one. It’s kind of dope, really.”
They rise up on their toes and broaden their shoulders, like he’s a bear or a moose or something they’re looking to intimidate on size alone. Hilariously, he thinks. They should know better.
No one intimidates Puckzilla.
“What do you bastards want, anyway?” he asks, doing his best to sound casual, like his blood isn’t singing for violence.
Captain America-Tolstoy, if his ears can be trusted to place that brawny, grating voice properly-glares at him through minimalist eyeholes. “Let’s just say, we’re sick of your shit, Puckerman. Ever since your boyfriend high-tailed it, you’ve been a pathetic shadow of the man you used to be. It’s old.”
“Yeah,” Johnson jeers. “We need a running back who can actually focus.”
“Uh huh.” Puck arches an eyebrow, the rage slowly stacking up in his chest. “And the masks?”
A third guy, unreasonably believing himself a man of Krypton, snorts. “Halloween, bro. We’d have asked you to join, but, y’know. We don’t jive with homos.”
“Could’ve fooled me,” Puck snips, jamming his hands into his back pockets in an effort to avoid pummeling them one by one. Tolstoy growls.
“Get your shit together, asshole, or you’re a dead man. We have to ask again, it ain’t gonna be so nice.”
“This is asking?” Puck smirks. “Your mother teaches manners about as well as she fucks, Tolstoy. Maybe I oughta go back, give her a few more lessons.”
“At least I have a mom,” Tolstoy returns, “instead of some zombie loser waiting around for her deadbeat husband to get back. What dog is your dad off screwing this week?”
It’s little. It’s little, and it is not the point, and he’s more of a man then they will ever be. The placating phrases echo in his head, resounding off of one another, but they aren’t enough to stop the welling rage. Lately, it seems like nothing is.
“What’sa matter, Puckerman?” Batman-some asshole, probably a freshman, given that Puck can’t place his voice-sneers. “You miss Daddy?”
It’s enough. It’s enough, and he knows this won’t help, but he’s sweating and swearing and lost to the glory of knuckles smashing cartilage through the mask. He’s screaming things, senseless, rambling provocations, sitting on this boy’s chest and beating him, and it feels so good. Better than the past month’s worth of orgasms, better than the swelling of pride when the team takes in their rare win. Better than anything ever.
Except for the heat. He could really do without that part, without the sweat pouring down his forehead, dripping off the spikes of his mohawk and into his eyes. He could really do without feeling like there is no air in the area, like his anger has taken it all and crushed it into a tiny, pathetic ball.
He is so hot, and still his body continues to destroy Batman, bit by bit.
There is yelling-a lot of it-and he thinks in the back of his mind that control would be a wonderful thing to have right now. He needs to stop, he knows; needs to climb off this kid and walk away. Cool off. But he is boiling, sweltering, skin radiating heat like it was made to do so. He is a walking fucking fireplace.
This, the pounding he is dishing out, should help.
It doesn’t, somehow. He only grows warmer, until his shirt is sticking to his skin, until every movement feels like it’s coming through a wave of gelatin. The yelling is muffled now, barely reaching his blistering ears. He’s exhausted, and energized, and a mess.
If Finn were here, he catches himself thinking, he would know what to do. But he’s not. It’s just Puck, swinging his fists and cursing up an intelligible storm, feeling like he’s on fire.
“No, no, stop,” the boy underneath him wails thickly. “Stop, get him off me, get him off-“
Heaven help the person who tries, Puck rages silently. Heaven help the person who so much as thinks about touching him.
“Help me, please, God, he’s burning-“
The cry jolts through him, and for the first time, Puck is able to pull back just enough to look clearly at himself. It’s as if he is actually above his own body; he sees tears streaming down his own cheeks, mingling with perspiration. More importantly, he sees his skin, glistening in a totally unnatural way. Like oil. Like burning glass.
Because the guy he’s pummeling is right about that: he’s on fire. Literally. He can see flames licking off his back, searing straight through his muscle shirt.
He is sitting on this kid and he is torching him by proxy.
Mustering every vestige of strength he’s got, Puck scrambles off of Batman, horrified. The kid stays where he is, arms over his face, weeping; behind him, the others stare.
“Oh, fuck me,” Johnson whispers. “You’re just like him.”
Just like him. Just like Finn. Except Finn never burned the shirt right off his own back, and goddamn, Puck can’t understand how he’s still standing. His knees quake violently, his lungs panting for air, and in that moment, he is certain he is dying. There is no other explanation; he can’t breathe, he is on fire. For Christ’s sake, this isn’t some harmless bounding around from one room to the next; this fucking hurts.
He commands himself to breathe, to stand strong. It isn’t the fight he’s worried about anymore; the guys have turned tail and run like the cowards they are, leaving him here alone. He leans against the dumpster, gasping, watching as the metal under his shoulder slowly blackens.
It isn’t the fight anymore so much as his life.
He just can’t fucking go out like this.
Minutes tick by, slow as death, and with each snap of the clock, he feels a little something drain away. The anger, he thinks. It’s hard to be angry when he’s so damn scared-yeah, Puckzilla isn’t above admitting it; he’s a stone’s throw from wetting his goddamn pants. Give him a fucking break, he’s a human goddamn Tiki torch.
Except…
Except something’s changing. He’s not really overheating anymore, not sweating buckets. In fact, he’s practically chattering, his flesh cooling against the air, and maybe it was a fluke? Maybe he just got so into decimating that cheeky little bastard that his brain overheated for a second. Maybe he imagined everything.
Although that wouldn’t explain why his shirt is laying in tatters at his feet, singed through and through.
Fuck.
“Oh dear, we’re late,” someone proclaims behind him, the kind of tone that is naturally accompanied by an eyeroll. Puck sucks in a breath (his lungs still aren’t doing their job, it seems) and glances over his shoulder.
It’s not that he’s at all shamed by his own body, but really, he’s not up for being on display just now.
It’s a geeky little fucker, womanish and instantly irritating. If not for this whole dying scenario, Puck thinks he’d like to grab the kid by the ankles and swing him heartily into this very dumpster, as punishment for looking like such a fucking dweeb.
Also, that voice is annoying as shit.
“Kurt, you really must work on your conception of time,” a girl responds haughtily; Puck thinks she’d be kind of sneaky hot, if she didn’t look like it’s been weeks since her last change of clothes. At any rate, the nose suggests she’s one hell of a Jew, which he can respect.
“Shit, man.” Another voice, but this one-this cinches it, he must be going crazy-actually sounds familiar. Teeth crashing together as he shivers, Puck whips around just in time to see Finn Hudson’s mouth drop open.
“Puck, dude, what happened to your shirt?”
It’s a valid question, he supposes, but nothing compared to what Puck’s concerned with.
“Where,” he rasps, throat hoarse as hell, “have you been?”
Finn looks uncomfortable, rubbing the back of his head and scuffing one giant sneaker on the pavement. “Well,” he says uneasily, “you see…”
“You ran away?” Puck interrupts disbelievingly, choking down his distress just long enough to fix the tall boy with a glare. “You just fucking left?”
“I didn’t have a choice,” Finn replies firmly. Spotting Puck’s unsteady scowl, he hesitates. “I mean…kind of. Look, it’s complicated, man.”
“Nothin’ complicated about it,” Puck coughs, rubbing his arms in a desperate attempt to warm himself again. “You fuckin’ bailed. You just…goddammit, dude.”
“Is now really the optimum time for finger pointing?” a loser in a wheelchair muses. Puck wants to stomp over there and crush his glasses in one strong hand.
“You,” he snarls deliberately, jabbing an index finger at Finn’s chest, “are fucking dead to me right now, you hear me? You miserable fuck, do you have any idea how worried I was?”
“You never told me you had an overbearing wife,” that Kurt kid observes amiably. Puck resolves to murder him with his bare hands the second his body stops freaking the fuck out.
“Puck,” Finn says gently, nudging closer with both hands outstretched. “Come on, dude.”
“No fucking way,” the mohawked boy grumbles. “We are fighting. We are so fighting. Like, forever. You fucking asshole.”
“Really,” Kurt taunts, “he’s kind of a woman, isn’t he?”
Something snaps; he’s heating up again, fast and furious. Puck turns his pointing finger on the kid.
“Don’t push me, gaywad,” he warns. “I’ll fucking kill you.”
“I don’t think he’s joking,” an Asian girl comments, nervously edging closer to the wheelchair. Four-Eyes grasps her hand comfortingly.
The would-be-hot brunette rolls her eyes. “Must this always be quite so ridiculous?”
“It’s not exactly an easy thing you ask of us,” Finn reminds her, crossing his arms over his chest the way he does when he has no idea where else to turn. Puck rubs his forehead, sensing a killer headache.
“Just…fucking explain, will you?” he asks, suddenly wiped out by the whole mess. Finn turns back, almost smiling.
“We’re going to save the world.”
A month ago, Puck would have told him to fuck off. A month ago, Puck would have pounded him within an inch of his life for saying something so stupid. A month ago, Puck would have checked him into the nearest loony bin.
A month ago, Puck wouldn’t have watched himself very nearly burn another person to death with his body alone.
“Fine,” he says wearily. “Whatever.”
Finn takes another step closer, wary as a kicked puppy. “Come with us?” he suggests, like he’s trying his best not to sound stupidly earnest. Puck rolls his eyes.
“Fine,” he repeats. “Whatever. Just get me some goddamn aspirin, you douchebag. And, y’know, find me a fucking shirt?”
The sight of his best friend’s grin is almost enough to crack his heart in two.
“That,” Finn says happily, “I can do.”
Puck reminds himself to punch him later on principle alone.
Pairing: Rachel Berry/Quinn Fabray, Santana Lopez/Brittany Pierce, minor Artie Abrams/Tina Cohen-Chang
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Nothing owned, no profit gained.
Spoilers: AU
Summary: “Sometimes, people are born a little different.”
When Finn Hudson up and vanishes, it takes all of one day for the school to slide into an uproar.
Noah Puckerman can’t exactly fault his peers for being stressed out-he, more than anyone, cares about what has happened to his slightly-dim best friend-but he does wish they’d go about it with a little more decorum. Really, it’s pathetic to erect a floral-and-football arrangement of a shrine outside his locker before the week is up. Pathetic, and desperate, and he wonders who they think they’re impressing.
Plus, hello, morbid. Puck usually finds that sort of thing mildly amusing, if only because it leads to the discomfort of others, but this feels unnecessarily extreme. Finn isn’t some faceless, random asshole on the street; he’s Finn. And Puck, though he really isn’t interested in admitting it on national television or whatever, is getting worried.
Puck doesn’t do worried, so…there’s that.
The first week is rough, but in a way, simple. It’s not that long, in the grand scheme of things, which means Puck is able to convince himself that Finn is just out sick, holed up in his bedroom with a stack of Playboys and Sega to keep him company. He does not, it goes without saying, actually visit the Hudson home to test this theory, mostly because he doesn’t actually believe it in the first place.
It is, he has learned the hard way over the years, so much easier to lie to oneself with one’s eyes firmly wedged shut.
He isn’t the only one walking around like an ostrich, either. In fact, the school-and by extension, the surrounding town-seems to have divided into two opposing factions. The first consists of the desperate jackasses who cripple Finn’s locker with well-meaning debris, the people who can’t go half an hour without firing longing sighs and lingering glances in the direction of the missing boy’s assigned seat in geometry or…whatever.
Puck spends a lot of time wanting to deck these people.
The second group is made up of people like Puck himself: those who don’t believe-or don’t want to believe-that Finn is actually missing at all. Some might call these people delusional, and Puck can’t say he totally disagrees with that assessment, but the thing is, it’s ten thousand times better than focusing on the alternative.
Fuck it, Finn is the best friend he’s ever had. If the kid went and got himself horribly murdered or something, the victim of some new-age hate crime, Puck is never going to forgive him.
It’s the sort of event that has him gritting his teeth and shaking his head as he walks mindlessly through the halls each day, because Finn would be That Guy. The one to get some magic comic-bullshit power and immediately get fucked up over it. Finn would be, and Puck kind of hates him for it, because if it were Puck? He’d have gotten up and done something about the mess that was becoming his life-and he would have done so before it wound out of control.
He doesn’t exactly know what he would have done in Finn’s place, but he’s a badass, for God’s sake. He would have thought of something.
That first week passes at a snail’s pace. The second goes a little quicker, and by the fourth, he’s barely able to tell one day from the next. At first, he feels like this is okay; it’s better, in a way, because he can stay busy with skipping classes and drilling the guys during practice. Plus, at the end of the day, there’s always some cougar with great tits waiting to make him forget everything. It’s better than sitting on his bed, staring out the window and wondering what became of the one guy he’s ever called brother. It’s better than slumping around the house, sucking on a Dr. Pepper (he’d prefer a beer, but his mom’s been home weirdly often lately, taking care of nine-year-old Allison and her stupid little kid flu bug) and looking too emo for words.
It goes without saying that Noah Puckerman also does not do emo.
By the fifth week, he’s just praying for an excuse to cause trouble. Any rumor of where Finn might have gone, or the barest whiff of the bastard who undoubtedly fucked him up, and Puck will be on the trail like a damn shot. He’s pretty positive there’s nothing healthy about how often he imagines grasping some faceless asshole and kicking his teeth in until there’s nothing but a lump of ruined ground chuck where his nose and lips ought to be.
There are stages to the grieving process, he knows. He can never remember what order they go in, but he thinks denial, anger, and depression can be interchangeable. And if any shrink dares to say otherwise, he’ll beat their dumbass face in too.
It doesn’t take long for the other emotions to drain away, leaving only the anger behind to get bad. Really bad. It actually reaches the point where even football doesn’t feel like enough; practice has a hollow edge, and games are stupidly structured. He can’t seem to hit nearly enough people nearly as hard as he needs to-and it is, he feels, a need more than the usual mild desire. It eats at him at night, leaving him staring at the slowly rotating fan blades above his head as his chest constricts with the temptation to bolt from his window and pound some hobo until he lies dormant.
He’s sent home twice in one week for blowing up at innocent passerby-one nerd, who, for his Team Edward sweatshirt, kind of deserves it, and one teacher, who mostly doesn’t. It’s not exactly a suspension, but he has the sneaking suspicion it might evolve into such if he can’t get his head on straight soon. The problem is, no matter how many times he tells himself to be cool, the fire inside seems only to burn hotter and brighter.
If Finn were around, he’d know what to say to diffuse the temper Puck feels spiraling swiftly out of control, but the fact is, he’s alone.
Alone and in shambles, and he isn’t going to try therapy or any pansy-ass bullshit like that, so he settles for his own brand of treatment: drinking himself under the table the second his mom steps out the door and burying his dick in the first woman who will have him.
He knows it’s bad when he’s got Mrs. Fienstein bent over her kitchen table, screaming his name like it’s God’s as he pounds her senseless, and he still feels like shit.
His mother gets tired of asking after him and receiving the same grunt and shrug in response. His sister gets tired of being shouted at whenever he enters a room. His teachers get tired of jerking him bodily away from whichever douchebag has chosen to yank his chain on a given day. And Puck? Puck is just tired. Tired, and anxious, and stressed to a capacity no amount of sex or booze will help.
It’s easily the worst few weeks of his life.
The day everything snaps and comes tumbling down is no different from the others. He has spent hours trudging through school, sneakers squealing against ugly tile, biceps flexing threateningly each time another student so much as glances his way. He has skipped three of his six classes and dozed through the rest. He’s pretty sure he missed lunch, and doesn’t care; his appetite, the desire to cook and devour four meals a day, has completely vanished. It’s as if Finn and his monster-sized self took it with him when he-
Bailed?
Was kidnapped?
Got himself killed?
Puck shakes his head, growling under his breath. One fist shoots out, connecting with a metallic clang as it slams into the locker of a freshman girl. She cowers under the weight of his glare and scurries off down the hall like the mouse that she is; he tamps down the urge to follow and swing a fist into her.
Noah Puckerman is many things, but girl-hitter, he is determined never to be. He is not his father. He will never be his father.
It’s not a thought process that in any way improves his mood. Eli Puckerman was, put simply enough, a bastard and a half. A cocaine enthusiast with a rock star pedigree and a distinct penchant for fucking, fighting, and fleeing, there isn’t much of worth to be noted about the old man. Usually, Puck prefers to pretend he never existed in the first place; the idea that he was actually fathered by Zeus, or Keith Richards, or the Easter Bunny is far easier to swallow.
Today, he’s having trouble forgetting reality, which is just a bitch. Not to mention the very last thing he needs.
Until, at least, the doofuses in masks corner him behind the school less than ten minutes later. Then that becomes the last thing he needs, and really, Puck just hates everything right now.
“What?” he snaps before they can speak. His hands are braced against the rim of the dumpster, head bowed as he forces the steadiest breaths he can manage into his lungs. His mohawk practically tingles with the intensity of their eyes-five sets belonging to five assholes, each one physically more imposing than Puck himself.
“Hello, Noah,” the one wearing a Captain America mask greets him, hands folded almost daintily against his front. He looks like a ten-year-old practicing for Comic-Con. Puck instantly wants to smash his face to bits.
“It’s Puck,” he settles for grumbling, proud of his restraint. He isn’t sure how long it will hold out, of course, but it’s something. Proof that he hasn’t completely gone over the deep end.
“It’s Noah,” the asshole corrects him. One of his buddies, channeling The Flash, snorts.
“Could save the trouble and just call him the motherfucker. I mean, isn’t that what you are? Mother. Fucker.”
Can’t fault the man for truth, Puck thinks ruefully, almost amused. If not for the masks, this might actually feel like just another bantering session with the team.
In fact…
“Johnson, is that you?” he asks, pumping as much instinctive venom out of his tone as he can. “Dude, you look like a fucking toddler. Should have gone with the Krueger look.”
“Shut the fuck up,” the boy snaps, and Puck gets the feeling this is going to be more than your average everyday testosterone showdown. A wild energy brews within his belly at the thought, something strangely like ecstasy. He smiles.
“I’m just saying, man, there are levels of loser, and I think you just invented a whole new one. It’s kind of dope, really.”
They rise up on their toes and broaden their shoulders, like he’s a bear or a moose or something they’re looking to intimidate on size alone. Hilariously, he thinks. They should know better.
No one intimidates Puckzilla.
“What do you bastards want, anyway?” he asks, doing his best to sound casual, like his blood isn’t singing for violence.
Captain America-Tolstoy, if his ears can be trusted to place that brawny, grating voice properly-glares at him through minimalist eyeholes. “Let’s just say, we’re sick of your shit, Puckerman. Ever since your boyfriend high-tailed it, you’ve been a pathetic shadow of the man you used to be. It’s old.”
“Yeah,” Johnson jeers. “We need a running back who can actually focus.”
“Uh huh.” Puck arches an eyebrow, the rage slowly stacking up in his chest. “And the masks?”
A third guy, unreasonably believing himself a man of Krypton, snorts. “Halloween, bro. We’d have asked you to join, but, y’know. We don’t jive with homos.”
“Could’ve fooled me,” Puck snips, jamming his hands into his back pockets in an effort to avoid pummeling them one by one. Tolstoy growls.
“Get your shit together, asshole, or you’re a dead man. We have to ask again, it ain’t gonna be so nice.”
“This is asking?” Puck smirks. “Your mother teaches manners about as well as she fucks, Tolstoy. Maybe I oughta go back, give her a few more lessons.”
“At least I have a mom,” Tolstoy returns, “instead of some zombie loser waiting around for her deadbeat husband to get back. What dog is your dad off screwing this week?”
It’s little. It’s little, and it is not the point, and he’s more of a man then they will ever be. The placating phrases echo in his head, resounding off of one another, but they aren’t enough to stop the welling rage. Lately, it seems like nothing is.
“What’sa matter, Puckerman?” Batman-some asshole, probably a freshman, given that Puck can’t place his voice-sneers. “You miss Daddy?”
It’s enough. It’s enough, and he knows this won’t help, but he’s sweating and swearing and lost to the glory of knuckles smashing cartilage through the mask. He’s screaming things, senseless, rambling provocations, sitting on this boy’s chest and beating him, and it feels so good. Better than the past month’s worth of orgasms, better than the swelling of pride when the team takes in their rare win. Better than anything ever.
Except for the heat. He could really do without that part, without the sweat pouring down his forehead, dripping off the spikes of his mohawk and into his eyes. He could really do without feeling like there is no air in the area, like his anger has taken it all and crushed it into a tiny, pathetic ball.
He is so hot, and still his body continues to destroy Batman, bit by bit.
There is yelling-a lot of it-and he thinks in the back of his mind that control would be a wonderful thing to have right now. He needs to stop, he knows; needs to climb off this kid and walk away. Cool off. But he is boiling, sweltering, skin radiating heat like it was made to do so. He is a walking fucking fireplace.
This, the pounding he is dishing out, should help.
It doesn’t, somehow. He only grows warmer, until his shirt is sticking to his skin, until every movement feels like it’s coming through a wave of gelatin. The yelling is muffled now, barely reaching his blistering ears. He’s exhausted, and energized, and a mess.
If Finn were here, he catches himself thinking, he would know what to do. But he’s not. It’s just Puck, swinging his fists and cursing up an intelligible storm, feeling like he’s on fire.
“No, no, stop,” the boy underneath him wails thickly. “Stop, get him off me, get him off-“
Heaven help the person who tries, Puck rages silently. Heaven help the person who so much as thinks about touching him.
“Help me, please, God, he’s burning-“
The cry jolts through him, and for the first time, Puck is able to pull back just enough to look clearly at himself. It’s as if he is actually above his own body; he sees tears streaming down his own cheeks, mingling with perspiration. More importantly, he sees his skin, glistening in a totally unnatural way. Like oil. Like burning glass.
Because the guy he’s pummeling is right about that: he’s on fire. Literally. He can see flames licking off his back, searing straight through his muscle shirt.
He is sitting on this kid and he is torching him by proxy.
Mustering every vestige of strength he’s got, Puck scrambles off of Batman, horrified. The kid stays where he is, arms over his face, weeping; behind him, the others stare.
“Oh, fuck me,” Johnson whispers. “You’re just like him.”
Just like him. Just like Finn. Except Finn never burned the shirt right off his own back, and goddamn, Puck can’t understand how he’s still standing. His knees quake violently, his lungs panting for air, and in that moment, he is certain he is dying. There is no other explanation; he can’t breathe, he is on fire. For Christ’s sake, this isn’t some harmless bounding around from one room to the next; this fucking hurts.
He commands himself to breathe, to stand strong. It isn’t the fight he’s worried about anymore; the guys have turned tail and run like the cowards they are, leaving him here alone. He leans against the dumpster, gasping, watching as the metal under his shoulder slowly blackens.
It isn’t the fight anymore so much as his life.
He just can’t fucking go out like this.
Minutes tick by, slow as death, and with each snap of the clock, he feels a little something drain away. The anger, he thinks. It’s hard to be angry when he’s so damn scared-yeah, Puckzilla isn’t above admitting it; he’s a stone’s throw from wetting his goddamn pants. Give him a fucking break, he’s a human goddamn Tiki torch.
Except…
Except something’s changing. He’s not really overheating anymore, not sweating buckets. In fact, he’s practically chattering, his flesh cooling against the air, and maybe it was a fluke? Maybe he just got so into decimating that cheeky little bastard that his brain overheated for a second. Maybe he imagined everything.
Although that wouldn’t explain why his shirt is laying in tatters at his feet, singed through and through.
Fuck.
“Oh dear, we’re late,” someone proclaims behind him, the kind of tone that is naturally accompanied by an eyeroll. Puck sucks in a breath (his lungs still aren’t doing their job, it seems) and glances over his shoulder.
It’s not that he’s at all shamed by his own body, but really, he’s not up for being on display just now.
It’s a geeky little fucker, womanish and instantly irritating. If not for this whole dying scenario, Puck thinks he’d like to grab the kid by the ankles and swing him heartily into this very dumpster, as punishment for looking like such a fucking dweeb.
Also, that voice is annoying as shit.
“Kurt, you really must work on your conception of time,” a girl responds haughtily; Puck thinks she’d be kind of sneaky hot, if she didn’t look like it’s been weeks since her last change of clothes. At any rate, the nose suggests she’s one hell of a Jew, which he can respect.
“Shit, man.” Another voice, but this one-this cinches it, he must be going crazy-actually sounds familiar. Teeth crashing together as he shivers, Puck whips around just in time to see Finn Hudson’s mouth drop open.
“Puck, dude, what happened to your shirt?”
It’s a valid question, he supposes, but nothing compared to what Puck’s concerned with.
“Where,” he rasps, throat hoarse as hell, “have you been?”
Finn looks uncomfortable, rubbing the back of his head and scuffing one giant sneaker on the pavement. “Well,” he says uneasily, “you see…”
“You ran away?” Puck interrupts disbelievingly, choking down his distress just long enough to fix the tall boy with a glare. “You just fucking left?”
“I didn’t have a choice,” Finn replies firmly. Spotting Puck’s unsteady scowl, he hesitates. “I mean…kind of. Look, it’s complicated, man.”
“Nothin’ complicated about it,” Puck coughs, rubbing his arms in a desperate attempt to warm himself again. “You fuckin’ bailed. You just…goddammit, dude.”
“Is now really the optimum time for finger pointing?” a loser in a wheelchair muses. Puck wants to stomp over there and crush his glasses in one strong hand.
“You,” he snarls deliberately, jabbing an index finger at Finn’s chest, “are fucking dead to me right now, you hear me? You miserable fuck, do you have any idea how worried I was?”
“You never told me you had an overbearing wife,” that Kurt kid observes amiably. Puck resolves to murder him with his bare hands the second his body stops freaking the fuck out.
“Puck,” Finn says gently, nudging closer with both hands outstretched. “Come on, dude.”
“No fucking way,” the mohawked boy grumbles. “We are fighting. We are so fighting. Like, forever. You fucking asshole.”
“Really,” Kurt taunts, “he’s kind of a woman, isn’t he?”
Something snaps; he’s heating up again, fast and furious. Puck turns his pointing finger on the kid.
“Don’t push me, gaywad,” he warns. “I’ll fucking kill you.”
“I don’t think he’s joking,” an Asian girl comments, nervously edging closer to the wheelchair. Four-Eyes grasps her hand comfortingly.
The would-be-hot brunette rolls her eyes. “Must this always be quite so ridiculous?”
“It’s not exactly an easy thing you ask of us,” Finn reminds her, crossing his arms over his chest the way he does when he has no idea where else to turn. Puck rubs his forehead, sensing a killer headache.
“Just…fucking explain, will you?” he asks, suddenly wiped out by the whole mess. Finn turns back, almost smiling.
“We’re going to save the world.”
A month ago, Puck would have told him to fuck off. A month ago, Puck would have pounded him within an inch of his life for saying something so stupid. A month ago, Puck would have checked him into the nearest loony bin.
A month ago, Puck wouldn’t have watched himself very nearly burn another person to death with his body alone.
“Fine,” he says wearily. “Whatever.”
Finn takes another step closer, wary as a kicked puppy. “Come with us?” he suggests, like he’s trying his best not to sound stupidly earnest. Puck rolls his eyes.
“Fine,” he repeats. “Whatever. Just get me some goddamn aspirin, you douchebag. And, y’know, find me a fucking shirt?”
The sight of his best friend’s grin is almost enough to crack his heart in two.
“That,” Finn says happily, “I can do.”
Puck reminds himself to punch him later on principle alone.