The idea for this occurred to me while on Tumblr. Someone reblogged 37 things one should never apologize for and I figure it might actually be a decent writing exercise for me to start AND FINISH a fic using it as fodder. Yeah, 37 chapters might be a little ridiculous. Then again, there are several I doubt I can work in no matter how much I twist it, so it might drop down quite a bit.

27. Never apologize for lack of information. Ignorance is acceptable. Staying ignorant, however, is stupid.

"Yeah, real funny, guys. I just love being thrown into closets and locked in there," Puck shouted through the door. He'd been asking for it, though. He and Finn had been trying to secretly intervene on the slushies and pee balloons and that whole getting thrown into the dumpster thing with the Glee Club members. He would never have admitted that he was taking pity on those nerds, but there it was.

"Hey, who else is in here?" he asked. He'd heard a small noise. As long as it wasn't a rat – after he'd read that story "The Pit and the Pendulum" in middle school he'd felt a slight sense of unease with the possibility of rats in dark places. The sniffle he heard quickly debunked that theory because as far as he knew, rats did not sniffle that loudly. He fumbled for a light switch and finding it, flicked it on.

Or not. Nothing happened. "Great. That's great. Hello? I know I'm not talking to myself, and if you don't want me to accidentally grab something that shouldn't be grabbed when I feel my way over there, you might want to spit it out."

"It's Kurt," came the quiet voice from a far corner. It was shaking slightly.

"Oh, you. The fact that you're a fag and you're in a closet is pretty ironic, isn't it?" He swore silently, knowing that the fact that he was also in the same closet was setting himself up for that one – but the expected retort never came. "Okay, I walked into that one and you didn't take advantage of it. Did they beat you up before throwing you in here or something?"

"No. Please just..."

Puck waited for the sentence to be finished. He waited some more before prompting, "just what?"

Kurt coughed a little. "Shut up and leave me alone because I am locked in a closet WITH YOU of all people and I really really really don't want to be."

His voice had started to rise in pitch halfway through the sentence and hadn't stopped until his voice had cracked on the last word.

"I don't see what the big deal is. I mean, if they didn't beat you up... It's just a closet."

"A small, dark closet with a locked door and limited air!" Kurt shrieked.

Puck looked at the obvious cracks in the door frame. "Uh, dude, I think we're okay on air." He then realized that the other kid's breaths were frantic. "I think you're hyperventilating." When no answer came, just more gasping, he smacked himself in the head for daring to ask, but -

"Why are you so freaked out?"

There was no answer and he wanted to smack himself again, but he began to inch his way over to Kurt. He aimed to grab Kurt's shoulder but accidentally smacked him in the face. "Sorry, I kinda missed there," he started to say, but was cut off by a terrified shriek. In true Noah Puckerman fashion, he reached the end of his rope and grabbed Kurt in a headlock. "What in the hell, Hummel?"

"I'm claustrophobic," he gasped out, still sounding terrified.

"Well, that's all you had to freakin' say," Puck growled, letting go. "Why?"

Sounds came from outside. It sounded like a scuffle, and suddenly the door swung open. Puck tried to jump at it and stick his foot in the open door but instead caught an armful of someone else being thrown in. "Oh, what the – who is it now?"

"It's me."

Puck sighed. "And if we didn't know your voice, who would 'me' be?"

"Oh, it's Finn. Hi, Puck. Who's 'we'?"

"Hummel's in the corner hyperventilating. He's claustrophobic, apparently."

Mumbling noises came from the very corner Puck had just referenced. "Dude, we can't hear when you mumble."

"It's your fault, you know."

Puck looked at Finn in confusion before realizing it was dark and the look was completely lost. "Okay, humor me." Apparently it was not the time for joking, though, since Kurt remained quiet.

After a few moments of silence, Puck turned to Finn. "As I see it, we can either attempt to break down the door or wait until they try to throw another kid in here with us – speaking of that..."

More scuffling noises were outside and Mercedes' angry voice came through the door. "What would your mothers say if they saw you manhandling a girl? What the – oh, HELL no, I am not going in that nasty closet."

Puck and Finn simultaneously started shouting. "MERCEDES, HELP!" It was mortifying to ask a girl for help but it was better than being stuck in a dusty closet.

"How many people you got in there, you freakin' idiots?" The sharp sound of someone backhanding another upside his 'idiot' head resounded in the halls. She yanked the door open and Finn and Puck spilled out of it.

"Kurt's still in there," Finn said.

Mercedes gave them a look. "Hold this door. You lock me in there, I'll break it the hell down and then I'll break you. Got it?" She stomped in and looked around, spotting Kurt in the corner. "Boy, what are you doing down there?" She grabbed him by the elbow and hauled him out. He still looked vaguely terrified and pinned himself against the opposite wall of lockers in relief. Apparently, the other football players had fled in response to the large, formidable girl's sudden anger.

"Claustrophobia," he whispered, breathing normally. Kind of. "Middle school."

Puck thought back to middle school. Ah, the days when the little twerps were small enough to fit into lockers.

Wait. Lockers.

"Is this about the whole locker-stuffing thing, Hummel?" Puck asked.

"It is indeed about the locker-stuffing thing, Puckerman," he replied, "and I really don't want to discuss it," he finished, standing up a little straighter.

Finn shrugged. "It couldn't have been that bad."

Kurt looked nonplussed. "I almost died the last time, so forgive me for asking but what in the world do you mean by 'couldn't have been that bad'?"

Mercedes shook her head. "Okay, calm yourself. You're getting extra all over the place. You did not almost die."

Kurt started laughing, a sick little laugh that meant that whatever he was about to say was far from funny. "I assure you, I did," he said, stalking away.

Puck, Finn, and Mercedes looked at each other. "What did you do to him?" she asked.

"Stuffed him in a locker a couple times. Then one time we went to stuff him in, he flailed like a cat next to a bath tub – hey, cats need baths sometimes. Don't judge me. But yeah. So we gave up, and next year he was too big to fit in a locker, so..." Puck trailed off. "And that was when the slushie to the face was born."

"You know what," came an angry voice from around the corner. Resounding footsteps were coming closer and Kurt rounded the corner. "I don't give a damn about the slushies. Or the dumpster, and I can even stand the freakin' pee balloons, but that locker thing was traumatic."

Puck shook his head, furrowing his eyebrows and shrugging. "I really don't get it, dude. It's no big deal."

Kurt was fuming. "I was in there an entire weekend that last time. A three-day weekend. It takes three days for a person to die of dehydration in a stressful environment. Add to that fact that I was already dehydrated from crying all day – and it's really fucking humiliating to get so desperate you try to drink your own piss and realize you can't because your arms are pinned to your sides because you're in a locker." he spat. "So you'll understand if I don't fucking want to be locked in a closet with one of the people who almost killed me!"

Puck was taken aback. "No. Like, someone would have said something. Like, I would have got detention, at least..."

"No one would have cared, so I didn't tell anyone. I told my dad I stayed over at a friend's," he hissed.

Mercedes tried to intercept Kurt. "You do realize you just dropped like three f-bombs just now? Calm down."

"I will not calm down! You know, I've been taking their shit for years and I'm tired of it. Because I'm the weak, gay-ass faggot and I figure, 'oh, I'm strong enough to survive whatever they throw at me and there's no need to resort to violence' – well I'm fucking tired of it and I swear to God, the next derogatory word that comes out of anyone's mouth, the next time one person invades my goddamn personal space, I'll rip someone's throat out with my bare, well-manicured hands!" he screamed, panting. Puck could have sworn he was about to start foaming like some kind of rabid dog and he knew it was a really stupid idea, but sometimes his mouth worked faster than his brain.

"Like you could ever manage to unsheathe your claws... pussy." Everything happened in a split second. Mercedes grabbed Kurt, Finn shoved Puck backwards and tried to pull him into a run, and then all hell broke loose, because Puck's mind was still five minutes behind his mouth, and Mercedes, too surprised by the situation to keep a good grip, was not strong enough to hold the fully enraged Kurt back.