Title: Filled to the Gills
Media: Fic
Rating: PG
Pairing: None, Puck centric
Summary: How Puck spends his nights. Shifter!Puck
AN: Written for a prompt on gleeanimalism on Livejournal, for Puck being part shark and how he would spend his nights.
It's hard, being a shark, being a shifter with so much pent up power but ultimately helpless to use it. Ohio is a terrible place for sharks, landlocked without a drop of saltwater in sight. He's out of his element, and his too dry skin yearns for an ocean he's never seen.
When Puck was younger, his mother would fill the bathtub with saltwater, making him float in it all night. Sometimes Puck would play with his bath toys, but as the night wore on and his eyelids burned, he would just lay there, counting tiles until the sun rose.
As Puck grew up, he started reigning in his shifting abilities. He spent less time in the bathtub, or kiddie pool in their garage, and more time wandering the streets. As his mother and baby sister slept on, Puck would go to the playground, or walk around his neighborhood. But even that got boring after a while.
So as Puck grew, he ventured farther, grew more daring in his nightly adventures.
In the summer he would go skinny dipping, from one backyard pool to the next, bare skin buzzing as he hopped fences in the too warm night. Puck liked to graffiti rooftops, collect lawn gnomes off of other people's lawns, see how many fireflies he could catch in one night. Before he got his license, he would walk down the suburban streets, pulling at the car door handles, taking joy rides in the cars whose owner's were unfortunate enough to leaves their keys behind.
(Puck usually left the car in the same spot he found it, and any mysterious dents were normally blamed on careless garbage men rather than a nighttime car thief.)
In the fall Puck liked to take long drives out through the farmland. He likes the way his hands go numb, as the bat turns to ice, splattering rows and rows of pumpkins. And for the last three years, like clockwork, he goes to the Emerson's cornfield to make his own alien signs. He keeps the Lima Enquirer newsclippings on the phenomenon on his corkboard, surrounded by MILF phone numbers, a 2nd place ribbon from his third grade Field Day, and numerous pictures of his sister, his mom, and the New Directions.
(A picture of Beth gets a cheap frame and hidden away in his sock drawer. He tries not to spend too many nights just staring at the picture, wondering about a daughter he'll never see grow, never know what her future holds.)
Winter is the worst. It's boring and the season he is most likely to be caught by the police/security guard/angry neighbors. He likes to explore, opening random doors, trespassing through unknown properties, looking for a little warmth, or just a quiet place to destroy. Sometimes it leads to good things. Puck is pleasantly surprised when he finds himself opening a nondescript back alley door to find himself backstage one of the nicer coffee shops in the Lima area. He was whisked into doing an impromptu show, getting free coffee and the barista's number. Or the time he drunkenly stumbled under an impasse to find Patches camping out, huddled by a roaring fire. Puck joined him, and they wound up singing a great rendition of 'Hotel California'.
But sometimes opening random doors leads to bad things.
The fight club he stumbles upon starts off pretty cool, until they're bending the rules and it becomes a mass attack on one guy. They leave him beaten, battered, broken in an abandoned warehouse, no one knowing what to say afterwards. Puck catches a clip on the news a few days later, about a violent gang attack leaving him crippled. His mom changes the channel before the reporter can announce any leads in the investigation. It's a long winter that year.
Spring is a good time for practicing. Puck likes to find empty parking lots and sing to them. He likes the way his voice echoes, the way he plucks his chords and the only response is the humming streetlights, the only audience the lone plastic bag. Glee Club is always in the back of his mind, and now it's second nature for him to hum the melodies to his emotions. It's both nice and irritating, because he didn't even know he could feel this way, sort out his emotions through song instead of letting everything make him angry. But he's annoyed, because one day, if he ever graduates, he won't be able to sing it out like he can with New Directions.
And maybe that's what he hates most about being a shark, this curse his father gave him. He's stuck in bumblefuck Ohio, just wasting away. He's done everything this town has to offer, and now he sits.
Waits.
Watches every minute of every day slip from his grasp.