My second attempt at Puckleberry (though this one's more friendship than romance). Set before "The Sue Sylvester Shuffle".

Obligatory disclaimer: I don't own Glee.

The morning after an amazing holiday performance, Puck felt like crap. It wasn't anything Glee-related, he decided. No, the weekend had been perfect: New Directions had been invited to an invitational at another high school to celebrate the holiday season. The different holiday themes were distributed between the attending high schools, and McKinley had ended up with Christmas.

It had been a great set; they had decided to go all out and cover a huge range of Christmas songs. They'd performed "All I Want for Christmas Is You" (which made Kurt, who had driven down to see the performance with that guy Blaine, swoon) and Puck swore the audience had been completely silent, save sniffles, as they sang "O Holy Night". Then they'd closed the show with a pretty good cover of "Last Christmas"—the animosity between Rachel and Finn made the song entertaining, even if the club thought the pair would end up fighting on stage.

So the fact that he felt like crap was a feeling he couldn't explain, and still, it was there: He felt guilty. He felt all bad inside, full of rotten pieces that stank of remorse. The last time he'd felt this guilty was when he'd walked down the school halls in the morning, a slushie in his hand and Rachel Berry's locker as his destination.

But that was ridiculous. It had nothing to do with the present. Sure, at that very moment, he was headed toward Berry, but he was so far from throwing a slushie in her face that it wasn't even funny. It was true that he did have a drink in his hand, but it was her favorite drink from Starbucks. It was a soy sugarless vanilla latte with no whipped cream—it was also the least decadent drink he'd ever heard of. Despite the term 'latte', he sincerely doubted the presence of caffeine. It was most definitely a drink that Berry would order.

And if it seemed uncharacteristic for Puck to be bringing Rachel her morning coffee…well, there was a funny story to explain that…

*start flashback*

Puck was about to head out into the hallway, one hand already on the hotel room's doorknob, when his friend stopped him.

"Dude, where're you going?" Mike asked, grabbing at his friend's arm.

"I was gonna head down the hall, see if I could get some breakfast," Puck said. Mike continued to shake his head at his friend. And it got worse – instead of releasing Puck's arm, his grip only tightened. "You gotta chill. Take your hand off me. That's better. All right, wanna tell me why I can't go into the hall?"

"Rachel's out there."

Puck snorted and pushed past Mike. "I'm not afraid of Berry and her crazy. I'm not about to let her stand in the way of my breakfast."

"No, it's beyond her everyday crazy. The girl's having a meltdown. We're talking screaming, flying fists – Artie said he saw tears…"

"I can handle it."

"Don't say I didn't warn you."

Puck waved off his friend's concern with a decidedly rude gesture and stepped out into the hall, where he immediately collided with…one freaked-out Rachel.

She was sputtering some sort of nonsense and doing something weird with her hands, almost like she couldn't keep 'em still, they wouldn't stop moving. "This is not a good morning. Not good, not good."

"And I thought Mike had to chill," Puck said, taking a firm hold on the tiny brunette. "Outta my way, Berry."

"Where are you going?"

"A man's gotta eat."

The relief in her face was beyond noticeable. "You drove here, right?"

"Uh huh," Puck said warily. The club had decided to save money by driving themselve. Sam had driven Artie's dad's car (a wheelchair-accessible van), Mr. Shue drove his own van, and Puck had picked up the stragglers in his pick-up. Luckily, there weren't many. Puck hated road trips with other people.

"And you're heading out for breakfast?"

"If you'll let me out of this hallway, yeah."

"Can I come with you?"

Oh God, this was not what he needed. "What?"

"Please? I won't be a bother, I promise. I need my caffeine in the morning. It's a dangerous addiction, I'm well aware of the various health hazards and what-not, but to be perfectly honest, I never quite feel exactly like myself unless I have something to help me wake up in the mornings. Otherwise, and please don't laugh…otherwise, well, I've been described as somewhat crazy. When I don't have my caffeine, that is."

"Good God, Berry, I always think you're crazy," he said, but Puck relented and let her follow him out of the hotel and into his car.

*end flashback*

"Here's your drink," he said, setting down the steaming latte in front of Rachel, who was sitting peacefully at a table in the quietest corner of the coffee shop. "Can't imagine it has caffeine though. Doesn't look like it has much of anything."

"Thank you," Rachel said. And then, peering around at his now empty hands, "Didn't you get anything for yourself?"

"Right. Like what?"

"Did you miss the menu, behind the counter? They offer a lovely array of drinks, and there's hardly a combination that can't be made to suit any particular set of taste buds. For example, I'm sure you noticed—"

"They're all chick drinks. I don't do chick drinks, Berry."

"Well, did you notice the assortment of—"

"Yeah, I saw the biscotti, oatmeal, muffins. That's not breakfast." But then, he looked at Rachel and realized that she was just trying to be helpful – in her strange, maddening way. "I'll just head out to get some real food after you're done with your drink."

Immediately she rose, as if to not be outdone by this strange and new contender in a battle of niceties. "I can drink it in the car."

"Let's stay here. We've got no place to be and don't tell me you want to spend your time back at that madhouse."

"I…" Rachel paused and took a sip of her latte, reeling back as it burned her lip. "I can't say I've too many friends back there, but I had no idea you felt the same."

"It's not a nice place to be right now."

Although he didn't expand on anything, Rachel took a guess on what he meant and believed herself to be fairly accurate. The McKinley High Glee Club, as it existed back at the hotel, wasn't a warm crowd for either of them. Puck was on good terms with Mike and Finn and sometimes Sam—but Sam's his new relationship with Quinn complicated things. He was also on the outs with Santana for dumping her a couple weeks before, and if Santana hated him, so did Brittany and, by extension, Artie. As for Rachel, well, she'd never been the most popular in the club and breaking up with Finn didn't give her much reason to want to stay.

"Right. Then, um, I guess I wouldn't mind if we sat here for a few minutes, since there's—" Rachel was still rambling when Puck pulled out the chair across from her and sat down. "Would you like a sip of my drink?"

He flinched, like he still believed in cooties. "Nah, I'm good…thanks."

"Are you sure? I'm not sick or anything, so you won't catch anything and the drink's quite good if you get over the name. A lot of people are turned off by soy, and there's been some controversy over the supposed health benefits, but—"

"Nah, I'm just not a coffee person."

"Oh."

They sat in silence long enough for Rachel to nearly finish her drink, and then Puck spoke. "Berry?"

"Yes?"

"Sorry."

She immediately began to eye her cup suspiciously. It would be just like him to put something in her drink and then only tell her afterwards. Whether he merely spat in it or did something worse, of course, was merely up to conjecture—unless he was to tell her.

"I didn't mess with your drink," he said, noticing her reaction.

"Oh. Well, then what do you have to be sorry for?"

God, there was a long list, but one in particular he was thinking of—"The slushies. I'm sorry about the slushies."

"I know, you've said that before, when we were…you know."

"I just wanted to say it again."

"Oh, well, in any case, it's fine. Really. I already forgave you…after all, who am I to judge? Maybe if I were liked enough to have as many friends as you do, and the cool thing was to throw slushies at people, I would do it too. I don't know."

"I like you, Berry." There was a bit of awkward silence and then, "I mean, you're okay." It still wasn't something Puck would normally allow himself to say out loud, but it was a heck of a lot closer than I like you, Berry. Where the fuck did that even come from?

Luckily, Rachel did her best not to draw attention to his comment, although she did blush a little bit. "Oh. Um, Noah? Aren't you hungry? You set out this morning for breakfast, and as much as I don't like it, it appears that I am the cause for you still not having had anything to eat."

Thank God for Rachel and her crazy, making life seem just that much more normal. "Right."

And later, after Puck had eaten something he deemed filling and manly, when they got back to the hotel, they parted ways like there was no way in hell they'd ever want to be mistaken for friends. But when Mike asked Puck how exactly he'd survived Rachel and her crazy, Puck just said, "I don't know, man. I'd say I was lucky, but she was kind of all right this morning."

It gave Rachel, who was rounding the corner at the time and happened to have overheard, something to smile about.

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