This chapter takes place between the episodes "Never Been Kissed," and "The Substitute."

It was an unseasonably warm November day in Lima, Ohio and Rachel Berry had decided to take advantage of it by eating her lunch at McKinley High's outdoor seating area. Apparently, the entire student body had also decided to do the same as the area was packed with students. Searching for someone she knew with whom to sit, Rachel noticed Sam and Quinn at a table together but decided not to join them, as they appeared to be quite cozy at the moment. Looking around, she noticed Puck sitting by himself at a table all the way in the back. He had an open notebook in front of him, but he was staring ahead in the direction of Sam and Quinn with a blank, unreadable expression on his face.

Rachel sighed. Most of the members of the Glee club had taken bets on how Puck would react to the news of Quinn and Sam's new relationship when he came back to school after his stint in juvie. Rachel had refused to participate, of course, but she knew that the majority of the club members were sure he was going to try to beat Sam up, or at least let loose with a punch. Strangely, he hadn't seemed to react at all, at least not that anyone knew. He hadn't shown any hostility towards Sam or Quinn, hadn't thrown a tantrum of any kind, hadn't acknowledged the situation at all. Rachel had heard that he had been seen storming through school a couple of days ago, but no one seemed to know what that was about, and he had seemed fine yesterday when the boys performed their mashup. She was starting to worry that something was boiling under the surface, and it made her very nervous. Sectionals were only a few weeks away, and the Glee club had only just gotten back its twelfth member. The last thing they needed right now was tension within the group.

Determined to head off any trouble before it could start, Rachel walked over to Puck's table.

"Is this seat taken?" she asked, gesturing towards the bench he was sitting on.

"Yes," Puck responded.

"Oh," she looked around. "By whom?"

"Anyone but you."

Rachel huffed, and sat down, placing her lunch on the table in front of her. Puck rolled his eyes, but then grabbed a handful of her potato chips.

"Where's Finn?"

"Talking to Coach Bieste about some football strategy…thing. I don't really understand the details, to be perfectly honest."

Puck snorted and turned away from her, pulling his notebook towards himself and ignoring her as she started on her lunch. Whatever was written on it couldn't have been very interesting because within moments, Rachel noticed him looking up at Sam and Quinn again. She took a deep breath.

"It bothers you, doesn't it?"

"That you're sitting next to me? Yes."

Rachel rolled her eyes. "Sam and Quinn."

Puck shook his head and went back to ignoring her, taking out a pencil and writing something in his notebook. Rachel glanced over and…was he doing…was that geometry homework?

"It's good to see you taking an interest in your studies, Noah."

Puck banged his pencil down and shook his head in exasperation. "Jesus, Rachel, what do you want?"

"There's no need to be so rude. I'm just trying to have a friendly conversation."

Puck tried again. "What. Do. You. Want?"

Rachel took a deep breath and decided to be honest with him. "I want to make sure that you're not going to do anything." Puck just stared at her, so she pressed on. "About Quinn and Sam. I know you must be unhappy about it, and we were all a bit surprised, but Sam is a very sweet boy and I think Quinn needs something a little bit less…complicated right now. I hope you can accept that and be happy for her."

Puck shook his head at her before letting out a little laugh. "Rachel?"

"Yes?"

He raised his eyebrows and casually said, "fuck off."

Rachel gaped at him. "There's really no need for that. I'm just trying to show some concern for you."

Puck scoffed. "Bullshit. You don't care about me. You're just worried I'm gonna beat the shit out of Sam and we'll end up down a member for Sectionals. Again."

Rachel held her chin up. "As Captain of the Glee Club it's my responsibility to make sure that everyone – "

"I'm not going to do anything. Ok? So you can go now." He leaned his head forward and waved mockingly at her. "Bye bye."

Rachel scowled at him. "You're a jerk."

"And you like to stick your nose in where it doesn't belong."

Rachel sighed. "That may be true, but I do think you should take what I said to heart."

Puck leaned towards her and quietly asked, "You think I need you to tell me that she deserves better than me? I know that. You know that." Puck gestured to the other students around them. "Everyone in William McKinley Fucking High School knows that. I get it. I'm a fuck up and a delinquent and no girl with half a brain would go for a guy like me."

Rachel stared at him. "That's not…I didn't… Noah. I simply meant that you and Quinn have a complicated history that might make a relationship difficult. Sam can help her move on after a very hard year. You could try doing the same. There are very many nice girls at McKinley you could try to get to know."

Puck laughed. "Are you serious? You want to set me loose to defile some innocent girl?"

"Must you always be so crass? What about actually finding a nice girl to date?"

"Girls don't date me, Rachel. That's not what I do."

Rachel scoffed. "That's ridiculous. I dated you."

Puck held up a finger, "You used me to make Finn jealous," he said pointedly.

Rachel blushed and looked away. "You were using me too."

"That's not the point. The point is, you may have liked making out with me," Puck smirked as Rachel blushed again, "yeah, you know you did – but when it came to a real boyfriend, you wanted him, not me. Just like Quinn."

Rachel swallowed. She didn't understand how this conversation had ended up here. Grasping, she said, "You dated Santana as well. And while your relationship didn't work out, she's still quite possessive of you."

"She's possessive of my dick."

"Noah!" she hissed. "Listen to me –"

"No, you listen to me you nosy little dwarf." He was so close now Rachel could practically feel his breath on her face, but he spoke without anger or heat. "This is how it works: If Quinn wants to make googly eyes at Sam, that's fine with me because I don't do relationships. Santana comes to me or lets me come to her when she remembers that she also likes dick, but she didn't want me for a boyfriend. And that's fine too. I'm not the boyfriend. I'm the guy they cheat on their husbands or their boyfriends with. I'm the dirty little secret, and I'm good for one thing – fucking them till their eyes roll up in their heads." Rachel's eyes widened. "But they don't leave their boyfriends for me and you know what? That's fine. I get all of the perks, and none of the drawbacks." He smirked and sat back, looking at her triumphantly for a moment before returning to his notebook.

Rachel sat there, stunned. For one thing, she didn't think she'd ever heard him use that many words at one time. For another, she couldn't believe the matter-of-fact way in which he'd said it. She didn't buy for one second that he was happy being nothing more than the boy on the side. They hadn't gotten to know each other that well during their brief relationship the year before, but, whatever his sexual appetites, if there was one thing she knew about him it was that his feelings for Quinn had been genuine. She had only ever been disgusted by the thought of his and Quinn's cheating on Finn, but for the first time she wondered if it had hurt him very badly when Quinn had regretted her night with him. If Rachel was perfectly honest with herself, she had to admit that she'd never really given Puck a tremendous amount of thought. She had gone from hating him, to being attracted to him, to accepting him as a valued teammate who liked to needle her with disgusting comments. But he was such a…such a character, with his silly Mohawk and his "badass" persona, that she never thought to take him that seriously. Now Rachel found herself sitting at a lunch table staring at Noah Puckerman and wondering if he had ever been loved.

And for some reason that sad, horrible thought made her irrationally furious. Furious with him. He had asked her, when she'd broken up with him, why girls didn't like him, and she'd told him it was because he was kind of a jerk. And he was a jerk. He was a jerk, and a bully, and a delinquent who stole ATMs, slept with married women, and got his best friend's girlfriend pregnant. He pushed people away with every action, destroyed his friendships, and sabotaged his relationships. This boy – and he was just a boy. Underneath the haircut and posturing and talk of "being a man," he was just a boy, just a child who had been abandoned by his father, and who had already – at such a young age – already fathered a child of his own and been forced to give her up. She wanted to tell him that she saw right through him, wanted to scream, to cry, to hug him, to pound his chest with her fists.

And then it hit her. "You joined Glee."

He gave her a dumbfounded look. "What?"

"No one was ever really sure why. Maybe for Quinn, and the baby." She noticed him flinch, but she pressed on. "But you joined Glee, and you stayed in Glee, even after Quinn, even after you got slushied and lost your popularity, even after you came back from juvie and you looked so different, so mean, so much like the old Puck that when Artie and I saw you in the parking lot that morning we were sure you were quitting Glee and going back to your old ways. I honestly thought I'd turn a corner and find you throwing a slushie in my face. But there you were, at the morning meeting, and you were even more obnoxious and disgusting than usual, but you were there. And you know why?"

"Chicks dig singers?"

"Yes," she agreed, and she couldn't help but smile a bit. "And you've certainly used that fact to your advantage multiple times. But that's not all. It's more than that. You're there for the same reason Santana is, despite her endless supply of rude comments."

Puck crossed his arms and looked at her expectantly.

"You love Glee. It's the best part of your day," she said with satisfaction.

Puck snorted. "You're crazy."

Rachel shrugged.

"Whatever. What does this have to do with anything?"

"You're very talented, and you enjoy performing. But if that was all you wanted to do, you could do it on your own, or start a band. You like performing with us. You like being on our team. You like knowing that the people in the choir room accept you, with or without your Mohawk." She jutted her head to another table where Karofsky and Azimio were sitting with a number of other jocks, messing around. "You still play football, but you're not theirs anymore. You're ours."

Puck stared at her like she had grown two heads. "You have lost your damn mind. What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Rachel got up and started collecting her things. "It means, Noah Puckerman, that there's hope for you yet."

As she walked away, she heard him yelling behind her, "You're a lunatic, Berry!"

She spun on her heel and gave him a bright smile. "I'll see you in rehearsal, Noah," she said, before spinning around again and walking away.