Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 47th cycle. Now cycle 48!

Cycle 48/Day 1000 special: So, yes, in this cycle, a milestone I had to do something special for.
In this cycle I'm passing my 1000th consecutive day of gleekathon! So for this, the cycle will feature:
* 21-day/chapter story for the Sunshine Girls series (This Little Light of Mine)
* 14-day/chapter story special for day 1000 (Let Me Tell You A Story)
* One-shot installments from 12 series + 2 non-series
* And for this cycle and this cycle alone (I swear), 7 'triple shift' days, with 3 chapters/stories going up in the day!

This is a double shift day. There will be one more upload today: This Little Light of Mine, chapter 21.

"Roll On, White Chocolate"
Puck & Sam

(Day seven of birthday week for the one and only, the fabulous, the exquisite, yes, mag721! :D)

He wasn't entirely sure how this had happened. It was one thing that he had found out. The picture had been taken down almost as fast as it had gone up, but it so happened that he had seen it before that happened. His head had kind of exploded at the elements involved, but it didn't explain what possessed him to get in his car and put in the four hour drive to Kentucky and the doors to the club.

The guy at the door had just sort of given him a look and waved him in, which caught him off guard at first, until he realized… the guy thought he was there to… perform. At this point he didn't need to stop and contest this with him – he had gotten in and that was what he had needed.

His apparently blatant 'I work here' look continued to turn heads as he made his way into the club proper. The women flocked to him like it was feeding time and he had all the grain. Most times he might have been all over that, but this wasn't most times, and to be honest, that many of them pawing at him at once, some of them drunk or on their way to drunk, even he couldn't get on board. He barely managed to pry himself away with no clothes ripped off him, though he'd swear he'd find the odd dollar bill here and there for a week after.

He'd found a table as not too in the open as he could find, hiding behind a menu in case any women came at him again, or some manager or another tried to shove him in spanx and toss him on stage… He waited, unsure what he would find.

His entrance had not gone unnoticed. Word had gotten around backstage of 'some dude with a mohawk riling up the patrons.' Sam had allowed himself all of five seconds to delude himself into thinking it wouldn't be him, but then he had gone to peek from the side, and finally he saw him. He was already in costume, they were going on in five minutes, so he wasn't looking to go out there. He grabbed one of the waiters on the fly to make him look over. When Puck's face popped up from behind the menu, Sam sighed and signalled for him to come backstage. This looked to be the last thing Puck wanted to do, but Sam continued to insist until his former classmate got up, ducked his head, and slipped through until he could get behind the curtain.

"What are you doing here?" Sam muttered.

"What… I…" Puck had looked up and, seeing how Sam was dressed, he couldn't help his first reaction being a chuckle. "Dude, what the hell…"

"Who else knows I work here?" Sam ignored him, but Puck was still laughing, so he smacked him. "Hey!"

"Sorry, sorry, but I mean come on, you expect me to see that and keep a straight face?" Sam frowned. "Alright, I'm done," Puck held up his hands.

"Did you tell anyone?"

"Did I tell anyone I was driving four hours to see a dude at a strip club?" Puck took the long way to say 'no.' "By the way, I don't know if I should brag or run, your guy at the door thought I worked here, too."

"How'd you find me?" Sam asked.

"Someone took a picture, I happened to see it," Puck shrugged. Sam closed his eyes. He had caught it in time for no one to see it, he'd hoped, and now he had his answer.

"So it's just you? You really didn't tell…"

"I swear, alright? Say what you want about me, I wouldn't lie about that," he promised. "Especially with the look on your face right now." Sam let out a breath, but he nodded; he believed him. "Alright, now I'm going to get out of here, because this place makes me nervous. There's a coffee shop up the street, what time do you get off?"

Sam had been kind enough to let him exit from the back instead of walking back through. He had time to kill, so he sat in the coffee shop and tried reading newspapers and magazines lying around, though that got old fast. Then he would stack sugar packs in some sort of fort structure. The girl at the counter gave him dirty looks, especially when he'd take the neighboring tables' sugar supplies to expand his construction.

Finally though Sam had shown up, dropping in across from him and staring at the sugar packs. "You should be an architect," he joked.

"Because I'm the guy you want in charge of designing your house," Puck shrugged, nudging and toppling the packs into a pile at the end of the table. The girl had looked like she wanted to kill him, but he didn't care. There was an awkward pause. "So, stripper…"

"Not proud of it, okay? But it gives me money my family needs."

"Do what I do, get pool cleaning," Puck suggested.

"It's a little cold for that right now," Sam pointed out.

"Fine, indoor pools, whatever. You don't need to show as much, and instead of a mob of them trying to get a hold of you, you just got the one to worry about, up to you to decide how you handle it…" he didn't go into specifics.

"I don't know," Sam shrugged, still not able to get over the fact Puck was there. This life in Kentucky, his job at not-Dairy-Queen, it was completely separate from his life back in Lima, with him and everyone else in Glee Club, and… "How's everyone? Artie, Kurt, Santana, Mercedes…" his 'random' voice tripped on the last one no matter how hard he tried not to.

"They're good," Puck nodded. "We got Sectionals soon, so everyone's kind of nuts, but other than that…"

"Sectionals…" Sam breathed. That seemed like so long ago, all of it, Glee Club… "Well, good luck with that."

"Look, just because you're out here doesn't mean we can't talk. We were friends, right?"

"Right," Sam looked to him.

"And if a friend needs help…"

"I don't want a hand out," Sam had to mention.

"I get that," Puck promised. "But if there's anything else…"

"Yeah, thanks… Really, thank you," Sam replied honestly. After a moment, Puck had to ask.

"White Chocolate?" Sam chuckled.

"I didn't pick it."

They had parted ways there, Sam heading home while Puck had a long drive ahead to take him back to Lima. He had to respect Sam for his dedication to his family. Puck got that, and just as much he didn't look at the job he'd taken in order to support them as being anything but what it was, the means to an end. Still if he could find a way to get him out of there, he'd get it to him.

THE END

A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.
In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are
always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!