The halls of McKinley were the second to last place that Puck wanted to be. His only saving grace was that school was better than his past two weeks on the streets of Columbus.

He walked towards the choir room, hoping there wouldn't be too many questions from the glee kids. The only thing he was sure of was that they all thought he was in juvie over the past couple weeks. When he had left, he wasn't sure the lie would stick, but luckily, everyone already expected Puck to end up in juvie at some point in his life.

Two weeks before

"Noah, honey, can you come downstairs?" Mrs. Puckerman's voice was light but commanding, making Puck wonder what he'd done this time.

As he paused his game of Call of Duty and got off his bed, he sighed, shouting back to her, "Coming."

He walked down the stairs towards the living room and stopped in disbelief at the man in front of him.

"Dad?"

"Hey son. Long time no see," his father said with a laugh.

Puck shook his head and then looked from his father to his mother and back again. "Why are you here?"

"Come on, don't be rude. I'm here to see my family."

"We haven't been your family for like 6 years… and the years before that are debatable too." Puck tried to push back the memories that were rushing to the front of his thoughts.

"Noah," his mother interrupted. "I ran into your father at Temple. He's better now. We need to give him a second chance."

Puck could see he wasn't going to win this. If his dad wanted to suddenly come back, there was no way Puck could keep him away. "Whatever. I'm going out."

Not leaving time for a reply, Puck took his coat and keys from the chair by the door and walked out to his truck. He would need massive amounts of alcohol to fight off the memories tonight.

After stopping at a liquor store and getting a bottle of Jack Daniels with his fake ID, Puck drove to the high school. He hated school, but he did love sitting on the football field. Back when he and Finn were close, the two of them would sometimes sit on the empty field and drink a few beers, talking about girls, football, and cars.

Now he was alone. He didn't have a best friend and he didn't have anyone to care that his dad was back and Puck wouldn't be okay. He sat by the goalpost and started drinking, hoping that his dad would leave sometime soon before he could cause any real damage.

Halfway through the bottle of whiskey, Puck began to see the flaw in his current plan. The alcohol was only making him remember more vividly the last time his father was around.

"You stupid fucking kid, you think you're actually going to accomplish anything?" Puck's dad shouted at a 9 year old Noah.

With a swift kick to Noah's ribcage, his father continued shouting. "You think we can pay for that window you broke?"

Noah could feel blood trickling down his forehead from when his dad slammed his head into the kitchen table. "I guess you just don't need to eat for a while. That will save us some money…"

Puck felt warm tears falling down his cheeks as he took another drink. He'd never told anyone how bad it was when his dad was around. Finn probably suspected something, but they never spoke of the random bruises Puck would try to hide or how hungry Puck always was. Finn just always made sure to have extra food for Puck to take home with him.

He missed Finn. He saw the kid every day, but he missed what they had. He knew Finn would be the only one who could help him deal with this right now, but that was out of the question.

He could feel himself slowly drifting off and knew it wasn't smart to fall asleep there, especially with alcohol on school grounds. He slowly got up put the cap back on his whiskey before walking back to his car. He stumbled slightly but grabbed the door handle and yanked the car door open. He put the alcohol under the passenger seat, got in, and began to drive home.

It wasn't the smartest decision, driving drunk, but he didn't care. If he died, it would just save his dad the trouble of killing him. Surprisingly though, Puck got home safe, parking crookedly in his driveway. He turned off the car and sat quietly for a minute, hoping everyone was asleep.

"Welcome home Noah," was the first thing Puck heard as he walked in the door.

A shiver made its way down his spine at the sound of his father's voice. He knew that tone. It was the, I'm-only-going-to-be-calm-for-about-two-minutes voice that he had before a beating would ensue.

"Come sit down with your dad."

"I'm tired. Gonna go to bed." Puck slurred.

After taking a step towards the stairs, Puck felt a hand on his shoulder. "Let's not start off like this son. Time to sit with me for a moment."

Puck sighed. Thankful that he was drunk, maybe things wouldn't hurt so much. He let his father lead him into the living room. Stumbling a bit, he sat on the couch.

"God damn it Noah, are you fucking drunk?" His father's voice was growing angry. He hadn't noticed at first, but it was obvious after a minute in Puck's presence that the teen was wasted.

"Thought you'd notice sooner, seeing as you know drunk so well," Puck remarked snidely.

With that, Puck felt a familiar sting of a hard slap across his face. "Why do you make me do this?" His father asked, not expecting a reply.

"Well…" Puck started, "I figure the sooner we get this out of the way, the sooner you can leave again."

His father sighed and picked up his own half-finished beer. He had been drinking that night too, but Puck was far drunker than his father for once. "There's the attitude your mother was complaining about."

He finished his beer and broke the bottle against Puck's head. Puck winced and looked up at his father, mentally sinking back to a younger version of himself.

"If you hate us so much, why'd you come back?" Puck asked, trying to keep up his end of the fight.

"Your sister needs a father around," his father answered as he grabbed another beer from the 6-pack on the coffee table.

"So she didn't need one before?" Puck knew his dad's answer was bullshit.

"Fine, I needed a place to crash. Doesn't hurt that there's some free sex in it for me." His father smirked and took a swig of beer.

Puck could feel the anger pulsating through him. He wasn't sure if it was because he was drunk or because he was older and angrier than he was when he was 10, but he currently found himself rising from the couch and landing a well-placed punch to his father's stomach.

Coughing slightly, his father laughed. "So you think you can take me now?"

The older man placed his beer on the table and smirked again.

Before Puck could bring up his arm in defense, his father had punched him in the face. As Puck struggled to stay on his feet, his father shoved him to the ground, Puck's head to hit the corner of the coffee table on the way down.

"Oh, now look at that, you've spilled my beer."

Puck could feel his head being surrounded in a warm sticky substance and wasn't sure if it was the spilled beer or his own blood. His head was pounding and he was getting slightly dizzy.

He couldn't focus on that though because his father had begun to kick Puck in the stomach. After a dozen or so kicks, Puck tried to decide if breathing through the pain was actually worth it or not.

Finally his father stopped and opted for another beer instead of another kick.

"Right, well, make sure this is all cleaned up before your mother wakes up. And don't even think about fucking telling her. I'd kill all of you guys before anyone showed up to help."

He finished his beer and threw the bottle at Puck as he lay on the floor. The bottle shattered on the floor next to Puck's face, letting a couple shards fly into his face. His father then turned off the television and went to bed.

Puck wasn't exactly sure of how much pain he was in. He was still slightly drunk and he knew that if he could feel as much pain as he was now, it was probably going to be 10x worse when he was sober. Knowing he couldn't allow himself to stay on the living room floor, he slowly began to sit up. He fought the pain with every breath he took and tried to focus his vision. Once he was in the sitting position, he looked at the ground where he had been laying.

The usual beige carpet now sported a circular crimson stain that he knew would be impossible to clean up right now. Off to the side of that was a light brown stain of beer, surrounded by broken glass. He picked up the bigger pieces and placed them in the grocery bag sitting on the couch that had once held the 6-pack his father had consumed. Once the glass was off the ground, Puck stared at the floor, thinking of how to make this mess unnoticeable. He wished he didn't have to worry about it, wished he could leave it and let his mom find it and kick his dad out. But he knew if his dad saw that the mess wasn't cleaned up, he would receive yet another beating.

He looked up at the clock on the wall and saw it was nearing 2 AM. He then stared at the floor again, this time noticing the rug that was under the coffee table. It took him another 10 minutes to work through the pain, but he moved the rug so that it covered the stains on the carpet. Once nothing looked out of the ordinary, Puck slowly walked to his room, noticing that he couldn't stand up straight without wanting to throw up.

Once he reached his room he grabbed the trash can by his desk and vomited all the alcohol in his system. If he hadn't been so drunk and his vision hadn't been so blurry from the pain, he would have noticed the blood that he vomited up as well.

Instead, he finished with a dry heave and then collapsed on his bed, glad that it wasn't Monday yet.