Happy Hanukkah! Or second day of Hanukkah… I don't know how to greet anyone like this. I'm sorry.

Thanks for all the reviews, you wonderful and beautiful people. Stop being so gorgeous. Stop it. Just no. It's not fair. Like…no. But seriously, I'm so glad to see so many of you haven't quite left the bubble yet. =')

On to the second chapter!


Wednesday, December 21, 2011


It hadn't bothered him much the day before, this whole present-leaving-nonsense. It could've just been some sort of secret-admirer fluke. But when he walked in the next day and saw that damn penlight beaming down again, he started to get some serious creeper vibes. He had some yesterday, but his paranoia got derailed by Berry's big brown eyes saying she didn't have anyone with her for Hanukkah.

But today…

Motherfuckers, today was gonna be different.

He was gonna formulate one helluva plan to figure out who the fuck was doing this 'cause while he totally appreciated getting presents on Hanukkah and having something to actually look forward to at school, he'd rather be given shit face-to-face than face-to-locker. It was a less-risky surprise.

Today wasn't a typical present though. It wasn't in a box, but it still had a bow: a coffee tumbler duct-taped to his locker door with actual, hot coffee in it.

Yesterday, it could've been a bomb.

Today, it could be arsenic.

Tomorrow, it might be something venomous.

Happy Hanukkah.

He glared around the kids walking and talking and being their typical douchebag-ish selves, trying to use his latent raptor-vision to see if anyone was watching him.

"So, is this like a Secret Santa-type deal?" Sam asked, coming up beside him as Puck gently peeled the duct tape off the tumbler.

"More like a Secret Hanukkah…Armadillo?"

Puck paused, turned, and narrowed his eyes at Mike. "What the fuck, dude?"

"That's what Ross dressed up as to get his kid more excited about Hanukkah," Mike tried to explain.

Sam snickered. "That was on Friends last night, right? The Holiday Armadillo."

"No. Just…the both of you, shut up." Puck shook his head and turned back to peeling his coffee off his locker without spilling anything. "Jesus."

He finally got it off, popped the cover, and took a sip. "Holy shit."

"What?! Are you okay?! Don't drink anything!" Sam screeched, diving for the coffee.

Puck held it out of his reach and elbowed Sam in the chest. "You idiot—I ain't keelin' over. This is just some serious brew. Damn."

"What? What does it taste like?" Sam asked.

"Like…chocolate and peppermint," Puck answered, licking his lips. "And, no, you don't get any. Go away." He pulled the penlight off his locker and pulled the door open.

"Come on," Sam whined. "Don't be like that. It's the season of giving, remember?"

"Yeah," Puck agreed with a nod. "I'm giving you a fair warning that if you take my coffee, I'm gonna poke your eyes out and replace 'em with these penlights."

"Good morning, boys," Rachel chirped, appearing from out of nowhere again.

"Morning, Rach," Sam greeted her with a grin.

Mike nodded and tugged on her hair affectionately. "Hey."

She turned her big brown eyes on Puck, who didn't even look her way. "Good morning, Noah."

"'Sup, princess?" he grunted, reaching into his bag to pull out a small green cellophane bag tied with tinsel. He checked if the surprise was still at the bottom before holding it out to her. "Happy Hanukkah."

Blinking in confusion, she accepted the small bag and gingerly opened it as he turned back to his locker.

Sam peered over her shoulder to see. "What's that?"

"It's gelt," she answered. "Chocolate gelt. But…Noah, I'm ve—"

"Vegan," Puck finished, shoving his books in his bag, "I know. That's vegan chocolate. Asked my mom to get some before I came and got you yesterday since she knows this one chick who owns a vegan store near the hospital."

He barely even got out the last syllable of the word before the crazy chick threw her arms around his torso was and squeezed the ever-loving shit out of him. He grimaced and patted her on the back.

"Thank you, Noah," she said earnestly into his shirt.

"Rachel," he said awkwardly, not really like the fact that this just had to be happening in front of Mike and Sam, of all people. "For God's sake, it's just gelt."

"Vegan gelt," she insisted.

Puck sighed and rolled his eyes, smiling. Fuck it. He wrapped his arms around her, hugging her tightly and even lifting her up off the ground a little before setting her back down.

"Awww," Sam and Mike chorused.

Puck shoved Sam's face with one hand and smacked Mike with the other. He motioned to the baggie in Rachel's hand again. "There's something at the bottom that you can't eat though. You might wanna pull it out."

She glanced down at it before shooting him a suspicious look as she opened it and started digging around between the gelt. "What? What is it?" She suddenly stopped and pulled out a silver ring with a small pink rose on it.

Puck picked up his delicious coffee and slammed his locker shut, trying not to be obvious about the fact that he was paying close attention to her expression. It took two seconds for the memory to register, but then she was grinning up at him again.

"Once upon a time, in a faraway land, a young prince lived in a shining castle," she recited softly, shaking her head but still grinning. "Thank you, Noah."

"I don't get it. Is it another Jewish thing?" Sam whispered, leaning close to Mike so as to not break this weird little magic bubble Puck and Rachel were in again.

Mike shook his head with a small smile. "Nah, man. This is a Puckleberry thing."

Puck cleared his throat and held out the coffee to Rachel. "It's too early in the morning for gelt, but, uh, here. You can have some of my coffee."

Sam nearly had a heart attack. "What?! But—"

"But there's totally no creamer in it or anything," Puck interrupted him with a pointed glare. "I'm pretty sure the flavoring's all in the brew."

Rachel's huge-ass grin got even bigger, and she slipped the ring onto her finger before accepting the tumbler and taking a sip. He seized the opportunity and led her toward her first class, away from Ren and Stimpy.

Those two were seriously beginning to squirm their way onto the top of his hit list. Well, his mild-attempted-murder hit list. Not the actual one that included idiots like Azimio and the redheaded asshole with the mullet. On top of that list, Trouty and Chinky were topping his suspect list of people who could be his anonymous creeper. They could just be leaving him these presents to make him feel better after that whole Shelby debacle—they were at his locker the both times he found those presents, after all. Maybe he should've been looking at them instead of trying to see who else was watching him open the presents and shit.

But then he reconsidered it when Rachel handed him back his coffee. Jackie Chang and the Albino-Bieber had zero barista skills to make this kind of brew, and if this was pre-made, his good-coffee-finding-skills were shit. Which they weren't. This was an original, homemade blend; he could tell.

Then, as Rachel continued to jabber on about how good of a movie Ghost Protocol was but how it also didn't do a very good job of paving the way for Jeremy Renner to take over the franchise like with Bourne Legacy, he nearly smacked himself.

She was the one doing it. She was the one leaving him the presents. But why the fuck…?

He was gonna need to find a way to see if she was the one doing this, leaving these presents—receipts, Sue's hidden cameras that actually did record things, eyewitnesses, motive?

Motive.

Oh, hell, that was easy. She wanted another lick of Lolly-Puck.

But that didn't make sense. She and Finn had been dancing around getting back together after that almost-kiss at Nationals in May. He'd been begging and wooing and serenading the shit outta her, but personally, Puck thought none of those were working. The begging somehow wound up with Finn always accidentally-insulting her, the wooing would offend her, and the serenading was kind of always about how Finn couldn't live without her rather than how awesome of a chick she was. There's a difference, you know. It's like "Jesse's Girl" versus "Sweet Caroline."

Y'all honeys would prefer getting some of that "Sweet Caroline," and you know it.

Rachel seemed pretty into it though. But it could just be that she likes the attention not as much the actual content of the attention… Whatever it was, Puck was fairly sure Finchel 2.0 was on the rise. Finn would probably rig some parade of mistletoe by the end of today, which was the—oh, fuck.

Right.

Midterms.

"Noah? Noah, are you even listening to me?"

Puck rubbed his forehead. "Yeah, yeah, I think Simon Pegg is super underrated too, but, baby, I think we got bigger problems than how Cruise and Patton had about twenty-percent chemistry."

She froze right in the middle of the hallway. "What? What is it? Has the Christmas special been offered to Vocal Adrenaline instead?! Those—"

"Okay, calm your shit. No, we still got the special," Puck cut her off before she could get going. "I'm talking about the fact that I've got midterms."

She shot him the most exasperated look. "And let me guess: you didn't study?"

He scowled and rolled his eyes. "You have to ask?"

"Noah! For goodness sake, I thought you wanted to do better this year if only to prove yourself a competent man and therefore a good father!"

"I do, but what in the hell does British Lit have anything to do with being a good father? Am I supposed to use Beouwulf and Macbeth as examples?"

Rachel rolled her eyes and heaved a sigh that should've blown him back into the lockers. "The fact that you actually know those names and know that they're not exactly good father material is promising enough, I suppose. I'll meet you at free period, and I'll help you get some last minute studying in. Your exam is after lunch, right?"

"Yeah."

"Good. We can use the lunch period to study too," she said, clutching her books and gelt baggie tighter as she stomped down the hallway, Puck at her heels.

"Berry—Berry! Wait," he called, running up beside her and shoving aside a few juniors in the process. "Look, there's only so much you can cram into my head, baby."

She paused to study his head for a second before taking off again. "If your head can accommodate your gigantic ego, I'm sure we can shove in a few tidbits about the Lady of Shalott and Hamlet in there too. I'll meet you in the library after second period, okay? Do you remember where the library is?"

"Yeah," Puck answered proudly. "Lauren showed it to me last year, and I totally managed to find eight great make-out spots. Should've found that place years ago!"

She blinked at him a couple of times, like she was seriously wondering how he made it past kindergarten.

"How did you even make it past sixth grade?"

Wow, that was an improvement.

"Just…keep drinking your coffee, Noah. You're gonna need it." Then she walked into her first period, leaving Puck in the middle of the hallway with a half-empty tumbler. She actually drank half his coffee.

As if she didn't have enough energy already.

Crazy girl.


He loved the combo of peppermint and chocolate, don't get him wrong. Loved it ever since he was little and his dad made it for him for the very first time: hot chocolate with a candy cane in it as, like, a stirrer. Not anything original, but the taste was like his tongue's soul mate.

On bad nights, he'd drink that shit like he was drinking the Word of God, and then he'd have no problem going to bed.

Which is why it probably was a bad idea that he had it in his coffee.

It's like his entire fucking being was confused about which one it wanted more: waking up or going to bed. Half of him was about to fall asleep right there on the desk—wipe the books off and just lay the fuck out. The other half was about to start climbing the walls. What was that saying—the mind is willing, but the body is weak? Yeah.

That's how he felt not fifteen minutes into first period. His coffee was all out at that point, and he was two seconds from just dropping his head onto the desk.

Two seconds later, he did.

Five seconds after that, Mr. Welling hollered at him to sit up, and he nearly gave himself whiplash with how quick he sat up. Welling was a buff dude, okay? And if you didn't sit up when he told you to sit up, he'd punch you in the back until your spine was as straight as a rod.

Puck blindly reached for his coffee on impulse, trying to get anything to wake up and hoping there was a last little gulp in there before he completely lost consciousness. So when he put it up to his lips and wound up swallowing a gulp that seared his throat, he lost his shit instead of his consciousness.

"Mr. Puckerman?" Welling called out from the front. "You need help swallowing or something?"

Sorry, y'all, but he just couldn't help himself: "You're the expert, right?"

Welling cocked an eyebrow. "You weren't so bad at it yourself."

"OKAY!" Joe called out awkwardly from the seat in front of Puck. "I'm still confused as to what a medusa oblongata does, Mr. Welling."

Welling shook his head, shot Puck another stern look, and then turned back to the board. "Well, I don't know what the hell a medusa oblongata does either, Mr. Hart. But a medulla oblongata…"

And Puck tuned him out as he studied his now-full new coffee tumbler because what in the fuckering hell? He looked around, trying to see if Rachel had ducked under the desk somewhere and refilled it while his head was on the desk, but it wasn't like she could just run in here and then run out unless she was the Flash or something. Which she definitely wasn't. Sam was at the other end of the classroom and could not make it all the way over without making a scene or getting called out by Welling.

Puck glared at each and every student in that classroom, trying to elicit any sort of guilty or smug reaction from any-fucking-one because SOMEONE WAS SCREWING WITH HIM, AND HE DID NOT APPRECIATE BEING SCREWED.

Unless it was by a hot chick.

Like Rachel Berry.

And then he suddenly had this bizarre and sexy mental image of Rachel dressed in a sexy Santa costume with thigh-high leather boots and a skirt about three fingers lower than her silky green panties, pouring him coffee as she sat perched on the desk in front of him.

Hot damn.

OFF TOPIC. OFF TOPIC.

He glared at the class until the bell rang, and when that happened, he bolted out of his chair and grabbed Sam by the collar.

"Trouty, if you're the one who refilled my coffee to mess with my head, I'm dumping all of this down your underwear—make sure Karofsky's thinking you got a hot ass becomes literal," Puck growled.

"Puck! Chill out! I don't know what you're talking about!" Sam cried, squirming out of Puck's grip only to be grabbed around the neck in a choke-hold. His voice went up two octaves. "Dude!"

"I had about half a sip left in this cup-thing, I put my head down for, like, three seconds, and next thing I know, the tumbler's full," Puck explained as calmly as possible. "Care to explain? This the glory of God or something? Like feeding the five-thousand?"

"I thought y'all didn't acknowledge the New Testament!"

"I still know the story, asshole!"

"I don't know, Puck! I swear! I was clear across the room—I don't know what happened! Maybe you forgot?"

"How could I forget that my cup's full, Sam?!"

"I don't know! It's midterms! We're all getting stressed out!"

Puck squeezed. "I don't get stressed. I have too much sex to get stressed out, dude. That's not it. Something funky's going on."

"What if your Secret Jew-madillo is, like, a magician? What if there's, like, a secret compartment in there that lets out stored coffee once it senses that it's low…?"

Puck paused for a good three seconds before letting Sam go. Poor guy apparently needed all the brain cells he had.

"Go to class," Puck grumbled, nudging him out the door. "Useless."

"Maybe you need to get some more sleep, dude."

"Maybe you need to get the fuck outta my sight, dude."


The next period, Puck kept his eyes wide open and trained directly on the dark green tumbler because, damn it, if this was a holy tumbler, he was gonna make sure of it. So he sat there and stared the shit outta that thing. He took his drinks of course, so it was probably back down to just a quarter left before Brittany made the most random-ass comment he'd ever heard in his life.

"Why does glass shatter if contact lenses are so mushy?"

They were in Economics.

"They're glasses in your eyes, right? So why isn't it that glass is mushy? Or why don't contacts shatter?"

Puck had to physically turn around to see if she was talking to the class or to her cat or her notebook or fucking anything else. But then he remembered what he was doing, and he immediately turned back to his tumbler ONLY TO FUCKING SEE THAT IT WAS BACK TO BEING FULL.

"What the fuckity-fuck?!" he screeched.

"Wow, Puckerman, it's just an innocent question!" Santana barked, throwing her pen at his head from where she sat next to Brittany "She doesn't know what contacts are made of!"

Puck ignored her. "Who refilled my coffee?!"

"What are you talking about, asshole?!"

"My coffee! It was almost empty, and now it's full again!" he cried, waving the tumbler around and actually getting out of his seat.

"Puck, calm down," Mike said, tugging him back down.

"YOU!" Puck shrieked. "You did it, didn't you?!"

Mike held out his arms. "I don't have anything to refill it with, Puck. You need to calm down, dude."

"Mr. Puckerman, do you need some sort of sedative?!" Mrs. O'Toole demanded from the front of the classroom.

"No!" Puck snapped, dropping back down onto his seat, and gripping the tumbler for dear life. "No, for God's sake, I don't need a sedative, I need answers. Jesus Christ!"

"It's midterms, Mrs. O'Foole," Brittany said. "Puck's brain is melting."


"Noah? Noah, are you all right?"

Puck jumped when her hand landed on his shoulder, but he sat back against the chair when she began rubbing his back and shoulders and neck. He'd met Rachel in the library, just like she told him to—hugging the tumbler to his chest the whole time.

"This damn coffee is driving me up the wall, Berry, you don't even fucking understand," he hissed, glaring at some sophomore who walked past them.

That statement was replied with a hand to his forehead. "Noah, are you sure you're feeling okay?"

"I'm okay," he insisted. "It's this godforsaken tumbler that's demon-possessed or something. It keeps refilling itself."

"Noah," she said slowly, worriedly. "Tumblers don't refill itself."

"Yes," he said, his eye twitching slightly. "This one does."

"Okay, Noah," she said finally. "Noah, sweetheart, give me the tumbler."

"Baby, baby, Rachel, honey," Puck said in the same tone. "No. This cup is of the fucking devil."

"Then why are you clutching it like that?" she asked exasperatedly.

"Because Satan's the one filling it up. Every time I take my eyes off it, Beelzebub fills it back up—that devious son of a bitch."

"Okay, Noah. Give me the tumbler. No more coffee for you. Just…give me the tumbler."

"Okay, Rachel. I am not giving you the tumbler. The moment I give this motherfucker to you, it's gonna be full again. I need it to stop being full."

"You need to stop drinking coffee," she commanded, reaching for the tumbler. "When I said 'drink your coffee,' I meant just one serving. How many have you had?"

Puck popped the lid and peered inside. "I don't know. It's refilled itself, like, two times so far."

"Okay, let's not make it a third. I don't think anyone is supposed to have that much caffeine before ten thirty in the morning," she said, trying to pry it from his fingers. "Come on, Noah. We need to study."

He reluctantly released the tumbler, and she set it on the table. Then she pushed his textbook in front of him and opened it to the first chapter. He shot one last glance at the tumbler, anticipating the shitstorm.

And he was right to.

She walked over to one of the bookcases, and he checked out her ass.

The half-empty tumbler filled back up to full.

He showed it to her, spilling some in the process, and when he came back after grabbing a roll of paper towels from the librarian, the spill was cleaned up and the tumbler was full again.

When he completely lost his shit, dumped the contents in the trash, and pitched a mini-fit that had the librarian in a complete meltdown, he turned around to the see the tumbler back on the table, full once again.


He could say that the only good part about that day was that Rachel dragged him all way back to her house where she gave him a full back massage and let him rest his head on her lap as they had a Pirates of the Caribbean marathon since school was official over for winter break.

"So are you going to swear off coffee for now?" she asked, massaging his temple. "I told you it's not good for your nerves especially if you start drinking it at such a young age."

"What do you drink then?" he groused.

"Tea, orange juice, coconut milk—"

"Okay, yeah, yeah, I got it. Lots of alternatives." Puck sighed and shifted so he was looking straight up at her. "I think I preferred the movie ticket, Berry."

Rachel smiled distractedly. "I think your nerves agree."

"Hah!" Puck cried triumphantly. "You admit it! You're my creepy gift-giver-person!"

"Oh, Noah," Rachel chuckled, shaking her head. "I am most certainly not leaving you gifts. I don't have the time to go there at whatever hour to set up that elaborate penlight-spotlight-taped-present-thing. And besides, if I was the one leaving you gifts, I wouldn't be giving you coffee. You know how I feel about your obscene ingestion of that stuff. I don't mind just one cup, but you drink way too much, Noah."

Puck rolled his eyes and groaned. "I know, I know. I'm gonna have some sort of heart problems later on 'cause I drink too much of it."

"You started drinking coffee when you were eleven, Noah. You really need to ease up," she pleaded.

"Calm your shit, Berry. I'm swearing off that crap for a long time," Puck sighed, settling back down on her lap. "My brain's still buzzing."

"Good," Rachel said, running her hands through his 'hawk and massaging the scruff on either side of it. "Now hush. The mythology of Davy Jones is…"

And Puck let her ramble on through the movie, closing his eyes and letting her voice dull into the soft melody he remembered falling asleep to when they were little and she just would not shut up to save her life.

"Noah?"

"Hmm?"

"At what point does lying become a good strategy to achieve something for the greater good?"

"The hell are you talking about this time, Berry? Don't ask me these philosophical questions when my brain still feels like its floating two feet above my head."

"Never mind," she said, dropping the most random kiss on his forehead. "Go to sleep."

And she stroked his head until he conked out.


Legitimately don't know where I went and wound up with this…

Hmmm…

Feedback is loved! =D
Next chapter tomorrow!