Warning: Discussion and aftermath of nonconsenting sex. Please do not read if you are under 18 or easily triggered.

Author note: I swear there is an end in sight to this! This is clearly a very long work and please feel free to message me with questions about its direction, I do have a definite ending in mind.

Puck did not handle the separation from Santana well.

The fact that they were making him "work" was more a tactic of a showing of control of him, of both of them, on their part than any actual expectation from them that he would be able to efficiently do or concentrate on any task they might give him. By forcing Puck to come out with them to escort girls, they were proving a point and teaching a lesson more so than actually putting him to work, and he knew with every passing second exactly what they were trying to accomplish. They were punishing him, punishing him and Santana both, but whatever they did to him to try to make him cooperate, it would be nothing compared to what they did to Santana.

Even as they forced him down the hallway, away from the basement door, even when he knew that he was nowhere within earshot to be able to genuinely hear her, Santana's screams were still ringing in Puck's ears. It seemed the only sound in all the world that was anywhere within his range of hearing, the only thing he could focus on or react to, and it left him raw from the inside out, his chest aching with genuine physical pain. Although he knew it was more than hopeless, he continued to struggle against the men dragging him forward, still fighting to get free of them, to be able to force his way back to Santana, but they didn't so much as falter in their progress forward with him, nor was he able to very effectively block himself from the blows they dealt him to keep him under control. Although he felt very little of them in the moment that they happened, by the time they had gotten him to the first girl's bedroom and almost threw him through the door, Puck was feeling the accumulation of hits all at once and nearly fell to the floor, his legs suddenly aching and weak beneath him.

He was clearly not a physically imposing presence for the girls that they chose to take out for the night. The men made no commentary to the girls about how or why Puck was bruised and bleeding, barely standing upright without their grips even if he hadn't also been of a mind to escape if possible. There was no need for explanations for the mere sight of him to be an effective deterrent for anything that any of the girls might have chosen to try against them. Perhaps this was the intention; a lesson for the girls as much as for Puck, a scare tactic stronger than simply Puck's physical presence had been before. Because if a guy as big as he was could be beaten by people who were, from the girls' perspective, on the same side against her, then what more might could be done to her, should she step a toe out of line?

There hadn't been too many more physical assaults on him in front of the girls. There was no need for it. By the time they collected the first girl and escorted her to her job for the night, Puck had found himself physically and emotionally drained. He knew there was no further use in protest; it could very well result in the girl or future girls being harmed as well as him, to further up the stakes of his "lesson." It could mean worse for Santana, and as it was, he knew it was already too late to stop Remington's assault on her. There was nothing he could do but suffer through it, knowing that Santana was suffering even more, and hope against all hope that after it was all finally over, he would be allowed then to return to her.

Puck was pretty sure that it wasn't his imagination that it took longer this time for him to go through his "route" with the girls than it had the last time. whether this was because they were taking the girls to more appointments or allowing them to last longer, he didn't know, but it seemed endless to him, like every second passing was never going to come to an end. As the night dragged on, Puck could feel the injuries dealt to him settling in more and more thoroughly, causing pain with even small movements, but he ignored it all, unable to focus or care.

It wasn't until the men dragged him into the kitchen area of one client's home, disregarding the fact that they usually waited outside the door rather than coming inside, and dug through his refrigerator, removing what alcohol they found and beginning to pass it among themselves, that Puck for the first time focused on something, anything other than Santana and the terrible situation they had found themselves in- no, the situation he had put them in. As they passed the bottles around, knocking back a case between them easily, Puck had found himself staring, not wanting to ask, but almost desperate to be offered. It seemed an incredibly long time since he had drank alcohol, though in all actuality, it had probably been only about a week ago, during the time of Finn's memorial in Lima. How could that have been such a short time ago, when it seemed more than a lifetime? How could it have been that such a short time ago, his best friend's death seemed the worst thing that could ever happen to him, the worst he could ever experience- how was it that he had so seldom thought of him in the week that had passed, that there could be even more terrible things to experience that would drive even grief straight out of his thoughts?

Between them the men must have seen him staring at the alcohol assortment they had spread over the counter, because they snickered and held one up tantalizingly, asking him if he wanted it. Puck had tried to play cool, but the next thing he knew, he was at least four or five drinks down and definitely feeling the effects. After having had as little consistent food as he had for as long as he had, and with his recent neglect, due to the lack of Santana's reminders, to stay fully hydrated, he was considerably more intoxicated from his amount than he would have been under normal circumstances.

By the time the men had wrapped up for the night, Puck had managed to wrangle another beer out of them at the last stop as well, and he was feeling absolutely no physical pain anymore even as they continued to grip him harder than necessary and handle him with unneeded roughness to move him along. As they finally deposited him back at the basement stairs, nearly shoving him through the door before locking it behind them, one of them called out a sneering remark to him that Puck didn't register or remember later. It was much more slowly than usual that he navigated the stairs in the semi darkness, holding the railing the whole way. Head spinning, he concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, not even thinking to look for or call out to Santana until he had reached the stairway's bottom and he could clearly see her in front of him.

Santana was lying on the bed, her back turned to Puck, curled into a loose ball. Although she surely must have heard Puck approaching, as slow and heavy as his footsteps had been, she didn't turn her head or call out. Perhaps she thought it was Remington returning, or perhaps she was simply too emotionally spent to care one way or the other. She lay there, her back visibly moving with each shallow exhalation, and Puck could see looking at her that she was clad only in her shirt and underwear, her pants and bra discarded on the floor. It was as though she had reached blindly for the easiest clothing to put back on and given up dressing herself more thoroughly, simply wanting something to cover herself with partially again. The sheet was only partly wound around her, covering only her legs and hips, and when Puck staggered a few more steps towards her, finally calling out her name in a hoarse croak, Santana still didn't turn her head.

When he called for her again, stumbling towards her and having to catch himself on the headboard of the bed, Santana continued to ignore him, though she surely recognized his voice by then.

Puck leaned over her, hearing his own breath rasping in cacophony with hers, but he could not see her face. She was still keeping herself turned away from him as much as possible, hiding herself from his view, and he reached for her thoughtlessly, taking hold of her shoulder and attempting to roll her back towards him where he could more easily see her. Santana made a noise almost like a hiss, reaching up with the same arm he had touched and pushing out at him, but the gesture was weak and ineffective, and Puck easily managed to turn her body to face him. As soon as he could see her, though admittedly through faintly blurred vision, he wished he had left her be, as she had obviously wanted, because looking at Santana then made his stomach lurch, and not simply due to his overindulgence of alcohol.

"Shit," he breathed, swallowing noisily, and he felt his mouth go dry. "What the fuck happened…"

"What the fuck does it look like happened?" Santana shot back, her voice raw and hoarse. She sounded as if it was painful to even talk, as though she had screamed so much she had lost her voice, and even as the thought occurred to Puck, he realized with slow horror churning his guts that this was probably true. "Do the fucking math, Puck, I know you're not the brightest bulb in the hardware store, but even you can work this equation. What the fuck do you think happened?"

He could see it, of course, and she was right, it wasn't a difficult deduction to make. But it was one that Puck didn't want to think about, a drawing of conclusions that he didn't want to so much as cross his mind. So he stood there, swaying slightly, his hand still gripping the headboard of the bed as he partly leaned over Santana, his other hand just barely touching her shoulder, and blinked down at her, a muscle flexing in his jaw as his eyes unwillingly took in the damage wreaked upon her.

He had not looked into a mirror since having been forced out of the basement, but he was sure he couldn't look very good himself. He had, upon seeing Santana, completely managed to block out the pain his own injuries caused him with every small movement, but he knew vaguely that when she looked at him through her slitted eyes, she must be seeing cuts and contusions, drying blood and darkened bruises, that made it obvious that he had been beaten. She showed no reaction to observing this in him, however, as she might have before, and he couldn't say, given the extent of her own appearance, that he could blame her for it.

Her lip was cut, swollen, dark blood drying in its split flesh, and there was blood around her chin as well. Her eye was bruising, the eyebrow split and containing flecks of drying blood as well, and her cheekbone also seemed to be in the process of bruising. Although she was wearing a shirt, Puck could see marks on her throat and upper chest- hickeys, and what looked like a possible bite mark as well, right above her left breast. Dark bruises in the shape of rough male fingers were clearly displayed on her arms, and as Puck's eyes continued to drift over her, taking all this in, Santana made only minimal effort to cover herself, tugging at the sheet, but not with enough strength to actually yank it entirely over herself.

Puck sucked in his breath, a strangled noise emerging from his throat. On impulse he reached out to get a better grip on her, intending to pull her up to a sitting position, then to her feet, wanting to take her into his arms and comfort her, to try to soothe the angry colors of her skin, to somehow attempt with gentler touch to take away or make up for the abuse it had endured. But Santana cried out, pulling away, and this time her shove at him was harder, more insistent.

"Don't touch me, leave me the fuck alone!"

"What…what did they do?" Puck muttered, his hands still half extended towards her, hanging awkwardly in the air before he let them drift slowly back down to his sides. Even though he could clearly see for himself, without it being said aloud, without him being forced to hear it and confront its reality in this way, he could still manage to partly keep himself in the dark, to hold out a semblance of hope that it wasn't as it appeared. "What happened, what the hell…"

"What the fuck do you think happened, Puckerman?!" Santana almost spat, her eyes so dark they appeared black, with almost no different between iris and pupil. She sat up then, her back ramrod straight and stiff as she glared at him, head tilted forward towards him in an aggressive fashion even as her chin dropped nearly to touch her chest. "Open your fucking eyes and take a wild guess here, or is your vision too blurred to be able to make out anything but your own dying brain cells? Yeah, Puck, I can see that you're fucking drunk. I don't know if you think you're smooth and clever and getting one over on me, but I recognize someone who's plastered and you're breathing your fucking dragon breath all over me and it's going to make me puke if your eyes rolling around your head like a seizure patient or your sweaty man paws touching up on me doesn't first. I don't know if you can put two and two together since that involves math and math involves thinking and planning skills beyond that of a first grader which you clearly don't possess, but here's how it is. While you were out there partying it up with your new pals Lurch, Frankenstein, and Steroids, drinking yourself into a stupor even greater than your average daily experience, probably fucking any girl with tits you happened to be terrifying as part of your fucking JOB description, while you were out there just having yourself a ballbuster of a time, I was in here getting used as a punching bag and a blow up doll. While you were out fucking around, I was the one being literally fucked around. Can you add up the fucking equation now, Puckerman, or do I have to get even more explicit with the directions? Do you fucking get it now?"

Puck flinched, turning not only his head, but his full body away from her. He didn't want to look at her anymore, didn't want to listen to her or hear even one word of what she had to say. When she made reference to being "fucked around," he felt a shaking start up at his shoulders and spread down his arms, through his torso, and down his legs until he had to lean against the bed for support. He shook his head, wanting to deny what he was hearing, to keep himself from understanding it, wanting to simply block her words and all the evidence supporting them from his awareness. But even with his face turned from Santana he could still picture her in his mind, even as his pulse pounded at his temples, somewhat distracting from her voice, she was speaking loudly and intently enough that he couldn't entirely block her out. Continuing to shake his head, Puck heard a noise escape his throat, an odd strangled cry that sounded something like both a growl and a sob. He didn't respond to her verbally, couldn't have found the words to do it with. Santana was asking him angrily if he wanted more details, but Puck couldn't even handle the few details he could pick up on just from having looked at her, let alone any additional ones she might inform him of to round out the hazy but still too clear picture forming in his mind.

"Why are you shaking your head?" Santana asked him, her tone harsh, aggressive. It sounded like she was leaning closer to him, trying to force him to hear her, or maybe to look at her while she was talking to him, her voice rising as she went on. "You don't want to know, Puck? Is it too much for you to hear, or too much to look at me and see? I'm the one they did it to, Puck, and you don't even want to know about it, that's too much for YOU?! They raped me, Puck, they fucking raped me, that's what happened and you can't deny it or make it go away by standing there shaking your damn head like a fucking bobblehead dog!"

Even though Santana had commanded him not to continue doing so, Puck kept shaking his head, harder and harder, jaw clinched, eyes almost shut, as though if he simply continued to nonverbally deny, he could somehow undo everything he was hearing, make it all unreal and untrue. His head pounded painfully with this gesture, and his stomach churned, his vision continuing to blur frequently as he kept trying to force back the heavy, hot weight pressing harder and harder against his chest, at the back of his eyes, as though a force stronger than he was able to contain was trying to erupt from beneath his skin. Puck's entire body was shaking now even as he continued to shake his head, barely keeping himself upright, and he did not see Santana reach out to grab him, long finger nails digging into his bicep as she shook him as forcefully as she was able.

"Aren't you going to fucking say something, Puckerman?! Do you even give a shit, did you hear a word I said, or are you so drunk off your ass that all you can hear is the alcohol sloshing around in your head?" She shook him again, her voice rising almost to a scream as she went on. "How the hell can you go out and get drunk when they're doing this to me?! How the hell can you go out and just drink yourself into even more of a stupor than your fucking natural state of being, how can you make yourself that much weaker when they can already beat the shit out of you when you're sober? How can you go out and just have a blast drinking with the fucking enemy, literally the FUCKING ENEMY, when they're in here doing this to me? You asshole, how the hell can you go get DRUNK!?"

She hit him with her fist in the bicep this time, hard enough that it looked as though she would have hurt her wrist with its impact more than she actually hurt him. Puck for his part didn't even feel it. He blinked at her, trying to process what she was saying, to follow along with the speed, volume, and intensity of her words and finding difficulty. He swallowed, opening his mouth in an effort to try to find some sort of reply to give back to her, but the only response that came to his mind was "stop," a directive that Santana seemed to have absolutely no intention of heeding.

Throat choking, his eyes hot and suddenly moist with what Puck only vaguely knew to be continued unshed tears, he shook his head at her again, which only further provoked Santana's rage.

"Don't keep shaking your head at me, don't you even try to fucking deny it, I know you're fucking drunk! I can smell you from the staircase and you can't even look at me without your eyes crossing back and forth and rolling back into your skull! How can you do this, Noah Puckerman, how can you go out and just have yourself a good time, how can you just forget all about me in here and just go around partying it up, probably fucking whatever girl they throw your way-"

"I wasn't," Puck managed finally, weakly shoving at Santana's hands in an effort to make her loosen or let go of her hold on him, but she hung on, if anything only tightening up her grip that much more.

"Like hell you weren't, don't even try to lie to me. Don't tell me you weren't out there throwing them back, slapping each other on the ass like a bunch of overgrown frat boys, shouting back and forth to each other about all the whores you've fucked and how you put it to them, what were you doing, Puck, comparing notes? Were you letting them know all the ways you've had me and exactly what it takes to make me scream, were you giving them tips of the trade so whenever it's their turn, they can really have some fun? Now that you're on the side of the fucking enemy, trading shots and getting initiated into their little fuck festival, is that what you do?"

Her voice was shaking badly now, and even though he was trying not to look at her at all, even as his vision continued to blur repeatedly with the addition of the frequent appearance of tears in his eyes, before he could force them back down again, Puck could see her chin quivering, her throat working as if Santana too was trying not to cry. Her hands were shaking in their grasp of him now, her touch loosening, and he couldn't take even a second more of being touched by her, of being that close to her. He couldn't hear one more word of accusation from her, couldn't bear to see how genuinely she seemed to think that he would for one second forget her, let alone deliberately turn his back on her, and so he finally pulled away from her, staggering towards the opposite wall and nearly tripping over his own feet with every step.

"No…I wasn't," he choked out, hearing his own voice slurring, cracking, barely intelligible even to his own ears. "Wasn't…fun…wasn't fucking…"

He was facing completely away from her, walking with slow, unsteady steps towards the wall, no real destination in mind except away from Santana. When Puck heard her begin to cry, the rough, breaking noise of her breathing undeniably partly suppressed sobbing, he felt his skin burn with helpless pain for her, with a self-directed loathing that left him nearly unable to move.

He wanted to go to her, to put his arms around her and hold her, to soothe her and protect and comfort her as she so obviously needed. But it couldn't happen. If she wouldn't thrust him away, infuriated and disgusted by his touch, he himself would not be able to bring himself to do it or even to try. She was right, he didn't deserve to touch her, he had no right to it. This had been his failed, careless plan, decided with no real analysis of consequence or alternatives, and this had been his failure, at least of his perception, to protect her. She could not remember now, while hurting so badly, that he had done this in an effort to keep from being the one to hurt her, and Puck himself could take no comfort or moral satisfaction in this either. All he could think, feel, and understand now was that she was in enormous pain, that she had been used and abused in exactly the way he had sworn to her she never would be, and no matter what he had promised her, so far he had managed to break every single one of his own words.