It's still technically the first week of summer. Football practice is a long way from starting up for the next school year, and assigned summer reading is a joke. Puck's been promoted to the varsity team because they lost a good deal of seniors at graduation, and besides that, he's a genuinely good player. It's when he starts hanging with some the upperclassmen that the trouble starts.

It's late and they're at someone's house, taking turns on Halo and drinking way too much light beer. They're more than ready to cause trouble, so when someone brings up how much they hate that Hummel kid for being such a prissy homo, the pack mentality takes over, and before they know it they're en route to the Hummel home. One of the seniors thinks it's funny to start tossing cushions from the lawn furniture onto the roof, watching them land with a thud. The others stumble drunkenly through the yard for a while before someone realizes the side door to the garage is unlocked. Puck finds it well-supplied with toolboxes and a ladder, and it all escalates from there.

It's probably the best prank of all time, which is part of why they can't help themselves from returning to the scene of the crime the next day. They cruise past and admire their handiwork as the two Hummels stand in their front yard. The younger has his arms crossed in indignation, while the elder holds a baseball cap in one hand and scratches his balding head with the other. The lawn furniture is arranged jauntily, fastened with nails at awkward angles, and the sight of it in daylight makes Puck's chest swell with fiendish pride.


*****

The pee balloons are Karofsky's idea. It's still early in the afternoon, and after using all the eggs on that Berry girl's house, they're looking to up the ante a little bit. They stop for a few beers, and most of them are piss-ass drunk when the suggestion comes up. It's a simple matter of finding water balloons, so Puck calls his on-again girlfriend Santana, and she comes by with a bag from Wal-Mart and a receipt.

"You guys owe me like twenty bucks," she tells them in her normal, unamused way.

Puck scoffs. "Water balloons are not that expensive," he remarks as he looks in the bag, trying to determine how many they have.

"My time is valuable, Puck," Santana replies. "And I think I should be reimbursed for gas."

Just like that they're off-again, but Puck doesn't care. He's got, like, two hundred balloons that need to be filled.

They drive down several streets they've become familiar with in the long doldrums of summertime, past several houses whose occupants they recognize and irrationally torment. Kurt Hummel is the only one outside at the time, passing a chamois over his beloved SUV. Puck takes one of the balloons from a cooler they've got on the back seat. He leans out of a passenger side window and winds up. He shoots, he scores - a balloon explodes as it makes contact, soaking Kurt. The liquid drips all the way down from his designer sweater to his designer socks and his designer shoes. He stands open-mouthed and blinking in shock at the end of his driveway before he apparently recognizes the stench of urine and runs inside.

Puck laughs and high-fives everyone else in the car. He's never been so impressed with himself.

*****

The dumpster-throwing is time-honored tradition, as far as most of the varsity football team is concerned. Last year the seniors elected the president of the chess club to receive the honor every day before the school bell rang, but since then they'd graduated and the kid had moved to, like, Canada or something, so Puck meets with a few of the other first-string players in the parking lot of the first day of class.

"What about that Jacob kid?" one of them suggests. "The one with the Jewfro. He's totally annoying."

"Yeah, but he's got that blog," Finn replies. "He'd find some way to destroy us all that way, I'm pretty sure." Puck shoots Finn a quizzical glance, and Finn shrugs and shoves his hands in his pockets. "What?" he mumbles. "I know how to Google."

"Like, barely," Puck remarks. He scans the parking lot for a vulnerable target just as a sleek black SUV pulls into a nearby spot. When the driver gets out, he shuts the door delicately behind him. He then walks around the vehicle armed with a handkerchief, quickly rubbing out flecks of dirt and shining up smudges. When he's done he straightens up and drops his hanky into his attache case (it looks like a women's purse to Puck) as he runs his hand across his perfectly coifed hair. "What about Hummel?" he asks, and like Babe Ruth ready to bat at home plate, he extends his arm and points at his intended target without the slightest trace of shame.

Finn shrugs, and most of the others nod and laugh and poke each others' ribs with their elbows before they descend on Kurt like a pack of hyenas in letterman jackets.

*****

The ride back from sectionals should be a time of joyous celebration, and for most of the passengers, it is. But for Puck, it's weird in a way that's almost painful. Finn's taken Mr. Schue's minivan back to McKinley, and Quinn's buddying up to Berry, of all people, so there really shouldn't be any awkwardness, but there is. No one wants to sit by him; no one even talks to him except to ask for a can of beer from the case he's hidden beneath his seat. "Don't let the ginger counselor catch you," he warns Tina when she takes two. She only giggles in reply and creeps back to the front of the bus where Artie's waiting for his first taste of alcohol.

Puck's perfectly content being miserable with himself when Kurt Hummel, his heretofore favorite torture target, scoots into the seat beside him.

"Dude," Puck begins. "What are you doing here?"

"Mercedes kicked me out of her seat so she could have some girl-talk with the others," he says, using air-quotes. "I don't menstruate, and I don't care to learn anything about it. Also, since when has dude been an acceptable greeting?" Kurt asks, his pitch lilting like the word has two syllables. He raises his eyebrows in a way that expresses both curiosity and disdain. "Whatever happened to a simple hello?"

"Whatever, dude," Puck mumbles. He knows when he's being judged, when someone's trying to make him feel guilty - his mom's an expert at that. In fact, he was doing fine judging himself and feeling guilty all on his own, even before Kurt sat next to him on the bus ride home. "I was gonna say something, but I don't think I'm gonna, now."

"Well, now my day is ruined," Kurt replies sarcastically. "Whatever shall I do? Sitting beside you and hearing you speak was going to be the highlight of this trip, even more so than winning Sectionals and partaking in this delicious brew you were so kind to bring along." He raises his half-empty can, which he has been sipping from delicately since they left Buckeye Auditorium.

"Don't knock the Natty," Puck warns. "It gets the job done, right?"

"I've had far stronger stuff," Kurt sasses back, although he fails to mention how adversely he'd been affected by April Rhodes' Chablis. "Besides, this tastes like pee."

Puck laughs a little at the comment. "I guess you would know."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Kurt asks sharply, trying to figure out if that's a dig at his sexuality or his impeccable fashion sense or what.

"The balloons, man," Puck tells him, unable to control his drunken snickering. "The pee balloons."

"That was you?" Kurt gasps.

"Oh, come on, like you thought it could have been anyone else. I'm McKinley's biggest asshole. Of course it would have been me."

"I don't know why you're laughing. You ruined a pair of perfectly good Coach shoes." Kurt crosses his arms and stares straight ahead angrily. "Even if they were last season."

"You gotta admit, it would have been funny if it had happened to somebody else," Puck says, prodding Kurt with his elbow.

"No, it wouldn't. It's demeaning and cruel and unsanitary. That sort of thing is not okay."

The remark wounds Puck in a way that only words can. It shuts him up for a second, and suddenly he's as angry as Kurt is. He's angry at Finn for not forgiving him right away, he's angry at Quinn for pushing him out of her life, he's angry at everyone else because they can't even stand to sit next to him for an hour on the bus, and he's angry at Kurt for pointing out to him that being in asshole is nothing to be proud of. When he realizes this last point, all his anger turns on him and he can't help but punch the seat in front of him, grunting.

"Hey!" Brittany protests. "Knock it off."

"Whatever," Puck grumbles, retreating back into his own seat.

Kurt is unfazed. He's seen fantastically inappropriate and compelling outbursts before, and he's able to take them in stride. "Want to talk about it?" he asks, perhaps a little sardonically. "Maybe sing about your feelings?"

"That's so gay," Puck says, rolling his eyes, but when he hears his words out loud he immediately regrets them. And, just like that, it occurs to him how he can fix it. "I'm sorry," he adds. "I didn't mean to be, like, offensive."

"No offense taken," Kurt replies, folding his hands in his lap as he crosses his legs.

"And I'm sorry for the balloons," Puck continues. "And the lawn furniture."

"That was you, too?"

"We were really just joking around," Puck explains without pausing, steeled by the two or three Natty Lights he's already had. "We just thought we were being funny. I don't know how or when we started taking things too far. Kinda like with me and Quinn - we were just fooling around, and we took things too far..."

"As much as I love being compared to Quinn - really, she's lovely, although I wish she'd invest in a more appropriate winter wardrobe - I think I get the point," Kurt interrupts.

"I'm sorry," Puck repeated, although the interruption wasn't helping him keep track of all the reasons he had to apologize. "I'm sorry for the dumpster thing. And for trying to keep you off the football team."

"Okay, stop," Kurt said finally. "Stop apologizing."

"But I'm sorry."

"You really are, believe me," Kurt replied, rolling his eyes. "But apologies won't get you anywhere. You need to man up and take responsibility for the crappy things you've done."

"How do I do that," Puck asked idly, "without turning into a total pussy?"

Kurt let his mouth fall open, scandalized. "Language," he says dramatically. "I don't even know how to respond to that."

"You know what I mean, though," Puck insists, taking a swig from his beer, emptying the can.

"I suppose it would be too much to expect for you to go from a complete jerk to a total sweetheart just because of one short bus ride," Kurt concludes, looking straight ahead to ignore Puck's increasingly bad beer breath.

"Or one ride on the short bus," Puck snickers, earning himself a severe glance from his seat mate.

Kurt sighs. "At any rate, it's a slow process. I suppose all that apologizing is a decent start, as long as you've got the follow-through."

"I'd have all the follow-through I'd need if you'd pass me another Natty Light."

Kurt rolls his eyes and reaches beneath the seat for another can; by now it's disgustingly warm. "Here you go," he says, practically dropping it into Puck's lap as he gets up to leave. "I'm going back to sit with my friends. Whatever womanly issue they're discussing is bound to be easier to stomach than your increasingly drunken shenanigans."

"Kurt," Puck says, reaching out and grabbing him by the wrist. Kurt pauses and meets Puck's gaze, and for a brief moment there's some sort of connection, some sort of honesty in between them. "I really am sorry."

"And I accept your apology," Kurt replies formally. "But one day, you're still going to work for me."