It had started as a game, more or less. Their eyes met while Puck was checking out the hot substitute teacher at lunch and Kurt happened to be eating an unnecessarily juicy fruit salad. Neither of them could think of a reason not to play.

It escalated, of course. Smoldering gazes on the sly, bending over innocently, sexual innuendo that no one else caught.

Puck was sure he was going to win until Kurt started getting serious. The crinkly ripping sound one day behind Puck after Mr. Schuester was finished talking was distracting and he knew, he knew it was an awful idea, but he glanced.

Kurt was unwrapping a lollipop. With his teeth. He stopped when Puck looked at him and stared with wide, falsely innocent eyes. "How many licks does it take?"

"Uhhhh."

Kurt grinned a self-satisfied grin. He leaned in closer. "How many licks does it take to... get to the center of a... Tootsie Roll Pop?"

Puck found his brain again. "I don't think it counts as licking if you shove the whole thing in your mouth at once."

"I don't do that. I like to take my time."

Puck grinned. "I never said that's what you do. I speak from personal experience."

That led to the first time. And it pissed Puck off that Kurt managed to win every round after that. He was beginning to think that Kurt had outmaneuvered him. He had played the coy and naive card, but that wasn't how it was. It pissed him off. It reminded him of his father.

Every time they played a game – chess, checkers, what have you – his father would begin by letting Puck win. Halfway through the game, he turned around and demolished his young son. Puck could deal with losing, but not the way his father's need to win crushed his feelings. His father didn't want to spend time with his son. He wanted to prove he was better than. And then when his father left, Puck found himself inferior to a man who couldn't bear up the brunt of such small responsibilities. Such tiny, tiny responsibilities – ones that Puck now had to shoulder. He managed well enough and derived a small amount of pleasure from succeeding where his father failed, but there was still that sense of losing and having lost.

This game wasn't fun anymore. He had a burning desire to win in football, yeah, but that was because he was Noah Puckerman. The other things – well, those really were just for fun, and when the prize was sex, there was no way to really lose. Except now. Santana had been like this, kind of, but she wasn't as ruthless, vindictive. He never thought he'd say someone was more ruthless and vindictive than Santana, but there it was.

"I'm done," he told Kurt. And he walked away.

He was halfway home when the text came. "Why?"

"Because I just can't do this anymore."

"Why?"

Why. That word struck Puck as the most evil word in the world, because after his father left, it was all his mother and little sister could say.

Then, he couldn't answer.

Now, he didn't want to.

"Sore loser? ;]"

He had to stifle a little chuckle. Sore. It was an amusing pun, but -

"Not exactly. Just drop it and forget any of it happened."

Hours later, the call came. "Please, Puck? Don't do this."

"Why do you care? It's just a game. We knew that."

"...Not really. At least – well, I didn't think it was anymore." Kurt's voice was kind of small.

Puck almost caved then. But he paused to think. "Another complicated maneuver to humiliate me."

"What? No – and – another? Puck, I was never trying to humiliate you."

Puck hung up.

It was incredibly late that night when Kurt showed up at his door. The texts and missed calls woke Puck up out of a sound sleep. Against his better judgment, he opened the door, and there was Kurt, looking terrible. "Do you really think I was trying to humiliate you?"

Puck stepped aside to let him in and Kurt turned those huge eyes on him, half-whispering, half-singing in the night, "pressing hard against your jeans, your tongue in my mouth, trying to keep the words from coming out. You didn't care to know who else may have been you before... I want a lover I don't have to love. I want a boy who's so drunk he doesn't talk. Where's the kid with the chemicals? I got a hunger and I can't seem to get full. I need a meaning I can memorize; the kind I have always seems to slip my mind..."

He recognized the song and the desperation, and he caved. Pulling Kurt up to his room, hating himself for his weakness, he laid down on the bed. Kurt straddled him, grinding, pulling their clothes off. He slowed as he leaned down to put his lips against Puck's ear. Breathing raggedly, he whispered the last lines. "Life's no storybook. Love's an excuse to get hurt and to hurt. Do you like to hurt?"

And Puck responded, still caught up in his own self-hate. "I do, I do-"

"Then hurt me," Kurt said, finishing the song. "Then hurt me. Then hurt me."

Puck didn't understand at first, but when Kurt handed him the tape, it didn't take him long. He bound Kurt's wrists together, his ankles to the bottom of the bed. He taped his mouth shut, and Kurt just closed his eyes like a lamb being taken to the slaughter.

Puck stared at the other boy for a few minutes. Kurt felt ashamed by it. He never had before, but something had changed now.

Puck began to touch him roughly, rubbing the spots he knew turned Kurt on the most. Then he started biting. They were almost painful at first, and then they were definitely painful. Kurt began to whimper, but stopped himself.

It wasn't right, Puck thought furiously. He hadn't won. Kurt was letting him win. It wasn't the way it was supposed to work. He growled and backhanded Kurt viciously. Kurt's head snapped to the side violently and he began to cry silently. He said nothing, though. He couldn't. His mouth was sealed shut both physically and emotionally. He would not have said a word even if he could.

It made Puck angrier. He didn't even bother to prepare Kurt – he just rammed into him with a guttural moan that contrasted with the short, muffled scream Kurt uttered. Puck rolled his hips into the other boy, who whined painfully again, tears coming faster now. Over and over, he pushed his way to oblivion, moaning like some kind of savage. He exploded into Kurt, who was now sobbing quietly. The sounds of their breathing mingled with Kurt's crying and Puck's soft noises of arousal until Puck pulled out and saw the blood. His breath caught in his throat and a vague terror entered his heart. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry – this is going to hurt but it's better –"

He tore the strips of tape off in swift motions. There was blood coming out of Kurt's mouth, too, presumably from when Puck had struck him. The vague terror solidified into absolute terror.

Kurt just curled up into a ball, still crying. Puck had no idea what to do but to apologize, over and over, but his voice quickly fell quiet and he tried to hold back his own tears. He hadn't cried since his father left.

Kurt mumbled something. "What?" Puck asked desperately.

"I need a shower," Kurt croaked.

Puck tried to help Kurt up, but he whimpered with pain and collapsed. Puck wordlessly pulled Kurt into his arms, carrying him into the shower. He set him down carefully on the bathroom floor, where Kurt shuddered from the cold. "I'm sorry," Puck whispered again. He turned the water on and picked Kurt up again, gently easing him into the shower. Kurt held onto him for dear life. There was a desperation in his eyes, the kind a wounded puppy shows to its tormentor. Puck prayed that he would have the strength – it wasn't winning, what he'd just done. It was the sickest form of losing. It was what his father had done to him, a thousand times magnified. He whispered his apologies again and again, softly stroking Kurt's hair as the hot water ran out. He turned the water off and reached for a towel. He slowly began to dry the other boy off, tenderly placing the towel to Kurt's quickly bruising face.

"Please, say something," Puck murmured desperately once they were both dry and clothed.

"I..." Kurt started. "I'm sorry."

Puck was dumbstruck. "Why are you apologizing?"

Kurt began to cry again. "I deserved it."

"No, no, you didn't. You didn't deserve that. No one deserves that. Especially not you."

He gently wiped the tears away from Kurt's face. He wasn't sure when it had happened, but there was something there that urged him to protect the boy he had just – well, he didn't want to say the word, and Kurt would deny that that was what it was if he did. Hesitantly, he wrapped his arms around Kurt's shoulders. Kurt collapsed into the hug. Puck was immensely relieved and immensely terrified at the same time. The implicit forgiveness was not lost on him. That implicit forgiveness had been understood since the first time Kurt's face had been acquainted with a grape slushie. The fear, though – the fear of the escalating abuse that Puck recognized in himself now – no. It would go no further. He refused to let it. He couldn't – no. And no one at school would ever touch Kurt again, he would make sure of that. It had gone on long enough.

He very gently pulled Kurt onto his side, then laid down next to him, wrapping his arms around him. Kurt buried his face in Puck's chest and Puck rested his chin on top of the other's head.

No. Never again.