"How are you feeling today Noah?" asked the kind nurse, hovering above him holding a thermometer upside down.

Puck faked a cough and his best puppy dog eyes. "Still not so good," he whispered hoarsely. The nurse clucked her sympathy and bustled away, leaving him to his second period bed in peace. Sometimes he felt a little guilty for taking advantage of the old woman, but then he would fall asleep, far away from the pressures of algebra and he would forget all about it.

Today, however, Puck was not in the mood for sleep. As soon as the nurse was out of earshot he edged his bed closer to the wall and pressed his ear up against it. The best part about the location of the health room, other than it being far away from his class, was that it shared a wall with Principal Figgins' office. Ever since he had overheard Coach Sylvester complaining that Mr. Schue's hair gel had artificial additives that were poisoning his students one day, he'd developed a habit of eavesdropping on them, just in case.

Just yesterday Brittany had been in the principal's office worrying quite sincerely that a mountain lion had eaten her English homework, and she wasn't sure when she would get it back. The day before that he overheard Karofsky being reamed for, as Figgins put it, pleasuring himself in the linen closet. So, Puck had figured, there was nothing wrong with adding a bit of entertainment to his hour of rest and relaxation, especially if it had the added bonus of reaffirming his dominance over the other jocks.

A win-win situation, for him anyway.

Unfortunately, it did not seem like today's show was going to be a comedy. For the first few minutes all Puck could hear was quiet voices, their words indiscernible through the walls. Puck rolled his eyes in exasperation; probably some anorexic Cheerio getting a pep talk she would later ignore as she was emptying her stomach in the third floor bathroom. Just as he was searching for a clock to tell him how much longer he was stuck in this hell he heard a shout so loud and unexpected he practically smashed his head into the wall trying to escape it.

Some kid was yelling, annoyingly loudly in Figgins' office. Puck could hear the principal trying to calm him down, soothe him, but now his ears were ringing with the blow to his head and he couldn't focus on what they were saying. The nurse whose name he should probably learn came dashing around the corner, mumbling to herself about disrupting the ill before retreating back to the safety of her desk.

Puck cursed to himself, then cursed whatever brat was currently going ballistic at the principal. He wondered if it would be like that time that quiet kid brought a gun to school, swore to kill all the jocks that had tortured him, then realized he'd forgotten to buy bullets. Figgins had given him a week suspension and put him in some new "special" classes to help with his "problems." Puck had stopped tossing him into dumpsters too, but that had been more of a self-preservation technique than anything else.

As the yelling, no really more of screaming, continued, Puck realized that he recognized that shrill voice. He only knew one dude in the school whose voice was that prone to reaching that shrieking pitch that so bugged him. This was that queer kid from Glee Club. Like that narrowed it down much, Puck thought with a snigger, before realizing there was no one else around to appreciate his joke.

But why would Hummel be yelling at the principal? Had someone spilled Orangina on his messenger bag? Or slusheed him in his new Gucki shirt he wouldn't stop bragging about that morning? And why the hell was he still thinking about this?

Sparing a quick glance back towards the front of the room Puck shoved his bed back to it's proper position and tried his best to ignore the noise from the room over. Within minutes Puck was asleep and had forgotten all about Kurt Hummel.

It was a good twenty minutes later when hushed whispers awoke him. Crankily, Puck opened one lazy eye and searched his surroundings for the offender. The nurse evidently had a new patient to tend to. The kid was shielded from his view by her rather chubby physique and she was fussing over him obsessively.

"Just let me know if you need anything else dear," she said before patting his head and waddling out of the way. As soon as she was out of the way Puck opened his other eye and sat up for a better view.

The kid was facing the wall, dark hair obscuring most of his face and holding a cup of sweet tea.

Wait he got sweet tea? Puck never got tea. Feeling rather betrayed by the nurse he thought he'd been on good terms with, Puck glared at this kid.

"What are you in here for?" he barked across the room, but received no reply. "Hey, dude, I'm talking to you!"

The boy still didn't turn to face him, but did lift one dainty hand to brush his bangs away from his eye and oh yeah. Hummel.

Puck weighed his options. Condemn himself to sitting in silence with the geek for the next forty seven minutes, go to class, or try to start up a conversation and risk social exile for speaking to the queer.

Well class was out of the question; he was pretty sure the last time he'd seen his math textbook had been when he accidentally peed on it one night after Santana got him drunk. Plus, he wasn't entirely certain he could find the room if he went in search.

So he decided to go with the silent treatment.

Which, if he did say so himself, was going quite well for the first seven and half minutes, until Hummel started sniffling. And not the quiet, "I've got a cold" kind of sniffles, these were the big, loud, snot-filled, "My husband just left me and I've got to support two kids on my own" kind of sniffles. Or that was what he most closely identified them with anyway.

Puck figured that the kid was probably in some serious trouble for yelling at Figgins, and no matter how lame he was, that was a pretty cool thing to do, so he reached behind him and tossed the guy a box of Kleenex.

It was so not his fault or his intention that the box whacked the kid on the side of his head. He'd been trying to do something nice for once, and it wasn't his fault Hummel had the reflexes of a dying cat on anti-depressants.

The loud, comical whack the box caused when it made contact was pretty funny though, so no one should really be able to blame him for laughing a little.

His snicker was enough to finally get Hummel's attention though, and he turned to face Puck for the first time to shoot him the withering death glare that he had perfected over the past few months. The sight was enough to sober Puck immediately. His face was pink and pinched, the blue of his eyes standing out in sharp contrast to the red surrounding them, peeking into the iris, and tear tracks were staining his cheeks. Evidently satisfied in his ability to silence the other boy, Kurt turned away again, surreptitiously reaching for the offending tissues.

"Uh, I meant to, I mean that was supposed, I didn't, yeah." Puck wasn't entirely certain what he was trying to say, so he figured it'd be best if he just stopped.

To his great annoyance, years of dealing with his mom when she was upset over her latest deadbeat boyfriend and his baby sister when she was bullied had trained him never to leave a girl alone when she was crying. And Hummel certainly looked the part enough, what with his scrunched up, pitiful face.

And so, lacking his brain's approval, his mouth decided not to just let it be, and do the complete opposite of shutting up.

"Figgins ream into you, huh?" No answer. "That's happened to me a few times. This one time, he called my mom and told her that I was a disgrace to the entire population of Israel because I locked a kid in a locker for six hours and tried to feed him beef jerky. Said I couldn't treat freshman like I do my pets." Puck tried for a conspiratorial smile. After all, he didn't go sharing his best pranks with just anyone, Hummel ought to be grateful.

"I remember. That was my thirteenth birthday, and I stunk of jerky for a month."

Oh. Crap.

"And I would hope you take better care of your pets than that," Kurt added in a barely audible whisper, his voice shaky.

Puck remembered Pogo, his hamster who died under mysterious circumstances, and whose body it took him a week and a half to find in it's cage and chose not to respond to that comment.

"So why are you here? Are you actually sick? Cuz you look like shit." Hummel made a weird, hacking sob noise and Puck figured maybe he should soften the blow. "You know, comparatively."

This had to be the most one-sided conversation he'd had since dating that Rachel chick, and in that situation he'd always been on the other side.

"Listen, Puck," the name rolled of his tongue like a derogatory slur that nearly made it's owner wince. "I'm really not in the mood for your pathetic attempts at humor. If you could just leave me alone. Please." The smaller boy's voice trailed off by the end, making his firm declaration come off as more of a desperate plea.

"Fine. Whatever. I didn't want to talk to you anyway."

Puck was mildly offended that he just got blown off by Hummel of all people, as though he was in the position to be picking and choosing his friends. On the bright side, though, this did solve his problem for him. Back to the silent treatment plan.

Which, once again, had been proceeding perfectly when the world, and maybe a tiny amount of his own insolence decided to fuck it up.

He lounged back on the thin mattress and made a show of getting as comfortable as possible. Kurt continued sitting stiffly on one corner of his bed, his arms wrapped protectively around his waist.

"Here, sweetie, why don't you eat some of this?" Nurse Something-or-Another was back, and this time with a plate of cookies.

Wait, so Hummel goes all ballistic on the principal of the school and is rewarded with freaking cookies, and yet the one time that Puck let a little livestock into his English class the liven things up he got lunch detention for a month. Life was so unfair.

"Why does he get food?" Puck demanded indignantly.

Nurse Whatserface turned to him, her former kind smile disappeared, replaced by a tight, furious frown.

"Special circumstances, Noah. Now get some rest if you want to feel better." Her words were clipped and harsh as she spoke to him.

Fuck Hummel. Three months of sucking up to this nurse and he comes in for like, five minutes and suddenly she couldn't care less about him.

Turning her back on Puck, Nurse Bitchface said to Kurt in a much milder tone, "We're still trying to get in touch with your family. Let me know if you need anything else."

"Thanks Nurse Krimmel," Kurt murmured softly.

Fine, so he knew her name.

"Nurse's pet," Puck muttered as she walked away. Turning to face the wall he continued, "What the hell did you ever do to get cookies? Fucking-OW!"

There was a lump forming on his head, a broken cookie on his bed, and Fucking Kurt Hummel sitting two beds over with a far too self-satisfied smirk on his face.

This was the worst day of all time.

He ate the cookie anyway.

"You know," Puck started a few minutes later after polishing off his sixth cookie (eventually he realized Hummel was throwing them to him more to shut him up and in hopes of whacking him on the head again than out of any semblance of kindness). Kurt hung his head in exasperation, clearly wishing he had more baked goods to serve as bribery. "I bet you're in a whole lot of trouble if they're calling your family."

Kurt didn't respond, choosing rather to continue staring deliberately at one spot in the beige wall in front of him.

"You'll probably end up suspended," Puck continued.

"Do you ever just shut up?" Kurt yelled in frustration, his voice approaching that octave that only dogs could hear.

"Is everything OK back there? Noah, are you behaving?"

"Everything's fine Nurse Krimey!" Puck called back, hoping to appease her and avoid getting in trouble. It wasn't his fault Hummel had thin skin.

"Krimmel. Nurse Krimmel, dumbass. You only spend everyday here."

Puck shot him a fierce look, but luckily Nurse Krimmel didn't seem to interested in following up on her patients.

In hindsight he would wonder why he couldn't just leave it at that, why he had to keep bugging the kid. Then again, what was it that Rachel said when she was doing her version of an apology for trying to get the Glee Club to do a spirited production of The Color Purple, starring her and Hudson? My hindsight's 20/20, it's my foresight that sucks. Schue had murmured that any kind of sight could see that that idea sucked, but he was pretty sure Rachel hadn't heard.

In any event, Puck did not shut up, because he was Puck and quite frankly, he wasn't sure he knew how.

"Bet your dad is gonna be pissed when he finds out you yelled at Figgins." Again, with the gift of hindsight, Puck would be able to recognize the way Hummel winced at that statement, the way he pulled his legs up to his chest, folding into himself.

"He'll be real disappointed. More disappointed than he was when he found out his kid was a queer, even. If that's possible. God, I bet he-" But Puck never got to say what he bet this time, because he was interrupted by an almost inaudible whisper from the other boy, so quiet he barely heard the earth shattering statement that had caused this entire painful encounter and effectively ruined Puck's morning naptime.

"My dad's dead."

Oh shit.