Notes: Apparently I can't enter a fandom without writing a serial killer AU. /facepalm
Warnings: (Minor) Character death, graphic violence, boy/boy sex.
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October
Looking back the whole story had a kind of sick inevitability. Puck spoke the language of violence too well before he ever picked up a blade. The push and pull of muscles, the pain of knuckles meeting flesh, hard grips and sudden movement – it was a kind of poetry. If you spoke the language you knew what was coming next, when to duck, when to hit. Fighting was a thrill, winning was exhilaration. This was just the next step up, so he figured.
Blood on his gloves, dripping from the blade of his bowie knife, and a twisted body at his feet smaller in death than in life. "God, you stink," Puck informed the corpse. There was no response. He'd have been just a bit worried if there was one. He turned away from the body and walked back to his truck, stuck his knife point-first into the gas-can full of industrial grade bleach sitting innocently in the back. The tarp sat beside the can within easy reach. He pulled that off the back of the truck and walked back to the rapidly cooling body, crouched down on the concrete and unrolled the tarp beside the corpse.
"I'll give you three guesses where you're going," he said as he rolled the body onto the tarp, leaving a wet smear of blood and intestinal matter on the concrete. "And the first two don't count."
Puck's efficient, gloved hands wrapped the tarp around the body and tied it neatly in place with nylon rope. He hauled the whole thing up onto the back of his truck. "You," he told the body, giving the tarp a condescending pat, "should not have fucked with The Puck." A beat. "Or his people."
The excuse sounded weaker every time he said it. Puck enjoyed this way too much for it to be plain revenge. He smirked to himself as he slid behind the wheel of his truck. The engine rumbled to life and Joe Cocker's voice crooned at him that he was misunderstood. Puck glanced in the rear-view mirror at the bit of blue he could see in the bed of his pickup. He hummed along as he steered the truck towards the industrial district, the leather of his gloves squeaking against the wheel.
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Early September
Ice cold green apple slushy hit him like a sledgehammer to the face. It was only the second time in the entirety of his life that it had happened. "Fuck!" Puck responded, wiping the sticky, icy mess from his face with a hand. He could feel it dripping down his shirt, soaking through the fabric. In a few minutes it would feel like his t-shirt was glued to his chest with sticky, sickly sweet adhesive.
A small, pale hand with painted fingernails gave him a black and red chequered handkerchief. Puck glanced to his left to see Tina giving him a sympathetic look. "Maybe they were aiming for me and missed?" she suggested weakly.
"You were two feet away," Puck replied, mopping his face with her handkerchief. "That's some really shitty aim."
"There's a girl's bathroom up ahead," Tina said, hugging her math book (and the notes Puck had been trying to wheedle from her) close to her chest. "You could clean up in there."
"Girl's bathroom," Puck said dryly. "Score."
It was still a good idea. So, despite the fact that he felt in no way like a rebel with apple slushy sticking his shirt to his skin, Puck stalked down the hall and pushed open the door to the girl's bathroom. A freshman in pigtails squealed. Two senior girls retouching their makeup at the mirror glared at him, obviously about to ask him what the hell he was doing in a girl's bathroom when Tina came through the door behind him.
"'Sup ladies," Puck said, sarcasm dripping from his lips like the sticky liquid seeping through his shirt. "Someone here order a stripper-gram?"
"We'll be out of your way really soon," Tina promised, smiling apologetically. She grabbed hold of Puck's elbow and marched him over to the sink furthest from the door, the smile gone from her lips. "You, shirt off and sit down."
His reputation must have really fallen, Puck thought glumly, if chicks like Tina could actually boss him around. Still, she had a point. He stripped out of his sticky shirt and handed it over to Tina's expertise. He watched for future reference – God, how fucking low had he sunk that he actually figured on getting slushied again some time in the future – as she filled up one of the sinks with water and put his shirt in to soak. She then pulled a bunch of paper towels from the dispenser and dampened them before handing them over to him.
Puck used a couple to wipe his face down first, then used the rest to get rid of the sticky residue on his chest. He leaned against the bathroom wall, arms crossed, and tried his very best to look as if it were totally normal for him to be standing shirtless in a girl's bathroom while the school's resident goth-chick washed his shirt in a sink. He managed remarkably well.
Tina drained the water from the sink and wrung out his shirt carefully. She then commandeered one of the mounted dryers to dry the material. "It's still going to be damp," she told him, "but it's the best you can do on short notice."
"You guys keep extra shirts and stuff at school, right?"
"At least two changes," Tina answered, looking back at him over her shoulder as the two seniors left, pigtail-girl already gone. "So... if you think this might happen again..."
Puck snorted. "Screw that." He pushed himself away from the wall and stalked back and forth in front of the stalls. "Nobody fucks with me."
"Somebody did," Tina pointed out, looking at his shirt and not at him.
"Then I'm getting them back," Puck announced, hands already clenched into fists. He felt predatory, ready for a fight. Some punkass puckhead thought he could fuck with the Puckasaurus? He was sorely mistaken. "I'm making sure it never happens again."
"How are you going to do that?" Tina asked mildly. She turned around and held out his mostly-dry shirt. "That's about as good as it's going to get."
Puck thought a moment. He took his shirt back, covered his skin with the damp (but clean) fabric and frowned. "I dunno," Puck admitted. "I'll beat someone up. I'll destroy the slushy machine. I'll do something and remind everyone in this school that you don't mess with me."
He looked at Tina again and saw an odd expression on her face. "It must be nice," she said after a moment. "To be able to protect yourself. Um... here are those math notes. I have to get to class."
She shoved the notes into Puck's chest and left before he could even get a proper grip on them. Puck stood there in the empty girl's bathroom, his frown deeper than before, and a page of mathematics sticking to the damp cotton of his t-shirt. He felt weird, like he should be doing something. He gently peeled the math notes from where they were stuck to his shirt and looked down at where the ink had started to bleed on contact with the damp. Tina's handwriting was precise and rounded. She had doodled little flowers into the margins.
Puck suddenly identified what exactly it was he felt he should be doing. And he swore. "This bites. This bites like a rabid weasel."
If Puck were truly a badass he wouldn't just be protecting himself. Somehow, without his really noticing it, he had actually become friends with the geeks from glee club. And friends – he felt sort of like a pussy just for thinking it – don't just stand around while their friends were being pushed around.
Puck had work to do. Like, a lot of work.
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October
The weekend always passed quickly these days. Puck had a lot to fill in his time, and a lot of that was planning. He'd never put this much effort into anything, but he reasoned that was because the stakes were never so high. Football and Glee were once the only two things he'd really cared about enough to make an effort in, everything else he'd just let go, coasting by on reputation and whatever natural aptitude he might have had. He scraped by with Cs in school – it occurred to him that if he'd put this much effort into homework and assignments he might actually pass as one of the smart kids. After all, he was smart enough to plan and execute. It stood to reason he could be smart about other things too.
Puck parked his pickup in the school's lot. He jumped out of the car and shut the door with the heel of his boot, liked the sound it made as metal met metal. He took the long way to the front doors, swinging past the dumpsters on the way in. In the past couple of weeks he'd halved the number of usual offenders, and it was nice to see his own handiwork in the fact that nobody was hanging out near the dumpsters waiting to toss some unsuspecting geek.
His lips quirked upwards into an involuntary smirk as he remembered the last guy – Donahue. Poor unfortunate bastard. He'd never fuck with anyone again, unless it was in the afterlife.
He nodded a hello to Finn and Rachel on the steps, gesturing that he was going to go inside rather than stay and chat. Rachel could be cool, but Puck still preferred her in small doses. Anyway, he had other people to meet inside. That was nice too, he mused as he pushed his way straight through the other kids in the hallway, hanging out with his gleeks outside practice. Dorks were cool. And these ones, the ones currently congregating by Kurt Hummel's locker, were his.
"'Sup," Puck greeted the small group with a nod.
"Noah," Kurt greeted him, lips pursed with the thrill of gossip and knowing something that nobody else did. "You had practice with Donahue on Friday after school, didn't you? Perhaps you can give us the scoop?"
"What scoop?"
"The entire school is talking about it," Mercedes informed him. "It was all over the news last night too. They're saying Donahue never made it home on Friday, just disappeared right off the face of the earth between the end of football practice and curfew."
"Well he was fine when I saw him last," Puck replied easily. He leaned against the row of lockers that lined the wall, unconcerned that he might be blocking someone's way, and crossed his arms casually. "Anyway we're not exactly pals now. I could care less what happened to him over the weekend."
"You don't even care?" Tina asked, trailing somewhere between awe and incredulity.
Puck shrugged. "He's an asshole. He could be rotting in a bath full of bleach for all I care."
"That's a terrible thing to say!"
"Hm," Kurt hummed, blue-gray eyes sharp and focussed on Puck. "Donahue was a terrible person. And a little dark humour never hurt anyone before now. The ghouls are out in force already, we may as well admit to being a part of them."
"Kurt's right," Mercedes agreed. "I just want to know what happened. Even if that boy is out there rotting in a bath tub."
"I wonder if they're going to offer counselling," Tina said, looking over her shoulder and in the general direction of the administration office. "I mean, that's three kids that have gone missing now. I think people are starting to get freaked out."
"Maybe there's a serial killer on the loose," Kurt suggested.
"If there is it's someone with a grudge against jocks."
"Maybe you oughtta watch out, Mohawk," Mercedes said, bumping her shoulder lightly against Puck's arm. "You might be next."
"Yeah, I doubt it." Puck grinned. "I'm just too badass even for a killer."