AU after the first season, Puck never drove a car into a shop and never went to juvie.

I own nothing. Title from Kaiser Chiefs song 'I Predict A Riot'.

I Predict A Riot

When he looked back, Puck is amazed that he didn't snap until then.

Spending his freshman year dealing with a baby mama who thought he was worthless, a best friend who hated him, a mother who didn't care and the loss of the majority of his peers who he had thought of as friends, meant Puck had had little time to deal with his emotions.

Not that Puck was very good at dealing with emotions. He fucked them into submission, started a fight or ran till he couldn't think, let alone feel, anymore. Which meant that that summer he'd spent earning money, sleeping around, looking after his sister, avoiding his mother and anyone from school and running until he collapsed.

And yet, the first day back, he wasn't quite as ready as he'd hoped to be in order to deal with the rumours and gossip swirling behind his back. If it had just been about him, he could've dealt, he thinks. But he heard, not only his name repeated, but Quinn's and even Beth's.

He was trying to be better though, trying to be someone Beth would be proud of if he ever ever got to see her again. So he didn't punch anyone who said Beth's name, he didn't even punch Jewfro when he asked if Puck was depressed. Just shoved him a bit. Then he spent three hours after the first day of school running around the oval. He was fine, obviously.

It didn't last. The Puck being fine bit. And in the third week back at school, on the Thursday, Puck came to school, stone cold sober, in a very very black mood.

And he started a riot.

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It wasn't really Puck's fault. He will maintain this until his dying day. Or not. Just until he's graduated and they can't do anything to him at all. Really not his fault. Just because he accidently tripped that guy from the hockey team who'd been making snide comments about Quinn's 'post-baby' figure, into his own lunch, and the hockey guy had jumped up, face red and white with cream cheese and rage, and looked at the baseball guy, who, somehow, had ended up standing between Puck and the hockey guy, laughing and decided it was baseball guy who had tripped him. Totally not Puck's fault. And no one could pin it on him either.

So hockey guy had done the usual "How dare you? Who do you think you are? Do you know who I am?" speech at the baseball guy and Puck may have added in a few insults when he passed the message on to the rest of the baseball team sitting behind him. So when the hockey team loomed up to threaten the baseball guy, the baseball team loomed up also.

Puck's not totally sure who threw the first punch, but it doesn't really matter because it wasn't him. And for the next ten or fifteen minutes the world was an exciting blur of fists and yells and blood and Puck's laughing as he felt more at ease than he had for months.

By the time the teachers were breaking it up, Puck was standing at the edge away from the main fight with a black eye and a cut just below it.

The entire hockey team was suspended, three baseball players and two cheerios, all of whom needed first aid. Fourteen other people were also sent to the nurse, for being injured trying to avoid the fight.

Though the teachers suspected Puck had something to do with the brawl, because, let's face it, Puck's a badass and any fight in McKinley High has something to do with him whether he started it or it's about him or whatever, but they couldn't prove anything. So Puck was sent off to Glee with a triumphant grin on his face. The grin seemed to scare everyone else more than his usual smirk as people scrambled to get out of his way and Jewfro locked himself in his own locker.

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And Puck was fine then. He turned up to classes, went to training and Glee. Left people alone. And people left him alone, because even though he in no way started that riot, students at McKinley weren't stupid and they just knew Puck was involved. But it was all fine.

Until the next Thursday, four weeks into the school year, and Puck was heading up the hallway to maths. (No more naps this year, Puck was proving a point this year, damnit, he was no Lima Loser). Griggs from the baseball team, one of the ones who was suspended for the riot, was running his mouth to a couple of mates how Glee club was obviously some sort of cover for the gay incestuous orgies the club were having and that Finn had probably asked Puck to fuck his girlfriend. Puck saw red.

But it wasn't his fault. Sure, he'd swiped a slushy from Azimio as he was trying to throw it in Berry's face, and sure he'd accidently tripped over Jewfro when trying to chuck it in the bin, which had meant the cherry slushy had ended up all over Griggs stupid face, and sure, Puck's 'apology' had been less than sincere and had included a fair amount of thinly veiled insults that had the hallway snickering had Griggs' red face, but Puck didn't throw the first punch, and really he only threw any punches because he'd had to defend himself from Griggs and four of his teammates who he'd been running his mouth off to.

But not Puck's fault. He was defending himself from the five baseball players, admittedly, with a crazed grin on his face as he threw and dodged punches, but it was pure self-defence. Which was what all the witnesses said, including Jewfro's blog and video of the incident, once the teachers had managed to pull everyone apart.

All five baseball players were suspended, Griggs for longer for throwing the first punch, then sent off to get looked over by the nurse. And Puck turned up to Glee yet again with a black eye and a grin, feeling good.

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People seemed to avoid Puck after that. And there was a definite hush as he stalked down the hallways towards classes, training and glee. Puck wasn't stupid, he knew the rumours were still floating around, but if he couldn't hear them, he could ignore them.

And, as he couldn't hear them, he calmed down, didn't have to run as much after school, started to heal slowly.

Except, the next Thursday (always a Thursday, Puck started to think it was cursed or something), the football team had obviously decided that they were safe from Puck, because they were his teammates or something. And they didn't do anything to Quinn, and they didn't say anything about Beth. But Puck stepped into the cafeteria for lunch and saw Azimio and Karofsky backing Rachel Berry and Kurt Hummel into the wall, menacing slushies, while the rest of the school watched, including Hudson who Puck was pretty sure was going out with Berry and was practically the brother of Hummel.

This time Puck marched straight up to the pair of idiot footballers and growled at them that Berry and Hummel were his teammates and he protected his teammates and did Azimio and Karofsky want to see what else he was capable of because he would show them if they wanted and all they had to do was to keep threatening his teammates, any of his teammates from glee, just give him one fucking excuse damnit.

The idiots stepped away and Puck thought they'd managed to grow half a brain between the two of them. Except at glee, Berry walked in with different clothes and wet hair, and Kurt limped in late. Puck stared at them, then grinned and stopped listening to whatever Schue was going on about this time.

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And the next day Azimio and Karofsky walked around school with their eyes half in front and half over their shoulders. It was almost as if someone had told them to watch their backs because they were going to get it. Which is exactly what Puck had done. He'd cornered both of them after glee the day before, going to their houses to find them, and told them in no uncertain terms, that they had chosen not to listen to him when he warned them at lunch and that anything that happened from this time on was their own faults so to watch their backs (yes, word for word) because he was coming and it wasn't going to be pretty. But nothing happened on Friday. Or over the weekend. Or on Monday. Puck wasn't even grinning scarily anymore. Azimio and Karofsky were bold enough by Tuesday to go back to verbally bullying the gleeks, not physically yet so no slushies, they'd wait a week more before they'd start that again. Or they would have.

Except on Thursday (Puck thought it was appropriate) Karofsky came down with some sort of rash in an uncomfortable place at school that ended up being serious enough for him to have to go to the hospital. Jewfro just happened to be in the right place to tape a loud discussion between Karofsky and his mother about the proper safety practices for sex and why he should get tested every month and that he really needed to contact all his previous sexual partners as soon as possible. It was a very popular video on Jewfro's website.

And, on Thursday as well, Azimio got called to the office to explain why he appeared to be copying assignments from students in years under him and handing them in for his own work and how it seemed he wasn't meeting the requirements to graduate this year, in fact he didn't meet the requirements to move up the year before and they really weren't sure how he'd been allowed, but they were going to have firstly, pull him from the football team so he could focus on his studies, and secondly, he was going to have to repeat the year, maybe more than once, if he ever wanted to graduate. Unfortunately, the microphone in Figgins' office had been switched on somehow, and so the entire school listened as Azimio was told he was to repeat because he wasn't very smart at cheating.

Azimio and Karofsky, unsurprisingly, decided these attacks had been because of Puck, somehow. But really Puck couldn't have anything to do with the fact that Azimio's school records had been rearranged to highlight the questionable marks and then left on Figgins' desk. And nothing to do with Karofsky leaving his clothes in the change rooms during gym where absolutely anyone could access them, with chemicals. So Puck was suitably surprised when the two cornered him on Monday with violence in their eyes.

And Puck did not throw the first punch, or any punches actually. He just dodged and laughed and had to sit and hold his stomach when Sylvester hit Azimio over the head with a lunch tray to stop him from hitting anymore innocent bystanders as Puck had weaved past them.

Azimio and Karofsky were both suspended for three weeks and banned from football matches. Puck waved goodbye as they were marched out of the cafeteria.

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So it was all going well from then really. No one attacked Puck's teammates from glee, in anyway slushy or otherwise. And Puck didn't hear any rumours about Beth, Quinn, Hudson or himself. Sure people did that abrupt stop in conversation when he entered a room or looked like he was in hearing distance, but that didn't bother Puck because people also did that thing where they went deathly white and threw themselves into the closest room to avoid him (an AV geek tried to hide in the girls change room, there was a lot of screaming involved, mostly from the AV geek, and Puck spent the rest of the day randomly bursting into laughter) or tried to lock themselves in their own lockers (Jewfro again). But life was good. The teachers even stopped eyeing him warily and Coach Sylvester stopped following him around all the time.

Really, all because, one time, he started one little riot.