Nine Shades of Red - Part 1/9
Title: Nine Shades of Red Part 1/9
Author: Anon_Fangirl
Rating:PG-13 for this part, it will probably go up to R or NC-17 later
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Puck/Kurt
Genre: Romance, Friendship, A bit of Angst
Warning: Some bad language
Spoilers: Everything that's aired is fair game (up to 3X04 at this point)
Disclaimer: I do not own Glee or its characters.
Author Notes: This is my first fic, ever. It's my very late attempt at the FIDW Challenge. I really welcome contructive criticism!! Many thanks to knittycat99 who gave this an initial read through and motivated me to keep writing and to peet4paint who fixed all my tenses and shames me inspires me with her crazy superhuman writing abilities ;) .
Summary: Written for this prompt from the FIDW challenge: Sin, guilt, pain,
passion, blood, anger, courage, danger and love... those are all things that you easily associate with the color red. Puck goes through all those nine shades of red when thinking about Kurt.
Word Count: 1505 this part
Puck was pretty sure he was over the whole homophobic thing. In fact, he was pretty sure it hadn’t really been a homophobic thing in the first place - he couldn’t remember ever really caring that Kurt was gay, it was really more of an easy excuse for the bullying. Which was why Puck was kinda confused, and frankly disgusted with himself.
See, him and Finn patched things up towards the end of junior year which meant he’d been spending a lot of time at the Hudmel place over the summer. A lot of time at the Hudmel place meant a lot of time with both Finn and Kurt. He’d realized after joining Glee that Kurt was a pretty ok guy, but they’d never actually spent that much time together. Over the summer they’d been hanging out though, even just one-on-one sometimes, when Finn was caught up with Rachel and Puck just ended up at the Hudmel place anyway, out of habit. So, Puck wasn’t just ok with Kurt anymore, he considered the dude a friend and he actually respected the hell out of the guy.
So, that was why Puck was pretty pissed at himself when he finally had to acknowledge that yeah, he was (and had been all summer) kinda uncomfortable around Kurt. It was just a low level thing. It didn’t get in the way of anything and it definitely didn’t keep Puck away, but it was pissing Puck off for what it represented Puck just couldn’t understand why the fuck he’d start being uncomfortable with the gay all of a sudden.
Puck liked to believe that he’d grown up, maybe even matured a little. Even though he wasn’t raising her, he liked to believe that he could be the kind of man that his little girl could be proud of. He was pretty sure that a guy who was uncomfortable around his gay friend probably wasn’t going to win any awards for father of the year. So Puck decided to fix it. He did some research and found that a lot of homophobic beliefs stemmed from ignorance, so he figured he’d better hurry up and educate himself.
Puck being Puck, he figured the best, and easiest way of getting educated about gay stuff was gay porn. This didn’t go exactly as Puck had planned - not that he had really planned beyond “watch gay porn, stop being uncomfortable around Kurt”. Mostly he just ended up kinda confused, incredibly curious, and way more turned on than he had expected. But the next time he saw Kurt he still had that nagging, nauseous feeling underlying everything.
After some more Googling and a little more actual thought, Puck realized that what they meant when they said to get educated probably wasn’t “watch a lot of gay porn” but something like “get to know actual gay people”. Puck thought he already knew Kurt, but he guessed hanging out playing video games and eating pizza didn’t count. Clearly he needed to get to know Kurt better - hopes, dreams, all that crap. Problem was, he couldn’t just start asking Kurt all kinds of personal questions, that would just be weird. What was he going to say, “Dude, I just realized I’m apparently still kind of homophobic, seeing as how you make me uncomfortable, so I need to like, get to know you and shit, so I can stop feeling like such a douche”. Yeah, that probably wouldn’t go over so well. So that ruled out the direct approach, which left Puck with, well… snooping. He figured he could dig around Kurt’s room some, figure him out, get over his shit, and stop feeling like crap every time Kurt was around.
The opportunity to snoop turned up sooner than he would have thought. Kurt was out one day and Puck and Finn were hanging out playing video games. Mid-game Rachel called looking for a ride from Finn and Puck figured he’d just hang out and wait for Finn to get back. It wasn’t until about ten minutes after Finn had left that Puck realized that this was the perfect opportunity to check out Kurt’s room. He headed upstairs and began rifling through Kurt’s things. The desk was a bust - homework, picture of the Garbler hobbit, sheet music - nothing new there. Peering around the room he headed to the closet. As he was rummaging around the back he spotted a bright red, obviously (even to Puck’s very untrained eye) expensive sweater shoved into a bag with a few other pricey looking pieces. Puck’s gust twisted uncomfortably as he grabbed the sweater, running it through his hands - you didn’t have to know Kurt very well at all to know that he took care of his clothes, a bag stuffed full of fancy clothes at the back of his closet? That just didn’t make sense. Puck backed out of the closet still holding the sweater, just as the door to Kurt’s room opened.
Forgetting for the moment that he was snooping, he just thrust the sweater toward Kurt and asked, “Dude, why was this shoved in the back of your closet? You like, worship your clothes”.
Kurt blinked a few times before demanding, “Why were you in my closet?”.
“Finn said he thought you had a stash of vintage Mario games stashed in here somewhere. Answer my question dude, why the abuse of the sweater?”
Kurt sighed and grabbed the sweater, replying “It’s a bag to donate, I just keeping forgetting to bring it in. Most of the pieces are ruined, but I figure someone might get some use out of them”. Kurt demonstrated, wiggling his fingers through a sizable hole in the shoulder of the sweater.
The unpleasant churning in Puck’s gut increased as he asked Kurt, “How the hell did that happen? You’re seriously obsessed with your clothes dude”.
“It got caught on the edge of a d- It was a really fragile sweater, it tears easily. It’s not a big deal Puck.”
Puck was pretty sure he was going to puke. “You were going to say dumpster. It got ripped on a dumpster.” Puck reached into the closet, pulling out the bag of clothes to be donated. He grabbed each piece finding similar holes in almost all of them. “These are all from dumpster aren’t they?” Puck asked. “Or locker slams”, he continues as he saw Kurt was about to protest, “These are slushy stains”, he grabbed a few light colored items out of the bag.
“I’m probably responsible for at least half of these, Kurt.” Puck whispered.
The familiar churning in Puck’s gut was at its peak, and he finally - finally- realized what it was. He hadn’t been uncomfortable around Kurt because he was homophobic, he was uncomfortable because he was guilty. Because he spent years bullying the kid and he never apologized, he never did anything to make it right, he
just stopped being an asshole and Kurt just accepted it.
“I’m so sorry Kurt”, Puck whispered, still gripping the slushy stained clothes.
“Puck, it was a long time ago, it doesn’t matter.”
“It does though Kurt, I was awful to you and I never apologized, I never did anything to make it right.”
“I forgive you Puck, I did a long time ago. You never said the words, but you stopped being that guy ages ago. You’ve been there for everyone in Glee at one point or another over the past year.” Kurt took a hesitant step forward and carefully placed a hand on Puck’s forearm, “We’re friends Puck, don’t worry about it anymore, ok?”.
“Yeah… friends…ok…” Puck grinned, as he looked up at Kurt, “Thanks dude, that means a lot. I figure I’m supposed to hug you or something now, but I’ve pretty much used up my talking/feeling/emotions quota for one day”.
Kurt just laughed and rolled his eyes, “Yeah Puck, I know. No hugging necessary.” He giggled a little as he reached under his bed and pulled out a large box labeled boldly with ‘GAY PORN’. “Besides, who needs hugs when you’ve got-“.
“Dude! Whoah! Dude, just…what?!” said Puck, staring wide eyed at the box.
“Honestly Puckerman”, Kurt snarked, “If I were hiding pornography under my bed, do you honestly think I would store it in a box labeled GAY PORN?!”. Kurt glared at Puck until Puck sort of nodded and acknowledged that no, he supposed Kurt wasn’t exactly that much of a moron. “It is, however, the perfect place to store anything that I want to make sure my nosy brother never finds”, Kurt added, opening the box to reveal an NES and a rather impressive collection of games.
“So, so much better than hugs, dude”. Puck said as he began to help Kurt set up the system.
The two boys quickly finished setting up the system and settled in for a long night of retro gaming. Puck was psyched about the NES but he was even happier that for
the first time in a very long time, he was totally comfortable hanging out with Kurt.
Author: Anon_Fangirl
Rating:PG-13 for this part, it will probably go up to R or NC-17 later
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Puck/Kurt
Genre: Romance, Friendship, A bit of Angst
Warning: Some bad language
Spoilers: Everything that's aired is fair game (up to 3X04 at this point)
Disclaimer: I do not own Glee or its characters.
Author Notes: This is my first fic, ever. It's my very late attempt at the FIDW Challenge. I really welcome contructive criticism!! Many thanks to knittycat99 who gave this an initial read through and motivated me to keep writing and to peet4paint who fixed all my tenses and shames me inspires me with her crazy superhuman writing abilities ;) .
Summary: Written for this prompt from the FIDW challenge: Sin, guilt, pain,
passion, blood, anger, courage, danger and love... those are all things that you easily associate with the color red. Puck goes through all those nine shades of red when thinking about Kurt.
Word Count: 1505 this part
Puck was pretty sure he was over the whole homophobic thing. In fact, he was pretty sure it hadn’t really been a homophobic thing in the first place - he couldn’t remember ever really caring that Kurt was gay, it was really more of an easy excuse for the bullying. Which was why Puck was kinda confused, and frankly disgusted with himself.
See, him and Finn patched things up towards the end of junior year which meant he’d been spending a lot of time at the Hudmel place over the summer. A lot of time at the Hudmel place meant a lot of time with both Finn and Kurt. He’d realized after joining Glee that Kurt was a pretty ok guy, but they’d never actually spent that much time together. Over the summer they’d been hanging out though, even just one-on-one sometimes, when Finn was caught up with Rachel and Puck just ended up at the Hudmel place anyway, out of habit. So, Puck wasn’t just ok with Kurt anymore, he considered the dude a friend and he actually respected the hell out of the guy.
So, that was why Puck was pretty pissed at himself when he finally had to acknowledge that yeah, he was (and had been all summer) kinda uncomfortable around Kurt. It was just a low level thing. It didn’t get in the way of anything and it definitely didn’t keep Puck away, but it was pissing Puck off for what it represented Puck just couldn’t understand why the fuck he’d start being uncomfortable with the gay all of a sudden.
Puck liked to believe that he’d grown up, maybe even matured a little. Even though he wasn’t raising her, he liked to believe that he could be the kind of man that his little girl could be proud of. He was pretty sure that a guy who was uncomfortable around his gay friend probably wasn’t going to win any awards for father of the year. So Puck decided to fix it. He did some research and found that a lot of homophobic beliefs stemmed from ignorance, so he figured he’d better hurry up and educate himself.
Puck being Puck, he figured the best, and easiest way of getting educated about gay stuff was gay porn. This didn’t go exactly as Puck had planned - not that he had really planned beyond “watch gay porn, stop being uncomfortable around Kurt”. Mostly he just ended up kinda confused, incredibly curious, and way more turned on than he had expected. But the next time he saw Kurt he still had that nagging, nauseous feeling underlying everything.
After some more Googling and a little more actual thought, Puck realized that what they meant when they said to get educated probably wasn’t “watch a lot of gay porn” but something like “get to know actual gay people”. Puck thought he already knew Kurt, but he guessed hanging out playing video games and eating pizza didn’t count. Clearly he needed to get to know Kurt better - hopes, dreams, all that crap. Problem was, he couldn’t just start asking Kurt all kinds of personal questions, that would just be weird. What was he going to say, “Dude, I just realized I’m apparently still kind of homophobic, seeing as how you make me uncomfortable, so I need to like, get to know you and shit, so I can stop feeling like such a douche”. Yeah, that probably wouldn’t go over so well. So that ruled out the direct approach, which left Puck with, well… snooping. He figured he could dig around Kurt’s room some, figure him out, get over his shit, and stop feeling like crap every time Kurt was around.
The opportunity to snoop turned up sooner than he would have thought. Kurt was out one day and Puck and Finn were hanging out playing video games. Mid-game Rachel called looking for a ride from Finn and Puck figured he’d just hang out and wait for Finn to get back. It wasn’t until about ten minutes after Finn had left that Puck realized that this was the perfect opportunity to check out Kurt’s room. He headed upstairs and began rifling through Kurt’s things. The desk was a bust - homework, picture of the Garbler hobbit, sheet music - nothing new there. Peering around the room he headed to the closet. As he was rummaging around the back he spotted a bright red, obviously (even to Puck’s very untrained eye) expensive sweater shoved into a bag with a few other pricey looking pieces. Puck’s gust twisted uncomfortably as he grabbed the sweater, running it through his hands - you didn’t have to know Kurt very well at all to know that he took care of his clothes, a bag stuffed full of fancy clothes at the back of his closet? That just didn’t make sense. Puck backed out of the closet still holding the sweater, just as the door to Kurt’s room opened.
Forgetting for the moment that he was snooping, he just thrust the sweater toward Kurt and asked, “Dude, why was this shoved in the back of your closet? You like, worship your clothes”.
Kurt blinked a few times before demanding, “Why were you in my closet?”.
“Finn said he thought you had a stash of vintage Mario games stashed in here somewhere. Answer my question dude, why the abuse of the sweater?”
Kurt sighed and grabbed the sweater, replying “It’s a bag to donate, I just keeping forgetting to bring it in. Most of the pieces are ruined, but I figure someone might get some use out of them”. Kurt demonstrated, wiggling his fingers through a sizable hole in the shoulder of the sweater.
The unpleasant churning in Puck’s gut increased as he asked Kurt, “How the hell did that happen? You’re seriously obsessed with your clothes dude”.
“It got caught on the edge of a d- It was a really fragile sweater, it tears easily. It’s not a big deal Puck.”
Puck was pretty sure he was going to puke. “You were going to say dumpster. It got ripped on a dumpster.” Puck reached into the closet, pulling out the bag of clothes to be donated. He grabbed each piece finding similar holes in almost all of them. “These are all from dumpster aren’t they?” Puck asked. “Or locker slams”, he continues as he saw Kurt was about to protest, “These are slushy stains”, he grabbed a few light colored items out of the bag.
“I’m probably responsible for at least half of these, Kurt.” Puck whispered.
The familiar churning in Puck’s gut was at its peak, and he finally - finally- realized what it was. He hadn’t been uncomfortable around Kurt because he was homophobic, he was uncomfortable because he was guilty. Because he spent years bullying the kid and he never apologized, he never did anything to make it right, he
just stopped being an asshole and Kurt just accepted it.
“I’m so sorry Kurt”, Puck whispered, still gripping the slushy stained clothes.
“Puck, it was a long time ago, it doesn’t matter.”
“It does though Kurt, I was awful to you and I never apologized, I never did anything to make it right.”
“I forgive you Puck, I did a long time ago. You never said the words, but you stopped being that guy ages ago. You’ve been there for everyone in Glee at one point or another over the past year.” Kurt took a hesitant step forward and carefully placed a hand on Puck’s forearm, “We’re friends Puck, don’t worry about it anymore, ok?”.
“Yeah… friends…ok…” Puck grinned, as he looked up at Kurt, “Thanks dude, that means a lot. I figure I’m supposed to hug you or something now, but I’ve pretty much used up my talking/feeling/emotions quota for one day”.
Kurt just laughed and rolled his eyes, “Yeah Puck, I know. No hugging necessary.” He giggled a little as he reached under his bed and pulled out a large box labeled boldly with ‘GAY PORN’. “Besides, who needs hugs when you’ve got-“.
“Dude! Whoah! Dude, just…what?!” said Puck, staring wide eyed at the box.
“Honestly Puckerman”, Kurt snarked, “If I were hiding pornography under my bed, do you honestly think I would store it in a box labeled GAY PORN?!”. Kurt glared at Puck until Puck sort of nodded and acknowledged that no, he supposed Kurt wasn’t exactly that much of a moron. “It is, however, the perfect place to store anything that I want to make sure my nosy brother never finds”, Kurt added, opening the box to reveal an NES and a rather impressive collection of games.
“So, so much better than hugs, dude”. Puck said as he began to help Kurt set up the system.
The two boys quickly finished setting up the system and settled in for a long night of retro gaming. Puck was psyched about the NES but he was even happier that for
the first time in a very long time, he was totally comfortable hanging out with Kurt.