Fic for denise0949
Recipient's LJ Name: denise0949
Title: Different Strokes
Pairing: Puck/Kurt
Length: ~2,000 words
Warnings: None
Summary: It’s a simple pleasure, but Kurt just likes to watch the snow. Puck takes a more active approach.
2012
Kurt isn’t much of a tea person, really, except on mornings like these, mornings when coffee just doesn’t feel like the right way to start the day. It’s much too still and quiet outside for him to even think of disturbing the mood with a drink that will leave him jittery. Instead, he drops a teabag into the steaming water, mixing the flavor until the liquid has turned light brown. When he takes a sip, it fills his chest with a pleasant feeling of soft and warm that fits perfectly with the peaceful layer of snow on the ground outside.
He’s going to enjoy this while it lasts, before the day really gets going and people start stomping around the yard, disturbing the surface of the snow. The driveway is already gone, ruined the moment Carole pulled out of the garage this morning for her early shift, but the lawn, at least for now, is untouched.
So he sits by the window and drinks his tea and lets himself start the day as slowly as he feels like.
It works perfectly for seventeen whole minutes, and then he’s jerked out of his mellow thoughts by Noah Puckerman stomping across the lawn and up to the door, leaving a trail of destruction in his path. Kurt sighs to himself at the loss but stands up, placing his tea on the table and moving to answer the ring of the doorbell.
“Hey, man,” Puck says as soon as the door is swung open. “What’s up?”
“Just a lazy day,” Kurt says (read: he actually had plans until about twelve hours ago, when they blew up spectacularly to the soundtrack of both Blaine and him yelling things they knew they shouldn’t but not caring enough to censor themselves).
“Cool,” Puck says easily. “So is Finn up yet?”
“I… don’t think so?” He hasn’t seen Finn at all this morning, which is a pretty good argument for him never having left his room. “Should he be?”
Puck shrugs. “Well, yeah, but everyone else already bailed on us except-” His phone chirps at him. “Okay, everyone. What the hell? The roads are not that bad.”
“You managed to drive on them, at least,” Kurt agrees, then sighs. “Did you really have to mess up the yard, though?”
“Huh?” Puck says, eyebrows furrowing in confusion. “What’d I do to it?”
Gesturing widely at the path Puck has carved out of the snow with his footsteps, Kurt finally moves back from the doorway to let Puck in beside him. “You ruined the snow,” he said, heaving another sigh, completely aware of how this must sound ridiculous.
“By stepping on it?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t you kinda have to step on it? Like, if you ever want to leave the house again?”
“I was going to wait until spring,” Kurt says, smiling at the split-second look on Puck’s face before he realizes that Kurt isn’t serious. With one last glance at the lawn (trying his best to restrict his vision to the side that Puck hasn’t violently mutilated), Kurt swings the door shut against the cold air. “Or at least another hour, maybe.”
“Why?”
“What?”
“Why do you care?” Puck asks. “I mean, yeah the snow looks nice and everything, but seriously? It’s not like it’s gonna fly away if someone steps in it.”
For a moment, Kurt blinks at him, unable to decide whether it’s crazier that Puck actually asks or that Kurt is seriously considering answering him, because this isn’t the sort of thing they normally talk about.
“I don’t know,” he says finally, even though he does know, but explaining it in a way that someone else can understand is a different story. He’s never really tried it before. “It just feels wrong, I guess. It looks so soft and beautiful like this, and whenever anyone disturbs it, it just gets… messy. There’s never anything you can do to it to make it look better than it does now.”
Potential. That’s the word that always pops up in his mind when he looks out at the unbroken snow. There’s so much potential for something beautiful but the realization of any attempts is only ever disappointing.
“I… guess?” Puck says, though he clearly doesn’t understand. “I always figured that when it gets messed up is when someone had fun in it.”
“I bet you were one of those kids who had to run right outside as soon as they woke up and saw the snow, just to make a mark.”
“Yep.” Puck grins. “And it’s awesome. You wanna?”
“Aren’t you here to hang out with Finn?” Kurt asks. Not that he’s complaining, because he really does have a startling lack of things to do today.
“He’s asleep,” Puck says simply.
Kurt pauses, chews just a little on the inside of his cheek, and tries to imagine walking out into that perfect snow, crushing it underfoot until it looks nothing like it was meant to. “Let’s go wake up Finn,” he says finally.
It’s easy enough to slip in a comment while Finn’s still half-asleep, something vaguely depreciative about his video game skills which leads to an inevitable challenge, and they never even think to make it outside. Kurt lets his tea run cold, though, in favor of taking his turn shooting poorly-animated zombies in the head.
---
2013
“Nooooo…” Kurt moans slowly when he’s woken - much too early - by lights flashing on over his head and a voice that has no right to be so cheerful at… five in the morning? “Puck, what the hell?”
“C’mon, Kurt. Wake up!”
“This is the moment when I severely regret giving you the code to my dorm,” Kurt mutters. “I don’t even have class until three, today.”
“This is the first time?” Puck asks, instantly distracted.
“Puck, what on earth could you want so very early in the morning, and are you planning to continue wanting it in the future? Because if so, things are going to start getting ugly.”
Puck sinks down to sit on the bed next to him, tugging the pillow away from where Kurt has pulled it over his face. “One time only, I promise. But, Kurt, you gotta come see this.”
“Now?” Kurt whimpers.
“Yeah, now. Before everyone else on campus gets up.”
By the time Puck starts pulling at his arm to get him out of bed, Kurt’s accepted that there is no way he’s getting back to sleep this morning, and is already trying to figure out some equivalent revenge he can take in the next few days that doesn’t involve having to get up early himself just to drag Puck out of bed (that feels more like a punishment for both of them, really). Unfortunately, his tired mind can’t quite wrap itself around the concepts.
“Grab some clothes or a jacket or something,” Puck says.
“We’re going outside? In the cold? This is getting progressively worse.”
“Yep,” Puck says cheerfully, snickering at the way it takes Kurt three tries just to get his arm through the sleeve of his coat. “Let’s go.”
Kurt is fairly certain he will never remember exactly how they get down two flights of stairs and down the hallway to the exit, but as soon as he steps outside, he’s wide awake. “Oh.”
“Mmhmm.”
“Wow.”
The snowfall that started out light yesterday afternoon must have picked up overnight, because the entire world looks white.
It’s not just the regular sort of white that comes with winter, though; it’s a solid wall. This is trees struggling not to bend sideways under the added weight. This is dogs getting lost in the snow drifts when they stray ten feet from the porch. This is cars left barely identifiable, nothing more than large lumps in the landscape.
This is complete.
“I know it’s early, but if I let you sleep in then people would’ve messed it up walking to class and stuff.”
“Thanks,” Kurt says softly.
He stands in the doorway and watches carefully as the snow stays exactly the same, vaguely wishing he had some tea. On the other hand, he’s got Puck standing two inches to his left, radiating warmth through the winter weather.
“C’mon,” Puck says finally, and Kurt blinks himself out of the reverie to look at him.
“What? Where?”
Puck gestures widely at the quad.
“Why? ”
“Because we’re the first ones up, and that means we get dibs.”
“We’ll mess it up,” Kurt says, grimacing slightly at how young he must sound with those words.
“No, we’ll have fun,” Puck insists, and it’s at least as immature as Kurt sounded a moment ago, so if nothing else they’re together in this. Maybe it’s because it’s just after five in the morning and their brains haven’t quite figured out how to act like adults just yet. “You can’t tell me you don’t want to.”
The snow is inviting, Kurt will admit. It always has been. It’s just that he knows he’ll feel bad about it in the end, when he looks back at what he’s made and finds it ugly and misshapen.
He’s still thinking about it when Puck leans in a little and slips his fingers between Kurt’s.
“Guess you’re going in anyway,” Puck says, and before Kurt can ask what that means, he finds himself pulled suddenly forward and stumbling, nearly falling face-first into a pile of snow. The hand holding his saves him, tugging him up and lending him balance until his feet stand solid underneath him once again.
“Puck!”
They haven’t gone far, but they’ve left a very short trail of messy footprints and a kind of trench from the way he slid around in the deep snow.
“Told you,” Puck shrugs. He reaches down - not that far, even, because they’re up past their knees in the stuff - and snatches up a loose handful of snow, which he flicks lightly into Kurt’s startled face with a wide grin. “So stop looking at it and play with it.”
“You do not- Aah!” He’s cut off by another pile of snow to the face, a little larger than the last one, and glares at Puck. “Stop that.”
“Make me.”
It’s not until after his snowball wipes the satisfied smirk off of Puck’s fact that Kurt remembers the uneven hole he’s dug to make that weapon, and by then he’s already worrying about ducking out of the way of Puck’s retaliation.
In the end, their cheeks turn red and they get more than a few odd looks from the early risers heading off to the first of the morning classes or opening shifts at work, leaving extra trails of footprints as they walk that pale in comparison to the destruction Kurt and Puck have wreaked on the quad. Kurt takes a moment to catch his breath and look around.
It’s incredibly uncoordinated and unfocused, and there’s nothing resembling any kind of pattern to the way they’ve dug trenches in the snow; but he can locate the place where Puck lost his balance completely and nearly disappeared into the snow when he fell over, and the place where he insisted they attempt to make snow angels that look as nice as the ones that come out in cartoons (which was, incidentally, a miserable failure; they came out looking like the imprints of a small bear that had flopped around pathetically in the snow).
It certainly isn’t a tea morning by the time they get back inside, but it’s not a coffee morning either, especially since he’s more than sufficiently awake after all that.
They settle for hot chocolate, and Kurt sits quietly at the widow beside Puck, blowing on his mug to cool the liquid while Puck tips it straight into his mouth and burns his tongue.
Title: Different Strokes
Pairing: Puck/Kurt
Length: ~2,000 words
Warnings: None
Summary: It’s a simple pleasure, but Kurt just likes to watch the snow. Puck takes a more active approach.
2012
Kurt isn’t much of a tea person, really, except on mornings like these, mornings when coffee just doesn’t feel like the right way to start the day. It’s much too still and quiet outside for him to even think of disturbing the mood with a drink that will leave him jittery. Instead, he drops a teabag into the steaming water, mixing the flavor until the liquid has turned light brown. When he takes a sip, it fills his chest with a pleasant feeling of soft and warm that fits perfectly with the peaceful layer of snow on the ground outside.
He’s going to enjoy this while it lasts, before the day really gets going and people start stomping around the yard, disturbing the surface of the snow. The driveway is already gone, ruined the moment Carole pulled out of the garage this morning for her early shift, but the lawn, at least for now, is untouched.
So he sits by the window and drinks his tea and lets himself start the day as slowly as he feels like.
It works perfectly for seventeen whole minutes, and then he’s jerked out of his mellow thoughts by Noah Puckerman stomping across the lawn and up to the door, leaving a trail of destruction in his path. Kurt sighs to himself at the loss but stands up, placing his tea on the table and moving to answer the ring of the doorbell.
“Hey, man,” Puck says as soon as the door is swung open. “What’s up?”
“Just a lazy day,” Kurt says (read: he actually had plans until about twelve hours ago, when they blew up spectacularly to the soundtrack of both Blaine and him yelling things they knew they shouldn’t but not caring enough to censor themselves).
“Cool,” Puck says easily. “So is Finn up yet?”
“I… don’t think so?” He hasn’t seen Finn at all this morning, which is a pretty good argument for him never having left his room. “Should he be?”
Puck shrugs. “Well, yeah, but everyone else already bailed on us except-” His phone chirps at him. “Okay, everyone. What the hell? The roads are not that bad.”
“You managed to drive on them, at least,” Kurt agrees, then sighs. “Did you really have to mess up the yard, though?”
“Huh?” Puck says, eyebrows furrowing in confusion. “What’d I do to it?”
Gesturing widely at the path Puck has carved out of the snow with his footsteps, Kurt finally moves back from the doorway to let Puck in beside him. “You ruined the snow,” he said, heaving another sigh, completely aware of how this must sound ridiculous.
“By stepping on it?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t you kinda have to step on it? Like, if you ever want to leave the house again?”
“I was going to wait until spring,” Kurt says, smiling at the split-second look on Puck’s face before he realizes that Kurt isn’t serious. With one last glance at the lawn (trying his best to restrict his vision to the side that Puck hasn’t violently mutilated), Kurt swings the door shut against the cold air. “Or at least another hour, maybe.”
“Why?”
“What?”
“Why do you care?” Puck asks. “I mean, yeah the snow looks nice and everything, but seriously? It’s not like it’s gonna fly away if someone steps in it.”
For a moment, Kurt blinks at him, unable to decide whether it’s crazier that Puck actually asks or that Kurt is seriously considering answering him, because this isn’t the sort of thing they normally talk about.
“I don’t know,” he says finally, even though he does know, but explaining it in a way that someone else can understand is a different story. He’s never really tried it before. “It just feels wrong, I guess. It looks so soft and beautiful like this, and whenever anyone disturbs it, it just gets… messy. There’s never anything you can do to it to make it look better than it does now.”
Potential. That’s the word that always pops up in his mind when he looks out at the unbroken snow. There’s so much potential for something beautiful but the realization of any attempts is only ever disappointing.
“I… guess?” Puck says, though he clearly doesn’t understand. “I always figured that when it gets messed up is when someone had fun in it.”
“I bet you were one of those kids who had to run right outside as soon as they woke up and saw the snow, just to make a mark.”
“Yep.” Puck grins. “And it’s awesome. You wanna?”
“Aren’t you here to hang out with Finn?” Kurt asks. Not that he’s complaining, because he really does have a startling lack of things to do today.
“He’s asleep,” Puck says simply.
Kurt pauses, chews just a little on the inside of his cheek, and tries to imagine walking out into that perfect snow, crushing it underfoot until it looks nothing like it was meant to. “Let’s go wake up Finn,” he says finally.
It’s easy enough to slip in a comment while Finn’s still half-asleep, something vaguely depreciative about his video game skills which leads to an inevitable challenge, and they never even think to make it outside. Kurt lets his tea run cold, though, in favor of taking his turn shooting poorly-animated zombies in the head.
---
2013
“Nooooo…” Kurt moans slowly when he’s woken - much too early - by lights flashing on over his head and a voice that has no right to be so cheerful at… five in the morning? “Puck, what the hell?”
“C’mon, Kurt. Wake up!”
“This is the moment when I severely regret giving you the code to my dorm,” Kurt mutters. “I don’t even have class until three, today.”
“This is the first time?” Puck asks, instantly distracted.
“Puck, what on earth could you want so very early in the morning, and are you planning to continue wanting it in the future? Because if so, things are going to start getting ugly.”
Puck sinks down to sit on the bed next to him, tugging the pillow away from where Kurt has pulled it over his face. “One time only, I promise. But, Kurt, you gotta come see this.”
“Now?” Kurt whimpers.
“Yeah, now. Before everyone else on campus gets up.”
By the time Puck starts pulling at his arm to get him out of bed, Kurt’s accepted that there is no way he’s getting back to sleep this morning, and is already trying to figure out some equivalent revenge he can take in the next few days that doesn’t involve having to get up early himself just to drag Puck out of bed (that feels more like a punishment for both of them, really). Unfortunately, his tired mind can’t quite wrap itself around the concepts.
“Grab some clothes or a jacket or something,” Puck says.
“We’re going outside? In the cold? This is getting progressively worse.”
“Yep,” Puck says cheerfully, snickering at the way it takes Kurt three tries just to get his arm through the sleeve of his coat. “Let’s go.”
Kurt is fairly certain he will never remember exactly how they get down two flights of stairs and down the hallway to the exit, but as soon as he steps outside, he’s wide awake. “Oh.”
“Mmhmm.”
“Wow.”
The snowfall that started out light yesterday afternoon must have picked up overnight, because the entire world looks white.
It’s not just the regular sort of white that comes with winter, though; it’s a solid wall. This is trees struggling not to bend sideways under the added weight. This is dogs getting lost in the snow drifts when they stray ten feet from the porch. This is cars left barely identifiable, nothing more than large lumps in the landscape.
This is complete.
“I know it’s early, but if I let you sleep in then people would’ve messed it up walking to class and stuff.”
“Thanks,” Kurt says softly.
He stands in the doorway and watches carefully as the snow stays exactly the same, vaguely wishing he had some tea. On the other hand, he’s got Puck standing two inches to his left, radiating warmth through the winter weather.
“C’mon,” Puck says finally, and Kurt blinks himself out of the reverie to look at him.
“What? Where?”
Puck gestures widely at the quad.
“Why? ”
“Because we’re the first ones up, and that means we get dibs.”
“We’ll mess it up,” Kurt says, grimacing slightly at how young he must sound with those words.
“No, we’ll have fun,” Puck insists, and it’s at least as immature as Kurt sounded a moment ago, so if nothing else they’re together in this. Maybe it’s because it’s just after five in the morning and their brains haven’t quite figured out how to act like adults just yet. “You can’t tell me you don’t want to.”
The snow is inviting, Kurt will admit. It always has been. It’s just that he knows he’ll feel bad about it in the end, when he looks back at what he’s made and finds it ugly and misshapen.
He’s still thinking about it when Puck leans in a little and slips his fingers between Kurt’s.
“Guess you’re going in anyway,” Puck says, and before Kurt can ask what that means, he finds himself pulled suddenly forward and stumbling, nearly falling face-first into a pile of snow. The hand holding his saves him, tugging him up and lending him balance until his feet stand solid underneath him once again.
“Puck!”
They haven’t gone far, but they’ve left a very short trail of messy footprints and a kind of trench from the way he slid around in the deep snow.
“Told you,” Puck shrugs. He reaches down - not that far, even, because they’re up past their knees in the stuff - and snatches up a loose handful of snow, which he flicks lightly into Kurt’s startled face with a wide grin. “So stop looking at it and play with it.”
“You do not- Aah!” He’s cut off by another pile of snow to the face, a little larger than the last one, and glares at Puck. “Stop that.”
“Make me.”
It’s not until after his snowball wipes the satisfied smirk off of Puck’s fact that Kurt remembers the uneven hole he’s dug to make that weapon, and by then he’s already worrying about ducking out of the way of Puck’s retaliation.
In the end, their cheeks turn red and they get more than a few odd looks from the early risers heading off to the first of the morning classes or opening shifts at work, leaving extra trails of footprints as they walk that pale in comparison to the destruction Kurt and Puck have wreaked on the quad. Kurt takes a moment to catch his breath and look around.
It’s incredibly uncoordinated and unfocused, and there’s nothing resembling any kind of pattern to the way they’ve dug trenches in the snow; but he can locate the place where Puck lost his balance completely and nearly disappeared into the snow when he fell over, and the place where he insisted they attempt to make snow angels that look as nice as the ones that come out in cartoons (which was, incidentally, a miserable failure; they came out looking like the imprints of a small bear that had flopped around pathetically in the snow).
It certainly isn’t a tea morning by the time they get back inside, but it’s not a coffee morning either, especially since he’s more than sufficiently awake after all that.
They settle for hot chocolate, and Kurt sits quietly at the widow beside Puck, blowing on his mug to cool the liquid while Puck tips it straight into his mouth and burns his tongue.