Fic: Low Rising (1/4)
Low Rising
Part One
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Noah Puckerman hates a lot of things in life. One of them is the Hummel kid’s laugh.
Mostly, it’s loud. And not in the grind-of-an-engine or the roar-of-a-crowd-after-a-touchdown kind of way. More like the Jesus-Christ-shut-the-fuck-up kind of way. It’s the kind of loud that had their kindergarten teacher, Miss Bedford, wrinkling up her nose and flinching, even as she shot the boy a tight-lipped grin over blowups of the Letter People, back in the day.
Noah cleans Miss Bedford’s pool. She’s Mrs. Nelson now, not that it matters. She takes her ring off when she calls for her mid-season chemicals.
But Hummel’s laughter’s like a plague. There’s no escaping it, and it’s always there, and it makes his gag reflex act up when he’s drinking out of the water fountain, and it throws off his rhythm when he’s running suicides on the field. It’s infectious, and it sends off a wave of fucking giggling that might as well send him breaking out in boils, or itching with lice or flies or locusts, whatever the fuck happened in Egypt -- he didn’t pay real good attention in Hebrew school, so sue him; and the worst part is that Noah’s pretty sure other people only laugh along out of the sheer desire to drown the kid out, to make that sound go away, to keep it from melting the insides of their brains until they start bleeding from their ears.
He’s pretty sure that’s the kind of sound that kills firstborns, no fucking lie.
It doesn’t help that Hummel’s laugh is also pitched like nails on a chalkboard. Or like the death-squeal of some wild animal after it’s been hit by a truck and is oozing out under tread-marks on the asphalt, smooshed between cracks in the pavement and knee-deep potholes that ODOT’s too useless to fix. It makes him trip over words in English when they’re reading Shakespeare or some other Euro-douche from their textbooks -- the same textbooks he’s made it his personal mission to ensure have a blatant etching of a dick on the cover, each and every one of them, before he graduates. It makes him forget the Spanish for I like tacos and big tits when it’s his turn to have a conversation in front of the class for their midterm. It fucks him up sometimes when he’s trying to stare at Santana’s cleavage, makes him wince when there should be nothing wince-worthy about drooling over the way her boobs are pushed so high she’s almost choking on them, the way her nipples show through her uniform, just inside the neckline.
It might also have something to do with the fact that, when Noah’s at his locker, he’ll hear Hummel’s laugh, and it’s so goddamn breathy that he almost thinks it’s a chick’s laugh. And sometimes, when chicks laugh, Noah gets a little tight in the groin. Whatever. He’s a guy.
It’s not like it means anything. It mostly just pisses him off.
__________________________
Honest to fuck, Noah does not get what the big deal is with quote-unquote “intimacy.”
‘Cause like, what the fuck do these chicks want, anyway? He’s sitting there, fifth-period History, and his fucking phone battery’s gonna die in ten, when Santana follows up << imma suck you betta than ur lil virgin mary eva did >> with << ur an asshole and ur not gettin none o’ this >> out of fucking nowhere.
It’s not like there was any other reply to the first part other than << dunno, will u swallow? Q did >>. He’s so not an asshole just for asking the obvious question.
Well, okay, he might be an asshole, but that doesn’t mean it should cost him a blowjob.
He figures it’s probably some of that crazy reverse chick psychology that people are always talking about; that that stupid Ben Israel douche is always writing about, and spitting off about at Celibacy Club. Because it’s not like she isn’t begging for it; she totally is. People don’t walk like that, don’t roll their hips and shake their ass like that for no reason. They just don’t.
And, in Noah’s experience, they don’t shove their hands down your fucking boxers for no reason, either.
And Santana, she does both, like, a whole fuck ton of a lot. And now she’s pissing and moaning because he’s asking if she’s gonna spit up on his dick? When he knows she slept with half of his teammates before preseason scrimmages were over? Yeah, no fucking dice on that one. They’re both in this for the same things.
Maybe she’s on the rag, he thinks, as he rummages through his locker for his history book -- his hand sticks to some old gum flattened against the bottom, and he thinks for a second that it’d be kinda cool to coat the whole fucking locker, keep the janitors busy over the summer -- and yeah, she’s probably on the rag.
It’s only after he slams his locker shut that he notices.
“What the fuck you staring at, pussy boy?” It comes out low, a growl, and he’s not even looking in the direction of the kid; he doesn’t have to.
“Is that really the best you can do?” Hummel sneers, like he practices the look in the fucking mirror, corners of his lips all turned out, just like the point of his nose. “You’ve been giving me that one since the seventh grade, Puckerman. One would think that you’d have come up with something better by now.”
And Noah, he’s about to say something epic, something really fucking good -- he’s about to, but the little cunt nugget prances past him, brushes his goddamn shoulder up against Noah’s left pec all... fuck.
“Then again, one would also think you’d have figured out that women don’t take well to being treated like your jock straps.” And the fucker, the fucker, he leers like a little bitch at Noah’s crotch before he smirks just a little bit harder and spits; “You know, dirty them up and then toss them aside.”
He swallows a little too hard; catches and burns at the back of his throat. “That’s rich, coming from you,” he shoots back, a little slow; he pretends like it doesn’t lose some of the effect; “D’ya even have a dick?”
If he tries to smirk into the insult, it’s nothing compared to the Cheshire fucking grin Hummel gives back with a wink -- a goddamn wink. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
Fucker’s swaying his hips in jeans that he knows Quinn’d kill to squeeze her hips into, and Jee-zus; Hummel’s gone before Noah can think up a decent comeback.
Not like it even matters; it’s pancakes-and-sausages today in the cafeteria, and he’s gonna throw fairy-boy and his fall-fucking-collection in the goddamn dumpster so he can get his jacket full of syrup and sour milk.
Fuck -- even in his head, it sounds like the gayest kind of payback ever.
__________________________
The Great State of Ohio’s pretty much mother nature’s biggest fucking practical joke when it comes to climate, so pool season’s a little like what his mom always tells his sister about wearing white -- you get a few good months between Memorial Day weekend and Labor Day before it becomes really fucking ridiculous. Except that people in Ohio are sort of ridiculous, and sort of fucking lazy too, and they wait until the water turns green and their liners are covered in fucking slime and there’s a goddamn dead forest floating on top of the pea soup that’s left of their pristine pool water before they even think about closing the damn things up.
Not that Noah cares so much: he can charge more to shock the motherfucker if it’s dirty, and price increases make housewives bitchy.
Bitchy housewives often lead to awesome hate sex. So he gets off and gets paid. Basically, it’s a win-win situation.
Come October, though, it’s less the smell of chlorine and more the stench of sweat -- ripe after practice with the sour-sweet smell of Gatorade mixing with dirty socks in his gym bag. It’s gone once he showers, but it’s kind of like when they serve fish sandwiches at lunch -- under the tartar sauce, the stench sticks around for fucking weeks.
He tosses pussy-boy Hummel into the garbage, like, ten times in two weeks -- mostly because there are no goddamn MILFs paying him to clean their pools and suck his cock, and he’s a little sexually frustrated, yeah, so shoot him -- and they’ve had fish, like twice within that time frame. So he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to that shit.
He doesn’t really know how it happens, the whole singing thing. He doesn’t know how he ends up in the choir room with Finn and a bunch of douche teachers and Coach, but it happens, and he’s a fucking stud, so it’s not like he has to worry. But when he leaves the choir room, he can smell it on himself -- like loserdom leaving its mark because he’s dancing like a fag on a stage: all brine and that sewage-shit smell of decaying, just under the musk of too much Axe. And maybe it’s just him, maybe not -- but it gets worse the more they practice, the more he’s there: he can smell it on himself like he can smell fry grease under Hummel’s chick perfume when he decides to the Princess needs a second reminder of his lameitude after school, because his morning dumpster dive apparently didn’t do the trick. But whatever: it’s like a dead skunk under your porch, or the aftermath of the Triple Bean Supreme at La Charreada, and they’re working on analogies and metaphors for the OGT in his English class and Noah feels like it’s relevant to something, even if he really doesn’t get why the word Ampersand is more like Semicolon than Amsterdam.
Even after the whole Acafellas thing runs its course: he feels like people can smell it, see it on him. He’s a stud, for fuck’s sake, but there’s only so far he can push.
He sprays his whole goddamn bottle of Instinct on him when he gets into the locker room; glares when people choke against the cloud of aerosol in his wake.
__________________________
When Hummel joins the team, it’s pretty much the worst thing ever.
He can kick, sure, but he can’t throw worth a damn. And yeah, he kinda runs like a girl, but he’s fast as hell; Noah figures that’s probably a side-effect of being the whole school’s punching bag since forever. Basically, it’s a fucking joke, the whole thing, but even Noah can’t deny that the kid’s the only thing that’s keeping their record from the gutter. Again.
He just really kind of hates Hummel being around in general.
And it pisses him off, makes his skin hot and his breath shallow when Hummel’s there, his hands all up on the gear, his skinny little bitch frame too damn small for the pads, when Hummel’s talking on his fucking iPhone, tittering with god-knows-who after practice; when Hummel’s washing off the stench with his nose all wrinkled up over the dividers in the shower, after just about everyone else has taken off for the night.
Everyone except Noah.
It doesn’t make it any better, really, that he’s dealing with Quinn’s not-so-immaculate-conception. Not that it isn’t kind of funny that Finn’s fucking stupid enough to buy that coming in a goddamn hot tub’s gonna make a baby -- and Noah would know: he’s spent a lot of time cleaning out spas.
Jesus Christ, that boy’s a moron.
But that’s basically the only funny thing about the entire situation, and that basically kind of sucks, because now Noah’s stuck thinking about money and something-natal-somethings that he overheard Quinn being all sad about in the hallway; now Noah’s thinking about high school and after high school, and the day his dad walked out, the look on the sorry bastard’s face the last time he closed their front door.
Plus his mom gets pissed that he’s later getting home, these days; says she’s gonna call Coach and tell him she needs him home to get dinner ready before his sister has to be at Girl Scouts.
He knows she won’t call, but still.
It’s basically all Hummel’s fault, anyway, for blurring the lines of where people are supposed to be, of where the world makes sense. It’s basically Hummel’s fault that Noah can’t even enjoy football anymore -- where he gets to run people down and break the occasional bone without the threat of detention or worse.
It’s Hummel’s fault that Noah’s questioning his sanity, that Noah’s carrying around an extra set of strings in his gym bag, keeping his guitar case locked in his trunk.
It’s probably Hummel’s fault that Noah breaks down and joins fucking Glee Club on top of everything, too. Somehow.
He’s not even going to comment on where his eyes ended up during that fucking Single Ladies dance. His helmet totally kept that under wraps.
And it’s not like anyone can even blame him. Looking from behind, Hummel’s ass has always looked kind of like a chick’s.
Yeah.
__________________________
He’s bored, mostly. They’re all fucking bored. That’s usually how these things start. They run out of cheap pizza and stolen beer, and they’re bummed after another mid-season loss, and they’re riled up on adrenaline and alcohol and they’re horny because they’ve watched too many hot chicks doing too many high fucking kicks in those cheerleading skirts, and they’re mostly just bored. They need a creative outlet, or something -- he’s pretty sure he’s heard Oprah saying that’s what troubled youth are lacking. His mom’s a big Oprah fan.
His gut’s raw, weak from too much pepperoni and more than his share of the Jack that Davison managed to nab from his dad’s liquor cabinet; maybe more than that, really, when they look at him expectantly, wait for him to take the lead -- not that he’d own to it, but yeah. It might be more than just the food.
So he makes the phone call, the old handset from Karofsky’s kitchen counter sweaty against his palm, his fingerprints like grease stains against the tissuey sheets of the Yellow Pages.
The guys, they’re laughing their fucking asses off as they listen for the ring that only Noah can hear, and when Fairy Boy’s dad picks up at the other end of the line, it takes him a moment to remember what he’s doing, why he’s doing it.
He only manages the ‘what’ part before he says the words:
“Your son’s a fag.”
It doesn’t make him feel any fucking better.
Neither does sucking what’s left in the container of garlic butter tucked in the corner of one of the empty pizza boxes, but whatever. He does it anyway, even if it’s too thick; bitter going down.
__________________________
He hates to admit it -- wouldn’t, if someone asked him, because that’s just fucking gay -- but more often than not, Glee’s pretty much the highlight of his day.
Because, like, pool season’s long gone, and while he’s got a few rich fucks on the edge of town with indoor setups he keeps up with after the snow flies, he’s pretty much free after classes let out. And he sure as hell doesn’t play basketball, because that’s just a lame fucking sport, and Noah doesn’t do fucking lame things.
So even if Glee was a total drag, it would at least give him something to do. So there’s that.
But sometimes, Noah can’t even really lie to himself about how much he really likes being in Glee Club. Sure, some of the losers there make him want to gag a little sometimes, and he takes some shit from the boys in the weight room if Push It comes on the radio, even if he had absolutely nothing to do with that train wreck, but whatever. He does like Glee. He likes Glee a whole fuckton of a lot.
So when Mr. Schue tells them to each come prepared with a song for practice by the end of the week, Noah tells his mom he’s got a group project he’s got to stay late to work on, and he lingers in the hallway until everyone’s left and Schue’s locked the choir room door behind him before he picks it back open and sits with his guitar on the piano bench, picking out the notes for Stairway To Heaven and listening for the squeak of the janitor’s mop bucket rolling past the room so he doesn’t get thrown out before he gets the chords right.
He hums along to keep his place, places the lyrics in under his breath, in his head as he strums through, slips every so often, swears between fuck ups before trying again; gets lost in the swell of the music like he wants to, like he’d planned to, and thinks about the slow climb of the song, the story, the girl on the stairs, and he doesn’t hear, doesn’t notice when the mop bucket stops outside the door and the custodian peers in through the window, shakes his head with a rueful smile and moves on; doesn’t notice when the hinges rub just a little, caught up in the second verse, the buildup.
So he doesn’t see Hummel until he’s standing just a few feet from him, watching with a stare that’s kind of blank, kind of empty, kind of full of the things Noah doesn’t know how to recognize or pin down, and he’s ready to rip into him, tell the fucker to mind his own business and learn how to goddamn knock, but the words don’t come, and before he can force them, before he can rip them from his throat and out, Hummel’s coming closer, and it’s too late.
“Here,” Hummel reaches out toward the guitar, his fingers long -- his hand farther than it should be from the head, but his touch close, lingering like he’s waiting for Noah to slap him away, or wrench the instrument out of his reach, but Hummel doesn’t flinch, and Noah wonders if maybe he’s used to it; wonders if it’s just a given.
Noah wonders if the dive in the pit of his stomach has a name, or if he’s just fucking starving or something.
“Just a little,” and Hummel’s fingertips tweak the peg, quick and fierce and soft against his nail, and Noah can feel the G string tighten beneath the pad of his finger on the fret, can feel the way his gut moves when he swallows hard, brushes up against the body of the guitar in his lap.
“There,” Hummel says, keeps his hand on the head for a second too long and doesn’t look up; “That should be good.”
And it’s almost a whisper, and it shouldn’t be; it shouldn’t be, because it’s light enough that Noah can hear his own breathing, both their breaths in the quiet of the room, and beneath that there’s a beat, a rhythm that’s too fast for the goddamn song, more Ramble On than Stairway, like a bass line in the background, and Noah’s finger’s itch against the pick pinched tight between his fingers; he runs the thin plastic against the strings and hears it already; something’s right.
Hummel kind of half smiles at the space above his left ear, lips pressed thin as he flips his hair from his forehead and sucks in a sharp lungful of air, and Noah feels it, the way the room shifts around it, with the echo of the half-shaped sounds, and his fingers look small again when he grabs at the strap on his back, holds it close into his chest and lets out the breath, looks down at the toes of his shoes.
And it’s weird, for a lot of reasons.
The fact that Noah has absolutely no desire to deck the kid as he walks out, quiet as he came in, might be the weirdest.
__________________________
It’s not that Noah doesn’t feel guilty about the whole Quinn/Finn/Baby thing. He does. Kind of.
It’s just that, well, what’s he supposed to do? He’s tried to give Quinn money, he’s tried to be there for her, the best way he knows how. Is it his fault that he had needs? That he’s doing the best he can, and it’s just not enough for her crazy expectations?
Well, okay, maybe it’s a little bit his fault. But like, not mostly.
And the truth is, he’s basically fucked either way, because she tells him he’s trash when he tries to give her the gas money he weaseled off the losers in chess club, but then when she gets those sea-monkey x-ray pictures of the kid in her belly and he wasn’t there to hold her hand (and neither was Finny, because that ship’s fucking sailed already), well, then he gets the fucking ultrasound prints thrown in his face in the middle of the goddamn hallway.
He was actually thinking about going to class before that happened, too. No, really.
He lets out a long sigh and opens his eyes, shifts so that the skin of his neck pulls from the plasticy-leather of the sick-lounge in the school clinic, all olive green and fraying open at the seams; his head crinkles against the paper pillow he’s propped against, and he tries to find his favorite patterns in the water stains in the ceiling, distracts himself with the sounds of people walking outside the door, the clock on the wall counting the seconds.
Doesn’t really work; he thinks maybe that’s because he’s not really sure what he’s trying so hard not to think about.
The bell rings to signal that his math class is officially over, and he salutes Nurse Whatserface on the way out; he should probably know her name by now, but whatever.
It’s not all bad, though, he thinks as the soles of his shoes stick against the floor where someone -- not him, this time -- definitely spilled a slushy before homeroom. He’s still riding the high of the Sectionals win a little, because sure, they should have been shoo-ins anyway, but they pulled through pretty fucking awesomely. Not to mention he’s bench pressing 250, which is pretty decent for the off-season. And he filled up his frequent-eater card at Breadstix, and has an all-he-can-eat feast waiting for him tonight after school. So, you know, there are upsides.
But still.
The fourth period bell sounds, echoes harsh through the halls as they empty, and Noah mutters a quick fuck under his breath when realizes that he’s gonna be late to Biology, and he used the last of the pad of hall passes he lifted from Miss Pillsbury’s office last week.
Goddamnit.
He detours back toward guidance, to see if he can snag another set while their fearless counselor’s out stocking up on hand sanitizer or something, but he doesn’t make it past the German hallway’s bathrooms before he hears it; not words, really, or noises, but... something, and it’s familiar.
He pushes open the men’s room door and sees exactly what he expects to.
Azimio’s got his thick fingers shoved up under Hummel’s jaw, cut against his neck tight enough that the skin strains, and the crease against his throat’s all red underneath, and white above the hold -- the heartbeat split in half around Azimio’s grip rippling like a current, fast and hard under the surface, and Noah doesn’t stop to think about it, doesn’t know where any of it comes from, except that even he has limits, and some things are just fucking wrong.
“Unless you’re planning on dropping to your damn knees and swallowing,” Noah says, kinda growls, just as the door to the bathroom swings shut behind him; “you’d better keep your hands off him.”
It’s not that he thinks it’s going to stop anything, exactly, make Azimio back down, but it does get his hands off the kid’s throat, and that’s something; when Hummel’s chest heaves and he gags on the breath he takes, yeah, it feels like something.
“Am I getting too handsy with your butt buddy here, Puckerman?” Azimio sneers as he turns to face Noah head on, and Hummel ducks away toward the sinks, presses himself against the wall in the corner, and Noah’s never liked Azimio, not since second grade when the little dickface pushed him off a swing and got a face full of Noah’s fist, for which Noah then got his first OSS. So it doesn’t really bear any consideration when he simply walks up to the douchenozzle and gets a good grip on the collar of his jacket, uses the leverage to shove him up against the wall.
“Not so badass all by your lonesome, are you Az?” he taunts; “Your wife leave you for greener pastures?” He smirks when Azimio looks almost confused at the jibe; “Or were you too rough with poor Dave last night, and he needed a personal day before he could sit comfortably in class?”
The smirk just gets bigger when the confusion goes away.
“Asshole!” Azimio spits, tries to force himself out of Noah’s hold, but the bastard’s all bark and no fucking bite when it comes to taking on someone his own size; all he’s got in his corner’s a cherry slushy, and fuck if that’s gonna stop Noah.
So he does what anyone would do to shut a stupid bastard up: he decks him hard enough to break his fucking nose.
There’s blood on the floor when Noah drops him, snarls when he stumbles: “Get the fuck out, or your face is gonna be the least of your worries.”
Azimio’s a dumbass, but he doesn’t have a death wish; he’s gone before Noah’s breath starts coming slower, before the adrenaline starts wearing off.
His eyes dart to the row of mirrors above the sinks, and he sees Hummel’s head bowed low over the farthest one, his knuckles white with the force of his grip on the chipped basin, his hair flung out to hide his eyes at the angle. He clears his throat without really thinking, doesn’t know what he’s waiting for, doesn’t know why he hasn’t just walked out already, or at least wiped the drops of Azimio’s nose-blood off of his wrist.
He doesn’t mean to look up -- he doesn’t mean not to or anything, but it’s not intentional; catches Hummel’s gaze in the mirror -- hot and wrecked and tired.
“I don’t need a defender, Noah,” Hummel tells his reflection, his eyes wide and sad, angry almost as he stares too long before breaking the contact and looking down at the rusty drain cover.
Noah shrugs, wipes his hand on the tiling of the wall just inside the door, and scowls down at the red smear left on his skin as he walks back out and tries to make heads or tails of... everything.
__________________________
He’s a father. Well, like, not really. But yeah, really. He may never see that baby girl again, but she exists; she’s real, and she’s his. He can’t really wrap his head around that.
He looks out at the dusky skyline, too high above him to really make out, to see much past the concrete and brick, and when he breathes, the air is thick with smog, exhaust from semis roaring down 77 at one in the fucking morning -- homeless truckers on the road ‘til dawn, pushing the hours and fighting off sleep.
Noah sneaks a glance to either side as he steps toward the decorative shrubbery near the back door off the maternity ward. Reaching into the back pocket of his slacks with one hand, he pulls out a crushed box of Reds while he loosens his tie, fishes in his front pocket for his goddamn lighter.
He hears the mechanical swoosh of the automatic doors; doesn’t look up, just drags long before someone tells him to snuff it out, lets the taste linger in his mouth and the weight settle in his lungs before he lets it out, slow stream of grey in the spots of light, the swell of dark.
“Congratulations,” Hummel’s voice is quiet -- the scuff of his shoes on the concrete is louder -- and it sounds different when it’s so fucking faint; sounds heavy and raw -- a little scared, but deep. And Noah doesn’t say anything back; on a whim, he offers the cigarette held loose between unbalanced fingers, knuckles that are shaking ‘cause of the cold, nothing more.
To his surprise -- though, well, maybe not -- Hummel takes it, puts his lips where Noah’s were and breathes; doesn’t choke.
He drops the cigarette and twists ash beneath his heel as he exhales a cloud that dies on the breeze, and Noah doesn’t say anything; doesn’t complain that that was his last fucking smoke.
“You’d have been a decent enough dad,” Hummel adds, voice rough, and it’s wrong, kind of; husky, but not... not bad, really. Not really bad. “By which, of course, I mean that you may have lasted a good week before someone called Child Services on you.”
Noah tries not to laugh, tries not to clench his hands into fists at his sides; from Hummel, it’s almost like a compliment.
__________________________
Truth: the world does not revolve around Noah Puckerman. Fact is, the world revolves and just catches every sad sonfuvabitch up in the turning, knocking them on their asses and laughing, because just as they get back up, the world’s coming back again for round two.
Which, for Noah, means that the governor sucks, the economy’s shit, and his pool cleaning business just isn’t cutting it this summer. Not if he plans on keeping his unlimited texting plan. And getting that sweet body kit for his truck.
Long story short: he’s going to have to keep the stupid Sheets N’ Things gig.
It’s basically a useless job -- men are just not meant to ever know how to fold a fitted sheet, it’s just the way things are -- but it pays well, and the Former Mrs. Schue thinks his abs are fantastic, so she pays him enough above minimum wage to make it tolerable, so he deals, and collects his paycheck every two weeks with a cheeky grin and the kind of wink that has an extra five bucks or so being tacked onto his hourly rate every pay period. It’s doable.
It’s how he runs into Hummel, in fact; how he breaks his streak of avoiding everyone from William McKinley except Mr. Ryerson for the whole first month-and-a-half of summer vacation.
He actually manages to hide from Hummel for a good half an hour by Windexing the makeup mirrors like, five times, but eventually, he has to pass by the wall of shower curtains on his mid-morning stock rounds. He literally walks right past Hummel, keeps his head down and his steps light like he’s trying to sneak out of the house after his mom’s asleep, but the kid doesn’t even flinch. Noah takes it as a sign that the Sheets N’ Things gods are on his side.
It’s not until after he’s scarfed down his lunch at his register between customers, a good three hours later, that he realizes he never saw Hummel leave the store.
Noah closes his lane and starts a lap around the store, counterclockwise from the collection of stainless steel trash cans near the front entrance, past the beds he sometimes tries to get hot customers to lay down on next to him just to “get a feel for the firmness,” around to where the picture frames and oversized art deco prints bleed into the curtain rods and give way to the bath towels when Noah spots Hummel, right where he’d been earlier in the day. In fact, Noah’s pretty fucking sure that the kid hasn’t moved a damn muscle -- his bitchy little pout is still the same, and his head’s tiled up toward the display on the wall just like he’d caught it out of the corner of his eyes before; his eyes are kind dead, kinda glazed, not that Noah had noticed that so much the first time around, really, but yeah.
“Dude,” Noah cuts through the quiet, leans up against a display of toothbrush holders and little dishes for bars of soap that no one would ever use, because who even uses bars of soap to wash their hands anymore? “You lost or something? Or should I call the fuzz to pick you up for loitering?”
Hummel doesn’t even blink, more kinda bites his lip and keeps staring at these shower curtain hooks made of fake copper and brass beads.
“Carole wants to redo the master bathroom.”
Hummel says it in kind of a whisper, kind of a hiss that’s a little strained, like he’s either mad as hell, or about to start bawling like a fucking girl; and Noah’s not what some pansy-ass douche-bags might call perceptive, but he’s not a complete idiot, and there’s more in that one sentence than even he can play dumb about.
He doesn’t want to stay; doesn’t feel right walking away -- so he sits on the edge of a shelf and just watches.
They both just watch, until the store closes for the night.
__________________________
Hummel comes back the next morning; Noah sees him, stopped at the entrance, barely moving as he kind of dances between the automatic doors, just moving enough to keep them from closing in on him.
Noah doesn’t think much about the way his lips quirk, watching Hummel’s hands run through his hair, watching the way his lips move soundlessly as he walks in, turns, walks back out, stops, does it again.
He flips the light off on his register and tells Courtney to cover for him -- not like there’s truckloads of people looking for curtain rods on a Wednesday morning or anything -- as soon as the hard click of Hummel’s mostly-flat boots give him away as he stalks toward the new display of sink fixtures.
He’s not really surprised when Hummel’s just standing there, same as yesterday, except this time he looks like blank and more... lost.
He’s a little surprised at how much he feels like he should maybe try to think about doing something to fix that.
“So, like,” he starts in, steps forward and doesn’t let it stop him when Hummel spins on his heel and stares at him like he grew an extra fucking head; “you said she’s redoing the bathroom, right?” He keeps walking, doesn’t look to see if he’s being followed like he should be. “We’ve got these...” he puts his hand on some really ugly fucking soap dispenser before he notices that, wow, even he can tell that’s really fucking ugly; he clears his throat and tries again, pointing out something pink and slightly-less ugly instead and hoping for the best before lowering his hand and giving half a shrug; “well, we’ve got some stuff.”
It yeah, it sounds really fucking stupid, and his palms might be kinda fucking sweaty in the pocket of his gay little employee apron, but Hummel grins -- not like he’s making fun of him or anything, more like the good kind of grin -- and he follows, and Noah gets commission for sales over a hundred bucks, so it’s all good.
__________________________
Because Sheets N’ Things actually does sell more than sheets, and happens to keep in stock some pretty mass-ass “things,” they have this delivery van -- an old Chevy Express with rust in the wheel-wells that looks like some creepy fucker should be leaning out the window of it, offering candy to children, but whatever.
He parks in Hummel’s driveway, thinks about how the house is pretty nice in the daylight, and how he probably should never have done that whole thing with the lawn furniture on the roof -- that was a bad call. He throws open the back doors, the grind of rust on the hinges carrying down the sidewalks as he sizes up the boxes shoved inside. Noah apparently never gave the Hummel family business the credit it deserved, because he’s pretty sure Kurt dropped close to two grand on this whole crazy project, all charged to Daddy’s Master Card.
He hears footsteps, and he’ll admit it: it kind of stops him short when he turns and sees Hummel in a pair of worn sweats and a white undershirt. ‘Cause, you know, it’s weird -- he’s always wearing girl clothes and shit.
“Thanks for driving these over,” Hummel says, and sounds halfway between suspicious and grateful as he folds his arms across his chest and throws his hip out a little to lean against the side of the van.
“Not a problem,” Noah says, because being here keeps him from having to do inventory. “Wanna hold open your front door so I can start unloading?”
“You don’t have to carry it all in, you know,” he counters as he walks toward the house Noah, a smaller box of god-only-knows-what clasped in his left hand as he reaches in from of them and opens the screen door with his right. “You can just get it all onto the porch, I’ll get it upstairs.”
“S’part of the package,” Noah grunts as he hauls the new sink basin and faucet, some marble shit or something, losing purchase on the awkwardly-shaped box for a second before he catches himself, gets his arms underneath the edges; “The delivery charges cover installation.”
And that’s a fucking lie, but Noah kind of tells enough of those for it to not really matter all that much. Probably.
Hummel just shrugs and leads him upstairs to the infamous bathroom in question.
It takes them about half an hour to get everything out and into the house, and Hummel kinda surprises Noah by handling some pretty weighty packages on his own; he’s panting a little bit harder than Noah is by the time they’re done, but it’s still kind of shocking that the scrawny little bastard can manage it.
“Water?” Hummel offers him when they get back down the stairs, grabbing a bottle of some fancy private-spring shit from his refrigerator and offering one to Noah. It kind of goes against everything he is, but he takes it and nods, almost like a thank you, except he doesn’t really do that.
“So,” Noah says around the mouth of his bottle, glances up and catches the bob of Hummel’s throat as he swallows quick and long, and shudders a little, ‘cause there’s a breeze or something, and he’s sweaty, goddamnit. “Looks like your dad’s gonna be busy for the next couple weeks, getting everything put together and connected right.”
Hummel sets his water down and huffs a strangled sort of laugh, though it’s not the funny kind, it’s the pissy kind. “By the time he gets home from the garage, he eats, watches Deadliest Catch, and falls asleep on the couch within the span of an hour.” When he leans back against the counter, hands propped behind him as he heaves a dramatic, girly sigh, Noah spares a thought to wonder if the shirt he’s wearing came from the kid’s department, because it sure as hell doesn’t fit Hummel’s chest for shit. “It’ll be me doing most of the legwork, I think,” he says, sounds really fucking bitter, and hey, Noah can relate on that front. “I guess I could consider it a housewarming present.”
Noah takes another swig from his water, and it’s kinda sweet, tastes weird on his tongue and warm as it runs down his throat, even if it’s icy from the back of the fridge. “Aren’t you gonna need an extra set of hands for some of that stuff?” he asks, doesn’t really know why. Doesn’t think about how that’s happening more often lately.
“Ideally,” Hummel shrugs, the motion spreading his arms wider as he leans heavier on the countertop, “but I’ll make do.” He ducks his head and twists the cap back onto his bottle. “Won’t be the first time.”
“Dude, I said installation was included, didn’t I?” Noah says, a little more harshly than he means, than he can explain as he tosses back the rest of the water and grimaces at the sugar-lace of the taste, letting the plastic creak under his grip as he crushes it in his fist. “You want a hand or not?”
And Hummel, he just stands there for a second, more than a second; a lot of fucking seconds, if the number of slow pulls of the cotton of his shirt against the way he sucks in breaths is anything to judge by, and Noah’s about ready to just say fuck it and walk out and hope that Howard’s done with the inventory and Noah can just hop on returns or some shit when he gets back to the store when Hummel finally decides to say something back.
“Umm,” he starts, his eyes all frowny and his forehead all bunched together, like he’s confused, except Noah’s pretty sure what he said was fairly straightforward. “You’re sure you don’t mind?”
And Noah really wants to shoot him a smartass remark at that, something snarky that he can’t really think of right now, but whatever; the kid sounds kind of like he doesn’t trust Noah at all, but also kinda... lonely. Hopeful. Like his little sister sometimes sounds when she asks Noah to play with her stuffed animals.
So what he does instead is give a tight kind of smirk and shake his head; and the thing of it is, he really doesn’t mind at all.
__________________________
As it turns out, Hummel’s not entirely useless with his hands, and they work alright together, getting the lighting fixtures wired right; the plumbing’s a different story, but they’ll cross that bridge when they get to it. Point is that the whole thing takes them longer than a day or two, longer than a week -- and before he knows it, Noah finds the afternoons after his morning shifts and pool rounds mostly taken up by helping Kurt fucking Hummel remodel his dad and maybe-soon-to-be-step-mom’s bathroom.
“Okay, try it now,” Noah says when he climbs back up the stairs from turning the water back on so they can see if Kurt’s iPhone app gave them legit instructions for hooking this shit up.
The way the water shoots out at a freakish angle, soaking Hummel’s shirt before he manages to turn it off again, means that it totally worked. Sort of.
Noah snickers at the drowned-rat look that Kurt’s got going on, the way he looks disgusted as he wrings his shirt out into the basin while they reposition the spigot and tighten it up until the water flows quick and straight from the faucet, and yeah, it’s basically what a five year old would do, but Noah can’t help but flick a palmful of water at Hummel’s face just as he’s got himself all dry-ish.
The glare he gets shot for that is almost murderous, so the obvious response is to flick more water.
Hummel’s face twists up, classic bitch-look, and Noah thinks for a split second that he might be punched in the face or something, before Kurt swipes his hands under the stream and hoists a good slash up into Noah’s face, right up his nose so he splutters a little, and Hummel, the fucker, he giggles. Fucking giggles.
And Noah -- Noah just kind of swallows down a grin and runs a wet hand over his head, where the hair’s starting to grow back enough that there’s some fuzz, and he toggles the hot and cold knobs to make sure everything’s working right before he figures they can officially cross the sink off of their to-do list.
Which brings him to the slightly fucked-up thought that he’s thinking of Hummel and him as a ‘we.’
Which then makes him look at Hummel to make sure it’s all real.
Which then leads him to notice the little wrinkle above Kurt’s top lip when he grins; the little smudges of water at the corners of his eyes, in his lashes -- long lashes. Chick lashes.
Except not.
He shakes the thought away quick, fools himself into thinking it was never there -- he’s getting good at that.
It’s basically how every afternoon works, give or take, so he’s had lots of practice.
Eight times, no, more like nine times out of ten, he stays for dinner. Hummel’s a decent cook, and when he doesn’t make the food, Carole whips something up after work, and Noah’s used to her cooking by now, so it works: he ends up sandwiched between Kurt and Finn at the dinner table, and sometimes it’s awkward -- most of the time it is, for a while -- but after Noah steals thirds from Finn for the fifth time in a row, like he has since they were kids, Giganteen stops being so bitchy. It’s not like they talk, really, more than the necessary “Pass the potatoes, loser,” but Finn does actually laugh when he manages to wrestle the last roll from the basket before Noah can get his hands on it.
The flip side of that coin is that, when Noah’s the one who gets the last ear of sweet corn, he usually doesn’t even think before he sort of bumps shoulders with Kurt at his side in celebration of his victory.
Carole offers to pay him for his time -- says he’s saving her the work of doing it herself, says she’d be dead on her feet if she had to try and finish the remodel after working doubles half the week; he says no thanks, ma’am without really thinking it through, really thinking about anything.
It should be a sign, probably; he’s known Carole since he was like, seven, and he’s never called her ma’am. Like... never.
He swings by the 7/11 and buys a six-pack with his fake ID before he heads home.
Master Post // Part Two
Part One
-----------------------------------
Noah Puckerman hates a lot of things in life. One of them is the Hummel kid’s laugh.
Mostly, it’s loud. And not in the grind-of-an-engine or the roar-of-a-crowd-after-a-touchdown kind of way. More like the Jesus-Christ-shut-the-fuck-up kind of way. It’s the kind of loud that had their kindergarten teacher, Miss Bedford, wrinkling up her nose and flinching, even as she shot the boy a tight-lipped grin over blowups of the Letter People, back in the day.
Noah cleans Miss Bedford’s pool. She’s Mrs. Nelson now, not that it matters. She takes her ring off when she calls for her mid-season chemicals.
But Hummel’s laughter’s like a plague. There’s no escaping it, and it’s always there, and it makes his gag reflex act up when he’s drinking out of the water fountain, and it throws off his rhythm when he’s running suicides on the field. It’s infectious, and it sends off a wave of fucking giggling that might as well send him breaking out in boils, or itching with lice or flies or locusts, whatever the fuck happened in Egypt -- he didn’t pay real good attention in Hebrew school, so sue him; and the worst part is that Noah’s pretty sure other people only laugh along out of the sheer desire to drown the kid out, to make that sound go away, to keep it from melting the insides of their brains until they start bleeding from their ears.
He’s pretty sure that’s the kind of sound that kills firstborns, no fucking lie.
It doesn’t help that Hummel’s laugh is also pitched like nails on a chalkboard. Or like the death-squeal of some wild animal after it’s been hit by a truck and is oozing out under tread-marks on the asphalt, smooshed between cracks in the pavement and knee-deep potholes that ODOT’s too useless to fix. It makes him trip over words in English when they’re reading Shakespeare or some other Euro-douche from their textbooks -- the same textbooks he’s made it his personal mission to ensure have a blatant etching of a dick on the cover, each and every one of them, before he graduates. It makes him forget the Spanish for I like tacos and big tits when it’s his turn to have a conversation in front of the class for their midterm. It fucks him up sometimes when he’s trying to stare at Santana’s cleavage, makes him wince when there should be nothing wince-worthy about drooling over the way her boobs are pushed so high she’s almost choking on them, the way her nipples show through her uniform, just inside the neckline.
It might also have something to do with the fact that, when Noah’s at his locker, he’ll hear Hummel’s laugh, and it’s so goddamn breathy that he almost thinks it’s a chick’s laugh. And sometimes, when chicks laugh, Noah gets a little tight in the groin. Whatever. He’s a guy.
It’s not like it means anything. It mostly just pisses him off.
__________________________
Honest to fuck, Noah does not get what the big deal is with quote-unquote “intimacy.”
‘Cause like, what the fuck do these chicks want, anyway? He’s sitting there, fifth-period History, and his fucking phone battery’s gonna die in ten, when Santana follows up << imma suck you betta than ur lil virgin mary eva did >> with << ur an asshole and ur not gettin none o’ this >> out of fucking nowhere.
It’s not like there was any other reply to the first part other than << dunno, will u swallow? Q did >>. He’s so not an asshole just for asking the obvious question.
Well, okay, he might be an asshole, but that doesn’t mean it should cost him a blowjob.
He figures it’s probably some of that crazy reverse chick psychology that people are always talking about; that that stupid Ben Israel douche is always writing about, and spitting off about at Celibacy Club. Because it’s not like she isn’t begging for it; she totally is. People don’t walk like that, don’t roll their hips and shake their ass like that for no reason. They just don’t.
And, in Noah’s experience, they don’t shove their hands down your fucking boxers for no reason, either.
And Santana, she does both, like, a whole fuck ton of a lot. And now she’s pissing and moaning because he’s asking if she’s gonna spit up on his dick? When he knows she slept with half of his teammates before preseason scrimmages were over? Yeah, no fucking dice on that one. They’re both in this for the same things.
Maybe she’s on the rag, he thinks, as he rummages through his locker for his history book -- his hand sticks to some old gum flattened against the bottom, and he thinks for a second that it’d be kinda cool to coat the whole fucking locker, keep the janitors busy over the summer -- and yeah, she’s probably on the rag.
It’s only after he slams his locker shut that he notices.
“What the fuck you staring at, pussy boy?” It comes out low, a growl, and he’s not even looking in the direction of the kid; he doesn’t have to.
“Is that really the best you can do?” Hummel sneers, like he practices the look in the fucking mirror, corners of his lips all turned out, just like the point of his nose. “You’ve been giving me that one since the seventh grade, Puckerman. One would think that you’d have come up with something better by now.”
And Noah, he’s about to say something epic, something really fucking good -- he’s about to, but the little cunt nugget prances past him, brushes his goddamn shoulder up against Noah’s left pec all... fuck.
“Then again, one would also think you’d have figured out that women don’t take well to being treated like your jock straps.” And the fucker, the fucker, he leers like a little bitch at Noah’s crotch before he smirks just a little bit harder and spits; “You know, dirty them up and then toss them aside.”
He swallows a little too hard; catches and burns at the back of his throat. “That’s rich, coming from you,” he shoots back, a little slow; he pretends like it doesn’t lose some of the effect; “D’ya even have a dick?”
If he tries to smirk into the insult, it’s nothing compared to the Cheshire fucking grin Hummel gives back with a wink -- a goddamn wink. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
Fucker’s swaying his hips in jeans that he knows Quinn’d kill to squeeze her hips into, and Jee-zus; Hummel’s gone before Noah can think up a decent comeback.
Not like it even matters; it’s pancakes-and-sausages today in the cafeteria, and he’s gonna throw fairy-boy and his fall-fucking-collection in the goddamn dumpster so he can get his jacket full of syrup and sour milk.
Fuck -- even in his head, it sounds like the gayest kind of payback ever.
__________________________
The Great State of Ohio’s pretty much mother nature’s biggest fucking practical joke when it comes to climate, so pool season’s a little like what his mom always tells his sister about wearing white -- you get a few good months between Memorial Day weekend and Labor Day before it becomes really fucking ridiculous. Except that people in Ohio are sort of ridiculous, and sort of fucking lazy too, and they wait until the water turns green and their liners are covered in fucking slime and there’s a goddamn dead forest floating on top of the pea soup that’s left of their pristine pool water before they even think about closing the damn things up.
Not that Noah cares so much: he can charge more to shock the motherfucker if it’s dirty, and price increases make housewives bitchy.
Bitchy housewives often lead to awesome hate sex. So he gets off and gets paid. Basically, it’s a win-win situation.
Come October, though, it’s less the smell of chlorine and more the stench of sweat -- ripe after practice with the sour-sweet smell of Gatorade mixing with dirty socks in his gym bag. It’s gone once he showers, but it’s kind of like when they serve fish sandwiches at lunch -- under the tartar sauce, the stench sticks around for fucking weeks.
He tosses pussy-boy Hummel into the garbage, like, ten times in two weeks -- mostly because there are no goddamn MILFs paying him to clean their pools and suck his cock, and he’s a little sexually frustrated, yeah, so shoot him -- and they’ve had fish, like twice within that time frame. So he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to that shit.
He doesn’t really know how it happens, the whole singing thing. He doesn’t know how he ends up in the choir room with Finn and a bunch of douche teachers and Coach, but it happens, and he’s a fucking stud, so it’s not like he has to worry. But when he leaves the choir room, he can smell it on himself -- like loserdom leaving its mark because he’s dancing like a fag on a stage: all brine and that sewage-shit smell of decaying, just under the musk of too much Axe. And maybe it’s just him, maybe not -- but it gets worse the more they practice, the more he’s there: he can smell it on himself like he can smell fry grease under Hummel’s chick perfume when he decides to the Princess needs a second reminder of his lameitude after school, because his morning dumpster dive apparently didn’t do the trick. But whatever: it’s like a dead skunk under your porch, or the aftermath of the Triple Bean Supreme at La Charreada, and they’re working on analogies and metaphors for the OGT in his English class and Noah feels like it’s relevant to something, even if he really doesn’t get why the word Ampersand is more like Semicolon than Amsterdam.
Even after the whole Acafellas thing runs its course: he feels like people can smell it, see it on him. He’s a stud, for fuck’s sake, but there’s only so far he can push.
He sprays his whole goddamn bottle of Instinct on him when he gets into the locker room; glares when people choke against the cloud of aerosol in his wake.
__________________________
When Hummel joins the team, it’s pretty much the worst thing ever.
He can kick, sure, but he can’t throw worth a damn. And yeah, he kinda runs like a girl, but he’s fast as hell; Noah figures that’s probably a side-effect of being the whole school’s punching bag since forever. Basically, it’s a fucking joke, the whole thing, but even Noah can’t deny that the kid’s the only thing that’s keeping their record from the gutter. Again.
He just really kind of hates Hummel being around in general.
And it pisses him off, makes his skin hot and his breath shallow when Hummel’s there, his hands all up on the gear, his skinny little bitch frame too damn small for the pads, when Hummel’s talking on his fucking iPhone, tittering with god-knows-who after practice; when Hummel’s washing off the stench with his nose all wrinkled up over the dividers in the shower, after just about everyone else has taken off for the night.
Everyone except Noah.
It doesn’t make it any better, really, that he’s dealing with Quinn’s not-so-immaculate-conception. Not that it isn’t kind of funny that Finn’s fucking stupid enough to buy that coming in a goddamn hot tub’s gonna make a baby -- and Noah would know: he’s spent a lot of time cleaning out spas.
Jesus Christ, that boy’s a moron.
But that’s basically the only funny thing about the entire situation, and that basically kind of sucks, because now Noah’s stuck thinking about money and something-natal-somethings that he overheard Quinn being all sad about in the hallway; now Noah’s thinking about high school and after high school, and the day his dad walked out, the look on the sorry bastard’s face the last time he closed their front door.
Plus his mom gets pissed that he’s later getting home, these days; says she’s gonna call Coach and tell him she needs him home to get dinner ready before his sister has to be at Girl Scouts.
He knows she won’t call, but still.
It’s basically all Hummel’s fault, anyway, for blurring the lines of where people are supposed to be, of where the world makes sense. It’s basically Hummel’s fault that Noah can’t even enjoy football anymore -- where he gets to run people down and break the occasional bone without the threat of detention or worse.
It’s Hummel’s fault that Noah’s questioning his sanity, that Noah’s carrying around an extra set of strings in his gym bag, keeping his guitar case locked in his trunk.
It’s probably Hummel’s fault that Noah breaks down and joins fucking Glee Club on top of everything, too. Somehow.
He’s not even going to comment on where his eyes ended up during that fucking Single Ladies dance. His helmet totally kept that under wraps.
And it’s not like anyone can even blame him. Looking from behind, Hummel’s ass has always looked kind of like a chick’s.
Yeah.
__________________________
He’s bored, mostly. They’re all fucking bored. That’s usually how these things start. They run out of cheap pizza and stolen beer, and they’re bummed after another mid-season loss, and they’re riled up on adrenaline and alcohol and they’re horny because they’ve watched too many hot chicks doing too many high fucking kicks in those cheerleading skirts, and they’re mostly just bored. They need a creative outlet, or something -- he’s pretty sure he’s heard Oprah saying that’s what troubled youth are lacking. His mom’s a big Oprah fan.
His gut’s raw, weak from too much pepperoni and more than his share of the Jack that Davison managed to nab from his dad’s liquor cabinet; maybe more than that, really, when they look at him expectantly, wait for him to take the lead -- not that he’d own to it, but yeah. It might be more than just the food.
So he makes the phone call, the old handset from Karofsky’s kitchen counter sweaty against his palm, his fingerprints like grease stains against the tissuey sheets of the Yellow Pages.
The guys, they’re laughing their fucking asses off as they listen for the ring that only Noah can hear, and when Fairy Boy’s dad picks up at the other end of the line, it takes him a moment to remember what he’s doing, why he’s doing it.
He only manages the ‘what’ part before he says the words:
“Your son’s a fag.”
It doesn’t make him feel any fucking better.
Neither does sucking what’s left in the container of garlic butter tucked in the corner of one of the empty pizza boxes, but whatever. He does it anyway, even if it’s too thick; bitter going down.
__________________________
He hates to admit it -- wouldn’t, if someone asked him, because that’s just fucking gay -- but more often than not, Glee’s pretty much the highlight of his day.
Because, like, pool season’s long gone, and while he’s got a few rich fucks on the edge of town with indoor setups he keeps up with after the snow flies, he’s pretty much free after classes let out. And he sure as hell doesn’t play basketball, because that’s just a lame fucking sport, and Noah doesn’t do fucking lame things.
So even if Glee was a total drag, it would at least give him something to do. So there’s that.
But sometimes, Noah can’t even really lie to himself about how much he really likes being in Glee Club. Sure, some of the losers there make him want to gag a little sometimes, and he takes some shit from the boys in the weight room if Push It comes on the radio, even if he had absolutely nothing to do with that train wreck, but whatever. He does like Glee. He likes Glee a whole fuckton of a lot.
So when Mr. Schue tells them to each come prepared with a song for practice by the end of the week, Noah tells his mom he’s got a group project he’s got to stay late to work on, and he lingers in the hallway until everyone’s left and Schue’s locked the choir room door behind him before he picks it back open and sits with his guitar on the piano bench, picking out the notes for Stairway To Heaven and listening for the squeak of the janitor’s mop bucket rolling past the room so he doesn’t get thrown out before he gets the chords right.
He hums along to keep his place, places the lyrics in under his breath, in his head as he strums through, slips every so often, swears between fuck ups before trying again; gets lost in the swell of the music like he wants to, like he’d planned to, and thinks about the slow climb of the song, the story, the girl on the stairs, and he doesn’t hear, doesn’t notice when the mop bucket stops outside the door and the custodian peers in through the window, shakes his head with a rueful smile and moves on; doesn’t notice when the hinges rub just a little, caught up in the second verse, the buildup.
So he doesn’t see Hummel until he’s standing just a few feet from him, watching with a stare that’s kind of blank, kind of empty, kind of full of the things Noah doesn’t know how to recognize or pin down, and he’s ready to rip into him, tell the fucker to mind his own business and learn how to goddamn knock, but the words don’t come, and before he can force them, before he can rip them from his throat and out, Hummel’s coming closer, and it’s too late.
“Here,” Hummel reaches out toward the guitar, his fingers long -- his hand farther than it should be from the head, but his touch close, lingering like he’s waiting for Noah to slap him away, or wrench the instrument out of his reach, but Hummel doesn’t flinch, and Noah wonders if maybe he’s used to it; wonders if it’s just a given.
Noah wonders if the dive in the pit of his stomach has a name, or if he’s just fucking starving or something.
“Just a little,” and Hummel’s fingertips tweak the peg, quick and fierce and soft against his nail, and Noah can feel the G string tighten beneath the pad of his finger on the fret, can feel the way his gut moves when he swallows hard, brushes up against the body of the guitar in his lap.
“There,” Hummel says, keeps his hand on the head for a second too long and doesn’t look up; “That should be good.”
And it’s almost a whisper, and it shouldn’t be; it shouldn’t be, because it’s light enough that Noah can hear his own breathing, both their breaths in the quiet of the room, and beneath that there’s a beat, a rhythm that’s too fast for the goddamn song, more Ramble On than Stairway, like a bass line in the background, and Noah’s finger’s itch against the pick pinched tight between his fingers; he runs the thin plastic against the strings and hears it already; something’s right.
Hummel kind of half smiles at the space above his left ear, lips pressed thin as he flips his hair from his forehead and sucks in a sharp lungful of air, and Noah feels it, the way the room shifts around it, with the echo of the half-shaped sounds, and his fingers look small again when he grabs at the strap on his back, holds it close into his chest and lets out the breath, looks down at the toes of his shoes.
And it’s weird, for a lot of reasons.
The fact that Noah has absolutely no desire to deck the kid as he walks out, quiet as he came in, might be the weirdest.
__________________________
It’s not that Noah doesn’t feel guilty about the whole Quinn/Finn/Baby thing. He does. Kind of.
It’s just that, well, what’s he supposed to do? He’s tried to give Quinn money, he’s tried to be there for her, the best way he knows how. Is it his fault that he had needs? That he’s doing the best he can, and it’s just not enough for her crazy expectations?
Well, okay, maybe it’s a little bit his fault. But like, not mostly.
And the truth is, he’s basically fucked either way, because she tells him he’s trash when he tries to give her the gas money he weaseled off the losers in chess club, but then when she gets those sea-monkey x-ray pictures of the kid in her belly and he wasn’t there to hold her hand (and neither was Finny, because that ship’s fucking sailed already), well, then he gets the fucking ultrasound prints thrown in his face in the middle of the goddamn hallway.
He was actually thinking about going to class before that happened, too. No, really.
He lets out a long sigh and opens his eyes, shifts so that the skin of his neck pulls from the plasticy-leather of the sick-lounge in the school clinic, all olive green and fraying open at the seams; his head crinkles against the paper pillow he’s propped against, and he tries to find his favorite patterns in the water stains in the ceiling, distracts himself with the sounds of people walking outside the door, the clock on the wall counting the seconds.
Doesn’t really work; he thinks maybe that’s because he’s not really sure what he’s trying so hard not to think about.
The bell rings to signal that his math class is officially over, and he salutes Nurse Whatserface on the way out; he should probably know her name by now, but whatever.
It’s not all bad, though, he thinks as the soles of his shoes stick against the floor where someone -- not him, this time -- definitely spilled a slushy before homeroom. He’s still riding the high of the Sectionals win a little, because sure, they should have been shoo-ins anyway, but they pulled through pretty fucking awesomely. Not to mention he’s bench pressing 250, which is pretty decent for the off-season. And he filled up his frequent-eater card at Breadstix, and has an all-he-can-eat feast waiting for him tonight after school. So, you know, there are upsides.
But still.
The fourth period bell sounds, echoes harsh through the halls as they empty, and Noah mutters a quick fuck under his breath when realizes that he’s gonna be late to Biology, and he used the last of the pad of hall passes he lifted from Miss Pillsbury’s office last week.
Goddamnit.
He detours back toward guidance, to see if he can snag another set while their fearless counselor’s out stocking up on hand sanitizer or something, but he doesn’t make it past the German hallway’s bathrooms before he hears it; not words, really, or noises, but... something, and it’s familiar.
He pushes open the men’s room door and sees exactly what he expects to.
Azimio’s got his thick fingers shoved up under Hummel’s jaw, cut against his neck tight enough that the skin strains, and the crease against his throat’s all red underneath, and white above the hold -- the heartbeat split in half around Azimio’s grip rippling like a current, fast and hard under the surface, and Noah doesn’t stop to think about it, doesn’t know where any of it comes from, except that even he has limits, and some things are just fucking wrong.
“Unless you’re planning on dropping to your damn knees and swallowing,” Noah says, kinda growls, just as the door to the bathroom swings shut behind him; “you’d better keep your hands off him.”
It’s not that he thinks it’s going to stop anything, exactly, make Azimio back down, but it does get his hands off the kid’s throat, and that’s something; when Hummel’s chest heaves and he gags on the breath he takes, yeah, it feels like something.
“Am I getting too handsy with your butt buddy here, Puckerman?” Azimio sneers as he turns to face Noah head on, and Hummel ducks away toward the sinks, presses himself against the wall in the corner, and Noah’s never liked Azimio, not since second grade when the little dickface pushed him off a swing and got a face full of Noah’s fist, for which Noah then got his first OSS. So it doesn’t really bear any consideration when he simply walks up to the douchenozzle and gets a good grip on the collar of his jacket, uses the leverage to shove him up against the wall.
“Not so badass all by your lonesome, are you Az?” he taunts; “Your wife leave you for greener pastures?” He smirks when Azimio looks almost confused at the jibe; “Or were you too rough with poor Dave last night, and he needed a personal day before he could sit comfortably in class?”
The smirk just gets bigger when the confusion goes away.
“Asshole!” Azimio spits, tries to force himself out of Noah’s hold, but the bastard’s all bark and no fucking bite when it comes to taking on someone his own size; all he’s got in his corner’s a cherry slushy, and fuck if that’s gonna stop Noah.
So he does what anyone would do to shut a stupid bastard up: he decks him hard enough to break his fucking nose.
There’s blood on the floor when Noah drops him, snarls when he stumbles: “Get the fuck out, or your face is gonna be the least of your worries.”
Azimio’s a dumbass, but he doesn’t have a death wish; he’s gone before Noah’s breath starts coming slower, before the adrenaline starts wearing off.
His eyes dart to the row of mirrors above the sinks, and he sees Hummel’s head bowed low over the farthest one, his knuckles white with the force of his grip on the chipped basin, his hair flung out to hide his eyes at the angle. He clears his throat without really thinking, doesn’t know what he’s waiting for, doesn’t know why he hasn’t just walked out already, or at least wiped the drops of Azimio’s nose-blood off of his wrist.
He doesn’t mean to look up -- he doesn’t mean not to or anything, but it’s not intentional; catches Hummel’s gaze in the mirror -- hot and wrecked and tired.
“I don’t need a defender, Noah,” Hummel tells his reflection, his eyes wide and sad, angry almost as he stares too long before breaking the contact and looking down at the rusty drain cover.
Noah shrugs, wipes his hand on the tiling of the wall just inside the door, and scowls down at the red smear left on his skin as he walks back out and tries to make heads or tails of... everything.
__________________________
He’s a father. Well, like, not really. But yeah, really. He may never see that baby girl again, but she exists; she’s real, and she’s his. He can’t really wrap his head around that.
He looks out at the dusky skyline, too high above him to really make out, to see much past the concrete and brick, and when he breathes, the air is thick with smog, exhaust from semis roaring down 77 at one in the fucking morning -- homeless truckers on the road ‘til dawn, pushing the hours and fighting off sleep.
Noah sneaks a glance to either side as he steps toward the decorative shrubbery near the back door off the maternity ward. Reaching into the back pocket of his slacks with one hand, he pulls out a crushed box of Reds while he loosens his tie, fishes in his front pocket for his goddamn lighter.
He hears the mechanical swoosh of the automatic doors; doesn’t look up, just drags long before someone tells him to snuff it out, lets the taste linger in his mouth and the weight settle in his lungs before he lets it out, slow stream of grey in the spots of light, the swell of dark.
“Congratulations,” Hummel’s voice is quiet -- the scuff of his shoes on the concrete is louder -- and it sounds different when it’s so fucking faint; sounds heavy and raw -- a little scared, but deep. And Noah doesn’t say anything back; on a whim, he offers the cigarette held loose between unbalanced fingers, knuckles that are shaking ‘cause of the cold, nothing more.
To his surprise -- though, well, maybe not -- Hummel takes it, puts his lips where Noah’s were and breathes; doesn’t choke.
He drops the cigarette and twists ash beneath his heel as he exhales a cloud that dies on the breeze, and Noah doesn’t say anything; doesn’t complain that that was his last fucking smoke.
“You’d have been a decent enough dad,” Hummel adds, voice rough, and it’s wrong, kind of; husky, but not... not bad, really. Not really bad. “By which, of course, I mean that you may have lasted a good week before someone called Child Services on you.”
Noah tries not to laugh, tries not to clench his hands into fists at his sides; from Hummel, it’s almost like a compliment.
__________________________
Truth: the world does not revolve around Noah Puckerman. Fact is, the world revolves and just catches every sad sonfuvabitch up in the turning, knocking them on their asses and laughing, because just as they get back up, the world’s coming back again for round two.
Which, for Noah, means that the governor sucks, the economy’s shit, and his pool cleaning business just isn’t cutting it this summer. Not if he plans on keeping his unlimited texting plan. And getting that sweet body kit for his truck.
Long story short: he’s going to have to keep the stupid Sheets N’ Things gig.
It’s basically a useless job -- men are just not meant to ever know how to fold a fitted sheet, it’s just the way things are -- but it pays well, and the Former Mrs. Schue thinks his abs are fantastic, so she pays him enough above minimum wage to make it tolerable, so he deals, and collects his paycheck every two weeks with a cheeky grin and the kind of wink that has an extra five bucks or so being tacked onto his hourly rate every pay period. It’s doable.
It’s how he runs into Hummel, in fact; how he breaks his streak of avoiding everyone from William McKinley except Mr. Ryerson for the whole first month-and-a-half of summer vacation.
He actually manages to hide from Hummel for a good half an hour by Windexing the makeup mirrors like, five times, but eventually, he has to pass by the wall of shower curtains on his mid-morning stock rounds. He literally walks right past Hummel, keeps his head down and his steps light like he’s trying to sneak out of the house after his mom’s asleep, but the kid doesn’t even flinch. Noah takes it as a sign that the Sheets N’ Things gods are on his side.
It’s not until after he’s scarfed down his lunch at his register between customers, a good three hours later, that he realizes he never saw Hummel leave the store.
Noah closes his lane and starts a lap around the store, counterclockwise from the collection of stainless steel trash cans near the front entrance, past the beds he sometimes tries to get hot customers to lay down on next to him just to “get a feel for the firmness,” around to where the picture frames and oversized art deco prints bleed into the curtain rods and give way to the bath towels when Noah spots Hummel, right where he’d been earlier in the day. In fact, Noah’s pretty fucking sure that the kid hasn’t moved a damn muscle -- his bitchy little pout is still the same, and his head’s tiled up toward the display on the wall just like he’d caught it out of the corner of his eyes before; his eyes are kind dead, kinda glazed, not that Noah had noticed that so much the first time around, really, but yeah.
“Dude,” Noah cuts through the quiet, leans up against a display of toothbrush holders and little dishes for bars of soap that no one would ever use, because who even uses bars of soap to wash their hands anymore? “You lost or something? Or should I call the fuzz to pick you up for loitering?”
Hummel doesn’t even blink, more kinda bites his lip and keeps staring at these shower curtain hooks made of fake copper and brass beads.
“Carole wants to redo the master bathroom.”
Hummel says it in kind of a whisper, kind of a hiss that’s a little strained, like he’s either mad as hell, or about to start bawling like a fucking girl; and Noah’s not what some pansy-ass douche-bags might call perceptive, but he’s not a complete idiot, and there’s more in that one sentence than even he can play dumb about.
He doesn’t want to stay; doesn’t feel right walking away -- so he sits on the edge of a shelf and just watches.
They both just watch, until the store closes for the night.
__________________________
Hummel comes back the next morning; Noah sees him, stopped at the entrance, barely moving as he kind of dances between the automatic doors, just moving enough to keep them from closing in on him.
Noah doesn’t think much about the way his lips quirk, watching Hummel’s hands run through his hair, watching the way his lips move soundlessly as he walks in, turns, walks back out, stops, does it again.
He flips the light off on his register and tells Courtney to cover for him -- not like there’s truckloads of people looking for curtain rods on a Wednesday morning or anything -- as soon as the hard click of Hummel’s mostly-flat boots give him away as he stalks toward the new display of sink fixtures.
He’s not really surprised when Hummel’s just standing there, same as yesterday, except this time he looks like blank and more... lost.
He’s a little surprised at how much he feels like he should maybe try to think about doing something to fix that.
“So, like,” he starts in, steps forward and doesn’t let it stop him when Hummel spins on his heel and stares at him like he grew an extra fucking head; “you said she’s redoing the bathroom, right?” He keeps walking, doesn’t look to see if he’s being followed like he should be. “We’ve got these...” he puts his hand on some really ugly fucking soap dispenser before he notices that, wow, even he can tell that’s really fucking ugly; he clears his throat and tries again, pointing out something pink and slightly-less ugly instead and hoping for the best before lowering his hand and giving half a shrug; “well, we’ve got some stuff.”
It yeah, it sounds really fucking stupid, and his palms might be kinda fucking sweaty in the pocket of his gay little employee apron, but Hummel grins -- not like he’s making fun of him or anything, more like the good kind of grin -- and he follows, and Noah gets commission for sales over a hundred bucks, so it’s all good.
__________________________
Because Sheets N’ Things actually does sell more than sheets, and happens to keep in stock some pretty mass-ass “things,” they have this delivery van -- an old Chevy Express with rust in the wheel-wells that looks like some creepy fucker should be leaning out the window of it, offering candy to children, but whatever.
He parks in Hummel’s driveway, thinks about how the house is pretty nice in the daylight, and how he probably should never have done that whole thing with the lawn furniture on the roof -- that was a bad call. He throws open the back doors, the grind of rust on the hinges carrying down the sidewalks as he sizes up the boxes shoved inside. Noah apparently never gave the Hummel family business the credit it deserved, because he’s pretty sure Kurt dropped close to two grand on this whole crazy project, all charged to Daddy’s Master Card.
He hears footsteps, and he’ll admit it: it kind of stops him short when he turns and sees Hummel in a pair of worn sweats and a white undershirt. ‘Cause, you know, it’s weird -- he’s always wearing girl clothes and shit.
“Thanks for driving these over,” Hummel says, and sounds halfway between suspicious and grateful as he folds his arms across his chest and throws his hip out a little to lean against the side of the van.
“Not a problem,” Noah says, because being here keeps him from having to do inventory. “Wanna hold open your front door so I can start unloading?”
“You don’t have to carry it all in, you know,” he counters as he walks toward the house Noah, a smaller box of god-only-knows-what clasped in his left hand as he reaches in from of them and opens the screen door with his right. “You can just get it all onto the porch, I’ll get it upstairs.”
“S’part of the package,” Noah grunts as he hauls the new sink basin and faucet, some marble shit or something, losing purchase on the awkwardly-shaped box for a second before he catches himself, gets his arms underneath the edges; “The delivery charges cover installation.”
And that’s a fucking lie, but Noah kind of tells enough of those for it to not really matter all that much. Probably.
Hummel just shrugs and leads him upstairs to the infamous bathroom in question.
It takes them about half an hour to get everything out and into the house, and Hummel kinda surprises Noah by handling some pretty weighty packages on his own; he’s panting a little bit harder than Noah is by the time they’re done, but it’s still kind of shocking that the scrawny little bastard can manage it.
“Water?” Hummel offers him when they get back down the stairs, grabbing a bottle of some fancy private-spring shit from his refrigerator and offering one to Noah. It kind of goes against everything he is, but he takes it and nods, almost like a thank you, except he doesn’t really do that.
“So,” Noah says around the mouth of his bottle, glances up and catches the bob of Hummel’s throat as he swallows quick and long, and shudders a little, ‘cause there’s a breeze or something, and he’s sweaty, goddamnit. “Looks like your dad’s gonna be busy for the next couple weeks, getting everything put together and connected right.”
Hummel sets his water down and huffs a strangled sort of laugh, though it’s not the funny kind, it’s the pissy kind. “By the time he gets home from the garage, he eats, watches Deadliest Catch, and falls asleep on the couch within the span of an hour.” When he leans back against the counter, hands propped behind him as he heaves a dramatic, girly sigh, Noah spares a thought to wonder if the shirt he’s wearing came from the kid’s department, because it sure as hell doesn’t fit Hummel’s chest for shit. “It’ll be me doing most of the legwork, I think,” he says, sounds really fucking bitter, and hey, Noah can relate on that front. “I guess I could consider it a housewarming present.”
Noah takes another swig from his water, and it’s kinda sweet, tastes weird on his tongue and warm as it runs down his throat, even if it’s icy from the back of the fridge. “Aren’t you gonna need an extra set of hands for some of that stuff?” he asks, doesn’t really know why. Doesn’t think about how that’s happening more often lately.
“Ideally,” Hummel shrugs, the motion spreading his arms wider as he leans heavier on the countertop, “but I’ll make do.” He ducks his head and twists the cap back onto his bottle. “Won’t be the first time.”
“Dude, I said installation was included, didn’t I?” Noah says, a little more harshly than he means, than he can explain as he tosses back the rest of the water and grimaces at the sugar-lace of the taste, letting the plastic creak under his grip as he crushes it in his fist. “You want a hand or not?”
And Hummel, he just stands there for a second, more than a second; a lot of fucking seconds, if the number of slow pulls of the cotton of his shirt against the way he sucks in breaths is anything to judge by, and Noah’s about ready to just say fuck it and walk out and hope that Howard’s done with the inventory and Noah can just hop on returns or some shit when he gets back to the store when Hummel finally decides to say something back.
“Umm,” he starts, his eyes all frowny and his forehead all bunched together, like he’s confused, except Noah’s pretty sure what he said was fairly straightforward. “You’re sure you don’t mind?”
And Noah really wants to shoot him a smartass remark at that, something snarky that he can’t really think of right now, but whatever; the kid sounds kind of like he doesn’t trust Noah at all, but also kinda... lonely. Hopeful. Like his little sister sometimes sounds when she asks Noah to play with her stuffed animals.
So what he does instead is give a tight kind of smirk and shake his head; and the thing of it is, he really doesn’t mind at all.
__________________________
As it turns out, Hummel’s not entirely useless with his hands, and they work alright together, getting the lighting fixtures wired right; the plumbing’s a different story, but they’ll cross that bridge when they get to it. Point is that the whole thing takes them longer than a day or two, longer than a week -- and before he knows it, Noah finds the afternoons after his morning shifts and pool rounds mostly taken up by helping Kurt fucking Hummel remodel his dad and maybe-soon-to-be-step-mom’s bathroom.
“Okay, try it now,” Noah says when he climbs back up the stairs from turning the water back on so they can see if Kurt’s iPhone app gave them legit instructions for hooking this shit up.
The way the water shoots out at a freakish angle, soaking Hummel’s shirt before he manages to turn it off again, means that it totally worked. Sort of.
Noah snickers at the drowned-rat look that Kurt’s got going on, the way he looks disgusted as he wrings his shirt out into the basin while they reposition the spigot and tighten it up until the water flows quick and straight from the faucet, and yeah, it’s basically what a five year old would do, but Noah can’t help but flick a palmful of water at Hummel’s face just as he’s got himself all dry-ish.
The glare he gets shot for that is almost murderous, so the obvious response is to flick more water.
Hummel’s face twists up, classic bitch-look, and Noah thinks for a split second that he might be punched in the face or something, before Kurt swipes his hands under the stream and hoists a good slash up into Noah’s face, right up his nose so he splutters a little, and Hummel, the fucker, he giggles. Fucking giggles.
And Noah -- Noah just kind of swallows down a grin and runs a wet hand over his head, where the hair’s starting to grow back enough that there’s some fuzz, and he toggles the hot and cold knobs to make sure everything’s working right before he figures they can officially cross the sink off of their to-do list.
Which brings him to the slightly fucked-up thought that he’s thinking of Hummel and him as a ‘we.’
Which then makes him look at Hummel to make sure it’s all real.
Which then leads him to notice the little wrinkle above Kurt’s top lip when he grins; the little smudges of water at the corners of his eyes, in his lashes -- long lashes. Chick lashes.
Except not.
He shakes the thought away quick, fools himself into thinking it was never there -- he’s getting good at that.
It’s basically how every afternoon works, give or take, so he’s had lots of practice.
Eight times, no, more like nine times out of ten, he stays for dinner. Hummel’s a decent cook, and when he doesn’t make the food, Carole whips something up after work, and Noah’s used to her cooking by now, so it works: he ends up sandwiched between Kurt and Finn at the dinner table, and sometimes it’s awkward -- most of the time it is, for a while -- but after Noah steals thirds from Finn for the fifth time in a row, like he has since they were kids, Giganteen stops being so bitchy. It’s not like they talk, really, more than the necessary “Pass the potatoes, loser,” but Finn does actually laugh when he manages to wrestle the last roll from the basket before Noah can get his hands on it.
The flip side of that coin is that, when Noah’s the one who gets the last ear of sweet corn, he usually doesn’t even think before he sort of bumps shoulders with Kurt at his side in celebration of his victory.
Carole offers to pay him for his time -- says he’s saving her the work of doing it herself, says she’d be dead on her feet if she had to try and finish the remodel after working doubles half the week; he says no thanks, ma’am without really thinking it through, really thinking about anything.
It should be a sign, probably; he’s known Carole since he was like, seven, and he’s never called her ma’am. Like... never.
He swings by the 7/11 and buys a six-pack with his fake ID before he heads home.
Master Post // Part Two