GLEE: The Grass is Always Greener
Title: The Grass is Always Greener
Chapter: 14/?
Rating: overall NC-17, this chapter PG-13
Characters: Noah 'Puck' Puckerman, Quinn Fabray, ensemble
Pairing: Quinn/Puck
Warnings: Body swap, teen pregnancy
Spoilers: Blanket Season 2
Disclaimer: Not mine. No money. No affiliation.
A/N: from the glee_angst_meme, prompt here
Summary: Somehow, Quinn and Puck somehow end up in each other’s bodies. It's not as fun as it sounds either. The really horrifying thing? Puck ends up pregnant and seeing how the other half lives. This is not how he wanted to spend his senior year.
Secondary Note: Really, really, really confusing pronouns ahead.
“What’re everyone’s Thanksgiving plans?” They got past Halloween a week ago, so Rachel believes it’s okay to start on Thanksgiving. Puck would like to just get through his first major test in French, thanks very much. Either way it doesn’t matter; Quinn explained that they don’t do Thanksgiving anymore because of her Dad and his lack of being involved and how Judy sort of hates it anyway and Puck hasn’t done Thanksgiving since his Dad walked out that day almost ten years ago. They’re half planning to spend it together anyway.
“Mom’s looking to do some weird dinner thing with my cousins and aunt, they’re driving in from Columbus,” Santana doesn’t look overly pleased. “If that bitch asks just once, why I can’t just be straight, I’m gonna stab her with my fork.” While Santana’s mother has been supportive of her choice to come out as a lesbian -because dudes just aren’t doing it for her at all, her mother’s sister isn’t so keen.
“You can come over to my place if that happens. Daddy keeps asking me about you anyway, it’d be cool.” Avery seems to have a more stable home life, she calls it boring, but most of the time it seems like something a few of them wouldn’t mind at all. Her Dad is some kind of car dealer and her mom is a dental hygienist. Simple, plain, boring if you’re Avery.
“Well, Dad and Daddy are hoping to take me to Chicago.”
“Weren’t you just in Chicago?”
“Yes, but Aunt Gertrude has these theatre tickets,” Puck doesn’t feel bad about zoning out, playing with the food on his plate and just letting Rachel’s voice wash over him. It’s not like he’s keeping track or anything, but Thanksgiving would mark him and Quinn’s four month mark on body swapping. It’ll be their three month dating anniversary on the Saturday after Thanksgiving -he knows this because Rachel’s pointed it out to him twice and Hummel brought it up four times in the last week.
People keep asking if Puck has anything planned for them and he’s not sure if he’s supposed to take care of that or if Quinn is. Logically speaking, he’s still the guy, but Quinn seems far more capable at the guy stuff when it comes to this -probably because she’s really the chick and knows what the chick should want. It’s this stuff that still gets to him. He’s mostly over all the other stuff; the hair and make-up, the size difference, the classes, the cheerleading instead of football, the house and family swap isn’t as frustrating as it was. But trying to figure out their roles based on gender is fucking difficult and giving him a headache because he is a guy but he’s technically the girl.
It’s annoying.
Quinn doesn’t exactly help, because she just sort of does whatever she wants and that is usually just something he rolls with. But she hasn’t mentioned this whole ‘anniversary’ crap -seriously, three months is nothing, why aren’t they waiting for the year? It just distracts him the whole day.
“You okay?” Quinn’s driving him home that week, because Judy’s car took a bump and bust it’s exhaust and she’s using Quinn’s car. So they’re driving around after school in the truck and Puck actually feels a little lost in his own truck. It’s crazy scary how used to being Quinn he’s becoming.
“Yeah, just thinkin’ about some stuff.” Quinn glances at him warily. Since he told her he loved her, and she told him, three weeks ago, they’ve not really had any issues. Things are simple, Finn isn’t interfering, Louise isn’t being a snotty little bitch. Well, Louise is being a snotty little bitch but Puck-as-Quinn is way better at it and the junior has no hope of ever competing. “Hummel keeps asking about our three month anniversary.”
“Oh that, yeah. Rach practically cornered me to interrogate me about my intentions.”
“What are our intentions? I mean, is three months a big deal? Are we doing anything? Thanksgiving is like right before it, should we just ignore it this time and wait for the six?”
“You think we’ll make six months like this?”
“Like this?” In each-others bodies? He really, really hopes not. He’s not sure why they’re even in each-others bodies in the first place, but whatever it is, he hopes it’s done and gone by the time they hit six months. “I hope not, but it’s always a possibility.”
“So you think we’ll make it to six months?”
“Do you plan on dumping me before then?”
“No.”
“Then I think we’ll manage six months, and probably more.” Quinn gives him this smile, because he has to face facts, even if he was in his own body when they hit six months and even if Quinn decided she didn’t want to have sex anymore, he’d still be in love with her and he’d still want to be with her so really, why would they break up?
“What’s one thing you miss about being a guy?” It’s a pretty random question considering what they were just talking about, but maybe it’s just Quinn’s way of changing the topic, so he just goes with it. “And don’t say sex.”
“Why would I say sex? You have sex with me, like, all the time.” And really, he’s not bothered about who’s on what side of it now; at first, sure, it was a little strange, but chicks’ bodies are totally awesome and he’s pretty down with it. Quinn seems pretty on board with the guy role in sex too, it’s possibly because of the control or just because she can let go and not worry, Puck isn’t all that sure if he’s honest but he’d place money on the control thing. “I miss, guy sports.” Quinn gives him another look, just glancing across before turning back to the road. “Like, cheerleading is great and all, but I miss baseball and contact sports and stupid things like paint ball and night golf.”
“Well, what if we didn’t do a soppy anniversary thing? What if we, well, what if we went paintballing? I’ve never done it, you’re meant to be organising it. It could be fun.” Puck can only grin at her.
“Seriously? I will give you a shmoopy, soppy romantic six month anniversary for this. Like, totally.”
“You don’t need to. I mean, Finn did the romantic stuff, and it always felt forced and unreal. I like how we don’t feel like that. It’s like, it’s genuine.” Mostly because he’s always felt something for her, and yeah, he’s pretty sure if he broke out the romantic stuff it wouldn’t feel fake for her. But he’ll keep that in mind for when they get back to normal and he can actually do that stuff for her. “So,” they pull up outside the Fabray house, Quinn putting the truck in park but not killing the engine meaning she’s not coming inside, “how about I get everything set up, we keep it quiet and then Rach won’t bitch at me for how unromantic it all is?”
“Sounds good.” He slides across the bench, leaning in to kiss her and smiling into it. Even with the nutjob body swap, it’s the most stable and probably the best relationship he’s ever had with anyone to date and that’s pretty awesome in his mind. “Rach is picking me up tomorrow morning, she wants to go somewhere after school, so I’ll see you later on.”
“Sure, have fun meeting mom’s boyfriend.” And Puck didn’t need that reminder.
“Yeah, you go have fun with the three screaming, crazy nine year olds, big brother.” There’s another quick kiss before Puck slips out of the truck and heads up into the house, waving as Quinn drives off. This was something he hadn’t been expecting, but Judy was single and she was relatively young and good looking, so really she should get a boyfriend, that was fine. Besides, her ex-husband was already on girlfriend number three following their divorce.
Puck didn’t actually want to meet the guy though.
Closing the front door, Puck headed into the kitchen, hearing the voices from in there. “Mom,” it’s no longer weird calling her that, even if she’s not his mother, it’s just a name. Just like he’s gotten used to calling his Ma ‘Mrs Puckerman’ or ‘Ruth’ when she’s in a really good mood. “Hey, I’m home.” He ends up leaning against the door frame to the kitchen, watching Judy giggle and wipe some cream from the corner of her mouth with a blush on her face while the boyfriend ducks his head towards the cooker.
“Sweetie, how was school?” Judy tries to tidy herself up, but Puck’s pretty sure she was pretty close to just letting the boyfriend ravish her against the kitchen counter. He wonders what she’d think if she knew that Puck and Quinn had already done that.
“Fine, really. Rach is going to Chicago for Thanksgiving and Santana has her aunt and cousins coming through. She’s not overly thrilled so if the phone rings and there’s an angry Latina on the other end, it’s just San.” Judy gives a small smile and nod. “Are you going to introduce us?”
“Um, Quinny, sweetie, this is Stephen. Stephen this is my daughter, Quinn.” It’s good that she didn’t tell him that her name was Lucy, because then Puck would need to pull Quinn’s bitch card like instructed and he doesn’t really want to pull that.
“Hey there,” Stephen is tall, somewhere between Finn’s height and Puck’s real height. Puck’s pretty sure the guy played a sport of some kind, he’s all broad shoulders and fairly muscled arms and he definitely looks a fair bit younger than Ms Fabray. Like college age. “Your mom’s told me a lot about you.”
“Really? I haven’t heard much about you.” Judy only just mentioned a few days ago that she’d been seeing someone -which Puck actually figured, because she was out late a lot and came in wearing clothes she wasn’t wearing to work. It didn’t take much to figure things out. “So, Stephen, what do you do?”
“I work for a real estate company as a realtor.” That was something like what Quinn envisioned herself doing, wasn’t it? “I’ve just started out but it’s pretty good.”
“Really? The state of the economy isn’t royally screwing you over with the blown up prices and the near impossibility of getting a loan for a mortgage?” Judy and Stephen stare at him for a moment and Puck figures he should just move on. “How did you two meet?”
So Judy launches into this story about how they met at a hotel bar during one of her meetings with a CEO or something or other and started talking and how Stephen used the lamest pick up line that Puck’s ever heard but Judy sort of wanted the attention anyway. He eats the spaghetti that Stephen made and further listens to a few stories, absently answering questions when asked. He’s never been in this situation before, because his Ma never dated after his dad walked out, Sarah was too little and Puck couldn’t watch her on his own and Nana never approved since, technically, Ma was still married. So it’s the first time he’s ever met a ‘boyfriend’ and had to deal with that ‘we’re going to be a family’ thing, even if they weren’t.
“So, Stephen has invited us to go to his family’s home for Thanksgiving.”
“What?” Judy just drops it right in there during desert. Puck drops the spoon into his bowl of ice cream, not even bothering with subtlety. “Mom, what happened to ‘not doing’ Thanksgiving?” See, they got the whole weekend off school, Thursday through to Monday was like a holiday or whatever, and he was looking forward to spending time with Quinn.
“Well, I thought that, since Stephen was being so sweet and inviting us along, it would be rude to say no.” Puck totally catches just how she says it, so he knows that she thinks he’s being a bitch or whatever.
“You know what else would be rude, cancelling my plans with my boyfriend.”
“Oh, you have a boyfriend?” Stephen is apparently trying to defuse things, but it’s unlikely to happen because Puck’s still getting used to doing the teenage girl fighting with mom thing, but it’s happened enough that he knows him and Judy are going to yell at each other over this.
“Yes, I do. One whom I’ve made plans to spend Thanksgiving with, and the weekend after that. Since it’s our three month anniversary.” Judy puts her own spoon down and crosses her arms.
“You know I’m happy that you and Noah are doing so well, but frankly, I’m not sure how I feel about all the time you spend with him.”
“He’s my boyfriend mom, of course I’m going to spend a lot of time with him.” And really, he’s barely gotten any time with Quinn lately, it’s all be him and Rach and San for a bit, he gets some time with Quinn at school and she drives him home and stuff, but there’s hardly any time. “I barely see him, just him and me. We want to do something special for this.”
“And it’s great, really, I’m glad you’re so serious. But we’re going to Cincinnati with Stephen for the weekend.” There was no way that Puck was spending the weekend in Cincinnati without Quinn, least of all Stephen and his family.
“No. I am not. I’m not spending Thanksgiving weekend in another city with your boyfriend’s family when I can be at home, with my boyfriend for our anniversary.” He pushed himself out from the table in the kitchen and went upstairs, ignoring Judy calling after him. It was the girl thing, he was fairly certain that was all it was, but there was just this annoying clench in his chest that tightened any time Judy and him started arguing and he hated it. Because he wasn’t even her daughter, and he shouldn’t care enough to start arguing with her.
“Quinn,” Judy just follows him upstairs, pushing the door open and comes into Quinn’s room. Puck stands by the end of her bed, arms crossed under his boobs, glaring at her. “Don’t you dare start this. This is a good thing for me, don’t ruin it.”
“I’m not trying to, I’m all happy or whatever that you’re getting out there and dating. But you only told me about this guy like two days ago, and you want me to drop everything and spend Thanksgiving weekend with his family? What about what I wanted?” He spends enough time with Judy to know what’s going on with her, but he’s not all that interested in going beyond that. He does not want to spend a weekend with her and her boytoy, least of all when he knows no one.
“You can see Noah when you come back.”
“He’s taking me out. On Saturday. For our anniversary. He’s actually remembered, three months is like the longest he’s ever been in a relationship and he’s got something planned. Please, mom, this is a big deal for us.” Really, Puck would tell her anything if it got him out of going to this stupid thing.
“He’s already planned something?”
“Yes, like new clothes worthy something. Like getting everything waxed worthy something and new shoes. Santana and Rach and I are going shopping after school tomorrow for something. C’mon mom. You’ve gone away for the weekend before, I promise I’ll behave and call and whatever, but please don’t make me go.” He can tell that he’s almost got her.
“You really like this boy?” And Judy isn’t all in on the idea of her little girl dating ‘Puck’. Not entirely, because he was the guy who got her pregnant and Ms Fabray is aware that he’s the same boy who has had sex with half of the female population of Lima. But when Quinn’s over, she plays it as nothing but polite so it’s not like Judy actually has anything to complain about when it comes to her interactions with Noah.
“I love him.” He pulls out the most pathetic, whining and pouting voice and face that Quinn can possibly make when he says it. He’s not even lying because he loves Quinn and she loves him so there is no actual lie there. In the end, it’s probably what makes Judy cave to it. She intends to go with Stephen to Cincinnati on the Tuesday and stay through to the Sunday night. Which gives him from Tuesday night to Saturday night with Quinn and that just makes his damn week. Even if he does have to promise to no funny business -which probably means no parties, but it wasn’t like Puck was planning one- and she says that if Noah intends to stay over, Quinn has to call and let Judy know.
He figures that if he calls on Saturday to tell her that’s enough. Even if Quinn sort of just moves in for the duration of the break.
---
The thing about Rachel picking him up in the morning rather than Quinn isn’t just the lack of making out, but the lack of coffee, because Rachel appears an hour earlier than anyone else is logically going to get out of bed and it just makes no damn sense. If Puck had his way, he’d be in bed until half eight and barely show up in time for his first class at ten to nine.
“No uniform today?” He’d opted out of the Cheerio’s uniform because there was no practice today, no games, and he was going out with Rach and San straight after school and he sort of hated being in the uniform all day.
“Nope.” He just huffs, and he knows he’s still in a mood from the night before, but that tends to happen now that he’s a girl. “If we’re going out, I’d rather not be wearing the red and white like a damn beacon all afternoon.”
“Okay, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Why do you think something’s wrong?”
“You’re wearing jeans, your hair is a bit of a mess and you have the minimal amount of make up on that’s possible. Did you and Noah have a fight?” What he really hates is how, when he gets fed up with all the girl stuff, everyone assumes he’s fighting with Quinn. Seriously, maybe he just slept in that morning.
“No, okay, Puck and I are fine. We’re great. We’re planning a nice Thanksgiving weekend together which will include a surprise in the form of him actually remembering our anniversary and taking me somewhere and my mother, who just sprung her boyfriend on me two days ago, wants me to go to Cincinnati with her and him to meet his entire family when I barely even know anything about him.” Yeah, he got Judy to agree to him staying in Lima for the weekend, but it’s the principal that counts. “Seriously, she wanted me to miss my three months with a boy who used to only make as far as three days with the same girl, because she’s got some hot new boytoy to flaunt around.”
“Okay, Quinn, you need to calm down.”
“I am calm, okay. This is me being calm. You should’ve seen me last night, if you had, you would know. This is calm.” The rest of the drive is quiet and Puck can’t wait until he gets Quinn’s car back because this early morning being a passenger thing is a total drag and he hates it. Rachel doesn’t talk until they pull up into the school parking lot and then it’s just to try and placate her.
“Do you think if you told her you were staying with Santana or something she’d let you stay?”
“I’m staying. I convinced her to let me stay on my own while she went to meet the boyfriend’s parents. I have stupid rules to deal with, but I’m staying.” Rach just shakes her head again, clearly not understanding. Frankly, Puck doesn’t really get it himself, he just reacts a whole lot differently to stuff these days.
“Come on, we’ll get you something to drink, I’m thinking green tea, by the way, and then we’ll wait in the library until Noah’s likely to show up and then you can just see him and try and feel better.”
“I resent the implication that I require Puck to make me calm down and ‘feel better’.” Funny thing is though, almost forty five minutes later when Rachel drags him over to Quinn, he totally feels better when Quinn just wraps her arms around him and kisses his head.
He’s such a fucking girl.
“So, Judy’s boyfriend seems okay. I might’ve made a not so great impression, but Judy is going to Cincinnati to meet his family from Tuesday to Sunday, so, free house. Also, Rachel is crazy. And stupid. And I’m in a mood with her.” Quinn just laughs at him and wraps her arms around his shoulders tighter.
“Free house means I can stay over?”
“Yeah, I need to tell Judy that you’re there on Saturday, but what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her, right?” It’s generally how he feels about his own mother too. If he told her everything she’d have had a heart attack years ago, so this is much better. He’ll just limit how much Judy finds out and move on from there. “Do you have any idea where the hell Rachel is taking me today?”
“Not a one. She’s in secret agent mode. I think it’s just something to do while she’s single. But hey, you’ve got five more days and then we’ll be free of all interruptions while Santana deals with her family and Rachel heads off to Chicago.”
“Yeah, what about you? No fear that Finn’ll try and work in a boy’s night? Sam and Mike inviting you over of video game marathons? Artie pulling the bros before hos card?” Quinn just laughed at him, walking them down the hall and, tragically, towards his French class with Hummel.
“They’ll just be told, I’m playing house with my girl and that’s that.” Puck just rolled his eyes, expecting the quick kiss that came as he approached his class and the grin on Quinn’s face afterwards.
“Guess who’s doing all the cleaning up? And I plan to make the biggest mess possible.”
“Looking forward to it, Q.” Really, this whole thing was far too comfortable, but he just couldn’t work up the energy to hate it.
---
Part Fifteen
Chapter: 14/?
Rating: overall NC-17, this chapter PG-13
Characters: Noah 'Puck' Puckerman, Quinn Fabray, ensemble
Pairing: Quinn/Puck
Warnings: Body swap, teen pregnancy
Spoilers: Blanket Season 2
Disclaimer: Not mine. No money. No affiliation.
A/N: from the glee_angst_meme, prompt here
Summary: Somehow, Quinn and Puck somehow end up in each other’s bodies. It's not as fun as it sounds either. The really horrifying thing? Puck ends up pregnant and seeing how the other half lives. This is not how he wanted to spend his senior year.
Secondary Note: Really, really, really confusing pronouns ahead.
“What’re everyone’s Thanksgiving plans?” They got past Halloween a week ago, so Rachel believes it’s okay to start on Thanksgiving. Puck would like to just get through his first major test in French, thanks very much. Either way it doesn’t matter; Quinn explained that they don’t do Thanksgiving anymore because of her Dad and his lack of being involved and how Judy sort of hates it anyway and Puck hasn’t done Thanksgiving since his Dad walked out that day almost ten years ago. They’re half planning to spend it together anyway.
“Mom’s looking to do some weird dinner thing with my cousins and aunt, they’re driving in from Columbus,” Santana doesn’t look overly pleased. “If that bitch asks just once, why I can’t just be straight, I’m gonna stab her with my fork.” While Santana’s mother has been supportive of her choice to come out as a lesbian -because dudes just aren’t doing it for her at all, her mother’s sister isn’t so keen.
“You can come over to my place if that happens. Daddy keeps asking me about you anyway, it’d be cool.” Avery seems to have a more stable home life, she calls it boring, but most of the time it seems like something a few of them wouldn’t mind at all. Her Dad is some kind of car dealer and her mom is a dental hygienist. Simple, plain, boring if you’re Avery.
“Well, Dad and Daddy are hoping to take me to Chicago.”
“Weren’t you just in Chicago?”
“Yes, but Aunt Gertrude has these theatre tickets,” Puck doesn’t feel bad about zoning out, playing with the food on his plate and just letting Rachel’s voice wash over him. It’s not like he’s keeping track or anything, but Thanksgiving would mark him and Quinn’s four month mark on body swapping. It’ll be their three month dating anniversary on the Saturday after Thanksgiving -he knows this because Rachel’s pointed it out to him twice and Hummel brought it up four times in the last week.
People keep asking if Puck has anything planned for them and he’s not sure if he’s supposed to take care of that or if Quinn is. Logically speaking, he’s still the guy, but Quinn seems far more capable at the guy stuff when it comes to this -probably because she’s really the chick and knows what the chick should want. It’s this stuff that still gets to him. He’s mostly over all the other stuff; the hair and make-up, the size difference, the classes, the cheerleading instead of football, the house and family swap isn’t as frustrating as it was. But trying to figure out their roles based on gender is fucking difficult and giving him a headache because he is a guy but he’s technically the girl.
It’s annoying.
Quinn doesn’t exactly help, because she just sort of does whatever she wants and that is usually just something he rolls with. But she hasn’t mentioned this whole ‘anniversary’ crap -seriously, three months is nothing, why aren’t they waiting for the year? It just distracts him the whole day.
“You okay?” Quinn’s driving him home that week, because Judy’s car took a bump and bust it’s exhaust and she’s using Quinn’s car. So they’re driving around after school in the truck and Puck actually feels a little lost in his own truck. It’s crazy scary how used to being Quinn he’s becoming.
“Yeah, just thinkin’ about some stuff.” Quinn glances at him warily. Since he told her he loved her, and she told him, three weeks ago, they’ve not really had any issues. Things are simple, Finn isn’t interfering, Louise isn’t being a snotty little bitch. Well, Louise is being a snotty little bitch but Puck-as-Quinn is way better at it and the junior has no hope of ever competing. “Hummel keeps asking about our three month anniversary.”
“Oh that, yeah. Rach practically cornered me to interrogate me about my intentions.”
“What are our intentions? I mean, is three months a big deal? Are we doing anything? Thanksgiving is like right before it, should we just ignore it this time and wait for the six?”
“You think we’ll make six months like this?”
“Like this?” In each-others bodies? He really, really hopes not. He’s not sure why they’re even in each-others bodies in the first place, but whatever it is, he hopes it’s done and gone by the time they hit six months. “I hope not, but it’s always a possibility.”
“So you think we’ll make it to six months?”
“Do you plan on dumping me before then?”
“No.”
“Then I think we’ll manage six months, and probably more.” Quinn gives him this smile, because he has to face facts, even if he was in his own body when they hit six months and even if Quinn decided she didn’t want to have sex anymore, he’d still be in love with her and he’d still want to be with her so really, why would they break up?
“What’s one thing you miss about being a guy?” It’s a pretty random question considering what they were just talking about, but maybe it’s just Quinn’s way of changing the topic, so he just goes with it. “And don’t say sex.”
“Why would I say sex? You have sex with me, like, all the time.” And really, he’s not bothered about who’s on what side of it now; at first, sure, it was a little strange, but chicks’ bodies are totally awesome and he’s pretty down with it. Quinn seems pretty on board with the guy role in sex too, it’s possibly because of the control or just because she can let go and not worry, Puck isn’t all that sure if he’s honest but he’d place money on the control thing. “I miss, guy sports.” Quinn gives him another look, just glancing across before turning back to the road. “Like, cheerleading is great and all, but I miss baseball and contact sports and stupid things like paint ball and night golf.”
“Well, what if we didn’t do a soppy anniversary thing? What if we, well, what if we went paintballing? I’ve never done it, you’re meant to be organising it. It could be fun.” Puck can only grin at her.
“Seriously? I will give you a shmoopy, soppy romantic six month anniversary for this. Like, totally.”
“You don’t need to. I mean, Finn did the romantic stuff, and it always felt forced and unreal. I like how we don’t feel like that. It’s like, it’s genuine.” Mostly because he’s always felt something for her, and yeah, he’s pretty sure if he broke out the romantic stuff it wouldn’t feel fake for her. But he’ll keep that in mind for when they get back to normal and he can actually do that stuff for her. “So,” they pull up outside the Fabray house, Quinn putting the truck in park but not killing the engine meaning she’s not coming inside, “how about I get everything set up, we keep it quiet and then Rach won’t bitch at me for how unromantic it all is?”
“Sounds good.” He slides across the bench, leaning in to kiss her and smiling into it. Even with the nutjob body swap, it’s the most stable and probably the best relationship he’s ever had with anyone to date and that’s pretty awesome in his mind. “Rach is picking me up tomorrow morning, she wants to go somewhere after school, so I’ll see you later on.”
“Sure, have fun meeting mom’s boyfriend.” And Puck didn’t need that reminder.
“Yeah, you go have fun with the three screaming, crazy nine year olds, big brother.” There’s another quick kiss before Puck slips out of the truck and heads up into the house, waving as Quinn drives off. This was something he hadn’t been expecting, but Judy was single and she was relatively young and good looking, so really she should get a boyfriend, that was fine. Besides, her ex-husband was already on girlfriend number three following their divorce.
Puck didn’t actually want to meet the guy though.
Closing the front door, Puck headed into the kitchen, hearing the voices from in there. “Mom,” it’s no longer weird calling her that, even if she’s not his mother, it’s just a name. Just like he’s gotten used to calling his Ma ‘Mrs Puckerman’ or ‘Ruth’ when she’s in a really good mood. “Hey, I’m home.” He ends up leaning against the door frame to the kitchen, watching Judy giggle and wipe some cream from the corner of her mouth with a blush on her face while the boyfriend ducks his head towards the cooker.
“Sweetie, how was school?” Judy tries to tidy herself up, but Puck’s pretty sure she was pretty close to just letting the boyfriend ravish her against the kitchen counter. He wonders what she’d think if she knew that Puck and Quinn had already done that.
“Fine, really. Rach is going to Chicago for Thanksgiving and Santana has her aunt and cousins coming through. She’s not overly thrilled so if the phone rings and there’s an angry Latina on the other end, it’s just San.” Judy gives a small smile and nod. “Are you going to introduce us?”
“Um, Quinny, sweetie, this is Stephen. Stephen this is my daughter, Quinn.” It’s good that she didn’t tell him that her name was Lucy, because then Puck would need to pull Quinn’s bitch card like instructed and he doesn’t really want to pull that.
“Hey there,” Stephen is tall, somewhere between Finn’s height and Puck’s real height. Puck’s pretty sure the guy played a sport of some kind, he’s all broad shoulders and fairly muscled arms and he definitely looks a fair bit younger than Ms Fabray. Like college age. “Your mom’s told me a lot about you.”
“Really? I haven’t heard much about you.” Judy only just mentioned a few days ago that she’d been seeing someone -which Puck actually figured, because she was out late a lot and came in wearing clothes she wasn’t wearing to work. It didn’t take much to figure things out. “So, Stephen, what do you do?”
“I work for a real estate company as a realtor.” That was something like what Quinn envisioned herself doing, wasn’t it? “I’ve just started out but it’s pretty good.”
“Really? The state of the economy isn’t royally screwing you over with the blown up prices and the near impossibility of getting a loan for a mortgage?” Judy and Stephen stare at him for a moment and Puck figures he should just move on. “How did you two meet?”
So Judy launches into this story about how they met at a hotel bar during one of her meetings with a CEO or something or other and started talking and how Stephen used the lamest pick up line that Puck’s ever heard but Judy sort of wanted the attention anyway. He eats the spaghetti that Stephen made and further listens to a few stories, absently answering questions when asked. He’s never been in this situation before, because his Ma never dated after his dad walked out, Sarah was too little and Puck couldn’t watch her on his own and Nana never approved since, technically, Ma was still married. So it’s the first time he’s ever met a ‘boyfriend’ and had to deal with that ‘we’re going to be a family’ thing, even if they weren’t.
“So, Stephen has invited us to go to his family’s home for Thanksgiving.”
“What?” Judy just drops it right in there during desert. Puck drops the spoon into his bowl of ice cream, not even bothering with subtlety. “Mom, what happened to ‘not doing’ Thanksgiving?” See, they got the whole weekend off school, Thursday through to Monday was like a holiday or whatever, and he was looking forward to spending time with Quinn.
“Well, I thought that, since Stephen was being so sweet and inviting us along, it would be rude to say no.” Puck totally catches just how she says it, so he knows that she thinks he’s being a bitch or whatever.
“You know what else would be rude, cancelling my plans with my boyfriend.”
“Oh, you have a boyfriend?” Stephen is apparently trying to defuse things, but it’s unlikely to happen because Puck’s still getting used to doing the teenage girl fighting with mom thing, but it’s happened enough that he knows him and Judy are going to yell at each other over this.
“Yes, I do. One whom I’ve made plans to spend Thanksgiving with, and the weekend after that. Since it’s our three month anniversary.” Judy puts her own spoon down and crosses her arms.
“You know I’m happy that you and Noah are doing so well, but frankly, I’m not sure how I feel about all the time you spend with him.”
“He’s my boyfriend mom, of course I’m going to spend a lot of time with him.” And really, he’s barely gotten any time with Quinn lately, it’s all be him and Rach and San for a bit, he gets some time with Quinn at school and she drives him home and stuff, but there’s hardly any time. “I barely see him, just him and me. We want to do something special for this.”
“And it’s great, really, I’m glad you’re so serious. But we’re going to Cincinnati with Stephen for the weekend.” There was no way that Puck was spending the weekend in Cincinnati without Quinn, least of all Stephen and his family.
“No. I am not. I’m not spending Thanksgiving weekend in another city with your boyfriend’s family when I can be at home, with my boyfriend for our anniversary.” He pushed himself out from the table in the kitchen and went upstairs, ignoring Judy calling after him. It was the girl thing, he was fairly certain that was all it was, but there was just this annoying clench in his chest that tightened any time Judy and him started arguing and he hated it. Because he wasn’t even her daughter, and he shouldn’t care enough to start arguing with her.
“Quinn,” Judy just follows him upstairs, pushing the door open and comes into Quinn’s room. Puck stands by the end of her bed, arms crossed under his boobs, glaring at her. “Don’t you dare start this. This is a good thing for me, don’t ruin it.”
“I’m not trying to, I’m all happy or whatever that you’re getting out there and dating. But you only told me about this guy like two days ago, and you want me to drop everything and spend Thanksgiving weekend with his family? What about what I wanted?” He spends enough time with Judy to know what’s going on with her, but he’s not all that interested in going beyond that. He does not want to spend a weekend with her and her boytoy, least of all when he knows no one.
“You can see Noah when you come back.”
“He’s taking me out. On Saturday. For our anniversary. He’s actually remembered, three months is like the longest he’s ever been in a relationship and he’s got something planned. Please, mom, this is a big deal for us.” Really, Puck would tell her anything if it got him out of going to this stupid thing.
“He’s already planned something?”
“Yes, like new clothes worthy something. Like getting everything waxed worthy something and new shoes. Santana and Rach and I are going shopping after school tomorrow for something. C’mon mom. You’ve gone away for the weekend before, I promise I’ll behave and call and whatever, but please don’t make me go.” He can tell that he’s almost got her.
“You really like this boy?” And Judy isn’t all in on the idea of her little girl dating ‘Puck’. Not entirely, because he was the guy who got her pregnant and Ms Fabray is aware that he’s the same boy who has had sex with half of the female population of Lima. But when Quinn’s over, she plays it as nothing but polite so it’s not like Judy actually has anything to complain about when it comes to her interactions with Noah.
“I love him.” He pulls out the most pathetic, whining and pouting voice and face that Quinn can possibly make when he says it. He’s not even lying because he loves Quinn and she loves him so there is no actual lie there. In the end, it’s probably what makes Judy cave to it. She intends to go with Stephen to Cincinnati on the Tuesday and stay through to the Sunday night. Which gives him from Tuesday night to Saturday night with Quinn and that just makes his damn week. Even if he does have to promise to no funny business -which probably means no parties, but it wasn’t like Puck was planning one- and she says that if Noah intends to stay over, Quinn has to call and let Judy know.
He figures that if he calls on Saturday to tell her that’s enough. Even if Quinn sort of just moves in for the duration of the break.
---
The thing about Rachel picking him up in the morning rather than Quinn isn’t just the lack of making out, but the lack of coffee, because Rachel appears an hour earlier than anyone else is logically going to get out of bed and it just makes no damn sense. If Puck had his way, he’d be in bed until half eight and barely show up in time for his first class at ten to nine.
“No uniform today?” He’d opted out of the Cheerio’s uniform because there was no practice today, no games, and he was going out with Rach and San straight after school and he sort of hated being in the uniform all day.
“Nope.” He just huffs, and he knows he’s still in a mood from the night before, but that tends to happen now that he’s a girl. “If we’re going out, I’d rather not be wearing the red and white like a damn beacon all afternoon.”
“Okay, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Why do you think something’s wrong?”
“You’re wearing jeans, your hair is a bit of a mess and you have the minimal amount of make up on that’s possible. Did you and Noah have a fight?” What he really hates is how, when he gets fed up with all the girl stuff, everyone assumes he’s fighting with Quinn. Seriously, maybe he just slept in that morning.
“No, okay, Puck and I are fine. We’re great. We’re planning a nice Thanksgiving weekend together which will include a surprise in the form of him actually remembering our anniversary and taking me somewhere and my mother, who just sprung her boyfriend on me two days ago, wants me to go to Cincinnati with her and him to meet his entire family when I barely even know anything about him.” Yeah, he got Judy to agree to him staying in Lima for the weekend, but it’s the principal that counts. “Seriously, she wanted me to miss my three months with a boy who used to only make as far as three days with the same girl, because she’s got some hot new boytoy to flaunt around.”
“Okay, Quinn, you need to calm down.”
“I am calm, okay. This is me being calm. You should’ve seen me last night, if you had, you would know. This is calm.” The rest of the drive is quiet and Puck can’t wait until he gets Quinn’s car back because this early morning being a passenger thing is a total drag and he hates it. Rachel doesn’t talk until they pull up into the school parking lot and then it’s just to try and placate her.
“Do you think if you told her you were staying with Santana or something she’d let you stay?”
“I’m staying. I convinced her to let me stay on my own while she went to meet the boyfriend’s parents. I have stupid rules to deal with, but I’m staying.” Rach just shakes her head again, clearly not understanding. Frankly, Puck doesn’t really get it himself, he just reacts a whole lot differently to stuff these days.
“Come on, we’ll get you something to drink, I’m thinking green tea, by the way, and then we’ll wait in the library until Noah’s likely to show up and then you can just see him and try and feel better.”
“I resent the implication that I require Puck to make me calm down and ‘feel better’.” Funny thing is though, almost forty five minutes later when Rachel drags him over to Quinn, he totally feels better when Quinn just wraps her arms around him and kisses his head.
He’s such a fucking girl.
“So, Judy’s boyfriend seems okay. I might’ve made a not so great impression, but Judy is going to Cincinnati to meet his family from Tuesday to Sunday, so, free house. Also, Rachel is crazy. And stupid. And I’m in a mood with her.” Quinn just laughs at him and wraps her arms around his shoulders tighter.
“Free house means I can stay over?”
“Yeah, I need to tell Judy that you’re there on Saturday, but what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her, right?” It’s generally how he feels about his own mother too. If he told her everything she’d have had a heart attack years ago, so this is much better. He’ll just limit how much Judy finds out and move on from there. “Do you have any idea where the hell Rachel is taking me today?”
“Not a one. She’s in secret agent mode. I think it’s just something to do while she’s single. But hey, you’ve got five more days and then we’ll be free of all interruptions while Santana deals with her family and Rachel heads off to Chicago.”
“Yeah, what about you? No fear that Finn’ll try and work in a boy’s night? Sam and Mike inviting you over of video game marathons? Artie pulling the bros before hos card?” Quinn just laughed at him, walking them down the hall and, tragically, towards his French class with Hummel.
“They’ll just be told, I’m playing house with my girl and that’s that.” Puck just rolled his eyes, expecting the quick kiss that came as he approached his class and the grin on Quinn’s face afterwards.
“Guess who’s doing all the cleaning up? And I plan to make the biggest mess possible.”
“Looking forward to it, Q.” Really, this whole thing was far too comfortable, but he just couldn’t work up the energy to hate it.
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Part Fifteen