Fic: Snapshots, a Higher Education Interlude
Title: Snapshots, A Higher Education Interlude
Author: knittycat99
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: Puck, Puck/Kurt
Spoilers: None that I know of
Warnings: None
Word Count: 2,338
Summary: Five events that influenced Puck, and the one time he decided to follow his heart
Note: This was kicking around in my brain all day. It's not beta'd.
In every heart, there is a room. A sanctuary safe and strong. To heal the wounds of lovers past until a new one comes along.
Billy Joel
1. 1998- 4 years old
Mommy and Daddy were mad. They were always mad. Sometimes at night, Noah would bury his head under his pillows so he didn’t have to listen to them yelling. If that didn’t work, he’d pull his dinosaur quilt off his bed and go lay in the corner next to his night light. The bright made him feel better, and if he got really scared he would put his hand next to the light so it would feel all warm. The mornings after The Yelling, he would be extra quiet and get his own cereal and eat it without milk because he couldn’t reach to get it out of the fridge himself. He would get dressed and play in his room, or out in the yard. By late morning, Daddy would be gone to wherever and Mommy would come and get him for lunch.
But last night there was yelling, and there was also crying, and he thought he heard something breaking. Noah played alone in his room all morning, and then his tummy started to feel rumbly, but nobody came to tell him it was lunchtime. He was hungry and bored and lonely, so he gathered up his best toy cars and his nightlight (even though Mommy was always telling him “Noah, please don’t touch that!” when he got too close to a plug) and put them in the GI Joe lunchbox he used on the days he had to go to day care. He took it to the kitchen and piled in a juice box and two fruit roll ups and a granola bar. And then he let himself out into the backyard.
He ate his snacks and drank his juice, and was rolling his cars into the muddy birdbath when Mommy cane running out the back door. “I’ve been looking all over for you! What are you doing out here?”
“Running away.”
“Running away? Why?”
“Because. Where were you, Mommy?”
“Mommy wasn’t feeling well. I was sleeping.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t ever run away again, Noah.”
“Don’t leave me alone again, Mommy.”
2. 2000- 6 years old
The stupid baby cried all the time. When his mom was pregnant, there hadn’t been any yelling. When the baby first came home, there also hadn’t been any yelling. But now, the baby was a little older, and when she cried at night his dad would yell. He yelled about how his mom couldn’t keep the baby quiet so he could get some sleep, about how the house was messy, about how his mom was stupid and lazy because she couldn’t manage to keep the house and take care of Noah and the baby and cook dinner on time. When Noah had gotten in trouble at school last week for fighting with Finn, his dad even yelled that “no kid of his was going to turn into a punk.” Noah kind of hated his dad a little bit, for yelling at his mom like that, and for blaming the baby. She was kind of funny looking, and she did cry a lot, but he was a big brother now and he had to protect her.
It was hard to ignore the yelling now that he was older. It made him sad, which made him mad, which got him in trouble in school. Which made his dad yell some more. That was the only time his dad even paid attention to him, though. Noah didn’t mean to be bad, and he didn’t want to be in trouble. But being yelled at was better than being invisible.
3. 2004- 10 years old
“You’re the man of the house now, Noah. Take care of your mom and sister.” Noah was sure he had imagined it, that he had only been dreaming. That he hadn’t smelled the beer on his dad’s breath, or felt the weight of his dad’s hand on his back as he said goodbye. But he knew for sure when he woke up in the morning and saw his dad’s best guitar on a stand in the corner of his room with his baseball stuff. When he wandered downstairs, his mom was crying at the sink while she poured milk for Lizzie’s breakfast. There was a note on the counter. He went up and snaked his skinny arms around his mom’s waist. “Dad’s gone,” he said, “but don’t worry, I’ll take care of you and Lizzie now.”
His mom wrapped him up in a bear hug. “It’s okay, kiddo. We’ll all be fine. He’s been gone for years. The only thing different now is that he won’t be living here.” Noah really hated his dad. He wasn’t sure why he was sad. He worked hard to be a man, even as he cried little-boy tears into his mom’s fuzzy blue bathrobe.
4. 2007- 13 years old
Finn was an idiot. The whole point of being cool was being able to manage the other kids. What was the point of being cool if you couldn’t wield a little power? He pointed to that Hummel kid, the one who had gone to West Lima Elementary before joining with the kids from East Lima in middle school. He was in the same honors track as Puck was, which Puck would deny if anybody asked. He only pretended to be stupid. But that was kind of beside the point. Hummel was most definitely gay, which was a little weird but not necessarily a bad thing (at least not in Puck’s mind). And he was a loser, because he did girly things like wear makeup and sing in the chorus. Puck decided that he needed to be put in his place. “That’s the kid,” he told Finn. “Dumpster or Slushie?”
“Dude, I dunno. I really don’t think either one is a good idea.”
“Power, Finn. We need to be badasses, so we can be on top when we go to high school. Dumpster or Slushie?”
“Dumpster, I guess.”
The kid was kind of gracious about it. He didn’t fight like some of the geeks Puck had tossed in recent weeks. Instead, he kind of looked down his nose at Puck, like he was better than the rest of them. When Puck looked down into the dumpster, Hummel’s eyes caught the sunlight and suddenly looked so clear and blue. Puck felt like Hummel was looking right through him, to the places he never let anyone see. He couldn’t afford for that to happen. He had a reputation to maintain, and he wasn’t going to let anyone (especially not a loser who sang in the chorus) damage it.
5. 2010- 16 years old
Everyone was rallying around Quinn, which in all honesty made Puck a little nauseous. Beth had been his kid, too, and just because he was a guy, and a badass to boot, didn’t mean that he didn’t hurt. He felt like a failure because he’d wanted to keep the baby and he hadn’t been able to convince Quinn that he could be a good father. He supposed that it was kind of his own fault, because he never let anyone get really close to him. His badass-ness tended to turn people away. Even now, when his insides felt so empty it was hard to get out of bed in the morning, he managed to do it and put on his Puckasaurus persona. Only at night, only at that coffee shop he had found on the road to Dayton, could he kind of relax. It had started with song lyrics scribbled on napkins as he drank cup after cup of black coffee, continued with a mild flirtation with the barista, and ended with an invitation from the night manager for him to come in and sing with his guitar. He had five new songs. Fifteen minutes of heartbreak and loneliness, and no safe place to put it all out there. Except maybe here, where nobody knew him.
It had seemed like a good idea at the time, until he was halfway through his songs and spied a familiar pair of sea-blue eyes looking back at him from a corner table. His hands shook against the neck of his guitar, and he had to look away to be able to finish. The applause at the end was mild, and the ache in his chest was a little bit less. He was putting his guitar in its case when he felt the gentle pressure of Kurt’s hand on his shoulder. “Your songs were beautiful, Puck.”
“Whatev.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Shut me out. I know you think we have nothing in common, but we do. We know what it’s like to lose someone we love. We know what it’s like to be thought of as less than. We know what it’s like to put on a mask every morning because letting people see us hurt would kill us.”
“I don’t . . .”
“Yes, you do. We’re both masters at it. I know everyone thinks you’re the screw-up in all of this, and that they’re all hand-holding Quinn. But you might need some hand-holding too. I won’t push, but you can always call me if you need anything. To talk or to watch a stupid movie, or whatever.”
“Why are you being nice to me? I used to kick your ass every day.”
“I know. We just show our hurt in different ways. I can’t really hold that against you. I know it’s not personal.”
“How do you know . . .?”
“That first time you tossed me in a dumpster, back in middle school. I looked up into the sun, and there you were.”
“You saw me.”
“Yes. I saw you.”
Kurt turned away then, began moving towards the door. He looked back once, before he grasped for the handle. “I’ll always see you, Noah.”
6. 2013- 18 years old
If Puck had to stay in Lima one more freaking day, he was going to go crazy. Until his friends (even Finn and Brittany) all went off to college and he was left alone, standing in the registration line at Lima Community College, he hadn’t been bothered by his lack of a Big Plan. So he started checking in with Mr. Schue, talking about the things he’d been afraid to admit to anyone last year: that he didn’t want to turn into his dad by default, angry at the world and his family, running off in the middle of the night because he was too much of a coward to leave Lima in the clear light of day; that he didn’t want to be a Lima Loser, still cleaning pools in five years with no future at all; that he was afraid he’d become stupid merely by pretending to be stupid. Mr. Schue assured him that the last was impossible. He had been smart once, and maybe he just needed to work a little harder and he’d be smart again. As far as the other things, Mr. Schue thought that maybe Puck needed to expand his horizons a little bit.
“Do you want to go to college?” He’d asked Puck one August night when they met for burgers.
“Not really. I mean, I don’t see myself as the academic type. I’d rather learn a skill, something I can use to make a decent living. Not a trade, an actual skill. Something I can feel useful doing, and not be stupid doing it.”
“What was your dream when you were a little kid? What did you want to be more than anything?”
“One time, my mom was watching some show about paramedics, and I thought that looked really cool. Getting to help people, and drive fast, all that.”
“Then you should check it out. There’s probably a class you can take at LCC.”
“Yeah. I guess.” He pretended to be apprehensive, but if he was being honest with himself, his heart gave a little flutter when he thought about it. The next day, he went to the registrar and signed up for the fall EMT Basic class.
He got his license in December, and spent Christmas with his family and hanging out with Finn at the Hudson-Hummel house. Finn was loving Ohio State. Apparently, Kurt was loving his school in Boston, something-Eastern. Puck had hoped he’d get to at least see Kurt over the break. They had never been great friends, mostly because Puck had been too scared of what Kurt saw in him, but he felt like he’d grown a lot since graduation. He wasn’t so afraid of himself anymore, which made it easier to let go of the scared boy he had been for so long. Too long. In any case, he wanted to see Kurt. To see if the boy he remembered was still kind and strong and heart-breakingly aware. To find out if the feelings for Kurt that he kept close to his chest were as real as they seemed sometimes. But they kept missing each other. Puck figured he’d have to wait until summer break.
Until the morning in late January when he woke up feeling like he was suffocating. The only two thoughts in his mind were I have to get out of here and I have to see Kurt. He stuffed his backpack with a few essentials, made sure he had phone numbers for all his East Coast college friends (Kurt in Boston, Rachel in New York City, Santana in Philly, and Tina in DC), and drove to the airport in Columbus. He had $1,000 in his bank account, which was enough for a one-way ticket on a two-stop flight to Boston and more travel money once he figured out what he was going to do.
His hands were shaking as he dialed Kurt’s cell. After some small talk, a demand for breakfast, and some convoluted instructions about how to find him, Puck clicked off the call and headed for the subway, headed for Kurt. Headed for what he hoped was going to be home.