Fic: Sweet Child O' Mine (8/more than 10)
Media: Fic
Title: Sweet Child O’ Mine (8/more than 10)
Author/Artist: likethedirection
Friendship/Pairings: Kurt+Puck, canon pairings as of 2x22
Spoilers: To be safe, we’ll say everything through Season 2?
Rating: PG-13+
Summary: Puck comes to Kurt for help, and Kurt figures it can’t hurt to do a friend a favor. Unfortunately, everything is more complicated when there’s a baby involved.
Previous Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6a | 6b | 7
A/N: LOL I thought this would be only 10 chapters. Yeah, that’s not gonna happen. XD
Thanks once again to the lovely and talented theslashbunny for her help, feedback and cheerleading while I whined ceaselessly over this chapter. Darling, you are indeed the Kurt to my Blaine. <3
Also thanks to ms_jvh_shuh for identifying this story on gleefinders! I get so excited when I see other people expressing enjoyment of my scribbles. :) Thank you!
~*~
"So can I score a ride back to the hellhole on Monday?"
Kurt glanced over his shoulder, his eyebrows lifting. "Risky move," he commented, holding out his hand. "Monkey wrench."
Puck grabbed the tool from the tray and handed it to him, then leaned back with a shrug. "Like it's not gonna be a shitfest either way. I don’t have to get up before seven if I'm not gonna walk, and you've got a sweet ride. Win-win."
"True on all counts, I suppose," Kurt murmured, ducking his head back under the hood. "You’re on my way to McKinley, so if you dare."
"Is that even a question? Doesn't matter what it is, the Puckmeister is up for it. All the time."
"How wonderful for you," Kurt drawled, rolling his eyes, and handed the wrench back to Puck. "Carburetor."
"Got it," Artie said, rolling up with the piece in his lap and handing it over.
Puck swatted Kurt in the back, looking affronted. "How come he gets to touch the carburetor?"
"Oh, I don't know, because he doesn't slap the mechanic."
"It's wheel-trust," Artie said, shrugging. "Cars behave for me. They think I'm one of them."
"Dude, that's bullshit."
"Hey. Watch the language," Kurt's dad called from rather close.
Puck muttered a "Sorry, Mr. H," and Kurt straightened up again, wiping his hands.
His dad looked from him, to Puck, slouched against the worktable, then to Artie with an oily cloth over his lap to catch the grease, then back to Kurt. "You keep bringing guys in here to work for free, they're gonna start expecting a paycheck."
"Don't worry, Mr. Hummel," Artie said. "I’m just here for moral support. And to exercise my right to manly bonding as the glee club’s only eligible bachelor.”
Kurt pressed his lips together and turned silently back to the engine.
“And I’m here ‘cause I, uh. Felt bad. That Hum--Kurt accidentally got wasted the other night. From the…spiked punch. That we don’t know who spiked.” Puck cleared his throat, and Kurt rolled his eyes. “Least I can do is help a guy out.”
Kurt bit back a faint grin, his face hidden under the hood, and shook his head.
The real reason Puck was here, of course, was because he’d somehow figured out that with nothing else to do, Kurt would bury himself in work at the shop, and so had shown up uninvited on Friday to bum around and bother him and generally be the loophole in Kurt’s grounding sentence. (When he’d realized that was what he was doing, it had taken everything in Kurt’s power to keep from hugging him outright.) Artie was a surprise today, but not an unwelcome one, his calm energy balancing Puck’s and keeping Kurt centered. As he could be, anyway.
His dad made a skeptical noise, and then a warm, heavy hand landed on Kurt’s shoulder. Kurt glanced up, waiting patiently while his dad leaned in to look over his handiwork.
The ‘fight’ they had been in over Kurt’s punishment had lasted all of sixty minutes; after that voicemail from Blaine, Kurt had slept nearly twelve hours, then had to be practically muscled out of bed to get something in his stomach. He had been feeling quiet and non-confrontational ever since, a little numb, and his dad’s worry was obvious. It came across in touches like this--little shows of affection that were just a little more frequent than usual.
His dad patted him on the back. “Looks good, kid.”
“Thanks.”
Straightening up again, his dad swept a calculating gaze over Puck and Artie again, then sighed. “You boys want to hang around, that’s fine. But no touching anything without Kurt’s OK, got it?”
“Got it,” Puck said at the same time Artie replied, “Understood.”
Once his dad was back across the shop, Puck turned back to Artie, twirling a wrench between his fingers. “So who’s not still pissed at us?” he asked. “Gimme a head-count.”
Artie pursed his lips, looking guilty. “Well, there are the people who don’t know you?”
Puck rolled his eyes, the wrench twirling faster in a clinking rhythm. Kurt ducked his head back under the hood.
“But, I mean,” Artie quickly backpedaled, “it’s not that everyone’s against you. It’s just…half the glee club, plus whoever’s attached to them. Like Brittany. And Sam.” Slowly, the brightness crept out of his voice. “…And I think Mercedes got Tina. Plus Mike. And, um. I don’t know about Lauren…”
Twirl, clink, twirl, clink, twirl, clink, speeding up with Kurt’s pulse. “Pretty sure I’m still on notice.” Puck’s voice grew sullen. “Whatever.”
“Hey! There we go,” Artie piped up. “Significant others.” Twirl clink twirl clink twirl clink twirl clink-- “ ‘On notice’ just means she’s not ready to admit she forgives you yet. It’s a pride thing. So you’ve got Lauren, and then Kurt’s got Blaine--”
Kurt’s hand shot out and clamped around the wrench mid-spin. “Stop that.”
Puck and Artie stared at him, their mouths clamping shut, and Kurt took a breath because that had come out a little louder than he’d meant it. He plucked the wrench away from Puck and set it down, muttering something about eye sockets and lawsuits that he forgot as soon as it was out of his mouth.
“…Or…not-Blaine,” Artie said in a smaller voice, then frowned. “Wait. Why not-Blaine?”
“Big Man Dalton left our boy hangin’,” Puck said.
Kurt let out his breath. “I told you. The voicemail was inconclusive. It just said we need to talk--”
“Ooh,” both boys said with matching grimaces, and Kurt’s shoulders tightened.
“Not that we-need-to-talk,” he said, tension thinning his voice. “Blaine has this thing about social customs. He doesn’t quite grasp how they work.” His voice was a little too soft when he added, “He probably doesn’t even realize he said it like that.”
Artie and Puck were quiet, looking like they believed that about as much as he did, and he couldn’t quite handle that so he spun back around to finish with the car, pitching his voice light. “What’s that? You want to talk about anything else within the realm of human thought? I think that’s a marvelous idea.”
There was a shift of cloth, then a couple of firm pats on his back that had to come from Puck, and Artie waited a beat before obliging. “So, uh…what classes are you guys taking?”
After an awkward few seconds during which Kurt focused very hard on fitting the next piece into place because he wasn’t in the right headspace to answer much of anything, Puck stepped up to brag about taking Home & Auto Maintenance instead of math. Artie mused over whether that was actually allowed, then enthused about how he and Mike were going to be the most epic AP Physics partners known to mankind. Puck fake-gagged until Kurt’s dad cleared his throat from across the shop, at which point he stopped so abruptly that he coughed a little.
Kurt’s mouth twitched up, just a bit.
Five minutes later, he finally joined in, wrinkling his nose over Macroeconomics and wishing he could just fast-forward through it to AP French, wondering aloud how in the world Azimio Adams had made it onto that class list--and why. Puck helpfully pointed out that Advanced Placement classes were for losers and freaks.
Ten minutes later, he was laughing helplessly into the oil filter with Artie while Puck did a flawless impression of Crazy Mr. Wikert from the math hall--insanely long drawl, squinty-glare and all--and his dad was watching curiously from the front desk, but he really didn’t care.
Artie left for dinner just before the end of Kurt’s shift, wishing them luck for the first day and promising he would have their backs. He shot Kurt a reassuring smile, genuine and accepting, and Kurt was reminded of the early days of glee club, when it had been just the two of them sharing war stories of Port-A-Potties and dumpster-dives while the girls combed slushie out of their hair.
It made him wonder if the real reason none of the guys but Finn had really gotten close to him before this summer wasn’t because they had a problem with him, but because he just hadn’t let them.
When Artie had gone, Puck quieted down, and Kurt still didn’t have much to say. But Puck stayed, shining a flashlight where Kurt needed him to and unsuccessfully hiding how his eyes lit up when Kurt offered to talk him through rotating a set of tires.
Once Puck had the hang of it, Kurt leaned back against the worktable and carefully, quietly approached the elephant in the room.
"What are we going to do about Wednesday?"
He almost regretted asking as soon as it was out of his mouth. Puck's shoulders tensed, even as he continued dutifully tightening a lug nut on the wheel. "Nothing."
"Nothing?"
"She's not gonna be there," Puck said, finishing up and moving to the last tire. "Shelby's sending her to stay with her sister for a few days while she gets some shit in order for the move, or the job, or...whatever. Tuesday ‘til Thursday was the only time she could do it."
The deadness in his voice was unnerving, and Kurt tried, "Should I call her? We can switch to a different day this week."
Puck shook his head. "I told you. She wants me to start pulling the fuck away. You seriously think this is just shitty timing?" He put the wrench down, and Kurt knelt next to him to take over with the last steps. "She's doing it on purpose."
"We don't know that," Kurt said.
“I do. You don’t, because this kind of shit doesn’t happen to you.”
The bitterness wasn’t really for him, Kurt knew, and he sighed, standing again and glancing at the clock. His shift was over. "We'll figure it out."
"You said that before."
"I meant it then, too." He extended a hand to help him up, and Puck looked at it, then surprised him a little by accepting it. "As the flawless Julie Andrews would say, 'I have confidence in confidence alone.' Tomorrow is coming, no matter who is or is not on our side." He smiled, a little sadly. "At least this time around, we don't have very far to fall."
Puck regarded him, some of himself coming back to his face, and he nodded. "Trufax."
Kurt wondered if it was good or worrisome that he actually anticipated the fist-bump this time.
“You working tomorrow?”
“Sadly, no. We’re closed on Sundays, so I get to spend it alternating between the rousing activities of staring at my ceiling and hiding from Finn.” At Puck’s lifted eyebrow, he elaborated, “He’s refusing to speak to me and shoulder-bumping me every time we cross paths. If it’s allowed to go on, I’m going to bruise.”
Puck snorted. “Figures.”
Sighing, Kurt admitted, “I don’t entirely blame him.”
“Dude, if you get emo on me again, I’m out.”
“You’re out anyway. My shift is over and I am going home. As should you.” He turned, then stopped, glancing back. “You really want to ride together on Monday?”
“Hell yeah,” Puck said. “Told you. Win-win.”
“Win-win,” Kurt repeated under his breath. He shook his head. “Well. I’ll have my phone back Monday morning, so I’ll text you when I’m leaving. I feel obligated to remind you that the fashion rules I gave you for Shelby do not become null and void in the halls of McKinley, and while not following them isn’t a guarantee that I’ll drive away without you, it wouldn’t behoove you to push your luck.”
Puck rolled his eyes. “Dude, be more of a bitch.”
“Well, that does seem to be how you like it.”
Puck’s eyebrows shot up, and Kurt couldn’t suppress a smirk even as his face heated a little, because he just didn’t say that sort of thing and he knew it. “Yes. That happened. You’re a terrible influence on me. You should go home now.”
“Dude, I’m an awesome influence on you,” Puck finally said, sounding rather obnoxiously impressed, and Kurt stifled a laugh.
“I’ll see you Monday. Make sure to bring a change of clothes,” he added as an afterthought, and Puck frowned at him. Kurt frowned back, then shook his head and looked away.
“Just trust me.”
-
Kurt decided that he hated being right.
More than that, he hated being right when they had done everything right. He had made sure to pick up Puck early so they could get to school early, since the majority of the jocks tended to trickle in just before the bell. He had purposely parked at the side entrance, where the crowds of other students weren’t quite as thick. He had walked at a casual distance from Puck as they headed down the hall toward their lockers, dodging lost freshmen and teachers who were already wearing their migraine-faces, and for just a moment, he’d thought that maybe he was wrong. Maybe no one did pay attention to Jacob or his blog anymore, and being seniors meant they were finally above the kind of harassment Kurt had come to expect.
That feeling had lasted approximately two minutes.
“Hear some congratulations are in order, fags!”
Kurt’s head snapped up, and on instinct he immediately squeezed his eyes shut, just in time to be slapped in the face with a wall of ice that stole his breath and stopped him in his tracks.
And there it was.
He cracked his eyes open and lifted his chin, glaring down his nose at Strando, Azimio, and a few others whose names he didn’t care to remember, who cackled as they passed by, Azimio shoving him against a locker with one hand and knocking the wind out of him almost as an afterthought.
Slimy ice slid all the way down his spine and into his underwear, and he grimaced, trying hard not to squirm.
Four for four. He had now been slushied on the first day of school every year from the first day he set foot at McKinley. In his senior year. He closed his eyes because this was not something to cry about, he wouldn’t cry, he wouldn’t--
It wasn’t until Puck started shouting that Kurt remembered he was there, too.
There, and covered in strawberry and blueberry slushie, just like Kurt was, in almost-clever shades of pink and blue. “What the hell!” he barked, grabbing one of the nameless ones by the sleeve and slamming him up against the opposite locker, holding him there with a forearm across his collarbone. “You think that’s funny, asshole?!”
Kurt was across the hallway and grabbing Puck by the shoulder before he had entirely thought it through, hissing at him to stop and glancing warily at their audience. His fight-or-flight instincts were alive and well in these halls: they were outnumbered, most of these guys were bigger even than Puck, and a teacher could round that corner any second.
That was, of course, overlooking the fact that they were on the chopping block for suspicions of dating each other, and everyone was watching.
To his credit, Puck actually obeyed, seeming to try and look around for teachers even though he could barely open his eyes from the slushie dye that had clearly gone straight into them. He let go of No-Name with an extra shove (Kurt pushed away the memory of Puck doing the same thing to him outside Shelby’s house not two weeks ago), and the guy slunk back to the safety of the letterman jackets.
“Damn, Puckerman,” Azimio said, chuckling. “Fairy Princess has got you by the balls, huh?”
“Yeah, guess we know who’s gonna be the daddy,” Strando cracked on his heels.
Puck lunged in their direction, clearly no longer thinking with his brain, and Kurt grabbed him again, audience be damned. “No,” he said, keeping a hold on Puck’s sleeve. “They aren’t worth it.”
There was a wave of whispers and a few giggles and an actual cat call as he started to drag Puck toward the stairs, and Kurt immediately let go, shooting a glare in the direction of the cat-caller--was that Santana?--and stalking up the stairs two at a time, trusting Puck to follow.
Yes, he decided as he pushed open the door to the restroom at the end of the math hall, the most rarely used in the building, and caught sight of himself in the mirror. He hated being right.
What he hated more, though, was when he ended up dragging other people down with him.
He fastened his gaze to the sink as he wet some paper towels, wincing inwardly when Puck cursed under his breath, because he had known this would happen, and thinking about it made him want to curl in on himself and hide for the rest of the day. If it had been anyone else. Anyone else.
If it had been anyone but me.
Puck swore again, his eyes squeezed tightly shut as he pressed his fingers to them, and Kurt resolved that if he couldn’t make everything right, he would at least try to help. He automatically reached up with the paper towel, turning Puck’s chin towards him. “Here. Let me see--”
“Get off!” Puck barked, smacking his hand away with a vehemence Kurt hadn’t seen since Finn, and a basement, and a moist towelette.
Kurt flinched back, hurt gripping his insides tight before he wiped the emotion from his face, deliberately turning his body away. “Sorry,” he mumbled, only dimly noticing that he was pushing his voice out lower again.
Of course Puck wouldn’t want him to touch him. He’d already been called a fag once today. Once was all it would take.
Keeping his eyes down, Kurt grabbed more paper towels, wet half of them, and headed for a bathroom stall. “I’m going to change. Leave whenever you’re ready, it’s probably better if we don’t go back out there at the same time. Sorry.”
He shut himself in the stall without waiting for a reply. He didn’t get one.
He could still hear Puck pulling out paper towels and running water as he carefully hung his soaked cardigan and shirt on the hanger over his bag (he refused to let anything of his touch that floor except the bottoms of his shoes), and after he’d stripped off his undershirt to wipe at his chest and shoulders, he closed his eyes a moment and accepted his fate.
“Tell them…whatever you need to tell them,” he said, each word feeling like a nail in his own coffin. “Just…if you could please not make me out to be some sort of predator, or to have hit on you, or anything. I can manage the herd if it’s slushies and locker-checks, but if they think I’m actually…looking, or wanting things from them, I don’t…I don’t know how far it will escalate. Especially after last year. And since I’m sure the others are in no mood to stand up on my behalf anymore, it’s, um. It’s just me. So--”
“You think I’m gonna throw you under the bus.”
There was disbelief in Puck’s voice, and Kurt faltered, wondering when his heart had started pounding so hard. “If that’s what you need to do.”
Something like a fist thudded into the stall door, startling him.
“Get it through your head: you don’t bail on me, then I don’t bail on you. That’s not how I roll. Think you’d have figured it out by now.” There was the clink of a belt being fastened. “I’m not telling them shit. If I do, I’m not gonna lie about it. I’m not into dudes, and you were too busy sexting your boy all summer to look at me twice anyway. Everyone’s seen Beth now. So anyone asks, I’m telling that shit like it is. Same goes if anyone asks you.” There was some rustling of clothing, the zip of a backpack. “Anyone messes with you, they’re messing with both of us. Got that?”
Kurt let his forehead fall to the stall door with relief, shocked to find that his eyes were wet with it. “Okay.” He swallowed hard. “They’ll notice if you’re talking to me more than usual, though. It won’t do anything to quell the rumor.”
“Count how many fucks I don’t give.” A pause. “Do you?”
“No. You just have more to lose, so. Even if you’re telling people the truth, if you want to act…like we used to. Or less. I mean…I’d understand.”
And it was strange to say ‘like we used to,’ because that felt so long ago.
Silence, and then Puck muttered, “I’m just pissed.” Quieter, “It’s not you.”
Kurt straightened, wiped at his eyes. “I know,” he said, because now he did. “I’m…pissed, too.”
“You skipping homeroom?”
He took a steadying breath and pulled a clean shirt over his head. “I try not to skip classes, but that’s about how long it will take to properly treat this cardigan, so.”
“Want me to stick around?” He sounded closer now, like he was leaning on the adjacent stall.
“It should be fine,” Kurt said, finally unlatching the stall after changing the rest of his clothes and going straight for the sinks to straighten out his hair. Strangely, it was still a little hard to meet Puck’s gaze, so he didn’t. “Barely anyone uses this restroom except the Advanced Calc students, and they’re generally harmless. You can go ahead. At least one of us should start this year out on the right foot.” Puck hesitated, and Kurt finally lifted his eyes to meet his in the mirror. “The more you show that you can get it together, the more Shelby might be willing to work with you about Beth.”
That seemed to sell it, and Puck looked at the floor, then gave a stiff nod. Before leaving, though, he held up his phone. “Anyone gives you any bullshit,” he said, and Kurt nodded.
“You, too.”
Puck vanished through the door, and once it had closed behind him, Kurt braced his hands on the sink and let out his breath, trying to shut out the buzz of students in the hall.
Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.
Okay.
Kurt straightened, rolled back his shoulders, and set about treating his poor cardigan, slipping into Post-Slushie Mode. He knew how to do this. A little out of practice, perhaps, but he knew how to sail through moments like these, to show the world they couldn’t touch him. Granted, these moments were usually played out in the girls’ bathroom, if for no other reason than that it was safer (and cleaner) in there, but nevertheless. He would be fine.
The door swung open, and Kurt looked up, then had to check himself not to jump back.
David Karofsky froze halfway through the door, staring at Kurt like he had suddenly sprung out of the floor.
Calm down, Kurt immediately told himself, forcing his shoulders to relax, just a little. Things were different now. This was the boy who had been carefully coexisting with him on Facebook all summer, who had actually commented with a lmao last week when Kurt had posted a status about Granny Bartlett from down the street driving into the shop to complain about a rattling in the engine of her Depression-era Harley. It was the boy who had taken nearly two months to respond when Kurt had sent him a private message apologizing for junior prom, and then telling him that the message thread would be there whenever he felt ready to talk--but who had responded nonetheless. Baby steps.
Facebook was nothing at all like face-to-face, though, and Kurt swallowed hard, not quite able to look away.
After a moment, David came forward enough for the door to close behind him. Kurt came to himself and shook his head a little, dropping his gaze back to the sink and trying to keep his voice light. “Hello, David.”
Karofsky looked him up and down, and Kurt maybe held his breath a little until Karofsky opened his mouth.
“How’d they get you already?”
Air flowed back into Kurt’s lungs, and he tried for a tight smile that ended up more like a grimace. “What can I say. They love me here.”
Karofsky was quiet a moment before saying, in a lower voice, “Which one was it?”
Kurt studied him a moment, took in the frown and the real concern behind it, the awkwardness, the determination--just like when he’d first donned that ridiculous Bully-Whips beret--and the smile Kurt had for him this time was faint but real. “It was four or five of them together. Don’t waste your time.” Then, after a second, “Thank you, though.”
Karofsky shrugged, still frowning a little, this time at the floor. Out in the hall, the first bell rang.
Focusing carefully on his cardigan, Kurt dared, “I couldn’t help but notice that you were suspiciously absent among the Cro-Magnon population this morning.”
Karofsky finally stepped away from the door, leaning back against the counter with his arms crossed as if to pin his hands in place, his movements still tense. He muttered something from which Kurt could only glean the words, ‘working shit out.’
Looking at him, at the nearly-openness of his face and the anxious energy in his fingers, Kurt believed him.
“It was a pleasant surprise,” Kurt assured him after a moment, still feeling like there were eggshells under his feet. “If there had ever been an excuse for you to make a comeback...”
“Heard about that,” Karofsky said, his arms still tightly crossed. He seemed to fight with himself for a second before speaking again. "So what’s the actual damage with you and Puckerman?" he asked, glancing tentatively up. "I kinda can't see you trying to pull one over on Prep-School."
Kurt stared at him for a second, then another, then another, and then dropped his arms to his sides. "Thank you," he huffed, the tension rushing out of him like air from a balloon. Karofsky--David--raised an eyebrow, and Kurt elaborated, "You are the first person, all of my so-called friends included, to just ask me instead of jumping to conclusions or assuming I'm right or wrong. That's...I appreciate that. Thank you."
David shrugged again, shifting on his feet, and Kurt wondered how often he was actually thanked for anything. Then again, there wasn't much reason for them not to be awkward around each other while standing alone in a school bathroom after last year, Facebook peacemaking or no, so Kurt lowered his eyes back to his cardigan to take the pressure off. "In any case, it's a long story, so unless you have an exceedingly low interest in making it to homeroom..."
"It's Schwarz. Think I'll live."
"Ooh." Kurt grimaced on his behalf, thinking back to the most monotonous and terrible history class he'd ever had. "Well, then. Take a sink."
-
These are the things fourteen-year-old-Kurt had thought would never happen on the first day of his senior year:
He would never get a slushie to the face two minutes into his first day, because he would certainly not still be that low on the food chain.
He would never feel a swell of fondness as he watched Noah Puckerman walk out of a school restroom, because Puckerman would certainly not leave until Kurt's head was firmly shoved in a toilet.
He would never spend a half hour venting about his summer to a quiet, attentive David Karofsky, because they would certainly not have anything in common.
And he would never, ever look ahead to glee club and feel utter dread, because glee club would certainly not stop being the one place where he belonged.
-
Kurt had to feel a little bad for Mr. Schuester. He was positively beaming as the glee club trickled in for their first meeting of the new school year, probably expecting that everyone would still be holding hands and giving hugs and joking with each other like they were at the end of last year.
The only other member in the choir room when Kurt got there was Quinn at the far end of the room, who shot him a glare that could cut glass. He elected not to make eye contact and positioned himself near the door, two rows back.
Rachel came in next, stabbing him with a glare of her own before dramatically whipping her head to face forward again, smacking Finn in the chest with her hair. Finn did the same as he had been doing all week and pretended Kurt didn't exist. They sat two rows behind Quinn.
Kurt arched his eyebrows in the aloof expression he had honed to a T from years of pretending bullies weren't hurting him, pulled out his phone, and pretended to text.
Santana and Brittany were next, ignoring him completely and sliding in next to Quinn. Then came Tina and Mike--here Kurt subtly lifted his eyes, unsure where they stood in all this--who glanced uncertainly between the two sides before taking their seats right in the middle, Tina on Quinn’s half and Mike on Kurt’s, but not really close to anyone but each other. Kurt lowered his eyes again and heaved a quiet sigh.
He told himself he wouldn't look up when Mercedes came in. He honestly had no intention of putting himself through that, but old habits died hard, and he was glancing up before he could stop himself. When she kept her eyes down and walked right past him, settling on the other side of Tina, that's when it really started to hurt.
At the doorway, Mr. Schuester finally started to look concerned. When he caught his eye, Kurt gave a tiny shake of his head and lowered his eyes to the blank screen on his phone.
This sucked.
He idly typed in famous sets of numbers (8675309, 525600, 24601) and was possibly wallowing in despair a little, and so he almost didn't notice when Puck came in. Puck only paused for a second, just inside the door, to return the wall of glares he received from stage left. Then he sauntered up to Kurt as if he had done it since the beginning. "'Sup, Hummel." He held out a fist.
Kurt smiled weakly and returned the fist-bump, trying not to cry again with the relief coursing through him when Puck dropped down right next to him while the other half of the room watched. (Back at the doorway, Mr. Schuester stared outright, his mouth a little open.) Slouching back in his chair, Puck murmured, “You get any more bullshit?”
Kurt shook his head, lowering his voice with Puck’s in the choir room’s eerie quiet. "Karof--David tailed me to first and second period. Benevolently," he added when Puck tensed. "Not that much happened. Josh Waco came up with another slushie, but that ended up in his own face." Puck snorted, and Kurt managed half a grin. “David can move fast when he wants to ‘accidentally’ bump someone.”
Puck frowned, seeming unable to decide between suspicion and approval. He shook his head. “Seriously don’t get that guy.”
Lowering his gaze, Kurt softly replied, “It’s complicated.”
They were interrupted by Mr. Schuester greeting Artie and Sam at the door, and the subject was dropped.
“Hey, guys,” Artie chirped as Sam wheeled him in, getting situated a row in front of them and doing some odd manly-secret-handshake with Puck, and Kurt didn’t think he’d ever been quite so happy to see Artie. Once his job was done, Sam glanced at Mercedes with pursed lips, then mouthed ‘Sorry’ in Kurt’s direction before going to join her.
Last in was Lauren, who Puck watched longingly as she settled in behind Tina and Mike. When Puck frowned at her, she shook her head and mouthed, ‘Notice.’ Puck crossed his arms and slouched back in his seat.
“All right, guys,” Mr. Schuester said, walking to the front of the room and clapping his hands. “Welcome back! It’s great to see you all again.” His gaze flicked between the two opposing halves of the room, his smile wavering a little before he plastered it back on. “I hope you all had a chance to relax this summer, because this year is our year. Nationals,” he said with a wave of the hands, and Artie and Sam obliged him with a whoop. “We came so close last year, and I’m positive we could have won the whole thing if--”
“If Finchel hadn’t had to get their exhibitionism kink on?” Santana drawled from the side.
“--If we’d had a little more focus,” Mr. Schuester corrected with a warning look in her direction. “Our problem last year,” he went on, moving to the whiteboard and uncapping a marker, “was that we lost track of our identity.” Once he had IDENTITY scrawled big and messy on the whiteboard, he turned back around. “We got caught up in what other people thought. What they told us. What we thought they wanted. We lost us. So,” he underlined the word on the whiteboard, “your first assignment of the year is all about you. This year’s going to be about embracing both who we’ve been, and who we’re going to become.”
Across the room, the side of Finn’s mouth was turning up the way it always did when he and Mr. Schue spoke the same language, and Kurt looked a moment before lowering his gaze. At this rate, he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to know what he was becoming.
“For your first assignment,” Mr. Schuester went on, “we’re going to start with who we’ve been. I want you to choose a song that represents something significant that happened to you over the summer, something personal to you, and perform it as a solo.”
The buzz following his announcement was decidedly quieter than it would usually be, and Kurt suddenly had a feeling that at least six glares were boring into the side of his head.
“Now, I know this is a short week for you guys because of the start-of-year faculty meetings Thursday and Friday,” Mr. Schuester went on, “so we’ll have performances start next week. Until then--”
A hand shot up. “Mr. Schuester? If I may?”
Mr. Schuester let out his breath, then held out a hand. “Of course, Rachel.”
She was out of her seat and facing the group before he’d finished speaking. “As the de facto leader of this glee club, I feel it is only appropriate that I give the first performance to allow others the opportunity to observe and follow my example." Everyone but Finn and Mr. Schuester rolled their eyes or sighed, as always, but something about her voice was subdued today, pitched in a lower tone. "As it happens, I spent the last ninety-six hours brainstorming, preparing and polishing a piece that flawlessly matches the criteria of this assignment.” She handed the sheet of music in her hand to Brad at the piano. “Considering the final days of my last summer as a high school student, it’s only right that I perform Stevie Hoang’s beloved single about resilience in the face of abandonment and betrayal, two sensations I have come to know all too well in my young life.”
“Oh, no,” Kurt mumbled under his breath.
Puck elbowed him. “Man up.”
Brad began to play alone, the only instrument Rachel apparently felt was necessary, and she began to sing.
Kurt bit back a wince at the lyrics, then frowned when Rachel left all the pronouns as they were--she didn’t change ‘she’ to ‘he,’ and for a moment Kurt’s chest clenched with hurt that she would stoop so low against him. But then he looked at her face, and listened to the lyrics some more--So many things that I’m just dying to say, But I can’t seem to tell her--and realized that she wasn’t singing this song about him.
Somehow, that made it all much, much worse.
-
“We’re horrible people.”
“It was just a song.”
“With no souls.”
“Dude. Seriously--”
“Who steal people’s mothers. I’m a cold-blooded mother-stealer with no soul.”
“Will you quit freaking out?” Puck glanced around the parking lot as they began to cross it to Kurt’s car, though there wasn’t much to see, as sports wouldn’t be starting until next week. The only ones left at school were the other members of glee. Across the parking lot, Finn held Rachel in a loose embrace next to her car. “So Berry sang a song about her inner turmoil or whatever. What else is new?”
“It baffles me that you aren’t fazed by any of this,” Kurt said, fishing for his keys in his bag. “These are your friends, too.”
Puck shoved his hands in his pockets, his face closing up a little. “So?”
“So, you spent half of that song staring conspicuously at your phone. I can respect emotional compartmentalization to a point, but--”
“Heads up.”
“What?”
Something bumped hard into Kurt’s shoulder, knocking him straight into an unconcerned Puck, who grabbed him by the arm before he could fall over. Kurt took one look, then straightened with a huff. “Really, Finn?”
Not surprisingly, Finn continued to his own car without deigning to reply.
Kurt let out his breath, pressing his fingers between his eyebrows where a headache was starting to pulse. He shook his head. “Where were we?”
“You were spouting psychobabble or some shit. I kinda tuned out.”
“Of course you did,” Kurt said with a sigh.
Kurt unlocked his car and inspected it while Puck tossed his backpack in the back, half expecting to have gotten keyed or worse. “At least the windshield is intact,” he muttered under his breath, and he already had a foot in the car before he noticed that Puck wasn’t getting in, instead looking guardedly over Kurt’s shoulder.
Before he could follow Puck’s gaze, a voice said from behind him, “Hi, Kurt.” Then, hesitantly, “Hi, Puck.”
Turning around, Kurt was faced with a slightly sheepish-looking Tina and Mike.
Immediately his guard went up, too, and he looked between them, then around the parking lot behind them. It looked like they were the last ones there. Looking back at them, he said, “I wasn’t aware you were speaking to us.”
“I know,” Tina said, looking down. “After you guys left the party, Santana sort of rallied the troops.”
“It was pretty scary,” Mike added, shifting on his feet. “Especially when she started crying hysterically…I’m pretty sure she was still drunk.”
“She pretty much made everyone choose between you two and the rest of them,” Tina said, a little guiltily. “You guys weren’t there, and we didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings…”
Kurt sighed, because of course they didn’t. “I see. And what, other than the convenient absence of the rest of the glee club in this parking lot, inspired this sudden change of heart?”
It was a little harsh, he knew, and they looked crestfallen for a moment, and that just made Kurt feel like scum all over again.
“It isn’t a change,” Tina said softly. “Just…we just want you guys to know that we actually think it’s really sweet, what you’re doing. Even if the way you went about it was kind of, um. Terrible.”
Kurt blinked a few times. Sweet. She had said ‘sweet,’ right?
“We understand if you’re mad at us,” Mike said, slipping his hand into Tina’s and looking over Kurt’s shoulder at Puck. “But we think--well, I think, Tina is an independent thinker and we’re not actually the same person,” --Tina smiled goofily at the ground-- “I think it’s really cool that you’re getting to be a part of your baby’s life.”
“We were looking at those pictures in the article,” Tina said, meeting Kurt’s gaze again. “None of those were Photoshopped, were they?” Kurt shook his head, and she smiled shyly. “Beth looked really cute.”
“She’s perfect.”
Kurt actually jumped a little; he’d almost forgotten Puck was still at the passenger-side door. Puck didn’t say anything else and didn’t move, still keeping the car between them and himself, but the shield behind his eyes was starting to go down.
When Kurt looked back, both Mike and Tina were smiling a little in Puck’s direction. “So,” Tina said, “that’s all. We just wanted you to know.”
It was an olive branch. And it was sincere, and about a hundred miles beyond what Kurt had expected anyone to give him today, and for a second he honestly couldn’t make words come.
“Thank you,” he finally said, not quite able to smile back, but meaning it with everything he had.
It seemed to come through, because both of them seemed to relax. They exchanged a look with each other, then turned toward Tina’s car with a quick wave and a nod.
Puck’s voice caught him off guard again. “I’ve got more.”
They stopped, looking curiously back toward Puck. Kurt followed their gaze.
Puck looked between them again, then pulled out his phone, dropping his eyes to the screen. “Jewfro’s a shitty photographer,” he mumbled. “You can’t see her that well.”
He began to click through, and suddenly Kurt knew exactly what Puck had been doing on his phone for the second half of glee club.
Tina and Mike looked at each other, then, for some reason, glanced questioningly at Kurt. And for just a second, Kurt hesitated, because...well. For nearly three months now, he had been the only one in on the secret, the only outsider to know that Beth’s nose crinkled like Quinn’s when she laughed, or that Tenacious D’s ‘Tribute’ was her favorite, favorite song. He was the one behind the camera, who got to see all these moments. He was Uncle Kurt.
But then that second passed, and Tina and Mike were eagerly eying Puck’s phone, and Puck was slowly coming around the car, and a smile finally found its way across Kurt’s face. He nodded.
And he couldn’t even make himself say anything when Puck leaned against his car, normally a forbidden act, because the split-second glance Puck shot him--a question and an answer and an ‘I-told-you-so’ all in one--was so much more important than that.
Kurt stayed where he was, letting Mike and Tina come up on either side of Puck to peer at the screen, because now it was their turn.
He knew the second the first photo came up, because Mike’s face opened up and Tina’s broke into a smile, and Puck’s relaxed just around his eyes, the way it did whenever he looked at Beth. “Aww!” Tina cooed. “Is she dancing?”
Puck’s face shifted as he fought a smile. “She’s all about the Tenacious D. She’s got rhythm, too, like, serious rhythm. No way can other one-year-olds feel music like that. On this one, I think it was ‘Wonder Boy,’ and she did that bobbing thing for most of it, but whenever I went into eighth-notes on the guitar, she did this stomping thing that totes lined up with it. She’s like a prodigy or something.” He lost his fight against smiling about halfway through, and he beamed down at the phone. “Her favorite’s ‘Tribute,’ though.”
“That’s so cute,” Tina said, leaning in for a closer look.
“Wait, how do you sing ‘Tribute’ with one person?” Mike asked absently, his focus clearly captured by the phone screen.
“You don’t,” Puck said, his smile turning into a smirk, and he reached behind Tina to punch Kurt in the arm.
Tina seemed to surprise herself with a laugh, and covered her mouth. “Oh my God. I would pay money to see that...wait.” She tore her gaze from the phone screen to look at him. “Kurt, what are you doing over there?”
“Yeah, for serious,” Puck said, shooting him a look. “Get over here.”
Tina’s arm was around his waist and tugging him over before he could say anything, and he automatically wrapped his around her shoulders, and just like that, it turned into a warm, tight one-armed hug that Kurt had needed so badly that his chest actually ached. She reached her other arm around him and squeezed, seeming to understand, and he rested his cheek on top of her head, blinking his eyes dry for what felt like the millionth time, and Puck clicked to the next photo. This one was a close-up that Kurt had taken while he was standing up, and Beth had been standing at his feet, proudly showing off her stuffed Tigger with a huge smile.
“That thing’s like her favorite toy ever,” Puck said, relaxing back against the car door. “Makes sense. When I was a kid, Tigger was the shit.”
“I was more a Piglet fan,” Kurt commented, smiling when Tina squeezed him again and murmured, “Totally. Him and Eeyore.”
Puck rolled his eyes, and Mike looked genuinely distraught. “But Tigger’s bouncy...”
“You can have Tigger, sweetie,” Tina assured him, and Puck snorted and moved to the next photo.
Kurt lost track of time as they stopped on each picture, Puck growing more and more open and animated as he related exactly what was going on in each one, Kurt contributing when he could. They laughed at the photo Kurt had snapped of Beth with her faux-hawk and Puck’s sunglasses and video game guitar, and Kurt had blinked with surprise at the one he hadn’t realized anyone had taken, of himself holding Beth on his lap and pointing to a picture in a book. He’d been teaching her French that day.
Mike started cooing over Beth almost as much as Tina, and Tina didn’t let go of Kurt once, snuggling close and letting him do the same. Before he knew it, nearly forty-five minutes had passed them just standing by his car in the empty lot, huddled around Puck’s phone, and Puck was clicking to the last photo he’d transferred back to his phone. In it, he was sitting on the couch with his guitar, and Beth stood behind it on his lap, reaching curiously for the strings.
Looking up from the photo, Kurt found that Puck was wearing the exact same expression he had in that picture, warm and absolutely in love. He thought back to how Puck had been since last Wednesday, closed off behind a defensive wall, and he almost couldn’t bear it.
“She looks like you,” Tina finally said, and Puck murmured, “Yeah,” and Kurt made a decision.
Maybe he didn’t have all of his friends, and maybe he didn’t have Blaine--the 0 Missed Calls screen on his phone that morning felt more telling every time he thought of it--but Puck would have Beth. Somehow, he would have Beth.
Kurt would find a way.
~*~
Title: Sweet Child O’ Mine (8/more than 10)
Author/Artist: likethedirection
Friendship/Pairings: Kurt+Puck, canon pairings as of 2x22
Spoilers: To be safe, we’ll say everything through Season 2?
Rating: PG-13+
Summary: Puck comes to Kurt for help, and Kurt figures it can’t hurt to do a friend a favor. Unfortunately, everything is more complicated when there’s a baby involved.
Previous Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6a | 6b | 7
A/N: LOL I thought this would be only 10 chapters. Yeah, that’s not gonna happen. XD
Thanks once again to the lovely and talented theslashbunny for her help, feedback and cheerleading while I whined ceaselessly over this chapter. Darling, you are indeed the Kurt to my Blaine. <3
Also thanks to ms_jvh_shuh for identifying this story on gleefinders! I get so excited when I see other people expressing enjoyment of my scribbles. :) Thank you!
~*~
"So can I score a ride back to the hellhole on Monday?"
Kurt glanced over his shoulder, his eyebrows lifting. "Risky move," he commented, holding out his hand. "Monkey wrench."
Puck grabbed the tool from the tray and handed it to him, then leaned back with a shrug. "Like it's not gonna be a shitfest either way. I don’t have to get up before seven if I'm not gonna walk, and you've got a sweet ride. Win-win."
"True on all counts, I suppose," Kurt murmured, ducking his head back under the hood. "You’re on my way to McKinley, so if you dare."
"Is that even a question? Doesn't matter what it is, the Puckmeister is up for it. All the time."
"How wonderful for you," Kurt drawled, rolling his eyes, and handed the wrench back to Puck. "Carburetor."
"Got it," Artie said, rolling up with the piece in his lap and handing it over.
Puck swatted Kurt in the back, looking affronted. "How come he gets to touch the carburetor?"
"Oh, I don't know, because he doesn't slap the mechanic."
"It's wheel-trust," Artie said, shrugging. "Cars behave for me. They think I'm one of them."
"Dude, that's bullshit."
"Hey. Watch the language," Kurt's dad called from rather close.
Puck muttered a "Sorry, Mr. H," and Kurt straightened up again, wiping his hands.
His dad looked from him, to Puck, slouched against the worktable, then to Artie with an oily cloth over his lap to catch the grease, then back to Kurt. "You keep bringing guys in here to work for free, they're gonna start expecting a paycheck."
"Don't worry, Mr. Hummel," Artie said. "I’m just here for moral support. And to exercise my right to manly bonding as the glee club’s only eligible bachelor.”
Kurt pressed his lips together and turned silently back to the engine.
“And I’m here ‘cause I, uh. Felt bad. That Hum--Kurt accidentally got wasted the other night. From the…spiked punch. That we don’t know who spiked.” Puck cleared his throat, and Kurt rolled his eyes. “Least I can do is help a guy out.”
Kurt bit back a faint grin, his face hidden under the hood, and shook his head.
The real reason Puck was here, of course, was because he’d somehow figured out that with nothing else to do, Kurt would bury himself in work at the shop, and so had shown up uninvited on Friday to bum around and bother him and generally be the loophole in Kurt’s grounding sentence. (When he’d realized that was what he was doing, it had taken everything in Kurt’s power to keep from hugging him outright.) Artie was a surprise today, but not an unwelcome one, his calm energy balancing Puck’s and keeping Kurt centered. As he could be, anyway.
His dad made a skeptical noise, and then a warm, heavy hand landed on Kurt’s shoulder. Kurt glanced up, waiting patiently while his dad leaned in to look over his handiwork.
The ‘fight’ they had been in over Kurt’s punishment had lasted all of sixty minutes; after that voicemail from Blaine, Kurt had slept nearly twelve hours, then had to be practically muscled out of bed to get something in his stomach. He had been feeling quiet and non-confrontational ever since, a little numb, and his dad’s worry was obvious. It came across in touches like this--little shows of affection that were just a little more frequent than usual.
His dad patted him on the back. “Looks good, kid.”
“Thanks.”
Straightening up again, his dad swept a calculating gaze over Puck and Artie again, then sighed. “You boys want to hang around, that’s fine. But no touching anything without Kurt’s OK, got it?”
“Got it,” Puck said at the same time Artie replied, “Understood.”
Once his dad was back across the shop, Puck turned back to Artie, twirling a wrench between his fingers. “So who’s not still pissed at us?” he asked. “Gimme a head-count.”
Artie pursed his lips, looking guilty. “Well, there are the people who don’t know you?”
Puck rolled his eyes, the wrench twirling faster in a clinking rhythm. Kurt ducked his head back under the hood.
“But, I mean,” Artie quickly backpedaled, “it’s not that everyone’s against you. It’s just…half the glee club, plus whoever’s attached to them. Like Brittany. And Sam.” Slowly, the brightness crept out of his voice. “…And I think Mercedes got Tina. Plus Mike. And, um. I don’t know about Lauren…”
Twirl, clink, twirl, clink, twirl, clink, speeding up with Kurt’s pulse. “Pretty sure I’m still on notice.” Puck’s voice grew sullen. “Whatever.”
“Hey! There we go,” Artie piped up. “Significant others.” Twirl clink twirl clink twirl clink twirl clink-- “ ‘On notice’ just means she’s not ready to admit she forgives you yet. It’s a pride thing. So you’ve got Lauren, and then Kurt’s got Blaine--”
Kurt’s hand shot out and clamped around the wrench mid-spin. “Stop that.”
Puck and Artie stared at him, their mouths clamping shut, and Kurt took a breath because that had come out a little louder than he’d meant it. He plucked the wrench away from Puck and set it down, muttering something about eye sockets and lawsuits that he forgot as soon as it was out of his mouth.
“…Or…not-Blaine,” Artie said in a smaller voice, then frowned. “Wait. Why not-Blaine?”
“Big Man Dalton left our boy hangin’,” Puck said.
Kurt let out his breath. “I told you. The voicemail was inconclusive. It just said we need to talk--”
“Ooh,” both boys said with matching grimaces, and Kurt’s shoulders tightened.
“Not that we-need-to-talk,” he said, tension thinning his voice. “Blaine has this thing about social customs. He doesn’t quite grasp how they work.” His voice was a little too soft when he added, “He probably doesn’t even realize he said it like that.”
Artie and Puck were quiet, looking like they believed that about as much as he did, and he couldn’t quite handle that so he spun back around to finish with the car, pitching his voice light. “What’s that? You want to talk about anything else within the realm of human thought? I think that’s a marvelous idea.”
There was a shift of cloth, then a couple of firm pats on his back that had to come from Puck, and Artie waited a beat before obliging. “So, uh…what classes are you guys taking?”
After an awkward few seconds during which Kurt focused very hard on fitting the next piece into place because he wasn’t in the right headspace to answer much of anything, Puck stepped up to brag about taking Home & Auto Maintenance instead of math. Artie mused over whether that was actually allowed, then enthused about how he and Mike were going to be the most epic AP Physics partners known to mankind. Puck fake-gagged until Kurt’s dad cleared his throat from across the shop, at which point he stopped so abruptly that he coughed a little.
Kurt’s mouth twitched up, just a bit.
Five minutes later, he finally joined in, wrinkling his nose over Macroeconomics and wishing he could just fast-forward through it to AP French, wondering aloud how in the world Azimio Adams had made it onto that class list--and why. Puck helpfully pointed out that Advanced Placement classes were for losers and freaks.
Ten minutes later, he was laughing helplessly into the oil filter with Artie while Puck did a flawless impression of Crazy Mr. Wikert from the math hall--insanely long drawl, squinty-glare and all--and his dad was watching curiously from the front desk, but he really didn’t care.
Artie left for dinner just before the end of Kurt’s shift, wishing them luck for the first day and promising he would have their backs. He shot Kurt a reassuring smile, genuine and accepting, and Kurt was reminded of the early days of glee club, when it had been just the two of them sharing war stories of Port-A-Potties and dumpster-dives while the girls combed slushie out of their hair.
It made him wonder if the real reason none of the guys but Finn had really gotten close to him before this summer wasn’t because they had a problem with him, but because he just hadn’t let them.
When Artie had gone, Puck quieted down, and Kurt still didn’t have much to say. But Puck stayed, shining a flashlight where Kurt needed him to and unsuccessfully hiding how his eyes lit up when Kurt offered to talk him through rotating a set of tires.
Once Puck had the hang of it, Kurt leaned back against the worktable and carefully, quietly approached the elephant in the room.
"What are we going to do about Wednesday?"
He almost regretted asking as soon as it was out of his mouth. Puck's shoulders tensed, even as he continued dutifully tightening a lug nut on the wheel. "Nothing."
"Nothing?"
"She's not gonna be there," Puck said, finishing up and moving to the last tire. "Shelby's sending her to stay with her sister for a few days while she gets some shit in order for the move, or the job, or...whatever. Tuesday ‘til Thursday was the only time she could do it."
The deadness in his voice was unnerving, and Kurt tried, "Should I call her? We can switch to a different day this week."
Puck shook his head. "I told you. She wants me to start pulling the fuck away. You seriously think this is just shitty timing?" He put the wrench down, and Kurt knelt next to him to take over with the last steps. "She's doing it on purpose."
"We don't know that," Kurt said.
“I do. You don’t, because this kind of shit doesn’t happen to you.”
The bitterness wasn’t really for him, Kurt knew, and he sighed, standing again and glancing at the clock. His shift was over. "We'll figure it out."
"You said that before."
"I meant it then, too." He extended a hand to help him up, and Puck looked at it, then surprised him a little by accepting it. "As the flawless Julie Andrews would say, 'I have confidence in confidence alone.' Tomorrow is coming, no matter who is or is not on our side." He smiled, a little sadly. "At least this time around, we don't have very far to fall."
Puck regarded him, some of himself coming back to his face, and he nodded. "Trufax."
Kurt wondered if it was good or worrisome that he actually anticipated the fist-bump this time.
“You working tomorrow?”
“Sadly, no. We’re closed on Sundays, so I get to spend it alternating between the rousing activities of staring at my ceiling and hiding from Finn.” At Puck’s lifted eyebrow, he elaborated, “He’s refusing to speak to me and shoulder-bumping me every time we cross paths. If it’s allowed to go on, I’m going to bruise.”
Puck snorted. “Figures.”
Sighing, Kurt admitted, “I don’t entirely blame him.”
“Dude, if you get emo on me again, I’m out.”
“You’re out anyway. My shift is over and I am going home. As should you.” He turned, then stopped, glancing back. “You really want to ride together on Monday?”
“Hell yeah,” Puck said. “Told you. Win-win.”
“Win-win,” Kurt repeated under his breath. He shook his head. “Well. I’ll have my phone back Monday morning, so I’ll text you when I’m leaving. I feel obligated to remind you that the fashion rules I gave you for Shelby do not become null and void in the halls of McKinley, and while not following them isn’t a guarantee that I’ll drive away without you, it wouldn’t behoove you to push your luck.”
Puck rolled his eyes. “Dude, be more of a bitch.”
“Well, that does seem to be how you like it.”
Puck’s eyebrows shot up, and Kurt couldn’t suppress a smirk even as his face heated a little, because he just didn’t say that sort of thing and he knew it. “Yes. That happened. You’re a terrible influence on me. You should go home now.”
“Dude, I’m an awesome influence on you,” Puck finally said, sounding rather obnoxiously impressed, and Kurt stifled a laugh.
“I’ll see you Monday. Make sure to bring a change of clothes,” he added as an afterthought, and Puck frowned at him. Kurt frowned back, then shook his head and looked away.
“Just trust me.”
-
Kurt decided that he hated being right.
More than that, he hated being right when they had done everything right. He had made sure to pick up Puck early so they could get to school early, since the majority of the jocks tended to trickle in just before the bell. He had purposely parked at the side entrance, where the crowds of other students weren’t quite as thick. He had walked at a casual distance from Puck as they headed down the hall toward their lockers, dodging lost freshmen and teachers who were already wearing their migraine-faces, and for just a moment, he’d thought that maybe he was wrong. Maybe no one did pay attention to Jacob or his blog anymore, and being seniors meant they were finally above the kind of harassment Kurt had come to expect.
That feeling had lasted approximately two minutes.
“Hear some congratulations are in order, fags!”
Kurt’s head snapped up, and on instinct he immediately squeezed his eyes shut, just in time to be slapped in the face with a wall of ice that stole his breath and stopped him in his tracks.
And there it was.
He cracked his eyes open and lifted his chin, glaring down his nose at Strando, Azimio, and a few others whose names he didn’t care to remember, who cackled as they passed by, Azimio shoving him against a locker with one hand and knocking the wind out of him almost as an afterthought.
Slimy ice slid all the way down his spine and into his underwear, and he grimaced, trying hard not to squirm.
Four for four. He had now been slushied on the first day of school every year from the first day he set foot at McKinley. In his senior year. He closed his eyes because this was not something to cry about, he wouldn’t cry, he wouldn’t--
It wasn’t until Puck started shouting that Kurt remembered he was there, too.
There, and covered in strawberry and blueberry slushie, just like Kurt was, in almost-clever shades of pink and blue. “What the hell!” he barked, grabbing one of the nameless ones by the sleeve and slamming him up against the opposite locker, holding him there with a forearm across his collarbone. “You think that’s funny, asshole?!”
Kurt was across the hallway and grabbing Puck by the shoulder before he had entirely thought it through, hissing at him to stop and glancing warily at their audience. His fight-or-flight instincts were alive and well in these halls: they were outnumbered, most of these guys were bigger even than Puck, and a teacher could round that corner any second.
That was, of course, overlooking the fact that they were on the chopping block for suspicions of dating each other, and everyone was watching.
To his credit, Puck actually obeyed, seeming to try and look around for teachers even though he could barely open his eyes from the slushie dye that had clearly gone straight into them. He let go of No-Name with an extra shove (Kurt pushed away the memory of Puck doing the same thing to him outside Shelby’s house not two weeks ago), and the guy slunk back to the safety of the letterman jackets.
“Damn, Puckerman,” Azimio said, chuckling. “Fairy Princess has got you by the balls, huh?”
“Yeah, guess we know who’s gonna be the daddy,” Strando cracked on his heels.
Puck lunged in their direction, clearly no longer thinking with his brain, and Kurt grabbed him again, audience be damned. “No,” he said, keeping a hold on Puck’s sleeve. “They aren’t worth it.”
There was a wave of whispers and a few giggles and an actual cat call as he started to drag Puck toward the stairs, and Kurt immediately let go, shooting a glare in the direction of the cat-caller--was that Santana?--and stalking up the stairs two at a time, trusting Puck to follow.
Yes, he decided as he pushed open the door to the restroom at the end of the math hall, the most rarely used in the building, and caught sight of himself in the mirror. He hated being right.
What he hated more, though, was when he ended up dragging other people down with him.
He fastened his gaze to the sink as he wet some paper towels, wincing inwardly when Puck cursed under his breath, because he had known this would happen, and thinking about it made him want to curl in on himself and hide for the rest of the day. If it had been anyone else. Anyone else.
If it had been anyone but me.
Puck swore again, his eyes squeezed tightly shut as he pressed his fingers to them, and Kurt resolved that if he couldn’t make everything right, he would at least try to help. He automatically reached up with the paper towel, turning Puck’s chin towards him. “Here. Let me see--”
“Get off!” Puck barked, smacking his hand away with a vehemence Kurt hadn’t seen since Finn, and a basement, and a moist towelette.
Kurt flinched back, hurt gripping his insides tight before he wiped the emotion from his face, deliberately turning his body away. “Sorry,” he mumbled, only dimly noticing that he was pushing his voice out lower again.
Of course Puck wouldn’t want him to touch him. He’d already been called a fag once today. Once was all it would take.
Keeping his eyes down, Kurt grabbed more paper towels, wet half of them, and headed for a bathroom stall. “I’m going to change. Leave whenever you’re ready, it’s probably better if we don’t go back out there at the same time. Sorry.”
He shut himself in the stall without waiting for a reply. He didn’t get one.
He could still hear Puck pulling out paper towels and running water as he carefully hung his soaked cardigan and shirt on the hanger over his bag (he refused to let anything of his touch that floor except the bottoms of his shoes), and after he’d stripped off his undershirt to wipe at his chest and shoulders, he closed his eyes a moment and accepted his fate.
“Tell them…whatever you need to tell them,” he said, each word feeling like a nail in his own coffin. “Just…if you could please not make me out to be some sort of predator, or to have hit on you, or anything. I can manage the herd if it’s slushies and locker-checks, but if they think I’m actually…looking, or wanting things from them, I don’t…I don’t know how far it will escalate. Especially after last year. And since I’m sure the others are in no mood to stand up on my behalf anymore, it’s, um. It’s just me. So--”
“You think I’m gonna throw you under the bus.”
There was disbelief in Puck’s voice, and Kurt faltered, wondering when his heart had started pounding so hard. “If that’s what you need to do.”
Something like a fist thudded into the stall door, startling him.
“Get it through your head: you don’t bail on me, then I don’t bail on you. That’s not how I roll. Think you’d have figured it out by now.” There was the clink of a belt being fastened. “I’m not telling them shit. If I do, I’m not gonna lie about it. I’m not into dudes, and you were too busy sexting your boy all summer to look at me twice anyway. Everyone’s seen Beth now. So anyone asks, I’m telling that shit like it is. Same goes if anyone asks you.” There was some rustling of clothing, the zip of a backpack. “Anyone messes with you, they’re messing with both of us. Got that?”
Kurt let his forehead fall to the stall door with relief, shocked to find that his eyes were wet with it. “Okay.” He swallowed hard. “They’ll notice if you’re talking to me more than usual, though. It won’t do anything to quell the rumor.”
“Count how many fucks I don’t give.” A pause. “Do you?”
“No. You just have more to lose, so. Even if you’re telling people the truth, if you want to act…like we used to. Or less. I mean…I’d understand.”
And it was strange to say ‘like we used to,’ because that felt so long ago.
Silence, and then Puck muttered, “I’m just pissed.” Quieter, “It’s not you.”
Kurt straightened, wiped at his eyes. “I know,” he said, because now he did. “I’m…pissed, too.”
“You skipping homeroom?”
He took a steadying breath and pulled a clean shirt over his head. “I try not to skip classes, but that’s about how long it will take to properly treat this cardigan, so.”
“Want me to stick around?” He sounded closer now, like he was leaning on the adjacent stall.
“It should be fine,” Kurt said, finally unlatching the stall after changing the rest of his clothes and going straight for the sinks to straighten out his hair. Strangely, it was still a little hard to meet Puck’s gaze, so he didn’t. “Barely anyone uses this restroom except the Advanced Calc students, and they’re generally harmless. You can go ahead. At least one of us should start this year out on the right foot.” Puck hesitated, and Kurt finally lifted his eyes to meet his in the mirror. “The more you show that you can get it together, the more Shelby might be willing to work with you about Beth.”
That seemed to sell it, and Puck looked at the floor, then gave a stiff nod. Before leaving, though, he held up his phone. “Anyone gives you any bullshit,” he said, and Kurt nodded.
“You, too.”
Puck vanished through the door, and once it had closed behind him, Kurt braced his hands on the sink and let out his breath, trying to shut out the buzz of students in the hall.
Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.
Okay.
Kurt straightened, rolled back his shoulders, and set about treating his poor cardigan, slipping into Post-Slushie Mode. He knew how to do this. A little out of practice, perhaps, but he knew how to sail through moments like these, to show the world they couldn’t touch him. Granted, these moments were usually played out in the girls’ bathroom, if for no other reason than that it was safer (and cleaner) in there, but nevertheless. He would be fine.
The door swung open, and Kurt looked up, then had to check himself not to jump back.
David Karofsky froze halfway through the door, staring at Kurt like he had suddenly sprung out of the floor.
Calm down, Kurt immediately told himself, forcing his shoulders to relax, just a little. Things were different now. This was the boy who had been carefully coexisting with him on Facebook all summer, who had actually commented with a lmao last week when Kurt had posted a status about Granny Bartlett from down the street driving into the shop to complain about a rattling in the engine of her Depression-era Harley. It was the boy who had taken nearly two months to respond when Kurt had sent him a private message apologizing for junior prom, and then telling him that the message thread would be there whenever he felt ready to talk--but who had responded nonetheless. Baby steps.
Facebook was nothing at all like face-to-face, though, and Kurt swallowed hard, not quite able to look away.
After a moment, David came forward enough for the door to close behind him. Kurt came to himself and shook his head a little, dropping his gaze back to the sink and trying to keep his voice light. “Hello, David.”
Karofsky looked him up and down, and Kurt maybe held his breath a little until Karofsky opened his mouth.
“How’d they get you already?”
Air flowed back into Kurt’s lungs, and he tried for a tight smile that ended up more like a grimace. “What can I say. They love me here.”
Karofsky was quiet a moment before saying, in a lower voice, “Which one was it?”
Kurt studied him a moment, took in the frown and the real concern behind it, the awkwardness, the determination--just like when he’d first donned that ridiculous Bully-Whips beret--and the smile Kurt had for him this time was faint but real. “It was four or five of them together. Don’t waste your time.” Then, after a second, “Thank you, though.”
Karofsky shrugged, still frowning a little, this time at the floor. Out in the hall, the first bell rang.
Focusing carefully on his cardigan, Kurt dared, “I couldn’t help but notice that you were suspiciously absent among the Cro-Magnon population this morning.”
Karofsky finally stepped away from the door, leaning back against the counter with his arms crossed as if to pin his hands in place, his movements still tense. He muttered something from which Kurt could only glean the words, ‘working shit out.’
Looking at him, at the nearly-openness of his face and the anxious energy in his fingers, Kurt believed him.
“It was a pleasant surprise,” Kurt assured him after a moment, still feeling like there were eggshells under his feet. “If there had ever been an excuse for you to make a comeback...”
“Heard about that,” Karofsky said, his arms still tightly crossed. He seemed to fight with himself for a second before speaking again. "So what’s the actual damage with you and Puckerman?" he asked, glancing tentatively up. "I kinda can't see you trying to pull one over on Prep-School."
Kurt stared at him for a second, then another, then another, and then dropped his arms to his sides. "Thank you," he huffed, the tension rushing out of him like air from a balloon. Karofsky--David--raised an eyebrow, and Kurt elaborated, "You are the first person, all of my so-called friends included, to just ask me instead of jumping to conclusions or assuming I'm right or wrong. That's...I appreciate that. Thank you."
David shrugged again, shifting on his feet, and Kurt wondered how often he was actually thanked for anything. Then again, there wasn't much reason for them not to be awkward around each other while standing alone in a school bathroom after last year, Facebook peacemaking or no, so Kurt lowered his eyes back to his cardigan to take the pressure off. "In any case, it's a long story, so unless you have an exceedingly low interest in making it to homeroom..."
"It's Schwarz. Think I'll live."
"Ooh." Kurt grimaced on his behalf, thinking back to the most monotonous and terrible history class he'd ever had. "Well, then. Take a sink."
-
These are the things fourteen-year-old-Kurt had thought would never happen on the first day of his senior year:
He would never get a slushie to the face two minutes into his first day, because he would certainly not still be that low on the food chain.
He would never feel a swell of fondness as he watched Noah Puckerman walk out of a school restroom, because Puckerman would certainly not leave until Kurt's head was firmly shoved in a toilet.
He would never spend a half hour venting about his summer to a quiet, attentive David Karofsky, because they would certainly not have anything in common.
And he would never, ever look ahead to glee club and feel utter dread, because glee club would certainly not stop being the one place where he belonged.
-
Kurt had to feel a little bad for Mr. Schuester. He was positively beaming as the glee club trickled in for their first meeting of the new school year, probably expecting that everyone would still be holding hands and giving hugs and joking with each other like they were at the end of last year.
The only other member in the choir room when Kurt got there was Quinn at the far end of the room, who shot him a glare that could cut glass. He elected not to make eye contact and positioned himself near the door, two rows back.
Rachel came in next, stabbing him with a glare of her own before dramatically whipping her head to face forward again, smacking Finn in the chest with her hair. Finn did the same as he had been doing all week and pretended Kurt didn't exist. They sat two rows behind Quinn.
Kurt arched his eyebrows in the aloof expression he had honed to a T from years of pretending bullies weren't hurting him, pulled out his phone, and pretended to text.
Santana and Brittany were next, ignoring him completely and sliding in next to Quinn. Then came Tina and Mike--here Kurt subtly lifted his eyes, unsure where they stood in all this--who glanced uncertainly between the two sides before taking their seats right in the middle, Tina on Quinn’s half and Mike on Kurt’s, but not really close to anyone but each other. Kurt lowered his eyes again and heaved a quiet sigh.
He told himself he wouldn't look up when Mercedes came in. He honestly had no intention of putting himself through that, but old habits died hard, and he was glancing up before he could stop himself. When she kept her eyes down and walked right past him, settling on the other side of Tina, that's when it really started to hurt.
At the doorway, Mr. Schuester finally started to look concerned. When he caught his eye, Kurt gave a tiny shake of his head and lowered his eyes to the blank screen on his phone.
This sucked.
He idly typed in famous sets of numbers (8675309, 525600, 24601) and was possibly wallowing in despair a little, and so he almost didn't notice when Puck came in. Puck only paused for a second, just inside the door, to return the wall of glares he received from stage left. Then he sauntered up to Kurt as if he had done it since the beginning. "'Sup, Hummel." He held out a fist.
Kurt smiled weakly and returned the fist-bump, trying not to cry again with the relief coursing through him when Puck dropped down right next to him while the other half of the room watched. (Back at the doorway, Mr. Schuester stared outright, his mouth a little open.) Slouching back in his chair, Puck murmured, “You get any more bullshit?”
Kurt shook his head, lowering his voice with Puck’s in the choir room’s eerie quiet. "Karof--David tailed me to first and second period. Benevolently," he added when Puck tensed. "Not that much happened. Josh Waco came up with another slushie, but that ended up in his own face." Puck snorted, and Kurt managed half a grin. “David can move fast when he wants to ‘accidentally’ bump someone.”
Puck frowned, seeming unable to decide between suspicion and approval. He shook his head. “Seriously don’t get that guy.”
Lowering his gaze, Kurt softly replied, “It’s complicated.”
They were interrupted by Mr. Schuester greeting Artie and Sam at the door, and the subject was dropped.
“Hey, guys,” Artie chirped as Sam wheeled him in, getting situated a row in front of them and doing some odd manly-secret-handshake with Puck, and Kurt didn’t think he’d ever been quite so happy to see Artie. Once his job was done, Sam glanced at Mercedes with pursed lips, then mouthed ‘Sorry’ in Kurt’s direction before going to join her.
Last in was Lauren, who Puck watched longingly as she settled in behind Tina and Mike. When Puck frowned at her, she shook her head and mouthed, ‘Notice.’ Puck crossed his arms and slouched back in his seat.
“All right, guys,” Mr. Schuester said, walking to the front of the room and clapping his hands. “Welcome back! It’s great to see you all again.” His gaze flicked between the two opposing halves of the room, his smile wavering a little before he plastered it back on. “I hope you all had a chance to relax this summer, because this year is our year. Nationals,” he said with a wave of the hands, and Artie and Sam obliged him with a whoop. “We came so close last year, and I’m positive we could have won the whole thing if--”
“If Finchel hadn’t had to get their exhibitionism kink on?” Santana drawled from the side.
“--If we’d had a little more focus,” Mr. Schuester corrected with a warning look in her direction. “Our problem last year,” he went on, moving to the whiteboard and uncapping a marker, “was that we lost track of our identity.” Once he had IDENTITY scrawled big and messy on the whiteboard, he turned back around. “We got caught up in what other people thought. What they told us. What we thought they wanted. We lost us. So,” he underlined the word on the whiteboard, “your first assignment of the year is all about you. This year’s going to be about embracing both who we’ve been, and who we’re going to become.”
Across the room, the side of Finn’s mouth was turning up the way it always did when he and Mr. Schue spoke the same language, and Kurt looked a moment before lowering his gaze. At this rate, he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to know what he was becoming.
“For your first assignment,” Mr. Schuester went on, “we’re going to start with who we’ve been. I want you to choose a song that represents something significant that happened to you over the summer, something personal to you, and perform it as a solo.”
The buzz following his announcement was decidedly quieter than it would usually be, and Kurt suddenly had a feeling that at least six glares were boring into the side of his head.
“Now, I know this is a short week for you guys because of the start-of-year faculty meetings Thursday and Friday,” Mr. Schuester went on, “so we’ll have performances start next week. Until then--”
A hand shot up. “Mr. Schuester? If I may?”
Mr. Schuester let out his breath, then held out a hand. “Of course, Rachel.”
She was out of her seat and facing the group before he’d finished speaking. “As the de facto leader of this glee club, I feel it is only appropriate that I give the first performance to allow others the opportunity to observe and follow my example." Everyone but Finn and Mr. Schuester rolled their eyes or sighed, as always, but something about her voice was subdued today, pitched in a lower tone. "As it happens, I spent the last ninety-six hours brainstorming, preparing and polishing a piece that flawlessly matches the criteria of this assignment.” She handed the sheet of music in her hand to Brad at the piano. “Considering the final days of my last summer as a high school student, it’s only right that I perform Stevie Hoang’s beloved single about resilience in the face of abandonment and betrayal, two sensations I have come to know all too well in my young life.”
“Oh, no,” Kurt mumbled under his breath.
Puck elbowed him. “Man up.”
Brad began to play alone, the only instrument Rachel apparently felt was necessary, and she began to sing.
Kurt bit back a wince at the lyrics, then frowned when Rachel left all the pronouns as they were--she didn’t change ‘she’ to ‘he,’ and for a moment Kurt’s chest clenched with hurt that she would stoop so low against him. But then he looked at her face, and listened to the lyrics some more--So many things that I’m just dying to say, But I can’t seem to tell her--and realized that she wasn’t singing this song about him.
Somehow, that made it all much, much worse.
-
“We’re horrible people.”
“It was just a song.”
“With no souls.”
“Dude. Seriously--”
“Who steal people’s mothers. I’m a cold-blooded mother-stealer with no soul.”
“Will you quit freaking out?” Puck glanced around the parking lot as they began to cross it to Kurt’s car, though there wasn’t much to see, as sports wouldn’t be starting until next week. The only ones left at school were the other members of glee. Across the parking lot, Finn held Rachel in a loose embrace next to her car. “So Berry sang a song about her inner turmoil or whatever. What else is new?”
“It baffles me that you aren’t fazed by any of this,” Kurt said, fishing for his keys in his bag. “These are your friends, too.”
Puck shoved his hands in his pockets, his face closing up a little. “So?”
“So, you spent half of that song staring conspicuously at your phone. I can respect emotional compartmentalization to a point, but--”
“Heads up.”
“What?”
Something bumped hard into Kurt’s shoulder, knocking him straight into an unconcerned Puck, who grabbed him by the arm before he could fall over. Kurt took one look, then straightened with a huff. “Really, Finn?”
Not surprisingly, Finn continued to his own car without deigning to reply.
Kurt let out his breath, pressing his fingers between his eyebrows where a headache was starting to pulse. He shook his head. “Where were we?”
“You were spouting psychobabble or some shit. I kinda tuned out.”
“Of course you did,” Kurt said with a sigh.
Kurt unlocked his car and inspected it while Puck tossed his backpack in the back, half expecting to have gotten keyed or worse. “At least the windshield is intact,” he muttered under his breath, and he already had a foot in the car before he noticed that Puck wasn’t getting in, instead looking guardedly over Kurt’s shoulder.
Before he could follow Puck’s gaze, a voice said from behind him, “Hi, Kurt.” Then, hesitantly, “Hi, Puck.”
Turning around, Kurt was faced with a slightly sheepish-looking Tina and Mike.
Immediately his guard went up, too, and he looked between them, then around the parking lot behind them. It looked like they were the last ones there. Looking back at them, he said, “I wasn’t aware you were speaking to us.”
“I know,” Tina said, looking down. “After you guys left the party, Santana sort of rallied the troops.”
“It was pretty scary,” Mike added, shifting on his feet. “Especially when she started crying hysterically…I’m pretty sure she was still drunk.”
“She pretty much made everyone choose between you two and the rest of them,” Tina said, a little guiltily. “You guys weren’t there, and we didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings…”
Kurt sighed, because of course they didn’t. “I see. And what, other than the convenient absence of the rest of the glee club in this parking lot, inspired this sudden change of heart?”
It was a little harsh, he knew, and they looked crestfallen for a moment, and that just made Kurt feel like scum all over again.
“It isn’t a change,” Tina said softly. “Just…we just want you guys to know that we actually think it’s really sweet, what you’re doing. Even if the way you went about it was kind of, um. Terrible.”
Kurt blinked a few times. Sweet. She had said ‘sweet,’ right?
“We understand if you’re mad at us,” Mike said, slipping his hand into Tina’s and looking over Kurt’s shoulder at Puck. “But we think--well, I think, Tina is an independent thinker and we’re not actually the same person,” --Tina smiled goofily at the ground-- “I think it’s really cool that you’re getting to be a part of your baby’s life.”
“We were looking at those pictures in the article,” Tina said, meeting Kurt’s gaze again. “None of those were Photoshopped, were they?” Kurt shook his head, and she smiled shyly. “Beth looked really cute.”
“She’s perfect.”
Kurt actually jumped a little; he’d almost forgotten Puck was still at the passenger-side door. Puck didn’t say anything else and didn’t move, still keeping the car between them and himself, but the shield behind his eyes was starting to go down.
When Kurt looked back, both Mike and Tina were smiling a little in Puck’s direction. “So,” Tina said, “that’s all. We just wanted you to know.”
It was an olive branch. And it was sincere, and about a hundred miles beyond what Kurt had expected anyone to give him today, and for a second he honestly couldn’t make words come.
“Thank you,” he finally said, not quite able to smile back, but meaning it with everything he had.
It seemed to come through, because both of them seemed to relax. They exchanged a look with each other, then turned toward Tina’s car with a quick wave and a nod.
Puck’s voice caught him off guard again. “I’ve got more.”
They stopped, looking curiously back toward Puck. Kurt followed their gaze.
Puck looked between them again, then pulled out his phone, dropping his eyes to the screen. “Jewfro’s a shitty photographer,” he mumbled. “You can’t see her that well.”
He began to click through, and suddenly Kurt knew exactly what Puck had been doing on his phone for the second half of glee club.
Tina and Mike looked at each other, then, for some reason, glanced questioningly at Kurt. And for just a second, Kurt hesitated, because...well. For nearly three months now, he had been the only one in on the secret, the only outsider to know that Beth’s nose crinkled like Quinn’s when she laughed, or that Tenacious D’s ‘Tribute’ was her favorite, favorite song. He was the one behind the camera, who got to see all these moments. He was Uncle Kurt.
But then that second passed, and Tina and Mike were eagerly eying Puck’s phone, and Puck was slowly coming around the car, and a smile finally found its way across Kurt’s face. He nodded.
And he couldn’t even make himself say anything when Puck leaned against his car, normally a forbidden act, because the split-second glance Puck shot him--a question and an answer and an ‘I-told-you-so’ all in one--was so much more important than that.
Kurt stayed where he was, letting Mike and Tina come up on either side of Puck to peer at the screen, because now it was their turn.
He knew the second the first photo came up, because Mike’s face opened up and Tina’s broke into a smile, and Puck’s relaxed just around his eyes, the way it did whenever he looked at Beth. “Aww!” Tina cooed. “Is she dancing?”
Puck’s face shifted as he fought a smile. “She’s all about the Tenacious D. She’s got rhythm, too, like, serious rhythm. No way can other one-year-olds feel music like that. On this one, I think it was ‘Wonder Boy,’ and she did that bobbing thing for most of it, but whenever I went into eighth-notes on the guitar, she did this stomping thing that totes lined up with it. She’s like a prodigy or something.” He lost his fight against smiling about halfway through, and he beamed down at the phone. “Her favorite’s ‘Tribute,’ though.”
“That’s so cute,” Tina said, leaning in for a closer look.
“Wait, how do you sing ‘Tribute’ with one person?” Mike asked absently, his focus clearly captured by the phone screen.
“You don’t,” Puck said, his smile turning into a smirk, and he reached behind Tina to punch Kurt in the arm.
Tina seemed to surprise herself with a laugh, and covered her mouth. “Oh my God. I would pay money to see that...wait.” She tore her gaze from the phone screen to look at him. “Kurt, what are you doing over there?”
“Yeah, for serious,” Puck said, shooting him a look. “Get over here.”
Tina’s arm was around his waist and tugging him over before he could say anything, and he automatically wrapped his around her shoulders, and just like that, it turned into a warm, tight one-armed hug that Kurt had needed so badly that his chest actually ached. She reached her other arm around him and squeezed, seeming to understand, and he rested his cheek on top of her head, blinking his eyes dry for what felt like the millionth time, and Puck clicked to the next photo. This one was a close-up that Kurt had taken while he was standing up, and Beth had been standing at his feet, proudly showing off her stuffed Tigger with a huge smile.
“That thing’s like her favorite toy ever,” Puck said, relaxing back against the car door. “Makes sense. When I was a kid, Tigger was the shit.”
“I was more a Piglet fan,” Kurt commented, smiling when Tina squeezed him again and murmured, “Totally. Him and Eeyore.”
Puck rolled his eyes, and Mike looked genuinely distraught. “But Tigger’s bouncy...”
“You can have Tigger, sweetie,” Tina assured him, and Puck snorted and moved to the next photo.
Kurt lost track of time as they stopped on each picture, Puck growing more and more open and animated as he related exactly what was going on in each one, Kurt contributing when he could. They laughed at the photo Kurt had snapped of Beth with her faux-hawk and Puck’s sunglasses and video game guitar, and Kurt had blinked with surprise at the one he hadn’t realized anyone had taken, of himself holding Beth on his lap and pointing to a picture in a book. He’d been teaching her French that day.
Mike started cooing over Beth almost as much as Tina, and Tina didn’t let go of Kurt once, snuggling close and letting him do the same. Before he knew it, nearly forty-five minutes had passed them just standing by his car in the empty lot, huddled around Puck’s phone, and Puck was clicking to the last photo he’d transferred back to his phone. In it, he was sitting on the couch with his guitar, and Beth stood behind it on his lap, reaching curiously for the strings.
Looking up from the photo, Kurt found that Puck was wearing the exact same expression he had in that picture, warm and absolutely in love. He thought back to how Puck had been since last Wednesday, closed off behind a defensive wall, and he almost couldn’t bear it.
“She looks like you,” Tina finally said, and Puck murmured, “Yeah,” and Kurt made a decision.
Maybe he didn’t have all of his friends, and maybe he didn’t have Blaine--the 0 Missed Calls screen on his phone that morning felt more telling every time he thought of it--but Puck would have Beth. Somehow, he would have Beth.
Kurt would find a way.
~*~