Fic: Reverseverse Ep 1: 'Popular', Part 2
Title: Ep 1.1: Popular, Part 2
Fandom: Glee
'Verse: Reverseverse
Characters/Pairings: Kurt/Puck, Finn/Rachel, Artie/Tina, most of the regular cast of Glee appear, albeit as their slightly altered role-reversal selves.
Challenge/Prompt: The original ‘A Little Role Reversal’ fic was written by mundaneone in response to this prompt from the glee_angst_meme .
Rating: PG, for the odd unexpected f-bomb.
Word Count: (This part) 2628
Genre: AU
Copyright: I don’t own Glee or anything to do with it; I just have vivid hallucinations. The role!reversal AU belongs to mundaneone . I’m just playing in it by her very kind permission :).
Summary: Part 2 of episode 1, Popular. Puck discovers the McKinley High Glist is kind of a Big Deal.
Author’s Notes: A tribute and addition to mundaneone’s fabtastic 'A Little Role Reversal', whose characters ate my brain. I hope anything I write in this verse can do her original creation justice. You’ll need to read 'A Little Role Reversal'before you read anything I write, so you get the gist of the characters and the world they live in. Fics in this verse will be tagged 'reverseverse', 'cos it's an awesome word, alright?
Somehow, Puck manages to make it to lunchtime glee rehearsal. There’s still a lot of staring and whispering, and on the way to choir room he has to duck into the football locker room more than once to avoid that crazed sleazeball Israel shoving a microphone in his face; but eventually he stops trying to camouflage his head in his letterman jacket and starts humming Black Eyed Peas' I Got A Feeling under his breath instead, stupid dopey grin pushing at his cheeks.
Yeah; he has no idea.
There’s a sheet of paper taped to the wall in the choir-room just beside Lillian Adler’s plaque, and to distract himself from pacing the length of the floor like some kind of lovesick dingo while waiting for Kurt to arrive, Puck wipes his sweaty palms on his jeans and squints to read it:
GLIST
OCT 12TH 2009:
1. Rachel Berry +500
2. Kurt Hummel +147
3. Finn Hudson +98
4. Mercedes Jones + 95
5. Tina Cohen-Chang + 76
6. Artie Abrams +76
“Hey.” He jerks his head at Finn, who’s sprawled across two of the crappy plastic chairs, stuffing pizza into his mouth as fast as he can before Rachel catches him.
Puck points at the list:
“Know what this is?”
Finn nods, pushing himself back up to sitting.
“Ifaglift.” He says.
Puck’s eyebrows would’ve disappeared into his hairline, if he’d had one: “… Ya what?”
“It’s The Glist.” Another familiar voice supplies- it’s Artie, who’s half-in half-out the doorway, waiting for Tina to finish wedging it open. Suddenly anxious again, Puck stuffs his hands in his pockets:
“Uh, what’s a ‘Glist’?”
“The Glist.” Artie corrects, looking at Puck over his glasses like it’s an important distinction. Tina straightens up and tosses her long black hair gracefully over her shoulder, giving him a tiny smile that’s kind of like the one he gets from his math teacher when he fucks up in geometry.
“It’s a portmanteau.” Rachel supplies curtly as she arrives just behind them, wafting past Tina and Artie with Kurt and Mercedes trailing in her wake. Puck immediately straightens up, his eyes helplessly following the most graceful brunette of the trio, who is once again doing a great job of not noticing him.
“Two words combined together to make one?” Rachel tries again “The Glist: known in its proper form as the Glee List.”
Kurt finally catches Puck’s gaze, and maybe Puck imagines it, but the highest spots on Kurt’s perfect cheekbones seem to flush a little pinker.
“Stop frowning, you’ll get wrinkles.” The other boy warns sharply, going across to prop his messenger bag at the foot of one of the chairs.
Puck opens his mouth automatically to apologise; but is stopped short by Kurt returning to press his lips oh-so fleetingly against his own- and just like that, just like every time Kurt kisses him, Puck’s totally forgotten what they were talking about.
“God, could a girl be more single?” Mercedes sighs loudly, rolling her eyes as she whips her Blackberry out of her pocket.
“I assume you read Jacob Israel’s blog?” Kurt enquires, pulling away again and fussily straightening his bangs out. If it wasn’t totally ridiculous, Puck might even think he was nervous.
“Everyone reads Jacob Israel’s blog. Even people who can’t read.” Artie interjects pointedly, and Puck bites his lip. “He does a voice-post for short-bus passengers.”
“His words are somehow even more distressing when spoken aloud.” Rachel adds, looking disapproving.
“Ok, um, yeah, I’ve read it.” Puck interrupts. “But I don’t…”
“The Glist is posted every week.” Kurt explains. “On the front page?” He raises his eyebrows at Puck’s continued blankness, then waves a fluttery hand of dismissal, wandering back over to Mercedes: “You’ve probably seen it so often you don’t even notice anymore. It’s all the members of the Glee club listed in descending order of popularity-”
“-Myself at the top.” Rachel interjects, granting one of her widest, whitest smiles to Finn, who looks temporarily blinded.
Kurt crosses his arms:
“Well, yes; but with Jacob I like to think there’s a clear bias.”
“Every member of the club gets included in the Glist,” Rachel continues resolutely, playing with Finn’s fingers as she talks: “and we post this copy up after publication so the well-oiled cogs of the Glee Club’s publicity machine can keep in touch with the opinions of the wider student populous-”
“-Alright guys, why all the chit-chat?”
Mr Schuester’s reprimanding voice shakes Puck out of his reverie, as the gleeks around him immediately scuttle to form a straight line across the centre of the room.
The showchoir director strides in, all business and flinty-eyed, pulling an envelope out of his pocket:
“Only forty-seven days till Sectionals- we can’t afford to waste a minute of that time... Noah Puckerman, what are you doing in here?”
Puck freezes, standing dumbly in the middle of the room.
“I, um, I’m here-”
He feels soft, warm fingers wrap viciously tight around his wrist, yanking him backwards into the line.
“He’s with me Mr Schue.”
Mr Schuester crosses his arms, leaning back against the piano. “I don’t think I should have to remind you that this is a closed rehearsal Kurt?”
“Of course not.” Kurt retorts frostily, and for the first time Puck wonders how the Glee Club actually functions with so many egos bouncing about. “Noah plans to audition next week: he wanted a taster session before committing himself.”
Wait: audition? What?
“That’s what she said.” Artie murmurs, earning him a glare from Mr Schue and a poke in the ribs from Tina.
Puck just stares, horror-struck, at the side of Kurt’s face- but the other boy doesn’t turn around, locked in a bitch, please contest with Mr Schue until eventually the teacher sighs and flips his envelope over in his fingers.
“Fine.” He points the envelope at Puck: “Mr Puckerman- I’ll expect you to be first in line at auditions.”
Puck swallows, and it’s only Kurt smacking him sharply on the arm that forces him to reply:
“Uh, sure thing Mr Schuester. Thanks. Um…”
“Right. To business.” Mr Schue holds out his envelope, showing off the inoffensive item of stationary to the entire class. “This landed on my desk this morning.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Puck sees Rachel’s hand fly to her heart: “Am I singing for the President?” she gasps.
“Don’t be ridiculous Rachel.” Mr Schue sneers, dropping his hand back to his side. Rachel glares at him a second, before crossing her arms and letting her features fall back into their usual haughty neutrality.
“This,” Mr Schue continues “is an invitation from the newly-reformed showchoir at Carmel High-”
Immediately, the room fills with whispered giggling. Rachel tosses her hair back, smiling up at the ceiling with a knowing smile; Artie flaps his hand in a mock ‘too-hot-to-handle’ gesture; Mercedes makes a face at Kurt and checks him with her hip, but Kurt just pouts back and rolls his eyes. Puck’s glad to see Finn looking just about as wtf as he is, and for a second their gazes meet and they shrug minutely at each other, before Mr Schuester slams his palm down on the top of the piano and everyone jumps about half a foot in the air, mouths instantly clamping shut again.
“Thankyou.” He says dryly. “Now: these are our tickets to Vocal Adrenaline’s first invitational of the year. It’s this Saturday-I expect all of you to be there. We really need to get moving on with our campaign if we want to get a leg-up on the competition…”
“Competition?” Rachel scoffs. ”Please, Mr Schuester: even I have trouble understanding why we should waste valuable weekend rehearsal time attending the sub-standard performances of a show-choir that was disqualified from their last sectionals competition because they’d forgotten to bring the cassette tape they usually mimed along with.”
“Nonetheless.” Mr Schue interrupts “they’ve invited us and it’s only polite we accept.” A vaguely sly look slides across the teacher’s face. “Think of it this way: the better we know their weaknesses, the more satisfying it’ll be when we exploit every single one of them at sectionals. Hey-if we really try, maybe we can get them disqualified from this years’ competition as well!”
The club starts giggling again. Mercedes and Kurt share a worryingly conspiratorial wiggle of their fingers; Artie looks over his glasses at Tina in a way that could only really be described as scheming… and even in profile Rachel is managing to look wickedly smug and Puck thinks, kind of incredulously: fuck: they’re actually serious…
Mr Schue reclines back against the piano with the air of a warlord surveying his minions.
“So that’s this Saturday, here, ten am sharp.” He reiterates. “We’ll take the bus. Ok; that’s enough chat. Like I said: only forty-seven days until Sectionals- that means forty-seven days to teach Mr Hudson his right from his left in the hope that he might actually be able to dance the lead without shoulder-checking his partner into the orchestra pit. Tina: find the board markers.”
*
Finn rubs uselessly at the ‘L’ and ‘R’ written loud and proud across the back of his hands as they wander out to fifth period.
“Dude, maybe you just get tattoos, right?” Puck suggests sympathetically, a couple of steps behind. “It’s gotta be easier.”
Finn’s eyes are getting wider and wider: “I think I’m allergic…” he mutters worriedly. “Look: the skin’s going all red…”
“It’s going red because you’re rubbing it, sweetie.” Rachel tells him, taking Finn’s hands in hers and grimacing: “Don’t worry: all it’ll take is a little nail-polish remover and some tender, loving care…”
Glee rehearsal had been ball-busting. Despite hanging around with the glee kids for the last couple of weeks, Puck had never actually sat through the Circus of Pain that was Mr Schuester’s lunchtime rehearsals. Like, he knew the gleeks were tough-any group that commanded the rule of school had to be tough-but he hadn’t expected Schue to outlaw sitting for the whole hour and a half; or arrange the group in pitch order according to who was most likely to give him a brain clot... Then there was that thing where he made them eat their sheet music...
‘Course, Puck wasn’t allowed to join in, since he wasn’t really part of the group yet (he would ‘terrorise their aural dynamic’)- but he was totally having abtastic sympathy pains watching Tina do all those stomach crunches (she’d had to do Artie’s as well), and he felt embarrassment all the way to his toes for Finn, who kept screwing up on the choreography until Mr Schue snapped and made him do it with Rachel on his shoulders.
Yeah, you heard him.
The only thing that really made it worthwhile was that one time Kurt had caught Puck watching him, and smiled a bright little surprised smile at him before it morphed into his failsafe eye-roll.
“So, uh, what class you got next?” Puck asks, brushing his arm against Kurt’s as they walk. He knows how particular Kurt is about physical contact and, no, Puck still isn’t brave enough to initiate a hand-hold or anything dumb like that, so he settles for just reminding the other boy that he’s there.
“Why?” Kurt barely looks up from his nail-beds “Are you planning on offering to help me study for AP Calculus?”
Puck bites his tongue.
“Was just curious.” He shrugs. “Maybe, I could walk you?”
Kurt smiles sweetly at him: “Why thankyou Noah; but I think I have the hang of walking by now, and I wouldn’t want you to get lost.”
Mercedes is not doing a great job of hiding her snigger and Puck looks away, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his letterman.
He lifts his eyes to focus over Rachel’s head- racking his brain to remember how the softness of Kurt’s lips against his made him feel more complete and accepted than anything else has in years- when he notices Quinn and Santana walking towards them from the opposite direction, sipping their slushies and pressing back against the lockers to let the Glee crowd past, as is expected.
Puck feels a sudden flush of guilt. He ducks his head down even further, hoping his red cheeks will camouflage with the McKinley Titans team colours. Call him paranoid if you want, but he can almost hear Santana’s sneer from here; laughing at him for trying so damn fucking hard to fit in; shuffling along like he’s actually part of this crowd of beautiful people, instead of just a pathetic tag-along.
… Well, y’know what?
Fuck Santana.
“Hey.” Puck stops in his tracks, reaching out a hand to grab Kurt’s elbow before he saunters past him.
The look on the other boy’s face is 100% unhand me, cretin but, to Puck’s infinite surprise, he does stop, and Puck quickly jerks his hand back in case he gets bitten.
“So you do remember yesterday, right?” He asks in as casual a voice as he can manage, before his brain catches up with his mouth. “With the serenading and the talking and the… kissing and stuff?”
Kurt glances around him, like he’s searching for secret service backup.
“Of course I do.” He says quickly, and again, his tone’s all prissy and enunciated, but his perfect skin flushes all across his nose. “What’s your point?”
“It’s just… you’ve hardly said like two words to me today, and I thought we were, y’know, gonna try this thing-us, whatever- and I kinda just wanna know where I stand ‘cos right now? It sorta feels like yesterday all over again, except with, like, hi-def and the stage at the Superbowl and me with nothing but my guitar to protect my man-junk.”
Oh dude. Puck’s brain groans as it finally wanders up: word vomit. Total word vomit. You may as well have just barfed up all over his freakin’ blazer.
Kurt’s just staring at him. His eyes have somehow managed to get even bigger than normal- he looks vaguely wondering, as if he’s never seen a creature quite like Puck before and wants to pin him to a collector’s card. But weirdly, when Puck looks closer, he’s sure that’s the tiniest inkling of a smile twitching the corner of the other boy’s mouth.
Kurt hikes his messenger bag further up his shoulder:
“Nothing but your guitar, huh?” He repeats.
It was a smile.
Puck’s so shocked that his mouth drops open without his say-so… But whatever he was going to say, he’s interrupted by a sudden shock of ice-cold spattering against the side of his face; and a split-second later a blood-curdling, strong-lunged scream fills the corridor, along with the sweet tangy metallic smell of artificial raspberries.
“Nice facial, loser!” Santana calls cheerily, as she and Quinn slide past the crowd of horrified onlookers, leaving Rachel Berry standing, utterly stunned, dripping with ice and corn syrup like she has no idea what just happened.
"Oh my god, someone just slushied Rachel." Puck hears Tina hiss needlessly-- but she may as well have shouted it, considering the complete and total silence that has descended on the corridor.
From five feet back, Puck stares gapingly at the Glist-topping diva- her perfect hair sticking to her face, blue slush dripping from the hem of her skirt- like maybe the whole world has just been drop-kicked off its axis.
Then he glances at Kurt.
McKinley’s resident ice-bitch looks completely horrified, head moving to follow Quinn’s retreating Cheerios uniform as the blonde reject heads to class, his eyes fixed on the pink cherry slushy left ominously unused in her hand.
Puck bites his lips hard together.
Fuck.
xxx
Fandom: Glee
'Verse: Reverseverse
Characters/Pairings: Kurt/Puck, Finn/Rachel, Artie/Tina, most of the regular cast of Glee appear, albeit as their slightly altered role-reversal selves.
Challenge/Prompt: The original ‘A Little Role Reversal’ fic was written by mundaneone in response to this prompt from the glee_angst_meme .
Rating: PG, for the odd unexpected f-bomb.
Word Count: (This part) 2628
Genre: AU
Copyright: I don’t own Glee or anything to do with it; I just have vivid hallucinations. The role!reversal AU belongs to mundaneone . I’m just playing in it by her very kind permission :).
Summary: Part 2 of episode 1, Popular. Puck discovers the McKinley High Glist is kind of a Big Deal.
Author’s Notes: A tribute and addition to mundaneone’s fabtastic 'A Little Role Reversal', whose characters ate my brain. I hope anything I write in this verse can do her original creation justice. You’ll need to read 'A Little Role Reversal'before you read anything I write, so you get the gist of the characters and the world they live in. Fics in this verse will be tagged 'reverseverse', 'cos it's an awesome word, alright?
Somehow, Puck manages to make it to lunchtime glee rehearsal. There’s still a lot of staring and whispering, and on the way to choir room he has to duck into the football locker room more than once to avoid that crazed sleazeball Israel shoving a microphone in his face; but eventually he stops trying to camouflage his head in his letterman jacket and starts humming Black Eyed Peas' I Got A Feeling under his breath instead, stupid dopey grin pushing at his cheeks.
Yeah; he has no idea.
There’s a sheet of paper taped to the wall in the choir-room just beside Lillian Adler’s plaque, and to distract himself from pacing the length of the floor like some kind of lovesick dingo while waiting for Kurt to arrive, Puck wipes his sweaty palms on his jeans and squints to read it:
GLIST
OCT 12TH 2009:
1. Rachel Berry +500
2. Kurt Hummel +147
3. Finn Hudson +98
4. Mercedes Jones + 95
5. Tina Cohen-Chang + 76
6. Artie Abrams +76
“Hey.” He jerks his head at Finn, who’s sprawled across two of the crappy plastic chairs, stuffing pizza into his mouth as fast as he can before Rachel catches him.
Puck points at the list:
“Know what this is?”
Finn nods, pushing himself back up to sitting.
“Ifaglift.” He says.
Puck’s eyebrows would’ve disappeared into his hairline, if he’d had one: “… Ya what?”
“It’s The Glist.” Another familiar voice supplies- it’s Artie, who’s half-in half-out the doorway, waiting for Tina to finish wedging it open. Suddenly anxious again, Puck stuffs his hands in his pockets:
“Uh, what’s a ‘Glist’?”
“The Glist.” Artie corrects, looking at Puck over his glasses like it’s an important distinction. Tina straightens up and tosses her long black hair gracefully over her shoulder, giving him a tiny smile that’s kind of like the one he gets from his math teacher when he fucks up in geometry.
“It’s a portmanteau.” Rachel supplies curtly as she arrives just behind them, wafting past Tina and Artie with Kurt and Mercedes trailing in her wake. Puck immediately straightens up, his eyes helplessly following the most graceful brunette of the trio, who is once again doing a great job of not noticing him.
“Two words combined together to make one?” Rachel tries again “The Glist: known in its proper form as the Glee List.”
Kurt finally catches Puck’s gaze, and maybe Puck imagines it, but the highest spots on Kurt’s perfect cheekbones seem to flush a little pinker.
“Stop frowning, you’ll get wrinkles.” The other boy warns sharply, going across to prop his messenger bag at the foot of one of the chairs.
Puck opens his mouth automatically to apologise; but is stopped short by Kurt returning to press his lips oh-so fleetingly against his own- and just like that, just like every time Kurt kisses him, Puck’s totally forgotten what they were talking about.
“God, could a girl be more single?” Mercedes sighs loudly, rolling her eyes as she whips her Blackberry out of her pocket.
“I assume you read Jacob Israel’s blog?” Kurt enquires, pulling away again and fussily straightening his bangs out. If it wasn’t totally ridiculous, Puck might even think he was nervous.
“Everyone reads Jacob Israel’s blog. Even people who can’t read.” Artie interjects pointedly, and Puck bites his lip. “He does a voice-post for short-bus passengers.”
“His words are somehow even more distressing when spoken aloud.” Rachel adds, looking disapproving.
“Ok, um, yeah, I’ve read it.” Puck interrupts. “But I don’t…”
“The Glist is posted every week.” Kurt explains. “On the front page?” He raises his eyebrows at Puck’s continued blankness, then waves a fluttery hand of dismissal, wandering back over to Mercedes: “You’ve probably seen it so often you don’t even notice anymore. It’s all the members of the Glee club listed in descending order of popularity-”
“-Myself at the top.” Rachel interjects, granting one of her widest, whitest smiles to Finn, who looks temporarily blinded.
Kurt crosses his arms:
“Well, yes; but with Jacob I like to think there’s a clear bias.”
“Every member of the club gets included in the Glist,” Rachel continues resolutely, playing with Finn’s fingers as she talks: “and we post this copy up after publication so the well-oiled cogs of the Glee Club’s publicity machine can keep in touch with the opinions of the wider student populous-”
“-Alright guys, why all the chit-chat?”
Mr Schuester’s reprimanding voice shakes Puck out of his reverie, as the gleeks around him immediately scuttle to form a straight line across the centre of the room.
The showchoir director strides in, all business and flinty-eyed, pulling an envelope out of his pocket:
“Only forty-seven days till Sectionals- we can’t afford to waste a minute of that time... Noah Puckerman, what are you doing in here?”
Puck freezes, standing dumbly in the middle of the room.
“I, um, I’m here-”
He feels soft, warm fingers wrap viciously tight around his wrist, yanking him backwards into the line.
“He’s with me Mr Schue.”
Mr Schuester crosses his arms, leaning back against the piano. “I don’t think I should have to remind you that this is a closed rehearsal Kurt?”
“Of course not.” Kurt retorts frostily, and for the first time Puck wonders how the Glee Club actually functions with so many egos bouncing about. “Noah plans to audition next week: he wanted a taster session before committing himself.”
Wait: audition? What?
“That’s what she said.” Artie murmurs, earning him a glare from Mr Schue and a poke in the ribs from Tina.
Puck just stares, horror-struck, at the side of Kurt’s face- but the other boy doesn’t turn around, locked in a bitch, please contest with Mr Schue until eventually the teacher sighs and flips his envelope over in his fingers.
“Fine.” He points the envelope at Puck: “Mr Puckerman- I’ll expect you to be first in line at auditions.”
Puck swallows, and it’s only Kurt smacking him sharply on the arm that forces him to reply:
“Uh, sure thing Mr Schuester. Thanks. Um…”
“Right. To business.” Mr Schue holds out his envelope, showing off the inoffensive item of stationary to the entire class. “This landed on my desk this morning.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Puck sees Rachel’s hand fly to her heart: “Am I singing for the President?” she gasps.
“Don’t be ridiculous Rachel.” Mr Schue sneers, dropping his hand back to his side. Rachel glares at him a second, before crossing her arms and letting her features fall back into their usual haughty neutrality.
“This,” Mr Schue continues “is an invitation from the newly-reformed showchoir at Carmel High-”
Immediately, the room fills with whispered giggling. Rachel tosses her hair back, smiling up at the ceiling with a knowing smile; Artie flaps his hand in a mock ‘too-hot-to-handle’ gesture; Mercedes makes a face at Kurt and checks him with her hip, but Kurt just pouts back and rolls his eyes. Puck’s glad to see Finn looking just about as wtf as he is, and for a second their gazes meet and they shrug minutely at each other, before Mr Schuester slams his palm down on the top of the piano and everyone jumps about half a foot in the air, mouths instantly clamping shut again.
“Thankyou.” He says dryly. “Now: these are our tickets to Vocal Adrenaline’s first invitational of the year. It’s this Saturday-I expect all of you to be there. We really need to get moving on with our campaign if we want to get a leg-up on the competition…”
“Competition?” Rachel scoffs. ”Please, Mr Schuester: even I have trouble understanding why we should waste valuable weekend rehearsal time attending the sub-standard performances of a show-choir that was disqualified from their last sectionals competition because they’d forgotten to bring the cassette tape they usually mimed along with.”
“Nonetheless.” Mr Schue interrupts “they’ve invited us and it’s only polite we accept.” A vaguely sly look slides across the teacher’s face. “Think of it this way: the better we know their weaknesses, the more satisfying it’ll be when we exploit every single one of them at sectionals. Hey-if we really try, maybe we can get them disqualified from this years’ competition as well!”
The club starts giggling again. Mercedes and Kurt share a worryingly conspiratorial wiggle of their fingers; Artie looks over his glasses at Tina in a way that could only really be described as scheming… and even in profile Rachel is managing to look wickedly smug and Puck thinks, kind of incredulously: fuck: they’re actually serious…
Mr Schue reclines back against the piano with the air of a warlord surveying his minions.
“So that’s this Saturday, here, ten am sharp.” He reiterates. “We’ll take the bus. Ok; that’s enough chat. Like I said: only forty-seven days until Sectionals- that means forty-seven days to teach Mr Hudson his right from his left in the hope that he might actually be able to dance the lead without shoulder-checking his partner into the orchestra pit. Tina: find the board markers.”
*
Finn rubs uselessly at the ‘L’ and ‘R’ written loud and proud across the back of his hands as they wander out to fifth period.
“Dude, maybe you just get tattoos, right?” Puck suggests sympathetically, a couple of steps behind. “It’s gotta be easier.”
Finn’s eyes are getting wider and wider: “I think I’m allergic…” he mutters worriedly. “Look: the skin’s going all red…”
“It’s going red because you’re rubbing it, sweetie.” Rachel tells him, taking Finn’s hands in hers and grimacing: “Don’t worry: all it’ll take is a little nail-polish remover and some tender, loving care…”
Glee rehearsal had been ball-busting. Despite hanging around with the glee kids for the last couple of weeks, Puck had never actually sat through the Circus of Pain that was Mr Schuester’s lunchtime rehearsals. Like, he knew the gleeks were tough-any group that commanded the rule of school had to be tough-but he hadn’t expected Schue to outlaw sitting for the whole hour and a half; or arrange the group in pitch order according to who was most likely to give him a brain clot... Then there was that thing where he made them eat their sheet music...
‘Course, Puck wasn’t allowed to join in, since he wasn’t really part of the group yet (he would ‘terrorise their aural dynamic’)- but he was totally having abtastic sympathy pains watching Tina do all those stomach crunches (she’d had to do Artie’s as well), and he felt embarrassment all the way to his toes for Finn, who kept screwing up on the choreography until Mr Schue snapped and made him do it with Rachel on his shoulders.
Yeah, you heard him.
The only thing that really made it worthwhile was that one time Kurt had caught Puck watching him, and smiled a bright little surprised smile at him before it morphed into his failsafe eye-roll.
“So, uh, what class you got next?” Puck asks, brushing his arm against Kurt’s as they walk. He knows how particular Kurt is about physical contact and, no, Puck still isn’t brave enough to initiate a hand-hold or anything dumb like that, so he settles for just reminding the other boy that he’s there.
“Why?” Kurt barely looks up from his nail-beds “Are you planning on offering to help me study for AP Calculus?”
Puck bites his tongue.
“Was just curious.” He shrugs. “Maybe, I could walk you?”
Kurt smiles sweetly at him: “Why thankyou Noah; but I think I have the hang of walking by now, and I wouldn’t want you to get lost.”
Mercedes is not doing a great job of hiding her snigger and Puck looks away, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his letterman.
He lifts his eyes to focus over Rachel’s head- racking his brain to remember how the softness of Kurt’s lips against his made him feel more complete and accepted than anything else has in years- when he notices Quinn and Santana walking towards them from the opposite direction, sipping their slushies and pressing back against the lockers to let the Glee crowd past, as is expected.
Puck feels a sudden flush of guilt. He ducks his head down even further, hoping his red cheeks will camouflage with the McKinley Titans team colours. Call him paranoid if you want, but he can almost hear Santana’s sneer from here; laughing at him for trying so damn fucking hard to fit in; shuffling along like he’s actually part of this crowd of beautiful people, instead of just a pathetic tag-along.
… Well, y’know what?
Fuck Santana.
“Hey.” Puck stops in his tracks, reaching out a hand to grab Kurt’s elbow before he saunters past him.
The look on the other boy’s face is 100% unhand me, cretin but, to Puck’s infinite surprise, he does stop, and Puck quickly jerks his hand back in case he gets bitten.
“So you do remember yesterday, right?” He asks in as casual a voice as he can manage, before his brain catches up with his mouth. “With the serenading and the talking and the… kissing and stuff?”
Kurt glances around him, like he’s searching for secret service backup.
“Of course I do.” He says quickly, and again, his tone’s all prissy and enunciated, but his perfect skin flushes all across his nose. “What’s your point?”
“It’s just… you’ve hardly said like two words to me today, and I thought we were, y’know, gonna try this thing-us, whatever- and I kinda just wanna know where I stand ‘cos right now? It sorta feels like yesterday all over again, except with, like, hi-def and the stage at the Superbowl and me with nothing but my guitar to protect my man-junk.”
Oh dude. Puck’s brain groans as it finally wanders up: word vomit. Total word vomit. You may as well have just barfed up all over his freakin’ blazer.
Kurt’s just staring at him. His eyes have somehow managed to get even bigger than normal- he looks vaguely wondering, as if he’s never seen a creature quite like Puck before and wants to pin him to a collector’s card. But weirdly, when Puck looks closer, he’s sure that’s the tiniest inkling of a smile twitching the corner of the other boy’s mouth.
Kurt hikes his messenger bag further up his shoulder:
“Nothing but your guitar, huh?” He repeats.
It was a smile.
Puck’s so shocked that his mouth drops open without his say-so… But whatever he was going to say, he’s interrupted by a sudden shock of ice-cold spattering against the side of his face; and a split-second later a blood-curdling, strong-lunged scream fills the corridor, along with the sweet tangy metallic smell of artificial raspberries.
“Nice facial, loser!” Santana calls cheerily, as she and Quinn slide past the crowd of horrified onlookers, leaving Rachel Berry standing, utterly stunned, dripping with ice and corn syrup like she has no idea what just happened.
"Oh my god, someone just slushied Rachel." Puck hears Tina hiss needlessly-- but she may as well have shouted it, considering the complete and total silence that has descended on the corridor.
From five feet back, Puck stares gapingly at the Glist-topping diva- her perfect hair sticking to her face, blue slush dripping from the hem of her skirt- like maybe the whole world has just been drop-kicked off its axis.
Then he glances at Kurt.
McKinley’s resident ice-bitch looks completely horrified, head moving to follow Quinn’s retreating Cheerios uniform as the blonde reject heads to class, his eyes fixed on the pink cherry slushy left ominously unused in her hand.
Puck bites his lips hard together.
Fuck.
xxx