Fic: Reverseverse Ep3: 'Gay', Part 5 - PG
Title: Reverseverse Ep 3, part 5
Verse: Reverseverse
Author: Test_kard_girl
Rating: PG, for some sweary language
Characters/Pairings Kurt/Puck, Finn/Rachel, Artie/Tina, most of the regular cast of Glee appear, albeit as their slightly altered role-reversal selves.
Genre: AU
Warning: Puck and Kurt not being themselves
Spoilers: Say through Season 1, although as it's AU, in a very roundabout, squint and you'll miss it kind of way.
Disclaimer: 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 :).
Author's Notes A tribute and addition to mundaneone’s fabtastic 'A Little Role Reversal', whose characters ate my brain. The original fic was written by mundaneone in response to this prompt from the glee_angst_meme. 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.
Word Count (This part) 1880
Summary: he "social ladder" is upside down. Puck gets bullied by one ice-queen Kurt Hummel. Doesn't mean he isn't head over heels though.
The Reverseverse, episode 3 part 5: The thing about big public declarations of love? They're kind of big and public...
*Another episode dzown! Hope you enjoyed. As always, if you'd like anymore, please let me know in the comments, so I know whether to keep posting, or if this is just boring the hell out of people :). xxx
“Hi.”
Mike jumps like a mile in the air, instinctively brandishing his weapon of convenience-his car keys-in his attacker’s general direction; until his eyes adjust and he realises it's Tina Cohen-Chang, half-in half-out of her Prius, pretty heart-shaped face all lit up in the warm glow of the dash lights.
Mortified, Mike lowers his keys.
“…Uh…Hi.”
He could swear she hadn’t been parked there before.
“I’m- I’m sorry… Was this your spot?” He gestures jerkily at his own car: “I didn’t see… There wasn’t any-”
“-Relax. This is my spot.” Tina interrupts, patting her hand against the hood of her car. “I won’t call the parking police.” She gives a little giggle that’s almost hypnotically musical; like wind-chimes.
Keep it together Chang.
“Oh, um, ok.” Mike tries to smile. In return, Tina leans her elbows on the top of her car:
“You looked really good out there tonight.”
Oh. My. God.
“… I did? That’s uh… Thankyou.”
“Especially the dancing. You can really move.”
Mike’s face drains of colour. He’d been trying not to show it; trying to keep it on the down-low and miss every couple of steps… But cranking
out some Beyonce in front of all those people made him feel like he was flying.
There’s a barely-quirked grin tugging at the corner of Tina’s enticingly red lips and Mike swallows hard.
“Thanks.”
At the word, that tentative quirk curls into a steady, brilliant smile:
“Maybe you should call me sometime.”
“…I…I what…?”
But Tina’s already slid into her car, slamming the door behind her and leaving Mike’s brain to make fizzy, useless firework type noises as he blinks after her.
Did Tina Cohen-Chang just ask him out? Or, y’know, ask him to ask her? To call her, even though… he doesn’t have her number...? Even though he knows-the whole school knows-she’s dating Artie Abrams?
But it’s too late for clarification: the girl’s already disappeared into the night, her eco-friendly Sweet Sixteenth gift barely even leaving a trail of exhaust fumes in the crisp Fall air.
Mike cusses, unlocking his own embarrassingly shiny Mazda (he keeps his grades up: his dad appreciates it) and tossing his football stuff in the backseat. This night has got to be up there with smoking pot while staring at an iguana through a kaleidoscope and beating that guy from Gossip Girl at Mario Kart as one of the most surreal experiences of his life.
He turns the ignition, engine stuttering to life and- illuminated in the backwash from his headlights- finds a cell phone number scrawled in careful cursive through the frost on the outside of his windshield, along with the instruction:
Not kidding! I like your moves. Call me :).
*
Kurt tucks his car keys as silently as he can into his jacket pocket, pausing in the hallway and listening like a cat.
The TV’s on in the front room: it’s early for his dad to be home on a school night- but then, it’s probably not as early as Kurt thinks it is.
His eyes flick down to the carpet, allowing himself one tiny smile. He can still taste Puck’s lips on his.
He rests his temple briefly against the wall, considering: it’d be easy to just slip through the kitchen and downstairs; grab some yogurt or something. That’s what he usually does when he comes home after hours. If he gets started on his moisturising routine now he’ll still hit his pillow this side of midnight.
(Perfect porcelain skin doesn’t come easy you know. Or cheap- thankyou Mr Dior.).
His dad probably hasn’t even noticed he isn’t in yet, anyway; he never goes down to Kurt’s room without permission (it’s just safer for everyone).
Making up his mind, Kurt toes his shoes off, lines them up carefully under the coat rack, and pads through to the living room.
He hears the voice before he can see the face, and it takes a minute for his endorphin-fogged brain to make the connection:
“…To them, all I have to say is,'Shake it up a bit!' Be brave; get out of your box! Even if that box happens to be where you’re living…”
Oh heavens. Kurt holds up a hand, warding off the demon visage suddenly assaulting his corneas. His birthday treat a couple of years back was a decent HD widescreen to watch the West Side Story re-mastered digital edition on: but right now, most every one of those pin-sharp 55 inches is filled with the huge nightmarish grin and curly Justin Timberlake locks of one improbably earnest looking Mr Schuester.
“…You can often find me visiting the homeless, inspiring them out of poverty with music and song, and the simple suggestion: Hey! How about giving not being homeless a try, huh? You’d be surprised at how effective it can be..
Seriously? Kurt snorts, hand coming up to hide his laughing: who gave Mr Schuester’s sadism a TV slot?
He squints at the logo in the corner. Oh. WOHN. Well that makes a lot more sense.
Kurt glances over at his dad, who’s slumped in his usual recliner with a half-finished beer at his hand. “You know, he actually does do that.” Kurt assures him, going for lightly humorous: “It’s embarrassing for everyone concerned.”
His father makes no reply. That’s not too unusual- they don’t engage in small talk very often- but Kurt, irked, purses his lips:
“Hey dad…? Dad?”
But the older man doesn’t shift, and when Kurt peers closer he can see how the warm indigo haze of the TV throws up the shadows under his father’s eyes, the half-day bristle on his chin.
He’s fast asleep.
“…But I know Ohio: it’s not always easy to break out of your comfort zone. People will tear you down; tell you you shouldn’t have bothered in the first place...”
Kurt blinks, staring back at the screen. Despite the bizarre pseudo-reality he feels he’s currently inhabiting, Mr Schuester’s smilingly enunciated words feel like an Acme hand-buzzer pressed to his heart.
“…But let me encourage you, with the same encouragement I give naive cheerleaders and football players who join my glee club never even having set eyes on a glockenspiel before: there's not much of a difference between a theatre full of cheering fans, and an angry crowd hollering abuse at you: reality is, they’re both just making a lot of noise…”
Kurt bites the inside of his lip. They sure were making a lot of noise, he thinks, feeling the night’s excitement being sloughed piece by piece from his body like winter skin meeting a brand new loofah; when he sent that football on its perfect arc through the uprights; when Noah scored that touchdown; when eleven football jocks were hip-rolling their way to victory...
“You’re such a cliché, dad.” Kurt mutters, snatching up the remote and stabbing the power off, banishing Mr Schuester's rictus-baring face. His father doesn’t stir, and Kurt tosses the remote onto the sofa.
In the abrupt darkness, he can still smell the unfamiliar aroma of cut-grass and bio-freeze and polyester sticking to his skin, and suddenly feels unbearably stupid for thinking that just for once his dad might have noticed something too.
*
“Hey ma.”
“...Where've you been?”
Puck’s mouth curls at the dull steel of his mom’s voice. Usually, how his mom manages to cram accusation into every syllable of those three little words would tick him off. But tonight, the linoleum under his sneakers feels like clouds, and most of his brain has been systematically
switched off by the sly ministrations of Kurt’s lips, so his mom’s pissy mood barely dents his consciousness:
“I had a football game,” He reminds her in a grunt, swinging his backpack down to the counter and unpacking his stuff for the laundry. I told you I had a game.”
“Your sister got in an hour ago.”
“Yeah? Great for her.”
There’s chink of glass against formica. A messy chink, like his mom’s missed the coaster. There was full bottle of wine in the fridge before he went to school this morning- Puck’d bet his right arm and his signed Hot August Night album it’s not there anymore.
“…She went to your game. With Matt Rutherford’s sister.”
There’s something in her voice. Something flat and grey that makes Puck freeze, every hair on his neck prickling. His mom’s chair scrapes an agonizing diagonal across the floor.
“Noah. Look at me.”
“…W-what are you freaking out about? I just-”
“-Look at me Noah.”
Puck does. He turns round, cocooning himself in his own arms and staring at his mom. She looks twenty years older than she is, but somehow even younger than Sarah. She stares at her son, and Puck stares back.
The hand nearest her wine glass jerks, like she wants to take another gulp but aborts just in time. Instead, she reaches across and yanks the dishtowel from the cooker, wrapping it tight between her hands.
“…Sarah said she saw you kissing one of the other boys on your team... When the game finished... Kissing one of the other boys.” Her eyes are big and surrounded by white: “I told her she didn’t see that.”
A high-pitched buzz starts thrumming in Puck’s ears. It takes a long minute for words to gloop like treacle from his brain to his mouth.
“…She shouldn’t…” Puck swallows harshly. “…she shouldn’t have even been there-“
“-Is she telling the truth, Noah?”
Puck stares at his mom’s pale-knuckled fingers, feeling cold sweat breaking out along his hairline, under his armpits, all across his abs. She can’t even say it, he realises numbly.
“…Sh-she’s a fucking liar,” he stammers, eyes burning at the corners “she shouldn’t have even-“
“-Noah-”
“-She couldn’t-couldn’t see anything, sh-she’s-”
“-Do you kiss boys Noah? Do you like kissing boys?”
Puck slams his fist back against the counter, hating the tear that trickles down his cheekbone: “-What kind a dumbfuck question-?”
“-Noah!”
Puck glowers at the floor. His heartbeat starts throbbing behind his eyes, black pulsing in and out of his vision. He thinks he’s gonna be sick.
He nods once: a sharp, involuntary jerk of his head.
(Kurt had dropped him off outside. They’d kissed goodnight. They’d spent a long time kissing goodnight. It had made Puck’s blood sing.)
The minute feels like a century.
“…He’s my boyfriend.” He hears slide from his tongue, brain blank noisy static. His mom drops her dishtowel on the table. It slips and falls to the floor.
“He’s my boyfriend.” Puck repeats, words trembling in his mouth. His mom rips her eyes away from his face; takes a few uneven strides towards the door.
“Mom-“
“-I can’t hear this-“
“Mom!” Puck chokes round his heart in his throat. But he can’t make his legs move.
His mom’s feet pound on the stairs over his head, just like Sarah’s when she’s in a sulk and locks herself in her room to bitch on MSN. Her door slams, the bang reverberating through the house- and through Puck’s legs and feet and arms and chest and head as he grabs the edge of his mom’s dejected chair and hurls it to the floor.