Title: Like a Virgin
Author:
oddegg Rating/Warnings: PG-13. Angst and implied dodgy underage sex. Could be triggery for some.
Pairing/s: pre-slash Puck/Kurt, implied Santana/Brittany, past Puck/Santana, Puck/OC and Santana/OC
Word count: 2,262
Disclaimer: The last time I checked I wasn’t Ryan Murphy so, no, not mine.
Summary: Puck and Santana are more alike than they want to show.
Author note: I was going for fluffy PWP for my 1st Glee fic. Instead I came up with this. Sorry about that.
I intend to do a proper Puck/Kurt follow up.
Puck liked to boast to the football team that he got rid of his V card when he was 14. It’s believable, given his reputation as a stud, and he knows that even if any of them are sceptical and adjust the timeline a bit, they’re only going to bump him up to 15 at the most.
He’s never hinted to anyone that the adjustment should be the other way, and that he’d actually been 13. Or as good as. A week or so before is neither here nor there, is it? It’s not like anyone’s counting.
* * *
She’d been his sitter.
Or Sara’s sitter anyway. He’d explained to his mom that ‘God!; he was nearly a teenager! He didn’t need a babysitter, did he?’ and she’d whacked him on the head, told him that he’d been a bratty teen since he was 10 and not to take the Almighty’s name in vain. And that the sitter was for his sister, because she wasn’t leaving him in charge of a 6 year old. But the 17 year old cheerleader from around the corner was ok.
Puck had been moody and bad tempered like a teenager then, though that had more to do with his dad skipping out on them and his mom’s obvious unhappiness than anything. He was big for his age, too; taller than Finn then, who hadn’t got his growth spurt till he was nearer 14. Still skinny though, he can see when he looks at the photo his mom has on the mantle from his 13th birthday. Skinny and smooth and lithe, with big eyes and a soft mouth that had his mother’s friends at temple ruffling his hair and saying ‘Oy, he’s going to be a heartbreaker’
If you look close at the picture there’s something slightly off about the look in those big eyes, but Puck tries not to look at it nowadays. He kinda wants to smash it when he does and his mom likes that photo. She’d be upset.
* * *
His mom had been upset when she’d got back from the date she’d been on. The one she’d got them a sitter for.
Puck had heard her on the phone; straight in the house and on to the phone to her friend Gina. He’d crept down to sit on the last step of the stairs and listened to her laugh, high and angry as she said ‘No, no - it went great. Exactly the same bullshit as all the rest of the dates I’ve been on, only after one thing’
He’d heard the clink of a glass being pulled from the cupboard, the glug of wine going into it. Listened as his mom as her voice went tight and clogged - ’It always comes down to sex with men. They’re just dogs led round by their balls, all of them!’ - and he’d wanted to tell her about the sitter arguing with her boyfriend on the phone earlier and the way the light from the hall behind her had made her look like a stranger when she’d come and stood in his bedroom door. About the smell like oregano and smoke that had hung about her and the way her eyes looked funny and too big. The way she’d giggled at him and sealed his mouth with hers when he opened it to speak; lipstick waxy and false tasting on his tongue, wet and invading and nothing like the shy, dry pecks he and Alicia Alexander over the road had traded during the summer.
He’d wanted to tell his mom something, but it had been cold on the stair and he’d been shivering in his pyjamas as he heard her start crying on the phone to Gina and so after a while he’d just gone back to bed.
* * *
Maybe if she thought about it Santana might be able to guess when he really got laid first.
Maybe she had already. They’re pretty similar in a lot of ways, and he’s certainly wondered about her.
He thinks maybe it was one of her cousins. Before they joined Glee and were still fucking around she got a little weird once because some family were there, and made him drive her out to one of the local make out spots and fucked him; riding him with a look on her face like she was in pain and slapping his hands away when he went to touch her.
The drive back had been near silent until they were outside her house. He’d parked and looked over to see her staring at the jeep on the drive in front of them. ‘Nice vehicle’ he’d said. ‘My cousin’s’ she’d replied, still not taking her eyes off it. ‘He’s back from Iraq and came over to visit’
‘He’s older than you then?’ he’d asked. ‘He’s 22’ she’d said, and got out of his truck and gone into the house.
So… 19 or 20 when he did her then. Santana had got her tits early, from what he remembered of middle school. He’d stared at the cousin’s jeep and thought idly about slashing the tyres, and then he’d driven himself home.
* * *
They’ve been in Glee for a while when Santana’s cousin got killed in Iraq.
They’d stopped messing around with each other ages ago and the drama with Finn and Quinn and the baby and him knocking Quinn up with the baby behind Finn’s back has started to settle a bit and Finn’s seeing Rachel and Quinn’s back with her mom but spending most of her time with Mercedes and Puck’s started some kind of strange flirtation thing with Kurt Hummel that he doesn’t like to think too closely about and Santana’s doing… whatever it is she does in between planning new ways to be a bitch. But doing it with Brittany, anyway.
And then one night she’s at his house when he pulls up and gets out of the truck and she’s slamming him back against the cab with a kiss that feels more like an attack. And Puck goes with it for about a minute - mind just on automatic but then his brain kicks in and he shoves her away to get an explanation.
‘I just want to fuck, Puckerman - you not man enough for that anymore?’ The words are a snarl and maybe one time he’d have just seen the red rag she was waving at him and nothing more, but her eyes are too wide, too wild and her arms have a tremor in them where he’s holding them and he’s not fucking stupid and he’s tired of people treating him like he is.
He bites out ‘Santana - what. the. fuck..?’ and she snaps ‘My fucking cousin died. We done with the caring and sharing now? Do you want to fuck or not?’
For a couple of seconds he might even have done it. But this is messed up. He’s been edging up to a kind of happiness lately that makes him feel slightly panicky sometimes like it’ll disappear if he looks right at it. Santana’s obviously messed up and if he messes with her then everything is just going to get… messy.
Yeah. Puck gets all eloquent and shit when he’s flustered. So sue him.
Besides, he’s got a nasty feeling that if things go wrong here he can kiss any chance of anything happening with Kurt bye-bye and as Aretha would say - oh, hell to the no. That just ain’t happening.
Santana makes another rush at him and he spins her round and pins her while he yanks open the cab door. ‘Oh, you taking me for a ride now, Puck?’ she jeers and he just says ‘Get in the fucking truck, Lopez’
He supposes Santana must think she’s won because she’s quiet then but he’s texting as he drives and by the time he pulls up where he was aiming for ten minutes later Brittany is already opening the front door of her house.
Santana’s looking at him a bit like he’s turned up at school in nothing but a sparkling pink, sequined jock and a bit like he’s betrayed her but he just says, softly, ‘Get out of the fucking truck, Lopez’
He thinks he’s going to get spat on for a second but instead she just slams out of his cab and runs past Brit into the house. Brittany comes up to the open passenger door before he can lean across and shut it and just asks ’What?’ simply, her eyes worried.
‘Her cousin died. The one in Iraq’
And ok, yeah - he knew then he was right about the cousin and he knew Brittany wasn’t always as dumb as she came off because her mouth turns down as she looks back at the house and after a pause she says, tentative ‘Do you… do you think it makes you a bad person to be glad someone’s dead?’
And Puck remembers the Santana at the start of middle school, when her smiles had been soft and real - and then in 8th grade when they went bright and hard instead, and he remembers seeing a notice in the local paper a year ago about his old babysitter getting married and jerking himself off hard that night, teeth clenched, muscles rigid, to a fantasy of turning up at her reception and fucking her in the corridor and her new husband coming out at the end to find them and see what a slut-whore she was. He’d come gasping imagining the tears in her eyes as she realised he’d ruined her life.
He says to her, ‘No’
‘No, that doesn’t always make you a bad person, Brit’
* * *
He doesn’t bother looking out for Santana the next day at school. She’s either going to decide to be ok with him or she’s going to hate him, and he’ll find out soon enough which it is. He’s not too optimistic. If it was him, faced with someone being all understanding and shit, he’d probably hate them - and he and Santana have always been more alike than’s comfortable sometimes.
But it turns out he’s wrong. He’s the first one in the music room for Glee because he couldn’t be bothered going to his last lesson beforehand and he sits and picks out tunes on his guitar while the others trickle in but he sits up straighter when Brit and Santana enter in their usual swirl of red and cream and long legs.
Brit sits down by Quinn and Mercedes but Santana veers off to plunk herself down in the chair next to him. She crosses her arms and doesn’t look at him and he doesn’t look at her and he changes to just idly strumming the guitar because for some reason his hands are a bit shaky right now.
Eventually she says, in a low voice ‘You’re a dick, you know’ And Puck starts to smile a little because, yeah, he really is, but that’s not what she means. He glances sideways at her and gives a little flamenco flourish on the strings as he sees her lips are quirking up at the edges.
She turns toward him and gives him a proper smile, soft lips and bright eyes and he grins back at her.
And then - because he’s the goddamn Puckzilla, how can he not? - he looks over at Brittany and lets the grin slide into something dirtier. He waggles his eyebrows at Santana and says ‘Does this mean I can watch?’
She punches him in the arm (which hurts more than he lets show, because she’s still Santana and a scary bitch) but she mainly just rolls her eyes at him and she’s still smiling as she stands up to go over to Brit, who is watching them with a big, obviously happy look on her face. Then she pauses and looks over at Kurt, who’s bickering with Rachel at the piano, and back at Puck with a thin, perfect brow raised. ‘You should grow some balls there, Puckerman. You could do worse’
‘So could he’ she throws over her shoulder as she leaves, and Puck is left clutching the neck of his guitar too tightly and feeling like he swallowed a rock because, what the fuck? He thought he’d been being subtle about watching Kurt’s ass all the time.
Ok. Maybe not. But seriously, dude, it’s a nice ass and it deserves to be leered over.
And maybe Santana has a point. If other people can grow up and move on and ‘heal’ and all that shit (he’s not saying ‘all that jazz’, he hasn’t drunk that much of the show-tune kool-aid yet), then maybe Noah Puckerman will be allowed to get something real without it screwing up. If he doesn’t man up then he’ll never know.
So he puts the guitar down and stands up and walks over to the piano (because however this goes down he’s not going to hide, not any more) and he can see Rachel looking puzzled out of the corner of his eye but mostly he can just see Kurt; big, baby-blues blinking up at him and that stupidly soft mouth slightly open, lips shiny and tempting and before the other boy can say anything Puck smiles at him - a real smile - and he asks what he’s wanted to for weeks.
‘Hey, Kurt? You want to go out with me sometime?’
And he can hear Santana laughing softly behind him but Kurt’s blushing and starting to smile back and you know what? Puck doesn’t really mind.