Should've Put A Ring On It (part 1/2) [Glee fic]
Title: Should've Put A Ring On It
Characters: Kurt/Puck, Kurt/OMC, ensemble
Rating: R
Word Count: ~15000
Summary: Kurt starts dating a baseball player. Puck is not pleased.
Note: Written for the gleebigbang. Also includes gorgeous art by sijay!
Puck still sits with the jocks at lunch, but sometimes he thinks he might as well just defect to the gleek table because he spends half the period staring over at them and he usually misses most of whatever stories the guys are telling about their recent Cheerio conquests.
He gets pulled back in every once in a while by phrases like, “huge tits, man,” (usually accompanied by expansive gestures over the chest area) and “Amanda Harris blew me in the locker room,” (which Puck knows is shit because Amanda Harris actually should be the president of the Celibacy Club), but yeah, he spends a lot of time watching the gleek table.
So Puck notices when all of the sudden a new face shows up there. The new kid has short blonde hair and a wide mouth, and Puck thinks he recognizes him from the varsity baseball team. His chair is settled right up close to Kurt Hummel, their legs pressing against each other from ankle to thigh.
---
“Who’s that asshole that was sitting with you guys at lunch?” Puck asks Finn after the bell rings and they’re back at their lockers grabbing their History books so they can go learn about Christopher Columbus or some other jerk-off that lived five hundred years ago. Finn looks at him blankly and Puck realizes he’s going to have to spell it out. “The blonde guy?” he clarifies.
“Oh, you mean Sam,” Finn says, fishing around for a notebook. “He’s not an asshole. He’s actually really nice.”
That is not the kind of information Puck wants. “Sam who?” he prods. “And why is he sitting at your lunch table?”
Finn stills. “Sam Blackwell,” he says, a little reluctantly. “He’s a junior. On the baseball team.” And then, because Finn is about as subtle as a brick, he tries to distract Puck with, “We should get to class before the bell rings.”
Puck stops Finn with a hand on his shoulder. “Why is Sam Blackwell from the baseball team sitting at your lunch table?” he asks again. Calmly.
Finn’s eyes catch on his and then skitter away. “Look, man,” he says, “I just don’t want you to do anything… or say anything that you might regret later. I mean, it’s not like it’s a secret that Kurt’s…”
“Finn,” Puck says impatiently. “Spit it the fuck out.”
“Sam is Kurt’s boyfriend, okay?” Finn says. “And I don’t want you to hassle him about it. Either of them. They’re nice guys and they don’t deserve to take any crap over this.”
Puck slams his locker shut with a satisfying clang that echoes down the nearly empty hallway and ignores Finn’s shouts for him to come back.
---
The next morning, Puck is waiting in the parking lot when Kurt pulls up and gets out of his shiny, black SUV.
“Hey, Hummel,” Puck calls to get Kurt’s attention. Kurt looks up from going through his bag and his face registers surprise as he realizes that he’s surrounded by jocks, the dumpster six feet away.
When his eyes find Puck, they go wide and betrayed. Puck hasn’t had Kurt thrown in a dumpster in months and he honestly can’t say why he feels the need right now. He wonders how much Kurt’s designer outfit cost and he feels a little guilty, but not enough to let whatever this is go. “Here, give me your jacket,” Puck offers, like they’ve come some kind of weird full circle to the beginning of the year and Puck has taken Finn’s place as the jock ringleader who parcels out kindness in tiny increments before chucking people in the dumpster.
Puck tries not to look too closely at what that means about him, that maybe he wants to follow Finn’s progression to gaining Kurt’s friendship. Because Finn sits at the gleek table at lunch nowadays. Every few weeks, he wears a button down shirt -just a shade too light to be called red- that Kurt bought him for his birthday. He talks about music and when he slings an arm over Kurt’s shoulders at football games, Kurt smiles at him, bright as the stadium lights.
When Kurt glares at Puck, his eyes are bright with anger, not happiness, but it’s better than not being looked at at all. “Just do it,” Kurt bites, tossing his messenger bag to the ground.
“Give me your jacket,” Puck presses, refusing to be rebuffed.
Kurt stands his ground. “No,” he says, with clear emphasis, eyes locked with Puck in challenge. He crosses his arms over his chest like he expects Puck to try to forcefully rip his jacket off him. It makes Puck even more angry because he’d been considering doing exactly that.
“Fine!” Puck yells, and Kurt is the only one that doesn’t flinch. The other football players take hasty steps back. Evans and Landry share a quick glance, their grip on Kurt loosening like maybe they want to let him go. Puck grabs Kurt out from between them and hurls him into the dumpster himself. The other jocks slink off slowly and quietly, with none of the laughter that used to accompany this ritual, and Puck stands steaming in front of the dumpster alone, with the phantom feel of Kurt’s weight in his arms from the second before he dropped him into the trash.
There is the rustling sound of garbage bags pushing against one another as Kurt tries to disentangle himself and climb out of the dumpster and then Puck hears a muffled, “Ow!”
Immediately, he’s halfway in the dumpster himself, arms reaching blindly for Kurt. “What?” he asks. “What happened?” Puck feels the soft leather of Kurt’s jacket and pulls, dragging him out of the dumpster.
Overbalanced by Kurt’s weight, they topple backwards, Puck keeping Kurt on top of him to cushion Kurt’s landing. Puck’s head thuds loudly against the pavement and Kurt ends up sprawled halfway across his chest, knocking the air out of him, but he’s up on his knees beside Kurt in a second. “What happened?” Puck repeats, running his hands over Kurt’s arms, checking for hurt.
Kurt holds out his right hand. “I think I might need to go to the nurse,” he says, matter-of-factly. There’s a large piece of brown glass, probably from a broken beer bottle, stuck in the center of his palm. Blood is welling up around it, and Puck can tell it’s dug in deep from the way Kurt is biting his lip.
“Fuck,” Puck says. “Okay, okay, c’mon. I’ll walk you.” He stands quickly and takes a few stuttering steps to right his balance, dizzy.
“Are you okay?” Kurt asks, staring up at him from the ground. “It sounded like you hit your head when we fell.”
Puck wants to laugh, bitter, because he just threw Kurt in a dumpster and now Kurt’s on the ground with blood dripping down his wrist and he actually fucking cares that Puck maybe has a karmic-deserved bump on the back of his head. “I’m fine,” Puck says, reaching out to give Kurt a hand up.
It’s a little awkward because Kurt has to take Puck’s right hand with his unhurt left hand, but Puck finds that pulling Kurt up is infinitely easier than throwing him down.
“This is because of Sam and me, isn’t it?” Kurt asks quietly, cradling his hand as they walk into the school. “What, so it was okay for me to be gay as long as you didn’t have to see it?”
“It wasn’t… I mean, maybe it was a little bit about Sam, but…” Puck trails off, not knowing how to explain it, even to himself. Kurt doesn’t so much as look at him again until they get to the infirmary and Nurse Betty swarms over to them with gauze and alcohol wipes.
Puck and Nurse Betty have a pretty good relationship since he spends second period in the infirmary almost every day, feigning illness to get out of Algebra. While she’s examining Kurt, she gives him a smile and a preemptive ginger ale in the hope that it will settle his stomach enough that he won’t end up here for second period. Puck drinks the ginger ale a little guiltily and resolves to hide out in the gym to skip Algebra today.
“How did this happen?” the nurse asks, clucking over Kurt’s hand.
“We were in the parking lot,” Kurt says, before Puck can get a word in. “There was a bottle on the ground and I tripped.”
Puck opens him mouth, then closes it soundlessly, unsure why Kurt is willing to cover for him. He suspects Kurt isn’t going to be speaking to him for a while, so it may be a long time before he finds out.
---
Kurt’s hand is wrapped in white gauze and ace bandage for two days before he turns it into an accessory.
The third day, he lets people sign the bandage like a cast. Mercedes draws hearts on it with a dozen different colored gel pens. Tina donates a fingerless mesh glove. It’s less stark than the bright, clean white of the untouched bandage and people stop staring at Kurt’s hand and asking what happened. They glance over it the way they do his colorful scarves and odd hats, half disdainful and half fascinated.
Puck keeps staring until a week later, when the bandage comes off leaving only a healing scar.
---
Puck is good at denial.
When he and Quinn fell together at the beginning of the year, an empty six pack of Natty Light at his feet and Quinn matching each of his beers with a strawberry kiwi wine cooler, then had tipsy, I-hate-being-second-best sex, the moment they woke up they’d shoved it awkwardly behind them.
Quinn’s eyes were frightened and she’d slipped on her shirt and straightened her hair while Puck watched her blurrily in the mirror and thought this did not happen.
They pass each other in the halls now every day, and half the time Puck spends with Finn she’s hanging off his arm, but they never say a word about what happened, so it’s almost like it never did.
Watching Kurt held tight in the circle of Sam Blackwell’s arm makes something burn bright and hot in Puck’s chest. He rubs a fist over his sternum and vows to stop eating the sausage from the cafeteria line.
---
The last football game of the season comes on a cool November night and the stands are packed with people.
Puck doesn’t bother to look for his mom; she’s never made it to any of his games. He sees Kurt waving frantically at someone in the middle section and takes a moment to scan the crowd, looking curiously for Kurt’s parents. He imagines Kurt takes after his mom and searches for high, fragile cheekbones and pink lips, but he doesn’t see anyone that reminds him of Kurt and when he tries to follow Kurt’s line of sight, he finds that Kurt has turned to look at someone else.
Sam is in the stands next to Mercedes, Tina and Artie. They’ve each got a square of white posterboard with a brightly-colored letter painted on, spelling out KURT. Sam holds up a red K and Kurt smiles and waves at him. Puck scowls and turns away.
Three minutes before halftime, ‘Single Ladies’ comes on over the loudspeakers and Kurt kicks a perfect field goal to the lyrics, “If you liked it then you should’ve put a ring on it. Don’t be mad when you see that he want it. If you liked it then you should’ve put a ring on it.” Sam’s voice is cheering from the stands.
Denial snaps straight to acceptance. Puck can practically hear Beyonce singing, “This is your own damn fault, boy.”
---
The thing is, it’s not even that Puck really cares so much about the fact that he’s apparently discovered himself to be bisexual. He’s always done his own thing.
It’s just the fact that he likes Kurt Hummel that’s really fucking inconvenient.
---
Now that Puck is officially out of denial, he’s transitioned to sitting at the gleek table for lunch.
He tells people it’s because Finn is sitting there, but Finn, Rachel and Quinn are usually at one side of the table playing out some dramatic love triangle over French fries, which leaves Puck at the other side of the table across from Kurt and Sam, so it’s not a particularly compelling lie. Puck tells himself at least he’s not playing out a dramatic love triangle with Kurt and Sam, but that’s not a particularly good lie either. Although he does seem to be the only one aware of it.
Unlike the brittle, almost combative smiles Finn and Quinn share lately, Sam and Kurt seem entirely relaxed in each other’s company. Kurt is wearing Sam’s letterman jacket, the McKinley High ‘M’ right over his heart like a warning sign reading, “Mine.”
“Why are you even in this lunch period?” Puck asks Sam, annoyed. “Don’t the upperclassmen eat after the fourth bell?”
Sam laughs. “I have study hall this period.” He pulls out a green bathroom pass and smiles his wide, white-toothed smile, “I’ve convinced the monitor that I have some kind of embarrassing gastrointestinal issue, so I can usually skip out for at least twenty minutes.”
“Heartburn?” Kurt smirks.
“Absolutely,” Sam returns, a little too seriously. He picks up Kurt’s hand and presses a chaste kiss to the back of it.
Puck wonders if it’s the protection of Sam being an upperclassman and a jock or if people are just less prejudiced than he thought. Kurt and Sam sit close together and hold hands, sickening sweet, on top of the table. A few people laugh or point, whispering together like they’re being subtle, but no one throws a slushie on them or anything.
Sam moves his hand down to Kurt’s knee and Puck’s hand clenches tight around his own slushie. He imagines himself throwing the whole thing at Sam, cup and all. Kurt laughs at something Sam whispers in his ear, and Puck gulps his slushie down so fast he gives himself brain freeze.
---
Puck hasn’t been to a math class in two years and he doesn’t plan on showing up ever until he notices Kurt carrying around the same Algebra II textbook that’s collecting dust on the bottom of his locker.
An hour block of Sam-free time with Kurt is totally worth pretending to listen to some teacher talk about square roots and imaginary numbers. So Puck digs up his math book from beneath his gym clothes and football cleats and waits until Kurt walks past his locker. “Headed to Algebra?” Puck asks without waiting for an answer. “Me too. I’ll walk with you.”
Kurt nods automatically and then Puck’s words catch up with him. “Wait, wait,” Kurt says. “You’re not in my Algebra class. I’m in second period with Mr. Klusner.”
“Yeah,” Puck replies. “Me too.”
Kurt stares at him. “You are not in that class.”
“Well, no, I haven’t been in the class physically,” Puck explains. “But I am registered for it.” He holds up his textbook. “I’ve even got the book.”
Kurt eyes the book skeptically. The binding is broken, it’s got claw marks on it from the time Puck accidentally brought it home thinking it was his Earth Science book and the cat got at it, and there’s a dubious brown stain on the cover hiding the Alg of Algebra. Puck’s pretty sure the stain is just melted chocolate. He hopes.
“Well, you’ve got a book,” Kurt allows. “I guess you could probably convince people you’ve actually been using it considering how much damage it’s taken.”
Puck nods. That’s exactly what he plans to do.
He follows Kurt up the south staircase and around a corner and almost walks past the classroom when Kurt turns abruptly into room 209. Kurt gives him a look from inside the doorframe. “This is the classroom,” he says pointedly, but his mouth is amused.
Kurt moves over toward the row of desks alongside the windows and sits down in one. Puck slides into the empty seat beside Kurt even though it most likely belongs to someone else.
The bell rings at ten on the dot and the teacher looks up from grading papers at his desk and goes to stand beside the white board at the front of the room. Mr. Klusner calls roll distractedly, marking off absences, until he reaches Matthew Watson. “Did I miss anybody?” he asks, clearly not expecting a response.
Puck raises a hand. “You didn’t call my name.”
The teacher does a double-take and skims his eyes down the class list. “Puckerman,” he says hesitantly, looking confused. “I have your name crossed off here for some reason. Are you transferring in from a different class?”
“No,” Puck says, trying to look innocent. He can tell from Kurt’s sardonic expression that he’s fallen short of the mark.
Mr. Klusner looks more taken in. “Well, do you have the book?” he asks, perplexed. Puck blows a cloud of dust off his textbook and holds it up. “All right, then,” Klusner shrugs, marking off Puck’s name on the list and turning to the whiteboard. “Everyone open to page 112 and take a look at question 1.”
Puck shifts his desk a little closer to Kurt’s and opens his book.
---
It’s become routine for Kurt and Puck to walk to Algebra together now that Puck is actually going to class, but on Monday Kurt isn’t waiting for Puck to pick him up at his locker. Puck waits a few minutes in case Kurt got held behind in his English class. When Kurt still doesn’t show, he shrugs and moves off down the hall. Puck’s fingering his cell phone and thinking about texting Kurt to see if he’s home sick, when someone collides with him.
Kurt stumbles out of the bathroom straight into Puck’s chest and Puck’s arms come up around him automatically, steady. “Oh, sorry,” Kurt says, but he’s smiling dopily, like he didn’t really feel the impact. His obsessively perfect hair is sticking up in a cowlick in the back and one side of his shirt collar is flipped up. His lips are even redder than usual.
Puck feels his arms tighten around Kurt when the bathroom door swings open again and Sam steps out, fixing the line of his jacket.
“Did you just molest Hummel in the school bathroom?” Puck questions, incredulous.
Sam reaches up and smoothes down the cowlick in Kurt’s hair. “I didn’t do anything he didn’t ask me to,” Sam grins, like they’re sharing a joke and not at all like Puck’s about to punch him in the face.
It’s not just jealousy that curls low and hot in Puck’s stomach. It’s a horrible kind of fear.
He doesn’t understand how Sam can be so cavalier about this. Being gay in Lima is fucking dangerous. And Sam might have the protection of being an upperclassman and a jock, but Kurt is a sophomore in the Glee Club. Sam wears jeans and a letter jacket to school. Kurt wears Dolce and Gabbana.
If anyone is going to get hurt over this, it’s going to be Kurt.
In his mind’s eye, Puck sees Kurt with his arm in a sling, a split lip, large designer glasses hiding two black eyes, and he knows it’s more probable than improbable with the way Sam and Kurt are flaunting their relationship. It pisses him off and Puck shoves Kurt away from him, into the wall of lockers on their right instead of back into Sam, and storms off.
---
Puck is not in a good frame of mind when he breaks the lock on the storage shed beside the football field.
He bypasses the football supplies, patiently waiting for next season, and carefully selects a metal baseball bat. Then he walks back into school and toward Finn’s locker. A few people give him odd stares when they see him carrying the bat, but no one Puck can’t glare into submission. He grabs Finn by the arm with a cursory, “C’mere,” and drags him out to the parking lot.
“Dude, what’s going on?” Finn asks, off-balance.
“I need a lookout,” Puck says simply.
Finn winces, glancing around the empty lot. “What are you going to do?”
Puck hefts the bat in one hand and then points it at the car Finn is standing next to. “I’m going to fuck up Blackwell’s car,” he replies.
Finn takes an automatic step away from the car. “What? Why?” he cries.
Puck shrugs. He doesn’t really know how to describe the swell of anger in his chest. It’s about 5% irritation, 25% jealousy and 70% this-is-what-could-happen-to-Kurt’s-face-or-his-leg-or-whatever-if-you-keep-flaunting-him-around-you-jackass.
“Look, man,” Finn hesitates. “I know you’re having some issues with the whole Sam and Kurt thing, but this is kind of crazy. I don’t think…”
“You don’t even have to do anything,” Puck interrupts. “Just keep a lookout in case anyone comes outside.” Sam’s car is a pretty old model. It doesn’t look like any alarms will start blaring when Puck hits it.
“Sam’s a nice guy and Kurt likes him…” Finn tries, but it’s exactly the wrong thing to say to Puck right now.
“I’m your best friend,” Puck cuts him off, and maybe it’s a shit card to play in this situation, to make Finn do something he doesn’t want to, something that might end up hurting Kurt, but it’s all Puck’s got to play right now. And the best friend card is like an Ace, nothing higher.
Finn gives him the puppydog-eyed look that probably made Rachel start following him around, but Puck is fucking resolute. “Watch the door,” he says, setting his stance and pulling the bat back behind his shoulders. Puck swings for the fence and Sam’s right taillight doesn’t stand a chance. It breaks with a satisfying crunch. Puck rights himself and does the same to the left light, which splinters apart even more spectacularly.
He’s thinking about leaving it at that, when the image of Kurt’s possible-probable split lip and blackened eyes flashes through his head and, before he even consciously realizes he’s doing it, Puck has shattered the rear window. After the smash of impact and the tinkle of broken glass, the silence echoes.
“Are you…done?” Finn asks quietly.
Puck steps away from the shower of pale glass, breathing hard. Pieces of smashed red taillight litter the ground like a broken heart.
---
Puck spends the rest of the day not thinking about what he’s done. He skips lunch.
When the final bell rings out, he doesn’t run outside so he can surreptitiously watch Sam’s reaction. Puck goes to Glee like everything is normal, but his chest tightens when Kurt doesn’t show up. It throws off his singing and Finn is all fucked up from earlier too, so after a lecture from Rachel and an encouraging sentence from Mr. Schue, they break early.
Kurt is waiting for Puck at his car.
“Where were you at lunch today?” Kurt asks and Puck falters for a second because he hasn’t thought out a plausible lie. Beside him, Finn goes taut as a wire.
“Where were you at lunch today?” Kurt asks again. It sounds like an innocuous question, but his voice holds an undertone that makes Puck wary, like the question Kurt’s asking on the surface isn’t his real question. There’s a furious light in Kurt’s eyes that makes Puck suddenly grasp, Oh shit, he knows.
The realization doesn’t come in time to save Puck from the wicked swing of Kurt’s ever-present messenger bag. It hits him right across the face and Puck goes down against the asphalt like a ton of bricks. Jesus Christ. Kurt must have the insane thirty pound Physics textbook he totes to fourth period in the bag and he’s clearly not been taking it home just for show. Puck wonders what chapter taught Kurt about force and velocity and what the fuck ever else you need to know to completely decimate a football player with one swing.
Or maybe Sam’s been giving him batting practice. Puck imagines Sam pressing up behind Kurt, their hands overlapping on the grip of the bat, and he smiles up at Kurt through the trickle of blood in the corner of his mouth. Right at that moment, he could honestly say he’s not even sorry.
Kurt stares at him, disgusted, and Puck can tell that he’s not sorry either, not at all sorry to see Puck on the ground with blood on his face. “Katie Arbor saw you do it,” he spits. “She was taking a half day so she could get to a dentist appointment and she saw you in the parking lot putting a bat through Sam’s window.”
He rounds on Finn, standing awkward and upset off to the side. “And you just stood there and watched him do it?” Kurt yells. Puck can see the threat of tears in his eyes, the wet whirl of anger and hurt, because Kurt was sure about Finn; he was sure that Finn was his friend. Puck’s emotions spin wildly and suddenly he is sorry, he’s so sorry, but he can’t say it.
Kurt looks between Finn and Puck like he can’t tell which of them is more worthy of his contempt. He scrubs a hand across his eyes and leaves, walking quickly toward the baseball diamond, repelled.
Puck waits on the ground for a moment for Finn to offer him a hand up, but Finn is silent and still, so Puck levers himself up alone. “You’re a shit lookout,” he tells Finn.
---
Kurt doesn’t even look at him for two whole weeks.
Puck wishes he knew what happened to his previously awesome denial skills so he could tell himself it doesn’t sting.
---
Fifteen days of Puck ghosting along beside Kurt, who refuses to acknowledge his presence, ends when Kurt stops Puck halfway to Algebra and says, “Look. I’m not sure how it happened, but in all honesty, up until two weeks ago, I actually considered you one of my better friends.”
Puck opens his mouth to say something, but Kurt keeps talking. “And while I am still incredibly pissed” -he punctuates with a glare- “about that stunt you pulled, I would sort of hate to lose that. And even though you haven’t said that you’re sorry” -another pointed glare- “the fact that you keep silently following me around like a beaten dog indicates to me that you might be.”
“I…might be,” Puck forces out, because he’s never been good at apologies, but he doesn’t think he can take another day of Kurt’s silent treatment either.
“Fine,” Kurt says, and Puck has a moment of glorious hope that that’s where this will end. They’ll behave like normal guys who fight and then nod at each other in some vague semblance of apology and never, ever speak of it again. Then Kurt continues, “But this weird thing between you and Sam can’t keep going on. I don’t really understand why you’re angry with Sam and not with me. It’s not like he turned me gay or something.”
Puck wants to say, it’s not about the gay thing. He hates Sam personally, for having something that Puck wants.
Kurt grabs Puck’s wrist and turns them in the opposite direction of Algebra class. “Where are we going?” Puck asks, surprised, because he’s discovered that Kurt is one of those smart kids who never skips class even though he’d probably still be able to maintain straight A’s.
Kurt doesn’t reply, just drags Puck down the hall and into an empty room that’s used for Shop class. Sam is sitting at one of the worktables fiddling with a drill press.
“What is this, some kind of intervention?” Puck asks, annoyed. Thank God at least they didn’t decide to have an actual counseling session with Ms. Pillsbury and her table of pamphlets. Puck already has one titled Divorce: Why Your Parents Stopped Loving You and another that reads When Being A Pool Boy Becomes Statutory Rape, which he suspects was designed and printed for him specially. He doesn’t need So You’re Bisexual and Your Gay Crush Already Has A Boyfriend: A Guide.
His only comfort in this shit situation is that Sam looks as uncomfortable as he does.
“Pretty much,” Kurt replies, picking at his designer scarf. He folds his hands together. “All right,” Kurt says to Puck. “Puck, you obviously have an issue with Sam, as evidenced by you being a complete jerk and smashing up his car.” Kurt turns to Sam, who looks pretty pissed to even be in the same room with Puck. Puck wonders how much the car repairs are going to run him. “Sam, you probably have some issues about the fact that Puck smashed up your car. I clearly haven’t been a mitigating factor, so I’m just going to let you two talk this out alone.”
Before Puck can process that last sentence, Kurt has practically run out of the room and Puck hears the click of a lock behind him. “How the hell does Kurt have the keys to this classroom?” Puck wonders aloud, impressed.
“Please,” Sam scoffs, not looking at Puck, “This is Kurt’s fifth period class and he’s practically Mr. Stanford’s TA.”
A prickly silence falls and Puck alternates between glaring at Sam, who refuses to look up at him, and a shoddily-made birdhouse probably fashioned by an awkward freshman who wanted to impress girls by telling them he took Shop. Twenty minutes later, the door is still locked and Puck figures he’s not getting out of here without at least some attempt at conversation with Sam, so he breaks the strained silence with, “So, I fucked up your car.”
Sam’s hand twitches toward a hammer and Puck thinks that maybe Kurt made a tactical error by choosing a room full of sharp, heavy objects for Puck and Sam to have their throwdown in. “Yeah. And I didn’t fucking appreciate it,” Sam replies tightly. “Want to tell me why the hell you did it?”
Puck kind of does. Well, not the whole thing about how he’s bisexual and his gay crush already has a boyfriend, who happens to be Sam, but the part about Lima being a dangerous place to be gay and how Kurt’s going to end up with black eyes and mental scars and it’s going to be Sam’s fault.
“We aren’t in San Francisco or one of those states where gay couples can get married,” Puck says heatedly, the wash of anger he felt with the bat in his hands rushing back through him. “We’re in motherfucking Lima, Ohio and I’m not about to let Kurt get hurt because you can’t keep it in your pants.”
Sam stares. “Are you saying smashing up my car was your repressed jock way of telling me to cut down on the PDAs with Kurt?”
Puck doesn’t really know how to explain things any better and suddenly he doesn’t want to go along with this stupid intervention thing anymore. He glances around the classroom. There’s a backsaw on one of the tables he could probably use to get the door open…
“Hey,” Sam says, close, and Puck jumps a little when he feels a hand on his shoulder. “Look, I understand where you’re coming from. You think I haven’t gotten prank calls from homophobic assholes or had someone piss in my gym shoes? I have. And Kurt has. And it sucks. It scares the crap out of me that things might escalate. But I’m not ashamed of liking Kurt and I’m not going to act like I am.”
Puck is about to say, I don’t want you to be ashamed, I just want you to be careful, but a key clicks in the lock and Kurt swings the classroom door open looking apprehensive.
Puck figures they’ve cleared the air enough for one day. “We’re cool,” Puck tells Kurt and Sam nods beside him.
---
Spring brings baseball season and Kurt drags Mercedes and Tina to all the home games to watch Sam play. Puck trails along after them, proclaiming an interest in the sport. Mercedes gives him a well-honed bitch, please look but he doesn’t think she’s figured out his true motivations.
There are only two stands of metal bleachers set into the grass alongside the baseball diamond. Most of the parents who can make it to five o’clock games bring folding lawn chairs or blankets, and the kids from school bunch together on the bleachers. Puck and the others always climb to the top row.
During his first at bat, Sam grounds out to second base and Puck hides his smile in a cough. Kurt claps anyway and calls out, “You’ll get the next one!” supportively. Sam gives him a wave and a smile and walks back behind the wire caging with the rest of the varsity team, his hardwood bat perched easily on one shoulder.
“So I was watching the Cleveland v. Atlanta game last night on TV and Gregg pitched a-- wait, no,” Kurt says, reaching into his messenger bag and flipping open a notebook full of names and numbers, like he’s reviewing for a test. “Wood pitches for the Indians. Gregg pitches for the Cubs.”
“Hold up,” Mercedes says, pointing at the notebook. “You’re actively learning about baseball for this guy?”
“Y-You don’t even know the rules for f-football, and you’re on the team,” Tina puts in skeptically.
Kurt tosses his head carelessly. “All I have to do is kick the ball through the giant fork at the end of the field. I don’t need to know the rest of the rules.”
“The ‘giant fork’ is also called a goalpost, Hummel,” Puck says, pained on behalf of the sport.
Kurt doesn’t deign to respond. He turns to grab his bottled water off the bleacher below them and accidently dislodges his notebook from its place on his knees. A few squares of colored paper slip out from between the pages. Kurt tries to gather them up without anyone seeing, but Mercedes is quicker. “Baseball cards?” she shrieks, holding up Grady Sizemore accusingly. “You bought baseball cards? How serious is this?”
“Careful!” Kurt snaps, snatching the card back. “That’s a rookie.”
“Oh my God,” Mercedes says. Tina just stares, shaking her head in disbelief.
On the field, Sam’s bat makes a loud crack! and the ball sails into left field, dropping just short of the fence. Sam rounds the bases, dust puffing up behind his cleats, and slides into third base like a pro. Kurt stands up to cheer. Puck mimes clapping with his hands, teeth clenched. He can’t stop wondering whether Sam’s gotten to third base with Kurt yet.
Part 2
Characters: Kurt/Puck, Kurt/OMC, ensemble
Rating: R
Word Count: ~15000
Summary: Kurt starts dating a baseball player. Puck is not pleased.
Note: Written for the gleebigbang. Also includes gorgeous art by sijay!
Puck still sits with the jocks at lunch, but sometimes he thinks he might as well just defect to the gleek table because he spends half the period staring over at them and he usually misses most of whatever stories the guys are telling about their recent Cheerio conquests.
He gets pulled back in every once in a while by phrases like, “huge tits, man,” (usually accompanied by expansive gestures over the chest area) and “Amanda Harris blew me in the locker room,” (which Puck knows is shit because Amanda Harris actually should be the president of the Celibacy Club), but yeah, he spends a lot of time watching the gleek table.
So Puck notices when all of the sudden a new face shows up there. The new kid has short blonde hair and a wide mouth, and Puck thinks he recognizes him from the varsity baseball team. His chair is settled right up close to Kurt Hummel, their legs pressing against each other from ankle to thigh.
---
“Who’s that asshole that was sitting with you guys at lunch?” Puck asks Finn after the bell rings and they’re back at their lockers grabbing their History books so they can go learn about Christopher Columbus or some other jerk-off that lived five hundred years ago. Finn looks at him blankly and Puck realizes he’s going to have to spell it out. “The blonde guy?” he clarifies.
“Oh, you mean Sam,” Finn says, fishing around for a notebook. “He’s not an asshole. He’s actually really nice.”
That is not the kind of information Puck wants. “Sam who?” he prods. “And why is he sitting at your lunch table?”
Finn stills. “Sam Blackwell,” he says, a little reluctantly. “He’s a junior. On the baseball team.” And then, because Finn is about as subtle as a brick, he tries to distract Puck with, “We should get to class before the bell rings.”
Puck stops Finn with a hand on his shoulder. “Why is Sam Blackwell from the baseball team sitting at your lunch table?” he asks again. Calmly.
Finn’s eyes catch on his and then skitter away. “Look, man,” he says, “I just don’t want you to do anything… or say anything that you might regret later. I mean, it’s not like it’s a secret that Kurt’s…”
“Finn,” Puck says impatiently. “Spit it the fuck out.”
“Sam is Kurt’s boyfriend, okay?” Finn says. “And I don’t want you to hassle him about it. Either of them. They’re nice guys and they don’t deserve to take any crap over this.”
Puck slams his locker shut with a satisfying clang that echoes down the nearly empty hallway and ignores Finn’s shouts for him to come back.
---
The next morning, Puck is waiting in the parking lot when Kurt pulls up and gets out of his shiny, black SUV.
“Hey, Hummel,” Puck calls to get Kurt’s attention. Kurt looks up from going through his bag and his face registers surprise as he realizes that he’s surrounded by jocks, the dumpster six feet away.
When his eyes find Puck, they go wide and betrayed. Puck hasn’t had Kurt thrown in a dumpster in months and he honestly can’t say why he feels the need right now. He wonders how much Kurt’s designer outfit cost and he feels a little guilty, but not enough to let whatever this is go. “Here, give me your jacket,” Puck offers, like they’ve come some kind of weird full circle to the beginning of the year and Puck has taken Finn’s place as the jock ringleader who parcels out kindness in tiny increments before chucking people in the dumpster.
Puck tries not to look too closely at what that means about him, that maybe he wants to follow Finn’s progression to gaining Kurt’s friendship. Because Finn sits at the gleek table at lunch nowadays. Every few weeks, he wears a button down shirt -just a shade too light to be called red- that Kurt bought him for his birthday. He talks about music and when he slings an arm over Kurt’s shoulders at football games, Kurt smiles at him, bright as the stadium lights.
When Kurt glares at Puck, his eyes are bright with anger, not happiness, but it’s better than not being looked at at all. “Just do it,” Kurt bites, tossing his messenger bag to the ground.
“Give me your jacket,” Puck presses, refusing to be rebuffed.
Kurt stands his ground. “No,” he says, with clear emphasis, eyes locked with Puck in challenge. He crosses his arms over his chest like he expects Puck to try to forcefully rip his jacket off him. It makes Puck even more angry because he’d been considering doing exactly that.
“Fine!” Puck yells, and Kurt is the only one that doesn’t flinch. The other football players take hasty steps back. Evans and Landry share a quick glance, their grip on Kurt loosening like maybe they want to let him go. Puck grabs Kurt out from between them and hurls him into the dumpster himself. The other jocks slink off slowly and quietly, with none of the laughter that used to accompany this ritual, and Puck stands steaming in front of the dumpster alone, with the phantom feel of Kurt’s weight in his arms from the second before he dropped him into the trash.
There is the rustling sound of garbage bags pushing against one another as Kurt tries to disentangle himself and climb out of the dumpster and then Puck hears a muffled, “Ow!”
Immediately, he’s halfway in the dumpster himself, arms reaching blindly for Kurt. “What?” he asks. “What happened?” Puck feels the soft leather of Kurt’s jacket and pulls, dragging him out of the dumpster.
Overbalanced by Kurt’s weight, they topple backwards, Puck keeping Kurt on top of him to cushion Kurt’s landing. Puck’s head thuds loudly against the pavement and Kurt ends up sprawled halfway across his chest, knocking the air out of him, but he’s up on his knees beside Kurt in a second. “What happened?” Puck repeats, running his hands over Kurt’s arms, checking for hurt.
Kurt holds out his right hand. “I think I might need to go to the nurse,” he says, matter-of-factly. There’s a large piece of brown glass, probably from a broken beer bottle, stuck in the center of his palm. Blood is welling up around it, and Puck can tell it’s dug in deep from the way Kurt is biting his lip.
“Fuck,” Puck says. “Okay, okay, c’mon. I’ll walk you.” He stands quickly and takes a few stuttering steps to right his balance, dizzy.
“Are you okay?” Kurt asks, staring up at him from the ground. “It sounded like you hit your head when we fell.”
Puck wants to laugh, bitter, because he just threw Kurt in a dumpster and now Kurt’s on the ground with blood dripping down his wrist and he actually fucking cares that Puck maybe has a karmic-deserved bump on the back of his head. “I’m fine,” Puck says, reaching out to give Kurt a hand up.
It’s a little awkward because Kurt has to take Puck’s right hand with his unhurt left hand, but Puck finds that pulling Kurt up is infinitely easier than throwing him down.
“This is because of Sam and me, isn’t it?” Kurt asks quietly, cradling his hand as they walk into the school. “What, so it was okay for me to be gay as long as you didn’t have to see it?”
“It wasn’t… I mean, maybe it was a little bit about Sam, but…” Puck trails off, not knowing how to explain it, even to himself. Kurt doesn’t so much as look at him again until they get to the infirmary and Nurse Betty swarms over to them with gauze and alcohol wipes.
Puck and Nurse Betty have a pretty good relationship since he spends second period in the infirmary almost every day, feigning illness to get out of Algebra. While she’s examining Kurt, she gives him a smile and a preemptive ginger ale in the hope that it will settle his stomach enough that he won’t end up here for second period. Puck drinks the ginger ale a little guiltily and resolves to hide out in the gym to skip Algebra today.
“How did this happen?” the nurse asks, clucking over Kurt’s hand.
“We were in the parking lot,” Kurt says, before Puck can get a word in. “There was a bottle on the ground and I tripped.”
Puck opens him mouth, then closes it soundlessly, unsure why Kurt is willing to cover for him. He suspects Kurt isn’t going to be speaking to him for a while, so it may be a long time before he finds out.
---
Kurt’s hand is wrapped in white gauze and ace bandage for two days before he turns it into an accessory.
The third day, he lets people sign the bandage like a cast. Mercedes draws hearts on it with a dozen different colored gel pens. Tina donates a fingerless mesh glove. It’s less stark than the bright, clean white of the untouched bandage and people stop staring at Kurt’s hand and asking what happened. They glance over it the way they do his colorful scarves and odd hats, half disdainful and half fascinated.
Puck keeps staring until a week later, when the bandage comes off leaving only a healing scar.
---
Puck is good at denial.
When he and Quinn fell together at the beginning of the year, an empty six pack of Natty Light at his feet and Quinn matching each of his beers with a strawberry kiwi wine cooler, then had tipsy, I-hate-being-second-best sex, the moment they woke up they’d shoved it awkwardly behind them.
Quinn’s eyes were frightened and she’d slipped on her shirt and straightened her hair while Puck watched her blurrily in the mirror and thought this did not happen.
They pass each other in the halls now every day, and half the time Puck spends with Finn she’s hanging off his arm, but they never say a word about what happened, so it’s almost like it never did.
Watching Kurt held tight in the circle of Sam Blackwell’s arm makes something burn bright and hot in Puck’s chest. He rubs a fist over his sternum and vows to stop eating the sausage from the cafeteria line.
---
The last football game of the season comes on a cool November night and the stands are packed with people.
Puck doesn’t bother to look for his mom; she’s never made it to any of his games. He sees Kurt waving frantically at someone in the middle section and takes a moment to scan the crowd, looking curiously for Kurt’s parents. He imagines Kurt takes after his mom and searches for high, fragile cheekbones and pink lips, but he doesn’t see anyone that reminds him of Kurt and when he tries to follow Kurt’s line of sight, he finds that Kurt has turned to look at someone else.
Sam is in the stands next to Mercedes, Tina and Artie. They’ve each got a square of white posterboard with a brightly-colored letter painted on, spelling out KURT. Sam holds up a red K and Kurt smiles and waves at him. Puck scowls and turns away.
Three minutes before halftime, ‘Single Ladies’ comes on over the loudspeakers and Kurt kicks a perfect field goal to the lyrics, “If you liked it then you should’ve put a ring on it. Don’t be mad when you see that he want it. If you liked it then you should’ve put a ring on it.” Sam’s voice is cheering from the stands.
Denial snaps straight to acceptance. Puck can practically hear Beyonce singing, “This is your own damn fault, boy.”
---
The thing is, it’s not even that Puck really cares so much about the fact that he’s apparently discovered himself to be bisexual. He’s always done his own thing.
It’s just the fact that he likes Kurt Hummel that’s really fucking inconvenient.
---
Now that Puck is officially out of denial, he’s transitioned to sitting at the gleek table for lunch.
He tells people it’s because Finn is sitting there, but Finn, Rachel and Quinn are usually at one side of the table playing out some dramatic love triangle over French fries, which leaves Puck at the other side of the table across from Kurt and Sam, so it’s not a particularly compelling lie. Puck tells himself at least he’s not playing out a dramatic love triangle with Kurt and Sam, but that’s not a particularly good lie either. Although he does seem to be the only one aware of it.
Unlike the brittle, almost combative smiles Finn and Quinn share lately, Sam and Kurt seem entirely relaxed in each other’s company. Kurt is wearing Sam’s letterman jacket, the McKinley High ‘M’ right over his heart like a warning sign reading, “Mine.”
“Why are you even in this lunch period?” Puck asks Sam, annoyed. “Don’t the upperclassmen eat after the fourth bell?”
Sam laughs. “I have study hall this period.” He pulls out a green bathroom pass and smiles his wide, white-toothed smile, “I’ve convinced the monitor that I have some kind of embarrassing gastrointestinal issue, so I can usually skip out for at least twenty minutes.”
“Heartburn?” Kurt smirks.
“Absolutely,” Sam returns, a little too seriously. He picks up Kurt’s hand and presses a chaste kiss to the back of it.
Puck wonders if it’s the protection of Sam being an upperclassman and a jock or if people are just less prejudiced than he thought. Kurt and Sam sit close together and hold hands, sickening sweet, on top of the table. A few people laugh or point, whispering together like they’re being subtle, but no one throws a slushie on them or anything.
Sam moves his hand down to Kurt’s knee and Puck’s hand clenches tight around his own slushie. He imagines himself throwing the whole thing at Sam, cup and all. Kurt laughs at something Sam whispers in his ear, and Puck gulps his slushie down so fast he gives himself brain freeze.
---
Puck hasn’t been to a math class in two years and he doesn’t plan on showing up ever until he notices Kurt carrying around the same Algebra II textbook that’s collecting dust on the bottom of his locker.
An hour block of Sam-free time with Kurt is totally worth pretending to listen to some teacher talk about square roots and imaginary numbers. So Puck digs up his math book from beneath his gym clothes and football cleats and waits until Kurt walks past his locker. “Headed to Algebra?” Puck asks without waiting for an answer. “Me too. I’ll walk with you.”
Kurt nods automatically and then Puck’s words catch up with him. “Wait, wait,” Kurt says. “You’re not in my Algebra class. I’m in second period with Mr. Klusner.”
“Yeah,” Puck replies. “Me too.”
Kurt stares at him. “You are not in that class.”
“Well, no, I haven’t been in the class physically,” Puck explains. “But I am registered for it.” He holds up his textbook. “I’ve even got the book.”
Kurt eyes the book skeptically. The binding is broken, it’s got claw marks on it from the time Puck accidentally brought it home thinking it was his Earth Science book and the cat got at it, and there’s a dubious brown stain on the cover hiding the Alg of Algebra. Puck’s pretty sure the stain is just melted chocolate. He hopes.
“Well, you’ve got a book,” Kurt allows. “I guess you could probably convince people you’ve actually been using it considering how much damage it’s taken.”
Puck nods. That’s exactly what he plans to do.
He follows Kurt up the south staircase and around a corner and almost walks past the classroom when Kurt turns abruptly into room 209. Kurt gives him a look from inside the doorframe. “This is the classroom,” he says pointedly, but his mouth is amused.
Kurt moves over toward the row of desks alongside the windows and sits down in one. Puck slides into the empty seat beside Kurt even though it most likely belongs to someone else.
The bell rings at ten on the dot and the teacher looks up from grading papers at his desk and goes to stand beside the white board at the front of the room. Mr. Klusner calls roll distractedly, marking off absences, until he reaches Matthew Watson. “Did I miss anybody?” he asks, clearly not expecting a response.
Puck raises a hand. “You didn’t call my name.”
The teacher does a double-take and skims his eyes down the class list. “Puckerman,” he says hesitantly, looking confused. “I have your name crossed off here for some reason. Are you transferring in from a different class?”
“No,” Puck says, trying to look innocent. He can tell from Kurt’s sardonic expression that he’s fallen short of the mark.
Mr. Klusner looks more taken in. “Well, do you have the book?” he asks, perplexed. Puck blows a cloud of dust off his textbook and holds it up. “All right, then,” Klusner shrugs, marking off Puck’s name on the list and turning to the whiteboard. “Everyone open to page 112 and take a look at question 1.”
Puck shifts his desk a little closer to Kurt’s and opens his book.
---
It’s become routine for Kurt and Puck to walk to Algebra together now that Puck is actually going to class, but on Monday Kurt isn’t waiting for Puck to pick him up at his locker. Puck waits a few minutes in case Kurt got held behind in his English class. When Kurt still doesn’t show, he shrugs and moves off down the hall. Puck’s fingering his cell phone and thinking about texting Kurt to see if he’s home sick, when someone collides with him.
Kurt stumbles out of the bathroom straight into Puck’s chest and Puck’s arms come up around him automatically, steady. “Oh, sorry,” Kurt says, but he’s smiling dopily, like he didn’t really feel the impact. His obsessively perfect hair is sticking up in a cowlick in the back and one side of his shirt collar is flipped up. His lips are even redder than usual.
Puck feels his arms tighten around Kurt when the bathroom door swings open again and Sam steps out, fixing the line of his jacket.
“Did you just molest Hummel in the school bathroom?” Puck questions, incredulous.
Sam reaches up and smoothes down the cowlick in Kurt’s hair. “I didn’t do anything he didn’t ask me to,” Sam grins, like they’re sharing a joke and not at all like Puck’s about to punch him in the face.
It’s not just jealousy that curls low and hot in Puck’s stomach. It’s a horrible kind of fear.
He doesn’t understand how Sam can be so cavalier about this. Being gay in Lima is fucking dangerous. And Sam might have the protection of being an upperclassman and a jock, but Kurt is a sophomore in the Glee Club. Sam wears jeans and a letter jacket to school. Kurt wears Dolce and Gabbana.
If anyone is going to get hurt over this, it’s going to be Kurt.
In his mind’s eye, Puck sees Kurt with his arm in a sling, a split lip, large designer glasses hiding two black eyes, and he knows it’s more probable than improbable with the way Sam and Kurt are flaunting their relationship. It pisses him off and Puck shoves Kurt away from him, into the wall of lockers on their right instead of back into Sam, and storms off.
---
Puck is not in a good frame of mind when he breaks the lock on the storage shed beside the football field.
He bypasses the football supplies, patiently waiting for next season, and carefully selects a metal baseball bat. Then he walks back into school and toward Finn’s locker. A few people give him odd stares when they see him carrying the bat, but no one Puck can’t glare into submission. He grabs Finn by the arm with a cursory, “C’mere,” and drags him out to the parking lot.
“Dude, what’s going on?” Finn asks, off-balance.
“I need a lookout,” Puck says simply.
Finn winces, glancing around the empty lot. “What are you going to do?”
Puck hefts the bat in one hand and then points it at the car Finn is standing next to. “I’m going to fuck up Blackwell’s car,” he replies.
Finn takes an automatic step away from the car. “What? Why?” he cries.
Puck shrugs. He doesn’t really know how to describe the swell of anger in his chest. It’s about 5% irritation, 25% jealousy and 70% this-is-what-could-happen-to-Kurt’s-face-or-his-leg-or-whatever-if-you-keep-flaunting-him-around-you-jackass.
“Look, man,” Finn hesitates. “I know you’re having some issues with the whole Sam and Kurt thing, but this is kind of crazy. I don’t think…”
“You don’t even have to do anything,” Puck interrupts. “Just keep a lookout in case anyone comes outside.” Sam’s car is a pretty old model. It doesn’t look like any alarms will start blaring when Puck hits it.
“Sam’s a nice guy and Kurt likes him…” Finn tries, but it’s exactly the wrong thing to say to Puck right now.
“I’m your best friend,” Puck cuts him off, and maybe it’s a shit card to play in this situation, to make Finn do something he doesn’t want to, something that might end up hurting Kurt, but it’s all Puck’s got to play right now. And the best friend card is like an Ace, nothing higher.
Finn gives him the puppydog-eyed look that probably made Rachel start following him around, but Puck is fucking resolute. “Watch the door,” he says, setting his stance and pulling the bat back behind his shoulders. Puck swings for the fence and Sam’s right taillight doesn’t stand a chance. It breaks with a satisfying crunch. Puck rights himself and does the same to the left light, which splinters apart even more spectacularly.
He’s thinking about leaving it at that, when the image of Kurt’s possible-probable split lip and blackened eyes flashes through his head and, before he even consciously realizes he’s doing it, Puck has shattered the rear window. After the smash of impact and the tinkle of broken glass, the silence echoes.
“Are you…done?” Finn asks quietly.
Puck steps away from the shower of pale glass, breathing hard. Pieces of smashed red taillight litter the ground like a broken heart.
---
Puck spends the rest of the day not thinking about what he’s done. He skips lunch.
When the final bell rings out, he doesn’t run outside so he can surreptitiously watch Sam’s reaction. Puck goes to Glee like everything is normal, but his chest tightens when Kurt doesn’t show up. It throws off his singing and Finn is all fucked up from earlier too, so after a lecture from Rachel and an encouraging sentence from Mr. Schue, they break early.
Kurt is waiting for Puck at his car.
“Where were you at lunch today?” Kurt asks and Puck falters for a second because he hasn’t thought out a plausible lie. Beside him, Finn goes taut as a wire.
“Where were you at lunch today?” Kurt asks again. It sounds like an innocuous question, but his voice holds an undertone that makes Puck wary, like the question Kurt’s asking on the surface isn’t his real question. There’s a furious light in Kurt’s eyes that makes Puck suddenly grasp, Oh shit, he knows.
The realization doesn’t come in time to save Puck from the wicked swing of Kurt’s ever-present messenger bag. It hits him right across the face and Puck goes down against the asphalt like a ton of bricks. Jesus Christ. Kurt must have the insane thirty pound Physics textbook he totes to fourth period in the bag and he’s clearly not been taking it home just for show. Puck wonders what chapter taught Kurt about force and velocity and what the fuck ever else you need to know to completely decimate a football player with one swing.
Or maybe Sam’s been giving him batting practice. Puck imagines Sam pressing up behind Kurt, their hands overlapping on the grip of the bat, and he smiles up at Kurt through the trickle of blood in the corner of his mouth. Right at that moment, he could honestly say he’s not even sorry.
Kurt stares at him, disgusted, and Puck can tell that he’s not sorry either, not at all sorry to see Puck on the ground with blood on his face. “Katie Arbor saw you do it,” he spits. “She was taking a half day so she could get to a dentist appointment and she saw you in the parking lot putting a bat through Sam’s window.”
He rounds on Finn, standing awkward and upset off to the side. “And you just stood there and watched him do it?” Kurt yells. Puck can see the threat of tears in his eyes, the wet whirl of anger and hurt, because Kurt was sure about Finn; he was sure that Finn was his friend. Puck’s emotions spin wildly and suddenly he is sorry, he’s so sorry, but he can’t say it.
Kurt looks between Finn and Puck like he can’t tell which of them is more worthy of his contempt. He scrubs a hand across his eyes and leaves, walking quickly toward the baseball diamond, repelled.
Puck waits on the ground for a moment for Finn to offer him a hand up, but Finn is silent and still, so Puck levers himself up alone. “You’re a shit lookout,” he tells Finn.
---
Kurt doesn’t even look at him for two whole weeks.
Puck wishes he knew what happened to his previously awesome denial skills so he could tell himself it doesn’t sting.
---
Fifteen days of Puck ghosting along beside Kurt, who refuses to acknowledge his presence, ends when Kurt stops Puck halfway to Algebra and says, “Look. I’m not sure how it happened, but in all honesty, up until two weeks ago, I actually considered you one of my better friends.”
Puck opens his mouth to say something, but Kurt keeps talking. “And while I am still incredibly pissed” -he punctuates with a glare- “about that stunt you pulled, I would sort of hate to lose that. And even though you haven’t said that you’re sorry” -another pointed glare- “the fact that you keep silently following me around like a beaten dog indicates to me that you might be.”
“I…might be,” Puck forces out, because he’s never been good at apologies, but he doesn’t think he can take another day of Kurt’s silent treatment either.
“Fine,” Kurt says, and Puck has a moment of glorious hope that that’s where this will end. They’ll behave like normal guys who fight and then nod at each other in some vague semblance of apology and never, ever speak of it again. Then Kurt continues, “But this weird thing between you and Sam can’t keep going on. I don’t really understand why you’re angry with Sam and not with me. It’s not like he turned me gay or something.”
Puck wants to say, it’s not about the gay thing. He hates Sam personally, for having something that Puck wants.
Kurt grabs Puck’s wrist and turns them in the opposite direction of Algebra class. “Where are we going?” Puck asks, surprised, because he’s discovered that Kurt is one of those smart kids who never skips class even though he’d probably still be able to maintain straight A’s.
Kurt doesn’t reply, just drags Puck down the hall and into an empty room that’s used for Shop class. Sam is sitting at one of the worktables fiddling with a drill press.
“What is this, some kind of intervention?” Puck asks, annoyed. Thank God at least they didn’t decide to have an actual counseling session with Ms. Pillsbury and her table of pamphlets. Puck already has one titled Divorce: Why Your Parents Stopped Loving You and another that reads When Being A Pool Boy Becomes Statutory Rape, which he suspects was designed and printed for him specially. He doesn’t need So You’re Bisexual and Your Gay Crush Already Has A Boyfriend: A Guide.
His only comfort in this shit situation is that Sam looks as uncomfortable as he does.
“Pretty much,” Kurt replies, picking at his designer scarf. He folds his hands together. “All right,” Kurt says to Puck. “Puck, you obviously have an issue with Sam, as evidenced by you being a complete jerk and smashing up his car.” Kurt turns to Sam, who looks pretty pissed to even be in the same room with Puck. Puck wonders how much the car repairs are going to run him. “Sam, you probably have some issues about the fact that Puck smashed up your car. I clearly haven’t been a mitigating factor, so I’m just going to let you two talk this out alone.”
Before Puck can process that last sentence, Kurt has practically run out of the room and Puck hears the click of a lock behind him. “How the hell does Kurt have the keys to this classroom?” Puck wonders aloud, impressed.
“Please,” Sam scoffs, not looking at Puck, “This is Kurt’s fifth period class and he’s practically Mr. Stanford’s TA.”
A prickly silence falls and Puck alternates between glaring at Sam, who refuses to look up at him, and a shoddily-made birdhouse probably fashioned by an awkward freshman who wanted to impress girls by telling them he took Shop. Twenty minutes later, the door is still locked and Puck figures he’s not getting out of here without at least some attempt at conversation with Sam, so he breaks the strained silence with, “So, I fucked up your car.”
Sam’s hand twitches toward a hammer and Puck thinks that maybe Kurt made a tactical error by choosing a room full of sharp, heavy objects for Puck and Sam to have their throwdown in. “Yeah. And I didn’t fucking appreciate it,” Sam replies tightly. “Want to tell me why the hell you did it?”
Puck kind of does. Well, not the whole thing about how he’s bisexual and his gay crush already has a boyfriend, who happens to be Sam, but the part about Lima being a dangerous place to be gay and how Kurt’s going to end up with black eyes and mental scars and it’s going to be Sam’s fault.
“We aren’t in San Francisco or one of those states where gay couples can get married,” Puck says heatedly, the wash of anger he felt with the bat in his hands rushing back through him. “We’re in motherfucking Lima, Ohio and I’m not about to let Kurt get hurt because you can’t keep it in your pants.”
Sam stares. “Are you saying smashing up my car was your repressed jock way of telling me to cut down on the PDAs with Kurt?”
Puck doesn’t really know how to explain things any better and suddenly he doesn’t want to go along with this stupid intervention thing anymore. He glances around the classroom. There’s a backsaw on one of the tables he could probably use to get the door open…
“Hey,” Sam says, close, and Puck jumps a little when he feels a hand on his shoulder. “Look, I understand where you’re coming from. You think I haven’t gotten prank calls from homophobic assholes or had someone piss in my gym shoes? I have. And Kurt has. And it sucks. It scares the crap out of me that things might escalate. But I’m not ashamed of liking Kurt and I’m not going to act like I am.”
Puck is about to say, I don’t want you to be ashamed, I just want you to be careful, but a key clicks in the lock and Kurt swings the classroom door open looking apprehensive.
Puck figures they’ve cleared the air enough for one day. “We’re cool,” Puck tells Kurt and Sam nods beside him.
---
Spring brings baseball season and Kurt drags Mercedes and Tina to all the home games to watch Sam play. Puck trails along after them, proclaiming an interest in the sport. Mercedes gives him a well-honed bitch, please look but he doesn’t think she’s figured out his true motivations.
There are only two stands of metal bleachers set into the grass alongside the baseball diamond. Most of the parents who can make it to five o’clock games bring folding lawn chairs or blankets, and the kids from school bunch together on the bleachers. Puck and the others always climb to the top row.
During his first at bat, Sam grounds out to second base and Puck hides his smile in a cough. Kurt claps anyway and calls out, “You’ll get the next one!” supportively. Sam gives him a wave and a smile and walks back behind the wire caging with the rest of the varsity team, his hardwood bat perched easily on one shoulder.
“So I was watching the Cleveland v. Atlanta game last night on TV and Gregg pitched a-- wait, no,” Kurt says, reaching into his messenger bag and flipping open a notebook full of names and numbers, like he’s reviewing for a test. “Wood pitches for the Indians. Gregg pitches for the Cubs.”
“Hold up,” Mercedes says, pointing at the notebook. “You’re actively learning about baseball for this guy?”
“Y-You don’t even know the rules for f-football, and you’re on the team,” Tina puts in skeptically.
Kurt tosses his head carelessly. “All I have to do is kick the ball through the giant fork at the end of the field. I don’t need to know the rest of the rules.”
“The ‘giant fork’ is also called a goalpost, Hummel,” Puck says, pained on behalf of the sport.
Kurt doesn’t deign to respond. He turns to grab his bottled water off the bleacher below them and accidently dislodges his notebook from its place on his knees. A few squares of colored paper slip out from between the pages. Kurt tries to gather them up without anyone seeing, but Mercedes is quicker. “Baseball cards?” she shrieks, holding up Grady Sizemore accusingly. “You bought baseball cards? How serious is this?”
“Careful!” Kurt snaps, snatching the card back. “That’s a rookie.”
“Oh my God,” Mercedes says. Tina just stares, shaking her head in disbelief.
On the field, Sam’s bat makes a loud crack! and the ball sails into left field, dropping just short of the fence. Sam rounds the bases, dust puffing up behind his cleats, and slides into third base like a pro. Kurt stands up to cheer. Puck mimes clapping with his hands, teeth clenched. He can’t stop wondering whether Sam’s gotten to third base with Kurt yet.
Part 2