Streetlight People 3, part 2/2
Part one.
Part two.
Part three, 1/2. (Read this one first! ♥)
*
While Kurt was showering, Puck opened all of the windows, trying to rid the apartment of its stale foreign smell. Then he changed Kurt’s sheets. The linen closet had been filled with every shade of bedding, and after debating for a long time, he picked out a simple white set with laced edges-no sense in any extraneous colors, anything that might distract them. The sheets were spotless on Kurt’s mattress, a Queen that looked enormous after Puck’s years on the single. He was just smoothing out the last corner when he heard Kurt’s voice behind him, a sound like a light in a dark room.
“Puck.”
He looked up. Kurt stood in the doorway, completely naked. Puck swallowed as he examined him-the beautiful lines of his body, his tapered waistline, hipbones and ribs making soft dips and peaks below a smooth plane of skin. He made no move to cover himself, just offered what was his. Damp hair and nervous hands, a pale constellation of scars on his knees.
“Hi,” said Kurt simply.
“Hi.” Puck’s pulse fluttered as he crossed the room and pulled Kurt against him. He breathed in the fresh scent of his hair, cradled Kurt’s warm flesh in his palms, so full and present. Kurt pressed his lips softly to Puck’s, too tense to kiss him.
“Am I okay?” he asked, shy.
“You’re beautiful,” said Puck. “You’re perfect.”
He guided Kurt to the bed. Kurt tugged Puck’s shirt over his head as they moved, pushed his jeans down over the muscular planes of his thighs. He was fully divested of clothing by the time he rolled into the sheets with Kurt on top of him, kissing him from chest to chin. Kurt paused at the tattoo on Puck’s ribcage, running one finger along the indecipherable green calligraphy. “What does it say?”
“No clue, but the gist of it is, ‘It’s Saint Patrick’s Day and I just drank my weight in Guinness,’” said Puck. “Finn has a matching one on his ass. We got them the same night Britt and Santana got the hearts done on their shoulders, but they were sober at the time, so theirs came out fine.”
Kurt laughed, still stroking the wobbly letters. “You and Finn make such great friends. This is a sweet gesture.”
“Sweet gesture, horrible fucking tattoo,” said Puck. He mouthed the smooth space at the base of Kurt’s throat, the crescent-shaped scars between his clavicles. Just looking at them hurt him, but he had to ask: “So. Killer goldfish? Emergency laryngotomy?”
“Quite the opposite of a laryngotomy, in fact,” said Kurt. “Erotic asphyxiation sans the erotica. On that note, if you ever try to stop me from breathing, I will stop you from having testicles.”
“Fair enough,” said Puck.
“Good man.” Kurt kept his voice light, but his body was a battlefield. The space between them was empty and electric and bitter as a bad beer. Puck palmed the lithe expanse of Kurt’s back, trying to polish out its history of damages, and Kurt responded by tangling a hand in his hair and reaching between Puck’s legs. They had only been touching like that for a few minutes before Kurt slipped into his business etiquette, moving from Point A to Point B with dutiful determination. Puck had to seize his busy fingers to still them.
“Don’t work when you’re around me,” he said. “I’m not one of your customers.”
Kurt’s mask finally slipped. He looked suddenly frightened. “I’m sorry, but this is how-”
“Shh.” Puck took hold of Kurt’s hips and eased him onto his back against the mattress, waiting until he was comfortably settled before parting his legs and climbing on top of him. Kurt’s breath caught, then started up again, a few beats faster this time. Puck waited for his taut arms to slacken, admiring the darkness of his hair against the pearl-white sheets. “Is this okay?”
“Yes,” said Kurt.
He didn’t want Kurt with the same type of intensity he’d possessed the night Santana set them up, or even the raw lust of that Saturday morning, with Kurt grinding against him in the kitchen. This was a tender hunger, an urgency to show Kurt what he was missing when he had sex with men who didn’t love him. He sucked at the soft skin below Kurt’s ear, eliciting a shiver from him.
“That feels good,” said Kurt. He sounded surprised.
“Just wait,” said Puck, sitting up. “Do you have-?”
“Everything’s in my bedside table.”
Puck opened the drawer, sifting around for the proper items. He ended up with a bottle of warming lubricant and a condom. Kurt caught his hand as he moved to open the contraceptive.
“I get a full screening done a couple of times a year,” said Kurt. His cheeks were flushed. “I was clean when I went in a few weeks ago, and I never have unprotected-not that I’ve even slept with anyone since then. Since I met you again, really. So if you want to-I mean, if you’re not…”
He wasn’t, and he was moved by the implicit mutual trust of the proposal. Puck felt himself grinning as he lowered himself to kiss Kurt again. Kurt reached once more between his legs to touch him, and it was nothing like it had been before-he was gentler now, tentative and teasing, his grip barely a whisper against Puck’s receptive erection. Puck thrust into his palm. “Mmm. Kurt.”
“How is-well, I really feel like I shouldn’t have to ask about my technique at this point in my life.”
“Keep it up,” Puck affirmed. “I know I’m going to.” He uncapped the lube and poured some onto his fingers, shifted a little so he could get his hand between their bodies. This new business of asking repeatedly for permission was both thrilling and terrifying. “Can I?”
“Go on.”
Puck pushed. It was harder to ease inside than he’d anticipated-Kurt’s brows furrowed in focus, not quite a wince. Puck scissored his fingers in gentle shifts, monitoring Kurt’s face carefully for reaction. The tension showed in the stiff lines of his mouth, the hand that tightened minutely on Puck’s forearm. “Do you want me to stop?”
“No,” said Kurt at once, hauling him closer. He traced the firm lines of Puck’s abdomen, thumbed one nipple to a hard peak. “Keep going, please.”
Puck nodded and pressed his fingers deeper. Kurt was alive around him, intricate and unknown. Puck slickened his erection with the excess lubricant and was reaching for the tube again when Kurt picked it up, squeezed some into his own palm, and blew gently to diffuse its warmth. When he wrapped his hand around Puck again, it was all pressure and smooth heat. Puck had to concentrate hard to hold himself back. The lust tingled all the way up his spine.
“‘Would you like to have a dance?’” Kurt sang, stroking him. “‘The rhythm to the music’s hot. Maybe if we could talk it over here?’”
“‘Hot, close, why not?’” Puck paused to breathe. “You always serenade your lovers at inopportune times?”
“Only if they strike me as like-minded Broadway snobs.”
“Well, thanks, then. I think.” He extricated Kurt’s hand from between his legs and positioned himself at his entrance, brushing his bangs aside so he could stare directly into his eyes. He was nervous. His heartbeat was so loud he swore Kurt could hear it. “Are you, um-ready?”
Kurt stopped smiling and moistened his lips. His chest heaved. “For the first time in my life, I think I can say ‘yes’ and mean it,” he said.
The admission was so real that Puck almost pulled back right then. The potential for disaster was too great. But Puck had been running away from relationships for as long as Kurt had been running into them, and it had to be some kind of sign that they were finally meeting somewhere in the middle. Ten years of not being ready. Ten years of biding their time. Puck waited until his arms had stopped shaking-then, moving with infinite care, he eased himself inside Kurt.
“Puck,” Kurt whimpered. He shifted to accommodate him, his head falling back against the pillow to expose the tempting line of his throat. His body was sinuous and compliant, delectably hot. Puck kissed trails down his neck. Kurt’s hands were trembling on his shoulders.
“Are you okay?” Puck panted.
“I’m fine. It’s just so different. I mean, it’s not, but-I think I’m scared.” Kurt tried to smile. “That doesn’t make any sense at all, does it?”
“It makes perfect sense.” Puck had only been this tense during a sexual encounter twice before: once during his first time with Santana, and once when he and Quinn were stumbling drunk into the guest bedroom, set on each other with humorless intent. In spite of the familiar trepidation, this wasn’t comparable to either of those times. This was deeper and more critical. It threatened to scar. Only Puck’s resolution to satisfy Kurt had trumped his fear of disappointing him, and he pressed further into Kurt at a practiced, deliberate angle, making him cry out. Don’t screw this one up, Puckerman, he told himself, pausing for Kurt’s approval. Don’t you dare screw this up.
“Puck!” Kurt arched his hips against him, his lips flushed with color. He twisted handfuls of the sheet between his quivering fingers. “Oh, Puck. Please.”
Puck gripped the headboard to steady himself and began moving in and out of Kurt at a slow, thorough pace. Kurt pushed hard to meet Puck’s strokes, the back of one hand pressed against his mouth to stifle his gasps. His thighs tightened briefly around Puck’s waist, then slackened. His chest quavered with caged air.
“Kurt, don’t do that,” Puck panted, slowing down again. “Keep breathing, okay?”
Kurt nodded and let out a slow, quiet lungful. His eyes were faraway, and his silence was disconcerting. Puck could still read the consent in his spine, the throb of his hips against his own-but he was offering nothing vocal in terms of encouragement. Puck sucked Kurt’s lower lip between his teeth, trying to coax out an affirmative response.
“Still with me?” he asked, running kisses across his jaw. “Come on, Kurt. Come back.”
There was an old three-inch wound on Kurt’s left side, scoring him from breastbone to bellybutton. What was the story behind this one? Another broken glass of orange juice, a fall down the stairs? Puck traced the scar tissue with one fingertip and bit back the recurring wave of desperation that followed. This didn’t feel right. He climbed onto his elbows to pull away. Then the soft soles of Kurt’s feet inched up to rest against Puck’s calves, holding him in place.
“Haunted hayride last October,” said Kurt, panting. “The headless horseman scared me so badly that I fell out of the wagon. I had to get stitches. Artie laughed until he cried.”
Puck felt a nervous chuckle escape him. Relief and love coursed through him; he was helpless to do anything but lean forward to press his shaking mouth back against Kurt’s.
“It’s not all bad,” Kurt whispered, after they had broken apart. “Don’t think that for one second. I have my friends, I have a warm place to sleep, I have a beating heart and a whole closet full of Prada. And just when I thought that nothing was going to hold even that together for me, I found you. Or you found me. I’m sorry for the false start; I was afraid for a second, there. Let’s finish what we started here, okay?”
Puck couldn’t quite get himself together to speak. He nodded instead.
“Okay,” said Kurt, with finality.
He replaced his hands on Puck’s hips and set a smooth, easy pace. It was sweet and full, and Kurt’s curves arched against his in all the right places, setting old breaks that Puck never thought would heal. He thrust deep into Kurt. Kurt moaned back in response, full-voiced, deliciously responsive. His nails raked up and down Puck’s ribcage and skipped the illegible tattoo every time. Puck kept his own fingers away from the hayride scar, threaded them into Kurt’s, instead. Their bodies weren’t battlefields; they were monuments. Puck prayed into the crook of Kurt’s neck, paying twenty-seven years of respects. Thank you for this evening. Thank you for this moment.
Kurt cried out when he came. Puck followed suit while his name was still trembling on Kurt’s lips, and coming back down was like a terrifying fall into familiar arms. He didn’t know how long he lay like that, shaking uselessly against Kurt’s chest with God knew what running through his head. Kurt just stroked his face and shushed him and murmured something. “I love you,” he was saying, when words finally began making sense again. “I love you, Noah Puckerman.”
Puck mouthed it back into Kurt’s shoulder, deliberate enough for Kurt to feel it, then clambered around and tried to swallow. He was still getting little aftershocks. Kurt watched him struggle to sit up, his eyes hazy and half-lidded.
“I didn’t know it could be like that,” Kurt said, his voice quiet. “It was never like that before. All this time, and I had-I had no idea.”
“Anything can happen,” said Puck, quoting their first date, but the philosophy needed amendment now: “We can be anything.”
“You’re right,” said Kurt, swiping his bangs out of his eyes. “So where do we start?”
“Let’s start by being together,” said Puck.
There was a moment of silence in which neither of them remembered how to speak. Then Kurt broke into a smile and slid back down in sheets to kiss him. The white linens set the color off in his cheeks and lips, and his tongue was firm between Puck’s teeth, poised with promises. “Okay,” he whispered, hot against Puck’s mouth.
“Okay,” Puck repeated. And, tonight, it really was. “Okay.”
*
“Sorry I made you gay,” said Santana.
Puck glanced around instinctively for assistance from Kurt, but he must’ve stepped off to use the restroom or something-Puck and Santana were alone in the booth, both of them on their second milkshakes, a plate of maraschino cherries on the table between them. Hitting up the diner had apparently been one of Santana and Kurt’s pre-work ceremonies, because neither of them had consulted Puck before dragging him along for bacon cheeseburgers and onion rings. Not that Puck was complaining. But it was strange being out with Santana, and it was strange being out with Kurt. Especially when it spawned conversations like this one.
“Where the hell did you get that idea?” Puck asked, after a long sip of his shake.
“I’m not stupid, Puck, I know how this sounds,” said Santana. “Nature versus nurture or whatever. Sexuality is supposed to be something you’re born with, right?”
“Right,” said Puck. “So…”
“So, I was just thinking about the past few days, and our history together. And…god, I think I did something to you.” She began ticking points off her fingers: “This whole thing with Kurt started because I got you two to almost sleep with each other, right? Then I yelled at you in a pre-menstrual rage, which was almost enough to turn me off of women, too.”
“What?” said Puck.
“I was the first girl you slept with,” Santana continued, ignoring him. “As far as I know, I was the last girl you slept with, too. I don’t know how many there were in between…”
“Thirty-one.”
Santana finally paused. “What?”
He choked on an onion ring. Had he really said that out loud? “I said ‘go on.’”
“I don’t know how many there were in between, but the last time we had sex, it was terrible.”
Oh, right, the night that he had been ‘unable to make change.’ He had vague memories of that evening. Time had been moving way too slowly, and the black polka dots on Santana’s bra had looked like a cattle grid. From the cow’s perspective. “To be fair, we were both blazed.”
“Right,” said Santana. “Do you know how hard it is to have bad sex when you’re high?”’
She had a point. He shrugged. “At least half of that was my fault, though.”
“Probably less than half. I mean, five inches is impressive flaccid, but it hardly accounts for-”
“Anyway,” said Puck.
“Anyway,” she echoed, pulling a knotted cherry stem from between her lips, “I’m trying to tell you that I know how I am. I get into these ugly places, and then I poison the things around me, especially when I feel entitled to something that I’m not going to get. I wish you well, Puck. I do. But-I’m so sorry if I did anything to make you want to change just to avoid me. Or to avoid becoming me.”
They never had talks like this anymore. Puck was moved by her articulacy, the honesty in her eyes. She was so beautiful. He squeezed her hand. “Santana, I’ve got more history with you than with anyone else in the world,” he said. “If you ‘turned me gay,’ it wasn’t because I don’t love every single inch of you, it was because you’re too much woman for me to handle. Don’t ever change.”
“I don’t think I could,” Santana confessed.
“Good,” said Puck. He tried to kiss her on the lips, grimaced, and pulled another cherry stem out of her mouth. This one had been knotted three times in perfect intervals. “Wow, what the fuck. Someday a much more deserving guy is really going to appreciate that tongue of yours.”
Santana looked down. Her lashes were already curled and darkened for work; he almost didn’t catch the flicker of grief in her eyes. “Don’t count on it. I know I don’t.”
“All paid up,” Kurt announced, returning to the table with a receipt. “I tipped forty percent because I think we accidentally taught that little boy beside us that 'docking' doesn’t always mean ships.” He paused when he saw Santana’s expression. “Santana? Are you okay?”
She took a deep breath and smiled up at him. “Am I okay,” she repeated, flinging open her coat to reveal her sculpted body, already decked out in scanty work attire. “Kurt, look closely. Two cheeseburgers and a boatload of onion rings later, and I am still more than okay; I am fuckin’ smoking. The only thing faster than Puck in bed is my metabolism.”
“I hope you roll over wrong one day while you’re sleeping and suffocate in your own cleavage,” said Puck.
Kurt winced and stepped in front of the shocked seven-year-old in the next booth over. “I should’ve tipped fifty percent.”
“So this is where the real money’s at,” said Santana, gathering her keys and purse. “Hey, let’s go, okay? Half an hour until show time.”
She pushed past them on a current of body glitter and feigned indifference, making a young busboy gawk and drop an entire tub of plastic glasses. Puck watched the cups roll in every direction and felt helpless for no reason at all. He had Kurt on his arm now, sure, but where did that leave Santana? He had grown up with her. He and Kurt loved her, but they weren’t always going to be there to assuage the desolation of her night shifts. She was beginning to apologize for who she was. She would dance alone in a dusty spotlight for the rest of life unless someone reminded her about the sun.
Kurt, sensing his distress, dropped Puck a quick kiss. Even at eight-thirty in the evening, it tasted like daylight. “Don’t worry,” he said. “By tomorrow morning, she will be happily reunited with her tattoo twin.”
“And what happens until then?” said Puck. “We find her a man to keep her occupied?”
“Three men,” said Kurt, holding up his fingers. “Samuel Adams, Jack Daniels, and Jim Beam.”
Puck couldn’t repress his smile. “What, Captain Morgan isn’t invited?”
Kurt purred and gave his hips a raunchy little thrust. “No way, I’d rather have a big captain in me,” he declared, just as the music stopped and plunged the diner into abrupt silence. “Want to rob my vessel, Private Stock?”
They ended up leaving a sixty percent tip.
*
He hadn’t expected her flight to arrive that evening, and he definitely didn’t realize that she had the presence of mind to find her own ride from the airport. But there she was at ten o’ clock, pushing hard on the club’s pull doors, her blonde hair sparkling under the neon lights of the sign outside. Puck gaped when he saw her, then ran outside to grab her by the elbow and hurry her down the hallway that led to the champagne room.
“Brittany!” he said, trying to block her view to the stage. “What are you doing here?”
“I caught an earlier flight,” she explained, smiling.
“Well, I figured as much, but-what are you doing here? At the club?”
Brittany’s eyes grew distant, and she threaded a lock of hair between her fingers. “I’m not sure? I stopped at a coffee shop to get a scone, and I started talking with the guy next to me. I told him I was visiting Santana Lopez. He gave me a weird look and said he was, too, and then he drove me here. So here I am! And there he is. Hi, Rick!” She wriggled her fingers at a man in a baseball cap by the bar, who waved and made a lewd gesture with his tongue. “He keeps doing that. I wonder if he was raised by lizards.”
“Oh, Brittany,” said Puck. He really didn’t know what else to say.
“So is Santana here?” asked Brittany, craning to look over his shoulder.
Puck blocked her few with a strange, flailing sidestep and peeked back at the stage. Santana had just invited an inebriated Kurt to share her pole, and the two of them were laughing and performing an old glee routine that Puck recognized as an R-rated version of “Last Name.” They were definitely doing more grinding and pelvic thrusts than they had at invitationals. The horrible porno-beat of the techno wasn’t helping much, either.
“She’s here, but the circumstances are a little-sensitive,” said Puck. “It might be better for you to wait to meet up with her tomorrow.”
Brittany’s smile trembled at the corners. “She doesn’t want to see me?”
“No, no, it’s not that! It’s just that she-”
The whole discussion was rendered pointless by a clamor on the stage. Santana had seen Brittany and botched a dance step; she would’ve taken a header into a nearby table if Kurt hadn’t caught the back of her bra. Santana readjusted her top and stepped down, her face red, torn between humiliation and delight. Kurt raised his hands and shot Puck a what the hell look. Puck replied with a give me a break, like I have any control over Brittany, and by the way your cowlick is sticking up look. He didn’t know what was weirder-the fact that Kurt actually jumped and smoothed his hair, or that the clubbers in the front row were yelling at him to keep dancing.
Santana made her way over in a slow, stalling saunter, trying without much success to cover her sequined bra. “Brittany!” she said, offering a nervous hand.
Brittany ignored the aloof gesture and threw her arms around Santana’s neck, making Santana laugh and stagger for balance. “I’ve missed you so much!” Brittany exclaimed, kissing her soundly on her glossed lips. “Why did you change your number? I used to call it like every night to see if you’d changed it back, but the guy who has your number now put me on his block list!”
“I’m sorry,” said Santana. “I was just in such a bad place-”
“Fresno?”
“No. What? No.”
“That’s where I was living last year, I mean,” said Brittany. “Tons of murder. Bad pollution. And it made my hair get frizzy.”
“Nooo,” Santana said again with deep sympathy, stroking her fingers through Brittany’s curls. She paused with her hand there for a moment, admiring Brittany’s radiance, the way her skin seemed to shimmer with health. “Not that I’m not thrilled as hell to see you, but-why are you here?”
“Puck and Kurt called me to see if I could come to the reunion a few days early, so we could catch up.”
Santana arched an eyebrow at Puck. “Oh?”
“Yeah, the plan was for Thursday morning, when you were free,” said Puck, defending himself.
“I got excited and didn’t want to wait,” Brittany confessed. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s totally okay,” said Santana, but she looked at Puck when she said it. Her false lashes flickered as she blinked back tears, and she wiped her eye with the tip of one manicured finger, careful not to disturb her makeup. She glanced down at herself and laughed without humor. “I’m humiliated. You were never supposed to see me like this. You’re the sanest thing that ever happened to me, Britt; I wanted you to at least be proud of me the next time we saw each other.”
“But I am proud of you!” said Brittany. “I couldn’t walk in those shoes if I tried! And it’s okay, Santana, I’m not judging. I’m a stripper, too.”
Both Puck and Santana froze. Fuck, thought Puck, afraid to look at Santana’s face. Not Brittany, too. Yes, the girl had gotten a six on her ACTs, and she had been under the impression that “blue” was a food until shortly after her nineteenth birthday, but she had a ready smile and great heart. Possibly the greatest. The idea of her working a crowd in a smoky room made Puck feel sick to his stomach, and he wasn’t even her best friend.
“What?” Santana said finally, her voice dark. “You-what?”
Brittany nodded, her hair bouncing on her shoulders. “Yup!”
“God, no. Please, God!”
“Well, only on weekends,” Brittany amended, startled by her reaction. “Mondays through Fridays, I answer phones at an animal shelter.”
Santana was scrubbing at her eyes again, this time with no regard at all to her makeup. She was trying and failing to contain her sobs. “Damn it, Brittany! If you’ve got another job, why don’t you quit?”
“Well, I don’t get paid for Saturday and Sunday. I’m a volunteer. But I really like what I do, Santana; I don’t want to quit! I get to clean rooms and deliver flowers and read to the children. Oh! This one time, I helped with a garage sale, and we earned enough to hire a magician for-”
“Wait,” Puck interrupted. “What kind of kinky shit are you doing, anyway? Where is it that you work?”
“The children’s hospital in Madera,” said Brittany.
For one perplexed moment, Santana simply gaped. Then she seized Brittany’s shoulders and shook her hard enough to make her earrings jingle. “I thought you said you were a stripper!” she shouted.
“I am!” said Brittany, staring at her like she’d gone insane. “I’m a candy stripper!”
Oh.
“Oh,” said Santana, looking blank.
In the long break in conversation that followed, Puck scratched his ear and glanced back up at the stage. Kurt was whooping and gyrating against the pole, swinging his jeans over head, his blue-and-white-striped knee-highs causing a strange reaction inside the front Puck’s pants. Either the men in the crowd had shitty eyesight and were really into butch chicks, or they were too boozed up to care. Maybe a combination of both.
“Candy striper,” said Santana was saying.
“That’s what I said,” said Brittany.
“No. No. Striper.”
“Stripper,” Brittany repeated. “Right.”
“Fuck me sideways,” said Santana, with simple wonder. Then she yanked Brittany against her and squeezed with uninhibited affection, no longer conscious of her sparse attire. Her tears had tracked clean trails in the glitter. “Thank god you’re you,” she managed, with fierce affection. “I fucking love you, Britt. I love you so fucking much.”
“I love you more,” said Brittany. She seemed puzzled by the intensity of Santana’s response, but she clung back hard, her own eyes welling up. “Don’t stop talking to me again, okay? I don’t ever want to have to miss you again.”
Santana laughed. “Are you kidding? Now you’ll never be able to get rid of me!”
They stood like that for a long time, just holding each other a fraction too tight. Puck took that as his cue to slip away. Santana was clearly blowing off the rest of her shift, and Kurt needed to be tended to in a bad way-he had just vacated the stage and plastered himself on Lizard Rick, and was now not-so-subtly trying to steal his silk Charvet pocket square. Brittany was right; the guy did do weird things with his tongue. Puck pried Kurt off of him and smoothed down his cowlick, trying to walk him to the car.
“Home,” he ordered, and was pleased when Kurt gave him a meandering nod and pointed not in the general direction of his own apartment-but Puck’s.
“Home,” Kurt agreed, clinging to the front of his shirt. “We’ve never had sloppy drunken sex yet, ohmygod. Wanna try?”
“Um, duh? Let me drive you home, and then I’ll catch up with you. Don’t you dare sober up.”
The fresh air was bracing after all that Wednesday night sweat. Puck sighed, grateful for the breeze. Somewhere behind him, Brittany was finally learning the perils of a dropped letter, and Santana Lopez was saying her first “I love you” of the decade. A miraculous evening. Puck guided Kurt to the car under the inflamed cherry-red of the club’s neons, and for once, the fake light didn’t bother him. Lima at night had nothing on the sunrise. There would be dawn through Puck’s apartment window, and Kurt would still be curled against Puck when he woke up, his sleeping form boasting the sun in his hair and the prospect of morning.
*
“Hi, Artie. It’s Puck. I know that this is a delayed reaction, but I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said to me in the library. Don’t get me wrong; I understand it can’t be easy being the shoulder that everyone cries on, but-damn, you’re a cynic. I mean, like, I’m not even in the same league as you, and that’s saying something. I look around nowadays, and it’s like I’m seeing everyone for the first time-Kurt started it, and then Santana, and now it’s like bam, bam, bam. Beautiful moments everywhere. If you can’t see that about us, then you must not be looking very hard. Seriously, I used to think it was Journey. It’s not Journey, though. It’s Cyndi fucking Lauper and ‘True Colors,’ and I’m not even ashamed to admit it, because, all of us? Especially when we’re together? We shine, man. We fucking shine.”
“Puck, hey, move your-ow! Did you just knee me in the face?”
“Okay, I’m drunk as hell and Kurt’s totally getting ready to go down on me-”
“Not anymore!”
“-so I’m going to hang up now. But…I see ‘em shining through, and that’s why I looove you! Come to the reunion, dude-bro. It won’t be the same without you.”
*
Friday night.
“What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” asked Puck.
It was something they played now, this question-and-answer game, lying together under the sheets after having sex. They’d spent the whole day making hors d'oeuvres for the reunion, and the apartment was redolent with the smells of tiny spinach quiches (Kurt’s) and Cheez Wiz canapés (Puck’s, with a continued insistence upon reprocessed cheese as a food group). Now, finally off of their feet, Puck was stroking one finger gently between Kurt’s legs, sleepy and sated. Kurt kissed Puck’s knuckles one by one. His respiration was soft.
“You first, please.”
Puck didn’t even have to think about it. That was the terrible part. “Getting Quinn pregnant. Taking advantage of her. We were both drunk out of our minds, but something inside me must’ve known what I was doing when I passed her that first wine cooler. Maybe I thought that if I could…you know, make it good for her, that she’d want to be with me. I loved her; I know that much. Until recently, I thought I always would. But she ended up with Finn, and that’s how it was always supposed to be, probably.”
“What do you mean?” asked Kurt.
“I mean, we’re all okay now. Me and my daughter and their daughters, and hopefully you, too. Don’t you see how lucky that is for me? I didn’t deserve for it to work out so well. Finn and Quinn changed me. Not right away, of course-they’d probably given up on me by the time I realized what a difference they’d made. But they were always going to be okay. I only reaffirmed their humanity. They redefined mine completely.”
Kurt drew circles on his bare chest. “Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing after all, then.”
“I would still take it back if I could,” said Puck. “We were sixteen. We had no fucking idea, did we?”
“No. Maybe we still don’t.”
Something in his voice was shutting down and begging to be asked at the same time. Puck removed his hand from between Kurt’s legs and rested it on his hip, offering him his full attention. “Your turn,” he said. “Same question.”
Kurt pulled the sheets up and held them there under his eyes. Tears silvered his lower lids. He could barely bring himself to meet Puck’s gaze.
“When I was twenty-two, a man called me for a job on the anniversary of my father’s death,” Kurt whispered. “I was a mess, and I shouldn’t have gone, but I’d just moved out from the Hudsons’ and I was dying to find someone or something to make me feel loved again. I met the man in a hotel room. He paid me up front, cash, seventy-five dollars. But-he told me that I had to call him ‘daddy’ while we had sex. And I did it.”
A sob escaped his lips. He tried to roll over, but Puck seized his face and held him still, scrubbing away the tears that had slipped down his cheeks. He had never seen Kurt cry before, not even the day of Mr. Hummel’s funeral. It stung deep and sharp, like a needle in his stomach.
“Kurt. Kurt, it’s okay.”
“Nothing’s okay,” Kurt sobbed. “The things I’ve done, Puck-I wasn’t even trying to make a living; I was trying to make myself feel alive. How could I have done that to myself? To him? My dad hates me now, I know it, and he has every right!”
Puck remembered all of this, seven years old and still like yesterday. The statues in Woodlawn, those goddamn weeping angels. Kurt bleeding rain and gerberas and self-deprecation. This time, though, Puck had the right answer, and he pulled Kurt forward until he was forced to meet Puck’s eyes: “Stop, Kurt. Your dad loves you. Nothing you say or do will ever change that, and you know it.”
Kurt was unconsciously stroking the scars on his shoulders and neck. His tears dotted their pillow. “But I don’t know that, see? I don’t know that for sure! I can’t even love myself after all of this. How can he?”
“Hate yourself all you want, because I’m here for you now,” said Puck, pulling his hands away from the scars. “We can work on this. But don’t drag your family into it, for fuck’s sake, because this isn’t about them. The only thing they want you to do now is try to be happy, I guarantee it. That’s all any of us want for you, Kurt. Really.”
“Happy,” Kurt said, choking on a bitter laugh. “Who the hell is happy these days? You?”
Puck shrugged. “Just about there, yeah.”
“How?”
“By taking it one step at a time, I guess,” said Puck. “By learning and by regretting things, but not letting them eat me alive. Most importantly, by trying to live in a way that keeps as many people as intact as they can be. Listen, no one in the world has still got all of their pieces, Kurt. That’s why we try so hard to find each other. It’s like soul-glue.”
Kurt laughed through his tears. “Soul-glue, huh.” He pressed against Puck, warm and supplicating, his pulse beating strong in every one of his fingertips. “Then make me whole,” he pleaded, drawing the blankets back up over his shoulders. “Please, Puck-help me try to put myself together.”
So they made love again, Kurt panting atop him, Puck maintaining the sensitive pace of his hips and trying to keep the spaces between them filled. Kurt wept and clung to him, arms around his neck. Puck kissed him like that again and again until Kurt had stopped shaking, and Saturday morning was rising silent behind the blinds, and both of their mouths were full of salt.
*
“Puck? It’s Artie. You probably don’t even remember drunk-dialing me on Wednesday, but I’ve done a lot of thinking these past few days, and I have to thank you for kicking some sense back into me. God knows I needed it. I’ll be at the reunion, as long as you can get me a ride-try to send hot girls! Oh, and Kurt? If you’re listening to this, too? Hang onto this one, and keep reminding him not to be so damn hard on himself. Goes for both of you, really. Stop sucking lemons, and remember to breathe. I'll talk to you guys tomorrow.”
*
Part two.
Part three, 1/2. (Read this one first! ♥)
*
While Kurt was showering, Puck opened all of the windows, trying to rid the apartment of its stale foreign smell. Then he changed Kurt’s sheets. The linen closet had been filled with every shade of bedding, and after debating for a long time, he picked out a simple white set with laced edges-no sense in any extraneous colors, anything that might distract them. The sheets were spotless on Kurt’s mattress, a Queen that looked enormous after Puck’s years on the single. He was just smoothing out the last corner when he heard Kurt’s voice behind him, a sound like a light in a dark room.
“Puck.”
He looked up. Kurt stood in the doorway, completely naked. Puck swallowed as he examined him-the beautiful lines of his body, his tapered waistline, hipbones and ribs making soft dips and peaks below a smooth plane of skin. He made no move to cover himself, just offered what was his. Damp hair and nervous hands, a pale constellation of scars on his knees.
“Hi,” said Kurt simply.
“Hi.” Puck’s pulse fluttered as he crossed the room and pulled Kurt against him. He breathed in the fresh scent of his hair, cradled Kurt’s warm flesh in his palms, so full and present. Kurt pressed his lips softly to Puck’s, too tense to kiss him.
“Am I okay?” he asked, shy.
“You’re beautiful,” said Puck. “You’re perfect.”
He guided Kurt to the bed. Kurt tugged Puck’s shirt over his head as they moved, pushed his jeans down over the muscular planes of his thighs. He was fully divested of clothing by the time he rolled into the sheets with Kurt on top of him, kissing him from chest to chin. Kurt paused at the tattoo on Puck’s ribcage, running one finger along the indecipherable green calligraphy. “What does it say?”
“No clue, but the gist of it is, ‘It’s Saint Patrick’s Day and I just drank my weight in Guinness,’” said Puck. “Finn has a matching one on his ass. We got them the same night Britt and Santana got the hearts done on their shoulders, but they were sober at the time, so theirs came out fine.”
Kurt laughed, still stroking the wobbly letters. “You and Finn make such great friends. This is a sweet gesture.”
“Sweet gesture, horrible fucking tattoo,” said Puck. He mouthed the smooth space at the base of Kurt’s throat, the crescent-shaped scars between his clavicles. Just looking at them hurt him, but he had to ask: “So. Killer goldfish? Emergency laryngotomy?”
“Quite the opposite of a laryngotomy, in fact,” said Kurt. “Erotic asphyxiation sans the erotica. On that note, if you ever try to stop me from breathing, I will stop you from having testicles.”
“Fair enough,” said Puck.
“Good man.” Kurt kept his voice light, but his body was a battlefield. The space between them was empty and electric and bitter as a bad beer. Puck palmed the lithe expanse of Kurt’s back, trying to polish out its history of damages, and Kurt responded by tangling a hand in his hair and reaching between Puck’s legs. They had only been touching like that for a few minutes before Kurt slipped into his business etiquette, moving from Point A to Point B with dutiful determination. Puck had to seize his busy fingers to still them.
“Don’t work when you’re around me,” he said. “I’m not one of your customers.”
Kurt’s mask finally slipped. He looked suddenly frightened. “I’m sorry, but this is how-”
“Shh.” Puck took hold of Kurt’s hips and eased him onto his back against the mattress, waiting until he was comfortably settled before parting his legs and climbing on top of him. Kurt’s breath caught, then started up again, a few beats faster this time. Puck waited for his taut arms to slacken, admiring the darkness of his hair against the pearl-white sheets. “Is this okay?”
“Yes,” said Kurt.
He didn’t want Kurt with the same type of intensity he’d possessed the night Santana set them up, or even the raw lust of that Saturday morning, with Kurt grinding against him in the kitchen. This was a tender hunger, an urgency to show Kurt what he was missing when he had sex with men who didn’t love him. He sucked at the soft skin below Kurt’s ear, eliciting a shiver from him.
“That feels good,” said Kurt. He sounded surprised.
“Just wait,” said Puck, sitting up. “Do you have-?”
“Everything’s in my bedside table.”
Puck opened the drawer, sifting around for the proper items. He ended up with a bottle of warming lubricant and a condom. Kurt caught his hand as he moved to open the contraceptive.
“I get a full screening done a couple of times a year,” said Kurt. His cheeks were flushed. “I was clean when I went in a few weeks ago, and I never have unprotected-not that I’ve even slept with anyone since then. Since I met you again, really. So if you want to-I mean, if you’re not…”
He wasn’t, and he was moved by the implicit mutual trust of the proposal. Puck felt himself grinning as he lowered himself to kiss Kurt again. Kurt reached once more between his legs to touch him, and it was nothing like it had been before-he was gentler now, tentative and teasing, his grip barely a whisper against Puck’s receptive erection. Puck thrust into his palm. “Mmm. Kurt.”
“How is-well, I really feel like I shouldn’t have to ask about my technique at this point in my life.”
“Keep it up,” Puck affirmed. “I know I’m going to.” He uncapped the lube and poured some onto his fingers, shifted a little so he could get his hand between their bodies. This new business of asking repeatedly for permission was both thrilling and terrifying. “Can I?”
“Go on.”
Puck pushed. It was harder to ease inside than he’d anticipated-Kurt’s brows furrowed in focus, not quite a wince. Puck scissored his fingers in gentle shifts, monitoring Kurt’s face carefully for reaction. The tension showed in the stiff lines of his mouth, the hand that tightened minutely on Puck’s forearm. “Do you want me to stop?”
“No,” said Kurt at once, hauling him closer. He traced the firm lines of Puck’s abdomen, thumbed one nipple to a hard peak. “Keep going, please.”
Puck nodded and pressed his fingers deeper. Kurt was alive around him, intricate and unknown. Puck slickened his erection with the excess lubricant and was reaching for the tube again when Kurt picked it up, squeezed some into his own palm, and blew gently to diffuse its warmth. When he wrapped his hand around Puck again, it was all pressure and smooth heat. Puck had to concentrate hard to hold himself back. The lust tingled all the way up his spine.
“‘Would you like to have a dance?’” Kurt sang, stroking him. “‘The rhythm to the music’s hot. Maybe if we could talk it over here?’”
“‘Hot, close, why not?’” Puck paused to breathe. “You always serenade your lovers at inopportune times?”
“Only if they strike me as like-minded Broadway snobs.”
“Well, thanks, then. I think.” He extricated Kurt’s hand from between his legs and positioned himself at his entrance, brushing his bangs aside so he could stare directly into his eyes. He was nervous. His heartbeat was so loud he swore Kurt could hear it. “Are you, um-ready?”
Kurt stopped smiling and moistened his lips. His chest heaved. “For the first time in my life, I think I can say ‘yes’ and mean it,” he said.
The admission was so real that Puck almost pulled back right then. The potential for disaster was too great. But Puck had been running away from relationships for as long as Kurt had been running into them, and it had to be some kind of sign that they were finally meeting somewhere in the middle. Ten years of not being ready. Ten years of biding their time. Puck waited until his arms had stopped shaking-then, moving with infinite care, he eased himself inside Kurt.
“Puck,” Kurt whimpered. He shifted to accommodate him, his head falling back against the pillow to expose the tempting line of his throat. His body was sinuous and compliant, delectably hot. Puck kissed trails down his neck. Kurt’s hands were trembling on his shoulders.
“Are you okay?” Puck panted.
“I’m fine. It’s just so different. I mean, it’s not, but-I think I’m scared.” Kurt tried to smile. “That doesn’t make any sense at all, does it?”
“It makes perfect sense.” Puck had only been this tense during a sexual encounter twice before: once during his first time with Santana, and once when he and Quinn were stumbling drunk into the guest bedroom, set on each other with humorless intent. In spite of the familiar trepidation, this wasn’t comparable to either of those times. This was deeper and more critical. It threatened to scar. Only Puck’s resolution to satisfy Kurt had trumped his fear of disappointing him, and he pressed further into Kurt at a practiced, deliberate angle, making him cry out. Don’t screw this one up, Puckerman, he told himself, pausing for Kurt’s approval. Don’t you dare screw this up.
“Puck!” Kurt arched his hips against him, his lips flushed with color. He twisted handfuls of the sheet between his quivering fingers. “Oh, Puck. Please.”
Puck gripped the headboard to steady himself and began moving in and out of Kurt at a slow, thorough pace. Kurt pushed hard to meet Puck’s strokes, the back of one hand pressed against his mouth to stifle his gasps. His thighs tightened briefly around Puck’s waist, then slackened. His chest quavered with caged air.
“Kurt, don’t do that,” Puck panted, slowing down again. “Keep breathing, okay?”
Kurt nodded and let out a slow, quiet lungful. His eyes were faraway, and his silence was disconcerting. Puck could still read the consent in his spine, the throb of his hips against his own-but he was offering nothing vocal in terms of encouragement. Puck sucked Kurt’s lower lip between his teeth, trying to coax out an affirmative response.
“Still with me?” he asked, running kisses across his jaw. “Come on, Kurt. Come back.”
There was an old three-inch wound on Kurt’s left side, scoring him from breastbone to bellybutton. What was the story behind this one? Another broken glass of orange juice, a fall down the stairs? Puck traced the scar tissue with one fingertip and bit back the recurring wave of desperation that followed. This didn’t feel right. He climbed onto his elbows to pull away. Then the soft soles of Kurt’s feet inched up to rest against Puck’s calves, holding him in place.
“Haunted hayride last October,” said Kurt, panting. “The headless horseman scared me so badly that I fell out of the wagon. I had to get stitches. Artie laughed until he cried.”
Puck felt a nervous chuckle escape him. Relief and love coursed through him; he was helpless to do anything but lean forward to press his shaking mouth back against Kurt’s.
“It’s not all bad,” Kurt whispered, after they had broken apart. “Don’t think that for one second. I have my friends, I have a warm place to sleep, I have a beating heart and a whole closet full of Prada. And just when I thought that nothing was going to hold even that together for me, I found you. Or you found me. I’m sorry for the false start; I was afraid for a second, there. Let’s finish what we started here, okay?”
Puck couldn’t quite get himself together to speak. He nodded instead.
“Okay,” said Kurt, with finality.
He replaced his hands on Puck’s hips and set a smooth, easy pace. It was sweet and full, and Kurt’s curves arched against his in all the right places, setting old breaks that Puck never thought would heal. He thrust deep into Kurt. Kurt moaned back in response, full-voiced, deliciously responsive. His nails raked up and down Puck’s ribcage and skipped the illegible tattoo every time. Puck kept his own fingers away from the hayride scar, threaded them into Kurt’s, instead. Their bodies weren’t battlefields; they were monuments. Puck prayed into the crook of Kurt’s neck, paying twenty-seven years of respects. Thank you for this evening. Thank you for this moment.
Kurt cried out when he came. Puck followed suit while his name was still trembling on Kurt’s lips, and coming back down was like a terrifying fall into familiar arms. He didn’t know how long he lay like that, shaking uselessly against Kurt’s chest with God knew what running through his head. Kurt just stroked his face and shushed him and murmured something. “I love you,” he was saying, when words finally began making sense again. “I love you, Noah Puckerman.”
Puck mouthed it back into Kurt’s shoulder, deliberate enough for Kurt to feel it, then clambered around and tried to swallow. He was still getting little aftershocks. Kurt watched him struggle to sit up, his eyes hazy and half-lidded.
“I didn’t know it could be like that,” Kurt said, his voice quiet. “It was never like that before. All this time, and I had-I had no idea.”
“Anything can happen,” said Puck, quoting their first date, but the philosophy needed amendment now: “We can be anything.”
“You’re right,” said Kurt, swiping his bangs out of his eyes. “So where do we start?”
“Let’s start by being together,” said Puck.
There was a moment of silence in which neither of them remembered how to speak. Then Kurt broke into a smile and slid back down in sheets to kiss him. The white linens set the color off in his cheeks and lips, and his tongue was firm between Puck’s teeth, poised with promises. “Okay,” he whispered, hot against Puck’s mouth.
“Okay,” Puck repeated. And, tonight, it really was. “Okay.”
*
“Sorry I made you gay,” said Santana.
Puck glanced around instinctively for assistance from Kurt, but he must’ve stepped off to use the restroom or something-Puck and Santana were alone in the booth, both of them on their second milkshakes, a plate of maraschino cherries on the table between them. Hitting up the diner had apparently been one of Santana and Kurt’s pre-work ceremonies, because neither of them had consulted Puck before dragging him along for bacon cheeseburgers and onion rings. Not that Puck was complaining. But it was strange being out with Santana, and it was strange being out with Kurt. Especially when it spawned conversations like this one.
“Where the hell did you get that idea?” Puck asked, after a long sip of his shake.
“I’m not stupid, Puck, I know how this sounds,” said Santana. “Nature versus nurture or whatever. Sexuality is supposed to be something you’re born with, right?”
“Right,” said Puck. “So…”
“So, I was just thinking about the past few days, and our history together. And…god, I think I did something to you.” She began ticking points off her fingers: “This whole thing with Kurt started because I got you two to almost sleep with each other, right? Then I yelled at you in a pre-menstrual rage, which was almost enough to turn me off of women, too.”
“What?” said Puck.
“I was the first girl you slept with,” Santana continued, ignoring him. “As far as I know, I was the last girl you slept with, too. I don’t know how many there were in between…”
“Thirty-one.”
Santana finally paused. “What?”
He choked on an onion ring. Had he really said that out loud? “I said ‘go on.’”
“I don’t know how many there were in between, but the last time we had sex, it was terrible.”
Oh, right, the night that he had been ‘unable to make change.’ He had vague memories of that evening. Time had been moving way too slowly, and the black polka dots on Santana’s bra had looked like a cattle grid. From the cow’s perspective. “To be fair, we were both blazed.”
“Right,” said Santana. “Do you know how hard it is to have bad sex when you’re high?”’
She had a point. He shrugged. “At least half of that was my fault, though.”
“Probably less than half. I mean, five inches is impressive flaccid, but it hardly accounts for-”
“Anyway,” said Puck.
“Anyway,” she echoed, pulling a knotted cherry stem from between her lips, “I’m trying to tell you that I know how I am. I get into these ugly places, and then I poison the things around me, especially when I feel entitled to something that I’m not going to get. I wish you well, Puck. I do. But-I’m so sorry if I did anything to make you want to change just to avoid me. Or to avoid becoming me.”
They never had talks like this anymore. Puck was moved by her articulacy, the honesty in her eyes. She was so beautiful. He squeezed her hand. “Santana, I’ve got more history with you than with anyone else in the world,” he said. “If you ‘turned me gay,’ it wasn’t because I don’t love every single inch of you, it was because you’re too much woman for me to handle. Don’t ever change.”
“I don’t think I could,” Santana confessed.
“Good,” said Puck. He tried to kiss her on the lips, grimaced, and pulled another cherry stem out of her mouth. This one had been knotted three times in perfect intervals. “Wow, what the fuck. Someday a much more deserving guy is really going to appreciate that tongue of yours.”
Santana looked down. Her lashes were already curled and darkened for work; he almost didn’t catch the flicker of grief in her eyes. “Don’t count on it. I know I don’t.”
“All paid up,” Kurt announced, returning to the table with a receipt. “I tipped forty percent because I think we accidentally taught that little boy beside us that 'docking' doesn’t always mean ships.” He paused when he saw Santana’s expression. “Santana? Are you okay?”
She took a deep breath and smiled up at him. “Am I okay,” she repeated, flinging open her coat to reveal her sculpted body, already decked out in scanty work attire. “Kurt, look closely. Two cheeseburgers and a boatload of onion rings later, and I am still more than okay; I am fuckin’ smoking. The only thing faster than Puck in bed is my metabolism.”
“I hope you roll over wrong one day while you’re sleeping and suffocate in your own cleavage,” said Puck.
Kurt winced and stepped in front of the shocked seven-year-old in the next booth over. “I should’ve tipped fifty percent.”
“So this is where the real money’s at,” said Santana, gathering her keys and purse. “Hey, let’s go, okay? Half an hour until show time.”
She pushed past them on a current of body glitter and feigned indifference, making a young busboy gawk and drop an entire tub of plastic glasses. Puck watched the cups roll in every direction and felt helpless for no reason at all. He had Kurt on his arm now, sure, but where did that leave Santana? He had grown up with her. He and Kurt loved her, but they weren’t always going to be there to assuage the desolation of her night shifts. She was beginning to apologize for who she was. She would dance alone in a dusty spotlight for the rest of life unless someone reminded her about the sun.
Kurt, sensing his distress, dropped Puck a quick kiss. Even at eight-thirty in the evening, it tasted like daylight. “Don’t worry,” he said. “By tomorrow morning, she will be happily reunited with her tattoo twin.”
“And what happens until then?” said Puck. “We find her a man to keep her occupied?”
“Three men,” said Kurt, holding up his fingers. “Samuel Adams, Jack Daniels, and Jim Beam.”
Puck couldn’t repress his smile. “What, Captain Morgan isn’t invited?”
Kurt purred and gave his hips a raunchy little thrust. “No way, I’d rather have a big captain in me,” he declared, just as the music stopped and plunged the diner into abrupt silence. “Want to rob my vessel, Private Stock?”
They ended up leaving a sixty percent tip.
*
He hadn’t expected her flight to arrive that evening, and he definitely didn’t realize that she had the presence of mind to find her own ride from the airport. But there she was at ten o’ clock, pushing hard on the club’s pull doors, her blonde hair sparkling under the neon lights of the sign outside. Puck gaped when he saw her, then ran outside to grab her by the elbow and hurry her down the hallway that led to the champagne room.
“Brittany!” he said, trying to block her view to the stage. “What are you doing here?”
“I caught an earlier flight,” she explained, smiling.
“Well, I figured as much, but-what are you doing here? At the club?”
Brittany’s eyes grew distant, and she threaded a lock of hair between her fingers. “I’m not sure? I stopped at a coffee shop to get a scone, and I started talking with the guy next to me. I told him I was visiting Santana Lopez. He gave me a weird look and said he was, too, and then he drove me here. So here I am! And there he is. Hi, Rick!” She wriggled her fingers at a man in a baseball cap by the bar, who waved and made a lewd gesture with his tongue. “He keeps doing that. I wonder if he was raised by lizards.”
“Oh, Brittany,” said Puck. He really didn’t know what else to say.
“So is Santana here?” asked Brittany, craning to look over his shoulder.
Puck blocked her few with a strange, flailing sidestep and peeked back at the stage. Santana had just invited an inebriated Kurt to share her pole, and the two of them were laughing and performing an old glee routine that Puck recognized as an R-rated version of “Last Name.” They were definitely doing more grinding and pelvic thrusts than they had at invitationals. The horrible porno-beat of the techno wasn’t helping much, either.
“She’s here, but the circumstances are a little-sensitive,” said Puck. “It might be better for you to wait to meet up with her tomorrow.”
Brittany’s smile trembled at the corners. “She doesn’t want to see me?”
“No, no, it’s not that! It’s just that she-”
The whole discussion was rendered pointless by a clamor on the stage. Santana had seen Brittany and botched a dance step; she would’ve taken a header into a nearby table if Kurt hadn’t caught the back of her bra. Santana readjusted her top and stepped down, her face red, torn between humiliation and delight. Kurt raised his hands and shot Puck a what the hell look. Puck replied with a give me a break, like I have any control over Brittany, and by the way your cowlick is sticking up look. He didn’t know what was weirder-the fact that Kurt actually jumped and smoothed his hair, or that the clubbers in the front row were yelling at him to keep dancing.
Santana made her way over in a slow, stalling saunter, trying without much success to cover her sequined bra. “Brittany!” she said, offering a nervous hand.
Brittany ignored the aloof gesture and threw her arms around Santana’s neck, making Santana laugh and stagger for balance. “I’ve missed you so much!” Brittany exclaimed, kissing her soundly on her glossed lips. “Why did you change your number? I used to call it like every night to see if you’d changed it back, but the guy who has your number now put me on his block list!”
“I’m sorry,” said Santana. “I was just in such a bad place-”
“Fresno?”
“No. What? No.”
“That’s where I was living last year, I mean,” said Brittany. “Tons of murder. Bad pollution. And it made my hair get frizzy.”
“Nooo,” Santana said again with deep sympathy, stroking her fingers through Brittany’s curls. She paused with her hand there for a moment, admiring Brittany’s radiance, the way her skin seemed to shimmer with health. “Not that I’m not thrilled as hell to see you, but-why are you here?”
“Puck and Kurt called me to see if I could come to the reunion a few days early, so we could catch up.”
Santana arched an eyebrow at Puck. “Oh?”
“Yeah, the plan was for Thursday morning, when you were free,” said Puck, defending himself.
“I got excited and didn’t want to wait,” Brittany confessed. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s totally okay,” said Santana, but she looked at Puck when she said it. Her false lashes flickered as she blinked back tears, and she wiped her eye with the tip of one manicured finger, careful not to disturb her makeup. She glanced down at herself and laughed without humor. “I’m humiliated. You were never supposed to see me like this. You’re the sanest thing that ever happened to me, Britt; I wanted you to at least be proud of me the next time we saw each other.”
“But I am proud of you!” said Brittany. “I couldn’t walk in those shoes if I tried! And it’s okay, Santana, I’m not judging. I’m a stripper, too.”
Both Puck and Santana froze. Fuck, thought Puck, afraid to look at Santana’s face. Not Brittany, too. Yes, the girl had gotten a six on her ACTs, and she had been under the impression that “blue” was a food until shortly after her nineteenth birthday, but she had a ready smile and great heart. Possibly the greatest. The idea of her working a crowd in a smoky room made Puck feel sick to his stomach, and he wasn’t even her best friend.
“What?” Santana said finally, her voice dark. “You-what?”
Brittany nodded, her hair bouncing on her shoulders. “Yup!”
“God, no. Please, God!”
“Well, only on weekends,” Brittany amended, startled by her reaction. “Mondays through Fridays, I answer phones at an animal shelter.”
Santana was scrubbing at her eyes again, this time with no regard at all to her makeup. She was trying and failing to contain her sobs. “Damn it, Brittany! If you’ve got another job, why don’t you quit?”
“Well, I don’t get paid for Saturday and Sunday. I’m a volunteer. But I really like what I do, Santana; I don’t want to quit! I get to clean rooms and deliver flowers and read to the children. Oh! This one time, I helped with a garage sale, and we earned enough to hire a magician for-”
“Wait,” Puck interrupted. “What kind of kinky shit are you doing, anyway? Where is it that you work?”
“The children’s hospital in Madera,” said Brittany.
For one perplexed moment, Santana simply gaped. Then she seized Brittany’s shoulders and shook her hard enough to make her earrings jingle. “I thought you said you were a stripper!” she shouted.
“I am!” said Brittany, staring at her like she’d gone insane. “I’m a candy stripper!”
Oh.
“Oh,” said Santana, looking blank.
In the long break in conversation that followed, Puck scratched his ear and glanced back up at the stage. Kurt was whooping and gyrating against the pole, swinging his jeans over head, his blue-and-white-striped knee-highs causing a strange reaction inside the front Puck’s pants. Either the men in the crowd had shitty eyesight and were really into butch chicks, or they were too boozed up to care. Maybe a combination of both.
“Candy striper,” said Santana was saying.
“That’s what I said,” said Brittany.
“No. No. Striper.”
“Stripper,” Brittany repeated. “Right.”
“Fuck me sideways,” said Santana, with simple wonder. Then she yanked Brittany against her and squeezed with uninhibited affection, no longer conscious of her sparse attire. Her tears had tracked clean trails in the glitter. “Thank god you’re you,” she managed, with fierce affection. “I fucking love you, Britt. I love you so fucking much.”
“I love you more,” said Brittany. She seemed puzzled by the intensity of Santana’s response, but she clung back hard, her own eyes welling up. “Don’t stop talking to me again, okay? I don’t ever want to have to miss you again.”
Santana laughed. “Are you kidding? Now you’ll never be able to get rid of me!”
They stood like that for a long time, just holding each other a fraction too tight. Puck took that as his cue to slip away. Santana was clearly blowing off the rest of her shift, and Kurt needed to be tended to in a bad way-he had just vacated the stage and plastered himself on Lizard Rick, and was now not-so-subtly trying to steal his silk Charvet pocket square. Brittany was right; the guy did do weird things with his tongue. Puck pried Kurt off of him and smoothed down his cowlick, trying to walk him to the car.
“Home,” he ordered, and was pleased when Kurt gave him a meandering nod and pointed not in the general direction of his own apartment-but Puck’s.
“Home,” Kurt agreed, clinging to the front of his shirt. “We’ve never had sloppy drunken sex yet, ohmygod. Wanna try?”
“Um, duh? Let me drive you home, and then I’ll catch up with you. Don’t you dare sober up.”
The fresh air was bracing after all that Wednesday night sweat. Puck sighed, grateful for the breeze. Somewhere behind him, Brittany was finally learning the perils of a dropped letter, and Santana Lopez was saying her first “I love you” of the decade. A miraculous evening. Puck guided Kurt to the car under the inflamed cherry-red of the club’s neons, and for once, the fake light didn’t bother him. Lima at night had nothing on the sunrise. There would be dawn through Puck’s apartment window, and Kurt would still be curled against Puck when he woke up, his sleeping form boasting the sun in his hair and the prospect of morning.
*
“Hi, Artie. It’s Puck. I know that this is a delayed reaction, but I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said to me in the library. Don’t get me wrong; I understand it can’t be easy being the shoulder that everyone cries on, but-damn, you’re a cynic. I mean, like, I’m not even in the same league as you, and that’s saying something. I look around nowadays, and it’s like I’m seeing everyone for the first time-Kurt started it, and then Santana, and now it’s like bam, bam, bam. Beautiful moments everywhere. If you can’t see that about us, then you must not be looking very hard. Seriously, I used to think it was Journey. It’s not Journey, though. It’s Cyndi fucking Lauper and ‘True Colors,’ and I’m not even ashamed to admit it, because, all of us? Especially when we’re together? We shine, man. We fucking shine.”
“Puck, hey, move your-ow! Did you just knee me in the face?”
“Okay, I’m drunk as hell and Kurt’s totally getting ready to go down on me-”
“Not anymore!”
“-so I’m going to hang up now. But…I see ‘em shining through, and that’s why I looove you! Come to the reunion, dude-bro. It won’t be the same without you.”
*
Friday night.
“What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” asked Puck.
It was something they played now, this question-and-answer game, lying together under the sheets after having sex. They’d spent the whole day making hors d'oeuvres for the reunion, and the apartment was redolent with the smells of tiny spinach quiches (Kurt’s) and Cheez Wiz canapés (Puck’s, with a continued insistence upon reprocessed cheese as a food group). Now, finally off of their feet, Puck was stroking one finger gently between Kurt’s legs, sleepy and sated. Kurt kissed Puck’s knuckles one by one. His respiration was soft.
“You first, please.”
Puck didn’t even have to think about it. That was the terrible part. “Getting Quinn pregnant. Taking advantage of her. We were both drunk out of our minds, but something inside me must’ve known what I was doing when I passed her that first wine cooler. Maybe I thought that if I could…you know, make it good for her, that she’d want to be with me. I loved her; I know that much. Until recently, I thought I always would. But she ended up with Finn, and that’s how it was always supposed to be, probably.”
“What do you mean?” asked Kurt.
“I mean, we’re all okay now. Me and my daughter and their daughters, and hopefully you, too. Don’t you see how lucky that is for me? I didn’t deserve for it to work out so well. Finn and Quinn changed me. Not right away, of course-they’d probably given up on me by the time I realized what a difference they’d made. But they were always going to be okay. I only reaffirmed their humanity. They redefined mine completely.”
Kurt drew circles on his bare chest. “Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing after all, then.”
“I would still take it back if I could,” said Puck. “We were sixteen. We had no fucking idea, did we?”
“No. Maybe we still don’t.”
Something in his voice was shutting down and begging to be asked at the same time. Puck removed his hand from between Kurt’s legs and rested it on his hip, offering him his full attention. “Your turn,” he said. “Same question.”
Kurt pulled the sheets up and held them there under his eyes. Tears silvered his lower lids. He could barely bring himself to meet Puck’s gaze.
“When I was twenty-two, a man called me for a job on the anniversary of my father’s death,” Kurt whispered. “I was a mess, and I shouldn’t have gone, but I’d just moved out from the Hudsons’ and I was dying to find someone or something to make me feel loved again. I met the man in a hotel room. He paid me up front, cash, seventy-five dollars. But-he told me that I had to call him ‘daddy’ while we had sex. And I did it.”
A sob escaped his lips. He tried to roll over, but Puck seized his face and held him still, scrubbing away the tears that had slipped down his cheeks. He had never seen Kurt cry before, not even the day of Mr. Hummel’s funeral. It stung deep and sharp, like a needle in his stomach.
“Kurt. Kurt, it’s okay.”
“Nothing’s okay,” Kurt sobbed. “The things I’ve done, Puck-I wasn’t even trying to make a living; I was trying to make myself feel alive. How could I have done that to myself? To him? My dad hates me now, I know it, and he has every right!”
Puck remembered all of this, seven years old and still like yesterday. The statues in Woodlawn, those goddamn weeping angels. Kurt bleeding rain and gerberas and self-deprecation. This time, though, Puck had the right answer, and he pulled Kurt forward until he was forced to meet Puck’s eyes: “Stop, Kurt. Your dad loves you. Nothing you say or do will ever change that, and you know it.”
Kurt was unconsciously stroking the scars on his shoulders and neck. His tears dotted their pillow. “But I don’t know that, see? I don’t know that for sure! I can’t even love myself after all of this. How can he?”
“Hate yourself all you want, because I’m here for you now,” said Puck, pulling his hands away from the scars. “We can work on this. But don’t drag your family into it, for fuck’s sake, because this isn’t about them. The only thing they want you to do now is try to be happy, I guarantee it. That’s all any of us want for you, Kurt. Really.”
“Happy,” Kurt said, choking on a bitter laugh. “Who the hell is happy these days? You?”
Puck shrugged. “Just about there, yeah.”
“How?”
“By taking it one step at a time, I guess,” said Puck. “By learning and by regretting things, but not letting them eat me alive. Most importantly, by trying to live in a way that keeps as many people as intact as they can be. Listen, no one in the world has still got all of their pieces, Kurt. That’s why we try so hard to find each other. It’s like soul-glue.”
Kurt laughed through his tears. “Soul-glue, huh.” He pressed against Puck, warm and supplicating, his pulse beating strong in every one of his fingertips. “Then make me whole,” he pleaded, drawing the blankets back up over his shoulders. “Please, Puck-help me try to put myself together.”
So they made love again, Kurt panting atop him, Puck maintaining the sensitive pace of his hips and trying to keep the spaces between them filled. Kurt wept and clung to him, arms around his neck. Puck kissed him like that again and again until Kurt had stopped shaking, and Saturday morning was rising silent behind the blinds, and both of their mouths were full of salt.
*
“Puck? It’s Artie. You probably don’t even remember drunk-dialing me on Wednesday, but I’ve done a lot of thinking these past few days, and I have to thank you for kicking some sense back into me. God knows I needed it. I’ll be at the reunion, as long as you can get me a ride-try to send hot girls! Oh, and Kurt? If you’re listening to this, too? Hang onto this one, and keep reminding him not to be so damn hard on himself. Goes for both of you, really. Stop sucking lemons, and remember to breathe. I'll talk to you guys tomorrow.”
*