Of Bears and Brothers
"A teddy bear?!"
"What? I thought it was cute."
"You got me a teddy bear for my birthday! My nineteenth birthday!" Kurt's voice soared and very nearly broke. Puck stared at him in amusement and he shut his mouth sharply, turning bright red. He was grateful nobody else was paying much attention, with the majority of his friends waging war over the cake on a picnic table some distance away.
Instead of speaking, he glared mightily at Noah Puckerman, as though he could make the bigger boy burst into flames with sheer willpower. Puck, for his part, was unimpressed.
"Just be glad it's a normal teddy bear. My sister suggested I go to that creepy Build-A-Bear store in the mall. Get a teddy bear with like, bedazzled clothing or some crazy shit like that. I kind of figured you wouldn't like that."
Kurt hissed with irritation. "But you thought I would want a normal teddy bear?!"
There really was no good explanation for the bear. Maybe as a gag gift, but Puck seemed perfectly serious about it and didn't see anything wrong with it. It might have worked well a few years ago, back when New Directions was just getting into the swing of things and Puck had treated Kurt like a small child trying to play with the big boys. But now, in the first few weeks of summer after graduation, with years between them and what Kurt had thought to be at least some amount of respect if nothing else? The teddy bear was a bit ridiculous.
At best, it meant Puck still thought of Kurt as a child, despite Kurt being two months older than Puck and infinitely more mature. Sure he was smaller, but not by a lot. In fact, they were the same height after an unexpected growth spurt late in Kurt's sophomore year (and boy had he been upset about that one. He'd had to replace nearly his entire wardrobe thanks to his old clothes no longer fitting) and while admittedly Puck was still technically bigger courtesy of having more muscle mass, the truth was that they were similar enough in size to comfortably trade clothes if they wanted to. Not that they ever would because Puck seriously couldn't have a worse sense of fashion if he was lobotomized. But the point stood.
At worst, it meant Puck just didn't care. And that kind of hurt. He'd like to think they were friends. Sure they bickered non-stop, but that wasn't because they disliked each other, it was because that was really the only way they could communicate. Neither of them would have known friendly conversation if it bit them in the ass and sat there chewing for awhile (they were both too acid tongued and jaded to be nice and Kurt is eternally grateful that he found a group of friends who understood that and took his biting sarcasm as the form of love that it was). Just because Kurt didn't get along with Puck didn't mean he didn't care about him. He had hoped that was a mutual feeling (because he couldn't exactly ask. How could he? Kurt wasn't totally sure he could have admitted it himself) but either they had wildly different definitions of 'caring' or Puck just... didn't.
Kurt forced himself to take a deep breath. The birthday party wasn't just a birthday party. It was also a going away party. In a few short days, Kurt Hummel would finally escape Lima, Ohio on a jet plane to southern California (a mystical land full of pretty gay boys and no goddamned snow) and he wouldn't be coming back for the foreseeable future. Despite all their promises to stay in contact with each other as they scattered across the country, this was potentially the last time he'd ever see Noah Puckerman or indeed, any of his friends. He wasn't going to make a fight his last memory of any of them, not even Puck.
Kurt let out a sigh and put the bear with his other gifts. "Thank you, Noah. For... something."
Puck shifted uncomfortably for a moment, like he finally grasped that the stuffed animal was perhaps not the best gift for a fresh high school graduate, but he seemed to shrug it off after a moment and clapped Kurt on the shoulder before slouching off, no doubt to scarf down what few remnants of the cake he could find.
Kurt spotted something in his peripheral vision and tried very hard to ignore the figure sidling up to him from behind; but, alas, it was not to be. Rachel Berry tugged on his wrist gently until he relented and followed her, entwining their arms as they walked across the park.
Rachel was headed for New York, as they had all known she would from the moment they heard her sing, and Kurt was man enough to admit that he might just miss having her around. On the other hand, it would be kind of nice having an entire country between them. At least when they inevitably started fighting again, they wouldn't be able to throttle each other (and they wouldn't be able to make up with late night Disney movies and popcorn in Kurt's basement, cuddled up together like cats on a recliner that wasn't really meant to hold two people) and honestly it would probably do them both a world of good. He forced himself to think the last part because if he didn't then it would hurt entirely too much when he left.
"You know he didn't mean anything by it. He's just being Puck."
"Right, but what does that mean? Who is Puck anyway? Is he a jerk with a heart of gold, or is he just a jerk? I'm not sure I ever knew."
He knew he sounded more depressed than he should have, honestly it's just a stupid birthday present, but he couldn't help it. He felt like he lost something that he couldn't even claim to know he had in the first place. If Kurt and Puck had anything, then it was only something they had when they didn't look directly at it, didn't talk about it, and didn't think about it. Whatever it was, they both knew it would evaporate if examined and although he couldn't speak for Puck, Kurt knew that he had desperately wanted to keep a hold of it. So he hadn't looked too closely. It was too precious a thing to lose.
But maybe he had lost it anyway. Maybe he'd never had it to begin with and he'd just imagined that they'd shared any kind of connection. Maybe Puck had just tolerated Kurt being around, where Kurt had genuinely enjoyed his company (even if he did complain about it).
For whatever else he knew (or apparently didn't know) about his friend, Kurt did know that Puck had never done anything without meaning it. And Puck was a jerk so he didn't always mean well by whatever he was doing, but he always meant it. The teddy bear had meant something, Kurt just didn't know what it was and it was unlikely that Puck was going to just tell him. Words never had been his strong point (because he always either slept through English, or he spent the whole period doodling on pieces of paper and chucking them at Kurt from across the room and as annoyed as Kurt got about wads of paper hitting him in the head, it never stopped him from unfolding them and laughing lightly at whatever Puck had drawn) and he's pretty sure it's not going to change any time soon so he's just going to have to figure it out on his own.
Kurt came out of his thoughts to the realization that Rachel had been talking to him for some time and he hadn't the faintest idea of what she'd been talking about. Which was kind of par for the course actually, and Rachel didn't even blink when he bluntly told her he hadn't been listening and had entirely lost the thread of the conversation. Rachel just smiled at him and he wondered vaguely if she had gotten used to it enough that she was just talking about things she hadn't even wanted him to hear but still wanted to say out loud. He wouldn't put it past her.
Kurt also abruptly realized that they were walking back towards the picnic tables, Rachel had apparently taken him around a small pond and looped back towards the party. As they returned, she removed her arm from his and left to find her boyfriend. He doesn't hold a grudge about that one anymore (because honestly, waiting for the big dope had been killing him inside and he can't expect Finn to do a complete 180 in his sexuality for him. No more than Mercedes can expect it of Kurt, he realizes, so he decides he's being petty and needs to man up like his best friend did and just get the hell over it.) and Kurt briefly watched as the two of them flirted and acted ridiculously cute together before he decided that he was going to take a page out of their book and just enjoy the moment and ignore the problem for the time being (because Finn isn't going to New York and everyone knows it, but nobody talks about it because even Rachel and Finn aren't really talking about it and all Kurt can think is that maybe not all stories can or even should end with 'happily ever after', his own included.)
He resolved to enjoy the rest of his birthday/going away party and staunchly ignored the teddy bear that sat on top of his pile of gifts like a particularly inane watchdog. And if Puck had an unusually thoughtful and/or frustrated expression on his face for the rest of the party, Kurt staunchly ignored that too.
The party ended and people went home, as both parties and people were wont to do. Kurt put all of his gifts (even the stupid bear) in the back of his Navigator and shut the trunk with a noise that sounded too loud in the quiet evening. He turned to watch Puck throw away the last of the garbage and tie the bags off because the gleeks (ex-gleeks? Kurt can't honestly call them that because although they might no longer be part of a high school Glee Club, deep down he knows that once a gleek, always a gleek) are messy teenagers and if Puck left the bag open all night then half of it would blow away by morning. Puck totaled his car months before graduation but between saving for college and spoiling his daughter rotten, he simply never had enough spare cash to get the old junker fixed up. He walked to his various odd jobs and school instead, hitching rides with his friends when the weather was abominable or if they just felt like giving him a lift.
Kurt drove him to the party in the first place so no matter how he felt about Puck's gift, he couldn't refuse Puck a ride home. Finished with tying the trash bags up, Puck hauled himself up into the passenger side of the Navigator and settled in silently. Kurt desperately wanted to ask him about the bear, to demand an explanation that wouldn't make him feel so frustrated and betrayed (he's half expecting a ball of paper to hit him in the head, with a poorly drawn sketch that somehow conveys what in the goddamn world he meant by giving Kurt a teddy bear, but it never comes) and the truth is that he doesn't know how to talk to Puck about it. It occurred to him that he didn't know how to talk to Puck about a lot of things that had never seemed relevant before but with their friendship on the line, those things suddenly felt a great deal more important and if he didn't at least put them out there, they'd never get resolved. And apparently they wouldn't get resolved, because he couldn't bring himself to say anything about it.
To Kurt's eternal surprise, it was Puck who broached the subject first. "If you don't want the bear, just give it to Carolina. She'd probably love it."
"Yeah, Puck that's because she's three. I'm nineteen. I really don't know how you expected me to react to a teddy bear."
"I wasn't... you know. Making fun of you." Puck scratched at the top of his head where his mohawk had formerly been, before he'd shaved it off because applying for jobs with a mohawk didn't usually win you a lot of job opportunities unless you badly wanted to work at a tattoo parlor. "It was just something I wanted you to have. Something that – you know what? Nevermind. It was a dumb idea."
He fell into silence again, staring out his window sullenly. Kurt couldn't just leave it at that though. "I guess I just don't understand. You give kids stuffed animals, not people going on two decades of life. Unless you were just trying to tell me you think of me as childish, in which case : Fuck you, Noah." He meant the last part as a joke. Sort of. He was trying to lighten the mood, but the sentiment behind it was serious. Kurt wasn't a child and wasn't willing to be treated like one.
Puck appeared to see the humor at least because he snorted slightly. "No. Yes. Not really?" He sounded entirely too hesitant about that and Kurt swore that if Puck admitted to thinking of Kurt as a little kid, then he'd be walking home. "Not childish. It's more of – Look. I know you don't have siblings so let me try to explain." Puck's voice became more clear and confident and Kurt suddenly realized that Puck had only just figured out the whole thing himself. "When you have a little sister or a little brother, then that person is always a kid to you. Even when they aren't. Even when they're just starting high school and you know they aren't really little anymore, but it feels like they are because how could they have grown up? You've been watching the whole time and they didn't change. Did they? Couldn't be. But they did, and you just never saw it because you were too close."
Puck paused for a long moment and Kurt waited patiently. When he eventually continued, his voice sounded strained, like the words hurt him to say. "When you have a friend, even a best friend, it's not that close. You can see someone changing, for better or worse, and you can accept that that's how it goes. But not family. Everybody has a blind spot for their family, you know? So if you have a little brother and he turns nineteen and he's going off to college a thousand miles away from you because this stupid fucking small town can't handle somebody amazing like him, and even though you know it's the best thing in the world for him, you're panicking because that's your baby brother and he's just a kid and to you he's always going to be, even when he's not and maybe especially when he's not. The world's too big and fucking scary and you can't protect him any more and -" Puck broke off sharply and his head thumped against his window. He didn't lift it, and Kurt fully understood the need to let the cool glass soothe his racing heart. If he hadn't been driving, Kurt might have done it himself.
"Do you remember in our sophomore year, when you moped for like two weeks because some guy you really admired died?" Puck's voice startled Kurt out of his stunned silence.
"Alexander McQueen?"
"Yeah, that guy."
"He was a fashion designer. Committed suicide. I was heartbroken."
"I know. That was when I..." Puck struggled for the word. "Adopted you. I guess." He tapped his head thoughtfully. "Adopted works. Even after you told me what it was about, and I knew I couldn't really do anything about it... I felt like I never wanted to see you that hurt again. You always acted like it was just Lima that sucked and once you got out the world was gonna be great. And that was the first time the world turned around and told you that it kind of sucked out there too. So I decided you were gonna be my baby brother from then on and the whole world could go fuck itself if it thought it was gonna hurt you."
Baby brother. Those were big words from Puck, who defined his life in terms of family, something he'd willingly give up everything for, something he had given up everything for, including his money, his happiness, his future, and if they asked it of him, his beating heart. The bear hadn't been an insult or indifference or anything in between. It was just the only way that Puck could express, in physical form, a bond that he could barely put into words, much less into a gift.
Kurt hadn't been willing to look at their connection too closely. He was too afraid that if he understood what it was then so would Puck, and he'd reject it. But it was Puck who had put their friendship under the microscope and found family lurking in disguise.
"Carolina really does need a teddy bear. Every little kid does." Kurt's voice was quiet and thoughtful. "I'll have to buy her one. I'm afraid mine will be going with me to Cali."
Puck's soft laughter echoed throughout the car. "I thought you hated the bear."
"I do hate the bear. But I love my brother." A smile bloomed on Puck's face at Kurt's words, and it was gentle and full of love and adoration and usually could only be seen directed at his daughter.
And honestly, Kurt thought to himself, a brother was the one thing he'd always wanted that his father couldn't give him. The bear wasn't the present. Not really. Puck's going away present was a promise that there was somebody who always had his back, no matter what. That there was somebody who loved him dearly and would never be ashamed of that. Puck had offered himself up and despite the initial confusion, it was quite possibly the best birthday present Kurt had ever gotten in his life. And while it might have been too early to say so, he couldn't really imagine anyone ever doing better.
College dorm room, shared apartment, or private home, that bear was going to live forever in Kurt's bed. He'd never live it down. And he didn't really mind.
"So what are you going to name it?"
"Alexander."
A/N : Reviews are love, especially about Puck's characterization. I'm not quite confident on writing him. Help me out here!