Title: Red Windmills
Summary: Kurt Hummel left Lima without a goodbye, hoping to forget his shattered life. Performing in a burlesque lounge in Chicago, he's found the secrecy and the spotlight he needs to stay happy. But Noah, his unrelenting best friend whom he left without a shoulder to cry on, refuses to give up on him. He knows just how much more Kurt deserves, and he's determined to show him how much love the world still has to offer him; and maybe find a romance of his own along the way...
Pairings: Puckurt (friendship...mostly); eventually a Klaine romance; Puck/OC romance. [Note, Kurt did not meet Blaine in his high school years. I just love the pairing...though not as much as Puck and Kurt's friendship...]
Warnings: Well, none for this chapter, but this will feature violence - physical and sexual - naughty language, sexual scenes of both consensual and non-consensual nature (nothing too graphic), homosexual relations (homophobes can happily f**k right off), hate crime, maybe more depending on how the story goes. Oh, yes, and angst. Lotsa, lotsa angst. Don't worry, there's happiness, too...sometimes. Rating may well change.
Red Windmills
1) Arrival
For a guy who spent his childhood and teenage years idealising the moment he would finally escape the stifling confines of Lima's borders, Noah Puckerman was uncommonly uncomfortable with visiting new places.
In one hand, muscles twitching with the strain, he held three bags stuffed with assorted items of necessity, clothes and photos and even a few books, while in the other he held a crumpled piece of paper, his own spidery writing scrawled across three lines. Over his back he had slung his guitar, and it bounced awkwardly against his spine.
This, however, was the least of his problems.
He squinted at street names and muttered half-hearted apologies as he bumped into every other stranger he passed, attention on his destination and not his current situation. He was beginning to doubt Santana's sincerity, perhaps his entire friendship with her.
The girl had assured him that, while visiting a cousin in busy old Chicago, she had seen him.
Him.
Allegedly she'd watched him serve drinks and smile and flirt and wiggle his hips as he crossed the room to help a customer with their luggage. A quaint bistro, she'd said. Well, in all honesty she'd used words closer to shitty little bar and food joint, but to Ms Lopez it meant the same thing, and Noah, after years of practice, had grown to understand his favourite lesbian Latina's way of speaking.
Not that it mattered. All that mattered was the thought of him.
No, not him. Answers. That was all Noah needed.
His fingers gripped the paper tightly, folding another few creases into the greyish page as he peered across the road to a row of shops, all high street brands with windows full of pouty model photos and cheap clothes that screamed end-of-summer sale.
It was growing dark by now, the young man had been walking for over an hour and he'd never felt more hopeless than as he stood briefly still, inhaling the scent of a smoky city, relishing the symphony that signalled another Saturday night on the streets of a big city. He could feel the promise of alcohol and laughter quivering in the air. It was the same everywhere. With people came socialising, and with socialising came celebrating. Even in Lima, a prison cell that the devil himself considered lowlife, Friday and Saturday nights became just that bit more interesting than any other time of the week. Noah smiled at the thought of dropping his belongings at the first chance and giving up his search for the night, instead simply heading to the nearest bar and sitting with only his ego and whiskey for company for a few hours.
It wouldn't have been the first time.
But no, he shook his head, pushing onwards through the darkening streets of this new, alien city. He had to keep looking. And if he didn't find him? Well, he'd have to check into a hotel and try again the next day.
His feet dragged along the pavement, purposefully slowing outside every open door, every flashing neon light. Noah found himself reading the names as he passed: Flares, Razzles, Vistra, Club Caesar, Bar 69. He grinned at some of them, winced at others, and a couple he even hurried past, not wanting to linger outside their doors. His inner badass scowled at such cowardly behaviour, but he ignored his subconscious. It wasn't his fault if he didn't like sleazy under-the-radar pits of hell disguised as 'clubs'.
His bags were weighty in his hand; he could have sworn they were heavier than they had been when he first packed them, vacating the shabby Philadelphia motel that had been his home for the past few months. He longed for that sit down, for that whisky, for that one long night of steady drink and steady comfort. He hadn't simply gone out in so long...
If he hadn't been so desperate for that drink, he probably wouldn't have paid attention to the dark doorwayed building that fate presented him with. As it was, he stared intently at every poster, every window, every door, trying to find an excuse to stop, and, staring momentarily at a large oil pastel effect poster, he saw something quite incredible. The picture was a swirl of colours. The name Red Miller had been painted above the images, which merged and clashed brightly into an attractive eye-catcher. Its images showed busty girls wrapped around muscular men, bright dresses of every hue shining into the almost-night dim that now gripped Chicago city. And in the bottom left hand corner was a picture, fake pastel and oil like the others, of a young man mid twirl, as if half way through a elegant pirouette. His slender arms curved gracefully, the skin painted pale but for a rough staining blush in his cheeks that made him look alive, and his eyes were simply quick, sharp specks of blue half hidden behind strands of a dark brown that fell like post-sex bed hair into his face.
Noah felt his fingers twitch and it was all he could do to keep from dropping his bags there and then.
He stepped back so as to take in the building as a whole. It was devoid of all signs but for the poster on the door and a bright flaring notice that glowed Red Miller beneath the windows of the upper storeys. It was a curious place, invitingly mysterious without the usual bouncers and doormen flanking the entrance.
With little to lose, Noah took a deep breath and stepped towards the door. Before he could reach out to give it a testing push, however, it opened seemingly of its own accord. He froze, spooked by the sudden movement, until a man appeared in the doorway.
"Going to stand there all night, are we, sonny?" the man asked with a dark grin that, though not intimidating, did remove the younger man's urge to smirk and retort snidely. Noah shrugged, hoisting his guitar higher over his shoulder and scrunching his paper into his pocket. "Get in, before you fall over." The man was older than Noah by a good fifteen years at least. His dark hair was slicked back with enough grease to remind Noah of his old glee teacher, and the man's warm eyes took in the sight of the heavily burdened customer with a mixture of amusement and unease.
"Thanks," Noah muttered as an afterthought.
"Take it you're not a member, then?"
Noah looked to the doorman, whose nametag read Jay, with confusion. It was only the silence as he shook his head that he heard the muffled sound of a jazz band of some kind coming from down the stairs, the clink of glasses and tinkering of babble joining the lullaby. The corridor he found himself in was cramped, a desk shoved into a corner, covered in papers, and above it a large, faded poster of Liza Minnelli beside a blown up photo of Audrey Hepburn.
"Well, it's twenty bucks if you want to go any further.
"Twenty?" Noah cried, outraged. "Like hell I'm going to pay-"
"For that you'll get your first two drinks free, as well," Jay added with a sly grin, hand already held out, as if he knew Noah's decision.
It didn't take long for the last beloved twenty dollar bill in Noah Puckerman's wallet to be stuffed happily in doorman Jay's front pocket, as the weary traveller, his bags stowed in a closet with the promise they'd be taken care of, jogging eagerly down the steps towards he now realised to be some form of burlesque lounge.
Chairs and tables and couches and stools filled the majority of the floor space, and a large bar that ran the length of the room had been fitted into a wall painted dark red to match the majority of the lighting. Smoke filled the underground air with a haze that, mixed with the scent of desire and alcohol, went straight to Noah's head, and it wasn't long before he was sitting comfortably on a stool at the bar, three feet away from a beautiful young waitress with curly blonde locks and an angelically featured face that screamed nose job!, a glass of burning amber liquid in one hand and his second free drink ticket in the other. The air was filled with laughter and chatter, the lively jazz music merely background noise provided loose tie tuxedoed men and cocktail dress wearing women.
Noah had always been happy enough by himself. He had found at a young age that he liked people. Moreover, he liked watching people. He took a sip of whiskey, whistling through his teeth as it slipped hot and heavy down his welcoming throat, and leaned over the bar towards the pretty girl.
"I'm Puck!" he raised his voice louder than usual, wanting to be heard over the volume of the very air around them.
"I'm Carley!" she shouted back with a grin as she placed one of the large vodka bottles back in its rightful place on the shelf. "And I have a boyfriend!" she added, one eyebrow quirked. Noah smirked, already glad he'd entered, his reason for doing so almost forgotten, the painting he'd initially noticed out of his head.
"So do I!" he bellowed, and for a moment Carley paused, before she noticed his lips twitch as he fought back a chuckle. Realising his lie, she rolled her eyes and began wiping glasses before putting them away.
"Funny guy, are you?" she commented, not really needing an answer, but Noah, being the gentleman he was, provided one anyway.
"Always, sweetheart." He winked, and though she blushed lightly, Carley remained uninterested.
It was only once Noah's eyes strayed from the blonde's cleavage to the stage that he remembered why he had decided to enter the joint at all; the same reason he'd travelled all the way to Chicago, of all places, on that September day.
A slight girl with raven hair and a high cheekboned face had taken to the stage, her eyes on the band, and she licked her red, red lips once before belting out a long, powerful note that had Noah fleetingly recalling a curvy girl with cocoa skin and enough attitude for the rest of her schoolmates put together, a girl he'd known - quite well, in fact - during his high school years. Behind her a row of dancers swayed to the beat of the percussion instruments that set the tempo of the song, the women sporting mini top hats which matched their corset and mini-shorts outfits, the men in open tuxedoes, their ties undone. All faces but for the soloist's were shadowed in darkness, but before the girl had ran out of breath on her first note they stepped forwards, and it took precisely three and a half seconds for Noah Puckerman to momentarily forget how to breathe.
The song was foreign to him, but he didn't care for it. He watched, rather than listened, and his eyes never left one face. A pale face that blushed crimson under the lights.
In his younger years Noah would have been humiliated at the possibility of someone catching him staring at a boy, particularly when there were so many beautiful women around him, but times had changed. At twenty-two years of age, the Puckerman hooligan had learned better than to rely only on what people thought of him.
He stared unabashed at the face he'd thought of with regret and anger for years.
He was sure the young man had felt his stare, because his eyes would flit to the bar every few seconds, never quite reaching Noah but always searching in his direction. He grinned at the thought, smiling painfully as he hid the sudden urge to run onto the stage and beat some sense into the performer as he stood between two fellows, a girl in front of him and a boy behind him, all grinding in unison as they cast flirty gazes to their captivated audience and sang underneath the soloist's potent notes. With difficulty he beat down the urge to burst into a fit of rage, or of hysteria, or of just plain old tears.
He stared unabashed into the face of Kurt Hummel.
Reviews are rewarded with authors' love, virtual lollipops and hugs. We hope you enjoyed the first chapter! Honestly, it picks up next chapter...
Stormy and Pan (a.k.a. Sally and Kyle) xx xx