Disclaimer: Ownership is neither claimed nor implied.
A/N: They'd made a pact, made a promise, if the time came...now here it was...
"Should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind..." the crowd of happy revellers sang, bouncing their joined hands in time honoured fashion. Puck, taking a moment to himself on the patio, looked over his shoulder at the party, glancing back into the function room at Lost Creek Country Club, noting the happy, slightly intoxicated faces, he sighed and closed his eyes, swallowing back the emotion that suddenly welled up from nowhere.
"Hi," a soft voice said from behind him making Puck jump just a little.
"Hey, how are you?" Puck responded.
"Good, good, how are you?" she asked politely.
"Good, good," Puck replied then they both glanced around, embarrassed, uncomfortable, neither thinking of anything interesting to say.
"We-" she started to say.
"Are-" Puck started to say, both of them stopping as they interrupted each other. "You first," Puck offered with a smile.
She shrugged self consciously and blushed. "I was just going to say that it feels like we haven't seen each other for a long time," she muttered and blushed some more. "You?"
"I was going to ask if you're here alone," Puck mumbled, embarrassed too at the desperation he could hear in his voice.
"Yes," she replied, "yes, I'm here alone."
Puck felt the flush of relief spread through him, the kind you feel when you think you've lost your keys or your phone, just for a split second, the kind where, when you actually locate your phone an instant later, you see your life flash before you and you thank God that no one found it or the sappy stuff you have saved to it. He did the only sensible thing, he took a sip of his drink and nodded, Puck wasn't sure that shouting 'woohoo' would be his best course of action.
"Do yo-" they both began together.
"You first," she grinned, wondering if this could get any more awkward.
"Do you remember what we said?" he asked, his eyes narrowing as he stared into hers.
"Yes," she replied, her simple word such a heartfelt sigh. "Yes, I remember, that's why I'm here," she added and almost had to bite back a sob.
Puck's mind ran back to graduation, to the whispered promise they'd shared on that stage, the hug that went on and on until their friends broke them apart. "Let's keep in touch, if we're both alone on New Year's 2020, then we'll know we're meant to be," he had vowed, Quinn had immediately agreed, unfortunately they'd been dragged apart before they could seal the vow with a kiss.
"Quick, I see people coming this way," she hissed, grabbing at his hand and dragging him into the shadows with her.
"Oh, I thought I saw Quinn out here," Rachel slurred to Santana, almost tripping over her own slightly tipsy feet.
"I thought she was talking to someone," Santana replied, trying to focus on the area just in front of the patio, peering into the darkness. "Can't see them now," she sighed. "It's freakin' cold out here, I'm going back in to party some more," she told Rachel and turned to totter back into the ballroom on impossibly high heels.
"Well, if she was out here with someone and that someone was listening right now," Rachel said out loud to herself, "he better look after her or Noah will have his hide," she muttered before turning to the open doors to look in at some of her best friends partying like it was a new millenium. "And if Noah had any sense, he would stop ignoring me and get it on with Quinn because they are totally made for each other," she added before stepping back into the room, closing the door behind her.
"She does always say that," Puck admitted once Rachel had disappeared.
"She tells me the same thing," Quinn sighed, looking up into Puck's dreamy, sexy eyes. "So," she started, still trying to find the words.
"So," Puck repeated, his hands landing gently on her shoulders. "I got the ticket," he said, stating the obvious. Obviously he'd got the ticket, otherwise he wouldn't have been at the ball, he didn't even live in Lima anymore, he hadn't since joining the airforce the year after graduation.
"I was just about to say the same thing," Quinn said with a slightly embarrassed laugh. "You didn't send the ticket?" she asked, giving Puck a totally puzzled look.
"No, I thought you...you didn't send the ticket?" Puck asked Quinn. "Then who did?" they asked each other at the same time. "You know what?" Puck said with a broadening smile. "It doesn't matter who sent it," he said, confident that Quinn would admit it eventually. "What matters is that we're here now, together, just like we said, and I am so ready to not be alone," he added with feeling.
"I'm ready too, there's never been anyone else to match up, no one even came close," Quinn said simply. Puck bent his head, his lips touched hers and in a flash of light, Puck knew he had come home.
"Excuse me, Mr Puckerman? Ms Fabray?" a woman's voice gently interrupted them. "We're ready for you, if you'd like to come this way," she indicated the now brightly lit pergola that stood, like a beacon on a small rise about fifty feet away from the patio.
"Ready for what?" Puck asked, as puzzled and confused as Quinn looked.
"For your marriage to take place," the woman answered with a smile, checking something in the large silver folder that she carried. "If you could wait here," she said to Quinn, "Mr Puckerman, come with me, we won't be a second," she told Quinn and led Puck by the hand. "Your brother is waiting, ah, there he is, he has the rings," she said, looking ahead. Puck looked up and saw Jake waiting in the pergola for him along with several other faces he recognised, none more so than his mother and his sister.
"What's going on?" Puck murmured to Jake once they were stood together under a canopy of artificial flowers and fairy lights.
"What do you mean what's going on?" Jake countered. "It's your wedding," he answered as though talking to an imbecile.
"So I've been told, but how did this happen?" Puck asked, glancing round and noticing even more people he recognised, Shelby, Mr Schue, Sam Evans, Tina and Mike Chang, Kurt and Blaine Anderson, Coach Beiste and Coach Sylvester and more, quite a few more faces. "Crap, is this real?" he asked as the wedding march suddenly began to play. Puck turned and saw Santana and Rachel trot, quite steadily he thought, down the aisle between the rows of chairs towards Jake and himself. "They don't look quite so wasted anymore," he mentioned to Jake, Jake shrugged. "Jeez," Puck breathed as Beth came next, followed by Quinn, complete with a beautiful bouquet of deep red roses, she walked towards him, her mom supporting and guiding her. "She looks amazing," he whispered, monitoring Quinn's progress, then Quinn looked up and their eyes locked, Puck couldn't breathe, his lungs burned, he felt faint. How had he managed to live his life without her in it? How had he even existed all these years? "Hi," he said very quietly to Quinn as she reached him, giving her such a sweet smile as their fingertips joined.
"Are we really doing this?" Quinn asked tremulously, her voice shivering with nerves almost as much as her body was trembling with them.
"I will if you will," Puck replied as he took both of her hands in his, her bouquet having been taken by Rachel. "I am so ready for this," he told her intently, "I have never stopped loving you, it's always been you, since we were fifteen years old, it's always been you," he said, emotion and love overflowing in his voice, bringing tears to Quinn's eyes, to her mom's, Beth's, Rachel's, even Jake's. Santana, typically, rolled her eyes then surreptitously wiped away a stray tear.
"There has never been anyone who makes me feel like you make me feel," Quinn replied with just as much emotion. "I feel like I've loved you for a thousand years and I hope that we will be blessed enough to have a million more," she added with a self conscious shrug.
"Sounds good to me," Puck whispered then turned to face the celebrant, Quinn did too.
"After such lovingly said vows, all that remains is for me to ask, Lucy Quinn Fabray do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?" the celebrant asked.
"I do," Quinn whispered then gulped, wondering when she would wake up from this lovely dream.
"Noah Asher Puckerman, do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?" she asked Puck.
"I do," Puck replied firmly and was pleasantly surprised by how right it felt to say those words.
"By the power vested in me by the State of Ohio," the celebrant continued, "I now pronounce you husband and wife, you may kiss your bride."
Puck's hands gently guided Quinn's face to his own, their lips joined in an explosion of fireworks. The ooohs and ahhhs alerted them both to the fact that they were possibly real fireworks. "Happy New Year," Quinn whispered to Puck as their lips parted and their eyes opened.
"Happy new life," Puck replied, his lips joined with hers again. "Who arranged all this?" he asked the celebrant when he felt he could let Quinn go.
"I really can't say," the celebrant told Puck with a smile. "I just turn up and perform the service, you'd have to ask the wedding planner," she suggested, indicating the back of the woman holding the large silver folder. "I hope it was everything you wished for," she said as she closed her own file and tugged her coat closer around her. "Oh how lovely," she sighed as snow began to fall gently all around them.
"Morning," Puck said as he woke and felt her shift in his arms.
"Morning," Quinn replied and stretched sinuously against him. "Did that really happen last night?" she asked after a few moments.
"Did what happen?" Puck asked slowly, wondering which part she was referring to. He could tell her blow by blow some of the things that happened, if she wanted him to and hell yeah, he could show her again if that helped.
Quinn turned in his arms, their noses touching then their lips. "Did we really get married last night?" she asked, hardly daring to look at her left hand.
"Yep we did," Puck murmured against her lips. "That was really cool by the way, arranging all that, sending the ticket," he said, appreciating how wanted it made him feel, how needed.
"It wasn't me, I thought it was you," Quinn said, pulling back a little, looking at Puck with troubled eyes. "I thought you were joking last night when you said it wasn't you, I thought you just didn't want people to know how romantic and special you are," she told him.
"Seriously, it wasn't me," Puck said, suddenly feeling like they'd been manipulated.
"If it wasn't you and it wasn't me, then who was it?" Quinn demanded, looking round the beautifully appointed bridal suite as if she would find someone in there with them.
Puck's phone chimed at the same time as Quinn's buzzed. "Congratulations," both text messages read. "We're waiting downstairs to have breakfast with you when you're ready."
"Maybe now we'll find out," Puck said with a grin, getting up to take a quick shower. "Don't recognise the number, not one either of us has in our contacts, but that's easy to do, buy a disposable cell, use it to send a few messages then get rid of it, just about untraceable," he continued, talking even through his shower. Quinn stepped in behind him and hurried through her own morning routine.
"I don't believe it," Quinn breathed as they neared the bottom of the sweeping staircase. "Both of you?" she asked. "You did this? You arranged all this?" she demanded with a grin. "Thank you," she sighed as she hugged first her own mother then Puck's.
"I can't believe you did all this for us," Puck said as he pulled his mom into a bone crushing hug. "How did you know?" he demanded.
"We've always known," Judy Fabray replied with a damp, teary smile. "Since the day you both went your seperate ways and tried to be without each other, even down to dating other people, it was obvious to everyone that no one else would ever come close to being 'the one' for either of you," she said.
"And neither of us is getting any younger, we want grandchildren," Puck's mum chimed in, watching her son roll his eyes. "Finn heard you two, the day you graduated, he was worried that you were going to run away to Vegas or something right then and there, so he told me about it, about your pact. I have to admit that I haven't been particularly welcoming to any girl that Noah brought home and I know Judy has been the same with any boy you brought home," she said almost apologetically to Quinn.
"That's true," Quinn said to Puck, thinking about how unlike her usually ultra polite self Judy had been on the admittedly rare occasions that Quinn had brought anyone home with her. "So you decided that we should wait until now?" she asked their mothers.
"Well, no, not really," Judy replied uncomfortably. "It's more a case of neither of you two doing anything about it and like Rosa said, there's none of us getting any younger and we would like grandchildren," she added, smiling endearingly at Quinn.
"We'll have to see what we can do," Puck said, hauling Quinn close to his side. "I have a month's worth of leave, starting yesterday," he told her. "I'm sure we can do something to pass the time," he grinned, flicking his eyebrows up at her.
"And I called your boss yesterday and arranged for you to take two weeks off for your honeymoon," Judy admitted to Quinn, biting her lip and unable to look at her daughter. "You're going to Belize," she cried, hardly able to keep the news to herself, she was so excited, so happy for them.
"Tonight actually, you fly tonight," Rosa Puckerman told her son and new daughter-in-law. "We hope you have a wonderful time," she sighed as they sat down to breakfast together. "Have you forgiven us yet? For sending the tickets for the ball and arranging your wedding?" she asked, hoping to hear a yes from both of them, either of them.
"Thank you," Puck said quietly, sincerely to both his mom and Judy. "This is exactly where we should be, probably just a few years late," he added with a huff of laughter. "You've always been the love of my life, even when I was too stupid to know it," he told Quinn.
"And I have always loved you, from the very first time you tried to get me to go out with you, way, way back before we ever tasted wine coolers," Quinn told Puck with a shy blush. "Although that day sealed it for me," she admitted quietly.
"For me too," Puck agreed, "no one else has ever measured up to you, I never wanted anyone to."
Rosa and Judy looked at each other and smiled. Mission accomplished, now if all their other schemes would just fall into place, 2020 would be just about perfect...