Morning Blend (Of Me and You)
Behold, yet another sappy fic of blissfully domestic proportions! I seriously have a problem with Puck/Kurt!domesticity.
...And coffee, but honestly, that's nothing new.
Written to fill this one anonymous prompt over at the puckurt Fic Meme that asked for Puck having to Kurt-proof his apartment for a klutzy, not-a-morning-person!Kurt, who can't function properly without his morning cuppa. (It wasn't hard to come up with mishaps... I have my mother to thank for this fic. LOVE YA, MA!)
Without further ado... I hope you like this! (I'd say "I hope this is good to the last drop, but I think that a little too punny, even for me. Ahaha.)
black as the devil, hot as hell,
pure as an angel, sweet as love.
- Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord
It was a beautiful Saturday morning: the sun was shining, the birds were singing, and-
…Alright, so Puck didn't actually know if it was nice out. Hell, he'd yet to crack open his sleep-crusted eyes to check the time. And as far as he knew, the City's pigeons couldn't carry a tune for shit. Curiosity wasn't enough to make him wake up and peek at the alarm clock, not yet. He'd had Kurt over after a full day sweating gallons at the warehouse and they'd had a late night, so to speak. Considering the last time they hooked up had been sometime last week, they had a lot of… catching up to do.
Puck had earned his bum day, fair and square, and he planned on milking his free time for all it was worth.
Just as he was sleepily wondering what he'd do today (sit in front of the tube, fool around on the couch more than actually watching his TiVo'ed shows), a loud crash came from somewhere in the hallway.
He leapt up in bed like his mohawk had finally caught fire from Kurt's über-glares, wide-eyed and kind of out of it. His head rushed from getting up so quickly, but he ignored it in favor of finding out where the hell Kurt was, and what he was up to.
Puck made it out of his room before Kurt stopped him in his tracks… literally.
He stumbled and flew into the adjacent wall in the narrow hall, shouting in surprise as he looked down at the other man, crumpled in a heap on the hardwood floor. "Kurt… what the hell are you doing?"
The other man pouted up at him with a look that made Puck think of high school days-which felt more like eternities than years ago-and their unorthodox methods of courtship. (Degrading, stinging remarks paired with veiled touches that lingered far too long to be casual; smoldering eye-sex from across the choir room when their friends were too self-absorbed to notice... Oh, those were the days.)
"Wu's it look like 'm doin'?" Kurt slurred, letting his head drop back down to the floorboards with a wince-worthy smack. The other man didn't seem to notice (or care).
"It looks like you're making out with my floor," Puck said, sleep-roughened voice laced with amusement. He yawned loud and long, slouching against the wall. His framed Metallica vinyl teetered dangerously next to his temple. "Why're you on the floor, again?"
"Wanted to… getta know your apartment better," Kurt muttered sarcastically, not nearly as acerbic as usual.
"Right. Well," Puck propelled himself onto his feet and carefully sidestepped Kurt's sprawled-out legs. "I'm gonna make some coffee. Did you-"
"Coffee," Kurt moaned appreciatively, opening one eye to pat Puck's bare foot in thanks. "Please. Coffee."
Puck snorted and playfully jabbed Kurt's side with his big toe as he made his way into the kitchenette. He paused to right the lamp that had tripped Kurt, making a side note to move it closer to his recliner. This way, it'd be easier to switch it on whenever Puck wanted to read in his favorite chair.
He didn't choose to acknowledge the fact that the last time he'd cracked open a book, he'd been studying for his senior finals.
He found out the hard way that Kurt considered it a national crisis when there was no coffee to be had. It was like watching a car crashing right before your eyes and being glued into place, unable to do more than gape and stare.
"Puck, fix it," Kurt said after a moment of poking and prodding at his old, wheezing Black & Decker coffee maker. His voice was reedy with panic. After a tense moment, Kurt spun around and cried, "Puck!"
He shook out of his stupor and hesitantly approached his crazed boyfriend(?). Kurt stepped back, wringing his hands nervously as Puck took a look at the machine. He pretended he knew what he was doing, only to yank something off and have hot steam blow into his face.
Kurt did his best to play the part of concerned fling-slash-possible-boyfriend, inspecting Puck's face for second-degree burns and asking if he was alright. It was a thin, cracking veneer that barely concealed the man's panic.
"Look," Puck sighed, "It's broken. But-" He put a hand on Kurt's shoulder soothe him before he began hyperventilating. "There's a Starbuck's down the block. We can pick up some coffee, and I'll even buy you a scone or something."
"Unnecessary calories," Kurt moaned, but the promise of caffeine was too important to pass up.
They were out the door in five minutes flat; Kurt had just thrown on whatever he could find-his jeans from last night paired with Puck's oversized Yankees hoodie. It was a pretty uneventful trip, if you counted Kurt nearly bashing a picky businessman's head in with a retractable umbrella and Puck having to apologize to an irate mother whose five-year-old son's Batman toy was cleanly beheaded.
But all the trouble Puck went through to caffeinate his temporarily insane boyfriend was worth it. He got a giggle out of Kurt when the barista announced Puckzilla's orders were ready, quickly followed by a pick-up for one Lady GaGa.
And once Kurt had taken a couple bracing sips of his coffee (with nothing foofier than a dash of nonfat milk and Sugar in the Raw, much to Puck's surprise), he had offered the sobbing kid a chocolate chip cookie the size of his head and a twenty for the dazed mother. "Just in case he wants a Ken doll, too."
They walked around a bit, hands linked and shoulders brushing. Kurt lasted for a good fifteen minutes before he began to fret over his outfit, and Puck grinned. "Good to have you back, Kurt."
Nearly two weeks passed in a blur of almost daily goodnight kisses and no one's bed head to laugh at in the mornings. To say Puck was a little bewildered (and secretly kind of hurt) by the sudden distance between him and Kurt would be putting it lightly. He was just considering staging some kind of intervention when Kurt barged into his apartment late Friday night, plopping a gift-wrapped box in Puck's lap.
Awkward silences were the worst.
"Er…" He looked at the box with a frown. "It's not my birthday."
Kurt's face was cutely flushed-probably not because of the unseasonably cool weather. "Um… any Jewish holidays coming up?"
Puck blinked. "Nope."
"Usually, I'd pretend it's an anniversary gift and fake anger over your brutish ignorance… but it's a little too late for that."
"And you wouldn't do that to me…" Puck said, trailing off with a visible question mark.
"And I wouldn't do that to you," Kurt agreed. (Though that smirk said otherwise.)
He shrugged and unwrapped the big rectangular box to find…
He leaned back, scratching his head. "A coffee maker?"
Kurt huddled into a little ball of embarrassment next to him on the hideous (but still comfortable!) sofa. "I figure you need one, since Starbucks isn't all that easy on the wallet."
Puck looked from the pretty pricey-looking appliance to Kurt, clearly bewildered. "Hold up… is this why I've been missing out on thank-you-for-coffee blowjobs? Because of coffee?"
"I need my caffeine!" Kurt argued in a hilariously impassioned tone of voice, his cheeks blazing red.
"Should I be jealous that I'm less important than coffee?" He was laughing, though, and Kurt offered him a sheepish little smile.
"No. You should feel thankful to have such a thoughtful boyfriend."
"Right. Well," He set the box down on the floor before crawling over onto Kurt's lap, smirking as the man automatically grabbed Puck's hips. "Let me show you just how thankful I am."
Their relationship had come to the point where Kurt could be found scattered throughout Puck's apartment. It wasn't just a small, nondescript thing or two, like spare change forgotten on a nightstand or a stray sock hidden beneath the bed.
No, it was loading his laundry into the washing machine and finding some of Kurt's boxers, or going to the snack cabinet and finding a box of Wheat Thins next to his Doritos. It was trying to find his lucky red and white plaid flannel pants (the pair with McKinley's Titan logo sewn onto the side), only to find it fucking cleaned and folded in his pajama drawer. (Oh yeah. The pajama drawer was a new installment, too.)
Puck had gone to brush his teeth today, and he nearly had a panic attack when he picked up something that looked more Medieval torture device than toothbrush. It was Kurt's toothbrush. Puck looked at his wide-eyed expression in the vanity mirror, and opened the medicine cabinet with no small amount of trepidation.
His worst fears were confirmed: the shelves were noticeably fuller. Kurt's toiletries had invaded his mancave. He moaned in anguish. Soon, Kurt would be buying them monogrammed bath robes!
Puck was onto the arm-flailing and hissed What the fucking stage of panic when he heard a muted thud come from his bedroom.
He halfheartedly popped his toothbrush in his mouth, trudging along the hall in his (probably white, once upon a time) socks. He almost spewed minty foam all over his bare chest at the sight of Kurt glaring down at the pile of laundry that had tripped him.
When Kurt noticed him standing in the doorway, the dirty look was quickly directed at Puck. It was all Puck could do to keep from bursting out laughing, especially with his boxer shorts that had somehow landed on top of his head.
"Why 're there clothes on th'floor?" Kurt ground out. If he were a cat right now, Kurt would look like a puffy ball of stuck-up fur, hissing and spitting with claws swiping at the open air.
"Um…" He swallowed down what was left of his toothpaste, grimacing slightly. "Because that's where dirty laundry goes?"
"Dirty laundry b'longs in hampers."
Puck rolled his eyes. "Well, I don't own a hamper." He smiled lightly when Kurt rolled over in the pile of clothing and used it as a makeshift bed. "Hey, Kurt. Kurt. Come on, you gotta jump in the shower like, right now if you want to make it to work in time."
Kurt groaned but allowed himself to be helped up… only to knock them both over when he slumped against Puck's toothpaste-sticky chest with a content, tired mewl. Puck rolled his eyes. "C'mon, babe."
He smiled in success when he got Kurt into the bathroom, closing the door behind the sleepily murmuring man. Just as he was about to head into the kitchen to get some coffee (the beauty of coffee timers), he heard a series of clanks and thumps.
Puck spun on his heel and yanked the door open, jumping back when something… Kurt fell onto his feet. He felt exasperation welling up, but just as he was about to ask what the fuck Kurt thought he was doing, he made the mistake of looking into those wide blue-green eyes that were looked up at him in delirious confusion. His heart practically melted when Kurt asked, in a voice reminiscent of Brittany Lopez's dreamy lilt, "Puck… when'd you get so tall?"
He shook his head and smiled down at Kurt, who offered him a dopey grin in return. "C'mon babe," he sighed. "Maybe you should have some coffee fir-"
"Coffee," Kurt moaned, practically climbing Puck's legs in his excitement.
"Chillax," Puck laughed. "Wait here, it'll be easier."
He carefully shook Kurt awake, and they sat and drank their morning cuppa right there in the doorway. They exchanged small-talk, leaning against opposite ends of the jamb so their feet could tangle together and play footsie in-between sips of liquid Godsend.
Puck was there to see a frenzied Kurt off to work, a silently amused presence to offer fresh bath towels-because the others were in that pile of dirty clothes-and hand over missing car keys.
After a quick goodbye kiss (which had been pretty damn mind-blowing, for the three-second time limit it was given), he was left alone in his apartment once more. It was odd because just a handful of months ago, it would've been odd to have someone else in his home for more than a few hours. Now… now it was weird to have the place to himself.
He smiled like a loon as he nuked leftovers from last night's dinner for his breakfast: Kurt's father's famous chicken parm. Sure, Kurt was a little high-maintenance-he refused to drink juice that had less than twenty-five percent real juice, and when he stayed the night, he tried his best to make a home-cooked meal instead of ordering out. But his quirks were mostly cute and only sort of annoying sometimes.
When he stopped by Walmart later on that day, a cheap, collapsible mesh hamper somehow found its way into his shopping cart.
Before Kurt, Puck hadn't considered being under-caffeinated a state serious enough to cause bodily harm.
He was wrong.
Kurt moaned, leaning his head back against Puck's chest as Puck dutifully held an ice pack to the growing egg on Kurt's forehead.
"Why would you leave the door closed, Puck?" He asked for the umpteenth time.
Puck rolled his eyes when Kurt wasn't looking. "I told you already-I left the bathroom door cracked after I took a dump, because the vent kinda sucks. The breeze musta shut the door sometime in the night."
Kurt whimpered and huddled closer into Puck's embrace. He had to reluctantly commiserate with the poor guy. Sure, he hadn't walked straight into the bathroom door first thing in the morning, but last night's dinner hadn't sat well with Puck. He'd been up for hours on end with the runs, and he knew he wouldn't hear the end of it from Kurt. (Who had warned him about the seedy Chinese restaurant, and didn't you read that article in the paper about their latest failed inspection?)
"Apologize," Kurt demanded, though it came out sounding more like a plea.
Puck glared at the crown of Kurt's head. "What for? 'I'm sorry that the Chicken Kung Pao kung-pao'ed my stomach?'" He sighed at Kurt's soft noises of pain. "Well, I guess I'm sorry you got hurt."
"You should be," Kurt said, craning his neck to pout up at Puck. He looked like a helpless kitten.
Puck smirked down at him, carefully carding his hand through Kurt's hair with his free hand. "But look, you're conscious! And you didn't even have to drink any coffee," he said with a bright grin he knew had to be irritating.
Kurt gave him an unimpressed glare and elbowed him in his (still tender) stomach. He grunted in pain, and Kurt looked a little sympathetic.
They dozed off cuddled together on the sofa as the sky went from orangey-pink to soft blue, their daily routine of morning coffee forgotten. Kurt traded the promise of a doorstop for the bathroom for the amazing Hummel family chicken noodle soup. It wasn't Kosher, not by a long shot, but it was a perfect dinner, complete with crusty bread… and coffee. (For Kurt.)
The transition of Kurt's life into Puck's own had been months in the making, so when the issue of Kurt moving in was eventually brought up, Puck didn't even hesitate when he said they'd rent a POD to move Kurt's stuff into Puck's place before next month's rent was due for Kurt's apartment.
Of course, they now had a surplus of shit. They were working on sorting things and putting what they didn't really need into storage. (Their debates over morning coffee were now focused on whose couch would be staying.) Therefore, it seemed like having space to breathe was some stroke of luck.
Puck walked into the kitchen just in time to see disaster unfold. It was like a slow-motion scene in an action movie: a coffee mug that had been teetering on the edge of the cabinet shelf wobbled a bit before making its lazy descent onto the linoleum floor.
He was running towards Kurt before he realized what he was doing, and he caught the other man right before he fell on his ass. Kurt cried out in what could have been either surprise or pain, and Puck shouted "Are you hurt?"
Kurt shook his head slowly, obviously still half asleep and in shock. Puck could feel both of their hearts racing as they stared in bewilderment at the shards of blue porcelain decorating the kitchenette floor.
"God, the things you do for coffee." It was anyone's guess as to why they started to giggle, but before he knew it, Puck was trying not to drop Kurt as they both shook in belly-busting laughter. Puck was wheezing, as he slowly sank down to the ground.
Kurt folded neatly into his lap, laughing until he snorted. He froze in embarrassment, only to be sent into fresh peals of laughter as Puck laughed at him. Tears were rolling down their flushed cheeks when they finally managed to reign in the too-early hysterics.
"There's definitely not a dull moment with you, is there?" Puck sighed, grinning as he placed a kiss to Kurt's temple.
Kurt hiccupped on another giggle, leaning against Puck's bare chest. "Well, you're stuck with me, I'm afraid. Any regrets?"
"Well, I'm a chunk of my paycheck now goes to your Crack Funds," he quipped. "I'm still waiting for a thank-you gift basket from Folgers."
Kurt smiled back at him, but Puck could see the shadows of doubt still lurking in his expression. He pulled Kurt in for an open-mouthed kiss, morning breath and all. "No, none at all."
Puck would surely end up with a stomach ulcer or two if he stayed with Kurt for the long run, but if being with Kurt-living with Kurt's coffee addictions had taught him anything at all, it was that some things were worth suffering for.