No one, least of all Puck or Lauren, would have predicted that four years after the "potty rescue" as they had taken to calling it, they would still be together. Lauren never anticipated a life with a partner at all, she was comfortable being alone. And Puck never thought he would find a woman who could quell his desire to spread his genetic material as far and wide as possible. But you never fall in love when you plan to or when it's convenient, despite what the Disney fairytales tried to teach us.
So here they were, Lauren's junior year at Ohio State. Puck was working the small, but not completely useless music scene in the city. Sure, it wasn't New York or LA or even Nashville, for that matter, but there was a pretty good local music community and he got to stay with Lauren. For her part, Lauren's big dreams of professional wrestling faded a bit too. Too many assholes telling her to lose weight or to trying to get a quick BJ in their office turned her off really fast. That combined with all the fakeness she saw in the "business" and she was out. Sure she wanted to be famous, but she was an athlete, not a fucking actress.
Once the pro wrestling desires were abandoned, Lauren knew exactly what she wanted to do. She would major in sports management and maybe athletic training and become either the best sport agent in the world, or work for a professional sports team somewhere. It made so much sense to her, she was fluent in the language of athletes and she would be able to go to bat, so to speak, for her clients like no one else. She was nothing if not fierce.
Puck was actually managing to make some sort of living out of the music industry in the city. He wrote his own music and played a circuit of bars and clubs in the area. His favorites were open mic nights for singer-songwriters that had been known to attract a few music insiders, but those were never the gigs that paid. He had a few small bars that would let him play his own bluesy, folky music and give him a cut of the bar sales as payment. But most of the time, he made money to pay the bills playing covers and putting on the persona of the cocky rock star. And the job that always came through for money, much to Lauren's I-told-you-so smug delight, was a hard rocking show in his tightest jeans at the few very popular gay clubs in Columbus. There is no way he would have even thought of that idea himself, or put together the outfit for the first night at the club, and that is exactly why Lauren decided he needed to try out. God, he hated when she was so overwhelmingly right.
They lived in the same apartment building, well more accurately, they both rented apartments in the same building, but they lived together 99 percent of the time. No matter how much Mr. Zizes liked and respected Noah, there is no chance that his baby girl was going to be allowed to officially live with him, at least if Mr. Zizes' money was helping pay for Lauren's education. So their apartments were separated by a few floors, his efficiency barely furnished and chronically empty and her larger, more comfortable space was their obvious home.
There was no doubt that the love was there, but after four years, people get… comfortable. Their sex was still un-fucking-believable and had the ability to turn them both into boneless piles of jelly, but something was less so than it was at the beginning. They didn't talk about it and neither of them could probably identify the 'what' that was missing. Not even missing really, just… different. Their beginning had been such a cat-and-mouse chase that the thrill was addicting. Maybe that was it, the thrill was changing into something else more comfortable. Their lives were pretty predictable at this point, homework and working on new music, dinners at home and music at bars all over town, the occasional road trip to New York of Chicago to see Rachel and Tina and Kurt in their shows or trips home to Lima.
It was late fall and Lauren had just finished up a particularly brutal round of midterms. Puck knew he needed to do something. If there was nothing else he had learned in the past four years of becoming a man, it was that things didn't just happen, sometimes you had to make your own magic.
"We're going out tomorrow, babe." She just raised an eyebrow at him. The unspoken question so clear he could actually hear her voice in his head asking 'and what is all this fuckery?' He just continued, "It's a place that may be kinda fun. I want you to wear something super hot and meet me there." Now both of her eyebrows shot up.
"Not the stranger at the bar scenario. Oh sweet boy, I am SO not into role-playing. I am already more than enough woman for you to handle ."
He pulled her to him and reached around to grab two handfuls of her lovely ass, "And don't I know it. I just wanna surprise you for once, plus I will take any excuse I can to see you show off all my property," Puck slide his hands up from her ass, across her hips and to her breasts as he dipped his head down to nuzzle between them.
"Oooh, possessive Puck. You know I like it when you try to take control," she teased him. Lauren broke away from his embrace and sauntered to their bedroom. "Get me the address and I will be there, if you think you can handle all this," as she flung her shirt right at his face.
"I never had a problem making you scream my name before and it won't start now," he poked right back as he hurried after her, nearly falling trying to take off his jeans and jog to the bedroom at the same time.
This was a huge risk and he knew it. Either Lauren would think this was totally awesome, or he may end up sitting on an ice pack for a week. The scary thing was that he was still 50-50 on which outcome was more likely. Columbus had a club that was known as a BBW club and he wanted to take her to it. He loved Lauren because she was Lauren and for no other reason. He thought she was sexy as hell. Her body and how she used it made him hotter than any other women ever had. Sex with her was vision-blurring, breath-stopping amazing. But somehow he knew that if she weighed 120 or 320 pounds, he would still love her and sex would still be amazing because she was Lauren. He never loved her because of, or in spite of her body. That conclusion took him a while to process, because it wasn't exactly an easy concept to deal with for a 17 year old boy who only knew women before as playthings.
But he also noticed the brief pangs in her eyes when they were out at bars. It wasn't exactly self-pity or jealousy. He saw it when some bar floozy came up to him after a performance or when her eyes scanned the room every time they went into a new place, looking to see if she was the biggest girl there. It was like, even though she had no qualms about her attractiveness or his appreciation of her body, she was just intensely aware of her "big girl" status. And Puck just knew that that awareness, constant barrage of "you're different than us" messages had to suck.
So in his travels of the music/bar/night club circuit in Columbus he heard about a club. It wasn't really advertised as such, but everyone just knew it was a bbw club (God, he hated that term). So his dilemma was clear – either she would love it, have fun, feel sexy (as she should) and not feel like she was being constantly judged as different. Or she would hate it and quite possible kick his ass, or even scarier, cut off his access to her bed. After wrestling with his own mind for days, he decided it was worth the risks to both shake things up and bit and hopefully help her feel as amazing as he knew she was.
Lauren was pretty surprised at the excitement with which Puck was planning his little surprise. He actually was up and out of the apartment before Lauren even woke up, and that NEVER happened. He left her a note on the bathroom mirror with the address of their meeting place for the evening and a note. "See you tonight babe. 9:00. Wear something from the back of the closet."
"Oooooh ho ho. This could get interesting," Lauren said to herself aloud. The back of the closet was were the super scandalous, usually only for "private" clothes lived. The ones she pulled out for those times when she felt the need to tease Puck out of his ability to form actual words. Once she even wore a back-of-the-closet undergarment under her dress when they went out to dinner with his mom. The text she sent him telling him that fact made his eyes slightly roll back in his head and made the family dinner WAY more fun to witness.
Thankfully, Lauren finished up her midterms and didn't have any class or studying or commitments of any kind that Friday. Puck was nowhere to be found, probably in one of his favorite hiding spots writing lyrics. The music always flowed from him, but he needed a lot of solitude to write lyrics. And honestly, Lauren liked the time away. In spite how much more social and friendly she had become, and no matter how much she loved Puck and being with him, sometimes being alone was exactly what she needed. She laid in bed till late in the morning, not fully awake or asleep. She ate cereal for lunch in her pajamas while she watched her favorite trashy TV from her DVR.
It was late in the afternoon before she finally showered and primped a little for her mystery date night. After much deliberation and digging through the back of the closet, Lauren settled on an outfit she was pretty sure would make Puck drool. Her favorite tight black pants that hugged her ass in all the right ways, knee-high black boots with a little kitten heel, and the never-before-seen-the-public dark purple and black corset. When she finally completed the whole hair, makeup, outfit package she checked herself in the mirror. "Oh yeah, I'd totally fuck me," she said out loud and giggled to herself. She was walking out the door before she gave in to the voice in her head telling her to maybe cover up a little, and grabbed a purple cardigan. "In case it gets cold," she told herself.
Lauren's eyes narrowed as she handed her ID to the bouncer and got her first glimpses of the other patrons of this establishment. What in the actual fuck is going on here? she thought. All of the women here were some version of round. Some with just a few extra curves around the bottom and every other shape and configuration of woman you could imagine. The thing that shocked Lauren more than anything was the complete diversity of the men. Short, tall, big, small, black, white, brown, young, old. This could be a disaster, Lauren thought. But she allowed herself to trust Puck and her knowledge that she was one sexy ass woman.
Lauren barely noticed the heads turning to follow her as she stepped inside and scanned the look for Puck. He didn't see her at first, which was fine with Lauren. She hung back and watched him for a minute. He was sitting at the bar with a beer in one hand and the other tapping a rhythm with his fingertips. There was a group of women hovering around him looking like cats waiting for their opportunity to pounce, but it was as if he didn't even notice their presence. In fact, he looked kind of nervous the way he kept checking his watch every 3 seconds and picking at the edges of the label on his beer.
She decided to take pity on him and stepped out of the shadows towards the bar. When he finally caught sight of her, his face lit up. She had to admit that it made her heart swell a bit knowing that seeing her made him happy. But then he waved to her like a goofy little kid and she groaned to herself. There goes all your cool kid street cred, baby. Even better than his smiling face though, was watching the faces of all those jealous bitches fall as she pulled the stool up next to him.
Lauren leaned over and kissed his cheek. "Hey sexy mama, whacha got under that sweater?" Puck asked her in his most leering pick-up line voice. "Wanna let me get a peak?" and he actually reached over heading towards the buttons of her cardigan. She smacked his hand away hard enough to sting.
"If you wanna keep that hand, you'll keep it to yourself, big boy." She tried to sound like a hard ass, but she was smiling too much too sound too mean. "So are you singing here tonight? Bring me along as your fatty-appreciation credential?" She laughed at her own joke, but noticed quickly that Puck wasn't laughing along.
"Nope, I just want to spend time with you. I want to dance. I want to get a little drunk and maybe grope you inappropriately on the dance floor." I want you to finally feel like the most wanted woman in the room,' cause when you're with me anywhere, that's what you always are. But he knew this was not the time or place to say those things. Puck leaned over and pressed his lips to Lauren's neck right under her ear, "And when we get home, I want to make you scream my name," and nipped at her skin.
Lauren could not contain the shiver that ran up her spine. God, four years later and he could still make her heart pound like a dorky sixteen year old. Lauren ordered a drink, vodka and cranberry with a lime, enjoying the time just being with Puck. The current song ended the DJ started playing a song that sounded a little familiar. Puck's eyes went wide as he downed his beer and started tugging at her hand. "Come on babe!" but it took her a few more seconds before she recognized Freddie Mercury's voice… I was just a skinny lad, never knew no good from bad. Lauren just threw her head back and laughed. She threw down the rest of her drink and allowed herself to be dragged to the dance floor.
After they got on the dance floor they hardly left, if only to get new drinks. After a few songs, they were both getting hot, so Puck offered to take her sweater and his jacket to the coatcheck while Lauren went to the ladies' room. When she unbuttoned her cardigan and peeled it down her arms, Puck's mouth went dry. "Sweet mother of…" Puck managed to say in a strangled voice. She looked amazing, all her curves on display in the best possible way.
Lauren tossed the purple sweater to him and started to head of the restroom when Puck finally looked up and saw all the dropped jaws of the men all over the room. He grabbed at her hand and pulled her back into his arms and kissed her deeply. He pressed their bodies together and his round hands splayed against the bare skin on her back. When they pulled apart Lauren was flushed and heaving a little and looked like pure sex. Maybe marking his territory this way wasn't the best plan. He could see guys starting to stand up like they were going to approach her the second she left his side. He tried to wrap the sweater back around her body. "What the hell Puckerman? It is too fucking hot in here for that!" It only took her a split second for Lauren to catch some of the glimpses from around the room and her mind to catch up to what Puck was trying to do. She laughed to herself and grabbed a handful of his t-shirt, pulling him into her. She licked a path up his neck to his earlobe, "Don't worry baby, property of the Pucksauras." Her breath was hot and her voice raspy. The jolt it sent through him pooled immediately at his crotch. Lauren could feel him stir against her thigh.
She giggled as she turned away and tossed the sweater back at him again and walked towards the restrooms walking tall. She checked herself out in the mirrors and she had to admit she did look like sex on a stick. And seeing all the men follow her with their eyes sure didn't hurt her ego. When she looked at the other women in the bathroom, she didn't compare herself to any of them. She just though 'Oh, I like those shoes', and 'No no, honey, that hair color is fooling no one,' and 'Hell yeah, get it girl' to the woman reapplying her lipstick and checking her cleavage.
Puck was waiting for her right outside the bathroom door. "Hey babe, you wanna go home or stay? Cause, you know, I wouldn't mind getting to that last part of my evening plan." She smirked at him and pulled him by the hand back to the dance floor. "I haven't gotten to show you all my moves yet," as she turned her back towards him and grinded her ass against him to the beat of the song. Puck choked back a moan and Lauren smiled broadly. Teasing him was too much fun.
Lauren was sweaty and her feet were starting to ache. They had been dancing for several hours and she was thinking maybe it was time to go home. Lauren slung her arms around Puck's neck and pressed her breasts against his chest. He swallowed hard and gripped her hips, digging his fingertips into her. "Baby, I am too buzzed to drive, why don't you get us a cab? I wanna go home and test out the sound-proofing in the apartment." He groaned and she rolled her hips against his. She felt his approval through his jeans. "Yes. Home. Home is good." She giggled at his inability to form complete sentences. She started to pull away from him but he stopped her. "Hold on. Can't. Walk away yet. Need to…" Maybe he wasn't the only one who knew all the right buttons to push even four years later.
A few deep breaths and visualizations of his old shop teacher and reciting baseball stats in his head calmed him enough to separate from Lauren without looking like a horny teenager, even though that is exactly what he felt like. Lauren went to get their jackets while he called a cab from the bar.
As they climbed into the back of the cab together, Puck nearly attacked Lauren with the fierceness of his kisses, his hands all over her body. "Hold up, I don't want to end up on some x-rated episode of Taxi Cab Confessions, Puckerman." She let him continue to kiss her neck while she stroked his thigh just enough to torture him, but not enough to give him any relief. She didn't realize it then, but Lauren hadn't given a single thought to anyone else in the club all night long. She felt at ease the whole time and secure in both her sexiness and Puck's desire for her. Puck on the other hand, finally saw glimpses into the world of questioning that Lauren normally felt when he knew that all eyes were on her. He knew she was there with him, for him, but it didn't stop the jealousy and bits of self-doubt from trying to bubble up. But it was so worth it for him to see his love feel comfortable and at ease and not afraid to show off her sexiness. So maybe that club wouldn't be someplace they would go every weekend, but they got from their night there more than Puck had hoped for—a little bit of extra understanding for both of them.
When they finally arrived home, Puck followed Lauren to their apartment door and kissed her neck and caressed her ass while she tried to unlock the door. Lauren moaned, "You're making it hard for me to concentrate."
"Oh you make it hard for me too, babe." He punctuated his words with a not-so-subtle thrust against her backside. "The difference is, I am more than willing to give the neighbors a show," he said right as Lauren unlocked the door. She walked in and spun around to show him she was unhooking the long line of hooks on her corset, leaving him gape-mouthed standing in the doorway.
"Well then, the show must go on," as she turned on her heels and headed for the bedroom, tossing the corset over her head.