Noah Puckerman is a lot of things, but "stupid" isn't one of them. Despite his grades and other claims to the contrary. Sure, he's been to juvie, knocked Quinn up and let her go most of a year without talking to him ever outside of glee, almost gone back to juvie, swallowed golfballs and staples and one of those peppers that put Mister Schue's Susie Stalker Girl in a coma, and otherwise acted like a dumb-ass. … But he likes to think he's getting better. And either way, he notices things.
Like, a couple of weeks before now, when Lauren invited him over to her place for homework, dinner, and post-dinner making out, Puck showed up right on time only to find himself cowed like a puppy before he'd even gotten through the doorway, by some massive guy — six inches taller than he was and about three times as wide — with cold, beady eyes and a Josef Stalin mustache. And even after Lauren swooped in and saved Puck's ass with a well-timed, "Dad, seriously. I still won state MVP in wrestling. Stop calling my man a useless, distracting, waste of my time," Mister Zizes spent most of the night glaring at Puck when Lauren and her mom weren't looking, whispering threats to the tune of, Ruin my baby like you did the Fabray girl and your ass is mine, Puckerman when they weren't listening.
Lauren's mom was a similarly overbearing kind of story … just nicer about it. Way nicer. Stiflingly nice, even. Just entering the kitchen got Puck wrapped up in a vise-grip hug and cooed over — all, Hellooooo, Noah! It's so nice to finally meet you, I'm Delia Zizes — don't listen to anything Charles says, promise me? He's just protective of his girls — and Precious has told us sooooo much about you. Is it true you're Jewish? one minute, and then all, Oh, Lauren, baby, he's so thiiiiiin, I hope you plan on staying for dinner, Noah, I really do… and finally, Lauren says that you can sing beautifully, Noah, do you know anything Eric Clapton-flavored? Oh, I just love Eric Clapton.
… And, sure, Puck felt kind of naked without his guitar or a duet partner or the rest of the glee club behind him, but he still gave Mrs. Zizes his best slowed-down, acoustic "Layla," because she was a sweet lady, and she had a smile that lit up her whole face like Lauren did, and she'd asked him for a song. And really, if she hadn't been so obviously in her late forties, he would've thought she was Lauren's older sister.
Turned out, Lauren didn't have an older sister. But she did have a younger sister, a younger brother, and an older brother named Tommy, who had a long weekend off from Ohio State and had come back to meek his sister's boyfriend. Tommy was cool — big and broad, like the other Zizeses, pretty easygoing, a defensive lineman on the Buckeyes, which was probably the coolest thing ever (for a little while, anyway). Then Lauren's little brother, Zachary, couldn't have been older than twelve, and spent dinner asking if he could have a mohawk just like Noah, and if Puck had ever ridden a motorcycle, and if he could teach Zac to sing Justin Beiber so he could get girls at school to stop picking on him. And sure, he was only twelve or whatever, but the Zizes build was pretty evident in him already. It was on all of them and they were still happier and cooler than Puck's relatives … well, except for Nana Connie, but that's because Nana Connie's a Hell-raiser.
… And except for Melissa Zizes, aged fiften, Lauren's little sister, who's apparently a freshman at McKinley and Puck just never picked her out of a crowd until they were sitting opposite each other at the Clan Zizes roundtable, passing each other mashed potatoes and Mrs. Zizes's Family Secret Cheese-Less Lasagna (Luckily it's kosher, right, Noah?, she asked, beaming as she handed him a giant plate of it).
Melissa stuck out like a sore thumb from the rest of her family — she was just as pretty as Lauren, for sure, but … smaller than everybody else. Shorter. Thinner. Nowhere near as muscular as her older siblings, and not really tiny or all that fat, just … stuck and confused-looking, and pale, and so small overall, something she didn't help by slouching her shoulders like she wanted to fold in on herself, hiding behind her hair, and giving off an air of please, please, please, everyone, just go away and leave me alone. Both of the Zizes parents seemed to have their eyes on her extra-close, not to mention other weird things — like her plate being bigger than everyone else's but her portions pretty clearly being smaller, and the way that Tommy kept asking her how she was feeling when the conversation hit a lull or he didn't want to let Puck and Lauren just rattle off glee club gossip.
Melissa was the first one at the table to finish, and the only person to skip out of dessert, even though Mrs. Zizes had clearly put a lot of effort into making the from-scratch Black Forest cake. She sat there for a minute, watching the slices get doled out and passed around, and as she made some excuse about having a lot of work to do for her algebra class, she looked even paler. Maybe even a little bit green. And once she was gone, there came another moment of silence, with the other older Zizeses sharing guilty glances, sighing, rubbing their lips together like they had something to say but couldn't find the words for it, and Puck and Zac frowning, then giving up and shrugging at each other because … well, Puck had no idea what was going on, and the kid apparently didn't either.
But Puck knew one thing for certain, and that was that something was amiss about Melissa Zizes — Puck was sure enough of it that he'd not only bet on it, he'd offer to swallow another freaking thumbtack if he lost.
After dinner, as they'd promised, Puck followed Lauren up to her room — painted and decorated in a pretty shade of purple, with different posters of Johnny Depp, classic rock greats (on a cursory glance, Puck spied Janis Joplin, John and Yoko, The Runaways, Karen Carpenter, and Mama Cass), and Heath Ledger as the Joker. She sat Puck down on her cushy bed, slipped out of her rainbow-striped flip-flops, and went in for a kiss —
But Puck backed away, first, because he had to ask: "Babe, your sister … is she okay?"
Lauren's face fell. It very briefly got her Trademarked Look of, God, Puckerman, I don't know if I want to slap you or kiss you right now, but that faded away too quickly into a legitimate frown. She sighed in the way people in movies did just before asking the plucky hero if he'd just had to keep pushing, hadn't he; her gaze lingered on her comforter, and out of nowhere, she got a slumped posture he'd never seen her have before. Whenever she'd slouched before, it was because she'd put her all into wrestling, or into the latest glee club number, or something like that. Seeing her shoulders tumble down in what looked like defeat … that just made Puck wrinkle his nose and wonder if this was one of those things that he couldn't help with, even though he was her boyfriend and he wanted to help.
When Lauren looked back up, she pulled Puck into a kiss, but it was brief. Chaste. Weird for them, just because the emotion behind it felt like affection and trust, not half-anger, half-sexual frustration, and half-lust (because their kisses were always a hundred fifty percent, damn every math teacher who'd ever tried to teach Puck fractions).
"So … I'm taking that as a 'no' …?" he guessed when Lauren let him go and let the kiss go without a comment.
"Yeah, no … 'no' covers things pretty well." Her nod was one of resignation, and in the face Puck asking what she meant by that, Lauren just shrugged. "Lissie's been worse. She's been better, too, but she's been a lot worse than tonight — this was all just … one of her in-between nights, I think. And before I say anything else, you have to swear to me that you won't tell anyone else I told you this, okay? She doesn't like it getting around."
Puck nodded, and promised, and even held up three fingers for Scout's Honor and mimed out crossing his heart. (Not that he'd ever been a Boy Scout, but he'd learned it from Finn, and apparently it was a big deal.)
"Lissie has this … eating disorder thing," Lauren said, and for a moment, Puck could only stare at her blankly. Not that nothing was going on inside his skull, but that there was much too much of it — more questions, a ton of things he was just confused about, all kinds of bad ideas that he quickly talked him out of indulging. She gave his shoulder a gentle shove. "I'm being serious here, nerd. You could at least nod."
Puck nodded, again, and he still didn't know what to say.
"Most of what I know's this," Lauren went on, "Lissie and food have a really bad relationship. The rest of us? We're mostly fine, but she has some times when she hates it — well. I think most of the time, she hates it. Mom and Dad have to make sure she eats, some other times, then she has a dietician who does that too, once every two weeks or something. 's why she's older than most of the other freshman, though, you know? I don't even know all of the story, but I guess she was doing it for a while by the time she finally needed serious help for it. And I'm talking like, 'had to take a year off of school for hardcore therapy' serious help."
"So, what?" Puck said, brow furrowing as he gave up and let himself just say the first thing that came to mind. "She just … tried to stop eating or something?"
Lauren gave him another Look, but it didn't burn at him like her Looks usually do. It was soft, instead, and maybe it was just something about the way she knotted up her own brow, or how her eyes seemed like they were watering up a little, but Puck's still pretty sure that that moment was the most vulnerable he's ever seen her look.
With a quiet huff, she said, "Yeah, that's what I thought too, when Mom and Dad told me and the boys what happened and why she still wasn't home from the hospital after a week. I was all, 'you've got to be joking, right? I've seen Lissie eating, she can't be sick' … but apparently, just like there's a lot of ways to be a female athlete or a girl in the glee club, there's a lot of ways to have an eating disorder."
Puck wanted to ask more of what was up with Melissa — what she did, how Lauren's parents figured it out, all of what Lauren was feeling right now. Even trying to talk his Bad Instincts down left him thinking that asking more questions was the best possible course of action.
But he knew Lauren.
And he knew how much she hated being vulnerable.
And, like he's tried to tell so many people who didn't believe him, Noah Puckerman is not stupid. He notices things. And right then, at that very minute? He noticed that his woman wanted to stop talking about her baby sister's illness … and luckily for both of them, Puck was both ready, willing, and able to oblige.
He nudged Lauren's bangs off her face, with a little smile, whispered, "You know you're gorgeous, right? And I mean all over." He leaned in, took a similarly little kiss — sweet and chaste, like the one she'd given him before. "You're smart. And you're fun. You're not just the wrestling MVP, you know — you're the all-Titans-sports-teams MVP — I don't care if they gave that trophy to Finn. You and Tina should've shared it. And I love you. I love wooing you, and the time we spend together. And you're such a badass I wouldn't know if I could handle you if you didn't give me permission."
She smirked at him, if kind of half-heartedly, and pretended to bite at his nose. "I know, baby, I know."
"And you're an awesome big sister," he said. "And I might've only just met her, but I know your sister knows you care about her. And—"
She pulled him into another kiss, a deeper one, just so she could cut him off. "And as much as I love hearing about how awesome you think I am … Mama needs more macking, and less lovey-dovey, emotional stuff, okay?"
Puck didn't nod this time, just kissed her, and she pulled him down onto the mattress with her. Even if she didn't want him getting his feeling too much into this, he put his all into this make-out session, tried to kiss her more openly and more earnestly than he'd kissed anyone before. Because she spelled 'woman' Z-I-Z-E-S, and this whole lotta woman deserved the best that Puck could give and more.