Spoilers
: Up to and including Laryngitis.Warnings: Puck's potty-mouth.
Disclaimer: Still don't own them. Sigh.
Chapter 3
Kurt arrives at school early and thinks if he can just make it from the car to somewhere he can sit down everything will be ok. He has made it all the way to his locker before he runs into anyone which he thinks is probably a good thing as walking and talking don't seem a viable combination right now.
"Holy shit Hummel, you look like the walking dead." Great. Noah Puckerman.
Kurt tries to think of a sufficiently insulting reply (I mean, this is Puck, how hard can it be?) but his brain just isn't behaving.
Fortunately at this point, Mercedes appears like a guardian angel behind him, "You should check yourself in a mirror before you start hating on my man, Puck." She snarls, stepping in front of Kurt.
Slightly less fortunately, in stepping between the two boys she knocks into Kurt who has been struggling to stay upright all morning so a gentle shove is all it takes for him to lose his balance and fall into an ungraceful heap on the floor.
Mercedes whirls around, horrified, "Kurt, I'm so sorr… Hell, boy you look terrible."
"Thanks for your support, Mercedes." Kurt gives her his best icy-glare but obviously doesn't do a great job as her expression softens and she crouches down next to him.
"Honey, what are you doing here? You shouldn't be at school today. Let me give you a ride home."
"What are you, his Mom?" Puck smirks.
She rolls her eyes and stands back up to face him. "He's sick you asshole. Look at him." Kurt squirms under their gazes.
"He does look kinda… weird." Puck agrees after a moment.
"Duh." She rolls her eyes, "What did you think the swooning was about yesterday?" She asks him.
Puck shrugs, "I helped him up. I just assumed he was hot for me."
"Hot for you?" Kurt gasps, sounding horrified.
"Hey, it's nothing to be ashamed of Hummel." Puck smirks, "It's a well known fact that nobody can resist the sexual magnetism of the P-Rex."
"Ok, firstly I am not 'hot for you' Puckerman," Kurt spits out, "I may be gay, but I have standards." He is ashamed to feel his face burning and prays the three layers of foundation he applied this morning are enough to rid his cheeks of the evidence.
"And secondly, I did not swoon – who uses that word anyway? – I am fine."
Puck folds his arms across his chest and raises an eyebrow. "Get up then." He says, the challenge clear in his voice.
Kurt considers this for a second. The floor actually seems a pretty good place to be right now. He wonders if anyone would notice if he just curled up in a ball and went to sleep here.
"Hah!" Puck says triumphantly, making Kurt jump.
Mercedes glares at the jock and offers Kurt her hand, "Here, let me help you."
"Just… Give me a second." Kurt tells them, waving Mercedes' hand away irritably. He gets up slowly and just as he thinks he's made it the little black dots in front of his eyes are back and the room is tipping to one side and…
"Shit Hummel."
…and he is leaning on something solid and warm and gradually the tipping stops and his vision returns to normal. Wait. Not something, someone. Puck. He jerks back and nearly falls into Mercedes who looks at him and shakes her head.
She grabs his hand and pulls him into the empty choir room, "Sit." She instructs and she frowns as he sits obediently on the piano stool
"Now give me one good reason I shouldn't drag your white ass to the nurse's office right now."
Kurt rests his head in his hands and feels miserable. Arguing with Mercedes is usually one of his guilty pleasures; there are not many people who can keep up with his quick wit and sharp tongue and fewer still that he knows will still love him after being on the receiving end of both.
Fortunately Mercedes is able to give as good as she gets and Kurt usually finds the verbal combat between the two of them exhilarating and a great way of flexing his mental muscles.
Today his mental muscles seem to have gone on strike as he looks up and realizes that Mercedes is obviously waiting for an answer to a question he can't quite remember.
"Uh…" He stalls.
"That's it, I'm getting the Nurse."
"No!" He grabs her as she brushes past him. She looks from his hand clasping her arm in a death grip to his face, pale and desperate and totally un-Kurt like.
He takes a deep breath and releases his grip slightly. "Please Mercedes, I need to be at school today. I promise I'm ok, I'm just a little tired and strung out and… please – can't you just trust me on this?"
Her expression softens and she sits down next to him, "Kurt, I do trust you. I'd trust you with my life. I just don't always trust you with yours." She sighs, "And you can wipe that kicked puppy look off your face boy. It was like two weeks ago you were making out with Britney and I'm still having nightmares about all that flannel. You catching my drift here?"
Kurt doesn't respond and when Mercedes looks at him again there are tears in his eyes. "Sweetie, what's wrong? I hate to see you hurting like this."
Kurt takes a shaky breath, "I… I just need to get through today. At school. I promise if I still feel sick tomorrow I'll stay home. Today is… a really important day for me. And it's not like we have Glee practice or anything, I'll mostly just be sitting in class."
She looks at him seriously and he meets her eyes, a look of determination on his face. She sighs, "I'll give you until lunch. But if you still look like you're about to keel over then I'm calling your dad, ok?"
He smiles in relief, "Thanks Mercedes."
"Don't make me regret this." She tells him sternly, "If you feel worse you need to tell a teacher ok?"
"Yes, mom." He replies, rolling his eyes.
"I've gotta get to class, you coming?" She asks him, getting to her feet.
"I think I'll stay here for a while." He tells her, turning to face the piano, "I need to rehearse my song for Glee and I have Phys Ed first period."
"Ok, I'll catch you later." She gives his back a final concerned glance before hurrying out of the choir room.
Kurt plays a few random notes on the piano. He is relieved to be alone again; as much as he loves Mercedes, her iron will is giving him a headache today (not to mention her pink and yellow scarf which gives a while new meaning to the word 'gaudy').
Inspired by both Kurt's and Puck's unorthodox performances recently (Puck's Sammy Davis Jr. unanimously considered a far greater success than Kurt's attempt at Mellencamp), their assignment this week is to pick a song they wouldn't usually sing.
Apparently this will help them to "find something inside themselves they didn't know existed" (Kurt had learnt this from Artie – he had kind of zoned out after Mr. Schue began talking about "breaking musical boundaries" and "thinking outside the box").
Picking something that was neither a ballad nor a show tune had caused Kurt considerable difficulty. His original idea – a Whitney Houston number – had been vetoed by Mr. Schue. Apparently Kurt had missed the point (again) – it wasn't enough just to sing a girl's song as Kurt did that all the time (the irony of this was not lost on Kurt, who still felt a little sensitive about the Defying Gravity debacle).
After raiding his father's music collection (again) he had finally decided on performing an acoustic version of Queen's "The Show Must Go On," which suited both his vocal range and his mood.
He begins to play the introductory chords, his eyes closed as he feels rather than sees the notes in front of him, and he begins to sing,
Empty spaces - what are we living for?
Abandoned places - I guess we know the score...
On and on!
Does anybody know what we are looking for?…
Another hero - another mindless crime.
Behind the curtain, in the pantomime.
Hold the line!
Does anybody want to take it anymore?
The Show must go on!
The Show must go on!
Inside my heart is breaking,
My make-up may be flaking,
But my smile, still, stays on!
Whatever happens, I'll leave it all to chance.
Another heartache – another
Kurt stops playing and thinks that closing his eyes was probably a mistake because his brain now seems to think it's time for a nap – and really, who is he to argue with his own brain?
Kurt rests his head on his hands on top of the piano and his mind starts to drift and…
… "Wake up!" Someone is shaking his shoulders.
"Five more minutes Dad, it's Saturday." Kurt mumbles and turns his head so that he's facing away from the rude interruption and his mind sinks back into the warm peaceful haven that is sleep until…
CLASH…
Kurt yelps and falls of the stool, landing hard on the floor. He looks up to see Puck standing by the drum kit, stick in hand, the cymbal still vibrating slightly.
"Oh my God Noah, are you trying to kill me?" He spits out, his heart still hammering.
Puck has the grace to look slightly guilty, "I've been trying to wake you up for the past like two hours. Or five minutes at least. I was worried you were like dead or something."
"So to make sure I'm not dead, you try and kill me. That's just the kind of logic I'd expect from you Puckerman." Kurt snaps. He still feels disorientated and his fall kind of hurt.
Pain makes him irritable. So does Puck. In combination they are like nails across a chalk board.
"Last I checked you were still alive Hummel." Puck tells him, settling himself onto one of the chairs. He folds his arms and raises an eyebrow. "Or if not you're the bitchiest corpse I've ever met."
Kurt ignores him and gets slowly to his feet. He winces as he feels his hip, which had taken the brunt of his fall, throb painfully.
"Well thanks for making my shitty day ten times worse." He tells Puck and is embarrassed to hear that his voice is a little shaky.
"Uh, maybe you should sit down." Puck tells him looking uncomfortable, "Seriously dude, you do not look good."
Kurt limps over to the chairs and makes a point of sitting as far away from Puck as he possibly can. Puck ignores the gesture and moves so he's sitting a couple of seats away.
"Seriously Hummel, what were you doing sleeping on the piano anyway? That's kind of messed up. Nurse Green's office has a bed and everything and she would totally let you sleep there. You look so pathetic you're like every nurse's wet dream or something."
"Oh God, please stop talking." Kurt moans because he really can't take much more of this. The weird part is that he honestly thinks that Noah might actually be trying to be nice. He thinks he is much easier to stomach when he's being deliberately obnoxious.
"So anyway," Puck says, ignoring him, "I was totally listening in on your conversation with Aretha…"
"Her name is Mercedes. And that's rude."
"Whatever. And I can totally help you."
"And what makes you think I need you help?" Kurt asks tiredly.
"Uh, duh, I just told you – I was listening. And also because you kind of look like a crack whore right now."
"A… what?" This is just so surreal.
"You know – all pale and pathetic and stuff. Anyway, I wanted to give you these."
He digs around in his bag and pulls out a small packet before throwing it at Kurt. Kurt's reaction times are not great today and the box hits him in the chest and falls to the floor. Puck rolls his eyes.
"What are those?" Kurt asks, looking down at them.
"They're the pills I got when I busted my Achilles tendon last fall. They're like, the good stuff – serious shit. You need to get through today – these will totally make that happen."
Kurt looks at the packet on the floor and then up at Puck, "And how do I know you're not trying to poison me?" He asks.
"Dude, I'm hurt." Puck protests, holding his hand up. "I just want to help. And also… I was kind of hoping you'd help me with my own… problem."
"And suddenly it all makes sense." Kurt mutters under his breath.
"See, I don't know if you noticed a few weeks back when you were having your freaky spaz-out, which was seriously disturbing by the way, but your best buddy and I were kind of the Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt of McKinley High for a while."
"I noticed." Kurt replies, "I still haven't quite worked out what the hell she was thinking but my best guess is that the strict calorie controlled regime enforced by Coach Sylvester drove her to temporary insanity."
"That's harsh man." Puck responds, looking a little taken aback, "We had a good thing going on. Truth is I miss her."
Kurt raises a skeptical eyebrow at him.
"Stop looking at me like that. I have feelings too you know. I may be a badass but I'm a badass with depth. Also she is seriously hot – curves in all the right places if you know what I mean." Kurt wants to throw up a little, "Anyway, so I wanted to find a song to sing to her for our assignment this week. Show her that I really like her…"
"So, you want me help to pick out a song?" Kurt asks, feeling confused.
"Well actually I was thinking of Baby Got Back by Sir Mix-A-Lot."
"Oh dear God, please tell me you're not serious." Kurt replies, horrified.
"Freaky – that's exactly what Mr. Schue said. So can you think of something better? Something she'll like?"
Kurt massages his temples to try and ease the throbbing in his head. "I'll… think about it." He says, it's the best he can do right now.
"Great!" Puck exclaims enthusiastically.
"But Puck, just so you know, if you hurt her I will hunt you down, I will tie you up and then I will introduce you to my epilator."
"Uh, ok. I totally don't know what that means but… don't hurt her, I get it."
Puck slings his bag onto his back and before he leaves he turns back, "Seriously dude, take the pills. You'll feel better I promise."
Kurt reaches down to pick them up and when he looks back up, Puck is gone.
He looks at the pills in his hands and weighs up his options. Ok, so poison was probably going a little far and wasn't really Puck's style (if he was going to kill someone then he was probably the type to do it with his bare hands – poison was more "psychopathic housewife" than "king of the badasses").
But Kurt wouldn't put it past Puck to think it was hilarious to slip him laxatives or something similar.
On the other hand there was Puck's name right on the box, alongside a date last October. And Kurt remembered the injury he was talking about. He had been on the football team at the time and it had disturbed him to see his hard-assed team-mate so obviously in pain.
There was also the inescapable truth that Kurt felt a little like he'd been run over by a bus and that he didn't seem to be able to go for more than twenty minutes without falling over or falling asleep. The thought of making it to the end of school and then to the basketball game seemed as unachievable as running a marathon in his present state.
There were no instructions on the packet so he popped two pills out (it was always two right?) and looked down at them.
In his head he remembered the feeling of his dad's arms around him earlier that morning and the joy and relief that Kurt had felt when he realized that he was solid and real and there. And although it hurts him more than anything else he let's his mind drift back to the conversation he had overheard the night before.
"…all he does is mope about… so many chances… happier with him gone… kid's useless… one last chance, one last chance, last chance, last chance…"
And with these words echoing round his head, Kurt puts the pills into his mouth and swallows them.
A/N Once again a huge thank you to everyone who has reviewed this fic. I was really blown away by them and they kept me writing over the past week even when I felt like giving up (I really struggled with this chapter so I hope it's ok). I also realize that this chapter suffers from a severe lack of Burt – don't worry, he'll be back soon!
