(Author's note: Sorry for the long delay in posting. Our writing has slowed down as life has intervened, but there's still plenty of story to tell, so we hope you'll stick around. Enjoy - amy and penthea)

Pascal didn't like being in a moving vehicle any more than the average cat, but in the past, Dave had been able to get him to calm down on the way to the vet by holding him in his lap and petting him constantly. It wasn't the safest way to drive, so Dave had always taken him on the bus. "You could try it," he suggested, when Pascal took one look at the cat carrier and bolted up the stairs. "He's got claws, though."

Puck shrugged. "I can handle a little shredding. If you can get him to come back downstairs, that is."

That was no problem. Dave just opened up a can of tuna fish. There was something about the sound of a can opener, even for cats like Pascal who'd never had a can of wet cat food in his life; it was like it was a biological response or something. Within ten seconds, Pascal was winding his sinuous way into the kitchen and rubbing up against Dave's legs, chirruping hopefully. Dave made sure there were no sharp edges on the lid of the aluminum can, and set it upside down on the floor for Pascal to lick.

Puck crouched down on the floor and scratched his ruff while Pascal made short work of the tuna. "Seems kind of dishonest to me, you know? Luring him here with the promise of tuna and then taking him to the v-e-t."

Dave smirked, but Puck was probably right that Pascal knew that word. Although he probably knew how to spell, too. "I don't know. It's not like we're not giving him tuna. Seems fair to me."

Puck snorted. "Really? You think it's fair, or you think we can get away with it because he's a cat? Because I'll tell you, my cat would hate me for weeks if I did that to her."

"Pascal's pretty forgiving," Dave admitted. "But I've never had a cat before, so I don't know how typical that is."

Puck sat down on the floor next to Pascal and coaxed him onto his lap, sitting there and petting him until he was curled into a warm ball, his eyes closed and ears pricked forward, crooning words of praise. Then he picked him up and nestled him into his arms, still stroking, and said quietly, "Okay, I think we can go now."

Pascal only dug in a little with his claws when they walked down the steps, and Dave managed to get the keys out from Puck's pocket and open the door to the passenger side for him without Pascal drawing blood. Pascal buried his head into the crook of Puck's arm and made a low, uncomfortable yowling noise.

"Don't worry," said Dave, when Puck looked concerned. "It's just what he does. He won't throw up on you or anything."

They drove slowly up the street toward the v-e-t. Dave wasn't sure if this was a good time to bring up the events of the previous night, but there was something safe about talking about personal things in a car. Not having to look the other guy in the eye probably had something to do with it.

"I wanted to apologize for what happened the other day," Dave said, and watched Puck stiffen. He felt a little guilty for making him deal with a freaking-out Pascal at the same time Dave was talking about this stuff, but he figured it was easier to discuss it openly than it was to ignore it.

"Dude." Puck shifted Pascal to his other arm and looked away. "I'm the one who sent you flowers, right? Who's apologizing to who, here?"

"Yeah, exactly. You sent flowers, but I'm the one who should have. That's why I wanted to talk to you. You didn't do anything wrong. You were the one keeping me from freaking out completely, remember? I mess up, and you say you're sorry...that doesn't seem right."

Puck shook his head, clearly annoyed. "Dude. You didn't mess up. You were just, you know, being honest. You thought you wanted something and then... you didn't. No big. It was me, pushing you into something... a little weird. So I'm just, I don't know. Sorry for making you do that." He scratched Pascal under the chin and murmured words of comfort; Dave thought maybe they were for himself, as much as for the cat.

It hurt to listen to, to watch, and what had he been thinking, starting this conversation in the car? "No, that's...that's not. You didn't." Maybe he'd just have to jump in, say all of it, never mind that it wasn't a very long drive or what would happen when they got there. "Sometimes, I - sometimes I can't do things, even if I want them. And if I hadn't...I'd still be responsible for...I don't know, not just leaving you like that."

Puck looked a little uncertain. "You think you're responsible for... uh, for that?"

Yes. And probably for what he wasn't saying, too, but Dave thought he should be careful what he said when Puck was already feeling like this. "I think...yeah, when I ask you to trust me like that? I think I need to not drop the ball. And I don't mean letting you push me into anything, or whatever it is you think you did." Dave wanted to touch him, to try to say with his hand what he couldn't make a sentence out of, but he didn't dare. "It just...it sucks that you think you did something so scary that you just expect me to run."

"Not scary, exactly. I know you're not scared. You're one of the bravest guys I know." He detached one of Pascal's rear claws from his forearm with masterful tolerance. "I guess I just figure that nobody ever wants what I want, so it's not surprising to find out that you don't either."

Dave didn't look at him. "And I'm trying to tell you, I think you're wrong about that."

"Wrong about... what?" Puck shot him a wary glare. "I think by now I have a pretty fucking good sense for what I want, even if it's... whatever. And trust me, nobody else wants that."

"God, Puck, would you listen to me?" Dave heard his own voice, felt the frustration building, and pulled over onto the gravel shoulder of the road. When they were standing still, he could finally look at Puck, who was sitting silent.

"Puck, you're wrong. Okay, you know what you want, but you don't know about me. It's not true that nobody wants that. Because I do, okay? It freaked me out, sure, but you know what else freaked me out at first? Every fucking thing I ever wanted in my whole life."

Puck flinched back from the force of his words. Pascal took advantage of his distraction to scramble out of his arms and huddle on the floor by his feet, panting in distress. He let him go, and sighed. "Yeah, I know. I remember, all the way back in high school." He paused, then added, with some heat, "And trust me, no matter how confident I seemed, I was just as freaked out as you were."

Puck trailed his hand by his ankle, letting Pascal smell his fingers, and put a hand on the cat's cocoa-colored head. Eventually he glanced sideways at Dave.

"You do, huh?" he said. "Want that?"

Dave looked up, out the window, anywhere but at Puck. "Yeah. I think I might. When I'm ready to handle it."

Puck nodded, clearly struggling with this, but not upset, just thoughtful. "So... what, it's just too much, right now?"

"Some of it, maybe. You know I'm not - I guess there's just stuff getting in the way. And I'm not that good at... people, or talking, or whatever." Dave looked down at his hands.

Puck shook his head. "Dave... I don't know, man; you seem to think you're shortchanging me here somehow, by not being able to... do everything, all at once. Fuck that. This - just you and me, and - and Pascal, sitting here in the car - eating breakfast together, hanging out - everything we did at your house yesterday, and the day before, and..." His hand was up in the air, holding up the enormity of everything he was naming, and he laughed a little before he let it drop. "Everything you... give me. That's a lot. That's a hell of a lot."

Puck reached over, grabbed one of Dave's hands off his lap and gripped it tight. Dave stared at their joined hands, startled, then up at Puck. He opened his mouth to speak, but was interrupted by Pascal's yowled complaint. Puck cracked a grin, and Dave found himself laughing, the tension easing.

He felt Puck's hand squeezing his. "Whatever's in the way," Puck said softly, "it doesn't really matter, okay? Because even if you're not so good at talking, or people, you're good at..." Puck tilted his head. "You're good at me."

Dave smiled, and squeezed his hand back. He didn't know what to say, but maybe Puck was right, maybe that didn't matter, at least right now. "Okay," he said, looking at Pascal. "Um. Maybe we should get moving again, before he gets really impatient." He leaned over and kissed Puck quickly, trying to let him know he'd heard all those words, and appreciated them, even if he didn't have any himself right then.

They pulled into the parking lot outside the brown brick building. Puck dug under the seat to scoop up the protesting form of Pascal, bundling him against his chest and giving a muffled curse at his clutching claws. The receptionist looked startled to see Puck wrestling with the unhappy cat, but she quickly herded them into a room and shut the door behind them. Pascal found himself in the center of an unfamiliar room, and after a brief, terrified moment, he hid under Dave's chair, staring up at them with a wounded expression. What did I do to deserve this? he seemed to be saying. No tuna is worth this shit.

"Sorry, buddy," Puck said, leaning forward on his knees and rubbing the puncture wounds on his arms. "You've got to get your teeth cleaned some time." He smirked at Dave. "Penumbra gets so freaked out, we have to sedate her when she goes to the v- the cat doctor."

"Uh, we're here now," Dave said an undertone, "so I think you can say vet without too much fear of reprisal."

Puck ducked his head down and peered at Pascal under the chair, extending upside-down fingers for the cat to sniff, but Pascal was having none of it. "Well, I guess he's not going anywhere." He glanced back up at Dave, just for a moment, his voice muffled. "So what was Kurt going on about on the phone last night, anyway?"

Dave stared at the information poster on the wall. "I don't know if... the past, I guess. History. Stuff that never even happened." He bent down a little, sort of as a gesture of trying to help but not enough to actually see or do anything. "Can we talk about that when we're not - here?"

Puck raised one eyebrow; from his inverted position, it dropped toward the floor in an ironic u-shape. "What, you think Pascal's going to tell on you or something?"

"No." Pascal kept all of his secrets perfectly. And Puck should know that, and recognize a hint when it hit him in the face. "Just, not now, okay?"

"Okay," he shrugged, straightening up. He looked like he might say something else, but then the vet came in, and it was set aside. They managed to wrestle Pascal out from under the chair and onto the table without any more bloodshed.

The appointment was routine. Dave didn't feel too guilty about not brushing Pascal's teeth, the way the vet always told him to, and Pascal made a brave show while he was poked and prodded by an unfamiliar woman. The vet accepted Puck in the room without comment. Dave wondered if people thought they were brothers, or what. Maybe there were plenty of guy roommates with shared custody of pets; he had no idea.

They booked Pascal another appointment for six months in the future, and Puck made adequate small talk with the receptionist while Dave got Pascal back into the car. Pascal made a lot less trouble on the way back, leaving Dave free to worry about Puck and how he'd refused to answer his question about Kurt. It felt wrong for reasons he couldn't quite put his finger on...and wasn't the guilt a sign that he probably should be telling Puck about it? Or did not telling make it worse? Was this the kind of thing a boyfriend should know? He opened his mouth, closed it, and tried again. "So, um, Kurt."

Puck hit the turn signal and nodded, coming around the corner carefully, so as not to disturb the cowering cat on the floor. "Yeah?"

"Yeah." Dave sighed. "You know we've been friends for years, right? And he's called me sometimes in the middle of the night because of things that...Kurt emergencies, you know? But last night - I guess he - " He stopped, not knowing what he actually believed had happened, himself. "He said he's in love with me."

Puck's eyes were steady on the road, but Dave could see the surprise in his expression. "He... really? … Wow."

"Yeah, wow." Dave shook his head. "He said he'd felt like that for - a while, but he sure never told me about it. And, it was three in the morning and maybe it was just him wanting to go back to being nineteen, or something, but...I thought you should know."

"Yeah. Fuck. Uh, thanks for telling me, I guess?" Puck's fingers flexed, gripping the steering wheel briefly, then releasing. He shifted forward in his seat. "The two of you - I mean, you guys have a lot of history. And you really had no idea?"

"No, I...I guess, there was something, a long time ago, like, in high school. But that was mostly me. Or that's what I thought. And then I got over that, and he let me, so how would I know there was more?"

"I don't know, man; Kurt's always been kind of a mystery to me." Puck's sigh sounded more annoyed than anything else, but Dave couldn't be sure. He eyed the two feet of space between their seats, wondering if he should do something about spanning that. Eventually Puck glanced at him, just for a moment, and then away again. "So what are you going to do about it?"

"Nothing?" Dave shrugged. "It sucks, but there's nothing I can do. Maybe give him some space, but I don't want him to think I don't want to be friends anymore, so... pretend it didn't happen? I don't know what's worse."

"You think he'd let you get away with that?" Puck shook his head as he drummed a beat on the wheel. "I don't know... if I was in love with my best friend, I don't think I could just pretend it wasn't real. Sounds like he's looking for something more, here."

"Maybe. Half the time I have no idea what he wants or what he's on about, anyway. And anyway, he's been pretending just fine for, what, five years, right?"

"Yeah. So something changed, right?" Puck pulled into the driveway and paused outside the garage, staring at Dave now like he had some hidden meaning to impart. "Gosh, I wonder what that was."

Dave stared back at him. "You mean, it's about you? Like now that he knows I'm in love with someone else, he can tell me, because nothing's actually going to happen?"

"Well, I don't know, Dave," he snapped. "Is it?" Puck shoved open the driver's side door, and in a shot, Pascal had leapt out between his legs and disappeared beneath the juniper bushes. Puck did a quick three-sixty, trying to grab him, but Pascal was gone. He swore and hit the side of his truck in frustration.

Dave walked over and put a hand on his shoulder. "Hey, it's fine. He'll come back." Puck still looked worried, but probably not about Pascal. Dave moved closer, placing his arm around him and a hand on his back. "And, what are you thinking? That I'm going to leave you to go be with Kurt?"

Puck wouldn't meet Dave's eyes. "Maybe. Yeah, why not? Big shot scriptwriter - and don't tell me you weren't hot for him. It could still happen. You guys'd be good together."

Dave shook his head impatiently. "Puck. I have a boyfriend right here, okay? I love you." He took in Puck's sharp breath and shocked expression, and decided they probably should bring this into his house. He led him in and shut the door behind them, then gripped his shoulders.

"We're good together. Do you think all of...this, that a guy I like as a friend and had some feelings for in high school, can come close to that?"

Puck shrugged, but he was smiling now. "Hey, I had feelings for you in fucking middle school. I don't think there's a competition here."

"No, and if it were about who was there first, you'd still win." He put his arms tightly around Puck. "Not to mention, you're way hotter. No offense to him, you're hard to compete with."

"You too," Puck breathed. He managed to maneuver one hand out of the tight hug to touch Dave's face. His eyes were alight now, with gratitude and desire and all kinds of things that made Dave's heart beat a little faster. "You're totally what I want. I guess I was just freaking out about the idea of you realizing that you had something else. That maybe, if you had a choice, you'd... well, you'd leave."

Dave couldn't help but laugh a little. "Babe, I'm not leaving you. Come on, I can't believe I'm lucky enough to have you."

"Oh, yeah, you have me, all right." Puck pressed his lips against Dave's neck. "You can have me about any way you want."

All the words Dave considered saying in response to that trickled away, until he was left with nothing but the sensation of Puck's mouth on his skin. Dave loosened his hold, and that was all the permission Puck needed; he slipped his hands under Dave's shirt and tugged it over his head. They stumbled back against the couch, all tangled limbs and hands grasping and tongues slick.

"I'm definitely the lucky one, here," Puck muttered, gazing up at Dave with dark eyes, and kissed him in the center of his chest, slowly working his way down. "Really... lucky."

Dave was pretty sure there was some kind of joke in there about getting lucky, but his brain wasn't functioning well enough to parse it. He just leaned back against the couch and tried to keep his breathing going as Puck unzipped his jeans.

"I guess I understand how Kurt feels," Puck went on, tugging the jeans down over Dave's hips. "I was in love with you for a hell of a long time, and I never thought I'd get a chance to tell you that. But it's good, to be honest, even if it's hard. Even if you're not sure what the other person's going to say back." He trailed his hand up Dave's chest, then back down, over his stomach and along the inside of his thigh.

"Anytime, now," Dave said through gritted teeth, feeling each touch like a shock to his core. "You can shut up about Kurt anytime."

Puck chuckled, low and confident, which Dave still thought was one of the sexiest fucking things he had ever heard. "Got it. Shutting up... now."

And of course the way he shut up was inspiring all on its own. Dave felt himself arching up off the cushion, and Puck nudged his hips back down, wedging himself in closer between Dave's half-clad legs. He wasn't quite sure how they'd gone from arguing about past possible relationships to a blowjob on his couch, but he really, really wasn't complaining. It was just about the best outcome he could think of, actually.

When things had quieted down afterwards, Puck crawled up onto the couch beside him. Dave turned his head with some effort and gave him a weak smile. "How're you doing?" he murmured.

"I'm good," said Puck, one hand on Dave's chest. "Thanks."

Dave chuckled, incredulous. "You're thanking me?"

"Sure." He didn't look even a little bit embarrassed. "That was awesome. Totally getting what I want here, remember?"

Dave remembered. "Still hard to believe, I guess. Don't you want... I mean, can I...?" He coughed a little, turning red. Puck just gave him a smile.

"I'm good," he said again. "Really." He hesitated, then said, "You're not just humoring me, are you? I mean, you're not just letting me do this because... I don't know, you feel sorry for me, or you don't want me to feel bad, or something?"

Now Dave absolutely couldn't hold back his laughter. "You're serious?"

Puck made a face. "I guess I'm thinking of Pascal and the tuna. I mean... yeah, he got to eat this awesome treat, but he got lured in with one kind of promise, and ended up in a whole different situation than he expected."

"Puck. Come on. I'm... I'm not a can of tuna, all right? I'm your boyfriend, and that was totally hot." Dave gave him a kiss. "I wanted that. A lot. God, who wouldn't?"

Puck nodded, but his silence stretched out long enough that Dave had to poke him to get him to say something. "I feel bad for Kurt, okay?" he said finally, and sighed. "Dude. It's stupid. But I can't stop thinking about what I would have done if you guys had ever decided to... "

"But we didn't," Dave interrupted. "Forget that. Kurt's a hell of a lot stronger than you're giving him credit for. He'll be all right. We've been friends this long, and we'll keep being friends. I mean, he was pretty drunk when we talked. Maybe he won't even remember what he said." He heard himself telling the story as much to himself as to Puck. Wishful thinking - because Kurt would remember every word, and things between them would be awkward and strained. And yet, with Puck here beside him, he could almost believe it: maybe, maybe it really would be okay, eventually. He said it again, just to help it along: "He'll be all right."

"Okay," said Puck, like he just accepted Dave's words. Like Dave knew what he was doing, or something. He trusts me, he realized. It was a warm, heady feeling, kind of dangerous, but wonderful, too, and he had to kiss him again. This time it was deeper, and went on for longer. When he was done, Puck was shaky and breathless, and Dave simply stared at him for a while, keeping his arm around him, feeling the heat of his body and the tiny little movements under his hand. Had Dave just done that to him? Really?

"God, Dave," Puck whispered. "I just love you so fucking much."

Dave nodded, smiling. "Yeah?" he whispered back. "That makes two of us."

The book sat on the nightstand by Dave's bed for two nights before he picked it up. Puck's bookmark was tucked inside, about two and a half chapters in at that time. Dave just read a tiny bit of the chapter where Puck was before putting it back exactly where Puck had left it. He read a little every night that way, after that. He told himself he wasn't checking up on Puck, at all, that he just was curious, and wanted to stay caught up with what Puck might be thinking mathematically and biographically. And maybe that was true, a little.

"You're reading it, too, huh?" Puck asked him one Saturday morning, when he picked it up from the nightstand.

Dave felt instantly guilty, even if he couldn't really explain why. "I've been looking at it. It's interesting."

Puck propped his pillow right up next to Dave's and sat down next to him with the book, casually invading the personal space Dave had established around himself. It didn't feel awful. "It's slow going," Puck admitted. "But yeah, interesting. I mean, I read some with my sister when I'm home, but she doesn't know half the words, and it's like ripping out nose hairs to get her to care about math." He glanced at Dave, then back at the book.

"Um." Dave wasn't sure if he should offer, but he didn't think Puck would be too offended, even if he didn't like the idea. "Maybe...I could read it to you. If you wanted. Since I'm already reading it anyway?"

Puck looked a little startled, but he was smiling. "Uh... sure, that'd be fine. If you don't mind. Sarah says it's a lot slower for her to read out loud than to read in her head."

"No, I don't mind." Dave took the book from Puck's hand. "At least I don't think I do? I don't really read out loud." He turned his head and looked down at Puck slouching beside him. "We could just try and see how it goes."

Puck was as good a listener in his bed as he was in class, and if Dave was a little bit distracted by the feeling of Puck's arm brushing up against him, it was okay. The math wasn't actually that complicated, and the book was interesting. Dave went through the chapter about Galileo and Bolzano before setting it on his stomach.

"How was that?" he asked, feeling a little anxious.

Puck rested his head on Dave's shoulder. "You're a good reader."

"Thank you." Dave tucked one arm around him, pulling him snug against his chest. "Hey, Bolzano was the one with the intermediate value theorem, right? Did you know that proves that there are always two points, exactly across each other on the globe, that are the same temperature?" He traced a line up and down Puck's arm with his finger. "Or elevation, or whatever, anything that varies continuously around a circle. The shade of tan on your arm." He smiled. "I guess there's an infinite number of points like that, actually, because there's a pair on any random circle that you pick. My calculus professor told us. I don't know what you'd do with that knowledge, but I thought it was neat."

Puck smiled, looking down at their feet. "Really? Wow."

"Yeah." Dave stretched around Puck to put the book back on the nightstand, stopping on the way to drop a kiss on his head. "I'll show you the proof later, if you want. Or you could probably figure it out yourself. Star student." He smiled, and instead of sitting back against the pillow, he kept leaning sideways over Puck, supporting himself on one arm. "And no, I'm not just saying that because you're sleeping with the teacher."

Puck smirked at him, an oh really? look on his face, but he said nothing. Dave swung one leg over to straddle his, and grabbed his upper arms. "Really. But you probably shouldn't stop, just in case, huh?"

Dave couldn't help but grin at the stunned expression on Puck's face as he kissed him thoroughly. Finally Puck managed to pull away.

"Breakfast?" Dave suggested. "I need some oatmeal before I go, or I'll crash so bad you'll have to drive sixty miles to come rescue me from a ditch somewhere."

"All right." Puck allowed Dave to drag him up and out of bed. "Breakfast sounds like a wise idea, then. I've got a karate class to teach, and I'd hate to leave you lying there until I was done."

The early October weather was still pleasant enough that they decided to sit on the back deck to study and prep, although the wind would occasionally pick up their papers and try to make off with them. Pascal was curled up into a tiny purring ball on Dave's lap.

Dave looked up from his own work at Puck, who was frowning at his binder. From what Dave could see, it might be some kind of linear algebra, maybe.

"Is this even for my class?" He nodded at the paper Puck was scribbling on.

"Kind of?" Puck shrugged. "I was reading the chapter about bijections, and and I realized I don't know as much as I should of this matrix stuff to really get it, so I found this."

Dave smiled. He knew Puck was smart, and motivated, he saw it every week in class and in between, too, but it was always a little extra rush of something not unlike pride, when he showed it off like this. "Want to tell me what that confused look is about? It's been a while since I took lin alg, but maybe I can help."

"Yeah. Um, I don't know." Pascal leapt down from Dave's lap and wound around Puck's legs, looking for more attention, and Puck put an absent-minded hand on his head. He hunched over the book, tapping it with his pencil. "This thing, here? I don't get what that has to do with functions."

"Okay, so...let me see where they're going with this." Dave scanned the page. "All right, do you know what the span is? Of a set of vectors? "

"I think so. That's something to do with linear combinations too, right?"

"Yeah, exactly. So, the span is the space of all the combinations, right?" Dave waved his hands in a gesture that didn't really demonstrate anything except maybe, if you were being generous, the general concept of space. "Sort of everywhere you can get to with the vectors you have."

Puck nodded, scratching Pascal's chest. The cat flopped down onto his back, exposing his belly to the sun. "Yeah. So if you had two vectors, the span would be a plane?"

"Yeah, usually, or it could be a line. So, if those vectors are the columns of your matrix, see?" Dave pointed at the grid of numbers on the page. "And when you multiply this in..." He showed with two fingers how he'd mentally lift the vector off the page and place it across the matrix. "...see how you're making a linear combination of the columns? So anything that comes out here...is going to be in the space that those columns span."

Pascal started grooming Puck's hand, but that didn't seem to interfere with his ferocious concentration. "Yeah, okay, so the rank would be...the dimension of the column space? And that's, kind of like the image of a function?"

Dave grinned. "Yes." He leaned over and kissed him, not because he thought Puck really needed rewards to motivate him or anything, it was just hard to resist. "Damn. If I leave you alone here for ten minutes, you're probably going to prove the first isomorphism theorem or something." He laughed when Puck actually looked excited by this idea.

"Hey, you're the first person who's bothered to explain all this stuff to me that I guess I should already know. And, well." He shrugged sheepishly, pulling Pascal into his lap. "It's interesting, okay?"

"Start with the rank-nullity theorem, then, if you can't help yourself." Dave took the book from the table and turned a few pages. "Here. Plenty of dimensions to think about. And the idea applies to a lot more stuff than just matrix transformations."

Puck was immediately absorbed, and Dave smiled. He moved back to his own end of the table and attempted to find the argument he'd been following in the very dense text.

They sat like that for a while, quietly working side by side, Pascal purring loudly enough to be heard now, and Dave looking up every few minutes just to stare and wonder how on earth this had become his life. Eventually Puck broke the silence.

"So, if you're missing a dimension...you'd know because there aren't enough vectors? Or the ones you have are linearly dependent?"

"Yeah. And, I guess, if you knew you were in a higher dimension space, you could build one from the ones you have, you know, like the cross product? I'm not sure how that generalizes. Or you'd just have to be lucky and...find one." Dave glanced at Puck. "One that...had that orthogonal component you were missing."

Puck smirked. "I think some people would say I'm missing a couple of those. But, heh, yeah." His smile softened. "I know what you mean. All I know is my own dimension, but - if another one crossed it, suddenly, there'd be like, whoa, a whole different possible space. Pretty awesome. And startling, like - all these things about the world you never realized were possible before. Right?"

"Yes, like if you're a plane, right? And you're living in your plane doing plane things and everything you touch gets projected down into the same plane, because that's what you do, that's your transformation matrix." Dave had no idea what he was talking about, not really, but he thought he could say it anyway when it was sort of half math.

"And maybe...you've got some idea that it's really 3D space out there, right, but you can't get there, you don't have that basis vector that gets you...out. Up." He looked at Puck, then back down at his right hand, watching himself make the right hand rule shape that he'd learned to remember which way the cross product should point. "And maybe you can't remember how to do this orthogonal product thing, or you're some kind of different vector space where it doesn't even exist, or whatever. You can't do it." He sighed. Not that he could relate to that, or anything.

"But I guess if you're lucky a...vector, shows up that just...attaches to you, I suppose, but it keeps being itself too, pointing off in that direction you could never quite grasp. And then you can go there, with them."

Puck gazed down at Pascal in his lap. "But...like, what if you never intersect with any of the right vectors? You wouldn't have anywhere to go. Or - what if you had a vector in mind, but it turns out you make a dependent set together? Or you don't have the right number of rows to fit, or..." Now he was starting to look a little desperate.

"Oh. No." Dave smiled. "There are enough rows - or if not, don't worry, there are ways to fix that. And the span always includes the zero vector, see? If nothing else, they could meet there."

Puck's shoulders relaxed a little, and he nodded. "Meet me at the origin, huh?"

Dave smiled at Puck's concern for lonely vector sets, but also thought he knew how he felt. "And, hey, maybe your column space could meet another nice plane, or something. They'd have a whole line to work with."

Puck dropped Pascal to the floor, stood up and came over to crouch down beside Dave's chair. "I don't think I want another nice plane," he said softly. "I think I know what I want."

"Do you really," Dave said, pulling Puck closer until he was sitting on his knees on the floor, resting against Dave's legs. He leaned forward and rubbed the skin behind Puck's ear gently with his thumb. "Good," he mumbled into the short fuzz of his hair. "Me too."