Title: the sound of voice saying I told you so
Disclaimer: not my characters; title from Richard Siken
Warnings: future!fic; implied child molestation
Pairings: Kurt/Puck, Puck/OFCs, Puck/OMCs, Kurt/Blaine
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 535
Point of view: third
Prompt: Any, any, my best friend's brother is the one for me
Finn and Puck (still Noah then) met in first grade, proceeded to bond over not having fathers, and were inseparable after that. They argued about superheroes and cartoons and whether wildebeest or moose were cooler, but nothing really ever came between them, until sophomore year and Quinn and Beth.
It wasn't until senior year that they were tight like they used to be, when Puck spent the night and crawled into Finn's bed and finally told him just why his dad left all those years before.
Finn didn't kick him out or freak, just pulled Puck into his arms and let him cry.
And then, when Puck didn't think he had any tears left, he murmured a confession about why he had bullied Kurt so much. He expected Finn to shove him away in disgust and big-brother fury, but Finn just chuckled and said, "Dude, I figured that out ages ago."
After that night, they were inseparable again.
0o0
Kurt left Lima, of course. He was too big for a small town, meant for bright lights and city nights. Rachel went with him, both bound for New York. Blaine joined them a month later, but Finn stayed in Lima, with Mom and Burt, and Puck asked if he could pick up some shifts at the garage, and he turned out to be almost as good as Kurt when it came to taking engines apart and putting them back together better.
Puck dated women for a couple years, and then he brought a college kid by, a boy in town for a few nights. The kid's name was Greg, and he was a communications major, and he laughed at Puck's jokes and blushed at Puck's smiles, and Finn hadn't seen Puck that happy in a long time.
They tried the long-distance thing for a while, until Puck quit emailing Greg back. Finn asked why, but Puck just shrugged.
Three months later, it was a Breadstix waiter named Tom. Early the next year, it was a guy from 'fight club,' a dude who called himself Alpha. He didn't last long, and Finn didn't like him.
At the start of the summer, when Kurt came home for a break from his career, Puck asked people to call him Noah again.
0o0
Finn had known Noah for a long time. He could tell when Noah was crushing. And Noah had already admitted he'd crushed on Kurt all through freshman year.
So when Kurt came home, Noah spent all his not working at Finn's apartment, just hanging around and waiting for Kurt to notice him. It was kinda pathetic, really. Kurt clearly had no idea what was going on, and Finn wasn't about to tell him.
Early in August, just before Kurt went back to New York, he kicked Finn out of the kitchen while he talked to Noah.
Long-distance worked this time.
0o0
Later, much later, after the wedding and two adopted kids and half a dozen awards and Noah working his way up a New York garage to running the whole enterprise, Finn would just smirk and say he knew the whole time.
Kurt would smile up at Noah through his lashes, and Noah would laugh, pulling him in for a kiss.