Dave walked into the classroom a few minutes early. He wanted to be prepared, was all. It had nothing at all to do with hoping that Puck might still show up with a coffee. Anyway, he needed the time to focus. He was the teacher. Whatever had happened last night (and in the middle of the night, and this morning) had absolutely nothing to do with the job he had to do right now, which was explaining rational and real numbers to the seventeen people who were getting up in the morning specifically so he would do just that. He was just hoping that Puck would see it that way, too, and not let whatever it was they were doing get in the way of using that amazing brain Dave was just finding out that he had.

The first students started to trickle in. Puck was not among them. Dave tried hard not to let it worry him. It didn't have to mean anything, maybe there was a line for the coffee, or he'd had trouble finding a parking spot, or any number of reasonable reasons Puck might be a little later to arrive than he usually was.

Normally he always started class exactly on time, because he didn't want to give anybody the idea that it would be okay to stretch it a little and then have them show up even later next week. He'd seen it happen, as a student. But today, he found himself stalling, trying to look like he was just getting everything in order before he started his lecture. He'd give him one more minute to show up.

Three minutes past, he decided enough was enough. If Puck wasn't going to show, there was exactly nothing he could do about it, at least until this class was over. He cleared his throat.

"Okay! Last time we talked a little bit about sets in general. We'll get back to those later, but today we're going to look at just a few very famous sets of numbers." He could do this. He had notes. And he really needed to stop watching the door, as if there was any way that would magically make it open.

Eleven minutes into class, Puck opened the door and walked right in, casual as anything. He had his own coffee in his hand and a drink holder in the other. Dave wished he could send some kind of subliminal message to Puck not to bring the coffee to his desk, but Puck apparently had some amount of common sense, because he barely looked at Dave; he just found an empty seat near the front and sat down, setting the drink holder with Dave's coffee to the side. Dave felt a little of the tension in his neck subside.

At the same time, though, the electricity he'd felt between himself and Puck during Thursday and Friday's classes seemed to have multiplied. No, increased exponentially. And he was a math Ph.D student, so he actually knew what that meant. He was a little shocked it didn't make crackly cartoon lightning bolts in the air between them. Dave found himself avoiding looking at Puck, even to the point of not calling on him when he was the only person raising his hand. Which, let's face it, was going to keep happening, because Puck apparently understood stuff. He was going to need to figure out a way to deal with this.

It was almost tempting to try out his least favorite teaching method, the kind that consisted of copying the textbook onto the board while talking to himself, and possibly the board, about what he was doing. He was better than that, though. He'd sworn he wouldn't do that kind of bad job. He'd at least try. He turned to the class.

"Does somebody want to try to explain what's special about the decimal expansion of a rational number?" Of course Puck was the only one to raise his hand. Dave swallowed and nodded in his direction, still not quite making eye contact. "Yes?"

"It, like, ends with a lot of zeros?"

Dave looked at him. Puck was sitting there frowning and looking for all the world like just another talented and somewhat motivated student. He was wearing Dave's shirt. Shit, had he worn that to class before? He couldn't remember. At least it was fairly inconspicuous, just a regular t-shirt that anyone might have bought from any number of places. But he hadn't thought about it. He'd just picked one from the drawer. It might just as well have been something with a bike shop logo, or his Maxwell's equations one that he was sometimes not sure about wearing in case someone might think it was blasphemous. And if it had, Puck might easily have worn the shirt and not really thought about it either. Dave felt dizzy, thinking about how close he'd come to really messing up.

He really needed to get back on track, or everybody would know something was wrong. He took a deep breath. It was fine. Nothing had really happened.

"That's one possibility, yes. Usually in that case we'd say that the series terminates, and stop writing, but you might just as well consider any finite number of decimals as ending with it a row of infinitely repeating zeros."

He remembered saying more or less the same thing to Puck in his office just the week before. What if Puck showed up there again? What would he do? He shook off the thought. Don't borrow trouble, like his dad always liked to say. He wrote the fraction "1/7" on the board.

By the time class was over, he'd established that there were infinitely many rational numbers, that there were also infinitely many of them between any given pair, and that despite of this infinity they were in fact almost negligibly few, compared to the irrational ones.

Puck had answered several more questions, all of them competently if not perfectly, and Dave was almost to the point where he could look at him without worrying about a change in skin color that might give them away.

He thought about the cup of coffee he'd seen on Puck's desk. It didn't have to be for him. Odds said it was, but maybe Puck had changed his mind after seeing things in the harsh fluorescent classroom light, and decided against giving it to him. Dave took his time cleaning up, making sure he kept the back to the room for long enough to give Puck a decent window to escape, if that was what he wanted.

He jumped when he felt the touch on his arm.

"You okay?" Puck said, very softly.

Dave didn't know if he was more scared or happy or relieved. "I'm fine. Why?"

"I don't know. You seemed kind of nervous." Puck actually looked nervous, himself. Dave was pretty sure he'd never seen him look like that before.

Shit, and Dave hadn't even bothered to ask Puck if he was okay. "Really, I'm fine. I should be asking you that question. Are you? Okay?"

"Sure." Puck set the coffee on Dave's desk. "I just wanted to give you this before I head out. Hope you don't mind your coffee a little on the cold side."

"No, I'm sure it's still good. Thank you." He took the coffee, and Puck left without another word.

Dave stared at his back until the door closed, then turned around and leaned his forehead against the cold surface of the board until his head cleared a bit. And now he probably had chalk on his forehead. Great. He rubbed at it, then decided he didn't care, the math department had seen worse. If anything, he'd cultivate a reputation as an absent-minded genius. He picked up his things and headed for his office. He hoped it was empty, because he didn't know if he could deal with any more people right now.

It wasn't.

Dave barely made it through the door before Puck pushed him up against the wall and had his face in his hands, kissing him. He nearly dropped his coffee.

"What the fuck are we going to do about this, Dave?" Puck breathed, running his hands over Dave's head. "I really don't think I can sit there all semester and stare at you talking about math without wanting to strip you bare and make you come so hard you forget the Pythagorean theorem."

Dave would have loved to say that it was only anger that made him react like he did, because what the hell did Puck think he was doing, kissing him like that in his fucking office in the middle of the goddamned day? But then he noticed he had his hands on Puck's hips and that he'd made no move to remove them or to get away, and anyway, Puck kind of had a point.

"God, Puck, I don't know, okay? I don't fucking know. But we really, really can't be doing this in here."

Puck dropped his hands to his side and backed away, closing his eyes. "Yeah. You're right. I'm sorry - this is fucking crazy, anyway." He leaned on the side of Dave's desk, and when he opened them again, he was staring at Dave with the oddest expression. Like he thought Dave was some kind of snack in a glass case, and he were on the other side.

"I should probably go, huh?" he said.

If he'd only looked a little more hurt, a little less like a pouty teenager taking the rules as a personal insult, Dave would have been ready to point out all the many, many parts of the state that weren't actually his office. As it was, though, he shrugged.

"I guess you probably should."

"Fine," Puck snapped. "Whatever. I'll see you Thursday, teach." He brushed past Dave on the way toward the door.

Dave almost reached out to hold him back, but before he could make a decision it was too late. Puck left, and the door slammed behind him.

Damn. And now he had to go to his own class and pretend to be a functional human being for two hours. It was a small one, too, so he probably couldn't get away with sitting in the back pretending not to be there. He sighed. He should at least try to read the chapter they were going to discuss. If he was lucky, a bit of complex analysis would be enough to crowd the thoughts of Puck out of his brain. He opened the textbook, found a pencil and a spiral notebook and started to read, writing out the equations as he went. Usually that helped him absorb what he was reading, but today the content seemed to flow directly from eyes to hand, bypassing his brain entirely.

He found himself spacing out during class, not really noticing that his thoughts had been nothing but memories and imagined conversations before something drew his attention back to the real world. Then he'd try to follow the professor's argument for a while, until he realized he'd missed too much of what came before to really understand what they were doing, or why, and he'd let his mind float back to Puck, replaying everything they'd said and done and wincing whenever he came to something particularly bad.

When the professor announced a break, the guy next to him, who he sort of knew but never really talked to outside of class, turned to Dave. "Dude, are you okay? You seem really out of it today."

Dave shook his head as if to clear it. "Nah, it's nothing. Just a headache."

His neighbor looked at him sceptically. "Sure. Just let me know if you want to copy my notes or something."

Dave made a non-committal gesture. "Thanks, I will." He wouldn't, but it was nice to offer. He stood up and headed for the door, leaving his books and pens behind. Maybe some cold water would help.

It didn't. He really wished he'd have brought his things with him so he could have just left. He hadn't, though, so he went back in and tried to do a better job at least looking like he was paying attention. Once class was over, he went to pick up his things and headed home. He had no idea what he'd do there that would make anything better, but at least he'd be alone and away from this fucking place.

There was no way he could be bothered to cook, so he found some leftovers in the fridge and warmed them up. There were cold spots, but he couldn't find the energy to put the plate back in the microwave. He could eat lukewarm food. It didn't matter anyway.

It took an hour and a half of bad television and three hours of lying awake in the dark before Dave decided enough was enough. If for no other reason that he needed to resolve this so he could get some sleep. He let out one exasperated breath, rolled over on top of Pascal and snagged his phone from the nightstand. Pascal let out a single meow of protest.

"Sorry to disappoint you," he said. "Your boyfriend's somewhere else tonight." Possibly never to be seen again.

He was kind of startled to notice Puck still had the same number as he had in high school, but then, he still lived in Lima. Nothing much changed there. The phone rang once. Twice. Again. He got ready to hang up.

"Hi?"

Whatever it was Dave was going to say, whatever variation on would you get the fuck out of my head so I can have my life back, was lost in the soft, surprised tones of that one word from Puck. He resorted to politeness.

"Hey. I'm sorry to call so late."

"No, I was... I was awake." He actually did sound awake. Dave had the sudden, disconcerting image of Puck sitting there on his couch next to another guy. Or maybe in his bed.

"I didn't interrupt anything?"

"Just fighting my way through another chapter of The Mystery of Aleph. Sarah went to sleep a half hour ago, so it's kind of slow going without help."

Dave revised his mental image of Puck to include a cup of tea and a book. And somehow he was naked. Dave shook his head to clear it.

"I was thinking," Puck went on. "About Zeno's paradox. You know, the one where you walk half the distance to the door, then half the rest of the distance, and so on, and so you never can really get there?"

"Yeah, I know," said Dave, smiling a little.

"So what if... what if two people are doing that? If both people are walking toward each other, say, and both of them are going halfway, and then halfway again - " He was getting a little worked up now, sounding almost panicked. "If they keep doing that... they'll never get to the same point, right? It's totally useless?"

Dave tried to infer from Puck's tone exactly what he was asking, because he had the feeling there was more going on here than a theoretical conversation about convergence and the illusion of motion. But apparently he took too long, and Puck sighed.

"This is why I don't sleep," he said. "I get stuck on these questions and they kick my ass."

"I know what you mean," said Dave, even though he wasn't sure he did, really, at all.

"I think I need to take bigger steps. I mean, I want to. But sometimes I - I overstep. Like this morning, in your office. That wasn't cool, man. I don't want you to risk your job for... for this."

This. Dave held this in his hands for a moment, inspected it, and set it down carefully. Part of him, the insane part, apparently, though it might almost be worth risking his job for it. Risking a hell of a lot more than that.

"I think...yeah, it's a risk. But it doesn't have to be, like, all or nothing. It isn't, I don't know, either you fuck me on my desk or you never see me again."

"Yeah?"

And what the hell was Noah Puckerman doing, talking to him in that uncertain, hopeful voice? Since when was he the one who needed convincing that - this - was possible?

"Sure," said Dave, in as calm and reasonable a voice as he could manage at two in the morning, after the day he'd just had. He heard Pascal give a sound of protest and he realized he was squashing him with one sweaty hand.

Puck paused. "You, uh... what's your day look like tomorrow?"

"I don't have anything until eleven-twenty. I usually take a bike ride in the morning, but, whatever. I'm flexible." You can shut up now, Dave.

"I could come down for breakfast."

The two hour drive to Lima suddenly seemed... half as long. "If you don't mind driving all that way. I've got class, so I can't come up there. Though a donut from Pat's sounds pretty awesome right about now."

"I'll bring some with me. They'll be really fresh in the morning."

Dave almost, almost made a joke, but he decided that would be pushing his luck. He still couldn't quite believe the outcome of his phone call. "Okay, then. I'll see you - what, in a couple hours? How's nine?"

"I can do that." Puck was sounding more like his cocky self. It made Dave relax a little. Pascal would probably appreciate not having his bodily functions not quite so impaired by the pressure of his hand. "Hey, Dave?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks for calling."

"Sure, man." I've only been thinking about you all fucking day.

Dave's thoughts still weren't particularly conducive to sleep after Puck hung up, but at least he thought he knew what was going on the next day. At least there wasn't anything hanging over his head. He indulged in a little wardrobe planning before turning over and attempting to rest.

He must have fallen asleep, sometime, because he woke with a start at the sound of the doorbell. It was still dark outside. The clock read 3:49.

Puck was shivering, on the porch, wearing just a t-shirt and jeans. He was holding a bag of donuts. The smile he gave Dave was sheepish.

"I'm overstepping again, aren't I?" he said.

"Maybe." But as he said it, he reached out and pulled him through the door and into his arms. "I don't mind."

Puck tossed the bag onto the table by the door with a more relaxed version of the same smile. His skin was chilly, and Dave rubbed his arms a little to warm him up. "I get kind of impatient."

Dave chuckled. "You're only, what, five hours early? It's fine. I wasn't really sleeping anyway."

"Yeah, well, I'm pretty sure I broke at least two laws to get here this fast." He leaned against Dave's chest and sighed. "I'm sorry about this morning. That wasn't fair to you."

It was so good to just hold him, feeling Puck's skin slowly warming up under his hands. Maybe it was because of the early hour and the cold, but Dave just wanted to keep him close and protect him. He pressed his lips to the side of his head, not really moving, just holding them there.

"It's okay. Nothing happened. We're fine."

"Okay." Puck seemed totally willing to accept this statement. His arms crept around Dave's waist and rested there. It felt absurdly familiar.

"Okay." Dave pulled away far enough to look at him. "You must be really tired, driving like that all night. Want to save the donuts for later and try to get some more sleep?"

Puck's eyebrows shot up to the top of his forehead. "Are you fucking kidding me?"

"Or not. I just thought a warm bed might be nice."

"Yeah, well, sleeping isn't real high on my list of priorities." He took Dave's hand and tugged him toward the stairs. "I hope you're awake enough for what's coming next."

Oh, okay. If that was how he felt. Dave grabbed Puck's upper arm and turned him around on the stairs, kissing him. Then he pulled away. That didn't feel quite right. "Wait. Let me try this a different way." He stepped down and pushed Puck up, so they changed places and Puck was on the higher step. Then he grabbed him again for a second kiss, pretty much the same but with a better angle. "See? Much better."

Puck rolled his eyes, but his breath was definitely coming faster and Dave thought his eyes were a little glassy. "Yeah, okay, you're right. Can we get on with it?"

Dave wouldn't mind that, but when Puck got impatient like this, it was hard to resist making him wait a little longer. "I don't know. I think we need a bigger sample size, or this experiment will be useless." He walked around Puck, holding his shoulder to keep him from following. "One more."

Puck seemed to take that as some kind of challenge, kissing him harder and deeper and somehow better than before, despite being kind of far down. Dave felt the kiss in the soles of his feet, and he groaned helplessly as Puck found a particularly sensitive spot under his chin. "You know what? I don't care. Let's go."

"Too late." Puck climbed on top of him, right there on the stairs, wedging him against the step under the railing. It was almost uncomfortable and far, far too hot for Dave to do anything but acquiesce. He gasped under the assault of Puck's hands, pulling his shirt up and his sweats down to touch his skin. "The whole fucking day has been foreplay, man. I'm ready now. And you're wearing too many clothes."

Dave was thankful for several things. That he'd taken a shower before bed instead of waiting for morning, for one. That his stairs were carpeted. That somewhere along the course of his life, Puck had learned how to do that with his fingers. It didn't matter at all what girls or guys had come before, in that moment. It was just them, there on the stairs, and Dave couldn't believe it had taken him this many years to feel like this.

"Puck," he said, trying to keep his eyes from rolling back into his head. "Puck. Wait a second."

"Little busy here," he heard.

Dave nudged him with his knee. "You." He stopped to try to get some control of his voice, because Puck wasn't taking a break quite yet. "This is... there's nothing wrong with this, God, Puck, but I want you to... let me do something for you. Too."

Puck paused, sitting back far enough for Dave to take a reasonable breath. "Right now?" He sounded confused.

Dave looked at him. That settled it. "Yes, right now." He had just enough room to get one hand out from under their compressed bodies and place it on the inside of Puck's thigh. "If that's okay with you?" It certainly felt like it was, but he figured it was polite to ask before he... took.

Puck gripped the railing with one flailing hand, almost falling backwards down the steps. "Uh... yeah," he said, his voice as unsteady as his body. "Yeah... that would be okay."

Dave took hold of him to keep him from falling. "Great. So why don't we start by getting off the stairs. I want to make you feel awesome, not break your fucking neck."

Puck still looked a little perplexed as he followed Dave up to his room, holding his hand, but he didn't complain, or even say anything else until they were halfway out of their clothes.

"You liked what I was doing, on the stairs." Puck tossed his shirt on the floor and watched Dave with those intense eyes.

He knew Puck had a lot of doubts, but come on. He couldn't have missed that. "Of course. Yes."

Puck shrugged, making the muscles in his bare neck and shoulders do interesting things. "So why the rush to worry about me? Why can't you just enjoy it?"

Dave sighed, taking Puck by the arms and setting him down on the bed. "Because that's not all this is. Yeah, I liked it, I'm pretty sure you know how good you are at that, but this - I want you to get something more out of it than, I don't know, a sense of accomplishment. It's about you - about us, doing this together. Or it should be, anyway." He ran a hand down Puck's bare arm, watching the goosebumps appear on his naked flesh. "I'm kind of pissed that you don't already know that."

Puck's eyebrow went up. Dave was starting to realize what that meant. It wasn't so much that Puck didn't believe what he was hearing; it was more that he was questioning his own preconceptions. "Dude. Trust me, I've got plenty of experience taking care of myself. I don't really need anybody else doing that for me."

Dave tried not to get annoyed. Puck clearly thought what he was saying was the truth, like it was some mathematical constant. Puck's axiom: people don't need other people. He took Puck's hand. It was firm and strong and warm, just like Puck himself.

"Yeah," he said, as gently as he could. "You do. I mean, we all do. And you deserve it as much as I do."

Puck's other eyebrow went up. "And you want to do that?" His voice was cold now. Dave fought against the urge to withdraw, to protect himself, because he knew enough now to be sure that would drive Puck back out the door and into his truck.

I think I might, he wanted to say, but that was way, way too heavy for a second date, such as it was.

"Can you at least let me start with this?" he asked, and kissed him. "I want to show you a good time. You said I could."

He could feel Puck reacting in stiff denial, resisting Dave's words, but it didn't last very long. Dave put a little pressure behind his kiss, stretching it out, and Puck shuddered and thawed beneath his hands. He tried to push Dave down on the bed, but Dave put a restraining hand on his chest.

"I got it," he said. "Relax."

Puck didn't seem to know where to look. He was jumpy, restless. "Not so good at that," he muttered, shifting his legs. "I've got to be doing something."

Dave rolled his eyes. "Jesus. Okay... recite the digits of pi in your head, then. There's something for you."

By the time Dave had coaxed Puck out of his jeans and his own were draped over the back of the chair, the look of concentration on Puck's face made him wonder if maybe he actually was doing that. Puck lay back on Dave's pillow, an arm propped behind his head, and watched him in silence as Dave ran hands over the muscles in his thighs. Yeah, he was pretty evenly built all over, no uneven bulk in his shoulders or back.

Dave cleared his throat. This was always kind of an awkward point, figuring out what the other guy wanted, how far he was willing to go with you. They'd already done, in two days, more than Dave had done in the last two years. Could you forget how to do this stuff? Maybe there were things he'd never learned that he should know. Now he was starting to get stage fright.

"Dave?"

"Mmmm." He came to lay beside Puck on the bed.

Puck hesitated. There was a wrinkle in the middle of his forehead that Dave wanted to touch. "After 9502884... is it 1971 or 1974?" He saw the look on Dave's face and hastened to explain, "I always forget because one is when my mom was born and the other is when my dad was born and - what?"

Dave had given up trying not to laugh, which he knew was a mood killer, but for fuck's sake. "Puck. Don't worry about it." He rolled on top of him, tucking an arm behind his back, just holding him, feeling their bodies touching. It was kind of embarrassing how much he'd wanted to do this all day.

Puck slowly reciprocated the embrace. Dave felt his touch resonate from his back across every part of his body, through his arms and legs, into his fingers and toes. If he hadn't been quite so turned on, he might have suggested they just do this for the rest of the night. He heard him make a quiet moan.

"This all right?" He shifted his weight a little. "I'm not crushing you?"

"You feel fucking amazing, man. No complaints here." Puck tightened his arms. It made Dave a little breathless, but he couldn't have said whether it was because of the pressure or the overwhelming closeness of this man, who'd lived in his memory all these years.

"You know what you want, or are you going to make me guess?"

Puck smiled a little as Dave tipped his head back with a little nudge and kissed his neck. "Yeah, that's good - like that." He turned his face so his mouth was right over Dave's ear, and whispered, "You can fuck me if you want."

If I want. Dave had a list of top ten things he'd like to do before he died. Getting his Ph.D. was only fifth on the list. He was pretty sure this was number two or three. But he was going to get absolutely clear about one thing before they went any further. He pulled back and propped himself up on his elbow, staring down into Puck's far too pretty face. "This isn't about what I want, okay? It's about you. What do you want?"

"I'd be into that, yeah," Puck said, staring back. "What?" He shook his head, exasperated. "Dave, you can do whatever the fuck you want and I'm going to love it. Just you, touching me - pretty much everything after that is gravy. Okay?"

Dave knew exactly what Puck meant, but it was a little strange to hear those words coming out of his mouth, like he'd read them out of Dave's head. He tried saying a phrase he'd thought often, just to see what would happen. "Yeah. It's like all the guys I've touched up until now have been practice for you."

Puck's pleased smile told him he'd said something right, anyway. But he wasn't going to let him get away that easily. He went on. "You have to choose, though. I can pick, but it'd be a hell of a lot easier if you'd just tell me."

"You want me to tell you what I want you to do to me?"

Dave swallowed, as that idea hit him in a very definitely erotic way. "Uh... yeah. I do."

Puck ran gentle fingers over Dave's face, which wasn't at all distracting. He shuddered again as Puck kissed him slowly, very deliberately, keeping their heads together with one hand tucked around Dave's neck. Dave could feel the control slipping away, but it was hard to care, because damn, could Puck kiss.

"All right," Puck said at last. "I want you to put me on my knees, and do me from behind."

That was number three, he almost said, but managed to keep control of his tongue. "I can do that," he croaked.

As it turned out, there were a few things he'd forgotten, but he was able to pick them up again pretty easily. Puck was surprisingly patient while he fumbled with the lube, because there wasn't any elegant way to get through that ritual. It was just necessary. But Puck seemed to like it just fine, and when Dave got to the point of adding a third finger, he growled, "God, Dave, could this be any hotter?"

Dave had no rational or useful answer for that, so he just ran his other hand over Puck's back, marveling anew at the complete lack of hair. He must either wax daily or just have incredibly fortunate genetics. "You ready for more?"

"I've been ready for way too fucking long," Puck groaned. "Come on."

He tried to savor each detail: his thighs against Puck's ass as he pushed into him, the noises of encouragement and pleasure coming out of Puck's mouth, each motion he elicited from Puck with his body and hands. Each little thing was a piece of Dave's long-held fantasies snapping into place, like color added to a black-and-white image. He couldn't say it was exactly the way he'd been imagining it, because it was so much better than that.

Dave had him tucked in one arm, holding his chest from behind, taking as much of Puck's weight as he was willing to let him take as he stroked him with the other hand, when he heard Puck say, kind of alarmed, "Dave - can you wait a minute?"

It was awkward to stop, but he let them slump forward onto the bed, trying to keep them together. "Yeah, sure. Are you okay?"

"Sorry." Puck got his arms underneath himself, pushing back against Dave, trembling. "I just don't want this to be over. You only get one first time, you know?"

"You - what?"

Puck laughed a little. "Yeah, I thought maybe you'd freak out if I said anything."

You could say that. Dave took a deep breath and shifted his knees, making them both gasp a little. "Are you trying to tell me you've never - this is the first time you've - ?"

"It's not like I never wanted to." Dave could feel his heart beating, quick and strong, under his hand. "I guess I was waiting for the right guy."

And now Dave felt like the biggest loser in the world, because he hadn't done that. And it was just weird, because he'd never gotten the idea that Puck was very big on waiting for anything. He thought that was his job. And, fuck, after so many guys, what made him decide that Dave was different? He wasn't sure he was up to that kind of responsibility.

"You don't have to worry about it," Puck said, turning his head to look at Dave. "I mean. It feels great. Really fucking amazing."

"Oh. Okay, that's good." Dave calmed his breath. He was still a little freaked out, but not so much about what was actually happening. Just, he'd done the same thing his first time. He'd acted like he'd done it lots of times before - and it hadn't exactly been an awesome experience. But it seemed like it was working out a lot better for Puck than it had for him. Was it bad to feel a little bit smug about that?

"We're not done yet," he said. "Right?"

Puck laughed. "I should hope not." He touched Dave's hand over his heart, intertwining their fingers and squeezing tight. "You'd better be ready to do this again tomorrow morning."

After that, the effort Dave made to remember each detail took on a little different flavor. Because now, he wanted to remember Puck's first time doing this. He tried to remember all the bad things about his own first encounter, and make sure not to do them. Except - it occurred to him that there was one thing he'd wished the guy had said to him, and he wasn't sure he could say it. Not because it wasn't true, but because it was a hell of a lot to lay on someone who was probably already exhausted and a little overwrought. So he had to just think it, and hope that Puck was as satisfied as the noises and eventual wet spot suggested.

Puck seemed more than willing to curl up with him afterwards, and he pulled the blanket up from the foot of the bed to cover them. "You need anything?' he asked. "Water? A towel, whatever?"

"No," said Puck quietly. "Just stay here."

It was Dave's house, so that was easy. He tightened his arm around Puck and kissed his ear. "Yeah, okay."

The door nudged open, and a second later, Pascal was on the bed beside them, purring like a little motor. "Go on," Dave said, poking him with his foot. "Out."

"He's okay," Puck said. He extracted one hand from under the covers to reach over and pet his head, and Pascal climbed delicately over them with his long legs to curl up against Puck's chest.

"You really don't mind?"

"No, man," Puck grinned, leaning back into Dave with a sigh. "This is his bed, right? I'm kind of in his way."

No, you're not. "He'll manage," said Dave, and turned out the light.


"Puck? You awake?" Dave tried to ask quietly, because he only wanted to know if he was; he didn't want to wake him up if he wasn't already.

Puck turned his face a tiny bit from where it was buried in the pillow. "Mmmm. No."

Dave smiled, touching his back. "Okay. But I think that might be some kind of paradox."

"Fuck, not another one." He grunted. "You're going to keep me up all night."

"Like you told me on the phone, right? I meant to tell you you were wrong about that, but I guess I got distracted."

Puck opened his eyes reluctantly. "Wrong how?"

Dave lifted himself up on one elbow to get a better look at him. "So Zeno's paradox says you'll never get anywhere, right, because there's always an infinite number of halfway steps between you and where you're going? A half plus a quarter plus an eight, and so on."

Puck turned his head towards Dave, resting it on his folded arms. "Yeah."

"So what math says," he went on, drawing a sigma symbol on Puck's naked back, not that Puck could probably tell what it was, "is that the series converges. Just like with the endless row of nines we talked about in class yesterday. It's not just that you can get as close as you want to one. It actually is exactly one, if you accept that there's an infinite number of steps."

"But how do you have time for an infinite number of steps? Wouldn't you be stuck there?"

"Yeah, I don't know, that's the weird part. Maybe it's because they get infinitely short, too. Or because you don't need to stop at every single point on the way to wherever. If you did, you probably would be stuck."

Dave smiled. Puck was sprawled there in his sheets, gazing at him out of one eye, his limbs still loose and heavy from sleeping, listening avidly to him talk about... math. Kind of.

"Maybe those guys, Zeno and whoever he was meeting in the doorway... there's nobody telling them they have to keep taking those damn half steps. They managed the first just fine, even if you could just as easily start going on about the half of that. They should just say, fuck it, let's move already."

Puck shifted, the muscles in his back rippling under Dave's hand. Dave stroked them reverently, appreciating the fact that Puck seemed to enjoy being touched as much as he enjoyed touching him. "Assuming these guys actually want to reach the same point."

There was that. "Anyway, remember I told you about the rational numbers, that there's an infinity of them in every interval? Because you can always find the halfway point?"

His finger traced the line of Puck's spine.

"And on and on forever." Puck's voice was low and sleepy.

Dave brushed a hand along the edge of his ribcage. "Yeah. But that doesn't mean the interval is infinitely large. It can be kind of small. Doesn't matter, there's still an infinity inside of it." He bent down and placed a kiss on Puck's shoulder. "With just as many points in it as all of the universe."

"S'beautiful," he murmured. His eyes were closed now.

Dave rested his head on Puck's back, feeling his chest rise and fall with each breath. You're telling me.


Puck woke him with a little shoulder shake. "Dave. Come on."

He struggled awake, squinting. Dave was a morning person, but that didn't generally include mornings after which he'd had three and a half hours of sleep. "What?"

"I was just thinking, about the paradox."

Oh. Nothing important. He buried back into the covers. "Puck, it's called a paradox for a reason. There isn't really an answer."

Puck was sitting on top of the covers, cross-legged. He'd clearly been awake for a while because he had a glass of orange juice and a croissant. Dave didn't know if he could really tell Puck at this point that he didn't want him to have food in the bedroom. He sighed and turned over to face him.

"But, okay, if you really want to talk about it, I think it somehow comes down to cardinality, and how it's not the same thing as size. And, besides, there's quantum mechanics. The ancient Greeks didn't really take that into account. So we're only talking about abstract, mathematically constructed people. Or tortoises or whatever."

Puck held out the croissant for Dave to take a bite. He did, trying not to get any crumbs on the covers, and watched Puck lick his fingers afterwards. "Cardinality?"

"The number of elements in a set. It's pretty intuitive as long as you stick to finite sets, but once you get into infinity, it kind of breaks down. That's why Georg Cantor's famous, he figured out a way to sort that out. Only you get some weird results, like small parts of something being equally big as the whole thing, and one infinite list being longer than another."

Puck gazed down at him. His hands were empty now, and he slipped one under the covers. "Is it crazy that you talking about math like this is a total turn-on?"

Math was a turn-on? Yes, probably crazy, but he wasn't sure he wanted to tell Puck that, in case that made him try to stop. It might make class awkward, but they'd find a way to deal. "Really? Like, all math, or just this?"

"Honestly? You could probably read me the newspaper and I'd be good to go." He grinned, and did something with his hand that made Dave wake up completely. "But mostly I think it's the way you get when you talk about math. You really know what you're doing. It's pretty hot."

"Huh. So I should be talking to you about something like...curves on the complex plane? Does that work for you?"

"Dude. If I wanted to talk about curves, I'd be with a chick. I'm into you." He threw the covers back and straddled Dave, leaning in to kiss him. "And, apparently, you really do it for me."

There really was no point in arguing with that. He could save the math for some other time.