(Author's note: I'm so proud to announce the posting of our Kurt-OT3 Big Bang story tomorrow! It's titled Kiss Me I'm Drunk Don't Worry It's True, and we've been working on it all summer. You can find it at AO3 starting at midnight tonight, and it'll be posted on FFnet eventually. I hope those of you who are not put off by a little Kurt in your Puckofsky will give it a try. In the meantime, there will be one more chapter here after this one, and then an epilogue which falls after Kiss Me. Thank you for your fantastic feedback throughout this story - it's been a hell of a journey for us! Enjoy. -amy)
Of all the situations in which he ever thought he'd find himself, Dave figured being on a double date with Finn Hudson, Noah Puckerman and a girl was one of the least likely. By now, though, he thought he and Finn might actually be good enough friends that he could believe it when Finn smiled big at him and told him he was glad to see him. Puck speculated it was so easy for Finn to forgive all the history between them because his memory was so bad. Regardless of why, Finn never brought it up, and seemed to have accepted Dave into their social circle.
Dave settled himself into the booth. "So you say Finn's been seeing this girl for a few weeks?"
"Yeah, since before we got Beth her bike." Puck grimaced. "But if you ask me, she's just another Rachel clone. He never got over letting her go to NYADA without him." He poured Dave a beer. "She's okay. He could do better."
Dave grinned, because it was the same thing Puck had said about his sister's last two dates. "You should just set him up with somebody good enough, huh?"
"Not sure they exist," Puck grinned back. It was the same way Dave felt about Kurt, so he got it.
Once he met the girl Finn brought with him, he had to agree. She had the same dark hair, the same chatty, exuberant manner he remembered from Rachel Berry in high school. Puck was polite, but largely ignored her in favor of talking about the conference and Beth.
"Shelby wants to take her to New York to see her sister," he said, making a face. "It'll be the third Thanksgiving in a row that she's been away. Kind of sucks, not to have a place to offer instead." He poked at his sandwich. "Maybe I could get Sarah to make a turkey."
"Hey, you could come over to our house for Thanksgiving!" Finn said, sounding excited. "My mom's cooking, and she makes the best sweet potatoes."
Finn's date took this opportunity to complain about how awful Thanksgiving would be with her crazy relatives (no two gay dads here, but apparently there were several cousins with mental disorders). It was several minutes later that Puck turned to Dave, a questioning look on his face.
"You want to?" he asked.
Dave thought about a room full of people he only kind of knew, and with whom he had a spotty past. He considered the experience of being there with the Hudson-Hummel family. He wondered what he would tell his own parents, if they even invited him for Thanksgiving dinner.
"You sure I'm welcome?" said Dave. "You do remember the stuff that happened with me and Kurt's dad."
Puck rolled his eyes. "That was, like, a decade ago. You think a US Congressman cares about a couple stupid arguments his kid had in high school?"
It sounded like the same argument Puck had made about Finn forgiving him, water under the bridge and all that, but things with Kurt had gone pretty far beyond throwing slushies and calling names in the hallway. And he guessed Mr. Hummel had a better memory than Finn did. Dave shrugged. "Maybe not. I just don't know if he'd really be comfortable with me there, and Kurt might tell me it was okay, even if it wasn't."
"Kurt would totally love it," Finn assured him, crunching up a tortilla chip. "And it's just as much my house as it is his. I'm inviting you."
It was a tempting offer. Really, he'd say yes to almost anything just so when his dad called, trying to pretend that both he and mom would love to see him, he could say no without hearing any pity about being all alone on the holiday. "Thank you," he said. "I'd like that. If everyone thinks it's okay."
Dave had already forgotten Finn's date's name by the time they parked the truck in Puck's driveway. He was too caught up in his thoughts about Thanksgiving to notice Puck's hesitation as they went up the sidewalk to the house. But before they got through the door, Puck stopped him.
"My Ma's home tonight," he said, sounding agitated. He gestured at the front window which looked into their dining room. "And, uh, I'm pretty sure she's already drunk, judging by the number of bottles on the table."
Dave nodded. "Would it be better if I went somewhere else?" He wondered what would happen if he showed up at his parents' house. He hadn't spoken to them all semester; he doubted they even knew he had been in town at all. But Puck shook his head.
"It's not like you'd be a surprise," he said. "She knows I'm... where I stay, most nights." But he still seemed reluctant. Dave could guess why, so he let Puck lead the way into the house.
On the Wednesdays when Puck didn't have seminar with Elliott the next morning, they usually spent the night at Puck's house, but this was the first time Puck's Ma had been home at the same time Dave had been there. He tried not to expect much, but when Puck introduced her, she seemed both calm and relatively lucid.
"Nice to meet you, Mrs. Puckerman," Dave said, taking her offered hand.
"Call me Ruth," she replied. Her hand was loose and soft, and her gaze slid off him and back to the television before he could reply.
Puck looked like he couldn't wait to get out of the room. Dave followed him into the kitchen, and when he tried to take his hand, Puck shrugged it off.
"She's okay, man," Dave said. "This isn't a problem."
But Puck just shook his head and sighed, squeezing his eyes shut. "No, it really is. I'm sick to fucking death of worrying about her, how she's going to be, if it's going to be a good day or a bad one. I just wish she could be my mom, and not this person who's living in my house, taking up space, needing me to take care of her and not giving us anything in return. I guess I should be grateful she's still working at all."
Dave nodded, staring unhappily at Puck's twitchy hands, gripping the counter, crossing in front of him, playing with the belt loop on his shorts. "I understand. My family, we've got our share of people who used alcohol to solve their problems."
Puck laughed bitterly. "I don't think she's trying to solve anything. It's just what she does. She works forty hours and comes home to a couple glasses of whatever's handy to blot it all out. Then she gets up ten hours later and does it all over again." A flicker of pain crossed his face. "I just keep running through all the things that might fix it... maybe if she quit her job... maybe if she had a husband... maybe if we weren't around..."
Dave gave up trying to give Puck the distance he was striving for. He moved in right against Puck's side and put a hand on his back. "You're not the problem," he said. "Don't even think that. You can't fix this for her."
He could hear the unspoken question that followed: If I can't, who can?
Puck went to bed early, and Puck's Ma passed out on the easy chair. That left Dave and Sarah on the couch, watching the Late Show with half an ear while Sarah finished her homework. Dave peeked over at the book she was reading. There were multiple sticky notes protruding from the pages. He was reminded of Vincent's graph structure, and grinned. "What's that?"
"Madame Bovary," Sarah said, like she might say capital punishment. "I'm almost done."
"I had to read that for senior English." He'd liked it, but most of the rest of the class had complained about how slow-moving it had been. Dave didn't mind moving slowly.
Sarah folded down the corner on her page. "I'm trying not to get senioritis."
"Uh, aren't you a junior?"
"Exactly." She set the book down on the table. "Hang on, I have to get Ma to bed. She's supposed to take her medication at eleven."
Dave was almost ready to ask the question after Sarah came back without her mother. She folded herself back into the opposite corner of the couch, and he waited for a few more minutes before taking the plunge. "So... you guys kind of take care of your mom, huh? I mean, she seems like she needs... a little help."
Sarah rolled her eyes. "You could say that. We do the best we can. Some days are better than others."
Dave nodded. "Yeah, it's always like that, I guess." He remembered what it was like living with his own mother, not that she'd ever have admitted to needing any kind of help - that was for everybody else - but there had definitely been bad days and good days, and he'd hated the unpredictable pattern more than anything.
She blew out a breath. "Sometimes I think she could have a lot more control over her drinking if we just stopped taking care of her. What's that called? Enabling? Whatever. She's totally a mess, and we kind of let her be that way, because it's easier than dealing with what would happen if we made her stop."
"No. Yeah, I get that." Dave waited a few seconds again, not sure if he should really say anything or not. "I don't think it's wrong, if it makes it easier for you, for a year or two. You won't be here forever, anyway."
"I know it's going to suck when I leave. There's no way I'm going to stay in Ohio for college." She glared at the coffee table. "Mostly I'm just trying not to think about it. Not very grown-up of me, I guess."
"Don't take this the wrong way or anything, but you're a junior. You're not supposed to be that grown-up."
"Hey, it was me or nobody. What, you think Noah was going to be the grown-up?" She snorted a laugh. "He's a lot better since he became a father, but, trust me, I've been doing this since I was ten." She slouched into the couch. "It's hard enough dealing with Ma, but so much worse when I have to worry about other people doing it wrong."
Dave wished he could tell her she didn't have to do it at all, but he knew that just wasn't the reality. Sometimes people had to do things, things they didn't want to do, just to get by. Then he thought maybe he shouldn't bring up... the thing he wanted to bring up, but it was already too much on his mind.
"Puck's been in Columbus a lot this semester." He watched her shrug in response, but she wasn't fooling anyone. Dave knew it mattered that he had been gone. "I'm... sorry about that."
"He's never been in love with anybody the way he loves you," Sarah replied.
Dave hadn't expected that response. It threw him off his rehearsed speech, and for a minute he just sat there, watching her in confusion. Finally he acknowledged what she'd said with a little nod. "You're very perceptive."
"He's my brother," she said, as if this explained anything. Dave didn't have any siblings, so he wasn't sure if this would be a universal experience or unique to Sarah and Puck. He nodded again. He had a sinking feeling that it really wasn't going to get any easier from here on out, so he just took a deep breath and forged ahead.
"So... uh, after this semester... I'm thinking about asking him to move in with me."
Sarah didn't look surprised or anything. She just sighed, shrinking down into herself, and nodded. Then she gave him a half-smile. "I guess I should be happy for him. If I met a guy as nice as you, I'd want Noah to want me to have that. I wouldn't want him to tell me to stay home with him and take care of our drunk Ma."
"I'm sure he doesn't want you to do that, either," said Dave. Sarah gave him a look.
"Yeah? I think that's pretty much what he's expecting me to do right now. Sorry, Dave, but it's the truth."
They sat together in uncomfortable silence for a few moments, not really looking at each other. Dave was pretty sure it was an example of thing that Puck called overstepping, but he reached out and put a hand on top of hers. It was so much smaller than his that you couldn't see her hand at all underneath. She glanced at him in surprise.
"That's really not okay," he said quietly. "I guess you know that already. And if nobody else is going to help you take care of your mom, Puck and I still aren't going to leave you to do it alone."
Sarah didn't look angry, as he'd feared; nor did she pull away. She left her hand under his, to be covered, and blinked rapidly. "I don't know what else to do, other than what I'm already doing."
"Well." Dave took a deep breath. "Your mom's a nurse at St. Rita's, right?" Sarah nodded. "You think she'd consider going through the detox program they offer?"
"Doubt it," she said. "She'd have to admit she had a problem first, right? I don't think she's ever going to do that."
Dave nodded. He had pretty much expected that, especially considering it would also require her to come clean about her addiction at her workplace, which might be even harder - though he assumed they already knew, on some level. "And you don't have any other relatives who could help?"
She shook her head. "Nobody who'd come to Lima. Not for her."
Dave sighed. He knew that, really, and in the end he thought it was probably the right choice, but Sarah being there changed things. "How about for you?" he asked.
She looked a little startled by the question, and shrugged. "I - I don't even know. I haven't really asked. It's always just been me and Noah and Ma, since my Nana died. But I have some aunts near Dayton. They kind of hate my Ma, but they've always been nice to me." She extracted her hand from under Dave's and worried the skin on the backs of her knuckles. "I figured two more years wasn't so long to wait until I could just take off and never come back."
"Two years is a long time to keep doing this," Dave said. "I don't think Puck would be okay with that." He paused. "I'm not okay with that." He knew it wasn't really up to him, but he was involved now, if he was asking Puck to move in with him, and...he could try, anyway.
Sarah was nodding, staring at her hands. "I guess I'm not so okay with it, either." Then she turned to Dave, wrapped her arms around him, and kissed him on the cheek. She gazed at him fiercely. "You're really good for Noah. I just wanted you to know that I see that."
Dave was trying not to be irritated about his day, but it wasn't working very well. There were no fewer than four students using the dead grandmother excuse for not wanting to take their final exam. Dave's colleagues had warned him to include the phrase all students must take the final exam or get an incomplete in his syllabus, but he'd thought it was too punitive. Now he wished he'd listened. He really didn't want to be grading exams during Christmas vacation.
Before that, though, came Thanksgiving vacation, and he had no idea what that was going to be like, spending Thanksgiving with Puck and Kurt and Mr. Hummel and Finn's mother and what felt like half of Lima. He went back and forth between hoping it would just hurry up and be here so he could get it over with, and wishing he'd never agreed to Finn's offer.
And here he was, turning a family vacation that was supposed to be pleasant and meaningful into a hell of a mess. He couldn't blame any of it on Puck; there wasn't anything he could do about it, either. He sighed sharply and tossed his notebook on the table. Puck looked up from where he was hunched over the books for the dojo.
"You done?" Puck said, his voice mild, but he was watching Dave closely.
"Yeah. I mean, no. I've got another hour's work to do, but... no, I'm really done." He held out his hands, warding the responsibility of teaching away for one evening. "Let's go to bed."
Puck didn't move. "You've got something going on, here?"
"Writing my final exam, and dealing with irresponsible, dishonest undergrads. You're not going to tell me your grandmother died, too, are you?"
He snorted. "Even if I could resurrect my Nana, I wouldn't try that excuse. I'm gonna fucking ace your final."
Dave had no doubt Puck would, and with Elliott grading Puck's exam for him, he knew it would be done fairly. He rested his empty hand on the edge of the couch, picking at the upholstery with one fingernail.
"So..." Puck leaned on both knees, setting his book on the table next to Dave's. "What else is going on?"
Dave closed his eyes. "I..." There was no way he could say it's nothing. Puck knew him too well by now. They were practically living together, for god's sake. He shook his head. "I'm... kind of freaking out about Thanksgiving."
"Oh." He sounded a little surprised, as though he'd expected to hear Dave say something else, but he nodded, listening. "Okay, yeah, I can understand that. But - really, Finn's mom, she's awesome. Mr. Hummel's a little scary, but seriously, he's not going to freak out about the gay thing, because, dude, Kurt." Puck paused, tilting his head. "Hey, is Kurt going to be there?"
"Yeah, he's bringing Vincent." Dave watched Puck's face brighten, then, as he saw Dave's unresponsive expression, withdraw into wary concern.
"That... that's good, right?"
"Yeah." Dave heard his own apathy, and he laughed at himself. "Yes. It is. It'll be good to see him, of course, and... and everything seems to be fine, between us?" He shrugged.
"So that's not it," Puck said slowly. "Uh... I know you kind of hate it when I ask this, but... it wasn't something I did, was it?"
Dave picked up his hand and squeezed it. "No. You didn't do anything."
He watched Dave for a few more seconds, but when nothing else seemed to be forthcoming, he sighed in frustration before standing up and dropping Dave's hand. "Okay, then... I guess you'll have to fill me in when you figure it out, then, because I'm not really up for twenty questions, here."
Dave wanted to pull Puck back onto the couch, to hold him and convince him without words that everything was okay, but he didn't think he could convince even himself of that. There was too much hovering in the air between them, and too much they'd already said to let this thing go unspoken.
"I have to tell you about something," he said haltingly.
Puck stopped on his way toward the stairs, still facing away from Dave.
"Okay," he said. He glanced back over his shoulder with an uneasy frown. "You gonna tell me now, or am I going to have to sit here for another half hour while you figure out what to say?"
Dave indicated the spot on the couch next to him. "Come here." He wasn't sure how he was going to tell Puck about this without some kind of visual aid, because the words alone sure as hell weren't going to make any sense. He opened his laptop, trying to keep his breathing steady. "You remember I told you how things were for me, back before we started dating? How I'd been trying to figure myself out in college, but mostly just... kind of hiding, and not really doing a very good job of being anybody I could be proud of?"
Puck looked like he wanted to protest Dave's words, but he closed his mouth on his reply, and just nodded.
"Yeah. Well... I did something, over the summer. Something I don't... do. But I did, and it turned out to really, seriously be a bad idea." He took another deep breath, opening the directory he'd kept hidden even from himself, pausing over one of the icons. "In at least one way, though, I guess it was really important, too."
"Dave," Puck said, sounding a little impatient, "can't you be a little more specific? I'm feeling like I'm looking at one of those surreal paintings with melting clocks or something, trying to figure out what it all means."
Dave nodded. "Yeah, I'm sorry for that." And for this. Just... don't hate me, okay? He double-clicked on the icon, and the screen filled with a familiar artsy, black and white photo of a man's bare back, bowed under some unknown weight. Only now, the weight was well known to both of them. Puck stared at the image of himself.
"What... the fuck, Dave?" he breathed, reaching out to touch the screen. "Where did you get this?"
He swallowed hard. "I responded to your personal ad. You had them on that web site... only I didn't know it was you. And once I got there and realized it was you, Puck... I couldn't do it. I couldn't go through with it." He reached forward and closed the lid of the laptop with a snap, shaking a little. "I'm so sorry."
"That... the guy I was supposed to meet in the bar," Puck said. His voice sounded peculiar and flat. "That was you. I mean... that was you?" He watched Dave until he nodded, reluctantly, then he leaned back with a sigh. "Fuck. I always assumed the guy didn't show because I'd said something wrong. I don't always come off so good in print."
Dave shook his head, incredulous. "You - no! You didn't do anything." He ran a hand over Puck's head, fingers tracing the scar. "I saw you there, at the bar, and... I couldn't believe I hadn't recognized you before. I don't know. All I could think was, he can't see me this way." He forced himself not to pull away when Puck slipped an arm around him.
"That totally doesn't make any sense, babe," Puck murmured, brushing his lips against Dave's neck, "considering I'm the one who put those pictures out there for somebody to find. And I answered your request, right?"
"I know." Dave sighed again, but this time it was less about regret and more about relief. He'd told Puck the truth, and Puck hadn't left. Puck was still here, still apparently wanting to be in the same room with him, not acting appalled or disgusted or... anything. "But I'm the one who went looking for you, even though I'm not that guy, really. I don't think it would have mattered as much if it hadn't been you, but... it was. And it did."
Dave wasn't even sure how he could explain who Middle School Puck had become in his closeted, lonely imagination, or how much better the reality of Puck was, but Puck was leaning in, kissing him gently, and he decided it didn't matter.
Puck rested his head on Dave's chest. "You know, I wish I could say that I went home, all dejected, after you stood me up. But I ended up going home with some random guy from the bar."
Dave clenched his teeth against the pointless surge of fury that erupted at the mention of Puck thinking, yet again, he wasn't good enough for anything more than another meaningless hookup. That had been a long time ago. It wasn't like that anymore. Dave wouldn't let it be. He kissed Puck's head and said, as gently as he could, "Yeah?"
"Yeah. It was a hell of a lot more depressing than going home alone would have been." He glanced up at Dave, somewhat sheepishly. "I - won't ever do that again. Okay?"
"Okay," Dave agreed. "Sounds like a plan."
