The boxes that filled the family room and the front hall were piled high enough that Dave had trouble finding Pascal in the morning, but once Dave made it into the kitchen and opened a can of tuna, he appeared as though by magic. He stared up at Dave with wide eyes, meowing.
"I know, buddy," he said, twisting the lid off the can and setting it on the counter. "It's going to be a little crowded here for a while, but you can handle it. It's just Puck. Remember, your boyfriend? And... one more, but I'm not sure you'll see much of her."
He spooned a little tuna into a bowl and set it on the floor, crouching down to pet Pascal's striped head. Pascal immediately began to purr, settling down on his haunches to munch.
"Yeah, that's it. See? Everything's going to be fine." He hesitated, then stood and reached into the cupboard for another bowl, into which he spooned another serving of tuna. This one he set on a chair. He clicked his tongue, without much hope of success.
"She's not going to come when you call," said Puck, picking his way over the stack of boxes next to the door. "She's a cat, not a dog."
"Yeah, well, my cat comes when I call." Dave nudged Pascal's bowl over to the side, and Pascal followed it with his nose. "Mostly. Sometimes."
"Control freak." Puck grinned, edging closer to Dave. Dave put a hand on his hip.
"Wiseass." He leaned in and kissed him. "You bringing any more boxes over today?"
"I think this is it, for a while. I mean, I've still got plenty of stuff at my Ma's, but she said there's no hurry. I think she's going to keep my room pretty much the way I left it for now." He took the teapot and filled it with water, setting it on the stove. There wasn't any question now of whether it was okay for Puck to make tea for Dave. He just did it.
"Today's a very special day for Pascal," said Dave. He sliced off a piece of bread, reaching around Puck to get the cottage cheese from the fridge. "It's his pi birthday."
"His what?" Puck took the bowl of tuna off the chair and set it on the floor in the hallway. It sat there, untouched, while he made his breakfast, but they both kept an eye on it.
"His pi birthday. He's 3.141 years old today." Dave smirked at Puck's expression. "Yeah, if I'd been paying closer attention to what time he'd been born, I could have calculated it to four decimal places, but this is good enough."
"God, you are such a dork," Puck said, his eyes shining. Dave was only a little embarrassed to hear the admiration in his voice. "And I think I might want to take you back upstairs now."
"Breakfast first," Dave suggested. He sipped his tea, then took a bite of his bread and cheese, sliding a book across the table toward Puck. "And one other thing."
They'd finished Mystery of the Aleph a few days before the end of the semester. Reading to Puck was far preferable than grading papers, but Dave had managed to get all those done, too. He was proud of all his students, but none had made him more proud than Puck. He'd insisted on putting Puck's exam, with 100% - Great job! marked in Elliott's hand in big red strokes, on the fridge. Puck had rolled his eyes, but he hadn't taken it down.
"What is it?" Puck turned the book over and looked at the cover. "Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid." He pronounced the first name go-del, and Dave didn't correct him.
"I was thinking we needed another book. Something else to read, now that the semester's over." He tapped the book. "This won the Pulitzer and the National Book Award for science. I've been wanting to read it since college. It's not really about math, but there's a lot of puzzles, and stuff about patterns and intelligence and symmetry, and..."
"It's perfect," Puck murmured, flipping open the cover. He glanced at Dave. "You... really don't mind reading it to me? 832 pages... that's a lot of words."
"No. Not at all. And, really, it's more your thing than mine. You can help me understand the complicated parts."
Puck snorted. "Whatever." He turned another page, inspecting a diagram. Dave took another bite of bread.
"We've got time," he said. "To read all the words we want."
Puck looked up with a little smile and seemed like he was about to answer when a flicker of movement in the hallway caught his eye. He nodded silently at the black shape crouched in front of the bowl of tuna.
"Guess she likes it," he said.
Dave reached out and took his hand. "Why wouldn't she? This is about as good as it gets. For cats, I mean."
"For cats. Yeah." Puck squeezed his fingers. "I wasn't sure if she'd make herself at home here, but I should have known it would be okay, considering how she feels about you."
"Yeah?" Dave couldn't resist. He leaned in, resting his elbow on the table, and smiled. "How... does she feel about me?"
"She trusts you," Puck said softly. "Like nobody else."
They watched Penumbra eat in silence. Eventually Pascal wandered over and sniffed the bowl from which she was eating her tuna. Dave held his breath as they touched noses. Penumbra's ears went flat to her head, but she didn't hiss, and she didn't run away from her bowl. Pascal circled her, smelling the smaller black cat.
"That's a good sign," Dave said. "He doesn't seem to mind sharing his territory."
"It's not the biggest house, but there should be room enough for two cats. And, uh, two guys." Puck squeezed his hand again. "If they're sleeping together."
"Which they totally are," agreed Dave. "But, yeah, we can figure it out. It doesn't have to be complicated."
Puck smiled suddenly. "Like the triangles and the cake. Sometimes there can be a simple solution. It doesn't always have to be the expected one."
Dave took his other hand. Now they were facing each other across the table, the cup of tea between them. "This was... definitely unexpected."
"Kind of." Puck licked his lips. "I mean, you were on my mind, on and off, since middle school. And then four months ago, I saw your name in the course directory, and... there was no way I wasn't going to take your class."
"You told me you didn't think it was me," Dave said, mildly outraged. "That it was some other Karofsky."
"Seriously, Dave?" His eyebrow went up. "No. I wanted to see you again. Like, a lot. I just never thought it would turn out like this."
Dave had to agree. "I never thought I'd have anything like this." He paused. "Okay. So, there was this one day. In the hospital, right after... you probably remember. Kurt came to visit me. He was trying to cheer me up, I guess, and he asked me to imagine what things might look like, ten years from now. What I might be doing." Dave smiled a little, and looked down. "It was... me, coming home to my, uh. My partner. Hugging him, and... well, that was all, really."
"Yeah?" Puck was smiling back. His hands were holding Dave's so tight, Dave had to shift them a little to restore circulation. "Don't tell me that was the pinnacle of your fantasies."
"No - I mean, that's just it." Dave shook his head. "I was so angry about it, later, because... I couldn't imagine having that. Like, there was no way I thought I deserved a boyfriend, or getting to live with him, or being that happy. But Kurt made it sound like maybe I did. That maybe I could have that, someday. And...that lasted maybe ten minutes, and then I hated him for making me believe it for a while."
Puck thought about that for a moment. "Isn't that kind of backwards?" he asked. "Shouldn't you have been mad about not getting to have it?"
"Yeah, probably." Dave sighed. "But sometimes you can't see that, you know? So I just hated that he made me hope, because hoping made me want it more, and... I was so sure I shouldn't. It was just how it was, and being angry about it would be like getting mad at gravity when you crash your bike. You know there's no point."
Puck snorted. "I think I might have cursed gravity a few times when I fell off your damn bike."
"Yeah, okay." Dave squeezed Puck's hand. "Maybe you did. It's just that...some people would probably ignore that and say fuck the guy who told me I could do this."
"You didn't make me do it," Puck said, wrinkling his brow. He let his hand dangle close to the floor, waiting while it quietly hung there. "You didn't crash the bike for me. Trust me, as much as I blamed you and everything else in that moment, it was my own stupid fault."
Edging around Pascal, Penumbra made her slinky way into the kitchen, darting under the table. She appeared under Puck's chair and sniffed his hand with her little black nose. He smiled in satisfaction, rubbing once under her chin before she skittered away.
"Sometimes at my Ma's, we'd go days without seeing her at all," he said. "So that's something."
Dave smiled, but he wasn't ready to let go of this conversation quite yet. "It's not always your fault, you know," he said. "I mean...things happen, and...sometimes it's nobody's fault, and sometimes it's yours, and sometimes the whole situation really was stacked against you in the first place? I think... it's okay, sometimes, not to take all the blame yourself."
Puck took a deep breath, considering this, and finally nodded. "Okay. I think I can believe that."
Dave got up from his chair and walked around the table with his plate and glass. He set them down next to the sink, and stood behind Puck's chair, hands resting on his shoulders. He looked down at Puck's plate. It looked like he'd taken maybe two bites of one piece of toast. "Aren't you going to eat that, babe?"
Puck leaned back, resting his head against Dave's stomach. "Not really hungry." He reached up and wrapped one hand around Dave's waist, pulling him closer. "Not for toast, anyway."
Dave rubbed his shoulders a little. "I like that idea. After you finish breakfast." He bent forward just enough to kiss the side of Puck's mouth. "I'll just clean this up while I wait, okay?"
Puck didn't answer, but he picked up his toast and started chewing with determination. Dave smiled from the sink. It wasn't hard to motivate him.
Just as he was finished rinsing the last dish, Puck stood up, leaned around him and placed his empty plate in Dave's hand. "All done."
Dave left the plate, unrinsed, in the sink. Then he turned around and put his arms around Puck's waist. "Perfect," he said. He was still smiling, feeling light and happy, but when he held his boyfriend like that and looked into his eyes, he couldn't laugh. Because he meant it, he was absolutely serious, that this was perfect, and his whole body was suddenly full of feelings that he couldn't explain any better than to say there were a lot of them.
He didn't know what else to say, what to do with any of it, so finally, after standing there for a second taking it in, Dave just kissed him. Hard, and a little desperate, trying to tell him all of it, how grateful and happy he was that by some miracle they'd made it here, but in the end, all that was probably getting through was want you. Dave decided he was okay with that.
With his hands on Puck's hips, he walked them the two steps to the wall, and kept kissing him, pushing him up against it, wanting to take his breath away, not caring that he was losing his own. It was so good, and Puck was pushing back, moaning into his mouth and making Dave forget that he'd ever felt hopeless, powerless, that anything was ever not perfect.
He stopped at least three times, only to find Puck's face mere inches away, and each time he had to kiss him again. The final time, though, Puck was looking up at Dave, must have been slipping down the wall, and he was breathing unevenly, eyes wide open.
"Puck," he whispered, awed by it, and still wanting so much. "Babe. Come back to bed."
Puck nodded, and let Dave pull him away from the wall and lead him up the stairs to his - no, their - bedroom. A remote part of Dave wondered if this would ever feel ordinary to him, if he would ever get to a point where he didn't cherish every time Puck said yes. It didn't seem likely.
But there was something different about the way it felt this morning. It wasn't until many long minutes later, when Puck was splayed on the bed before him, breathless now from exertion and release, and Dave was cradling him from behind, that he figured out what it was. When it came to him, it was like a revelation.
"This isn't going to end," Dave said. Puck turned his head a little, lazy and sated.
"Hmmm?" he asked.
Dave stroked his hand along the surface of Puck's shoulder, down his bicep to his forearm, feeling the sweat cooling, the strong muscles underneath. Mine, he thought, tightening his hand briefly. He tried to explain. "You - this - you're not going home in a few hours. Or a few days, or a few weeks. This - you're home. Right here. You're staying here, with me."
Puck smiled. He still looked entirely relaxed, like this idea didn't scare him in the least. "Yeah. Home. That's pretty awesome."
It was, but Dave almost felt as though he'd been tempting fate by saying it like that. "And that's really what you want?"
"As often as you want it," said Puck, rolling toward Dave and kissing the nearest available skin, which happened to be his neck. He lay his head against Dave's shoulder. "To tell you the truth, it's felt like home here for a while now. I don't have a whole lot of attachment to my Ma's house. And all my stuff - well, that's just stuff. I don't really need any of it. I'm here because you're here."
"Yeah. And this is just a house." Dave put his hand on Puck's back, holding him close. "But I like it, and it's mine, and...now you're here, too." He sighed, relaxing into the soft bed, his and Puck's bed, and the sense of quiet happiness washing over him.
"Yeah." Puck settled against Dave's body, letting the sigh pull him closer. "Yours, too."
