(Author's note: I have never been to a gay conversion camp. This is a made-up place. My imagining here is mostly my own, informed by articles I've read and documentaries and movies about reparative therapy. Apparently there still exist gay conversion camps in California, both Christian and Jewish, using some of the techniques described here. This has been really hard to write; I just feel so bad for everybody, even Hunter. Big warnings for psychological manipulation, boys messing around, and lots of guilt. -amy)

There was still plenty of afternoon left by the time Puck's dad's truck climbed the gravel road marked with a faded painted sign marked Adventure Camp. Still, Puck was feeling some weird time-distortions. He was sure it was all due to having been on the road for nearly twenty-four hours. He yawned, rolling down the window and inhaling the brisk air.

"Don't tell me you're going to crash on me now," said his dad, smiling. "We're almost there."

"Nah, I'm good." The last time he'd dozed off, he'd had some startling dreams about Beth that he wasn't sure he wanted to revisit. They weren't exactly like the ones he'd had about Blaine over the past year, but they were definitely odd enough to merit conversation. He just wasn't sure how to bring them up with his dad. Then there were all the missing-feelings he was having about Finn and Kurt and Beth and Adam and everybody. That wasn't even counting Blaine or his sister or Carole or Burt. Those he definitely kept to himself. He was supposed to be on retreat, not freaking out about a little family withdrawal.

Assuming they are still your family, his thoughts taunted him. Considering you totally rejected Kurt.

"I'm gonna have to drop you off," his dad said. "I don't think there's a place for dads to sit around waiting for their kids. But I'll be nearby, and I'll call every day to check in. From what they told me, this thing has kind of a level two, and that's only open to kids who ask." He shrugged at Puck. It was such a familiar gesture, one he'd seen Timothy make a million times. "I think you should do it, but only if you want."

"I don't know what it'll be like," said Puck. "But I'll, you know. Stay open to whatever."

"That sounds like a good plan. I just want you to get something out of it." His dad pointed up the rutted incline, noting the building ahead of them. "I think this is it."

Puck carried his guitar and the bag his dad had packed for him with clothes and toothbrush. He left his phone in the glove compartment. His dad had said they'd told him not to bring electronics.

The building, made almost entirely of rivets and sheet metal, wasn't like anything Puck had ever seen before. He'd been expecting something like the campground they'd gone to for Finn's family reunion last summer, but this was much more stark and rustic. The cars parked outside, however, ran the gambit from rusty Subarus to gleaming BMWs. There were several other boys standing nearby with their parents. One of them was clearly trying not to cry, but the rest were just looking uncomfortable.

Puck followed his dad into the strange metal cabin. It was surprisingly bright inside, considering there weren't any windows, and the decor was a lot closer to a meeting room than a camp cabin. The man seated at the card table looked up and smiled.

"Welcome to Adventure Camp," he said to Puck. He held up a stack of index cards. "Name?"

"Noah Puckerman."

The man riffled through the stack and pulled out the one with Puck's name on it, nodding. "Sure, I remember you. You're the last-minute registrant. Coming from Ohio. Now, that is a long drive." He handed Puck a name badge with his first name and city and state printed on it. Then he shook Puck's hand. His smile was just bright enough to be dazzling without seeming insincere. "I'm Cyrus Lucis, but all the kids call me Cy. I'm the director of this weekend retreat. You can come to me if you need anything, Noah — anything at all."

To his dad, Cy handed a thick packet of papers. His dad sorted through them while Cy smiled apologetically.

"You're going to have to work your way through these," said Cy. "Standard release forms, permission to participate in strenuous activities, that sort of thing. If you want to take them over there and have a seat at the table, you're welcome to read them all over. We want parents to be certain their son in good hands, but not everything we do can be guaranteed to be completely safe."

"That's all right," said his dad, smiling back. "It wouldn't be much of an adventure if it was."

"After we get you signed in, you can get settled in the bunkhouse. Dinner's in about forty-five minutes." Cy indicated Puck's guitar case. "You play?"

"He's a pro," said his dad.

The way his dad said it, kind of puffed up and self-important, Puck wondered how much of it had to do with his dad's own memories of being a musician himself, and how much of it was really about him. But it still felt good to hear his dad saying something nice about him.

Cy beckoned over another boy around his age. "Hunter will show you to the bunkhouse. Why don't you say goodbye to your dad now, Noah, and he and I can talk before he heads out."

His dad reached out and grasped his hand, shaking it, then did that shoulder-clapping hug thing they'd always done in football. "I'll be praying for you, son."

"Thanks," he said, feeling a little surprised. But of course his dad would do that.

Hunter led him away from the reception room, down a hallway and around the corner to another door, and through a corridor to a long room full of metal beds with mattresses. "Did you bring a sleeping bag?"

Puck shook his head, holding up his guitar and the bag his dad gave him. "I'm traveling light."

"We have a couple extras in the back." Hunter was watching Puck with a curious smile, as Puck chose an empty cot and tried not to scowl.

"What?" Puck said at last.

"You… don't look like the guys who usually come here."

Puck reached up and self-consciously ran a hand over his scalp. It was starting to grow back in uniformly, not long enough to curl yet, but was definitely no longer a mohawk. "Too badass?"

"Definitely." Hunter grinned, his cheeks flashing dimples. Puck snorted, and they both laughed. "No, really. These guys… well. You'll see."

Puck did see when Hunter brought him back to the dining room, where young men of assorted ages were helping themselves to dinner, mostly avoiding one another. Most of them are more like Kurt than me, he thought. At least on the outside. One very young boy with dark brown curly hair reminded him enough of Blaine that he had to look away.

"You can sit with me," Hunter told him after they'd filled their plates. There wasn't anything that looked awesome, but he hadn't really expected that. He led Puck over to the table where Cy was sitting, talking to two other men. Puck looked from Hunter to Cy and back again.

"Is he your dad or something?"

"My boss. Mentor, kind of." Hunter made an all-encompassing gesture with his knife. "I'm working here too. Like a counselor in training."

"Cool," Puck said. It made him look at Hunter differently. He caught Puck staring, but he didn't look upset about it.

Cy pushed out his chair and stood up, tapping his glass for quiet, even though most of the boys had been pretty quiet already. Puck had never been much of a talker, but he was a little weirded out by how depressing the mood was. It definitely wasn't very adventurous.

"I'm Cy," he said to the dining hall. "You've all met me. I'll be the leader on this journey you've taken. I want to be the first to tell you how brave you are to take this first step toward being closer to God and to your true self. I hope you'll all take this opportunity to get to know one another this weekend." He gestured to the corners of the room. "Look around you. These are the brothers who are fighting alongside you, supporting you, to get back to the person God intended you to be." He bowed his head toward his plate. "Let's pray."

The prayer Cy spoke was a lot like the ones they used at Puck's dad's group, even though his group had never eaten a meal together. Puck did the asking-for-forgiveness thing in his head as Cy mentioned it, running through the awful things he'd done in quick succession, like a slide show. He wasn't sure if he should still be asking for forgiveness for all the old stuff, or if maybe after six or ten times asking for it, he was forgiven for all of them and he didn't have to ask anymore? That seemed like such a crazy rule.

Then the prayer was over and people began to eat. A buzz of conversation spread across the hall. Hunter gave Puck a quick smile over his mashed potatoes.

"I play guitar too, and bass."

"No shit." Puck grinned. "My — uh, best friend plays in a band. Drums. We used to play together a lot."

Talking about Finn made him wonder if Finn missed him. He wasn't going to think about Finn, and especially not the collar Finn had given him, resting in its box beside his bed at home.

"My whole family's pretty musical," Puck went on. "My dad used to play in a band, too. My sister and me both write songs, and my brother's a sound engineer. And my — my foster brother plays piano and has an awesome voice." And my boyfriend's on tour on the other side of the world.

"We all sing in my family, too," said Hunter. "My mom and my dad and me. Maybe I shouldn't admit to it, but I sing in my show choir."

Puck smirked. "Yeah, maybe you shouldn't. Okay, I do too."

"You?" Hunter had a great laugh, big and full. "Wow. I didn't see that coming."

"Because I'm such a badass." Puck flexed, and Hunter laughed again, shaking his head.

Puck could have said I bet there are lots of things I do that would surprise you, but he wasn't going to say that with Cy and the other adults sitting right there. He didn't actually want to get Hunter in trouble with anybody.

"Even if you don't look it, I suppose you can live up to the stereotype in other ways," Hunter said.

"Like all these kids do," said Puck.

Hunter nodded.

"But not you?"

He smiled again. "I'm not even remotely bi-curious."

Puck thought about all the things he'd done with guys since he gave Andrew Baker a blowjob for the first time at thirteen. "I've always been curious. About a lot of things. A lot of people."

This time Hunter's nod was serious. "You think you're ready to do something about that?"

"Like what?"

"Like get serious about what you're really doing here, and why."

"I guess," Puck said slowly. "I mean… I'm trying to figure it out. How to be a better man. I have a kid."

Hunter's eyes widened fractionally, but he just took another bite of meat and nodded for Puck to go on.

"A daughter. Her name's Beth. She was born in April."

"Well, that's a great reason to make the first step."

"The first step?"

"To stop being gay."

Puck pushed his potatoes around on his plate. They had too much butter and not enough salt. He could have made them a million times better.

"I'm not gay," he said.

"Yeah," said Hunter, nodding. "That's what you're going for."

"No, I mean… it doesn't matter to me that they're guys. I just belong with them."

Hunter's brow furrowed. "Them?"

Puck glanced over at Cy, then lowered his voice. "My boyfriends."

He looked genuinely perplexed. "As in more than one?"

"As in three. Kind of." He thought about Blaine, and Alex and Daphne and Nicole in Santa Fe, and even how things had been with Carl at Valentine's Day. "More than three, I think."

Hunter didn't look shocked or disgusted or anything, but he ate in silence for the rest of the meal. Puck didn't push him. Eventually he stood up and brought his half-eaten dinner back to the kitchen, peeking through the doorway where two guys were standing at the industrial sink, wearing plastic aprons. They looked up at him in surprise.

"Hey, uh…" He cleared his throat. "Would it be okay if… I helped out with cleanup?"

The guys exchanged looks. "Por qué preguntas?" one asked the other. "Qué es lo que quiere?"

Puck desperately mimed scrubbing a dish. "Lava, um — can I lavar los platos?"

After a little confusing conversation in Spanish, they cleared space for him at the sink. The shorter guy handed over his apron before heading back to the dining room. He gave Puck a gentle pat on the back before he left, which felt good.

The hot water and rubber gloves felt good, too, and so did filling the enormous dishwasher with racks of plates, and taking them out three minutes later in a cloud of steam. He thought, if he never had an opportunity to get anything else in the world right, he might be satisfied doing this.

Cy gave Puck a big smile when he stripped off the sweaty apron and gloves and returned to the dining room.

"Service to your brothers is admirable work," he said.

"Thank you, sir," Puck said.

After everyone was done eating, they returned to the first meeting room and sat around in a circle of chairs, facing one another. Cy asked them to introduce themselves with their name, their city and state, one thing they were proud about themselves, and one thing they were afraid of. He waited for a while to give them time to think.

When it got to him, Puck tried not to scowl at anybody. He didn't really want to come off as a badass, no matter what he'd said to Hunter.

"Noah Puckerman, from Lima," he said. "That's in Ohio. I'm afraid of… thunderstorms? And I guess I'm proud of my daughter, Beth."

"Is that about you?" Hunter asked.

He shrugged, keeping his gaze level with Hunter's. "She's the best thing I ever did."

Most of the guys looked too scared to even say words, but they all managed something. The boy with the hair like Blaine was Daniel Glickman, from Troutdale, Oregon. He was proud of his A in chemistry and scared of Kenneth, the kid at school who'd threatened to beat him up.

"Did he throw you in the dumpster?" asked Puck.

That made Daniel look even more scared, but he shook his head.

"You should kick him in the balls," Puck said. Most of the kids laughed.

"I'm not sure I could even reach his balls," Daniel admitted. That got a laugh, too.

"There's a guy at my school who used to throw my boyfriend in the dumpster, almost every day," Puck added.

Everybody got really quiet then. They gave each other uneasy looks.

"Go ahead," said Cy, when another boy (his name tag read Trevor from Kennewick, Oregon) raised a hand. "You don't have to ask permission to speak."

"What happened to him?" asked Trevor. "That guy who did that?"

Puck shrugged. "He's sitting here in the circle."

They stared one another in the face curiously for a long time before somebody got it.

"You?" said Daniel.

"Me, and my best friend," Puck said. "We both did. Kurt — the guy we threw into the dumpster — he says we were sublimating our desires into violent action. It took me a while to apologize. Then I made him dinner."

"I guess he accepted your apology," said Trevor, smiling. They laughed again.

"It sounds to me like you felt guilty about how you treated him," Cy said. "Men need to be able to trust one another. That was important, apologizing like that. Nobody should be bullied or ridiculed."

Puck sat there for several minutes while other guys talked, thinking about Kurt and all the ways he'd managed to show Puck how much he was loved and appreciated since then. Nobody commented when he had to get a tissue from the box next to Cy and blow his nose.

"Hunter Clarington," said Hunter, "from Colorado Springs, Colorado. This is my second year helping out at Adventure Camp. You can come find me if you need an ear or a shoulder."

"What are you proud of?" asked Daniel tentatively. "And scared of?"

"I made the Dean's list this year again. One more year of that and I can transfer to a more prestigious boarding school. And…" Hunter shrugged. "I suppose I'm scared of always being the skinny kid who never gets a chance to prove himself, because everyone else is bigger."

"They're just more badass than you," murmured Puck.

Hunter flashed him a grin, nodding. "All right, yeah. I could stand to cultivate a little more… badassness."

The group did several other activities to give everyone a chance to get to know one another, but Puck was only paying attention with half a brain. Most times somebody had to prompt or poke him to get him to respond.

"Tomorrow," Cy told them, "we're going to get up bright and early, have a good breakfast, and do some hiking. We've got a killer game of Capture the Flag planned before lunch. But right now…" He held out a stack of stapled packets and began passing them out. "We're going to tell a story."

Puck didn't much care for the idea of reading, especially not when he was already so tired, but when he saw the familiar photocopied picture on the cover of the packet, he just stared at it.

The Missing Piece, by Shel Silverstein, it said.

"Let's take turns reading each page out loud," said Cy. "But as we're reading, I want you to think about why I chose this story and why we might be taking the time to read it now. Hunter, you go first, and we'll continue around the circle."

"It was missing a piece," read Hunter. "And it was not happy. So it set off in search of its missing piece."

Puck listened with a sense of dread akin to panic until it came around to him. He looked at the page before him. He didn't need to read it. He knew it by heart. He just didn't want to.

"Noah?" prompted Cy.

He cleared his throat. Then, using the tune his dad always had, he sang:

Oh I'm looking for my missing piece
Over land and over seas
So grease my knees and fleece my bees
I'm looking for my missing piece.

Everybody chuckled at the funny voice he used, even the guys who'd looked a little disgruntled about reading a children's book aloud.

"I'm guessing you've read this before," said Cy.

"My dad read it to us a lot when I was growing up. Now I read it to the kids I babysit."

"Remarkable. All right, go on."

They made it around the circle three more times, with each boy reading, but each time they got to the part where the round dude sang about his missing piece, they looked at Puck, and he supplied the tune. The part where the piece had something in his mouth had them laughing out loud. By the end, they were all singing along.

"Okay," Cy called, when they were done, grinning. "That was probably the most entertaining reading of that story I've ever heard. Thank you, Noah, for adding so much levity." He made eye contact with each of them. "So… what does that story mean?"

They sat quietly for a while, thinking. Puck wasn't sure if he wanted to share his own thoughts about the story, considering they were pretty complicated, but then Cy went on.

"This is a story about man's disconnection with God."

He felt his forehead draw down into a crease, creating the thing that Kurt called the I-want line. No, it's not, he thought.

"The main character is us, searching for that essential connection we all are longing for, but can never attain in this world. So we fill the void within us with other things: food, alcohol, drugs, sex. But the truth is, no human being can fill that void."

"That's not what it's about," Puck said loudly. He let go of his grip on the script and tried to calm himself as they all turned to look at him. "It's not," he said again. "Dude, this guy, Shel Silverstein, he was totally fucked up. He swore all the time and I bet he did a ton of drugs. He definitely wasn't writing about God."

Cy gave him a little smile. "That's the nice thing about a story, Noah. You can interpret it so many ways."

Puck clenched his jaw to keep from yelling at Cy, because Cy clearly wasn't going to hear him.

He went on with his lecture, but Puck ignored him. His mind was filled with memories of reading the story with his dad and Meemee, and later reading it himself to Sarah, and after that, reading it with Finn. He remembered waking up in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat and scared shitless as usual, and realizing for the first time exactly what — or, rather, who — he was missing. He hadn't been able to look at Finn for days after that. And then, much later, the first morning waking up with Alex and Daphne and Nicole in their bed, and feeling more whole than he ever had — and months later, having the same experience with Kurt and Finn. He'd recited the sequel story to Adam over the phone. That first week after returning to Lima after meeting Adam in Santa Fe had been like discovering some essential piece of himself he hadn't known he was missing.

And then there was Blaine. He wasn't sure he could think about Blaine without yelling at somebody.

While all the other boys were getting ready for bed, Puck sat on the edge of his bed and took out his guitar. He found Cy's scrawled Hello, My Name is Mr. Lucis sticker on to the bottom of his shoe, so he stuck it on the side of his Taylor's battered case.

He ignored the curious looks from the other campers and let his fingers on the strings find Adam's music. He felt awfully far away at the moment. Puck had never wanted more than he did at at that moment to hear Adam's voice on the phone, saying honey, for him.

Hey
Slow it down
Whataya want from me

Yeah
I'm afraid
Whataya want from me

Hunter actually came out of the bathroom while he was brushing his teeth to stand there and watch Puck play.

"Adam Lambert, right?" he said around the mouthful of toothpaste.

Puck nodded, still strumming. He couldn't exactly stop.

"Not exactly the kind of role model we're looking for here, is he? Though, really, I have my doubts about him."

"Doubts?" Puck said.

"Whether or not he's really as gay as he says he is."

Puck snorted. "Are you kidding? Is there somebody more sparkly out there?"

"Yeah, like I said. He's trying too hard."

Not hard enough, Puck thought. He pressed his fingers to the fretboard to still the sound, and it continued inside him, Adam's voice singing on in the silence. He closed his eyes, but he couldn't keep them that way. Whatever judgment he was feeling from Hunter or any of the other guys, it was nothing compared to the way it felt in his own head.

Hunter returned to the bathroom. When he came back out a few minutes later, he sat down next to Puck on the too-springy mattress.

"You looked kind of upset," he said. "I wanted to let you know a lot of guys have trouble adjusting when they get here. But it gets easier."

Puck shook his head. "I — don't think I should be here."

"Did somebody talk you into coming?"

"No. I wanted to." He couldn't even say I didn't know what was going to happen here, because somewhere inside, he was pretty sure he had known. Or maybe he'd told himself it wouldn't matter.

From the perspective of this moment, he could see what he'd done, how he'd let his dad take him away from Kurt and Finn and Burt. It had been a crazy thing to leave like that, without talking to anybody. He'd had a kind of vague sense that it had been a bad idea, even as he'd gone through with it, but he didn't know how to describe that without sounding like an idiot.

"I didn't think it through," was as close as he could come.

"You want to go home?"

Puck shrugged. "I don't know. It was a long drive out here. My dad was pretty excited about me coming."

"He wants you to be right with God."

Hunter sounded so solemn and earnest. He was like a younger, cuter version of Ethan. He was actually a lot like Blaine — although Puck couldn't imagine Blaine ever telling him stuff like this. Puck felt a sudden overwhelming wave of missing Blaine, and squeezed his eyes shut again.

"Hey," Hunter said, gently. "You want me to pray with you?"

Puck set his guitar aside, trying to focus on what Hunter was saying, instead of on Adam singing in his head, or Blaine's face. But it all kind of blended together, like it did when he tried to read. He sighed.

"I think I'm just tired," he said. Hunter nodded, standing up.

"If you can't sleep, come wake me up," he said. "I'm the bed around the corner, by the door."

Puck accepted Hunter's smile, even though he knew he didn't deserve anything like it, and he took off his jeans and climbed into the borrowed sleeping bag with a sense of something like peace. It was less weird than it could have been. Giving up control was comforting — even if he was giving it up to God instead of to Finn, or Adam, or Kurt.

The dreams hit him hard that night, like they hadn't done in weeks: Blaine and toddler Beth, playing in the park; Blaine and tiny baby Beth, younger than she was now, snuggling on the porch swing. And Blaine, without Beth, looking up at him with infinite trust and love as Puck fucked him slowly.

When he woke up in the middle of the night, hard and desperately lonely, he didn't bother Hunter. In his current state, it would have just been embarrassing, and there was nothing Hunter could have done to help him anyway.