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Puck puts down the four month old issue of Vanity Fair and looks at the time on his phone again. He’s been sitting in the waiting room of Affiliated Oral Surgeons for close to two hours, but they only called Finn back a little over an hour ago. Puck assumes it could be another twenty minutes or so before Finn reappears, and he picks up a year-old issue of People, promising exclusive photos of Drew Barrymore’s wedding. It’s not that Puck minds driving Finn to and from having his wisdom teeth removed, but he’s still not sure why Carole had to schedule herself in DC the same week Finn had already made the appointment for his teeth.
After Puck reads about the wedding, he moves on to reading about Miley Cyrus’s engagement to Liam Hemsworth, and he’s about to choose between Jimmy Fallon and Tiger Wood’s niece when he hears footsteps coming towards the waiting room finally. He sets the magazine down and stands up as one of the hygienists opens the door and Finn appears.
“All done?” Puck asks.
“Who’re you?” Finn mumbles through a mouthful of gauze.
“I’m your very best friend,” Puck says with an amused snort. “Also your ride home.”
“Are you an Uber driver?”
“That’s a career I haven’t tried yet.”
“Can we go to the zoo?” Finn asks.
“I am not driving you to Cincinnati,” Puck says, shaking his head and taking a stack of papers from the hygienist. “C’mon, you want to stop and get ice cream or something at Ray’s before we get home?”
“I want to go to the zoo and see flamingos.”
“Okay, we can get something at Family Video with flamingos in it,” Puck offers.
“I really like flamingos,” Finn says, looking a little bit like he might cry. “I just like ‘em so much.”
“I’m sure they like you, too,” Puck says, and as he ushers Finn out the door and onto the sidewalk, he realizes that he’s smack-dab in the middle of one of those YouTube videos about people talking crazy after wisdom teeth removal.
“Is this your car?” Finn asks, pointing at the first car in the lot, a white minivan that looks nothing like Finn’s blue truck, which they drove there in.
“Dude, no,” Puck says, steering Finn slowly across the lot and to the passenger side of the truck. “Do you remember how to buckle your seatbelt?”
Finn looks indignant. “I know how to ride in cars!”
“And yet you didn’t remember your own car.” Puck opens the door. “C’mon, get in.”
“I’m great at riding in cars,” Finn says, still sounding both mumbly and indignant. He does get into the truck, at least.
Puck shuts the door and shakes his head. “Didn’t know anyone was bad at it,” he says to himself as he walks around to the driver’s side. He climbs in and starts it up, turning up the AC. “So was that a yes or a no on the ice cream?”
“I want pink.”
Puck hopes that Finn means bubblegum or strawberry, not peppermint, since it’s the wrong time of year for peppermint stick. “Sounds good,” he tells Finn, even though Puck won’t eat either of those flavors. He’ll just grab two different flavors while they’re there. “Anything else you want to eat?”
“I just really like flamingos, Puck,” Finn says.
“They don’t sell flamingo meat in Ohio,” Puck says, just in case Finn meant he liked to eat flamingos. “They’re also not native birds.”
“They made the flamingos into meat?” Finn asks, sounding distraught. He sniffles loudly, and when Puck looks over at him, he has tears rolling down his face.
“Shit,” Puck says under his breath. “No, no,” he says more loudly. “People just like to look at them.”
“They look at the meat?”
“The birds. The live birds,” Puck says, and if he thought he could safely film this while driving, he totally would. “How about while you eat your ice cream, we’ll order a poster of a flamingo.” If nothing else, Puck can get a good laugh when it shows up two days later and Finn’s completely confused.
“Yeah, okay,” Finn says, still kind of crying. “I don’t know what kind of ice cream I like best.”
“Luckily for you, I do,” Puck says, making a mental note to ask his dentist if he can avoid wisdom teeth removal.
“Yeah, okay,” Finn says.
“Do you remember who I am yet?” Puck asks as he pulls into the Ray’s parking lot.
“Yeah, you’re my boyfriend,” Finn says.
“Oookay,” Puck says, because that’s definitely not the case. On the other hand, it means Finn now remembers that he knows Puck. “How about you sit here in the truck while I run in and get the ice cream?”
“Yeah, okay. Can you get the right kind?”
“I’ll get all the right kinds. Anything else you want?”
“Tea.”
“Like… herbal tea?”
“For my mouth. That lady with the pink clothes said I could put it in my mouth,” Finn says.
“Well, yeah, people usually drink tea,” Puck says. “Any particular flavor?”
“The kind for my mouth.”
“Okay. Stay here,” Puck says. “I’ll be right back. Got it?”
Finn tilts his head to the side, like a dog does when it’s confused. “Got what?”
“Nevermind. Just stay here,” Puck says, shaking his head and locking the doors as he climbs out. He goes in the Ray’s and gets two half-gallons of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream, plus a half-gallon of strawberry, in case Finn insists on pink ice cream after all. Puck decides to get some cans of soup and some instant mashed potatoes, then picks out three different flavors of tea: chamomile, island mango, and Earl Grey like the guy on Star Trek. On the way up to the registers, he grabs a two-liter of Dr. Pepper, then pays for all of it before heading back to the truck.
Finn is still sitting in the truck, which is a relief, and Puck unlocks the door before climbing back in. “Ice cream, soup, mashed potatoes, tea, and pop,” he says to Finn. “Sound good?”
“Can we go to sleep?” Finn asks. “Going to sleep sounds good.”
“Not until we’re back home,” Puck says. “Do you still remember who I am?”
“Yeah, you’re my boyfriend.”
Puck shrugs, because at least Finn’s both certain and consistent about that. “Do you remember how long I’ve been your boyfriend?”
“You gave me your roll at lunch,” Finn says.
“What…” Puck shakes his head, because clearly this is something from before college. The dining hall does not serve rolls every day. “What grade?”
“The year we learned all about Ohio,” Finn says. “The Wright brothers. Remember?”
The Wright Brothers and Ohio was in fourth grade, and Puck nods, because he does remember that, but he definitely would have remembered if he and Finn had been dating for close to a decade, or even at all. “I remember learning about Ohio,” Puck says. “That was fourth grade.”
“And remember? You gave me your roll because I dropped my roll, and I said I love you, and Azimio Adams said ‘what, is he your boyfriend?’ and you said ‘yeah, so?’ Do you remember?” Finn asks.
The truth is that Puck has absolutely no immediate recollection of it, but he’s pretty sure that medicated Finn would be really sad if he admitted that, so he nods instead. “Yeah, okay,” he says. “Do you remember where home is?”
“Yeah, it’s where we live.”
“Do you remember that you’re in college?”
“Well, yeah,” Finn says. “Duh.”
“And what’s your major?”
“Flamingos.”
“You can’t major in flamingos,” Puck says.
“You can’t tell me what to do with my life!” Finn says.
“I think if I’m your boyfriend, then yes, I can,” Puck says, because there ought to be something to this for him.
“You should support me! You should believe in me!”
“And what kind of jobs do flamingo majors get?”
Finn huffs. “Jobs at the zoo with the flamingos.”
“There’s not a zoo in Lima,” Puck says. “Where are we supposed to move?”
“San Diego.”
“Uh, what did you think I was going to do in San Diego?” Puck asks.
“Train the pandas,” Finn says. He slumps down in his seat and closes his eyes. “You always wanted to do that.”
“I did?” Puck is pretty sure that he’s far more interesting in Finn’s med-mind, what with the pandas and being Finn’s boyfriend and all.
“Uh-huh. You said,” Finn says.
“I don’t remember that,” Puck says. “So, uh, what kind of boyfriend things do we do?” Puck figures that there’s a chance that’s fourth grade level, too.
“Boyfriend stuff.”
“Naked boyfriend stuff?” Puck asks.
Finn frowns, his eyes still closed. “I don’t remember.”
“But that kind of boyfriends?”
“Is there a different kind of boyfriend? I don’t think there’s a different kind.”
“Just checking your memory,” Puck says, even though he feels like he should be making air quotes or something around memory.
“I can remember better after I go to sleep,” Finn says.
“You have to be in the dorm before you can sleep, ‘cause I can’t haul you up the stairs,” Puck says.
“Yeah, okay,” Finn says. “But I wanna sleep soon, okay?”
“Luckily for you, we’re about to park,” Puck says. “You want mashed potatoes or soup after you sleep?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Both?” Puck asks as he parks the truck. “Can you carry one of the bags from Ray’s?”
“Uh-huh.”
“It has your pink ice cream and your tea,” Puck says.
“My tea for my mouth,” Finn says.
“Yeah, no bathing in it,” Puck says, handing one of the bags to Finn. “Do you remember what floor we’re on, at least?”
“Top,” Finn says. “I wanna sleep.”
“Sort of,” Puck says. “We’ll let you sleep once we get up there. Okay?”
“Yeah,” Finn says. He follows Puck into the building, wandering from side to side a little instead of walking in a straight line. Puck holds the door open to the stairs, gesturing for Finn to go in front of him. Finn takes him time walking in and then seems confused by the stairs.
“Gotta go up, Finn,” Puck says.
“Uh-huh,” Finn say, starting slowly up the stairs. “It’s far.”
“And I’ll be right behind you the entire way.”
“Yeah, okay.” Finn continues up the stairs, pausing at each floor to look expectantly at Puck.
“I promise I won’t let you pass the right floor,” Puck says when they’re one below theirs, and then opens the door when they finally reach their floor. “Here we are. Six doors down.”
Finn counts out loud as he walks down the hallway, stopping in front of their room. Puck takes out his keys and opens the door, holding it open for Finn.
“Ice cream?” Puck asks.
Finn drops the bag he was holding on the floor in front of the mini-fridge, then collapses onto his bunk. “Uh-uh,” he says, eyes closed.
“Okay, sleep first, I guess,” Puck says, putting away the ice cream and the pop, then turning back to Finn. “Take your shoes off.”
“Uh-uh. ‘m okay.”
Puck shakes his head and goes over to pull Finn’s shoes off, then locks the door and looks through the stack of papers from the oral surgeon.
“I love you,” Finn mumbles, sounding mostly asleep already.
“Yeah, because of the roll,” Puck says, shaking his head as he looks down again. About halfway through the list of instructions, there’s a note about putting tea bags on Finn’s newly-cut gums. “Oh, tea bags in your mouth,” he says to Finn’s back. “That makes a lot more sense.” Nothing else on the paperwork is that surprising.
Of all the medicated surprises, Puck wouldn’t have anticipated the insistence from Finn that they’re dating and that Finn loves him. It’s not a horrible thought or anything like that, but it is surprising, especially since Finn’s never given any real indication that he was anything other than a Kinsey zero.
On the other hand, Finn’s not dated anyone since Rachel, and hasn’t even hooked up with anybody since Rachel, so Puck guesses it’s not impossible that Finn has some mostly-subconscious feelings either about dudes or about Puck in particular. The sheer loss of inhibition from the anesthesia could have given Finn the opportunity to bring it up in a way that practically ensured no rejection or negative fallout.
Puck puts the paperwork down on his desk and looks over at Finn. Once Finn wakes up and is more coherent, Puck’ll have to steer the conversation around to the topic. For now, though, he’s going to get a bowl of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream and find a flamingo poster available through Amazon Prime. Finn’ll have his flamingo in less than two days.