Fic (Complete): Summer 2010 - Glee, Kurt/Finn - 1/4
So here's this behemoth, which was supposed to be a *vigniette* and ended up being a nonstop smutfest. Posted in four parts due to THE FACT THAT IT WOULDN'T FUCKING END.
Title: Summer 2010
Author: Aristide
Fandom: Glee. Pairing: Kurt/Finn
Rating: NC-17 for m/m shenanigans
Spoilers: Through S1
Disclaimer: Not even slightly mine.
Summary: Stuff happens, smut ensues.
Gratitude: I cannot overstate the debt I owe to Sandy Justine for excellent beta, insight, and encouragement. She rescued this story from the scrap heap, and was incredibly kind and generous to an author struggling to write in a vacuum. She made everything here so much better, and she did it with grace and style and compassion. Thanks are also due to Dib for audiencing, cheerleading, and inspiration via her innate devastating sexiness. I’m also grateful to Bone for a fourth-quarter Hail Mary, and to Bagmaster Barb for forcing me to sit down and watch Glee (which I’m sure she’s very sorry for now, and she’ll never do it again).
Author’s Notes/Warning: The schmoop siren is seriously going off. It is interesting to note that the noise it makes is ‘schmoop’.
Summer 2010
By Aristide
The summer of 2010 was turning out to be awesome. Epically awesome, actually, because although there had been one other summer in which he’d had a girlfriend (the official qualifier of an awesome summer), the Summer of Quinn had been every bit as frustrating as it had been exciting, and really, he tried not to think about that these days, because it made him feel sad and weird and like maybe if he’d been a better boyfriend none of what had happened would have happened and--yeah, not exactly an awesome memory.
But now, Rachel’s dads were out of town, Rachel’s shirt was still on but her bra was tossed somewhere over the side of her terrifyingly pink bed, and Finn was pretty sure he understood the look Rachel was giving him. At least, he hoped he did--and he couldn’t wait to see how it was different with someone he loved.
“Finn,” Rachel said, and he could hear her heartbeat in her voice. Her excitement. And that was important, it was important to him that this be *her* idea, something that she wanted.
“Yeah?”
Rachel’s eyebrows drew together. “You need to know--I didn’t. I wasn’t. I didn’t tell you the truth about Jesse. I never--we didn’t do it.”
“Oh. Okay.” He was bending down to start kissing her again, but she stopped him with one hand on his chest.
“And I just wanted you to know that because it’s important to me, because I’m so, so glad you didn’t do it with Santana--because that makes this both of us, special for both of us--I know I’m babbling, but I just wanted you to know how glad I am that it’s us. That it’ll be our first time. Together.”
Finn swallowed hard, and looked deep into her gorgeous, trusting eyes. “Uh…”
About ten seconds after that, the summer of 2010 got a lot less awesome. Thirty minutes after that he was once again Rachel’s ex-boyfriend who had broken her heart and hurt her terribly, and he had three long months of utter suckage to look forward to.
***
He had a whole plan in place for dealing with the suckage until it sucked less, but he hit a snag on his first day of coping when his XBox gave him the red ring of death, and there went that part of the plan--which was basically his whole plan. So he asked for and got extra shifts at Sheets-N-Things, because if he was going to be miserable and bored out of his mind he might as well get paid for it. He spent the first three days dreaming up ways of getting Rachel back, and the more he thought about it the less he paid attention to stuff that was actually outside his head, until Mrs. Schuester yelled at him to stop freaking out her customers by singing REO Speedwagon songs to them when they checked out.
He spent a lot of time feeling guilty and sorry, but once he’d made his way through that he was surprised to find that he was also--kind of--relieved, which only made him guiltier and sorrier. He’d been so sure when he told Rachel he loved her, totally sure, but now he wasn’t sure, and the only thing that made him sure of was that he pretty much sucked as a person.
Also, he sucked at being in love. So he sucked as a person and he sucked at being in love, and since he didn’t see himself being able to practice his in-love skills any time soon, it looked like he was doomed to suck at it forever--and that was just a whole lot harder to deal with than the time he realized that he sucked at geometry, which had bugged him for a maximum of three minutes before he’d shrugged it off and moved on to other things.
His mom was worried about him. He could tell she wanted him to talk to her, but he just couldn’t think of anything he could say that didn’t eventually lead to some version of ‘Rachel broke up with me because I had sex with this girl I wasn’t in love with and then lied to her about it’, and, yeah, he wasn’t ready to have that conversation with his mom. Maybe later, when he was, like, thirty, and ancient, and nothing mattered any more. Or never. Never would be good. When he refused to go into detail about what was wrong, she gave him a lecture about spending too much time at work and not enough time with his friends, and muttered a whole bunch of other stuff he didn’t even try to hear on her way out the front door.
He spent the morning stewing, then called Artie. Artie sounded glad to hear from him, but he was also busy--he and Tina were working their way through the Valkyria Chronicles, and Finn had to try really hard not to be too jealous when he thought about what it would be like to have a girlfriend who 1) thought you were awesome, and 2) had a PS3, and 3) wanted to spend the summer playing it with you, in between make-out sessions.
“Does she have ‘Call of Duty’?” he asked forlornly.
Artie made one of his sarcastic noises. “Yeah, but she won’t play it--she says the boys in it aren’t pretty enough.”
Even with that, it turned out that calling Artie was a mistake--because all it did was made him think even more about what he didn’t have, what he probably wouldn’t ever have due to rampant sucking at things he didn’t want to suck at, and… God.
Finn spent the next three days lying in bed with his mp3 player. He put his Dio playlist on permanent repeat, and left it there.
***
The third day of the all-Dio mopefest, Finn was in the kitchen getting a bowl of cereal when someone knocked on the door. He ignored it, because his Mom was at work and there was nobody he could think of who would come to see him without calling him first. Whoever it was didn’t give up, and he was kind of idly wondering what the local Jehovah’s Witnesses would make of his rat’s-nest hair, holey pajama bottoms and ancient Styx t-shirt, when the knocking stopped and the hollering started. “Finn Hudson, I know you’re in there. Your Mom says you’re devolving into some kind of emo pre-human and she’s worried about you, so open up--I’m working my sunscreen to the maximum out here.”
Kurt. Not someone he particularly wanted to see. “Go away,” he yelled through the door.
“Not going to happen--not until we talk.”
“I don’t have anything to say to you. I’m busy.”
“Yes, I’m sure that the in-depth exploration of every detail of your angst and inner turmoil is hell on your social calendar--”
Finn thumped the door lightly with his fist. “I’m not going to let you in just because you’re extra annoying, you know.”
“Actually, I’m willing to bet you’re wrong about that. I assumed that anyone who is voluntarily dating Rachel Berry has a pretty high annoyance threshold to start with, so I planned accordingly: if you leave me out here much longer I’m going to start singing show tunes on your doorstep. I understand that Mrs. Samuels across the street is a big fan of Ethel Merman.”
Finn hesitated, horror slowly growing in him. He wouldn’t. Oh God. He so totally would. Already there was humming.
He was pretty pissed by the time he unlocked the door. “My Mom had no right to say anything to you,” he said, ignoring Kurt’s wide-eyed double-take. “I’ve got stuff going on that I’m not talking to her about, and I’m not talking to you about it either--”
“Excuse me,” Kurt interrupted. “I couldn’t hear you over the sound of vagabond chic. Seriously, Finn--your business is your business, but did you have to involve your hair to such a tragic extent? It looks like it’s crying out for help, for an intervention, for Prozac shampoo--”
“I’m not talking to you,” Finn said, turning towards the hall. He figured if he locked himself in his bedroom and put all his pillows over his head and turned Dio up to full volume, he could ignore Kurt until he went away. Even with show tunes.
“I’m not here because your Mom asked me,” Kurt said from behind him.
“I so don’t care.”
“I’m not here to pick on your hair, either.”
“My hair and I will get over it.”
“I’m here because you were right about me, and I owe you an apology. I’m sorry.”
Finn stopped, and turned around. “Huh?”
Kurt’s face was carefully set. “I owe you an apology. Your Mom said you were upset and didn’t want to talk to her about anything, and she wished you had a friend to talk to. I took the hint.”
“I don’t--”
“But then I realized that I wasn’t qualified for the job.” Kurt took a breath. “I’ve never really tried to be your friend. Not really. I just manipulated you, because you were hot and cute and sometimes nice to me, and I had a crush. I never even thought about trying to be a real friend.”
Finn blinked. “Kurt--”
“I’m not done.” He shook his head. “I never thought about it because guys like you just aren’t friends with guys like me--”
“That’s not true, we--”
“Finn, listen. This is important.” Kurt crossed his arms and looked away. “I have this much going for me: I don’t hate who I am. Because I *know*--I mean I all-the-way-down know--that the people who hate me for being the way that I am, are wrong. I just know they’re wrong. But there are lots of other people who don’t hate me, but also don’t really know--not in the same way I do--how wrong that hate is. And those people, they’re just scared.”
Kurt looked at him then, his eyes bright. “You’re one of those people, Finn.” Finn opened his mouth, then closed it.
“Which is why guys like you aren’t friends with guys like me. You can’t be, because you’re afraid the people who hate me will hate you too. You’re probably right about that. And because you don’t know for sure how wrong they are, you’re risking more than just everything that can happen to you when people hate you--you’re risking them being right. And under those circumstances, I don’t blame you for being afraid.”
Kurt carefully ran his knuckles under his eyes. “But, Finn--you stood up for me. You wore a dress made from a red vinyl shower curtain for me. So when your Mom told me you needed a friend, I thought about how I’d never been a real friend to you. And then I thought about how you tried. At least you tried. And I knew I had to apologize.”
Kurt shrugged. “So I’m sorry. I’m sorry I tried to manipulate you and didn’t pay attention to who you really are and pushed even when I knew you weren’t okay with it.” He swallowed, twice, quickly. “You deserved better treatment than you got from me. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
Finn felt dizzy, and a little numb. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“And… thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
“And… you’re right. About me being scared.”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
It was kind of an awkward moment. Finn said the first thing that came to mind. “Um. So. You want some cereal?”
***
Kurt didn’t want any cereal but he took an apple, and they sat at the kitchen table, eating without talking. Finn’s brain was still kind of doing loops and corkscrews around everything Kurt had said to him. Kurt was either deep in his own thoughts or evaluating the kitchen curtains; Finn couldn’t tell which.
Unfortunately, thinking about ways he’d failed with Kurt led him straight to some very familiar territory, and then he was staring at the sugar-speckled milk in the bottom of his bowl and, fuck his entire life, he realized he was actually on the edge of crying.
“Um,” Kurt said hesitantly. “Did you just eat a bowl of Depressi-Os or something?”
He didn’t want to talk about it. He really didn’t want to talk about it. “You can’t tell my Mom,” Finn said, his voice tight, because he kind of needed to talk about it.
“I… No. I won’t.”
“Or anyone else.”
“No.”
Finn started talking, and he didn’t stop for a long time.
***
By the time his Mom got home from work, Finn had taken a shower, done two loads of laundry, aired out his bedroom, mowed the lawn, and made turkey sandwiches (one for her, four for him).
She pretended to faint, until he threatened to use the hose to revive her. Then she ruffled his hair and gave him a hug, and offered to take him out for ice cream after dinner.
“Mom. I’m not five, you know.”
“No, that would be the other kid I left here this morning. What a pain that guy was. I’m so glad he’s gone--”
“Mom--”
“Seriously--that kid was working my last nerve. If you see him around, kick his ass for me, okay?”
“Mom!”
***
The phone only rang once before Kurt picked up. “Finn?”
“Hey, Kurt.”
“Hey.”
There was a pause.
“Finn?”
“Huh?”
“Are you testing your cell reception, or did you call me for some reason?”
“Yeah, uh. Hey, are you… I suppose… you’re probably hanging out with Mercedes tomorrow.”
Kurt sighed. “Sadly, no. My girl got it into her head that she needs to go to some big extended Christian choir camp, and she talked Quinn into going with her, so I am bereft.”
“You’re not that big on choir camp?”
“Between the excess of bugs and Bibles and the lack of hardcore caffeinated beverages and decent shower facilities, strangely, no. So tomorrow I’m just… oh wait, I forgot. My Dad’s shorthanded, so I have to work.”
Finn grinned. “You mean, at the auto shop? You fix cars?”
“Finn Hudson, I sincerely hope that’s admiration and not amazement in your voice, because otherwise--stereotype much? Also, yes: I am a reluctant reserve employee of Hummel Tires and Lube. I know my way around well enough, although Dad says I never really put my heart into it except for when I work on the top-end vehicles.” A pause. “He may actually be right about that.”
“It’s not amazement, it’s, uh, probably that other thing. It’s just--that’s really cool, but you never talk about it.”
“That would be because of the amazement factor. It gets old.”
“I get that.”
“But you know, if you don’t have anything better to do, and if your boredom threshold is very, very high, you could come with me, if you want.”
Finn hesitated. “Actually, that sounds kind of cool, but I think I’m not exactly one of your Dad’s favorite people.”
“He’s okay. When I got home I talked with him about some stuff. Oh--none of the stuff that was, uh, your stuff. Just… other stuff.”
“Oh. Okay. Good. Then, yeah. Yeah. Hey--can I help?”
“Do you know how to fix cars?”
“Nope.”
“Okay. Do you want to learn?”
“Yeah!”
“Meet me at the shop at ten. Don’t wear anything too--oh, never mind.”
***
Kurt walked him through an oil change and then a brake pad replacement, explaining things as they went and demonstrating some, but mostly letting Finn do the work. It turned out to be fun; a lot more fun than he’d thought it would be. It made sense, for one thing: there was a specific order to everything, and reasons why it had to be that way. He asked a lot of questions, and Kurt knew the answers, and all the answers made sense. He wished more things worked like that.
The other part of the fun was that Kurt seemed to think that motor oil and car dirt were hazardous to his health, and Finn had a great time attacking him with his black, greasy hands.
“I will end you,” Kurt said ominously, scrubbing his cheek with a clean handkerchief.
“Not if you’re afraid to get near me,” Finn sang happily, waving his terrifying hands around.
“Like I would even have to get near you to--oh, hey, Dad. We’re done with these two. I’m going to go get us some drinks.” He vanished into the back of the shop.
Burt checked everything they’d done. Twice. Thoroughly. When he was finished, he looked at Finn speculatively, wiping his hands on a rag. “How much are they paying you over at the Sheets-N-Things?”
“Uh. The minimum. I mean. Minimum wage.”
Burt nodded. “I could give you a dollar an hour more, to start. But you’d be on trial until we figure out whether or not you’ve got a knack for this. If you do, you could make some decent money--start saving for college.”
Finn made himself close his mouth. “I. You. Are you giving me a job?”
Burt shook his head. “Nope. I’m giving you a chance to earn one, if you’ve got what it takes. And if it’s something you’re interested in, of course--”
“I am. Interested, I mean. That was… so far, anyway, it was kind of awesome.”
“Well, as long as it was ‘awesome’… want to learn how to do a full lube job?”
“Oh, thank God,” Kurt said, handing Finn a Diet Coke. When Finn looked at him, he shrugged. “Despite the intriguing name, I hate doing them. They’re super-messy.”
“Sounds awesome,” Finn said, grinning hugely.
Burt let out a short laugh almost like a bark, and smacked him on the shoulder. “Okay then. Let’s go.”
***
At dinner a few days later, his Mom passed him bowls of salad and coleslaw and then pointedly looked at his plate, which was currently covered with nothing but four pieces of chicken and a stack of corn-jalapeno flapjacks. “So, how’s it going at the auto shop? You’re not working too hard, are you?”
Finn dumped a huge spoonful of coleslaw on his plate, and dug in. “You know, it’s really weird. It’s work, but I’m learning all the time so it’s also kind of like school, but actually it’s not like either of those things. I really like it.”
Mom leaned her head on her hand, pointed to the salad and tapped him above the ear. Finn loaded salad onto his plate. “Okay,” she said, pushing a strand of hair out of her eyes. “You know, your father… he always worked on my car. I never had a mechanic, the whole time we were together.”
“Really?” he’d never heard that before.
“Yep. He used to say it was relaxing, a chance for him to think. Of course, I thought it was just an excuse to blast AC/DC out in the garage and drink a bunch of beer.”
“Huh. Coulda ibbe bofe?”
“Swallow before you speak, Finn. And sure, it could be both.”
***
Kurt was waiting for him when he clocked in. “Are you sick to death of this place yet?”
Finn smiled. “Not even a little. It’s fun.”
Kurt shook his head. “Such a guy.”
“A car-lovin’ guy.”
“I swear; if you suddenly break into Springsteen, I will wreak terrible musical vengeance upon you.”
Finn winced. “Sheena Easton?”
“Nope. My own home-grown secret weapon: Liza Minelli Sings N.W.A.”
Finn was silent for a moment, contemplating the magnificence of something that terrible. “But I like N.W.A.”
“Oh, so do I. But you won’t any more after I get done with them.” He smiled brightly and semi-evilly. “Anyway, come on--I’ve got something for you.”
He followed Kurt into the small locker room that also served as a break room, and sat down on the bench while Kurt dug around in one of the lockers, coming out with a neatly folded, ironed pair of coveralls. “Dad asked me to give these to you. They don’t have your name on them or anything, but they’ll keep you from wrecking your shirts, and they should fit. The last guy who wore them was about your size.”
“Wow.” Finn took them, absurdly pleased. “Thanks. This is… thanks.” He looked up quickly. “Uh. Should I ask what happened to the last guy?”
“I didn’t sell his kidneys on the black market, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Huh. I really wasn’t until just now.”
Kurt sat down at the other end of the bench, picking at an invisible thread on his knee. “He smacked me on the ass and called me ‘Princess’. He didn’t know Dad was behind him.”
Finn whistled softly. “Bet he found out fast.”
“Yep.”
Finn paused, then frowned. “So was he… Uh. Was he being a dick, or--”
“Well, certainly that. But if you’re asking whether he was making a pass or exercising his right of free speech to be a homophobic jerk, I’m honestly not sure--there’s not always a lot of difference. But either way, Dad wasn’t thrilled. He’s kind of protective of me. As you know.”
“Your Dad is awesome.”
“Look at you, already bucking for a raise. What a go-getter.”
***
Finn rummaged through his paper sack. He had three PB&Js, a bag of carrots, chips, three pieces of string cheese, a chunk of hard salami, a banana, an apple, and a king-size Snickers. “I’m forgetting something. What am I forgetting?”
His Mom peeked in the bag on her way to the coffee pot. “Your arteries? Probably also your colon.”
“Right--apple!” Finn said, grabbing a fat, green one from the bowl on the counter and tossing it in the bag.
His Mom squinted at him. “You already have an apple--did you need an extra for juggling practice? Are you planning to run away and join the circus again?”
“That would have been totally awesome if you hadn’t stopped me. But no--the green one’s not for me. It’s for Kurt. He likes these. His Dad only buys red ones.”
“Oh. Well, that’s really nice of you, Finn. I’m glad you two are getting along so well now.” She kissed him on the cheek. “You’re a good kid, despite everything everyone says about you.”
Finn rolled his eyes, then used his shoulder to scrub the lipstick off his cheek.
***
Finn was finishing up his first solo brake line replacement when Kurt wandered over. “I’m almost done,” Finn said, reading through his notes carefully. “A few more minutes, then you can check it.”
“Okay.” Kurt leaned against the car and crossed his arms. “Actually, I just wanted to talk to you about your plans for tomorrow’s day off.”
Finn blinked. “We’re off tomorrow?”
Kurt sighed. “Do you even look at the schedule in the locker room? Oh, of course not, because the moment you get here you’re all ‘ooh, wrench is shiny’ and ‘can I fix that?’ and ‘loud engines make me sing Whitesnake’--”
“It was Scorpions,” Finn said defensively. “Also, you should probably know that my hands are completely coated in brake fluid, and I am so okay with the idea of cleaning them off on you.”
Kurt gave him nothing more than a haughty, defiant look, but he took one calculated step further away. “So. Tomorrow. It’s the casting call for the Community Summer Musical--I can’t miss it. And I thought you might want to come with me.”
“Huh.” Finn thought about it. “I’m actually not sure I… I mean, I think I’d feel weird singing and dancing in front of people who aren’t, you know, Glee Club.”
Kurt raised an eyebrow. “They’re doing Sweeney Todd.”
Finn blinked. “Oh.”
“You have no idea what that is, do you?”
“Nope.”
Kurt shook his head. “Your musical education has been woefully neglected. It’s Stephen Sondheim’s masterpiece, according to some people. Including me. You’d love it--it’s full of blood and gore and murder and revenge and death and cannibalism.”
Finn actually stopped working. “In a *musical*?”
“In a Sondheim musical. He’s like… he’s like the Rob Zombie of musical theater. Of course, you probably wouldn’t want to say that to him personally.”
Finn thought it was highly unlikely he’d ever have to work around that in conversation, but he wasn’t about to say so. “Huh. Really. And there’s blood?”
“Literally, buckets of it.” Kurt turned his head. “Hey, Dad?”
Burt popped up from under the hood of an ancient Buick. “Yeah?”
“Will you please explain to Finn why you don’t approve of Sweeney Todd?”
Burt came over, digging under a thumbnail with his screwdriver. “I don’t disapprove of it,” he said, frowning. “I just… well, Kurt here says it’s really about… what was it?”
“Class disparity, obsession, and the effects of the industrial revolution on human morals.”
“Right. That. But I watched the DVD, and to me it just looked like a two-hour bloodbath. With singing and cannibalism.”
“Seriously,” Finn said, marveling. “Cannibalism.”
Kurt lounged back against the car, and started unrolling the cuffs of his coverall. “On a massive scale. People get murdered by a maniac with a straight razor, then run through a meat grinder and baked into pies, which are then eaten by an unsuspecting public.”
“Gross!”
Kurt and his Dad looked at each other, then Kurt looked back at him. “And by ‘gross’, you mean ‘awesome’, don’t you?”
Finn could not stop smiling. “Seriously awesome. I am so there.”
***
The Director’s name was Sherrod ‘call me Sherrod’ Braun, and from the way he introduced himself, he was confident that everyone in the room already knew who he was and was suitably impressed. He had a head full of wavy, white hair that reminded Finn of one of the televangelists his Grandma had been a big fan of when she was still alive, about a thousand blazingly-white teeth in a deeply tanned face, and one of those voices that rolled and boomed all the way to the back of the auditorium they were sitting in. Finn had had enough of him after about thirty seconds.
“Now, of course, not everyone will be chosen for this most *special* production,” Sherrod said, wandering up and down the aisles among them. He’d been talking for quite a while, and every so often he would bend down and subside into a whisper, then point someone into one of two different groups--one that was gathering on the stage, and one much smaller group that was collected at the back of the auditorium. Of the group they’d started with, about half the people were still left in the seats, and Finn could actually feel Kurt getting nervous.
“Dude,” he whispered quietly in Kurt’s ear. “Stop stressing. You’ve totally got this.”
Kurt looked like he was trying to smile, but it wasn’t really working out for him.
“Because,” Sherrod continued, “the *source material*, ladies and gentlemen; the Raw. Source. Material--well. As you know, this is not your average summer musical. This, of course, is Sondheim’s Dark Masterpiece!”
Somehow, when Sherrod said it, it just sounded lame.
“And it’s out of respect to the *material*, this *brilliant, brilliant material*, that we find ourselves needing to--oh, by the great god Priapus, who are you and where have you *been*?”
Sherrod had found Kurt. Kurt was staring up at him, his mouth open. “By *who*?”
Sherrod reached out and took Kurt by the chin, staring at his face from different angles. “Remarkable,” he said, and then leaned in to whisper. “Side door, off stage left. Dressing room corridor. Wait for me there, I won’t be a tick.”
Sherrod moved on. Finn glared after him, waving away the smell of cologne, until Kurt suddenly clutched his arm, staring at him with wide, shocked eyes. “Don’t leave me,” he said in a panicked whisper.
“Not gonna happen.” Finn whispered back as he helped Kurt gather up his sheet music. They crept up to the stage, out the stage-left door and then into the hallway that connected all the dressing rooms, which was dark and gloomy and smelled like old floor polish.
Finn waited for the door behind them to click closed, then turned to face Kurt. “Okay. That guy? Is seriously creepy. I mean; I know directors are supposed to be, you know, *directors*, but still. Is that normal?”
Kurt frowned. “No. He’s… no. But he’s making me want to apologize to straight people everywhere. And maybe do a PSA.”
“Do you want to go?”
Kurt looked at him, clearly unhappy. “Not yet. I’m kind of hoping he might be different after he understands that I can actually sing.”
Finn thought it over and decided not to say anything. He had all kinds of faith in the power of music, but he just wasn’t sure it had the power to triumph over sleazy perverts.
From the door that led to the stage there was a sudden run of piano scales, low voices talking, some sounds of laughter. It got louder when the door opened, then cut off again. Sherrod walked toward them, frowning at Finn.
“Ah. I see--yes, well. You’re a big, strapping fellow, aren’t you? You’re here for Antony, I presume?”
“No,” Finn said, although he had no clue who the hell Antony was. “I’m here for him.” He nodded at Kurt.
Sherrod sighed. “Oh, no. You’re not one of those *dreary* stage boyfriends, are you?”
“No,” Finn said, at the same time Kurt said, “He’s not--”
“Excellent,” Sherrod said warmly. “Truly. You’ve made my day.” He turned to Kurt. “Now. You are?”
“Kurt Hummel, auditioning for the role of Toby.” Kurt had his chin up and his sheet music pressed to his chest behind his crossed arms.
“Toby! Of course! Just… just stand right here, please.” Kurt stood still in the middle of the hallway while Sherrod walked all the way around him twice, looking him over. “Mmm. Yes. Yes. Well. Toby is of course a *fiendishly* difficult role to pull off; kind of the linchpin of the whole piece, you know. It requires… subtlety, and dedication--so much dedication. We’ll have to work together *very closely* to make sure you’re properly prepared--”
“You mean,” Kurt turned around to face Sherrod. “I’ve got the part? But… you haven’t even heard me sing yet--”
“Oh. Do you sing?” Sherrod asked, as if he’d only just thought of it.
Kurt raised an eyebrow. “Yes. I do. Very, very well.”
Sherrod smiled and stepped closer to Kurt. “My goodness--isn’t this just my lucky day? I think we should--”
“Dude!” Finn said, because he really couldn’t stand it any more.
Sherrod looked at him with some surprise, as if he’d forgotten he was even there. “Yes?”
“You’re totally hitting on him!” Finn said, scandalized. “You’re totally doing that… that casting-couch thing!”
Sherrod tilted his head to the side. “And your point is…?”
“He’s *sixteen*!”
“Ah.” Sherrod said, then leaned back to take another look at Kurt. “But he has the ass of a superlative fifteen-year-old catamite.”
Finn wasn’t entirely aware of when he decided to try to punch the guy’s lights out, or what the hell a catamite was for that matter, but the next thing he knew Kurt was standing in front of him with both hands on his chest, telling him to calm down.
Sherrod looked offended. “I thought you said he wasn’t your boyfriend.”
“He’s not,” Kurt said. “But he is my friend.” He took a few steps forward, looking up at Sherrod. “You didn’t even ask me to sing,” he said quietly, and then turned and walked away. Finn took a second to flip the bird with both hands, then went after him.
Kurt was walking with his head down, so fast that Finn actually had to break into a trot to keep up with him.
“What. A. Jerk.” Finn said. He was about to go on in greater detail, but from the corner of his eye it looked like Kurt was maybe crying a little, so he shut up.
Once they got out to the parking lot, Kurt stopped and sat down on the low wall that ran around the side of the theater, then put down his sheet music and buried his face in his hands. Finn wasn’t really sure what to do so he just stood there, feeling completely useless and lame, shifting from foot to foot.
Eventually Kurt said something, but with his hands in the way it was impossible to tell what it was. “Kurt, I… what?”
Kurt dropped his hands and looked at him. He wasn’t crying, but he was close to it. His eyes were brimming. “I don’t ever want to be that guy. I don’t want to be like--”
“Hey,” Finn said, sitting down next to him. “No. I mean. You’re not. At all. You couldn’t ever be--”
“I don’t know that it’s all that different--what he just did in there, and what I did. To you.”
The shock of that felt almost like a slap. “Oh--no way. You can’t even think that’s… hey. I was there for both of those things, right? And I’m telling you--it’s not the same. Not even a little.”
Kurt shook his head, tracing under his eyes with his knuckles. “I mean; I know we all get old, but when I get old I don’t want to be, I never want to be like--”
“When you get old,” Finn said firmly, “you’re going to be like… like your Dad.”
Kurt hiccupped sudden sad laughter. “Oh, thank you for that terrifying mental image.”
Finn grinned, and patted him on the back. “Well, you know. Like that, but with fashion sense.”
They sat there for a while, quietly, until Kurt sighed and sat up, shaking his hair back into place. “Thank you. For coming with me. And for staying. And for that valiant attempt to commit battery.”
“Hey--no problem. If you want we can go back, I’ll hold him down and you can beat on him until you feel better.” He bumped Kurt’s shoulder with his own. “I’m sorry you won’t get to be Tony--”
“Toby.”
“But… oh, hey, didn’t your Dad say… don’t you have this Weenie Todd thing on DVD?”
“Sweeney Todd,” Kurt said, laughing and sniffling at the same time. “And yes. Actually, I have three different versions.”
“Well, why don’t we go to your house, and watch one of them? Or, hell, all of them--it’s my day off.”
Kurt’s eyes were still red, but his head was up again, his shoulders back. He looked… like himself again. “I… okay. As long as you understand that I *will* be singing along. Loudly.”
Finn shrugged. “Knock yourself out. As long as you understand that I *will* hog all the popcorn.”
“Deal.”
***
“Lima Rec Center. Pool.”
“Lima Public Works. Wastewater treatment center.”
Finn took the phone away from his ear and stared at it, then put it back. “Huh?”
“I’m sorry,” Kurt said primly. “Were we not playing Name That Taxpayer-Funded Resource?”
“Well, as much fun as that sounds, I was kind of thinking of going swimming today instead.”
“Ah. Well, in that case, the Lima public pool would definitely be a slightly less trashy option than the wastewater center.”
“That’s why I picked it. I’m awesome that way.” He hesitated. “Are you in?”
“Let me check my sunscreen supply--”
“Oh, there’s shade there. Shade, public outdoor showers, diving boards. Plus trashy deck chairs.”
“You had me at public showers, you silver-tongued devil.”
***
The pool was crowded, but most people were jostling for places in the sun, so Finn was able to score two deck chairs under the shaded canvas area without too much trouble. He stripped down to his trunks and angled his chair for maximum girl-watching convenience, and had just settled down to it when he realized that something was… off.
It took him a few minutes of looking around to figure it out. People were off. People were staring. Namely, people were staring at Kurt. And they were staring at him, with Kurt. Some of them (girls) were sneaking glances and elbowing their friends and giggling, and some (guys, including Roy the lifeguard, who always yelled at Finn for trying to do backflips off the high dive) were openly staring, making faces of disgust every time they looked over.
He looked at Kurt, laid out in the deck chair next to him. Swim trunks, sunglasses; seriously lacking anything resembling a tan--which was not exactly shocking at the beginning of summer in Ohio. That was all. Okay, granted, Kurt appeared to be the only person there who had brought an issue of French Vogue to flip through, but still. Big deal. And yet, somehow, it seemed like everybody knew. And it seemed like everyone who knew had pretty definite opinions about them being there, and no reason to bother hiding it.
Kurt slid his sunglasses down to the bridge of his nose and gave Roy one of his most hypercritical glares. Eventually Roy looked somewhere else--for about ten seconds, before his stupid bleach-blond head swiveled back in their direction. “If it bothers you,” Kurt said quietly, “we can go. Or I can go, if you want.”
“No,” Finn said sharply. “Just… God, it’s creepy. It feels kind of like that pod people movie, and we’re the holdouts.”
“If it’s any comfort to you, I think it’s highly unlikely that they’ll suddenly swarm us and make us sleep next to eggplants,” Kurt said. “Now if we were in Utah, sure…”
Finn took another look around and felt his hands twitch. “Just so you know, I’m thinking seriously about punching Roy right in the mouth.”
“Roy?”
“The lifeguard with the attitude problem.”
“Ha. That one. I don’t think you need to worry about him.”
“Hey. Are you okay? Because if you’re uncomfortable--”
Kurt shrugged. “Not me. After all, it’s like this for me all the time, every day. Everywhere I go.”
Every day. Everywhere. All the time. Suddenly, Finn was furious. Absolutely, totally furious.
“Finn. Are you *growling*?”
“I’m gonna go cool off,” Finn said abruptly, and pushed himself up to his feet. “I’ll be back.”
He was locked in a hot, interior world that was half self-recrimination and half rage, walking along the edge of the pool towards the high dive ladder and not really paying attention to anything around him, when a voice from the water stopped him cold.
“Finny? *Finny Hudson*, is that you?”
Finn froze. There was only one person who’d ever gotten away with calling him ‘Finny’. She’d lived down the street from him, babysat him for a few glorious, wonderful years, and had gone away to college the year he’d started at WMHS, breaking his heart forever.
Finn looked down and there she was, smiling up at him as she pulled her dripping-wet self up the ladder and out of the pool: shining, golden hair; blue eyes with obscenely thick lashes; perfect eyebrows and full pink lips and a tiny-tiny white bikini and--oh God boobs; truly incredible boobs--
Holy shit, it was Brandie Bellacek, his first and worst-ever crush. Standing there dripping and smiling at him and being gorgeous and looking really glad to see him.
“Hey, Brandie,” Finn said smoothly, casually; unfortunately without making any sound at all.
She didn’t seem to notice but she did laugh and hug him, and even though she was drenched in cold pool water he was still hot, so hot. “Look at you--you’re, like, a giant!” Brandie said happily, pulling back and gazing up at him and basically destroying his ability to do things like breathe and talk. “So grown-up! And so handsome--but you were always a super-cute kid. Extra adorable, with the pink cheeks and the wavy hair--”
“I have some chest hair now,” Finn said, perfectly clearly. He was really proud of himself until he realized the actual words he’d used, after which he kind of wanted to die. He cleared his throat and lunged around in his head, looking for something not-stupid to say. “Uh. School? College? How’s college?”
Brandie made a face and dropped her hands to her curvy hips, which he really needed to not stare at because he had a sneaking suspicion that falling to his knees and drooling wasn’t exactly the coolest thing to do right now. “Oh, Finny--seriously, don’t ever fall for that ‘best years of your life’ story. It’s really hard, and there’s math and stuff, and there’s all these *tests*--”
“Man, that sucks,” he said earnestly, shaking his head over how terrible college was. He was carefully constructing his next remarks to include ‘how’s your family’ and to not include ‘can I touch your thighs’, when they were interrupted.
“Okay, it is officially hot enough for me to risk devastating hair chlorination and--oh. Hey, Finn, who’s your friend?”
Finn’s stomach clenched. “Uh. Brandie. This is. This is Brandie. She’s. Uh. Brandie, this is--”
“Celine Dion!” Brandie squealed, pointing at Kurt.
“Ooh, no, but I’m extremely flattered. Kurt Hummel.”
Brandie’s eyes got huge. “I totally know you! Omigod, me and my Nana and Mom and little sis watched the Nationals, and when you sang ‘My Heart Will Go On’ we all totally cried and Nana right away said a rosary for you to win and you *won*! You were *amazing*--”
“Oh, thank you so much--”
“They’ll just *die* when they hear I met you--just keel over and die. Especially my little sis Brinn, because afterwards she was all like, ‘Justin Bieber who?’, and all of us agreed you sing *just like an angel*--”
Finn stood there silently, watching the ping-pong of Brandie and Kurt talking over each other and inching closer and closer together as they rambled through various topics including Celine Dion, music, cheerleading, cheerleading movies, hairstyles in cheerleading movies, hairstyles outside of cheerleading movies, Megan Fox, tattoos on girls, tattoos on guys, emo boys, metrosexuals, retrosexuals, and way more than he ever wanted to know about skin and hair care products. And maybe he could have just tuned the whole thing out, except that the upshot of the last part of the conversation was that Kurt had a ton of stuff with him that he offered to let her try, and Brandie right then and there asked him to come help her with dechlorinating her hair, and the next thing Finn knew he was standing next to the pool all by himself, while Kurt Hummel went off to the outdoor showers with Brandie Bellacek.
In what way was that even remotely fair?
He fully intended to hurl himself into the pool and swim until he no longer felt outraged over the terrible, terrible injustice in the world, but before he could move there was a tap on his shoulder, and he turned around to find himself staring down at the bronzed, glowering face of Roy the Jerk, who appeared to have recently added a fresh coat of oil to his six-pack. “What?”
“That guy,” Roy said, nodding in the direction Kurt had gone. “He a friend of yours?”
“*Yes*.”
Roy snorted. “Boyfriend?”
“*No*.”
Roy shook his head. “And there he goes,” he said in a disgusted voice, “showering with Brandie Bellacek. Brandie. Bellacek.” The last two words were accompanied by hand gestures to indicate that Brandie had boobs. Big ones. “Jesus wept--there is no justice in this world, Hudson. None.”
Finn wondered if he should maybe start making a list of reasons to punch Roy, because there was just such an assortment he’d hate to miss any. Then he had a few seconds where he felt kind of crappy that he was pissed at Roy for saying basically the exact same thing he himself had been thinking, but in the end he gave himself a break on that one, because, well, because at least he wasn’t a giant douche.
Finn dove for the water.
***
By the time he got out of the pool Brandie and Kurt were back, and the whole area they were sitting in smelled kind of like his Mom’s herb garden after a rainstorm and kind of like a giant bowl of fruit salad. Brandie had made herself at home on Kurt’s deck chair, and had her gorgeous round ass parked right between Kurt’s legs, while Kurt rubbed sunscreen into her tanned, creamy shoulders and listened to her talk. Finn sat down fast when he realized that the stories of college life she’d decided to share with Kurt were really not about math.
“So anyways, there I am at this stupid party--I totally didn’t want to go, but Kirstyn and Kristin and Krystanne just pitched a fit, and so I went and I danced, and before the song was halfway done there were, like, *five* frat guys grinding on me all at once, all of them with their shirts off--like that was supposed to drive me mad with lust or something--and then it actually got worse, there was all this beer and then groping and finally I’m like, ‘why does every guy in this stupid frat wear boxer-briefs?’ and they were just… oh. You can’t imagine.”
“Bet I can,” Kurt said wryly, meeting Finn’s eyes over Brandie’s shoulder.
“Huh?”
Kurt cleared his throat. “I said--you poor girl! Men are just beasts.”
“Utter animals,” Brandie echoed feelingly. Then she sat up straight. “Oh, no--speaking of which…” she dug through her bag for her cellphone and checked the display. “Crap--I have to go. Mom has a stupid date with some stinky guy from her dumb Parents Without Partners group, and I have to watch Brinn because it’s Nana’s bingo day.”
Brandie garnered a lot of attention when she got up to go. She gave Finn a long, tight hug goodbye, and he was pretty jazzed about that until she said goodbye to Kurt, kissing him lingeringly on the lips and calling him ‘Baby’. The only thing that made it at all bearable was that Roy saw it--and if looks could kill, Kurt would have two giant, smoking holes where his chest used to be.
“Well,” Kurt said after she had walked away, while Finn was still kind of vibrating from watching her walk away. “That was fun. She’s great.”
“She kissed you,” Finn managed to get out from between his teeth. “On the mouth.”
“Mmm,” Kurt said, rubbing his lips together. “Cherry lip gloss. Better than root beer.”
“I hate you so much right now.”
“Very pretty girl. Friendly. Easy to talk to.”
“You so, so suck.”
There was a strategic pause.
“Her breasts are real, you know--”
“*Dude*! You did *not* touch Brandie Bellacek’s *breasts*!”
Kurt tilted his head. “See, Finn--this would be one of the advantages of being gay: girls find you non-threatening. In fact, some of them might even think you’re as cute as a bucket of puppies. And if you should happen to admire their figure--purely in the context of fashion, of course…”
Finn glared at him. Hard.
“Oh, don’t be like that. I’m sure it was a complete accident that she mashed them into me like--where are you going?”
“I have to go cool off,” Finn said, stomping towards the pool. “*Again*.”
When he got out of the pool he had just about brought himself around to the point where he was willing to forgive what had happened, so long as Kurt was willing to tell him all about it in excruciating detail. The problem was, Kurt wasn’t there, although his stuff was still on his deck chair. Finn waited for a while, then went inside the center and checked the locker room and the bathroom and the steam room: nothing.
Finally he took the gravel path that looped between the center complex and the surrounding hedges, just to check. He didn’t really expect to find anything, but at the back of the building he spotted Kurt, pinned into the angle between two cinderblock walls--by Roy.
Finn started towards them, his hands clenching tight into fists. Then Kurt’s eyes met his and went wide, and Finn stumbled and froze as he watched Roy lean in towards Kurt and kiss him, missing his mouth by inches only because Kurt pulled his head back at the last second. Roy didn’t even seem to notice, but started in on the side of Kurt’s neck with what looked like a lot of enthusiasm.
“*What the hell*?” Finn shouted, and Roy whipped around, looking both guilty and furious.
“Nothing!” Roy said in a loud voice. “That was nothing, you didn’t see anything, there wasn’t--okay, look; this little faggot totally came on to me--”
Finn had him up against the wall before he even knew he meant to move. “Don’t even think about using that word again,” he said, banging Roy into the cinderblock a few times to really drive the point home.
“I thought you said he wasn’t your boyfriend--FUCK! OW!”
Roy shoved him, and Finn went down on his ass but jumped right back up again, feeling almost glad, savagely glad, because now, he was going to seriously take the guy *apart*--but Roy had already backed away beyond arm’s reach, his face twisted and ugly. “Both of you--you’re just a pair of *fucking faggots*--”
Finn lunged for him, then ran after him when he bolted, blundering down the path until he realized that he was actually dragging Kurt along, since Kurt had his arm.
“Stop-stop-stop,” Kurt kept saying. Finn watched Roy round the corner up ahead to the safety of the pool area, and then he stopped, still breathing hard and shaking a little from how fast everything had happened.
“Stop. Finn--stop. Not worth it. Jerks like him just aren’t worth it--”
“I’m stopped,” Finn said.
Kurt looked at him, then looked down at the deathgrip he had on Finn’s arm and let go. “Oh. Good.” He slumped down until he was crouched against the wall, and put his head in his hands. “Well. That was nice and terrifying.”
Finn slid down next to him, breathing out loudly. “He scared you?”
Kurt snorted. “*You* scared me,” he said, lifting his head and frowning. “I wondered if you were going to take his face off, and then I wondered how I was going to explain to your Mom that you’d been arrested for assault, and then… And then I panicked.”
Finn scrubbed one hand through his damp hair. “I just. I don’t get it. I mean--he spent the whole day *glaring* at you like he wanted to feed you to alligators or something--”
“Yes, welcome to the wonderful world of repressed homosexuality, where it’s kind of a toss-up whether the person behaving as if they are offended by your existence wants to beat you up, make out with you, or both. And that guy is more closeted than my heaviest pair of velveteen jodhpurs in July.”
They sat quietly for a few minutes. Finn closed his eyes and watched the patterns made by the sunlight coming through the hedge leaves. “Kurt?”
“Mmm?”
He opened his eyes. Kurt wasn’t looking at him. “How come… I mean, if you don’t want to tell me that’s cool, but--”
“How did I end up in flagrante delicto with Captain Queerbash?”
“Uh. I think… Yeah.”
Kurt thumbed his hair out of his eyes, and sighed. “He asked. I said yes.”
Finn blinked. “And?”
Kurt looked at him. “He was hot?”
“And?”
Kurt shrugged. “That was it.” He smiled a little, cynically. “You’re wondering exactly how shallow I really am, aren’t you?”
Finn shook his head. “No. I’m wondering… I’m wondering why you would decide to do something like that, because I know… I know you’re not shallow.”
“Oh.” Kurt looked away, then started picking pebbles out of the gravel and tossing them into the hedges. “Well, I guess I’ll have to keep working on that.”
Finn snorted. “Dork.”
***
Burt gunned the engine, backed down to an idle, then shut the car off and got out. “Perfect.”
“Yes!” Finn said, spinning around. “I love carburetors. They’re fun.”
Finn grinned. Burt grinned. Kurt rolled his eyes.
“Come on, guys,” Burt said. “Dante’s. Pizza’s on me.”
“Keys,” Kurt demanded. “Because you two are *way* too pleased with yourselves right now to be trusted on public roadways.”
Burt stopped in the act of digging his keys out of his pocket, and put one hand on Kurt’s shoulder. “Kurt--”
“Oh, no--Dad, I’m fine--I’m glad that you two, you know, get along. It’s kind of charming, actually, in a testosterone-laden way. I’m just… being bitchy. For fun.” He smiled sweetly.
Burt patted his shoulder. “Okay. Play to your strengths, son.”
Kurt nodded. “Also, if you’re serious about the pizza, you should bring extra cash--Finn can eat.”
“Kind of a lot,” Finn said, wrestling himself out of his coverall at top speed.
Part 2 here