"Shatter" (Part Two), Glee Fic, Kurt/Karofsky
--
The dreams are so much worse than they used to be.
Dave has been dreaming about Kurt Hummel for over a year, but now his brain can supply memories to back up the fantasy. They fill in the details: how Kurt’s lips felt when he kissed them, how soft and smooth his face was when Dave had cradled it in his hand.
He is lying on his back, naked but for his bright letterman’s jacket, on the floor of the scuzzy, dimly-lit locker room. The one where Kurt confronted him, where he’d shouted and pointed and looked so viciously beautiful that Dave just couldn’t stop himself anymore. Bright red lockers line the walls. The clinical fluorescent lighting is softer, gentler somehow. The room seems frayed and fuzzy around the edges.
Kurt is naked above him, kneeling with one leg on either side of Dave’s broad waist. He looks tiny above him, long and slender and delicate as he straddles Dave’s own much-larger body. Kurt’s cock is hard and rosy, and Dave can feel his own erection pressing against the curve of Kurt’s tight ass.
But the look on his face is... God.
Once, Dave had seen Kurt perform “Push It” at a school assembly. The performance itself had been caustic and vulgar, designed to awe and tempt and impress. But while his teammates had stared at Berry as she strutted around the stage, or Chang as she flipped her hair and bent over salaciously, Dave hadn’t been able to take his eyes off Kurt Hummel. So icy and composed and bitchy in the hallways at school, this Kurt had twisted and thrusted viscerally on stage as hundreds of people watched. He’d crawled across the stage on all fours, face a perfect culmination of self-confident sexuality and unadulterated enjoyment.
Kurt’s face is identically smug and sultry as he raises himself up, adjusts their positions. As he ever-so-slowly lowers himself onto Dave’s cock - already slick and stretched and prepared. Kurt looks as though there is nothing he would rather be doing, nothing better than the slow ache as Dave’s cock inches inside and fills him up. The sensation of Kurt’s ass squeezing around the tip of Dave’s cock is unbelievably good, and Dave groans uselessly as Kurt keeps pushing down, impaling himself maddeningly slowly. The smaller boy cries out softly and gasps as he sinks lower and lower, a look of absolute bliss on his face. He is writhing by the time Dave is fully seated inside of him, head thrown back and trembling and stretched so tight around Dave’s cock.
Dave wants to raise his hands to Kurt’s slim waist, to run his hands along the skin he knows will be smooth and perfect. To thrust up, deep into Kurt’s hot body. But he can’t; his hands are dead weights on either side of his body, pinned against the cold linoleum floor. It is as though he’s trapped in quicksand, frozen in time - and all he can do is lie there and watch the boy on top of him.
Kurt begins to move, and the slow drag of his ass as it moves around Dave’s cock is obscene, maddening. The smaller boy is groaning now, hand fluttering up to his face as he maintains the agonizingly languid rhythm. They’re whining, wanton moans - like something from porn. Kurt’s high voice reverberates off the locker room walls as he slides up and down, up and down. Dave isn’t fucking him; he’s fucking himself on Dave’s cock, long and deep and slow. Kurt’s hands are moving all over his own body, dancing over his own nipples and pulling at his own small erection.
And Dave can’t move. He lies there, heavy and bulky as Kurt rides his cock endlessly, arching up gracefully and moaning like a whore. He is slender and brave and beautiful. Dave is disgusting; a chubby boy who sweats too much, scared of himself and taking up space on the ground. It seems to last forever. Neither of them ever orgasm; they are trapped, unfulfilled and wanting, in an endless loop of pleasure and disgust. It goes on and on and on, an eternal aching slide of skin on skin until -
He wakes.
Panting and desperately hard, Dave wakes to sweat-soaked sheets and soft morning light. His alarm buzzes angrily from his bedside table, boxy red numbers flashing 7:45am. Dave shakily shuts it off and rolls onto his back, breath still coming hard and uneven. He runs a hand through his sweaty, matted hair. It takes a long few minutes before he is able to regain some semblance of composure.
I can miss my first class, Dave thinks dully, sleep beginning to drag temptingly at the corners of his mind. I already missed English twice this week; once more can’t make any difference.
He sleeps through both his first and second classes. When he finally stumbles out of bed two hours later to head to his third, he leaves his letterman’s jacket hung over his desk chair.
--
Dave knows that he should be working on his American History essay.
He knows this in a bone-deep, matter of fact way. It’s Thursday night, and his paper is due at 9:00am on Friday morning at the beginning of class. It’s been assigned since the beginning of the semester. The essay itself is even on a topic he’d been interested in: ‘The Impact of Industrialization on 19th Century America.’ Dave even has good notes from the day they’d spent covering the topic over a month ago.
Generally, Dave begins take-home essays at least a few days before they’re due; this time, however, the idea of sitting down and just writing the damn thing has seemed... insurmountable. Unthinkable. The few times Dave has tried, he hadn’t been able to focus at all, eventually slamming his laptop shut in frustration.
Dave knows that if he does not start writing now, at 2:37am, even pulling an all-nighter will not be enough. There will be no physical way he can possibly complete anything half decent by morning if he does not begin writing immediately, this instant, right now.
Instead, Dave watches sci-fi.
Not even just good sci-fi, like normal people sometimes watch on television and it’s okay and no one thinks they’re losers. Bad sci-fi, too. Cheesy sci-fi. Really old sci-fi. The kinda stuff that even die-hard fans have to preface with, “Hey, that shit’s classic!” It’s stupid, and lame, and Dave blames his dad completely.
Paul Karofsky has always been into science fiction. Their shelves in the den are teeming three-deep with well-read paperbacks, dog-eared and spines long broken. Books with spaceships, aliens, and well-endowed ladies holding blasters sprawled across their covers. When Dave was a little kid and his dad hadn’t got the permanent position at the university yet, Paul Karofsky looked after Dave while Elaine went to the office. He stayed home most days, picked Dave up from school, made his lunch. And it was simply easier for his dad to plunk him down in front of Star Trek: The Next Generation or Babylon 5 rather than attempting to have an actual conversation with him. Watching sci-fi together was always bonding time; Dave and his dad followed reruns of the original Battlestar Galactica like some fathers and sons followed sports.
As a result, Dave has possibly seen the original Star Wars trilogy more times than everyone else at his school combined.
Including Abrams and Puckerman.
Of course, as Dave got older he realized how completely fucking stupid it all is. Sci-fi is for losers; for nerds who are never going to get laid. Hating that geeky shit was just another facet to who he was at school: the red-and-yellow jacket, the scowl, the jocky friends.
All of that bullshit.
In the past week, Dave has watched two seasons of Star Trek: The Original Series and the entirety of Firefly. It’s like he can’t stop himself; like he has a physical need to watch episode after episode of shitty special effects, and half-assed morals, and plot holes the size of galaxies. Families through space and brave new worlds.
It’s as comforting as food or alcohol or sleep, in its own way.
So instead of starting his paper, Dave sits in bed with his laptop and his headphones plugged in and watches disc after disc of the new Battlestar Galactica. The humans drift through the vastness of space trying to find earth, and Dave can barely even follow the characters or the storyline or the dialogue anymore. It’s all noise and colour and religious symbolism as his eyelids get heavier and his muscles get sorer.
The red numbers on his alarm clock keep on changing persistently.
3:00am.
4:00am.
5:00am.
The disc ends. Dave takes it out and inserts another one.
--
It’s on a Tuesday afternoon out a month after the locker room incident when Hummel corners him in a mostly-empty hallway.
It happens when Dave is heading from English to American History. Dave is almost positive he is going to fail the latter class, a shame he has never experienced before despite the sorts of friends he keeps. He is trying to imagine the look of disappointment on his dad the professor’s face when Kurt rounds the corner ahead and Dave is suddenly staring right at the person he’s been trying to avoid above all.
He looks fucking ridiculous, tarted up with a snugly-fitting hat and a pair of jeans so tight they almost look painted on. His shirt is some silly purple number; it has a funny neckline that exposes a long stretch of pale neck. It takes Dave a moment to realize that Kurt is trying to get his attention, looking guarded but determined. For a second, Dave looks right into Kurt’s eyes - fucking blue, and sharp as hell - before he looks down at the floor and keeps walking.
“Hey!” hisses Kurt, and Dave looks up just in time to see the smaller boy stride purposefully up to him. “I’m talking to you,” says Kurt, obviously irritated. But there is an underlying hint of confusion in his words, and his voice remains low and secretive. There are only one or two other people in this hallway, and none of them seem to be paying the two of them any attention.
Kurt’s not looking to make a scene, Dave realizes. He wants answers.
Dave is almost twice the size of Kurt - only a few inches taller, perhaps, but broad and big and bulky. Kurt looks as though he is even struggling slightly under the weight of his own bookbag. But somehow Dave is utterly helpless as Kurt stops immediately in front of him, blocking his way forward. Dave could shove him into the lockers, or punch him in that girly fucking mouth and make him move. But he knows he won’t do either of those things. Kurt Hummel is stronger than him, and better than him, and harder than him in so many ways that Dave has spent years denying, and it is Kurt who is entirely in control of this encounter. This realization is terrifying.
“What the hell is going on with you, Karofsky?” Kurt’s voice is fast and angry, as though this is something he has been waiting to ask Dave for ages. Like he’s been trying to find a moment, to work up the nerve to have this conversation for days. The thought that it is Dave who Kurt has been thinking about, Dave who has brought that tiny flush to Hummel’s cheek makes something hot twinge in his stomach - before Dave ruthlessly crushes excitement.
Kurt never asked for his attention. Never wanted to be the object of some weirdo’s fantasies.
And Kurt is still talking.
“First you do - that - in the locker room, and then you push Blaine around when he tries to help you, and now you’ve just - just -” The smaller boy cuts himself off, looking exasperated, before continuing. “What is your angle with this? Moping around, skipping your Cro-Magnon tackle-fests, refusing to slushie the Glee club with Azimio - oh, don’t give me that look. Of course I know. Everyone knows, Karofsky. But they don’t know half of what I do.”
For a moment, Dave thinks he might actually be physically ill. A sickly, cold feeling is washing over his entire body, but it’s as though it’s happening to someone else.
They know. Everyone knows that something’s wrong with him. The past four weeks, it’s felt as though he has existed within his own self-contained world. None of it has mattered, not really. None of it was real.
But it is real. And now it’s only a matter of time before they realize exactly what is wrong with him.
“Just - just tell me what you want from me, all right?” Kurt says after he doesn’t immediately respond. His hand jerks up automatically as if to rake a hand through his hair, but he stalls it in mid-air. His arm returns back down to his side, and Kurt takes a deep, shaky breath. “Because - I just can’t take not knowing anymore, okay?” There is a slight quaver to Kurt’s voice. “I can’t do it. I can’t handle not knowing how much of this is acting, or if any of it is actually real, or if you’re just trying to make me feel safe again before you do something worse, and - and I can’t do this anymore.”
He’s scared of me, thinks Dave, horrified realization creeping in. He’s really, really scared of me. Taunting Kurt, hurting Kurt, belittling Kurt - it’s always been a way to make himself feel better, make the voice inside him shut the fuck up and keep himself going for a few more days. But this was never a little thing for him. Jesus Christ, I fucking terrified him. And after all that, not knowing was the worst part for him, too.
Then the significance of Kurt’s words sinks in.
“Wait, what?” says Dave, the first words he’s spoken since Kurt managed to corner him. “K- Hummel, I don’t. I don’t want anything from you.”
It’s a lie, and Kurt seems to realize it.
“Oh, really?” he sneers, bitch-ice veneer fully back in place. Kurt disdainfully drags his eyes all the way down Dave’s body and up again, meeting his eyes with an ugly curl to his lips. And Dave feels sick again because, yeah. He does want something from Kurt. He wants everything from Kurt. And he is never going to have it. An image from last night’s dream flashes, unwanted, into Dave’s mind.
Kurt, on his knees in Dave’s bedroom, his mouth wrapped around Dave’s cock and his fingers gripping almost painfully into Dave’s thighs.
Those too-pretty lips all stretched around him and mouth so hungry, so desperate, practically gagging himself on Dave’s cock while Dave leans against his bedroom wall lets Kurt wring frantic groans out of him. His bright blue eyes dart up and catch Dave’s, his movement never stopping, and with a twist of his wicked tongue Dave knows with absolutely certainty that there is nothing Kurt would rather be doing than taste him, please him.
“Karofsky, what the fuck?”
Dave comes back to himself, and Kurt’s staring at him as though he’s about to explode. His knees feel like they’re about to give out.
“I have to go,” he mumbles, or something like it, and he sidesteps Kurt and begins speedwalking down the hallway toward the parking lot. Fuck American History. Fuck school. Fuck Hummel.
Kurt calls something after him, but Dave has no idea what the words mean. They are just noise in the still air.
--
When Dave gets home, his mother is waiting for him.
The sight of her perched on the living room couch, obviously anxious, makes Dave stop in his tracks. She is wringing her hands, a sign of distress Dave doesn’t think he’s ever seen his mother stoop to. After a long moment, she seems to become aware of his presence with a jolt.
“Mom?” he says, confusion leaking through his voice. Why would she be home so early on a weekday?
“David,” she says, brow furrowing. “You’re home -” But she cuts herself off, eyes darting to the phone sitting in its cradle. Dave knows suddenly and with absolute certainty that she has finally has received a call from the school. About the absences, or the failing grade, or skipping more practice. Elaine’s lips are pressed into a thin line, and she stiffly motions for Dave to sit next to her. He does so, already hearing the conversation in his mind. He has rarely been rebuked by either of his parents - he’s hardly ever needed it - but the words will be familiar nonetheless.
Your father and I... disappointed... unusual behaviour for you... school is your job, David, and you need to make a bigger commitment.
But Elaine doesn’t immediately launch into the pre-prepared speech. Instead, she looks at him. Looks at him for one minute, and then two, and it dawns on Dave just how bad he must look. He hasn’t slept properly in weeks, and he skipped having a shower this morning after he slept in thirty minutes longer than he intended. He isn’t wearing his letterman’s jacket - just some black t-shirt he found on the floor of his bedroom - and its absence suddenly makes him feel inexplicably naked, even just in front of his own mother. His eyes must be slightly red-rimmed from his drive home after Hummel. Dave wants badly to scrub at his face, and barely manages to stop himself.
Elaine keeps looking at her son.
Gradually, he becomes aware that his mother doesn’t look well either. She looks... tired, and her face seems to sag slightly in a way Dave has never noticed before. It hits him that his parents are getting older, and one day they will be elderly, and one day they will be dead.
“David,” she finally begins, once her long stare has grown so uncomfortable Dave is barely stopping himself from twitching in place. “Sweetie.” The term, which would generally sound stilted from either of his parents’ lips - they simply aren’t very affectionate people - is said with a catch in Elaine’s voice. It makes Dave’s eyes sting and his throat feel thick. Because this is all wrong, and different, and not normal at all.
Slowly, gently, Elaine Karofsky reaches out and places a small hand on her son’s knee. “You know you can tell us anything, don’t you?” As she says the words, her eyes never leave his.
A sob wrenches itself from Dave’s throat, and all at once Elaine has her tiny arms around his broad shoulders, and he’s crying and leaning into her and saying mom, mommy over and over as she rubs comforting circles on his back and holds him close. And it’s stupid, and weak, and awful, but he can’t stop himself now. Because no one - neither of his parents, or his friends, or any person in Dave’s life has ever said that to him before now. Has ever told him that he could tell them anything, anything at all - that they would care, and listen, and not hate him for what he said. And it’s all too much.
Dave cries, and cries, and feels his eyes grow puffy and the snot run down his face, and he just can’t care anymore. He can’t care, not now, and the comforting smell of his mother is all around him, and she’s holding him tight, and whispering it’s okay, it’s okay over and over.
“I messed it up,” chokes Dave, and he feels about five years old. He has not cried like this in years; uncontrollably, seemingly unendingly. Elaine is so much smaller than him, but she seems to envelop him. Her hands are still rubbing warm circles into his back. “I messed it all up so badly, mommy.”
“I know, baby.” Her words are gentle and loving, and Dave thinks no, you don’t know any of it before shoving the thought away. Because Elaine Karofsky does not know what her son is capable of, or what his secrets are, or how badly he has managed to ruin everything. But she is willing to listen, and right now that is enough. He squeezes his mother tightly and she quietly repeats herself: “I know.”
It is a long night. Paul arrives home not too long after Dave’s outburst - they’d clearly been planning some sort of intervention - and the look of sadness on his dad’s crumpled face is enough to make Dave bite his lip hard and clench his hands into fists.
The resulting conversation is... it’s hard, and awkward, full of long pauses and carefully selected words. It’s difficult, and terrible, and Elaine and Paul hold hands while their son talks. Their faces are the picture of quiet attention as he lays himself open at their feet.
The talk lasts long into the evening. When it is over, Elaine makes tea and Paul starts work on enchiladas, and everything should be different now. Everything should be weird and stilted and sidestepping the elephant in the room. But the silence is comfortable and normal, and yeah, Dave’s eyes are sore and his face is blotchy. But the tea is hot and the enchiladas are delicious.
Everything is different. But Dave shocks himself by being unable to tell whether the difference is good, or bad, or neither.
He gets an entire night’s sleep for the first time in a month, and dreams of nothing at all for the first time in much, much longer.
The End