Fic: Boys of Summer, 1/2
Title: Boys of Summer, 1/2
Author: knittycat99
Rating: PG-13 for mild language
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Kurt/Karofsky
Genre: Friendship
Warning: mild angst, but nothing too big here
Spoilers: through 2x22, New York
Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters
Author Notes: I can't freaking get Dave Karofsky out of my head. Follow up to Much Too High a Cost, Watch me Fly, and These Broken Wings. Read those first, please, if you haven't already. The second half of this should be up tomorrow or Tuesday, depending on how much computer time I can finagle without seeming like I'm ignoring my Other Half. Thanks for reading, and for all of your kind comments on the previous installments.
Summary: Summer in Lima isn't all Kurt thought it would be. Which still doesn't really explain how he ends up having coffee with Dave every Tuesday.
Word Count: 2,628
School let out three days after they got back from Nationals, and Kurt’s summer was stretched out in front of him, two and a half months of working for his dad and thinking about college and missing Blaine, who was off to Cincinnati and Six Flags for the duration. Kurt figured he’d be able to get out there maybe twice for a weekend each time, if his dad would let him. If not, he supposed they would just have to Skype and text, and try not to go over the minutes on their respective calling plans. He made plans to hang out with the other kids from Glee on Saturday nights, but by the end of June those standing dates were pretty much shot to hell by 13 different sets of jobs and family expectations. Even at home, Kurt only really saw Finn in passing as he divided his time between summer workouts with the football team, dates with Rachel, and his job at the rec center.
Then it got hot. Not that it was anything new; it was always hot in Western Ohio in July, but something about it seemed oppressive this year. The house wasn’t air conditioned, so when Kurt wasn’t at the garage he started taking his laptop to the library to mooch off the free wifi and watch movies off his Netflix queue or download music. He also read a lot of books. The Lima Public Library didn’t have a great selection of the kinds of books he was craving, fluffy things about gay men in big cities having grand romances. He supposed it was silly, to read things like that. But it gave him hope for what his life might be like once he graduated and moved away. And he was thankful that he could search on Amazon and bring a list to the librarian, who never blinked as she submitted interlibrary loan requests to the tune of five or six a week for the books Kurt wanted that none of the other libraries in Allen County had in their collections; the books came from all over the Midwest, and Kurt read them like they were candy. He was just leaving the library one Tuesday evening, messenger bag slung across his chest and a new stack of books cradled in his arms when he literally ran into Dave Karofsky while trying to pull his keys out of his shorts pocket. Dave shuffled awkwardly before kneeling down to help Kurt gather his books. Kurt hadn’t seen him since school had gotten out. When all the books were stacked up in his arms again, he took a good long look at Dave, and his face went soft. Dave looked like hell.
“How are you?”
“Been better.” Dave was mumbling, and looking at his feet.
“What’s going on?”
“Just . . . well. Shit with my dad. With the team.”
“Did you walk?”
“Yeah. I have a couple of things to pick up.”
“Look, I can wait if you want. We could go for a coffee. Or ice cream or something. If you want to talk. If not, I could just give you a ride. It’s really too hot to walk.” Kurt waited for rejection, was prepared for it actually. But he was surprised when Dave looked at him and offered up a strained smile.
“I’d like that. The coffee, I think. And the ride. Thanks.”
“No problem.” Kurt angled his head towards his Navigator. “I’ll be over there.”
When Dave opened the door to climb up into the car, he slid his stack of library books in first. Kurt spied the telltale paper wrappers of interlibrary loans, and took note that the pile was about as big as his own.
“Reading a lot this summer?” Kurt joked.
“Yeah.”
“Anything good?”
“Just . . .” Kurt half-smiled as Dave blushed, so he turned and grabbed the first book off his stack in the backseat and held it out for Dave’s inspection.
“I seem to have developed a taste for gay man meets Mr. Right romances. If you tell anyone, I’ll have to hurt you.”
Dave laughed at that, and offered up one of his own books, a teen title Kurt recognized from his own junior high searches for books about kids like him. He nodded at Dave and offered “That’s a good one. If you want, you can poke through my library. I have a fairly extensive collection.”
“That would be . . . nice. Thank you, Kurt.”
“No problem. How about that coffee?”
*****
The Lima Bean was nearly empty in the pre-dinner hour. Dave thought that was a good thing. It wasn’t that he didn’t want people to see him with Kurt, he just thought that the fewer people around to overhear their conversation, the better. He sat at an almost-hidden corner table while Kurt ordered, and took a long sip of his iced vanilla latté before meeting Kurt’s pointed gaze.
“What? So I like vanilla lattés.”
“I didn’t say anything. What’s going on?”
Best just to put it out there. “I’m thinking of quitting the team.”
“Why? You love football.”
“No, I don’t. Football is okay. I like being part of the team. I like it because it gives me something to share with my dad. But I don’t love it. And I kind of want to see if I can be more than just a football player.” And a jackass, he thought silently, but didn’t add that.
“You could get a scholarship, though. Get out of Lima.”
“I’m not good enough. Even with Coach Beiste, I’m still not good enough. But if I don’t do football this year, if I focus on school and find something else to do . . .”
“Maybe you really can get out of here?”
“Yeah.”
“And your dad? How is that going?”
“We talk around it a lot. I’m not sorry I told him, but it’s been hard for him. I think . . .” Dave thinks about the hushed phone calls he hears in the mornings or at night when his dad clearly thinks that he is asleep or busy or something. “I think maybe he’s talking to your dad about it, though.” Dave catches a flicker of sudden recognition as it flashes across Kurt’s face.
“I think you might be right. And I think that’s a good thing for both of them.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I know it hasn’t been easy for my dad, but he’s learned a lot about me, and about himself, and about this town in the past few years. If he can help your dad, and if it gives my dad someone to talk to as well, I think it’s great.”
They each fall silent then, and sip at their drinks. Dave finds his voice first, so he asks “What are you doing for the summer?”
“Ah. Well. Blaine is off in Cincinnati, so I’m working for my dad and trying to decide where to apply to college, and spending lots of hours at the library.”
“And reading gay romances.”
“And reading gay romances. What about you?”
“Practice, at least until I decide to quit the team. I have a part time job at the Safeway as a checker, which is okay.”
“And you’re reading gay romances.” Kurt smiles at him.
“Yes.”
“What about your friends?”
“They’re not my friends.”
“Azimio and them?”
“They’re football friends. Not real friends.” Dave thinks around his thoughts, hates how easy it’s become to talk with Kurt. He curses the fact that he seems to have lost his filter before he admits “I don’t really have friends.”
Kurt is clearly surprised by this. “Oh.” His voice is soft again, but not out of pity. When he looks at Dave, his eyes are wide and sad. “I know what that feels like.”
“Bullshit. You have all the Glee kids.”
“I have my Glee family. I have a step-brother and a boyfriend. But I have very few real friends. At least not the kinds of friends who absolutely accept everything about me.”
“But they know about you and they still like you.”
“They know about me and they tolerate me.” Dave can hear the barest hint of bitterness under Kurt’s words. “I can be a bitch and a drama queen with the best of them. I can be the life of the party. But none of it is fucking real.”
And that is something that Dave understands all too well. He looks down, fiddles with his straw, with the sugar packets in a bowl on the table, with the hem of his t-shirt. When he lets go of his heart, he does it so softly that Kurt actually leans across the table to hear him.
“I’m not real either. I have no idea who I even am anymore.”
Which is how anyone at the Lima Bean that Tuesday night would have found Kurt Hummel and Dave Karofsky: sitting across a corner table from each other, pretending that neither of them was crying.
*****
After that, Kurt makes it a point to have a standing appointment for coffee with Dave every Tuesday. They meet at the library after they both get off work, and then go over to the Lima Bean where they drink coffee and talk about the books they’ve read since their last meeting and the music they’re listening to, the crazy customers Dave has to deal with at the Safeway (“seriously, there’s this couple who come in on Sunday mornings and they buy two cartons of cigarettes that they pay for entirely in crumpled ones and quarters and dimes”), and the interesting things Kurt finds when he vacuums customers cars after doing an oil change (“I’ve come to expect the odd earring, or tube of lipstick, or nasty sippy cups if it’s a station wagon with child seats, but sometimes . . .”). At their third meeting, Kurt spies Dave surreptitiously eyeing a chess set tucked between Scrabble and Pictionary on the game shelf.
“Do you play?”
Dave nods at him hesitantly. “I haven’t in years. You?”
“My dad taught me when I was little, but also not in years. Do you want to?”
Dave shrugs, but moves from his chair over to the shelf and wrestles the box down. They set it up, realize the set is missing a couple of pieces, and decide to do the best they can with what they have. It turns out to be fun; neither of them is really any good, but it helps to buffer the hard parts of their conversation.
If anyone had told Kurt back in June that he’d be spending his Tuesdays spilling his deepest secrets to Dave Karofsky, he would have laughed in their face. But he finds more and more that he really looks forward to these stolen hours. More importantly, he’s finding that he needs them. Because Dave Karofsky has no stake in Kurt’s dreams or decisions, so he’s the one Kurt talks to about his college hopes and the fact that he’s either brave or crazy by loading up on AP classes in order to impress the hell out of the Admissions people at a half-dozen East Coast schools. When they’re done with their makeshift chess game, Kurt reaches into his bag and pulls out the view books, which he fans across the table in front of Dave. He taps each one in turn. “NYU, Williams, Wesleyan, Brown, George Washington, and Yale.” Dave’s eyes go wide, and Kurt laughs. “It’s my freaking longest of all possible long shots. Please. I’m never going to get in.”
“What do you want to study?”
“I think everyone assumes I’m going to do fashion or music or theater or something.”
“But what do you want to do?”
“English Lit and some kind of language.” At Dave’s sideways glance, Kurt continues. “It’s like music. Reading, writing, learning a new language. It makes me feel the same way that singing does. Happy.”
“Cool.”
“Yeah. Your turn. Have you thought at all about where you’re going to apply?”
“Not yet. Ohio State, of course. Maybe Indiana. I’m not as smart as you are.”
“Says Mr. College Math.”
“It’s just community college.”
“But you’re still going to get credit for it. And AP Physics, right?”
“Yeah.”
Okay. So. You like math and science. If you could pick one place to live, your ultimate dream home, where would it be?”
Kurt is almost surprised with the swiftness of Dave’s response; he doesn’t even blink before blurting out “San Francisco.”
*****
There aren’t many times when Dave feels like he wants to take back things he says when he’s with Kurt, but this is one of them. Especially after Kurt looks at him and says “That’s pretty cliché.”
Dave’s subtle humor kicks in, and he finds his comeback tumbling off his tongue before he even has to think about it. “Like New York isn’t?”
“Point. So. Why San Fran?”
Dave wants to make something up, talk about the bay or the bridge, but he is discovering that he can’t lie to Kurt. “Have you read ‘Tales of the City’?”
“No.”
“Okay. You can borrow mine. Anyway, when I was first questioning, last year, I tried finding books about it.”
“It’s not easy.”
“No, it’s not. And I was worried that people would find out, so I picked the safest thing I could find. The books have straight characters in them, too, and they’re weird and wacky and so funny I laughed through all of them. And I kind of fell in love with San Francisco. So. If I could go anywhere, it would be there.” He looks away, and finishes the thought as he stares out at the parking lot. “I could be anyone I want to, there.”
“So do it.” God, Kurt made it sound so easy.
“It’s not that easy.”
“Sure it is. All you have to is pick some schools and apply. Even if you get in, it doesn’t mean you have to go.”
Dave can feel irritation beginning to creep under his skin, because it’s clear that Kurt really doesn’t get it. He grinds out his next words, can feel the fire that they burn in his throat. “If I get in and can’t go, it would be like losing the dream twice. Guys like me don’t dream like you do.”
“Who says you can’t?”
“Everyone. All the people in this damn town, the teachers, the other kids. Even my dad. There’s no model for what I want. How do I even know where to start looking for it?”
“Why do you think I read all those silly romances?”
“I don’t-”
“Dave.” Kurt’s voice is strong across the table. “I’m trying to make my own model, my own dream.”
“You make it look effortless.” He’s surprised at the harshness of Kurt’s laugh.
“Trust me. It’s anything but effortless. It’s scary and I just have to hope that I’m making the right decisions. But maybe . . .”
Oh. Dave can tell that this isn’t going to be good. He can see the idea percolating behind Kurt’s show-everything eyes. He’s about to nip the whole thing in the bud when Kurt squeaks out “Let’s do it together.”
“Excuse me?”
“Follow our dreams.” His finger drifts to the Yale catalog and pushes it forward. “It’s my reach, but it’s my dream. Yours is San Francisco. Let’s do it. We’ll be each other’s model.”
Dave runs his eyes over the cover of the catalog, and oddly enough he can imagine Kurt there. Just like he can almost see himself haunting hidden corners of a magical city. He smiles reluctantly, and takes a deep breath before committing.
“Okay.” He tells Kurt, all the while wondering what he’s gotten himself into.