Glee -- Third Time Lucky 3: For Real
Title: Third Time Lucky
Chapter: 3. For Real
Fandom: Glee
Pairing: Karofsky/Kurt
Rating: R (…or F, for "Full of F-Bombs")
Word Count: 7,377
Warnings: language; underaged drinking; language; sporadic angststorms; language; talk of a religious nature; major spoilers through 2.11; sorta-spoilers through 2.15 ("Sexy")
Summary: Somehow the dead heat of summer gives rise to the mother(fucker) of all second chances. The road to redemption is paved with fights, phone calls, false starts, and more than a few jokes at the expense of the lovable Finn Hudson.
Author's Note: I'm sorry I haven't had a chance to reply to most of the comments yet, but I've been going pretty close to full-speed since five this morning, and I just came down with the second cold in two months… so it's time to go pop another decongestant and then DIE IN BED as soon as I've posted this. I will thank you all personally as soon as I can. ♥ (Edit: oops, have I Want to Break Free.)
CHAPTER 3: FOR REAL
The email he composes when he gets back gives him trouble, but so does existing on this irredeemable planet, and he’s powered through on that front so far. After fifteen minutes of more vacillation than actual effort, he literally covers his eyes with one hand and clicks to send with the other.
It’s just that communicating with Karofsky is so… fraught. It’s different than censoring himself in front of his parents; it’s different than masking the black rage and the clouded misery in front of his McKinley friends; it’s different than wit-fencing at Dalton. It’s well-established, after all, that Karofsky could not care less about his vocabulary, but Kurt’s diction here is more selective than ever. He supposes that it’s a conundrum that was born with letter-writing, but the internet has magnified it-as it has everything-by a hundred-hundred-thousand measures. In person, he can control every word with his tone and his expression, but cold lines on a screen take on a life of their own.
Hey, David,
I just wanted to let you know that I’m semi-starting at the toy store tomorrow. It’s just training, and it’s fairly early in the morning, so I’ll almost certainly be back here well before two, but I wouldn’t mind at all if you wanted to show up fashionably late just in case. That’s probably more fun than standing on the doorstep, at any rate. (That said, the doorstep is all yours if you want it.)
See you then!
- Kurt
P.S. No real rush, but let me know when you choose something from the list I sent. We can also just start from scratch with one tomorrow - I know I didn’t exactly give you the easiest task in the world.
P.P.S. See? Show choir is HARD WORK.
(P.P.P.S. Coach Sylvester doesn’t think it’s hard.)
If the Dalton’s admissions office knew about this, they’d probably retroactively rescind his transfer acceptance on the grounds of his total and unabashed idiocy.
He picks up his phone. To Mercedes, he texts, Will give you my bank acct. info - you may need it to bail me out of jail when I start working w/ children tomorrow. To Blaine: So I’m starting at the toy store tomorrow… Do you ever get tired of always being right? :)
He puts the phone down and digs out his summer reading. Blaine is going to buy him a three-scoop waffle cone of chocolate, pistachio, and strawberry, since the local place doesn’t have ready-made spumoni.
Thirty pages and ten Post-It flags later, his phone vibrates partway across the desk. Then it buzzes again.
From Blaine: Never do! Can’t come down Monday, but let me know what other shifts you get. Kudos, btw!!
From Mercedes: Kurt, if you assault a kid on your first day we are no longer bffs. love you. call me later?
Then his computer dings. Kurt would be more excited about his popularity if he wasn’t so busy reeling from all the attention.
From Karofsky:
np
see you tomorrow
ps. damn you AND all of your music, hummel
It’s a little anticlimactic, maybe, but Kurt still catches himself smiling.
The Play Faire woman-whose name, Kurt gathers by listening closely, is Alyssa-abandons him to the unnervingly sticky clutches of the children after about half an hour. The extremely harmless-looking late-middle-aged woman running the front counter-who introduces herself as Dina, firmly tells him there is never a reason to panic, and promises she’ll look after him until he’s settled in-shows him the proverbial ropes as well as the real one that they have in place of a silver bell.
The register is DOS-based (apparently DOS is basically code for a computer from before human civilization began), and Dina cheerfully tells him it should be in a museum instead of on this countertop, plotting various nefarious strategies for frustrating its operators. Apparently, one must also bang the price-scanner to convince it to function, but not too hard, or it won’t work at all.
Extremely belatedly, Kurt realizes that this is probably not going to be worth eight dollars an hour and the lunch-break proximity to the coffee shop.
Dina pats his arm. “Everybody wears that face the first day,” she says. “But everything gets easier as you go along.”
Kurt wishes that was true.
Kurt sits at the kitchen table and reads the news on his phone while he waits for Karofsky, since apparently doorbells went out of style since the last time he checked. It’s a bit odd given how easy it is to imagine Karofsky doorbell-ditching; he must know how to use one.
At two-thirty-seven, there’s a knock. At two-thirty-seven-and-a-bit, Kurt is opening the door.
He has to steel himself not to flinch. It’s just ingrained now-even though Karofsky carries himself slightly differently when he’s not terrorizing the populace, Kurt’s always possessed by a powerful instinct to cower away, cover his head, and try to minimize the damage that his heart knows will come. Last time they were together, he slowly relaxed, but the associations are subconscious and unmanageable, and he just-
“How was your first day?” Karofsky asks.
“If there is a hell,” Kurt says, stepping back to let him in, “it is an enclosed space full of children who have made it their personal mission to get peanut-butter-and-jelly stains on your chinos. How are you?”
Kurofsky… shrugs.
“It drives me insane how you monopolize our conversations,” Kurt says, and he earns the smirk again for that.
“Were you going to feed me and then make me sing something stupid, or what?” Karofsky asks.
“That depends on a lot of things,” Kurt says. “First, what we have to eat; second, what your definition of ‘stupid’ is; and third, what you thought of my suggestions.”
“I was on Wikipedia for, like, three hours,” Karofsky-grumbles is the only word.
“And what did you find out?” Kurt asks patiently.
“That all of the singers on your list are gay.”
“Very good,” Kurt says. “Did you find anything you liked?”
“The Scissor Sisters have a song about killing people,” Karofsky volunteers.
Kurt applies palm directly to forehead. “Let’s start with the food this time.”
“Sure,” Karofsky says, which is two steps up from another shrug. “Can I have a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich?”
“You’re evil,” Kurt says.
Karofsky’s smirk is less schadenfreude and more simple amusement this time. “It’s a tough job,” he says, “but with the economy this shitty, you take what you can get.”
“That’s the perverse part,” Kurt says. “Replacing the clothing that the kids destroy is probably going to cost me more than I make.” He bangs an upper cupboard open and stands on his toes to look inside. “We have organic toaster pastries, not to be confused with Pop Tarts.”
“I’ll take one of those,” Karofsky says. “As long as they’re not banana. Banana is the worst fucking flavor ever made.”
Kurt stretches and manages to grasp the box of raspberry ones. “You do know that banana is a fruit.”
“Okay, fine. It’s the worst fucking fruit ever made.”
Kurt hands him a foil packet of pastries. “You do know that fruit grows.”
“I’m not a fucking moron, Hummel.” Karofsky snatches the package away and then points it at him. “And before you ask like a smartass, banana splits are kind of okay, because the ice cream evens it out.”
Kurt grins. “And you say I’m psychic?”
Karofsky tussles with the package, frowning. “Doesn’t take a genius to know you’re a wiseass.”
Kurt pauses, watching the foil… foil… him. “Do you want scissors?”
“Fuck no.” Karofsky’s scowl deepens, and he pulls harder to no avail. “Scissors are for puss-”
The foil rips all the way down the side, dropping the pastries to the linoleum-where they essentially explode-and spewing crumbs and flakes of frosting everywhere.
In a movie, this would be hysterical-they’re both absolutely still, blinking but not breathing yet, Karofsky with both large hands still clenched in the foil, Kurt with both of his held up in surprise. Kurt swallows on reflex, his eyes darting to evaluate Karofsky’s mood, and that’s when he sees that the linebacker from hell has chips of pink frosting stuck in his eyelashes.
Movie or no movie, it’s too late-Kurt starts laughing so hard and so abruptly that his chest aches.
Karofsky stares at him, blinking more vigorously now, enough to dislodge a few pale pink flecks, which spiral down to join their brethren on the floor. He seems to have taken up breathing again, albeit somewhat hitchingly.
“You’ve finally fucking lost it, Hummel,” he says. “Your parents are gonna be fucking pissed.”
“No, they’re not,” Kurt says when he’s reduced his mirth to a cheek-straining grin. “Because they’re not going to know. You get a new pastry, and I’ll get a broom.”
He assumes Karofsky is following his instructions, but when he returns with a dustpan, the other boy is on his hands and knees on the floor, armed with damp paper towels and an expression every bit as intense as the one he wears on the football field. Kurt definitely does not sneak a glance at his ass, because he definitely doesn’t notice it in the first place; and also because this is Karofsky, who is so clearly beyond help, beyond saving, and not even the slightest bit kind of attractive when he goes out on a limb and smiles.
“Here,” Kurt says, kneeling beside him. “Really, go find something else to eat; I’ll take care of it.”
“S’fine,” Karofsky says, looking intently at the crumbs he’s shepherded into something like a pile.
Kurt looks intently, too-at him.
“You have some in your eyebrow,” Kurt says.
Karofsky pauses and shoots him a skeptical glance. “I guess it makes sense that all of the fucking food in your house hates me, too.” He rubs the back of one hand across his forehead and succeeds only in-
“You just spread it around,” Kurt says. “Stay still for two seconds-”
Karofsky sees what’s coming too late, starts to recoil, and then freezes as Kurt brushes a few fingertips-which are obviously steadier than the very walls around them, rather than shaking like individual leaves-against his face. There is a small rain of crumbs finally freed. Karofsky’s eyes are guarded, but the twist to his mouth-when exactly did they get so cl… oh, right; this was Kurt’s brilliant idea this time-takes Kurt back to the locker room like a time machine on turbo, and he reads the sublimating ancestors of that moment’s shame and terror and anger and need.
“Why me?” Kurt asks softly. “Was it because I was the only one who’d even… or is it because I’m just not big enough to fight back?”
Karosfky’s eyes are smoldering now, but they flick down to focus on the floor. “We have a fucking deal, Hummel.” He makes another sweep with the paper towel. His voice sharpens. “So shut the fuck up if you even know how, and let’s go sing one of your stupid gay songs so I can go home.”
“I didn’t make you come here,” Kurt retorts, getting to his feet. “And you’re welcome to go home now if you want-though if you’re curious, I think that’d make you a coward. Being afraid of music written and performed by gays is the lamest thing I’ve heard since Mr. Schue saying we couldn’t do an entirely Cabaret-themed set for Sectionals.”
“Is that why you quit?” Karofsky mutters, employing the dustpan.
“You know very well why I left,” Kurt says. He pauses. “That said, I may or may not have arranged for a beautiful bouquet of orchids to be delivered to Miss Pillsbury from her dentist beau when I knew Schue would be in the teacher’s lounge.”
“When I take over the world, you can be my most important henchman.”
Kurt assumes that this high praise is directed at him, rather than at the dustpan. “All of your minions will look fabulous,” he says.
“Freakin’ yay,” Karofsky says. He gets up, taking the dustpan with him, to scrutinize his work on the floor, and then he looks around. “Where’s the trash?”
Kurt slips past him to open the appropriate cabinet door. “Goodnight, sweet pastries. Flights of angels and so on.”
“You’re the weirdest kid I know,” Karofsky says, dumping the crumbs into their final resting place. He pushes the dustpan at Kurt and then starts for the stairs. “Let’s do this shit if we’re going to do it.”
“It’s Hamlet,” Kurt says, hastily putting the dustpan away to chase Karofsky down the stairs-which is stupid, but he can’t quite squash the voice in the back of his head and the boiling in the pit of his stomach, which are in agreement that he really shouldn’t leave Karofsky unattended in his home.
Obviously Karofsky’s just standing by the foot of the stairs when he gets down, but it’s been less than a week since he started trying to shift the axis of his entire worldview, and… he can’t quite bring himself to hope for the best yet.
“Did you want to try ‘I Can’t Decide’?” he asks, because at least signing a song about killing people is better than following through.
“I can’t decide,” Karofsky says, without so much as a quiver of a smile.
Kurt allows a twinge of irritation, but he recognizes that this is about the closest Karofsky dares to come to a direct apology. Kurt appreciates the sentiment. And he was kind of asking for it.
“If you don’t decide on something,” Kurt says, “I’ll sort iTunes by the ‘musical theater’ genre, and then you’ll be screwed.”
“I hate hanging out with smart people,” Karofsky says, dropping into Kurt’s bowl chair. “Fuck it. What are the options again?”
Kurt perches on his desk chair, drawing one knee up to his chest and wrapping his arms around it. “Melissa Etheridge, k.d. lang, the Scissor Sisters, Erasure, Elton John, Boy George or Culture Club, the Pet Shop Boys, Queen, David Bowie, and-if you’re really desperate-Right Said Fred, the Indigo Girls, and the Village People.”
Karofsky buries his face in his hands. “I think I got ten percent gayer just hearing that.”
Kurt rolls his eyes. “I also just listed some of the most influential names in music no matter which way you slice it, David. Do you want to do Queen? Everybody loves Queen.”
Karofsky spreads his fingers enough to peek at Kurt. “Queen is pretty fucking legit. But Freddie Mercury had such a kickass voice-I know I can’t do that shit. You can, but I can’t.” He considers. “He also had that bitchin’ mustache going for him for a while.”
Kurt literally shudders. “Right. That was just sheer sex plastered to his upper lip.” He pretends not to notice that Karofsky’s hand moves over his mouth to stifle laughter, instead focusing his attention on scrolling through the library of songs on his computer. “I’m thinking… ‘I Want to Break Free.’ It’s mostly in a lower register.”
Promisingly, Karofsky merely nods.
Kurt plays the song through once, realizes it is-as seems to be the theme for today-far too late to chicken out, and plays it again, this time taking furiously scribbled notes on arrangement ideas.
“All right,” he says on the third run. “It’s three-fifteen. We have an hour and forty-five minutes to teach you how to harmonize and polish this thing up shinier than Freddie’s favorite pair of leather pants.”
Karofsky shakes his head this time. “Just tell me what to do, Hummel.”
By four-thirty, they’ve brought it so far that Kurt’s forgotten to watch the clock-or anything else. He has the lyrics down by now, and the accompaniment they’re getting from Freddie’s original on the computer speakers just makes him want to jump up and…
“Is there room in your brain right now for choreography?” he asks.
“Seriously?” Karofsky says.
Kurt grins-recklessly, perhaps. “Come on. Just follow my lead.”
Reluctantly, Karofsky climbs up out of the bowl chair as Kurt pops up and multitasks.
“I want to break free,” he sings, and if his ‘choreography’ would be better-suited to a mediocre line dance than a show choir stage… he’ll work on it. “I want to break free… I want to break free from your lies; you’re so self-satisfied; I don’t need you… I’ve got to break free…”
Karofsky chimes in, and for someone who learned harmonizing about an hour ago, he’s phenomenal.
“God knows… God knows I want to break free.”
Kurt helps guide him into the second verse, just like Freddie and Roger Taylor would have done.
“I’ve fallen in love,” they sing together, Kurt taking a break from his bad choreography to make slightly manic gestures of encouragement. Karofsky hesitates, but not for long.
“I’ve fallen in love for the first time, and this time I know it’s for real… I’ve fallen in love…”
Kurt grins. He can’t help it, can’t help himself-the mountain of young man that was occupying his bowl chair has loosened up and opened up, and all of the rough edges seem like the feathered outline of something wonderful.
“God knows-God knows I’ve fallen in love.”
Kurt gives up on his crap choreography, and he doesn’t have to announce as much; Karofsky just joins him in boogieing around the room like the biggest pair of losers on Earth.
Karofsky air-guitars righteously through the solo, maintaining that brutal straight face like he always does, and Kurt has to sit down again to laugh.
When the bass fades out, Karofsky spins dramatically on his heel and collapses on the floor. Kurt always assumed that flash a smile was an exaggerated figure of speech, but Karofsky’s lights up his face in a way that makes Kurt’s breath stick somewhere in the middle regions of his lungs, and he rescinds all judgment on the idiom.
The front door slams.
Karofsky sits bolt upright. “I thought-”
“It’s ten minutes to five; he’s back early,” Kurt says blankly, because it sounds a little better than Son of a bitch on a shit sandwich.
Karofsky looks at him, and suddenly Kurt’s no longer surprised about any of it-about the abuse at McKinley; about the kiss; about the fights in the park and the unsettling tension and the tricky contours of their every conversation. Kurt sees, in this single instant, that Karofsky is terrified and deeply shamed, bitter and resentful but paralyzed by that old fear of discovery and repercussions; he’s desperate and helpless and backed into a corner, and there’s no way to keep his head above the water except for pushing other people underneath.
That doesn’t make it right. But Kurt’s seeing now that David Karofsky feels all of these things all of the time, and the effort of containing them, of bottling them all up and keeping them silent, is tearing him apart. Nothing about it is okay; nothing can justify the things he did, but Karofsky is using the only recourse he has. The only masculine emotion in the overflowing jumble is rage, and that’s the only one he can feel safe showing. The only way he can think of to survive this is to turn the destruction outward instead.
Karofsky swallows hard, and in that moment, for that action, Kurt admires his tenacity.
“Well, this blows,” Karofsky says. “I was kind of enjoying being alive for once.”
Kurt does not have time for that talk, although he intends to hold it later in considerable detail.
He slips out of his chair with his heart in his throat, manages not to hesitate before stepping over Karofsky, and starts for the stairs. “Just-we should get this over with. Follow me slowly.”
“B-”
There isn’t time for an objection. Kurt takes the stairs at a run, using the banister both for balance and to haul himself up faster, his heartbeat so loud in his ears that he can’t hear himself think-which bodes rather ill for his powers of persuasion.
Burt has just finished drying his hands on the dishtowel hanging from the oven when Kurt tops the stairs, dizzy and breathless more with the reeling terror than the exertion.
What the hell does this make him-an extraordinary idiot, or a traitor? Both? He knows which is worse, but either way he’s not sure he can bear to see the wave of disappointment crest in his father’s eyes; it’s inevitable now, with what he’s done, one way or another.
“You have to let me explain,” he gasps out as Burt turns bewilderedly. “And please actually listen.”
Burt smiles faintly. “I guess it would be arrogant to expect ‘Hooray, Dad’s home,’ but I can’t say I’m thrilled with the reception, here.”
“Dad,” Kurt says helplessly, and his father’s smile disappears.
“What is it?” he asks, starting towards Kurt. “What happened? Are you okay?”
One of the stairs creaks, close enough that Kurt knows Karofsky is visible over his shoulder. His theory is efficiently proven by the way his father’s eyes snap to the place and narrow.
“What in the hell is he doing here?”
“I invited him,” Kurt says loudly, wanting to kick himself for the way his voice shakes.
Burt turns the sharp, incredulous gaze on him. “Care to tell me why exactly you did that?” Kurt gets out a half-word-some permutation of wait or no or Dad or please-but his father doesn’t wait for the rest. “What the hell were you thinking? What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Dad-”
Burt’s blazing eyes zero in on Karofsky again, and he jabs one finger towards the door. “Out. Now. If you’re not halfway down the street in five seconds, I’m calling the cops.”
“Dad!” Kurt protests. “Will you listen to me?”
His father isn’t even looking at him-Burt’s watching Karofsky slip past Kurt and stride for the front door.
“We were just talking!” Kurt shouts, not that it makes any difference. Maybe his stinging eyes are playing tricks, but it looks like Karofsky flinches as he throws open the door. Kurt fights the choking well of shame and wild fear, the feeling that everything’s imploding all at once, and reaches for his father’s arm. “Dad, it’s not-”
Burt shakes him off, eyes like flint. “What the fuck did you think you were doing?”
Kurt’s going to throw up. He’s going to split open. He’s going to shatter into pieces. “Haven’t you ever heard of a second chance?”
“Kurt,” his father says, staring at him like he’s incomprehensible and deeply offensive, “this is the asshole who chased you out of school. This is the guy who made your life so damn miserable that even after all of that practice shutting out the negative, you couldn’t take it. This is the guy who made you give up. I’ve never seen you give up, not since you were three years old and we could trick you with another toy.” Kurt dares to hope that they might not end up yelling for another half-second, and then his father’s voice begins to rise. “And you let that kid into my house? I don’t know what to say to you, Kurt. I don’t know what you’re saying to yourself to make it seem like there is anything sane about this.”
Kurt’s voice breaks, which adds to the general desire to hop on a bus to Columbus and jump off of the tallest building he can find. “Will you just listen to me?”
“To be honest,” Burt says, “right now, I don’t think I want to hear anything you have to say.”
Splattering on the pavement would probably have been preferable.
Kurt turns around and gropes for the banister-he can’t hear anything over the roar in his ears; he can barely see; his skin’s numb all over. There’s a rhythm that he almost recognizes as his clumsy steps on the staircase, and it bangs out a tune with one lyric-fuck-up, fuck-up, fuck-up.
His legs almost give out when he reaches his bedroom; he wasn’t ready for the change of terrain. He stumbles to the center of the floor and unceremoniously drops onto his knees.
There it is. Thirty seconds, and everything he’s built has gone to shit.
He can’t take any of it back.
“Kurt?” Finn’s voice, from the top of the stairs. “Hey, man, you awake?” A hesitant tread on the steps. Can’t have that.
“Yes,” Kurt calls back. Not much of a quaver. Improvement.
“Just, uh… it’s dinnertime. And you might wanna come up before your dad eats all the garlic bread, because seriously, he’s trying.”
Kurt thinks May he choke on it before he can stop himself, and his stomach flips so violently that eating actually sounds like a very ill-advised pastime. He doesn’t mean that, not really; he’s just-trapped. And when Kurt is backed into a corner, he lashes out, and all the acidic vindictiveness that he goes to such lengths to stifle rises with a fury that he can’t restrict.
He swallows. He pushes his hair back. He stands.
Damn Blaine to hell. This is courage. This is accountability. This is knowing that no one will actually hear him and defending anyway. This is continuing to try when it’s already too late.
If there’s garlic bread to be eaten, Carole probably made spaghetti, which isn’t bad for a last meal. If Kurt was on death row-
Jesus. This is not the end of his life. He and his dad have gone through worse, and he has to remember that. His father is still the best thing that’s ever happened to him, and it’s not going to be a walk in the park, but they’ll get past this.
Kurt goes to a great deal of effort to take deep, calming breaths as he ascends the stairs, and he goes to a greater deal of effort denying that he feels like a man climbing to the gallows.
Finn’s galloped off before Kurt reaches the top, which gives him a few seconds more to compose himself-and he needs them. His father doesn’t look at him as he slides into his seat.
The silence is brittle and brutal at once.
“So…” Finn says slowly. “What’s… up with everybody?”
Burt mutters something unintelligible, and Finn has the sense-or the self-preservation instincts-to let it go.
“The usual,” Carole says warmly, although her eyes flick between Kurt and his father, and there’s a slightly cautious neutrality to her tone. “How about you, hon?”
“Puck is officially not as much of a douchebag,” Finn says happily. “It’s really kind of awesome, because nobody else is as good at fist-bumps as he is. And we hung out with Artie today, too, and just jammed for a while.”
Normalcy. What a foreign concept.
“I’m glad to hear that,” Carole says. “But you probably don’t want to call him a douchebag to his face. Kurt, did you get that job at the toy store?”
“Yes,” Kurt says blandly, twisting a piece of spaghetti around the tines of his fork and trying to think about how angels would be horrifying if their hair actually looked like pasta.
“That’s awesome, dude,” Finn says genuinely-as Finn does everything. “Do you get an employee discount?”
“Yes,” Kurt says again, “although I can’t imagine why you’d want to shop there.”
“Brittany got a tambourine there last year,” Finn says. “It’s seriously the best tambourine ever made. It’s like the Holy Grail of all percussion… things. Haven’t you seen it? It’s pink. She added her own glitter.”
Kurt shakes his head mutely, and the silence rushes back in to fill the vacuum, heavy and claustrophobic.
Kurt focuses on his plate, but he surveys the table subtly, and he sees Carole with her lips pressed together, looking back and forth.
“All right,” she says after forty seconds of Finn’s favorite expression of baffled concern. “Everybody ’fess up. Let’s air the dirty laundry and then wash it, okay?”
Burt puts his fork down and looks up, and every muscle in Kurt’s chest goes tight. “You know that kid Karofsky who started all of Kurt’s problems? Well, when I got home today, Kurt had invited him into the house. Fancy that.”
Somehow the plainness of it hurts more than it would have if Burt had gone for venom.
“Wait,” Finn says. “Why in the hell would you even talk to Karofsky, let alone bring him here?”
Kurt swallows hard, draws a deep breath, and clenches his hand around his own fork to ground himself. “Our first year in glee, you had a really crazy year. Correct?”
“Sure, but I don’t see wh-”
“Would you say you’re not the same person now that you were then?”
Finn’s eyebrows cinch together. It is adorable, but Kurt can’t afford to get distracted. “Well, sure, but-”
“David Karofsky has more issues than Vogue sells during Fashion Week, but we encountered each other in the park, and-”
“How can you talk like this is reasonable, Kurt?” Burt cuts in. “I mean, really? Yeah, people change; great, I’m happy for him. But people don’t do a one-eighty in six months, and a small change from violence and bigotry is not enough to make this guy safe. There is no way you’re getting near that kid, period, ever.” He’s breathing hard enough that Kurt wants to say something about heart attacks, about overexerting himself, about getting too worked up-but he didn’t inherit all of his stubbornness from his mother. “What I don’t get, Kurt, is why I have to remind you what this jerkoff is capable of.”
“Finn,” Kurt says without looking away from his father, and his voice is shaking again, “wasn’t he different? For the week he was in New Directions, when people actually cared about him personally-wasn’t he different then?”
He can hear Finn shift in his chair, but he knows what’ll come. You can’t usually rely on Finn to add single-digit numbers accurately, but he always does the right thing, even when it terrifies him.
“Well… yeah. Sort of. I mean, he was almost a cool guy for, like, two days.”
“Two days,” Burt says, and Kurt remembers whence he inherited his razor-edged sarcasm. “Now that’s stamina. Can we close this conversation on the grounds that it’s completely absurd?”
“Dad,” Kurt insists. “I ran into him for the first time last week, and he hasn’t tried a thing.”
“Yeah?” Burt says. “Well, maybe he’s waiting until you’ve done something stupid, like let him into the house, and he’s saving up for then.”
“Sorry,” Finn says, slowly and carefully, glancing between them, “but… I mean, the dude’s not exactly smart. And he gets hit in the head a lot. So I feel like… I don’t think he’d be able to keep up a face-aid-”
“Façade,” Carole and Kurt automatically correct at the same time, although Kurt doesn’t add “Hon” to the end.
“-yeah, I don’t think he’d be able to keep up a façade like that.”
Kurt’s spaghetti is terrifically interesting.
“I mean,” Finn says, “I still think he’s a dick-”
“Language, sweetheart.”
“Sorry. He’s a… jerk, and I definitely don’t want him hanging out in the house where I have to sleep at night, but-”
“But nothing,” Burt says. “He’s a bully, and he’s physically abusive, and Kurt is his preferred victim. There are no circumstances under which we’re going to allow that to happen again.”
“It won’t.” Kurt’s feet twitch; he wants to stand. Being slight is great when he’s buying clothes, but it always leaves him with this nagging sense that no one can see him or hear him, and he’ll always be perceived as a precocious child. “You’re not the one who’s been talking to him, Dad, okay? Maybe it’s a mistake-I guess it probably is-but it’s my mistake to make, and I’ll face the consequences. This is my battle now.”
“No,” Burt says, “it’s not. It never was. That’s the point of a damn family, Kurt. We’re all on your side, so we’re all in this together, and when that kid attacked you? He came after all of us. And no, I’m not going to let that go. I’m not going to let you walk back into that. But before I declare this conversation one hundred and ten percent over, I have to ask. Was everything we gave up to get you out of his reach just not enough for you, Kurt? Because that’s what it feels like from here-like everything we’ve gone through to make sure you’re safe just didn’t meet your standards, and that’s why you’re jumping back into the same damn thing that was tearing you apart.”
Kurt’s hands are clenched under the table, and his face is on fire. “That’s not true at all. I can’t tell you how grateful I am for everything you did-everything both of you did. All of you; you, too, Finn.”
There’s a pregnant pause, and then Finn pushes at Kurt’s shoulder very gently. “I’ve got your back, Kurt.”
If there is a God, God damn that wonderful, hapless, hopeless boy.
“I would appreciate it,” Burt says, but his voice is softer, “if you’d just… show that. Once in a while. I know nothing has been easy for you for six months, but it hasn’t been a bed of roses here, either.”
“I know,” Kurt says. There are flecks of oregano in this spaghetti sauce. It doesn’t have oregano when it’s in the jar; Carole must have added it herself. “Thank you. And I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make a scene. May I be excused?”
“Y-”
Carole puts a hand on his father’s arm and nods to him. “Go ahead, sweetheart.”
Kurt manages not to run for it.
Initially, he makes a beeline for his bed, faceplants, and hopes the pillow will slowly eat him alive. After five or six minutes of unsuccessfully trying to resemble pillow food, he drags himself up and goes to his desk, where he sits down and starts a new email with no subject line.
David,
I am so sorry about this afternoon.
- Kurt
It’s not much, but it’s all he can really muster, so he sends it.
He’s starting to become aware of a strange polarity in his head-a sense that David and Karofsky are two different people, or at least two divisible halves of the same one. One is a hulking shadow in the hallways that tracks him everywhere he goes, battering him inside and out until he’s so exhausted he can’t believe he can still tremble all over with nerves. The other is a young man who is trying very hard to come to terms with an identity that has rocked the very foundations of his life-who is terrified of who he’ll discover when he finds himself.
It has amused Kurt for many years that the Mac version of Tetris is called “Quinn,” and it still vaguely distracts him now. Unfortunately, this version of her can still kick his sorry ass.
One of the green line pieces has finallydings, he jumps, and the piece efficiently blocks his column and ruins his game.
This had better be worth-
it’s not your fault. it’s not your dad’s fault either, and in all honesty hes probably right.
i mean i guess really it’s my bad. you can tell him i won’t be showing up at your house again. except maybe don’t mention we’re actually emailing so nevermind.
- d
Kurt sits back for a moment, processing that grammatical masterpiece, and then he leans forward and puts his fingers to the keys.
You’re different than you were. That’s what I tried to tell him, but it’s hard when he won’t let me get a word in edgewise. And I didn’t want to tell the entire dinner table about things that aren’t mine to tell, so… I didn’t.
We can always meet elsewhere. Although I don’t think a public place would be very conducive to our recent work, and I doubt Mercedes would let us hang around her place, much as I think she’ll refrain from bringing the smackdown as long as I tell her you’re okay.
We could always try the park. Maybe off in the woodsy area it’d be quiet enough. Because that’s not sketchy, riiiiight?
- Kurt
He gets up, paces a circuit of the room, sits down again, gets up again, and makes his bed. There’s another ding, and he heads straight back for the computer. It’s kind of stupid, really-this isn’t urgent or something.
are you going to pick me up in your skeevy black escalade with all the windows tinted and give me candy????
if you don’t have any candy you could come to my house if you want. i mean it kind of sucks but it has a/c and none of the forest creatures will try to sing along and shit
- d
There is a weird sound in the back of Kurt’s head. He thinks it might be the paltry remnants of his better judgment crying themselves to sleep.
He doesn’t have the heart to tell Karofsky that the Escalade was the first thing to be sacrificed for Dalton tuition fees.
Sounds good to me. Shoot me your address?
His dad is right. He’s reckless. That’s not even the right word; “reckless” has a connotation of bravery, rather than good, old-fashioned stupidity.
If Life was a class, Kurt would be failing out.
Seconds after he’s once again shielded his eyes and hit send, there’s a soft knock on the wall by the stairs.
“Can I talk to you, Kurt?” Carole asks.
Kurt has always been fond of Carole-even when she wore acid-wash mom jeans and had extremely questionable taste in chaise lounges that didn’t match her questionable taste in curtains-but it strikes him now just how difficult it is to refuse her anything. Finn gets his goodness from her, but she has an emotional intelligence that slipped out of the gene pool before she could pass it on, and she’s so fiercely lovable Kurt knows he’ll buck up and take whatever comes next.
“Of course,” he says.
He stands before she’s come all the way down the stairs, more because he’s considering how to negotiate the chairs than because he’s a gentleman, although it’s a bit of both. She smiles at him, slightly wearily-and that aches, because Carole Hudson-now-Hummel absolutely does not need more stress on his account.
He offers her the desk chair and sits on the edge of his bed. She settles, folds her hands, and smiles again, and there’s a hint of Finn in that, too-in her need to make things right and her worry that she doesn’t know how.
“He means well,” she says.
Kurt sucks in a breath, holds it, and lets it out. “I know he does. And I fully understand all of his objections, but… it really is different. And it’s safe; I wouldn’t deliberately place myself in a situation that wasn’t.”
“Kurt,” Carole says gently, “you have to help him. You’re quick, Kurt-more than any of us. And you work things out, and you’re ten steps ahead. Your father’s not unintelligent, but he’s not like you, and when he sees A plus B, it always equals C, because that’s how numbers work.”
Kurt smiles a little. “Variables.”
Carole smiles back. “Finn and I have done a lot of algebra homework together, believe me.” Kurt never doubted it. “The thing is… sweetheart, with the whole thing last year, your dad was a mess. He tries so hard-I know you know that, too; I’m not scolding-and, as far as he could tell, it wasn’t working. He felt like he’d failed you as a father twice-once for not protecting you, and a second time for not teaching you how to protect yourself.”
“Dad knows better than anyone that you have to break a couple eggs to make an omelet,” Kurt says. “In his case, usually half a carton.”
Carole smiles a little at that, too. “Parents are like that, Kurt. Sure, in our heads, we know it can’t be perfect, and it never will be, and there’s nothing we can do about that. But we keep on trying, because the thought of our children hurting is worse than anything else in the world. I mean, we’re always still disappointed when we come up short, but we have to try, you know? I guess it sounds kind of stupid put like that.”
“No,” Kurt says. “It doesn’t.”
Carole shakes her head a little. “Well, it doesn’t matter. The thing is… your dad loves you, Kurt. And he wants what’s best for you, even if he doesn’t let you tell him what you think that is.”
He can’t really fight against that kind of ammunition.
“I’ve just got one question, Carole,” he says.
She’s receptive, but there’s a hint of something else in it-like she’s expecting him to use that sometimes-too-incisive intelligence to shut her down. “Yeah?”
He gets up, crosses the carpet, and hugs her tightly. “Where have you been all my life?”
She kisses his forehead. “Guess I’ll just have to make up for it now.”
After Carole ensures, for the umpteenth time, that Kurt has her cell number on speed-dial-just in case it’s something that she doesn’t condone or anything that he wouldn’t want his father to know about at that particular moment-everyone pretty much leaves him alone for the rest of the night. It’s kind of nice for a while, but the silence gets to be pressing, and he can’t quite bring himself to turn on any music and sing along. The more time he has to think about today, the more he thinks he and his two bites of spaghetti will soon be parted.
Just after nine, his phone rings, and he jumps.
The number belongs to the main Play Faire line, so he puts on his smooth, professional voice as he picks up.
“This is Kurt.”
“Can you come in Wednesday?” Alyssa asks. It’s fortunate that he recognizes her voice-Kurt might admire her disinterested lack of pretext if he wasn’t having the kind of day where a token How are you would make him feel a little better. “Nine in the morning would be good.”
“Absolutely,” Kurt says. That gives him all day tomorrow to mend fences, un-burn bridges, and brace himself for another day of monster-children.
“Great,” Alyssa says, despite the fact that her monotone hasn’t experienced so much as a blip. “Goodnight.”
“Goodn-”
The line’s dead. Kurt rolls his eyes and programs the appointment into the calendar app, much more for the sake of completeness than because he thinks he’s liable to forget.
His email program sings out into the silence again, and Kurt looks. That members’ coupon from the coffee place has arrived at long last, and there is also an email from the Jekyll half of David Karofsky.
It’s just an address-a ways across town, which doesn’t actually mean that much in Lima, but which is enough to reduce the chances of getting caught out. Kurt has to suppress a wince as he wonders just when he started thinking about this like a crime.
On second glance, there are a few lines at the bottom.
i figure same time tomorrow. lemme know if that doesn’t work.
i know you must have some less-gay music somewhere, cause all the broadway musicals are pretty hetero, right? okay I guess Queen was fine. something like that is my vote, only with less shit going down afterwards would be awesome.
- d
Kurt’s face seems to be trying to make four expressions at once. It is slightly painful.
[Chapter 2] [Chapter 4]
Chapter: 3. For Real
Fandom: Glee
Pairing: Karofsky/Kurt
Rating: R (…or F, for "Full of F-Bombs")
Word Count: 7,377
Warnings: language; underaged drinking; language; sporadic angststorms; language; talk of a religious nature; major spoilers through 2.11; sorta-spoilers through 2.15 ("Sexy")
Summary: Somehow the dead heat of summer gives rise to the mother(fucker) of all second chances. The road to redemption is paved with fights, phone calls, false starts, and more than a few jokes at the expense of the lovable Finn Hudson.
Author's Note: I'm sorry I haven't had a chance to reply to most of the comments yet, but I've been going pretty close to full-speed since five this morning, and I just came down with the second cold in two months… so it's time to go pop another decongestant and then DIE IN BED as soon as I've posted this. I will thank you all personally as soon as I can. ♥ (Edit: oops, have I Want to Break Free.)
CHAPTER 3: FOR REAL
The email he composes when he gets back gives him trouble, but so does existing on this irredeemable planet, and he’s powered through on that front so far. After fifteen minutes of more vacillation than actual effort, he literally covers his eyes with one hand and clicks to send with the other.
It’s just that communicating with Karofsky is so… fraught. It’s different than censoring himself in front of his parents; it’s different than masking the black rage and the clouded misery in front of his McKinley friends; it’s different than wit-fencing at Dalton. It’s well-established, after all, that Karofsky could not care less about his vocabulary, but Kurt’s diction here is more selective than ever. He supposes that it’s a conundrum that was born with letter-writing, but the internet has magnified it-as it has everything-by a hundred-hundred-thousand measures. In person, he can control every word with his tone and his expression, but cold lines on a screen take on a life of their own.
Hey, David,
I just wanted to let you know that I’m semi-starting at the toy store tomorrow. It’s just training, and it’s fairly early in the morning, so I’ll almost certainly be back here well before two, but I wouldn’t mind at all if you wanted to show up fashionably late just in case. That’s probably more fun than standing on the doorstep, at any rate. (That said, the doorstep is all yours if you want it.)
See you then!
- Kurt
P.S. No real rush, but let me know when you choose something from the list I sent. We can also just start from scratch with one tomorrow - I know I didn’t exactly give you the easiest task in the world.
P.P.S. See? Show choir is HARD WORK.
(P.P.P.S. Coach Sylvester doesn’t think it’s hard.)
If the Dalton’s admissions office knew about this, they’d probably retroactively rescind his transfer acceptance on the grounds of his total and unabashed idiocy.
He picks up his phone. To Mercedes, he texts, Will give you my bank acct. info - you may need it to bail me out of jail when I start working w/ children tomorrow. To Blaine: So I’m starting at the toy store tomorrow… Do you ever get tired of always being right? :)
He puts the phone down and digs out his summer reading. Blaine is going to buy him a three-scoop waffle cone of chocolate, pistachio, and strawberry, since the local place doesn’t have ready-made spumoni.
Thirty pages and ten Post-It flags later, his phone vibrates partway across the desk. Then it buzzes again.
From Blaine: Never do! Can’t come down Monday, but let me know what other shifts you get. Kudos, btw!!
From Mercedes: Kurt, if you assault a kid on your first day we are no longer bffs. love you. call me later?
Then his computer dings. Kurt would be more excited about his popularity if he wasn’t so busy reeling from all the attention.
From Karofsky:
np
see you tomorrow
ps. damn you AND all of your music, hummel
It’s a little anticlimactic, maybe, but Kurt still catches himself smiling.
The Play Faire woman-whose name, Kurt gathers by listening closely, is Alyssa-abandons him to the unnervingly sticky clutches of the children after about half an hour. The extremely harmless-looking late-middle-aged woman running the front counter-who introduces herself as Dina, firmly tells him there is never a reason to panic, and promises she’ll look after him until he’s settled in-shows him the proverbial ropes as well as the real one that they have in place of a silver bell.
The register is DOS-based (apparently DOS is basically code for a computer from before human civilization began), and Dina cheerfully tells him it should be in a museum instead of on this countertop, plotting various nefarious strategies for frustrating its operators. Apparently, one must also bang the price-scanner to convince it to function, but not too hard, or it won’t work at all.
Extremely belatedly, Kurt realizes that this is probably not going to be worth eight dollars an hour and the lunch-break proximity to the coffee shop.
Dina pats his arm. “Everybody wears that face the first day,” she says. “But everything gets easier as you go along.”
Kurt wishes that was true.
Kurt sits at the kitchen table and reads the news on his phone while he waits for Karofsky, since apparently doorbells went out of style since the last time he checked. It’s a bit odd given how easy it is to imagine Karofsky doorbell-ditching; he must know how to use one.
At two-thirty-seven, there’s a knock. At two-thirty-seven-and-a-bit, Kurt is opening the door.
He has to steel himself not to flinch. It’s just ingrained now-even though Karofsky carries himself slightly differently when he’s not terrorizing the populace, Kurt’s always possessed by a powerful instinct to cower away, cover his head, and try to minimize the damage that his heart knows will come. Last time they were together, he slowly relaxed, but the associations are subconscious and unmanageable, and he just-
“How was your first day?” Karofsky asks.
“If there is a hell,” Kurt says, stepping back to let him in, “it is an enclosed space full of children who have made it their personal mission to get peanut-butter-and-jelly stains on your chinos. How are you?”
Kurofsky… shrugs.
“It drives me insane how you monopolize our conversations,” Kurt says, and he earns the smirk again for that.
“Were you going to feed me and then make me sing something stupid, or what?” Karofsky asks.
“That depends on a lot of things,” Kurt says. “First, what we have to eat; second, what your definition of ‘stupid’ is; and third, what you thought of my suggestions.”
“I was on Wikipedia for, like, three hours,” Karofsky-grumbles is the only word.
“And what did you find out?” Kurt asks patiently.
“That all of the singers on your list are gay.”
“Very good,” Kurt says. “Did you find anything you liked?”
“The Scissor Sisters have a song about killing people,” Karofsky volunteers.
Kurt applies palm directly to forehead. “Let’s start with the food this time.”
“Sure,” Karofsky says, which is two steps up from another shrug. “Can I have a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich?”
“You’re evil,” Kurt says.
Karofsky’s smirk is less schadenfreude and more simple amusement this time. “It’s a tough job,” he says, “but with the economy this shitty, you take what you can get.”
“That’s the perverse part,” Kurt says. “Replacing the clothing that the kids destroy is probably going to cost me more than I make.” He bangs an upper cupboard open and stands on his toes to look inside. “We have organic toaster pastries, not to be confused with Pop Tarts.”
“I’ll take one of those,” Karofsky says. “As long as they’re not banana. Banana is the worst fucking flavor ever made.”
Kurt stretches and manages to grasp the box of raspberry ones. “You do know that banana is a fruit.”
“Okay, fine. It’s the worst fucking fruit ever made.”
Kurt hands him a foil packet of pastries. “You do know that fruit grows.”
“I’m not a fucking moron, Hummel.” Karofsky snatches the package away and then points it at him. “And before you ask like a smartass, banana splits are kind of okay, because the ice cream evens it out.”
Kurt grins. “And you say I’m psychic?”
Karofsky tussles with the package, frowning. “Doesn’t take a genius to know you’re a wiseass.”
Kurt pauses, watching the foil… foil… him. “Do you want scissors?”
“Fuck no.” Karofsky’s scowl deepens, and he pulls harder to no avail. “Scissors are for puss-”
The foil rips all the way down the side, dropping the pastries to the linoleum-where they essentially explode-and spewing crumbs and flakes of frosting everywhere.
In a movie, this would be hysterical-they’re both absolutely still, blinking but not breathing yet, Karofsky with both large hands still clenched in the foil, Kurt with both of his held up in surprise. Kurt swallows on reflex, his eyes darting to evaluate Karofsky’s mood, and that’s when he sees that the linebacker from hell has chips of pink frosting stuck in his eyelashes.
Movie or no movie, it’s too late-Kurt starts laughing so hard and so abruptly that his chest aches.
Karofsky stares at him, blinking more vigorously now, enough to dislodge a few pale pink flecks, which spiral down to join their brethren on the floor. He seems to have taken up breathing again, albeit somewhat hitchingly.
“You’ve finally fucking lost it, Hummel,” he says. “Your parents are gonna be fucking pissed.”
“No, they’re not,” Kurt says when he’s reduced his mirth to a cheek-straining grin. “Because they’re not going to know. You get a new pastry, and I’ll get a broom.”
He assumes Karofsky is following his instructions, but when he returns with a dustpan, the other boy is on his hands and knees on the floor, armed with damp paper towels and an expression every bit as intense as the one he wears on the football field. Kurt definitely does not sneak a glance at his ass, because he definitely doesn’t notice it in the first place; and also because this is Karofsky, who is so clearly beyond help, beyond saving, and not even the slightest bit kind of attractive when he goes out on a limb and smiles.
“Here,” Kurt says, kneeling beside him. “Really, go find something else to eat; I’ll take care of it.”
“S’fine,” Karofsky says, looking intently at the crumbs he’s shepherded into something like a pile.
Kurt looks intently, too-at him.
“You have some in your eyebrow,” Kurt says.
Karofsky pauses and shoots him a skeptical glance. “I guess it makes sense that all of the fucking food in your house hates me, too.” He rubs the back of one hand across his forehead and succeeds only in-
“You just spread it around,” Kurt says. “Stay still for two seconds-”
Karofsky sees what’s coming too late, starts to recoil, and then freezes as Kurt brushes a few fingertips-which are obviously steadier than the very walls around them, rather than shaking like individual leaves-against his face. There is a small rain of crumbs finally freed. Karofsky’s eyes are guarded, but the twist to his mouth-when exactly did they get so cl… oh, right; this was Kurt’s brilliant idea this time-takes Kurt back to the locker room like a time machine on turbo, and he reads the sublimating ancestors of that moment’s shame and terror and anger and need.
“Why me?” Kurt asks softly. “Was it because I was the only one who’d even… or is it because I’m just not big enough to fight back?”
Karosfky’s eyes are smoldering now, but they flick down to focus on the floor. “We have a fucking deal, Hummel.” He makes another sweep with the paper towel. His voice sharpens. “So shut the fuck up if you even know how, and let’s go sing one of your stupid gay songs so I can go home.”
“I didn’t make you come here,” Kurt retorts, getting to his feet. “And you’re welcome to go home now if you want-though if you’re curious, I think that’d make you a coward. Being afraid of music written and performed by gays is the lamest thing I’ve heard since Mr. Schue saying we couldn’t do an entirely Cabaret-themed set for Sectionals.”
“Is that why you quit?” Karofsky mutters, employing the dustpan.
“You know very well why I left,” Kurt says. He pauses. “That said, I may or may not have arranged for a beautiful bouquet of orchids to be delivered to Miss Pillsbury from her dentist beau when I knew Schue would be in the teacher’s lounge.”
“When I take over the world, you can be my most important henchman.”
Kurt assumes that this high praise is directed at him, rather than at the dustpan. “All of your minions will look fabulous,” he says.
“Freakin’ yay,” Karofsky says. He gets up, taking the dustpan with him, to scrutinize his work on the floor, and then he looks around. “Where’s the trash?”
Kurt slips past him to open the appropriate cabinet door. “Goodnight, sweet pastries. Flights of angels and so on.”
“You’re the weirdest kid I know,” Karofsky says, dumping the crumbs into their final resting place. He pushes the dustpan at Kurt and then starts for the stairs. “Let’s do this shit if we’re going to do it.”
“It’s Hamlet,” Kurt says, hastily putting the dustpan away to chase Karofsky down the stairs-which is stupid, but he can’t quite squash the voice in the back of his head and the boiling in the pit of his stomach, which are in agreement that he really shouldn’t leave Karofsky unattended in his home.
Obviously Karofsky’s just standing by the foot of the stairs when he gets down, but it’s been less than a week since he started trying to shift the axis of his entire worldview, and… he can’t quite bring himself to hope for the best yet.
“Did you want to try ‘I Can’t Decide’?” he asks, because at least signing a song about killing people is better than following through.
“I can’t decide,” Karofsky says, without so much as a quiver of a smile.
Kurt allows a twinge of irritation, but he recognizes that this is about the closest Karofsky dares to come to a direct apology. Kurt appreciates the sentiment. And he was kind of asking for it.
“If you don’t decide on something,” Kurt says, “I’ll sort iTunes by the ‘musical theater’ genre, and then you’ll be screwed.”
“I hate hanging out with smart people,” Karofsky says, dropping into Kurt’s bowl chair. “Fuck it. What are the options again?”
Kurt perches on his desk chair, drawing one knee up to his chest and wrapping his arms around it. “Melissa Etheridge, k.d. lang, the Scissor Sisters, Erasure, Elton John, Boy George or Culture Club, the Pet Shop Boys, Queen, David Bowie, and-if you’re really desperate-Right Said Fred, the Indigo Girls, and the Village People.”
Karofsky buries his face in his hands. “I think I got ten percent gayer just hearing that.”
Kurt rolls his eyes. “I also just listed some of the most influential names in music no matter which way you slice it, David. Do you want to do Queen? Everybody loves Queen.”
Karofsky spreads his fingers enough to peek at Kurt. “Queen is pretty fucking legit. But Freddie Mercury had such a kickass voice-I know I can’t do that shit. You can, but I can’t.” He considers. “He also had that bitchin’ mustache going for him for a while.”
Kurt literally shudders. “Right. That was just sheer sex plastered to his upper lip.” He pretends not to notice that Karofsky’s hand moves over his mouth to stifle laughter, instead focusing his attention on scrolling through the library of songs on his computer. “I’m thinking… ‘I Want to Break Free.’ It’s mostly in a lower register.”
Promisingly, Karofsky merely nods.
Kurt plays the song through once, realizes it is-as seems to be the theme for today-far too late to chicken out, and plays it again, this time taking furiously scribbled notes on arrangement ideas.
“All right,” he says on the third run. “It’s three-fifteen. We have an hour and forty-five minutes to teach you how to harmonize and polish this thing up shinier than Freddie’s favorite pair of leather pants.”
Karofsky shakes his head this time. “Just tell me what to do, Hummel.”
By four-thirty, they’ve brought it so far that Kurt’s forgotten to watch the clock-or anything else. He has the lyrics down by now, and the accompaniment they’re getting from Freddie’s original on the computer speakers just makes him want to jump up and…
“Is there room in your brain right now for choreography?” he asks.
“Seriously?” Karofsky says.
Kurt grins-recklessly, perhaps. “Come on. Just follow my lead.”
Reluctantly, Karofsky climbs up out of the bowl chair as Kurt pops up and multitasks.
“I want to break free,” he sings, and if his ‘choreography’ would be better-suited to a mediocre line dance than a show choir stage… he’ll work on it. “I want to break free… I want to break free from your lies; you’re so self-satisfied; I don’t need you… I’ve got to break free…”
Karofsky chimes in, and for someone who learned harmonizing about an hour ago, he’s phenomenal.
“God knows… God knows I want to break free.”
Kurt helps guide him into the second verse, just like Freddie and Roger Taylor would have done.
“I’ve fallen in love,” they sing together, Kurt taking a break from his bad choreography to make slightly manic gestures of encouragement. Karofsky hesitates, but not for long.
“I’ve fallen in love for the first time, and this time I know it’s for real… I’ve fallen in love…”
Kurt grins. He can’t help it, can’t help himself-the mountain of young man that was occupying his bowl chair has loosened up and opened up, and all of the rough edges seem like the feathered outline of something wonderful.
“God knows-God knows I’ve fallen in love.”
Kurt gives up on his crap choreography, and he doesn’t have to announce as much; Karofsky just joins him in boogieing around the room like the biggest pair of losers on Earth.
Karofsky air-guitars righteously through the solo, maintaining that brutal straight face like he always does, and Kurt has to sit down again to laugh.
When the bass fades out, Karofsky spins dramatically on his heel and collapses on the floor. Kurt always assumed that flash a smile was an exaggerated figure of speech, but Karofsky’s lights up his face in a way that makes Kurt’s breath stick somewhere in the middle regions of his lungs, and he rescinds all judgment on the idiom.
The front door slams.
Karofsky sits bolt upright. “I thought-”
“It’s ten minutes to five; he’s back early,” Kurt says blankly, because it sounds a little better than Son of a bitch on a shit sandwich.
Karofsky looks at him, and suddenly Kurt’s no longer surprised about any of it-about the abuse at McKinley; about the kiss; about the fights in the park and the unsettling tension and the tricky contours of their every conversation. Kurt sees, in this single instant, that Karofsky is terrified and deeply shamed, bitter and resentful but paralyzed by that old fear of discovery and repercussions; he’s desperate and helpless and backed into a corner, and there’s no way to keep his head above the water except for pushing other people underneath.
That doesn’t make it right. But Kurt’s seeing now that David Karofsky feels all of these things all of the time, and the effort of containing them, of bottling them all up and keeping them silent, is tearing him apart. Nothing about it is okay; nothing can justify the things he did, but Karofsky is using the only recourse he has. The only masculine emotion in the overflowing jumble is rage, and that’s the only one he can feel safe showing. The only way he can think of to survive this is to turn the destruction outward instead.
Karofsky swallows hard, and in that moment, for that action, Kurt admires his tenacity.
“Well, this blows,” Karofsky says. “I was kind of enjoying being alive for once.”
Kurt does not have time for that talk, although he intends to hold it later in considerable detail.
He slips out of his chair with his heart in his throat, manages not to hesitate before stepping over Karofsky, and starts for the stairs. “Just-we should get this over with. Follow me slowly.”
“B-”
There isn’t time for an objection. Kurt takes the stairs at a run, using the banister both for balance and to haul himself up faster, his heartbeat so loud in his ears that he can’t hear himself think-which bodes rather ill for his powers of persuasion.
Burt has just finished drying his hands on the dishtowel hanging from the oven when Kurt tops the stairs, dizzy and breathless more with the reeling terror than the exertion.
What the hell does this make him-an extraordinary idiot, or a traitor? Both? He knows which is worse, but either way he’s not sure he can bear to see the wave of disappointment crest in his father’s eyes; it’s inevitable now, with what he’s done, one way or another.
“You have to let me explain,” he gasps out as Burt turns bewilderedly. “And please actually listen.”
Burt smiles faintly. “I guess it would be arrogant to expect ‘Hooray, Dad’s home,’ but I can’t say I’m thrilled with the reception, here.”
“Dad,” Kurt says helplessly, and his father’s smile disappears.
“What is it?” he asks, starting towards Kurt. “What happened? Are you okay?”
One of the stairs creaks, close enough that Kurt knows Karofsky is visible over his shoulder. His theory is efficiently proven by the way his father’s eyes snap to the place and narrow.
“What in the hell is he doing here?”
“I invited him,” Kurt says loudly, wanting to kick himself for the way his voice shakes.
Burt turns the sharp, incredulous gaze on him. “Care to tell me why exactly you did that?” Kurt gets out a half-word-some permutation of wait or no or Dad or please-but his father doesn’t wait for the rest. “What the hell were you thinking? What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Dad-”
Burt’s blazing eyes zero in on Karofsky again, and he jabs one finger towards the door. “Out. Now. If you’re not halfway down the street in five seconds, I’m calling the cops.”
“Dad!” Kurt protests. “Will you listen to me?”
His father isn’t even looking at him-Burt’s watching Karofsky slip past Kurt and stride for the front door.
“We were just talking!” Kurt shouts, not that it makes any difference. Maybe his stinging eyes are playing tricks, but it looks like Karofsky flinches as he throws open the door. Kurt fights the choking well of shame and wild fear, the feeling that everything’s imploding all at once, and reaches for his father’s arm. “Dad, it’s not-”
Burt shakes him off, eyes like flint. “What the fuck did you think you were doing?”
Kurt’s going to throw up. He’s going to split open. He’s going to shatter into pieces. “Haven’t you ever heard of a second chance?”
“Kurt,” his father says, staring at him like he’s incomprehensible and deeply offensive, “this is the asshole who chased you out of school. This is the guy who made your life so damn miserable that even after all of that practice shutting out the negative, you couldn’t take it. This is the guy who made you give up. I’ve never seen you give up, not since you were three years old and we could trick you with another toy.” Kurt dares to hope that they might not end up yelling for another half-second, and then his father’s voice begins to rise. “And you let that kid into my house? I don’t know what to say to you, Kurt. I don’t know what you’re saying to yourself to make it seem like there is anything sane about this.”
Kurt’s voice breaks, which adds to the general desire to hop on a bus to Columbus and jump off of the tallest building he can find. “Will you just listen to me?”
“To be honest,” Burt says, “right now, I don’t think I want to hear anything you have to say.”
Splattering on the pavement would probably have been preferable.
Kurt turns around and gropes for the banister-he can’t hear anything over the roar in his ears; he can barely see; his skin’s numb all over. There’s a rhythm that he almost recognizes as his clumsy steps on the staircase, and it bangs out a tune with one lyric-fuck-up, fuck-up, fuck-up.
His legs almost give out when he reaches his bedroom; he wasn’t ready for the change of terrain. He stumbles to the center of the floor and unceremoniously drops onto his knees.
There it is. Thirty seconds, and everything he’s built has gone to shit.
He can’t take any of it back.
“Kurt?” Finn’s voice, from the top of the stairs. “Hey, man, you awake?” A hesitant tread on the steps. Can’t have that.
“Yes,” Kurt calls back. Not much of a quaver. Improvement.
“Just, uh… it’s dinnertime. And you might wanna come up before your dad eats all the garlic bread, because seriously, he’s trying.”
Kurt thinks May he choke on it before he can stop himself, and his stomach flips so violently that eating actually sounds like a very ill-advised pastime. He doesn’t mean that, not really; he’s just-trapped. And when Kurt is backed into a corner, he lashes out, and all the acidic vindictiveness that he goes to such lengths to stifle rises with a fury that he can’t restrict.
He swallows. He pushes his hair back. He stands.
Damn Blaine to hell. This is courage. This is accountability. This is knowing that no one will actually hear him and defending anyway. This is continuing to try when it’s already too late.
If there’s garlic bread to be eaten, Carole probably made spaghetti, which isn’t bad for a last meal. If Kurt was on death row-
Jesus. This is not the end of his life. He and his dad have gone through worse, and he has to remember that. His father is still the best thing that’s ever happened to him, and it’s not going to be a walk in the park, but they’ll get past this.
Kurt goes to a great deal of effort to take deep, calming breaths as he ascends the stairs, and he goes to a greater deal of effort denying that he feels like a man climbing to the gallows.
Finn’s galloped off before Kurt reaches the top, which gives him a few seconds more to compose himself-and he needs them. His father doesn’t look at him as he slides into his seat.
The silence is brittle and brutal at once.
“So…” Finn says slowly. “What’s… up with everybody?”
Burt mutters something unintelligible, and Finn has the sense-or the self-preservation instincts-to let it go.
“The usual,” Carole says warmly, although her eyes flick between Kurt and his father, and there’s a slightly cautious neutrality to her tone. “How about you, hon?”
“Puck is officially not as much of a douchebag,” Finn says happily. “It’s really kind of awesome, because nobody else is as good at fist-bumps as he is. And we hung out with Artie today, too, and just jammed for a while.”
Normalcy. What a foreign concept.
“I’m glad to hear that,” Carole says. “But you probably don’t want to call him a douchebag to his face. Kurt, did you get that job at the toy store?”
“Yes,” Kurt says blandly, twisting a piece of spaghetti around the tines of his fork and trying to think about how angels would be horrifying if their hair actually looked like pasta.
“That’s awesome, dude,” Finn says genuinely-as Finn does everything. “Do you get an employee discount?”
“Yes,” Kurt says again, “although I can’t imagine why you’d want to shop there.”
“Brittany got a tambourine there last year,” Finn says. “It’s seriously the best tambourine ever made. It’s like the Holy Grail of all percussion… things. Haven’t you seen it? It’s pink. She added her own glitter.”
Kurt shakes his head mutely, and the silence rushes back in to fill the vacuum, heavy and claustrophobic.
Kurt focuses on his plate, but he surveys the table subtly, and he sees Carole with her lips pressed together, looking back and forth.
“All right,” she says after forty seconds of Finn’s favorite expression of baffled concern. “Everybody ’fess up. Let’s air the dirty laundry and then wash it, okay?”
Burt puts his fork down and looks up, and every muscle in Kurt’s chest goes tight. “You know that kid Karofsky who started all of Kurt’s problems? Well, when I got home today, Kurt had invited him into the house. Fancy that.”
Somehow the plainness of it hurts more than it would have if Burt had gone for venom.
“Wait,” Finn says. “Why in the hell would you even talk to Karofsky, let alone bring him here?”
Kurt swallows hard, draws a deep breath, and clenches his hand around his own fork to ground himself. “Our first year in glee, you had a really crazy year. Correct?”
“Sure, but I don’t see wh-”
“Would you say you’re not the same person now that you were then?”
Finn’s eyebrows cinch together. It is adorable, but Kurt can’t afford to get distracted. “Well, sure, but-”
“David Karofsky has more issues than Vogue sells during Fashion Week, but we encountered each other in the park, and-”
“How can you talk like this is reasonable, Kurt?” Burt cuts in. “I mean, really? Yeah, people change; great, I’m happy for him. But people don’t do a one-eighty in six months, and a small change from violence and bigotry is not enough to make this guy safe. There is no way you’re getting near that kid, period, ever.” He’s breathing hard enough that Kurt wants to say something about heart attacks, about overexerting himself, about getting too worked up-but he didn’t inherit all of his stubbornness from his mother. “What I don’t get, Kurt, is why I have to remind you what this jerkoff is capable of.”
“Finn,” Kurt says without looking away from his father, and his voice is shaking again, “wasn’t he different? For the week he was in New Directions, when people actually cared about him personally-wasn’t he different then?”
He can hear Finn shift in his chair, but he knows what’ll come. You can’t usually rely on Finn to add single-digit numbers accurately, but he always does the right thing, even when it terrifies him.
“Well… yeah. Sort of. I mean, he was almost a cool guy for, like, two days.”
“Two days,” Burt says, and Kurt remembers whence he inherited his razor-edged sarcasm. “Now that’s stamina. Can we close this conversation on the grounds that it’s completely absurd?”
“Dad,” Kurt insists. “I ran into him for the first time last week, and he hasn’t tried a thing.”
“Yeah?” Burt says. “Well, maybe he’s waiting until you’ve done something stupid, like let him into the house, and he’s saving up for then.”
“Sorry,” Finn says, slowly and carefully, glancing between them, “but… I mean, the dude’s not exactly smart. And he gets hit in the head a lot. So I feel like… I don’t think he’d be able to keep up a face-aid-”
“Façade,” Carole and Kurt automatically correct at the same time, although Kurt doesn’t add “Hon” to the end.
“-yeah, I don’t think he’d be able to keep up a façade like that.”
Kurt’s spaghetti is terrifically interesting.
“I mean,” Finn says, “I still think he’s a dick-”
“Language, sweetheart.”
“Sorry. He’s a… jerk, and I definitely don’t want him hanging out in the house where I have to sleep at night, but-”
“But nothing,” Burt says. “He’s a bully, and he’s physically abusive, and Kurt is his preferred victim. There are no circumstances under which we’re going to allow that to happen again.”
“It won’t.” Kurt’s feet twitch; he wants to stand. Being slight is great when he’s buying clothes, but it always leaves him with this nagging sense that no one can see him or hear him, and he’ll always be perceived as a precocious child. “You’re not the one who’s been talking to him, Dad, okay? Maybe it’s a mistake-I guess it probably is-but it’s my mistake to make, and I’ll face the consequences. This is my battle now.”
“No,” Burt says, “it’s not. It never was. That’s the point of a damn family, Kurt. We’re all on your side, so we’re all in this together, and when that kid attacked you? He came after all of us. And no, I’m not going to let that go. I’m not going to let you walk back into that. But before I declare this conversation one hundred and ten percent over, I have to ask. Was everything we gave up to get you out of his reach just not enough for you, Kurt? Because that’s what it feels like from here-like everything we’ve gone through to make sure you’re safe just didn’t meet your standards, and that’s why you’re jumping back into the same damn thing that was tearing you apart.”
Kurt’s hands are clenched under the table, and his face is on fire. “That’s not true at all. I can’t tell you how grateful I am for everything you did-everything both of you did. All of you; you, too, Finn.”
There’s a pregnant pause, and then Finn pushes at Kurt’s shoulder very gently. “I’ve got your back, Kurt.”
If there is a God, God damn that wonderful, hapless, hopeless boy.
“I would appreciate it,” Burt says, but his voice is softer, “if you’d just… show that. Once in a while. I know nothing has been easy for you for six months, but it hasn’t been a bed of roses here, either.”
“I know,” Kurt says. There are flecks of oregano in this spaghetti sauce. It doesn’t have oregano when it’s in the jar; Carole must have added it herself. “Thank you. And I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make a scene. May I be excused?”
“Y-”
Carole puts a hand on his father’s arm and nods to him. “Go ahead, sweetheart.”
Kurt manages not to run for it.
Initially, he makes a beeline for his bed, faceplants, and hopes the pillow will slowly eat him alive. After five or six minutes of unsuccessfully trying to resemble pillow food, he drags himself up and goes to his desk, where he sits down and starts a new email with no subject line.
David,
I am so sorry about this afternoon.
- Kurt
It’s not much, but it’s all he can really muster, so he sends it.
He’s starting to become aware of a strange polarity in his head-a sense that David and Karofsky are two different people, or at least two divisible halves of the same one. One is a hulking shadow in the hallways that tracks him everywhere he goes, battering him inside and out until he’s so exhausted he can’t believe he can still tremble all over with nerves. The other is a young man who is trying very hard to come to terms with an identity that has rocked the very foundations of his life-who is terrified of who he’ll discover when he finds himself.
It has amused Kurt for many years that the Mac version of Tetris is called “Quinn,” and it still vaguely distracts him now. Unfortunately, this version of her can still kick his sorry ass.
One of the green line pieces has finallydings, he jumps, and the piece efficiently blocks his column and ruins his game.
This had better be worth-
it’s not your fault. it’s not your dad’s fault either, and in all honesty hes probably right.
i mean i guess really it’s my bad. you can tell him i won’t be showing up at your house again. except maybe don’t mention we’re actually emailing so nevermind.
- d
Kurt sits back for a moment, processing that grammatical masterpiece, and then he leans forward and puts his fingers to the keys.
You’re different than you were. That’s what I tried to tell him, but it’s hard when he won’t let me get a word in edgewise. And I didn’t want to tell the entire dinner table about things that aren’t mine to tell, so… I didn’t.
We can always meet elsewhere. Although I don’t think a public place would be very conducive to our recent work, and I doubt Mercedes would let us hang around her place, much as I think she’ll refrain from bringing the smackdown as long as I tell her you’re okay.
We could always try the park. Maybe off in the woodsy area it’d be quiet enough. Because that’s not sketchy, riiiiight?
- Kurt
He gets up, paces a circuit of the room, sits down again, gets up again, and makes his bed. There’s another ding, and he heads straight back for the computer. It’s kind of stupid, really-this isn’t urgent or something.
are you going to pick me up in your skeevy black escalade with all the windows tinted and give me candy????
if you don’t have any candy you could come to my house if you want. i mean it kind of sucks but it has a/c and none of the forest creatures will try to sing along and shit
- d
There is a weird sound in the back of Kurt’s head. He thinks it might be the paltry remnants of his better judgment crying themselves to sleep.
He doesn’t have the heart to tell Karofsky that the Escalade was the first thing to be sacrificed for Dalton tuition fees.
Sounds good to me. Shoot me your address?
His dad is right. He’s reckless. That’s not even the right word; “reckless” has a connotation of bravery, rather than good, old-fashioned stupidity.
If Life was a class, Kurt would be failing out.
Seconds after he’s once again shielded his eyes and hit send, there’s a soft knock on the wall by the stairs.
“Can I talk to you, Kurt?” Carole asks.
Kurt has always been fond of Carole-even when she wore acid-wash mom jeans and had extremely questionable taste in chaise lounges that didn’t match her questionable taste in curtains-but it strikes him now just how difficult it is to refuse her anything. Finn gets his goodness from her, but she has an emotional intelligence that slipped out of the gene pool before she could pass it on, and she’s so fiercely lovable Kurt knows he’ll buck up and take whatever comes next.
“Of course,” he says.
He stands before she’s come all the way down the stairs, more because he’s considering how to negotiate the chairs than because he’s a gentleman, although it’s a bit of both. She smiles at him, slightly wearily-and that aches, because Carole Hudson-now-Hummel absolutely does not need more stress on his account.
He offers her the desk chair and sits on the edge of his bed. She settles, folds her hands, and smiles again, and there’s a hint of Finn in that, too-in her need to make things right and her worry that she doesn’t know how.
“He means well,” she says.
Kurt sucks in a breath, holds it, and lets it out. “I know he does. And I fully understand all of his objections, but… it really is different. And it’s safe; I wouldn’t deliberately place myself in a situation that wasn’t.”
“Kurt,” Carole says gently, “you have to help him. You’re quick, Kurt-more than any of us. And you work things out, and you’re ten steps ahead. Your father’s not unintelligent, but he’s not like you, and when he sees A plus B, it always equals C, because that’s how numbers work.”
Kurt smiles a little. “Variables.”
Carole smiles back. “Finn and I have done a lot of algebra homework together, believe me.” Kurt never doubted it. “The thing is… sweetheart, with the whole thing last year, your dad was a mess. He tries so hard-I know you know that, too; I’m not scolding-and, as far as he could tell, it wasn’t working. He felt like he’d failed you as a father twice-once for not protecting you, and a second time for not teaching you how to protect yourself.”
“Dad knows better than anyone that you have to break a couple eggs to make an omelet,” Kurt says. “In his case, usually half a carton.”
Carole smiles a little at that, too. “Parents are like that, Kurt. Sure, in our heads, we know it can’t be perfect, and it never will be, and there’s nothing we can do about that. But we keep on trying, because the thought of our children hurting is worse than anything else in the world. I mean, we’re always still disappointed when we come up short, but we have to try, you know? I guess it sounds kind of stupid put like that.”
“No,” Kurt says. “It doesn’t.”
Carole shakes her head a little. “Well, it doesn’t matter. The thing is… your dad loves you, Kurt. And he wants what’s best for you, even if he doesn’t let you tell him what you think that is.”
He can’t really fight against that kind of ammunition.
“I’ve just got one question, Carole,” he says.
She’s receptive, but there’s a hint of something else in it-like she’s expecting him to use that sometimes-too-incisive intelligence to shut her down. “Yeah?”
He gets up, crosses the carpet, and hugs her tightly. “Where have you been all my life?”
She kisses his forehead. “Guess I’ll just have to make up for it now.”
After Carole ensures, for the umpteenth time, that Kurt has her cell number on speed-dial-just in case it’s something that she doesn’t condone or anything that he wouldn’t want his father to know about at that particular moment-everyone pretty much leaves him alone for the rest of the night. It’s kind of nice for a while, but the silence gets to be pressing, and he can’t quite bring himself to turn on any music and sing along. The more time he has to think about today, the more he thinks he and his two bites of spaghetti will soon be parted.
Just after nine, his phone rings, and he jumps.
The number belongs to the main Play Faire line, so he puts on his smooth, professional voice as he picks up.
“This is Kurt.”
“Can you come in Wednesday?” Alyssa asks. It’s fortunate that he recognizes her voice-Kurt might admire her disinterested lack of pretext if he wasn’t having the kind of day where a token How are you would make him feel a little better. “Nine in the morning would be good.”
“Absolutely,” Kurt says. That gives him all day tomorrow to mend fences, un-burn bridges, and brace himself for another day of monster-children.
“Great,” Alyssa says, despite the fact that her monotone hasn’t experienced so much as a blip. “Goodnight.”
“Goodn-”
The line’s dead. Kurt rolls his eyes and programs the appointment into the calendar app, much more for the sake of completeness than because he thinks he’s liable to forget.
His email program sings out into the silence again, and Kurt looks. That members’ coupon from the coffee place has arrived at long last, and there is also an email from the Jekyll half of David Karofsky.
It’s just an address-a ways across town, which doesn’t actually mean that much in Lima, but which is enough to reduce the chances of getting caught out. Kurt has to suppress a wince as he wonders just when he started thinking about this like a crime.
On second glance, there are a few lines at the bottom.
i figure same time tomorrow. lemme know if that doesn’t work.
i know you must have some less-gay music somewhere, cause all the broadway musicals are pretty hetero, right? okay I guess Queen was fine. something like that is my vote, only with less shit going down afterwards would be awesome.
- d
Kurt’s face seems to be trying to make four expressions at once. It is slightly painful.
[Chapter 2] [Chapter 4]