Fic: We Three Queens (Glee, Kurt, Santana & Karofsky)
Title: We Three Queens
Fandom: Glee
Pairing/Characters: No real pairings, even if Santana and Dave kiss once... twice now (well, I suppose there is some implied upgrade-to-definite not-just-tension between Dave and Kurt)
Rating: PG-13 (hardly any swearing even...but oops, forgot about the word "blowjob")
Word Count: 8300+ now
Spoilers: yes, for season 2--events take place between "Prom Queen" and into "Funeral" (I even messed with the "Funeral" timeline a little--the magic of fanfic! It's transformative!)
Summary: Look, I don't know: the moment Santana and Dave appeared together with Kurt and Blaine, I was so excited, and the beard storyline hardly got enough play--I can't remember the last time I laughed as hard at Glee as I did when Santana and Dave had their exchange over their Bully Whip walkie-talkies. And I love when Kurt is thoughtful and full of good intentions but also infuriating and sassy. And the idea of the three of those teenagers trying to start a PFLAG chapter was great and it'll probably be forgotten next season. But I wanted to enjoy the subtly shifting alliances that happen when three people are together, and most of all, I wanted to be Santana and be sharply observant and mean about some of the goings-on.
Dumb! But I'm purging so I can hopefully get to writing a LOCI blah before it goes off the air.
The element of surprise was usually one of Santana's specialties. Which is what made it all the more shocking and disappointing when, one day, she slammed her locker and standing about six inches away from her was Kurt Hummel.
"Good afternoon, Ms. Lopez. How are we today?" His smile was somehow both prim and scheming, and she found herself wishing she wasn't wearing her sateen Bully Whips jacket at the moment, because Kurt was clearly in need of a slapping.
She crossed her arms and glared her best I-wish-I-were-pulling-your-hair glare. "Cut the small talk, Prissy. What are you up to?"
Kurt's arms were already crossed, but he cinched them in a manner that suggested he was ready to bring it. "Ouch! That hurts, Santana. It really does. Especially when I owe you so much, for making the school safer and bringing me back to New Directions."
Santana tipped her head and pursed her lips; Kurt cocked an eyebrow.
She sighed, shook her head, and said, "Never send a boy to do a bitch's job: Karofsky told you, didn't he?"
Kurt dropped both the prim and the scheming, and his mouth became a disapproving straight line; seriously, he and Quinn could start a Facial Expressions Club. "David told me about your plan to be prom queen. But I figured the other part of it all on my own, thanks."
Tyring to remain cool but faltering, Santana had a smattering of empathy for Karofsky, who she initially thought had the weakest poker face ever. “Figured out what?”
He leaned forward; she winced. “Figured out that you’re gay too.”
Determined not to draw this out and play dumb the way Karofsky did, Santana sighed and leaned against the row of lockers. “Like I said before: what are you up to?”
The corners of Kurt’s mouth turned up and, now more than ever, Santana longed to backhand him. “Dave and I are going to start a chapter of PFLAG, and I think as his ‘girlfriend,’ you should help too.”
Santana narrowed her eyes. As always, in moments where she felt outmaneuvered, she wished she had the power to make people catch fire. Actually, she thought to herself, it would be poetic justice for the little flamer. Her anger got the better of her and her seriousness and lack of bitchiness alarmed her. “Why are you so determined to make everyone go through this exactly like you? I thought that’s, like, the exact opposite of all the stupid b.s. we sing about in glee club.”
Kurt clearly took offense to the suggestion he was peer-pressuring anyone “I’m not looking for that at all. I’m looking for acceptance, and I believe we can all find that with a little education.”
In response, Santana sighed as loudly as she could without straining a muscle. “Don’t you ever get tired of listening to yourself? Oh, my God, Kurt, you’re worse than church and 7th Heaven reruns combined. I’m going to do this only because you’re blackmailing me-and don’t try denying it; it’s not like I don’t recognize it-not because I want to participate in some rebooted afterschool special with you and Karof-and speaking of Karofsky, what is your investment in that disaster? He threatened to kill you. I mean, last I checked, the gay community hasn’t canonized anyone since Ellen and Portia, and you are not even remotely close to getting a talk show or an American Express commercial.”
Her furious tirade had one positive result: Kurt had clearly not thought about the whys and whats and hows of his investment in Karofsky, or he had never thought of it as an investment. Uncertainty and something that looked suspiciously like guilt flickered across his little Precious Moments face.
Santana put that in her back pocket. Might as well have one sharp, poisoned dart heading into this.
She played it cool, resigned but sullen just like Kurt would expect her to be. “Well, criminal mastermind, tell me when we three queens are meeting.”
Santana wasn’t worried about Karofsky being on board for this whole PFLAG fiasco. It was clear after the whole prom king and queen business that there was an added layer to what had gone on between Kurt and Karofsky to illuminate Karofsky’s preference for dick and that the dick Karofsky preferred over all others belonged to Kurt Hummel.
After finishing her number with Weezy and seeing Brittany getting her prom picture taken with Artie, Santana wanted nothing more than to bail from the gym. She went for a walk and finally found her date out in the student parking lot.
Karofsky was on the opened tailgate of his pickup truck. He looked like he’d been crying, but was now in a weird, sad, silent, thoughtful space that Santana didn’t think she’d ever seen him in before. Not even in study hall, when any kid who was semiconscious had that expression on his or her face.
She boosted herself up beside him and asked, “So do you want to know what happened, or do you not want to talk about it?”
Karofsky’s immediate answer was surprising considering his expression: “Let me guess: that fancy prep-school boy saved the day, and they danced, and the whole school threw them a parade.”
Santana was impressed. “Not bad.” Then she added: “Except the part about the parade. Does teen-movie applause count?”
He didn’t respond. Santana continued looking at her fake-boyfriend, his tight, slumped shoulders, his tie missing in action... he was a mess.
And like a bright bolt of lightning, it struck her. “How exactly did Kurt figure it out, Dave? He didn’t just see you staring at some guy’s ass, did he?”
She was about to ask why the hell anyone would want to make a move on Kurt-I mean, he looked like a Disney Princess in drag, like a Germanic Mulan-when she remembered what Brittany had told her about her brief time “dating” Kurt, how he was soft like a baby, smelled like cucumbers and cream, had hair like a cat’s, and kissed, reluctant and gentle, with pillowy smooth lips.
Between thinking of Brittany’s description of Kurt and thinking of Brittany tonight, beautiful and happy in her dress and tiny hat, Santana kept her judgment to herself.
Almost as though she hadn’t asked the question, Dave wondered aloud, “How is he able to…be like that? Like it doesn’t matter what people think?”
Santana had rolled this over in her mind for several weeks and placed a comforting hand on Dave’s shoulder. “I know. And I guess if we were in some kind of lesson-teaching cartoon or Disney Channel kids show or episode of Degrassi, I’d tell you something about how we all need to embrace who we are, just like him. But that’s stupid and not true. We’re teenagers and we live in the Midwest; we don’t live in Canada or on TV. But before you start thinking Kurt’s perfect or something, you should know he’s also an arrogant, snotty, catty little bitch sometimes. He’s not Tom Hanks in Philadelphia or Greg Kinnear in that movie that’s on TBS all the time. He’s just a kid and he sucks sometimes. Most of the time, actually.”
He looked at her, sort of the way he looked at her when she told him she was gay too, curious and smart and terrified, like the for-real Dave he would be long after they’d all left this backwater shithole-or, Santana supposed, if he stayed trapped here, as a real estate agent or car salesman or whatever. “He asked me to tell everyone. Right there at prom in front of the whole school. And it’s like…you know, after everything, I thought about it for just a second, because maybe…” He stopped, frustrated and confused, and slammed his hand down on the tailgate. “There’s no way! In front of everyone? I mean, that’s freakin’ stupid, right?”
Santana wasn’t sure if he was asking whether the whole situation and Kurt’s expectations were stupid, or if his unexpressed thought that if he were to martyr himself in front of hundreds of peers, Kurt would dump his doo-wop looking boyfriend and run into Dave’s arms was stupid. Frankly, it didn’t matter, because the answer to everything was: yes, freakin’ stupid.
But instead she tried her best to be supportive. Because in a way, she understood. “Sometimes people think they’re being supportive and caring or whatever, but really, they’re just being unrealistic and suffocating and annoying.”
Dave nodded, still looking uncertain and miserable.
Fully embracing her role as Dave’s only ally in this whole dumb situation-after all, she had blackmailed him into pretending to be his girlfriend, so she may as well be half a friend to him, right?-she bumped her shoulder into his and said, “Why don’t we get out of here? I’ve got a couple bottles of Arbor Mist in my locker. We can go hang out at the football field, get drunk, and make fun of everyone’s outfits tonight, okay?”
He rolled his eyes but had a quarter-smile on his face which suggested she’d been successful in bringing him on board her plan.
Santana added, in her friendliest voice, “I could even give you a blowjob.”.
Dave’s eyebrows snapped together and his mouth tightened in an expression of disapproval.
Santana shrugged. “Don’t say I didn’t offer.” She hopped off the tailgate and offered her hand to him.
Dave scoffed. Then put his hand in hers.
Kurt informed Santana that the first meeting of the exploratory committee regarding the PFLAG chapter would meet at the school’s computer lab after glee club (and, for Dave, after track). She was charged with bringing her “boyfriend,” and it was painfully clear to Santana, from Kurt’s expression and slight blush that he and Karofsky had not spoken since prom.
Normally, this sort of oncoming car wreck would be exciting, but the fact of the matter was: Santana felt something, and not even begrudgingly, like friendship for Dave. After junior prom, he had held her hair while she barfed Arbor Mist and cried over Brittany. He even carried her into her house when her legs became too weak and head too cloudy to walk.
Since she turned 13, Santana hadn’t had friends who were guys. She had guys she fooled around with and/or banged (Puck, Sam, Finn) and guys she ignored (Artie, Mike Chang, many other nameless, faceless Lima students, also Finn). The closest thing to a guy friend she had was Kurt, and half the time, she wanted to shove him into a locker. It was nice to have someone around who understood her, who let her be bossy and mean and a mess.
And unlike Brittany, she’d never be in danger in falling in love with this friend.
Santana figured the next best thing to watching an awkward situation play out was to protect one of the parties in question by making the other party as uncomfortable as possible.
“So where’s Pompadour the Prep-School Kid?” she asked, as an opening volley.
“At Dalton, of course. Why do you care?” Kurt was busy fussing around at the keyboard, tapping and confusedly navigating the mouse recklessly around the tabletop.
“This just seems like something the two of you would do together. Or he would encourage you to do, then hog the spotlight for, like, four solo numbers.”
A scathing look over his shoulder was Kurt’s only reply.
“I suppose Blaine knows Karofsky came onto you, but does he know the two of you are going to be gay-acceptance welcome wagon of the greater Lima community? I can’t imagine he’d miss out on an opportunity to horn in and get some attention. Or let you hang around public enemy number one, for that matter.”
This, Santana observed, did not get a scathing look. Kurt was studiously, obviously ignoring her with a tense, straight face.
The face of someone with something to hide.
Santana almost wished she had an emery board. At this point, she should be sharpening her claws within earshot of Hummel. She settled for saying, “Hmm” in her best I-know-I’m-going-to-get-you tone and opened up her Glamour magazine.
With the timing of a man born for the stage, Dave Karofsky walked in shortly after that cue. He looked sheepish and uncomfortable for the millisecond he looked at Kurt, then let his eyes skip over to Santana, clearly looking for support. She smiled broadly.
As a result, Dave looked more uneasy and miserable. “Ugh,” thought Santana.
Without facing either one of them, Kurt announced, “There’s already a PFLAG chapter in Lima. It has a PO Box and an e-mail address.”
With zero implication of curiosity or caring, Santana asked, “So?”
Kurt clearly didn’t know where to go next now that he wasn’t on some insurmountable crusade. “Well...I guess we e-mail and ask for support materials? Or...a meeting?” He finally swiveled his chair and looked at his two reluctant comrades-in-arms.
Santana felt the full burden of throwing everything in Kurt’s face fell to her. “What are you looking at us for? It’s not like we signed up for this! Or know about this at all! I mean, I barely know how I end up registered for classes. And in case you haven’t noticed, Dave has been totally miserable since you put him on the spot in the middle of the dance floor at prom.”
That finally changed Dave’s expression from hangdog. To horrified, but still: it was a change. He shouted her name angrily.
“Don’t worry, DK, I got this one. Well, fearless leader, what now? Just tell us what you want us to do or say? Or is it disappointing that we’re not Perfect Preppy Blaine, always with the right answer.”
Kurt seemed caught between fury and shell-shocked sadness, and when he spoke, his voice trembled. “What exactly is your problem with Blaine? A month ago, you were defending him, and me, from...” he faltered, looking nervously and almost apologetically at Dave, “...from...”
“Me?” Dave’s voice was impatient and sharp and, in the moment, Santana was almost proud of him.
“Well...” Kurt’s perfect little brow creased. “...yes.”
An uncomfortable silence seeped into the room, and Santana found herself thinking that even with the exciting opening moments, this whole thing was turning out to be more miserable and annoying than she had anticipated.
And then Dave stunned both her and Kurt. “Look...just...write an e-mail and ask if they help start support groups. That’s what I did in my youth group to start...anyway, just e-mail. It doesn’t have to be much. They will ask you more questions and we’ll probably get someone over here in a few weeks.”
Kurt looked at him with a mix of wonderment and still-bubbling fury until Dave met his gaze.
“Well, at least you two have shut up now. I’m going home.” And with that, Dave slung his gym bag over his shoulder and exited the computer lab.
Santana knew she should be pissed she was lumped in with Kurt, but still: she couldn’t hide her prideful smile. “That’s my man,” she said to Kurt, who could only roll his eyes in response.
The next day, as she and Karofsky were walking the halls of school as a happy couple, he said, genuinely but reluctantly,“I’m sorry for...whatever.”
Santana faux-snuggled under his arm, and she could feel him barely suppress an irritated sigh. “Oh, DK, you didn’t tell me to shut up. That’s the only reason you’re still alive.”
“Right,” he said coolly. She subtly punched him in the side.
“So did you talk to Kurt? Apologize to him?”
In response, Dave’s unconsciously tightened his arm. “No. Not yet.”
“Just remember: he’s not perfect.”
Dave surprised her with his response: “But still, I was...I was pretty terrible to him. Remember? Every time I look at him I just feel...”
She almost made a joke at Dave’s expense in that instance--that sentence was begging to end with a half dozen different lewd phrases--but she managed to contain herself. She did, however, give him the best advice she could: “Guilt is for the weak; regret nothing.” He stopped walking and shot her a look. “What? It was, like, one of three useful things Coach Sue taught us.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Santana saw Brittany rounding the corner with Artie, Tina, and Mike. In a moment, anger and longing and hurt exploded through her. She squeezed Dave’s hand until he said, “Ow!” angrily.
“Now it’s your turn to shut up. Kiss me and make it convincing,” she said with all the cool fury she could manage.
Santana wasn’t sure whose look of disappointment was more unbearable. She wished she could have a do-over; she would have closed her eyes to avoid seeing Dave’s expression and Brittany’s reaction.
It wasn’t fair, she thought, to so quickly know the gnawing feeling of guilt.
It was clear to Santana when she and Kurt and Dave next met that one of the boys had reached out to the other. She couldn’t tell who, but though both of them were still pretty quiet, there was less tension in the air and much less avoided eye contact.
Kurt folded his hands and balanced them on top of his knee; he looked very official and very prissy and very ridiculous, in Santana’s opinion. “Well, David was right: I received a response from a very nice lady named Marjorie, and she has e-mailed discussion group topic suggestions, pamphlets, and flier templates. Also, she said that in a few weeks, she’ll be done teaching at the junior college, and she’ll meet with us to set up a plan for the next school year.”
Alarmed that Kurt was overlooking the obvious, Santana blurted, “What about Nationals? Kurt, we’ll be gone for practically a week before school gets out. And I don’t know about you, but I plan to practice every night after school for this stupid tryout that decrepit Jesse St. James is demanding we have.”
The bow of Kurt’s pursed mouth tightened. “Oh, right.” Then “What song are you doing?”
Santana folded her arms and scowled. The truth was that she hadn’t chosen. She’d been listening to a lot of Amy Winehouse lately and had been considering something similar to “Valerie.” But she’d also been listening to Fiona Apple’s Extraordinary Machine. It had come out when she first started listening to the radio and was dreaming of being a star like J. Lo. Back then, she didn’t really have the time for the old-timey-sounding, undanceable songs. But now, while wallowing in heartbreak, she was finally starting to understand its pull. She thought about singing “Window,” a song that she felt spoke to her attitude towards Brittany and Artie, but any time she reached the verse “It may look like I'm concentrated on a very clear view/But I'm as good as asleep,” she felt the threat of tears.
“Well, I’m going to do a song from Gypsy,” Kurt pronounced grandly, as though sharing meant she owed him something.
Santana hated to repeat herself, but she went with the simple and easy, “So?”
“Look, are we going to do something besides talk about glee club or argue or whatever? I have a calc final to study for,” Dave snapped.
Santana wasn’t sure what it was about his tone, but she and Kurt looked at each other and were suddenly joined in an allegiance.
“Look, Pythagorean, you can do as much math homework as you want. If we want to spend our gay club talking about glee, I think that’s actually a pretty legitimate use of our time.”
“Don’t call it ‘gay club,’” Kurt corrected halfheartedly.
“Whatever,” Santana replied.
Dave pointedly unzipped his backpack and removed an enormous textbook. “I’m not having anything to do with fliers, so you can forget it,” were the last words he said before putting in his earbuds.
Santana turned to Kurt and said, “Well, I was thinking about Amy Winehouse or Fiona Apple...”
While sitting in the choir room, waiting for Mr. Schuester arrive, Santana sacrificed her half-formed evil plan to torpedo Kurt’s grand notions for PFLAG, and she did so in the name of curiosity.
“Why haven’t you told Brylcreem about this whole thing?” she asked.
It was amazing what genuine interest instead of snarkiness could invoke. Kurt looked at her with his giant Sailor Moon eyes, opened his mouth to speak, and produce only a quiet, empty stream of breath.
He paused, then took another run at it. “I...don’t know. I guess because I forced you into it. I forced Dave into it too. I don’t think Blaine would...approve. And he and Dave seem to fight every time they see each other. Like, physically.” Kurt looked troubled and puzzled by his own motivations.
Santana felt other influences at work, other reasons. The way Kurt punched the word “approve,” for example, suggested that he almost resented the idea that Blaine would have the nerve to judge him for anything. And the whole Dave bit... she let that go. Entirely too much to unpack there.
The truth was: Princess Porcelain was unsure and confused and was doing some of this for the wrong reasons. And that was enough for her.
The next meeting should have been cancelled. Santana knew it. Kurt probably knew it. They showed up together and were surprised to find Dave waiting, head once again buried in a math book.
Their combined steely silence was enough to spook him from his concentration. “What?”
Santana could barely contain her tears. “That ascot-wearing idiot said...”
Kurt tutted and stroked her hair; his tenderness should have been annoying, but Santana silently found it comforting.
While she wept angrily, some kind of nonverbal exchange had clearly been happening without her knowledge: Dave closed his book and awkwardly said, “I’m sure you were great?” The tentative question, directed more to Kurt than to her, made her laugh.
“Wonderful. Just wonderful. Are you part of the drama club?” Kurt said to Dave in his most sweet-toned-but-annoyed voice.
“Well? What do I know?” He hovered nervously, clearly disliking his close proximity to a crying girl.
Frustrated, Santana snapped, “You’re supposed to be my boyfriend. Do something! Go and kick his ass!”
This caused Dave to shoot Kurt an alarmed look, as though to say, “I swear I’m not going to hit anyone ever again.”
In response to that bit of conspiracy--no matter how well-intended--Santana socked Dave in the area between his shoulder and pectoral.
The varsity football, hockey, and shot-putting star flinched visibly and snapped, “Damn it, Santana!”
“Why do I have to do everything myself? I’m going to shave all his ugly hair off and turn that neckerchief into a noose!” She started to charge for the door, but Dave handily stopped her by picking her up and moving her further into the computer lab.
“Just calm down already. You’re not going to do anything to...whoever this is.”
“Jesse St. James. He’s Rachel’s ex-boyfriend,” Kurt helpfully provided.
Dave matter-of-factly replied, “I don’t care” and turned his attention to Santana, who was biting her lip to keep from swearing or telling these two stupid boys to just run off together already and leave her alone to do things her way: angrily and with violence. “If you get suspended with fifteen days of school left in the year, you are being stupid.” Santana took a breath to start screaming about being called stupid, but Dave kept talking. “Take it from someone who was suspended in the middle of the year when it actually sort of pays off. You won’t get to go to New York or skip the last day of classes or anything worth doing. So chill out. Hit me a couple of times if it helps. But don’t...”
Santana’s glare stopped him from completing his sentence with “...be stupid.”
She sniffled, socked Dave another time in exactly the same spot, then said, “Well, what are we supposed to do? He’s wrong and someone needs to kick his ass.”
Eyebrows running in an irritated parallel line, Dave rubbed the tender, assaulted area and said, “I don’t know. Go back and talk to Mr. Schuester. He’s always good for some kind of pep talk that seems to make everything better.” He thought for a bit, and Santana watched him expectantly, seeing out of the corner of her eye that, without knowing it, Kurt was reflecting her expression of anticipation. “Or go talk to the rest of the glee club dorks and get rid of this guy.”
“Jesse. St. James,” Kurt interjected.
Dave frowned and shook his head. “Okay, whatever, I’m not saying that name. The point is...just...both of you go. I’m sure somewhere they’re all waiting for you. I know I wouldn’t know what to do without the two of you freakin’ pestering me and forcing me to do stupid things I barely want to do.”
Even though his last sentence was sarcastic and largely directed at her, Dave’s understanding of her and Kurt’s strong position within the glee club made Santana malevolently delighted and determined to prove to him just how quickly she and Kurt could collapse Jesse St. James’s mini-judging empire. She grabbed Kurt’s hand and said, “You’re right, even though you’re being a total ass. We’re going to ruin that jerk like he was Brian Dunkleman.”
Unenthusiastically, Dave said, “Great. Whatever. Get out of here.”
Santana smiled at Kurt, who continued to watch Dave with one of his transparently mixed expressions. “You heard him, Prissy.”
It wasn’t until they reached the door of the glee club that Kurt spoke, pronouncing in a mildly dazed voice that they hadn’t even discussed when to make an appointment with Marjorie to roll out the PFLAG support group.
An hour later, Santana sprinted into the computer lab, nearly knocking Dave out of his chair as she flung herself at him. “His ass is fired!” she shouted triumphantly, which drew a few angry “shush”es from an afterschool homework club.
Kurt trailed behind with a tiny, smug smile. “It was like shooting fish in a choir-room shaped barrel.”
Santana was covering Dave’s face with loud, lip-glossful pecks, and she could feel the blush creeping across his cheeks. “Okay, I’m really glad for you two and all, but I’m trying to study, like everyone else in here.”
“Who cares what these losers are doing? Let’s celebrate! DK, you have a Wii at your house, right?” Santana knew damn well Dave had a Wii; she had spent several nights playing Mario Kart in the Karofsky rec room, under the guise of fooling around with him.
“Yes,” he said reluctantly, and his muscles all seemed to freeze under her. Santana could tell he was looking at Kurt and panicking.
She nearly shook her head in exasperation. Boys.
“Well, I say we head over to your place, order pizza, and kick the shit out of Rock Band.” Santana punctuated her declaration by squeezing Dave’s neck and sighing like all her abuela’s stories taught her: “Our hero.”
Kurt finally chimed in. “You have Rock Band?”
It was a good thing she was still sitting on Dave’s lap, blocking his Adam’s apple from Kurt’s view, because Santana swore it took Dave ten seconds to painfully swallow about a gallon of saliva, all to force out one syllable: “Yeah.”
Kurt continued: “That’s the one with the singing, right?”
Santana could tell Kurt’s single-mindedness took the pressure off, as Dave repeated “Yeah” with less nervous effort.
Clapping his hands together in anticipation, Kurt beamed, “What are we waiting for?”
Almost as if they were a real couple, Santana and Dave shared a look that communicated much with no words.
The other reason Santana suggested Dave’s place was because she knew his parents had been planning to attend a couples’ retreat for weeks, and she, Dave, and Kurt would have the place to themselves. She’d scored some Mike’s Hard Lemonade from one of her cousins, and though it wasn’t enough to get any of them drunk, it was the principle: if parents were gone, you had to imbibe some alcohol.
Dave wrinkled his nose. “Disgusting. I’m not drinking that.”
Jutting her hip out and flipping her hair, she retorted, “But you’ll drink warm discount light beer?”
As Kurt looked through the Karofsky family’s movie collection, Dave nervously looked at him, then back to Santana. “I don’t...I don’t drink. Ever.”
Sensing this was some sort of family thing or another downer moment, Santana moved on. “Fine, I’ll drink yours. Kurt, that leaves you with two.”
Kurt looked at the bottles, which appeared to be about as close to soda pop as an alcoholic beverage could be, and said, “I’ll have one. To start. My last experience drinking didn’t go so great.”
Santana sighed. “Let’s play, you two buzzkills.”
It turned out that the selections were Beatles Rock Band (Dave’s parents) and Green Day Rock Band (the disdain in Dave’s voice was clear when he said, “They thought I’d like it”; the wrapper had never been removed from the case). She looked coolly at Kurt, who had performed at least two Beatles songs (that she knew of) and was fairly chomping at the bit, turning the Beatles cartridge over and over in his hands. Contrariness took over, and Santana took the plastic off of Green Day. “Maybe it’ll be more fun than you think,” she said, though she was already rolling her eyes at the tracklist.
Santana claimed the mike, though she didn’t exactly have to fight for it. Kurt picked up the guitar, looking at it like it was far more complicated than it was. After Dave finished setting up the whole semi-involved coordination between tv and gaming system, he turned to see Kurt tangled, like a failed parachute jumper, in the guitar strap.
“Come on, Hummel, it’s not rocket science.” And with that, he exasperatedly, and without much thought, stepped about as close to Kurt as he could without hugging him and adjusted the guitar controller while Kurt stared at him, startled and confused. It only took a few seconds for Dave to sort out the guitar situation and he didn’t even bother to look at Kurt’s befuddled expression when Kurt murmured “Thanks.”
It was the first time the situation between her two gays was reversed and so drastically at that.
Santana thought back to her abuela’s stories again.
Frankly, this was better.
The pure delight from the idea that drama was brewing was enough for Santana to throw a lot of enthusiasm into her performance of “American Idiot.” Between her vocals and Dave’s drumming (better than Finn’s, even if it was fake), they managed to keep Kurt’s pitiful, plonking performance afloat.
“At least we weren’t booed off the stage. Okay, as much as it pains me to give up control of vocals, I will do so for the good of the band,” Santana said, thrusting the mike into Kurt’s hands and stripping him of the guitar. “I imagine you know some of these numbers from the stage musical?”
Kurt looked disdainfully at Santana. “Why would anyone want to go to a staged mixtape? Musical theater is supposed to be just that: the melding of music and the...” Absorbing the blank looks of both his companions, Kurt snapped his mouth shut, put his nose in the air, and said, “Never mind.” He looked at Dave and nearly demanded, “‘Wake Me Up When September Ends.’”
They lasted two more songs (“Longview” and “Good Riddance”) before dabbling in Beatles, then throwing down the instruments in favor of Mario Party. Santana felt relaxed, almost giddy, as they goofed around, talked about teachers, gossiped about glee club (mostly her and Kurt, but Dave paid more attention than he usually did).
By 2 AM, Santana was spent and crashed on the couch next to Dave. With 2 ½ Mike’s coursing through her blood stream (Kurt gave up on his second), she drowsily leaned into him and closed her eyes. Moments or minutes later, Kurt sunk down into the couch, not far from her, and she settled her legs over his lap.
Her last thought, as she drifted off to sleep listening to Dave and Kurt continue to talk over her in hushed tones, was that if Kurt could guarantee her that every PFLAG meeting would be like this, she may even hang up a stupid flier or two.
Santana awoke to two sensations: one of having her mouth glued shut by formerly sweet, now almost disgustingly rancid Mike’s Hard Lemonade; and the other of a warm, spongy, moving body pillow supporting her face.
That pillow was lightly snoring too.
Looking through her hair, she saw Dave’s face and was startled for a moment or two, particularly because she could feel she was braless and skirtless, wearing a tee shirt that was very much not hers. But then it dawned on her: right, she undressed herself, mostly sober, and crawled into bed with Dave.
He didn’t even protest all that much, which was pretty cute.
Actually, he was pretty cute, all things considered--you know, impartially, as a lesbian who had mostly had sex with guys. Sure, he ran a little chunkier than the guys she’d been with, and he could look a little like a Neanderthal when sullen or angry (which was...kind of all the time). But while friendly or smiling or putting up with her b.s. or, like now, sleeping, he looked sort of sweet, like a very big kid who could grow stubble.
He awoke to her very direct stare. “What?” he mumbled (very predictably, Santana thought to herself).
“Can’t I gaze adoringly on the face of my boyfriend as he sleeps?” she said in a tone she imagined Rachel would use while trying to be cute with Finn, while actually sounding crazy as hell.
“Santana, it’s too early for this,” Dave groaned and stretched, but did not boot her out of bed or even out of position leaning on his chest.
“Actually, I was just thinking you were pretty handsome.” He scoffed, and Santana half-slapped his chest. “I’m serious! You know, you’d think my opinion would matter, what with having seen Puck naked many times. Many, many times. Many.” She thought for a minute. “Plus I made out with Sam. Never got him to put out, though.”
“You know, for a lesbian, you have done it with more guys that...well...” Dave trailed off, uncomfortable to admit even in the comfort of his bedroom with his lesbian girlfriend, his parents miles and miles away, that he very much wanted to, and had not, sexed guys.
Santana smiled at him, and he shyly smiled back. She repeated, “I am serious.”
He shook his head and said, with no small degree of effort, “You know, when this all started, I was so pissed and miserable and...I don’t know, more pissed. But you’re really...you’re the coolest girl I know.”
Santana felt the sting of the words, how similar they were to any kind, supportive, genuine things Brittany had said to her over the last few months. She wished she could blame the tears in her eyes on a hangover or being sleepy or having left her makeup on (she had, and she could see where her mascara and liquid eyeliner had smudged on Dave’s tee shirt). “Oh, DK,” was all she could manage for a while. He tousled, then smoothed her hair, while she composed herself.
“You’re such a girl,” he said, after she’d finally stopped the waterworks.
“Oh, shut up.” She swatted him as hard as she could while still lazily reclining on him. “I was going to apologize for making you kiss me at school a few weeks ago, but now I realize I should have made you go for second base.”
He shrugged. “It wasn’t so bad.”
Rolling her eyes, Santana said, “Thanks.” Dave shrugged again, and she half-smiled: yeah, what did she expect? But then again...
She leaned forward and kissed him, her lips only slightly parted. She kept her eyes open, as did Dave...until he leaned into it a little more and tilted his head a bit, moving his lower lip to catch hers. His hand dropped to the small of her back, and she thought about the way she could feel him thinking about every change he made, opening his mouth a little wider, tentatively touching his tongue to hers. He practically radiated the thoughts, “Am I doing this right? Do I feel something?”
After a few more minutes, Santana pulled back and looked him square in the eye. “Well, are you cured now? No more gay?”
Dave looked torn between laughing and crying as he shook his head. Then he pressed his palm into the small of her back so that she squished into him. “Maybe if you had brushed your teeth. Your breath is gross.”
Eyes wide, Santana finally raised herself on her elbows and socked him as hard as she could in the left shoulder. “You dick. Your breath is totally terrible too.”
She took another swing, which he managed to block, and the two of them dissolved into laughter together. After that passed, Dave’s expression shifted into its sad, serious mode. “I don’t get it. How did you manage to have so much sex with all those guys? Wasn’t it...I don’t know, bad? Bad for you?”
Santana wasn’t sure how much detail or description or bird and/or bee to give Dave. She wasn’t all that sure how much of what she’d done up until now she understood herself. So she shrugged. “Some was and some wasn’t. I think that’s just sex, really. I mean, I didn’t do anything I didn’t want to, you know? You said it yourself: it wasn’t all that bad kissing me, right?” He nodded, very seriously, which made Santana want to tell him all over how cute he could be. “Well, sex with guys is like that for me. It’s not bad; it’s just not being with...a girl. That’s...everything I ever want.” She pushed forward and looked into Dave’s hazel eyes. “DK, as not bad as it was kissing me, I’ve been leaning my boobs up against you for at least 15 solid minutes and...” She slid her hand under the sheets and gave his crotch a friendly, brief squeeze and watched his eyes widen in surprise, “...you have absolutely nothing going on down there. By now, Puck would be at full mast. In fact, he probably already would have...”
Dave nearly hid his face in his pillow. “Yikes, okay, I get it. Ugh. Puckerman is disgusting.”
Smirking, Santana teased him by beeping his nose several times. “Not your type, huh? I guess not, if you have a thing for Hummel. Like ‘em muscley-skinny and blond and smooth? Believe me, I get it.”
From that point, they somehow ended up in a half-play, half-serious wrestling match, him calling her Santana Stink Breath, and her shrieking protest and trying her damnedest to play dirty pool and go for his crotch again when they were both startled by a tentative tapping on the door.
Sharing a mutually surprised look, Dave and Santana both said, “Yes?”
From the other side of the door, Kurt’s cautious, tense voice said, “Can I come in?”
Santana narrowed her eyes and made an evil kissyface at Dave, which was enough for him to let go of her wrists and let her off the mattress. “Um...just a minute,” she said, smoothing her hair and then her day-old lip gloss from her earlier Karofsky kissing experiment.
Looking to Dave for a final okay as she leaned back against the headboard, she saw his nearly invisible nod, then said, “Okay.”
The knob turned and Kurt leaned uncertainly through the open door.
Next to admitting Rachel Berry had talent, there was nothing Santana found harder to admit than the fact that Hummel could occasionally look sexy as hell, and this was one of those times: bedhead, full lips aglow, pale skin dabbed with pink from sleep, a tight white tee he had been wearing under his ridiculous fucking jacket (no doubt some important gay New York designer), and his white skull pants from the day before. The worst part was that he wasn’t even trying, didn’t even know it, and was about as pure as any nun from her Catholic elementary school years, she would wager. Purer even.
Santana felt Dave’s breath catch in his chest; she hoped she didn’t have to call 911 on his behalf.
Eyes trailing from Santana’s bra casually hanging off one bedpost to Dave’s tee shirt, still smudged with her makeup, to Dave’s mouth, she awkwardly realizes also smudged with her makeup, Kurt looked at the two of them, startled.
They’d had such a fun time the night before that Santana decided not to toy with him: “Come on, Kurt, you have sleepovers with your gal pals. I know you do. You and yappy Berry and Frenchie Davis talk about it all the time.”
Still looking a little put out and befuddled, he replied, “Not all the time. We’ve only had two. And we all sleep in separate beds.”
Kurt’s judgmental attitude made Santana’s blood start to boil, but she tried desperately to remind herself that Rachel had kissed his stupid boyfriend at that drunk party earlier in the year, so that probably lingered somewhere in his little princess brain, and also to remember that any of the myriad bitchy things she wanted to shout at the little vestal virgin (like, for example, Kurt’s status as a vestal virgin--whatever “vestal” meant) would hurt Dave’s feelings too. “Look, I know it’s hard to believe, since I blackmailed him and all, but DK is my friend. I gave him a friendly little peck, he insulted my breath, and we’ve been fighting ever since.”
It was her privilege as the storyteller to leave out Karofsky’s tentative tongue action, her hand on his crotch, and her teasing mention of his thing for Hummel.
Torn between feigning disinterest and the relief that was lighting up his spooky Elijah Wood eyes, Kurt leaned a little further into the door.
But apparently, Santana wasn’t the only one struggling to keep her temper. “You dated Brittany.” It was said so cool and factually that for a moment, Santana was scared Dave was talking to her. But then she looked at his face.
Dave’s eyes were locked on Kurt.
Kurt looked back, seemingly powerless against the matter-of-factness in Dave’s voice. “I did. I did for a while. Before I...came out.”
The line of questioning continued in the same Horatio Caine voice. “Did she kiss you?”
Damn, he was cold.
Kurt’s blushing was unmistakable. Unlike Dave, it didn’t take much to get him glowing red. But Santana had to given Hummel credit: he was honest and didn’t hesitate when he said, “Yes.”
“And you kissed her?”
That caused Kurt’s embarrassment to crack a little, and his usual snotty aloofness made an appearance. “Well, of course I did. She was kissing me.”
It was like watching the world’s gayest tennis match--which, Santana pondered, made it pretty, pretty gay--looking from Dave, who seemed to be waiting for Kurt to make the next leap himself, and Kurt, who was blushing and now fully inside the door (though clinging to the doorknob like a life preserver) and silently challenging Dave to say whatever was on his mind.
Finally, Kurt cracked. “I suppose you’re suggesting that it’s not really my place to judge you and Santana for making out or whatever you were doing in here.”
“We were making out and yes, that’s what I’m saying. I told you that I don’t know if I really am...anything. And if Santana and I help you with the PFLAG thing, I don’t see why or how anything else we do is really your business. I mean, you have a boyfriend. He’s your boyfriend now, right?”
Kurt’s eyes slipped to Santana’s a moment, checking to see if she had shared any of their choir room confessions. All she could do was shake her head slightly. Kurt returned his gaze to Dave and a charge hit the air. Santana remembered something about this in her science class, but she’d be damned if she could remember the name of it, the thing where two people are attracted to each other and science and chemicals and all that shit.
Whatever, she’d gotten a C- on that test. Anyway, science was happening. And from the look of him, lips slightly parted and eyes blazing but confused, Precious Moments didn’t know what to do with it.
This, Santana thought, was not the drama she had in mind when she got herself all stirred up singing Green Day last night.
“I do. You’ve met him. Blaine.”
“Yeah. And you two suck face, right?”
Rather than look embarrassed or defeated, like Santana thought he would, Kurt suddenly looked very defiant and, unfortunately for her boyfriend, about a million times hotter than ever. “Yes. He asked me before he did it the first time too.”
Dave jolted as though he’d been shocked.
Judging by the way Kurt twisted the doorknob, he instantly regretted what he’d said. But Dave seemed to shut down. His eyes were locked on the carpet to his left, and Santana could feel the unsteady rhythm of his breathing. She could feel his heart breaking and it made her very, very angry at Kurt all over again, even though she was sure some of the stuff that went down that the two of them were talking about over her head was equally Dave’s fault. Santana just couldn’t abandon him to being unhappy again...mostly because she’d been so happy for the last 12 hours and knew he had been too.
Before she could send them both to their corners, Kurt took a few steps forward and sat on the edge of the bed by Santana’s feet. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.”
Dave’s breathing hadn’t changed. Santana was afraid he was going to cry or was crying, and it made her want to kick Hummel from his perch on the bed. Instead, she put a hand on Dave’s shoulder and squeezed lightly.
“But you’re right.” Dave’s voice cracked when he said it and Santana found herself welling up with empathy tears. He’d been right this morning: she was such a girl, at least lately.
Kurt leaned forward, over Santana, like she was just furniture or a prop, and put his hand on Dave’s knee through the blanket.
That was enough for her. “Jesus, Kurt, just get off your ass and hug him already. Do something, but don’t lay on me. I’ve already made out with the one gay guy I wanted to get down with.”
Both boys looked at her, Kurt with a small degree of embarrassment (finally) and Dave, his eyes bright with tears. Santana straightened her posture, and Kurt finally took the hint and leaned back, removing his hand from Dave’s knee, which, of course, made Santana feel like a total cockblocker.
“Sorry, Santana.” It sounded about as sincere as Santana imagined Kurt would ever be towards her in a moment like this. She was impressed, actually.
“Apology accepted,” she replied, about as sincerely as she could ever sound when talking to the little brat.
“David?” Kurt said tentatively, standing at the foot of the bed, hands clasped in front of him like a choir boy.
Sighing, Dave replied, “Yes, apology accepted, and I’m sorry too. Now can we please drop it?”
Kurt replied with a thread of hurt in his otherwise formal tone. “Of course.”
Dave heard it too, because he looked into Kurt’s face, unshed tears faded, and said, “You were on the football team for a little while, right?”
Kurt nodded.
Finally throwing back the covers, Dave rose from the bed to reveal his McKinley High tee and standard-issue white boxers. Kurt was hardly subtle as he took in Dave’s bare legs, hairy shins and well-muscled thighs, but Dave seemed too focused to notice.
But Santana noticed. Oh, did she ever notice. This was not the cartoony-hearts-and-bluebirds way Hummel stared at Pompadour. This was the eyeball equivalent of whatever was in the air moments earlier:
There was something going on. It had been going on since this whole stupid PFLAG thing started. And both of them were too dumb or confused or virginal and out of touch to get it.
Dave took Kurt’s hand and gave him one of those footballer backpat/handshake/hug things. The two of them lingered in each other’s personal space for a moment or two longer, then Dave said, “There. Done. Good game. Right?”
Kurt nodded and looked as though he were trying not to lose his mind. Santana imagined there would be a guilty set of texts or a phone call to that shiny-topped Luke Perry kid later in the day. Hummel had a lot wrong with him, but his conscience was too enormous to let him even have the most casual of naked feelings for another guy.
“Okay, now can both of you get out of my room so I can get dressed?” For the first time it was seemed like ages, Dave was looking only at Santana, and it only took a moment to realize that it was because he still thought she was the coolest girl he knew, and that he was proud of her for not flipping out at any point during the entire big production.
She hoped that the look she gave him in return said she was proud of him too. And also that Kurt was going to have a very long, tough summer ahead of him if the three of them continued to hang out, for a number of reasons.
Fandom: Glee
Pairing/Characters: No real pairings, even if Santana and Dave kiss once... twice now (well, I suppose there is some implied upgrade-to-definite not-just-tension between Dave and Kurt)
Rating: PG-13 (hardly any swearing even...but oops, forgot about the word "blowjob")
Word Count: 8300+ now
Spoilers: yes, for season 2--events take place between "Prom Queen" and into "Funeral" (I even messed with the "Funeral" timeline a little--the magic of fanfic! It's transformative!)
Summary: Look, I don't know: the moment Santana and Dave appeared together with Kurt and Blaine, I was so excited, and the beard storyline hardly got enough play--I can't remember the last time I laughed as hard at Glee as I did when Santana and Dave had their exchange over their Bully Whip walkie-talkies. And I love when Kurt is thoughtful and full of good intentions but also infuriating and sassy. And the idea of the three of those teenagers trying to start a PFLAG chapter was great and it'll probably be forgotten next season. But I wanted to enjoy the subtly shifting alliances that happen when three people are together, and most of all, I wanted to be Santana and be sharply observant and mean about some of the goings-on.
Dumb! But I'm purging so I can hopefully get to writing a LOCI blah before it goes off the air.
The element of surprise was usually one of Santana's specialties. Which is what made it all the more shocking and disappointing when, one day, she slammed her locker and standing about six inches away from her was Kurt Hummel.
"Good afternoon, Ms. Lopez. How are we today?" His smile was somehow both prim and scheming, and she found herself wishing she wasn't wearing her sateen Bully Whips jacket at the moment, because Kurt was clearly in need of a slapping.
She crossed her arms and glared her best I-wish-I-were-pulling-your-hair glare. "Cut the small talk, Prissy. What are you up to?"
Kurt's arms were already crossed, but he cinched them in a manner that suggested he was ready to bring it. "Ouch! That hurts, Santana. It really does. Especially when I owe you so much, for making the school safer and bringing me back to New Directions."
Santana tipped her head and pursed her lips; Kurt cocked an eyebrow.
She sighed, shook her head, and said, "Never send a boy to do a bitch's job: Karofsky told you, didn't he?"
Kurt dropped both the prim and the scheming, and his mouth became a disapproving straight line; seriously, he and Quinn could start a Facial Expressions Club. "David told me about your plan to be prom queen. But I figured the other part of it all on my own, thanks."
Tyring to remain cool but faltering, Santana had a smattering of empathy for Karofsky, who she initially thought had the weakest poker face ever. “Figured out what?”
He leaned forward; she winced. “Figured out that you’re gay too.”
Determined not to draw this out and play dumb the way Karofsky did, Santana sighed and leaned against the row of lockers. “Like I said before: what are you up to?”
The corners of Kurt’s mouth turned up and, now more than ever, Santana longed to backhand him. “Dave and I are going to start a chapter of PFLAG, and I think as his ‘girlfriend,’ you should help too.”
Santana narrowed her eyes. As always, in moments where she felt outmaneuvered, she wished she had the power to make people catch fire. Actually, she thought to herself, it would be poetic justice for the little flamer. Her anger got the better of her and her seriousness and lack of bitchiness alarmed her. “Why are you so determined to make everyone go through this exactly like you? I thought that’s, like, the exact opposite of all the stupid b.s. we sing about in glee club.”
Kurt clearly took offense to the suggestion he was peer-pressuring anyone “I’m not looking for that at all. I’m looking for acceptance, and I believe we can all find that with a little education.”
In response, Santana sighed as loudly as she could without straining a muscle. “Don’t you ever get tired of listening to yourself? Oh, my God, Kurt, you’re worse than church and 7th Heaven reruns combined. I’m going to do this only because you’re blackmailing me-and don’t try denying it; it’s not like I don’t recognize it-not because I want to participate in some rebooted afterschool special with you and Karof-and speaking of Karofsky, what is your investment in that disaster? He threatened to kill you. I mean, last I checked, the gay community hasn’t canonized anyone since Ellen and Portia, and you are not even remotely close to getting a talk show or an American Express commercial.”
Her furious tirade had one positive result: Kurt had clearly not thought about the whys and whats and hows of his investment in Karofsky, or he had never thought of it as an investment. Uncertainty and something that looked suspiciously like guilt flickered across his little Precious Moments face.
Santana put that in her back pocket. Might as well have one sharp, poisoned dart heading into this.
She played it cool, resigned but sullen just like Kurt would expect her to be. “Well, criminal mastermind, tell me when we three queens are meeting.”
Santana wasn’t worried about Karofsky being on board for this whole PFLAG fiasco. It was clear after the whole prom king and queen business that there was an added layer to what had gone on between Kurt and Karofsky to illuminate Karofsky’s preference for dick and that the dick Karofsky preferred over all others belonged to Kurt Hummel.
After finishing her number with Weezy and seeing Brittany getting her prom picture taken with Artie, Santana wanted nothing more than to bail from the gym. She went for a walk and finally found her date out in the student parking lot.
Karofsky was on the opened tailgate of his pickup truck. He looked like he’d been crying, but was now in a weird, sad, silent, thoughtful space that Santana didn’t think she’d ever seen him in before. Not even in study hall, when any kid who was semiconscious had that expression on his or her face.
She boosted herself up beside him and asked, “So do you want to know what happened, or do you not want to talk about it?”
Karofsky’s immediate answer was surprising considering his expression: “Let me guess: that fancy prep-school boy saved the day, and they danced, and the whole school threw them a parade.”
Santana was impressed. “Not bad.” Then she added: “Except the part about the parade. Does teen-movie applause count?”
He didn’t respond. Santana continued looking at her fake-boyfriend, his tight, slumped shoulders, his tie missing in action... he was a mess.
And like a bright bolt of lightning, it struck her. “How exactly did Kurt figure it out, Dave? He didn’t just see you staring at some guy’s ass, did he?”
She was about to ask why the hell anyone would want to make a move on Kurt-I mean, he looked like a Disney Princess in drag, like a Germanic Mulan-when she remembered what Brittany had told her about her brief time “dating” Kurt, how he was soft like a baby, smelled like cucumbers and cream, had hair like a cat’s, and kissed, reluctant and gentle, with pillowy smooth lips.
Between thinking of Brittany’s description of Kurt and thinking of Brittany tonight, beautiful and happy in her dress and tiny hat, Santana kept her judgment to herself.
Almost as though she hadn’t asked the question, Dave wondered aloud, “How is he able to…be like that? Like it doesn’t matter what people think?”
Santana had rolled this over in her mind for several weeks and placed a comforting hand on Dave’s shoulder. “I know. And I guess if we were in some kind of lesson-teaching cartoon or Disney Channel kids show or episode of Degrassi, I’d tell you something about how we all need to embrace who we are, just like him. But that’s stupid and not true. We’re teenagers and we live in the Midwest; we don’t live in Canada or on TV. But before you start thinking Kurt’s perfect or something, you should know he’s also an arrogant, snotty, catty little bitch sometimes. He’s not Tom Hanks in Philadelphia or Greg Kinnear in that movie that’s on TBS all the time. He’s just a kid and he sucks sometimes. Most of the time, actually.”
He looked at her, sort of the way he looked at her when she told him she was gay too, curious and smart and terrified, like the for-real Dave he would be long after they’d all left this backwater shithole-or, Santana supposed, if he stayed trapped here, as a real estate agent or car salesman or whatever. “He asked me to tell everyone. Right there at prom in front of the whole school. And it’s like…you know, after everything, I thought about it for just a second, because maybe…” He stopped, frustrated and confused, and slammed his hand down on the tailgate. “There’s no way! In front of everyone? I mean, that’s freakin’ stupid, right?”
Santana wasn’t sure if he was asking whether the whole situation and Kurt’s expectations were stupid, or if his unexpressed thought that if he were to martyr himself in front of hundreds of peers, Kurt would dump his doo-wop looking boyfriend and run into Dave’s arms was stupid. Frankly, it didn’t matter, because the answer to everything was: yes, freakin’ stupid.
But instead she tried her best to be supportive. Because in a way, she understood. “Sometimes people think they’re being supportive and caring or whatever, but really, they’re just being unrealistic and suffocating and annoying.”
Dave nodded, still looking uncertain and miserable.
Fully embracing her role as Dave’s only ally in this whole dumb situation-after all, she had blackmailed him into pretending to be his girlfriend, so she may as well be half a friend to him, right?-she bumped her shoulder into his and said, “Why don’t we get out of here? I’ve got a couple bottles of Arbor Mist in my locker. We can go hang out at the football field, get drunk, and make fun of everyone’s outfits tonight, okay?”
He rolled his eyes but had a quarter-smile on his face which suggested she’d been successful in bringing him on board her plan.
Santana added, in her friendliest voice, “I could even give you a blowjob.”.
Dave’s eyebrows snapped together and his mouth tightened in an expression of disapproval.
Santana shrugged. “Don’t say I didn’t offer.” She hopped off the tailgate and offered her hand to him.
Dave scoffed. Then put his hand in hers.
Kurt informed Santana that the first meeting of the exploratory committee regarding the PFLAG chapter would meet at the school’s computer lab after glee club (and, for Dave, after track). She was charged with bringing her “boyfriend,” and it was painfully clear to Santana, from Kurt’s expression and slight blush that he and Karofsky had not spoken since prom.
Normally, this sort of oncoming car wreck would be exciting, but the fact of the matter was: Santana felt something, and not even begrudgingly, like friendship for Dave. After junior prom, he had held her hair while she barfed Arbor Mist and cried over Brittany. He even carried her into her house when her legs became too weak and head too cloudy to walk.
Since she turned 13, Santana hadn’t had friends who were guys. She had guys she fooled around with and/or banged (Puck, Sam, Finn) and guys she ignored (Artie, Mike Chang, many other nameless, faceless Lima students, also Finn). The closest thing to a guy friend she had was Kurt, and half the time, she wanted to shove him into a locker. It was nice to have someone around who understood her, who let her be bossy and mean and a mess.
And unlike Brittany, she’d never be in danger in falling in love with this friend.
Santana figured the next best thing to watching an awkward situation play out was to protect one of the parties in question by making the other party as uncomfortable as possible.
“So where’s Pompadour the Prep-School Kid?” she asked, as an opening volley.
“At Dalton, of course. Why do you care?” Kurt was busy fussing around at the keyboard, tapping and confusedly navigating the mouse recklessly around the tabletop.
“This just seems like something the two of you would do together. Or he would encourage you to do, then hog the spotlight for, like, four solo numbers.”
A scathing look over his shoulder was Kurt’s only reply.
“I suppose Blaine knows Karofsky came onto you, but does he know the two of you are going to be gay-acceptance welcome wagon of the greater Lima community? I can’t imagine he’d miss out on an opportunity to horn in and get some attention. Or let you hang around public enemy number one, for that matter.”
This, Santana observed, did not get a scathing look. Kurt was studiously, obviously ignoring her with a tense, straight face.
The face of someone with something to hide.
Santana almost wished she had an emery board. At this point, she should be sharpening her claws within earshot of Hummel. She settled for saying, “Hmm” in her best I-know-I’m-going-to-get-you tone and opened up her Glamour magazine.
With the timing of a man born for the stage, Dave Karofsky walked in shortly after that cue. He looked sheepish and uncomfortable for the millisecond he looked at Kurt, then let his eyes skip over to Santana, clearly looking for support. She smiled broadly.
As a result, Dave looked more uneasy and miserable. “Ugh,” thought Santana.
Without facing either one of them, Kurt announced, “There’s already a PFLAG chapter in Lima. It has a PO Box and an e-mail address.”
With zero implication of curiosity or caring, Santana asked, “So?”
Kurt clearly didn’t know where to go next now that he wasn’t on some insurmountable crusade. “Well...I guess we e-mail and ask for support materials? Or...a meeting?” He finally swiveled his chair and looked at his two reluctant comrades-in-arms.
Santana felt the full burden of throwing everything in Kurt’s face fell to her. “What are you looking at us for? It’s not like we signed up for this! Or know about this at all! I mean, I barely know how I end up registered for classes. And in case you haven’t noticed, Dave has been totally miserable since you put him on the spot in the middle of the dance floor at prom.”
That finally changed Dave’s expression from hangdog. To horrified, but still: it was a change. He shouted her name angrily.
“Don’t worry, DK, I got this one. Well, fearless leader, what now? Just tell us what you want us to do or say? Or is it disappointing that we’re not Perfect Preppy Blaine, always with the right answer.”
Kurt seemed caught between fury and shell-shocked sadness, and when he spoke, his voice trembled. “What exactly is your problem with Blaine? A month ago, you were defending him, and me, from...” he faltered, looking nervously and almost apologetically at Dave, “...from...”
“Me?” Dave’s voice was impatient and sharp and, in the moment, Santana was almost proud of him.
“Well...” Kurt’s perfect little brow creased. “...yes.”
An uncomfortable silence seeped into the room, and Santana found herself thinking that even with the exciting opening moments, this whole thing was turning out to be more miserable and annoying than she had anticipated.
And then Dave stunned both her and Kurt. “Look...just...write an e-mail and ask if they help start support groups. That’s what I did in my youth group to start...anyway, just e-mail. It doesn’t have to be much. They will ask you more questions and we’ll probably get someone over here in a few weeks.”
Kurt looked at him with a mix of wonderment and still-bubbling fury until Dave met his gaze.
“Well, at least you two have shut up now. I’m going home.” And with that, Dave slung his gym bag over his shoulder and exited the computer lab.
Santana knew she should be pissed she was lumped in with Kurt, but still: she couldn’t hide her prideful smile. “That’s my man,” she said to Kurt, who could only roll his eyes in response.
The next day, as she and Karofsky were walking the halls of school as a happy couple, he said, genuinely but reluctantly,“I’m sorry for...whatever.”
Santana faux-snuggled under his arm, and she could feel him barely suppress an irritated sigh. “Oh, DK, you didn’t tell me to shut up. That’s the only reason you’re still alive.”
“Right,” he said coolly. She subtly punched him in the side.
“So did you talk to Kurt? Apologize to him?”
In response, Dave’s unconsciously tightened his arm. “No. Not yet.”
“Just remember: he’s not perfect.”
Dave surprised her with his response: “But still, I was...I was pretty terrible to him. Remember? Every time I look at him I just feel...”
She almost made a joke at Dave’s expense in that instance--that sentence was begging to end with a half dozen different lewd phrases--but she managed to contain herself. She did, however, give him the best advice she could: “Guilt is for the weak; regret nothing.” He stopped walking and shot her a look. “What? It was, like, one of three useful things Coach Sue taught us.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Santana saw Brittany rounding the corner with Artie, Tina, and Mike. In a moment, anger and longing and hurt exploded through her. She squeezed Dave’s hand until he said, “Ow!” angrily.
“Now it’s your turn to shut up. Kiss me and make it convincing,” she said with all the cool fury she could manage.
Santana wasn’t sure whose look of disappointment was more unbearable. She wished she could have a do-over; she would have closed her eyes to avoid seeing Dave’s expression and Brittany’s reaction.
It wasn’t fair, she thought, to so quickly know the gnawing feeling of guilt.
It was clear to Santana when she and Kurt and Dave next met that one of the boys had reached out to the other. She couldn’t tell who, but though both of them were still pretty quiet, there was less tension in the air and much less avoided eye contact.
Kurt folded his hands and balanced them on top of his knee; he looked very official and very prissy and very ridiculous, in Santana’s opinion. “Well, David was right: I received a response from a very nice lady named Marjorie, and she has e-mailed discussion group topic suggestions, pamphlets, and flier templates. Also, she said that in a few weeks, she’ll be done teaching at the junior college, and she’ll meet with us to set up a plan for the next school year.”
Alarmed that Kurt was overlooking the obvious, Santana blurted, “What about Nationals? Kurt, we’ll be gone for practically a week before school gets out. And I don’t know about you, but I plan to practice every night after school for this stupid tryout that decrepit Jesse St. James is demanding we have.”
The bow of Kurt’s pursed mouth tightened. “Oh, right.” Then “What song are you doing?”
Santana folded her arms and scowled. The truth was that she hadn’t chosen. She’d been listening to a lot of Amy Winehouse lately and had been considering something similar to “Valerie.” But she’d also been listening to Fiona Apple’s Extraordinary Machine. It had come out when she first started listening to the radio and was dreaming of being a star like J. Lo. Back then, she didn’t really have the time for the old-timey-sounding, undanceable songs. But now, while wallowing in heartbreak, she was finally starting to understand its pull. She thought about singing “Window,” a song that she felt spoke to her attitude towards Brittany and Artie, but any time she reached the verse “It may look like I'm concentrated on a very clear view/But I'm as good as asleep,” she felt the threat of tears.
“Well, I’m going to do a song from Gypsy,” Kurt pronounced grandly, as though sharing meant she owed him something.
Santana hated to repeat herself, but she went with the simple and easy, “So?”
“Look, are we going to do something besides talk about glee club or argue or whatever? I have a calc final to study for,” Dave snapped.
Santana wasn’t sure what it was about his tone, but she and Kurt looked at each other and were suddenly joined in an allegiance.
“Look, Pythagorean, you can do as much math homework as you want. If we want to spend our gay club talking about glee, I think that’s actually a pretty legitimate use of our time.”
“Don’t call it ‘gay club,’” Kurt corrected halfheartedly.
“Whatever,” Santana replied.
Dave pointedly unzipped his backpack and removed an enormous textbook. “I’m not having anything to do with fliers, so you can forget it,” were the last words he said before putting in his earbuds.
Santana turned to Kurt and said, “Well, I was thinking about Amy Winehouse or Fiona Apple...”
While sitting in the choir room, waiting for Mr. Schuester arrive, Santana sacrificed her half-formed evil plan to torpedo Kurt’s grand notions for PFLAG, and she did so in the name of curiosity.
“Why haven’t you told Brylcreem about this whole thing?” she asked.
It was amazing what genuine interest instead of snarkiness could invoke. Kurt looked at her with his giant Sailor Moon eyes, opened his mouth to speak, and produce only a quiet, empty stream of breath.
He paused, then took another run at it. “I...don’t know. I guess because I forced you into it. I forced Dave into it too. I don’t think Blaine would...approve. And he and Dave seem to fight every time they see each other. Like, physically.” Kurt looked troubled and puzzled by his own motivations.
Santana felt other influences at work, other reasons. The way Kurt punched the word “approve,” for example, suggested that he almost resented the idea that Blaine would have the nerve to judge him for anything. And the whole Dave bit... she let that go. Entirely too much to unpack there.
The truth was: Princess Porcelain was unsure and confused and was doing some of this for the wrong reasons. And that was enough for her.
The next meeting should have been cancelled. Santana knew it. Kurt probably knew it. They showed up together and were surprised to find Dave waiting, head once again buried in a math book.
Their combined steely silence was enough to spook him from his concentration. “What?”
Santana could barely contain her tears. “That ascot-wearing idiot said...”
Kurt tutted and stroked her hair; his tenderness should have been annoying, but Santana silently found it comforting.
While she wept angrily, some kind of nonverbal exchange had clearly been happening without her knowledge: Dave closed his book and awkwardly said, “I’m sure you were great?” The tentative question, directed more to Kurt than to her, made her laugh.
“Wonderful. Just wonderful. Are you part of the drama club?” Kurt said to Dave in his most sweet-toned-but-annoyed voice.
“Well? What do I know?” He hovered nervously, clearly disliking his close proximity to a crying girl.
Frustrated, Santana snapped, “You’re supposed to be my boyfriend. Do something! Go and kick his ass!”
This caused Dave to shoot Kurt an alarmed look, as though to say, “I swear I’m not going to hit anyone ever again.”
In response to that bit of conspiracy--no matter how well-intended--Santana socked Dave in the area between his shoulder and pectoral.
The varsity football, hockey, and shot-putting star flinched visibly and snapped, “Damn it, Santana!”
“Why do I have to do everything myself? I’m going to shave all his ugly hair off and turn that neckerchief into a noose!” She started to charge for the door, but Dave handily stopped her by picking her up and moving her further into the computer lab.
“Just calm down already. You’re not going to do anything to...whoever this is.”
“Jesse St. James. He’s Rachel’s ex-boyfriend,” Kurt helpfully provided.
Dave matter-of-factly replied, “I don’t care” and turned his attention to Santana, who was biting her lip to keep from swearing or telling these two stupid boys to just run off together already and leave her alone to do things her way: angrily and with violence. “If you get suspended with fifteen days of school left in the year, you are being stupid.” Santana took a breath to start screaming about being called stupid, but Dave kept talking. “Take it from someone who was suspended in the middle of the year when it actually sort of pays off. You won’t get to go to New York or skip the last day of classes or anything worth doing. So chill out. Hit me a couple of times if it helps. But don’t...”
Santana’s glare stopped him from completing his sentence with “...be stupid.”
She sniffled, socked Dave another time in exactly the same spot, then said, “Well, what are we supposed to do? He’s wrong and someone needs to kick his ass.”
Eyebrows running in an irritated parallel line, Dave rubbed the tender, assaulted area and said, “I don’t know. Go back and talk to Mr. Schuester. He’s always good for some kind of pep talk that seems to make everything better.” He thought for a bit, and Santana watched him expectantly, seeing out of the corner of her eye that, without knowing it, Kurt was reflecting her expression of anticipation. “Or go talk to the rest of the glee club dorks and get rid of this guy.”
“Jesse. St. James,” Kurt interjected.
Dave frowned and shook his head. “Okay, whatever, I’m not saying that name. The point is...just...both of you go. I’m sure somewhere they’re all waiting for you. I know I wouldn’t know what to do without the two of you freakin’ pestering me and forcing me to do stupid things I barely want to do.”
Even though his last sentence was sarcastic and largely directed at her, Dave’s understanding of her and Kurt’s strong position within the glee club made Santana malevolently delighted and determined to prove to him just how quickly she and Kurt could collapse Jesse St. James’s mini-judging empire. She grabbed Kurt’s hand and said, “You’re right, even though you’re being a total ass. We’re going to ruin that jerk like he was Brian Dunkleman.”
Unenthusiastically, Dave said, “Great. Whatever. Get out of here.”
Santana smiled at Kurt, who continued to watch Dave with one of his transparently mixed expressions. “You heard him, Prissy.”
It wasn’t until they reached the door of the glee club that Kurt spoke, pronouncing in a mildly dazed voice that they hadn’t even discussed when to make an appointment with Marjorie to roll out the PFLAG support group.
An hour later, Santana sprinted into the computer lab, nearly knocking Dave out of his chair as she flung herself at him. “His ass is fired!” she shouted triumphantly, which drew a few angry “shush”es from an afterschool homework club.
Kurt trailed behind with a tiny, smug smile. “It was like shooting fish in a choir-room shaped barrel.”
Santana was covering Dave’s face with loud, lip-glossful pecks, and she could feel the blush creeping across his cheeks. “Okay, I’m really glad for you two and all, but I’m trying to study, like everyone else in here.”
“Who cares what these losers are doing? Let’s celebrate! DK, you have a Wii at your house, right?” Santana knew damn well Dave had a Wii; she had spent several nights playing Mario Kart in the Karofsky rec room, under the guise of fooling around with him.
“Yes,” he said reluctantly, and his muscles all seemed to freeze under her. Santana could tell he was looking at Kurt and panicking.
She nearly shook her head in exasperation. Boys.
“Well, I say we head over to your place, order pizza, and kick the shit out of Rock Band.” Santana punctuated her declaration by squeezing Dave’s neck and sighing like all her abuela’s stories taught her: “Our hero.”
Kurt finally chimed in. “You have Rock Band?”
It was a good thing she was still sitting on Dave’s lap, blocking his Adam’s apple from Kurt’s view, because Santana swore it took Dave ten seconds to painfully swallow about a gallon of saliva, all to force out one syllable: “Yeah.”
Kurt continued: “That’s the one with the singing, right?”
Santana could tell Kurt’s single-mindedness took the pressure off, as Dave repeated “Yeah” with less nervous effort.
Clapping his hands together in anticipation, Kurt beamed, “What are we waiting for?”
Almost as if they were a real couple, Santana and Dave shared a look that communicated much with no words.
The other reason Santana suggested Dave’s place was because she knew his parents had been planning to attend a couples’ retreat for weeks, and she, Dave, and Kurt would have the place to themselves. She’d scored some Mike’s Hard Lemonade from one of her cousins, and though it wasn’t enough to get any of them drunk, it was the principle: if parents were gone, you had to imbibe some alcohol.
Dave wrinkled his nose. “Disgusting. I’m not drinking that.”
Jutting her hip out and flipping her hair, she retorted, “But you’ll drink warm discount light beer?”
As Kurt looked through the Karofsky family’s movie collection, Dave nervously looked at him, then back to Santana. “I don’t...I don’t drink. Ever.”
Sensing this was some sort of family thing or another downer moment, Santana moved on. “Fine, I’ll drink yours. Kurt, that leaves you with two.”
Kurt looked at the bottles, which appeared to be about as close to soda pop as an alcoholic beverage could be, and said, “I’ll have one. To start. My last experience drinking didn’t go so great.”
Santana sighed. “Let’s play, you two buzzkills.”
It turned out that the selections were Beatles Rock Band (Dave’s parents) and Green Day Rock Band (the disdain in Dave’s voice was clear when he said, “They thought I’d like it”; the wrapper had never been removed from the case). She looked coolly at Kurt, who had performed at least two Beatles songs (that she knew of) and was fairly chomping at the bit, turning the Beatles cartridge over and over in his hands. Contrariness took over, and Santana took the plastic off of Green Day. “Maybe it’ll be more fun than you think,” she said, though she was already rolling her eyes at the tracklist.
Santana claimed the mike, though she didn’t exactly have to fight for it. Kurt picked up the guitar, looking at it like it was far more complicated than it was. After Dave finished setting up the whole semi-involved coordination between tv and gaming system, he turned to see Kurt tangled, like a failed parachute jumper, in the guitar strap.
“Come on, Hummel, it’s not rocket science.” And with that, he exasperatedly, and without much thought, stepped about as close to Kurt as he could without hugging him and adjusted the guitar controller while Kurt stared at him, startled and confused. It only took a few seconds for Dave to sort out the guitar situation and he didn’t even bother to look at Kurt’s befuddled expression when Kurt murmured “Thanks.”
It was the first time the situation between her two gays was reversed and so drastically at that.
Santana thought back to her abuela’s stories again.
Frankly, this was better.
The pure delight from the idea that drama was brewing was enough for Santana to throw a lot of enthusiasm into her performance of “American Idiot.” Between her vocals and Dave’s drumming (better than Finn’s, even if it was fake), they managed to keep Kurt’s pitiful, plonking performance afloat.
“At least we weren’t booed off the stage. Okay, as much as it pains me to give up control of vocals, I will do so for the good of the band,” Santana said, thrusting the mike into Kurt’s hands and stripping him of the guitar. “I imagine you know some of these numbers from the stage musical?”
Kurt looked disdainfully at Santana. “Why would anyone want to go to a staged mixtape? Musical theater is supposed to be just that: the melding of music and the...” Absorbing the blank looks of both his companions, Kurt snapped his mouth shut, put his nose in the air, and said, “Never mind.” He looked at Dave and nearly demanded, “‘Wake Me Up When September Ends.’”
They lasted two more songs (“Longview” and “Good Riddance”) before dabbling in Beatles, then throwing down the instruments in favor of Mario Party. Santana felt relaxed, almost giddy, as they goofed around, talked about teachers, gossiped about glee club (mostly her and Kurt, but Dave paid more attention than he usually did).
By 2 AM, Santana was spent and crashed on the couch next to Dave. With 2 ½ Mike’s coursing through her blood stream (Kurt gave up on his second), she drowsily leaned into him and closed her eyes. Moments or minutes later, Kurt sunk down into the couch, not far from her, and she settled her legs over his lap.
Her last thought, as she drifted off to sleep listening to Dave and Kurt continue to talk over her in hushed tones, was that if Kurt could guarantee her that every PFLAG meeting would be like this, she may even hang up a stupid flier or two.
Santana awoke to two sensations: one of having her mouth glued shut by formerly sweet, now almost disgustingly rancid Mike’s Hard Lemonade; and the other of a warm, spongy, moving body pillow supporting her face.
That pillow was lightly snoring too.
Looking through her hair, she saw Dave’s face and was startled for a moment or two, particularly because she could feel she was braless and skirtless, wearing a tee shirt that was very much not hers. But then it dawned on her: right, she undressed herself, mostly sober, and crawled into bed with Dave.
He didn’t even protest all that much, which was pretty cute.
Actually, he was pretty cute, all things considered--you know, impartially, as a lesbian who had mostly had sex with guys. Sure, he ran a little chunkier than the guys she’d been with, and he could look a little like a Neanderthal when sullen or angry (which was...kind of all the time). But while friendly or smiling or putting up with her b.s. or, like now, sleeping, he looked sort of sweet, like a very big kid who could grow stubble.
He awoke to her very direct stare. “What?” he mumbled (very predictably, Santana thought to herself).
“Can’t I gaze adoringly on the face of my boyfriend as he sleeps?” she said in a tone she imagined Rachel would use while trying to be cute with Finn, while actually sounding crazy as hell.
“Santana, it’s too early for this,” Dave groaned and stretched, but did not boot her out of bed or even out of position leaning on his chest.
“Actually, I was just thinking you were pretty handsome.” He scoffed, and Santana half-slapped his chest. “I’m serious! You know, you’d think my opinion would matter, what with having seen Puck naked many times. Many, many times. Many.” She thought for a minute. “Plus I made out with Sam. Never got him to put out, though.”
“You know, for a lesbian, you have done it with more guys that...well...” Dave trailed off, uncomfortable to admit even in the comfort of his bedroom with his lesbian girlfriend, his parents miles and miles away, that he very much wanted to, and had not, sexed guys.
Santana smiled at him, and he shyly smiled back. She repeated, “I am serious.”
He shook his head and said, with no small degree of effort, “You know, when this all started, I was so pissed and miserable and...I don’t know, more pissed. But you’re really...you’re the coolest girl I know.”
Santana felt the sting of the words, how similar they were to any kind, supportive, genuine things Brittany had said to her over the last few months. She wished she could blame the tears in her eyes on a hangover or being sleepy or having left her makeup on (she had, and she could see where her mascara and liquid eyeliner had smudged on Dave’s tee shirt). “Oh, DK,” was all she could manage for a while. He tousled, then smoothed her hair, while she composed herself.
“You’re such a girl,” he said, after she’d finally stopped the waterworks.
“Oh, shut up.” She swatted him as hard as she could while still lazily reclining on him. “I was going to apologize for making you kiss me at school a few weeks ago, but now I realize I should have made you go for second base.”
He shrugged. “It wasn’t so bad.”
Rolling her eyes, Santana said, “Thanks.” Dave shrugged again, and she half-smiled: yeah, what did she expect? But then again...
She leaned forward and kissed him, her lips only slightly parted. She kept her eyes open, as did Dave...until he leaned into it a little more and tilted his head a bit, moving his lower lip to catch hers. His hand dropped to the small of her back, and she thought about the way she could feel him thinking about every change he made, opening his mouth a little wider, tentatively touching his tongue to hers. He practically radiated the thoughts, “Am I doing this right? Do I feel something?”
After a few more minutes, Santana pulled back and looked him square in the eye. “Well, are you cured now? No more gay?”
Dave looked torn between laughing and crying as he shook his head. Then he pressed his palm into the small of her back so that she squished into him. “Maybe if you had brushed your teeth. Your breath is gross.”
Eyes wide, Santana finally raised herself on her elbows and socked him as hard as she could in the left shoulder. “You dick. Your breath is totally terrible too.”
She took another swing, which he managed to block, and the two of them dissolved into laughter together. After that passed, Dave’s expression shifted into its sad, serious mode. “I don’t get it. How did you manage to have so much sex with all those guys? Wasn’t it...I don’t know, bad? Bad for you?”
Santana wasn’t sure how much detail or description or bird and/or bee to give Dave. She wasn’t all that sure how much of what she’d done up until now she understood herself. So she shrugged. “Some was and some wasn’t. I think that’s just sex, really. I mean, I didn’t do anything I didn’t want to, you know? You said it yourself: it wasn’t all that bad kissing me, right?” He nodded, very seriously, which made Santana want to tell him all over how cute he could be. “Well, sex with guys is like that for me. It’s not bad; it’s just not being with...a girl. That’s...everything I ever want.” She pushed forward and looked into Dave’s hazel eyes. “DK, as not bad as it was kissing me, I’ve been leaning my boobs up against you for at least 15 solid minutes and...” She slid her hand under the sheets and gave his crotch a friendly, brief squeeze and watched his eyes widen in surprise, “...you have absolutely nothing going on down there. By now, Puck would be at full mast. In fact, he probably already would have...”
Dave nearly hid his face in his pillow. “Yikes, okay, I get it. Ugh. Puckerman is disgusting.”
Smirking, Santana teased him by beeping his nose several times. “Not your type, huh? I guess not, if you have a thing for Hummel. Like ‘em muscley-skinny and blond and smooth? Believe me, I get it.”
From that point, they somehow ended up in a half-play, half-serious wrestling match, him calling her Santana Stink Breath, and her shrieking protest and trying her damnedest to play dirty pool and go for his crotch again when they were both startled by a tentative tapping on the door.
Sharing a mutually surprised look, Dave and Santana both said, “Yes?”
From the other side of the door, Kurt’s cautious, tense voice said, “Can I come in?”
Santana narrowed her eyes and made an evil kissyface at Dave, which was enough for him to let go of her wrists and let her off the mattress. “Um...just a minute,” she said, smoothing her hair and then her day-old lip gloss from her earlier Karofsky kissing experiment.
Looking to Dave for a final okay as she leaned back against the headboard, she saw his nearly invisible nod, then said, “Okay.”
The knob turned and Kurt leaned uncertainly through the open door.
Next to admitting Rachel Berry had talent, there was nothing Santana found harder to admit than the fact that Hummel could occasionally look sexy as hell, and this was one of those times: bedhead, full lips aglow, pale skin dabbed with pink from sleep, a tight white tee he had been wearing under his ridiculous fucking jacket (no doubt some important gay New York designer), and his white skull pants from the day before. The worst part was that he wasn’t even trying, didn’t even know it, and was about as pure as any nun from her Catholic elementary school years, she would wager. Purer even.
Santana felt Dave’s breath catch in his chest; she hoped she didn’t have to call 911 on his behalf.
Eyes trailing from Santana’s bra casually hanging off one bedpost to Dave’s tee shirt, still smudged with her makeup, to Dave’s mouth, she awkwardly realizes also smudged with her makeup, Kurt looked at the two of them, startled.
They’d had such a fun time the night before that Santana decided not to toy with him: “Come on, Kurt, you have sleepovers with your gal pals. I know you do. You and yappy Berry and Frenchie Davis talk about it all the time.”
Still looking a little put out and befuddled, he replied, “Not all the time. We’ve only had two. And we all sleep in separate beds.”
Kurt’s judgmental attitude made Santana’s blood start to boil, but she tried desperately to remind herself that Rachel had kissed his stupid boyfriend at that drunk party earlier in the year, so that probably lingered somewhere in his little princess brain, and also to remember that any of the myriad bitchy things she wanted to shout at the little vestal virgin (like, for example, Kurt’s status as a vestal virgin--whatever “vestal” meant) would hurt Dave’s feelings too. “Look, I know it’s hard to believe, since I blackmailed him and all, but DK is my friend. I gave him a friendly little peck, he insulted my breath, and we’ve been fighting ever since.”
It was her privilege as the storyteller to leave out Karofsky’s tentative tongue action, her hand on his crotch, and her teasing mention of his thing for Hummel.
Torn between feigning disinterest and the relief that was lighting up his spooky Elijah Wood eyes, Kurt leaned a little further into the door.
But apparently, Santana wasn’t the only one struggling to keep her temper. “You dated Brittany.” It was said so cool and factually that for a moment, Santana was scared Dave was talking to her. But then she looked at his face.
Dave’s eyes were locked on Kurt.
Kurt looked back, seemingly powerless against the matter-of-factness in Dave’s voice. “I did. I did for a while. Before I...came out.”
The line of questioning continued in the same Horatio Caine voice. “Did she kiss you?”
Damn, he was cold.
Kurt’s blushing was unmistakable. Unlike Dave, it didn’t take much to get him glowing red. But Santana had to given Hummel credit: he was honest and didn’t hesitate when he said, “Yes.”
“And you kissed her?”
That caused Kurt’s embarrassment to crack a little, and his usual snotty aloofness made an appearance. “Well, of course I did. She was kissing me.”
It was like watching the world’s gayest tennis match--which, Santana pondered, made it pretty, pretty gay--looking from Dave, who seemed to be waiting for Kurt to make the next leap himself, and Kurt, who was blushing and now fully inside the door (though clinging to the doorknob like a life preserver) and silently challenging Dave to say whatever was on his mind.
Finally, Kurt cracked. “I suppose you’re suggesting that it’s not really my place to judge you and Santana for making out or whatever you were doing in here.”
“We were making out and yes, that’s what I’m saying. I told you that I don’t know if I really am...anything. And if Santana and I help you with the PFLAG thing, I don’t see why or how anything else we do is really your business. I mean, you have a boyfriend. He’s your boyfriend now, right?”
Kurt’s eyes slipped to Santana’s a moment, checking to see if she had shared any of their choir room confessions. All she could do was shake her head slightly. Kurt returned his gaze to Dave and a charge hit the air. Santana remembered something about this in her science class, but she’d be damned if she could remember the name of it, the thing where two people are attracted to each other and science and chemicals and all that shit.
Whatever, she’d gotten a C- on that test. Anyway, science was happening. And from the look of him, lips slightly parted and eyes blazing but confused, Precious Moments didn’t know what to do with it.
This, Santana thought, was not the drama she had in mind when she got herself all stirred up singing Green Day last night.
“I do. You’ve met him. Blaine.”
“Yeah. And you two suck face, right?”
Rather than look embarrassed or defeated, like Santana thought he would, Kurt suddenly looked very defiant and, unfortunately for her boyfriend, about a million times hotter than ever. “Yes. He asked me before he did it the first time too.”
Dave jolted as though he’d been shocked.
Judging by the way Kurt twisted the doorknob, he instantly regretted what he’d said. But Dave seemed to shut down. His eyes were locked on the carpet to his left, and Santana could feel the unsteady rhythm of his breathing. She could feel his heart breaking and it made her very, very angry at Kurt all over again, even though she was sure some of the stuff that went down that the two of them were talking about over her head was equally Dave’s fault. Santana just couldn’t abandon him to being unhappy again...mostly because she’d been so happy for the last 12 hours and knew he had been too.
Before she could send them both to their corners, Kurt took a few steps forward and sat on the edge of the bed by Santana’s feet. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.”
Dave’s breathing hadn’t changed. Santana was afraid he was going to cry or was crying, and it made her want to kick Hummel from his perch on the bed. Instead, she put a hand on Dave’s shoulder and squeezed lightly.
“But you’re right.” Dave’s voice cracked when he said it and Santana found herself welling up with empathy tears. He’d been right this morning: she was such a girl, at least lately.
Kurt leaned forward, over Santana, like she was just furniture or a prop, and put his hand on Dave’s knee through the blanket.
That was enough for her. “Jesus, Kurt, just get off your ass and hug him already. Do something, but don’t lay on me. I’ve already made out with the one gay guy I wanted to get down with.”
Both boys looked at her, Kurt with a small degree of embarrassment (finally) and Dave, his eyes bright with tears. Santana straightened her posture, and Kurt finally took the hint and leaned back, removing his hand from Dave’s knee, which, of course, made Santana feel like a total cockblocker.
“Sorry, Santana.” It sounded about as sincere as Santana imagined Kurt would ever be towards her in a moment like this. She was impressed, actually.
“Apology accepted,” she replied, about as sincerely as she could ever sound when talking to the little brat.
“David?” Kurt said tentatively, standing at the foot of the bed, hands clasped in front of him like a choir boy.
Sighing, Dave replied, “Yes, apology accepted, and I’m sorry too. Now can we please drop it?”
Kurt replied with a thread of hurt in his otherwise formal tone. “Of course.”
Dave heard it too, because he looked into Kurt’s face, unshed tears faded, and said, “You were on the football team for a little while, right?”
Kurt nodded.
Finally throwing back the covers, Dave rose from the bed to reveal his McKinley High tee and standard-issue white boxers. Kurt was hardly subtle as he took in Dave’s bare legs, hairy shins and well-muscled thighs, but Dave seemed too focused to notice.
But Santana noticed. Oh, did she ever notice. This was not the cartoony-hearts-and-bluebirds way Hummel stared at Pompadour. This was the eyeball equivalent of whatever was in the air moments earlier:
There was something going on. It had been going on since this whole stupid PFLAG thing started. And both of them were too dumb or confused or virginal and out of touch to get it.
Dave took Kurt’s hand and gave him one of those footballer backpat/handshake/hug things. The two of them lingered in each other’s personal space for a moment or two longer, then Dave said, “There. Done. Good game. Right?”
Kurt nodded and looked as though he were trying not to lose his mind. Santana imagined there would be a guilty set of texts or a phone call to that shiny-topped Luke Perry kid later in the day. Hummel had a lot wrong with him, but his conscience was too enormous to let him even have the most casual of naked feelings for another guy.
“Okay, now can both of you get out of my room so I can get dressed?” For the first time it was seemed like ages, Dave was looking only at Santana, and it only took a moment to realize that it was because he still thought she was the coolest girl he knew, and that he was proud of her for not flipping out at any point during the entire big production.
She hoped that the look she gave him in return said she was proud of him too. And also that Kurt was going to have a very long, tough summer ahead of him if the three of them continued to hang out, for a number of reasons.