Fic: Fast Cars, 1/1
Title: Fast Cars, 1/1
Author: knittycat99
Rating: soft R for mild language
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Kurt/Karofsky, with appearances by Carole, Paul, and Burt
Genre: angst
Spoilers: none
Disclaimer: I don't own anything related to Glee
Author Notes: So I lied. I had to post this little drabble-ish bit that followed me around all day. The tenth installment of my Seasons Change Verse, which can be found HERE
Summary: What happens after Kurt and his dad drive away
Word Count: 486
Dave knew he’d made a terrible mistake as soon as the words left his mouth, but it was too late to take them back. Instead, he finished what he’d promised to Kurt that night by the harbor in Boston. He broke his own heart.
He felt Carole’s arms around his as the car pulled away, and he cried for what he had lost. For what he had pushed away, what he had let go. Carole took him to the kitchen and fed him more toast and a second cup of coffee, but he was silent and numb. When he got home, he moved through the empty house like a ghost as he did laundry and packed and re-packed his bags for school. He ate a silent dinner with his father, and because he had nowhere else to be he sat on the couch and pretended to be interested in the Indians game. When his dad commented on his silence, Dave saw the opening. He could have said anything, could have started with I’m in love with Kurt and he left today and finished with I’m a fucking idiot, I should have fought harder for him and for us and for myself. But all of his words that meant anything were gone; he had given them to Kurt that morning. So he sat on the couch with his dad and told him nothing.
*****
Nothing is all right. Kurt knows he’s scaring his dad, so he isn’t surprised when he pulls the car into a service plaza on the outskirts of Pittsburgh and parks at the edge of the lot under some trees. His dad’s voice is gentleness overlaid with mild panic when he tells Kurt to just let him know when it’s okay to drive again, and Kurt thinks that maybe he hasn’t loved his dad more since the night he came out.
They sit with the windows open, and Kurt marvels at how different Pennsylvania feels from Ohio, even as tears just keep running down his cheeks. He keeps swiping at them ineffectually, and it isn’t until his dad wets a paper towel in the half-melted ice from the cooler behind Kurt’s seat and presses it awkwardly into Kurt’s hand that he’s able to manage some semblance of self-control. When all the cold has seeped out of the cloth and into his skin, and he’s breathing easier and his heart feels incrementally less heavy, he nods. His dad starts the car and pulls out of the lot, and wonders aloud whether Kurt would like to talk about it. Kurt thinks for a few minutes about the past two years and all the secrets he still keeps, for himself and for Dave. He closes his eyes against the motion of the car in a moment of decision. Then he opens them, and as the tires eat up miles of empty road, Kurt tells his dad everything.