Fic: Fidelity - Interlude
Fic summary: An unlikely friendship forms among Dave, Blaine and Kurt. Or, Dave learns how to love himself, Blaine learns how to accept love, and Kurt learns that love is more complicated - and simpler - than he ever imagined.
Section summary: Flashback. Dave realizes he’s gay and doesn’t come to terms with it.
More notes: There is a reason this isn’t a numbered chapter. It takes a step out of the timeline and back a couple years. It can be read at any point - on its own, before you begin the story, or several chapters in. If you’re reading Fidelity as I post and don’t feel like going into Dave’s brain right now, save it for when you do.
Section warnings: If this chapter didn’t have homophobia, internalized homophobia, slurs, and misgendering, it would be a very inaccurate portrayal of Dave’s journey.
Pairings in this section: Dave/Brittany, massively unrequited Dave/Kurt
Rating: NC-17 overall
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2009
What Dave is has been written in his muscles and his heart as long as he can remember; it’s been plastered all over his wet dreams since puberty began. Still, he never let his waking brain clearly picture himself with a guy until he finally hooked up with someone for the first time.
Before that, the images were vague and inexplicit when he jerked off. Sometimes, he thought of the strange, warm feeling of safety he’d have sitting at the foot of Azimio’s bed, flipping through Sports Illustrated and sharing a bowl of popcorn while watching whatever was on ESPN. When he felt more daring, he’d remember details of the casual football scrimmages he played with his friends after school: the grip of another player's hands on his hips as he was being tackled, the heft of torso and pelvis on the back of his thighs, the shock of hitting the turf all tangled up in someone else's body. The best times were when he’d replay and expand upon backyard wrestling matches that he’d lost, pinned down to the ground by the weight of another guy, helpless and immobile, caged between their legs and arms and at the absolute mercy of anything they decided to do to him.
Somewhere in his sophomore year, other images began to flit across the screen of his mind: A long, lithe boy in a red Cheerios uniform dancing out his "fuck you" to all of McKinley High, surrounded by cheerleaders who imitated his moves but couldn't match his fire. The shallow cleft in an upturned, superior chin. Liquid-blue eyes of scorn. Perfect pink mouth that could go from singing Madonna so beautifully you wanted to cry, to ripping you to so many shreds you weren't sure whether you wanted to disappear or fall to your knees and worship him. Elegant, masculine fingers rearranging their owner's chestnut hair, smoothing down the lapels of an already perfectly arranged jacket, twirling a pencil before aiming its sharp tip at paper - always controlling, always directing, always molding the world into what it should be.
Dave pushed those images away as soon as he was conscious of them, but he couldn't push away their effect: the heightened buzz in his skin, the falter in his breathing, the surge in his cock.
Still, he didn't let them unfold into fantasy. As long as he didn't undress anyone or kiss anyone or cling to anyone in his mind, he could tell himself that the thoughts were random, had nothing to do with sex.
Brittany showed him otherwise.
He was in the middle of slugging back his fourth or fifth Jell-O shot at one of Azimio’s parties when Brittany walked up to him and said, "I've been keeping track, and you're the only guy in the school that I haven't made out with. Unless you count Kurt, but he's capital-G gay, so I'm not sure I should count him. What do you think?"
She pushed him toward the empty couch and sat in his lap without any preamble and stared at him, waiting for an answer.
"I wouldn't count Hummel for anything," Dave said, forcing a snarl.
Brittany frowned. "Kurt counts for lots of things. He makes me cry sometimes when he sings, and he loves people even though he pretends not to, and when he swivels his hips I get confused about whether I want to dance with him or lick him. I think he would taste like roasted eggplant and cinnamon. I had something like that at a Moroccan restaurant once. It was really good."
Dave wrapped his hand around Brittany's because he couldn't apologize out loud for insulting Kurt, not with Azimio just five feet away.
"You look sad," Brittany said. "Why are you sad?"
"I'm not sad, Brittany. I'm just listening to you."
"That's nice," Brittany said, smiling. "Not many people do that."Shesighed and stroked Dave's hair, and it felt strange and foreign and absolutely wonderful. As far as he could remember, no one had touched him that way since he was a little boy. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed it.
"Your eyes are so pretty, Dave," Brittany said. "They're like water. Can I kiss them?"
Dave knew he should be offended at Brittany's use of the word "pretty" to describe anything about him, but he wasn't. He wished he could tell her he loved her and mean it. "I'm not sure," he said. "I think that would hurt."
"Can I kiss your lips, then?" she said. "They look like strawberry ice cream."
"They taste like lime Jell-O and vodka." He wondered if he was trying to discourage her from kissing him, or just to keep her expectations from getting too high.
"I like those things, too," she said, trailing her finger along his jaw. "Hmmm. You're stubbly. Like Lord Tubbington's tongue. Can I lick you?"
Dave noticed how dry his mouth was, thought he felt the alcohol starting to seep out of his pores. He didn't really want her to touch him like that, but he didn't want to hurt her feelings, either, and maybe he could just finally get this over with.
"Sure," he said, and as soon as he did, she started flicking her tongue across his jaw in tiny strokes, and it wasn't horrible. It felt strangely non-sexual, and he didn't quite understand why, but when Brittany paused to say, "This is how Lord Tubbington greets me in the morning," he decided to attribute his lack of arousal to Brittany pretending to be a cat.
She moved to his mouth, and that was weird at first, because she kept licking in small, short strokes; but then she began to tug on his lips with hers, and he closed his eyes and just let himself feel the pull of skin on skin, the warmth and sweetness of it. Her lips were slick with gloss, and she tasted like kiwis and breath mints, but he tried not to be distracted by that, and just think how nice it should be that he was close to someone this way.
When the other guys started making lewd comments, Brittany ignored them, but Dave burned inside. He squeezed her hand and asked her if they could go somewhere else. "Sure," she said. "Hold on."
A minute later, she was back with Santana, who glared at him in a way that would have frightened him if he had actually wanted Brittany. "You do what she wants and nothing else," Santana said, adding a few choice threats involving his testicles, a melon-baller, and the family of raccoons that lived under Azimio’s porch.
Brittany picked the guest bedroom, thank god, because Dave didn't think he could ever look Azimio in the face again if it she'd picked his sister's bedroom or his parents' bedroom or, worst of all, Azimio's own bedroom.
She lay Dave out on the bed and hovered over him, kissing his face and telling him he was beautiful, that his skin was softer than she had expected, that his hair was as easy to touch as dandelion fluff. She kept asking why he looked so sad and he kept saying, "I'm not sad," until finally she said, "I understand. I forgive you."
"For what?" he said.
"For what you said about Kurt. I know you didn't mean it. You're afraid of him. Like all the boys are."
"I don't - I'm not -"
"Boys get scared because they want to lick Kurt, or they think they might want to lick Kurt, or that Kurt might want to lick them. Even though it should make them happy. Thinking about licking Kurt makes me happy."
"No, I wouldn't - " Dave started, but his throat closed on him.
"Maybe you should," Brittany said. "Maybe it would cheer you up."
"It would," he said, without meaning to.
"I thought so," Brittany said, kissing Dave behind the ear, and finally, finally, he felt something like what he should feel, a little shock of want and hope through his skin and down his spine. "So," she said, rolling onto her side and propping herself up with one elbow, "you think about Kurt, and I'll think about you."
She trailed her hand down to his jeans and loosened the buttons with easy expertise, and he wondered how many times she had done this. He was jealous of her, of all she had experienced and all that he had missed, but mostly of how straightforward this was for her. If she wanted it, she went for it, and didn't give a damn what anyone else thought.
"Huh, that's different," she said when she slipped her hand in his briefs and brushed his limp cock. "Usually it's hard by now."
"Sorry," he said.
"That's okay," she said. "Do you want me to stop?"
"No."
"Then start thinking about Kurt," she said. "Or someone else you think is pretty."
"Okay," he murmured, and closed his eyes and finally let himself see. He told himself it was only because she had told him to, that he was being a good lover - a gentleman - by following her directions.
It took absolutely no effort to see Kurt then, to recall every detail that Dave had tried so hard not to memorize. Everything about Kurt hurt - the way he walked down the hall like he owned it, the way his hips tilted forward when he leaned back against the lockers talking to one of his friends, the way his clothing snugged against his body and made Dave wonder about what was beneath.
Dave felt Brittany's lips on his neck, light kisses and gentle sucking, and her fingers brushing the underside of his cock. He pictured Kurt leading the Cheerios at the pep rally earlier in the week, prowling across the basketball court and squatting so low that Dave wondered how his thighs didn't just give out - and if they didn't give out on that, what else could they do? He heard the growl in Kurt's voice as he sang, and it sounded to Dave like commandment and desire, and oh he wanted that voice in his ears now, telling him what to do, who to be, how to let himself want.
"Take me," he said, forgetting where he was and who he was with until he heard her voice.
"How do you want it?" she said.
He pretended it wasn't her voice, that it was another voice, a voice that made him tremble inside. He told himself that it was okay what that voice did to him, because it wasn't really a man's voice - not exactly - but something in between male and female, or something encompassing them both, and it was probably the feminine aspect of that voice that made him want so badly.
"Whatever," Dave said. "Whatever you want." He was hard now, cock straining for something more than Brittany's gentle hand. He wanted rough possession, to feel he had no choice in the matter.
Her hand left him and he felt the mattress shift, but he didn't open his eyes - couldn't. He heard the tearing of foil and then felt her settling on his thighs, her ass resting just above his knees and her cheerleading skirt rustling against his jeans. Her hand was on him again, the strokes soothing now, reassuring - tethering him to reality when he felt on the edge of losing his sanity completely. He felt the cool, slippery unrolling of something over his cock, Brittany's deft fingers smoothing it down to the base, and he let himself think Oh, this is what a condom feels like but refused to think about what would happen next.
She trailed her fingers through the hair at the base of his cock, and they were Kurt's long, perfect, evil fingers and Dave gasped, "Fuck."
"You really want him, don’t you?" she said gently.
"Yes."
Dave felt Brittany's other hand on his forearm, petting him and making the hairs there stand on end. "You're trembling," she said. "Do you want me to stop?"
"No. Keep going." He dared to open his eyes then and looked at her. "Why are you doing this, though?"
Her laugh was light and knowing, and maybe there was a little pity in it. "Because it feels good," she said. "And I've already made out with all the other guys in the school except for Kurt and some of the ninth graders who look like fifth graders, and the hockey team is our best team next to the Cheerios and so it would just mean a lot to me to get to make out with all the hockey players, you know?"
"Kind of," he said.
She smiled that sweet smile that makes her look a little like one of those porcelain angel dolls his grandmother used to keep on the top of her piano. "Now close your eyes and think of him."
He did what she said. He felt Brittany's hands slide his t-shirt upward, the brush of air on his exposed chest, and thought of Kurt's face, his piercing eyes and his haughty smirk, his cruel eyebrows and his delicate nose. He thought of those glances of longing he had sometimes seen directed at Finn, and imagined them being directed at him.
Dave felt Brittany's lips on his stomach, his nipples, her hand still gripping his cock - except that it wasn't Brittany at all. It was Kurt's terrifying hand, and Dave thrust his hips forward, want and need winning over should and can.
The tongue on his cock was hot and slick and shocking. He hadn't been expecting it, was expecting something else entirely, but there it was, and also - all his friends who griped that they couldn't feel anything through a condom were full of shit.
Because Dave felt everything - more than everything: Kurt's wide, sweet lips, open and loose and wet and so-so-so much, and then tighter and sucking and curling and he thought he would die and he thought he would live forever and he forced himself to keep his hips still even though he was drowning in Kurt, Kurt's fingers on his nipples and his taint and oh and he saw Kurt's perfect hair mussed by desire and felt Kurt's hot breath against his stomach and heard Kurt's voice growling his name and he wanted to grab Kurt and hold on forever but he couldn't, so he grabbed the rails of the headboard and squeezed them so hard he could feel them pressing marks into his palms.
Dave's cock and his heart were throbbing and he let everything go, forgot everything and remembered himself and who he was and how he was meant to be. His cock became Kurt's cock and the mouth around it became his own, and it was more pleasure than he could stand and he felt the hot surge in his pelvis, familiar and yet so different from anything he'd felt before, and it vibrated down his thighs and made his knees quiver, and up into his nipples and his skull until he saw an explosion of colored dots dance across the inside of his closed eyelids and he gasped out Kurt's name.
Brittany was emitting soft moans that sounded like satisfaction, her mouth still around his cock, pulling him through it, but it was too much now and he lowered his hand to her jaw, pressing gently, thankfully, and she lifted off of him. He opened his eyes then, looked at her smiling up at him, her chin resting next to his slumping cock and her eyes alight, and he realized they were blue, kind of like Kurt's, but without the flecks of turquoise and emerald and aquamarine that set Dave's heart on fire.
He patted her hair, which was soft and reassuring, not sinister like Kurt's. "I - What do you want?" he said, afraid of the answer, but willing to try because it was the right thing to do, and might make him a little less whatever he was.
"I want to cuddle, and then I want Santana to fuck me," she said, resting her cheek on his stomach and sighing contentedly, and the relief was so terrifying, he almost cried. But he didn't. He held the tears back until his eyes felt like they were being clamped in a vise, and the only thing that relieved the pressure was when the tears started running out his nose, instead.
"Brittany? Please don't tell Santana what I said."
"You mean, that you told me you taste like Jell-O, even though you really taste like bubblegum and dip?"
"Um, no," he said. "About - who I was thinking about."
"Oh, I never tell her stuff like that," Brittany said. "She gets upset if someone isn't thinking about me, and I don't like to hurt her. Anyway, I mostly like to gossip about myself."
"Thanks," he said.
She petted the hair on his lower stomach absent-mindedly, like she was stroking a cat. "You should take the condom off before it falls off and spills all over the bed. There's a lot in there."
He felt his ears burn.
"Do you know how?" she said.
"Um," was all he could get out.
"Okay," she said cheerfully. "I'll do it for you. But watch. You need to learn. It's good condom etiquette. You put your friend's condom on for them, but you take your own condom off." Her voice was teacherly - not like his teachers at McKinley, but the ones he had in early elementary school who were gentle and kind and who he’d wished he could go home and live with.
Brittany rearranged his cock so the tip of the condom hung down, then slipped it off and tied it in a knot. "If you're at someone else's house," she continued in her sweet didacticism, "wad it in Kleenex before you throw it away. Most people don't like to see someone else's used condom in the trash. Weird, huh?" She stood up and grabbed a box of tissues and did as she had just instructed, then handed him the box so he could clean himself, and held the trashcan up to him so he wouldn't have to move.
"Why is that weird?" Dave said.
Brittany rolled her eyes and smiled in a way that almost seemed condescending - which surprised Dave, because he hadn't realized she might be capable of that. "Because every time someone comes without hurting anybody, an angel gets its wings."
Dave wasn't sure if she meant that as a metaphor or if she literally believed it. He hoped it wasn't the latter, because it would explain too much.
"I'm pretty sure that doesn't happen when I come," he said. He hadn't meant to say it out loud - but there it was.
"Of course it does," Brittany said, sliding back onto the bed and putting her head on his chest. "The angels need you, too. You have to be doing something very, very bad for your orgasms not to count." She sighed, nuzzling her cheek against his skin. "You're like a big teddy bear, but with a heart. I can hear it - kathunk, kathunk, kathunk."
It wasn't bad, lying there with her. It felt close, and warm, and oddly comfortable, and he could let himself hope that those feelings were attraction and maybe the first bloom of romance, that maybe his need for Kurt as she had sucked him off could morph into desire for her.
But the next morning, when he was alone in his room and he tried to think of her that way, nothing happened. His dick lay listless in his hand no matter how he teased and stroked it. So instead he pushed her aside and tried to remember instead the feeling of tongue on his cock, fingers on his nipples, how hard and hungry he had been and how - oh fuck, Kurt, no, he shouldn't think of Kurt, not when he was alone, when there was no girl there to make him okay. But he couldn't not think of Kurt, not when his hand was on his cock and he was finally, finally starting to get hard. Each shot of pleasure brought Kurt's face, his forearms, his sweet-supple ass, his fuck-syrup voice to mind, and every time he thought of Kurt he lost a little more control until Kurt was naked, Dave was naked, cocks rubbing together fiercely, Dave pinned down to the bed by Kurt's unforgiving hands and thighs and tongue - helpless, taken, wanted, fucked.
Dave came so hard his skull vibrated, but he kept stroking himself, imagining the come on his cock was Kurt's, marking and possessing him. "David Karofsky, you fucking fag," he murmured to himself, but he still didn't stop.
He fucked himself that way for the next few weeks - coming harder each time than the last as he allowed the fantasies to get more elaborate, let the Kurt of his imagination take him in every way possible.
And then things started to get ... complicated. He'd see Kurt in the hallway or a classroom or the gym and his cock would go almost immediately hard as images from the previous afternoon flooded his mind: Kurt dragging him into the teacher's bathroom and locking the door, pushing Dave to his knees and fucking his mouth so hard that Dave almost choked; the two of them in the locker room showers, soap-slippery and wet, their cocks sliding together, Kurt's hand over Dave's mouth to keep his cries from getting too loud; Kurt making Dave bend over the weight bench, ass exposed, sliding his long fingers in and out and telling Dave he was going to fuck him so hard that Dave would feel it all week.
Dave stared sometimes. He couldn’t stop himself. Thank god, Kurt was almost always standing next to some girl, so if anyone ever noticed him gawking, he could just pretend he was looking at her. That's how Azimio got to thinking that Dave had crushes on Mercedes Jones and that Tina girl, and started teasing him relentlessly about being into those fucking fag hags from the glee club - which was annoying, but so much better than Azimio knowing the truth.
But then things changed.
Because, one day, Kurt wasn’t standing next to a girl, and Dave still looked. Kurt was at the opposite end of the main corridor, leaning forward to read something on one of the bulletin boards, his hips swaying subtley as he shifted his weight from one leg to another. He had on a long blue scarf that, had he been standing straight, would have obscured his fly. But Kurt wasn’t standing straight, and his low-slung pants were tighter than leggings, and Dave could see the profile of his cock bulging against the front. Dave had the unexpected, overwhelming urge to spit-shine Kurt’s gleaming leather riding boots with his tongue.
Dave was jolted out of his reverie by Azimio’s elbow. “Jesus fuck, Dave! I know it’s hard to take your eyes off a car crash, but you keep looking at him that way and people are gonna start thinking it’s because you like what you see.”
Dave quiver started out naturally, born out of fear. But when he realized what his body was doing, he took control and turned it into a shudder of disgust. “Shit, man, don’t be sick.” He shoved Azimio by the shoulder and then, for good measure, scrunched his face up sourly, smacking his tongue dryly against the roof of his mouth. “Damn, I’m thirsty. Sure could go for a slushie. Couldn’t you?”
Azimio chuckled, his face lighting up in that way that used to make something inside Dave’s chest feel like it was going all soft and warm. “That’s more like it, D.”
Dave suddenly felt like his internal organs had been replaced with a block of ice, but he chuckled with Azimio all the way to the slushie machine.
*
When the summer came, Dave breathed a sigh of relief. He had three months to forget Kurt Hummel.
Dave went on the internet. He read evangelical websites about recovering from porn addiction (even though he hadn't actually been looking at much porn). He read about “secular” reparative therapy, how you could force yourself to think about women while you masturbated and eventually, you'd come to love them. (He'd tried that a lot already, and it hadn't worked.) He read about not masturbating, about doing push-ups or going for a run every time you had a sexy thought. (It turned out that push-ups reminded him of fucking, and running made him feel alive, which made him feel sexy, which made him want to jerk off.)
So Dave started going to porn sites and finding videos of guys who looked nothing like Kurt and watched them do everything. He found his favorites and replaced Kurt with them in his fantasies. By the time summer was over, he was over Kurt. He was sure of it.
Until he saw Kurt in the hallway on the first day of school. Kurt was misting hairspray over his scalp as he looked into a small mirror on the inside of his locker door. He stood tall and proud and confident, and Dave’s heart almost rose out of his chest and the skin of his cheeks and fingers tingled, crying to be held by Kurt and kissed and made safe.
It wasn't even a sexual feeling - Dave didn't get hard, didn't feel blood rush into his pelvis, didn't think about fucking or being fucked.
It was a lot like what people talk about when they talk about falling in love.
No. David Karofsky might get off on watching videos of men fucking each other, but he was not that much of a faggot. He wasn't going to buy roses and go on dates to see sing-along Moulin Rouge and hold hands in the park and send love notes on Valentine's Day and start calling everyone sweetheart and eat breakfast in bed with his screw on the off-chance that he ever got laid.
Dave turned away from Kurt, closed his heart and vowed to never feel anything that horrible again.
He didn’t know then that what he would do over the following months would make him feel so much worse.