Fic: Fidelity, Chapter 13 - Starting Anew
Fic summary: An unlikely friendship forms. Dave learns to love himself, Blaine learns to trust love, and Kurt learns that love is both simpler and a lot more complicated than he expected. AU from 3.05 with canon elements.
Chapter summary: Dave discovers that coming out never goes quite as you expect it, and that maybe the good in the world outweighs the bad. ~2,192 words.
Warnings: homophobia, homophobic language (but they don’t dominate the chapter)
Pairings: Kurt/Blaine
Rating: PG-13 for this chapter
Livejournal | Dreamwidth | AO3 | tumblr
Note: Chapters on AO3 are numbered differently due to factors beyond my control.
---
Chapter 13: Starting Anew
Dave's Monday is surprisingly uneventful - anticlimactic, really, after years of fearing the worst.
Maybe his new school is better than McKinley. Or maybe Burt Hummel was right. Maybe the only reason McKinley was so bad was because Dave made it that way.
There are stares, but he's gotten stares before. Most of the classmates who spoke to him before are still speaking to him as if nothing's changed - and maybe some of them don't know, but a lot of them must.
He returns to his locker from government class to find a folded piece of paper that has been slipped through the vents in the door. It's a picture of Esera Tuaolo, the only gay NFL player Dave's ever heard of, printed off in black and white with a note that reads: "See? You're not the only one."
Definitely not what Dave has been expecting.
The note he gets after math class is more along the lines of what Dave has feared. "Hey gayboy, want to lick my balls? Meet me under the bleachers after school."
Dave's pretty sure that's not a come-on, but the fact that he can't be entirely sure makes him laugh as he crumples up the paper and tosses it into the recycling bin.
At lunch, he hears a couple mutterings of fag and either buttboy or buckboy - they're too mumbled for him to tell. He wishes that they were louder, sharper, pointed enough to scratch into his skin and make him bleed, give him the scars he deserves for using those same words against people.
But they slip off him like drops of water, and although they may leave a residue of hurt for a few minutes, it quickly evaporates.
He eats with some girls from his math class, which feels stereotypically gay and a little weird because he's not really used to hanging out with girls much. But they invited him, and he doesn't want to risk sitting with any of the usual jocks. The varsity quarterback, whose ass Dave saved so many times last fall, pointedly looked away from him every time they neared each other in the halls this morning - which was between every class, since their lockers are only five apart from each other. And the linebackers, who were hanging out near the soda machine between second and third period, turned away from him when they saw him get in line for his Mountain Dew.
It turns out the girls aren't all bad. They don't spend the entire time talking about clothes and dieting and their periods like he thought they would; most of the conversation is taken up by one of the girls explaining a computer program she's designing. Dave doesn't understand half of it, but the half he does understand makes him wish he understood more.
After English, the hockey captain high-fives Dave in the hall for "telling off those pricks from McKinley" and adds, "You should have been on our team." Which is nice, even if neither of them refer to the content of the telling off.
In physics, a girl whose name he can never remember - it's either Catherine or Elizabeth, he's not sure - comes up to him before the bell rings and hugs him. "My brother is, too," she whispers into his ear. "College is so much better."
He thinks he should finally learn her name.
All in all, it's bearable - maybe better than bearable - and if it continues this way until the end of the school year, he'll easily survive it.
All in all, he deserves a lot worse.
*
When Dave gets to Blaine's house that afternoon, Blaine gives him the tightest, longest hug he's gotten since he was seven years old.
Instead of feeling constricted, Dave feels looser and freer than he did after the game on Saturday. He wonders if this is what life will be like now, the bands around him being slowly unbound, until one day they're gone altogether.
Kurt stands back while they hug, smiling fondly, and Dave has to remind himself not to reach out to him as soon as Blaine lets go. Kurt doesn't hug people other than Blaine and girls unless he’s drunk. Dave’s coming out doesn't change that.
What Dave gets from Kurt is so much better than a hug, anyway. There's a light of pride in Kurt's eyes, shining so bright that it makes Dave want to lie down and bask in it. He thinks he might understand a little of the feeling that Moses had when he prostrated himself before God on Mt. Sinai.
"You look amazing, Dave," Blaine says, slapping him on the shoulder as they walk toward the kitchen. "You look fifty years younger. Okay, that doesn't make any sense, but - less weather-beaten? Which sounds like a backhanded compliment. I just mean - "
"He just means that it's good to see you, Dave," Kurt says, settling on a barstool, and that smile is still there, and that light in his eyes - twinkling and sparkling and goddamn gleaming at Dave. "And you look happy."
"I am," Dave says, almost inaudibly. But he can tell Kurt caught it by the way his smile grows even more content.
"Exactly," says Blaine, disappearing behind the refrigerator door. "That was exactly what I wanted to say." He reappears with two cans of soda and a juice box and sets them on the bar. "The usual, I presume?"
Dave takes his Mountain Dew and Kurt takes his Coke Zero and the three of them settle down to start their homework. They don't talk about the weekend; Dave said all he needed to say last night when they texted.
So the afternoon isn't much different than usual for the first couple hours - Dave even finds himself unable to break his new habit of sneakily glancing at Kurt's ass to look for a handkerchief (today, there's the tiniest sliver of what might be plaid sticking out of Kurt's right back pocket, but Dave's pretty sure that doesn't mean anything in the hanky code), until Blaine turns his laptop in Dave's direction and tells him to sign into his Facebook account.
"I've kind of been avoiding Facebook," Dave says.
"No, not for you to look at. For me to."
Dave raises an eyebrow at Blaine.
"My brother did this for me when I came out. He'd go through my Facebook wall for me and delete anything that I didn't need to see, and block the people who posted it. Well, after taking screenshots of whatever they'd put there in case we ever needed it as evidence."
Kurt stares at Blaine, slack-jawed. "Cooper did that? That doesn't sound very … Cooper-esque."
Blaine shrugs. "He pulls through when I least expect it."
Dave jumps in. "So how many friends did you lose?" It's been nagging him, even though he knows he shouldn't care.
"Well, any that he had to get rid of were never really my friends in the first place, so ... none, actually," Blaine says a little too casually. "But if you mean my friends list, then I'm not sure, because I made other friends at the same time. Every gray cloud has a silver lining."
"And every silver lining has a gray cloud," Kurt murmurs.
Dave types his email address and password into Facebook, but he doesn't click the login button. "Here you go," he says, handing the computer back to Blaine. "But maybe sit at the kitchen table or something so I don't try to read over your shoulder."
* * *
"It's not all bad, actually," Blaine says after a couple of minutes. "It looks like Santana's on a mission to plaster your wall with kindness."
Dave smirks. "Not what I would have expected."
"Yeah," sighs Kurt. "She's nice sometimes now. It's weird."
"And Lord Tubbington is apparently a big fan of your performance at Saturday's game." Blaine smiles. "But knowing Lord Tubbington, he's probably talking about your tackles."
Dave laughs through his nose, and Kurt throws a pencil in Blaine's general direction, letting out a satisfied cluck when it hits the wall behind him rather than Blaine himself. "Have you been drinking Brittany's Kool-Aid?"
"Brittany makes the best Kool-Aid. She uses a secret recipe that's been handed down in Lord Tubbington's family for generations." Blaine looks back at the computer. "Also, you're a terrible shot."
"I wasn't trying to hit you. That pencil went exactly where I wanted it to go."
Kurt and Blaine continue their banter while Blaine works at the computer. It's a performance for Dave - laughing and joking to keep his mind off things that aren't funny at all.
Kurt can see from the lines in Blaine's forehead that not all the messages are kind - probably not even half of them - but Blaine keeps smiling as if the silver linings are the only thing visible to him. Kurt knows that Blaine will spend more time than usual in the weight room, pummeling the heavy bag until his arms are so tired he can barely raise them. He'll cry about them, too, and if Kurt's lucky, he'll get to hold Blaine through the tears. Blaine will refuse to tell him what most of the messages said, though, trying to protect Kurt from sharing in the heartache.
Of course it won't work. Blaine's heartache is always his own.
But for now, Kurt tries to believe the silver linings will suffice. Maybe Dave can believe it then, too.
* * *
Blaine shuts the laptop with an air of finality. "Okay. Done for now." He points to a piece of paper next to him. "I switched your page to private and made it so only friends can send you messages, and I wrote two lists. People who are safe, and people I blocked. Do you want them?"
"Maybe the good list," Dave says.
Blaine tears the piece of paper down the middle and brings the right half over to Dave, who folds it up and slips it into his pocket without looking at it. "Thanks," he says.
"You're not going to read it?" Blaine says.
Dave nods. "I will before school tomorrow. So I know who's safe. And maybe - " He stops, fiddles with his empty Mountain Dew can, feels the other boys’ eyes on him, waiting. "Maybe I could add my real friends to Facebook." He pulls the tab off and drops it into the can, swirls it around and listens to the scrape and slide of aluminum against aluminum. "I mean - "
He puts the can down, faces them but doesn't quite look in either pair of eyes. He's not sure why this is so hard, why it's like asking a guy to prom or letting a lover take all your clothes off or a hundred other things he's never experienced because they're just too difficult. "Maybe we can be Facebook friends now? You guys are important to me, and I don't want to hide you anymore. If that's - if that's okay."
Dave feels the breath squeeze out of him before he realizes he's being tackled by Blaine - well, not tackled, really. Dave supposes it's a hug, but it's even tighter than the one Blaine gave him when he first walked through the door.
"That would be awesome, Dave," Blaine effuses. "I'm so proud to call you my friend."
Dave looks over the top of Blaine's head at Kurt, whose grin is so big that Dave swears he can see every one of his teeth but his molars. They're a little rounded at the corners, not straight and sharp like Dave's, or rigidly aligned from years of braces. Dave thought he had memorized everything about Kurt that was possible to memorize - but he didn't even know that Kurt could smile like this, hadn't realized the perfect imperfection of Kurt's teeth.
Kurt reaches a hand toward them and tugs on Blaine's shoulder. "I think you need to let Dave breathe, dear."
*
On Thursday, Blaine quietly purges Dave's Facebook wall again while Kurt and Dave huddle over a physics problem at the kitchen bar. Up until the end of the afternoon, it's the only thing that veers from their normal routine, and Blaine does it so inconspicuously that they can almost pretend it's not happening at all.
When Dave is done studying, he walks over to the Steinway, stopping at the bookshelf first to tug out a book that's calling his name.
He flips through the pages, opening it to a piece he's always loved but never tried to play, and lets his eyes wander over the notes. Yes, he thinks, he should be able to do this, though it may take a little effort.
He rests the book against the music stand, settles himself on the bench and begins to play, methodically crawling over the keys with the speed of a pale-throated sloth. But he hits the right notes, and it doesn't sounds like random noise. It sounds like music.
He doesn't see Kurt standing in the entrance of the kitchen and watching him, smiling so wide that his eyes are half-closed with delight.