The caustic gift of insight.

Transcendental functions.

"What? Why that face? What, exactly, is so fucking funny?"

"Nothing, nothing! I'm sorry. It's just. You know, you talk a lot about elegance, for someone who looks..."

"Looks like what, Eyebrows?"

"I'm sorry, that came out wrong. I'm not trying to be insulting. Really. You look good—you know, uhm, fine. But you dress... You honestly don't care about what you wear. Not that I think there's anything wrong with that."

Dave snorted. It was almost cute that he wanted to reassure him he was less severe about fashion than Kurt, when Dave was readily capable of disregarding even his rigorous advice.

"And yet," Blaine swept an arm as if he was leading a waltz. "'Elegance.'"

Dave shrugged. "I care about it where it matters. Like. I fucking hate Trig." Blaine was a little baffled, because he'd been promised—explicitly and adamantly—that David Karofsky was an absolute math geek. "Because it's not elegant. It yields these huge messes of irrational numbers. And some you can put in terms of pretty, neat numbers, like pi or root two, but mostly you just have to pick your significant figures and let the rest of it just hang there like it never happened. It's sloppy."

"And calculus..."

"Sleek as a motherfucker. Like a fucking Mercedes roadster. Look at this." He pointed at the notebook page full of chicken scratched functions, crossed out lines and graphs covered in smudgy erasures. "It flows well, cleanly. It's neat. It's beautiful."

Blaine raised a substantial eyebrow and bit back a smirk.

"The idea, okay? The concept of it. Just—here. The exponential function." David wrote out the expressions as he spoke. "Its own derivative, and, plus C, its own integral. That? Is fucking classy."

Blaine burst into laughter, and tried to drown it in the crook of his elbow before the two of them got kicked out of the library. Part of it was over the incongruous description; the rest was the green prickle of new understanding in his chest, of how little he knew David and how much he wanted to.

"Look, Your Academic Excellency, you want an A- midterm or not?"

Shuttle Diplomacy.

"What do you think you're doing?"

"What?"

"Dave."

"What about him?"

"Look, Prep School Ken." Santana tilted her head, less than amused. "Unlike every other self-involved loser in Glee Club I have not carefully trained myself to ignore anything involving Dave Karofsky. What you're doing? I can see it. And I don't care if you're faking coyness or in denial, either way you're snapping out of it right now and explaining yourself."

"He's a nice guy. We've been hanging out. I don't see how that's something that I need to explain to anyone. Least of all to you."

"Least of all to me? I'm his ex-girlfriend."

"You're his ex-beard." Blaine found the word, the entire scheme, kind of gross.

"All the more reason. Trust me: Just because people aren't paying attention doesn't mean you're not transparent. So, once again. What do you think you're doing?"

"I—I'm just. Getting to know him. Okay? It's nothing bad. He's different from what I thought he was. He's interesting. Complex."

"You knew he was closeted and acting out and it didn't occur to you that he's complex?"

"I meant more. More than that. He's more than Narnia jokes and overcompensation. He's..." Blaine lowered his voice, suddenly very aware of the customers at the Lima Bean. When did a handful of people become a crowd? "He's funny, in a gruff sort of way. Smart, too— or no, not smart, intelligent. And he's passionate about the strangest things." Blaine smiled. "If you saw how he gets about math..."

"Oh, really? Fascinating! Tell me, does he know how to ice skate? How does he feel about Tarantino movies?"

He sighed. "I just—I like how it feels to know him. It's nothing more than that. It's nothing bad."

"Look, Eyebrows. If things were different I'd probably be encouraging you. If there's one thing Dave needs more than a good lay and parents who let him skip mass, it's a sweet, pretty boyfriend. But you can't apply for the job when you already hold the position in a different company, can you?"

Blaine couldn't answer, his tongue as stuck in place as his thoughts.

"Don't make him the Other Man. Don't make him the reason Kurt gets hurt again. Cause he won't forgive you for that. He needs Kurt to be happy in order to not hate himself."

"Even if nobody else is?" Blaine's voice was small.

Santana sat back and eyed him neutrally. Expectant.

"No—forget I said that. That's not fair." He closed his eyes and sighed. "I mean, I didn't mean it like that. I am happy. So much. It's why I left Dalton, even though it was safe and familiar. Because I'm happy with Kurt near. But David is—he deserves something like that too."

"Oh, I know that. Did you miss the part of this conversation where I implied I know him much better than you? Cause we can go back over it and I'll be more literal."

Blaine didn't respond. He blinked rapidly, absorbed in his thoughts.

"He doesn't deserve this, though. He needs something better."

"I... I honestly don't see how I'm doing anything wrong. This thing, it's perfectly harmless; I'm not going to actually do anything. I'm not. And if it's obvious I think he's great—I think he needs that. To know that he can be desirable. That he's attractive. I'm just looking. Nothing more. Nothing worse. What exactly is the harm in that?"

"If you were just checking out his arms, or his thighs or his ass, then nothing. But you're beyond that already, aren't you?"

Blaine breathed a helpless sigh and stared at his coffee.

Santana evaluated him carefully, thinking of the worst (and best) that could come from this. "You're already in more trouble than you think. Because you barely know what it feels like to know him, Warbler. His sisters call him Bunny, and he can dance a decent salsa, and he loves a good Monty Python quote. And he's huge." She bit saucily into her biscotti and he blushed.

"Next time he tutors you," she said as she gathered her bag, her pastry and her coffee mug, "ask him to fold you an origami swallow. Those things are gorgeous." And she left his table, more confident and more pleased with this mess than she had any right to be.

Note: This started as a comment fic I posted at the KarofskyLove LJ comm. Then I got the idea for second conversation and, well, here we are.

Disclaimer: I make no claim to owning any of the characters in this story.