A/N: Yet another La Vie Boheme universe fanfic. This time, it involves the independent film as mentioned in the eighth chapter, except this time, it features Dave's POV! ;D

Also: I AM TOTALLY UNCREATIVE. When it comes to character names for Dave and Kurt to play in the independent film, I couldn't think of anything, so they actually end up using parodies of their real names. LOLOLOLOL I fail.

Bleep-bleep, bleep-bleep, bleep-blee –

I roll over in bed and smack my alarm clock violently. I gradually open my eyes, rubbing at them, sighing through my nose gruffly. I prop myself up on one elbow and gaze down at the slender man lying beside me, half of the covers kicked away from his body. He's curled up on his side, milky porcelain skin alight in the crack of morning light leaking through the blinds.

I reach out a hand to gently stroke down his arm, feeling goosebumps rise on his skin as I do so. My hand slides back up, starting to rub his shoulder and neck, his skin smooth to the touch. "Hey, babe. Time to get up," I purr in his hear, my voice a little rough with sleep.

"Mnh," he half-hums, half-grunts. "I dun want to get up yet," he mumbles, yawning loudly.

"We have to, Kurt," I remind him, my hand grazing the length of his spine. I can feel a few vertebrae here and there beneath his skin, as well as the assuring thickness of muscle. "Our first day of filming is today."

For the past month now, we've been rehearsing for an independent film some guy named Chuck has been trying to create. He's Australian, with an accent and everything. He likes wearing baggy t-shirts of '70s rock bands. But his directing skills are impressive, just like his video-editing skills. And he has one damn fancy camera. He's pretty cool, and he acts like a fanboy whenever he hears Kurt or I sing.

"Oh… right," Kurt yawns, his words a little slurred. He flops onto his back, landing just an inch from me. His eyes open and he gazes up at me, his arms casually lying over his torso. "You excited?"

"Are you kidding?" I smile, propping my head up in my hand while my free hand fiddles with one of his on his chest. "It's been a dream of mine to be in a movie. This is only an independent film, but who knows? Maybe we'll get discovered as actors because of it. It's so lucky that I can't pass this up. I mean, what are the chances?"

Kurt laughs a little, leaning his head toward me to leave a peck on my neck. He sits up and cracks his back before turning to look at me. "You're so right. And on that note, I am fully awake, but in desperate need of a shower. I call dibs!" And he bolts out of bed.

"Oh no, you don't, Hummel," I grin playfully, chasing after him and grabbing him by the waist before he can reach the frame of the bathroom door. I swing him around and drop him on the opposite side while I slip into the bathroom, locking the door behind me. "You take forever in here! I'll be faster."

"Jerk!" he retorts, pounding a fist or a foot on the door. "Just for that, you have to make your own breakfast, because I'm eating all the rest of the cereal!"

Drat. He's got me there. But still, a victory is a victory, so I reap my rewards by stepping into the shower stall and turning on the water after discarding my pajama pants and boxers.

As soon as I'm out of the bathroom, my towel helping rid my ear of some water, Kurt is rushing right in. I ignore how he sends me an adorable dirty look, his lips pouty and his brows angry. But after about an hour he'll forget all about this and be himself again. We do this nearly every other day, stealing something from the other, such as a shower or the last cookie or something else silly that people often experience when living with someone.

After getting dressed, I head out into the kitchen and make myself a toasted English muffin with melted peanut butter on top. I chug a glass of milk, and by the time I'm ready to brush my teeth, Kurt is thankfully stepping out of the bathroom. He heads into the bedroom to dress, and it's simply our routine. I love every second of it. My life is whole, now, and I can't imagine it being like how it was before I re-met Kurt, or before he moved in.

"Meerwow," Figgles calls out, coming to weave between my ankles. I bend down and scoop him up, carrying him into the bedroom.

"Kitty tackle!" I say, tossing the cat gently into Kurt's awaiting arms. He laughs and hugs the animal to his chest.

"Good morning, Figgy," he coos, scratching the underside of the cat's chin. He glances up to look at me, and I can't help but admire how cute he is. Admittedly, one of the major reasons why I love Kurt so much is because his good looks never get old. He bats his eyes at me, smirking lightly. "And good morning to you, Dave."

I grin. "No longer pissed at me for taking a shower first?"

"Water under the bridge," he replies, setting his pet down to lean forward and give me a kiss. He still tastes of breakfast, and it tastes funny when mixed with the toothpaste flavor in my mouth. "Mm. You taste minty-fresh," he says.

"And you taste like Cinnamon Toast Crunch," I smile, running a hand through his wet hair. He always looks so sexy when he doesn't have his hair all combed back and gelled. (Mind you, I like his hair anyway, but when it's messy or wet, it just reminds me that no one is perfect, as much as I like to think that Kurt embodies perfection itself.)

"Sorry," he says, and turns to grab his shirt and yank it over his head. I already miss seeing his bare skin, but I can deal with it. His shirt is pretty tight, and his sleeves are short, since it's muggy August in Chicago at the moment. "So," he says, "As soon as I do my hair, we can go." He touches the top of my head where my hair is its thickest, still damp from my own shower. "But shouldn't you do something to yours, Mister?"

I shrug nonchalantly. "What's wrong with it? It's usually like this."

He makes a sideways frown on his lips, his eyebrows puckered in the slightest. "I don't know. I would just like to see how else you could look. It's a natural curiosity."

I roll my eyes. "You read too many fashion and hair styling magazines," I remark facetiously (a word I picked up from the man in front of me). "Now go do your hair so that we can leave."

Sighing to himself, Kurt relents. "Okay, okay." He struts out of the room (my eyes lingering on his butt unashamedly) and heads into the bathroom.

I decide to watch something on TV. It can take up to twenty or thirty minutes for him to get his hair "just right."

When Kurt's nearly done, I refill the cat's dish for him while he gathers up his wallet. With one last glance in the mirror, he turns to me and announces, "And I'm officially ready. Let's go, shall we?"

"We shall," I answer, and as he trots over to me, I don't hesitate to take his proffered hand in mine. We lock up the apartment, head outside into the blazing sun, listening to the cicada cry together, a low buzz coming from who knows what trees in this concrete jungle.

There's a studio outside of one of the art colleges in nearly the heart of the city. Chuck should be waiting there with the rest of his cast, an entire space station set up on the inside by some of the college students he hired as special effect artists.

The plot of the story is surprisingly well thought-out. In Chuck's screenplay, Earth was devastated by overpopulation and a few live-shattering floods from rising ocean waters, since he believes that someday the polar ice caps will all melt from the hole in the Ozone layer making global warming. Anyway, the overpopulation and lack of places to live stirred a project with the futuristic science to build space stations the size of countries in space that orbit the Earth alongside the moon. People attend school there, get jobs there, and live otherwise normal lives… in space. But there are diseases that can spread up there due to the compact way of living, and so this group of child-prodigy high school students, according to Chuck, decides to formulate an experiment to find a cure.

It's all very clever, and in the mix, there are two main romantic couples that are trying to battle against the odds and levels of stress to stay together. The main couple, two "teens" (since most of the actors are like Kurt and I, in their early to mid-twenties) who are part of the genius group, are tragically daring to be separated, the girl of the two being selected for her smarts to go with a team to Mars to see if there's a possibility to move the stations there, eventually building a permanent colony on another planet to balance out the lack of room on Earth. Apparently, in this future Chuck created, Mars migrated closer to the sun once Mercury burned up and all of the planets literally shifted over one spot.

Yeah, I know. It's a little insane. But it makes for one helluva interesting part to play, because this girl has to leave, but it'll take years, and all she wants to do is help the guy she loves and all of the friends she cares about mend the sickness that wrecks people's bodies.

The other tragic romance couple is Kurt and I. Our couple is a little more in the background, but in this future, we're considered completely normal. Apparently, the overpopulation ended up encouraging homosexuality so that people stop procreating and ultimately getting all these diseases and health problems at birth, since the gene pool is too stretched. It's so bizarre, because that oddly sounds probable. And that's why I'm growing used to this plotline, and fond of the part I have to play.

Kurt's character is named Christian (ironic, considering Kurt's religious beliefs, or lack thereof), but my character affectionately calls him Chris, the only person permitted to do so. Likewise, my character's name is Maximillian, but Christian fondly calls him Max. It's cute, how their relationship is based partly around their names/nicknames for each other. But it doesn't stop there. When I read it, I was laughing hysterically, because I found that Max used to be bullied as a child by Chris and his "friends" since Chris thought he was better than Max, and Max was this chubby, Japanese comic book-loving kid.

And it's so damn funny to me since, little does Chuck know, in real life, I used to bully Kurt, and now the roles are reversed and the situation made younger and under different circumstances, but still bullying all the same. My amusement knows no bounds when it comes to that little fact, since it both is ironic and makes me all the happier to know that, like Max and Chris in the film, Kurt and I were able to overlook our past and fall in love in spite of it.

The tragic part about our characters, however, is not that they can't be together because they're homosexual… but they can't be together because one of them is ill and dying. My character, actually. Max has one of those birth defects, the one that slowly develops with age and makes him sicker and sicker over time. That's why Kurt's character tries to get into the group of other high schoolers who are looking for cures. It's all so very complicated.

One cool little fun-fact about this, besides being a musical about separation, loss, and breaking free, is that all of the characters have no last names since in this future, heritage is moot since everybody is just about the same skin color and speaks just about the same language (English, naturally). It's weird and awesome at the same time to think, "What if, one day, all of the bloodlines mixed and we were one people again, like it was before the Tower of Babel in the Bible?"

Of course, such a future is scary to think about, because in Revelations, it states that when something like that happens, Christ is going to come again, signifying the Rapture.

(And I wish I didn't think about all of this religious crap while reading over and acting out the script of this film, but I can't help it. My mother's psychoanalysis of the Bible due to her overwhelming Catholicism has just about brainwashed me, drilling all of this info into my head.)

I wipe my musings from my head with a weak knock to my own head. I instead focus on what Chuck is saying as we approach him in the studio. He spots us, ceases giving a few orders to some art students, and smiles minutely.

"Hey, there's my favorite set of actors!" he teases, coming up to us. "Glad to see you here. To be honest, I keep waiting for everything to fall apart at any minute, like some actors canceling on the project or some artists not pulling through for me or something." Chuck shakes his head sadly before scratching at the short goatee on his chin. He claps his hand together. "So! I have one scene location all set up, and we can do a few more last-minute run-throughs before we actually start filming. Sound good? Good! Now let's go!" he remarks, immediately turning around and launching demands for his camera and extras and other actors.

He's just a bit neurotic and possibly A.D.D., but he's energetic and funny and honestly, I don't mind having Chuck as a director in the least. He's better than the pair from Rent, anyhow.

Kurt nudges me, grinning excitedly. "This is going to be amazing. I wonder how it'll look when it's all done?"

"I'm sure he'll give each of the actors a free DVD, since we're in it," I reply, also smiling. "And I bet it'll be epic. It sounds like an epic story, anyhow." I make a face. "I'm just glad that I don't have to die in it. They end up finding a cure in the end."

"Which is predictable, but nice; everyone loves a happy ending," Kurt replies.

I nod. "Yep. And I've got a feeling that how this film ends up going over with the public will also be a happy ending," I smirk cockily.

Kurt elbows me in the ribs, but it doesn't hurt very much. "Shut up, Dave. You're so full of it. And guess what? No one buys your bravado."

I lift my chin indignantly. "Says you. But I can still intimidate people, and I'm going to make sure the word about his film gets out, because not only could it be our big break, but it just deserves it."

Kurt sighs, rolling his pretty blue eyes at me. He smiles right afterward, though, leaning his head on my shoulder for a second. "Idiot," he comments, but he doesn't mean anything by it.

And throughout the filming, all I can think about is how much Kurt impresses me sometimes, and how I could get used to this acting business, even if it means scraping for money in between gigs. It's just something I've come to love and accept as part of me. Just like Kurt. And, for once, I think my sexuality, too, since I'm proudly displaying it through another character, and I'm finding that it's not very hard to do. All of the little PDA is building up, and now I think I can be okay with any glares sent my way as long as it means I'll continue to have these moments and opportunities.