A/N- I don't have much to say, other than this hasn't been Beta'd and so any and all accidents are my own. Also, keep in mind that I just started watching Glee this season and I haven't even gotten halfway through the first yet, so there may be slight discrepancies that could be noticeable to people who've been with the show since the beginning. Go easy on me, please? =)
Disclaimer- Glee would be quite different if I owned it, which I don't.
It all began -as most things at McKinley High do- with a slushy.
There had been the talk in the locker room with Azimio before that. He had been none-too-subtle about his want of seeing Jacob Ben Israel get a cup of ice-cold dye to the face. It had been a long time since they'd relieved the urge after all, and since it was an unspoken consensus that Glee club members were off limits since the Thriller performance, there had been no easy targets available. Jacob was, at least for the moment and at least for Azimio.
Dave, on the other hand, was skeptical. There was a whole hell of a lot Jacob could use against him on that damned blog, were he or anyone else to ever find out his secret. One slushy to the face could determine his fate at McKinley High for the remainder of his time there, maybe even after.
But he didn't let Azimio or any of the other guys catch on to this. He pretended to be just as enthusiastic as the rest of them about the plan for slushy sabotage and it made him feel, as it usually did, a little sick.
He still filled cups and marched with the rest of the guys down the hallway to Jacob's locker with a swagger in his step and a gleam in his eye. There was no way anyone would be able to detect the apprehension or self-debate raging within him.
The whole of them agreed the attack would be sudden and unannounced aside from the 'Hey Jew-Fro' that would get the target's attention long enough for him to turn around. Dave was unfortunately a bit too keen to get the deed over with as soon as possible, so he called it out himself and chucked the slushy before even having seen Jacob turn around.
He should have known Jacob would duck before turning to see who had called. He should have known his voice would be recognizable and gotten one of the other guys to do it.
But he didn't have the presence of mind to do so and instead was left staring at Santana fucking Lopez dripping in ice and blue dye –the latter of which was currently staining the immaculately white fabric of her blouse-. The football team collectively gasped, all of whom still had full Big Gulp cups. There was no denying who was the culprit here.
There was only a brief, heart-stilling moment of silence where Santana began to recover from the sudden attack and turn around to see who was responsible. As to be expected, the so-called teammates that had accompanied Dave were making a slow retreat. If the empty cup weren't evidence enough the fact that he was standing apart from all of them and looking the most afraid would be.
"What the fuck…!" she eventually cried, making everyone in the nearby vicinity either jump or shut up completely.
Dave didn't have enough time to react before she was coming at him in a blur of hair, teeth, and nails, screaming Spanish obscenities at him like some kind of hellish banshee. He also wasn't prepared enough to brace himself for her push into the lockers. He yelped as his shoulders and spine slammed against the metal and his knees buckled beneath him. It was not unlike the time Sam had done it, just somehow more painful.
"Who the fuck do you think you are?"
In his peripheral, Dave could hear the sounds of his teammates now enjoying themselves with a few obligatory cat-calls and inciting hoots and hollers. They seemed to be encouraging him now to take control of the situation and 'show that bitch who's the man', but that was easier said than done.
And when he was finally able to look down and make something resembling eye contact with his assailant, he saw she was crying. These weren't tears brought on by the unsettling eye-irritating property of the slushy dye, these were genuine. She was angrier than he'd ever seen her –anyone, in fact- and yet she was clearly crying out of sadness. Had he really done enough to cause that?
At that point he had decided he'd make no real effort to stop her. The last time he could remember making someone cry was when he and Azimio had cornered Kurt in the hallway. While the adrenaline had kept him going in the heat of the moment, there was no doubt that seeing that kind of pain inflicted on the boy he secretly loved –at his hands, no less- made him sick to his stomach. The sight of that quivering, beautiful reddened face still haunted him and he could now see Kurt at that moment in the much shorter girl before him.
If he could imagine that it was Kurt throwing him against the locker, Kurt that was yelling at him, maybe he could purge himself of this guilt.
He doubted it, but he deserved it either way.
"You don't know me!" Santana yelled, before her balled up fist collided with Dave's face. "None of you know who the fuck I am!"
The punch was painful, but thankfully not worse than one he might have endured from a teammate. It simply made him recoil his head to the side and cradle his jaw.
Santana yelled some more, half in Spanish and half in unintelligible English, before the familiar taps of teacher shoes –pennyloafers, of course- came cascading down the hall, parting the crowds of students not quite as efficiently as Moses to the red sea, but with the same fervor.
She was soon being pried off of Dave by Mrs. Olson, the US History teacher, still kicking and screaming in her grasp. Mr. Pruitt, the chemistry teacher, had followed close behind and seemed to be preparing himself to hold Dave back if necessary. Of course, Dave did nothing but stay plastered against the lockers where he had been thrown, hopeful that it might aid him in the inevitable trial that would take place in Mr. Figgins' office. Any witness could attest that he had done nothing more than slushy Santana in the face –albeit accidentally, but he wasn't relying on anyone to believe him there- and hadn't so much as lay a finger on her.
He internally acknowledged the fact that he was a Grade A douchebag, but he had a moral code even in that regard; no hitting handicapped kids, girls, or Kurt, the last of which he had formerly hoped he could keep under wraps by compensating with locker shoves. Unlike that failed effort, he hoped the powers-that-were would believe his claim and not lay all of the blame on him.
And so the two of them were dragged to the Principal's office and threw themselves down in the two chairs in front of his desk. He wasn't present for whatever reason, and so the only teacher serving as their chaperone decided to skip off to find him. Dave couldn't help but question the wisdom in leaving two kids alone together who had just finished having a hallway brawl. He then wondered if Santana would try to have another go at him.
Instead she simply sat there, not a foot away, sniffing audibly and feverishly wiping her eyes. He felt like something should be said, given that he hated awkward silences and the fact that Santana was apparently convinced he had been out to get her.
"It was a mistake," he said with unintentional incredulity. "I was aiming for someone else, you just happened to be in the way-"
"Shut. the fuck. up."
She didn't even bother to look at him as she said this. He had to admit he was intimidated, but that had never stopped him before.
"What, you don't believe me? You think I'm a liar?"
She then rounded on him, her lower jaw clenched angrily and her fists quivering.
"You're an asshole, is what you are. You're a fucking asshole."
"Are you not hearing what I'm telling you, Lopez? It was an accident. I swear to god I wasn't trying to hit you-"
"Why don't you just save it for Figgins?" she barked. "Not that I think he'll believe your little sob story, what with your track record of harassing people who are different than you."
Different? Dave was taken aback at her choice of words. What the hell made her so different from him?
"But I don't give a shit," she continued acidically, pointing one index finger at him much like Kurt did in the locker room. "You're not gonna turn me into your fucking punching bag. I'm not going to run off to some over-priced sob school so you and those other douchebags can have your homophobia-safe environment. I will fight you tooth and nail, Karofsky, and if not for me, than for Kurt's sake and any other closeted kids here who are too fucking afraid to own who they are because of dickwads like you. You don't scare me."
He simply stared at her a moment, too shocked to say much of anything. He was also sure that his slow retreat into the cushioning of his chair after having been owned like that was more than noticeable.
The only real, coherent thought running through his head was, Did Santana just confess to being gay? He had to run through her words once more to figure out if that's what she had actually just told him.
If so, it certainly explained a lot about her reaction to his mistake and it made the situation at hand all the more ironic.
Figgins thankfully arrived at that moment, relieving some of the tension brought on by the ensuing silence. As to be expected, he asked for both sides of the story. Santana's rendition put aside any of Dave's confusion.
"He purposefully slushied me," she growled, pointing at him all the while as though there might be some uncertainty as to who she was referring. "All because he and his little gang of jockstraps found out about me and Brittany. He's trying to get me to leave, just like he did to Kurt. As principal, it astounds me that you can let these blatant acts of homophobia go on, right under your nose."
Figgins reacted in the same way Dave did to Santana's tirade earlier, but before he could say anything, Dave was quick to add his own input.
"Seriously, what the hell are you talking about? I didn't know anything about you and Brittany." Turning to the principal he added, "I've told her already, it was an accident."
It was eventually decided that despite Dave's former history there was no proof that what he had done to Kurt was driven by any kind of hatred or intolerance, thereby negating its relevance. Furthermore, pushing a student into a locker and decking them across the jaw was a much larger infraction than a slushy to the face, no matter what the motivation for doing so was. So Figgins decided to go easy on both of them and just assign them a Saturday detention before shooing them out of his office.
Santana rose and spun on her heel with an audible huff before marching out, apparently having taken a page from Rachel's book of theatrics. Dave, feeling no kind of victory or self-satisfaction for what had transpired, followed her out.
"Hey," he called after her down the empty hallway. "Why don't I get you a towel? You're still soaking."
She glared at him. Even from opposite sides of the hallway he could see the fire flickering in her eyes.
"How about you pay to replace my outfit, asshole?"
He shrugged, rolling his eyes a bit. "'Seems fair. Maybe when I have the money. Do you want a towel or not?"
Something about his agreement to replace her ruined clothes must have softened her a little, as she reluctantly followed him to the locker room, making sighs and groans of irritation the entire way.
When they finally arrived and he handed her one of the freshly washed red towels from laundry room, he reiterated his earlier point.
"Look, I swear to you this whole thing was an accident. We had our sights sets on Jacob, not you. And I promise none of us knew anything about you and Brittany- whatever that means."
She eyed him for a moment, periodically disappearing beneath the fluffy red fabric as she attempted to extract the remaining ice particles from her hair. She seemed to eventually decide that he was telling the truth, either because they were no longer in the office, or because she had remembered Jacob was standing nearby at the time, or because he had just selflessly offered to her help her clean up. Perhaps it was a combination of all three.
Having realized this, she sighed and shrank onto the bench directly behind her.
"Fuck. Well, now you know."
Dave shifted his feet, feeling even more like shit. "Not…really. You haven't really been specific about it."
She turned to look at him sharply.
"I won't tell anybody, okay?" he assured.
She scoffed and continued to half-heartedly dry her shoulders. "Yeah, like I'm going to believe that. Why would you of all people protect me? Is this some segue into blackmail?"
He exhaled and chewed his bottom lip nervously, knowing in the back of his mind what he owed her now. His own secret had been itching and scratching to escape and he done everything in his power to try and contain it. But in the intimacy of this moment, as they sat in the same place Kurt had confronted him months before, the secret itself was about to spew out. Unless he were to sporadically stomp out of the locker room at this exact moment, he'd inevitably reveal it and he had no right to the former option.
Taking his fate into his hands, he sat down beside her on the bench, hoping direly that she would sympathize enough to keep it to herself.
"Alright…" he sighed, absently toying with a rip in his jeans and avoiding eye contact. "I'm telling you this because I unknowingly made you reveal your own secret. Also, I'm the biggest douche at this school and I don't deserve to keep it hidden anymore."
She remained silent, studying him with narrowed eyebrows.
"This place where we're sitting? Four months ago Kurt confronted me here. Do you know how it ended?"
She simply shook her head, clearly unaware of this past encounter. He found the will-power to look her in the eye, but only for the moment.
"I kissed him." And then he faltered, collapsing back in on himself and rubbing his eyes so that he wouldn't have to see Santana's reaction.
"You…what?"
"I kissed him. You wanna know why?"
They were silent again for a moment. Dave wasn't looking at Santana, but he could hear her let out a breath before saying in voice that sounded as though she might have been smiling,
"I think I know."