After school, Dave goes in to the English room to re-take his test. The only other person in the room is his teacher, who isn't paying attention to him. Outside, the sky is grey. It already feels like winter. The trees are completely bare. Dave tries to remember what a pedant is, and if it has anything to do with pendants. He doesn't really care. When he turns his test in, the teacher sees that, while he's improved his score, he has still failed to correctly define at least three of the fifteen words.

Dave grabs his bag and leaves the halls while there are still people in them. He passes Mercedes again on the way out the door, and he tries to ignore her, but rather abruptly she grabs his arm, with a look that tells him she has something to say and will not be prevented from saying it. Dave doesn't hit girls, or anyway he mostly tries not to, so he lets her steer him outside and out of the way of the stream of kids exiting the school.

Mercedes says, "Okay, fat boy, start talking."

Dave is forced to reconsider his policy of not hitting girls, though eventually he decides that there isn't enough to be gained here to warrant punching Mercedes for that insult. There are people everywhere. Besides, she's Kurt's best friend, and…

"Don't call me that," he says instead.

Mercedes raises an eyebrow. "So start talking. What happened on Wednesday that Kurt won't tell me? I asked him again at lunch, and he just shut his mouth and walked off like a princess with that Blaine kid he's hot for. He's barely talking to me."

The last bit distracts Dave—Blaine, he thinks, must have been the kid with Kurt who'd confronted Dave at lunch- but he knows better than to ask about the specifics. If he were straight, he wouldn't care who Kurt is hot for, and would not pay the slightest bit of attention to the boy's name. He corrects himself mentally. He doesn't care, he reminds himself. Or he does, but he doesn't (it makes sense to him).Then he remembers that he kissed Kurt on Wednesday, and Mercedes is waiting for him to tell her, and so he stands there, Mercedes glowering at him, wondering what he should say. Eventually, he evades her question rather lamely.

"I didn't hurt him any more than anyone else," Dave says, which is probably true, he thinks, but maybe not in the way Mercedes means. Mercedes isn't really mollified by Dave's explanation. She jabs him in the chest and says, with that ferocious, dead serious look black people can give when they're mad that scares the hell out of Dave,

"Karofsky, if you don't tell me what went on in that damn locker room I swear to God that I am going to castrate you in front of the whole god damn state of Ohio." She makes an obscene gesture into the air to illustrate her point. Dave slowly becomes aware of several people staring at them. It must be a sight, he thinks to himself, this short pudgy girl scaring the shit out of a hundred-ten kilo football player.

"Fine," he whispers, or croaks, pushing her back because she is way too close for comfort. "I'll tell you. But not here." The statement sounds gay even as he says it, but Dave has made up his mind. If he could tell Dr. Pat, he can tell someone else. And in spite of the voice in the back of his head that says he doesn't want people to know, Dave really wants to get all of this shit out of the way, and just say what happened and let people find out. It's stressful to do this, he thinks, to always be evading people's questions. He knows he isn't going be able to handle it when the football team finds out, but he'll deal with that, because that can't be half as bad as having his parents know, which has already happened, anyway.

He and Mercedes start walking, and he waits until they're past the front of the school, out in the parking lot by the dumpsters, before he stops and turns, looking around nervously. Mercedes puts her hands on her hips and scowls, tapping her foot expectantly.

"I kissed him," Dave says, and his voice isn't really his, and he thinks, Oh fuck, I'm going to start crying. Do not let me start crying. Do not-

Mercedes doesn't understand for a second. She stands there, looking at Dave like he has started transforming into Bigfoot, confused and not quite getting his point. She scowls deeper, and tilts her head, and then she says, in a voice that doesn't really match her threats from a few minutes earlier,

"What?"

"Don't make me say it again," Dave says, in a growling voice that is more like his own, and he turns to leave, and he starts to walk off.

"Wait," Mercedes says, too loudly. "You did what? You kissed-? Who?"

Dave feels a little sorry for her, then, because she looks so lost, like a little kid who has been told that shoes are for eating. "Kurt," he tells her. He pauses, watching her, and clarifies. "I kissed—Kurt." He takes a deep breath, the cold winter air rushing into his lungs. He feels like there is a weight off his chest now that he had said it, even though technically he has already told his mom and Doctor Pat. "Do you need me to spell it out for you?"

Mercedes' mouth forms a small O. "Are you serious?"

Dave turns to leave again, but Mercedes follows him. Suddenly she is less aggressive, her face sympathetic. Dave recognizes that expression. He has noticed a pattern here. People try to make you admit what you did with aggression, and threats, and wolfish smiles, and then they pity you because of it. He anticipates Mercedes telling him that she is going to help him, as she walks two paces behind him.

"You're gay?" Mercedes asks instead.

"No," Dave says quickly, a defensive mechanism. He doesn't really even think about it.

"But you kissed Kurt."

"That's what I said."

Mercedes rolls her eyes. She has to walk two steps for every one of Dave's. "Why didn't Kurt tell me?" she wonders aloud. "I guess it would be sort of awkward."

Dave shrugs.

"What happened, exactly?" Mercedes is being friendlier to Dave, in her tone at least, than she has ever been before, and it's a little annoying. "I mean, you've been beating Kurt up for years. Kurt said that you slammed him into a locker. How did that turn into kissing him?"

Dave doesn't feel like he really has to answer that question. He says nothing, and lets Mercedes fill in the details with her imagination.

"Did he kiss you back?" Mercedes asks next.

Dave's expression gives her the answer before Dave even opens his mouth, but eventually, he says, quietly, "No." He feels big and dumb and ugly, feels like a chubby boy who sweats too much and will be bald by the time he's thirty. Dave has pimples on his face and he isn't romantic, and the only kisses he has had have been as ugly as he is. In his head, Kurt pushes him away and his mother slaps him across the face. In his head, in his memory, Dave looks at himself in the mirror after spending hours sitting on his bed, staring at the computer, breathing hard. His face is red. He hates himself so much.

"You like him?" Mercedes' question jerks Dave back to reality. They are standing on a corner, waiting for the light above the crosswalk to turn green. Dave considers jaywalking. Mercedes is looking at him, and so he nods. "You can't expect him to like you back, you know," she says, and Dave grits his teeth, but he nods again.

"I know."