Hey Kids,

It's been awhile.

Ch.6 Like Lions

Kurt placed his cellphone gently back on his bedside table. In the still pre-dawn hour he could hear all the sounds that make up silence. The familiar, but now faint creaks of the old part of the house, the rain's steady drumbeat playing out on his window, the rhythmic cycle of his own breath. He pulled his legs tighter against his chest, the arms encircling them a binding force. His head dropped until it rested against his knee, the silk of his pajama pants cool against his heated cheek. Thickly fringed orbs stared sightlessly into the dark.

Surely he was going mad. To even consider this.

The sky lightened as he walked downstairs, his footing steady and unafraid. The rain had slowed and stopped without his realizing. He slipped out the front door like a ghost, into the fog where no one notices the contrast of white on white. In the chill Kurt wrapped his arms around his bare chest, and stared up at the faint outline of the moon. It had all the answers. In the lunar landscape was a strangeness, a scent of possibility. He could walk between the rain, through himself and back again. But where? He didn't know. But for once, there was a clarity, clear beyond crystal. Why?

The differences between wrong and right were crumbling around him.

Dave missed the rain.

The rain had been a constant presence; a reassuring entity since it began. Each drop had been followed by its fellow- a predictable force. If he had wanted to, he might have counted the beat out loud; a metronome of nature. Dave liked knowing what to expect. But-as he lay awake in bed, he found his steadfast companion slow and become inconsistent, even erratic. What had been so sure and unremitting was reduced to fine mist and droplets left behind on his windowpane. He watched silent and still as the sun rose unapologetically into the sky, burning off all remnants of reassurance.

He dragged himself from bed around one. Dave wasn't hungry, but still he stood in the fridge door, and he stood up straight. Habits. Round here, we always stand up straight. That was Dave. If his parents had ingrained nothing else within him, it was this. Perfect posturing.

He stared at the milk carton. Through the solid figures of the nutritional facts he managed to convince himself last night was a dream. A fantasy. He checked his phone, the yet unclassified number, the times received. Binary wouldn't lie. The door clicked close.

Dave couldn't help but glance back down at at the phone clutched in his hand... again. Maybe last night was... Well, maybe he should call Kurt back.

Calling someone in the middle of the night, that had to mean something. Right? He fiddled with the phone a moment before dropping it on the kitchen table. Everything that had happened, that kiss, everything- it had to be more than just Kurt fucking with him. Right?

But it's only in my head. I know, it's only in my head.

He just needed to take his mind off things. He was reading to much into this. Dave abandoned the pretense that he might eat and headed back upstairs, pausing by his bookshelf before throwing himself back upon the mussed comforter. The paperback in his hand fell open and Dave attempted to immerse himself in the distraction. But like the rain, a book must end.

Kurt was startled, but not surprised when he heard his cell phone sing. Three little tonal bars that signify a text message. It was, however, later than expected; the sun was already sinking in the sky. Not that he had been expecting anything. The phone wasn't in his hand per say, but it was only the slightest twitch of a finger to the right.

Mr. Jones: Meet me? the back parking lot at school?

There was a beat, just enough for the insecure before-

Mr. Jones: I jst wnt to talk. you knw, face to face.

The right corner of Kurt's mouth turned up thoughtlessly, his thumbs typing a reply.

The diver's side door of the black explorer slammed shut, followed by the quick 'beep beep' of the locking system. Dave was waiting; sitting on the tailgate of his beat up Nissan, clutching a cardboard coffee cup staring out into the west. The sun was sitting low, half hidden in the sky, grey and gold. Kurt walked over, trying not to hurry, trying not to seem to slow.

"Hey."

Dave looked at him, and for a moment there was unprecedented silence. An silence that said something profound, for that moment Kurt was sure.

The moment passed, and Dave smiled tentatively as he picked a second cup up from beside him. "Hey." He held it out, offering. His movements were smooth, gentle and slow. The way a man moves around an animal; a creature exotic, nervous, dangerous.

Kurt took the proffered beverage with mirrored measured movements. He took a small polite sip, and nearly choked. "Grande nonfat mocha?"

Dave shrugged, head down and cheeks reddening. "You asked that Jones chick to get it for you once and I just...remembered?" He coughed awkwardly, then growled out "I mean it was just such a fruity order- how could I forget?"

Kurt scowled. "Oh and I suppose yours is the absolute distillation of red blooded American Male?" Bitch face, engage.

"Look, maybe this was a mistake if you're going to be so freaking combative-"

"Maybe those who live in glass closets shouldn't throw stones!"

There was a silence, a furious standoff, and at the end a decided winner. The bigger boy sighed and sagged, defeated. "Look, Kurt I didn't mean it like that. I..." He ran a hand through his short hair, and rubbed the back of his neck. "I just get so defensive when I'm..."

The face he was making was so cute Kurt almost felt bad about yelling at him. Almost.

"I just I...I have trouble acting normal when I'm...nervous."

"Oh." Kurt stood silently a moment before awkwardly resting his hand on one of Dave's beefy, calloused ones. Dave stared at the two hands laying on the rusted truck bed for a moment, and Kurt found himself unable to read the expression on jock's face. The larger boy looked up from their hands to Kurt's face. Kurt had never seen so many shades of brown and gold, so much pain.

For some unexamined reason he felt his porcelain skin heat up and discolor in embarrassment. Kurt drew his hand back quickly and attempted to shove it into the pocket of his skinny jeans. Upon finding that it wouldn't fit, he settled for playing with the hem of his button down. "So um, what did you want to talk about?" He had been going for nonchalance, but he had a sickening feeling that for the first time his acting skills had failed him.

"I uh, dunno."

"Oh...then-"

"-can I just show you something instead?"

Kurt nodded, wordless and unsure. A warm sensation was constricting his chest, running through his synapses, settling in the bottom of his throat. Dave's smile was new and open, and he marveled at how people change one moment to the next. Unexpected yet predicted like the weather.

"C'mon."

"This is probably the highest point in Lima." He was really only half joking. The roof of McKinley High Auditorium wasn't hard to get too. He and Az had discovered it their first week of football, back when they were only freshman. The extra key, badly hidden on a hook beneath the bleachers which opened the locker room door. The supply closet near the showers with the rusty access ladder, and never bolted trapdoor that opened onto the roof. From there it was a hop over a small partition and another short climb, and a man could see right across the tiny town where he lived and out into the wide world. Ah, perspective.

Dave shook his head, dropping to a seat on the ledge. He motioned to the spot beside him, taking a long drought from his mug and staring at the thunderheads on the horizon. Careful not to look when he saw Kurt's legs swing over the edge. Careful not to look when he felt a separate heat settle beside him.

"I come here sometimes, when I'm thinking of jumping." Dave laughed, not bitterly but resigned. "I guess I'm tired of life."

"You must be tired of something."

Dave wasn't sure what he expected, but it wasn't that. A man says something like that, bares something like death and he expects a reaction. But then were had that even come from? He hadn't meant to say something like that at all and now... He watched Kurt surreptitiously in the peripheral, not sure how to respond. Luckily he didn't have to.

"Why me?"

Dave aloud himself a glance, to gaze upon the clean line's of Kurt's porcelain profile. "What?"

Kurt white fingers shifted, his long, delicate digits moving to tangle aimlessly in his teal scarf. "Exactly what I said. Why me? We aren't friends, we don't run in the same circles." He gifted Dave with a sidelong glance, and a tentative half smile. "Just look at us, and you can see we have absolutely nothing in common. I mean, I'm absolutely fabulous and you're, you know, "duke stud."

Dave wasn't sure what mortified him more, the fact that Santana had shared his pitiful attempt at a heterosexual pickup, or that Kurt had actually used his fingers to make quotations in the air. Kurt however, didn't seem to notice the jocks steady reddening. Once Kurt Hummel prepared a monologue, Barbra herself could not distract him."In all honesty, I don't think I've ever said three words to you that weren't part of a witty barb. Even before you started showering me in frozen food dye. So Gaga knows it wasn't because I was nice to you." Dave stared at him a moment, before realizing that his mouth was slightly hanging open. Smooth. He closed his gaping maw and looked out over the landscape again. Maybe a rouge billboard would provide him with a response.

"Do you read? Like, non-required. I mean, not for school." Dave pushed himself to his feet and walked back toward the center of the roof. He was so unprepared for this, it was almost painful. He kept talking. He was so bad at talking. Maybe if he just kept talking it would come out.

"My favorites are guys like Hemingway, Kipling, Joyce, Fittzgerald...the old Greats, you know? Modern authors, they never quite get it." He was talking to fast, clinging desperately. Dave glanced back, with what he hoped was a rakish grin. It was wasted. Kurt hadn't even turned to look at him.

Of course not.

But Dave soldiered on, unable however to curb the resentful hurt that found its way into his voice. "The mother-fucking human condition. Anyway-" He kicked a loose stone spitefully across the flat space, over the abyss, into the encroaching darkness."-'It's usually the selfish people who are loved the most. They do what you deny yourself, and you love them for it. You- you give them your heart.' I don't remember who said it, but I remember it. That's what counts right?"'

"Oh, so now I'm selfish?"

Dave spun, and was sickly gratified to see Kurt was on his feet, hands clenched, silhouetted in the dusk. Of course selfish was the only thing he took away from that. But Kurt Hummel wasn't the only one to prepare a soliloquy.

"You did everything that I was to scared to. Everyday you stand up to people who are three times your size. You never compromise. You don't just embrace yourself, you throw it in everyone's face. You flaunted it in my face. Everything I could never let myself have, everything I could never let myself be." Dave paused. somehow the space had closed between them and he lowered his voice, suddenly embarrassed. He could feel himself shutting down, hear the defensive edge, the gruffness. And Dave hated himself for it. He shrugged again, avoiding Kurt's eyes. "That's why. Not because you're beautiful, not because you're clever, not because your talented. It's because you're a self righteous little bitch and I want you and I want to be you and I just...can't help it."

His eyes were fixed firmly on the concrete beneath him now. When all the machismo was stripped away, there was nothing but a yellow streak. The stupid thing about telling people anything. They only hear what they want to hear. And its never fucking what you mean.

Suddenly everything had become to real, to honest, too impossible for him to bear.

"Wait. You can't just leave!"

Kurt stepped closer, shamelessly breaking that unspoken but ever present barrier between innocuous and intimate. "You've done something to me-something I- "He stopped. He was close and just not close enough. Dave was so still. He could hear his stillness, the buffeting wind, the breathing of the world. This was just madness-he could still turn and run- but the words came anyway- rasped , broken in their incomplete design and all-consuming desperation. "I want."

That voiceless chant that had plagued him since that dreamlike night, specifics denied him. But it was senseless to dwell on now- Kurt's hands were somehow roaming over thin jersey; he could feel the heat beneath it, the solid rawness of a man. There was pressure in the small of his back, one huge splayed, calloused hand unyielding, caressing the skin beneath the hem of his silk shirt.

But still Dave was hesitant. In the silence; and Kurt could feel Dave's mouth ghost against his temple, the pressure of the taller boy's face hidden in his hair. "I never thought you 'd believed in second chances."

Kurt bit back a reflexive remark. It was true, wasn't it? I don't believe in anything. But I…" I …l want to be someone who believes."

Dave's head dropped lower, pressing a kiss into Kurt's long exposed neck. His voice was ragged, singsong and exposed.

"So come on baby, oh, believe in me."

Round Here and Mr Jones (Acoustic Version) by the Counting Crows. Dave's quote is from an interview with the author Saul Bellows.

I won't lie, I posted this as soon as I finished because:

a. I've been caught on it so long I'm sick of it.

b. It's been what, 2, 3 months since the last update?

So please, review, correct me, and be brutal.

-The Neverender

PS: You'll be pleased to know the next chapter is already half done. xo N.E.