Dave didn't show up to the morning meeting, but he was there in the afternoon for their little competition. He was recruited by Puck to help move the eight treadmills from the weight room to the choir room.

Kurt did not object to watching muscular men carry large objects around, but he did have to wonder what exactly they were planning.

He didn't have to wait long. Dave, Puck, Mike, and Sam did a perfect reenactment of OK Go's famous music video to "Here It Goes Again" while Finn and Artie sang. It was a very enjoyable performance - especially when Finn tripped over the edge of a treadmill and managed to keep singing from the floor, and then decided to do the worm when it switched to Artie's part, which basically amounted to Finn humping the floor and eventually hitting his head on the piano.

However, Mr. Schue, always the bringer of bad news, decided that since they had just copied the band, it wasn't "creative enough."

000

Kurt and the girls - who had recently dubbed themselves "The Guest and the Furniture" - were confident in their ability to win the competition easily. That is, until they got out to the field and found Sue and her remaining Cheerios standing amongst the pieces of what used to be four trampolines.

Santana voiced their thoughts: "Well, fuck."

Sue switched her megaphone to 'mega-screech mode' and yelled into it loud enough to get through to the covered ears of the Gleeks.

"Your trampolines have been destroyed because they present safety risks to students. Should you attempt to use them again, I will have to take legal action."

000

"Well that sucked," Santana said, once they returned to the choir room.

"I guess no one wins then?" Quinn asked.

Mr. Schue sighed. "Guess so. Sorry, girls."

Kurt cleared his throat.

"And Kurt."

"Thank you."

"Well, I guess we'll start the next lesson early, then." He went up and wrote 'Duets' on the board.

"Not again," Finn groaned, leaning back in his chair.

"Yes, again. But this time, instead of choosing your own partners, everyone else gets to choose your partner for you." He pulled out his trusty hat. "You'll each pick a name out of the hat, and then you'll say who you think should pair up with them. The person you choose as their partner picks next. The last two left automatically get paired up. Who wants to go first?"

000

They were then given the task of making sure their song choice was out of the comfort zone of at least one of the duet partners. The only ones he specified were no musicals for Rachel or Kurt and no eighties for Finn, but everyone knew what that meant for themselves.

The duet partners worked out well, in that everyone found a workable mash-up of their names - Sartie, Laurcedes, Chang2, Brittanna, Fuck (or, officially, Huderman), Faberry, and of course Karommel - to use as team names.

They didn't work out well in that, within the first hour of "looking for songs", Quinn and Rachel had gotten themselves locked in a classroom and sounded like they were trying to yell at each other until they went deaf and/or mute, Finn and Puck were arguing over them, and Brittany and Santana had disappeared completely and no one was particularly willing to go and find them.

Quinn and Rachel had long since shut up by the time Mr. Schue found the right key for that particular door. Puck volunteered to go get them, but came back five minutes later, wide-eyed, saying, "Are you sure that was Quinn and Rachel? Looked more like Brittany and Santana to me."

Finn refused to talk to anyone but himself for the rest of practice. Among the various mutterings that were overheard was "I always wanna screw the lesbians, don't I? …Oh my God, I lost my virginity to a lesbian."

Puck was the only one who dared respond to that: "So did half the guys in this school. To the same lesbian."

Finn groaned. The last words anyone heard out of him that day were, "Maybe Kurt was right."

000

Dave and Kurt commandeered the stage after Quinn dragged Rachel off, and Dave grabbed an old acoustic guitar out of the orchestra room.

"Rachel and I have a lot more in common than I like to admit," Kurt said, facing the empty audience as Dave tuned the guitar. "One of them is that we both come here to think, and we both end up thinking in song… Oh, I love that one." Kurt smiled at the intro Dave tested out. "They're great, aren't they? They always have very powerful lyrics."

"Yeah…"

"…Keep playing. Maybe we can do this one. It's definitely unusual for me."

"Sure."

Kurt made a face at his tone and turned around. "What's wrong? Are…are you still mad at me?"

"I'm not mad at you."

"Oh."

"I'm mad for you."

"Oh."

"You knew that already."

"Well, yes, but…" Kurt hesitated, trying to force his heart to calm down. "It's different to hear you say it."

"Different how? Different now that I can tell you how much of a coward I am, and how much I fucked up everything in my life?"

"No! Dave, no. No. I just…"

"Stop. I don't want your pity. I don't deserve you to even care about me. I'm mad at myself for ever acting like I did… acting like… like… like a beast…"

"Dave…"

"Do you want to do the song or not?"

"Absolutely, but you have to let me talk first."

"About what?"

"About all this self-deprecating bullcrap. Can't you tell I don't hate you? I see your pain, Dave. I know you're sorry. I've actually forgiven you since the last time I spoke with you, isn't that interesting? I like you. I really do. I want to be your friend. Maybe more, I don't know. But you have to stop hating yourself. I should be the one hating you, and I don't. So you have no right to. If you ever want to think about me ever getting anywhere near loving you, you'll have to love yourself first."

Dave looked down, left hand sliding down the neck of the guitar, fingers screeching against the strings. "I'm sorry."

"What are you sorry for?" Kurt challenged.

"God, everything." Dave covered his eyes with his right hand. "Everything I ever did to you, all the pushing and the names and, and even kissing you, even if that few seconds was the happiest I had ever felt in my life up until then, I'm so sorry I did that to you, and now I can't even forgive myself even though you can forgive me for all of that." He rubbed at his eyes.

"All right. It's out. It's all out. Now never even think about being sorry again."

Dave nodded. "Do you wanna do the song? I think… I think we need to do the song now."

"Yeah. Definitely. How do you want to split it?"

"I was thinking… I could do the first line, then you do the second, and then we do the third together…"