Eat Your Words

Chapter Twenty-Six

Dave Karofsky was pretty sure that Kurt Hummel and Blaine Anderson could be the kind of gay guys that landed jobs as Vogue magazine models. Kurt's skin glowed so much they made a pregnant woman look like a ghost. Hell, Kurt's skin glowed so much that it looked radioactive enough to cause complete universal eradication... cool.

Kurt was totally an alien. So, it was a little funny that he went from rosy pink to marshmallow white when Dave showed up—from behind his Lima Bean table and scared the living crap out of the guy. Whipped cream flew everywhere, and Kurt let out a half-muffle, half-scream as him and Blaine were slaughtered by sugar snow.

It was the only foreplay he'd ever done, and Dave did it with TWO guys.

"Dave, there are less terrifying ways to greet people!" Kurt picked up his nonfat mocha cup, which was even more nonfat now that it was covering half the table. "You nearly scared me to death."

Dave laughed. "And here I thought the days where I put the fear of God in you were gone!"

Kurt glared. "Very funny," he wiped the coffee off his screen. "Ha ha. You're paying for my medical bills."

When Dave sat down with his white hot chocolate (he liked his coffee like he liked his women), he totally spaced out for five seconds because that stuff the vanilla scented body wash that Kurt used made him sleepy. By the time that Kurt and Blaine started chatting again, he was reminiscing about that one time that Quinn Fabray's bikini top came undone at that pool party two years back. It was the white, floral ruffled bikini top she wore when she wanted to pretend that she had bigger tits than her boyfriend. If he was attracted to Finn, did that make him bisexual?

But yeah, Dave was totally in the middle of a conversation but hey, it wasn't like anyone told him it was a private one.

"Did Sebastian really total his car?" Blaine asked, as he tried to wipe off Kurt's nonfat mocha off his coffee cup.

"You'd think with how he drives… it's a miracle he keeps a hand on the wheel because it's not like he bothers keeping his eyes on the road!" Kurt mumbled. "But he did not total his car. He has a tiny dent on the side."

"You can't compare Smythe with the rest of the human population," Dave snorted. Blaine's coffee cup looked small compared to Kurt's. "When the rest of us are trying to find out what we wanna do for the rest of our damn lives, Smythe is worried about trying to make an old guy come as fast as possible so he could get home before his curfew."

"He used to send me Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy fanart that was definitely not safe for work," Kurt said. Dave didn't know what the hell that meant. "He also said that even fictional unicorns are less vanilla than I am."

Kurt wasn't helping his case with his vanilla-scented body wash. But Dave guessed he liked vanilla…

Though he couldn't believe that he used to want to be with Sebastian! Dave was sure he moved past that now. He wanted a guy that was less about sex, and more about other stuff, you know? But all Smythe seemed to care about was pushing around Kurt, bothering him like a fucking zit that wouldn't just give and whoring himself out. What a loser.

Blaine didn't comment. "How did your Dad handle it?" he grabbed his mocha-soaked sandwich and took a bite.

"He was furious!" Kurt replied. "Sebastian continues to have NO shred of decorum whatsoever. He talked back with my dad, and then had the gall to remind me that I got him kicked out of his house by his sweet mom."

Kurt then turned to Dave. "He told me he went to your house to do his laundry!" he yelled. "Seriously?"

Dave's enthusiasm dampened. "Uh…" he did go to his house for laundry. "Did he total his car in that rainstorm?"

Kurt and Blaine were staring at Dave vacantly. His hot chocolate suddenly tasted like liquid diabetes.

"Yeah, he did come to my house with laundry—three loads!" Dave admitted. He felt bad about it. "And he was covered in mud from the storm… but uh, I don't know. He just saw my Dad around and then he freaked out and left."

"Well, when we saw him in his mom's house, his mom wasn't there," Blaine admitted. He had no more interest in his soggy sandwich anymore. "What's Sebastian's game? Is he really homeless, or does he just want to think that he was?"

Dave didn't know that Sebastian might be homeless. Were they kidding? "He said that?"

"Dad said that he was sleeping in his car," Kurt admitted. Blaine looked confused, like it was the first time he heard that. "But both of us were under the assumption that he wanted to get the car fixed alone and avoid telling his dad."

Dave tried to imagine getting into a car accident in that crazy downpour and then sleeping in his car. He just didn't think of a situation where he wouldn't want to call his dad to pick him up. "Shit. I bet his dad was worried sick."

Kurt opened his mouth to reply, and then furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. "He…certainly didn't show it."

"Seriously? My dad will be fucking crazy," Dave replied. Kurt looked like he was thinking about this, but Dave met Burt Hummel. He knew that there was no way that that guy wouldn't leap over bridges for his son.

This didn't add up! Dave sat listened when Kurt and Blaine told him about the whole Bash-Up Mash-Up Facebook thing. They told him about the first post that suggested that Smythe had an eating disorder, and then later on, he faked a photo where he looked like a skeleton (Dave totally saw that picture. It was scary bad) and Kurt found out that he ate a lot and posted about it on the internet. Blah blah blah. That wasn't surprising. Dave totally imagined Smythe to be the kind of guy that survived on energy piss, and cheeseburgers that were stacked tall enough to make the leaning tower of Pisa shake in terror. When Kurt got to the part of the story where he went to the guy's house and talked to his mom after Sebastian and him got into a fight, Dave felt more than just a little defensive.

"Why would you do that?" Dave didn't get it. "I mean—I guess you did that with me. And he's in a different school, so you can't exactly arrange a meeting with the principal, but why would you get him in trouble?"

Kurt raised an eyebrow. "I was sick of his tricks," he mumbled. "But then he told me that I outed him."

"You outed him?" Dave felt uncomfortable. That was not cool. "I'm pretty sure he wouldn't lie about that."

Dave suddenly felt so guilty for treating Sebastian like dirt. He never even asked the guy why he wanted to use his own laundry machine. He was pissed that he had to clean the mud out of the house, and that kid had his car totaled cause he didn't run after him. If it was Kurt, he'd have run after him, you know?

"Everyone knows that he's gay," Kurt rolled his eyes. "It's kind of obvious."

Dave couldn't believe this. "You think my dad knew I was picking on you before you took us to the principal office?"

Kurt opened his mouth to reply, but then stayed silent. Blaine nodded his head sternly.

"I'm just a terrible friend," Blaine admitted, his shoulders slumping. "I'm not sure if Sebastian is really my friend but we got into a fight and I just… how can you stop talking to someone after a fight completely? I mean it's not like I texted him after the slushie fiasco but… but if I was really his friend, wouldn't I be able to tell if he has a problem?"

"Yeah," Dave agreed. He didn't think of Sebastian as his friend. Not by a long shot, but he wasn't treating him right the last few times that he came over to his house. Even if he didn't get the flowers thing.

Kurt looked stunned. "Did I really out Sebastian?" he looked disgusted with himself.

"Yeah," Blaine concluded. "Kurt, I'm pretty sure that… we did. When we went to his house. I don't think he lied about being kicked out either. I-I… I don't think he'd go to Dave's house and pretend he needed a washing machine."

"I still have his clothes in my house," Dave's voice was soft. He felt disconnected from the world drama since he tried to you know—kill himself. He had such limited time online and his dad told him not to log into Facebook for a while. He didn't know that there was a Facebook page pretty much transformed to solely dedicate making fun of a snarky sixteen-year-old gay kid. "Look… I'll talk. I have to give him his stuff back anyway, you know?"

Dave felt horrible when those guys sent him the threats. He felt terrible for doing what he did to Kurt… he didn't know that he was just making things worse for Sebastian, you know? He didn't know people were doing that to him.

"Yeah," Blaine nodded his head. "Do you want any of us to come with you?" he asked.

"I think it'll be better," Dave decided, but really, he didn't want to talk to Sebastian with anyone around. "But hey, besides the whole 'outed Smythe out to his parents' thing, does he really have an eating disorder?"

Blaine's ears went red. "We can't really decide cause of that photo that he posted on the internet and then the—"

"Seriously?" Dave raised an eyebrow. "It's either he has one, or he doesn't! So which is it?"

Before Kurt could answer, Blaine did. "I'm pretty sure he does," Blaine honestly said, remembering how he reacted to the carrot cake. "But I'm also pretty sure that nobody else is going to believe that."

Dave left afterwards, but he didn't know what to think. He was never around Sebastian long enough to see him eat, you know? It wasn't like he was lurking around in his school, watching him eat his lunch and plotting whether he wanted to pick on that tall gay kid that retaliated by blackmailing other kids with bad photoshopped dick photos.

But by the time that Dave got home, he saw his dad standing by the fridge. He was chugging a beer. To most people, this looked normal. To Dave, he wondered who the fuck died and killed his dad's spirits.

"David!" Paul looked like a coke addict caught in the emergency room. Seriously. His dad went by the whole 'if I don't want my kid to do it, I wouldn't do it' thing. The beers were usually for his friends. "I didn't see you."

His father rubbed his temples. "Today was a disaster!" Paul yelled. The last time a day was a disaster was when that guy with borderline personality disorder managed to get five doctors to give him enough Xanax to start a drug ring.

"That kid from the other night, the one that turned our house into a pig pen and left his laundry all over my stairs! That delinquent… SMYTHE!" Paul's words made Dave's stomach squirm. "Well, he got an appointment just to… I don't even particularly know what for! B-besides… testing my patience—and my blood pressure. I called his father, and he invited us to his house for supper to-to square it up! And I want to go as much as I want to get a rectal exam!"

Dave did not want to think about his dad getting a rectal anything. He shuddered. His dad probably thought that having sex with a guy was probably the same as finding out if your prostate was so big you couldn't take a piss.

"But we are going," Paul sighed. "And I expect that you'd be on your best behaviour even if-if… that kid won't be!"

Dave wanted to say stuff about how he could be homeless, and the eating disorder thing that Blaine and Kurt thought he had. Truth was, Dave never paid attention to whether Sebastian lost weight. Like, how could someone that naturally scrawny lose anything but that attitude? He bet the only reason Sebastian didn't result into physique violence was because the last time he tried to hit a skinny guy like Kurt, he ended up getting his own wrist broken instead.

He tried not to think about seeing Sebastian tonight, but it was hard not to. He put all his laundry out into a neat pile.

At around five in the evening, they left the house. Dave didn't feel so good when they were driving around a bad neighbourhood, looking for a house. Dave didn't think they had millionaire mansions around certain parts, and his suspicions were confirmed when Paul parked close to a house that looked like it belonged in a swamp. Was it not like a public health violation? What was up with these houses? The house that Sebastian lived in looked old, and sort of tired. It gave off that old, haunted mansion vibe that Dave thought was cool (he really liked horror movies), but also that infested vibe that made Dave's skin squirm. Smythe hated public schools but take a look at that work of art!

"Sebastian won't be joining us tonight," Jean said. "His mother picked him up to go get his car from the shop."

They were eating dinner outside—in a shiny table that looked like it had just been bought like an hour ago cause it still had the noxious store smell, you know? On the table, there were pink roses they looked wilted and white lilies that looked sort like they were getting grey. Dave suddenly felt like the baby breaths that Sebastian got him looked about ten times prettier—too bad that he threw them away the second that he got them. But why would someone that was loaded, and looked like they were cut straight from an Armani catalogue live in this dump?

Dave remembered that day that he sped past Sebastian and when Smythe told him that he lived there, Dave totally called him out on stalking him. How was he supposed to really believe that Sebastian Smythe lived HERE?

Right now, Dave was wondering how this Jean guy managed to keep his Porsche safe in this neighbourhood.

But it pretty much solidified that there was something weird going on. What kind of kid had a millionaire father and then lived in a house that made most pedestrians shudder in horror? How come the kids around here didn't pick-pocket the guy and how come he was so comfortable sitting out in a table with his shiny golden watch anyway? If Sebastian lived here, was he technically homeless or was he like homeless before? Why did his folks split up anyway?

And the most important question was what kind of idiot would try and fix that lump of cold, sad metal parts that Sebastian Smythe chose to drive around in. Seriously. He'd seen more elegant-looking bicycles.

"This is nice," Paul lied. He hated sitting outside. It was hot as hell, and he was sweating through his three-layer suit.

Dave nodded his head. "Yeah," they were eating steak, potatoes, bread, and there was a pie covered with a thin tin foil. There was also pasta salad, and hamburgers to the side. Dave tried not to fill his plate too much. "Real nice."

Apparently, Jean said that he cooked most of it, but Sebastian helped peal the potatoes. Dave didn't know the potatoes had been peeled. They didn't look it. He didn't know if he should eat them just in case Sebastian spat in them.

They ate in silence for the first few minutes, but after the third sip of water, Jean chose to speak.

"I'm sorry about Sebastian's behaviour," Jean said to Paul. He wasn't sweating through his suit. He glistened like the steak. "His mother wasn't pleased with his recent behaviour either. He used to live with her up until recently actually—a few months back, he came here. I think he's finding it difficult to adjust to the fact that we're split up."

Dave took a stab of courage—or idiocy. "She kicked him out, right?" Jean turned red but then agreed. "Why?"

"That kid is a nightmare," Jean mumbled, snorted. Then Jean bought the strong stuff out. Dave didn't have any, and Paul, who drank like one beer every five months, certainly declined. The way he drank made Dave shudder.

The guy was used to drinking this heavy stuff. Dave didn't think that was a good sign… and he didn't like this guy.

Paul didn't say anything. Cause he couldn't agree. Jean could bad-mouth his kid, but it wasn't like he was going to let a stranger do the same, right? "He is… difficult," Paul tried to save the conversation, but his dad tried to be vague. He didn't wanna say anything bad about Sebastian right now. "He won't even let the nurse check his weight."

Jean laughed like it was funny. "He's afraid that if he weighs himself often, he'd have put on a hundred pounds." Dave felt a shiver down his spine. Paul ate a piece of stuck. "Did you know he used to be three hundred pounds?"

Paul started coughing. "WELL! He… looks underweight," he said. "I thought that was just his…natural body weight."

"He don't eat so he could look like that," Jean snorted, shaking his head in disbelief. "The spends all day running his legs as much as he spends it running his mouth. He gets up at five to do it, so I don't have to ask him where he's going—did you know how much fucking rabbit food he buys? I haven't seen this kid eat anything in months!"

Dave suddenly felt the need to go vegetarian. He wasn't very hungry at all.