My idea for a point of divergence for all those Fancy!Dave and Bully!Kurt 'fics. Not so short, and kinda done to death, but hopefully good, at the least as a tribute to one or two in particular...

In the end, the difference was the wind.

That was it. A subtle but definite shift in the local weather patterns — that's all it took to permanently alter lives. Was it caused by pure chance? A butterfly flapping its wings in Madagascar, or a kid throwing a rock into a pond in Louisiana? Does it matter, in the end? Perhaps to Dave Karofsky and Kurt Hummel. If they had known the minor point on which their lives turned, they would've laughed. Or raged at the heavens. Maybe both.

19 year old college student Paul Karofsky was strolling across the OSU campus in 1983, playing hooky from his late morning classes and enjoying the fall weather. He paused by a crosswalk, a decision to make. He could either continue his walk deeper into campus, or go to the nearby coffee shop for a hot drink.

Again, the difference was the wind. It picked up, blowing across young Paul and chilling him to the bone. Okay, decision made — definitely coffee.

So he turned right and headed for the coffee shop. He never passed by the bench where a young redhead named Diane Patton would've caught his eye. He never talked to her, fell in love with her, married her.

Instead, he got his coffee, and his cashier was a sweet girl his age named Elizabeth Greene. She gave him his change, and the routine gesture sent his heart racing. Acting on an impulse he knew would flee with his nerves if he didn't give in at once, Paul asked her if he could buy her a cup too. Elizabeth stared for a moment (one of the longest moments in Paul's life), then smiled. She said she was overdue for her break, and she liked hers with milk and sugar.

That was the beginning.

Meanwhile, the friend Diane Patton was waiting for finally arrived. She was full of apologies, telling Diane that she'd met this hot frat guy who'd invited her to a party that very weekend, and could Diane come with her for moral support and besides she never seemed to leave the dorm so please? Diane shook her head with a smile and said yes.

The party was strictly by-the-book: the music was too loud, the beer was too cheap, and the making out too public. It was by pure chance that Diane literally ran into one of the other guests, an old high school friend of one of the fraternity members, named Burt Hummel. If she'd known him better then, she would've realized immediately he was smitten; he didn't drink another drop of beer the rest of that night. Instead, they found a quiet corner and just... talked.

That was the beginning.

In time, rings were bought, veils lifted, and families begun. Genetics is a capricious force, not that anyone involved could fully grasp the irony. How could they, with their ignorance of what could've been? Even with the different paths the relationships and DNA took, there were many things about the results that were still somehow the same.

Burt and Diane Hummel had a son they named Kurt. If, in another time and place, Kurt's hair was a little darker, a little straighter... That didn't make much of a difference. Either way, he would still be the same lanky, porcelain-skinned young man, much like his paternal grandmother.

Paul and Elizabeth Karofsky had two sons: Jack and David. David was a large child from his birth. Elizabeth dryly blamed her birthing pains on his father's genes, which Paul accepted with sheepish grace.

But genetics is far from the only influence that can shape a person.

When Kurt was little, he asked his mommy for a pair of sensible heels. Diane laughed. It was gentle, not at all mocking, but Kurt felt his stomach falling into a pit.

"Oh, Kurt," she said, stroking his hair, "heels are for girls like Mommy. You're not a girl, are you?" He shook his head. "We'll get you a nice pair of sneakers like your Daddy's. How about that? Won't that be fun?"

Because he loved his mommy, Kurt nodded, and never brought up heels again.

When David was little, he made friends with a boy named Perry at his day care. One day, on the drive home, after nearly talking himself out of breath telling his parents about what he and Perry did that day (it was such a packed narrative full of coloring and snacks and running around that Paul was nearly exhausted by just listening), David declared, "I love Perry. We're going to get married." It was full of the seriousness only a child of that tender age could muster. "Can I, Mommy?"

Elizabeth turned around in her seat and smiled. "Only if you invite us to the wedding, sweetie."

Because he loved his mommy, David readily agreed, and chattered about how he and Perry would live with Mommy and Daddy all the way home.

Marrying a different man did nothing to change the cancerous cells Elizabeth's body created.

Her husband and sons visited her at the hospital every day. Jack became withdrawn; as the elder son, his sense of his mother slipping away was sharper than his brother's. David still asked every visit when Mommy would come home. Even Jack couldn't bring himself to burst out with the angry correction he sometimes wanted to make.

One visit, Elizabeth and David were alone in the hospital room while Paul and Jack were getting food. Her cheeks were starting to hollow, but her eyes still sparkled with life. "David..." she said to her son.

"Yes, mommy?"

"Mommy loves you very much. You know that, right?"

David was just starting to get the idea that maybe his mommy wouldn't be coming home. He sniffled, but did nothing else; he had to be strong for her. "Uh huh."

Elizabeth thought for a moment, thought of the little boy who wanted to marry boys and didn't have the same interests that his big brother had, before speaking again. "You're such a sweet, smart, brave boy. I know you'll always make the right choices. So I want you to always be true to yourself and do what you want in life. Whoever you are and whatever you do, you be proud of yourself, okay? Never let anyone else tell you that you're weak or worthless. You're a very special young man, and no matter what, mommy will always love you and be proud of you. I just want you to be happy, and that means doing what makes you happy and being yourself. Promise?"

David barely felt the hot tears slipping down his cheeks. "I promise, mommy."

Elizabeth nodded, wiping his tears away, before closing her eyes to rest. By the time his father and brother returned, she was asleep.

When they buried her, David hoped that she was still asleep until the instant the coffin came to a rest under the ground. He wanted to pound on the box, beg his mommy to come back.

But even then, he knew she wouldn't. Well, if she wasn't, he was going to make sure that she would smile at him in heaven.

He was going to make his mommy proud.

Burt Hummel's garage was just starting to take off. That meant a lot of days working, a lot of nights with the books. That meant having to depend on his wife to raise their son.

But why not? He was providing for his family, and he made sure to make the most of his precious time home. When his business was more secure, when he found the right man to delegate responsibility to... Then he'd be able to catch his breath, spend more time with his son. Until then, he trusted Diane to do right by their child.

Kurt, in the meantime, loved his mommy. He knew, for a fact, that his mommy loved him. But he was a perceptive child, so he knew... He knew that there was always that little tiny caveat.

"Mommy loves you, Kurt." That's what she always said, and he knew she meant it.

But...

"Mommy loves you, Kurt." That was said.

"... but I would love you more if..." That was never said aloud, but said all the same.

If you played sports instead of doing those tea parties.

If you wore that t-shirt instead of that silly bow tie.

If you had more boys as friends instead of all those girls.

When Kurt asked his mother if he could play Little League (even though he privately thought baseball was boring), the bright smile that lit up her face told him he was doing the right thing.

He was going to make his mommy proud.

David's young life was a whirlwind of activity. He told his father he wanted to dance, so after school and weekends were one dance lesson after another. Jazz, tap, hip-hop, even ballet for a year and a half, before he decided that the formal world of classical dance wasn't for him. As he grew older, the range expanded. A little ballroom dancing here, a little salsa there. It didn't matter. He loved it.

Jack teased his brother behind his father's back, but he came home more than once with black eyes and bruises after beating up classmates who dared do the same.

Paul paid the teachers and went to the recitals; he was often one of the first on his feet to applaud. He'd... wondered a little, in the beginning, about his son and his interests, was a little uncomfortable (he was still a small town Midwestern boy at heart, after all).

But then he remembered Elizabeth, her love and compassion and open mindedness, the very things he himself fell for. He remembered how she always told her sons to do what they loved — that as long as they were happy, they could be anyone they wanted to be, and she'd still be proud of them.

So he went along with what David wanted. As time passed, he thought about it less and less, until he didn't think his son's interests were anything unusual at all. Where he once went to performances with that little guilty fear in the back of his mind that the other parents would see and disapprove, he now went to them eager, always in awe of the grace and confidence contained in David's husky body. And when he secretly caught David shyly holding hands with a boy in his tap class, he was neither surprised nor upset. Hell, he thought it was kind of (to use one of Elizabeth's favorite words) adorable.

He supposed, in the end, that he was trying to make Elizabeth proud of him too.

Kurt once got an expensive designer angora wool sweater from his aunt for Christmas. He itched to wear it, but happened to see his mother roll her eyes the instant it came out of the box. So it went into storage.

He got better at baseball; in fact, he grew to enjoy it. Sort of. A little. (When he looked back on it later, he had no idea whether he actually enjoyed it, enjoyed any of the other things he did as a kid, or if he'd just conditioned himself to enjoy it so much that he actually grew to believe the lies he told himself. In his darker moments, he wondered if his entire personality was constructed out of lies.) Or maybe what he enjoyed was seeing his parents cheering in the stands, running up to him afterward telling him how proud they were.

Unfortunately, his stature wasn't catching up with the rest of the boys. "Don't worry," his mom said, "your grandpa Murray was short at your age, and you know how tall he is now!" Still, it didn't help his confidence to be the shortest guy on the team... Not that the funny feelings he got in the locker room did any good either...

So he asked his mom if he could sign up for martial arts lessons. She was more than delighted to help him pick. In the end, they started with good old fashioned karate. In the ensuing years, he'd dabble in the other usual suspects: judo, aikido, even krav maga. Learning that his size wasn't the debilitating disadvantage he'd feared (and could even be an advantage at times) was the key. He (as his mother would often proudly tell her friends) flourished. As he began moving up in martial arts ranks, and the Little League team winning games, she even started letting him skip church on Sundays. There was, after all, so much a boy that age could do with his time, and she felt more and more confident every day that she and Father Mitchell had already set him firmly on the moral path in life.

One night, while Kurt played video games (always FPSs and fighting games; never those girly rhythm games or boring RPGs), his parents watched him from the kitchen.

"He's really growing up," Burt remarked.

"He's becoming a fine young man," Diane agreed. "I'm so proud of him."

"Me too. He seems happier these days."

"'Happier'? You mean there was a time when he wasn't?"

Burt shrugged. "I dunno. There was this time when he was little that I thought..." He shook his head. "I was probably wrong. That was when I was spending a lot of time at the shop. I hate not having been around then."

"Well, you're here now, and you've been a terrific dad to your son." She pecked her husband on the cheek. "He's going to grow up to be a fine, strong man. Just like his daddy."

Something about her words stirred a vague, distant thought in Burt Hummel, a thought that made him uncomfortable. But he dismissed it. His business was picking up, his wife was making her mark in the local business world, his son was thriving. What could be wrong?

Kurt's future was set when his mother died when he was nine. It was senseless and stupid; a driver going too fast on the interstate cut across multiple lanes to make her exit. She was eventually convicted of multiple counts of vehicular manslaughter, including that of Diane Hummel.

At the grave site, Burt hugged his son tightly and promised Kurt, through his tears, that they'd get through this together. Kurt returned the embrace, just as tightly, but without tears.

Tears, he'd decided, were for girls.

Not that his dad was a girl, of course, but he was an adult. For someone who wanted to be a man, for a real man, the kind that Father Mitchell preached about and that would make his mom happy... It was unacceptable.

He had to be strong. For his mom. He knew what he wasn't: one of those people, the kind she saw on TV or, rarely, in the streets, the kind who drew disgusted head shakes and a quick turn in another direction. He didn't know what they were, precisely, or what they were called — his parents frowned on bad words of all kinds. He just knew that they were girly, they were wrong. And his mom didn't like them.

Well, he wasn't like them anyway. He'd make his mommy proud.

He was a man.

David's future was set when he came out to his father when he was thirteen. The declaration was simple, straightforward, and no nonsense. He hoped that his dad would accept him, but he was fully prepared with a plan if the worst happened — a plan Paul later found out included a packed duffel bag and his grandparents on speed dial. To David's relief, those plans weren't needed; Paul merely nodded, hugged his son, and said, "we need to talk about sex," which not only defused the tension (just under the surface, humming like a power line, despite David's confidence and Paul's understanding), but also achieved a rarity of rarities: David shell shocked and speechless. By the time Paul pulled out the pamphlets he'd gotten at the local clinic, David was as red as a tomato (Jack happened to pass by, and took photos with his phone that would haunt his little brother for decades).

David had grown up, maybe a little too fast for Paul's tastes. Maybe it was his sexuality; having to deal with the societal consequences at such an early age... Or maybe it was the promise he'd made to his mother; Paul sometimes wondered if David was putting too much pressure on himself, trying to be and do too much before he was even an adult. Either way, his son was certainly growing up physically; he was already a large, sturdy kid, much as his old man had been at that age. His dancing kept him in shape, making him look more like an athlete than the sensitive artist he actually was. Yet this was still the same boy who played happily with his baby cousins, collected stray animals like stamps, and cried at the movies.

Jack pretended to roll his eyes and tease, but Paul knew the truth — knew by the fierceness of Jack's glare whenever he overheard someone use an anti-gay slur, by the GSA that had somehow sprung up at Jack's high school, by Jack's presence at every one of David's dance performances, no matter how bored he claimed he was.

And David was good — really good. The grace and ease that Paul had so admired had only grown with years and experience. Best of all, David loved it. Paul could see the joy every time his son took the stage, the way his face lit up and energy flashed through every step and move. When he was dancing, he wasn't the little boy Paul remembered, the one with the wide eyes and skinned knees and diapers.

He was a man.

And so...

"You were right!" Mercedes Jones appeared as if by magic at her best friend's side, handing him the burnt DVD. "It was so good. I cried like a baby!"

"I know!" David Karofsky grinned triumphantly as he plucked the DVD from her fingers. "The book's even better, if you want to borrow it. But be prepared for major emotional trauma."

"Maybe another time. I need to recover." She regarded her friend with a critical, yet friendly eye. "I see you've got your lucky outfit today. What's the occasion?"

David always insisted that just because he was gay didn't mean he actually had much interest or aptitude for things like fashion. But he also believed in clothes as part of self-expression — no sense hiding who you were under stuff that you didn't want to wear. That particular day, he wore a black collared shirt (that was a tad tight, the sleeves a tad short, and the material a tad thin, but Mercedes tried really hard not to notice that; she'd already embarrassed herself enough over that last year), dark blue jeans, and red sneakers. It was, as Mercedes had already noted, his "lucky outfit." "I feel good when I wear this," he'd once said. "And when you feel good, good things happen."

"Mike, Brittany, and I are almost done choreographing our routine for Regionals," David replied in the present. "It's gonna be awesome."

"Uh oh," Sam Evans' voice said an instant before he appeared over David's shoulder. "I've seen this movie before. That means we're going to suffer, doesn't it?"

David grinned wickedly. "Oh yeah. A lot. But you gotta sacrifice for art, right?"

Mercedes shook her head, helpless to keep a smile off her face. "You three keep forgetting we're not all dance geniuses like you guys."

"Geez, Mercedes, I'm no genius. I just worked hard. If you did what I did, you'd be as good as I am. Probably even better."

"Boo, if I did what you did, I'd have died of exhaustion before I turned ten."

All three shared a brief laugh. "Hey," Sam suddenly said, "how'd the spying at Dalton go yesterday?"

David shook his head. "Rotten. And kind of weird. But I did meet this guy who—"

"Heads up, losers!"

They barely saw the colored ice arcing towards them. Sam, being in the back, managed to duck behind David's open locker door, escaping with only a few bits of freezing cold here and there. It was the much bigger David who bore the brunt of the frigid assault. He wiped the flavored slush from his eyes, spit it out of his mouth (he hated raspberry, anyway), and sighed. "Don't you people have anything better to do?"

"Better than giving losers and fags the welcome they deserve? Never!" Kurt Hummel tossed his empty Slushie cup in the air, cackling. Behind him, his friend and compatriot George Peyton nodded with a nasty smile.

Now there was a study in contrasts: bully versus victim. Kurt Hummel looked small and scrawny, but anyone who had the misfortune to cross him knew he was anything but. Not only did he have a razor sharp tongue that could reduce a person to a quivering mass all on its own, but he could actually more than hold his own in a fight, a fact that other bullies had learned the hard way. By now, the word was out: only idiots fucked with Kurt Hummel unless they enjoyed dental work. There was a reason the McKinley High School baseball team revolved around the guy.

David Karofsky, on the other hand, looked like the one who should've been feared, given his massive stature. But quite the opposite: between his open homosexuality and his gentle nature, he quickly became a prime target amongst those trying to prove something by pushing around the huge queer. Puck had once offered fighting lessons, but David refused. "It's not who I am. Besides, I'd eventually have to get to Hummel, and do you honestly think I could take him?" No one did, not that it was an indictment of David at all. That was just the way it was.

David shook his head, accidentally dislodging a clump of Slushie onto Mercedes' shoes. She kicked it off with an annoyed frown. "I pity you, Hummel. I bet you could be a really cool guy if you weren't such an asshole all the time."

Kurt Hummel's mouth twitched, and there was something strange in his eyes — something oddly deep and menacing. But it was gone quickly, if indeed it had ever been there at all. "Whatever. If you're asking me to be your boyfriend, sorry, but you're not my type. I don't go for dancing gorillas. But if Brittany ever decides she's tired of hanging around with you clowns, tell her to give me a call. We had plenty of fun the last time around." He gave the three a mocking bow. "Until tomorrow, Prancer." He and Peyton wandered away, high fiving each other. Through it all, the milling student body around them hardly gave them a second glance.

"Lemme guess: Hummel?" Finn Hudson had chosen that moment to appear, a contrite look on his face, as if he'd been the one slinging frozen beverage.

Sam pursed his ample lips. "Good guess."

"Geez, does the guy ever let up?"

David sighed as Mercedes handed him a wet wipe. "I think the answer to that is all over me."

"Is it just me, or is he getting worse?" Mercedes chimed in.

"Christ, I hope not," David groaned. "I'd hate to think what he'd do if he got really bad."

"Isn't his dad dating your mom?" Sam asked Finn, who nodded with a grimace.

"That's what I don't understand! I always thought Hummel was kind of a jerkoff, but I've met his dad, and he seems cool. I mean really cool. I don't get how someone like him could raise a douche like Hummel."

David looked down the hall Hummel had just departed down, a faraway look in his eyes. "Sometimes I wonder..."