When Dave got to Kurt's house the driveway was empty, except for Kurt's black navigator. He'd expected as much, but that didn't loosen the knot in his stomach. He wasn't sure he could take Kurt's presence diluted by a room full of people right now, much less Kurt all by himself. Every moment they spent near each other felt like playing hopscotch in a mine field: sooner or later one of them was going to lose a limb.

Under all the trepidation, too, was a steadily growing, gnawing feeling of guilt.

The feeling wasn't new, precisely. He'd been experiencing some semblance of it all summer, ever since the first time Kurt leaned against him on the couch. It had been easy to push it aside before, though, because he could honestly say it stemmed mostly from his own feelings, and not because he was actually doing anything wrong.

Now his guilt had a definite shape, and a face. It only made it worse that the face was someone he knew and cared about. The image of Blaine from Thursday night was burned into his mind, and he didn't know who he hated more at this moment: Kurt, Blaine, or himself. Maybe Santana, since it felt, in some surreal way, as if her words had brought all of his secret wants and fears to horrible life right in front of him.

Blaine wasn't a loud crier, the way Dave's imagination had supplied. He didn't sob or wail dramatically, or curse, or punch things, or even ask why. Dave wished to God he had done any of those things, because those were reactions he could relate to and deal with. What Blaine actually did was sit very quietly at the bar nursing the same beer for a little over three hours, shoulders hunched and head down, eyes staring at nothing. Tears accumulated on his lashes slowly, and only fell every other time he blinked. It was the saddest thing Dave had ever seen, and it was terrifying. Blaine was the most expressive person Dave knew, and he was in so much pain that he couldn't express it.

Dave wanted nothing more than to make it stop, and he didn't know how. Hell, who was he kidding? He was at least part of the reason it was happening in the first place.

Dave was no longer in the habit of lying to himself: he'd had a crush on Kurt since before he'd been able to admit that he was gay. Kurt's kindness and patience had only served to fan the flames, and actually getting to know Kurt had sealed the deal beyond hope. Still, aside from that fever-dream week before Valentine's Day, when he thought Kurt was single and saw him enjoying all the cards and attention, Dave had never seriously entertained the idea of being able to act on his feelings. Whatever faint hope he'd had faded the longer he watched Kurt and Blaine together. It was the strangest kind of aching gladness, to be happy for your friends' happiness even as it constantly reminded you of things you wanted and couldn't have.

That didn't stop him from fantasizing, on occasion, what it would be like to see Kurt look at him the way he looked at Blaine, or to be able to reach out and take his hand at any moment, just for the hell of it. He didn't stop daydreaming about how it would feel to kiss Kurt again—a real kiss this time, wanted and reciprocated, both their hearts pounding like before, but not out of fear. He didn't stop imagining a day when he would introduce Kurt to his dad—not his mom, just his dad—as his first boyfriend. However much he cared about Blaine, that affection never stopped Dave's heart from beating faster whenever Kurt turned to him for comfort. It also didn't stop his heart from soaring into the stratosphere when Kurt's lips were finally—finally—on his again.

The reality was so much less rosy than the fantasy, though. It hit him, hard and for the first time, that for anything real to happen between him and Kurt, Kurt and Blaine would have to be over, and for that to happen, Kurt and Blaine would have to hurt. Maybe he was an idiot, but he'd never seriously considered either of these things as real possibilities, so sue him if only now, when it was actually happening, did he see how one thing became a necessary result of all the others.

Watching Blaine suffer in silence for that seemingly endless three hours at Scandals, Dave started to really hate himself for the first time in months. And maybe, just maybe, he hated Kurt a little bit, too, because damn it, his thoughts were supposed to be harmless! He was supposed to want something he couldn't have, and watch his friends be happy. Anything more concrete happening was inconceivable. Kurt wasn't ever supposed to want him back, and he definitely wasn't ever supposed to break up with Blaine, because however much Dave might have daydreamed about having Kurt for a boyfriend, looking at the consequences of that becoming even a remote possibility was unbearable.

So Dave sat in his truck, staring at his hands on the steering wheel and trying to wrap his head around the situation he found himself in. His head wasn't cooperating; somehow, even through all the guilt he was feeling, he still wanted Kurt. Kurt, who curled up next to him every Saturday night, who sent him ridiculous text messages six or seven times a day…who kissed him, just a few short weeks ago, pressing close and holding on tight, seeming like something out of Dave's dreams. His lips still tingled just thinking about it.

Blaine is your friend, and he is miserable right now, Dave scolded himself. They just broke up, and all you can do is think about what this might mean for you and Kurt. Kurt probably doesn't even like you. He broke up with Blaine for some completely unrelated-to-you reason. He's told you before that you're not his type!

But Kurt's inside waiting for you, another part of his brain whispered. Kurt broke up with his boyfriend. He had a reason. Is it so hard to believe, after everything that's happened this summer, that the reason could be you?

If he were being honest with himself, a part of him didn't want to believe it. If Kurt felt the way Dave couldn't help hoping—wishing—he would, then Dave is just as responsible for that horrible, lost look in Blaine's eyes as Kurt is.

His phone buzzed.

Are you going to sit outside all night? – Kurt

Maybe. It's nice out here. Thought I'd watch the sunset. – D.

You're polluting the whole street with your exhaust fumes. Come inside. You can watch the sunset with me. – Kurt

Bossy. – D.

You love it. – Kurt

Dave stared down at the text and huffed an involuntary laugh. You have no idea , he thought. He felt less ready than ever to face Kurt Hummel, and the weight of his guilt wasn't lessened even a little by the thrill of anticipation that ran through him at all the possibilities attached to watching the sunset with the boy he loved. The combination made him nauseous.

He got out of his truck and trudged up to Kurt's front door. Before he had a chance to take a deep breath, gather his courage, and raise his hand to knock, the door was open and Kurt was standing there looking up at him. Dave reflected briefly that life really was, above all things, monumentally unfair.

Kurt looked flushed and strangely breathless, as if some excitable momentum had carried him to the door, and he only let that first moment stretch for half a second before he reached out and let the same force pull Dave inside, door shutting behind them with a soft thud that nevertheless seemed to echo in Dave's ears.

"Hi," Kurt said simply, looking up at Dave with an emotion he recognized but was afraid to name. It was that look: the one he dreamed about, the one that was for Blaine.

"No one else is coming," Kurt said, and Dave swore he could feel his vision narrowing to a dimly-lit tunnel. "It's just us tonight."

Just us, his brain mimicked hazily. Oh God. He took a step back, but that only put his back against the door and called attention to the fact that Kurt was standing close, far too close, and still holding one of Dave's hands tightly in both of his own. He started toward the living room, pulling Dave along with him and still looking at him in a way that made Dave's already addled head spin a little bit faster. He was trying to see it the way he'd fantasized about it: this perfect moment when he realized that Kurt actually did feel something for him, and he got everything he'd been dreaming of for as long as he'd known what he really wanted. Hell, longer.

The image wouldn't come. Everything he saw and felt was tangled up in its context. Kurt's hands on his were distorted by the memory of Blaine clutching one half-drunk beer. Kurt's eyes were only as warm and full as Blaine's were cold and empty. The faint inkling—growing stronger all the time—that Kurt actually felt something for him, that Kurt wanted to have something with him that wasn't restricted to two secretive hours every Saturday night, or even two weeks before he disappeared to New York, was snarled in the knowledge that Kurt and Blaine had something real, too, and that Dave had ruined it somehow. How much more would Blaine hurt when he found out that one of his best friends and his ex-boyfriend were suddenly a thing? Would he think they'd started it before he and Kurt had broken up? Would he be wrong?

The whole thing was tainted, and that's what finally did it for Dave. Abruptly, the voice in his head urging him to just go for it went quiet, and left him only with the voice screaming how wrong everything in front of him was. Dave pulled back sharply, stopping Kurt's movement toward the couch and finally extracting his hand from Kurt's grasp.

"I can't," he said simply, forcing himself to look Kurt in the eyes and watch the warmth fade into confusion.

"What?" He seemed so honestly puzzled, but did he really not see? Dave tried to reign in his frustration as he began to explain.

"We can't," he started. "You love Blaine. I know you do."

"I broke up with Blaine," Kurt said. His voice was neutral, but Dave saw the tightening of his eyes, and he knew the pain was there.

"Yeah, you just broke up with him, and you're not as okay with it as you're trying to seem. Whatever you think this is, I promise you it's not worth the risk of losing Blaine."

"I'm not going to lose Blaine," Kurt said tightly. "But can you please let me be the judge of what I want, and what I'm willing to risk to get it?"

"No," Dave said, and immediately knew it was the wrong thing when Kurt's eyebrows nearly disappeared into his hairline. His jaw clenched in a way Dave could only describe as mulish. Oh shit.

"No?" Kurt said, voice dripping with mock disbelief. "Well, by all means, Dave Karofsky, since I'm too stupid to know what's good for me or what I want, why don't you tell me what to do instead?"

"That's not—"

"Maybe you should start with Santana's argument, that it'll look like I'm just working my way through all the gay guys I know. Then there's Finn, who wants to know if I have some weird form of Stockholm Syndrome—not that he actually knew the term—that makes me feel connected to you because you used to pick on me. Do you want to know what Rachel said, by any chance? Or Brittany? Because believe me, you're not the first person to stand there and tell me that I don't know what's good for me. So go ahead: amaze me. What incredible insight do you want to add to the veritable mountain of reasons I've already been given for why I'm being an idiot?"

Dave could only think of one. He should have been speechless, but there was still that one thing left in his head.

"Blaine."

"What about him?" Something about the flippant tone of Kurt's voice grated against Dave's nerves, and he felt a dangerous swell of frustration bubble to the surface. This time, he didn't even try to stop it.

"Well, since he's my friend, and since he's apparently the only person in the world trusting enough not to see what literally everyone else already knows, he called me the night you two broke up. You want to know what Blaine looked like? He looked sad, Kurt. Like his world had been pulled out from under him. He spent the entire night staring at the table and crying into half a beer."

Kurt opened his mouth to say something, looking pained, but Dave was on a roll and he couldn't stop. All the stress of the last few months—to say nothing of the last few days—was pouring out of him and he didn't even want to stop it, because in some painful, fucked-up way, it felt good. It felt like drawing poison from a wound.

"It's worse than a break-up, Kurt. What we did to him is worse than doing it to anybody else, because Blaine trusted us. Blaine trusted us so much that he watched this happen and never thought, not even once, that this was gonna happen. Don't you see how that makes it so much worse?"

"Dave—"

"And not that it makes it better, but at least I'm an idiot with the emotional intelligence of a rock. I was dumb enough to play along with the whole thing, because I was willing to take whatever I could get, because I'm so fucking in love with you that I can barely stand it. What's your excuse, huh?"

"I—"

"Do you actually care how many people are getting hurt while you're figuring out what you want—"

"Dave!"

"—or did you just enjoy watching both of us pine after you while you were pulling the strings?"

Dave stopped, out of breath and, for the moment, out of anger. His whole body sagged in relief: every wish, every dark thought and fear of the last few months, it was all out of him now. It was in the air between them now, and Kurt…

Kurt looked stricken. He just stared at Dave in silence for a very long minute. When he finally spoke, his voice was soft and full of pain.

"Is that really what you think of me?"

Dave immediately wished he could bite his own tongue all the way off and throw it out the window.

"Do you really think I don't care about you, that I'm the kind of person who enjoys seeing others hurt on my account? Do you think I like hurting Blaine? I love Blaine. He's my best friend, and I've spent almost two years dating him. He may or may not ever speak to me again, and you have the nerve to imply that I'm just having fun with all of this? I'm not having fun, Dave! I hate this!"

The hurt on Kurt's face had faded steadily into anger, until he was in Dave's face and screaming. Dave had only ever seen Kurt lose control like this once before. Strangely enough, kissing him was the last thing Dave felt like doing this time. All he really wanted to do was yell back, because he was so fucking angry. Everything that had been good at the beginning of summer was ruined again, and this time it wasn't even all his own fault, and he had no idea how to fix it. So he yelled.

"I don't know what to think, Kurt! You knew how I felt about you. How could you not? I've been a wreck all summer, are you really going to tell me you didn't see that? And if you love Blaine and you didn't want to hurt him, then why the hell did you break up with him?"

"Because I think I love you!"

Time didn't stop, but Dave sure as hell felt like it did. Kurt was still in his face, breathing heavily and flushed with both his anger and the realization of what he had just said. His expression was melting into something like mortification, and it was taking all of Dave's anger with it. When he made to pull away, Dave stopped him with a gentle hand on his arm.

"You…I'm sorry…what?"

"I…I…" Kurt seemed unable to complete the sentence again.

"You think you—" He didn't dare to finish that sentence. It felt like finishing it would shatter something, or fuse something together, or take something away that he would never get back.

"Yeah," Kurt breathed, and there it went, whatever it was. It was gone. "I think I do. And I suddenly know how you must've felt in that gorilla suit. Is it warm in here?"

Dave snorted at that. He couldn't help it.

"Oh my God." Kurt smacked him gently on the shoulder. "Stop! You can't laugh! We're not supposed to be laughing!" That just made Dave laugh harder, and then Kurt lost his own battle and dissolved into giggles as well, laughing until his sides ached and he had to lean against Dave for support. Dave's arms came up automatically and held him there, and Kurt felt that pulse of warm-safe-happy-loved. As their giggles subsided, Kurt looked up at Dave with cautious eyes, and the last traces of the smile faded from his face.

Nothing was substantially different. A few angry, honest words and some laughter didn't change the fact that they had betrayed their friend, and that seeing them together was going to hurt him even more. It wasn't okay, either. But looking down at Kurt in his arms, Dave wondered if there was really anything else he could do. Sure, he could say no and walk away, but would that make him any less hopelessly in love with the boy in front of him? No. Would that keep Blaine from knowing the truth? Knowing Santana, probably not. The truth was, staying away from Kurt wouldn't save Blaine any pain at all. It would just be a lie to make himself feel better about being one of the causes of that pain.

Dave Karofsky was much more of an honesty kind of person these days.

"I love you," he breathed. The smile Kurt gave him was tentative, but it grew quickly into something lovely and real that covered his whole face and lit it up from the inside out.

"I knew it," Kurt quipped. "Be honest. You've been nuts about me since the first time you kissed me." And wow, hearing Kurt make a joke about that day was…weird. But good. It happened, but it doesn't matter anymore. The realization made him feel light all over in spite of the guilt still weighing heavily on him.

"Longer than that," he said honestly. "I think I've been in love with you since the first time I saw you making goo-goo eyes at Finn."

"First of all, ew, can we never bring that misguided period of my life up again, and secondly,goo-goo eyes? Really?"

"Yup. Big, beautiful puppy eyes. It was ridiculous, and I was jealous." Kurt laughed softly.

"That must have been so confusing for you," he said, and although his tone was meant to be teasing, it came across, more than anything, as sympathetic. Dave didn't bother to confirm it; he just held Kurt a little bit tighter and looked down into his eyes some more, some detached part of his brain marveling that he could feel this good and this bad at the same damn time. His emotional intelligence might be lacking, but clearly his capacity to feel things was overdeveloped.

Neither one was sure how long they spent standing there, just holding on and taking one another in, but at some point the air between them changed. It was Kurt's fault, Dave was sure of it; the change came after a split second during which Kurt's eyes left Dave's and flickered down to his mouth, then back up.

Kurt wanted to kiss Dave so badly he could almost taste it. And that would be the point of no return, somehow he knew. Well, you have nothing left to lose, Hummel. It's now or never. He slid his arms up and around Dave's neck and leaned in slowly, eyes never leaving Dave's.

Just before their lips touched, Dave spoke.

"You know…if I let you kiss me, that'll make me the world's most horrible friend."

Kurt pulled back just a bit.

"Mhmm, and I'll be the town harlot" he joked softly. "Chances are our movie nights will get pretty awkward."

"You're leaving for New York in a couple weeks, too," Dave went on, voicing one of the little nagging fears Santana had brought up for him. "Much as I might deserve it, I don't want to get hurt."

"Hey, none of that," Kurt scolded gently, tightening his arms around Dave's neck. "I don't want to hurt you, David."

"We didn't want to hurt Blaine, either…"

"No, we didn't. I don't want to hurt anyone. I just want to kiss you."

"So…how do we accomplish one and avoid the other?"

"Maybe we can't. Maybe people who love each other hurt one another sometimes, even if they try their hardest not to," Kurt said softly, but his eyes were now focused on Dave's mouth. Dave's next words were so soft Kurt barely heard them, and his voice trembled just the tiniest bit with the fear Kurt could feel screaming in his own head. It was telling him to pull away, to run back to Blaine and what was safe and familiar, what had worked up until now. This was dangerous, and they both knew it.

"So what do we do now?"

Kurt leaned in again, and this time Dave didn't stop him. It wasn't a perfect kiss, not the way Disney movies depict them anyway. It was hesitant, far from guilt-free, and full of all the jokes, mistakes, and moments—good and bad—between them. It wasn't the end of a fairytale, and it certainly created more problems than it solved. Even so, Dave thought it might be worth all the bitterness in the world to gain this moment of quiet, imperfect sweetness.

Then Kurt turned him around, pushed him down onto the couch, crawled into his lap…and for a little while, Dave had no more coherent thoughts.

Author's Note: Wow. That was difficult to write, but I finally finished it. This is officially my first completed, non-oneshot/twoshot fic. Yay! Thanks for reading, and I'd love to know what you think. 3