Pairing(s): Dave/Kurt is endgame… if I can ever get this fucker of a fic to behave.

Rating: PG, might change later

Warnings: OC's. Wikipedia/Mighty Ducks movie based knowledge of hockey. Clones (well, one). Homophobia. Violence (look, it's an angry girl with a stick, but she feels like someone you should warn people about).

Spoilers: Let's go with up to Sexy.

CROSSOVER: Stargate (spoilers for Atlantis and SG-1) but this is a Glee-centric fic, and if there's Stargate specific stuff it's not going to be mind-blowing. Worst comes to the worst, head over to one of the SG wiki's or ask me.

Summary:

Dave only shares some profile information with everyone. If you know Dave, add him as a friend.

"Screw it," Kurt murmurs, and clicks.

Chapter 4/? – Close for Comfort

I can't remember last time I thanked you,
Keeping my distance unintentionally.
Too close for comfort, just ain't close enough.
If I could have more time we would brainstorm.

Dave Dobbyn - Loyal

Colorado Springs at first glance is just how Dave left it last summer. Pikes Peak still rises behind downtown, a stone-boned sleeping giant with snow scraped across its spine and shoulders. The mountains are distant, deep grey and blue; not close enough to touch, but maybe to smell – there's the scent of the city, the car exhaust and concrete and people, but the air remembers its heritage, and under all that urban chaos is mountain-breath, clean and pale and earthy.

Dave rides shotgun in Jack's old truck with the window down and that memorable air blowing over his face and arms. Just like the apartment in DC was becoming a safe place, Colorado Springs already is, and truthfully, Dave's glad to be back.

Beside him, Aunt Sam is driving, and he can feel her occasionally glancing over at him, smiling fondly. The hug he got at the airport was a strong one; she's really missed him since he was here last summer. It makes him smile, too, and wonder if she's still restoring the Harley they worked on then. He wonders, a little dreamily, if she would let him use one of her bikes to go back and forth to school on, since he's left his truck in DC. There's a brief flash of fantasy; that he could drive up to that theoretical new school on Sam's Indian in a leather jacket and just automatically be cool again.

He closes his eyes, puts his face into the wind and wonders if you can actually be gay in high school and be cool. He wonders if this is something he should know, and then gets a little irritated that he's going to be living in…in this category of people that he knows so little about, and wonders if he can get away with just being Dave and being gay at the same time. After all, isn't that what Carl said? That he's just Dave and that he's always been this way anyway; that he doesn't have to change?

It's something to hold onto.

He puts one hand out the window, and feels the air beating like a bird's wings against his palm, slipping through his fingers.

Something to hold onto.

"…and this is your room."

Dave drops his duffle just inside the doorway and peers around. "Didn't this use to be Carl's home gym?"

"What's your point?" Cassie asks.

"Well…where's he going to work out now?" Dave says, smiling a little. "Won't he be crushed he can't go for a run and watch I Dream of Jeanie re-runs at the same time?"

"He'll just have to get a membership like the rest of us sad-sack civvies," Cassie says with a dry smile. "Now look, what do you think of the colours in here? We wanted to keep it pretty neutral, but if you want to repaint at any point, just say the word." She frowns at the bare cream walls. "Also, please put something on the walls. This is just sad."

Dave straightens from tipping his stuff out of his duffle and onto the bed. "Like what?"

"Y'know, posters and stuff. Something, okay, otherwise it looks like we're keeping you in a little white room."

Dave laughs. The room's not little, or really white. Whatever Carl does for the Air Force they pay him well to do it, and it means he and Cass definitely have the room to take Dave in comfortably. Dave does feel a bit bad about Carl's home gym, but he's thankful they didn't put him in their neatly done up guest bedroom. This way he gets to make this room really, truly his, instead of fighting the existing décor. He doesn't have to work around anything, or worry about messing something up.

He also thinks Cassie-the-psyche-major is well aware of this.

Dave's still thankful for it.

"Colours?" Cass reminds him, eyebrows raised.

Dave shrugs expansively, dropping down on his bed, heedless of the clothes and crap still spread across it. "I like blue."

Cassie tilts her head as he looks at him. "Really?Always pegged you as more of green kind of guy." She offers him a small smile. "Hey."

"Hmm?"

"How're you doing?"

He shrugs again, toeing the duffle bag where it sits at his feet. "'S been a week, y'know? I mean, this time last week I was…"

He was at home. He wonders if he'll ever stop calling it that.

"I thought they'd have called before now, or something. Maybe reacted in some way, when they found out I was moving here."

Cassie's gaze is attentive, but there's no pity there. It makes it easier to talk to her about this stuff. "Just 'cause you didn't see it doesn't mean they didn't react," she reminds him gently.

"Yeah, I know, but… I just thought –" he lets out a short, humourless laugh. "I don't know what I was thinking. Maybe that that would be something that would make them realize? That it'd be a reality check for them?" He shakes his head. "Apparently not."

Cass gives a soft sigh and comes and sits next to him, shoulder to shoulder. "I am not psychic."

Dave gives her a look. "Uh, okay?"

She smiles. "My point is I don't know what's going to happen in the future. I can help you plan for it, but I have no idea how things will turn out."

"This must be a terrible trial for you."

"Yes, it's deeply trying, but somehow I survive." This time she gives him a look. "Thing is, they could come around tomorrow, which would be great. We'd miss you, but we'd all be ecstatically happy for you. On the other hand…"

Dave sobers. "It could take them…a while." He swallows. "Years."

Cass sighs. "Yeah. I want you to hope for the best, Dave, but I don't want you to be heartbroken when it doesn't happen."

Dave nods. "You want me to be realistic."

"I want you to focus on now, and I want you to focus on finding yourself."

Dave blinks at her. Then he grins. "Oh my god."

"What?"

"Uncle Jack warned me you would do this."

"Do what, Dave?"

"Head shrink me," he says, still grinning.

Cassie throws up her hands in mock frustration. "I'm not trying to head shrink you, you dork! I just –" She huffs and does some toe-scuffing of her own. "Look, I know you were having some trouble at your old school."

Dave chews his lip. "Yeah. It was…hard. I mean, at McKinley you couldn't really…" He sighs. "Coming out didn't feel like an option," he murmurs, "not for me, anyway. I could barely even admit that I was…gay. And that kinda made me really, uh, angry."

He closes his eye briefly. This is the first time he's talked about all of it. It's like something's coming loose inside of him, rattling around before gently expanding. It feels like breathing.

"I did some stuff I'm not proud of," he continues quietly. "I did some stuff to people. One kid in particular."

Cass asks, "Wanna talk about it?"

Dave shifts, feeling inexplicably restless. "Not now, 'kay? I mean, yeah, I know I have to at some point but…now it's still kinda…raw."

She nods and they sit in comfortable quiet for a little while, Cass with a thoughtful look on her face and Dave wondering why he could never discuss this with everyone else who cared about him. With Cass it's easy, and with Uncle Jack it's easy, even though he knows that beyond certain members of his patchworked family Jack is a taciturn old bastard when it comes to the whole feeling-feelings stuff. It's not as easy with Carl, but he makes up for it by being so laid back and Aunt Sam is just too logical for prejudice and too passionate to let things like that just be, so he knows at some point they're going have a talk.

Briefly, he lets him entertain the idea of responding to the one message in his Facebook account that he hasn't deleted, beyond telling Finn that he's still breathing.

He shakes it away though.

Maybe. Another time. Later.

"So, blue right?" Cass says, apropos of nothing.

"Uh, yeah."

She nods again, still looking thoughtful.

"I think we need to go shopping."

It feels kind of traitorous to think it, but getting settled in Colorado Springs is stupidly easy.

He's always liked it because Uncle Jack is here, but now there's Cass and Nyla and Carl and Sam… And Daniel will be back soon – which is actually potentially awkward, for Dave anyway; way back before he really realized he was gay, about when he was eleven, Dave met Daniel for the first time when they'd come up to the Springs for Jack's birthday (Jack was mortified at the amount of fuss that was made, but couldn't exactly send them all away again).

Daniel was typically kind and smiling and patient with the chubby pre-teen that followed him around asking a thousand and one questions and insisted on sitting with him through dinner. All the adults smiled and called it a touch of hero worship, but Dave is old enough and wise enough now to know this was probably his first ever actual crush on a guy.

"It's okay," Cass tells him after he's blurted all this out in reaction to her innocent question of, 'so, looking forward to seeing the rest of the family?' "Danny was my first crush too. I mean, God, who wouldn't crush on him?" Followed by a slightly dreamy look off to one side as though picturing Daniel in that general direction. Dave has to laugh.

He manages to drag Aunt Sam along on his and Cassie's shopping spree, ostensibly for the purpose of getting things for Dave's room. Cassie of course goes a little power-mad in Home Depot/Pottery Barn/any furnishing shops she can get into before they can head her off. It becomes clear very early on that Sam and Dave are just along for the ride and to give occasional opinions. Yes, that blue is fine, no not that sheet set, I like that desk but not this bookshelf, Cass, when am I ever going to need a trophy case?

Cass blinks over her shoulder at Dave where he and Sam are sitting on a futon in the latest in a long line of furniture shops.

"You're not joining the hockey team?" she asks, all innocence. "At your new school, I mean."

"I was on the football team, Cass."

"Well, yeah," Sam says, "but you used to love hockey."

Dave frowns. "I still do, but… I quit at McKinley 'cause…"

Because the hockey team was dirt on the popularity ladder – football was where the power was.

But Dave didn't love football.

When he looks back up from his curled hands, Sam is smiling at him, and Cassie is smirking.

Dave squirms a little under their combined knowing gaze. "I'll see," he allows.

"Only if you want to," Sam agrees, putting an arm around his shoulder.

Dave looks up at a hopeful Cassie. "We're still not getting the damn trophy case, Cass."

That night, after they've packed away the DIY supplies for the coming weekend and set up some of Dave's new furniture, Dave settles in the den with the family, all of them chatting and half-heartedly watching Simpsons re-runs with takeout boxes covering the coffee table in the aftermath of dinner. Nyla has just been carted off for her bath, protesting 'no, Da, want lellow!'

"Lellow?" Dave asking, looking up from his laptop. The forward most browser tab is filled with the website for his new school…but the one behind it houses his Facebook page. He's been careful to keep his FB-chat offline, but there's a new message in his inbox, taunting him.

He feels like he's hiding.

Cassie is rolling her eyes. "She means 'yellow'," she says, and points at the TV, where Homer has just taken a header over Bart's skateboard. "You're a terrible influence on my child, Jack O'Neill."

Uncle Jack just smirks over his box of black bean beef and is totally unrepentant.

Dave smiles, but goes back to his laptop, Facebook continuing to mock him.

To answer or not to answer…

He thinks of Kurt Hummel's anxious eyes. "Good luck…"

He opens his inbox and hits reply on Finn's message.

I'm okay. Staying with my uncle's family in Colorado Springs. Not coming back to Lima.

Thanks Finn.

"That's it?"

"That's it," Finn says, and turns his laptop to Kurt to prove it.

Kurt puts his coffee down and reads the message sitting in his brother's FB inbox. Then he reads it again, and again.

It's deeply unsatisfying. When he drove from up from Westerville to see Finn for coffee and Karofsky-gossip, he'd expected something a little more…closure-y.

And now his vocabulary is suffering.

"Dude. With the frowny face," Finn says, gently prodding Kurt's wrinkled forehead.

Kurt sighs and flicks Finn's hand away. "I just…I mean, how can that be it? Surely there's more to what happened."

Finn shrugs and then says sensibly, "Yeah. But why would he tell me that? We're not really friends, y'know? I mean we are, but its Facebook."

Kurt huffs, feeling a little hard done by. He's invested a lot of thought in David Karofsky now that he'll probably never see him again. The irony kind of bites. He doesn't even know this boy that well, and up until a week ago, never laying eyes on him again would have made Kurt deliriously happy – and yet now, his continued existence is…very important.

Yeah, Kurt doesn't get it either.

Blaine kind of does – or he seemed to when Kurt talked to him about it, but he was wary, too.

"It's not weird," he reassured Kurt, who sat fretting on his bed. "It's compassionate. It's a good thing, Kurt, it's part of being a good person – which you are." He smiled, and Kurt melted, but kind of distractedly. "Just…"

"Just what?"

Blaine's smile turned rueful. "Don't name the puppy, okay?"

"…I'm sorry?" Kurt stared at him. "What puppy?"

"Karofsky."

One of Kurt's eyebrows flicked up. "Alright if we're going to equate him with a canine lets pick an appropriate one, shall we?"

Blaine chuckled. "Okay, don't name the Rottweiler then. Look, all I'm saying is, don't get too attached. It's great that you care but…he's not your problem anymore, Kurt."

And yet, thinking about it now, re-reading that message for the eighth time, Kurt thinks that maybe Blaine doesn't get it. Not really. Karofsky did more than just apologise when he came to Dalton that night; somehow, he became unignorable to Kurt. Once the fear was gone…curiosity took its place. Concern, even.

Now, if Kurt could only figure out how that happened…

"Should I reply?"

…or, for that matter, what to do about it.

Kurt looks back at Finn, coming back to himself a little. The sounds of the coffee shop filter back to him. "I don't know," he murmurs. "I kind of think…" Finn looks at him questioningly when Kurt trails off. Kurt attempts a smile. "It's just…if you reply…is it really just you replying, or should I be putting my name to it too, y'know?"

Finn nods slowly. "So add him."

Kurt stares at him. "What?"

"If you want to talk to him, add him," Finn says again, like it's the completely logical option, which…

…which it is.

Crap.

Kurt's getting a little worried by all these wildly insightful moments Finn's accumulating. And now he's giving Kurt one of those deep, meaningful looks – which Kurt thinks he might actually have learnt from Burt – one of the ones that says he knows Kurt knows the answer, he's just waiting for Kurt to click onto it. This is unnerving, because the situation is usually reversed. But the whole situation is screwy so maybe…

"Of for crying out loud, alright!" Kurt says, a little grouchily, and tugs the laptop towards him, quickly logging Finn out and logging onto his own account.

"Only do it if you want to," Finn says mildly, and smiles when Kurt glowers at him.

Then he looks back at his own page…and pauses. He takes a moment to wonder how this will look to everyone who sees his news feed – what the reactions of his friends will be when they see Kurt trying to add David Karofsky to their ranks. He wonders what Dave's friends will think when they see it.

He wonders what will happen if Dave hits 'accept'.

Dave only shares some profile information with everyone. If you know Dave, add him as a friend.

"Screw it," Kurt murmurs, and clicks.

He wonders what Dave will make of it, and wishes he could see the guy's face when he next checks his inbox.

This whole situation is deeply weird.

Its Monday – he's been in the Springs for a little less than four days, out of home for just over a week – and the woman who will become his new school principal is gazing at him with elegantly made up eyes over a huge and shiny mahogany desk.

When they first walked in, it had been kind of jarring. The rest of H.G. Wells Comprehensive – 'Higwell Comp' when it's at home – is modern and smooth and just as shiny as Principal Garnet's desk deity. It wasn't always like this; Cass gave him a quick tour before their appointment with Garnet, and spent much of the time saying things like "and this used to be the home ec department, only it was way smaller and there were birds nesting in the ceiling" or "that's where I used to have math, but the heating in here works now."

Dave shook his head at her, disbelieving. "Uncle Jack and Aunt Sam let you stay here? I mean, it sounds so…crappy."

"Oh, the facilities were," Cassie said blithely, "but the education was bangin'. What? Don't give me that look, David, I'm twenty-three, I can be hip and down with it."

The smooth and shiny-ness stops once you get through those office doors however. In Garnet's office, slick and up-to-the-minute – utilitarian – becomes elegant and rich. It's old world, or an old world expression of good money. The whole school has had fuckloads spent on it; it went bankrupt six years ago…and then out of nowhere appeared Margeaux Garnet; young, monied, beautiful and…a professional model.

No, really.

Dave has no idea why a model, of all people, would take over a financially nose-diving arts academy, become its principal and hurl a Swiss bank account at it…but then no one else can fathom it either.

So now, Dave is sitting across from this stunning woman, who looks back at him with her perfect, dreamy blue eyes and says serenely, "It's so lovely to meet you, David. Of course, we'll be happy to have you here at HG Wells." She smiles at him add, totally guileless, "You're gay, aren't you?"

Dave blinks at her, thrown, and stutters out, "Uh, ye-yeah. I just came out…"

"Oh, lovely," says Principal Garnet, "me too." Then, before Dave can even process this, "you'll be joining the GSA, of course, Carlo will be delighted to have you. And I'll have to get Matthew to introduce you to the Arc, you might like it there, too…"

And on she goes, single-handedly carrying on a conversation about the seemingly endless extra-curricularity of Higwell Comp while Dave sits back and thinks:

What the hell have I gotten myself into?

He has no way of knowing it, but this is just the beginning.

AN: Kind of a filler chapter, I know, but I promise shit will actually start to happen in the next one. Seriously, I'm getting ready to straight-up murder this fic if it doesn't settle down and start behaving. I don't even know what happens to my brain when I write this…