A/N: Want a huge hint about this lengthy chapter? Well, here's one: near the end of reading this, start playing 'Closer' by Nine Inch Nails. ;D

HOLY FUCK ON FRENCH TOAST, the overwhemling support for this fanfic is phenomenal! I'm only eight chapters in and already I have over one hundred and ten reviews, and over seventy alerts and about half as many favs? YOU GUYS ARE TOO MUCH. Seriously, you guys give my heart attacks of love and joy. I adore you all. 8D

Enjoy your Dave/Kurt loathin'- I mean, lovin'. C;

Chapter 7.

It's a week to the day after the "Motel 8 Incident" that Dave is startled awake by Kurt's forewarned sleepwalking.

All he feels is a presence lurking over him, startling him out of one of those dreams in which he is falling, falling, and right as he should be hitting the ground, he wakes up. He jolts upright, calms his erratic heart and shallow breathing, his hand to his head. He then peers over and finds Kurt standing in the aisle between their twin beds.

"Kurt?" Dave whispers with uncertainty.

The soprano doesn't say a word. His eyes are open, but his lids are at half-mast, and he isn't blinking very often. When he does, it's slow and measured. He is definitely not himself, Dave concludes.

Kurt presses a knee onto Dave's bed and leans forward. Dave's immediate reaction is to scoot backward. "K-Kurt? I know you're technically asleep, but you should really wake up right now…"

Kurt mumbles something, sleep-talk, and Dave sends the shorter male a questioning look. Then, he hears, "Day-vid."

"Um, yeah?" Is it possible to carry on a conversation with a sleepwalker? It must be, because Kurt is responding by climbing fully onto the bed. Dave presses himself against the wall, careful not to touch the singer.

"Want," Kurt slurs, and his hands reach out, grasping air, but coming so very close to Dave's nose.

Dave's heart skips about five beats and his breathing slows to a dangerously low level of activity. "Wh… what?"

"Want," Kurt repeats just as softly, just as barely intelligibly. "David."

Dave feels his heart pounding loudly in his temples, and his fingers loosely twitch. Does Kurt's subconscious even know what it's speaking to? Who it's reaching for? Dave hears his name being called, but that can mean nothing, it could –

Kurt's fingers freeze the jock's thoughts in place as they brush over Dave's parted lips. Dave stiffens, fear and desire rising in his chest. Kurt leans forward more, scooting further onto the bed near Dave. His eyes close, and his lips press against Dave's skin, right on his chin – not quite a kiss, just a touch, but it's enough to stir something inside of Dave that shatters his resolve.

He brings his hands up and tenderly grips Kurt's face, linking their mouths.

In this instant, Dave grasps a concept that terrifies him: he is (smitten with?) (doting of?) (fond of?) (devoted to?) (besotted with?) (in love with?) Kurt. Any word he could use, he isn't sure which is the most overpowering, which is the most passionate, which one is born of attraction and loathing and coming to know someone on a level outside of trivial facts like their favorite food or movie, and it's something rooted deep within his chest that Dave can't keep inside, and so he lets it sprout and grow to reach Kurt through the loving kiss he places on he sleepwalking boy's face.

But the intensity and the contact snaps Kurt out of his sleeping trance, and he's suddenly wide-eyed and humming in protest and breaking free of his roommate's grasp.

"What the Hell, Karofsky?" he gasps, stumbling backward, leaping off the bed and retreating to his own.

Dave blinks, lowers his hands, and permits a frown to float onto his face. "You did it, stupid! You sleepwalked into my bed and kissed me!" And it's mostly true. Mostly.

Kurt touches his fingertips to his mouth before blushing furiously and flopping onto his bed, facing the other direction. He doesn't even want to know why his subconscious would do that. And he isn't sure he believes that he did do it at all. Dave could be lying. He's not bad at it, considering all the years he's spent in very convincing denial about his sexual orientation. And yet he came clean recently, so he could be telling the truth, but if he is…

Kurt shakes his head and snuggles down further into his sheets.

He suddenly feels a hand clamping over his shoulder and yanking him onto his back to stare up at the boy above him.

"Don't do that to me, Hummel," Dave says darkly. "Something's up."

"Nothing is up, Karofsky," Kurt retorts. "I can't control myself when I sleepwalk. It doesn't mean anything."

"No?" Dave inquires, his eyebrow lifting momentarily. "Well, then maybe I should make it mean something." And he bends down and captures Kurt's mouth in a startling kiss.

Kurt's eyelids flutter shut on their own account, his mind teeming with thoughts as speedy as the Mach 5. He can't help himself; his lips start moving in tandem with the jock's, a single hand snaking up from under Dave's chest where the taller boy has him pinned to cling to the back of Dave's neck. Kurt presses upward, deepening the kiss, and he can't begin to think about why he enjoys the feeling of Dave's tongue dancing with his own, or why he wants it so badly, but he does. And he wants it. And he wants Karofsky, because there is something chemical between them; something like loathing, something like well-disguised loving, something like the passion; Kurt had been hoping to find this same feeling in Finn or Blaine, but is instead locating it in the depths of Dave's torn-up heart, and…

And Kurt suddenly bolts upright in bed, staring blankly around the dimly lit dorm room.

…A dream? A dream in which he saw outside of himself, saw himself sleepwalking, and started to make out with Dave? What the Gucci –

Kurt slaps a hand to his mouth with a soft clapping sound. He feels his own petal-soft lips under his fingers, but they feel warmer than they should, and a little wet, and just a hair tingly, a ghost of a sensation on his mouth.

Kurt's heart is racing, and something is coiling in the pit of his stomach. He's not… aroused, is he?

The soprano glances down at himself and timidly brings the hand from his mouth down to his groin, lightly touching between his legs. Even through the blankets and his nightclothes, there are definitely the beginnings of a half-hardness there.

Feeling dirty, Kurt tiptoes past a sleeping Dave to the bathroom to splash cold water on his face and calm himself down. He has the light on, and while it damn near blinds him at first, he's soon seeing perfectly fine, feeling wide awake.

His lips are pinker than normal.

That dream hadn't been real at all, had it?

Puzzled beyond belief, Kurt waits out his waning erection until the partial-risen member is back to normal. He then returns to the main room, biting his lip. He pads over the carpet to where his roommate sleeps. He looks the sleeping boy up and down, searching for clues.

Cautiously, Kurt pokes the jock in the arm. "Dave? Hey, Dave… Dave, wake up."

"Nuhh?" Dave hums, stirring awake with a snort. "Whah issit?"

"Dave, do you feel weird?" Kurt whispers, feeling his face heat up with a telling blush. Good thing it's too dark for either of them to see details.

"Weird how?" Dave yawns, sitting up. He rubs an eye and looks at Kurt.

"Your lips. Do you feel like you've been kissed?" Kurt murmurs, and Dave frowns deeply at him.

"…I dreamt about kissing, but that's not out of the ordinary. Why?" Dave says hesitantly, feeling as though he's treading into shark-infested waters.

"Um… no reason. Go back to bed; sorry for waking you." And Kurt turns to climb back into his bed again.

But Dave catches him by the wrist. "Hummel," he says flatly, "Do you think you sleepwalked or something?"

Kurt doesn't bother to face the other male. "I might have."

"And you think it has something to do with kissing me?"

"…Maybe."

Dave laughs. He actually laughs, and releases Kurt's wrist. "Oh, that's ironic," he scoffs in a whisper.

Kurt frowns and spins to face the other. A tad offended at being laughed at, he challenges in a mirroring whisper, "How so?"

"Just because it'd mean you'd be giving me what I dove in for a couple years back," he replies, casting his gaze to his comforter. He fiddles with a loose thread he finds within reach of his thumb and forefinger. "That second kiss, I mean."

"Oh." Kurt inhales shakily. "Yeah, I guess that is pretty ironic. Heh, heh," he laughs softly. He suddenly sits down on the edge of his roomie's bed. He combs a hand through his sleep-mussed hair. "Dave, look at me."

Dave obeys, their heads moving at the same time until their eyes lock together. Kurt looks as though he wants to say something, but Dave cuts him off. "There's a lot of sexual tension between us, isn't there?" he states bluntly.

Kurt visibly flinches, his gaze not wavering, but his shoulders clearly growing tense. "…I think so. Where did it come from?"

"It's always been there. You were just oblivious to it before," Karofsky says matter-of-factly. "And it's all my fault, too."

Kurt smiles oddly. "And here I thought you'd go blaming me for it."

Dave waves his hand, as if shoving that fact aside. "No, I'm past all that. Denial is difficult to maintain. I'm just honest, now, since I'm tired of lying to myself… and to you. Last week helped that," he mutters, and Kurt nods sympathetically.

In fact, since that time, Dave's been so much nicer to Kurt. There have been a lot more awkward silences, and at the same time, a lot more moments of ease and evident flirtation with simple gazes and smiles sent Kurt's way.

Kurt contemplates all of this. "I feel… rushed. I feel like we skipped over two steps, going from despising each other to…" And he doesn't want to say it, because he isn't sure of it's true on both ends or not, or if he even feels that way for Dave at all (yet), and he's a little scared of the fact that possibly loving Dave is a 'yet.' "Well. We skipped over being friends, anyway."

Dave nods solemnly. "Yeah, I know."

"So, like I said: what does this mean?"

"It means we should go back to sleep and deal with this later, or, I don't know, let things progress the way they have been. I don't mind either way. I'm just tired," Dave sighs, and scratches at his scalp a bit; that nervous tick showing itself again. "So… goodnight."

"Okay. Goodnight," Kurt replies. He isn't sure if he's disappointed or not, but he knows that something has most definitely permanently changed between them now, even though things already had before. Only this time, there is a full alteration. Something unique created between them. Something… precious.

Kurt reenters his bed and lies on his back, insomnia striking him. It takes a full hour for him to fall back asleep, unlike Dave, who returns to dreamland within, like, ten minutes; and while it annoys Kurt a little to be stuck with his thoughts for an hour, he doesn't mind the path the thoughts take.

XXX

"Fuck you, Kurt." Dave snarls, turning on his heel and storming off.

"Dave, wait! Don't – I-I, this isn't how it seems!" Kurt cries desperately, but the other boy is rushing away, somehow getting out of Kurt's reach before the soprano can take two steps forward.

He had been caught between Jesse and Blaine, the two looming toward him, and he had tried to escape, because he didn't want either of them, didn't want them as friends, and unquestionably not as lovers. He was through with both of them and their 'holier than thou' arrogance and their shallow, shallow hearts that Kurt couldn't stand to be around because he felt like he was becoming one of them on the outside, turning into one of them whenever he was around others, and it made Kurt feel ill.

"I loathe you!" The jock tosses over his shoulder, and Kurt stops dead in his tracks where he'd been running after the other boy.

"But… I love you," Kurt whispers, and a hand reaches from behind him and grabs him, and panic rises in Kurt's chest because it must be Blaine or Jesse trying to snatch him up, and he doesn't want them and their smiling faces, he only wants Dave's smiling face, and…

And once again, he bolts upright in bed, a light sheen of sweat on his forehead, and dry tears running down his face.

"Kurt? Are you okay?" he hears his roommate say, and he looks up to find Dave standing between their beds, one of his hands outstretched, as if just retracted from touching Kurt's shoulder. "I woke to the sound of you… crying. And you were thrashing on the bed like you were running."

The jock stoops down and picks something up off of the floor. It's Bunny-Hops.

"…And you threw this. At me, mainly." He hands it over, and Kurt quietly takes it in his hands.

"…Thank you," Kurt murmurs.

Dave sits down on the edge of Kurt's bed. "Last night you wake me up because you think you kissed me, and now you wake me up again because you're crying. What is going on with you, man?"

Kurt looks away. "Can you turn on a light?"

The taller male frowns slightly, but complies. He reaches over, clicking on the lamp set on the end table between their beds. A soft yellow light lights up the room, and Kurt heaves a sigh of relief of being able to see clearly.

The singer glances over at Dave. "Have you ever felt something so strongly for someone that it physically ached?" he poses with a low, carefully toned voice. He swallows nervously as he awaits a response.

Dave breathes out loudly through his mouth. "Uh… Yes, actually. A few different times."

"Tell me about each of them," Kurt murmurs, trying to get his mind off of his dream.

Dave shifts out of unease, clearly reluctant. He licks his lips and begins with his hands clasping and twisting together between his spread legs, "When I was in first grade, I hated this one kid so much that I would literally tremble every time I saw him and all I wanted to do was beat the shit out of him.

"Another time, when I was a little older, about a fifth grader, I liked this girl so much that my heart would clench in my chest, my breathing would almost stop, every time I saw her. She was a real tomboy; she wore boys' clothes and played in the dirt out on the kickball/baseball field every recess, never caring how dirty she got. She would swear and punch people and her green eyes would flash every time she tied her blond hair up into a ponytail, as if daring you to call her girly, because she knew she was boyish and she liked it.

He pauses. Slowly, he relays, "And then, in high school, there was this one person I met who I'll never forget, because they turned into a combination of the two. Every move they made, every single time they spoke to me, it drove me insane. I wanted to punch them and smack them around; and yet, at the same time, I wanted to hold them close and kiss them and tell them how much I burned for them. I didn't know what sort of burn it was, however; it was like I was attracted to them and disgusted by them at the same time. It was like I detested and adored them. It was like I wanted to get closer to and push them away. Before this person, I never felt anything so… all-consuming," he breathes, and he finally looks Kurt in the eye.

Kurt's mouth feels dry. With slightly widened eyes, he dares to ask, "And… and who was this person? Did I know them?"

Dave nods, a sarcastic smile on his lips. "Yeah, I daresay you knew them better than anyone."

"…Was it a boy?" Kurt questions, and he can feel his heart pounding like a snare drum.

Dave looks hesitant. "Yes."

Kurt can't help himself. He leans forward, and stares Dave directly in the eye, even though the other boy keeps glances back and forth between his own bed (as if wishing he could return to it and end the conversation) and at Kurt (as if he wants to say something but if utterly horrified at how Kurt might react upon hearing it). "Was the boy… me?" he whispers, his expression mostly blank save for the sparkle of hope in his eyes.

And Dave can't tolerate this atmosphere or this conversation or Kurt any longer. He abruptly stands from Kurt's bed. "You should go back to sleep. We have school in a few hours," he tells Kurt sternly. He moves to his own bed, dropping down onto it. Coldly, he adds, "And you shouldn't ask that, Hummel. You have no place in asking that. What makes you think you're so special, huh? Special enough that you could be that person?"

Something akin to frustration and resentment boils in Kurt's chest, channeling through his adrenaline-laced heartbeats and threading through his fingers like the vibrating hum of a guitar's strings when strummed. He leaps from his bed and shoves Dave against his mattress, forcing the young man to gaze up at him like Dave had made him do in that dream he had the previous night. "I think I'm special because I'm the person you bullied the most. I think I'm special enough because I'm the out gay, the one who's proud to be what he is, and the one person who can teach you to be the same, or at least accepting, and you know it. I think I'm special enough to be that person who stirs so much infatuation and rage inside of you because I'm the guy you kissed, I'm the guy you've been living with for the past several months, and I'm the closest thing you have to a true best friend."

Dave's face is expressionless, and it infuriates Kurt. He soprano grips the collar of Dave's plain white t-shirt and yanks him into sitting position.

"Damn it, David! Say something!"

Scowling, Karofsky bats the other's hand away and shoves him roughly to get him away. "Fine, you want to have this discussion at four thirty in the morning? All right, then let's have it." And he stands as well, and they are about a foot apart, their heights so close to being equal if not for those last two and a half inches that Dave has over Kurt. Dave hisses (trying not to be too loud to warrant any commotion from the neighbors), "Yes, you're right, that guy is you, Kurt Hummel. You drive me insane. I sometimes wish I had never met you, had never had dreams about you, had never been forced into a room for a year with you."

"Is that so?" Kurt hisses back, and steps half a foot closer, and only inches separate them. "Then prove it, Karofsky. If you have the balls to admit that, then go one step further and kiss me. Because I've been having dreams about you, too, and they're beginning to ruin me. And you always seem to ruin me, so why don't you just finish the job?"

"With pleasure," Dave growls, but it doesn't sound angry any longer. In fact, it stuns Kurt for a moment, because the growl sounds throaty and alluring, predatory, as if –

But Kurt can't finish the thought. Dave's hands grip the sides of his face, his mouth is crushing the shorter boys, and it's needy and destructive, and it's warm and smothering, and it's precisely like the first time.

Except this time, Kurt pushes back with all his force, trying to battle Dave, trying to gain some of the ground he always loses when he's up against the other male.

The soprano fists Dave's sleep shirt in his hands, his fingers curled around the fabric and his hand twisted until his wrists face upwards. He can feel Karofsky's heart beating against his knuckles, the beats fierce and jumpy. His own heart flutters in his chest, and something churns and swivels around in Kurt's stomach.

Kurt's teeth slip out and nip at Dave's bottom lip, eliciting a moan. He takes this chance to delve his tongue into the taller's mouth, and in response, the other presses onward, forcing Kurt to back up against the end table where Kurt's iPod alarm clock is stationed. Dave's iPod is in there at the moment, and as Kurt's elbows bump the snooze button, the sensual lyrics of Garbage's 'Number One Crush' drifts eerily up from the speakers at a low, low octave.

Kurt stumbles backward onto his own bed, his mouth still attached to Dave's. Dave pins him down, and this isn't a dream. This is real, this is actually happening, and Kurt's head is reeling as his hormones gladly take control.

Dave is in utter disbelief, but he can't stop himself. Every time he tries, Kurt is dragging him right back with another forceful, delicious kiss, and he can hear himself moaning as Kurt's hands rake down his chest and curve around his sides to push on his back, succeeding in lessening the chasm between them.

Dave groans again as his hands find Kurt's skin under Kurt's pajamas, and he gladly tears open the buttons of the lightly fuzzy fabric until Kurt's chest is exposed.

He breaks their current kiss to let his eyes flicker down to Kurt's milky-pale skin, creamy in color and texture, soft like well-taken-care-of skin is, but taunt, like a boy's should be. And, he notes, there isn't a single chest hair on the boy, and what's even better, Kurt isn't overly muscular or supple; he's lean and lissom and fit and breathtaking. And Dave feels like he should be disturbed by the fact that his hands are scanning such a flat surface, such an undoubtedly male body, but he isn't. He loves seeing Kurt's chest more than any girl's of any breast size.

He dips down and can't wait to taste Kurt's skin, and like he imagined, the flesh of Kurt's neck and collarbones and pert buds and abdomen are just as scrumptious as his lips. And even better are the hushed, breathy moans that slip out from his mouth as Dave shamelessly places his moving, wet mouth on scattered parts of Kurt's torso.

Kurt's hands clench behind Dave at his shirt, trying to pull it off, trying to feel skin while he writhes beneath the larger boy, and it amazes Dave to watch and feel all this, because it's as if he has Kurt under a spell, making him dance and sway in ways he never thought he'd witness Kurt move (outside of that little production of 'Push It' that the Glee Club did when it was first formed, and Dave was mesmerized by the way Kurt's hips could move, the way his ass could shake, the way he crawled across the floor or touched down himself).

"Kurt," Dave mumbles into Kurt's skin, his breath tickling the bare skin below Kurt's belly button.

"Wh-what?" Kurt pants, and he's never felt so horny in his life, and it's making him lightheaded and woozy in a dreamy, pleasing manner.

The jock peers up at Kurt from his where he hovers over Kurt's quaking stomach, kneeled in front of the bed between Kurt's dangling legs bent at the knee over the edge. "If you're letting me do this to you… I guess you don't hate me anymore, huh? Not scared me of at all?"

Kurt snorts and props himself up on one elbow while his other hand skims the surface of his roommate's jaw. "Nope. You've lost your bullying mojo, I'm afraid."

"Hmm. Too bad. But at least I get to do this without being pushed away," he smirks, and smugly leans forward to lock lips with Kurt, one hand stabilizing him on the mattress beside Kurt's thigh and the other creeping toward the waistline directly in front of Kurt's crotch.

The soprano breaks the kiss to suck in air sharply enough to slice icily though his lungs. "D-David," he sputters, "Don't."

"Why not?" Dave mutters in Kurt's ear, his tongue darting out to suckle at Kurt's earlobe. It's velvety and warm in his mouth, and just at the bottom of the piece of flesh where Dave's cheek brushes Kurt's sideburns, Dave can feel the faintest peach fuzz on Kurt's ear, and it's adorable. "I want you, Kurt. I want you more than I've ever wanted anything in my life. I might even love you, if that's what this all-consuming burn I feel for you is, what it always has been."

Kurt's breath hitches in his throat, and the words shoot directly into his heart. He sighs fluidly and brings his hands up to cling around Dave's neck. He raises his hips and brings Dave onto the bed more. "You know that dream that made me cry?" he confesses in a whisper.

"The one from tonight?"

"The very same," Kurt breathes. He says with a shaky breath, "Well… in it, you told me you hated me, and it cut me deeply, because in that dream… I loved you."

Dave pauses, turning to stone on top of Kurt. "You… you did?"

Kurt nods. He hides his face in Dave's ear. "Don't let me down, Dave. Either mean that or don't, because I hate lies. Don't say you love me just to get into my pants. I want it to come from your heart and soul, because I'm no slut. I won't do anything with you unless you truly like me and want to have something with me."

Dave pulls back, balancing on his hands and knees over Kurt. A tender expression relaxes his eyebrows and cures his parted lips. In the background, Negative's 'One Moment Of Our Love' plays, and it's so fitting that Kurt's heart skips a beat before Dave can even speak. "Kurt… I might get mad at you a lot, and I know I hurt you sometimes, but I do mean it. I've never known real romantic love before, obviously, but I'm sure this is the first time I've felt it."

"And you want to be with me?"

"Yes, more than anything," Dave replies firmly, and Kurt knows that determined look; it's the same he's seen when he caught Dave at the indoor ice rink at the school just last month during a moment of curiosity to see Dave play hockey. It takes Kurt's breath away.

"Okay, then," Kurt mutters, a minute smile gracing his lips. "Have me."