A/N: Um, so, my sister and I have long since said that Dash Baxter is the Dave Karofsky of the Y7-rated cartoon world. They're both bullies, jocks, and secretly gay (because I mean, come on. The way Dash picks on Danny? And the fact that it's been mentioned what Dash listens to – boy bands – and what he has in his closet (among other little hints)? Totally too queer to be hetero. And it amuses me greatly, and I love it). Therefore, I decided to play with the idea of what it would be like if they ever met…

Just so you know, though, THIS IS TOTAL AND UTTER CRACK, I SWEAR. It's just for the lulz, even more so than some real-life-slash I've written. So yeah. XD

It was one of the biggest games of the year, one tons of students look forward to: the football game that McKinley High verses a cross-state nemesis, Casper High. Lima, Ohio versus Amity Park, Illinois. The big clash of red against red. All intense, all consuming, all interesting.

And while there have been plenty of games that Dave Karofsky has missed out on (he wasn't in football until this year, junior year, finally taking a break from hockey to do something else), he's ready for this one. He came fucking prepared. And he's ready to take on any guy from the opposite team that he encounters.

The Casper High players arrive early, and wind up hanging around town for the day, some of them going to Breadstix on recommendation. And Dave and Azimio and some other footballers always go to Breadstix before a big game to carb up on bread and pizza and pasta and get jacked up on bubbly, caffeinated beverages of all varieties.

And it's just a little bit distracting for Dave when he sees some of the Illinoisans come strolling in, cocky and broad-shouldered and smirking. Some of them he could care else about, but two in the center – one, he's willing to bet, is the quarterback – stand out above the rest. They're like Puck and Finn, or Dave himself and his best friend Az, and they look roughly the same age. One is tall, yellow-blond haired and blue-eyed, Arian, muscular. The other is just as tall, but lightly tan-skinned and black-haired, Asian, equally muscular, but a little more lithe. And they are bustling loud, immature, but friendly. They give a curt wave to the Ohioans, the blond one sending a grin in what feels like Dave's direction.

Clearing his throat, Dave gestures behind himself at the small crowd, making a cocky gesture and laughing. "Look at those goons. We're totally going to tear them a new one out on the field. I bet their coach is a pussy, not like The Beast."

Because no one quite compares to the way Coach Bieste leads a team, and with her on their side, they haven't been defeated yet. They've come close, only winning by a point or two, but it's been solid wins nonetheless.

Azimio high-fives his friend and snorts his laughing agreement. Then, suddenly, Az elbows Dave in the side, mutters how he should call the quarterback over, get his attention, and see if they can't get him to come close enough to get a soda in the face, no slushies being available.

Inwardly, Dave doesn't want to do it. He's kind of tired of slushying and generally making people cold, wet, and sticky. But he shrugs and sighs, giving in anyhow.

"Hey, Blondie!" Dave hollers, hoping his assumption is correct, and that the headstrong-looking guy in the center of the table is in fact the quarterback. "Mind comin' over here for a sec?"

The guy shrugs, aloof, laughing a short, "All right," before getting up from his booth and proceeding over to the McKinley table. "'S up?"

"Hey, man. I'm Dave Karofsky," Dave says, standing up and acting falsely polite as he offers his hand to shake. "Looks like we'll be playing you tonight." And he somehow can't look away, 'cause even though this blond ain't some pretty little twink like Kurt Hummel, he's hot as hell, in that blond-Greek-god kind of way.

The blond grins and takes Dave's hand in his own. He tries not to flush, because as much as he doesn't want to admit it, he kinda finds this brunet in front of him… well, attractive. Not as hot as Danny Fenton, but hey, close enough. Dave's got a cute little beauty mark, and some fucking amazing hazel eyes. "Dash Baxter. And hell yeah, we are. I'm pumped. Hope I won't end up crushin' you on the field, but our town deals with some crazy shit," he leaves out the obvious; all of the rumors about ghosts, "So we can totally take you thugs on. Ain't that right, Quan?" he says, tossing the remark over his shoulder as he releases Dave's hand and glances back at his best friend.

"Damn straight, dude!" Quan hollers back, flipping his dark bangs over his forehead.

And Dave instantly regrets having called Dash over here, because no sooner as they finish shaking hands does Azimio pop up behind Dave and throw his drink into Dash's face.

"Holy shit!" Dash gasps; startled, furious, mortified. He wants to play it tough and call the mocha teen who ice-faced him out on the act, but Dash is really a coward and a little bit of a girl inside (as sick as it would make him to admit it), so he simply turns on his heel and rushes toward the sign indicating where the bathrooms are located.

Dave winces, turns back and smacks Az lightly on the arm, "Dude, he was just talking smack like we do. I know you were gonna do it, but did you have to be so violent about it?" Shaking his head, feleing guilty, Dave decides on impulse to chase after Dash (haha, he's, 'dashing after Dash') into the bathroom.

When he gets there, he finds Dash pink-faced from the cold and embarrassment, tears in his eyes. He sniffles once, wipes his eyes on his letterman, and doesn't even realize Dave is there until the fellow footballer places his hand lightly on Dash's shoulder. "Um, sorry about that, dude; my friend's an asshole. Opposing team or not, another jock doesn't deserve that, only gleeks do. Are you, uh… okay?"

Dash glances over his shoulder. "Huh? Oh. Yeah, I'm fine. Whatever, it's cool. We do stuff like that all the time to each other. No big deal," he says, and really he's just embarrassed that he made a fool of himself in front of this person, that he looked like such a loser to such a hot guy.

Dave seems not to notice the way Dash's face flares redder at his own thoughts, and Dave shrugs the whole thing off and reaches for a paper towel. "Here, lemme help. 'S my fault anyway. Shouldda warned you or something, but I didn't think he'd actually do it in puclib, outside of school. And with real ice! I mean, we usually slushify people, and slushies are… gentler, I guess. Not big blocks of ice in your face with a slushie," Dave offers, trying to be nice as he pours hot water on the paper towl and dabs at Dash's face.

"Hey, why are you being so nice to me?" Dash murmurs, face clearly red now, he's sure, and he hates his part-Swedish complexion. He clears his throat, trying to sound more like himself and will his blush away. "We're, like, going to play against each other tonight. And I don't even know you."

"Yeah, well. I feel like we're mirrors," Dave says, gesturing to their reflection above the bathroom sink as he crumples up the used paper towel and gets a fresh one to dry the blond's face. "You remind me of myself."

"Yeah? How?" Dash wants to know, feeling curious and self-conscious at the same time. This Dave guy, he's not… Is he?

"For starters," Dave smiles a little, "You seem like a bit of a jerk. No offense, but I mean to other… smaller people. Am I right?"

"…A bully, you mean," Dash sniffs as he rubs his nose of lingering soda. "But yeah. I kind of harass some freaks I know. Fenton and his friends."

"I do that to some geeks I know. Hummel and his friends," Dave admits. "And we're both in football."

"Yeah, true."

"And we're both, uh, built," Dave remarks, flushing lightly, waving a hand over his own chest and shoulders, wide and thick.

The blond sighs. "Yeah, I get your point. But, um. This might be totally out of bounds, but I get the feeling we have somethin' else in common. I mean, normal dudes don't run into the bathroom like girls. And normal dudes don't follow and help out. So, uh, are you…?" and he can't say it, he can't. Dash has denied it forever, but it took Quan confronting him oddly gently once when they were out on their bikes last summer to realize, yeah, okay, he's not a normal dude. He's fuckin' gay, and he knows it, and it sucks, because he's always chalked up his sentiments toward Fenton to be hatred, but…

Dave sighs roughly, licking his lips as he glances down and combs a hand through his short, curly hair. "Okay. Yeah. You caught me. Or, uh, we caught each other. But do I have to say it? I kinda only recently got used to the idea in my own head, and saying it to someone else…"

"I know," Dash grunts, kicking idly at a fallen ball of paper towel near the garbage can. "You'd think my stupid-sounding voice would've been my first clue. I shouldda seen it coming, you know? But I still don't like admitting it out loud. It took my friend telling me what he thought for it to become… I dunno, real? Solid? Whatever," the blond says, rambling a little, and suddenly Dave is closer, looking at him with this expression that just screams, I completely understand, like you don't even know.

Dash's eyes flicker up to meet Dave's, not an inch of distance between their heights, and yet Dash feels so much smaller all of a sudden. Dave's lips part, and he says with conviction, "It's not easy, is it? Being a… a gay jock. It sucks. It's the biggest, dirtiest secret you have, and sometimes you hate yourself for it, so you try picking on someone – maybe even the guy you like – just to try and push it away, get rid of it, and make yourself try and feel better. But you can't feel better, can you? You just feel worse."

Dash stares at Dave in amazement for a second. "Y… yeah. Yeah, exactly like that."

And he feels ashamed of himself, but at the same time, so, so much lighter. As if, in finding a stranger who understands him and his weirdness (outside of living in a ghost-littered town with a fucking superhero), Dash just resolved some issue in himself he didn't realize he possessed.

"Hey," Dash says, a little high on this discovery and a little mesmerized by Dave's closeness, "After the game, want to swap numbers? We can be like, text-pals or something."

Dave chuckles, taking a half-step backward. "Haha; man, I thought you were about to ask to kiss me or something. Both equally gay, but… okay. Yeah, let's swap. Even right now is cool. I doubt our friends miss us any, those dicks." Dash nods idly, and they whip out their phones and swap numbers.

"Does this make us friends or something?" Dash wonders aloud.

"If it didn't, then what else would it mean?" Dave returns with a quirk of one of his catlike brows, and Dash laughs.

"Sorry, I was being stupid," the other snorts, smiling broader. "I'm stupid a lot. Being a jock and blond doesn't help me."

"No, guess not," Dave chuckles, and how come it's so easy to talk to Dash like this? So easy to tease, to walk alongside him, both of them matching each other's strides, unlike how it is with his usual friends (or anyone else at school for that matter).

They return to their tables, spend the remainder of the hour glancing across booths at one another, sending reassuring and amused smiles, and then they play.

The game feels longer than usual, and much more intense than the norm for both of them, but by the end of it, Dave and Dash are meeting outside of the locker room near all the cheerleaders. Two girls who look like they could be sisters are talking to one another; Santana is one of them, Dave realizes, and Dash points out the other, calling her by name.

"Hey, Paulina! Wussup, girl?"

"Dash! Hey!" Paulina squeaks with a thick Hispanic accent. She giggles and chats for a second before glancing over at Dave. "And hello, you. Dash, who's your hunkie friend? Is he a McKinley footballer?"

"Um. I'm Dave," the brunet stutters. "And yeah, I am. Nice to meet you."

"Very nice," she flirts, and leans in a little. "Do you have a girlfriend? Because I wouldn't mind one of those one-time flings if you wouldn't."

"Uh… no, it's okay," Dave says hastily; too quickly, because Dash sends him a warning look. Apparently, you're not supposed to turn down Paulina.

But she seems okay with it, sighing dramatically and pouting. "Aww, you make me sad, David. Maybe next time." And she winks at him before turning back to Santana for some more chatter, evidently easily distracted.

Dash elbows Dave in the arm. "Hey, wanna get outta here? The hotel my team's staying at gave us our room keys in advance, so as long as you give me a ride before midnight I can hang out."

"Sure, sounds good," the other smiles, and he leads the blond over to his truck. "Careful, the buckle is tricky. It locks if you jerk it too fast. And no, it's not a safety feature; my truck is just old."

Dash amusedly nods, and slowly buckles himself to avoid the locking. Once they're turning out of the parking lot, Dave offers a tad nervously, "Um… anything you want to do in specific?"

"This might sound lame, but I could use a cup'a Joe. There any coffee places around here?"

"Of course there is," the Lima resident replies. "Starbucks or Seattle's Best?"

"Seattle's Best, man. They're way better."

"I'd beg to differ, but hey, you're the boss. Seattle's it is." And he turns flawlessly into the parking lot, feeling like this is going to be a weird, awesome friendship.