Dave's phone keeps buzzing about every thirty seconds starting from when they sit down at their booth and Dave flicks it on. Dave keeps pressing the button on the side to interrupt the vibrations.

"If you've got some other obligation, by all means," Kurt gestures grandly with his left hand and Dave rolls his eyes, places the phone screen up on the table as it buzzes again.

"Dude, they're ALL from you," Dave slides the phone across over to Kurt whose smug look flickers as another text message lights up the screen.

"I," Kurt begins slowly and doesn't continue.

"Seriously, is some of that stuff even English? This texts look like you just smashed your face against your little keyboard or something."

"You're a dick, Karofsky."

"No, if I were a dick I'd be sharing them with our waitress or posting them online and tagging you on Facebook. But I lo-ike you so I'm keeping it to myself despite the potential for hilarity." He catches himself, verbally, and looks down at his phone right after as it buzzes again and hopes that if Kurt caught the slight slip of the tongue, that he'll be kind enough to keep his mouth shut.

The waitress takes their orders and their menus quickly after that.

"I'm sorry," Kurt says almost too quietly for Dave to hear him.

"Wait, what?"

"I'm sorry. About getting drunk and yelling at you and sort of storming in to your house and making a scene in front of all of your friends."

Dave laughs, loudly and brightly, his cup of coffee held in his hand "It's fine Kurt. I knew what I was getting myself into when I took you home that first night."

"Did you, now?" Kurt asks right before licking a spoon he just used to stir three packets of sugar in to his coffee.

"No, not really," he amends with a large grin, "I had a vague idea."

Kurt gets up to go to the bathroom while they wait for their food and Dave takes the opportunity to listen to his voice mails. He gets through five of them before he spots Kurt on his way back to the table and ends the call.

The breakfast passes by fairly uneventfully and the conversation flows pretty easily. Dave gets Kurt to laugh a couple of times despite the fact he is still pretty clearly hungover. He tries to pay when the check comes, but Kurt slaps down some bills before Dave can even grab his wallet.

"You're like a ninja," Dave marvels, "I didn't see that coming at all."

"I suppose I owe you for the breakfast back in Lima."

"You don't owe me anything."

Kurt and Dave walk back to Kurt's apartment; Dave has kept his hands in his pockets to silence the occasional buzz of his cellphone. They're standing in front of the door, Kurt's hand on the lock, sighs and turns to Dave.

"I don't think it'd be a good idea if you came in."

"What? Why?"His eyebrows furrow in confusion.

Kurt sighs again, rolls his eyes, "I really don't think this is what I'm looking for, David. It's not really you, it's just that I- What are you doing? Really? You're calling someone right now? What is so damn important that-"

Dave pulls his phone away from his ear, presses the button to put it on speaker and stares directly at Kurt.

"Why aren't you answering? Why aren't you calling me back?" Kurt's static voice complains through the small speaker, "Why aren't you calling me? You said you'd call. I want you to call-"

'You have thirteen more messages,' the tiny voice of Dave's voicemail declares and it switches back to Kurt's voice again, the words are a little more slurred, "DAVID. What the fuck is your problem you're supposed to come over and fuck me! I should be on my knees right now giving you a blowjob right now-"

"Oh dear lord," Kurt whispers placing a hand over his heart and then moving it over his mouth.

"I like you!" his staticy voice screams out, "Is that what you're fucking waiting for? Are you happy now?"

"Turn it off! For the love of all that is good in this world turn it off this second, David."

"Don't even get me started don the one about my chest hair," he remarks as he ends the call and slides his phone back in to the pocket of his coat, "I think it'd be banned in some countries on account of obscenity laws-"

"Fine! Fine. What do you want?" Kurt throws his arms up dramatically and Dave takes a half step back.

"I want you to give me a chance. A legitimate chance. That's the only thing I've ever wanted."

Kurt opens the door and motions Dave inside. He takes a seat on the couch and after Kurt has locked the door he comes over and perches on the arm.

"I'm not going to hit you," Dave complains, "and I only ever bite when you tell me to."

Kurt sighs again and moves to sit down next to him on the couch; Dave shifts over so their knees touch.

"So," Dave starts, doesn't know what he wants to say, and ends up trailing off.

"So," Kurt repeats and crosses one leg over the other.

"I get it, okay? I was awful to you in highschool. But we're not in highschool anymore. I like you, you like me. Well, I think you like me or else you wouldn't keep calling me back all the time, right? I mean, sure I'm easy and whatever but you could get plenty of other dudes who didn't spend half their junior year shoving you against lockers and calling you a girl."

"I-" Kurt starts and Dave puts up his hand.

"Just, let me finish, okay? I understand it. I knew this wouldn't be easy, but this is getting ridiculous. We've been sleeping together for like, six almost seven months. If you don't think you can get over that then we should probably stop this," he motions with his hand between them and frowns, "whatever it is. Because it can't be good for either of us."

Kurt looks over at him, his face unreadable, lips drawn tight.

"I," he stops, swallows, exhales and looks away from Kurt, "I can't keep sleeping with you if this isn't ever going anywhere. It's just... it's fucking with me too much." He laughs, rubs at his face and groans, "Christ. I sound like a fucking girl. Fuck. I should probably just leave now-"

Kurt leans his body against Dave, presses his head to the other man's shoulder, then turns on the TV. It takes a second, but Dave wraps his arm around Kurt's shoulder and Kurt snuggles closer in. Dave kicks off his shoes fifteen minutes in to a rerun of Seinfeld and places his feet on the coffee table.

"David, get your gigantic feet off my table."

"It's practically my table," Dave complains, "you made me carry it six blocks and up three flights of stairs for you."

"Oh shut up it's not that heavy."

"Oh, of course you say that I was the one taking all the weight. You were just barely there to guide it upstairs."
Kurt smirks and pulls off his boots,sets them gently by the edge of the couch and puts his feet up on the table.

"I like your socks," Dave remarks and Kurt wiggles his toes in response.

"Cashmere. Argyle is one of my favorite patterns."

"Cotton," Dave responds and pokes at Kurt's foot with his own, "Maybe. Probably. I don't really know. I like the bold simplicity of plain white, and the convenience of buying them from a twelvepack at Walmart."

Kurt laughs and covers his mouth with his hand, "One day I'm going to take you shopping and clean you up. I'm sure you'd look halfway decent."

In response Dave lifts up the hand around Kurt's shoulder and rubs it against Kurt's hair making the other man flail. Kurt swats and Dave's hand but he's smiling and Dave can't help but laugh as he leans in and kisses him.

Dave goes to the opening night of Kurt's performance and sits about six rows from the front. Watching Kurt on stage, well... Dave can really only describe it as magic as cliché was it sounds. The other actors are good, of course, but whenever Kurt opens his mouth and speaks Dave has to mentally remind himself that it's Kurt so often it's not even weird watching as he kisses one of the women on stage. Well, it's a little weird only in that Dave never thought he'd see Kurt Hummel kiss a woman, but Dave's read the play before and knows exactly how it goes so he's not too surprised.

After the play ends the actors gather outside in the lobby to greet people. Dave brought flowers and then felt so goddamn dumb holding them that he shoved them in to the arms of a random woman passing by without saying anything and quickly walked over to where Kurt who was taking a picture with a few girls and signing programs.

Of course it's right when Kurt has turned to him and grinned at him that and she comes back with a confused, "Hi, I think you gave these to me on accident?" and places the flowers back in Dave's arms.

Kurt raises an eyebrow at Dave as he signs another program and shakes a woman's hand.

"You got me lilies, David?" His voice is clear and cuts straight over the idle chatter.

"Shut up," Dave replies and he holds the flowers upside down by their stems and offers them toward Kurt.

"Don't hold them like that!" Kurt cries out as he grabs them , "That's actually really sweet. How did you know they were my favorite?"

"You said it once," Dave mumbles staring down at his shoes, feeling like child.

"Sometimes," Kurt begins delicately with a smile tugging at the corner of his lips, "Sometimes you're not half bad."

Dave can't keep himself from grinning.

"Did you want to come out with me? The cast is going out for drinks."

"Um, you sure you want me?"

"Yes, of course I do."

"Yeah!" he replies a little too enthusiastically, "Yes. Sure. I'd really like that."

Once the crowd has filed out Kurt grabs Dave by his hand and leads him back stage.

"Where are we going?" Dave keeps glancing over his shoulder like he's done something wrong.

"I need to change. Did you think I'd really go out drinking wearing this costume?" Dave opens his mouth to speak and Kurt catches it, narrows his eyes, and interrupts him, "No. Don't answer that."

"It's a suit," Dave complains, "I mean, sure it's a bit flamboyant and like what, 19th century? But that's not the most outlandish thing I've seen you in."

"And what would that have been?" Kurt ask as he begins to slip out of his costume and. Dave has seen Kurt naked plenty of times but feels this odd tug in his chest while he watches him strip down to his underwear in the brightly lit dressing room.

"I don't really know. You wore a skirt once I think..."

Kurt takes a seat in front of a mirror and starts removing his stage makeup and doing some other stuff that Dave really doesn't understand involving three or four different types of lotions, so Dave just sighs and wanders around the dressing room for about five minutes before he gets bored with that and sits down again; he occupies his time by staring at the reflection of Kurt. Dave sees the guy he mentally dubbed as Ironic Mustache Man approach in the mirror. He looks at Dave then back at Kurt and doesn't say anything though he has a slight sneer in his lip that makes Dave think he wants to. Dave turns around in the chair and tilts his head just a hint to the right and looks up at him.

"Do you have an ironic tattoo?"

"What?" He adjusts his black frame glasses and his frown deepens.

"Do you have some tattoo you got ironically? Like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or a Pokemon? Maybe My Little Pony?"

The guy frowns at Dave and tugs down on the sleeve of his long-sleeved black shirt.

"Or did you get one and it's in a place that's so obscure I'll never have heard of it?

"David," Kurt chastises, "play nice."

Dave shrug, turns back to face the mirror, and watches a smirking Kurt finish with his intense skin care regimen. He zones out while the guy talks to Kurt about technical stuff and it isn't until Kurt places a hand on Dave's shoulder and catches his attention that he stops daydreaming.

"You ready?"

"Yep." Dave stands up and straightens his coat; Kurt takes his arm and leads the way.

The bar is pretty crowded and usually Dave would complain, but Kurt keeps smiling at him and laughing and leaning over to whisper jokes in his ear. He knows what Kurt drinks so he orders it at the bar and brings it back to the crowded table and places it in front of him and squeezes in next to him. Kurt nudges him with his shoulder and smiles as he takes a sip.

"Kurt! You didn't tell us you had a boyfriend," one of the actresses calls out across the table, "Where did you two meet?"

"Oh, I'm not-" Dave starts, but Kurt's already started talking over him so Dave shuts up.

"We're both from Lima."

"High school sweethearts?" the other girl asked and Kurt laughs and looks at Dave with a lopsided smile.

"Hardly, but he's not half-bad now."

Throughout the rest of the night Kurt holds Dave's hand under the table and looks at him often out of the corner of his eye with a sly grin on his lips.

When the lilies start drooping and loosing petals about two weeks later Dave goes out to the florist down the street from Kurt's apartment and buys some more.

Apparently every month Kurt and his roommates- Arthur, Kris, and Kris's girlfriend Sam- have movie marathons at their apartment and invite over anywhere between five to ten people, Kurt used to just call Dave over after they had finished and fuck him, but he gets legitimately invited and, well, it shouldn't be a big deal at all, but he feels like he's accomplished something huge.

Well, he feels like that until Kurt introduces him to some of his friends as 'His boyfriend, David.'

That's when Dave feels like he's accomplished something enormous.

They settle in and watch John Hughes movies and about three quarters through Pretty in Pink one of the girls prompts who they'd pick as their love interest: Blane or Duckie. Dave is sitting on the floor on top of a throw pillow with his back against the couch. Kurt's legs are on either side of him.

It's a pretty standard about, sixty percent favor Duckie and the other ones like Blane. Kurt says he would have picked Duckie if they had gone with the original casting choice of Robert Downy Jr., but as It stands Jon Cryer is too gay for even him.

When it's reached Dave's turn he finishes taking a sip from his beer- which he's certain they only keep stocked because he visits so often (otherwise all they would have would be wine) and says "Steff."

They all turn and look at him. They TV continues to play the movie, now forgotten in the background.

"You can't pick him, Dave," Arthur complains, "He's the antagonist."

"Only because we're watching it from Molly Ringwald's point of view. If we were following James Spader around, which we probably should have because he was fucking hot and a fantastic actor, he'd be an interesting and flawed anti-hero."

"David," Kurt says swatting him gently on the shoulder, "Explain."

"Just think of the character. He's suave, charming, and just totally drowning emotionally. His parents are like, never there. So he throws these ridiculous parties just to get their attention because any attention is good attention. He smokes and drinks way too much and honestly probably doesn't really like himself that much. And then there is this one girl he likes, the one who is always turning him down, the one who sees how flawed he is and won't take his shit. So she's the one girl he probably thinks in his messed up teenage head is going to make things okay for him; if only he can get her to go out with him then life won't suck so much. And then, bam. His bestfriend starts dating her. If you watch it from his perspective instead of Ringwald's, I don't know... The movie is just more interesting."

"Wow, you thought about this a lot-" Arthur replies sounding a little shocked.

"What? I really like James Spader," Dave says as he rubs the back of his neck and laughs uncomfortably.

Kurt ruffles his hair, "He was pretty cute in Stargate. What? Finn made me watch it."

The rest of the party passes by uneventfully and it isn't until Dave is pulling off his shirt to and crawling in to bed next to Kurt that he says it, the thing that's been sort of pressing at the back of his mind since Dave mentioned it:

"What was your story?"

"What?" Dave rolls on to his side to face Kurt, pulls the blanket up over his waist, and thinks about pressing his feet up against Kurt's warm calf because they're freezing.

"If high school hadn't been 'The Kurt Hummel Show' if it had followed you around... What was your story?"

Dave frowns and looks away. The wall, the ceiling, the dresser, anywhere but Kurt's face.

"Let's just go to sleep."

"David," Kurt says sharply and Dave rolls on to his back and stares up at Kurt's white ceiling.

"Lonely," he finally says and lets out a breath in annoyance, "can we go to sleep now?"

"David-" he repeats and Dave lets out an annoyed grunt.

"I don't know, Kurt. I don't really remember a lot about high school anymore. I'm pretty sure that my brain tried to block it out. It was just... It was hard, okay? It was really fucking difficult to be on the field or on the rink. Everyone was calling everyone else a fag and queer like it was the worst fucking thing you could be, next to a girl." He laughs dully and turns his head to the side to look at Kurt. "Sure, they fucking directed at you, hell I directed it at you, but most people tried to keep their mouth shut at least. But if I was there obviously they didn't need to, so everything was 'fucking gay' and any one you didn't like was a fag."

Kurt doesn't say anything just looks back at him with an unreadable sort of pity on his face and Dave keeps talking, "I was so fucking scared someone would find out. It's like I thought my life would fucking end or something. And then one day I kind of woke up and I, well, I... I just I don't know. I wasn't scared anymore. Not in the same way. Look, can we just go to sleep now? I don't want to talk about this anymore."

Kurt laces his fingers with Dave's and they falls asleep with his head pressed against his shoulder.

Dave spends roughly three nights a week over at Kurt's house. Sometimes on the weekend Kurt stays with Dave at his place, but his bed is small and he shares the room with a slightly obnoxious hockey player so that usually only happens when they've been out drinking and it's significantly closer than Kurt's.

One Friday morning in early May Dave wakes up to a persistent knock on the apartment door. He groans, checks his phone which tells him it's ten fifteen in the morning, which means Kurt has class, but should be getting back any minute. He sits up, swings his legs over the edge and trudges to answer the door to Kurt's apartment. He's still half-asleep, unshaven and barefoot in a plain white shirt and a pair of black boxers. His hand fumbles for a second as he undoes the deadbolt and pulls open the door and yawns a second time.

"Did you forget your keys again? I keep telling you to-" Dave stops mid sentence, blinks, blinks again, blinks a third time, "Hudson?"

"Karofsky?" Dave didn't think it was possible, but Finn sounds even more confused than he does. "What the hell are you doing in my brother's apartment?"

"Stepbrother," Dave corrects automatically for no more reason other than to have something to say. He glances to the left and right and tries to think of a million reasons he might be in Kurt's apartment that don't involve something along the lines of 'we have sex on a regular basis and I just woke up' and comes up with none.

"Dude! Why aren't you wearing any pants?"

"What are you doing in Boston? Does Kurt know you're here?"

"No. It's a birthday surprise." Finn pauses and elaborates, "His birthday is this weekend."

"I know when his birthday is," Dave snaps back and crosses his arms over his chest.

"Seriously dude, what are you doing here? It's not like you guys were friends in high school.

"I... I got in a fight with my roommate. Kurt let me crash here last night. We're friends now, sort of." He takes a step backwards and Finn walks in and shuts the door behind him. Finn starts looking around the room.

"Pants," Dave says suddenly, "I'm going to put on pants and I am going to leave."

Dave moves in to Kurt's room and grabs a clean shirt and pair of jeans out of the top drawer of Kurt's antique dresser.

Finn is staring at him from the doorway; Dave's mouth is dry.

"You're sleeping with Kurt."

"I don't know what you're talking about, can you get out now? I'm trying to change."

"Dude," Finn says and frowns at him, "I might be slow sometimes, but I'm not dumb. You're at his house Friday morning in boxers. You answer the door like you're expecting him. You're sleeping with my brother.

"Stepbrother," Dave corrects like somehow that makes a difference, "and we're dating."
"How long?" Finn enters the room and Dave turns his back to him and slides his jeans over his boxers and starts buttoning and zipping up.

"How long have we been dating? Or how long have been sleeping together?"

"Is there a big difference?" Finn's arms are crossed over his chest and he looks down at Dave.

Dave laughs and pulls his polo shirt over his plain white one, "yeah."

"How long have you been sleeping together?"

"Seven months." Dave walks over to the dresser and pulls out a pair of socks and back over to the bed where he sits down and starts putting on his shoes.

"How long have you been dating?"

Dave licks his lower lip and concentrates on untying his left shoe simply so he can retie and have something to do.

"Dude, it's a simple question."

"Fuck it," Dave growls as he stands up and grabs his keys off the bedside table, "I don't know man. You should be talking to Kurt about this not me." He pushes past Finn and heads out of the bedroom.

"David," Kurt's voice calls out from the living room as Dave exits Kurt's room, "Thank god. I thought you were still still asleep and I really I want to fuuuu-... Finn. Finn. Hi."

There is a long, long, damn near unbearable stretch of silence, Dave standing , Kurt at the door, and Finn a few steps behind Dave.

It's Finn who finally breaks the silence with a halfhearted "Surprise?"