A/N: For entangledbanks (summerhurleys).
Title taken from R.E.M.'s 1994 song "I Don't Sleep, I Dream."
December 1991
Mornings after the end of a tour always left Dave feeling like his batteries had run out. Getting out of bed was as offensive as leaving the warmth of the womb, so he burrowed himself deeper into the cocoon of his bed, seeking nothing but blissful comfort. Eventually, he rolled himself onto his back, contemplated the ceiling, and decided it was late enough to try calling Kurt.
“Kurt!” Dave wedged the receiver between his ear and shoulder as he shuffled through the stack of tapes that had taken up permanent residence on his bedroom floor. A disgruntled non-word was the only sound on the other end of the phone. Dave was starting to feel his energy returning, though, so he barreled on ahead: “Kurt, I have a couple demos I recorded--you wanna hear ‘em?”
The silence on Kurt’s end was punctuated only by the click of a lighter and the soft huff of exhaled smoke. Kurt’s voice was deep, still half-asleep. “Sure, come on over.”
Dave shoved the tapes and Walkman into his coat pockets and headed out into the misty damp of Seattle in winter. He drew in a deep breath of fine water droplets and cold air, jumped up and down a couple times to shake out his nerves (Kurt was going to hear songs he had written!) and headed to the hotel.
When he knocked on the door, he was greeted by a splash and an unenthused “It’s open,” He stepped into the room, and found Kurt in the bath, his head back against the tiled wall and eyes shut. Dave thought about the word “repose”, and was abruptly gladdened that Kurt was getting time to care for himself. These jolts of protectiveness toward Kurt had been surfacing more frequently lately, as Dave witnessed the increasing pressure on their whole outfit, with Kurt bearing most of the brunt of questions and taunts and prying eyes.
Kurt stirred, grinning lazily up at Dave. “All right, let’s hear it.” He was sitting up far enough out of the bath that his hair was only a little damp, and Dave stuck the headphones on him and retreated into the other room, unable to even look at Kurt as he heard these tinny demos that Dave had been tinkering with in his own room and head for months.
As Kurt lay there, headphones on, Walkman precariously balanced on the edge of the bathtub, he opened his eyes, and Dave steeled himself and peeked back around the door jamb. He saw the deep, gentle goodness shining from Kurt’s eyes as he broke out in a grin that lit up his whole face. “This sounds great! Don’t be shy, you fucker, come here!”
Dave took a few tentative steps into the bathroom, standing in the middle of the mustard-colored linoleum. Water clung in bright droplets to Kurt’s hair and eyelashes and bony shoulders. Dave’s knees hit the floor with a thud that vibrated through his every vertebrae. Kurt grabbed his jaw with wet fingers and his lips collided with Dave’s cheek. Dave felt his whole face heat up and in spite of himself, he grinned and gasped “You like it?”
Kurt’s fervent nod was almost lost against Dave’s collarbone, and he grabbed hold of Kurt’s hand where it rests against his cheek, crushing his fingers, wanting them both to remember that this was real. He brought his other hand to trace over Kurt’s lips, pink and alluring. His eyes fell shut and his lips parted further, and Dave was reminded--”Hey, do you remember when Kim put lipstick on us?”
Kurt lunged out to nip his finger before smirking, “Fuck yeah, that was so hot. Let’s do it again?” The hopeful question in his voice sent Dave’s body plummeting into helpless arousal. Kurt waved him out of the bathroom before he would get out of the tub (“you don’t want to see this bony ass, Grohl”). His casual self-deprecation made Dave’s heart sink, and in that moment he was resolved.
Kurt dug out a tube of lipstick in a perfect dusty pink shade and looked up at him, lips parted and pupils blown. He sat on the edge of the hotel bed with the towel wrapped around his hips, and Dave stood with his legs slotted between Kurt’s, hands shaking as he pressed the color to his lips. Dave caught his own lip in his teeth out of nerves (“Don’t, you’ll make it go on weird” Kurt chastised), before they switched places and Kurt fixed him with a stare full of concentrated care as he applied the color to his lips.
A thump at the door almost caused Kurt to smear the lipstick, but then Krist was standing in the entryway with a warm, friendly bellow, “I come bearing gifts!” He didn’t get a good look at either of them before stepping into the kitchenette, and the rustle of a plastic bag was followed by the thump of a variety of Krist’s “gifts” hitting in the kitchen counter. Kurt finished applying Dave’s lipstick as Krist rattled off a list of the things he had brought by, ending with “and then I ran into Kim and she gave me their new demo--we should play it!”
Kurt looked at Dave and called out, “Funny you mention Kim, we were just putting on lipstick, reminiscing about that time--” Krist dropped whatever he was holding, swore, and stepped back into view.
“That really should have been the lead of this conversation,” Krist muttered, eyes sweeping appreciatively over the way the winter light illuminates the planes of their upturned faces. Dave felt himself flush even more red.
“Don’t we look great?” Kurt’s lips turned up in what he probably thought was wry sarcasm, but the hope in his eyes gave him away. “Fuck yeah you do,” Krist grinned at them both, “Lemme get all this shit situated and then I’ll thank you properly. In the meantime, Dave, tell Kurt he’s pretty.”
Dave huddled into Kurt’s side, and murmured into his neck, loud enough for Krist to hear from where he was rustling around in the kitchenette, “Kurt, you’re so pretty.”
Kurt clapped his hands to his ears, shut his eyes, and shook his head fervently as though he didn’t want to hear it, but Dave felt his cock jump against his belly. Dave wasn’t sure how to proceed, running a tentative hand up Kurt’s thigh and hearing him hiss. “Krist, get in here, we need your dirty-talking expertise.” Krist barked out a laugh. “In a minute, I’m setting the scene.” Kurt kissed Dave again, moving from his lips to his jaw to his neck, and the feeling of lipstick smearing across his skin made Dave shiver.
Krist was as good as his word; in minutes Sonic Youth was on the tape deck singing about Clarence Thomas rotting in hell, and he walked in bearing what could only described as a platter of cookies and Strawberry Quik and cigarettes and condoms and lube. “So prepared,” quipped Kurt, and Krist managed to grin wolfishly and preen all at once. Dave’s eyes caught on Krist’s arms, long and muscled under his T-shirt, and Dave wanted everything all at once.
He pulled his own shirt off, mostly to make Kurt feel less naked, and locked eyes with Krist over Kurt’s head. Krist gave an imperceptible nod. Dave stroked up Kurt’s thigh, breathing in his clean, soapy smell, and murmured against Kurt’s ear, “Can’t wait to watch your ass in front of me on stage--you’re so fucking pretty.” Kurt keened, towel entirely forgotten beneath him now, though he was still wearing his boxers, and that last mark of insecurity left Dave with no alternative than to redouble his efforts in showing Kurt how desirable he was. Krist crossed the room in two strides and pulled Kurt to him for a kiss that mapped familiar territory, and that Kurt leaned into like it was a comfort he had been without for too long.
“Why is it,” Krist was kissing Kurt’s neck and petting Dave’s hair at the same time, and it made Dave feel so cared for but he also really needed to get out of these pants--”that men are only allowed to express intimacy and tenderness in the form of cathartic screaming and electric guitar noise, and we are dismissed when we express our feelings more softly?” Kurt pulled Krist down to him and stuck his tongue in his mouth before answering, “Fuckin’ patriarchy,” and then kissed him again with a fierceness that made his fingers tighten in Dave’s hair. Dave pressed his lips to the seam of Kurt’s thigh and listened to the ragged, imprecise rhythm of Kurt breathing above him. He felt his heart being drawn even deeper into connection with these men who were so righteously angry and riotously funny and downright fucking beautiful.
He gentled his tongue on Kurt’s skin and got a frustrated whine in response. He flicked his eyes up and Kurt and Krist were both watching his mouth. Dave found his voice, murmuring, “Want me to suck you?” Kurt flung his arm across his eyes and groaned, “Thought you’ve never ask, asshole.” Dave’s smirk covered his hesitance as he nuzzled Kurt’s dick, feeling it pulsing against his cheek, and he could sense the impatience in Kurt’s trembling thighs and then he finally got him in his mouth, and God, stretching his lips around Kurt’s cock felt just the right side of worshipful. He ran his tongue along the underside, tongue flicking against the vein, and Krist’s hand came down heavy to keep Kurt from bucking into Dave’s mouth.
He pulled off with an obscene sound, still savoring the weight on his tongue, and his voice was hoarse as he couldn’t quite ask, but still admitted--“Wanna make it good for you, Kurt,” and Kurt’s eyes were full of charged warmth as he said, “you are, babe,” and the nickname along with the press of callused fingers against his cheek made Dave hum and finally wriggle out of his pants. Fully naked, he took Kurt down again, sloppy and less self-conscious, and Krist ran his fingers across Kurt’s chest, muttering, “He’s so good at this, Christ, look at that rhythm master go, that’s our Grohl.”
And now they’re locked in, they’ve become the kind of fearless juggernaut of unstoppable unity that means that songs all crackle with electricity, and then Kurt’s gasping a warning and pushing him off. Krist reaches down and finally Dave is naked in his long muscled arms and fuck if it doesn’t feel better than he’d imagined, pressing all of himself along that long, powerful body. Kurt growls low in his throat and kisses all over Dave’s neck and back, and they both have their hands all over him, on his dick, his ass, his nipples, and he hardly has time to focus on any one feeling amid the warm rising burn at the base of his spine.
“Fuck,” he gasps, hair falling in his eyes, “y’all wanna fuck me?” and that Virginia twang that comes through when he’s lost control seems to do something to both Kurt and Krist, as Krist leans down impossibly far to mouth at Dave’s painfully hard dick and Kurt has wriggled away and made the lube appear out of nowhere and is circling Dave’s hole with a wet finger, a silent question. “Do questions including the pronoun ‘y’all’ imply enthusiastic consent?” Krist asks, and Dave almost falls off the bed he’s laughing so hard, and then Krist winks lasciviously and stretches his mouth hot and wet around Dave’s cock and he decides whatever line he’d come up with he can say it later, after Krist and Kurt have fucked his brains out.
What comes out of Dave’s mouth instead is a fervent “Krist, fuck” as he braces helplessly against the slippery, just-this-side-of-purpley-maroon comforter. Kurt is back to kissing his neck and growling “yeah, that’s right, let him work you over” and his voice has deepened and Dave is helpless to resist. Kurt yanks the comforter off the bed, and now they are three bodies splayed across the sheets. Kurt lays heated kisses down Dave’s spine and Krist flicks his tongue against the head of his cock and Dave is overwhelmed with how much they both seem to want him.
“Seem” is the operative word here, though. Dave knows they’ve both had their share of fucks, and that share includes each other, and he’s painfully conscious of all the ways he can’t compete with the sheer quantity of hilarious, disgusting, imperfect history between the two men whose big warms hands are engulfing him and rapidly driving all thoughts beyond lust from his head. With his last shred of coherence, he blows his hair out of his eyes and gasps, “Kurt, Krist—“ and some of his uncertainty must come through because they both pause and look up at him with gentle, genuine care in their eyes. “I want...something else,” and then he has to duck his head and mumble the rest before he loses his courage from looking at them—he thinks this is what they’ll want too, but he can’t be sure. “Krist, I wanna suck you off while Kurt fucks me.” They both swear and lunge to kiss him, and he thinks he must be doing something right.
Kurt presses his whole length against Dave’s back, taut and golden and gloriously naked, and rasps against the back of his neck, “This is my body wanting you--do you believe it now?”
Dave nods, pressing his ass back against Kurt with a hiss, and reaches back to grasp his hand. He leans forward and immediately goes to work on Krist’s dick, and is rewarded with a low, filthy laugh that runs like an electric current through him and he feels his cock throbbing between his legs. He moans helplessly.
Kurt runs his long fingers down Dave’s spine, pressing at the soft space right at the small of his back before whispering, “You ready for my fingers in your ass, Grohl?” Dave laughs, again because he can’t help it, and twists to kiss Kurt, licking into his mouth. He pulls back, looks at Krist, whose eyes are burning with what Dave can only call tenderness, and says, “So ready,” Krist throws his head back and says “You’re too much, Dave--c’mere and suck me.”
Dave immediately gets so lost in the smell and taste of Krist that he doesn’t register Kurt’s lips smirking against his neck as his first finger presses inside.
Kurt leans in and kisses Dave’s neck some more, murmuring little fond murmurs of what Dave can only call wonder into his shoulder as he puts a second slick, carefully crooked finger in him. Dave feels stretched and strung out and burning up all over, and he can’t keep the rhythm on Krist’s cock anymore and settles for pulling off and putting his hands to good use instead, jacking him off in time to Kurt’s fingers inside him and only pausing to gasp “fuck, Kurt, right there” when he finds his prostate and scissors both fingers against it, working him open. Krist is playing with his hair again and Dave’s rhythm even with his hands is wrecked, he can’t keep any kind of time on Krist’s cock and he almost has the presence of mind to be sorry, but then Krist is kissing the top of his head and going “nah dude, I’m all right, just let him nail you” and Dave’s eyes drift shut and he moans deep in his chest. This is what it feels like, then, to be loved by the two people who have brought you into this unspoken imperfect understanding that they have with each other. Dave doesn’t know where this is headed, but he does know he wants it with the kind of deep desire that leaves his knees shaking.
Kurt’s breathing is increasingly ragged against the back of Dave’s neck, and he’s gripping his hips hard as he sets a bruising pace, his cock pounding Dave’s prostate. Now Dave is struggling for breath, and he thinks for a terrifying ten seconds that he’s on the edge of the kind of panic attack he’d started getting when the crowds were suddenly a thousand people in a room built to hold four hundred. Then Kurt’s hand finds his and he grips it hard, grounding Dave back in his body, and Krist grabs his jaw and kisses him in a mirror of what Kurt had done in the bathtub. Krist’s hand finds his cock and jerks him through the right circle of his fist, and Dave is suddenly embarrassingly close to coming. Kurt must feel him tense up because he says, low and hot, “Gonna come, want you to come too.” Dave moans, “fuck, Kurt, Krist, ah—“ and then he’s coming in helpless spurts over Krist’s hand and thighs. Kurt’s hips stutter against his ass and he grips his hips impossibly tighter, growls deep in his throat, and he’s coming, wet and hot and perfect inside him. Krist has been keeping up a filthy running commentary about how gorgeous they both are, but now Dave finds the energy to suck him off in earnest, and it’s only a minute or so until he’s shooting into Dave’s mouth. Dave floats for a while, his cheek pressed against the cool sheets between Krist’s splayed legs.
Krist was the first to get up and fetch the tray. Dave took the cigarette he offered, took a drag and handed it to Kurt. “You know” Krist said reflectively around a mouthful of cookie, “we should take a queer band on tour with us. There’s this band called Tribe 8 from San Francisco and they fuckin' kill it. Plus, San Francisco is holding all these protests to get the government to pay attention to people dying of AIDS. You feel like inviting some activists onstage, or playing a protest and dragging a coffin down Market Street?”
“Can I ask Michael Stipe to take us on tour? Does this mean we can make out on stage?” Kurt regarded them both, eyes clouded with sleepy contentment. “You mean more than we already do?” Dave kissed Kurt’s cheek. Kurt hit him half-heartedly in the arm, and they all fell asleep, limbs tangled together like contented puppies, breathing in each other’s hair and sweat. It felt ridiculous and disgusting and perfect, and Dave pressed one last kiss to Krist's shoulder before he nodded off, his heart finally resting content in the knowledge that this was where he belonged.