A bunch of people we don’t care about, what was that about? Ah. Kurt knew that they didn’t take him seriously in the real world. He was too dirty, too punk-as-fuck, too much of his identity was wrapped up in being alienated and alienating. But he couldn’t make his dream come true without Alan’s help, either, and so Alan was the friendly face on their enterprise, and he resented that—feared that in order to keep up his appearance of punk-as-fuckitude, he’d have to go into the meeting cursing and sneering and that Alan would bust him on that, too.
Alan frowned at the steering wheel. He was getting better at understanding people, but that didn’t make him necessarily better at being a person. What should he say here?
“That was a really heroic effort, Kurt,” he said, biting his lip. “I can tell you put a lot of work into it.” He couldn’t believe that praise this naked could possibly placate someone of Kurt’s heroic cynicism, but Kurt’s features softened and he turned his face away, rolled down the window, lit a cigarette.
“I thought I’d never get it done,” Kurt said. “I was so sleepy, I felt like I was half-baked. Couldn’t concentrate.”
You were up all night because you left it to the last minute, Alan thought. But Kurt knew that, was waiting to be reassured about it. “I don’t know how you get as much done as you do. Must be really hard.”
“It’s not so bad,” Kurt said, dragging on his cigarette and not quite disguising his grin. “It gets easier every time.”
“Yeah, we’re going to get this down to a science someday,” Alan said. “Something we can teach anyone to do.”
“That would be so cool,” Kurt said, and put his boots up on the dash. “God, you could pick all the parts you needed out of the trash, throw a little methodology at them, and out would pop this thing that destroyed the phone company.”
“This is going to be a fun meeting,” Alan said.
“Shit, yeah. They’re going to be terrified of us.”