A/N: Another one for LunarGuardian27. Just because… Well. Because.

The thickness of the air is both suffocating and deafening. His ears are ringing, his heart is hammering, his lungs can't seem to gather enough wind to fill them fully. His stomach plummets further and further with eat new message that appears on his Facebook.

It all hurts more than he thought imaginable. And it isn't even physical; sure, yes, the physicality of it is there, of course it is, as inescapable as the reactions he keeps reading on his computer screen, but it's all byproduct. They're symptoms. The true cause is inside, churning and rotting him like garbage in a blender, and just as foul.

Emotional pain is something Dave has always ignored, brushed off, and denied. He put other things in its place to help stabilize himself. He would bully others, he would go out on dates, he would play his sports; and, later, he would join the Bully Whips, and use his protection of others to stuff his own painful issues further and further down until they were nearly harmless.

But there's no escaping it now. His secret is out, and everyone is lining up – a battalion of enemy soldiers – to knock him down, causing him to fall into the depths of his own despair, dark and cold and sickeningly deep as it is.

Part of Dave, a very small, precious part of him that has retained some of his boyish charms and childish hopes, is the piece that is hovering above the pit, looking down at his falling self, and offering a hand, because it is the part of Dave that doesn't regret it.

Kurt was worth it. Kurt was worth every homosexual slur, every condemnation to Hell, every drop of spray paint on his locker, and every last glaring pair of eyes. Seeing Kurt smile at him, say he was proud of him for coming so far within a year, for trying to be himself, even in secret as he was at Scandals… that was worth the pain, the small, light part of Dave thinks. It's worth all the struggle in the world not to have Kurt Hummel hold a grudge over him or be afraid of him or outright reject him.

Because he was rejected, yes, but only because Kurt has a boyfriend. Dave likes to think – to hope – that Kurt would have said yes, if maybe only to getting to know one another better first, had he not been dating someone. Dave likes to hold onto that thought, because, right now, as the hours and days pass, it's the only thing keeping him grounded.

But it's not enough. He knows it isn't. Soon, all he can think of is, But he did reject me, and probably would never have gotten as far as to date me because his father hates me and there are certain things that can be forgiven, but never, ever forgotten.

XXX

Dave isn't a crier. Even as a child when he fell and scraped his knee, he didn't cry. He only cried when his mother cried, because even as a child, he has always been empathetically in tune with her. He loves his mother.

In this past year, Dave has cried four times.

The first time was when he apologized to Kurt Hummel. Personally, not just in an official way in front of Kurt's father or the principal or the Glee club. He really meant it, down in his heart, and Kurt knew. He saw and heard and understood and knew that this was Dave, bring honest, wearing his heart on his sleeve, crying when he never usually cries, not because he's macho or anything ridiculous, but because he never needs to unless it's extremely attached to his emotions.

The second time he cried was at his junior prom. Because he wanted to come out, he did, because Kurt asked him to, present the opportunity, wasn't trying to rush him (it wasn't "now or never"), but showing him that this could be it, a pivotal moment, the pinnacle of his high school career, to make the statement, 'Yes, I am gay, and comfortable with it, and you all can suck it, because I am going to dance with Kurt Hummel.' Except he couldn't do it. He really couldn't, not yet. He was so afraid of the talks and the looks behind his back. Santana once told him the same thing, which is why she wanted to be his date. Santana was exactly like him, but in female form. Santana was his ally. But even she is out and dating Brittany now, and where does that leave Dave?

Lost. Left behind in the dust. And so, he ran off, and cried. Prom was awful. He never wants to go to another prom again.

The third time was recently. Just a few days ago. Because he mother found out, of course, because the school called both his parents at their workplaces and told them that their son's locker was vandalized and their son was being bullied by his peers… all because they found out he was gay. There is a picture; just one, but it's been sent to every phone at his new school and even a few to students at McKinley. It's of Dave reaching across the table, holding Kurt Hummel's hand.

(He almost wishes he had a copy of that photo, if only to remember that it was real, it had happened; he took Kurt's hand and held it, that was real. And Kurt looked down at it, momentarily taken pleasantly off-guard by Dave's comfortable forwardness. And it had felt so wonderful, so freeing, so soft and warm.)

He cried because his mother was cold and cruel when she returned home. Shaky, too; she kept murmuring that he must be sick, not right in his head, in need of a cure, because it's a disease that's been spread to him by Kurt Hummel, and he ran away from her, to his room, locked the door, red-faced, because how dare she? How dare his own mother, the one he loved so much, say such a thing to him? Call him sick and deranged and blaming it all on Kurt, the only good thing Dave has had in his life as of late? How dare she even suggest any of it?

So, outraged, insulted, hurt; he cried.

And now, right here and now, in his room, locked alone with music and broken CD cases that could easily be used to cut himself, as an option, if he needed it, he is crying again, crying for the fourth time in the past year, more than he has ever cried in his accumulative life, really, if he thinks about it. It's a release, sure, but it's ugly, and he wishes he wouldn't cry. He wishes he could stop crying.

But he hurts so much inside. Everything beneath his skin is a twist and ripping of innards like gutting a bird for the holidays, and his mind is a cesspool of turmoil, and Dave hates it so much that he actually burns inside with an aching fire he can't put out.

XXX

When he comes to the decision to kill himself, he wants to make himself look better. Not look like a crying mess, or a sloppy teenager, or anything demeaning.

So Dave puts on his best suit, the one he wears for weddings and church, and the one he wore to prom last year. He neatly does up his tie, puts on his jacket, makes sure even his underwear is clean. He fixes his hair, puts on cologne.

And then he stands on his desk chair in his closet and uses the rafter above him to hang himself.

He doesn't hear the car in the driveway over the sound of his music: melancholy crooner songs, fluid and sad and beautiful.

XXX

Paul Karofsky comes home early. He goes upstairs to check with his son, make sure he's okay through all this, because the school called again – Dave skipped today, didn't come in at all, and didn't call in ill, either – and he saw his son's Facebook page, all the comments there from his schoolmates.

He knocks on his son's door. Music is playing a hair too loudly. "David?"

No response.

He opens the door, doesn't see Dave on his bed, and his desk chair is missing. And then he turns and sees the open closet door, and he screams.

XXX

Dave wakes in his father's arms, head on his lap, and then he cries for a fifth time this year.

XXX

"Don't ever scare me like that again…!"

He's never heard his father break down like this before. He croaks, "I won't," and then he hears the sirens of an ambulance outside.

XXX

"That was the stupidest thing you could have possibly done!" Kurt is crying and yelling when he bursts into Dave's hospital ward while he's under suicide watch (but they really don't need to worry, because he isn't ever going to try it again; he was so relieved when he saw his father and not Limbo or Heaven or Hell).

Dave tightens his jaw. His voice is hushed. "I expected to hear that from my family, but not you. Of all the people I know, I really don't want to hear that from you," he says lowly, clearly pained, though his face doesn't show it.

Kurt doesn't have anything in his hands, and it's odd, because Dave had thought Kurt would be the one to bring flowers, or a card, or both. But instead, he's empty-handed and his hair isn't styled or wet, as if he rose from bed and raced over as soon as he heard this morning.

Kurt's hands are clenched are his sides, but Dave's words seems to break him, and he bolts for Dave's bedside and wraps his arms around Dave's neck, and Dave's face wipes blank with shock and his whole body goes stiff, and he can barely blink.

His voice seems to say in the distance, "Kurt… what –"

"I'm so glad you're alive," Kurt whispers into Dave's pillow, arms warm and firm where they are settled on his collarbones, and he exhales and closes his eyes and sinks into the embrace, his nose grazing Kurt's shirt.

"Me, too," Dave whispers as he brings up a hand and wraps it around Kurt's waist.

Everything hurts – his throat, his head, his heart – but this, right here… this makes the light in Dave shine a little brighter, making the pit inside him just a little less endless.