A/N: So, I've never even thought about writing Kurtofsky before, but this just sort of... happened. So read, enjoy - and please let me know what you think and review! Much love!

I was buying a lottery ticket for the first time when I saw him again. The 7-11 clerk had scowled at the shiny blue laminate of my new license, making sure I was legit, before handing me my Lucky Sevens scratch-off. I was in a blissful mood, celebrating my coming-of-age in the few moments I had to myself on my birthday. Then I saw David Karofsky bang through the door.

I swore and fumbled my change, quarters plunking against the counter. The irony – his appearance in the Westerville store that I had gone out of my way to come to after he'd started working at the Lima location – was unbelievable. I kept my head bowed low as I apologized to the cashier and scraped up my coins, but the next second he was right beside me, his lips too close to my ear. "Ah, swearing now, are we? Seems awfully butch for you, Kurt."

I pulled back, away, and into a redneck wrapped in a Carhartt jacket that smelled of snuff. Both of us swore, the redneck considerably more colorfully than I, and Dave's white hand encircled my wrist, pulling me away from the counter and towards the door. My entire body tensed. I concentrated on not screaming, yanking my wrist free and stepping back against a display of HoHos and Twinkies. The redneck grumbled and wandered toward the beer cave.

Karofsky had not changed, his form hulking as ever, the set of his jaw angry. "I really don't feel like catching up right now, I'm late." He didn't seem to hear me; his gaze made me feel naked. I pulled my raincoat tighter around me. "Dave –"

"No, it's fine, Kurt," he said, suddenly staring me in the eyes; it didn't seem like he was blinking enough, his gaze oddly hungry and dead at the same time. "I'm just happy to see you, is all. Happy birthday, by the way. I assume that's why you're diving into gambling. Good thing you're turning eighteen and not twenty-one, if this is how you handle the privileges of age."

"Um, thanks, but I've really got to go."

"Oh, I can at least walk you out," he said. I felt my head nodding against the wishes of the rest of me, and Karofsky held the door for me as we walked out into the damp March air.

I tried not to think about the fact that he knew I was in the Navigator. He led the way, and I fumbled in my pocket for my keys. When I found them, I pretended to continue digging, dialing my dad's phone number in my cell. "So how has life been for Mr. Hummel?"

"Oh, great," I said, baffled and frightened with how nice he was being. "How have you been?"

"I've been OK, got a new job at Ryan's, it pays the bills." I laid my keys on my Navigator's roof as we came up alongside it, and he smiled, an action that pulled his lips into an austere, thin line and left his eyes alone. "Nice scarf."

I had no time to react, so that his hand – big, thick, hairy – closed around the fabric grazing my collarbone.

I was suddenly sixteen again, exploding into the boys' locker room. The acrid stench of year upon year upon year of sweat was so heavy in the air, it was like walking through a cloud, but it barely bothered me. I was on a mission, enraged, fed up, and I felt myself screaming. Karofsky was affected, I could tell, but he was closer than I wanted him, his figure looming over mine. It was so much like the first time, when he had assaulted my face out of desperation.

But this time was different. Because this time, we were trying – at least, both of us had been. I'd been pouring myself into helping him come to grips with himself, and he had been really, truly, improving. And then, one day he dropped by my house unannounced – there had been another run-in with closet-crazed Santana threatening to out him – and he opened my bedroom door to find Blaine on top of me, our mouths joined and my hands in his curly hair. He had thrown Blaine off of me and then, rage coloring his brutish face, eyes unfocused, he grasped the fabric at my neck. Whatever pity I had been fostering for him suddenly vanished.

"Dave –" I protested. He pulled his hand away, tears forming and his chest heaving, but he still hovered over me, those cold eyes searching mine. My breath shook. "Dave, don't do this, please."

"I love you."

It was the eighth time he had told me since our flimsy friendship began. He bled the words as much as said them, his entire face already flinching for the rejection he must have known was coming. "I love you, Kurt. I love you." He visibly struggled for other words, other ways to describe his feelings, but he had spent his eloquence on the first seven tries. Blaine looked on with horror, his breath, too, audible in the room. I opened my mouth to respond, but Karofsky cut in, dismissing the objections he had already heard: "I know I've done wrong by you Kurt, and I know you think you're into that queer over there. But I love you, and even if you don't love me, if you care about me at all, isn't that enough?"

I remembered the past year, how Dave would show up wherever I was, slamming me into lockers or tossing me into dumpsters. I remembered the anger of his lips against mine, the way he forced himself on me. I remembered the threat on my life. I remembered his seven declarations of love, each more desperate and frightening than the last, and I knew I couldn't do it anymore.

"No, Dave."

He didn't pull back. "What do you mean, no? Is it him? This asshole?" He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at Blaine, who was quickly turning from concerned to angry.

"I mean no, I can't do any of this anymore." I twisted away from him. "If it's not enough to you to be my friend, you're going to lose me as that, too."

He tried to grab my shoulder, and I pushed his hand away. "Kurt, no. It's fine, we can be just friends, I didn't mean to pressure –"

"You didn't mean to pressure me? You mean the way you didn't mean to pressure me when you kissed me? The way you didn't mean to pressure me when you burst in here and grabbed my scarf like you were going to strangle me? Lord, Dave, you've asked me out more times than I can remember, and you don't mean to pressure me?" A hysterical cackle escaped me. "It can never be just friends with you. A little bit is never enough. I'm through. I've tried to be a good friend to you, I really have, but I can't do it anymore."

He quivered. His thin lips were pressed together, a slight crease in his dark eyebrows the only sign of his unhappiness. "If that's really how you feel," he said after a long pause, letting no emotion taint his voice. I noticed that his hands were balled into fists and I knew that he was inches away from imploding. When I didn't say anything, he gritted his teeth. "OK. I thought you were going to be my friend, but I guess I was wrong."

I spoke his name, already regretting my harshness, but he turned and headed for the door, his entire body shaking. Blaine crossed to me and held me as tears started to spill from my eyes.

It was two weeks before he came back to school for the first time, rehabbed from his nervous breakdown. When he apologized and asked to start over, I accepted. I didn't find out until his graduation that he had written a detailed suicide note before the panic attack hit him – and among its contents were plans to take an angelic countertenor with him when he went.

"Dave –" I protested just as I had two years before. My pulse raced. His face contracted in what looked like confusion, and he quickly pulled away from my scarf. "I'm so late to meet my friends, I've really got to go –"

"It's fine, Kurt. Sorry to hold you up. Good luck in life, or whatever." He smiled again, and this time his eyes were in it, too, no pain in his face. I took a deep breath and smiled back.

I opened my car-door and knocked my phone to the ground in the process. I hurried to retrieve it from the wet asphalt, happy to see that Karofsky might finally be over whatever hurt I had caused him. I came back up feeling that everything was fine. "I wish you the best of luck in life, too."

"Thanks, Kurt," he said. "Happy birthday again! See you later!"

"See you!" I returned, grabbing my keys and sliding into the leather seat.

It wasn't until later that I realized my house key was missing.