Alligator Blues
By Maureen Anson

[Standard disclaimers apply. I do not own any characters in this story, they are all owned by Fox. No money is being made.]

It hadn't been hard to get the address for Karofsky's house. After all, how many Karofsky's were there in the phonebook? Not as many as there were Abrams' anyways. An older man with grey hair opened the door, Mr. Karofsky. Artie could see the resemblance between him and his son.

"Is um…Karof…I mean, is Dave there?" Artie asked, nearly forgetting the other guy's first name.

"Yeah, come on in," he said, opening the door wider, clearly unsure if he should be offering Artie help or not, but Artie just rolled over the small step and threshold easily into a nice living room. Yelling upstairs for Dave to come down, his dad clearly wasn't too sure who Artie was or how he knew his son.

When Dave came down a moment later Artie smiled at him a little, "Hi," he said, offering his hand, which Dave took briefly as his father retreated from the room.

"What are you doing here?" the bigger guy asked, both a little wary and suspicious. His voice only had a hint of hoarseness to betray what he had gone through. If there were any sort of rope marks on his neck, they couldn't be seen with the collar of his shirt.

Artie shrugged, "I wanted to give you this," he said, reaching into his backpack and pulling out an old stuffed alligator.

Dave took it hesitatingly, looking curious and a little surprised. It wasn't like dudes gave each other stuffed animals all that often. Nor were he and Artie ever friends.

"That's Ollie," Artie said as if that clarified it all. "Back in middle school, I tried to kill myself too. They sent me to counseling of course, and my psychologist gave him to me. Any time it got too tough, he said I was supposed to hold him or hit him or talk to him or whatever it took for it to pass if I couldn't talk to anyone else. I thought though…that right now, you needed him more than I do," in all actuality, he mostly lived in the back of Artie's closet now, hidden under other things.

Taking a seat on the couch, Dave looked at Ollie for a moment, then at Artie appraisingly, their eyes meeting. Dave's had new depth to them, "A stuffed alligator," he finally stated dubiously.

Artie nodded, "His tail is pretty good if you wanna whack him against something and his body is a good punching bag. Well…it was for me. You're stronger than I am though. It's okay if he breaks; my mom's had to sew him up a few times."

Sure enough, when Dave inspected the alligator more closely, he had a few places where he had been hand stitched back together by what appeared to be an unsteady hand with a needle. Artie's mother was no seamstress, "Why…" Dave asked, not finishing the question. Not why was he giving him the alligator, Artie had already answered that, but why was he over here at all.

"Because," Artie stated firmly, pushing his glasses up with a finger, "I've been there. We've never much been friends and you made Kurt's life pretty crappy and I haven't forgotten that massive slushie last year either, but at the same time…even with all that, I've never wanted you dead. And yeah, it's hard, I'm not going to sugar coat anything or pretend to understand exactly, but I do know what it's like to be in that place where death seems like a good idea. When you just can't handle it or cope with living anymore. "

"Why did you?" he whispered, unconsciously holding the alligator and not looking at Artie.

"There was no one reason," Artie answered truthfully, "It was a combination of being in the chair, the bullying, the loneliness of not having friends, just…all of it. So one night I took a bunch of pills. I figured I'd go to sleep and that'd be it. Simple and not very messy. I was trying to be considerate. I went to sleep alright, but woke up about a day later in the hospital with my stomach pumped and everyone freaking out. Landed myself in a lot of therapy, antidepressants, probably everything they're doing for you now. It wasn't easy, but…looking back now, yeah, it gets better."

It was pretty clear that Dave felt bad and that Artie's explanation hadn't helped much. He'd been a bully, maybe not as bad as some others, maybe not to Artie specifically as much as Kurt, but he had laughed and he had never stopped it. "I couldn't…handle it," he finally whispered, hands clenching the synthetic fibers of the alligator fur. It didn't matter that alligators weren't actually fuzzy. "The whispers. The comments. The names. I don't want to be like this!"

Slowly, Artie reached out to touch Dave's hunched up shoulder. "I know," he agreed softly, "No one asks for these things in life. No one wants to be different. Not like this. It's not like we chose it or can choose to undo it. We can choose how we deal with it though. We can choose how we respond, because ultimately, we can only control ourselves."

Silently, Dave's shoulders shook and it took Artie a moment to realize that the bigger teen was crying. That was perhaps more disconcerting to realize than that he was gay. He wasn't sure what to do, so he just sat quietly, rubbing his back. It was what his mother had done a lot when he had cried.

Eventually, Dave began to sniffle and looked up at Artie with red rimmed eyes. "Sorry," he whispered, clearly embarrassed.

Artie just shrugged, "It happens," he replied nonchalantly. "Feel better?" Crying was a catharsis and it was ridiculous to hold it all in. Granted, he preferred to his crying in the shower where no one could hear or see him, but that didn't mean that he never cried. He had a lot when he had been younger. It was a lot more rare now.

Nodding, Dave got up to get a tissue and came back after blowing his nose. "Thanks," he whispered.

Artie nodded. "You're welcome," he replied, turning to leave. "See you next week," he added. This was not the last that Dave Karofsky was going to see of Artie Abrams. One visit was nice. Two was better. This wasn't something that would be fixed with a couple counseling sessions and some pills. It would take time and it would take real friendship. Artie had both.