I Shed My Coat With Caution

by a crime so low

Dave thinks that if he tries hard enough, he could be like one of those lizards on the discovery channel that change their colors. No-one need ever see him again. AU from 2x12. Slight Karofsky/Blaine

title: I Shed My Coat With Caution
pairing: shades of Karofsky/Blaine with mentions of Kurt/Blaine, past Karofsky/Kurt.
rating: R
warnings/spoilers: Homophobic slurs, bullying, angst, language, unsettling imagery.
disclaimer: Not even a little bit mine.
wordcount: 8,500
summary: "Dave wraps himself up in that stupid Letterman jacket and blends, sinks into a polyester mass of red and cream and thinks that if he tries hard enough, he could be like one of those lizards on the discovery channel that change their colors. No one need ever see him again." Season 2 AU from "The Sue Sylvester Shuffle".
notes: I don't even know what this is. preferthemoss once all but dared me to write Blainofsky and I wrote this instead. It's been sitting in my word docs since around the time of The Sue Sylvester Shuffle and was swiftly made non-canon compliant while I struggled to figure out what the hell I was writing, was beaten into submission by the completely non-existent timeline of it all and eventually just lost inspiration. It ended up here because I was listening to Damien Rice while trying to write and that's just never a good idea and ended up scouring my writing folder, re-reading this and remembering how much I loved parts of this and thinking it felt like it might be finished. IDK, don't judge me. Title taken from the lyrics of 'Chameleon Boy' by Blue October.

---

Sometimes Dave thinks about what it would have been like if he'd said yes.

It's not often or anything, not like he regrets it all that much. But sometimes he'll see them in the hall or filing into the Choir room in excited flurries or he'll hear a song on the radio and mouth along with the lyrics and Schuester, of all people, will pop into his head saying, "You're really good" and he'll have to drag his eyes away, change the station.

It isn't like anything has changed. The unspoken truce hadn't lasted and they were back to getting slushied every other day, even if it isn't the football guys doing it all of the time anymore, but sometimes he'll find himself watching and he'll wonder, what if.

What kind of guy would that Dave Karofsky be? The kind who ended up with a face-full of ice and corn syrup, probably. Loser. Nerd. Geek. F-

- Sometimes he'll remember the rush of the crowd at half-time, belting out the words to 'Thriller' and feeling free, feeling alive, shuffling and stupid and shameless dancing in front of the whole school and not caring.

But he isn't a Finn Hudson or a Noah Puckermann, he can't deflect that kind of heat with a girl hanging on his arm. He knows he's a coward. He wears his Letterman jacket like a suit of armor, like it's camouflage. With it he fits; he is one of them, he is safe.

Most days, that's enough.

.

When Kurt Hummel returns to McKinley it's with surprisingly little fanfare, or at least, that's how it appears to everyone else. There's Santana Lopez, sharp and sneering and knowing, pulling the strings behind it all to clear out a path and welcome their boy home. There's a meeting and there's Kurt, staring him down across an empty room while their fathers and Figgins hover outside. There are clipped words and threats and Dave doesn't, exactly, believe a word that falls out of his mouth.

Kurt Hummel terrifies him.

The glee club, of course, swarm Kurt, babbling with excitement and cast suspicious, dark looks Dave's way when they pass in the corridors. Nobody believes in his apologies or Santana's new altruistic streak. Not a single one of them seem to believe that he could change, least of all Santana, who carries with her at all times the arms that could break him and the will to carry it through.

Kurt is a reminder of everything he's ever done to them, a refresher course on Why We Hate Dave Karofsky.The almost truce that's existed between them since the Championship game falls apart the moment Kurt walks back through those doors.

They don't understand at all.

Kurt's the one who's dangerous, the one with one finger poised above Dave's precarious house of cards. Kurt's the one with all the power here. That one word stalks the empty space Kurt places between them at all times. It hides in the sharp, staccato glances Kurt sends his way when they pass in a hallway or the parking lot. And he may not believe in outing, as he'd so calmly told him, but Santana wouldn't hesitate if she so much as suspected..

When Kurt Hummel returns to McKinley, his head impossibly higher and with a new, different kind of confidence burning in him, Dave doesn't sleep for almost a week.

.

It's like watching a tidal wave in slow motion. He knows it's coming, he's waiting for it and there is no higher ground to run for, nowhere to hide and hope it passes him by. He can practically smell the smouldering wreckage of life as he knows it in the air.

He doesn't know what Kurt's waiting for, there has to be a reason he came back like this, like he's been rebuilt from the inside out.

Dave wraps himself up in that stupid Letterman jacket and blends, sinks into a polyester mass of red and cream and thinks that if he tries hard enough, he could be like one of those lizards on the discovery channel that change their colors.

No one need ever see him again.

.

Dave almost doesn't recognize him.

It's just a glimpse in the hallway, a flash of slicked back dark hair from the edge of his vision that sends his eyes skittering away. It sends his heart pounding uncomfortably, his hands sweating, because it can't be.

There are, that he knows of, three people in the entire world that know his secret. Kurt Hummel, who glares at him with accusing eyes across crowded hallways, Santana Lopez who smirks at him, dark and knowing, every time she meets his eyes and Hummel's smug, preppy, private school friend that Kurt had confronted him with that day.

That had shoved him once, in a dark school hallway like he wasn't half Dave's size.

He isn't wearing the uniform, Dave barely sees him for a moment as he turns the corner but he's got Rachel Berry attached to him by the elbow and Dave knows. He knows it's him with the same sinking dread that he'd had the day that Kurt Hummel showed up again.

It hits him like a hammer to the chest. Fear that rises up from his gut, claws at his throat, his lungs, sinks it's teeth into his jack-hammering heart until he's stumbling into the nearest bathroom and locking himself in an empty stall because he just needs to think, okay, just think his way out of this.

There are exactly three people in the world that know his secret and now they're all roaming the halls of McKinley.

It's only later, when he sees damp spots soaked into the material of his Letterman jacket, that he realizes he's been crying.

.

His name is Blaine.

He hears it in the locker room while he's changing after gym. A couple of guys from the Hockey team snickering over the new kid, Hummel's faggy boyfriend from that fancy private school out in Westerville. How they're going to give him a traditional McKinley welcome at lunch.

He keeps his head down, stares unseeing into his locker as he stuffs his gym clothes back into his bag. Their laughter is ringing in his ears, obnoxious and loud and he's been staring at his t-shirt, clenched tight in his fists, for almost three whole minutes now but he can hardly breathe.

He should join them, he thinks. This is an opportunity to remind that preppy kid why he should keep his mouth shut. He should blend. Not give them any reason to suspect. It would be easy to fall back into the old routines.

It's tradition.

There's an ache that spreads out through his chest, throbs painfully in his lungs, that catches and settles in his throat. His hands are shaking and he can't make himself let go of that stupid t-shirt as he hears a gasp of laughter, a sneered, "He'd probably like it."

He can't make his mouth work, can't force out the words he should be saying, something like, Yeah, fucking queer, because his jaw is frozen shut.

The locker room door slams behind them and he realizes that he's the only one left. A heavy breath escapes through his clenched teeth, catching around the lump in his throat.

It's another five minutes before he can unwind his fists from the shirt in his hands.

He's ten minutes late for his History class.

.

Dave's heart pounds in his chest every time they pass in the hallway.

Kurt he's gotten used to. Kurt he understands, maybe just a little bit. Kurt veers in wide circles around him, places bodies and space and anything he can between them, like Dave's toxic. It makes him uneasy, but it makes sense.

Santana pushes into his space, reminds him of her presence with a drag of fingers or a knowing smirk. He knows that the thing that stills her tongue, that holds them in this constant limbo, is that he knows too. It's tentative at best, the leverage he has, but he clings to it with both hands because it's all he has.

Blaine is something different. It's like maybe all that time at his fancy private school has worn down any survival instincts he once had. Like he expects nothing more than to be respected, accepted at least, for exactly who he is and will not accept the possibility of anything different.

Because while Kurt eyes him like he's a ticking time bomb, Blaine doesn't appear to notice him at all.

He strides past with head held high, doesn't so much as glance his way. He'll chatter away with whomever has attached themselves to his side on any given day, ignore the wary looks they'll send in Dave's direction by way of rifling through his armful of books, humming beneath his breath. He barely seems to acknowledge that Dave exists.

Underneath such blatant indifference Dave sometimes feels like he doesn't.

It shouldn't matter to him that this preppy kid with the stupid hair won't acknowledge him; that the kid who'd pushed back that day in an empty hallway, his anger a burning, palpable thing, could walk past him like they'd never met. It doesn't matter that some rich kid who seemed to think everything would be okay because he said, you're not alone, suddenly doesn't seem to see him at all.

And it's not like it matters or anything, it isn't like some prep school brat with a rich daddy could ever understand what it's like to be him. Except, okay, maybe it kind of does matter.

It's not something he's thought about exactly, but the day that Hummel and his stupid rich, prep-school boyfriend had confronted him, that kid had said, you're not alone like he meant it, like he knew something about what it was like to be alone.

Sometimes Dave wonders what it would be like to not be alone. What it would be like if someone knew. Not everyone, but just someone who would talk to him and know and maybe not care or maybe care but not in a bad way.

He wonders if maybe someone could understand the way that all of that fear bubbles up underneath his skin sometimes until he can't even think, until his fists just start swinging cause when it comes down to fight or flight he's always been a fighter.

He wonders if maybe that Blaine kid had really meant it, when he'd said you're not alone all those months ago.

But it's not like he cares.

Much.

.

He can't sleep.

In his dreams he feels the phantom press of Hummel's soft lips against his, his fingers twisted in soft grey wool before the slam of hands against his chest and horrified eyes staring back at him.

His hands tangle in a pristine navy blazer, a stream of scarlet curled around his thumbs and he's pushing, pushing, and the body beneath that uniform is pliable, malleable to his force, until abruptly there's resistance. The rattle of the fence, bright hazel eyes staring up at him through a veil of dark lashes, hands splayed between them in warning but not pushing back.

It's Hummel who drags them apart, pushes him away with indignant anger.

He wakes with stinging eyes, his chest heaving and the taste of salt on his tongue, tears dripping from his chin. He's so hard that it hurts.

He stares at the ceiling until the first touches of grey light crawl into his room through the cracks in his curtains and he can hear birds fluttering around in the guttering, the beating of their wings against the roof.

That day he wraps himself tight in his Letterman jacket, melts somewhere into the middle of a pack of the same and hopes that the next time he closes his eyes he doesn't see their faces.

.

The plastic is sweating, the cold seeping through to numb his fingers as he clenches it tight. It's more orange than red today, a shade that is miserably close to blood and he doesn't want to look too close, to think too hard about it.

Azimio is saying something to his right, his own cup clenched in one fist and he sounds excited to be resuming the old routine. It's like their week in the glee club never happened. Like those brief few weeks of patrolling hallways in a ridiculous hat and jacket had been some mass-induced hallucination.

Crowds are parting ahead of them, people scattering to plaster themselves against the lockers out of the firing line and Dave feels sick as condensation drips over his fingers. He knows who it is the moment that Azimio makes a sound of excitement at his shoulder.

The moment that he sees them Dave's stomach turns. It's the first time, he thinks, that Blaine has actually looked at him since that day. His face is as unreadable as it is in his dreams when he easily slips his arm out of Berry's grasp.

She looks up then, her eyes going wide before they turn resigned and she squeezes them shut and scrunches up her nose in anticipation.

He can't do it. Dave remembers the sting of syrup in his eyes, the slap of ice against his skin, the sheer shock and pain of it followed by the shame. The fear. Being branded with a stamp of loser far more memorable than just a name hurled in a hallway.

Azimio crows something as they close in and Dave's heart is pounding in his ears, there's something heavy lodged in his throat and he knows that he can't do it. Not when Blaine's eyes are fixed on him like that and Berry is cringing into his side and Dave doesn't understand what it means but he can't do it.

He'll tell. They'll tell. He can't.

At the same time that Azimio pulls back his cup to toss it, Dave tips his to his mouth and drinks. It tastes awful, some terrible mix of leftover Cherry and Orange syrup, but he drinks. He hears Berry's gasp as ice hits the roof of his mouth and his brain protests, an explosion of pain inside his skull.

When he squeezes his eyes open Azimio is staring at him in disbelief and Blaine is standing in the wrong place, dripping rivers of ice and syrup while Berry peers over the safety of his shoulder, stray flecks of ice clinging to her hair while her mouth droops in a surprised oh.

He's rooted to the spot as Blaine swipes a handful of ice and syrup from his face and it lands with a sickly splatter on the floor. He stares expressionlessly at his hand for a moment before his eyes rise back to Azimio, his voice curiously even as he says, "Weren't you ever taught better than to pick on girls?"

Dave knows he's staring, that his eyes are tracking the progress of ice and syrup down Blaine's neck and watching it soak into the collar of his shirt. Watching the way it flattens Blaine's carefully styled hair against his forehead and dribbles down his jaw. It's easier to process than the idea that Blaine, all five foot whatever of him, is standing up for Rachel Berry.

And Dave is stuck, thinking too hard about the many implications of why Azimio could have picked him for Dave's target. Like maybe it was a challenge, a test that he's pretty sure he just failed.

Azimio throws back something about thinking Blaine was a girl and Dave has to force his feet to move, to hurry away because Blaine is looking at him now and he knows. Berry is tugging on Blaine's arm to get him to move towards one of the bathrooms because he's just standing there in Azimio's face like he has some kind of death wish.

He's halfway down the hallway, the cup still sweating in cold drips over his fingers when Azimio reappears at his side and asks, "What the hell, bro?"

He can feel the phantom itch of hazel eyes on his back as he tosses the slushy cup in the trash.

"I saw Coach Sylvester," he lies without even thinking about it. "She's just looking for an excuse to get me expelled."

Azimio doesn't say anything, but Dave can tell that he doesn't believe him.

.

That night Blaine drips in crimson. Dave's fingers fist in the lapels of that crisp navy blazer and he's pushing (pulling) there's the kickback, the bounce of the wire as they collide. Crimson spills over Blaine's lips, down his chin, winds down his throat, spatters across Dave's fists like fat raindrops, sticky and warm and oh, oh, god.

He wakes feeling sick, his entire body shaking, with the phantom of Kurt Hummel's accusatory stare hovering over him like a shadow.

.

He hates the locker room.

He dresses and undresses as fast as he can, his head buried half in his locker and he tries to shut them out. To not listen but they're always talking, always laughing and he's supposed to do the same. He's supposed to laugh when they talk shit about those fags or those losers and he can't; can hardly breathe sometimes because he's so fucking scared.

What if this is the day that Hummel's tongue slips? What if Santana decides that making him squirm just got boring? What if this is the day that polite, preppy Blaine decides to take a stab at the McKinley way of life and just mention to someone, anyone..

Except, Blaine has seamlessly resumed his routine of ignoring Dave's existence. Of looking through him when he walks down the halls, of not so much as glancing his way in Biology even though his assigned seat is only a row behind Blaine's.

He acts like they've never met.

Dave is pretty sure that's supposed to be a good thing, which is why he can't understand why it matters.

Except those Puckheads are still laughing, talking about dumpster-tossing Hummel's boyfriend because clearly, if he's taking a slushy-facial for Rachel Berry than he must enjoy them a little too much.

And Dave doesn't realize how hard he's been clenching his fists until the door swings shut behind them and he's able to uncurl his fingers to see the tiny, raw crescents embedded in the soft skin of his palms.

His hands are shaking.

And god, he's angry, so angry, because this isn't fair. Blaine is just some stupid kid he shoved into a fence one time and those fucking Puckheads are just bottom-feeders trying to push their way up the social ladder.

They (he) shouldn't matter.

But, somehow, they (he) do (does).

.

Dave notices.

He's always been careful. He knows the laws they live by at McKinley; be aware of who your threats are, of where they are in relation to you, always have the biggest stick, the sharpest claws. Blaine is a threat, all five foot midget of him, so Dave has kept him on his radar, he notices.

It's why on Tuesday he notices that Blaine just slips into their Biology class before the second bell and when he sinks into his seat, one row ahead and on the diagonal from Dave's, close enough that he could probably kick his chair if he wanted to, he can see that his hair is dripping wet and a damp patch is spreading down his back. There are damp, lurid green splotches visible on the striped fabric of his shirt where the neck of a too-big sweater (borrowed, he figures) is slouching towards his shoulder.

It's why in Spanish on Friday, he notices the arm that Blaine tucks in protectively close to his side while he blatantly ignores Mr. Schuester's lecture, his pen twirling distractedly across his notebook. It's why he notices Schuester notice and the way that his eyes flicker, however briefly, to Dave even as he keeps up his usual stream of words with forced enthusiasm.

Sometimes Dave wishes that he didn't notice quite so much.

.

Every muscle he has feels like it wants to just melt right off of his bones.

Dave's pretty sure that these surprise practices Bieste keeps springing on them every other week (with the somewhat fanatical aim of ensuring her team isn't letting their fitness drop in the off-season) are going to kill him.

He's exhausted. The trek back to his locker feels like just one more punishment to add to his tired feet but his Biology notes are in there and he has that stupid test tomorrow that Wilkins has been warning them about all week and he's not sure if he can take another disappointed face and lecture over one more failed test.

It isn't that he intentionally looks at the door on his way past; it's kind of become a habit by now. He's not even (really) sure which days the Glee club holds it's after school practices anymore (not today, half the club had been out on the field with him trying not to puke their way through suicide runs), but the door to the choir room is ajar and if he stops, just for a moment, at the sound of the piano it's only because it's so unexpected.

The hallways are mostly deserted now anyway, so it's not like anyone's there to look at him funny if he just listens for a moment. Except, well, there's nothing much to listen to. Just the soft plunk of piano keys, over and over, and if he moves closer to the door to peer inside it's just because he's wondering what the point is.

He hovers in the doorway and it feels wrong somehow, like he's encroaching on some unspoken boundary, this room is theirs, something that he can't touch.

His time in that room feels like a distant memory sometimes, like something he maybe dreamed up, because that freedom he'd felt can't have been real. Dave's been hiding so deep beneath his own skin for so long that sometimes he thinks it's a wonder he can even breathe anymore.

"Are you just going to stand there?"

Blaine is staring at him over the top of the piano, his face composed and indecipherable.

Dave hadn't even realized that he'd stopped playing. He doesn't know what to say.

Blaine's fingers tap out something across the piano keys and Dave can't help but stare because he thinks that might be the song from Jaws. There's something, a moment where Blaine just watches him, before his gaze drops back to the keys and he says, "You may as well come in."

And that, well, that's maybe the last thing he expected.

"You're blocking the only exit anyway."

And Dave wants to, is the thing, and he could. But there's something sharp in the set of Blaine's jaw and there's a little bit of bite in his voice and Dave's heart is pounding, it feels like all the air in his lungs just got sucked out of him, and he realizes that really, he's terrified of this boy.

He backs away from the door and those same notes grow louder in his ears, chasing him away down the corridor.

.

These days he feels like his Letterman jacket doesn't fit quite right anymore, like it weighs too much or it's too tight, like it's trying to hold him in. Like he can't breathe.

Sometimes, he thinks he might hate it just a little.

He sees them coming, is the thing.

Dave's at his locker and Blaine's alone for once, stopped in the corridor to rearrange the contents of his satchel only a few feet away, and Dave sees them from the corner of his eye. It's just Williams and Strando and that one guy who'd been in his Geometry class last year, but it's clear who their target is the moment he sees the big plastic cups in their hands.

The hallway is clearing fast, the general school population knowing better than to stick around lest they become targets, and Dave is frozen at his locker, his fingers clenched around a binder. He can't seem to move.

They call out, Williams says something like, "Hey fag," like it's the cleverest thing that's ever left his mouth and Blaine's head whips around and Dave watches, feet glued to the floor, as a wave of ice and three different flavors of syrup hit him all at once.

They keep walking, laughing to each other and saying something about double rainbows as they toss the empty cups aside and the second bell rings and the last of the stragglers disappear with them but Dave can't seem to move.

Blaine is making these low shuddery sounds, standing completely still as ice drips to the floor and Dave can't get his feet to move or his mouth to work because he doesn't think he's breathing, like his lungs have just stopped working. He can't even bring himself to pretend he's not staring.

Then Blaine's moving, his fingers white-knuckled as they clench around the strap of his bag and he moves stiffly towards the nearest bathroom.

His lungs abruptly decide they need air and the sudden intake of breath is violently loud. His hands slide off of the binder they've been clenched around and his feet are moving, his locker door left wide open behind him, as he follows the melting trail Blaine left in his wake.

He pushes through the bathroom door and Blaine whips around and he looks so entirely uncomposed, like he's ten seconds away from breaking apart, that Dave just freezes on the spot and wonders what the hell he's doing because this isn't looking out for himself, this isn't protecting himself, this is a bad idea.

Blaine sees him and he looks so exasperated, so at a loss, as he scrubs a hand over his face. He tugs at the sticky mess of his hair and breathes something that sounds an awful lot like, "Not now," as his satchel falls with a wet slap to the bathroom floor.

"Look," he breathes, and he's suddenly staring hard at Dave with this earnest, raw expression that terrifies him, "I know that you're busy not-dealing with your problems over there and, fine, whatever– take out a second mortgage on that closet for all I care, but can we not do this now? I can't deal with this today."

And the way he says it implies that this, Dave being here, is something that he's been dealing with. Like he hasn't basically been celebrating Dave's complete nonexistence since he got here - like this is something that happens all the time.

Dave wants to ask what he means by that but Blaine looks like he's about to cry and Dave just doesn't want to see that because, whatever else he is, Blaine has always been the one that seemed to have it together.

Where Kurt is sharp and defensive and grandiose; Blaine simply is. Even when he was just a smug, preppy kid in a private school uniform he was together and okay with who he is, like it's easy, like it's natural, and Dave had maybe thought that someday he could have that, that it was possible.

Dave's mouth is just kind of hanging open and he's staring and Blaine looks so frustrated as he turns away. Dave watches, strangely detached, as Blaine's feet skid out from beneath him and he hits the floor with a hard, wet thwack. Dave doesn't realize until a few seconds later that he has a hand outstretched, like he'd maybe thought to steady or catch or something. It falls limply back to his side and his fingers curl into a tight, trembling ball.

It's so quiet that Dave feels a little sick, like he wants to shake Blaine's shoulder just to make sure, except that shoulder is shaking of it's own accord and there's this weird sound that could be laughter but he's pretty sure is actually sobbing or some weird hybrid of the two.

He doesn't want to see this but he can't actually move, can only watch Blaine push himself up and sit making that weird noise, shoulders heaving, surrounded by the melted remains of three different flavors of slushy.

Dave doesn't know how long he stands there or Blaine sits, all he knows is that when Blaine sucks in a long rattling breath and says, "Can you please leave?" in a determinedly steady voice, it feels like it's been hours.

Dave stumbles and skids his way out of the bathroom like he can't get out of there fast enough, like he can't put enough space between them, because he feels kind of dizzy and there's melted ice everywhere and he doesn't even think about class, just barrels straight for the exit because how could he be so stupid?

Blaine knows.

His locker door is wide open, his stuff piled inside but he just keeps walking out through the doors, blinking against the glare of the sun that's bouncing off of car windshields and he makes it to his truck before he realizes that his keys are in his backpack and his backpack is in his locker but that means turning back.

He keeps walking.

The yell of, "Karofsky!" should be alarming, as should seeing Coach Bieste barreling towards him but instead he flounders aimlessly as she intercepts his path. "My players don't cut class," she's telling him before she's staring at him like she's realized something's wrong, something's different.

She grabs his arm and it sounds like he's underwater, or she is, or maybe they both are but all he knows is there are words tumbling off his tongue, words he's never said to anyone, that he wants to snatch back the moment his tongue wraps around them.

He says, "I'm gay," and it's like he's suddenly choking, like something inside him is broken and those words had just slipped out through the cracks, his face is wet and Coach Bieste's hand is clenched tight around his arm.

And she doesn't say, it's okay or you're not alone, she doesn't pull him into what would certainly be a terrifyingly awkward hug, instead she clasps his trembling shoulder and says, "You're okay, son."

It's supposed to be better, he's sure. It should be a relief, like having some great weight lifted. Isn't that the way it was supposed to go? Instead he's standing in the student parking lot with Bieste's hand squeezing his shoulder and he's crying and that's not supposed to be how it works. It's supposed to feel good.

She's saying, "You're okay," again, guiding him along back towards the school and god, no, he can't go back there. How can he go back there? Somewhere in that school Kurt Hummel is sitting at a desk and Blaine Anderson is washing slushy from his hair and they know, just like Coach Bieste knows, and it doesn't feel good, it feels awful.

"I need to go," he insists.

"My office," Bieste counters and they're already passing his open locker and she frowns as she steps over the slippery path of melted ice and syrup in the corridor. "I have a free period. You can sit in my office for a while."

.

A while turns out to be an entire afternoon while she does other things, him sitting numbly in a chair in the corner surrounded by trophies and Coach of the Year awards. He doesn't know, has never thought about, what she does when she isn't coaching the football team or teaching a gym class.

She doesn't make him talk, just lets him sit and sort his head out while she does her own thing and it's weird to see her filling out paperwork. She occasionally looks over at him, like she's considering what she could say, but then she'll just nod at him and look away.

He knows that it's heading towards the last class of the day when she puts aside her pile of paperwork and looks at him again. "Are you alright?"

Dave's pretty sure that the last thing he is, is alright but he nods, not able to bring himself to speak because the last time he opened his mouth he told someone. What if it hadn't been Bieste? What if he'd just blurted it out to anyone walking past?

"Have you talked to anyone?"

He tries to open his mouth again but it's like his jaw has locked on him and at least that means he won't go around just telling people, so he just shakes his head and pulls his jacket in tight around him.

"Ms Pillsbury?" she suggests and Dave feels the strangest urge to laugh.

"No," he manages to rasp out and he just feels tired now.

And he can see that she's thinking, that there's words like you should talk to your parents and it gets better running through her head, but she doesn't say them and Dave is grateful, for that at least. Instead she says, "My door is open," and Dave suppresses the urge to turn and look at the very closed door because, somehow, it feels nice to know that she'd listen if he did talk.

Maybe.

.

That night he's standing, waiting, in an open doorway. He can see the shiny bronze nameplate from the corner of his eye but every time he tries to read it the letters scatter and crawl away from him like spiders. He has a question on his lips but his feet, he thinks, are glued to the floor, because the ground stretches out like taffy beneath him when he tries to move.

There's someone sitting at the desk inside, a pen scribbling madly across the wooden surface, but when he looks again it isn't a desk, it's a piano. Blaine's head is cocked to the side, his eyes bright and challenging even as he drips slowly onto the piano keys. His eyes burn right through Dave, and crimson spills from his lips as he asks, "Are you just going to stand there?"

.

It's like the whole world is moving in slow motion. He spends his days clinging to a jacket that feels too tight, buries himself in a crowd of people who jeer and laugh at everyone else but don't seem to have much else in common at all.

.

He doesn't know what he's expecting really.

Coach Bieste claps him on the shoulder, once, when he's walking down the hallway for no good reason at all.

Blaine strides through the McKinley halls like that boy Dave had seen in the bathroom never existed at all, his head held high like he's still one of those stuck-up private school kids at heart. Like none of it had ever happened.

And now that he's seen Dave can't stop looking for him – trying to see if he can see that boy in the one who smiles and laughs and dazzles and deflects and Dave wonders if Blaine's any different to him, really.

Because is it really that different to hide behind a smile instead of a sneer?

So he watches and he wonders how anyone could smile in the face of the whispers and the laughter and the pushes. It doesn't make any sense. He wishes he could hate him.

He keeps looking anyway.

.

Kurt Hummel is standing by his truck.

He wants to turn around, to walk as fast as he can in the other direction, because he's known this was coming. He's been waiting for it since the day Kurt strode back into McKinley with his head held high.

There are plenty of people still milling around the parking lot, talking in small clumps and Dave feels his stomach twist as his feet keep trudging forward. Kurt's seen him, he knows, he can see the twist of displeasure on his face. The superior set of his jaw as he stands straight, turns his head and glares at him, not an inch of him so much as touching Dave's truck though it's clear who he's waiting for.

He waits until Dave's only feet away before he says, cold and pointed, "You need to stop."

It isn't like Dave can move anyway.

"Whatever it is you think you're doing with Blaine," Kurt clarifies sharply, derisively, like Dave is that simple. Hummel has a way of making him feel like he's two inches tall. Like his head is filled with sand.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he replies flatly, because he doesn't. He doesn't exist to Blaine Anderson.

"What is it with you?" Kurt snarls and this is what Dave remembers, the flash bang burn of Kurt's temper and the sting of his words. "What? Is it some caveman instinct? You see someone who accepts who they are and your pea-brain thinks, crush kill destroy because they have something you don't?"

"I don't," he tries to say again before his throat closes up and he's left to stare, blinking at Kurt Hummel who is trembling with anger, his chin raised and defiant.

"Blaine has a bad habit of caring for things he shouldn't," Kurt says, "He won't look out for himself but I will. He doesn't need this. Back off, Karofsky, I swear."

And his lips are forming words, an I'm Sorry that is lost beneath the sharp click of Kurt's boots across the tarmac and a cold reply of, "That's not good enough."

By the time Dave can bring himself to look up from his shoelaces Kurt's already gone.

.

He tries.

He doesn't watch the way Blaine's hair drips a soft sugary-pink into his shoulders. He doesn't look when the guy Blaine's sharing his History text with says something low beneath his breath and Blaine bursts into bright, startled laughter.

He doesn't see the Hockey guys loitering by a shiny, black car in the parking lot after school with the kind of casual intent that only ever meant bad news. He certainly doesn't sit in his truck to wait and see Puckermann and Hudson and Evans and even Mike Chang clear them off long before Blaine or Kurt even leave the building.

Dave tries not to see a lot of things.

Like the rest of his life lately, he fails miserably.

.

He doesn't know why he does it, really.

They won't shut up. His head is already half-buried in his locker and his fingers are twisted deep in the fabric of his Letterman jacket like it might remind him of who he is and what isn't their laughter, their obnoxious you should've seen his face, man, is Hummel's voice telling him that's not good enough.

He doesn't know why he does it.

Their voices, though, they pick at him. Pull at his attention and prod at the painfully tight feeling in his chest, they stirup all of that anger that's bubbling away inside of him all the time and he can't help it.

He doesn't know why he does it, but he does it anyway.

"Would you shut up?"

He turns around, because their sudden silence is kind of stunned and they're staring at him and Strando's snorting back laughter, eyes incredulous as he says, "Sorry, were we insulting your boyfriend, Karofsky?"

And he doesn't panic, exactly. It makes perfect, rational sense to punch Strando in his stupid, smug face.

The second, perhaps, isn't quite so rational, but after that the others are jumping in and there's a bloom of pain tearing across his jaw and the side of his head and an accompanying pain in his fist before they're being hauled apart and Coach Bieste is bellowing something right next to his ear.

It's later, sitting in her office nursing his aching hand and trying not to wince every time his teeth grit while Bieste talks in a low, angry voice with Figgins on the other side of her door that it occurs to him that maybe he does know why he did it.

It doesn't make him feel any better.

.

He's suspended for a week.

It's a miracle, really, that he hadn't been expelled, or at least that's what his father says when he arrives to pick him up. Dave doesn't think he wants to know what Bieste had said to keep him from expulsion.

It's strange to realize that he has someone in his corner for a change, that there had been someone who was willing to go in to bat for him. It's kind of nice.

His father spends an entire afternoon using his I'm very disappointed in you voice while his mother makes these sad, despairing little noises and watches him with dewy eyes as she hands over an icepack for his jaw.

It's an old routine by now and he knows what it is that they want, it's been stuck on his tongue for months now, desperate to escape, but he just can't.

Instead, when they ask, he shrugs and mutters, I don't know.

It's not like the disappointment on their faces is anything new anyway.

.

He's confined to the house, his phone and his Xbox hauled away into off-limits and the television in the living room equally forbidden. He thinks, maybe, that his parents know just how much he needs to be distracted from his thoughts.

They're trying to crack him.

He sits in his room and he tosses a baseball into the air, over and over, the smack of it hitting the old, leather glove the only punctuation in the utter silence of his room. He doesn't dare turn his stereo on, the last thing he needs is to hear the wrong song and have his efforts in crowding out all those thoughts he doesn't want to deal with overthrown.

His jaw is aching and swollen, if he concentrates on the pain of that, of the smack of the ball into his glove, then maybe he won't think about anything else.

.

He doesn't know if this is a dream or a nightmare.

The door looms wide open before him and there, beyond it, is the piano. Blaine perched atop it and watching intently, his knees splayed in a way that's pure invitation and Dave doesn't know why his feet won't move except that there's crimson dripping from Blaine's bare toes, pooling on the floor beneath his feet.

He hum's, tilts his head to the side and Dave thinks he might hear laughter echoing in the empty room as Blaine asks, "Are you just going to stand there?"

.

Three days in and he knows he won't outlast them.

There was a time when Dave was much better at this, at redirecting his thoughts until even he believed, sometimes, what he wanted everyone else to. (He doesn't like Hummel. He stares because he looks ridiculous. He wants to be close so that Hummel will hear him when he calls him a freak. )

It's harder now and he thinks, maybe, that this is what those PFLAG meetings Hummel insisted upon had been designed for. Like all that talking he'd tried to tune out from his quiet corner had crept in beneath his skin and hid there, waiting to torment him.

Be honest, Dave.

Face the truth, Dave.

You know what you want, Dave.

He wonders if it's ironic that the voice in his head sounds a lot like Hummel's when all that Hummel has to say to him these days consists of, Not good enough.

Maybe, the thing that scares him the most is the realization that he wants to be good enough. That it isn't Hummel that he wants to be good enough for, not anymore.

He wants.

Isn't that the problem, though?

.

He blares his stereo for the entirety of day four, so loud that the walls tremble beneath his fingertips and his bones hum, and maybe he bellows out the lyrics to 'Radio Nowhere' when it plays for the third time that day (he's found that singing along to classic rock stations is cathartic in a miserable, twisted way that the sugary pop of Top 40 stations can't compete with).

He thinks of the football stadium full to bursting and the roar of 'Thriller' in his ears and that feeling he'd gotten, like he could walk on air. He maybe understands why they put up with it all, now, to be able to do this somewhere other than the confines of their bedrooms.

Maybe it's worth it.

It slips out somewhere between a bite of lasagne and the immediate gulp of water afterwards and it isn't like he'd actually meant to say it but he knows they've heard him because his mother is staring, wide-eyed and stunned and his dad's fork is hovering halfway between his plate and his mouth.

"Pardon?"

Dave breathes in, thinks, here we go, and repeats himself slowly, heart thumping so loud that he isn't entirely sure that he's said it until his father's fork lowers back to his plate and he shifts slowly.

"Is this," his dad begins before clearing his throat and trying again, "Is this why you've been acting out recently, David?"

Well, it isn't quite 'get out of my house.'

"I don't know," Dave replies, herding beef mince across his plate with his fork like it might, somehow, help him avoid this conversation. "Maybe, I guess."

"Was that," there's another weird pause like his father is gathering his thoughts, "Is this what that thing with that kid at school was about? You were-"

Dave feels his entire spine lock up and his head bows further over his plate because no and yes and the last thing he wants, right now, is to examine his actions towards Kurt Hummel.

"Dad, I don't-"

"You should have told us," his mother cuts him off and he's been so focused, so afraid of his father's disapproval that he hadn't even noticed her getting to her feet.

By the time he actually notices she's already on him, her face buried awkwardly against his neck and she's hugging him in a way that he hasn't really allowed since he was ten years old and was suddenly too cool to be hugged by his mom.

It hurts in the best possible way, makes him feel like that broken part of him that's been slowly spilling all of his secrets out in trickles and waves isn't broken, really, it's just starting to open. It feels good, somehow, in a way that blurting it out in the school parking lot to Coach Bieste had failed to.

His dad is watching him and he still looks surprised, a little confused, but his voice is steady and sure when he says, "I'm glad you told us, David."

Dave thinks that maybe he is too.

.

People are looking at him funny.

Granted, there's a pretty spectacular bruise on his jaw and Dave is just back from suspension which means the rumor mill has had a full week in high gear to make things up, but still. It unsettles him.

He doesn't like the looks, likes the whispers even less. He doesn't want to know what they're saying.

His second period Biology class is an experiment in torture. Dave can hear the whispering the moment he enters the classroom and it's practically buzzing by the time Blaine drops into his seat.

He tries not to look, because he's sure he's being watched, but last week had felt like a lifetime and his eyes betray him. It would be so much easier if he could just hate him.

Blaine's untouched, perfect, not a hair on his head out of place and Dave lets himself think that maybe it's because of him. He searches a little harder, the space behind Blaine's ear where his hair fights it's restraints and escapes in tiny dark ringlets, down the length of his jawline and the taut, stretched skin of his throat as he leans over to rummage through his satchel.

Dave wants to think why him, why does he even matter, because Blaine Anderson is just another boy. He isn't Sam Evans who spends hours in the gym or Kurt Hummel who wears pants so tight they should be illegal. He isn't any one of the muscled-up athletes in his gym class or on the football team. He's just a dumb rich kid who once said you're not alone like he actually believed it. Dave doesn't even know him.

But now that he's being honest with himself, (and really, even if he isn't ready to be honest with the entire school that's what matters, right?) he can admit that he wants to.

God, he wants-

That's the thing, really, because he doesn't need this has been running on a loop through his head since that day in the parking lot, that and not good enough and back off because Hummel has an uncanny way of getting into his head and what would a boy like Blaine Anderson want with someone like him?

He belatedly notices the pen that clatters across the floor and skids to a stop against his sneakers, his eyes dropping just a moment too late to avoid being caught by bright hazel eyes. Blaine has turned entirely around in his seat and the expression on his face is politely puzzled, lips pursed as his eyes dip toward his pen and up to Dave's face again and hesitates and that's it, really, right there.

Dave hunches around his desk to pick it up before he can change his mind and his breath catches in his lungs, a tremendous awful moment that swells and swells, as he extends his hand to offer it back and Blaine just stares at him. It cracks open with the slow curl of Blaine's lips (hardly the equivalent to one of those easy, blinding smiles he so readily gives to seemingly anyone else) and his fingers graze Dave's as he accepts the pen from him and says, "Thank you."

Dave nods, because he doesn't trust himself to say anything that isn't lame or embarrassing or cruel under the scrutiny of his classmates, and he watches Blaine turn back around in his seat, twirling the pen between his fingers.

He rubs a thumb absently over the tingling nerves in his fingertips, unable to ignore the curl of warmth that settles in his chest and he thinks, as he splits his attention between the empty page where his Biology notes should be and where Blaine is leaning over his own table, that maybe this could be progress.