Maybe three days after exchanging those emails with Dave Karofsky, Kurt IMed Blaine about the whole thing to get his input. Not because he had any real worry about making his ex-bully a pseudo-almost-friend, but because he wanted to know on a scale of Rachel Berry to, say, Joan Crawford, exactly how crazy was he?
He doesn't mind the idea of being insane, he just wants to be able to enjoy it for what it is.
Blaine was odd about the whole thing, though. He asked a lot of questions about how Dave was acting in the halls, and whether he smiles strangely or not, and if Kurt felt safe. Things like that.
It's clear to Kurt that Blaine thinks what Kurt didn't think – what Dave thought from the start that he would think. That Dave is just stalking him in a new way.
Kurt laughed off that concern. He knows it isn't the case. "Anyway," he said into his phone when he was done playing IM tag and wanted to talk for real, "he wasn't ever stalking me before. I mean, yeah, every time he saw me he would charge, but it's not like he went around looking for me. I had to chase him down just to yell at him."
"It's your choice," Blaine said with a contained little sigh. "I just can't help thinking about the bullies I used to know, and the tricks they could pull."
Kurt laughed, though he shouldn't have. "I don't think we're allowed to stereotype bullies when we fight so hard against them stereotyping us. Dave isn't like those guys you went to school with. Unless they were all closet-cases, anyway."
He still isn't sure why he protested so hard, except...in his mind Karofsky was settling in comfortably as Dave, and Kurt was starting to feel safe when he saw red in the hallways of the school. That was a new development that he wanted to hang on to.
"You know," he said into the silence on the other end of the phone, "I think he might have even danced with me at prom if I hadn't turned it into some Coming Out moment. I mean, he'd've played it off as a joke, but I think he would have."
It's strange, the things people regret in hindsight. Kurt doesn't regret taking Blaine's admittedly-stupid advice about confronting his psycho-violent bully all by his onesies, at least not now that the trauma of his first kiss is distant enough that he can dismiss it. But he does regret bringing Blaine to face Dave down in a public stairwell between classes, because even as it was happening he realized that 'public' and 'crowded' were two things a furious closet case would want to avoid if forced into a talk like that.
And he regrets telling Dave to come out at prom, because he really thinks Dave would have danced with him. He was standing beside Kurt on stage, and walking down those stairs with him to the dance floor, and he didn't hesitate once until Kurt opened his stupid let's-have-a-Lifetime-moment mouth.
Even a brief dance played off like a joke would have made a huge impact on someone as scared as Dave.
Blaine interrupted his train of thought by teasing him about his actual dance partner not being good enough for him, and they let it go.
Now Kurt sits in a white room with massive, excruciatingly generic Currier and Ives prints on the walls, and he thinks about calling Blaine but he doesn't want to have to call Dave 'Karofsky' right now, and Blaine gets way too pinched when he says Dave instead.
Besides, his hands won't stop shaking enough to dial a number.
Mr. Schue is over by a row of pay phones, hunched with his back turned. Finn sits beside Kurt, since he refused to leave his side after the gym. Sue Sylvester sits across from Kurt and Finn, her spine straight and her eyes sharp on everyone and everything moving around them. She's still a little more wide-eyed than normal.
Kurt can't think about how strange her reactions are compared to the Coach Sylvester that he knows. Because that means thinking about what she must have walked in on. It means wondering if she's the one who put those towels over Dave, and if so what did she see underneath? It means wondering if she came in while this...this attack was happening or if Dave had to lay there on the ground in the girls' locker room, alone, hurt, waiting to be found...
It means thinking about things that make him hyperventilate.
"Easy," Finn says when he starts to tense. He leans over and nudges Kurt's arm.
Kurt lets out a breath and shakes the images from his head, turning away from Coach Sylvester and staring at a tacky pastel-dotted print of a cottage in the woods.
Hospital art. Honestly.
Mr. Schue slams the phone down suddenly, so hard that more than just Kurt and Finn turn at the sound. He comes back towards them with clouds in his face, and Coach Sylvester stands up to meet him halfway.
The elevator doors open before they can exchange words, and Kurt is distracted by the one thing that might bring a little bit of a center back to his universe.
"Dad?"
He's up before he knows it, and suddenly his dad's arms are around him and he's trying so damned hard not to sob again that he has to squeeze his eyes shut so tight that they hurt.
"Hey, kiddo." His dad sounds faintly baffled, a lot worried, but he hugs back without pause.
There's never been anything that Kurt's dad couldn't make at least a little better for him, so Kurt buries his face against his dad's chest, smelling the traces of sweat and motor oil that have hung on his dad's work clothes as far back as Kurt can remember. His dad doesn't pull away, doesn't loosen his grip. He slips one hand to the back of Kurt's neck and pats his back with the other, and Kurt wants this to make things better but it doesn't.
There are voices around him, over his head. It sounds like white noise. There are movements and he gets a little jostled but he doesn't focus on any of it. It takes his dad talking over his head to even make him aware of any of it. His dad's sharp and surprised "What?" makes Kurt lift his head and blink around like he's waking up from a nightmare.
Schue and Finn stand there, furious and pale-and-awkward in turn. Behind them Coach Sylvester is now pacing, tense and wired like she's just looking for a chance to pounce on someone.
Mr. Schue talks, and Kurt has to blink hard and focus on his mouth before his brain registers the words. "-doesn't plan on coming down. That's all I know."
"Jesus," Kurt's dad mutters.
Kurt frowns. "What? What happened? Is there news?"
His dad releases him, but the hand around Kurt's neck slides to his shoulder and squeezes. He smiles, but his eyes are blazing. "Go sit down, son. Let me find out what's happening and I'll let you know."
Kurt wants to argue, but he sees from Finn's face that Finn heard it all. He steps back silently, unembarrassed when he sees the wet stain he's left over the patch with his dad's name on it.
Finn leads him back to their chairs, and Kurt speaks before they even sit. "What happened?"
Sure enough, Finn doesn't hesitate. "Mr. Schue called Karofsky's dad. I guess he isn't going to come down here?"
"What?"
Finn shrugs awkwardly, but his eyes are troubled. "Kurt...dude, did you know Karofsky's gay?"
Kurt frowns and thinks about that question, and his eyes go back to Mr. Schue and his dad and their solemn conversation. "What?" he asks again, needing time to make all these pieces fit.
"Yeah. That's what Mr. Schue said. I guess Karofsky's dad kicked him out for being queer, and he's doing this whole I-don't-have-a-son thing now. I guess Karofsky's been staying with friends the last couple of nights? I don't know, I only heard what Schue said."
"But..." Kurt looks from the adults to Finn and back again. He feels hushed and small. "But we met his dad. He was even on my side about...about everything."
Finn just shrugs. Kurt's eyes go back behind the little desk where a couple of nurses sit. The double doors behind them are where they took Dave.
"You did know."
Kurt looks back at Finn.
Finn's expression is troubled, but it's hard to tell what the cause is. There are a lot of troubling things happening around them. "You're not even surprised, except about his dad."
Kurt nods. Finn already knows, denying it won't do any good.
Finn leans in. "Is it...um." He glances towards their dad and Coach Sylvester and lowers his voice. "Is it like a gaydar thing?"
Kurt gapes at him for a moment, then suddenly leans in and crushes himself against the thin faux-wooden arm of his chair so that he can grab Finn in a hug.
Finn lets out a surprised breath. He pats at Kurt's back uncertainly.
"You almost made me laugh," Kurt says into his bony shoulder. "Even now, you almost made me laugh. Thanks, Finn."
"Uh. Yeah. Don't mention it."
He lets go of his baffled stepbrother and his thin smile fades. He looks back at the double doors behind the nurses.
Eventually his dad comes over and sits beside him. Kurt can smell motor oil and it makes him want to turn and cry, wail, babble to his dad about how horrible it was and how he's never seen anything like that outside of movies...
But it's not about him. Not yet. They need to find out what's happening behind those double doors, and then he can go home and make it about himself for a while.
He really did think Paul Karofsky was a good person. A better person than his son, at least. That's what Kurt came away from their two meetings thinking. He expected Dave's dad to be a foul, ignorant bully. He almost hoped for it, to explain Dave to him in a way that made sense. But he didn't seem that way at all.
Now Dave is lost behind double doors and his dad isn't even making the drive to check on him.
A few doctors come out now and then, always making Kurt and Sylvester and Mr. Schue tense expectantly. But it's maybe two hours after Burt Hummel arrived that one of those doctors speaks quietly to the front desk nurse and she nods him towards the waiting group.
Kurt is on his feet in a moment, but Sue Sylvester beats him over there.
"Well?"
The doctor thankfully doesn't smile or make small talk or even bother asking if they're here for Dave. He looks around at them and speaks solemnly. "Who here is family?"
Kurt doesn't even have time to panic about none of them being related, or to think about lying in order to get news, before a voice answers confidently. "I am."
He has to fist his hands to keep from gaping over at Coach Sylvester.
The doctor reaches out for her arm and nods her towards the back, and somehow she doesn't brush him off.
Kurt opens his mouth too late to add himself to the lie, but Mr. Schue reaches out and touches his shoulder. "She'll tell us what she finds out."
He sounds sure of those words, but Kurt knows Coach Sylvester. Why would she tell anyone anything? Why is she even here? The closest thing Kurt has seen to a soft side from that woman – aside from anything having to do with her sister – is when she took his side against Dave.
No. He can't wonder. Can't think about it. It makes him think of bloody towels on the floor of the locker room. It makes him wonder what she saw, how it must have been truly horrible to shake someone like her up so badly.
He shuts his eyes and turns away from the doors. He can't help but see an outstretched hand with torn fingernails and gashes in the knuckles. He can't help but think about the amount of blood streaking between broad, bare legs.
Dave is so strong. Kurt is thin and not the tallest boy in the world, but he isn't insubstantial. When Dave was Karofsky he would fling Kurt around like he didn't weigh an ounce. He's strong, and he's big. He must have fought back. Who could have taken on someone like Dave Karofsky? Who could have held him down, resisted his punches?
Was there more than one of them? Did someone hold him down while someone else...?
God.
Did he shout for help or was he muffled? Did he lay there alone or did Sue Sylvester of all people come in soon enough to break up whatever was happening? Why did he say Kurt's name? Why did he get her to ask for Kurt? Why did any of this fucking happen?
He's shaking, badly, and suddenly his dad is right there and Kurt doesn't realize that he's crying again until he feels the dampness of his dad's shirt against his cheek. He clings, grasping at his dad, seeing Dave's glazed eyes and Dave's shy smile in the hallway, and thinking about always seeing a hint of red in his peripherals when he moves down the halls lately.
They haven't talked, not since those emails. They should have. Kurt has his email address – he should have written to him. Kurt should have known that he was thrown out of his house. He shouldn't have left him on his own to deal with it.
No one has so much as called Kurt names in the last week. Dave has kept him safe, beret or no beret. Even before the emails. Even at prom. The election was a humiliation, but the students clapped when Kurt took his crown, and they joined in when he danced with his boyfriend.
And Dave ran out alone, because Kurt couldn't keep his smug mouth shut.
God. God, Kurt isn't religious and he knows no one answers to that name, but other people put so much power in the word and so he thinks it to himself. God, Jesus. Christ. Why, why, why?
His dad is making noises about them leaving, about dinner and homework and a whole world that apparently exists outside of the hospital waiting room.
But the double doors open and a pale Sue Sylvester strides out, and she heads for Kurt without asking anyone's okay. "I told them they should let one of his friends in."
Kurt pulls away from his dad and Finn, getting to his feet without being aware of his body moving. He stares at her, and she's still pale and her mouth is set tightly and he reaches out when she offers her hand and she tugs him back away from his family, back towards those double doors.
His dad makes a soft sound of uncertain protest behind him, but Kurt doesn't hesitate.
He does pause when the doors shut behind him, when he's safely inside the inner hallway. Coach Sylvester stops and looks back at him, dropping his hand like even in this state she's still afraid to seem too soft.
"Is he...awake?"
She frowns. "No. Pumped full of Lohan-level drugs. Come on, Porcelain."
"Why...why me?"
She seems annoyed at not being obeyed, or maybe just impatient to get back. She looks down the hallway and hisses out a breath.
When she moves in close he can't help but tense. "He thought you were next on their list. He was sure. That's why he asked for you at the school, that's why you need to come say something to him now. I don't know and I don't care when you two started giving a crap for each other. I don't care if you still hate his guts or if everything that ever happened between you was some depraved domestic abuse issue. All I care about is that what he was scared of when I found him was something happening to you. Now come on before I pick you up and carry you."
He goes when she leads. He's back to that thin, shallow breathing he couldn't stop back in school.
The ward isn't like what he used to watch on Scrubs. There's a lot of equipment but the rooms aren't rooms, just little closets partitioned off by thin curtains. Some of the curtains are left open, and he looks in at people laying on thin cots, and worried women holding the hands of old ladies, and he has to imagine what's behind the curtains that are closed.
Coach Sylvester stops in front of one drawn curtain. Her frenetic pace stills and she draws in a breath. Stealing herself.
Kurt doesn't have time to do the same before her thin, calloused fingers have looped around his wrist and he's being pulled in behind the curtain with her.
He wants to do this slowly, but there's nothing to look at in there except the bed and so that's where his eyes instantly go.
Dave dwarfs the cot. His feet hang off the end of it, his shoulders are nearly too broad to fit across. There's a thin sheet over him, pulled up over his arms and shoulders and leaving only his head uncovered. He breathes, and a machine beside him moves up and down and a screen blips with his heartbeat as a display of numbers goes up and down, up and down, but unlike what Kurt knows from tv it's all completely silent.
His head is covered with a bandage, and Kurt remembers how his hair glittered so wetly in the dim locker room lighting. His lip is swollen, his jaw is red and there's a raw scraped patch of skin on his chin. His eyes are both dark with bruises. There's a tube going down his throat and Kurt wants to ask why. Wants to ask if he stopped breathing or if it has to do with the drugs they gave him or what. He wants to know everything.
He steps up close to the cot, looking down at this oversize meathead and his swollen, discolored face.
All he can think about is Dave smiling at him in the hallway that first day after their emails. Himself, so smug, so enlightened, deciding that he's big enough to call the guy by his first name, and Dave smiling back as if he likes the idea but he's too shy to say so out loud.
He doesn't know Dave Karofsky at all.
They should have talked. He should have emailed. He should have thanked Dave for following him, for watching his back, even if he didn't think it was owed to him.
They should have danced together.
He swallows and reaches out. Dave's arms and hands are under the sheet so Kurt contents himself to lay his hand lightly on his shoulder. Maybe he isn't hurt there, maybe it's safe to touch.
"Is he going to be okay?" he asks, wishing that Dave's eyes would open so that he could see the green of them that he never noticed before today. He thought they were nothing but brown. He didn't ever see the startling hazel.
Coach Sylvester answers slowly, like she's stirring from her own deep thoughts. "He isn't dying," she says stiffly.
"I know what happened," Kurt says, stroking anxious fingertips down Dave's shoulder as if it will offer any kind of comfort. "I saw. When the towel fell..." He swallows.
"Then what do you want me to say?" she snaps back, and he somehow knows that the tension in her voice isn't dangerous. Not for him, anyway.
"Whatever the doctor said," he answers, and he can't move his eyes from Dave.
"He's got a concussion," she says, fast and resentful. "They hit his head hard with something."
He nods, picturing the bloody dent in the wall.
"Broken nose. Dislocated both his shoulders. Cracked ribs, none broken by some miracle. A lot of cuts and bruises."
Then she hesitates.
He still can't look at her, which probably helps them both.
"They tore his...tore the muscle pretty damned bad, but the doctor doesn't think he's got any...any internal..." She lets out a breath.
Then he understands which muscle they tore. He shuts his eyes, remembering bare legs and blood. He doesn't realize he's shaking until her hand falls on his shoulder to still him.
"You two friends?" she asks, despite her earlier claim not to care.
They aren't friends, really. They aren't anything. Everything they were to each other no longer applies. Still, he nods.
"Then take a few minutes and talk to your friend. I don't care if he can hear you or not." Her hand slides off and footsteps take her away, but he turns suddenly before she can draw the curtain.
"What did you see?" he asks, sudden and startling even to him.
She stiffens. She doesn't look back. "They were running when I got there," she says simply, and then she's out of sight on the other side of the curtain.
They. More than one. They, but...but Kurt is glad that Dave wasn't left alone, hurt and scared, before she found him.
He turns back to the bed. There's a chair against the wall, nearly lost in the equipment around it, and he pulls it up to the side of the bed.
It's not quiet enough. The machines don't beep or anything, but he can hear footsteps, voices. That curtain is no real barrier between them and the world.
Coach Sylvester ordered him to talk, but he has nothing to say. There is absolutely nothing, until he remembers why she asked for him in the first place.
"I'm here," he says, whispers, to Dave's slack face. "I'm okay. Nobody's coming after me." He draws in a breath and tries to stop his voice from shaking. "You kept me safe, just like you promised."
If this was any other day he would be horrified by the fresh tears. Constantly-sobbing-and-dramatic is one of those gay stereotypes he doesn't like to embody. He's shed a lot of tears in seventeen years, but each of them was earned. Each of them was for something big. And so he isn't embarrassed, because his dad throwing Finn out of their house for calling Kurt's room decor faggy is nothing compared to this. For all the drama and tension at McKinley High School, this is a level of reality that makes everything else pale in comparison.
Kurt cried for Coach Sylvester when her sister died. He cried at his father's bedside after his heart attack. Those are the only things he can think of that rate close.
That this can happen to anyone is jarring. That he saw it with his own two eyes, saw the limp aftermath of it, is horrible. That it's someone he knows, someone with a huge temper and a mountain of fear, and a shy smile, and an apparent hatred for using apostrophes in his emails...the only other gay boy at McKinley that Kurt knows about...
There aren't words.
He hopes for movement, hopes for the shifting of eyelids at least, but there's nothing. He sits for a while, occasionally letting Dave know that he's there and he's okay, in case Dave can hear him. But after a while the curtain pushes back and a long shadow falls over the bed.
"Time to go, Porcelain. Your dad thinks I'm traumatizing you keeping you back here."
Kurt snorts, a cynical and harsh sound. His dad is too late to stop the trauma, and it didn't happen at the hospital.
Sylvester nods her agreement of that snort, but she stays by the open curtain until he stands up and leaves the bed behind.
"Someone should stay," Kurt says as they move down the hall.
"Don't worry, kid," she answers grimly. "Nobody's kicking Aunt Sue out of here."
The good thing about knowing the dark side of Sue Sylvester is that Kurt knows she's right. No one can move her when she wants to stay put.
He's got two messages and five texts from Blaine when he remembers he has a phone, and he only has to read the first one to see that Blaine found out something happened.
He calls, sitting on his bed and clutching the phone tightly.
"Kurt, thank God, are you okay? I'm worried sick over here."
Maybe he's all cried out, because Blaine's honest concern doesn't do more than make him feel tired. "I'm fine. Nothing happened to me."
"Mercedes said she had to call the police? That someone left school in an ambulance, and that you never came back to class?"
He frowns, leaning back against the wall behind his bed. "She didn't say anything more?"
"She didn't know! Nobody knows, I guess. She said there's a rumor that a bunch of football players missed the rest of school, but...Come on! What happened? Did they try something? Did someone hurt you, or-"
"I said I was fine, Blaine." He doesn't meant for that to come out so sharply, but he doesn't take it back. "Look, I'll tell you everything tomorrow, promise. I'm just really exhausted right now, okay?"
Blaine says "Fine," and it's only a little edged. Kurt hangs up with a sigh, but a moment later his phone buzzes with a text and he reads:
I love you, remember that. Get some sleep.
And he smiles.
That night he dreams about a football game in slow motion, the cheering crowd and the chants of the Cheerios. For some reason it's being played inside the gym, and even as he sits there watching and clapping he somehow knows that behind the doors going to the locker rooms, someone is screaming. Someone is yelling for help, and nobody in the whole world can hear them.
