Kurt lets ten minutes go by, because he's pretty sure that Dave needs some recovery time from his panic attack. The sounds from the bathroom have all fallen silent, and there's no noise from upstairs, and eventually he gets tired of stacking and re-stacking a pile of dvds on the coffee table.

Finally he crosses the living room and goes back to the bathroom door and knocks quietly. "Are you coming out?"

There's a pause. Dave's voice is low, rough, when he answers. "If I ask you for a blanket and pillow could I just stay in here?"

Kurt smiles faintly at the door. "No."

He hears movement on the other side of the door, slow and stumbling, so he doesn't speak again. He leans back against the wall and waits.

The sink turns on and shuts off, and when the door finally opens Dave stands there with a damp, red face and eyes that instantly go past Kurt trying to see around the corner.

"They're gone," Kurt says softly. "And everyone's upstairs."

Dave doesn't answer, but his shoulders relax a little. He reaches up to swipe at a bead of water on his chin, and Kurt can't help but see how badly his hands are shaking.

"Sorry," he says. "That was..."

Kurt clears his throat. "Puck already admitted that they're all dumbasses, and Finn's apologized on behalf of the group. I think that's enough 'sorry' for one evening, so keep yours." He reaches out, only a little hesitant, and lets his hand rest on Dave's arm. "Come on, we'll go upstairs, you can get some rest."

"Your family think I'm psycho yet?" Dave asks, tensing a little under Kurt's hand but relaxing again when they start moving back to the living room.

"To be fair," Kurt says, injecting way more humor into his voice than he's feeling, "my family has mostly thought you were psycho for months now." And then he holds his breath, not looking at Dave, because that's the kind of joke that could backfire.

Dave snorts quietly after a moment. "And Finn and his pals already hated me. No harm done, then, I guess."

No harm to anyone but Dave. Kurt doesn't bother saying that, though, or arguing with it.

"You should know something about Finn and his pals," he says, feeling Dave relax under his arm when they make it to the living room and every trace of the crowd and their letterman jackets is gone. "Even decent people trying to do good things can be complete idiots. No one personifies that quite as perfectly as Finn."

They get to the foot of the stairs and Kurt glances over at Dave.

Dave eyes the stairway, and the arm not under Kurt's grip comes up, hand sliding to his side. He makes a face but draws in a deep breath and steels himself.

Kurt squeezes his arm. "Your ribs?" he asks quietly, remembering those things he doesn't want to think about, like cracked ribs and dislocated shoulders.

"I guess puking up everything I ate this week doesn't count as taking it easy," Dave confirms. "Doc's gonna be pissed." But he reaches out and grips the railing hard. "If you laugh at me when this takes an hour, I'm leaving."

"I'm offended at the implication, but luckily for you I'm too classy to show it. Let's go."

Dave flashes him a small, shaky smile, and Kurt returns it, and they start up.

Dave isn't a small guy. Kurt isn't a weakling, but he's weighed down not only by half of Dave's weight, but by this gnawing sense of guilt and responsibility and cold knowledge that if anything else happens to Dave in Kurt's house it is absolutely no one but Kurt's fault.

It ends up taking something closer to five minutes than an hour, and Kurt knows from Dave's set jaw and pale face that he's moving faster and taking on more of his own weight than he should. Kurt doesn't say anything, remembering what his dad said earlier about no one wanting to seem strong more than a teenage boy.

When they reach the top of the stairs, Dave keeps moving, step by step, not even pausing to celebrate the minor victory. His eyes are narrow with determination, and his hand clutches at his side in a way that almost makes Kurt want to go get his dad, but they reach the door to the plain little guest room and Kurt reaches out and pushes it open fast so Dave can keep up his momentum.

There's a bright red poster on the wall.

It catches Kurt's eye instantly, and it's unexpected (and red, which he's back to associating with bad) so he stops and turns to Dave like he can protect him from it somehow.

Dave's eyes go right to it, of course, but his reaction isn't anything like downstairs. His eyes get wide and surprised, and his trudging feet stop in the doorway.

He looks around, past Kurt without seeming to see him there, and a strange expression forms that Kurt doesn't understand. Strange, but he doesn't get tense. Some of the color comes back to his face, and he trudges past Kurt and looks around.

Kurt turns to watch him but his eyes catch on that red again, and this time he takes a moment and actually looks at it. It's red and white, bright, but it's a logo that looks familiar somehow, and at the bottom are the words Detroit Red Wings.

Hockey, he remembers from somewhere. And then he looks around the rest of the small room.

There are books on the little dresser, a stack of magazines. The closet is open, full of strange clothes. There's a computer, a plain laptop, sitting on the bedside table. Another poster on the opposite wall, some football player Kurt doesn't recognize. The comforter on the bed is unfamiliar, dark maroon and worn-looking.

On the shelf high in the closet is a familiar duffel bag, deflated and empty, and beside it another worn suitcase.

Dave moves to the bed and sits heavily. The hand he doesn't have clamped around his ribs reaches out, his fingers brushing over the shut lid of the laptop, over a faded and half-removed sticker of the McKinley High School's team logo.

Kurt remembers something his dad said earlier, at the hospital. Words he didn't pay attention to at the time, about how he took off from work for a few hours that day and ran some errands. He doesn't know if he should be furious at Paul Karofsky all over again for letting his son be removed from his house this way by a near-stranger, or if he should just focus on how incredibly lucky he is to have the dad he's got.

Kurt sees the brightness in Dave's eyes as he looks around at his things all moved into this new room.

"You can talk to him about it if you want," Kurt says. He clears his throat when his voice crackles a little. "But I suddenly get the feeling dad's already planning for you to be here for a while."

"Yeah. I..." Dave looks up at him. "I...I think I just need...some sleep. Or..." His throat works, and his lips press tight together.

Kurt understands instantly. He is strangely reluctant to nod, though, to slip backwards to the door. "Get some rest," he says quickly, seeing that Dave's reaching his breaking point fast. "I'll see you in the morning."

Dave nods fast. His face bows, hiding his expression.

Kurt wants to say more, to go over there and sit beside him and let his shirt get soaked again. But no one wants to seem strong more than a teenage boy, and Dave's let Kurt see way more than he probably would have chosen to any other time. So Kurt slips through the door and shuts it behind him, and he stands there long enough to hear the first muffled sounds of Dave giving in to his roller-coaster of a day.

He stops at his dad and Carole's bedroom door, and knocks quietly. "Dad?"

"He's asleep, Kurt," Carole answers through the door, obviously used to how his dad can sleep through screams and explosions once he's out for the night. "Hug him in the morning."

Kurt laughs at that wetly. "Night, Carole." He moves to his own door, and with only one last look back at the door to the guest room, Dave's room, he moves in and drags himself to his own bed.

He has plans for tonight. Had plans, anyway. A stern talking-to with Blaine to make him stop his passive-aggressive anti-Karofsky campaign, and then a long talk with Dave about Azimio. The second one is obviously not in the cards, but he digs his phone from his pocket and drops onto his back on his bed.

It rings once, then twice, and when Blaine answers there's a moment of fumbling. "Kurt?" He's all but slurring, and Kurt winces when he realizes it's probably later than he thinks.

"Kurt? Are you okay? It's late, what's..."

Kurt wants to go through his mental list of lecture topics. He wants to start by telling Blaine that he's wrong about Dave, that he can't tell him details but he can tell him that Dave didn't do anything to himself just to get Kurt's attention. He wants to tell Blaine that Dave is now staying at his house, and that if he wants to get angry about that he can just come down here and see Dave for himself, how bad he is and how badly he needs to be here.

He wants to tell Blaine, tell someone, about facing down Azimio, and talking him into going to the police. About Sue Sylvester and how she gave Dave her phone number and she has a nickname for him now, and she hates people but she made Dave smile.

He wants to talk about his dad, about Dave's dad, and how it's so entirely unfair that from one family to another there can be such a huge, gaping difference in priorities. He wants to tell Blaine about Finn and Puck and the guys, and how they meant well but drove Dave into blind panic and made him puke so hard he might have hurt himself.

God, he wants to tell Blaine how that's suddenly Kurt's biggest fear in the world, that he'll do something like that. That he'll be well-intentioned and trying to help but he'll get things so wrong that he ends up doing some real damage.

He doesn't know what he's doing. He doesn't have any idea how to help with something like this, how to deal with his own weird, scattered feelings about it all. He didn't ask Azimio, and he isn't sure he wants to know, exactly who it was who did this to Dave. Because that means putting a face to it. A young face in a letterman jacket, a face he knows from school. More than one face.

He doesn't understand people. The kids from school, Paul Karofsky. He doesn't understand that sort of hate, and how it can make people attack this way.

He doesn't know how to help Dave, and he's petrified of doing it wrong, but if someone was there who did know what to do and volunteered to take Dave away and help him...Kurt would fight it. Because the only thing scarier than having to be the one who helps Dave through this is the thought of not being here.

There's too much to say and there are no words for any of it, and it all clogs up in his brain. So many things want to push their way out that they all jam together and nothing can fit through, like his brain is a clogged drain.

"Kurt? You're scaring me."

"Sorry." Kurt swallows and he barely recognizes his own voice.

He doesn't have to be strong anymore, not for tonight. But the instant he lets go of any of that control, it's like the first drops of water slipping through that clog in his mind, and once the clog is breached everything breaks loose at once.

"I..." He can't even get a second word out.

Blaine stays on the phone with him, making soft sounds occasionally, murmuring Kurt's name among soothing words. It'll be okay, I'm here, you're safe, you're perfect, I love you.

He doesn't ask questions for once, he doesn't seem to need to know why Kurt is sobbing into his ear. For once he's just there. And that's enough.


His phone is under his ear when a knock wakes him up in the morning.

Kurt gropes for the phone and shoves it on the table beside his bed. He looks around, confused, feeling drained and actually kind of okay.

"Kurt?" The door cracks open.

Kurt pushes up on his elbows. "Dad?"

"Hey, kid. I'm taking off, okay? Carole and Finn are already gone. You need anything you call the garage."

Right. No school, not yet. Kurt struggles to sit up. "Dad? Hang on."

The door opens more and his dad moves in. "If this is gonna be a lecture about you needing beauty sleep or something, skip it. I just thought you'd want to be up before your friend, in case he-"

Kurt manages to climb off the bed and shove himself at his dad with sleep still fogging his vision. He grabs on tight, breathing in Old Spice and motor oil.

His dad hugs him back instantly. "Hey. I'm serious, okay – if you need anything, call. I can bring you guys some lunch on my break?"

"No, I can make something." Kurt pulls back and smiles up at his dad. "Thank you. And not for offering to bring us lunch."

His dad pats his back, but doesn't smile. "Kurt..." He hesitates, glancing back through the open doorway as if Dave might be standing there listening in. "It means a lot to you, that's why the kid's here. But I don't want you taking on more than you can handle, okay? And be careful."

"Careful?"

His dad regards him seriously. "People can react in a lot of different ways to getting hurt like this kid was hurt. And he wasn't exactly the most stable guy before this." He holds up a hand instantly, no doubt seeing the clouds forming behind Kurt's eyes. "You get mad at me if you want, kid, but I'm serious. If I was really sure he was dangerous, he wouldn't be here. But if you're right about him threatening your life and smacking you around because he couldn't deal with being gay, I've gotta be a little bit worried about what's gonna happen if he can't deal with this."

Kurt wants to be mad, but somehow he lets it go from one breath to the next. His dad is worried, because that's what dads do. But his dad went to the Karofsky house and cleared out Dave's room and rebuilt it here as much as he could just so that Dave would be more comfortable in this strange new place.

There's no real getting mad at him in the face of that. His dad has earned immunity from Kurt's temper.

So he sighs and nods, pulling back so his dad can get to work. "I'll call if we need anything," he agrees, a concession.

His dad flashes a faint smile and reaches out, mussing his hair and ignoring his instant squawk of protest.


Okay, Hummel, if you don't tell me what's going on and why you're not in school AGAIN I'm gonna come to your house and go all KINDS of ghetto on you.

Kurt rolls his eyes, but smiles a little as he thinks of how to respond to that text. He adores Mercedes, she's his absolute best friend and he doesn't see that changing anytime soon. But still, this isn't his answer, it's Dave's. And he's pretty sure Dave wouldn't welcome filling her in on the facts.

He wants to talk to her, to find out what she knows, what the rumor mills are saying about all this. It must be a lot, and it must be bad if it brought Puck and and the other glocks here yesterday.

I'm okay, he texts back finally. And we need to talk after school. Call me.

You get on my damn nerves. You better be okay.

He doesn't answer that, just leaves his phone upstairs so that he can go make some kind of breakfast.

When he emerges from the kitchen with a platter of pancakes and eggs steaming on the counter, he smiles to see Dave awake and dressed, standing at the top of the staircase, eying the stairs like they've personally wronged him.

Kurt comes over and jogs up the stairs. "Need some help?"

Dave scowls but doesn't protest as Kurt comes up and slides himself up to Dave's side. Dave hefts an arm around his narrow shoulder and sucks in a breath as they start down.

Big guy. Kurt knows this, he's been body-checked by Dave before and you can't get much more aware of someone's size than that. But leading him down the stairs is like a whole new kind of awareness of the fact of him.

Maybe he was distracted by everything that was happening the day before, so when he helped Dave up the same stairs he didn't even notice. But he notices now. Maybe it's Dave's heavy arm over his shoulder, or the fact that he holds on to Dave a little tighter going down than going up. Dave is heavy and broad, and with Kurt's arm tight around his waist as they go he can tell how firm and solid he is under his shapeless clothes.

It's...strange. It kind of makes Kurt's face heat up, but only because he's so strangely aware of him. He can feel the muscles in Dave's arm bunching on every step down as he tries to stay balanced and not drag both of them tumbling down the stairs. He can feel the clench in Dave's side, the rise and fall of his sharp breaths.

Kurt has been this close to one other guy before (not counting his dad, because no), and Blaine isn't quite as slender as Kurt but it's a close battle. This is a whole different thing, and for some reason all Kurt can think about as they near the bottom of the stairs are his own angry words in a locker room ages ago. Chubby, sweaty, hamhock.

It's a weird thing to think about, but once he starts he can't let it go. He stays quiet as they go down the stairs, but once they're down and his arm is sliding free of Dave's waist, he can't stop himself.

"Um. So...I'm sorry for calling you names, that one time."

Dave is pale a little, but he stretches his ribs out and holds on to the railing at the bottom of the stairs. He blinks over at Kurt, brow furrowed. "What?"

"You know. That one time. In the locker room."

Dave stares at him like he's speaking French.

Kurt doesn't want to say it, but he sighs. "When I called you...you know. Chubby and sweaty and said you'd be...bald...or whatever."

Dave blinks, and understanding flickers into his eyes just an instant before he laughs. "Are you serious?"

"Yes? Maybe?" Kurt frowns, and it deepens to a glare as Dave keeps laughing. "What? Come on, there's food getting cold."

Dave stumbles a little but moves slowly and steadily after Kurt. "Nothing, just. I forgot about that."

"You forgot?" Kurt pushes through the kitchen door and holds it open. "Really?"

"Well." Dave's laughter fades. "You know, what happened next kind of..." He shrugs, awkward.

Right. What happened next. This was probably not a great time to start opening those particular doors.

Dave clears his throat. "Anyway, come on, Fancy. Guys give each other shit like that all the time. Didn't break my heart or anything."

"No?"

Dave chuckles again, settling himself down at the kitchen table with a hiss of air. "You hang out with chicks way too much. Or is that a queer thing, getting all bent out of shape when someone gives you shit?"

Kurt rolls his eyes. "Obviously it's not a queer thing," he says with a look at Dave.

Dave flushes pink. "I'm just saying. Z's fat ass calls me Wide Load like he's got any room to talk. We're guys, that's the kind of shit we talk. What the hell would you apologize about it for? Especially when..."

Kurt plates up some eggs and pancakes, glancing back when Dave falls silent.

Dave's smile is gone without a trace. He stares at the table, looking like he's aged ten years instantly. For a moment Kurt thinks he's thinking about the kiss, the things that happened after it.

But something tells him that's not it, and when he thinks for a moment he realizes what it really is, and remembers that they're overdue for a particular talk.

He sets a plate in front of Dave. "We've got milk or OJ. Or coffee, I guess, if you want me to make some."

Dave shrugs. He looks at the plate like it's going to eat him. "Milk's fine. Thanks."

Kurt pours a glass of milk, makes himself a glass of OJ and plates himself some pancakes. He sits down across from Dave and reaches for the syrup.

When it becomes apparent that Dave isn't going to dive in while Kurt stalls this conversation, he clears his throat and goes ahead with it.

He tells Dave about talking to Azimio – minimizing the part where Kurt went alone to face him down in his own neighborhood – and Azimio's confessing to telling his friends on the team about Dave.

It's not a surprise to Dave, but his pale unhappiness just becomes more and more apparent. At least until Kurt keeps going with his story.

"So he's going to the police. Or went to the police, I think he was going to go yesterday. But...he's really, like, scary pissed off about this, and he asked me to tell you...you know. That he didn't ask for that, or plan it. He didn't know what he was covering up with the rest of the team. And as soon as I told him that you were involved..."

Dave's given up looking like he's got any interest in breakfast. He's sitting back in his chair, listening to Kurt, staring at him as he talks like he either doesn't understand the words or he just can't let a single one go unheard.

Kurt smiles weakly, because this is good news, right? But it's turning Dave an unflattering shade of gray. "And...yeah. That's it. He said to tell you he'd talk to you soon. Not yet, I guess, but...soon. Though he said that with a more copious use of the word 'shit' than I'm giving him credit for here."

Dave smiles at that, faint.

Then he pushes his chair back and mutters something about the bathroom.

His plate sits there untouched, and Kurt ends up throwing away food, which he hates to do. But even though it was quiet and strange in there as he talked, and Dave is gone for a long time afterwards, he finds himself smiling as he finishes the dishes.


They arrest five people, according to the detective who shows up that night and sits down with Dave and Kurt and Kurt's dad to go over the details.

Kurt instantly plunges into a horrified kind of shock at that. Five. Five of them.

But Dave is surprised, and the detective clarifies that two of them knew, watched the doors, but they're just as arrested as the three who actually took part in the attack.

Three. Better than five, but. God.

The cop doesn't name any names. Dave declines when he offers to tell him who, and Kurt doesn't have any interest in finding out himself. He knows that when he goes back to school he'll be searching the halls for familiar faces that are suddenly missing. The gossip mills will tell him whether he wants them to or not. He won't be able to avoid it, so he's going to at least stall it.

He doesn't want this attack to have a human face.

The detective talks to Kurt's dad seriously about the arrangements they're making with Figgins to keep the school safe for Dave's return. They're going to station an officer there for a while, to make sure that there's no retaliation for the arrests, but he's pretty convinced after interviewing their suspects that this isn't a widespread thing. That there's one in the group who seems to have been ringleader, and with that one gone the danger is probably gone.

Kurt's dad isn't convinced, but when the cop leaves he tells Kurt and Dave that he'll let them make their own choice. But it's Thursday, so he says they'll stay home tomorrow and let the immediate reactions die out.

Kurt helps Dave up the stairs, and he vanishes into his room and doesn't come out for the rest of the night.


He's out of sight most of the weekend. Kurt only sees him on his way to the bathroom, and when he says hello Dave doesn't seem to hear him.

Maybe that's normal. Maybe his coming down for breakfast that first morning, laughing at Kurt for his feeble apologies, maybe that was an aberration. This is...it's more what he would have predicted if he had to guess what someone's reaction would be after being attacked like Dave was.

But it bothers Kurt. He knocks on the door more than a few times, at meals, in the morning, before bed. He gets short answers, and he doesn't push, but every time he walks away from that door he feels worse and worse.

He isn't naïve enough to ask Dave if he wants to go with him to the mall to meet Mercedes and Tina on Saturday, but when he leaves he still feels like he's deserting Dave.

"People can't decide if Karofksy's dead or not," Mercedes reports at the counter of Jamba Juice. "Especially not after Thursday. It was about fifty-fifty, but I think more people are voting 'dead' after the cops showed up."

They dragged their suspects out of school in handcuffs, and Kurt is fiercely glad to hear it. Those bastards stopped circling their damned wagons a day too soon, it seems.

"Are you coming to school Monday?"

Kurt nods when Mercedes asks – he hadn't quite made up his mind, but when she asks he answers. Dave won't, he doesn't think, but Kurt has to go back. He learned a lesson at prom about facing down the things he dreads. He learned it thanks to Blaine, and thanks to Dave, though both in different ways.

Kurt dreads walking the halls of McKinley, looking for who's missing. He dreads the gym, the locker room. So he has to walk the halls and go to the gym and learn the names of the ones who got arrested. It's the only way to handle dread.

If Dave doesn't choose the same way, Kurt can hardly blame him. Kurt's nameless dread is an entirely different thing than Dave's. There was nothing nameless about his attack, and 'dread' is probably an understatement.

It's strange hanging out with his girls at the mall, walking past Macy's and avoiding the Cinnabon and listening to them chat about school, about glee and assignments and homework.

When he says he'll come back Monday, Mercedes grins at him and pulls out her phone, immediately calling a number. "Kurt's in," she says into the phone, and a moment later she lowers it. "What size jacket do you wear?"

"What?"

Mercedes rolls her eyes and lifts the phone. "Don't worry about it, he'll just get it tailored anyway."

"What?" Kurt frowns from her to Tina.

Tina smiles back innocently. "You'll see on Monday. And you're not going to believe it."