Dave notices that the lights aren't on at home, when he gets there. It's cold out, and Dave's toes are numb from the walk back to is house. His eyes feel dry and crusty, and whether that's from the cold or from the tears, he isn't sure. He wants to wash his face before he goes home to face his parents, feeling sure that he looks a mess, but it's too late now. He walks up his driveway and his steps, feeling different, foreign, now that he knows there's a chance he won't be allowed to stay. He knocks on the door and steps back, folding his arms against his chest for warmth.

There is no answer, and Dave looks back over his shoulder at the driveway and the quiet street. His dad's car is gone. Could they both be out? He knocks on the door again, and then, just in case, he tries the knob. It's unlocked.

Dave opens the door and peers inside. He can't see if there is anyone in the kitchen, but the lights are off. He steps inside, because hell, he isn't going to wait out there in the cold to be let into his own house, and if his parents really wanted him to stay out they would have locked the door. He takes off his shoes and rubs at his feet, feeling prickly stabs of pain where the sensation is coming back. Dave's house smells like cat, even though the Karofskys don't own a cat and never have owned one. The smell is embedded in the carpets, planted there by the pet of some previous owner, and though it's masked by a strong layer of pine air freshener, that distinctive scent is how Dave knows he's home. Now though, it smells stale and off-putting rather than welcoming.

Dave stands and goes to the kitchen. Nobody is there, though there's a purse left on the kitchen table next to his mother's glasses and a grocery list. There is no sign of either of Dave's parents being nearby. Dave sits down at the table, figuring that he'll wait there until his parents return, but he can't stand just sitting there. He stares out the glass back door into the sparse, brown backyard, where a lone crow attacks their birdfeeder, before getting up and going upstairs. He was planning on going to his room, to put his backpack away, but instead he stops halfway down the hall and peers into his parents' room. The door is half open, and he can see his mother's form on the bed. Cautiously, Dave pushes the door further so that he can see her. She's in her flannel pajamas, and she's sprawled on top of the covers, asleep. Dave knows she's asleep, since he's stepped closer to make sure she's breathing. He watched a horror movie last summer where a body was discovered like this, and part of him was sure, for a second, that his mother was dead. Her chest is rising and falling, though, so Dave stands between her and the door, looking around. The window shades are open, and the bed has been made, though it's mussed, now. A coffee mug half full of clear liquid on the bedside table nearest his mother. Dave doesn't get close enough to smell it. He steps out of the room and closes the door all the way, making the click as soft as he can.

Once he's in his room, Dave shuts his own door and dumps the backpack onto his bed, unzipping it so that the contents fall out. Dave's clothes from the day before, his schoolbooks and his pencils all fall onto the blue bedspread. Dave roots through the pile and pulls out Kurt's scarf. The memento makes him feel a little guilty, but not as much as one would think. He wanted that scarf, and he still feels that it was the right decision to take it. Who is it really hurting? Kurt has lots of scarves. Even though Dave can't have Kurt, not his affection or his attention, he can have this thing. It's a poor substitute, but Dave needs whatever he can get. It makes him feel accomplished to have it here, smelling like Kurt in the midst of the cat-dandruff and teenage boy scents that make up Dave's room.

Is this an obsession? Dave wonders for a second, and decides that it isn't, not really. It isn't really about Kurt. Dave wants Kurt, likes him, harbors a mess of emotional and physical feelings toward the other boy that he can't explain and doesn't want to, but he knows, in a practical, entirely unromantic way, that he is never going to be loved by Kurt. This isn't a realization but a prerequisite fact, and Dave has always known it. Dave's an idiot about some things, but he isn't that dumb. That isn't really what all of this is about. If it was-if all of Dave's troubles could be solved by the knowledge that Kurt loves him- then Dave would hardly be so worried. Because what kind of problems would they be, to be resolved and done away with by a high school romance? Romance. There's a faggy word. Dave loves Kurt, so much it hurts, and he wants to know him, but this wish is so powerful only because Dave thinks that it will help him to know himself. Then he could deal with all of this crap.

Dave inhales Kurt's scent from the scarf and then tries to think of a hiding place for it. In the end he tucks it under his mattress. He puts his dirty clothes in the hamper and, after some deliberation, he changes out of the clothes that Kurt gave him and into a different outfit. He puts Mr. Hummel's clothes into the bottom of his dresser drawer, under a tuxedo shirt full of wrinkles and a pair of black dress pants that Dave had forgotten he had. Out of sight, out of mind.

Dave reorganizes all of his stuff from school and puts it back into his backpack. He goes into the bathroom and washes his face and tries as hard as he can not to look at himself, but he does anyway.

That's the face of a guy who's made out with another guy. The thought gives Dave a little thrill. Dave examines his nose, and the eruption of pimples below his jaw line. Twice now I kissed him. I'm so ugly. Why did Kurt not push me away?

Usually, Dave thinks he is decent-looking, but today the light is crisp, streaming in from the hall window, and he thinks he sees himself more clearly than usual in its glow-every pore, every small imperfection. He goes back into his room and falls onto his bed, curling into a ball that bespeaks unborn animals and crying children. Dave really just wants to sleep, and he does in the end, but first a hotness rolls in behind his eyes and he starts crying again, the kind of crying people do in the irrational waking darkness after a nightmare. His lungs heave and fill with air and then shrink, and he takes shallow breaths until his sinuses start to clear and the cold air fills his mouth.

Dave doesn't dream. When he opens his eyes after what seems to him like a blink it's dark outside, and the garage door is opening. The grating metal-on-metal sound reminds Dave of where he is. He hears his dad's car pull in, the door slam, and then the key rattling in the lock. Dave jumps up into a sitting position, rubs his eyes, and grabs a book from the bedside table. It's an account of Lewis and Clark's journey across the mainland of America, and he tries to engross himself in it, so that he'll look nonchalant. After a few minutes, he hears his father mounting the stairs. There's a noise as the door to his parents' room opens, and a brief interim after that in which Dave thinks, if he strains his ears, that he can hear footsteps on carpet. There's a period of silence, and Dave wonders what's taking his father so long. It seems to Dave like his presence in the house is obvious, that his father ought to realize that he's there and acknowledge him.

He hears his father's footsteps go down the stairs again, then, and Dave puts his book down and sits up. There's the sound of water running and the dishwasher being started-an electrical hum and the splash of water into the machine. Dave swings his legs over the side of the bed and is at the door to his room, figuring out a way to make his presence known without pissing anyone off, when Paul Karofsky comes back up the stairs, holding a washcloth. The older man catches sight of his son standing in plain view down the hall, and nods in a way that says nothing about what he's thinking. He says nothing to Dave. He enters the bedroom again and shuts the door. Dave hears lows voices inside, his father's first and then a mumble from his mother. The realization dawns on him that his parents, or at least his father, are not thinking about him and his troubles every waking minute, and- this thought with some shock- that at the moment there is, must be, a problem more pressing than Dave's own issues.

Dave waits in his room. His father never comes in, though, and after an hour and a half of waiting, half-pretending to read his book, Dave goes out into the hall once more. The door to his parents' room is open and his mother, still on the bed, is now underneath the covers. The light is off and the shades are closed. Dave's father is nowhere in sight.

"Dave?" Dave thought his mother was asleep, but she is awake. Her voice is hoarse.

"Hi, Mom."

"Davie, I'm… sorry about last night."

"It's okay," Dave says, more because he wants to avoid the topic than because he has forgiven his mother. "I'm alive."

"Davie, Davie, I'm sorry." His mother sounds genuinely apologetic, indeed, on the verge of tears. Dave feels like there's been enough crying, though, so he just mutters something reassuring and goes downstairs to look for his dad.

Paul Karofsky is in his office, on the computer, typing something. Dave stands in the door until he's noticed. When at last his father spins around to look at him, Dave notices that his eyes are tired; red with lack of sleep.

"Dave," he says, in a deadpan.

"Hi," Dave mutters. "How was your day, Dad?"

"Same as it ever is."

"Is that good?"

"Maybe so."

There's a silence, and father and son make eye contact for a few seconds until Paul breaks it to spin back around to his computer. He says, to the monitor, "Have you done your homework?"

"I did."

"You'd better have. I saw your last report card. What are you doing with your time that you can't pass your Algebra II tests?"

"Sports, Dad. I'll do better next time."

"Just do your best. Be the best you can be," says Paul Karofsky, and he directs this to his keyboard as his fingers begin to move again. "Your very best."

Dave bites at a raw spot on the inside of his mouth. "Dad, about last night."

"I'm not talking about that."

Dave hesitates, but plows on. "I don't know how much you heard, but I think Mom thought- "

"We are not talking about this." Mr. Karofsky's voice is low, but Dave stops talking and stands, staring meekly at the floor. " We don't have to talk about this. I think we both know that it's not going to happen again, and that's enough for me."

Dave's brow wrinkles, but his father glances at him over his shoulder and so he says, quickly, "Absolutely not. Never again."

"I'm not having a faggot for a son."

Dave doesn't feel a pang in his heart when his father says it. He doesn't feel betrayed, or angry, or self-righteous. He feels blank and weak and empty and drained, and he feels like there's an ache in the pit of his stomach that will never go away, but he doesn't feel like arguing. He makes a noise of assent.

"Good man." Mr. Karofsky turns back to his work. "Now, can you please go order a pizza? I don't think your mother's up for making anything tonight and I'm swamped with these tax returns."

Dave walks into the hall, toward the phone.