"I dream. I dream I'm floating on the surface of my own life. Watching it unfold. Observing it. I'm the outsider looking in." Dexter Morgan, Dexter

"You don't understand how damaged we really are! You don't understand how evil we really are!" Hole

Okay, okay. You are having a heart attack. That's okay.

This is what Kurt was thinking, over and over, sitting at his desk, Barbra on full blast. Clutching his chest. Oh my god.

His phone lay, open, text mid-sentence, buzzing with incoming messages and added to the cluster of noises coming at him from the walls, the TV upstairs, the Funny Girl soundtrack and the thump of his own heartbeat.

He breathed deeply, too deeply, could he OD on oxygen? He was OD'ing, he knew it. Did he take too much aspirin, too much of those blue ones, not enough of those green ones? Was he stricken with face cancer? Was the baldness of his head leaving him exposed to double the bacteria? Was he dying, was he dead, was he undergoing the reasonably painful transformation from corpse to zombie? He didn't know, he didn't know.

Kurt, his phone asked him. R u ok?

He was having a heart attack.

Tina and Mercedes yapped happily as they scoped out Mike Chang's BMW in the parking lot. Music sheets out, practicing runs and debating the difference between soul and R&B. They finally found it, big and so not economy friendly, pedaling towards them. Mike smiled down at them, inviting them inside, where they would continue their conversation and pretend, with all their might, they weren't all sporting lost-and-found t-shirts, bundles of slushie-coated blouses and jerseys stuffed in their bags.

They parked on the curb, greeted by a greasy Burt Hummel hunched over the hood of a truck, wiping oil off his hands with a ratty cloth before adjusting his hat, glancing up at the teens. They all mustered up their brightest smiles, latching on to these small moments of normalcy.

"Hey, Mr. Hummel," Mercedes chirped, climbing out of the car's passenger seat, leaving everything but her songbook on the dashboard. "How's the truck coming along?"

Burt's eyes were flat, though his grin was wide. "It's coming. Lookin' for Kurt?"

Tina slid out of the back seat as Mike yanked his keys from the ignition. "Yeah, we were going to run through some of the songs he missed for glee."

Burt nodded absently, façade flickering like a candle under a sprinkler. He jerked his head towards the house. "Well, you know where to find him."

Mike stuffed his hands in his pocket, significantly less pseudo-enthused as the other girls because, despite everything, he didn't want to be around Kurt right now. Not like this, pale and skinny and dangerously close to breaking down, so much so that tension hung around his skin like body heat. Mike himself felt his will to live decrease just by being on the same street as him.

But he soldiered on. It helped that Tina took him by the cuff and dragged him inside.

Mercedes loved Kurt like a brother. She knew him inside and out, his habits, his rituals, his ticks and tocks and, most importantly, his drastically altering moods. She could sense his distress from a single text message, his joy before he even walked into the room. It was all tattooed on his cheek for her; right for the reading.

When she reached the base of the stairs, the rock in her gut grew into a boulder, a chainsaw, ripping and shredding. She immediately recognized Streisand, melodic and sorrowful, through the curtains acting as the last layer to Kurt's sanctuary. Tina's breath at her neck, she pulled it open.

There was a dragon in his room, breathing fire in his lungs. He could feel it, rough scales scraping away at his paper-like skin, ripping him apart, ripping out his heart, stomach, liver, his very sanity. He paced, rushed from one side of the room to the next, trying to escape it's stifling hold, it's jagged claws, it's eyes - fixed on him like he were a pile of particularly interesting dog shit. It hurt, it hurt and he couldn't breath.

What was Mercedes doing here?

It would hurt her, she would hurt him, they all be hurt, killed, dead like chickens in a slaughterhouse all because of him, all because they were with him and it wanted him dead and they got in the way and he wouldn't, he would take it alone because they didn't deserve it too, they didn't do what he did, they didn't do anything wrong.

"Get out," he screeched at her, at them, at Tina and Mike and how many were there? He couldn't tell, couldn't see past the blur of his vision, the hellfire licking his skin, couldn't hear past the rapid beating of his heart, of the walls bursting beneath their surface. His senses were shot but for the ache, the weight on his chest, the rock in his throat. He was done, so were they. No, they weren't. They were here. They couldn't be. They couldn't see him like this, couldn't be here when he was taken, stabbed and burned and killed. They couldn't, no no no. "GET OUT."

Author's Note: So, first chapter after the new season! Keep in mind this is probably going to stick with first season canon because, to be quite honest, I'm seriously doubting the reliability of the writers this time around (where did the blond kid go? And Charice? WTF?)

This chapter, I'm REALLY not sure about whatsoever. I say this a lot, but I feel like the pacing is so at a whack it's near-unintelligible.