A/N: Nnguhh. I love the Karomel/Kurtofsky pairing far too much to be healthy. Damn you, Chris Colfer and Max Adler for being so damn attractive and such amazing actors! XC #shake fist#

Depressing and sweet crap ahead. But this is only an oneshot so it's gonna be random and strange and stop where I see fit. :D

Kurt slips into the hospital, the news a soft murmur leaping from mouth to mouth. No one wants any copy-cat cases to pop up, so it's kept on the down-low. But it seems not very well kept after all, because the attempted suicide even reached Dalton Academy's students' lips.

"Um," Kurt begins softly, "I'm here to see David Karofsky? I'm… a schoolmate of his," he says unsurely to the receptionist.

"You're the third one this morning," the woman smiles gently. "He must have been popular."

"You could say that," Kurt mumbles quietly. She directs him to a ward on the level above his current location. He smiles weakly and nods to her as he moves toward the elevator.

Kurt hadn't known what it meant when he found a letterman jacket on his front stoop the other morning, but last night he found a note tucked into one of the pockets, and the realization dawned on him all too quickly whose jacket he had in his grasp and why it was left for him.

Even now, the soprano can't quite place the truth in the note. It's a suicide note of sorts, which explains Karofsky's recent actions. But the note itself is… heart wrenching. It speaks directly from the heart, so much so that Kurt began to cry when he read it. It was… unbelievable. And it screamed of low self-esteem and reeked of self-loathing.

In the hastily-written note, his bully spoke of feeling empty and lost without Kurt at school, and confused and conflicted about his feelings toward the gleek, and even went into further detail about dreams he'd had and thoughts that passed his mind on occasion and sorry, terribly sorry, over and over apologizing and saying that it's okay for Kurt to come back to school because Karofsky isn't going to be there any longer. In fact, the letter hinted that Karofsky isn't going to be on the Earth whatsoever any longer, and that's when Kurt got scared and went to school this morning to hear about the news.

Kurt stops in front of the ward, still lost in thought. He has the letterman draped loosely over his shoulders, being held on by one hand from the inside. He takes a deep, shaky breath and enters the ward.

Karofsky is unconscious. Apparently he has been ever since he slashed his left wrist, having no gun on hand. Even at a distance, Kurt can see the thick wrappings of gauze and bandages tied around where the wound should be.

Kurt's eyes prickle with tears. All of this over him? All this angst and suicide over Karofsky's feelings for Kurt? It stabs the soprano deeper than a dagger, his heart aching. He can't be afraid of this pathetic boy any longer. He can't, not when pity and empathy are vying for the most attention in his chest.

"I'm so sorry, Dave," Kurt breathes, and the name feels utterly wrong on his tongue, but he says it anyhow. It feels like it's the right thing to call this sad, pale jock in the hospital cot. Kurt paces over to the side of the bed that doesn't have a railing put up and drags a chair beside it. He sits down and reaches out to lay his hand delicately over the bandages on Dave's limp wrist, an IV thread into his arm at the back of the elbow a few inches up. "I didn't know that I affected you more than you affected me." Which is saying a lot, considering the fact that Kurt felt the need to run away.

He doesn't know how long he visits, sitting there, leaning forward, his thumb brushing over the gauze on occasion. After a while, Kurt grows emotionally exhausted and feels chilled from the room. He scoots closer to Dave's warmth and moves to lay his head on his own arm, similar to how he sleeps on his desk in school.

And pretty quickly Kurt is slumbering, Dave Karofsky – enemy, bully, tormentor… and feeble-minded lost soul – just barely inches away.

xXx

Dave stirs and blinks his bleary eyes open to find white, white, more white, and a splash of color in the corner of his eye. He glances at his right to find some flowers and meaningful cards expressing pity. Everything is too bright at first, and with a groan, Dave realizes with a harsh slap of reality that he had failed. He's so much of a coward that even when taking the coward's way out of trouble in life, he hadn't even done it correctly.

Sighing, he cracks his neck and rubs the back of his head with his right hand, but as feeling comes to all parts of him, he realizes that something is tickling his left forearm and something warm and soft is resting on his left wrist.

The former athlete (no way in hell is Coach gonna let him play after this, at least for a while) glances over to his left side and as he does so, he nearly jumps out of his skin. His heart speeds up, clearly heard on the heart monitor to the right of his cot, and he feels his face flush with shame and surprise and lightly of affection.

"H-Hummel?" Dave croaks, his throat parched. How did he know? How did he get here? Dave left his jacket with the boy, but he hadn't thought Kurt would find the note or piece two and two together; how could he have heard, anyhow, when he's all the way at Dalton?

Kurt is asleep, Dave realizes. And that tickle is his hair touching Dave's arm, and that warmth is Kurt's hand on Dave's wrist. Dave's heart skips a bleep on the monitor.

Weakly, Dave shifts and tears his arm out from under Kurt's loose grasp. He then proceeds to rip out his IV line, blood spilling onto his hospital gown, and he gets up and removes the sensor over his heart, causing the monitor to go dead, flat-lining.

Kurt is startled awake by the sound of the flat-line. "Dave?" he gasps, praying that the other boy isn't dead. He can't be, he just can't –

Instead, as Kurt looks around, he finds Dave limping stiffly toward the door leading into the hall, his right hand gripping his bleeding left arm where he removed the IV drip.

"Dave!" Kurt sputters. He leaps to his feet from his chair and runs to block the jock's way. "Just what in the hell do you think you're doing?"

"Get out of the way, Hummel," Karofsky grinds out between clenched teeth. He isn't looking Kurt in the eyes. He can't; not those beautiful, emotional, color-changing blue eyes.

"No. You need to return to that bed, get some rest, call a nurse – who should be coming soon anyhow, considering the fact that you made the heart monitor flat-line! – and get back your will to live!" And he's on the brink of crying, half out of anger, half out of worry.

"Why the fuck do you even care?" Karofsky spits out, taking a stumbling step backward. "You hate me! You're terrified of me! In your eyes, I should be labeled 'better off dead.'" He doesn't want to cry. He doesn't, but one glance at Kurt's face is nearly enough to make him want to.

"That's not true," Kurt murmurs softly. "I mean, it used to be, but not any more. And I've honestly never wished you dead, Dave."

"Stop calling me that! I'm not your friend!" Karofsky roars, but his voice falls flat at the end, his heart not in it.

"…Perhaps not," Kurt remarks, "But you do love me." And he withdraws the note he found from his pocket. "I found it, Karofsky. I'm the only one who knows why you did this, and I'm not about to give up on you when this is indirectly my fault." Here come the water works, Dave thinks. He isn't wrong. Kurt starts to cry, and he even is bold enough to take two steps forward, bringing them inches apart.

Kurt shoves the note into Dave's chest, pinning it there, and uses his other hand to touch Dave's bloody hand over his left arm.

"This is why I care. And this is why…" he takes a deep breath, "I'm going to return to McKinley. You're probably going to have mandatory therapy after this, and you'll need support. I can be here for you. If you let me."

And Dave looks torn between shouting his compliances and screaming for Kurt to leave. He winds up stating hoarsely, "I… need time to think."

Kurt smiles a bit sadly and steps back, leaving the note with the taller boy. A nurse finally appears, bursting in through the doorway, a relieved expression donning her features once she realizes that her patient isn't in peril and simply needs a band-aid and a re-fixed IV into his other arm.

"Mr. Karofsky, if you would lie back down," she's saying, and she quickly glances over her shoulder and mouths to Kurt, 'Thanks for being here.' Then, smiling softly, she re-situates Dave and turns to fetch fresh bedding and clothing for the blood. To Kurt, she quietly asks if he would like to leave or stay, knowing full well that the latter might be best for the suicide attemptee.

"I'll be staying, thank you," Kurt replies politely.

The nurse smiles. "All right," she says, and Kurt gets the feeling that things might turn out okay.