Authors Note: This is the very first fic I ever wrote dealing with Dave's character. It was written as a way to try and understand him a little better and is more of a character piece than anything else, though it's sort of one-sided Kurtofsky, pulled from canon. In my head-canon it's Smythofsky pre-slash but there's no real hint of that here.
I didn't think I'd ever post it, but today is the one year anniversary of On My Way, and it seemed appropriate.
Self Reflection: Dave
David Karofsky was a very normal child. He'd been taught to be polite and friendly and had been liked by most boys his age. He loved to play sports and roughhouse with the other kids in the playground and at school. He wasn't the best in class, but he certainly wasn't the worst and his parents never seemed to be disappointed with his school reports.
He liked hockey, but he loved football. When he was too young to play he'd watched games with his dad, some on television and some live. He'd talked about how he couldn't wait to grow big, so then he could play. He would be a star football player, he'd claimed, and one day he would play for the Buckeyes.
As he got older, Dave started to feel like he was different to the boys around him. At first it was nothing major and no one noticed aside from him. He'd gone through puberty a little earlier than most of the boys in his class, but not unusually so. When other boys stopped growing he became heavier, bulkier. He joined the football team and started lifting weights. He might have been at risk of being overweight if he wasn't so interested in sports. He had a bit extra around the middle, he knew, but aside from that most of his extra bulk was muscle, so he didn't care so much.
Besides, girls liked big tough guys, right?
The problem was that Dave never really liked them.
At first, he'd just thought he was a bit of a late bloomer. Just because his body was finished developing didn't mean he had to be interested in anyone yet, did it? When he still wasn't interested in girls by his freshman year at William McKinley High he was a bit more worried. He tried to tell himself that he just hadn't met the right girl, though he wasn't really convinced. After all, there were so many different girls around; cheerleaders, smart girls, punk girls; but none of them attracted him.
By sophomore year, Dave was convinced something was not right. The other boys were constantly checking out the girls around them, making lewd comments in the locker rooms and laughing at things that just made Dave feel uncomfortable. He'd found himself staring after the girls in the hallways trying to see what the other boys saw. He didn't want to be different. Then one day Azimio laughed at him and made a remark about how he'd caught Dave staring at Quinn Fabray's ass. That day he realized that even if he knew he wasn't the same as the other guys, no one else had to.
Then came a day that everything was different.
Dave wasn't sure what exactly had changed, why he suddenly noticed. He'd heard comments more and more often about that fairy or the fag but it hadn't really meant anything to him. He'd seen Hummel around, and yeah the guy was kind of girly but then so was that dude in his Calculus class – Jamie? Justin? Whatever – but that guy had a girlfriend and, besides, Dave couldn't remember the last time he'd seen Hummel anywhere without that Mercedes chick.
But a few days later he heard Santana Lopez gossiping to one of the other cheerleaders about how Hummel had come out. At first he didn't really believe it, Lopez wasn't exactly a reliable source, but it was enough to make him really look at Hummel the next time Dave saw him.
Could Dave be gay? No. Just…just no.
He couldn't be. He wouldn't be.
As much as he tried to ignore it, to make it go away, it was like a switch had been flipped in his head. He couldn't stop thinking about it. He tried everything. He tried to focus on football. He spent all his spare time lifting weights and hanging out with the guys. He avoided Hummel like the plague because seeing him made him think about those things.
Wrong things. Things that normal boys didn't think about.
He'd spent so long wishing he could find himself attracted to someone – but this wasn't what he'd wanted.
Dave refused to not be normal.
By the end of the year he thought he was losing his mind. He'd started treating the other kids in that stupid glee club worse than ever. He'd always picked on them a bit, a slushy here, a shove there; but it had gotten worse, like he couldn't stop himself. He knew he was changing, that he was acting weirdly; acting unlike himself. His dad had started looking at him differently.
Could he tell? Did he know…?
It was the day that he saw Hummel in some stupid silver dress that Dave really snapped. Up until then he'd managed to ignore the smaller boy, to pretend that he was just another glee loser; a nobody. But that day it was like Hummel was goading him. Like he was taunting Dave, just flaunting how…how proud he was to be that way.
Like he was proud to be wrong.
He hated Hummel for being who he was. He hated him for rubbing Dave's nose in it, as though he was screaming at him, you want me. He hated how scared he was that Azimio or one of the other guys would take one look at Dave when he was around Hummel and just know.
He tried to go back to ignoring the other boy as much as he could but sometimes he'd catch himself looking out of the corner of his eye.
Control yourself you fucking idiot or they will all know!
Nobody could know.
That summer Dave spent a lot of time with a girl he'd met at the mall. She liked him, he knew. If he could just focus on that then everything would be fine. So what if he wasn't actually attracted to her? She was fun and more importantly, she was a girl.
Did it really matter that by the end of the summer all Dave had managed to do was give her a few quick kisses that left him feeling empty? Okay, so maybe he hadn't really managed to straighten himself out over summer like he'd hoped, but he hadn't gotten worse and Z had seen him with Candice so it wasn't a total waste of time.
On his first day of junior year, Azimio and the other guys had ribbed him about that girl with the great tits – something that Dave tried to convince himself he had noticed – that he had been at the movies with a few weeks earlier. He laughed and played along. He might have embellished some things, maybe made it sound like he had done a lot more with Candice than press his lips to hers uncomfortably while mentally noting that the hips under his hands just didn't feel right.
He was careful not to make her sound cheap or easy, she really was a cool chick after all, but he also knew how gay it would sound if he didn't tell the guys something.
Dave was not a fag.
It was a few days before he saw Hummel up close. Yeah, he'd seen the other kid around doing stupid performances for the loser club but he was relatively far away and Dave managed to just block him out. But then at the end of the first week Dave stepped around a corner on his way to the gym, and there he was.
Summer had been good to Kurt Hummel.
Sure his skin was still pale – Dave refused to use the word fair (or perfect), even in his head – but he seemed to have gained a bit of height and looked even more slender. Or maybe it was just the way he was walking; taller, prouder, with more confidence. Like he was perfectly happy with exactly who he was; like he knew people were looking at him. Dave didn't understand fashion, but he knew Kurt was fashionable. He was dressed like he knew he looked great and he totally owned it.
Hot.
No. He couldn't think things like that. Thinking like that meant he'd look. People would see him looking and people would know.
Nobody could know.
In November it all came to a head. He started acting out more; being more aggressive. Instead of just ignoring the other boy, he was giving him slushy facials regularly, shoulder slamming him into lockers, calling him names, intimidating him. He knew that he was being a jerk but he just didn't care. He couldn't make himself treat Ku—Hummel better. Who knew what that would lead to?
If he'd known Hummel would fight back and what that would lead to, maybe he would have acted differently. Or maybe not. Because nothing…nothing in his life felt as right as that kiss, even when he knew it was wrong. Not because it was with a boy – well, okay, that was part of it – but mostly because he hadn't been given that kiss, he had stolen it.
He'd been so worried others would look at him differently if they knew about him. And he was right to worry, because Kurt definitely looked at him differently – and not in a good way. He looked at Dave like he was the worst of the worst. It hurt.
He regretted what he did – even if there was a tiny little part of him didn't. He shouldn't have kissed Kurt. But it was all that fucking fairy's fault anyway! He was the one flaunting his gayness; he was the one who made Dave want him. If he didn't want to be kissed, he shouldn't have looked so passionate, so angry...so fucking kissable.
Dave had wanted to avoid him after that. He didn't know what else to do. Kurt knew. But he wasn't a bad dude, right? Yeah, he was mouthy and kind of bitchy, but he wouldn't tell anyone, would he?
He'd decided that he would have to find Kurt alone as soon as possible and ask him not to say anything. He would have to be nice. His dad had always said you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. Dave always thought that was a strange saying but it did sort of made sense.
So that's what he was going to do. He was going to speak to Kurt privately, assuming he could get the other boy alone without making a scene. He was just going to talk to him, try to make him understand.
But the next time he saw Kurt, it was too late. He'd already told someone. Yeah, okay, he only told another fa—another gay kid. So maybe that wasn't so bad, it wasn't like he'd told the whole school. They had seemed to want to talk to Dave, like they could help him. Understand him. But he didn't want their help, especially not where anyone could hear them! He just wanted them to shut the hell up.
But they didn't seem to care, still tried to talk to him about it. Clearly, talking wasn't the answer. Dave had to make Kurt keep quiet.
He knew Kurt had always been a little intimidated by him, but after the…the thing in the locker room, the other boy acted a lot more cautiously. Like he was scared. If scaring him out of saying anything was what had to happen, well, then that's what Dave would do. He shoved him harder and more often. He used every way he could think of to intimidate the smaller boy; standing over him, glaring, controlling him, blaming him, threatening him.
And then he got expelled.
He'd made a gesture where Kurt's dad could see. He was so used to just getting away with it, he hadn't even thought about it. He had been dragged into the Principal's office, his dad had been called and he was expelled for threatening Kurt's life. As if he would ever actually do something like what he'd said.
He'd thought his dad would be on his side at first. It wasn't like anyone had seen or heard it and wasn't your dad supposed to believe in you? But he didn't. He was sure that Dave did everything he'd been accused of because Dave had been acting differently. No shit, wouldn't they have acted differently too? He couldn't even say that, though, because Kurt still hadn't said anything about the locker room and there was no way Dave was going to tell anyone himself.
Nobody could know. Nobody else could know. It was bad enough already.
When his expulsion was overturned he'd decided to apologize, even though nobody was forcing him to. Kurt hadn't actually had to keep his secret, either. But he had, so Dave thought he should at least say sorry and maybe try not to be such a dick. Maybe he could go back to ignoring the other boy and ignoring that part of himself that wanted.
The day he started back at McKinley, he found out that Kurt had transferred schools. He'd gone to a private school for boys. A school with rich kids, uniforms – blazers, even – and a zero tolerance bullying policy. That was a good thing, Dave figured. If he was braver, he'd tell his dad the truth and maybe even ask to go somewhere like that. But he wasn't. He couldn't face the disappointment and all he wanted was to be normal. Yeah, after kissing Kurt he was starting to see that he probably would never be normal again but couldn't he at least just finish high school? He knew the kinds of things that gay kids went through, hell; he'd put Kurt through a lot of that shit himself. He just couldn't deal with that. No way.
He'd almost relaxed by the time the glee club had their song night. Without Kurt around it had been a lot easier. Sometimes, he caught himself looking at some of the other guys. None of them were gay, though, so it would have been easy enough to explain if anyone saw him. I was just trying to see what brand of jeans he was wearing. Not that they did.
Then Kurt and his boyfriend were at the school to watch the performance. Dave shouldn't have been hurt to know Kurt had a boyfriend. He refused to be hurt.
Everything seemed to happen so fast after that. One minute he thought he was safe, the next minute Santana was confronting him. He hadn't been careful enough – she saw him and she knew – so then he was playing along with her stupid plan to get Kurt back to McKinley. He didn't want to; he knew it was a bad idea but if he didn't help her she'd tell the entire school.
Didn't enough people know already? Everything was getting out of hand and he had to control it all somehow.
So before he knew it, Kurt was back at McKinley and Dave was playing the part of bodyguard. There were a few jokes here and there – Karofsky, dude, what are you doing with the fairy? – but he'd played it all off as the best way to keep Santana happy so he could get in her pants. The guys bought it but Dave couldn't help but wonder how long that would last.
Then, Prom happened. He transferred to Thurston High immediately.
He knew that the whole thing was an attack – an awful, humiliating attack – on Kurt. He'd just been collateral damage. That didn't stop him thinking about the rumors that would start. Prom King, with Kurt as Prom Queen? It was too much.
Something about being the new kid at school made him feel more confident. Maybe it shouldn't have but it did. The guys around him didn't know him like the guys at McKinley had. They hadn't known him since he was a kid; couldn't easily tell when something was bothering him.
It was during the summer before his senior year that he was feeling unusually brave and decided to go to Scandals for the first time. No one from school would be there, after all. If they were, well, they'd have just as much reason to keep their mouths shut as he did. There weren't any out kids at Thurston.
He hadn't expected to love it so much, to feel so free and to become a regular. But he had. People there accepted him, they didn't care that he was supposed to be a football player, a jock, a popular kid. They didn't hate him because he was gay. They loved him there as much as he loved being there. Okay, there weren't a lot of guys his age (of course not, he was underage) but that didn't matter; he still felt accepted.
Then one day Kurt and his boyfriend were there with another guy. It was nice to feel like he'd actually managed to make peace with Kurt. He hated that the other boy was still with the gelled dude but apparently Mr. Gel had transferred schools to McKinley to be with Kurt, so he must have been a pretty decent boyfriend. Even if he – Anderson, he'd learned – was dancing with that other guy before Kurt cut in.
He never saw Kurt or Anderson at Scandals again, though he saw their friend pretty often. He'd turn up, drink, dance, and then leave with whichever good looking guy he'd picked up. Dave watched him sometimes. He wasn't trying to be creepy or anything, but he was the only regular around Dave's age and he was a pretty good looking guy. He'd thought maybe they could be friends if nothing more. Or maybe he could give Dave some advice. The other boy was pretty good at meeting guys. Although Dave wasn't really keen on the love 'em and leave 'em idea, he could still do with some help when it came to meeting someone.
When he'd finally gotten the courage to approach Sebastian, whose name he'd learned from the bartender weeks earlier, he hadn't expected such a mean response.
"You get a guy? Please," the other boy had scoffed.
"Why? What's wrong with me?"
"Well for starters, you're about a hundred pounds overweight. And stop waxing your eyebrows, you look like Liberace. In fact, just stay in the closet, buddy."
He probably deserved it, after what he'd done to Kurt, but he really hadn't thought that another out gay guy would treat him so badly. He was so used to being accepted at Scandals it hadn't occurred to him that not everyone was nice there.
His feelings were hurt. Worse than that, actually. He felt crushed. It wasn't even like he really cared what Sebastian thought of him but he couldn't help but wonder how many other guys his age would think the same thing. Did Anderson? Did Kurt?
Fuck this guy, Dave thought, at least Kurt is nice to me.
A few days later he found out that Anderson had been out of school for the last several weeks recovering because Sebastian, the asshole from Scandals, had nearly blinded him with a slushy that he had put something in.
And if that wasn't bad enough, he'd been aiming at Kurt.
After Dave had spent hours in the school gym angrily lifting weights and boxing, he realized something. He was less angry about Sebastian insulting him and nearly blinding Anderson combined than he was about the fact that Sebastian had tried to hurt Kurt.
He'd long accepted he liked Kurt but could it be more than that?
Valentine's Day had come around very quickly after that, so Dave decided on a game plan. He'd romance Kurt and see if maybe he had a chance. He knew it was unlikely, he didn't exactly have the best history with the other boy, not to mention Kurt had a pretty good looking boyfriend (if you liked that type, though Dave didn't particularly) – one that apparently jumped in front of a tainted slushy to protect Kurt. So yeah, okay, chances were slim. But – he just had to know.
Nobody else would know. Dave planned it all out carefully, or at least he thought he had. Breadstix wasn't a popular hangout for Thurston High like it was for McKinley. He hadn't expected to see Nick. If he hadn't freaked out so badly in his head, maybe it would have been okay. He was sure something on his face must have given him away because Kurt was quick on his feet and had a perfectly good explanation. It's not like Nick had seen Dave do anything other than walk by after talking to a boy. But Dave had panicked and it must have been obvious.
When nothing happened at school the next day, Dave felt relieved.
That didn't last very long.
Dave hadn't quite let his guard down when it all hit. Almost, but not quite. The way the guys looked at him, smirked at him, as he walked into the locker room made him feel sick inside. For a few moments he thought he was just being paranoid – if Nick knew he would have said something by now – but he wasn't. There sprayed in pink on his locker was one word.
Fag.
He didn't even make it out of the locker room before they started on him, jeering, shoving, laughing. He couldn't bring himself to deny it, he was too upset. He was crying openly by the time he'd made it into the hall to see more stares, more laughter. Everyone knew.
Had hadn't wanted anybody to know. Not yet.
Less than an hour after everyone at Thurston High turned their backs on him, Dave left. He just couldn't be there any longer; the hatred was too much.
Karma, he thought to himself sadly. I deserve this.
He thought about everything that had happened, about the people he had hurt when he was still hiding from himself. He thought about Kurt and what he'd gone through at Dave's own hands. He thought about how even among others just like him he felt alienated and alone. He thought about what his mother had said when he got home from school and told her what had happened.
"Oh, David," she's said sadly, "why didn't you tell me? We could have done something, found a way to cure you." He could barely believe what he'd heard. What was almost worse was the tone she had taken, as though she were speaking to a sick child. "You can beat this, David. It's a disease, and we can fix this."
He tried calling Kurt so many times. He just needed to hear a friendly voice. Maybe Kurt would know some way to make it hurt less.
When his father arrived home he'd said nothing to Dave. Instead, the teen spent the evening in his room trying to delete the hurtful comments that were popping up on his Facebook and Twitter accounts. It was a waste of time, though. Every awful post he removed was replaced with something just as bad, if not worse. He could hear loud angry voices coming from his dad's study, enough to know his parents were arguing but not enough to make out words. He chose not to leave his room to find out more, he didn't want to risk seeing the disappointment or anger he was sure to find on his dad's face.
He felt so exhausted but he couldn't sleep, every time he closed his eyes he saw the people he'd hurt and the people that hurt him; those he bullied and the bullies that had started tormenting him.
He'd tried calling Kurt again. Kurt was the only person he thought might be able to help him but apparently Kurt wasn't speaking to him. Dave couldn't blame him. Hell, he hadn't even had one whole day of this awfulness at his school and already he couldn't make himself go back. He'd put Kurt through months of it. He'd called Kurt terrible things. Homo. Lady. Princess. Insults intended to make Kurt weak – he'd never actually realized just how strong Kurt was. Stronger than him, that was for sure.
He was moving about his room before he'd even realized what he was doing. In a daze, he picked out his favorite suit and laid it out neatly along his bed. He tested his belt in his hands as he dressed himself. He cried one last time; for himself, for his family, for Kurt and Blaine and anyone else he had treated badly.
It seemed like everyone was telling him to go back in the closet. Comments on the internet, his own mother, and even Sebastian had told him the same thing at Scandals.
If there was one thing that Dave had learned to appreciate in the last few years, with his hidden feelings and his outward bullying, it was irony. And it was with a sense of irony that Dave Karofsky looped his belt around one of the rafters – in his closet – and attempted to hang himself.