Author's notes: this takes place after Courtney's elimination in TDWT.
….
Courtney was now in her room at the losers' resort and she was not happy. Duncan was still in the competion and she had failed to get revenge on him for his infidelity. Even worse, after confronting Duncan on that subject and seeing how he refused to or simply couldn't comprehend that he did anything wrong, she had now come to the conclusion that the infidelity was not Gwen's fault and was now feeling guilty about taking her anger out on the goth girl first.
As Courtney was dealing with these unpleasant thoughts, she heard a knock on the door. She opened it and saw that it was Harold. "What do you want Harold?" Courtney asked rudely.
"For what it's worth, I am sorry about Duncan cheating on you," Harold said. "I've always known that Duncan was a monumental jackass and it sucks that you had to find out about it the hard way. You deserved better than that."
"Thanks Harold," Courtney said sincerely. When she first saw Harold coming towards her, she thought he was planning to rub it in her face how she thought Duncan was a good person only to be proven wrong. She already felt bad enough about that and didn't need to be reminded.
"If you want to get back at Duncan, I have an idea," Harold said.
"What is it?" Courtney asked and then motioned for Harold to come inside. He entered the room and Courtney closed the door behind him.
"I think we should start going out," Harold said, causing Courtney to raise her eyebrow in puzzlement. "Hear me out: how do you think Duncan will take the news that you are now dating me, the guy you once beat up with a lamppost, because you now hate me less than him?"
"Not well," Courtney said as a wicked grin came across her face while she thought over Harold's suggestion. It was certainly tempting, but Courtney had her doubts: specifically, she had a certain doubt. "What about Leshawna?"
"What about Leshawna?" Harold repeated her question.
"Aren't you still pining over her?" Courtney asked. "Maybe this is your idea of playing hard to get with her while pissing off Duncan at the same time. Your plan is tempting, but I'm not going along with it if you're getting more out of it than me."
"I see," Harold said as he thought over his response. "Then you'll be glad to know that the torch I was holding for Leshawna has been extinguished. And it's been buried in the ground at a location unknown to me so it can never be reignited."
"Okay," Courtney said as she deciphered his clumsy metaphor and processed the information that he was now suddenly (to her) over Leshawna. "What happened?" Courtney asked. She thought that if Harold was lying about being over the curvaceous black girl, she might be able to trip him up by asking for details.
Harold took a deep breath as he prepared himself to tell this personal story. "I think Leshawna overreacted in Germany when she beat the crap out of Heather for trying to warn her about Alejandro. And then she found out that Heather was right about Alejandro and refused to admit she did anything wrong. I confronted Leshawna about that and…," Harold paused for a while as he put his hand on his forehead. "I really don't want to talk about this anymore," Harold said and Courtney could tell he was getting choked up about this subject. "The short version is that I couldn't get Leshawna to budge on her self-righteousness and I burned down that particular bridge in an attempt to salvage my respect for her."
Harold was now on the verge of tears. If he's lying, then he's a really good actor, Courtney thought. She decided that Harold was telling the truth about what happened between him and Leshawna (though she was still going to ask Leshawna for her side of the story as an act of fact checking).
Courtney came closer to Harold and embraced him in a hug. She felt pretty bad about bringing this up just because of her suspicious nature. She also understood Harold's sadness about how the person he liked very much didn't live up to his high opinion. Courtney went through the same thing when she learned that Duncan didn't share her ideas about monogamy.
Harold returned the hug and the two of them stayed embraced for a while. They broke apart and looked at each other.
"Thanks for that," Harold said, gratitude evident in his voice.
"Your welcome," Courtney said. "About you're earlier idea of going out to piss off Duncan: let's do it."
"Awesome," Harold said. "You know, for this to work out in the best way possible, Duncan is going to need incontrovertible proof of our new relationship. If we kiss for the first time in front of him and he sees how uneasy we are, this plan will have just been a waste of time."
"I see where you're going with this," Courtney said as she leaned towards Harold and kissed him. Harold kissed back and then they broke apart. They looked into each other's eyes for a while and kissed again. But this time, they started making out.
As they made out, Courtney thought about how she happy she was with this new development. She was very touched about how Harold reached out to her despite how mean she's been to him in the past. She decided that she was going to make things work with Harold as an actual romantic endeavor: pissing off Duncan would just be a very nice bonus.
Harold was immensely happy that his plan had worked. When things with Leshawna had taken a turn for the worse, he decided that it was time to try his luck with another girl. He had always thought of Courtney as attractive (though very rough around the edges) even though he was head over heels for Leshawna. But his feelings for Leshawna were in the past now and it was time to move on.
When he had found out about Duncan's infidelity, he felt two things: seething anger at Duncan for stomping all over Courtney's heart for the hell of it and great sympathy towards Courtney. After a while, he had come up with the idea of him and Courtney going out to spite Duncan. But the real purpose of the plan was to get on Courtney's good side: pissing off Duncan would just be a very nice bonus.
…..
Author's notes: I've wanted to do something with this couple for a long time. I like to think of it as a giant middle finger to the people who over saturate this section of with DxC fics (and you know who you are).
