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Wow, horror. Reason =/= Fic...again. Well. Sorta. I mean the reason with all my heart. The fic...er...it's not...pretty.
14 Reasons I Love You
5. I know you're celebrating Singles Awareness Day. I should be, too but I-hang on, no, I'm not single, what am I saying. Still...even if I wasn't dating Wolfie, I wouldn't be celebrating it anyway. I'm gonna take a page from SoSR...'I'm your friend, even if you aren't mine.' You got it? I will love you for who you are, even if you don't feel the same way. I will protect you, I will stand by you, I will pick you up when you're down. I'm your friend, even on the times when you aren't mine. Like period days. Or boyfriend days. Or general-hatred-at-all-men days. I will be with you.
Courage, Dave.
Dave Karofsky stared up at his room's ceiling in the middle of the night, pressing his pillow over his head. Downstairs, his father was on one of his rants again, and his little brother was taking the full brunt of it, despite being only three. He hated himself for running - wasn't he supposed to be the older brother? - but if he'd stayed, his father would have no problems about hitting him. He was older than six, and in this family, everyone had to look out for themselves.
Courage, Dave.
His only friend, Harry, hovered five inches over him, flying over the bed; he had the same hair, dark like his, moving in the same breeze that made Dave's room's curtains sway. Harry whispered the word over and over.
Courage, Dave.
Dave had only opened that Harry Potter book because it looked interesting, and it was the first - and only - word he'd saw before his father had slammed the book out of his hand and thrown it in the trash.
He looked it up in the dic-shun-nair-ry later. It was his favorite word.
Courage, Dave.
Courage...
Dave slid from his bed, and headed downstairs. His weight made the wooden stairs creak alarmingly.
Courage...
Upon noticing Dave's entry, his father spun around and backhanded him across the face. Dave's little brother fled the room, shrieking and snotty.
Courage...
As Dave sprawled across the ground, he struggled to get back on his feet. Harry's hand was warm on his cheek, trailing down and down until a finger trailed under his chin, or was that blood? He could never tell.
Courage...
Curiosity.
When Dave was nine, he snuck out of class and into the school library, ducking through the shelves until he found the Harry Potter book again. He hadn't much practice at home, but he managed to read the whole book before his teacher found him. Probably because she didn't think to go to the library, since Dave's father had told her he wasn't that type of person.
Curiosity, Dave.
Harry floated next to him, his feet not touching the ground, like Nearly Headless Nick, like a ghost. Harry laid a hand on his shoulder, urging him to find out.
Curiosity, Dave.
His father got called into the school because Dave had played true-want again. His father was polite to the teacher, but as soon as Dave got to his father's car he could tell that his father was angry, so angry.
Harry sat on Dave's lap and put his arms around him and held him tightly as his father drove tightly, angrily, swearing at the other drivers around him.
Courage, Dave.
Dave closed his eyes as Harry whispered the word in his ear, over and over and over, as his father got out The Belt.
"You enjoy having the belt, don't you, David?" his father asked, and his hand lifted and fell, lifted and felled, lifted and fell. "You secretly enjoy it every time I have to get out the belt. Why else would you mis," lifted, fell, "Be," lifted, fell, "Have, so often?" Lifted and fell, lifted and fell, lifted and fell. "Or you're secretly a fag on the inside. Are you that, David? A sick, unnatural inhuman object?" Lifted and fell, lifted and fell and fell and fell and lifted...
When The Belt time was over and his father lurched out the door, still steaming mad, Dave lay on his stomach, staring up at the sofa. He couldn't sit down. It hurt too much.
Harry laid a hand on his back and looked at him with those lime green eyes. Dave was breathing, breathing hard, he wanted to cry but his father had told him that no man ever cries and he wanted, he wanted, he wanted his father to love him, to say that, just once. So he'd make his father proud.
Your dad sounds like the Dursleys, Harry said. Dave couldn't object.
His mom came back two hours later, and got ice for his butt. Dave clung to her.
Curiosity, Dave.
"Mom...why's Dad the way he is?"
Ambition, Dave.
Dave plucked himself off the ground. At ten, he was kinda fat, and he was being picked on by the other guys. He could fight. He could take care of himself. But...he was still being picked on. At least his father liked him more now. Respected him more.
He didn't want just his dad's respect. He wanted...everyone's.
Barring respect, Dave thought, staring sightlessly at the classrooms' walls, he'd have fear.
Ambition, Dave.
Harry walked beside him now, his eyes hard. Bitter. The set to his lips cruel, except when he smirked, or smiled.
To everyone else, Dave knew, Harry would be dapper, a gentleman to the ladies, a nice guy to the guys. To him, Harry would be cruel, nasty, mean...when planning retribution with Dave. Otherwise, he was still Dave's best friend, who would smile at him and listen to him when Dave's father was mean to him again.
Ambition, Dave.
Ambition...
Manipulation...
Vines, like tentacles, a tendril in every pie...
Dave smirked, his thoughts running ahead of himself.
Harry turned up his nose as Dave walked by a group of 'tough guys'.
"Don't snort, Harry," Dave whispered, plans unfurling and folding in his mind, falling away as they were rejected by the dozens. "I'll be one of them, someday."
Harry placed a hand on his back, and steered him away.
That night, and in the nights after that, Dave told Harry about his plans. Harry smiled, nodded, and held Dave, as they both stared blankly into mid-air, Dave's little brother spinning lies about his time at school and both his parents eating it up, as usual.
Loyalty, Dave.
Who needed it?
Fifteen. Dave cast aside the fiction of Harry Potter, standing on his own. He didn't need invisible (though tangible) friends. He had self-esteem. He had influence, he had power, his father no longer cared about Dave.
What other reason was there?
Courage, he had, enough to face up to the muscleheads. They needed him to run interference on the field; his bulk no longer something to be teased, but appreciated. Curiosity, he had, enough to peer into every secret. Ambition, he had succeeded in; everyone else left him alone, enough for him to sink his fingers into every pie, metaphorical and literal.
He got every status symbol, the minimum necessary, including the obligatory Cheerios girlfriend. She wasn't too much of a bitch, and at times had caught her reading Harry Potter. Other than a brief glance at her assets, Dave left her alone. Provoking the wrath of the Abstinence Club, and coincidentally the main power in the school, Quinn Fabray, didn't interest him. Sex with her never interested him anyway.
Her hands, anyway, were too soft; softer than Harry's.
The fag had come back to McKinley. No, Kurt. And...he'd brought a boy with him.
The boy was...
Was...
The fag's locker, on the inside, had a collage of that boy, saying, 'Courage'.
Dave ripped it off the locker with the minimum of force, his anger completely cold. At least, that's what he told himself. He slashed out every 'Courage' with a red pen-knife, and carved a lightning bolt scar on every forehead. Then unnatural, additional smiles, crept across the boy's throats.
Harry laid a hand on his shoulder.
Dave ignored him, slamming the fag's locker shut and stalking away, his fists opening and closing, leaving the fag's collage inside.
To believe that there was once a time when he had watched the fag in the halls...
Be strong, Dave.
"Shut up, Harry," Dave muttered. "Shut up."
That night he kept seeing Harry as having that boy's face, dark hair like his, green eyes, his mouth open wide in a scream and his eyes sparkling (with tears? Something else? Something deep told him that he should enjoy it, take it, endure it) as The Belt hit him, over and over and over and over and...
Harry held him in his nightmares, wrapping warm arms around him, as Dave's throat locked, his screams trapped inside him.
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