dave x reader [when the night lights up] PART 1/4

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I feel a dragon's tongue living in my mouth, trying to force me to breathe out its hellfire.

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Whispers were always echoing in your ears, pounding through your skull.  So quiet to others, yet so impossibly loud to you.


Useless

Worthless

Nobody

Ugly

Stupid

Wanna-be


Did you believe these things, these awful words that danced around your soul, through your bloodstream and straight to your heart?

Yes, of course you did.  You always had.

Being sixteen didn't give you much of an option on what to believe.  Your religion was teachers pointing out your failing grades, giving you sideways looks left and right, and peers exchanging amused yet disbelieving glances at your supposed stupidity.  Being sixteen...

The words they said were the words of God, and you were a firm believer.

It wasn't as if you got hit and kicked and spit on.  It wasn't as if you had no friends, as if you were completely isolated. 

But some nights, the nights where you sat and watched the clock hit five AM, the nights where the music was so loud and the sky so dark that your whole world lit up without you wanting it to, the nights you felt alone in a crowd...

That was part of being sixteen, you guessed.  You lived off negativity like some bottom feeder in a fish tank, fueled by depression and low self esteem.

Some nights, you wanted to shout loud enough the whole world would hear it.  You wanted to scream at the other kids in school to stop it.

Stop making me feel like I have to apologize for being myself

Stop making me feel as if I am below you

Stop making me want to make you like me when you've never been anything but nasty to me

Stop treating me like I'm five years old

Stop calling me names behind my back

Stop

Stop

Stop

STOP.






✧✧✧






Then he came into the picture.

He was popular, cool, a bit of a player.  He wore his shades constantly, for what reason, you didn't know.  Maybe he just liked them.

You had always found him handsome.  He had platinum hair, almost white, and mildly tanned skin with light freckles.  His mouth was a professional at smirking, and his nose laid just right on his slightly angular face.  He was a star in the music department, and he brought in mixes and gave them out almost every day.  His voice was a low bass with a bit of a twang, and his athleticism granted him some serious muscles.

It all...fit.  Like a puzzle that's been taped together and framed.  Dave Strider was the perfect puzzle to solve, and many had tried and failed.

You, yourself, had always had a bit of an affinity for him, but he was him, and you were you, and he had so many other girls on him, you honestly didn't want to bother him any further than a few nervous hellos every once in a while.  Besides, you tell yourself, he's probably a huge ass anyways.

✧

You were losing control a bit nowadays.

You weren't cut out for the classes you were in.  Some genius put you in 'accelerated,' where the pressure on you was fifteen times heavier than the text book they made you cart around all day.

You had gotten an E on your book report.  Your parents were expecting it.  No biggie.  Not like you'd be in trouble or anything.

Failure

You tried to block the voices out, but they were whispering softly, so softly, in your young, impressionable ears, that they sounded like the screams and shrieks of a banshee.

Good-for-nothing

You slid down the front of your locker in the empty hallway, choking back the tears that were forcing themselves past your eyes.  They pushed gags and whines through your windpipe and salty raindrops down your flushed cheeks.  Enough was going on at home and in your head, you didn't need this.  You didn't need...

"Yo, I don't think sophomores are supposed to be in the building right now, so I'd beat it if I were you."

You pursed your lips, trying to keep the sobs inside, and nodded your head, shaking your hair in front of your face as you scooped up your things.  You hoped whoever found you hadn't noticed you were crying.  You knew you'd have another word to add to your list, meticulously ordered by appearance in your head.

You reached out to push open the door with your foot when you heard whoever found you speak again.

"Hey, you alright?"

You stiffened, choking out a sob, before shaking your head violently, shoving the door open with your side and rushing out the door and into the fall air.  You were not alright.  You hadn't been alright for a long, long time.  Maybe never again.

You cried a lot harder after that.

✧

A week went by.  You never once felt his eyes on you, though they always were.

You were odd to him.

He remembered you waving at him a few times in the hall last year, maybe once this year.  He never thought much of you.  You were just another girl.

He had heard plenty of rumors about you, yes, but not enough that he heard more than how you dressed or wore your hair or what your grades looked like.  Not enough that he knew what made your heart ache enough to act that way, that day near the lockers, when you cried and cried and cried and he just stood there, not sure what to do with himself.  He didn't even know your name.

He figured he'd find it out eventually.

✧

You pulled yourself apart a lot.  So much, nowadays, that the only thing you could wear to school without wanting to curl up and hide away was a loose t-shirt and a pair of jeans.  Beauty, a thing so many girls like you strived for, had become a very scary thing. 

So here you were.

You were in the hallways after school again, though this time you weren't crying.  This time you were just gathering your things to take home.

A shadow danced across the lockers next to you, silent and swift, unnoticed by your misty eyes.  "Hey, sophomore."

You jerked up.  That voice...

That was the boy that found you in the hall a few weeks ago. 

He could see your face this time.  He could see your eyes and your nose and your un-brushed teeth.  You were out in the open this time around, and you still weren't okay.

You felt a warm, slender hand on your shoulder and turned to meet the man himself, David Strider.