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You see him and he looks like you.
The second you found him you knew that he was yours, a tiny little boy with the most peculiar red eyes that you have ever seen. But from the moment you saw him, he belonged nowhere else but under your care. You wouldn’t trust anyone else to take him under their care. So you picked him up and put him on your shoulder, and you adorned him with glasses that matched yours. When he cried, you had no fucking idea what you were doing at first and scrambled to find solutions.
In truth, someone like you had no business bringing up anybody.
You called him Dave, and you fed him and bathed him and taught him how to speak and walk and defend himself should anyone attempt to try and take him from you. It was easier when he was smaller, the way he looked at you with that beautiful inquisitive face when he didn’t know something. Like yours, his eyes were covered. You were scared of taking them off because you feared that in them you would see a reflection of yourself.
But as he grows, and as you see him from one of your hiding spots in the living room, he becomes more like you. And not just in your habits, but in your expressions and your qualities. He flips through the television in the same way you do: one foot lazily on the couch while the other drags on the floor, back slightly arched against a pillow. Despite the fact that you have raised this child into a teenager, you have never felt quite like a father should. You hated your father, and maybe that’s why you never let him call you dad. Bro covers every part of you in relation to him, and that is how he refers to you, to this day.
Under your wing, you want him to grow, and you remember how at his age, you would rebel as much as you could. You remember feeling arrogant and over-confident when you did things your way, and you remember the pain of being unprepared in fights. You remember feeling weak in comparison to the people around you, and you remember being taken advantage of on multiple occasions.
This is not the future that you see for him. You want him to feel strong at his age, and you are almost bitter at the fact that he has so much respect among his peers. You shoot him down only to let him find his way back up. You want him to be on his toes, so you scarcely make yourself seen. You stage fights for him to walk into, setting clues for the sake of the game.
You just want him to be strong like you weren’t. You want him to be able to defend himself, to survive, to grow up knowing that he could take on the world. Your talents are much more practiced and much more refined, and you have honed them to be that way. Your sparring ends with his ass on the floor, and you can tell he feels defeated, but neither of you can see how you truly feel through the shades that you wear. But if they are taken off, you are scared to see a smaller you returning your gaze. You don’t want him to be you.
You want him to be better.
You will make him better.