Chapter Text
Sunlight drifts through the slightly open curtains into the quiet room, landing on a pastel themed flower crown sitting upon the back rest of a desk chair. An alarm sound soon resonates, waking the only person in the room. A hand reaches out from the pile of light pink of purple blankets on the bed and stumbles around to find the source of the noise, before effectively turning it off. The slightly tanned hand rests of the bedside table for a moment before it slowly slides back under the blankets. A head with curly, chocolate hair sticks out from under the blankets with a grown, rubbing at his eye with his left hand when the door to the bedroom opens.
“Dan!” exclaims a younger boy from the doorway.
“Mmm, I’m up, I’m up,” Dam grumbles, pulling the blanket off from himself.
The younger boy grins and runs off, leaving the door slightly ajar.
Dan sighs, shaking his head and rolling his eyes. He sits in bed for a moment, legs dangling over the side before his eyes go wide. Today was the start of his final year at school. He grins, finally. Hoping off the bed, he heads to the bathroom to take a short shower and get dressed into today’s attire. Some light blue booty jeans with a white shirt showing a cat on the front and a snug pink hoodie and his baby blue flower crown, perfect.
He makes his way downstairs to kitchen, giving the cat, Suki, a rub in the head as he passes her. He had his stuff already packed and organised sitting on the sofa from last night, a quick breakfast and Dan’s off for the day. He’s about the send a text when he notices his soul mark on his wrist, covered by all his wrist bands and charm bracelets. Could you watch where you’re going thanks, Sunshine?
Dan could tell from a young age that ‘sunshine’ was not meant in a nice way, but yet he powered on, becoming the bright person he is today. He smiles sightly and snorts, he’s glad he hasn't met his asshole of a soulmate yet, he is sure his life would probably a whole lot worse and depressing. He sends a text to his friend Chris, asking if he’s catching the bus to school today.
He replies a few seconds later, saying that he is with an added smiley face.
Dan smiles at the text and puts his earphones in, sliding his colourful cased phone into his pocket. He bounced along to his music, soon catching up to his friend at the bus stop. He calls out to him and takes and earphone out.
“Chris!”
Chris turns to him with a grin, “Dan! Long time, no see.”
“I know right,” Dan says, laughing and hugging Chris.
The two of them chat about the things they did over the holidays and a few new games that had come out, finding their respective spots on the bus when it arrives. The trip only takes a short fifteen minutes, with Louise and Peej joining them through the trip. They continue chatting away with each other until the bus pulls up to the school bus bay and the crew get out. Dan and his friends start heading over to the lockers to get their stuff ready for the day.
“Oh, you know, Zoe found her soulmate over the break,” Louise states excitedly.
“What’s their name?” Dan asks, curious of Louise’s friend.
“Alfie, I believe,” she says with her bright smile.
“I feel like I know him from somewhere,” Pj says, rubbing his chin in thought.
Chris snorts, “From where? I don’t think I've ever heard his name in the school’s system. Alfie the great mysterious man!”
“Knock it off,” Dan punches Chris in the arm lightly, chuckling.
“You've injured me greatly,” Chris feigns being injured and fall back on an unexpecting Pj, who manages to catch him just before he hits the floor.
Louise laughs at the two of them.
The two of them are soulmates, they’d met back in eighth grade after Dan has befriended the new kid Pj from Drama class and introduced to his only friend at the time, Chris. Chris had exclaimed with wide arms ‘would you look at those curls!’ at Pj who’d blushed and quietly said ‘thanks, I’ve had them since I was born’. They’d been a hot right off. Dan felt like it was an intimate thing that’d he witnessed since people didn’t like to show off their soul marks as such as other. Chris had been one to keep his mark out on display without a care while Dan keep his covered most of the time but didn’t worry too much about it.
“Oh no, guess you’ll die then,” Dan grins, swinging his hips to the left and sassily putting his left hand on them.
“Can’t believe you two, especially you, Chris” Peej says with exasperation.
“You love it though” Chris says, poking Pj’s nose from his spot in his boyfriend’s arms.
“Maybe,” Pj answers, looking down at Chris with a goofy smile.
Dan smiles widely at the two and pulls the rest out from his locker before shutting it, slinging his heavier bag over his shoulder. He checks his schedule, he has home group Chris, music with Pj and then science with Louise before first break. Louise and Pj head off to their respected classrooms while Dan stay to wait with Chris.
“Right, you ready to go yet or...?” Dan asks with a smirk.
“Patience is key young Daniel,” Chris says, pulling his bag up from the ground.
“And yet home group starts in about a minute,” he huffs out, still smiling.
“Fine, just let me get my folder,” he pulls out said folder and locks his locker.
They both head off to home group and sit at their usual seats as their other classmates file in. Chris turns to Dan with a mischievous smile.
“So, found your soulmate yet?” He knew Dan’s wasn’t a particularly nice one, but he’s said once that they could have been in a rush or making a joke, Dan had tried to agree but it didn’t feel right.
“Thankfully not,” Dan laughs, waving his hand about. “Otherwise you’d never hear the end of it.”
“Yeah, but you might want to keep them all to yourself!” Chris states, “Young Daniel, kept at bay because of how unimaginably gorgeous his soulmate looks.”
Dan raises an eyebrow, “And I’m not already too gorgeous? How rude are you?”
They laugh together.
“On other news, I saw Andrew staring at your ass before when we walked into school,” Chris bounces his eyebrows.
Dan snorts, before making a joke “Eww, doesn’t he have anything better to do?”
Chris snickers.
Andrew was that one person who liked to date everyone he could get his hands on and is kind of really disgusting in his behaviours and everything else he does.
“Like, I know I’m incredibly, stereotypically gay for a bisexual guy, but I still have standards and that boy, does not meet any of them even closely,” Dan continues with an exaggerated posh brit look.
The rest of the morning goes along quite slowly, all the new students for this year bustling about and trying to get to class on time in between the lessons. Dan could deal with it, and also use it to his advantage to be late, but they were still kind of annoying, especially when one particularly short one bumped into him and almost knocked his flower crown off when he was heading into the cafeteria.
Louise sees it happen and quickly helps steady him with a loud laugh, her hands holding Dan up by his armpits. He blows the hair that had landed over his face away with a grumpy expression forming on his face, the freshman who had knocked over Dan looks like a deer trapped in head lights. Dan gives them and unimpressed look and watches as they say a quiet sorry before hurriedly walking off.
“God, I’m not that hard to see,” Dan mumbles, getting back up onto his feet.
Louise giggles, “I’m sure you aren’t, Hun.”
There’s a sudden clap of a hand on Dans’ shoulder as they’re walking to the cafeteria. “With your clothing choice, I think you bring the attention of everyone’s eyes.”
He looks over his shoulder to see Chris, a grin spreads across his face. “You bet, I’m the walking embodiment of sunshine.”
Chris grins too, chuckling, “Definitely.”
Dan clasps his hands together, “Right, what’s for lunch today, losers?”
“Lasagne I think,” Louise replies, “but I’ve got my own lunch, so I wouldn’t know.”
“Fair enough,” Dan says, putting his bag back on his shoulder more comfortably.
After grabbing some food with Chris, he and Dan walk over to their bench all the way out at the end of the other benches near some of the trees. Collectively they loved the spot, especially Dan, since the tree above them had really nice flowers in spring. Though there were the draw backs, like how they got a clear view of where the punks would hang out behind the science block, smoking whatever they did and being total weirdos in Dan’s opinion.
“Hey Pj, Tyler,” Dan says, sitting down in the middle of one side of the table next to Chris.
“Hey Dan,” they said in turn, Tyler being a bit too enthusiastic for the cold weather.
Chris leans over to Dan and murmurs quietly, “looks like Phil’s here today.”
Dan follows Chris’s gaze to where Phil’s standing with two mates of his, leaning against the wall and chatting. They didn’t particularly like his group mainly because of what they look like, but also because Phil is a quiet but deadly kind of person. The black hair pushed to the side of his face and skin white as paper look vampire like, and with the added piercings and tattoos just make him look plain scary. Dan had heard once that Phil had killed a person and chose to avoid him like the plague.
“But it’s the first day of school, why’s he here?” Dan says back.
“Probably to scare the new kids,” Chris answers back.
Dan looks over at Chris, “but wouldn’t he wait for them to settle in before scaring the living daylights out of them?”
“I have no idea man; do I look like I’d know what he thinks?”
“I dunno,” Dan shrugs his shoulders.
“What are you two gossiping about over there,” Louise asks.
Dan looks over at her, Chris following suit.
Chris answers, “Phil’s here today.”
“Oh,” Louise says.
“Yeah, ‘oh’ indeed,” Dan snorts. “Maybe he’s here early to pick off his next victim.”
He casts another look over at Phil and finds him already staring at him. Phil squints his eyes with a scowl that makes Dan’s face flush red with the embarrassment of being caught and turns back to his friends, tuning into their conversation which had changed to something about a maths test. Dan looks at Phil again from the corner of his eye and sees him talking with his friends again, hopefully not about himself or his friends.