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Chapter Text

"Soulmatism - a complete observation."

By Darlene M. Louis.

Dedicated to my dearest soul bond, may our handprints never fade from one another.

Property of West Valley High School. Students are NOT permitted to annotate this book. Any graffiti and/or inappropriate language written will be reported.

Chapter 1: introduction.

As a society, we managed to slowly evolve into a species that has been touched by a higher being than us. Whether it be a god or a deity of love is beyond my knowledge, but one thing I know is that it's true and ever-growing, becoming the new normal since the first case way back in 1804. Soulmatism (see pages 126-137) has simply taken the world over with a strong 44.15% of men and women over the age of 40 having found their soulmate and a staggering 98.73% of the world having been confirmed at birth (see pages 73-89 for medical analysis) to be a holder of such ability. 

Although childish, there's simply no other way to describe it other than being Soulmates. From early experimentation and observations, doctors, scientists, the government and everything else in between and beyond came up with a consensus. In this world, there is somebody perfect for you, the other half of your split soul wandering this earth waiting for you. They complement your being while simultaneously slotting into your life seamlessly, and may it take weeks or months, years or decades, you will one day meet them. When you meet them, you will immediately feel a loose connection, the urge to pester them, a nagging feeling of familiarity, and one day, when you two either bump into each other for the first time or give up and fist fight outside the local diner, your handprints will stick to one another.

Simply said, you know you've met your soulmate because their handprints will warm you, leaving temporary thermal prints on your body until they naturally fade. Usually, they fully disappear within ten minutes or so; however, the 'stronger' or more 'perfect' the bond is, the longer it can take (see pages 15-20). [...]

[Black ink] Soulmatism is such a dumb word.

[Blue ink] Well aren't you a bundle of joy

[...] As previously stated, soulmate discoveries can be described as "unnerving" and "uncomfortable" with the public spectacle often occurring when such meetings first happen. The discomfort is inevitable as our species' way of sorting together souls is purely physical; there's simply no way of hiding the thermal print of the other half of your soul's handprint on your body. The heat will shock you at first, then stain your skin until it feels it's ready to go, [...]

[Red ink] Wow, this chick is saying a whole lot of nothing.

[Blue ink] Or you're just illiterate. Wild accusations, I know!

[...] I, as an adult and somebody who found their bond young, have had more than enough time to analyse the handprints spread along both me and my soulmate's body, [...]

[Black ink] What a weird way of saying you get off to marking your soulmate. Freak.

[Blue ink] pretty sure that's only you thinking that.

[...] The stronger the bond, the longer the prints last. Simple, right? My wife and I believed that for years, we took pride in the fact our bond was strong enough to allow a simple hand-holding to last for an hour until our mutual friend found his bond, [...]

[Red ink] Woah, this bitch is gay? Damn, don't think I can read on now. 

[Pink ink] You'd think the concept of soulmates would make people like you stop being assholes

[Red ink] fuck off

[Blue ink] You borrowed the book again? Sounds like you're into it, bro.

[...] our friend's soul marks hardly need contact, their skin turning blotchy oranges and reds easily without having physical contact with the other. I conducted a minor experiment as I'm neither a scientist nor a great academic, merely an author. I came to the conclusion that with a bond so strong, a hand could hover over the other at a maximum of five centimetres before imprinting onto their bond's skin. A bond so strong is a delicacy and, therefore, should be monitored and protected more than the average. Additionally, moderate to extreme bonds can find themselves feeling each other's emotions in abstract ways like mere gut instincts or [...]

[Pink ink] Oh to have a soulmate 

[Red ink] loser 

[...] The impacts of a strained bond can negatively impact both people involved. Ignoring the bond and/or refusing to acknowledge the other person involved once discovering your connection can lead to a fraying link with physical damage. Ignoring it and refusing to touch the other can result in agony if you eventually come into contact. For example, if you ignore your bond for a month and then accidentally brush against their shoulder whilst in a busy hall, you'll both feel the average warmth amplified by at least 50% of the common sensation. It'll burn, stain into your skin and refuse to fade away no matter how long you wait. Additionally, extended periods of time with no contact have led to reports of memory loss, depression, anxiety, headaches and, in some extreme cases, illness. Subjects of such observations (most notably being J. William's 'fractured bonds' series of investigations) had often reported feeling hollow, directionless and paranoid as well as the rare mention of mania and psychosis. Controversial as it is, that is why many soulmates are attached at the hip no matter how much they dislike each other. It's out of fear, fear of the possible pain and [...]

"LaRusso," A voice calls, stern, tired, probably croaky from hours of yelling. "Office now, put the book down, we both know it's not helping you or the situation," he runs a hand down his face and opens the door behind him. "God knows, Johnny refused to even open it."

He looks up, swallowing hard as he pushes the book closed and onto the rickety side table. "Doubt he knows how to read, sir," he mumbles, getting to his feet and following him into the office.

Slumping onto the chair, he takes notice of Johnny's rigid figure beside him, hand clutched onto an ice pack against his bright orange jaw like he's holding back on lashing out at the entire room. There's a tense pull on his eyebrows, the telltale sign of a deep ache within his bones. Daniel hates to relate to the guy, but he understands, the sting of his bloodied knuckles raging against his nerves and his busted nose threatening to gush blood once again being more than enough to understand. He'd hate to ruin another chair; he had already destroyed enough in the nurse's office earlier from his gushing blood.

He can feel his mother's glare bore holes into the side of his skull, her legs crossed over each other neatly as her brow raises at him accusingly. She was mad, of course she was, she had been pulled out of work to deal with her son getting into a fistfight like a so-called 'street thug' within the first few months of moving states. If she wasn't mad, Daniel would be far more distressed. Either way, he clenches his jaw and stares ahead at the principal who has his head in his hands and a sigh on the tip of his tongue. 

"Mr Lawrence, Mr LaRusso," he straightens up, attempting to make himself seem more put together. "I'm sure we are all fully aware why we are here, and I'm sure you are both extremely aware of the zero violence policy we have at West Valley High."

The words roll right over him, steamrolling his thoughts out into one thick, smooth plane of spilt regret. He keeps his eyes locked onto the desk, taking in the stale stench of coffee and leaking ink, the pain of his red and orange, yellow and green smattered flesh and the deep, spiralling feeling of Johnny's presence pressing into his core. He's taught, coiled up far too tightly in a bright fit of anxiety and undying rage. It rubs him the wrong way that he can feel his vague emotions, that the other can probably feel his as well. It's too raw to have to share with another, too abrupt, too vulnerable. He hates the thought of it, now he has to live with it.

The air between them, despite being able to feel how each other feels in a distant, cloudy sort of way, remains charged with a sick need to harm again. Whether it be from their fight or the fact that their skin remains marked with each other's touch despite not having been near each other in nearly an hour, is past Daniel's knowledge. Perhaps it's both, perhaps it's neither. Perhaps it's not even charged and he's overthinking it all. He doubts that last one, but still.

Johnny hasn't said a word yet, deciding it's better to brood by his mother's side than voice those pitiful thoughts in his dense skull. 

The older man looks between them, eyes darting between each boy in a desperate attempt to get them to apologise, to redeem themselves, to at least nod or acknowledge him in any way. He finally lets a sigh out. "Okay then, would you boys like to explain to both your mothers and I what got you in such a mood that you both decided to, instead of going to class and ignoring each other like the bell told you to do, throw punches at each other like delinquents?"

Daniel can feel eyes dart to him momentarily, a sharp glare before he hears him speak. "He doesn't know when to shut up."

He scoffs, mouth twitching in pain as his split lip stretches at the gesture. "Oh, is that right?" He turns his head to finally face the other; his eyes meet with the twisted face of a spoilt boy with far too much ego and not enough respect. He meets the expression with his own scowl. "Maybe, I wouldn't have to open my mouth if you laid off my ass once in a while. I know it's a foreign concept to you, but not everybody adores having your groupies jump them every other period." It's a shitty response, dull and full of muted anger in the presence of his mother's blazing glare. He's a smart ass in the face of a fight, his Ma has always shook her head at him, mumbling about how his big mouth would get him in big trouble one day. Call it mother intuition or destiny.

Probably a bit of both seeing as how Johnny's handprints are still—

Nope.

Not addressing that yet, hopefully never. 

"Daniel," his mother says, voice clipped like she was holding back a scream as she cuts off his growing tirade. "Dio, cosa hai fatto?" She looks pitifully at him, eyes softer as she takes in his heated cheeks and swollen nose, bloodied around the edges and poorly bandaged. "Huh?" She prompts, eyebrows raising as he bites his lip, refusing to answer.

She shakes her head. "This isn't what we moved here for. I thought it'd be a fresh start, a blank slate, not an... an opportunity for you to become some delinquent."

Daniel winces, letting his body falter into the chair. Here it comes.

His mother turns to the principal, gesturing sharply. "My boy isn't like this, never was and never will be. You expect me to sit here politely when I've been called out of work for this? A fight? An—" she waves a hand at Daniel, "attack if anything? Principal, with all due respect there is no chance you'll be punishing them equally, not after all that he has been through at the hands of—"

"Ma—"

"Non ora, Daniel!"

The principal tuts, waving his hands in front of him in a strange attempt at dissolving the growing tension. "Mrs LaRusso, as much as we're aware of the increasing... feud, Daniel was just as physical within the incident, letting him off the hook would be unfair—"

"Unfair?" She scoffs, a sharp exhale following as she rubs divots into her temples. There's a simmering rage there, her stiff posture giving it away if he hasn't already caught onto her hitched breaths. There's a filtered worry behind it all, a pleasant stream of hope that Daniel clutches onto even if he knows the reason behind it is one he'd rather ignore. She knows what the hues of a sunset imprinted along flesh means. So does he, so does Johnny, and so does his mother.

The room is more suffocating than it was before, the stifling stench of old wood making his skin prickle with goosebumps. Daniel can hear the wall clock ticking, the muffled voices of students passing outside, and the occasional slosh of Johnny's melted ice pack. His mother is still seething, his knuckles are still throbbing, their skin is still stained and Johnny is still burning against the edge of his senses like an ember that refuses to be stomped out.  

He hates it. Hates that no matter how much distance is put between them, it will never make a difference. He could be halfway across the city, locked in a casket and buried six feet below ground, and he knows he’d still feel his curling wrath deep in his gut. 

The principal clears his throat. "I understand tensions are high, Mrs. LaRusso. But the school has policies, important and beneficial policies that are there to ensure the safety of our students and—"  

"Policies?" His mother scoffs. "Policies? Your policies didn’t do much when my son was getting cornered between classes, did they?"  

Daniel shifts uncomfortably. "Ma," he tries again, quieter this time, less certain.  

"No, I want to hear this." She folds her arms, turning back to the principal. "You tell me, Principal, where were your policies then?"  

The principal exhales sharply, clearly exhausted. "Mrs. LaRusso—"  

"As much as I understand your worry, Johnny hasn't laid a hand on your son until today, and besides, this isn't about policies or punishment for making each other bleed, it's about... the other issue." Johnny's mother cuts in.  

Her voice is soft. Softer than expected, given the circumstances. It isn’t cutting or cold or dismissive. It’s careful, measured, almost like a sick sense of curiosity, like a schoolgirl aching for the next event in her friend's dramatic retelling of her day.  

Daniel takes a look at her and immediately regrets it.  

She’s watching him. Not like he’s a problem, not like she’s looking for someone to blame, but like she’s studying him. He tries to search for the disappointment, the disgust, but it's not there.

Just a probing stare like she’s trying to piece something together. A puzzle, a dissected frog, a fragmented story with one too many perspectives.

His stomach churns.  

"Oh, please—"  

"Daniel," his mother warns.  

"That fight is exactly why we're here! Not the stupid prints on us," Daniel snaps, ignoring her. "If it were a simple brush of the shoulders that made us figure it out, we wouldn't be—"  

The principal holds up a hand to stop him. "You may be right but—"

A prim huff stops him in his tracks as she turns her gaze toward her son. Nobody gets to finish their sentence within this office anymore apparently. "Right then, Johnny, be honest. Did you start this?" Her voice is sharper as if irritated by the lack of addressing the glaring elephant in the room.

Johnny's grip on the ice pack tightens. "Does it really matter?"  

"Yes," she says simply.  

Daniel watches the flicker of irritation cross Johnny’s face, but it’s gone too fast to settle. Johnny exhales harshly through his nose, eyes flicking to Daniel before he looks away again. "Like I said, he talks too much," he mutters.  

"That's a load of shit!" He starts, getting a harsh reprimand from the principal for his 'foul language'. "Your son punched me first, right in the jaw," he gestures to his busted lip and brightly coloured cheek. "If we're playing the who started it game, he threw the first swing."

"And you didn't hesitate to chuck a sucker punch right back, huh, LaRusso?" Johnny fires back, jaw tightening.  

"Sorry that I'm not the pushover you dreamt of me being."

"Oh as if I'd ever dream about your sorry ass—" 

"Enough!" the principal finally exclaims, rubbing feverishly at his temples. "Enough. I don’t care who started it. We aren't here to rehash the argument, this isn’t up for debate."  

He sighs, rifling through a few papers before continuing. "Mrs. Lawrence is right. Despite the fight being relevant and a large reason as to why we are all here, I believe there is a much more... pressing matter at hand." He glances around the room, clearly new to this uncomfortable topic. "Both of you are getting a week of detention, a simple hour after school every day starting from tomorrow and ending on Wednesday next week. And…" He hesitates, looking down at another document before looking back up at them with an obvious reluctance.  

Johnny tenses beside him. Daniel j how he knows it without looking at him.  

"You’ll both be required to attend so-called 'soulmate counselling' with Ms Wells during fifth period. Tuesdays and Fridays."  

For a second, the words don’t register.  

Then—  

"What?" Daniel blurts out, less angry and more dumbfounded at the ludicrous idea. 

Johnny straightens in his seat, his ice pack momentarily forgotten as his arm slumps to his side. "Nope."  

"Oh, it’s not optional, far from it." The principal clasps his hands together on the desk, seemingly having regained his confidence as the one supposed to be in charge of the situation. "You’ll meet with the counsellor twice a week, starting tomorrow."  

"That's insane, unnecessary," Johnny snaps. "Counseling? For what? We’re not—" He gestures vaguely at Daniel like the very idea is physically repulsive.  

Daniel recoils, something ugly curling in his chest. "Oh believe me," he hisses, "I know." 

The principal raises a hand. "Look. The school has procedures in place for cases like this."  

"Cases?" Daniel echoes, incredulous. "Like this?"  

"Daniel, you were reading the book the nurse gave you no more than ten minutes ago," the principal says dryly. "You know how this works."  

Daniel's mouth snaps shut.  

The room is dead silent.  

His mother exhales softly beside him, a quiet, steadying breath.  

Johnny's mother shifts in her seat. "So that's it, then? No suspension, no expulsion no—"  

"That’s it." The principal nods. "We have policies, and in a situation such as this, we'd much rather ensure the safety of your children than punish them for their mistakes as of now." He briefly glances at his mother at the word 'policy'. She bristles under the slight dig at her previous outburst. 

Daniel clenches his fists, knuckles turning white as his nails bite into the bruises already there. He has no faith in himself that he won't either end up landing himself in a second week's worth of detention or crying himself a river.

He can still feel Johnny's thinly reigned bitterness simmering beside him. It sticks to his skin like residue, like tar, like a mark that won’t fade no matter how hard he tries to scrub it off.  

A week of detention.  

Counselling.  

With Johnny fucking Lawrence.

Perfect.

Johnny hasn’t said anything else, but Daniel can still feel the heat radiating off of him, threatening to warp and taint his skin. He doesn’t want to look at Johnny, not now, not later, not ever, and he certainly doesn’t want to play nice with him or acknowledge the fact that their skin is still branded with each other’s handprints.

He takes a steadying breath, flooding out his thoughts and replacing them with a thick sheet of emptiness and clarity.

His mother is silent too, yet her presence stays as weighty as it has been the entire meeting. She’s frustrated, evidently so, but there’s a layer of something squishier, something unspoken in the way her hand rests on his knee, a silent gesture of reassurance that doesn’t seem to match the situation. 

"Is there anything else you’d like to add, Mrs. LaRusso?" the principal asks, looking at his mother with the slightest trace of exhaustion. Daniel can’t blame him—his mother can be a stubborn woman when it comes to her son's safety.  

"No," she says with a sigh, still angry but now resigned. "No more of this. Best believe my son won't be getting into fights like this again; he's not a bad kid." She gestures vaguely at Johnny, her eyes narrowed, but there’s a softness in her voice that only Daniel catches. She’s not truly mad at Johnny or his mother, not entirely anyway. But she’s mad at what he represents—something about this state, this school, the way it’s all stacked against them.

The principal looks at Johnny’s mother next, who nods with an almost calculating expression. 

Johnny stiffens slightly at the movement, but Daniel isn’t paying attention to him anymore. He can feel the weight of the entire room pressing in on him—the judgment, the uncertainty, the knowledge that in a day, he’s going to be sitting in some sterile, uncomfortable room with Johnny for a dumb game of pretend therapy, of all things. He doesn’t know whether to be pissed off or mortified by the thought.

"Alright then," the principal says, standing up as the tension finally begins to subside. "You both are dismissed for today. I’ll see you in detention tomorrow, and I expect full cooperation in your counselling sessions. There are no exceptions because best believe I'm getting it rescheduled if either of you misses a day. Understood?"

Daniel doesn’t respond at first. He’s not sure what to say. His mouth feels dry, and his fists ache with the urge to punch something. He’s never been the kind of guy to be violent, to punch a person or a wall, but this? There's something about Johny, something about him, that gets under his skin and makes him want to snap. 

Finally, he mutters a small "Yeah, whatever" before getting to his feet and stomping through the office door and into the watchful crowd of students attempting to go home.

────────

Not a bone in his body anticipated anything less than a suffocating, silent drive home. He could tell from deep within the school building that the car would be a prison compared to the shackles of the office. At least in there, there was a way out. A door, an opened window, a cupboard to hide in or a stapler to impale everybody's eyes with if things got especially hard. Here? Here, he had a door that would make him skid along the roads if he were to use it and the tense line of his mother's shoulders looming beside him. 

He wonders, fleetingly, if he should count his blessings. At least she isn’t yelling, shouting about how he's gone and ruined his supposed fresh start with a red face and furrowed brows. But somehow, the silence is worse. It stretches between them like barbed wire, full of unspoken reprimands and musings that only a damn deity could answer with truth. The world outside the windows keeps moving: trees and smiling couples, well-loved dogs on their afternoon walk and the bumpy streets speeding past, indifferent to the way his life has been derailed. He shifts in his seat, rolling his sore wrist, but there’s no getting comfortable in the battered, tainted form he's in now. He catches his mother's worried glance in the corner of his eye.

Small mercies. 

It’s always like this. No matter how hard he fights, no matter how much he claws to keep control of his own goddamn life, something always shoves him back into place. The school, the teachers, even his own body—it’s all working against him. Whether it be moving states or finding his bond, the world doesn’t live to please him, and fate certainly has an obsession with loathing him. 

Daniel slouches against the passenger door, arms crossed tightly over his chest, knee bouncing with a restless, jittery type of energy he aches to dissipate. His bruised knuckles throb and his lip hurts, his eyes are sure to turn purple and his skin is still coated in ugly memories of an ugly soul bond. The sun glares through the windshield, casting long, slanted shadows across the dashboard as the school slowly disappears behind them, shrinking in the rearview mirror like it hasn't just facilitated his misery.  

Because that’s what this feels like. A miserable punishment. A damn sentence.  

He steals a pointed glance at his mother as she takes a sharp corner, tousling him in his seat. She hasn’t said much since the eye-twitch-worthy conversation with the principal, but it's obvious how she's feeling. Her grip on the steering wheel is just a little too tight, and her jaw is just a little too stiff. The tinny radio pumping out croaky jingles about romance and flowers does little to ease the tension that sits thick between them.

He looks away, looks back, looks away, looks back. Repeat, sigh, repeat. He's fidgety, it's probably distracting her more than she'd like to admit, but he can't help it. He needs to get out of the car, take five laps and return to feel fine, to feel like his muscles aren't actively trying to spew out from his navel.

She finally gives in, grip loosening as they get to a red light. "Danny," she starts before exhaling sharply. “I hope you know how much trouble you’ve got yourself in.”  

Daniel lets out a short, humourless laugh, turning back to the window. “Yeah. Believe me, I know.”  

“You think I like getting called down to the principal’s office to hear that my son’s been fighting again?”  

That makes something hot and defensive spike in his chest. He turns toward her, frowning. “Again? What’s that supposed to mean?” His eyebrows twist, mouth frowning hard enough to make it bloom with a bright sting.

She cuts him off with a sharp look. “Don’t start, Daniel.” The lights switch to a glaring green, and the car begins to move again, her eyes stiffly trained in front of her. "You've been coated in bruises and limping back home for the past month, and every time I ask, you brush it off and say you fell or got into an accident, but you never agree when I mention the possibility of a bully, of somebody specifically going for you. Never a target, never an attack." She takes a quick glance at his tense figure. "What a mother supposed to think when their child comes home bloody, huh?" Her voice turns softer. "So, you admit you were lying to me? That there was a bully, there was a fight?" 

Daniel grates his teeth against one another. "You knew what was happening, said it in that office that I was some... some helpless boy getting pushed around."

She sighs, her grip loosening on the wheel. He hates this part—the strange transition between scolding and seething worry all while the disappointment still lingers. "You can't lie to save your skin, tesuro, I knew from the moment you walked in through that door with a fresh black eye that this place hasn't given you a warm welcome. I just wanted it to come from you, for you to trust me enough to tell the truth," she pauses for a moment, taking in whatever filtered air comes through the window as if contemplating whether her next words are suitable for the time or not. "I—" A beat passes. "I just don't understand what happened to my little boy. He used to come in and talk and talk about his day. About how Maria kissed Toby and how Toby got mad at you because you said to Maria that Toby actually liked Delilah and, god, I don't even remember the story, you were so young. I found it silly, though. You ended up with a red cheek, and Toby ended up sobbing because you yelled at him."

The car halts at another stop. Daniel pouts slightly, defiant to the nostalgic route his Ma was trying to take. "How do you even remember all that? I don't."

"Ah well, it was the first time I was called into school, and your teacher was berating you so harshly, telling a story that didn't seem right at all, and all I remember thinking is 'hm, but I know the right story because my Danny told me it all already. And he's too truthful for his own good'."

Daniel stays silent for a minute, listening to the angered honks of cars surrounding them. "I didn't lie to you, I just didn't need you getting all worried over me. It was never a big deal, today wouldn't have been a big deal too if it wasn't for... y'know," he lazily gestures to his splotchy face. "One or two punches and a slap on the wrist from a teacher, but no. Our bodies decided to fuck us over."

Her hands wring around the wheel, a soft, wistful smile on her face. "Danny, having a soulmate is a beautiful thing. Something that is not certain you'll find in your lifetime." Another honk and another yell from the car beside them and she sighs, slumping back into her seat and letting her arms fall by her sides. "And losing— losing a bond like that hurts."

Daniel stops his bitterness for a minute before sighing. He unhooks his seat belt to face her fully, knees up to his chest as he rests his back against the door. It feels too vulnerable, like she can see every emotion on his face. "Is this about dad?"

"Daniel, baby, this bond is so, so special," she turns to face him, a tense, saddened expression on her face. "Please don't waste it; nobody deserves to go through so much pain when their soulmate is still out there, alive and well. A person should only face such side effects when time reveals itself as not being on your side."

Daniel stiffens, hands wringing each other out of all their sweat in discomfort. His mother doesn’t say it, but he hears it anyway—You don’t know what you have.  

His stomach knots. He shifts against the door, nails digging into the fabric of his sleeves. “I didn’t ask for this,” he mutters, low, like saying it too loud would make the bond settle deeper into his skin, like it could solidify into something permanent just from acknowledging it. “I didn’t want this or him.”  

His mother exhales sharply, fingers reaching up to clutch the wheel once again, just to calm down the thrumming annoyance within her. “Nobody asks for it, Danny.” Her voice is quieter now, but there’s a weight behind it, something old and worn, tired. “It just is. There's no reason as to why this happens or a method to choose who the universe thinks is best for you. It's fate, it's something higher than me or you or Johnny.”  

He shakes his head, turning it to look out the windshield and the yelling crowd of congested cars. “It shouldn’t be. I don’t even like him. I hate him.” The word tastes sour in his mouth, too raw, too real after everything that’s happened today. "He's a cowardly, violent brat whose hardest challenge in life is probably—" he cuts himself off with a noisy huff. For some reason, his gut curls at the thought of continuing.

Her silence stretches for a beat too long. The song has changed, he realises, it being a louder, more chaotic tune that, paired with the sombre tone inside the car, fits more with the chaos outside. It's jarring. 

“You don’t mean that.”  

Daniel lets out a dry, disbelieving laugh. “Like hell I don’t, I'm not in the habit of liking people who beat me every other day.”  

She doesn’t argue, doesn’t scold him. Instead, she just looks at him for a long, searching moment before turning her eyes back to the road. “You know,” she says, voice careful, like she’s choosing her words as she speaks, “for all the people who are able to find their bond but never manage to, for all the people who find their soulmate and never get the chance to know them… for all the people who lose them before they ever get the chance to hold on… you’d think you’d be a little less ungrateful for this.”  

It hits him like a bitter, sharp slap. Like a bloodied nose, a split eyebrow.

He jerks toward her, face twisting. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”  

“It means you don’t have to like it, Danny,” she says, gaze unwavering, calm in a way that only makes him feel more unsteady. “You don’t even have to like him. But pretending like this is some kind of punishment?” She shakes her head, something bitter curling at the edges of her voice. “That’s selfish.”  

Daniel recoils. “Selfish?”  

She doesn’t answer, just exhales slowly, fingers tapping against the wheel. “You can be confused, mad at the world for connecting you to somebody you don't like but—” she says, quieter this time. “But you shouldn’t wish it away, either.”  

Daniel bites the inside of his cheek, hard enough to taste copper. He looks away, out the window and to the slowly moving traffic. 

It isn’t selfish. It’s his life. His body, his choices.   

"Just... the least you can do is try. Go to those stupid sessions and try, try. And if this boy wants nothing to do with you, then it's his loss. This beautiful thing is too wonderful to waste by holding onto grudges."

"Whatever," he mumbles, slouching back into his seat and glaring at the now-moving crowd of vehicles.

She sighs, sitting upright and focusing back on the drive home.

"Siediti dritto, tesoro"

He wants to argue, to shout and claw at his scalp and stained skin, but still, he swallows his tongue and doesn’t argue.  

Not because he agrees.  

But because he doesn’t know how to without proving her right.

Chapter Text

One thing you can rely on humans doing without any prompting is storytelling. Creating stories about how the world was made, arguing that vaccines cause syphilis with two flimsy theories as evidence, spinning tales about divinity, spitting harrowing narratives about the creation of grandma's pot pie. Theories, myths, comforting promises based in the clouds, and fables rooted in sickness. It's inevitable. Everybody, everywhere wants to know and nobody, nowhere wants to be faced with the unknown, so when a sweet baby boy is plastered all over the newspapers for leaving sticky, thermal prints all over their best friend's skin, society took it and ran.

Officially, Soulmatism has been a thing for, god, a couple of decades or so? Surely no longer than seven. Daniel never really bothered wrapping his head around the creation of it all, too busy being shitty at basketball and being fretted over by old ladies wishing him a fulfilling life to be concerned with such adult things like soulmates.

He knows certain bits, of course, but merely the bare bones of the whole ordeal. The kid was tested on, his best friend was tested on, and from then on, most babies were born to grow up and smear a singular person with orange, so the people in charge or something decided to test more and BOOM, Soulmates! Daniel can't find it within him to really give a crap about how it all began, despite his mother giving him a pat on the head and encouraging him to do so no longer than a minute after calling him a selfish boy.

He didn't.

Of course, he didn't

Should he have? Probably.

He's just happy it hasn't been around long enough to make it to the history textbooks yet. Well, it has, but the books are probably older than that fateful first boy, so whatever.

Anyway, stories. Something he does know for sure is that one, stories, no matter how good they are, are just stories and will more than likely never see the light of day and two, soulmates, no matter how long you theorise, will never have an answer. It just is.

His mother doesn't agree, she's too much of a hopeless romantic to believe in such a bland take. He can hear it now, 'it just is? Danny, how boring!'.

In the eyes of Lucille LaRusso, soulmates have always been a thing, and the gods (certainly not the gods they go to church for) were simply kind enough to make it visible to the first generation of humans they deemed worthy. Daniel doubts that last bit more than anything and narrowly avoids mentioning that believing in such a legend would directly fiddle with her beloved Catholic ideals.

So, according to the one and only Darlene M. Louis in chapter eleven of 'Soulmatism - a complete observation', the story goes something like this:

'The ancient Greeks believed humans once had four arms, four legs and a single head made of two faces. These humans displayed exceptional courage, strength and smarts. They were happy. Complete. So complete that the higher gods, fearing their wholeness would dull their need for worship, agreed to end such beings. After humans had attempted to overthrow the deities and climb Mount Olympus, the gods became desperate to lessen human audacity, so Zeus cleaved them in two, leaving their split selves to wander the earth in misery. Weakened and lost. Forever longing and longing, longing for the other half of their soul. Plato described it as the spiritual constant search for ‘the one’ to rid the sense of emotional and mental incompleteness. Modern-day hopeless romantics would describe this as the curation of soulmates and modern-day kids would laugh and say ‘What a load of bullshit!’ and me? Well, I don't think this at all, sure it's cute, but the truth in my eyes is...'

She goes on to talk about a science experiment gone wrong. It makes no sense at all.

What Daniel's trying to get at is that there are too many theories and depictions of Soulmatism that it becomes hard to feel a connection to it. Soulmates are stupid; the scientist probably made a mistake! Soulmates. Really? No, no, it can't be. If it was true, he would be throughly soulmateless at the moment.

Or perhaps he's lying. Shit, maybe his dad's death and his ma's lonesome soulmateless life impacted him more than he'd like to admit. Like what if—

Nope.

Don't bother.

The bond, yes, it's too unknown and too speculated to feel a connection to it.

So what if he can feel Johnny's heartbeat somewhere deep within him and feel the anger spike in him before he can take a swing? And so what if their prints lasted too long? It doesn't mean anything and doesn't prove the Greek gods took pity on them.

Actually, no, fuck those gods! Those dumb stupid gods who put him with Johnny Lawrence.

If anything, this was a punishment given by the gods to test their worth. They made humans think it was something pure when it was actually a curse and that's why he's stuck with Johnny. A punishment.

In hindsight, that probably makes no sense because—

Okay, so maybe what Daniel's been trying to get at this entire is that he hates Johnny Lawrence and he doesn't give two shits what theory is true because no matter what, the person in control of the story is an asshole for sticking him with Johnny.

Johnny Lawrence, who is smug and violent, a coward and a pro level bullshitter.

Johnny Lawrence, who can't talk without throwing a punch or insult.

"This is your fault, LaRusso." He sneers despite his blatant, swirling, anxiety sinking into both of their bones.

Johnny Lawrence who can't take the blame without throwing a bitch fit.

“Oh, sure. Next time, I’ll just let you kick my teeth in. Real sure that would’ve kept us out of—”

“This shit isn’t for me smacking your head in, LaRusso! It’s ‘cause you couldn’t keep your hands to yourself and branded me like some lovesick idiot.”

"Aw, but Johnny, I thought you wanted it, after all, you marked me first so—"

"Fuck you! D'You ever stop speaking like a condescending little bitch—"

"No! Do you ever stop yelling like—"

Johnny fucking Lawrence. His god damn soulmate.

Their first fight was quick striking, little action and even less small talk. A split lip, a swollen eye, a bruised jaw, a busted nose. It had no reasoning, just whatever pent-up grudge Johnny had against him since he swung at one of his loyal followers at the beach. Timmy? Tommy? Tammy? Something like that. If that fight was the catalyst, the fuel, this one was the reaction, the carbon and oxygen boiling over the bunsen burner of stained handprints and wrath. The only issue is that there isn't enough oxygen, so they accidentally create a steaming mess of toxic gas that infects everybody near them. It's a spectacle, with the students of West Valley gathering around as they hurl insults and bold-faced accusations at one another. Exactly one minute before their mandated counselling session, they're stiffly planted outside the office like two tightly wound mud mounds yelling jagged taunts at one another. They hardly have any time to throw fists before the office door splits open, and they're dragged into the room with a sharp reprimand and a red pinch on their ears.

Daniel's ear still stings, the ache persistent and the redness refusing to go down. It hurts more than he'd like to admit, but it's nothing compared to the heat crawling up his neck in a sickly range of colours, the warmth curling into his temple and down to his collarbone, spreading and infecting his entire skull with the disease of a thermal sickness. His jaw clenches so hard it might as well split in two. He hates how he wasn’t able to hit Johnny back, hates how his own skin betrays him—how it makes him look like a little bitch who’s been claimed, branded by a bond he never wanted.

He sighs, picking at his nail beds as the counsellor continues to bore holes into their skulls, her unwavering glare sharp and disappointed. It unnerves him, making him shift in his plush chair and dart his stare from corner to corner. The room is new, which he assumes is rare for their school. Despite the general cleanliness of classes, he can't remember ever entering a room that didn't smell of old man spunk and piss. The makeshift office is certainly homely, in the polite way you say to somebody you meet for the first time because, sure, the wallpaper is a gaudy blue, the stench is far too lemony and the furniture is ugly with each piece being a different colour and pattern, but he would be caught black and blue before bad mouthing a person's space. His mother would kill him if he did. But then again, he'd been forced to go to these sessions through no fault of his own, so maybe his mother would be understanding.

Johnny sits stiff beside him as always, he seemingly can't sit down in an environment like this without looking like he has a stick up his ass. His arms are crossed, eyes forward, his presence small yet glaringly out of place. He's untouched. Untouched and Daniel wants to lunge at him, to drive his knuckles into that smug, impassive face just to leave something behind, but all he can do is sit there, burning, while the counsellor stares and stares, as if analysing the two boys awkwardly perched in front of her.

She sighs at the evident disconnect, clearing her throat and saying a small "So." as if to test the waters of a civilised conversation. To see if they'll listen like eager puppies or stay silent, leave the room in a fit of yells or leap across the table and murder her.

The silence stretches, thick and unbearable. Daniel swears he can hear the blood rushing in his ears, the steady thump of his pulse in his throat. The air-conditioning hums in the background, the distant clatter of unpaid janitors outside the hall, a dull murmur against the tension in the room.  

The counsellor folds her hands neatly atop her desk, her expression unreadable, though she clearly decides that she's safe enough to go ahead with her tirade, comfortable in the belief they won't be jumping her any time soon. "Daniel LaRusso, Johnny Lawrence. I can't say I'm surprised about the situation you've found yourself in. A rivalry like yours? I've been working here for coming up to seven years now and have honestly never seen two soulmates quite like you." She looks up at them, their faces still taut and stubborn enough to stay silent. She sighs. "Well, I'm sure you've been told already, but we'll be seeing each other every Tuesday and Friday. My job here isn't to make you two love each other all of a sudden but to make sure you both develop a healthy enough relationship to not damage your bond and indirectly hurt yourselves. You don't need to worship each other, just chat once in a while, give each other a high five a day or something and not wish each other death 24/7, clear?"

They stare. Deadpan, stubborn, silent.

She looks between them, her fingers fidgeting with the folders' corners. She tilts her head slightly, urging a response from them, but they continue to glumly glare at her.

She rolls her eyes slightly, professional nature starting to rub off from the interaction. "Right, I get it. You don't know me, you don't like the situation you're in, and you'd rather not speak, but we need to get at least one thing done today." She says, her voice saccharine compared to the rough external noises. "Can you at least care to explain why you two were about to rip each other apart outside my office?" She motions to her cheek vaguely. "Punch like that? No chance it'll go down quickly."

Daniel grates his teeth in a dazed sort of annoyance, continuing to keep his mouth shut, for once, deciding that his limp mouth would do nothing but piss himself off. He doesn’t trust himself to speak yet, not with the warmth still crawling up his skin like a fever he can't shake. His hands clench into fists against his thighs. 

Johnny, to no one's surprise, doesn’t say a damn word either. He stares straight ahead like he’s being interrogated, like if he just keeps his mouth shut, they’ll let him walk free. Jaw set, eyes harsh, mouth spread into a cocky, shit eating grin. 

The counsellor exhales through her nose, looking between them like she’s debating whether this session is even worth her time. "Okay," she starts, dragging out the word with a pained expression. "Since you're both so talkative, let's try something different." She flips open a manila folder, skims whatever's inside, then clasps her hands together again. "Right. The whole school and their mothers know you hate each other, something about a fight at the beach when Daniel first moved." She looks at him. "Not great at first impressions, hey?" Daniel blinks at her, unimpressed. She coughs to ease the poorly landed joke before opening her mouth again. "Aside from what happened that day, is there any other reason as to why you two would rather rip each other's throat out than be... civil?"

Daniel scoffs, shifting in his seat. The movement makes his shirt brush against his collarbone, and he flinches at the heat still radiating there. The movement catches her eye, and once she's set on it, she refuses to let it go. She stares, her glare burning holes into his own set of eyes until an uncomfortable sheen of sweat spikes his skin.

He gives in.

"Maybe because he’s a raging asshole?" he mutters under his breath, just loud enough for Johnny to hear.  

Johnny doesn’t take the bait—not immediately, at least. But Daniel sees the slight twitch in his jaw, feels the way it rubs him the wrong way. His fingers curl against his sleeve before uncurling like he’s forcing himself to stay still. "Right," Johnny finally says, voice flat. He's pissed off Daniel broke the silence he was apparently planning on keeping the entire time. "Like you’re not a complete dick yourself."  

Daniel turns his head to scowl at him, the faux dam of silence they created coming down in a heap of rubble. "Do you need a reminder that your little gang of dropouts decided to jump me for no god damn reason at the beach while you sat watching, playing God?" He spits. "Oh, and who can forget that you hit me yesterday and twenty minutes ago!"  

"Oh, please, the only reason why they bothered you is because you were sticking your nose in business that didn't concern you—" 

"You know how stupid you sound? I'd been in town for barely a day; how was I supposed to casually know—" 

"Enough!" the counsellor cuts in, voice sharp enough to slice through their bickering. "As much as I am overjoyed at finding the trigger words to get you to speak, our time together won't be beneficial in the slightest if you keep these tough-guy personas on!" She huffs. "You both are nearly adults; by next year you'll be out of here and going to college, getting a job. Do you think an employer will take you on board with an attitude that stinks worse than bile? No."

"An interview is nothing like dealing with this asshole."

"You're proving my point. You can't even have a basic conversation without trying to kill each other." She sighs, rubbing her temples. "This is going to be a long semester."  

Daniel stiffens. "Semester?"  

The counsellor gives him a bland look. "Yes, Mr. LaRusso. Did you think soulmate counselling was a one-and-done thing? It's a medical procedure, an important one for people as reluctant as you."  

Daniel nearly chokes on air. His head snaps toward Johnny, who looks equally horrified, if only for a split second, before he schools his expression into indifference. 

Fucking tough-guy persona. 

"You're joking," Johnny says, voice strained.  

The counsellor offers them a polite smile. "Not at all," she says. "Now, will we be answering my questions from now on, or will we be sitting in silence?" She stares at their conflicted expressions. "This is my job, I get paid to sit here and do this. For me, it's daily work; you not speaking or arguing or refusing to interact is not harming me. I get paid the same amount every month, no matter what. You'll only be punishing yourselves." She leans back in her chair, the low squeak of the wheels itching against Daniel's ears. "Besides, you prove to me that you guys aren't gonna screw with your bond and I'll sign you off as a-okay and you won't need to see me ever again. So you better suck up to me, because i'm the only way you get out of here."

Daniel squints at her, mouth pressing into a thin, taught line. He hates this, he wants to go home and fall into his bed, rot there until the morning comes and he's free from colourful skin. He hates this and Johnny and hates that she has all the power here, that she’s dangling the possibility of freedom over their heads like some smug schoolyard bully holding a stolen lunchbox just out of reach. He can already feel Johnny scowling beside him, radiating barely restrained frustration, which—fine, good. At least they’re on the same page about something.  

The counsellor waits, crossing her legs over one another like this all unphases her while she sports a patient yet unbothered expression. Like she’s dealt with a thousand dumb, angry soulmates before and will deal with a thousand more after them.  

Daniel exhales sharply through his nose, glancing at Johnny from the corner of his eye. "Fine," he mutters. "I’ll talk. Whatever gets me out of here faster."  

Johnny scoffs. "What, suddenly you’re cooperative? Always knew you wanted to get all sappy with me, LaRusso."  

Daniel’s head snaps toward him. "Can you not for a—"  

The counsellor claps her hands together once, sharply, cutting them off. "Good! Love the enthusiasm, gold stars for the both of you, truly!" She grins something sickly sweet before pulling out three sheets of paper and placing them down. "Now, since we've established you both aren't mute and can identity when somebody is asking you a question, how about a little excerise?" Daniel bristles at the blatant dig at them. "Tell me something simple—one nice thing about the other."  

Daniel blanches. "Excuse you?"  

Johnny looks equally disgusted. "You're a shit comedian."  

She waves off the insult. "C'mon, one nice thing," she repeats, far too jolly to be authentic. "Just one. It can be anything. Come on, make an effort. For the freedom."  

Daniel clenches his jaw, trying to keep his expression neutral. His mind races, sifting through the mess of insults, grudges, and unspoken feelings that make up his relationship with Johnny. A nice thing? About him? Yeah, sure, he can think of a couple things—unfortunately—but he’ll be caught dead before he says them out loud. He doesn't need to know that he has a good laugh or that Daniel admires his ruthless passion and loyalty. Doesn't need to know that his hair looks soft and he just has the urge to mess it up because, really, why is it so perfectly formed? Yeah, he doesn't need to know about his smile or eyes, his admittedly good grades or—

Fuck.

Yeah, no. Never.

It'll stay with him until he's buried six feet under, maybe seven, just in case he dead-sleep talks about his opinions and Johnny ends up hearing them. Now, that's assuming he would even bother visiting his grave. So what if they're soulmates? There's no way this is going beyond an amicable relationship that is sparse enough to relieve them of a hospital but frequent enough to fend off the mania, and so Johnny visiting his grave would be insane.

His mind blanks, simultaneously full of every compliment under the sun and every insult possible. He shifts uncomfortably, glaring at the floor. "Uh. I don’t know. I guess he’s… not completely stupid." He stutters out awkwardly, regretting the words as soon as the tumble from his mouth. 

Johnny lets out an incredulous laugh. "Wow. So heartfelt. You should write poetry. Remind me, what grade did you get in English lit—"  

"Shut up, like you can do better!"  

The counsellor raises a hand before Johnny can fire back. "Your turn," she says simply.  

Johnny huffs, looking away. His fingers drum against his bicep where his arms are still crossed, a small, restless movement. "I dunno," he mutters. "He’s—" His jaw tenses. "He’s not a complete coward, I guess. No sane kid would throw a punch with such crappy form."  

Daniel blinks, taken aback despite himself. He’s fairly sure Johnny didn’t mean that as a compliment, not really, but there’s something weird about hearing it. Something that makes his skin itch worse than the lingering heat of their bond.  

"Well," the counsellor says, rocking back slightly in her chair with a satisfied grin. "That wasn’t too painful, was it?" She stares brightly at them, pen rhythmically tapping on the desk in a jovial tune. "Nobody died, we are able to see the good in each other, and we're one step closer to getting out of here!"

Johnny needs to get out of his head, his whole aura is throwing him off, his overwhelming and obviously over-suppressed emotions bubbling up within the bond and trickling over to his side of it. He doesn't want that, doesn't need that. It's the last thing he requires, an abundance of another person's emotions wracking into his own. 

Daniel grits his teeth, willing himself to shut it all out. It’s pressing against him, hot and restless, full of Johnny. Too much Johnny. His frustration, his anger, his endless need to bottle it all up until it bursts. Daniel is living through it right there with him, the way it coils under the surface, an electric charge crackling along the bond like the moment before a thunderstorm.  

He shifts in his chair, exhaling sharply. 'Cut it out, man!' he wants to snap at him, but he knows it's futile. What exactly would he be telling Johnny to stop? His emotions, his existence? What a load of bullshit. The idiot is probably gripping the edge of his seat right now, jaw locked tight, pretending none of this is happening. But Daniel knows it is, because it’s bleeding over, seeping into his own skin, his own pulse, and the last thing he needs is to start carrying Johnny’s emotional baggage on top of his own.

"Yeah, only a couple hundred more steps, right?" Johnny drawls, stretching his arms behind his head like he's settling in for a long, miserable ride. "Maybe by then, we'll have matching t-shirts. ‘I survived soulmate counseling, and all I got was this lousy trauma.' You think they print those?"  He lazily glances at Daniel; whether he expected a glare or agreement is unbeknownst to Daniel, but he can feel Johnny's surprise. "Bet we could get them custom-made either way."

His smirk is sharp, edged with something biting, something restless. He drums his fingers against his knee, a steady, agitated rhythm as he turns to face Miss... crap, what's her name? "Or! Hell, maybe we can fast-track it. Just slap a gold star on our files and call it a day. I mean, we did say nice things about each other. That’s gotta be worth an early release, right?"

The counsellor hums, completely unfazed by Johnny’s sarcasm. If anything, she looks surprised at how many words Johnny managed to spit out at once and oddly pleased with herself, like she’s been waiting for this exact moment.  

“Wonderful enthusiasm, Johnny. I knew you'd stick to the programme quick,” she says, reaching for the previously laid out papers strewn across the desk. “Since you’re just so eager for progress, I’ve got just the activity for you boys.”  

She slides two sheets of paper across the desk toward them, topped off with a pile of colourful gel pens. They stare at the heap of colours dumbfounded.  

“…What?” Daniel says flatly, more confused than anything. 

“A worksheet!” The counselor chirps, grabbing one for herself. “We’re all gonna fill it out together, even me. I think that building a strong foundation will be beneficial for us in the future. It's just a little activity to help all of us understand each other better, okay? No pressure, just a bit of fun.”  

Johnny blinks at the page like it might sprout legs and bite him. “You serious?”  

“Dead serious,” she confirms, already clicking her own pen open, a bright yellow.  

Daniel picks his up with extreme reluctance, scanning the page with thinly veiled horror. 'What’s your favorite color?' 'How do you express affection?' 'Describe a perfect day with your soulmate.' He drags a hand down his face, placing the sheet back down onto the desk.  

“This is—this is childish,” he mutters.  

Johnny scoffs, tossing his sheet down. “Yeah, what are we, seven? What’s next, macaroni art?”

The woman looks up from her furious scribbling to grin. “If that’s what it takes to get you two to cooperate, I’ll break out the glue sticks. I've always enjoyed arts and crafts. I once cured a fractured soul bond with origami crane making.” She leans forward slightly, tapping her pen against the desk, the yellow ink spilling slightly onto the wood. “Come on, humour me. This isn’t about right or wrong answers, just about getting you two to think.”  

Johnny huffs, tilting his head back to glare at the ceiling like it’s responsible for his suffering. “Oh yeah? Think about what, exactly?”  

Daniel, meanwhile, is still staring at the worksheet stuck to the desk like it’s a personal attack. 'Describe a perfect day with your soulmate.' He wants to puke.  

The counsellor shrugs, casual as anything. “Each other. Yourselves. How you relate.” She tilts her head in a sort of understanding. “Maybe you’ll even surprise each other.”  

Daniel makes a strangled noise of disbelief. Johnny just stares at her, then at him, then at the page in front of him.  

Then, in a slow, deliberate motion, he picks up his pen and starts scrawling something across the paper.  He holds it up for Daniel to see.  

'Perfect day: one where I never have to fill out this dumbass worksheet.'

Daniel snorts before he can stop himself. The counsellor sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Boys. Work with me here.”

Daniel exhales sharply, plunging his hand into the pile and picking up a pink pen as he finally puts it to paper. Fine. Whatever. If filling out this stupid thing gets them out of here faster, then so be it. He scrawls something down for the first question. Favorite color? Red. Green. Shit, maybe its blue, who cares? Before flicking his eyes over to Johnny’s paper.

Johnny, of course, is being an ass.

For 'How do you express affection?' he’s written: Wouldn't you like to know?

For 'Describe a perfect day with your soulmate?' it just says: Wouldn’t have one.

Daniel rolls his eyes. “Real mature,” he says sharply. "Inspiriational words, what colours did you use? 'sucker punch scarlet' and 'mental illness green'? Fitting."

Johnny scoffs, gesturing sharply to his own page. "You're acting like you didn't write love sonnets on yours with 'Princess pink'."

"At least I wrote something instead of bullshit. 'Wouldn't you like to know', 'wouldn't have one' how wonderful." He mocks

Johnny leans back in his chair, tossing his pen onto the desk with a dramatic flick of his wrist. “Yeah? And what did you put, Shakespeare? Can’t wait to hear your deep and meaningful take on what makes a soulmate connection special.” He makes a grand, sweeping gesture. “‘Oh, we simply complete each other, our souls entwined by the very fabric of the universe—’”

Daniel throws his pen at him.

Johnny barely dodges it, grinning. “Wow. And you called me immature."

“Oh, bite me,” Daniel mutters.

The counsellor, wisely choosing to ignore their antics, flips her own worksheet to face them, the yellow ink only showing up when the light hits it just right. “Well, since you two are struggling, maybe it’ll help if I share some of my answers.” She brightens. “Okay, first one—favorite color? Purple.”

A pause.

She glances between them, expectant. “Aren’t you going to ask why?”

“No,” Johnny deadpans.

“Not even a little,” Daniel adds.

She purses her lips but moves on. “Alright… ‘How do you express affection?’” She gives them a pointed look. “Words of affirmation. Like encouraging my students, for example!”

Johnny raises a brow. “If that’s affection, I’d love to see what you call abuse.”

Daniel catches himself snorting again, and he hates it. The counsellor sighs. “Fine. Let’s see… ‘Describe a perfect day with your soulmate.’” She beams at them. “Breakfast in bed, a nice long walk in the park, and stargazing at night. Just enjoying each other’s company.”

Daniel blinks. “You just described my nonna's Sunday.”

Johnny tilts his head. “I was thinking more prison yard privileges, but sure.”

The counsellor pauses, staring at them both like she’s reconsidering every life decision that’s led her to this moment. Then, with an exaggerated sigh, she slaps her worksheet onto the desk, rubbing her temples.  

"Okay. Fine," she mutters, mostly to herself, before glancing at the clock like it might offer salvation. It doesn’t. She straightens her back, forcing a smile that’s bordering on a grimace. "Moving on."  

Daniel exchanges a glance with Johnny, who looks just as unimpressed as he does. Not that that’s new.  

She exhales through her nose, gathering her last reserves of patience. "Now, unless I was given the wrong times like yesterday, period five should be ending within ten minutes. As much as I'd like to cheer and say this was an extremely productive session and that we've broken so many barriers, I can't. All we've done is bicker and brood with only slight progress being made in the past—" she glances up to the clock and back to them. "—five minutes seeing as how you managed to band together with the opinion that this ultimately sucked. But, I digress, people with such a strong bond and hatred simultaneously are no easy fix. We'll be up and running with a stream of happily answered questions within a month, just—" 

"Strong bond?" Johnny, surprisingly, asks, his voice dull, eyebrows knitting together in confusion. Or disgust. Probably both.  

The counsellor blinks at him like he’s grown a second head. "Yes…" she starts slowly, squinting as if trying to gauge whether he’s messing with her. "Were you not aware?"  

Johnny looks like he wants to scoff, but there’s a beat, one that lasts just a second too long, just enough hesitation to reveal that no, actually, he wasn’t. Daniel isn’t sure if that makes him feel better or worse.  

The counsellor leans forward, her previous air of defeat dissipating as she flips open the manila folder, clicking her pen with renewed purpose. "It's an assumption, of course, seeing as how Daniel's thermal mark is still as bright as the moment he walked in, and it's been almost an hour." She looks up expectantly.  

For once, they’re quiet. Not out of defiance, not out of passive-aggression, but sheer, dumbfounded bafflement.  

"Well?" she presses, tapping the page in front of her. "I need to take down the details at some point. I was waiting until I was sure you wouldn't bite my nose off, but here we are. Might as well do it now, huh?"  

They continue to stare blankly.  

She sighs, rubbing a hand down her face. "Do they not teach you this stuff in school? God, okay."  

She flips the folder around, tapping at a section. "This is informally called a 'bond profile.' I need to fill it with any details I can get from you, like how long the prints last, if they hurt, if there are any… side effects." She waves a hand vaguely, like this is just another day at the office for her. "It gets compiled with whatever the nurse observed of your marks yesterday and the inevitable second check that will come later this month and is then sent off to be put in your medical records."  

Daniel raises an eyebrow, catching the messy scrawl at the top of the page. "What does it already say?"  

Beside him, Johnny huffs, shifting in his seat.  

"That your prints act stranger than most. Whilst most marks are a constant, exact imprint of the other's hand, yours seem to spread slightly once impact has ended." She glances at his cheek and gestures down to her collarbone. "For example, I assume you were his on your cheek; however, it seems to have spread down to your neck." Her pen stays poised in the air as she refuses to let the air rest and continues her questioning. "How long until they fully went down yesterday?"  

Too long.  

Daniel glances at Johnny, who is suddenly very interested in the far wall, his fingers twitching against his knee. The tension that had been sitting between his brows has smoothed out, but Daniel can tell, he'll, he can feel it, that he’s thinking about it.  

"Uh—" Johnny starts, reaching back to rub his neck, voice oddly small. "I don’t know. Maybe four?"  

The counselor hums. "Minutes or hours?"  

Johnny grimaces.  

One beat of silence.  

Two.  

Daniel rolls his eyes. "Four hours," he corrects. "They started to fade after two."  

The counselor nods, smug in her earlier assumption being true. "What about emotions?" she asks, flipping a page. "Can you feel each other’s?"  

Yes.  

Yes, and Daniel wants to grab her by the collar and yell it in her face because it’s all he can think about. His body is in overdrive, his own emotions tangled and pulled in ways that don’t make sense, that shouldn’t be possible. He keeps waiting for it to settle, for it to even out, but it’s just getting worse, soaked through with feelings that don’t belong to him, that he knows aren’t his.  

Across from him, Johnny is staring, jaw set, shoulders tense.  

And Daniel feels that, too.  

Oh, god. They’re so screwed.  

The sharp clang of the bell makes them both flinch.  

The noise from the hallway floods in, a welcome sound compared to the stifling room they've found themselves in. Shuffling books, shouting students, the scrape of chairs against the floor, it's welcome jump in their monotony, but it all feels distant, like they’re underwater.  

Daniel swallows thickly. "Yes," he says, voice hoarse. "We can."  

The counsellor huffs a laugh, scrawling something onto the page. "Well, ain't that fun." She shuts the folder with a decisive thud. "You best be off to sixth period, then, huh?"   

That evening, three hours after his torturous counselling session and thirty minutes since his deadbeat and awkward detention, Daniel bikes home in the pissing rain. It's the sticky type where the weather is too hot to allow the rain to act as it should. He ends up more sweaty than anything.

And he barely gets through the door before collapsing onto the couch, face-first, groaning into a cushion like it's the only thing keeping him from losing his mind. He rots there until his mother comes home and begins to hover, awkward and concerned. "I can make you some food?"  

And he replies with a muffled grunt as the fabric of the cushion rubs uncomfortably against the fading print on his face.

In that moment, he wants nothing more than to peel his skin off and start over.

Chapter Text

Who in their right fucking mind throws a house party on a Wednesday?

Actually, scrap that. Who in their right mind throws a party on a Wednesday, invites the entire school and somehow manages to get a more than full house, on a Wednesday? What rational person would go to it? Genuinely, Wednesday is not only a shitty filler day that teases better days ahead but they all have school tomorrow. Daniel can see it now, the classes half empty from every hungover tramp taking a sick day and everybody else who wasn't lucky enough to stay home, waddling around in sunglasses, clutching a sick bag.

He heard Mrs Smith is doing a surprise quiz tomorrow. Good luck to her fried students.

Ali is one of those students; in fact, she was the one who mentioned it in the first place. Something about her catching a peek at the teacher's timetable and rushing to study because she's been dangerously behind on class reading. That was this morning. Maybe an hour or two before she sunk her nails into Daniel's arm and pushed him onto her lunch table, ranting about how somebody that Susan knows is throwing a party and somebody that Barbara likes is going to be there, so of course they need to go because Barb may just have a chance! Why did he need to go? Well, he's not quite sure either. They'd 'adopted' him of sorts, pulling him into their giddy friend group soon after his black eye had settled from the beach. Ali had liked him, apparently, found him interesting and charming enough to allow him to stick around. It was pleasant, he supposes. Their fluttering made sure no fucker could knock him out with a rock but was loose enough to allow said fuckers to either a) get a cobra to do their dirty work or b) yell at him. People like yelling insults from across the hall, then turning around before Daniel can catch them. Less confrontation on their part, more annoyance on his part.

Whatever, it's whatever.

So, he's an honorary girl. Supposedly. And because of that status, a Wednesday wannabe frat boy house party is imperative for him to attend because, "God, Daniel, Barb's been pining over the boy for months! She's even taken to trying to sell his Ma dictionaries under the disguise of being a saleswoman to try sneak a glance at him, this is her one and only chance!"

He never wanted to come. Didn't even have an inkling of interest at any point from this morning to this evening, people talk too much, and he'd rather not be there to hear it. Rumours and insults don't bother him as long as they're said far away from him, and that fact, especially now, is more important than ever, seeing as how he just knows that those stupid playground rumours are bound to be fueled by him. Him and Johnny. Him and Johnny and their stupid soul bond and that bitchy counsellor who Daniel still can't remember the name of.

It's pretty shitty, he should've said no out right but Ali was too excited to take anything less than an enthusiastic yes as an answer. Originally, he was planning on nodding along before simply not turning up and blaming it on a snuffly nose when she inevitably asks. Plan went down the shitter when a loud horn was sounded outside his apartment and the loud squeal of an already tipsy girl called out to him.

"C'mon Danny, let's go get shit faced!"

Well shit.

So he's a party boy now. 

Which, sure, he's been to parties before, but nothing quite like this because he has an actual part to play, apparently. Like this was all some mission. 

"Right, Danny, so this whole little outing is to get Barbara thoroughly laid, but like, ladylike, okay?" Daniel couldn't name her with a gun to his skull, Jennifer maybe? But one thing he did know was that she was about two shots away from wrapping the car around a tree. He's heard of pre-gaming before, but this? This was a blatant call for liver failure in the middle of a deadbeat house party. "Like I'm gonna be by her side all night and Sammy is gonna hunt down the guy and Ali is gonna— y'know what, you get the picture. ANYWAY, you're gonna be a distraction because this guy has a really snakey girlfriend and since you're like super popular with the whole Johnny thing, you can easily distract her!" She grabbed his hands between hers and pulled a scrutinising face. "It's super weird your SOULMATE is Johnny fucking Lawrence, you know he's Ali's ex, right? How weird that her bestie is fucking her ex—" He tried to cut her off with a strong reprimand because, no, they can barely speak to eachother let alone be intimate in any way, shape or form, but he got a swift flicking of her hand to shut him up.

"Nuh uh, zip it! This bitchy girlfriend is super into the whole Soulmatism stuff so you gotta stick your ass out and spew nonsense about your bond to her, got it? If I see that two faced asshole anywhere near Barbara I'm gonna slit her neck and then yours, do you understand, Sweetheart?"

He nodded.

She was terrifying.

Apparently, there used to be rumours about her being a diagnosed psycho. 

He's not chancing it, which is exactly how he's found himself here. Here, being a moth-eaten couch surrounded by sweaty bodies and a hand full of a solo cup pumped with whatever mysterious yellow liquid Susan pushed into his hands before sneering at him and trudging off. He's never quite understood why Susan hates him so much.

Maybe it's the fact that Ali likes him or the whole Johnny thing that's made her bitter, after all, she had been the number one Johnny hater after Ali and him had broken up. Maybe it's the way he talks that rubs her the wrong way, or the way he walks, or breathes too loudly when he's nervous. Maybe she just gets a kick out of making people squirm. Whatever it is, she handed him that cup like it was poison and she knew he'd drink it anyway, which, fine, he did. Not all of it, though. He's not suicidal. It tastes like battery acid and orange juice and regret. Still, it’s something to hold, something to keep him looking busy so no one tries to get him to dance in a sick humiliation ritual or worse, attempt to try to get any answers from him.

'Oh, Danny, is it true? Hey, LaRusso, we always knew you'd been batting for the other team! Daniel, is it true that Johnny's dick is as big as everybody says?'

How was he even supposed to respond to that last one? Like yeah totally, Johnny Lawrence and I obviously hooked up three minutes after finding out we were soulmates and, yeah, his dick's truly colossal!

God, give him a break.

It’s like the whole school forgot how to whisper the second they found out. Because, really, Daniel wouldn't have had a single complaint about the student body if they just whispered, kept their voices down about their hair-brained theories and assumptions, but they don't. So now it's Daniel's issue. Now it's something Daniel is actively a part of instead of just being the ignorant subject of their tales. It's barely been three days, and it's only grown in frequency; at this rate, it'll be going on for weeks. And now every glance feels a little too long, every laugh a little too knowing. Even now, he can feel eyes flicking over to him, conversations dipping for half a second when he walks past. Like he’s carrying something contagious. Like Johnny Lawrence might come barrelling through the front door at any second, and they'll all have front row tickets to seeing them throwing punches or, apparently, violently making out in public.

He sighs and sinks further into the couch, the shitty upholstery crackling under him like it might just give out and swallow him whole. Honestly? Wouldn’t be the worst thing. The music is too loud, the air’s thick and wet with other people’s sweat, and someone keeps burning incense that smells like it came straight from a gas station glovebox. There's some college guys floundering around a fold out table playing beer pong like they're trying to recreate a coming of age movie that only stayed in theatres for a day because it was so crappy. What they were even doing here was a mystery to Daniel; they're fully grown men hanging around a bunch of barely adults. Either way, at least they're too drunk to realise all the drinks in this house taste like arsenic, his own still tastes like citrus-flavoured chemicals and poor decisions, no matter how much he drinks it.

One of the college bros gets a ping pong ball in a cup and cheers wildly, cawing like a bird amid a mating call. Daniel flinches at the squawk, shifting uncomfortably, one foot tapping against the sticky floor as he lets his head fall back against the couch. Every few seconds, someone screams from the kitchen, or a laugh bubbles up too loud and sharp from across the room, and it just… grates against his skull. 

And, sure, he knows he doesn’t belong here. Not really. He’s background noise, a reluctant accessory to people of West Valley. In another world, he'd still be at home, ready to come into school the next day to get a punch or two. But no. He's instead here, listening to the bullshit spewing out of too drunk to give a shit teens while patiently waiting for either Ali to find him or for somebody to take him out with a pistol to the skull.

A twisted nausea builds up in his stomach, a strange distance to the feeling.

“Move it, Jimbo.”  

Ali appears in a blur of glitter and chaos, hip-checking the boy beside him with zero warning. Jim nearly spills his drink all over Daniel’s jeans, mutters something bitter, and slinks off like a kicked dog, the bitter stench of a wet pig following after his figure.

Ali throws herself into the vacant seat like she’s been through battle, her perfume chasing off whatever faint peace Daniel had managed to wrangle. She drapes an arm over the back of the couch, leans her head against it with a theatrical groan, and immediately launches into a frenzied string of words.

“God, Susan is being insane tonight," she starts, speech slurred around the edges. "My job today was to make sure Barbara was doing okay because even though Jenny was supposed to do that, she's such a lightweight that as soon as we got in here, she ended up passing out in a potted plant!" She gapes for a moment, as if her train of thought had fallen off, then continues like nothing happened. "But because I was spending so much time with Barb, Susan went wild and started screaming about me being something, then ran off and guess what, Danny?" She swings her head around to glare at him. "I found her ten minutes later grinding on one of the Cobras like they haven't blacklisted her from their minds since she went apeshit that one time and called Tommy inbred! I don't even recognise the guy, he must be a freshman, which, ew, she's been eighteen for ages now! Ugh, whatever." It looks like she intends to stop there but an uneasy expression spreads over her face as her silence creeps up to her.

"I'm not the only one who thinks she was totally out of line, right? Susan had no right having a fit and running off just because I was being a good friend and following the plan we all made... right?"

Daniel doesn’t say anything at first. Just lifts his cup, takes another begrudging sip of poison, and mutters, “totally."

"Are you okay? You're kind of being a buzzkill."

Daniel slinks further into the leather whilst letting out a gritted, "feeling just peachy."

Ali scoffs, churning in her seat beside him like a woman on the brink of a full-blown meltdown. Her silky top is slipping off one shoulder and her lip gloss is smeared just slightly at the corner of her mouth, it doesn't seem to help her frazzled image at all. "Okay chatterbox," she mocks, kicking her boots up onto the coffee table like she owns the place and throws her head back with a dramatic groan.

“Fine,” she says, already sounding exasperated. “Please tell me you’ve done something helpful aside from brooding here all night. Did you have any luck with the girlfriend? Or are you still hiding from Johnny and dry heaving into a plant?”

Daniel shifts uncomfortably on the sagging couch cushion, the plastic cup still in his hand like a prop in a play he didn’t audition for. He doesn’t answer right away, and Ali tilts her head toward him, eyebrows rising expectantly. "It's fine if you didn't. Jenny will never know—"

"No, I found her,” he says eventually, tone flat.

Ali perks up, turning to face him more fully. “Oh? And?”

He stares at the wall for a beat, watching as the sweaty room makes the paint gather with perspiration. “She’s gone. For now, at least.”

“…Gone?” Ali echoes, clearly coming up with all the wrong ideas in her mind. “Gone like…?”

“Gone, like she screamed, ‘Are you seriously flirting with me right now?’ and called me a freak and then stormed out. So. Mission accomplished, I guess?”

Ali sits up straighter, eyes wide. “What? What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything,” Daniel says, more defensive than he means to be. “I said something vague about soulmates and the metaphysical weight of fate, or whatever. I didn’t even know she was the girlfriend at first, she just started asking questions because I'm apparently boy fucking wonder right now and then—boom! Gone. Like, full dramatic exit, yelled and kicked and everything! Might’ve even knocked over a lamp or two.”

Ali stares at him for a second, and then slowly leans back, nodding. “Jenny is going to be impressed."

He snorts. “Great. Glad my accidental emotional terrorism worked out for Barbara’s love life.”

“Oh, Barb’s thriving,” Ali says, waving a hand. “Last I saw her, she was heading upstairs with dreamboat boy and two litres of boxed wine. You did good, LaRusso. Didn’t even have to show your tits.”

Daniel rolls his eyes, slouching deeper into the couch. “Yeah, a real win for the team.”

Ali grins and flops sideways until her head lands on his shoulder. “Don’t act like you’re not a little proud.”

“I’m not.”

“You totally are.”

He doesn’t respond, but he doesn’t push her off either. Instead, he takes another tiny sip of his god-awful drink and winces again.

“Still tastes like a war crime,” he mutters.

Ali hums, unbothered. “Mmm. Better than studying.”

He wants to agree to that but it feels all wrong. 

Everything feels all wrong.

He hums back, not quite lucid enough to sound alive. He's pretty sure his consciousness would've fluttered up to the high heavens should it not be tethered to the drink simmering in his throat like battery acid and poor judgment. That, and the steady weight of Ali’s head against his shoulder.

The party pulses around them, too loud, too bright, too much. Laughter roars from the kitchen. Someone drops a bottle and it shatters. No one reacts. A couple is making out on the stairs like they’re in a romcom, all teeth and desperation. It's all so messy. And Daniel’s sitting in the middle of it, still, quiet, sipping poison and pretending like his skin isn't writhing at the growing feeling of sickness that he knows isn't his.

And, yeah, he should feel proud. He did what they asked. Got the girl to leave, secured the upstairs tryst, deflected attention, played the part. Maybe part of him is glad to have been useful for something, even if that something was emotionally traumatising a stranger into storming off. But mostly, he just feels… drained. Like a sponge wrung out too tightly.

Like the air around him is too heavy for his lungs.

Like his skin isn't big enough to take into account another person living inside of him.

Ali shifts a little but doesn’t lift her head, her hand absently flicking at the hem of her shirt. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

He hesitates. He could say yes. It’s easier. Expected. But the truth curls at the back of his throat like bile.

“I feel like I’m wearing someone else’s skin,” he says in an elongated sigh.

Ali doesn't say anything right away. Then she sighs, long and slow, and pats his knee. “Yeah. Me too.” She takes the cup from his hand and chugs down the rest, lifting herself to throw the cup to the floor.

"Wanna know a secret, danny?" She asks, leaning back into his space with a wild grin that felt too big for the peaceful moment they were just in. "Nobody here even likes each other."

He lets out a breathless, punched-out laugh at the abrupt change in conversation.

She grins wider, nudging her shoulder against his. “Seriously, it's sort of disheartening to see!"

The music thuds louder, like someone cranked the volume up half a notch. Somewhere across the room, there’s a sharp burst of cackles followed by the sound of a bottle clinking hard against the edge of a counter. All of a sudden, the party feels like it’s gathering momentum again. It's slow and sticky, but undeniable, like the peace he was once cultivating had splintered as soon as Ali took his drink, his anchor.

Ali shifts on the couch and starts talking again. Not deep this time. Not heavy, but lighter now, lifted by a refresh of booze.

“I mean, did you see that girl in the red dress? She’s been flirting with two different people all night, and I’m pretty sure neither of them knows about the other—”  

He shakes his head fondly, deciding against pointing out the fact that there are at least twenty girls here wearing a red dress in favour of listening to the growing chaos of her ramblings once again. The weird ache in Daniel’s chest doesn’t disappear, but it tucks itself away behind the noise. The air feels easier to breathe.  

Ten minutes pass in a blur of bass and breathless monologue.

Ali’s still draped over Daniel’s shoulder like she’s fused there, talking so quickly he’s not entirely sure when one story ends and the next begins. At some point, she’s ranting about Barbara’s sixth-grade crush on her history teacher (“Mr. Weathers, yeah, he had a mole shaped like Florida and he only wore corduroy, Daniel, corduroy! Like, full sets, pants and all!”), and before he can blink, she’s pivoted to a conspiracy theory about how the cafeteria tuna is actually repurposed cat food from a nearby shelter.

Daniel hums when it seems appropriate, nods when she gestures wildly, and offers the occasional “seriously?” to keep the rhythm going. He figures if he stops her, she might explode, or worse, redirect her focus entirely onto him.

She doesn’t seem to notice he hasn’t said anything substantial in minutes, but he doesn't mind; it's preferred.

“And then—” she slurs, eyes wide, as she dumps another cup onto the floor, the endless stream of booze seemingly coming from nowhere. "And then some shmuck tried to tell me that I look better with my hair straight, like it’s not literally my hair, like i didn’t spend years perfecting the art of the curl! You remember that time I made you hold a diffuser for twenty minutes while I played snakes and ladders by myself to prove that the two to four player rule was bullshit? I don't do that for no reason, yknow! So screw that guy, I won't ever—"

She hiccups mid-sentence, claps a hand over her mouth, and freezes like she’s surprised to find herself still talking.

Daniel blinks. “You good?”

Ali narrows her eyes at him for a second, then nods slowly. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m peachy.” She mocks as she hiccups again. “I’m just... okay, I need another drink. That’s what I need. Like. Now. Right now." She cranes her head up to stare at him. "Go, Danny boy, go fetch.”

Daniel snorts, easing her off his shoulder so he can stand. She flops back into the couch, arms sprawled out like she’s sunbathing.

“I’m getting you water,” he says, already making his way through the crowd.

“Nooo,” she groans. “Daniel! Daniel, please don't—”

“Don't wanna end up like Jenny!” he calls back over his shoulder.

“Traitor!” she yells after him, dramatic to the very end.

He rolls his eyes and pushes through the throng of sweaty bodies and off-key karaoke in search of something less lethal than acid in a red solo cup.

The makeshift bar is a mess. It's just yet another rickety fold-out table sagging under half-empty bottles, plastic cups, and puddles of something sticky Daniel really hopes is just alcohol. He grabs the nearest semi-clean cup and starts filling it with water from a jug someone had thankfully left behind, god bless the lone sober person forced to think ahead.

He's just about to turn and make his escape when he hears it. His name. Or at least, kind of his name.

“—I swear that’s Danny La-something. Y’know, the soulmate guy!”

Daniel freezes.

There’s a group of girls huddled together just a few feet away, one of them teetering slightly on her heels, swaying like a slow-motion pendulum. She’s got glitter smeared under her eyes and a drink, something vivid and red, sloshing dangerously in her hand. Her eyes scan the crowd lazily until they land on him.

They go wide, frenzied like she had just caught her prey. 

“YOU!” she squeals, her voice chaotic and far too loud even for here as she points directly at him like she’s just discovered buried treasure. “Oh my God, it's you! You’re the one— the one! From the fight!”

Daniel’s mouth opens to deny it, but it’s too late; she’s already stumbling toward him, arms outstretched like they’re old friends reuniting after a war.

She interlocks their hands, cold fingers clutching tight as the other slings behind his neck like a weird waltz. Her drink nearly tips over his shoulder.

“You’re like SO much cuter than I thought you’d be. Like, seriously. I thought you were gonna be, like… ugly-hot. Y’know? Like hot in a gross, tragic kind of way? Sort of unshowered and miserable, but a bit cute if you look hard enough. But you’re actually hot-hot!”

Daniel blinks. “Um.”

“I can’t believe you and Johnny freaking Lawrence are soulmates! That’s insane. That’s like if the sun and the moon got married. Or like if Romeo and Juliet actually lived. Except you're both guys, which is, like, so much cooler and y'know... kind of hotter,  actually." Her train of thought dies out for a second before she gasps and tightens her grip on him. Her friends giggle behind her. "Are you together-together or just like, mystically entangled? Are you fighting right now? Did he do something? Did you do something?”

She’s speaking so fast it’s like her mouth’s running on double-speed while her brain’s lagging ten seconds behind.

She smells like vodka and peach body spray, something Damaniel will never see the same way again.

“Where is he?” she gasps, suddenly spinning around as if Johnny might pop out from behind the liquor bottles. “Did you guys come together? Wait! Can you do the glowy thing? I heard bonded people's imprints literally glow, like in the movies. Show me!”

Daniel, still clutching the cup of water, finally manages to shrug her arm off his shoulder. “I don’t glow. And he’s not here with me.”

She stares at him, utterly heartbroken by this news. “That’s tragic,” she whispers, eyes wide and pitiful, almost watery. “You should be together. You’re like… fate’s chosen. You have to be around each other or you’ll die, right?"

“I’m not dying,” Daniel mutters, stepping back.

“Okay, but wait, before you go, do you, like, feel him all the time? Like right now? Is he thinking about you? Can you feel if he’s sad? Can he feel you?”

He shakes his head, suddenly too overwhelmed to entertain her. “I gotta go. My friend’s waitin' for me.” Daniel turns to leave, gripping the cup of water like a lifeline, but she’s already reeling back toward him, grabbing his arm before he can escape. 

“Wait, wait, wait!” she gasps, wide-eyed. “Don’t go yet! Please, please, please just tell me! You can definitely feel him right now, you look super unsettled. Is it… emotionally? Psychically? Cosmically?”

He looks unsettled because some random girl is psychoanalysing him, not because he's feeling more ill by the moment.

Daniel sighs, already regretting every choice that led to this moment. He takes a shot in the dark. “He’s just… sick, alright? Probably drank too much if he's here. That’s it."

Her jaw drops like he just told her that her dog died. “Noooo way! Johnny Lawrence? A lightweight?”

She bursts out laughing, full-bodied and loud enough to turn heads. “I knew it! Oh my God, that’s so perfect! So he's the drunk and you're the calm one, that's sweet!"

Daniel blinks. “Okay.”

“No, like, listen, Danny, can I call you Danny? You’re so brave. And, like, you have that really calm soulmate energy, you know? Johnny probably drank like three shots and immediately faceplanted. You’re the type who sips a soda and carries everyone else home. You are exactly what Johnny needs right now! Like, if he's ill, why are you bothering standing here with me? He obviously needs you!”

“Right. Thanks. I really need to get this to Ali now—”

“YES! Hydration is so key!” she cheers, then lunges in for a hug that smells like glitter and bad decisions. “You’re so soft! Emotionally! And your hair, oh my god, it’s so messy chic. I love that for you. You're so wonderful, Danny, I really do think you're just so amazing!”

Daniel lets her hug him only because she’s plastered and he doesn’t want her to fall over.

She finally lets go, bouncing back a few steps and nearly tripping over a liquor spill. “Go hydrate your girl! And tell Johnny he’s a little bitch when you see him but, like, with love! Say it's from me, yeah? The pretty Abigail, not the sticky one!”

Daniel watches her stumble back to her group like a glittery wrecking ball before letting out a pent-up breath.

What the actual fuck.

Who knew having a soulmate would all of sudden make him everybody's number one in their books?

"Never leaving the house again," he says to himself, voice hardly loud enough for him to hear over the bass.

He lingers in the kitchen a moment longer, letting the hum of the fridge and the faint thump of a shitty song infiltrate his ears. He's not quite sure why he stays stagnant by the folding table, maybe out of shock, maybe out of a pure distaste for the outside chaos he's bound to face again. The chaos here feels contained, drunken and sparkly, sure, but manageable. But out there? Might as well be a cesspool of teenage mobs.

The second he steps past the threshold, it’s like hitting a wall of heat and noise. The music floods his ears again, louder and messier than before, voices overlapping, laughter like sirens in his skull. Someone, probably a drunkard who says they have a zest for life but in actuality probably has some coke in their pockets putting a pep in their step, brought a portable strobe light machine. Not a good one, just one of those crappy tin ones you find in the clearance section of a department store. It's sickening, does nothing to help the pit of nausea churning at the base of his sternum. Someone shrieks with delight near the stairwell, and a couple barrels past him holding hands and three drinks between them. Somewhere down the hall in what he assumes is another rich boy foyer, a group of fuckheads are giggling to sound of a bottle spinning. 

His stomach lurches just in time for his feet to begin the trek to the couch, weaving between sweaty bodies and spilt wine, who the fuck brings wine to a house party?

God, it’s worse now. The nausea, the pressure, that weird secondhand swell of heat and anxiety crawling under his skin. It wraps around his ribs like clingfilm and tightens with every step he takes, almost as if he's getting closer to the source.

By the time he reaches the couch, he’s sweating, coated in a sticky drink, and one stumble away from spitting his guts up.

And then he stops cold, staring at the dented cushions that lack a presence.

Well fuck.

Ali’s gone.

The couch is still warm where she was sprawled out, and there’s a half-eaten gummy worm stuck to the armrest, but otherwise it's empty.

“Shit,” Daniel mutters, scanning the room uselessly.

There are too many bodies, too much movement. Someone’s pouring soda directly into a bowl of popcorn. Another guy is doing a handstand on the kitchen island. A girl in glitter tights is throwing her shoe at the ceiling fan to try and get down a thong. The house feels like it’s unravelling thread by thread, and the one person who tethered him through it all is gone.

Of course she is.

“Shit!” he says again, louder, more frantic this time, but it’s swallowed whole by the party. He throws the cup of water to the side, uncaring for the mess he makes or the growls of a stoned freshman who got the brunt of the water.

He turns to Jim who still, for whatever reason, is crouched on the floor and kicks him lightly with his foot. He blinks up bleerily, pupils wider than a football. 

"You seen Ali?" He says, bending slightly to say it directly into his ears.

Jim's head knocks to the side as he groans. "Nuh-uh, prolly on the couch," he slurs.

Daniel rolls his eyes, muttering a small "Sober up, dickhead" before sauntering off in search for her or anybody he vaguely recognises. Hell, he'd even appreciate Susan's presence right about now.

But no. No Susan, no Ali, no Barb, no sight of Jennifer's passed out body anywhere either. It seems like a dead end wherever he goes, whoever he asks.

He drags his feet into another room, one that's larger and completely empty aside from a couch and s riot of bodies. That's the moment Daniel begins to wonder who actually lives in such a strange house. 

He calls her name out a few times but nobody hears him and if they do, they don’t give a shit aside from seeing him then mumbling to their friends with a shit eating grin on their face. He scoffs, pushing into yet another person's shoulder to get their attention.

“Hey, have you seen Ali?” he asks the girl, her rhinestone-studded eyelids fluttering in a tipsy glare. She shrugs and points vaguely towards the stairs before turning back to her conversation.

Another guy gives him a drunken thumbs-up when he repeats the question, but it’s unclear if that means “yes,” “good luck,” or “get lost.” So he bites his tongue and walks into the hall, a surprisingly clear area despite the stairs being right there. He suspects it's because somebody's trampy boombox is pumping out songs nobody likes at a volume nobody respects here.

He scoffs under his breath. Of course. Of course, she’d disappear the second he starts feeling like maybe he could handle the chaos.

Daniel pushes toward the staircase, side-stepping a couple tangled up in a slow dance to a song way too fast and ugly for it. The thump of the bass lessens slightly as he climbs, replaced by the softer, more scattered noise of doors opening, voices murmuring and someone laughing way too hard behind a closed door. He's pretty sure he hears a grunt and moan down the hall, but he chooses to ignore it.

He’s halfway down the hall when he sees a bathroom door half-ajar, light spilling out in a slice across the carpet.

He steps forward, expecting to see Ali being sick in the toilet or Barbara getting her shit rocked by the mystery guy but when he nudges the door open, the sight stops him cold.

"Shit," he says under his breath, the world seemingly being the only thing he's stuck saying all night as he looks at the pitiful sight.

Johnny fucking Lawrence.

Of course he'd run into him here; he was stupid to even entertain the thought of him not being here.

Johnny’s hunched over the sink, his elbows braced on either side, shoulders trembling slightly as he spits his guts up into it. His face is pale, flushed weirdly at the edges as he grips the counter like it’s the only thing keeping him upright.

Daniel’s first reaction is instinctive disgust.

His second, unexpected and certainly unwelcome, is a twisted relief.

The nausea, the thick, uneasy churn that had been building in Daniel’s chest since he stepped back into the chaos, dissolves.

He stands there for a beat too long, watching Johnny struggle for breath, and realizes with a weird, stomach-dropping clarity that his hair brained sort of lie to, shit what was her name again, Abigail?, was in fact, not a lie.

It wasn't just nausea. It was his. Johnny’s.

“Jesus,” Daniel mutters, more to himself than anything. “What the hell did you drink?”

Johnny growls soemthing inaudible, probably a half assed insult.

"What?"

"I said—" he starts, flicking the tap onto an unnecessarily high pressure. "Fuck off." He rinses his face with water and looks up into the mirror to meet Daniel's eyes.

Johnny’s eyes are bloodshot, a little glassy, but there’s still a flicker of awareness there, something sharp and mean simmering beneath all the tequila and piss poor decision making. He stares at Daniel through the mirror like he’s trying to decide whether to laugh or throw up again. It would almost be a sorrowful sight if he didn't have a smug face on, like even puking all his organs up can't smother his abhorrent personality.

“Cool. You look like death,” he says, mildly hoping Johnny's drunk enough to either not be able to land a punch properly or not want to in the first place.

Johnny smirks, or maybe grimaces, it’s hard to tell while he stands there looking like a kicked, wet dog. “Yeah? I feel like it too, congrats on winning the great observation award," he spits the remnants of bile into the sink and punches the tap closed. "You try keeping up with Dutch and his fuckin’ jungle juice next time, princess, see how great you hold up.” His fingers twitch against the sink. He’s clearly trying to play it cool, but the heavy rise and fall of his shoulders says otherwise.

Daniel scoffs, leaning against the doorway as he observes the wavering figure in front of him. "Could probably take it better than you, y'know—" 

Johnny rolls his eyes sloppily, swiping across his mouth. "You're so full of shit."

"—you know," he continues, pointedly ignoring Johnny's complaints, deciding he's too fragile in his hazey state to fight back. "Abigail said you were a lightweight, says to send her love or whatever."

Johnny closes his eyes for no more than a second, like he’s in pain, but Daniel knows better, knows it's just another wave of nausea. “Jesus Christ.”

“She said she was the pretty one,” Daniel adds unhelpfully. "Not the sticky one.”

"I have no clue who you're talking about," he sighs, dropping his death stare to buckle over the sink again, a dry heave stuck in his throat.

"I don't know, she was a bit eccentric. Covered in glitter, smelled like peaches. Kept rambling on about soulmates and how I was soft or something, she was so drunk I was surprised she wasn't passed out on the floor. To be fair, she probably has a high tolerance since she was making fun of you for being a lightweight, and she really didn't seem like a hypocrite, more of a—"

"Fucking hell, LaRusso, do you ever shut up?" He rakes a hand through his sweaty, sticky hair. "I thought I told you to fuck off."

“Yeah, I caught that. Hard to miss the heartfelt sincerity.” Daniel slumps further in to the doorway, arms crossed, very much not fucking off. “Anyway, do you know her or not? Because she really seemed to know you."

Johnny rolls his eyes as much as he can in his messy state. "I can barely think of my name right now, let alone some random chick." He inhales sharply as he pushes off the sink, staggering slightly before gripping the edge again, knuckles white. “I gotta get out of here, man.”

Daniel blinks. “What, like, home?”

“No, I was thinkin’ about launching myself off the roof, takin' a nap in the damn pool,” Johnny snaps, but it’s halfhearted, more winded than biting. “Yes. Home. Bed. Sleep. Or coma. Whichever.”

“Oh,” Daniel says, probably sounding more dumb than anything else. "No kidding, you're like one shot away from liver failure."

Johnny glances over, squinting at him like the world’s slowly rotating out of focus. “Drive me.”

Daniel just stares at him. “What?”

“Drive me home.”

“Ima repeat myself, what?"

He sneers, turning his body around to face Daniel fully without the help of a mirror, his hips thud against the sink as he puts all his body weight onto it. "Came on my bike," he mumbles, blunt as always.

Daniel squints at him, baffled. "Okay? So you don't have a car, and I don't have a car. What do you want me to do? Teleport you home?"

Johnny stares at him for a moment, words taking their time to process in his head. "So—" he tilts his head, scowling like Daniel's the dumbest person alive. "How did you get here?"

Daniel raises his brows. “Jennifer drove us.”

“Jennifer?” Johnny barks a laugh, immediately regretting it as he clutches his head. “Wasn’t she shitfaced by, like, eleven?”

Daniel shrugs. “Yeah, the drive was bumpy, but I'm pretty sure she was so busy telling me the grand plan to try and get Barbara the boy of her dreams that her body managed to go on autopilot and forget there was more vodka than sense in her."

Johnny glares at nothing in particular. “God, I hate that chick.”

“Yeah, well, she got me here alive and in one piece. Better record than you’re on track for.”

Johnny makes a face like he wants to argue, but decides it’s too much effort. Instead, he starts patting down his jacket pockets. “Whatever. We’ll take Bobby’s car.”

Daniel reels back. “We’ll what?”

Johnny pulls out a set of keys, holding them up like they’re a golden ticket. “He’s not gonna care. He owes me money anyway.”

Daniel stares like he’s just been asked to perform heart surgery. “I—Johnny, I can’t drive. Like, at all. Like, tried to once and crashed my ma's car so bad it almost blew up, and as much as I get he owes you money, I don't feel like wrecking another guy's car."

Johnny waves him off. “If you're not gonna suck it uo and help me, you shoulda fucked off earlier like I politely asked.” Johnny groans and tries to shove off the sink again. He makes it half a step before wobbling. "I'll do it myself."

Daniel grabs him by the arm without thinking. “Oh, no. No. You are not driving, are you batshit?” The burn of his touch settles in as his words die out. It takes him a moment for his brain to catch up, for his hand to register the warmth he's leaving on Johnny's forearm, but when he does, he drops it like he's been burnt, like leaving that print would multiply world hunger by five. 

He looks up at Johnny, momentarily worried at the prospect of his soupy brain catching up and realising what Daniel had done.

“Then what’s your brilliant plan, LaRusso? Since you wanna help so bad,” Johnny bites, swaying just enough that Daniel flinches on his behalf. If he does realise the print under his covered arm, he doesn't mention it.

Daniel lets out a stubborn exhale before shoving himself back into the doorway. “I don’t have one, I’m not the one who showed up to a party on a death machine and chugged whatever the hell that Dutch, of all people, offered!”

Johnny rolls his eyes so hard it might detach a nerve or something. “Fine," he scoffs, rubbing his hand roughly down his face. "Just… come with me, okay? Sit in the car. Make sure I don’t wrap it around a tree. And if a cop pulls us over, you switch with me.”

“That’s not— no. How is that any better?”

Johnny glares at him, eyes half-lidded but surprisingly focused. “LaRusso, listen. I’m gonna pass out in, like, five minutes if I don't start movin'. Either on a lawn or in your lap and you're sure closer to me than grass. So unless you wanna explain to everyone why we’re suddenly cuddling in a bathroom that smells like puke, you’re gonna help me get to Bobby's shitty fuckin' Mercedes and your gonna buckle me in and yell into my ear whenever I start drifting out of the lane, okay?”

Daniel stares at him, mouth slightly open. “You’re not serious.”

“I’m so serious.” Johnny wobbles forward, jabs a finger into his chest, a bright bloom of warmth spreading from the impact point. Once again, Johnny doesn't bring it up if he recognises it. “And you’re weirdly good at following instructions when you’re panicked, so, like, now’s really the time."

Daniel looks at him. Really looks. His face is clammy and pale, yeah, but his voice isn’t slurred, and his steps, while uneven, are stubbornly intentional. He’s definitely drunk, but not gone. Not really. Not like Jenny anyway.

God help him.

Remind him why he's doing this, again?

“You’re an idiot,” Daniel mutters, stepping forward and hooking an arm under Johnny’s to keep him upright. He takes a leaf out of Johnny's book and completely ignores the spreading thermal smears rippling up their sides.

Johnny leans into it without hesitation, pushing into the heat. “Takes one to know one, princess.”

They make it to the top of the stairs like two kids in a three-legged race where both have sprained ankles. Johnny’s weight is heavier than expected, and Daniel has to grit his teeth to keep them from tipping forward every time Johnny wavers. His shoulder is hot under Daniel’s hand, radiating enough heat to make Daniel want to flinch; surprisingly, it's not just because of the thermal marks, which are definitely multiplying, but because Johnny is leaning into him.

Like he trusts him or something.

Which is ridiculous.

“Stop dragging your feet,” Daniel hisses.

“Stop stepping on them,” Johnny hisses back, practically breathing down his neck.

"I'm shorter than you asshole, give me a break!"

They reach the base of the stairs just as a fresh wave of noise slams into them from the living room: music, laughter, glass breaking somewhere. Someone must've brought a second boombox and, for whatever reason, put it right next to the other as there are now two shitty songs overlapping eachother. It's like a weird song-off except nobody is winning it and it's an overwhelming hot mess. The sound digs in behind Daniel’s eyes, a migraine in the making.

The house is more crowded now, claustrophobic. Hotter, louder. The air reeks of cheap tequila and even cheaper body spray. Daniel swears he can feel Johnny sway harder with each new strobe of light, and his own stomach gives a sick twist as the shared nausea spikes again. What a treat this is. Really.

He keeps his head down, walking like they’re just another pair of drunkards headed for the door. Nothing suspicious here. Just two bitter rivals turned hated soulmate freaks going on a totally not awkward midnight stroll. Nope. Not worth noticing. Certainly not worth talking about, nothing to see here.

"Daniel?"

Oh great.

Well, he guesses he can't have his cake and eat it too. Eventhough his cake is dirty. And has probably been dropped five times. Maybe smeared across the pavement aswell. Whatever. 

He turns, slow and deliberate, like maybe if he moves gently enough, the ground will swallow him whole and leave Johnny's wobbling figure to cover for his sorry ass.

Susan’s standing just off to the side of the stairs, hands clawed around a red solo cup and the world's most judgmental expression stamped onto her face. Her gaze slides from him to Johnny and back like she’s scanning for evidence. Something damning. Something interesting.

Something that won't be found here.

“Hey,” she says, smiling with all the warmth of a freezer burn. “Weird seeing you two together. What were you doing upstairs? Something… personal?”

Johnny, ever helpful, groans faintly and leans a little harder into Daniel, just enough to make it look worse. He'll later blame it on a wave of nausea, forgetting Daniel could tell that didnt happen and he was in fact just being a nasty little shit.

Daniel can practically hear the rumour mill starting up in Susan’s brain.

“No,” he says quickly. “He was sick. I was helping.”

Susan hums. “Helping in the bathroom. With the door shut. For twenty minutes.”

Daniel squints at her, probably looking more pissy than he should. "Were you following me?"

She rolls her eyes. "You are so self-absorbed, I hope you know that, not everybody is obsessed with you, y'know?" She pauses, staring daggers that feel more like fully fledged swords at him. "No, I was looking for Ali—"

"I thought you were mad at her?"

"I was— I am." Her eyes widen slightly, jaw set harsh against her bitchy face. "Look, last time she saw me, she said she was gonna go find you, so obviously when I wanted to find her to... to uh— yell at her, because I'm still mad! I found you and then followed you because I thought Ali—"

Daniel scoffs. "So, you did follow me?"

She sneers, chucking her empty cup to the ground so she can cross her arms. "You are such a pretentious little—"

"Oh, like your number one Mrs Perfect, who are you to—"

“Ladies, ladies!” Johnny suddenly slurs, stumbling harder into Daniel and draping all of his body weight over him like a collapsing, liquor-soaked building. “There’s enough of me to go around!”

Daniel lets out a sharp grunt as he’s knocked sideways, staggering under the unexpected weight. Johnny’s cheek smushes against the side of his shoulder for one horrible, sticky second. 

Susan sneers. “Oh my god,” she mutters, taking a dramatic step back like she might catch something. “I think I just threw up in my mouth.”

“Jesus. Get off.” Daniel shoves him off with a tired huff, a blotchy, pink smear blooming in his touches wake. Its obvious along Johnny’s jaw and temple, like someone slapped him with a tin of paint.

Johnny just laughs, breath warm and awful. “You love it.”

“Fuck off,” Daniel mutters under his breath, brushing himself off, not even bothering to care about the patch of heat on Johnny’s face. Neither of them mentions it. Johnny’s too wasted. Daniel’s too done.

But Susan?

Susan notices.

Her eyes flick to the thermal smear, narrow, and then sharpen like a knife being drawn. Her lips part, something wicked and speculative forming right behind her teeth.

Daniel opens his mouth to argue, to slap whatever slimy words are about to crawl out of her mouth, but that’s when Jennifer stumbles in from the kitchen like she’s just returned from war. She’s pink-cheeked, her eyeliner’s smudged, and she looks weirdly serene for someone who was practically catatonic an hour ago. Like a ratty old shelter dog that looks one bark away from collapsing, and yet is somehow the most energetic one.

“Oh my GOD!” she gasps, eyes lighting up. “Danny! Danny boy! I heard about what you said to...what's her name?" She pauses for a moment. "Whatever! The girlfriend of that guy Barb likes. That was so funny! You’re my hero, and absolutely Barbs aswell because like, she is SO getting dicked down right now.” she laughs something chaotic before gasping again.

Daniel should've ran as soon as she shiwed up, hell, should've booked it before Susan could even say anything. But he didnt. So now he's here, stuck with a plastered Johnny by his side and making it all the easier for Jennifer to throw her arms around him in a sweaty perfume cloud.

“I love you,” she whispers, possibly to him, possibly to gravity, either way her elbow almost takes out Johnny so he's thankful for that at least.

Susan clears her throat, voice sharp. “He was just telling me about how they were upstairs together. Alone.”

Jennifer gasps against his shoulder. “Like, making out?”

Daniel jerks back so fast that she nearly topples. “No! Jesus, he was puking!”

Johnny, who has evidently decided not to help at all, raises a hand weakly and mutters, “Still might.”

“Uh-huh,” Susan says, eyes locked on Daniel’s face. “And now you’re just gonna take him home, huh? Just the two of you?”

Daniel glares. “Yes.”

“That’s so sweet,” Jennifer coos. "But like, can't one of your little Cobras drop you off instead, y'know Danny can't drive, right?" She lets go of Daniel fully, swinging back at the loss of stability before stumbling against the bannisters. 

Johnny blanches. "What?"

She squints. "You're buddies? The Co-ba-ras? Karate gang? Y’know..." She swings her hands around in a sort of karate chop, making a whooshing sound before immediately losing her train of thought and humming along to one of the two terrible overlapping songs.

"Oh." Johnny blinks. "Yeah..." 

Susan rolls her eyes, looking between them one more time, her expression turning from a malicious curiosity to an annoyance. “Okay, well, you should be going now!" She claps her hands together. "Daniel, don’t let him die or anything. Or do!"

Daniel mutters something that could be a curse and tightens his grip on Johnny’s jacket, pushing him toward the door before Jennifer declares her love again or Susan pulls out a damn notebook or something.

He vaguely hears Susan say something as the door shuts behind them, the music cutting off like a severed artery. The stuffy night air hits like salvation compared to whatever was going on inside.

Johnny coughs into his sleeve. “Hey.”

“What,” Daniel grits out.

“You should probably prepare yourself,” Johnny says.

“For what?”

He lifts his head to look at him, a dopey grin smeared across his face. “Tomorrow, you’re gonna be so fuckin' famous.”

Daniel lets out a short, humoured exhale in return as he continues to trudge in the vague direction Johnny's pointing him in. What he means by famous is beyond Daniel. Sure, he'll be the talk of the school in a matter of a couple of hours, but surely, surely, some mindless rumours coming straight from Susan's mouth won't pick up.

Right?

Yeah right.

He can see it now: death by a screaming mob of questions.

By the time they get into the car, Daniel's one step away from death and Johnny's on the verge of seeing stars once again. It smells like old gym clothes and rotted burritos, the seats are worn in past comfort and the tinny radio Johnny had sloppily slapped on, is crackling in more places than one, Johnny seeming too drained to even move a bit to turn it off once again.

He stares dazed out the windshield for a moment and all a sudden Daniel's forced to face the horrifying truth. He's about to sit in a car driven by a guy that's more beer than human.

Daniel is probably going to die at the hands of Johnny fucking lawrence.

One thing he comes to realise as they choppily pull out the road is that he's fairly sure Johnny's a shit driver with or without alchohol. They’ve been on the road for maybe five minutes (ten if you count the multiple wrong turns and one very illegal U-turn) and even he knows that travelling from one side road to another really shouldn't take that long.

Johnny drives like a drunk man (no shit) who thinks he’s compensating well, which somehow makes it worse. He squints at every traffic light like it personally offends him, drifts a little too far into the other lane no matter how lucid he is, and taps the brakes with the grace of a toddler learning to walk all with a smug face on his... face.

Daniel’s been clutching the door like it owes him rent for the majority of the ride, eyes glued to the road and praying to every god he can remember the name of. Every so often, he catches his thoughts drifting to something sweeter, the belief that, okay, this is it. He’s getting the hang of it now. We’re levelling out, we’re steady, we’re no longer an inch away from death when—

A blur of spinning tires.

Of FUCKING course. 

“Shit!” Daniel lunges across the console, grabbing the wheel just in time to jerk them away from a bike chained to a stop sign. They miss it by a hair, the side mirror scraping the air.

Johnny slams the brakes, lets out a guttural "Fuck!” and yanks the car over to the curb with a hard veer. Tires screech. The engine growls like it’s fed up too. One good thing is that whatever happened in between pulling over and near-certain death made the radio click off. 

He looks at Johnny from the corner of his eye, more concerned if his smuggy smugness is still there or not. Surprisingly, it's not. He looks spooked, if anything, tired. Drunk. “I can’t do this. I suck at this, how do people drive drunk?”

Daniel blinks at him, still halfway sprawled across the centre console, eyes wide and bewildered. “People usually don't!”

Johnny throws his head back against the seat, fists clenched. “I need to sober up or I’m gonna kill us both. I don't wanna die at the same time as you."

Daniel grimaces before slumping back into his seat. "You fill me with love, thanks."

Johnny's gapes, flinging his arms out as he turns to face Daniel fully, exasperated. "No! Like... think about it!" He pauses as if to actually give Daniel time to think about it. "If we die then people are gonna make some crazy rumours like— like we killed ourselves to escape the world's expectations and judgement or some bullshit like that! Do you want that on your gravestone, Larusso?" He's panting slightly after his outburst, like he had been holding his breath throughout it. 

Daniel tilts his head slightly, a sloppy smile on his face. "You imagine that often, do you?"

He laughs slightly, more to himself than anything else, when a driving car passes them, headlights lighting up the vehicle with a beaming red and highlighting Johnny's curled, confused brows.

Daniel refuses to allow himself to focus on how one of the many marks he's left on Johnny's temple gets more intense from the change in hue. Just because they aren't mentioning it out loud, doesn't mean it plagues him any less. 

"Huh?" He says, blinking once, twice, thrice, before widening his eyes in understanding. "Oh! Oh, as if. I'm not in the habit of dreaming about your ugly mug." 

Daniel snorts. “Could’ve fooled me.”

Johnny flips him off half-heartedly, then exhales loudly and, without warning, reaches for the ignition.

“Hey!” Daniel lunges, slapping Johnny’s hand off the key like a mother with nerves shot to hell. “What the hell are you doing?”

Johnny flinches, then scowls. “Starting the car?”

“You just said you suck at driving drunk!”

“Yeah, well, sitting here isn’t helping me get any better!” Johnny argues, gesturing wildly. “I’m starving, barely had anything but stale bread and mystery meat from the cafeteria. I need something greasy. Something that’ll soak all... this up.”

Daniel gives him a wary side-eye. “It’s one am.”

“Yeah? So?”

“So,” Daniel says, “a past-midnight meal with you sounds like an actual nightmare. A sweaty and claustrophobic one with a constant stream of screaming”

Johnny looks mock-offended, putting a hand on his chest and flinging himself back into his seat. “You wound me.”

“I’d love to wound you.”

“You already did,” he says dramatically, hand now clutching his imaginary pearls. “Back when you let me almost kill us. You were supposed to be the designated screamer!”

Daniel scoffs, but there’s the ghost of a smile on his face. “I did scream!”

“Not enough!” Johnny slaps the steering wheel lightly, like that proves his point. “Whatever, you're not my parent. I’m getting a burger.”

“Absolutely not!” Daniel says immediately. ”You just mentioned almost killing us and you're all of a sudden so ready to drive around for god knows how long again just to get a—"

"Blah, blah! You talk too much." Johnny rolls his eyes and starts the engine again, and Daniel lets out a strangled noise of disbelief.

"You dragged me along to be your supervisor, I'm supervising!”

“There's a diner down the road, I can drive that," he says, words humoured yet somehow harsh to the point where there's no room for Daniel to complain again. After all, Johnny is the one in control right now.

Daniel sighs and lets his head thud back against the seat. “God, I hate you.”

Johnny grins crookedly, still half out of it but clearly pleased. “Aw. I love you, too, princess.”

“Don’t call me— ugh." He scrunches his face up, sticking his tongue out slightly in exaggerated disgust. "Okay fine. Fine. You can get your stupid burgers, but I’m not paying.”

Johnny blinks at him. “What?”

“I said I’m not paying,” Daniel repeats. “I didn’t even wanna chaperone you in the first place, and now I’m stuck watching your sad drunk ass eat processed meat. So no. Not a dime.”

“You could’ve fucked off like I said.”

“Believe me, I considered it, but I'm actually a decent guy and didn't feel like leaving you there to pass out in your own puke.”

There’s a pause. Johnny mutters something under his breath, then says louder, “Fine. I’ll pay.”

Daniel turns his head slowly. “What, really?”

“Yes, really. Think of it as… payment. In return, neither of us ever speaks about this night again.”

Daniel snorts. “Wow. How generous.”

Johnny jerkily pulls the car out from its spot on the curb and gets its wheels moving in a sporadic, choppy sort of way. “Shut up, or I’ll crash us again.”

He grumbles something unintelligible, yet his mouth twitches like he’s holding back a laugh. Daniel refuses to let that make him feel anything but thinly veiled annoyance.

He refuses.

Refuses because there's nothing other for him to feel, no matter how stark and stupid the thermal smear on Johnny’s jaw is in the dim light. No matter how much the creeping heat on his shoulder tries to get his attention.

It's strange seeing their surroundings run so smoothly after the previous ten minutes of driving had been full of twists and bumps. Daniel's not quite sure how's he's managing to not drive them into a tree all a sudden, but one thing he does know is that at this rate he won't be dead at seventeen which is surprising. Alarming, even. Maybe the promise of a dollar burger really is enough to sober someone up.

It's unnerving, maybe a bit uncanny to be driving around the streets in some rich bitch little town he's never heard of before in the dead of night. The roads slipping by in a blur of weak streetlights and yellowed headlights are repetitive, dull compared to the wildfire spawned in his chest. If he were to bother looking forward and squinting just a bit, he would see the diner finally approaching like some fever dream on the horizon. But he doesn't. Doesn’t look forward, doesn't squint, doesn't exhale at the relief of getting out of this death trap that doesn't even belong to them because the rearview mirror is just too entertaining, too obvious. 

Vaguely, Daniel recognises that Johnny says something. It's slurred and probably not even directed to him, does nothing but push him further into whatever personal bubble he's found himself in.

It's hard to focus on anything aside from it. 

Because it’s there, just at the edge of his vision. The thermal print Johnny left behind on his shoulder when he’d collapsed into him back at the party. Bright and pulsing, spreading lazily like a long-term sickness he can't escape. Now, he can see the faint glow of it licking at his collarbone in the mirror. As if his body’s still reacting to it. Still holding onto it. He curses himself, his body, and the universe for not letting the marks dissipate normally.

The car jerks awkwardly, tearing his gaze from the outline of the mark. Avoiding it doesn't make it any better, only amplifies the... other issues. Sure, it's faint, but the tangled slosh of Johnny’s emotions, still bleeding into him in soft waves, is grating against him. It's still nausea, mostly. A little panic. Frustration. Weird, quick moments of a gross, soppy affection that bubble up every time Johnny glances at him for too long. Daniel decides to blame that on the bond and not anything else. 

He wonders, distantly, if Johnny can feel him too. The stress coiling tight around his stomach, the buzzing anxiety, the thousand mile an hour confusion ping ponging inside his skull.

It’s just weird being with him like this. Not fighting. Not yelling. Just… coexisting. Sitting next to him in a stuttering old car, barely saying anything, and somehow that’s more intimate than anything else. It’s oddly vulnerable. Jarringly different. It makes Daniel want to squirm out of his own skin.

He’s still tangled up in that thought when a bright voice cuts through the fog.

“Can I get you anything?”

Daniel blinks. There’s a waitress standing beside him. Pen poised, smile forced, a wonky name tag pinned to her collar stating a name Daniel's too tired to decipher.

He looks around for a moment, somewhat stunned to realise they’re in the diner now. Sitting in a booth tucked in the corner. Menus in front of them. Johnny already halfway through a glass of water, his legs sprawled out obnoxiously under the table.

Johnny grins around his straw as Daniel catches his eye. “Told you I could drive, daydreamer.”

Daniel squints at him. “That’s not reassuring.”

The waitress clears her throat, still waiting.

Daniel panics, eyes darting to the menu he hasn't read. “Uh— cheeseburger. No pickles." He tacks on a small "thank you" more as a mindless afterthought and not out of geneuine appreciation.

She nods, scribbles something down, and moves on like nothing’s weird.

Daniel exhales, sinking a little lower into the booth.

What the hell is happening to his life?

"You were sure thinking hard on the drive here." Despite everything, Johnny's voice is clearer than before, like all he needed was a glass of water and fluorescent lighting to make him snap out of it.

Daniel squints at him, narrowly avoiding the area of pink on his cheek. "I'm tired, was thinking about how I'd be asleep right now if it weren't for you." Johnny raises an eyebrow. "Or Jennifer, I guess."

He grins, leaning into the table with his elbows firmly placed on each side of the glass. "Liar," he simply says. "Didn't know sleep deprivation turned you into an anxious, blushing, bumbling fool."

Daniel's head snaps up to stare at him properly. Oh. So he can feel his emotions just as strongly. "What—" he's cut off by Johnny making an obnoxious slurping sound with the remnants of water in his glass and straw.

Daniel's shoulders slump, unimpressed by his childish mannerisms. "Real mature."

"Y'know what else is mature—" Whatever, probably nasty, thing he's about to say is cut off by two plates and yet another glass of water being placed in front of them.

Daniel looks up at the waitress, vaguely shocked. "Oh—" he says, probably (definitely) stupidly. "That was quick."

The waitress laughs, her eyes crinkling slightly at the corner as she shakes her head politely. "I can assure you it's not magic, you're just our only customers. Not a lot of people coming here past midnight." She smiles, turning to look at johnny who's already halfway through his one of two orders of fries. "Rough night?"

He looks up, a bit dumbfounded. "Uh— yeah."

She hums, that soft smile still etched into her lips as her eyes dart between them. "Can I just say you two are quite a charming couple? It's rare to find your soulmate at such a young age. You should cherish it, some people don't get that lucky."

Johnny looks like he's about to object to the allegation, but she's too busy skipping back into the kitchen before he can pry his mouth open.

Daniel blinks at the empty air she left behind. “Too bad she didn't offer us a soulmate discount,” he says awkwardly.

Johnny groans, dragging his palms down his face. “Do I look like your soulmate?”

Daniel refrains from replying insantly in fear of getting punched now Johnny's more conscious because, yes, he does. They do look like soulmates because of their stupid matching prints. The waitress would’ve passed out if she saw their skin beneath their clothes, daniels pretty sure his whole body is covered by Johnny’s drunken movements. 

"It's one am, she's probably delirious," he finally says, pulling his water-stained plate closer to his body. The burgers floppy, a bit soggy at the base and entirely too thick around the middle compared to the bun and— what the fuck. 

He stares at the burger, deadpan.

“Seriously?” He swore he asked for no pickles so why are there two fat flaccid green discs hanging from between the burger buns like the spawns of Satan himself?

"What?"

"Fuckin' pickles."

“Pickles?” Johnny asks, peering at Daniel’s plate like it’s the most interesting thing in the room.

“I said no pickles.” Daniel sighs, hand twitching like he’s about to start performing surgery on the flood.

Johnny, with no hesitation, shoves his own plate slightly forward. “I love pickles.”

Daniel gives him a wary look. “That’s disgusting.” 

Johnny only shrugs in return and so Daniel grimaces forking the pickles out and placing them onto Johnny's plate where he later watches as he eats all seven pickle slices like a god damn witch.

Daniel snorts, too tired to argue with Johnny's shitty taste buds. When he finally takes a bite, he immediately feels misery, so much so that he knows Johnny can feel it too. It’s shit. Too salty, too cold, too midnight diner. He's just happy he didn't pay for such garbage.

They eat in relative silence for a while, nothing but the clink of cutlery and the occasional exaggerated chew from Johnny to break the quiet.

"Johnny?"

"What?" He replies, voice muffled from his face full of lettuce and cheese.

"How the hell am I getting home?”

Johnny pauses, a fry halfway to his still-full mouth.

Daniel watches him closely. “You drove us here, but I still need to get home after we get you home.”

Johnny rolls his eyes like it’s the stupidest question he’s ever heard. “I’ll drive you.”

“You’re still drunk.”

“Not drunk enough to need you screamin' in my damn ear anymore.”

Daniel lets out a soft laugh, incredulous. “So what, this whole chaperoning thing was pointless? You could’ve done this all on your own?”

There’s a rising of red on Johnny’s cheeks at the question before he quickly scoffs, shoving the rest of his burger into his mouth.

“Yeah, well,” he mumbles around it, “you got a free burger so.”

Daniel just shakes his head, biting back a smile, and turns back to what’s left of his own. 

"Whatever you say."

"I do say."

Daniel hums. "So very mature for your age."

"Fuck off, princess."

Chapter Text

Thursday - 15:48

Daniel's grown to know the detention hall's ceiling better than his own palm. 

Now calling it a detention hall is probably giving the damn room a right ego but calling it anything less would remind him of the shitty situation he's in, so he avoids the latter like the plague. It's an abandoned classroom tucked behind a hallway of English classes across from the girls' toilets, which automatically means it's a trampy place to be spending an hour in every day after school for a week. Safe to say there's little to do in it aside from carve cries for help in the desk or stare at the walls. Daniel chose to be unique and stare at the roof instead. A great improvement indeed.

On the ceiling, there are too many water stains for it to be safe and approved by whoever checks the building, but he highly doubts the principal is too bothered about fixing up an old class when he has bigger issues to deal with, like drunk students and angsty soulmates. Anyway, to count the stains without wanting to gouge his eyes out is impossible; he tried once and got to twenty-two before giving up because he couldn't decipher if two were connected or not. Either way, there are three major ones that anybody can spot. The first is down by the teacher's desk, another is off to the left side of the room and looks vaguely like a misshapen bird, while the last is directly above the usual seat he takes and looks like a decapitated Jesus. If his mother were to see it, she would agree. She would agree and scream before distantly wondering if she should pray to make up for seeing such an ugly portrayal of the god. It's smeared, spotty around the edges, and wobbly to the point of looking more like an offensive caricature. The head is too long, the beard is too curly, the hair is too short, but Daniel knows what he sees. And what he sees is Jesus.

He's not comforted by the fact that a ceiling Jesus who looks more stoned than Jimbo last night is looking down on him. If anything, it makes his thoughts spiral worse during this time. Usually it's quiet, peaceful and full of little to no people. It's dull, it's repetitive, it's predictable in his life that's seemingly spun out of control throughout the past week. But today? Well, today, West Valley found itself overrun with a spectrum of hungover to still drunk students traipsing the halls, so of course, the detention hall is packed as a result.

"Daniel, truth or dare?"

Daniel looks back at the table, eyes tearing away from Jesus to look at the others.

Ah shit, yeah. How could he forget?

Truth or dare.

A very disciplined detention activity, truly.

"Uh—" he latches his eyes onto the bottle directly pointing at him, scratching the back of his neck slightly. He can't quite tell what the lesser of two evils are in this situation. On one hand, if he chooses truth, they'll probably pry into his already far too public bond and on the other hand, choosing dare is a death wish. They'd probably dare him to suck Johnny's dick or some wild bullshit like that and he's too tired to argue back and Johnny's slumped in his seat, one hiccup away from passing away so it would be a hard dare to complete either way.

Not like he'd do it.

Because he wouldn't.

The girl diagonal from him, Casey, his brain distantly reminds him, is staring at him, eyes wide with a liquor-clad grin that showcases her teeth. She nods her head slightly, as if to urge him on.

"Truth?" He asks quietly as if he were the one asking the question.

Casey laughs as her head tilts, fingers tapping on her crossed arms, encouraging him to continue.

"Truth," He repeats, words more solid than before.

She rolls her eyes. "Don't be a pussy, Daniel. Choose a dare!" She scoffs, her features becoming harsher at his reluctance. "We've done truth three times in a row! Don't be the reason why we end up bored and miserable again. You're in here for days still, you should really savour the one chance you get to have a bit of a giggle. So ungrateful!"

Daniel's eyes sharpen to combat hers. "I'm choosing truth or nothing."

Casey looks defeated for a moment, her face falling in a weird mixture of sorrow and pissiness as she begrudgingly accepts the fact she won't be able to get her rocks off to the live show of two soulmates going at it.

It's hard to feel sympathy for her disappointment when she's so clearly perverted and, quite frankly, just awful to be around. Daniel's hardly known her for more than twenty minutes, and yet he's found himself loathing her very presence. Which, sure, isn't the best thing to be saying about somebody you just met, but he has bigger issues than his wonky moral compass to be caring about now. Like the impending truth he's going to be asked, something most definitely about Johnny, and probably something crude enough to make the ceiling Jesus frown and weep. Not like he would give a shit about the truth, Casey's lucky if she even gets a response, let alone something she can gawk and giggle over.

"Okay. Okay," she starts, her face taught and stretched out into a grotesque smile as she leans in and plants her elbows stiffly onto the table like she's about to present a business proposal. 'Give me some material to jerk off to later and some stuff that I can spread throughout the school, and I'll give you half the profits.' Yeah, no thanks. 

"Oh! Oh, okay, Daniel. Let's be real here, let's make sure this game stays strong, hm?"

She gazes at him in a faux longing, eyes wide and teasing. It takes him a second to realise she genuinely wants him to answer. He stays silent, lips set in a bitter frown as she gives up and opens her sloppy mouth to spew out whatever bullshit her brain's mixed together. "I heard you used to be into Ali," she waves her hand slightly, as if to signal it may or may not be true. "Heard it from Susan. Tell me, are you still into her, or have you dropped that option since you've found out you're Johnny's? Have you just decided to submit to being his little lap dog now, or what? Because it really seems like all you do is follow him around now." Her smile becomes mocking, her eyes becoming shinier. 

Oh!

Oh, okay, so she wants to die tonight?

Right.

She really does have too much ego and too much snark for a girl who's banking on their comatose detention supervisor not waking up. Really, all he needs to do is yell, speak a bit too loud, or thump the table, and she would wake up delirious and realise that all her prisoners are bunched together around a pile of desks playing truth or dare like some strange rendition of a cheap indie movie. What bullshit. Not to be the number one buzz kill or whatever, but it's a piss poor attempt at fun anyway.

"We should totally finish what we started last night before the cops busted our asses!" She had said, brandishing an empty bottle from her bag and wagging it around. The story goes something like this. The party had somehow gotten more feral when he left, resulting in a trampy stream of party games which led to something happening. He's heard too many different stories to really get it but he can't find it in himself to fret over it too much, after all while that was happening he was in a car with a drunk man praying to live to see the next day which, actually, speaking about Johnny he kind of looks like shit. Shittier than he did 5 minutes ago, that's for sure. If the misery sitting heavily and the base of his stomach is anything to go by, Johnny's having a worse time than him.  

He glances sideways. Johnny’s slumped in his seat like a rag doll someone half-heartedly propped up, head tilted back against his seat, skin pallid, sweat glistening along his temple. His foot's twitching in uneven intervals, like his body’s still trying to process something his brain’s long abandoned. If it weren't for his sunglasses hanging onto the bridge of his nose and the barely there inhale, Daniel's sure he'd look dead. The bottle's landed on Johnny twice, both times ending in the bottle steadily being respun in fear that waking him up, or at least snapping him out of whatever trance he's in, would get their heads bit off. It's a good call.

There’s been a dull throb building behind his eyes for the last ten minutes, the kind that makes everything sound underwater, warped and stretched out, and looking at the guy is only making it worse, like addressing who's causing it is making his body flare up in an ache. A spike of nausea churns his stomach as he averts his eyes in hopes it'll settle whatever chemical malfunction is twisting throughout his bones.

Everything’s blurry and too loud. Too many voices, too many smells. Old perfume, cafeteria grease, Casey’s breathy cackle, someone’s cologne that smells like cheap gasoline. The buzzing fluorescent light sounds like it’s screaming. 

Jesus.

Like literally.

Ceiling Jesus is probably shaking his head at him.

Casey’s still grinning at him like she’s won something, and for a second, he doesn't even remember what the question was. Then it hits him.

Oh. Right. Ali.

Johnny’s lapdog.

Fucking Casey.

Daniel breathes in, slow and controlled, like he’s trying to inhale reason and exhale the part of himself that wants to crawl across the desk and punch her teeth backwards.

Instead, he slumps back in his chair and says, dry as sandpaper.

“Yeah, Casey. That’s it. You got me. I’m deeply, tragically in love with Ali. Always have been. In fact, I’m only pretending to be his soulmate so I can get closer to her. Real long con. I’m planning on taking her out on a romantic date the moment my leash gets loosened.”

There’s a beat.

Someone stifles a laugh.

He shoots them a look.

The silence lets him stew in his discomfort, the nausea now replaced with his own swirling feeling of the uncanny. Addressing the fact that Johnny is his soulmate is new. Something he's never dared to say out loud in fear of it being more true if he does. 

Casey blinks, taken aback for half a second, but then her eyes narrow and her lips curl in satisfaction. Like she wanted the bite. Like she adores it when people act like this. Of course she does.

“Jesus,” someone says. “Touchy.”

And just like that, the bottle’s spinning again. The chaos swells back up. Someone dares two people in the back to make out. Abigail, because of course she's found herself here, shouts “Gross!” and lobs an eraser across the room. The redhead yells something about personal space. Someone else screeches with laughter.

He takes it back, maybe the teacher wouldn't wake up for a little yell. 

But it's fine, because he won't have to yell. Nobody will.

Because it won't get worse, it won't get louder. It'll stay in this chaos, this moderately acceptable chaos.

Right?

Yeah, right.

Thursday - 15:51

Abigail’s pencil clatters off the side of a desk and smacks someone square in the forehead somehwere between a rapid fire round which consisted of Casey shooting half assed dares and questions at people instead of bottle spinning. The victim is a freshman, probably, if his gangly arms are anything to go by. He startles, arms flailing like a broken windmill and screeches like somebody had sawed it off. “Ow! what the fuck, Abigail!” he squawks, voice cracking in a way that makes the others burst out laughing. Cindy snorts loud enough to make heads turn, doubling over and slapping her knee like she’s watching stand-up, and someone, maybe that junior with the sleeve tattoos that insists every girl loves him, grins and shouts, “Jesus, Abigail, you’re gonna kill someone!”

Abigail shrugs, completely unfazed, and flips her hair like she’s auditioning for a shampoo commercial. “Sorry! My hand slipped!” she singsongs, though the grin that follows is so sharp Daniel’s not sure if she means it or not.

“Anyway,” Casey cuts back in, eyes gleaming as she leans across the table, her breath reeking of whatever dollar-store gin she’d swiped. She glances at Johnny's ever-so-slightly more alive figure and gasps. "Well, if it isn't Sleeping Beauty!" She smiles brightly and his tightly drawn frowns and turned eyebrows.

“If Daniel’s not gonna man up and give us the dirt, maybe you will.” She slaps her hands on the desk with a loud thwack, making half the table jump, then turns back around, all wide-eyed innocence, toward Johnny like she’s just so curious and definitely not fishing for the next headline. “Hey, Johnny! Since you’re all cuddly with your little soulmate over there, you've got to tell us the real reason why you love picking fights with Danny.”

Someone oohs, a loud, obnoxious thing that echoes off the walls and slams back into Daniel like a stiff punching bag.

Johnny doesn’t respond. Doesn’t even flinch. He’s still slumped in his chair like a corpse someone forgot to tag, one knee bouncing faintly, lips parted like he’s waiting for an airbag that never deployed. His head rolls to the side with a sickly groan, a line of sweat trickling down from his temple. Daniel watches, horrified, as nausea creeps up his own throat and the grotesque realisation of what's about to come slams into him. 

Well, shit.

Johnny dry swallows. Once, twice, then again before barely managing to croak out, “Gonna puke.”

“Oh, shit—” Abigail yelps, stumbling backward into someone else. A chorus of “Ew!” and “Oh, gross!” erupts around the table, bodies scattering in a messy half-circle as Johnny lurches forward, one hand clutching the table like it owes him money and the other braced on his knee. The tension snaps like a rubber band, and all of a sudden, everyone’s yelling over each other, desks scraping back, feet stomping as they try to dodge whatever’s about to come up.

“Move!” someone shouts, laughter tangled with a type of pure panic.

“Don’t get it on me, don’t get it on me, don't fucking get it on me!” Cindy cries, already halfway across the room like she's on track.

“Somebody get a bin!” the freshman wails, voice so high it’s almost a squeak.

Daniel’s stomach flips in solidarity. Jesus, he can smell the impending disaster. For a split second, he considers just bolting out the door, sprinting far enough to rid himself of the second-hand sickness and never thinking about today or yesterday or the past week ever again. But instead, he’s frozen, watching in shock horror as Johnny doubles over, coughs hard enough to dislodge his sunglasses off his face, and by some miracle or curse, manages to choke down whatever’s clawing up his throat. 

The room settles into a weird, twitchy quiet, everyone watching him like a bomb that didn’t go off.

Vaguely, Daniel hears somebody let out their own gag, but it doesn't last long before Johnny swings up with a loud gasp and eyes more awake than ever. Seemingly, it gives them a cue to snap out of it, and so the laughter bubbles up, and Casey's gripping the Sprite bottle from the ground to start it all over again.

Because this place is a zoo.

A fucking zoo.

Thursday - 15:59

Casey clicks her tongue, the abundance of saliva making an awful smacking noise. She squints, then points at Abigail. "What did you say?"

She sneers in return.

"I called you a spineless whore, Casey. Do we really need to add deaf to the list of your growing ailments?"

Punch, blood, scream.

Cheers.

Another punch, another scream.

Abigail wails, launching herself across the table and swinging at the other like a madman.

"Dumb bitch, you fucked up my lip gloss!"

Johnny gags. Daniel feels like he's about to puke.

Jesus sighs.

Thursday - 16:07

Daniel's first thought is simply: What the hell happened here?  

Because Casey has a shiner, a ripe, plum-colored thing blooming over her cheekbone, and Abigail’s cracking her bloodied knuckles against the hem of her skirt like she’s proud of them. The air in the principal’s office is sharp with antiseptic and the sour tang of sweat and leftover cheap cologne from the prior night. Everyone smells like guilt or bravado, depending on how you look at it. The freshman looks sick, the senior looks hungover, Johnny looks more alive than he has all day, and Cindy looks way too perky for the situation they're in.

The situation in question is here, in the principal's office, standing to attention in a line like they're ready to be sent off to the firing squad for the crime of misconduct, when they should be sitting through the rest of their detention. Peacefully. But peace doesn't come where Daniel goes or, better yet, where Johnny goes, because despite his lazy, conscious grin, this all would've never happened if it weren't for him. If it weren't for him, Daniel wouldn't be stuck with a bitchy soulmate who's only good at causing mayhem and eating pickles in the middle of fuck knows where at whatever dodgy time and, consequently he wouldn't be in counseling and he wouldn't be in detention and he wouldn't even have the opportunity to be here at this moment, getting berated in an office for the third time this week. And it's Thursday, so that's saying a lot.

The principal is pacing up and down behind his carefully curated mahogany desk (he has a complex over it, refuses to let anybody aside from himself touch it), with a pained expression on his face. Like he just ate a sour blueberry or chewed through a piece of shell in his scrambled eggs, it's vaguely nauseating to look at, but he refuses to acknowledge that in case Johnny gets a whiff of it and decides it's time to puke again. The man's stare makes it so he feels criminal even if he wasn't the one to throw hands this time, and it hits him in this moment that Daniel genuinely hasn't got a clue what their principal's name is.

Principal brown? Owens? Jackson, Johnson, Jehovah, Jeopardise, Jealousy? Principal James? Principal—

"Does someone, anyone, want to explain why two students ended up fighting in a detention hall of all places? I expected chaos at a party. I expected poor decisions off school grounds, hell, I even expected half the student body to walk in here drunk as a skunk and smelling of regret. I did not, however, expect a bottle of Sprite to become a weapon and I did not expect Abigail Hayworth to break the nose of a student after calling them a ‘spineless whore.’”

"Wasn't supposed to be the nose," Abigail says under her breath. “I was aiming for the mouth.”

Casey glares, her iron fist grasping onto the clump of tissues, making it twist and tear in places. "You are so full of shit, Abi—"

A slam rings off the walls, a one-way street to their ears as the principal glares, his jaw set tight. "Would somebody," he repeats, words strained like he's holding back from biting somebody. "Anyone care to explain the reasoning behind this fist fight, which may I add, happened in detention. And I can't stress this enough, a detention hall where you're all in purely for your drunken behaviours today?" He crosses his arms. "Not a cafeteria, not the car park, not the god damn locker rooms but a place designed  for self reflection and rehabilitation."

There’s a beat of silence. Then—

“It wasn’t my fault,” Casey pipes up, arms crossed tight across her chest as her bloodied tissue stays clutched. “I was just trying to lighten the mood. It was boring as hell in there. Everyone was sitting around like corpses. So I thought, why not a little game? Something to make the time pass faster.”

Johnny lets out a soft “heh” under his breath. 

Daniel elbows him.

He ignores the warmth.

The principal’s voice drops. “A game.”

“Yeah! Y'know, like Truth or dare, sir." She rolls her eyes, jutting her knee out to place all her weight on her right leg. She flicks the tissue onto the ground and scoffs. "I mean, it was basically Daniel’s fault anyway, he’s the one who made it weird by picking truth after fifty truths like a total wet sock. It's common knowledge that you choose the other option if one's being overdone.”

Daniel blinks. “What?”

“You did, LaRusso,” Casey insists, jabbing a finger in his direction. “You picked truth and then basically refused to say anything interesting, all you did was sass me out and sit there smug. Like, why even play if you’re just gonna sit there and act all Boy Scout?”

“Because I didn’t ask to play,” Daniel snaps. “You just started it by screaming at all of us to get in a circle. You dragged my chair in case you forgot!”

“Well, maybe if you'd picked dare, Abigail wouldn’t have gotten all holier-than-thou about it!” Casey retorts.

“Oh my God,” Abigail groans. “Are you seriously blaming him for your fight with me? And you wonder why I called you a spineless—"

“Don't even repeat it! You act like you're above everybody, who said it was okay for you to call me a ‘manipulative and desperate for attention, good for nothing—”

“You were being all that! You kept daring people to do humiliating stuff, and when I said no, you tried to make me feel lame—”

“Because you are lame, Abigail! All you're good for is cheap alcohol and glitter bombs.”

Abigail lunges.

The freshman squeals in fear, his arms blindly reaching out to push Abigail back into place.

The principal holds up both hands like he’s facing a wild animal, face pinched and thoroughly pissed off. “Settle down!”

Abigail freezes mid-step, left arm limp in the squealing freshman's grip. Casey looks smug. Cindy looks enthralled.

He sighs with enough gravel in it to be able to scratch them before gesturing to Abigail as if to say, "Go on then."

"Look, I said truth,” Abigail mutters tightly, shrugging off the kid. “I said truth to shut her up, and then she rolled her eyes like some princess and asked if I thought soulmates were a good thing, and I said yes. And then she laughed at me.”

“Because you said it all dreamy like this was a romance novel and not like... like Daniel and Johnny over here going to marriage counselling like a sitcom divorce!” Casey huffs. “I was joking!”

“You never joke,” Abigail spits. “You attack. You act like the only people who matter are the ones who make you laugh, and everyone else is just background.”

“That’s not—”

“It was humiliating,” Abigail cuts in. “So I yelled at her. I yelled at her and called her all those things because its the truth and I’ve had enough of people like her making fun of people like me for wanting something more than parties and vodka and running my mouth, then she fucking punched me!”

There’s a long pause. Casey stares, stunned, like someone’s just slapped her emotionally. The freshman is vibrating. Cindy wipes an invisible tear and proudly whispers, “That was so beyond.”

Daniel sighs. “So this had nothing to do with me, and yet somehow—”

“You escalated it!” Casey shouts suddenly, whirling on him. “You picked truth like a coward, started the whole vibe crash which pissed me off which pissed Abigail off to the point it got me a black eye! You gonna disinfect it, LaRusso? No! No, you're not because you're too busy making goo-goo eyes at Johnny, just like how you were in detention. Everyone noticed!”

Johnny, now thoroughly interested, raises an eyebrow. “You jealous, Casey?”

“Oh, shut up,” Daniel and Casey say in perfect unison.

“That’s enough!” the principal bellows, slamming a hand on his desk again. His globe wobbles dangerously. “I have heard enough.”

Silence drops like a guillotine, and for a long moment, Daniel yearns for the ceiling Jesus.

He takes a long breath. “Let me make this clear. You all behaved disgracefully, downright abhorrently in detention today," he glares at Daniel, then lets his eyes move to Johnny as he grits out his words. "For some of you, that’s becoming a pattern.”

He huffs then, pointing rapid-fire. “Casey Lattimer. Abigail Hayworth. Five-day suspension. You’ll be escorted to the front office, and your guardians will be contacted.”

“WHAT?” Casey explodes, stomping her foot like a petulant child 

Abigail growls under her breath at the same time, a sickening green hue coating her cheeks at the information.

He waves them off, turning his attention to the others. "You three are extremely lucky your name wasn't brought up; however, that doesn't mean you're off the hook." he gestures toward the half-asleep senior, shaking freshman and Cindy, who looks far too joyful. "Three more days of detention for you, consider it mercy."

The freshman whines, muttering under his breath about his stern mother.

“And as for you two—” His glare could burn holes through brick. “LaRusso. Lawrence. Another week of detention. Congratulations. That makes two. I hope your schedules are crystal clear.”

Daniel chokes. “You’re punishing us, too?”

“You were arguing, bickering, and escalating an already unstable situation!" He cries, slamming a hand on the desk so hard a stapler jumps five beats in the air. “I don’t care if you didn’t start the fire, Daniel, if you throw gas on it, you’re part of the explosion! I highly doubt a cop would excuse an arsonist just because they didn't mean to do it! ”

“Good thing I'm not an—!” Daniel starts, but Johnny immediately cuts in with a scoff.

“Fuckin' hell, relax, princess. If anything, I should be the one yelling, seeing as how—"

Daniel turns on him, eyebrows knitted together as his mouth turns down in a sneer. “Oh, now you decide to speak! Y'know you’re the reason this keeps happening!” Daniel snaps.

He raises his hands in mock surrender, still smug in his newfound consciousness. "Didn't make you choose truth."

And holy shit, Daniel wants to lunge at the guy. He wants to spring off the ground and collide into Johnny, hands wrung around his pigeon neck and foreheads colliding together in a deranged, macabre performance  

Fuck him, fuck detention, fuck soulmates and fuck Johnny fucking lawrence!

"That wasn't even the cause of—"

"Oh, blah blah, do you love your voice that much—"

"You're such a hypocrite! Y' just have to mouth off every chance you get—”

"Yeah, because I admit my voice is great—"

"Who lied to you—!"

Casey cackles from her spot beside them. “He’s not wrong. You do run your mouth like it’s a full-time job, Lawrence," she starts for tacking on a curt "And you're voice isn't all that”

“Shut up, Casey,” Johnny and Daniel say in choppy unison, which only makes her laugh harder.

Daniel barely has time to blink before the principal slams a ruler against the edge of his desk, the sharp crack hitting once, twice, thrice before successfully cutting through the chaos like a gunshot. "Silence!" He throws the ruler onto the desk, hands rubbing down his face. “What did I just say? And yet you question your punishment!”

The room, for the most part, jolts into stillness aside from Abigail’s seething and Johnny’s smug, cool kid persona leaning back against the wall, arms behind his head like they’re at some fucking beach cabana and not about to be executed in the school office.

The principal’s eyes narrow, deep lines cutting across his forehead as he glares at them all like they’re a pack of feral dogs that just pissed all over his new Persian rug. “I have had it with this soap opera. We are done here.” His gaze lands hard on Daniel and Johnny, eyes sharp as glass. “Congratulations, you two have upgraded to a strong two more weeks of detention. Effective immediately. Truly, and I mean truly, well done.”

Daniel’s mouth drops open, hands shooting up in protest, but the principal steamrolls over him with a bark, “Don’t even think about arguing, LaRusso. You yelled, you instigated, you escalated, and you made me cancel a dentist appointment for this!”

"Technically—” Daniel snaps, his voice cracking on the word, but it’s hopeless. The principal’s already moved on, turning to Casey and Abigail like a judge handing out death sentences.

“Casey, Abigail. Ten-day suspension now.”

The sound Casey makes is somewhere between a shriek and a sputter, like a kettle boiling over, while Abigail folds her arms and mutters something under her breath that sounds like “worth it.”

The principal silences them with a single, stabbing finger. “I don’t want to hear it."

Daniel’s heart is pounding in a weird mixture of whatever Johnny's feeling and his own haywire combination of stress and confusion, and when he glances at Johnny, the bastard’s got this lazy, lopsided grin on his face like they’re in on some private joke. Daniel feels his blood start to boil.

“Oh, you’re real happy about this, aren’t you?” he hisses, unable to stop himself. “It’s your fault we’re here in the first place! If you hadn’t—”

Johnny’s grin spreads wider, infuriatingly slow. “If I hadn’t what, princess? Go on, say it.”

“I will if you would just—” Daniel lunges an inch forward, practically vibrating with rage.

“Don’t!” The principal’s voice cracks through the room, thunderous. “If either of you says one more word, I’ll extend detention to summer school.”

Silence slams down again like a hammer, a shitty, shitty, shitty hammer.

Daniel stares at the floor, biting the inside of his cheek so hard he tastes blood, while Johnny, infuriatingly calm, leans further back into the wall like he can sink into it, arms crossed like a smug king surveying his kingdom.

The tension is so thick you could cut it with a plastic spoon, and Daniel swears if Johnny so much as breathes too loud, he’s going to lose his mind.

He hates this.

He hates Johnny Lawrence.

He hates detention.

He really hates soulmates.

And dear ceiling Jesus help him, if Johnny looks at him again, Daniel’s going to throw the goddamn globe across the room and hope it lands where the sun don't shine.

────────

Not to be a downer or anything but the clock is freaking him out. It's strangely slow, each tick of the second hand seeming to have longer and longer intervals between each other as time progresses, and the silence doesn't crack. 

It's just a reminder. A slow, sickening reminder that with every second, minute, hour that passes, he's just getting deeper and deeper into this mess. Trapped in a room with Johnny, in trouble with the school, no real plan, no way out, no way to explain how they got here without it all sounding insane. And the worst part is, it feels like time itself is conspiring against him, stretching these moments just long enough for him to stew in the discomfort, like it’s taunting him, waiting for him to snap, or worse, for Johnny to say something that will make everything explode again.

He needs somebody to speak and break the ice in three before he loses it.

Preferably not him, especially not Johnny.

But their counsellor is one hell of a stubborn woman. She'd much rather saw off her own foot and stew it until tender than be the first to speak, to give them an easy way out. Instead, she stares, mouth set into a tense line and her eyebrow slightly raised as if to say 'you've got some explaining to do' which, yeah, sure they do, but he'd rather not repeat anything that's happened the past two days.

The clock ticks, slow and disconnected, and it’s getting under his skin, worming into the cracks of his patience, scratching at the inside of his skull like blunt nails on a chalkboard.

Don’t say anything, don’t say anything, don’t say anything.

He’s biting the inside of his cheek, counting the ceiling tiles, trying to slow his breathing, but it’s not working, it’s not working because she’s just staring at them like they’re some kind of weird little art project that’s gone totally off the rails.

He distantly wonders when he got so paranoid, so anxious about small things like somebody staring at him, but brushes it off and, like all the other things, blames it on Johnny. Because it's easier that way and truthful most of the time.

Either way, his newfound paranoia is understandable because why is she looking at them like that? Why is Johnny just sitting there like a brick wall? Why is it so quiet in here? Why does it feel like the air is buzzing in his ears? Why does he feel like he’s about to implode?

It’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s not fair because why is he the only person who finds this whole thing insane?

The clock ticks.

And ticks.

And Daniel cracks.

“Why are you staring at us like that?” His voice shoots up an octave, way too loud in the quiet room, sharp and jittery, like a snapped string.

 Her eyes narrow ever so slightly, the faintest twitch of amusement breaking the frozen mask of her face, and Daniel immediately regrets opening his mouth.

“Staring at you like what?” she asks, voice light, feigning innocence, though the curve of her lips betrays her.

“Like that. Like we did something—like I did something,” Daniel blurts, shifting in his chair, crossing and uncrossing his arms. He can feel the heat creeping up his neck, that itchy, too-warm feeling of being watched too closely. “You planning on stopping any time soon?"

She hums, folding her manicured hands on the desk, the slow, practised gesture of someone who’s been waiting for exactly this. “I’ll stop,” she says, “when you start talking.”

Johnny groans under his breath, slouching back in his chair, and mutters, “God, can’t win in here.

“Excuse me?” she snaps, fixing him with that same cool stare, her eyebrow arching like a blade.

Johnny bristles, glaring at a spot on the wall like it personally offended him. “Nothing.”

“No, not nothing,” she says, tapping her pen against the notepad in front of her, the sharp clicks like gunshots. “You’re both here in the first place because you couldn't keep your mouths shut. And now suddenly, you’ve got nothing to say?” She leans back, spreading her hands. “I’m listening.”

Daniel’s stomach flips. His mouth feels dry, and he’s already regretting opening this can of worms.

Johnny shifts in his seat, throwing him a side-eye, all tight-lipped and simmering, and Daniel’s pulse spikes. He wants to hiss at him, "Don’t you dare", but instead, Johnny’s the one who cracks first this time, his voice sharp and defensive.

“You’re not asking us anything. How’re we supposed to talk if you don’t ask us anything?”

“Oh, really,” she says, pen pausing mid-tap, her voice light and mocking, sharp. “I thought you two didn’t need prompting. Yesterday, you had no problem arguing your way into an extra two weeks of detention. Yesterday, you didn’t need me or anybody else to ask you a single thing. Yesterday, you blew our whole first counselling session to pieces and left me looking like an idiot in front of the principal because I stupidly decided to speak of both of you like you were able to progress.”

She slams the pen down and leans forward, eyes gleaming with a sort of veiled toxicity. “So don’t tell me you’ve got nothing to say. Say it.”

And then—

Johnny half-heartedly snorts, scoffs, arms crossed, that smug, I-don’t-care mask cracking just enough for Daniel to see the simmering undercurrent of tension.

A secondhand, muted worry spikes in his chest.

Daniel shakes his head, voice rising before he can stop it, “Nothing happened! Seriously, we didn't do anything yesterday!”

“Yeah,” Johnny echoes, tone heavy with sarcasm, “Nothing happened.”

She raises both eyebrows, mouth twisting into a tight, not-amused smirk. “Really? So I’m just making things up, huh? Two more weeks of detention for nothing?”

Her face is set, unrelenting as she continues to glare at them. She's convinced herself she's going to get an answer out of them, and when she's convinced, there's no stopping her.

Daniel opens his mouth slightly, words dying on his tongue as he glances at Johnny's awkward figure, sending a small, desperate plea for help to him through his eyes. Or so he hopes.

The counsellor opens her mouth, but Johnny cuts in, voice dry, almost sing-song:

"Y'know, Daniel did help drive me home the other night when I was drunk. That’s teamwork, right? Even had a sweet little dinner date after, can't look like a fool for praising us when we are clearly doing something right.”

Daniel’s jaw drops. His stomach plummets. 

What the fuck! 

That is not what he was hoping for!

And Johnny just shrugs, like it’s nothing, like he didn’t just toss a grenade into a room with gasoline coating every inch. 

Daniel's convinced today is the day. The day when he rips out his brains just to rid himself of that smug connection between them.

The counsellor goes very still, her gaze sharp and assessing, while Daniel makes a strangled sound, half-protest, half-choke sound.

“Wait,” she says, holding up a hand, “You two saw each other outside of school?”

Johnny glances at Daniel, eyebrows raised, daring him like he wasn't the one to bring it up. Daniel shakes his head frantically, scrambling, “No! Not like that. It wasn’t like that, okay? Don’t see it like that.”

Johnny smirks, the worst kind of smirk, and Daniel wants to kick him, wants to shut him up, wants to crawl into a hole and rot there until his regret of mentally asking Johnny for help dies out.

The counsellor leans back, watching them like they’re the strangest disaster she’s ever seen.

“Uh-huh, sure.” She says, sitting back in her chair like a queen on her throne, folding her arms across her chest. Her eyes gleam with sharp amusement, but her mouth stays tight, like she’s daring them to change the subject again, to try and worm out of yet another round of questioning. The silence stretches again, taut as a drawn wire, and Daniel feels it in his teeth, in his bones, in the sick twist of his stomach.

“Look,” she says finally, voice cold and edged. “If you two want to sit here all afternoon, stew in your own awkward little silence and desperately try and switch topics every time you're asked things, be my guest. But I’m not leaving. And if you think I won’t drag the craft supplies in here just to get something out of you, oh, believe me, I will. We’ll sit here in a nice, cosy circle, and you can make friendship bracelets or maybe design a nice little trust quilt. I’ll even turn on some nice acoustic music if that helps get the conversation flowing. How’s that sound?”

Johnny lets out a loud groan, scrubbing a hand over his face like he’s considering bolting for the door. Daniel’s pretty sure his soul is leaving his body.

“Okay, okay, fine,” Johnny mutters, voice tight and strained. “What do you want us to say?"

She grins, wide and unrestrained, like she was just waiting for them to give in. "I'd love to hear about that little outing of yours!"

Daniel flinches like she slapped him. “It wasn’t an outing.”

“Oh, it wasn’t?” she says, all mock confusion and stunted smiles like the sub shine sout of her ass in a streamline beam. “What would you call it, then?”

“A mistake,” Daniel blurts, instantly. His voice is too high again, too quick, and Johnny makes this awful choked snort that sounds like he's trying not to laugh in return. It's grating.

The counsellor doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t blink, hardly breathes. “You accidentally went to a party together, accidentally left together, and accidentally ended up in a car together. And then accidentally got food together. Just… oopsies, right?”

Daniel grips his hands onto his knees and momentarily questions whether or not this is real. Should he pinch himself, would that make any difference? "I didn’t even want to be there! Ali dragged me to the stupid party and ditched me. I was going to find her and leave and then I found him—” he jabs a thumb at Johnny “—in the bathroom puking into the sink like some divirced dad, and I thought maybe if he died there that I’d somehow get blamed, and since that’s apparently how things go for me now, I stupidly decided to help.”

Johnny glares at him, lip curled. “You're welcome, by the way.”

Daniel whips around, seething. “For what? For almost throwing up on my shoes? For making me sit in a shitty diner with you while you moaned about your head? The burgers weren't even good, the whole place smelled like foot and it tasted like one too!”

The counsellor raises both eyebrows like this is a telenovela and she's the red-faced audience. “So, just to clarify, he was drunk, you weren’t, so you made sure he got home safe.”

“I did not get him home,” Daniel says immediately, hands flailing. “I can’t even drive! I sat in the car to make sure he didn’t crack his head open on the pavement. That’s it. It wasn’t like— it wasn’t, y’know, a thing.”

Johnny, always helpful, adds with a sly little smile, “It was a little bit of a thing.”

“No, it wasn’t! Why doyou  always have to be so difficult?”

“Okay,” the counsellor cuts in, voice sharp, slicing through the mounting chaos like scissors through gauze or a drunk Johnny driving through a rack of bikes. “Let’s take a breath. Let’s rewind, let's reign our bloodlust back in and not jump each other. You said you were worried you’d be blamed if he got hurt—why?”

Daniel sputters, blinking as if to say seriously? “Because! Because everyone already thinks we’re, I dunno, involved in some melodramatic marriage on the brink of divorce or something, and if he keeled over drunk with me there, what do you think people would say?”

Johnny huffs a dry laugh. “Yeah, ‘Daniel LaRusso murders soulmate in party bathroom.’ Real subtle.”

Daniel rounds on him, eyes wide, voice shrill. “You started this!”

“Started what?”

“This whole mess!”

"Is that all you ever say? You never know when to take the blame do you, LaRusso?"

“Uh, you punched me first.”

“Yeah, and I’d do it again!”

“Alright!” the counsellor snaps, finally raising her voice for the first time. “Let’s just stop with that. For both your sake and mine.”

They freeze. Daniel feels like he’s hovering several feet above his own body, watching this whole thing spiral out of control. Again. Like always. What a damn surprise.

The counselor exhales slowly, then leans forward with a new calm, the kind that comes with sharp teeth hidden behind polite smiles and slit eyes. “Listen. I don’t care if you two hate each other. Or love each other. Or want to push each other into traffic. But something’s going on between you two, and I can't tell for the life of me if that thing is that you secretly want to stick your tongues into each other's mouth or skin each other with a cheese grater and butter knife. And I can't help you as a counsellor, as an adult, as a third opinion if you don’t start being honest about it." She leans back again, shrugging in a way somewhere between a tired nursery teacher and a retired granny who just found a pit of gold but insists it's not a big deal. "We’re never going to get through this. So let’s try a new question.”

She flips open her notebook, pen poised like a blade, pointedly ignoring the shocked, ill-looking expression on both boys' faces.

"That's a bold assumption, like—"

“So!" She begins, harshly cutting off the words floating in the air. "When did you first notice the soulmate bond?”

Daniel’s mind races, neurons on overtime as they try and catch up from the whiplash from being borderline accused off wanting to be anywhere near the massive oath that's Johnny Lawrence and being asked to open up about the equally as shitty soulbond.

"How are you just gonna hop to the next question—

"Johnny, you were the one who asked her to ask us questions!"  Daniel hisses.

The counsellor smiles to herself for a second. "Thank you for standing yo for me Dan—"

"—not now!"

She sighs.

“Pass,” Johnny quickly says, leaving no beat of time between the words.

“There’s no pass, Mr. Lawrence.”

Johnny shrugs. “It wasn’t memorable.”

Daniel stares at him like he’s grown a second head. “Are you kidding?”

Johnny turns slowly. “What?”

“You decked me and I lit up like it's the fuckin' 25th of December!”

“Ohhh,” Johnny says, mock-remembering, "that’s what you mean. Sorry, I was distracted by the whole getting sucker punched by some 3 foot tall sapling straight after.”

Daniel nearly launches out of his chair.

The counsellor pinches the bridge of her nose.

“I don’t care who punched who, we've been through that enough for it to be engraved in my head. I want to know what happened the moment the bond revealed itself.”

Daniel exhales like he's been holding it in since Monday. Which he definitely hasn't, Ali's complaiend about it enough to be certain. “Fine. It was after sixth period. I said something perfectly normal, he snapped, and bam! Full collision of doom. And suddenly I’ve got thermal fingerprints burned into my wrist and jaw and eye and— and everyone in a six-foot radius is losing their minds.”

The counsellor nods slowly. “And what did you feel?”

Daniel pauses. “Like I’d made a huge mistake.”

Johnny, under his breath: “Didn’t realise being soulmates made you so dramatic.”

“Oh, I’m dramatic?” Daniel snaps. “You were the one yelling ‘this is a prank’ and focusing more on trying to rub the marks off than clean up your busted face!”

“Because it was gross!”

“It’s literally your soul!”

“Yeah, and it’s your problem now!”

The counsellor just stares, scribbling something in her notes. Daniel’s convinced it’s either a request for professional backup or the number for an exorcist specialised in ghosts with troubled pasts possessing teenage boys with too big egos.

The counsellor sighs. A long, soul-crushing kind of sigh that seems to deflate her entire body as she slouches back in her chair, her eyes drifting shut for a moment, lips parting with the faintest mutter.

“…what the fuck,” she mouths to no one.

But the boys don’t notice.

They’re too busy going at each other

She doesn’t even try to interrupt them anymore. Just lets them keep bickering, watching like she’s witnessing two homeless men fighting over a lukewarm coffee.

"You were the one yelling that you were gonna sue me, who says that? Who tries to sue a soulmate bond?!”

Johnny scoffs, slouching in his seat like he’s trying to physically distance himself from the argument. “It’s called trauma response, Daniel, look it up.” He sounds bratty, like a stubborn child throwing a fit over a chocolate bar.

“Oh my god, you can’t even spell trauma response—”

“Wanna bet?”

“I’ll bet you a concussion!”

“Gonna give it to me yourself, let me crack my skull open, huh? Real soulmate material.”

“Don’t even— don’t say that word.”

“What? Soulmate?” Johnny teases, grinning. “C’mon, LaRusso, say it with me, soulmate. Sooooulmaaate—”

Daniel lunges like he’s going to throttle him.

The counsellor finally slaps her clipboard face down onto the desk with a loud whack.

Both of them stop mid-motion, like said homeless men being caught fighting in church.

With a tired sigh, she flips the board around. Calmly. Slowly. Like she’s preparing a reveal on a cursed game show.

There, in big loopy handwriting, is a phone number and a chicken scratch date scrawled underneath it. Nothing else.

Daniel squints. “What… is that?”

Johnny tilts his head. “You got me a lawyer?”

The counsellor’s eye twitches.

“That,” she says, tapping the number with one perfectly filed nail, “is the contact info for a licensed soulmate psychic.”

Silence.

Beat.

Then—

Johnny snorts.

Daniel lets out a laugh that quickly devolves into a wheeze. “A psychic? Oh my god, are you kidding?”

“I’ve already scheduled your first session,” she continues, unfazed. “It’s for next Tuesday. You’ll be missing our third session in favour of it.”

“Oh my god,” Daniel says again, breathless. “Is that morally just?  You didn’t even ask us, you just... booked it?”

Johnny is nearly doubled over. “Is— is the psychic gonna read our cards? Like a wizard? Do we need to bring our crucifixes?"

The counsellor clasps her hands together like she’s in prayer. “She’s very reputable.”

“Reputable where? Saturn”

Daniel’s shaking his head, shoulders shaking in a poor attempt at stifling his laughter. “What’s she gonna do, wave a crystal over our heads and tell us we’re cosmically destined to— to...?” he wheezes slightly, mouth pinched as his words die out with a cackle.

Johnny nods solemnly, sarcastically. “Probably light some incense. Ask us what colour our auras are.”

“Maybe draw our past lives in crayon,” Daniel offers, breathless.

“Mine better be jacked.”

“I bet yours is a Victorian chimney sweep.”

Johnny gestures dramatically to himself. “Yeah, because this screams Dickensian trauma.”

"Oh, you do pay attention in English, then?"

The counsellor watches them, completely blank-faced now. She’s so beyond frustration that Daniel's pretty sure she's transcended the human realm and is now resting somehow between a universe of cosmic damage and Pluto. The corner of her eye twitches again.

“No hope,” she says calmly.

Daniel wipes a tear from the corner of his eye, more to piss her off than to dry his eye. “Is this, like… a punishment? Is that what this is? Is this like detention but with herbs and a cauldron?”

“You’ll be on your best behaviour,” she says, ignoring them. “She doesn’t tolerate sarcasm.”

Johnny gasps. “That's crude, we're hardly jokers, miss.”

The bell rings faintly in the distance, a soft echo through the halls, followed by the instant scraping of chairs and scattering of students.

“Go,” she says, waving a hand at the door like she’s banishing demons. “Leave before I actually make you crochet a trust quilt.”

Johnny salutes. “With glitter glue?”

“Out!”

Daniel follows him, still laughing, muttering under his breath: “There’s no way this is real. Psychic soulmate therapy. What next, we join a cult?”

Johnny doesn’t even blink. “Only if we get matching robes, I want mine to be red.”

Daniel rolls his eyes, suddenly reminded that Johnny's more obnoxious than a mountain goat.

"Of course you do."

"We'll get you a pink bedazzled one, princess, don't worry."

Chapter Text

Now Daniel isn't quite sure how this started. This being a strange comradeship with the maintenance man in his complex. It most likely started with one too many complaints about their piping and ended with Daniel almost throwing a bonsai across the globe. Still, he's not one to complain about things that aren't negative, so he's long accepted Mr. Miyagi as his token one friend who happens to not be a teenage girl gagging to get him drunk and stupid. And it isn't bad. Aside from the mild scrutiny he gets when a few too many leaves fall off his odd little trees, he offers decent enough advice and his garden is peaceful enough to scream in with limited interruption.

Like now.

Like yesterday.

Like tomorrow and any other day following where he's still able to get branded like a damn cow by Johnny fucking Lawrence.

"Like— like that doesn't even make sense!" He rolls over, knees smacking against a stray rock as he presses his chest flush to the grassy floor. He leans on his elbows, hands gesturing wildly in front of him as he continues. "Witchcraft! For a counsellor, she's quite literally lost all her senses. Like what's a so-called 'soulmate psychic' gonna do for us? Tell us we're soulmates again? Like wow, you don't say! It's almost like our handprints quite literally stay on each other for hours—"

"Hours?"

"Hours!" Mr Miyagi nods slightly in return, looking rather peculiar as his mouth sets into a line like he's scrutinising Daniel once again. "Look, I'm just trying to say that this whole thing is insane and that some witch isn't going to able to fix this because, one, she's definitely a quack and, two—"

There's a hum, low and somewhat contemplative, which cuts Daniel off. Mr Miyagi stares back at him, as he finally speaks, words like gospel compared to some of the shit Daniel's been forced to hear recently. "Sometimes, the heart confused. Mind too loud. Psychic not magic… just mirror. Show what's already inside." He smiles slightly, a small nod following like he's cured Daniel's ailed brain.

"You believe in this bullshit?" He asks, dumbfounded, probably a bit betrayed.

"Hai."

Daniel groans, elbows giving in as he allows his face to fall in between the blades of grass.

His counsellor is right, he is doomed.

And that's not his fault either. It's hers. And Johnny's. Mainly Johnny's but also hers. Hers because she insists on familiarity, insists on neutrality, insists on arts and crafts and ditsy good-for-nothing chit chats about what each other's favourite colour is and what they did last night instead of, oh I don't know, actually fixing whatever bullshit they've found themselves in. It’s Johnny's fault because he's him.

It's self-explanatory, really!

This whole thing could've been avoided, boxed up and pushed to the side if only—

"Good idea," he says, nod final like there's no room to fight him on this. When Mr Miyagi forms an opinion, it’s hard to make him budge. Especially when technically what he's saying is technically the correct viewpoint.

But whatever.

"What?"

He tilts his head in a rare sort of disappointment that itches at Daniel's skin. "Soulmate psychic… good idea. When trouble between soulmates, must fix any way you can. Soulmate who stay? Very rare. Hold on. Take pride."

Daniel lets out another groan, one that's probably far too long and dramatic for the seemingly tranquil surroundings but it’s fine, the grass muffles them just fine. 

"Yeah, well—" he lifts his head, lips stained with a grassy taste and chin digging into the earth as he stares at the other. "he doesn’t seem to think there’s any trouble,” he mutters bitterly, fingers dragging lines in the dirt like it personally wronged him. “He just shows up late, laughs through the whole thing, and then somehow I’m the problem? Like sorry, I don’t wanna play house with the guy who gave me a black eye last week."

Mr. Miyagi hums.

That infuriating hum. The one Daniel’s pretty sure means 'you’re being dramatic, but I’ll allow it.'

“And he, God, he just exists with this stupid, stupid so stupidly stupid smirk, like he knows something I don’t! Which, mind you, is so wrong because we literally share emotions half the damn time because he can't keep his in check! I’m fairly sure I don't either but— no! This is not about me!" Daniel throws his hands up, then lets them fall against the grass with a soft thump. “And— and y'know he never even says anything useful! He just grunts and shrugs, cackles and jokes like that’s supposed to count as communication! And I can see it on your face that you think I’m being hypocritical but it’s insane to me how I have standards but he doesn’t!”

Another hum. Patient. Maddening.

“Because he's able to just say one thing. One damn thing and suddenly, somehow, it’s the exact thing that needs to be said,” Daniel mutters. “Like he says it and it just… shuts me up. And I hate that. I hate how it sticks and works every damn time and makes me trip over my own feet just to catch up with whatever narrative he's pushing...”

He flops onto his back with a groan. “And he’s so smug about it. Like, oh, look at me, I’m Johnny Lawrence, I open my mouth once a week and everyone claps like I just solved world peace!”

He pauses, squints at the sky.

“Like his dumb pretty face is his own personal get out of jail free card and I’m the dumb prison warden who watches every time he waltzes out from behind the bars after he flashes the walls a smile and nods like he knows what's about to come!”

Mr. Miyagi doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t need to. His silence is heavy with knowing.

“And he has this dumb leather jacket,” Daniel continues, muffled despite facing the clouds now. “It squeaks when he moves. I know that sound, I’m sure I can mimic it right now if I really wanted to! It’s just that I can hear it before I see him and my whole body just prepares for war. Or something.”

He scratches at his nose. His voice dips.

"It's sinking, like a garden gnome left to rot in a shed for years to the point it starts to grow used to its mouldy surroundings just to be plucked from comfort and thrown in a washing machine." He gestures towards the cloud like it has any correlation to his next words. "My hands get clammy and my brain runs tenfold, his emotions are too strong for my body so I'm always on edge when I'm around him, it's unstable and so stupidly stupid! His emotions, his dumb shitty emotions. Did you know he’s making me feel paranoid now? It’s like one second I’m fine, then the next I’m on the verge of puking and finding Johnny with his head in his hands at a dodgy party, complaining about being drunk."

“And it's constant. It's like he needs to infect my lungs in every way, not just physically. I could be calmly sitting in chemistry when all of a sudden I’ll feel weird. Tight chest, headaches, like I’m floating or whatever, and then BAM! I find him sulking in a hallway somewhere with his hands in his stupid pockets like he didn’t just broadcast his stupid emotions straight into my skull. He acts clueless!”

Another hum filters through the air.

"Too many words. Maybe heart not hate like mind say."

Daniel’s head jerks up like he’s been slapped.

“What! No, are you—! I—what are you even—no, never! I don’t—!” He sits up so fast he nearly knees himself in the chin, flailing slightly. “You don’t just say that to someone! I don’t—ugh! You’re as bad as Ali!”

Mr. Miyagi only blinks at him, calm as ever while Daniel, fuming and slightly red in the face, collapses back into the grass with a grumble.

He groans again, dragging both palms over his face with a frustrated growl. “It’s not like I like him or anything, it’s just that this isn’t normal. None of this is normal!" He pauses, almost delirious in his rage. "Pshh, soulmates. Yeah soulmates are real but something fucked us over with our match, it makes no sense and now we’re struggling with the consequences of the universe's mistake! Because that match is stupid, confusing. I should hate— I do hate him! I mean, he’s—”

He falters.

“I mean, he’s… Johnny.”

There’s a long, aching pause as he rolls over limply, voice muffled slightly against the grass once again.

“I don’t get it,” he says. “I don’t get any of this.”

Mr. Miyagi watches with the stillness of stone. Then, finally, he speaks once again.

"You fight now… but soon, you like.”

Daniel lifts his head with a scandalised look. "Excuse me?"

Mr. Miyagi shrugs one shoulder, serene as ever. "Not now. Maybe later. Maybe when not busy yelling at grass."

Daniel sputters, “I’m not—! I—!”

He flips back over with a loud, dramatic huff, folding his arms and scowling at absolutely nothing.

The wind rustles the trees above them as he hears Mr Miyagi let out a slight chuckle behind him and go into the building once again. A few leaves drift down and settle on his chest.

He doesn’t brush them off.

────────

Roses are the flower of romance, of love and clichéd adoration doused in a sickly type of sweet that makes you immediately realise that it’s meant to be. Or not depending on how you view such a type of infatuation, but that’s far from the point. What he’s trying to get at here is that flowers are supposed to represent love so if those flowers are rotted, smattered with black spots and hanging from the ceiling like convicts, what’s that supposed to represent? 

Hatred? Loathing? Or just bad luck in that department? Daniel wouldn’t put it above such an unnerving woman, she seems docile enough but he’s fairly sure if he moves once more she’ll wring her hands around his neck and pray a gruesome death upon him.

“Uh— excuse me?” Johnny starts, voice stunted and clumsy as he waves a hand in front of the bug-eyed woman.

Yeah, she definitely doesn’t have a soulmate, let alone a partner willing to stick around. Sure she isn’t the worst to look at with her gaudy jewellery and reptilian pupils so large she may as well replace the microscope business, but her whole aura is so unsettling it must just put anybody off without a second thought.

“So—“ he begins, hand awkwardly hovering above the floor table in a sort of attention-garnering tactic that falls unhelpful when a hand stretches into his face.

She sticks her finger up, harshly pressing against his mouth until his sentence is cut off with a short wailing sound. “Hush, boy,” she mumbles, voice croaky from the misuse after what feels like hours of staring and wondering at the ceiling. 

She pulls her finger away and begins to sway, a hum in her throat as Daniel slaps his hands back down to the table, fingers landing a damp patch while his gaze stays glued to the wood in a shellshocked haze. He can feel Johnny's twisted amusement. He’s going to snap that boy's neck one day and feel little to no guilt for it.

He sneers at the sogginess under his nails and distantly hopes, prays, it’s something normal. Normal, yeah normal in this place? He’d be lucky if it were mucus compared to some of the jars this woman has plastered all up the walls like some putrid hall of fame. Are those eyeballs in a jar? Or just another wet specimen he’s forced to stare at as her humming becomes crackly?

It sets him on edge. Johnny’s tapping his foot in beat with the sway of dangling beads and flap of peeling astrology posters and zodiac charts. There’s no breeze though, the draft is probably coming from the woman’s stale energy and deep vibrations still lingering at the base of her throat. Johnny coughs slightly, his weird mixture of indifference and bone-rotting discomfort settling fitfully in his abdomen. It’s strange how quickly Daniel’s become accustomed to somebody else’s emotions rotting within him. 

The cough breaks him free from whatever sticky turmoil he’s found himself focusing on, so he snatches his hands away from the wet and allows his eyes to snap to the dodgy clock resting behind Johnny's head.

Garfield.

It’s grossly out of place but Daniel can somewhat respect that despite the awful nature of it. It’s one of those clocks where the hands are a character's arms but this time it’s Garfield’s tail and left leg and, jeez, that does not look right in the slightest. Poor Garfield in all his muted, chipped glory is twisted beyond saving with his tail twisting left to point at the nine and left leg cracked to point at the two.

Right, so that’s horrific.

It’s quarter to three and yet the only thing they’ve been blessed with is this quack’s musical theatre background and torture, namely in the form of Garfield and what looks to be a preserved shrew in an old jam jar. It’s been half an hour. How long until—

“The bond!” As if summoned by the thought itself, the woman lets out a sudden shriek, the beats ringing sharp and high-pitched through his eardrums, just loud enough to make Daniel's spine stiffen and Johnny almost fall off the plush floor cushion.

She throws her arms wide, bracelets clattering like tiny insects trying to flee, like the bones of her (potential) victims resting fitfully beneath the floorboards and then slams two tarot cards onto the floor table with such force that it kicks up a thin cloud of dust and splatters the liquid Daniel had been pawing at earlier.

“Death!” she yells, stabbing one sharp-nailed finger toward the first card. Glitter sheds off the acrylic, dusting the pitiful card in a sheen of sparkle. Johnny’s unimpressed frown settles so deep into his face that Daniel’s sure the guy’s bound to get wrinkles by twenty.

Johnny sneers at the card and says a disgusted “oh, cool”, earning him a glare that could flay flesh.

“And the tower!” she shrieks, slapping the second card next to the first.

The Tower is crooked in her rush, an image of a crumbling structure on fire, people leaping from its upper windows. Lightning bisects the card like divine punishment and her eyes gleam like she was the one to cause the chaos.

“Chaos! Collapse! RUIN! The utter and complete destruction of one’s sense of self and identity. That change! Oh, the change is so drastic and the resistance is pulling it away from divinity, of any hope for comfort!”

Daniel’s mouth is open slightly but no sound comes out. It’s more of a subconscious shock paired with a wonky sense of curiosity that keeps him staring at the frazzled woman as she gestures wildly to the card in front of her. The death card looks worse for wear with or without the macabre image smeared across it. It’s bent, faded, sort of soggy looking as if it’s one of her favourite cards to pull out and torment people with. The difference is they probably believed in this shit and he for sure doesn’t. 

“Death, my children, is no upright card, no no no you two are resisting the change, refusing to go with it!” she tuts, waving her hand vaguely. “Death is not always literal but can also be spiritual! Emotional! Sometimes the death of a dream! Or,” she cocks her head and stares directly at Daniel, “a delusion.”

Then, in an unsettling flick of her wrist, she flips another card, slamming it down with more force than before and shouting out a word he doesn’t quite catch. It sounded like placenta, but it probably wasn’t. If it were, he thinks that would’ve taken the cake for the strangest thing happening today. The table shakes under her actions and Johnny’s forced to snap out of his half-dazed, half-humoured gaze to save a stack of candles from falling.

“Behold, the darkest truth of you bond!” Her eyes shake, words taught until her distress begins to leak over to them. 

She flips the card over, loud and final like it’s the last nail smashed into their coffins.

The Sun.

The sun?

Everything in the room stills. Even the beads stop swaying.

A glowing child sits happily atop a white horse. Sunflowers bloom. There is radiance in the card, joy and optimism. Daniel blinks at it like it might bite him anyway.

This is their gruesome demise?

Johnny tilts his head slightly, boring holes into the card like it's either going to poke his eyes out or prove something he doesn’t want to become true.

“Oh wow, a traumatic pony ride.” He looks at her, incredulous. “Is this right?”

Daniel hums in return, mouth pinched in a judgment his mother would approve of. “Looks pretty happy to me.”

“Hm,” the woman mutters, genuinely puzzled for the first time. “That’s… not right.”

She looks down at it again. “The Sun is warmth. Love. Enlightenment. Clarity. Rebirth. Hm. Someone must’ve shuffled wrong.”

With barely a second glance, she launches the card behind her back. It lands in a small dish of ashes and wilting rose petals before catching alight and burning down to its mere atoms.

Daniel blinks at the small flame, eyebrows tangled together. “Right, yeah, totally normal.” He’s long since pegged her for a quack with little to no spiritual knowledge,  but that weird display of altering the narrative has just stamped and sealed it. “Just threw away proof that we’re not completely fucked in life, but sure, go ahead and burn it.”

She bristles slightly but before anyone can react, she slams another card down in its place.

The devil.

Johnny audibly wheezes.

“Oh great,” Daniel mutters, rubbing a hand down his face. “Of course.”

The woman throws her arms up again and screams.“Entrapment! Toxicity! Addiction! Sin!”

Then, without missing a beat, she begins pulling sprigs of rosemary from the inside of her robe, shuffling between the twigs like she’s scavenging for sense.

“Are you making these definitions up or—“

“You two have been TOUCHED!” she damn near howls, “touched by something wicked and achingly karmic!”

She waves the rosemary like a wand and begins to chant like a psycho. “Bad spirits of lust and longing, I bid thee go! Your tether is cursed, your fate full of woe! Out! Out! Out, I say! Leave these boys, and don’t delay!”

She starts smacking the sprigs across Johnny’s shoulders, each thwack grazing his cheek until Daniel is brimming with his second hand ache. He coughs again, half from the dryness, half from confusion.

“Jesus Christ lady, why are you—“ She smacks the rosemary clean across Johnny’s mouth before swooping into his side of the table. 

“Did you say lust earlier? Am I going insane—“ Daniel tries to lean away, but she screeches like a banshee or a particularly antsy cat and starts shaking the dried herbs over his head like she’s seasoning a roast for them to enjoy.

The scent is overwhelming. Earthy and sharp and ancient. No way this shit is normal Rosemary, it’s probably been fermented with pickled poodle guts for years.

Johnny's still spluttering out the remainder of the herb in his mouth. “Psh, lust. She’s batshit! Why are we even here?”

She raises her arms, rolling her tongue around her mouth and echoing out an awful sound that tears along his skin.

“The peonies will wilt, the bond blackens!” she bellows, eyes wide. “You are drenched in a foul soul energy! It’s like—like—” she squints at them, mouth parted like she’s about to sing a prayer “—a heart-shaped curse. One with teeth, teeth and harm and decay. Resiliency in all the wrong ways!”

She throws the rosemary into the air, the sprigs falling down their shirts and throughout their scalps, in their mouths and on their laps. “Wrong! So so wrong!”

Johnny wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, glaring. “Have you been huffing glue or something?”

Daniel scoffs under his breath, still picking rosemary out of his hair. “Oh yeah, real smooth, antagonise the psychic with a rosemary fetish. Didn’t our counsellor tell us she doesn’t fuck with dickheads?”

“Look, man, it’s better than sitting here letting her—” Johnny waves a hand at the air, “do whatever this is. At least I can get a laugh out of it.”

“It’s called theatrics, Johnny, she’s a psychic, she’s gonna be a lunatic, that’s common knowledge!” Daniel hisses. “You wouldn’t know—”

“Oh, shut up, LaRusso, we both know she doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing!”

They’re so wrapped up in sniping that the sudden banshee wail catches them both off-guard. It’s loud enough to topple over a bottle and send chairs flying, surely.

Johnny flinches back, Daniel’s hands fly up like he’s about to block a punch but it’s no use because she’s got this face-splitting, shit eating grin etched on to her face like she hasn’t just psychologically tormented them for the last forty minutes. 

She inhales deeply. Lowers herself into her seat. Smooths her skirt like nothing happened and looks up with these too soft eyes that make Daniel’s skin crawl.

Johnny’s mouth is still open, caught mid-insult while he shivers in the draft of Daniel’s goosebumps.

“Now,” she says warmly, like she didn’t just threaten them with mystical shrubbery. “Let us breathe.”

There’s a beat of complete, stunned silence. Johnny glances at Daniel, face twisted in a dumbfounded, strangely grossed out expression like he’s trying to say Is this real? Daniel just shakes his head minutely, no idea.

She takes each of their hands in hers, palms warm, expression almost grandmotherly. The purple eyeshadow brings out the soul-boring blue of her stare, it’s unnerving. Maybe even a bit grotesque, but so is everything else about her presence. “My name is Magenta and you… Yes you two hm...” her eyes widen, pupils pinholes compared to her seemingly all-composing irises. “Names, I know. Situation, I have heard whispers. But the rest…” She tilts her head, face softening and voice gentle as she grows content with their confusion. “We must uncover such things.”

Johnny’s still too busy blinking at her, patiently waiting for the next screech, to answer.

She looks between them, lips pinched in a smile and she skirts past Daniel’s screwed up face narrowly.

“Hold each other’s hands then,” she says, sweet but firm.

Daniel’s nose wrinkles. “I’m not listening to a deranged psychic who just—”

“Do it!”

“Look lady—“ she coughs, eyebrows raised at Johnny’s supposed disrespect. “—Magenta, I’m not holding his hand because I can tell that next you’ll be asking us to do trust falls with each other which will just lead to you knitting us a shitty get-along T-shirt and then what? I’m singing Kumbaya with him and you’re wedding us with thyme! I don’t need that,”

She sighs. “This is why the devil has easy access to you, boy! Now hold hands and I’ll share my knowledge!”

They exchange a wary look. Johnny sighs like it’s the worst thing he’s ever been asked to do, then reluctantly grips Daniel’s hand as if it’s a poisonous snake.

“Fuckin’ girly ass hands.” He mumbles.

Daniel sneers, gripping his hand harder until the burning warm hues begin to spill across the back of their hands. “Sorry I don’t have ogre hands, I probably have a disease now because god knows the last time you washed them,”

“Hm, your prints are very fast. That’s good, very good. Perhaps the sun is closer than we thought!” she beams, ignoring their squabbling like it’s sport.

“Now… would you be open to some questions?”

Daniel blinks. “Questions? What is this, a pop quiz?”

Johnny scoffs. “Yeah, great, now we’re in therapy again but just with Rosemary. What’s next, you gonna give us homework and threaten us with arts and crafts, too? I thought this was supposed to be different.”

Magenta exhales loudly through her nose, like she’s trying very hard not to strangle them. Then she flicks a twin pinch of rosemary into the air, letting the flakes rain down onto the table. “It is not therapy nor is it mundane like you’re implying. It is… the unravelling. The peeling of the onion until the truth spills forth.”

Johnny points at her with his now free hand. “Lady, that’s therapy.”

Daniel nods in agreement. “Yeah, you’re literally describing counselling.” He gestures to her. “You were supposed to spout out some wisdom about how we can improve or something, but this? This is just flamboyant school counselling.” 

Magenta’s eye twitches. “You will let me ask my questions. It is the only way to discover and gain a sense of your truth and the origin of why you are bonded, I may be in touch with your cores but I am no mind reader.”

Johnny makes a face, but doesn’t say anything, mostly because her tone has shifted from whimsical to I will hex your entire bloodline.

Daniel shifts in his seat, muttering, “Fine. Whatever. Ask your questions.”

Magenta smiles like a cat finally getting its claws into the curtains. “Excellent!” She says before ripping her palms away from her rosemary bunches and slamming down a book on top of the table. She flips open to a page and on close inspection it seems to be instructions on how to see the links between soulmates. Ah, so she really is clueless as to what she’s doing. “First one… when did you first meet?” She takes a grip of their hands again and sighs, closing her eyes wistfully.

“The beach,” Daniel says immediately.

She freezes. Then her lips pull tight. “The truth, boy.”

“That is the truth! What do you want, the exact time and coordinates?”

“LIES!” she creaks, launching another sprig of rosemary that bounces off Daniel’s chest. “Tell me of the drunken friend and the punches thrown, the mouthiness and aggression! Do not waste my time with half-truths!”

Johnny stares at her, slack-jawed but with eyes that scream I’m pissed off and you’re making it worse. “How the hell do you even—”

Magenta raises a single, lacquered finger. “I advise you not to continue pushing my boundaries.” Her tone is sharp enough to make Johnny actually shut his mouth for a mere second, lips twitching.

Daniel almost snorts. He doesn’t, but God he wants to. 

Johnny’s voice cracks back in, rough with disbelief. “What a load of bullshit!”

Magenta only tilts her head, watching him like he’s a noisy bird.

Daniel rolls his eyes. “Now you sound like a girl—”

“Oh please,” Johnny snaps back, “I’ve never heard something so—”

“Blah blah!” Daniel cuts him off, throwing his free hand out. His pulse is racing, half from irritation, half from the heat still crawling up his palm where Johnny’s hand lay tight. “Y’know what, lady? You’re right! This guy couldn’t keep his goddamn mouth shut that day. Too busy acting like some dick proud prince to realize Ali didn’t want anything to do with him, so he gets up in her face—” Daniel leans forward, jabbing a finger across the table, “—and I’m a good guy, man, so I call him out for it and lady, you seriously can’t tell me that he wouldn’t have swung at me if his drunken Cobra buddy hadn’t swooped in like King Fucking Dick and landed one right here!” He slaps his cheek lightly for emphasis. “Tell me, Johnny, do you always let your minions do your dirty work? Sure felt like it, every damn time you sat back with your hands clean while everyone else played executioner.”

Magenta hums thoughtfully.

Johnny explodes. “Oh, you are so full of it, LaRusso! I didn’t tell him to do shit! It was your little lizard brain that got wound up over a girl you just met, and you caused it all!”

Daniel’s laugh is jagged, bitter. “Oh yeah? Well fuck me in the ass and call me a lollipop for actually having sympathy for somebody, why don’t ya? God forbid somebody’s nice! That’s definitely grounds for a beating!”

Johnny points at him, leaning across the table now. “Sympathy my ass! We all know you just wanted to mouth off. You’re literally incapable of shutting up!”

Daniel barks out a humourless laugh. “Ha, fucking ha, Johnny! You wanna talk about running your mouth? Look in a mirror! For a guy who was so adamant about telling nobody about Wednesday, you sure had a field day spilling to Miss whatever her name is about our little cute date!”

Magenta perks up at that phrasing, lips curling. “Ahhh, Wednesday. The infamous day of union…”

“Shut up!” they both snap at her.

Johnny glares right back at Daniel. “I only told her to piss off your pathetic ass! I wasn’t the one frolicking through detention with a stick jammed so far up my ass it got us two more weeks! Do you even know the crap I’ve had to put up with because of you?”

Daniel’s voice rises, cracking against the ceiling. “You’re not the only one! I’ve been asked stuff too, hounded, tormented by people who didn’t even know I existed until last week! And—and yesterday, Jesus, yesterday! You walked around like the whole world was against you only, like it only impacted you, to the point I was choking on your self-pity all day!”

Johnny growls back, low and furious. “Self-pity? I couldn’t think straight with how much you were infecting me with your disgust. I almost puked, like seven times, because you couldn’t keep it under wraps!”

Daniel shoves his hands through his hair, voice cracking in frustration. “I had every right to! Susan printed out wedding invitations for us! Know what my greeting was? Not a hello, not a how are you? But a ‘happy one week anniversary Daniel, I know the wedding's just gonna be beyond!’ It was disturbing, so forgive me for—”

“You think you’re some saint? Newsflash, LaRusso, you’re just as bad. You run your mouth like it’s a damn weapon and then cry foul when somebody finally clocks you for it.”

Daniel’s nostrils flare. “Oh please. Like you’ve ever needed an excuse to hit somebody. You were just looking for an opening—”

“Better than whining every five seconds like the world owes you something!” Johnny snaps, shaking their still-linked hands in emphasis. The pressure is unbearable, burning, as the prints begin to leak up the wrists and curl across their forearms.

“Would you two shut your incessant traps!” Magenta hollers so loud the beaded curtains tremble. Both boys freeze, startled, as she drags down their accusing hands into a bruising clamp so tight Daniel yelps. Johnny jerks like she’s just branded him with a cattle prod and distantly he stays smug in the knowledge Johnny knows how he feels now..

She narrows her eyes, the candles around them flickering like they’re afraid. “Childish. Both of you. You think you’re the only souls to ever be bound? I have listened long enough to your petty squawking, like birds fighting over breadcrumbs in the gutter, like damned old crows bickering over the last box of raisins!” She releases them with a dramatic rip, snatching her hands away as if their bickering has infected her.

They exchange a glare, both breathing hard, but neither daring to break the silence first. They wouldn’t, both in fear of getting seasoned once again and opening up something that was verging just a bit too close to raw.

With a scowl, Magenta flips violently through her massive tome until she lands on a page. She spins it around to face them, the jagged black ink scrawled in spirals and symbols looking more like gibberish than anything else. Was it supposed to mean something aside from absolutely nothing to them? Either way, this (the mismatched, too cliche cards and eccentric mannerisms), seems just like one fat hoax to get them to fret.

Daniel squints. “What is that? Chicken scratches?”

Johnny snorts. “Looks like a five-year-old got hold of a Sharpie. You have kids?”

Magenta slaps the page with her palm so hard the table rattles. “This—” she says through clenched teeth, “—is your truth. Your bond. Your curse. And I know exactly why you two have been shackled together in such a way that sets both your teeth into a sodden frenzy!”

Her expression darkens, lips pursed like she’s tasted something sour, uncanny. “Though believe me when I say… it is no blessing that you boys have been given.”

Johnny's face contorts into a stereotypical bored revulsion as he rubs his face. Daniel pointedly ignores the bubbling disappointment threading throughout his organs that he knows isn’t his. He sees no good coming from acknowledging how the other feels, all it does is remind him of their mistake and the fact that Johnny fucking Lawrence of all people can take his emotions and rub it in his face. Like a sick form of manipulation, blackmail. How cruel. 

“A curse. Figures, but I think we could’ve realised that without the crappy show and tell.”

Magenta squints at them in all her purple glory, eyes exhausting holes into Johnny’s skull so brightly that Daniel swears he can feel the pits beginning to form in his.

And isn’t that a cruel joke? It’s not enough that they stain each other, it’s not enough that they can feel each other deep within their guts, it’s not enough. It’s never enough for the bond that tethers them and so it continues, continues to mutate and expand, continues to force their prints to spread distances from their hold and play tricks on their minds like it’s nothing too important.

Magenta lets the silence hang, her eyes drifting between them like she’s peering straight through bone. When she speaks, it’s low, deliberate as if she’s speaking to a spooked cat.

“You are bound because the cosmos saw fit to braid a rope out of two frayed threads. I am not one to understand such a bond but I suppose where there is chaos, there must be order. Where there is fire, there must be tinder. And when souls are jagged, only something equally as jagged will lock them in place.”

Daniel frowns, tilting his head. He can’t tell if her words are comforting or not. “That’s… that’s supposed to mean something to us?”

Johnny shakes his head dismissively. “Yeah, great. Real fortune-cookie crap this is, a waste of damn time.”

She ignores them, stabbing a finger at Daniel. “You. Boy of sun and sand. Sharp with your tongue yet still sharper with your heart. You cannot stand silence, you cannot stand stillness. You itch for movement, for fairness, for meaning. For a chance and yet you’ve held a stagnant life,”

Daniel shifts uncomfortably, eyes darting. There’s something in her words that settles deep within him and there’s no telling whether it’s disgust or an understanding. “Okay, well… that’s—”

Then she swivels toward Johnny, acrylics scratching strange little shapes along their wrists. “And you. You are smoke and steel. Loud and burning, but brittle inside. You stand so tall, yet all the while you stay on shaken feet. You tremble and you’ll fall. You mask it with fists. With venom.”

Johnny bristles, jaw clenching. “You don’t know anything—”

“Be quiet!” she snaps, and he shuts his mouth, the action unsettles something sour in him. “The reason you are bonded is not kindness, nor destiny. It is a necessity. Because one without the other is incomplete. Annoyingly so. He tempers you,” she gestures at Daniel, “and you,” a jab at Johnny “force him to face what he runs from.”

Her voice grows sharp, losing all pretence of mysticism and leaving it in a sort of unrefined crackle. “It is the worst kind of balance, the kind neither of you asked for and the type both of you are too young and naive to nurture without pain. You fit, in the way two jagged puzzle pieces fit. Not smooth. Not easy. But once joined, impossible to separate without breaking the whole picture.”

Both boys stare, faces twisted somewhere between discomfort and disbelief. Disbelief at the rubbish this woman is spewing, disbelief that of course they’re the ones tainted by a bond that’s not forgiving or pure.

Johnny shakes his head. “Aren’t bonds supposed to be good? This sounds like a punishment.”

Magenta pulls her hands away and slams the book shut, dust bursting into the air as Daniel clenches down on Johnny's hand like it’s trying to mean something aside from a mindless fright.  “It is punishment. For me. For having to listen to you bicker like old crones in my parlour!”

Magenta doesn’t open the book again. She presses her palms flat on its cover until the leather moulds to her fingers, leaning toward them with a gravity that makes the air feel heavier and dust fall thicker.

“Do not mistake me,” she says, voice low and sharp. “Your bond is not born of sweetness. It is not the gentle kind that poets write of. Yours is… raw. Unrefined. A chain forged in heat and hammered by conflict. It will grind at you. It will exhaust you. And yet—” she pauses, eyes narrowing and voice becoming hushed, “—to rip it apart would do worse damage than learning to carry it. It will be more painful than a teasing comment in the halls or the fall of your feud, it will be towers collapsing and veins rupturing.”

Her gaze flicks between Daniel and Johnny like she’s daring either of them to interrupt. Neither does.

“You are each other’s reflection, though you despise what you see. The anger you spit at one another is not merely rivalry. It is recognition. The soul always fights hardest against what it knows belongs to it.”

Daniel’s lips part, but she cuts him off with a raised finger.

“Do not speak yet, boy. I’ve been kind and following your fanciful bickering thus far but, this? You must hear this truth: you will waste years trying to deny it, to twist away from the shape that’s already set. And you will fail. Because whether you wish it or not, the world will bend you back toward him. Again and again. You may fight and punch, be reluctant to those who are trying to help and rue those who placed you together but nothing will be more rewarding than acceptance.”

She exhales through her nose, leaning back. Her mystic cadence breaks into something harsher, edged with annoyance.

“And honestly? I pity anyone who has to be in the same room while you two figure that out.”

Daniel’s first instinct is to scoff. To laugh in her face, to tell her she doesn’t know a damn thing. But the words catch in his throat, jagged and bitter like it’s threatening to choke him. His mind runs too fast, spinning circles around itself and then there are those shitty, gut-wrenching remnants of paranoia again. He glances at Johnny but there’s no answer there, he’s just sat still, eyes squinted slightly as if he’s scrutinising the woman. Johnny's hand is almost limp in his bruising grip but he can’t find it in himself to let go. Holding his hand, being close to him like this is more fictional than ever so letting go will only prove that this whole fucked up spiritual torture is real.

Reflection? Recognition? What the hell is she talking about? He’s nothing like me. Nothing. He’s cruel, he’s violent, he’s arrogant, he harms without getting his hands dirty, he’s… he’s everything I hate. And yet—

Daniel’s grip tightens around Johnny’s hand without meaning to, feeling violated as warmth spreads further up his arm. His stomach twists. Why does it feel like she’s peeling back something he doesn’t even know is there? Why does it feel like she’s infiltrating his head and spooning out everything he’s ever felt just from a stare?

The thought curdles. He shoves it down, but it sticks there, heavy. For a flicker, he can’t tell if the heat is from Johnny’s skin leaking onto his or the pulse in his own head. He doesn’t check.

Magenta exhales, long and weary. Her eyes lower, like she’s carrying a weight too familiar. “You boys… You don’t even know the half of what you’re tied to.”

Her gaze flicks sideways, pinning Johnny first. “You think I don’t see it? That stubborn pride is eating you alive. You’d rather chew glass than bend, rather cut yourself bloody than let someone else think you’re weak.” She smiles pitifully, reaching to cradle Johnny’s free hand tenderly. “I understand it’s difficult, boy, but you must see the impacts this strained bond has had on you already. The aching shoulders and ground teeth, the bruises from those in charge, the sneers from those who should care.” Her eyes narrow like she’s reaching in deeper and something rotten infiltrates Daniel’s sternum, leaking over in strong rivulets from the tense boy he’s still latched on to. “In your own home you stay quiet, don’t you? Slip past him in the halls, hold your tongue till your jaw aches. Pretend silence makes you untouchable but silence here holds no promises of peace, only harm.”

Johnny’s shoulders tense. The muscle in his jaw jumps, his voice sharp and defensive before he can stop it. “You don’t know a thing about me,” he grinds out, pulling his hand away like this is no more than a meaningless annoyance. “For somebody who claims not to read minds, you seem sure of yourself.”

He says it like her words aren’t true, like he’s claiming it’s all make-believe but he knows it’s true. Even somewhat.

Magenta only tilts her head, unbothered, the kind of smirkless calm that makes denial feel useless.

Then she turns, and Daniel feels the air shift like it’s pressing down on him alone. Her eyes, dark and too knowing, fix him still. If this is how Johnny was pinned down he’s surprised he didn’t lash out.

“And you,” she says, quieter now. “You’ve had love ripped out from under you so there’s no surprise you’re pulling away. Your poor mother, watched her own soulmate fade right in front of her, and she still breathes through that hole in her chest every day.” Her eyes turn soft, gooey in a sort of fake, exploitative way. “You think you can run from the bond? Pretend it’s just petty schoolyard squabbles? You know better. You’re terrified of being selfish, of wasting an opportunity your mother would sell what’s left of her splintered soul for, of letting someone need you and failing them the way you watched it happen before. I understand that, I understand better than any but, boy you need to hone that fear and make it flourish, pour it into your bones and—”

“Haven’t you said enough?”

She hums, a light shrug in her shoulders like this was all some mindless coercion and not a complete act of brain fuckery.

“This is all a part of the process, we—“

Johnny cuts her off, a muted acid in his words. “—we, don’t wanna hear it.”

Daniel would much rather smack her clean across the face and call her every curse he can conjure up but his mouth goes dry and his joints lock up just enough to hesitate until the moment passes.

A faint patter begins outside, soft at first, then harder, rain running down the windows. The daylight turns dim, grey shadows bleeding into the room. Magenta doesn’t flinch. She strikes a match and lights three small candles, sliding them across the table. Their glow flickers against the glass, catching on the beads of water running down. It smells like lavender and sea salt, something comforting compared to the tense air threaded between them now.

Her expression shifts. A softer smile, almost motherly, as she nods at his burnt words and allows her eyes to travel toward their still-linked hands. “Healthy marks,” she murmurs. “Alive, aching for their bond. They travel far, higher than most… nearly to your elbows already.”

Daniel risks a glance down. She’s right, Johnny's once limp hand is gripping just as harshly back now and the prints have spread into patchy hives across their forearms. It’s glowing, burning in long streams and teasing their joints. Johnny notices too after a beat and his scowl falters into something uneasy.

Magenta tilts her head, watching the prints shimmer in the candlelight. “Strong. Restless. Hungry.”

Neither of them has the nerve to move, both too unsettled to bicker and berate the insensitive woman skinning teeth in front of them. For once, they’re quiet. For once, they agree.

Johnny's fingers twitch against his as a wave of uncanny nausea sweeps past him, knocking against his already paranoid gut and dialling it up. He wants to pull away, but the bond anchors him. He hates the anchor. He hates that he wants it.

The room stays silent, except for the patter of rain, slow, heavy against the windowpanes. Shadows slide across the walls, stretching the jars and dried herbs into grotesque shapes. Daniel’s eyes trace the outlines of something that might be a bat, might be a ragged crow. He swallows hard.

Magenta sighs something wistful and Johnny shifts slightly, a low grunt that sounds like half-annoyance, half-disbelief. 

Why does it feel like she’s been staring at them for hours? 

She moves, slow, deliberate, almost ghostlike. She doesn’t speak, just adjusts the candles, letting the light flicker across their stained arms. 

Daniel thinks he can hear his own heartbeat in the quiet, pounding against the tension of the room, matching Johnny’s silent thrum of bottled-up tension. He wonders if the psychic can feel it too. He wonders if she knows everything already.

The air smells bloated with damp and it presses down on him until his skin feels too tight. The walls are close together now, less curious and now more daunting. His mind races, chaotic and harsh.

Who even is this woman and why the fuck did they come to this? 

We’re screwed. Absolutely screwed. How did it even come to this? I can’t think straight. I can’t—

“And they continue to creep far, your heart craves each other and both of you do too despite the animosity."

The words filter through his muffled ears and his gut continues to twist into knots of barbed wire, sharp and unrelenting as the gritty atmosphere continues to gnaw at him.

He jerks his gaze toward Johnny, and in that instant, the nausea, the creeping, curling tendril of unease and paranoia, disgust and despair threading into Johnny’s stomach spears itself stronger than ever into Daniel and perhaps the most sickening thing about it all is that he can’t tell whose emotions belong to whom. Johnny’s eyes flick up, concerned, and Daniel nearly recoils from the intimacy of it, the inescapable tether of their bond making him sick in a way he doesn’t have words for.

He wants out of her sight. Now.

Garfield winks down stupidly at him, his limbs twisted like cruel fingers to point vaguely around three. The end. The end of this session, the end of the day. Beyond the surface level of frenzy, A wave of longing hits him as a desperate, irrational part of him wishes to be part of the throng of students pouring from chemistry class hits him. He’d much rather be ten minutes into detention and stuck answering slimy truths with Casey Lattimer than be in this herb-stinking den with a quack who somehow knows too much.

Magenta notices the shift in his posture, the flicker of panic in his eyes, and she sighs, long and knowing, as if she has anticipated his discomfort all along. She leans forward, almost sweetly, and shuffles another deck of cards with a deliberate flick of her wrist. It has cats on it. Despite it, he doesn’t feel any better. “Before you leave,” she intones, “We must see… one more reading. One more insight with a question on how you must continue.”

With a barely concealed sense of dread, Daniel allows her to begin. His stomach churns, his hands still trapped in the warmth of their bond, his mind running through escape scenarios that feel more and more impossible. God, just let this end. Let the day be over. Let me go and drown myself in the humid storm outside.

She splays the cards onto the table with a light hum then says something so sweet that Johnny scoffs and Daniel blocks it from his ears and memory like it never happened.

It’s all bullshit anyway.

They end up with cliche cards. The lovers, temperance and five of cups reversed. They need harmony, they need patience, they need to mend and overcome past wounds.

Daniel bristles as she continues spouting on about aged wounds and Johnny scowls all the same.

In all honesty, that could’ve been said with less emotional exploitation and within five minutes.

────────

The bell over Magenta’s door gives a sharp jangle as it swings shut behind them, a flicker of rain falling onto their necks as it muffles the warm, herbal stink of the shop. Outside, the world is nothing but water, sodden yet humid whilst the rain comes down in a curtain, thick and relentless, turning the streets into a rippling grey river. Cars hiss by in the distance, wipers work over time and streets lie bare with everyone camping out in storefronts to stay dry.

Those daft people didn’t even think to bring a car or an umbrella. Or a thick jumper or jacket.

Daniel’s a hypocrite.

He lingers just under the archway, pressed into the peeling brick, hands shoved into his jean pockets like they can shield him from whatever sticky shiver is threatening to flood his bones. The damp air bites and he stares out at the rain like maybe, if he waits long enough, it’ll just stop. Of course it won’t. It never does when you want it to.

Johnny notices, leaning against the other side of the frame with his arms crossed, perfectly at ease despite the spray of damp misting his hair. He glances at Daniel once, then twice, and a crooked grin tugs at his mouth.

“You seriously biked here?” His voice is incredulous, but amused, the kind of laugh that always sits just one breath away from cruelty. This time it’s resting somewhere between humour and fatigue.

Daniel stiffens. “Yeah. What about it?”

Johnny shakes his head slowly, eyes trailing over the thin fabric plastered to Daniel’s arms. “You’re wearing a jersey, LaRusso. What’s the plan, huh? Pedal all the way back looking like a drowned mutt and end up with pneumonia?”

Daniel huffs, tugging the sleeves down further even though it makes no difference. “I’ll be fine, I don’t need you nitpicking my tactics.” He scratches his nose like it will be able to rid the awkwardness. It doesn’t. “Besides, it will improve my immune system in the future. Trust me”

The smirk falters just a fraction. For a moment Johnny looks at him differently—like Daniel isn’t an opponent to outdo, but like a basket case standing in the rain, shivering. 

“Trust me, you’re gonna end up some damsel in distress,” he says, voice twitchy in the aftermath of spiritual warfare. He shakes his head then without warning, shrugs out of his jacket, the leather heavy in his hands, and tosses it against Daniel’s chest.

“Won’t the kingdom fall if their princess is sent to their death?”

Daniel blinks, caught off guard both by the act of kindness and mindless joking. The jacket is warm, still carrying Johnny’s body heat, and smells faintly of smoke and something sharper, familiar in a way he doesn’t want to think about. It weighs on him but he still slides it over his shoulders before he can talk himself out of it.

“What—”

“Look, I’m not a complete dickhead, okay? I’ll drive you, completely sober this time,” Johnny interrupts, quick, almost brusque, like the words might bite him if he says them too slow. He stuffs his hands into his pockets, avoiding Daniel’s eyes. “Got a spare shirt in the car anyway so don’t get your panties in a twist overthinking it.”

Daniel narrows his eyes, suspicion prickling. “Why are you being so… nice?”

That earns him a sharp scoff, but it doesn’t quite land. Johnny angles away, his jaw tight, shoulders tense as if he regrets it already. “Don’t flatter yourself. I just don’t wanna feel it when you keel over tomorrow. Knowing my luck, I’d catch your damn sniffles telepathically or whatever.”

The deflection is clumsy, transparent, but he refuses to look back at Daniel. Instead, he steps into the rain, letting it slick his hair flat against his forehead. He jerks his head toward the curb where his car waits.

Daniel hesitates for a beat but squints at the retreating, drowning figure and sighs.

If somebody steals his bike, Johnny and Magenta AND the counsellor all owe him a new bike.

Fuck it, Mother Nature will owe him one too.

The car door slams behind Daniel with a dull thud, sealing them into the cramped little world of the Avanti. It smells faintly of leather, rain and something vaguely boyish that’s neither sickly nor admirable. The engine isn’t on yet and for once the roof is up so the air stays thick, heavy, still holding the damp chill from outside. Compared to the downpour, it’s warmer. Quieter. Almost too quiet compared to whatever shitty banter they had seconds ago.

Daniel sits stiff in the passenger seat, Johnny’s jacket still draped over him like it belongs there. “Thanks,” he says, stunted, distantly shocked at how loud his voice sounds in such an enclosed space. “For the drive, I mean.” He takes a chance and glances at Johnny, his mouth pinched in a bitter expression.

Johnny's face is twisted, like there’s something sour resting against his gums. It’s been there since Magenta had opened her duck mouth, but it seems to only be magnified in this death machine.

Daniel clears his throat. “You, uh… You alright?”

Johnny’s scoff is immediate, defensive, cracking the stillness in two as he slouches back, fingers drumming the wheel and slick hair dripping down his cheek. “What kinda question is that? I’m fine.”

Daniel doesn’t buy it. He can feel Johnny's caution tenfold now, like even he’s realised that after the past hour, such proximity is probably only a recipe for disaster. 

He studies Johnny from the corner of his eye, remembering the way he’d gone stone-faced back in Magenta’s shop. The way he’d snapped too quickly when she called them out. “It just seemed like what she said… I dunno, bothered you? You’re always a bit of a prick but now you’re just quiet and weirdly being nice and I know you said it’s because you didn’t wanna get sick but seriously—”

“LaRusso, please.” Johnny’s laugh is short, sharp, and humourless. He shakes his head like he’s trying to fling the thought away. “She’s a freak. Always talking outta her ass. I expected something like that.” He shrugs as if it’s nothing, though his jaw tightens. “Doesn’t matter.”

The words hang there, brittle, before he cuts them off himself with movement.

“Just forget it all, alright?”

His soaked jumper lands in the footwell with a wet slap. 

Daniel freezes. He knows he shouldn’t look, should probably be more sensitive and stay curious about Johnny’s sniffly mood, but his eyes betray him, flicking to the stretch of Johnny’s shoulders, the water beading down his skin, the faint rise and fall of his chest as he leans over the seat. His face warms before he can stop it.

Ah, shit.

For a beat, he wonders if Johnny can feel the flush inside his chest.

The only sound is the rain hammering against the car and the faint creak of leather as it shifts with his movement. He digs through a battered gym bag, pulling out a t-shirt that looks strangely well despite being shoved into a bag for god knows how long. Daniel internally curses rich people, they probably have a magic detergent that avoids wrinkles.

He tells himself to look away, that it’s none of his business, really, that it’s literally just skin, but there’s this faint scar running across his ribs, and rains trickled further down now and the arm bracing himself on the seat is still stained vivid pinks and oranges and he has the same on his arm and— and— god, he’s his soulmate. 

By the time Johnny drags the shirt over his head and shakes his damp hair out of his eyes, Daniel’s gaze has already lingered too long.

And Johnny notices.

Of course, the fucker does.

He freezes mid-adjustment, arms still tugging the hem of the shirt straight. His eyes flick to Daniel’s face, flushed, a little guilty like he’s been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Twice.

His mouth twitches, not into a smirk, not quite. Something smaller. “What, you gettin’ an eyeful, LaRusso?”

Daniel jerks his gaze forward. “I wasn’t—”

Johnny cuts him off with a laugh that’s just a bit more vacuous than before as he turns the key in the ignition. “Christ. You totally were.”

“I wasn’t looking!” Daniel insists, mortified, tugging Johnny’s jacket tighter around himself as if it’ll hide his face too. He slides slightly down the seat, the seatbelt catching with a jarring click at the movement.

“Sure, LaRusso, y’just happened to be starin’ at the window, which happens to line up perfectly with me taking my shirt off.” Johnny drums his fingers on the wheel, grin widening ever so slightly as Daniel sputters beside him. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you came dressed for clear skies on purpose just to see me all—“

“God, you’re so insufferable!”

Johnny shoots him a sideways glance, that same little grin softening, almost fond “Pervert,” he teases, like it’s the final nail in Daniel’s coffin.

Daniel can’t even argue. He just shoves his hands deeper into the sleeves of the jacket and glares at the rain outside, wishing the heat in his face would die down.

The engine hums, the headlights slice through the storm, and the word lingers between them, not sharp, not mean, just there like the strange foundations of a joke.

And when he gets dropped off, there’s still a weird little smug, shitty grin on Johnny's lips but his sternum feels lighter than before so he lets it slide without comment. 

And when Mr Miyagi asks how hours with a psychic went in his own roundabout way, Daniel sighs and whines about how much of a psycho she was, how the whole afternoon was a useless waste of free time.

Mr Miyagi squints at him before humming like he doesn’t believe him at all but Daniel can’t quite blame him for that. After all, he’s got a dry head and a stupid jacket that squeaks when he moves still on his shoulders.

Chapter Text

When Johnny Lawrence first met Sid Weinberg, he was young. Young in the sense that he was naive and still puffed up with cotton cheeks, still vaguely believed in Santa, but could recognise right from wrong nonetheless. Right, meaning when Sid had bought him a toy car the day they met and wrong, meaning when he had frothed at the mouth with a liquor-slick sneer and berated his being for something long forgotten later that week.

He had smiled at him and honey had stuck to his teeth, dripping down his gums and neck as his eyes glazed over golden and blinded his mother. Clouded her judgement and dulled her sense of danger, wrapping it all in bubble wrap made of twenty-dollar bills and promises of a cleaner life. Perhaps it blinded him too, each bucket full of toys stuffed into his too-big-for-a-kid bedroom throughout the years dulling his ability to think that honey can crystallise and rust. The newest Walkman, trucks full of records and CDs paired with keys to shiny new cars and a paycheck to a dojo that thickens his skin.

Honey can last centuries and still be sweet, but his diluted as the years went on, as his mother grew reluctant, as Johnny grew sharper. And so the honey became more water than sugar and rotted. Rotted and decayed until now he’s left skirting past the man in hallways and sneaking beers out of the fridge just to ride around the streets in hope of a rest bite.

It’s strange to think that Sid used to be sugared around the edges, strange to remember the brief period of time where he was seen more than a hangnail stuck to the side of Sid’s object of desire. 

It’s stranger to think that Sid has a soulmate somewhere out there. She’s probably just as awful, crass and sticky with arrogance to slot right into Sid’s life. She’s probably named something exotic just be plain, probably just as thick-skulled and superficial as him and probably has some flimsy job that she hardly has to tend to. There’s never been dirt under her nails and there never will be, because her soulmate is just the same. Or…

Or maybe not.

Maybe she’s sweet deep down, has a kid or two with morals higher than the divine and a job more gritty than the sand beneath his feet. Maybe she’s the complete opposite, the jagged edge needed to smooth out Sid’s edges. Somebody who doesn’t deserve his brashness, somebody too pure to be held down to someone more boy than man. And isn’t that cruel? That somewhere out there, a person is waiting for a soul bond that will never be found because her other half is no more than a pig.

“You fit, in the way two jagged puzzle pieces fit. Not smooth. Not easy. But once joined, impossible to separate without breaking the whole picture.”

And maybe that’s the cruellest realisation there is, that soul bonds no matter how fanciful and sought after they are, don’t exist to placate and please you. They’re there to force you to see what you need, to throw your regrets and issues back into your face and rub it into the wounds already split open. It ties a sweetheart and a criminal, a sinner and a priest, a loud mouth and a fighter together and makes you figure out how it makes sense and no amount of counselling and two pence psychics can make it clearer than you, no matter how much truth they hold.

Begrudgingly, Johnny thinks about such a puzzle more than he’d like to. About how unfair it all feels, how stupid it is that his body is now stuck in a pining limbo with itself for somebody who scrunches his face like he’s smelling piss every time Johnny opens his mouth. Someone who glares at him like he’s the walking embodiment of everything he hates, just like Johnny scoffs and preens at bruises that etch themselves along his skin.

And when their fists collide, when their shoulders bump and when they're stared down and told to clutch onto each other, the heat crawls up their arms like fire licking gasoline and Johnny almost swears it feels like the universe is mocking him. Like the universe was out there saying: see? He’s your other half. Not your high school sweetheart or the girl who smiles at you, not your buddies who laugh at your jokes, but him. Him, the jagged piece to your inverted being. The molasses to your honey-sodden life.

He’s the cure.

And yet Johnny stays bruised, stays berated, stays coming late to karate and stays the butt of the joke when his sensei turns around and snickers at his poorly hidden prints, sneers at his detention-stricken tardiness. How is that supposed to fix him?

And that's just the thing, the worst part, the absolute worst fucking part isn’t Kreese’s sneer, or Sid’s scowl, or even the endless gossip swirling the halls. It’s that Daniel LaRusso lingers. He gets under his skin in a way no bruise does, because bruises fade. They turn black and blue to green to yellow, but Daniel doesn’t. He stays tacky between surface and muscle and pretends like he doesn't.

It should be simple, Johnny hates him. That’s the script. That’s the way it’s always been. Mouthy little punk shows up out of nowhere, thinks he’s hot shit, and suddenly Johnny’s supposed to bend around him? No chance. He’s the enemy, the rival, the guy who makes Johnny want to grind his teeth to dust and nothing should change that. 

So then why the hell does Johnny keep remembering the stupidest things? Like the way Daniel’s laugh cracked in detention the other day when Susan glared for a bit too long through the glass door and Johnny had mumbled out something laced with mockery. Daniel laughed, really laughed, at his words. Enough to dislodge the comment from his brain and get him a slap on the back of his head from a teacher. And Johnny… he didn’t hate it. Didn’t hate himself for laughing in return either.

It’s alien. It feels all wrong. They don’t laugh together, they're not supposed to. They fight, they snarl, they bruise, they bicker and sneer. That’s the routine. That’s safe. But now there’s this strange shift, like the ground’s moving under his feet, and Johnny can’t stand to stay still and watch it shake, because sometimes when he’s not watching himself too close, he thinks that maybe Daniel isn’t all that different. That maybe he knows what it feels like to keep your head down, to fight like hell because it’s easier than being vulnerable, to hide behind sharp words and harder fists. Maybe they’re not opposites at all. Maybe they’re just… too similar, jagged in the same places, forced to fit where it hurts.

And the bond. It doesn’t care if Johnny’s not ready. Doesn’t care if it scares the life out of him to think about needing someone, about being needed back. Every brush of heat, every print spreading higher up his arm feels like a reminder that this isn’t going away. That no matter how much he wants to, he can’t shake LaRusso. In another world, one more simple, they would be just two regular rivals, bloody toothed and raw knuckled with bruises instead of warmth on their skin.

But Johnny has never been the luckiest guy. He gets stuck in positions he'd rather not, is somehow always the person teachers cold call on and constantly bashes his elbow against doorways, so his universe reflects that misfortune tenfold.

So Johnny does what he always does. He clenches his fists. He cracks jokes, he sneers, he pretends. Pretends the bond doesn’t matter, pretends Daniel doesn’t matter. Pretends he doesn’t notice when, for one second, laughing with him feels less like mockery and more like… relief.

And pretending, he tells himself, is easier than the alternative. The alternative would be far more irritating.

Because what started on that beach? It was an event that needed to be forgotten, something that never deserved to be built upon.

Johnny can still feel the grit of sand between his teeth if he thinks about it too long, LaRusso standing there, puffed up like a stray cat with his fists out like he had any right to interrupt. His eyes were bloodshot with a frayed, feral sort of fear. Protection rotted in his bones and if Johnny were to look into it for longer than a second, he’d probably realise that’s why Ali insisted on clinging on to the guy. Johnny remembers the whole ordeal in technicolour. Remembers the heat in his chest, remembers how it felt like everything he had was being challenged in front of everyone. He hated him back then— he still does.

But Tommy swung and the crowd squealed, Daniel scurried off and the chase continued in mindless circles, enough words and spiteful shoves thrown about to fuel a rink but never any contact between them. Not until the fight, the one that changed everything. He’d swung, LaRusso had swung back, and for a second it was normal. Just fists and anger, the usual. But it wasn’t, of course. Because he and Daniel had never laid a hand on each other, had never been without a puffed-up cobra between them to catch it sooner. It was moderately normal until their skin connected, and suddenly the universe had the sickest sense of humour imaginable. Soulmates. Him. LaRusso. Johnny remembers staring at those burning prints spreading across their arms, thinking it had to be some kind of curse. The heat was wrong, too sharp, too alive. He wanted to rip it off his skin. He still does. 

Then came the counselling. He’d rather find out about their bond five times an hour than complete another session. Being forced into a room with LaRusso, told to sit down like they were in marriage therapy. It’s hell. Magenta with her sprigs and screeches, digging into places Johnny never let anyone touch, much less some herb-stinking fraud. And worse, she hadn’t been wrong. Johnny had felt it, deep down, the way her words scraped at the inside of his ribs, things he didn’t want to admit lined up too damn neatly in a room much too crowded. And LaRusso had heard it all. He’d heard it all. And he had no damn right to.

Rumours spread faster than bruises in West Valley. Every hallway, every whisper about “soulmate counselling” sounded like nails on a chalkboard. Detention was just more salt in the wound, week after week, trapped in a room with LaRusso. Johnny thought it would kill him. Thought he’d snap before the second week was out. And yet, he didn’t. He joked, sometimes. He caught himself smirking when LaRusso snapped back, caught himself listening when LaRusso talked too much. It was weird. Wrong, and yet it’s been almost a week since their sentence had ended sweetly and sometimes he finds himself missing the proximity.

Johnny hates him for it. Hates that no matter how much venom he spits, LaRusso doesn’t shrink away, doesn’t back down. Hates that the fire doesn’t burn out, just changes shape. Hates that somewhere under the anger, there’s a pull. A softness, hidden and unwanted, like the bond is crawling its way into his marrow whether he wants it or not.

For all the fighting, the screaming, the rumours, the counselling, Johnny can’t shake the feeling that maybe the universe is laughing at him. Poking fun at his turmoil and rolling its eyes when his opinion changes for the seventh time that day.

────────

The thing about the long-awaited Halloween dance is that nobody really goes for the clean punch and subpar music. The girls use it as an excuse to show more skin without getting written up, the sleazy jocks take it as a chance to scoop up said girls and take them for a spin once their loose enough, and the cobras go there for the sake of it.

They dress as skeletons and roll joints in bathrooms, smoke them until their bones feel like jelly then roam around, almost get into a fight or two and then either go home or pass out on the beach. Simple. Johnny rolls, Tommy preys on a freshman, Dutch spikes the punch and life is good. Life is good except for the fact mentioned Cobras have decided cars are for the weak and that his precious Avanti is the new version of a Greyhound to get them from A to B.

“Stop moving, jackass, nobody has time to be taking your sorry ass to the hospital!” Jimmy’s got his fingers dug harshly into Tommy’s cheek, some barely two-cent plastic paintbrush in his hand and an equally cheap palette of face paint held between his teeth. He'd look like a girl helping her friend out with her eyeshadow if it weren’t for the fact that the stress of it all has made his own paint sweat off and cause a stink so violent in the car Johnny knows he's gonna have to scrub it out of the seats tomorrow.

“You’re stabbing me in the eye, man, what do you want me to do!” Tommy whines, jerking his head back.

“Maybe if you didn’t walk the earth with your thumb up your ass, you would've done it already—”

The car’s too small even with the roof down to absorb the humidity pooling into it. Dutch is all shivery in the back, knuckles white over an empty beer bottle as he cackles out insults to the pair and mutters under his breath about all the hairbrained thoughts he gets. Which isn't a lot. It was bad enough he dialled the radio all the way up, but acting like a prick more than usual makes that look like child’s play.

“Just give up, no amount of face paint can cure this guy’s ugly mug!” he jabs Jimmy’s side with his elbow, a shit eating grin engraved on his face.

The jab launches his body, face scrunched up as the paintbrush makes a beeline for Tommy's eye.

Jimmy snaps his head sideways, palette clattering onto his lap. “Touch me again and I’ll paint your face like a clown!”

“—ah fuck!” he winces, shoving off the hands pinching his cheeks and cradling his stained black eye. “You got paint in my eye! Its burns, oh god, it burns so bad—” Tommy groans, shakily lifting his hand away to show one watery eye squeezed shut. “Christ, Jimmy, I’m blind! Tell my mom I love her.”

Johnny flexes his jaw, knuckles hard on the wheel as Tommy kicks out in pain, his distant sounds of agony mixing with the bass and making everything seem far more crowded but then again, Dutch's turkey laugh isn't helping.

“You look like a panda,” Jimmy winces, pulling the bottom of his eyelid to get a better look. “Oh yeah, that's gone into your bloodstream, man.”

Tommy smacks his hand away, face pale and horrified in the rear view mirror. “Fuck off, I don't even look good and now I'm medically fucked! No girl’s gonna want to be around me—”

“Who? Susan? I promise you she wasn't interested to begin with,”

“—What!” he yells, sounding more like a kid who got his toy stolen than an almost-adult.

Johnny's shoulders ease as Tommy’s spine goes rigid in the back seat, his feet no longer stomping the space under his ass. “Oh yeah, Susan definitely isn't into you.’

Bobby snaps out of his self-mandated silence to snicker, eyes crinkling as his words come out with a teasing lilt. “Poor Tom, is this the first time somebody's told you?”

“Tell me what? What the hell do you guys know?” His safe eye twitches, mouth agape as a car goes past with a honk, harmonising with his gut-churning wail. “Tell me, man, I—” 

“Ah shut up with all this sappy shit! Even if she wasn't hard for Ali, she wouldn't entertain your sorry ass!” Dutch interrupts, shoving a grimy paw in Tommy's side and shoving him down with a yelp.

“Hey, grandma!” he launches between the seats, head almost bouncing off the windshield while jabbing at Johnny’s shoulder. “Pick it up a little, yeah? My nana drives faster to church!”

Johnny smacks his hand off, eyes flashing with annoyance as he turns onto a side road. “You wanna walk the rest of the way, Dutch? Huh? Be my guest.”

“Ooooh,” Jimmy sings, voice muffled as he stays crushed between Tommy's near-comatose in shock body and the window.“Daddy’s mad.”

He vaguely hears Tommy mumble a pathetic “Don't call him that, weirdo,” but with his annoyance muffled ears, that's up for debate.

“Daddy’s always mad!” Dutch grumbles, grubby fingers poking at the side of his head. “Because Daddy’s driving twenty in a sixty!”

It’s not funny. It earns another round of cackles anyway while the shithead continues to pound the back of Johnny’s seat like a drum. Johnny grits his teeth so hard his jaw clicks and he swear he can taste blood for a moment.

“Jesus Christ, quit it before I dump you on the curb!” Johnny snaps, eyes darting to the rear-view where Dutch is already grinning like a hyena.

“Relax, dad,” Jimmy croons against the window, his breath making it all foggy, “we’re almost there. Don’t bust a vein.”

Dutch barks a laugh, too loud, leaning forward again. “Almost where? I tell you, we’re driving like grannies! We’ll be there next year at this rate!”

Johnny’s elbow jerks out, swatting him back into his seat. “Keep running your mouth and I’ll drive back and let you walk all the way.”

“Fine by me!” Dutch shoves at Tommy’s knee, making him yelp as his paint smears on the seat. “At least then I’m not stuck in a hearse.”

“God, you’re insufferable,” Johnny growls.

“Better than being a corpse,” Dutch slouches back into his seat like a petulant child, pointing at the smeared skeleton face. “Christ, you look like roadkill.”

“I told you it burned!” Tommy screeches, clutching the side of his face like he’s two seconds from writing his will. “Besides, we're literally dressed as skeletons, the hearse brings character!”

“I don't know if you're dressed as anything man”

“I’m literally dressed as a pussy slaying chick magnet, you dick!”

Dutch scoffs. “Who? Susan? Y’know the girl who—”

“—Talking about Susan,” Bobby says, light and conversational like his words have nothing to do with the meltdown in the back, “do you know if LaRusso’s gonna be there?”

“WHAT?”

The words hit like a car crash.

And he almost causes the car to crash.

Johnny jerks the wheel without meaning to, the Avanti swerving hard enough that Dutch’s head smacks the window and Bobby's left clinging to the seat with all his might, regretting ever opening his mouth. The car erupts, Tommy howling, Dutch bellowing threats, Jimmy wheezing so hard he can’t breathe.

“What the HELL, Johnny!” Dutch is practically hanging sideways, arms flailing and legs up in the air like he's about to be shot out of a cannon or give birth. Maybe both. “Tryna kill me before we even get there!”

“Jesus Christ, man, my eye! My good one!” Tommy’s clutching his face like it’s melted off, peering at himself in the rear-view mirror with a strangled gasp. “Fuckin’ smudged the other, now I look like the fucking Crypt Keeper!”

“—what the hell kinda question was that!” Johnny barks over them, throat dry, hands tightening on the wheel to keep from showing the shake in them. The car's stable now, hardly a scratch on the side but that does little to comfort the inevitable doom of landing in a bush should the wrong this be said. “Why would I care if he’s there?” he pauses for a second too long to be a breath. “Why would you care?”

Bobby just lifts an eyebrow, cool as a summer night, lips twitching like he knows exactly what button he pressed.

“Relax,” he says as if his knuckles aren't sore from holding onto his seat. “Just asking, don't want any issues happening y’know? Ali and her lot are going, figured LaRusso would tag along.”

Johnny coughs, throat catching, forcing his voice into something flippant. His cheeks have gone slightly pink as if Bobby's simple, understandable reasoning had shamed his overreactive theories. “Yeah, probably. He’s glued to that girl patrol of his. Whole harem of ‘em. Ain't that his whole thing?”

“His thing, huh?” Bobby says it light, almost teasing. “Think you should know a lot about that, no?”

Jimmy snorts into his fist. “Sounds like you’ve been paying real close attention to his thing.”

Dutch cackles, still rubbing the back of his head where it smacked the glass. “Yeah, Johnny, what’s the matter? you worried lover boy’s gonna out-dress your ass tonight? Or maybe you're shitting yourself at the thought of him having a little dancey dance with—”

“Shut the hell up, all of you!” Johnny barks, ears burning hot, and whips the car into a random side road so hard the tires screech. The Avanti jerks to a stop. His heart’s a jackhammer but he shoves it down, throws it out in anger instead. “We’re here. Out. Now!”

“No way you're forcing us to walk like seventy blocks because your little soulmate has gotten your knickers in a twist!”

“Out!” 

Dutch is still laughing when he jumps over the doors, Jimmy’s already scrambling after him, Tommy whining about how his face is ruined forever as he scoops up the pallet from the ground and runs after them, a wail in his throat. 

Bobby’s the last to move, sliding out slow with that same half-smirk, half-knowing look like he’s just waiting for Johnny to trip himself up and realise— realise nothing because nothing is there to be realise. Nothing.

Johnny kicks open the door just to slam it harder than necessary, jaw locked so tight it aches. He tells himself it’s just the noise, just the idiots, just the paint fumes sticking to his car that's causing a weird swirl in his gut. Nothing else. 

Nothing to do with LaRusso.

And when he walks into that hall, face paint dripping down his neck and pockets full of weed itching to get wrapped, his stomach swoops in an anxious sort of thrill he knows doesn't belong to him, and instead of his eyes falling on to the girl with spiked punch or Ali with her blonde curls and cheesy group costume, they find the boy beside her. The boy beside her who's full of excitement tainted with fear and caution, who's got a plain costume on and yet still finds himself the centre of his whole world and doesn't even realise it. And somehow, that suits better than long hair and short skirts could ever, because in the ends it’s LaRusso.

Always LaRusso. 

Johnny may just resent himself for thinking he’s the most captivating thing in that room.

So captivating that there's no surprise when later that evening he scurries back to his car, cloudy-eyed and frayed at the edges, pretending he isn’t choking on everything unspoken.  It’s nothing. Just noise, just heat, just the inevitability of the static crawling under his skin. And when Bobby catches up with him at the car, leans on the hood with that maddening calm and asks him where he went, why his paint has smeared beyond recognition and why there's prints seeping across his skin, he doesn't reply. Johnny just scoffs and turns the engine on because, really, the whole ordeal is no surprise. After all, wasn't it meant to be?