Jude jumped at the sound of the bathroom door banging open. turning to see who walked in made him wish that his school was like the other ones where there were no doors to the bathroom. You just walked in, did your business, then walked out to wash your hands and that was that. He would be safe if the school was like that. However, life just didn't seem to really like him, like at all.
His breath became a little uneven as Fiori got into his space. He hated being backed into a corner. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. And in situations like this, he just made everything worse by opening his mouth. "Oh? My day? Well, it was the same as all the rest. You know, wake up, go to school, get harassed at school, pray that I don't have to spend another four hundred dollars on tires because I have to buy them myself and I really don't have that kind of money right now. "What with having to pay bills and helping out with buying groceries and stuff. Shit you wouldn't understand because your daddy pays for everything."
Why didn't Jude just go kill himself while he was at it?
Fiori's grip on Jude's collar tightened at the mention of his not so dear old dad, the way he was shoving Jude against the sink going from uncomfortable to downright painful. He was grateful for the anger, really he was. It made beating up people like Jude so much easier on him because he could pretend it was justified for a few hours.
"Don't you fucking talk about my father." The words were snarled, properly intimidating. "You don't know shit about me, freak. I'll fucking kill you."
Once upon a time the calculated ease with which he threw Jude to the floor, as hard as was possible without giving him a concussion, would've made Fiori sick. Now he relished the violence heavy in the air, drawing a leg back to kick him in the ribs. This was his headrush these days, the one thing that let him feel powerful, and he'd be damned if he let his conscious get in the way of it.
And it was in that moment that Jude realized he should have just kept his mouth quiet. There were a lot of those realizations. Keeping quiet would probably save him from a lot of damage, but he just couldn't seem to keep his mouth shut.
He let out a loud yelp as he was thrown to the ground. There would be no one saving him. Just about everyone had gone home. His head hurt. He wanted to start crying. He trued curling up in a ball. He wanted to scramble away but the kicks made it hard to breathe. He wasn't sure if he had broken anything. All he knew was pain.
Then, something strange happened. Something that distracted him fron the pain. His chest started….glowing? But how could that…. No.it couldn't be. He was officially going to throw himself in front of a bus.
Fiori forced down a shocking noise, taking an involuntary step away from Jude. A look of pure horror spread across his face when he looked down and realized his chest was glowing. Fuck. He couldn't… Jude couldn't be… His dad was going to kill him. How could his soulmate be a man? Or… a boy really, but that didn't matter. What mattered was the fact that his rotting body was going to turn up in a ditch when Dante Miller found out his son was gay.
He could practically see the headline; boy beaten to death with beer bottle, one suspect in custody.
"What the fuck did you do!?"
Jude weezed. He turned his head to the side, coughing, which ended up with him spitting up blood. He tirned his murderous gaze to Fiori.
"What did I do?! Are you seriously fucking asking me that!" Jude attempted to yell but it inly ended in him cough a bit violently. "Yes, I totally did something becahse I defiantly wanted to be soulmates with the boy who beats me up everyday."
"Oh, fuck off." It came out more desperate than he'd intended but Fiori was too bust tamping down the panic that had started to worm it's way into his heart to notice. He was breathing too fast, staring down at the tile floors like they had wronged him on a deeply personal level. "You won't have to worry about it for much longer, freak. I'll be gone in fucking week, tops."
Jude soften slightly. He could see the panic in Fiori's eyes. At the rate of his breathing he was going to pass out. It would be a good opportunity to leave. He figured he would have to walk home. But he found that he couldn't just leave, and not just because his body felt like ut was on fore.
"Fiori, you need to breathe. If you pass out I don't think either us will get out of this bathroom today." Jude said
"Better that than home." The way he spat the word, like it was burning his tongue, suggested that it wasn't much of one. His expression, caught between three different kinds of fear and something dangerously close to acceptance, crumpled. Why was Jude talking to him anyway? He was nice, but not nice enough to care about Fiori. Fiori who beat him daily as some kind of sick power play and hadn't said a kind word to him since they met. "I thought I told you to fuck off anyway. Leave."
Jude laughed sarcastically. "Don't you think I would have left already if I could? But I'm pretty sure I broke a rib, or at least sevey bruised it. So ot doesn't look like I'm going anywhere. And if you pass out, what the he'll am I going to do? Draw on your face? That seems like my only option at the moment." He should really shut up. Mainly because it hurt to breathe.
"You're going to piss off the wrong person someday," Fiori murmured, instead of retaliating or even bothering to care. He was still breathing too fast, but listening to Jude prattle on made it… better. "And I didn't break your rib, I know better than that. Sorry you got stuck with me as your soulmate, 'm probably gonna hit you again."
Jude snkrted at that, which hurt a lot. "I already have if you haven't noticed." He made a hand gesture to Fiori. "And i figured. Bullies don't just stop bullying." Hs troed relaxing on the floor, which was hard. His head was pounding, his sides hurt. "What the fuck am I supposed to do with you? I nljnew life hated me but I didn't realize it hated me this much."
"Get used to it." That was rude, wasn't it? Fiori took a deep breath and tried again. "Stop hiding in the biology classroom, everyone knows Mrs. Baxter likes you so it doesn't work anymore. And if all your tires get slashed, insurance will cover new ones. And the nurse doesn't ask questions." This school wasn't in the best part of town. Enough kids came in with wounds from home that Miss Tildy had started a don't ask don't tell policy when treating the students.
Jude rolled his eyes. "I'm not in Mrs. Braxton's class just to hide. I want to study in the scince field. I haven't firgured out exactly what yet, hence why im always in her room. She's been helping me. She even let me pick out the next lab we're doing." Jude sighed and grabbed his backpack. It hurt but he decided to cuddle it. He laid on his side and wrapped his body around the pack. "Yeah…insurance. Um, I don't have insurance. We can't afford it. And it doesn't help when my tires keep getting slashed so all that money i keep trying to save up goes down the drain. My mom and I don't make enough."
"Sorry." It was sincere, though Fiori knew one little word didn't mean much in the grand scheme of things. Still, it would probably be a nice gesture. "I tried to talk them into egging your house instead but Austin wouldn't go for it." He settled into a more comfortable position on the floor. "You shouldn't lay all curled up like that. It's better if you stay on your back. Especially if you're worried about your ribs."
Jude rolled his eyes again. He had a feeling that he would be doing that a lot in whatever their relationship was. "Gee, thanks, I just love getting egged. It's my most favorite thing in the whole world." His voice was dripping with sarcasm. "Fuck off. I'll do what I want. Unless you're going to do anything to stop me? Hmm? No? Didn't think so. I can't wait to get out of this shithole." He muttered the last sentence.
"It's better than slashed tires." Fiori rose slowly to his feet, brushing off his pants, and gave Jude a single, curious look. He didn't seem upset by the snark in the slightest, even-tempered the way he was with almost everyone after being shocked out of his rage. Or perhaps impassive was the right word, he couldn't care less about what was being said to him. "If you're really desperate, I can give you a ride."
"Get a ride from my tormentor? I don't think so. Don't think that just because our chests started glowing means you owe me any favors. I will walk. In a minute." Jude sneered at him. "You have made my life a living hell. Us being soulmates doesn't change that."
Fiori nodded once, slightly happy that he'd managed to fuck things up so badly between them. It was good that Jude would escape the chains that bound them together, he really didn't deserve to deal with Fiori. So why did his heart feel so heavy? "I know. Be careful on the walk home, Austin's waiting for you on the east trail."
"Oh? Really? Well perhaps I'll go pay him a little visit. Maybe he'll finally put me out of my misery. With the beating you gave me I'm not sure how much more my body can take. Maybe he'll hit me and then poof." Jude smirked at him. "That sounds like a great plan actually."
"If that's what you want." It was said in the same flat tone as always, but there was something tense in the way Fiori was holding himself. Like he was worried. He was standing in front of the door still, no obvious plans on leaving in case Jude wasn't just joking. "Your mother would be heartbroken."
"Yeah. But then she would actually have money and could take of herself for once. So in the end, it's a win for her, even though she might not see it like that." Jude pulled some Chapstick out of his bag and applied it. His lips always seemed to be chapped. "You can acting like some suicide preventor or something, I'm not going to do it. Cant you tell horribly dark sarcasm?"
Fiori raised one shoulder in a halfhearted shrug. "It's hard. You always seem so upset, I wouldn't put it past you." What Fiori wasn't saying was that the answer, in his case, was yes. Sarcasm was like lying; something completely foreign and often more trouble than it was worth. He avoided it at all costs and rarely understood it.
"I speak sarcasm fluently. So you better get used to it. I say a lot of things I don't mean. You should ask my tons of friends- oh wait, I don't really have any. I wonder why?" Jude gave him a dazzling smile. "Now are you done gaurding the door?"
Fiori shrugged again, lost between the poison in the words and the pretty smile. He admired the was Jude spoke, all bright and plastic until it was suddenly very real, even though it left him confused more often than not. It was like watching a performance, only it was someone's trainwreck of a life and tickets were paid in pain. "I don't think I am. Are you going to get up any time soon?"
"No, i think I rather like laying in this disgusting bathroom floor that probably hasn't been cleaned in ages. Its a favorite pasttime of mine." Jude pushed his bag away and slowly started sitting up. He let out a soft whimper. "I think it's going to take me a minite, or two, or more." His face was scrunched up in a grimance. He was going to be real sore in the morning. Maybe he should just bathe in ice when he got home.
