undeveloped film

skin your knee, bite my neck

LACHLAN ALWAYS WANTED A SOULMATE. Or rather, he craved the certainty that came with it. The idea that there was someone out there who fit perfectly with him. Amidst all the chaos in his life, the fighting and yelling, tension building as pressure was thrust upon his shoulders. After spending his existence caring for and looking after everyone around him, it was a comfort to think that someone was his.

Some would say that it was all shades of fucked up to only be connected to your soulmate through pain, but the romantic in Lachlan disagreed. There was something beautiful in it; how soulmate bonds went deeper than empathy, how it bled into actually feeling what your other half was feeling. If he ever got a soulmate, he would make sure that he would never feel her pain ever again, because he wouldn't let anything bad ever happen to her. That's what soulmates were for.

But he knew better than to dream of something as stupid as that. Soulmates used to be much more prevalent before. Even then, reading their ratty high school history textbooks, Lachlan already knew it was a bad idea. Soulmates had caused so many wars and conflicts. Besides, nowadays, they were a rarity.

And Lachlan already knew there was no point in hoping.

Hope makes people fools, his father told him when he was only eight years old, hissed as the older man glared furiously at the dark road, fingers clenched tight around the steering wheel. Eight was too young to feel the way Lachlan did, like he had to fix the strained ties between his family, like he couldn't say a word as the fear that was restless in his belly grew as his dad pressed the accelerator further and further and further, car careening faster towards something Lachlan wasn't sure of.

It was a damn shame that Lachlan was a fool.

...

Lachlan was already waiting outside when Sam pulled up in his shitty pickup truck.

"Eager to see me, huh?" his best friend drawled as Lachlan swung into the passenger seat. Rolling his eyes, Lachlan slammed the door shut.

"Of course, hot shot. I count down the seconds until I can see you again."

Sam smiled lazily, full pink lips pulling back to show off his pearly teeth, hooded eyes barely visible behind his dark shades. He had bought himself the rundown truck as a graduation present for himself, and the two of them went driving every day that summer, rejoicing in their last summer after high school.

If there was one silver lining in Lachlan's life, it came in the shape of Samuel Latour. Sam with his reckless plans, sly smile, and eyes that promised trouble. They had met in kindergarten, and despite being diametrically opposed, they had decided as four years olds that they would stick together come hell or high water. So even though Sam was an impulsive idiot who ran off of the adrenaline that came in the form of flirting and partying and Lachlan much preferred to get high in the dark of his room while he stained his fingers with charcoal used down to the nubs, time didn't tear them apart.

No, instead, they were still able to talk for hours. What Lachlan liked even better was how they could comfortably sit in silence together too. Sam was a person known for being too much, but to Lachlan he was always just enough. Maybe it was because he himself had been labelled as too little. Maybe they balanced each other out.

"They fighting again?" Sam asked, knowing better than to pin Lachlan down with his inquisitive gaze, knowing that it only made Lachlan more anxious.

"When are they not?"

They pulled onto the road, heading nowhere and everywhere, all at once. "This is why I say relationships aren't shit."

"Don't let Mariah hear you say that," Lachlan said lowly, closing his eyes and trying his best to sink into the seat, finally relaxing after spending the entire morning hiding in his room, trying to shelter himself from the screaming voices downstairs. His parents had stopped trying to hide away their arguments by the time Lachlan turned seven, because by that time, it was his responsibility to shield his younger sisters from it.