The SoulWatch: AfterMAGA (BL)

Doug raised his hand the way granite imagines levitation—slow, deliberate, daring gravity to object.

"Dr. Prophet," he said, syrup over stone, "if resistance breeds collapse, shouldn't the righteous act be to remove resistance? Like friction scorched off a shaft."

Eli unfolded from his desk. Chair legs shrieked, a brittle chord that set teeth on edge. His blazer remained immaculate, folds as sharp as creases in scripture. As he crossed the aisle, he shredded personal space by walking through it—desks quivering in his wake.

Michelle felt the shadow before the body. Doug planted a palm on her notebook, knuckles whitening. The same knuckles his mother used to ice after his "episodes"—back when she still believed therapy - and church - could fix what his father's absence had broken.

"Picture a body that refuses alignment," Eli continued, still gazing at Malik while pitching his voice for Eli's approval. "Inertia—morally speaking—demands an external force."

Michelle's pen skittered off the desk and pattered across tile until it reached David's shoe and shivered, a needle on a moral seismograph.

At the board, Eli's thumb resumed its secret metronome—one-two-three, stop.

"Precise," Eli murmured. A single syllable—gold medal, stamped. Doug straightened; his Faithwatch band flashed amber, logging a dominance spike David suspected the device would reward later.

Doug pivoted, prowled toward the back row. Shoulder brushed David's desk—testing ram. Breath. Soap. Threat. The smirk widened. "Order beats collapse, right?" he said, mock-polite dripping with contempt.

David's pulse counted five hammered beats. He pictured Newton's cradle, spheres clicking imbalance into balance—then imagined Eli's hand guiding Johnny's cradle, stealing Johnny's swing. Acid churned.

"Depends," David said, voice even. "On who's swinging the bat."

"Depends on who wields that vector," Doug spoke over David. A ripple—chairs creaked, breath hitched. Behind Doug's cuff, his SoulWatch blinked once—a silent alert only he would notice. The smirk faltered for a heartbeat, then locked back into place.

Eli tilted his chin by a millimeter. Baton enough. Doug withdrew, blazer pristine, wristband blinking satisfied green. The pen still lay between David's shoes, small and wounded. He stooped, pocketed it—a quiet rescue no one saw.

Chalk resumed its shriek on slate. Formulas marched like infantry: F = ma, destiny in variables. David felt the room tighten another notch, as though every molecule had been given marching orders—and Eli Prophet held the whistle.

The bell rang—thin metal, too bright—scattering students like starlings.

Doug swaggered off first, victory draped on broad shoulders. At the front, Eli erased formulas with the slow finality of a guillotine reset; chalk dust billowed, then settled as quiet as snow.

David lingered. Twenty desks occupied. One was not. David's eyes landed on an empty desk. No empty, vacant. Noel's. Chair pushed in with military exactness, surface scrubbed to reflective blankness.

David stared at the empty desk. Noel's absence pressed on his chest like weight.

He rubbed the inside edge of his jacket pocket, feeling the faint crease of the envelope he'd carried out of Witherhorn Grove. He still hadn't dared break the wax.

His thoughts stuttered—energy transfer, momentum, potential—none of it landed.

All he could feel was the wrongness. The silence. The chair pushed in too neatly, like it had been erased instead of abandoned.

A bead of sweat slipped down his back. His stomach turned, low and tight. Motion, stillness—who cared? Something had shifted, and the room hadn't noticed.

He stepped into the corridor, the air dense as if charged with static.

The lights had shifted to conservation-mode, a sickly green that bleached faces into wax. Lockers slammed; shoes squeaked. He slipped to row 318—Noel's bay. The door hung slightly ajar, revealing nothing but smooth metal ribs. A single yellow LED blinked inside the hinge—an unwatched heartbeat.

A sophomore passed, backpack slung low, and whispered: "He's late for the lab again." The word late echoed oddly—no relief in it.

Inside the bottom groove lay half a FaithCoin sticker, torn through the church crest. David pried it free, slid it into his pocket—evidence? talisman?

His fingers tingled at the secret.

The Christians feared entropy. But Buddhists understood: everything that arose would pass. The tragedy wasn't in the passing—it was in pretending otherwise. Yet this wasn't a natural passing.

He turned, scanning the hallway: students streaming past posters—VISION – LOYALTY – DISCIPLINE—Chastity's tank-top saint smile glaring down. IN OBEDIENCE - FIND PURPOSE.

A passing boy who David didn't know the name of comments on the poster. "I'd like to surrender to her," the boy said with a grin.

Overhead, a relay clicked—lights arming for night, or locks sliding home. The corridor felt narrower, as though every breath had been conscripted.

David closed Noel's locker door. The clang shot down the hall, ricocheting off metal and doctrine alike. For a beat, everything seemed to wait—Noel unaccounted for, his silence a question no one dared answer.

David had almost reached the stairwell when memory yanked his gut—he'd left his phone on the back row. He pivoted, slipped down the now-thinning corridor.

His phone screen still showed Johnny's contact photo—a candid from last summer, Johnny laughing with his head thrown back, one of David's baseball caps backward on his head. David's thumb hovered over it before quickly locking the screen.

Through the door's narrow glass he spied Eli. He was surprised to see Doug back inside. A half-drawn blackout curtain offered cover; David pressed into its velvet shadow. Chalk dust drifted in stale sunlight, and on the teacher's desk a tablet glowed white-blue.

Doug leaned over it, voice pitched low. "Noel's cortisol and REM graphs flagged red three nights straight."

Eli's answer was calm water over a blade. "Trajectory trending toward dissent. Upload the Retreat protocol before collapse sets in."

Eli's tone was controlled. "Then let's offer him extra support before he falls further behind." He tapped a few commands. A profile appeared—David Sheffield—annotated with lines of progress metrics, now arching downward.

Another thumbnail flashed and vanished, but not before David read it: Johnny Ashford — Compliance 82 %. His lungs locked. He imagined Eli's pen above that number, poised like a guillotine ready for the first wobble.

David's rib cage cinched tight. He imagined Eli's pen above that number, poised like a guillotine ready for the first wobble. 18% of the real Johnny left. 18% of the boy who kissed me behind the bleachers. 18% of—

"Mercy," Eli murmured, thumb ticking its private metronome, "is discipline executed early."

Doug's laugh was short, canine. "Preventive mercy."

David's foot shifted again. A soft squeak. Not loud—but enough. Eli's head twitched.

David stopped breathing.

Eli's gaze moved—slowly, like sonar sweeping. It passed over the curtain's edge.

Another half-inch, and he would've seen David's shoulder.

"Did you hear that?" Doug asked, turning.

David's fingers closed tighter around the sticker in his palm, blood rushing so hard in his ears he almost missed Eli's reply.

"A settling floorboard," Eli said smoothly. "This building is old. But you were saying—about mercy?"

David edged one toe back. Then another. The curtain brushed his cheek. If he bolted now, they'd hear. If he stayed…

Doug stepped toward the door.

David dropped into a crouch, hidden behind the classroom's inner cabinet—heart thrashing, thighs burning, the curtain just barely grazing his scalp. One wrong breath and he'd be exposed.

Behind him, a fluorescent light flickered once. Then stabilized. A second warning.

On the desk corner lay a stack of blank FaithCoin decals, the same cross-on-sword design David noticed earlier of Eli's lapel pin. One had slid free onto the floor. As Doug's back turned, David knelt, fingers closing over the slick sticker—torn half still in his pocket, twin pieces of a quiet crime scene. Evidence, or talisman.

Heart jack-hammering, he edged away, curtain brushing his shoulder like a confessor's veil. Out in the hall the air felt thinner, laced with static. Johnny at ninety-two. What happens when he climbs to eighty-nine?

David stuffed both sticker halves deep into his bag and rushed toward the main corridor, oblivious to the fact that his quickening pulse was being silently noted by someone watching from afar.

David was easing away from the Academy trophy case, ducking behind the glass and pretending to study the championship plaques, when Mr. Samuels strode up the corridor, tweed coat flaring behind him.

He called, not loudly but with the kind of authority born of decades, "Eli, we need to talk about the boys."

Eli emerged from the classroom, tablet tucked tight. Under the fluorescents he looked carved from stainless—no hair out of place, no feeling on display.

Samuels stopped two paces short. Even beneath the tweed, his frame suggested someone who'd once trained hard—though decades of grading papers had gentled the edges. "Noel's locker is empty. His friends are starting to ask where he's gone."

"And Johnny—Johnny Ashford used to stay late to tutor the other baseball players. Now he parrots doctrine like a press release."

"What are you doing to them?"

Eli's steel-gray gaze held steady. "Providing structure. Some students require firmer parameters. I'm Johnny's Faculty Mentor, Samuels. You can stick with Sheffield"

"Structure is one thing," Samuels replied, voice roughening, "extraction is another. Noel didn't need parameters—he needed patience. Johnny needed freedom to chase questions, not recite answers."

Eli's thumb ticked its silent three-beat loop. "Freedom without alignment is drift. Drift becomes decay. We intervene early—before collapse."

"Intervene?" Samuels echoed. "You're quarantining curiosity." He lowered his tone, pleading now. "These kids still believe the world can be better. You start filing off the jagged edges and all that's left is a dull sphere rolling whichever way you push."

A faint smile touched Eli's lips—professional, bloodless. "A sphere rolls straight, Samuels. That's the beauty of it."

"Like us," David thought, the ache spreading through his chest. "We used to orbit each other—two bodies in perfect balance. Now Johnny's being pulled into a black hole, and I'm just... floating."

Samuels inhaled, shoulders shaking once. "Doug shoved Malik against a desk today. His pulse spiked so high his Faithwatch flashed amber for five minutes. That sphere you're polishing? It's crushing the ones who don't fit inside."

Eli stepped closer—exactly half a shoe length—citrus cleaner and cold wool. "Discipline is mercy when applied early. Noel will come back adjusted. Johnny will thrive under clear expectations. Doug already thrives."

"That's not thriving," Samuels whispered. "Doug, a notorious bully who marches in time with your metronome."

Eli inclined his head. "You may speak with Principal Howe. My data is transparent. My results—measurable."

Samuels' jaw clenched, but he backed away, coat rustling like tired wings. Eli waited until the footsteps faded, then pivoted toward the main hall, shoes clicking—a countdown that seemed to end on Sunday.

From behind the glass, David clasped his hand into fists and wondered how many heartbeats a sphere could silence before it cracked.

The last bell of the day spat students into the main corridor like marbles from a jar. David rode the current.

Then he saw him

Johnny Ashford appeared at the end of the hall—shoulder to shoulder with Micah—rather than flanked by cadets. Micah's easy grin and the casual way he brushed an arm against Johnny's made David's chest tighten. Micah's hand lingered on Johnny's shoulder, thumb tracing a small circle that made David's fingernails dig into his palms. That used to be his spot—the place where he'd steady Johnny before a big game.

Johnny's gaze swept the corridor until it landed on David. Everything else—the noise, the crowd, Micah's voice—faded like someone had turned down the world's volume. For a single heartbeat, Johnny's stride faltered, lips parting slightly as if David's name had almost escaped. Then he closed the distance with that particular walk David knew too well—the one that said 'I'm trying not to run to you."

Micah bumped Johnny's shoulder, whispered something that drew a half-smile from him, and David felt a flicker of something sharp—jealousy, or maybe something darker. Enough.

Johnny murmured to Micah; they peeled off toward the quad. He approached David alone, his boots felt heavier with each step.

"Hey," Johnny said, voice pitched low, conspiratorial. He stood close enough that David could smell his shampoo—the same pine scent from before everything changed.

David's eyes slid to Johnny's collarbone. A shadow—small, greenish-yellow—peeked from beneath the edge of his shirt.

Thriving didn't leave marks.

A smile tried to surface and died on Johnny' face, leaving something rawer. "You heading straight home?"

"Thinking about it," David answered. His fingers tightened around the torn FaithCoin in his pocket, a secret shard of gospel.

Johnny's gaze flicked to the amber pulse on David's wrist. Concern, or curiosity. "You… you should come Sunday," he said. "Service starts at ten. It's—different now." A pause. Softer: "Better."

"Better how?" The words came out sharper than David meant. Micah glanced at the wall behind Johnny, his eyes narrowing slightly as he took in the venturesome poster of Chastity. Better was relative, especially to David.

Johnny inhaled through his nose, shoulders tense as bowstrings. "There's a new program. Real accountability. You'd like it. Eli says—" He stopped, as though realizing Eli's name soured the pitch.

David pondered Johnny's earlier words, "You'd like it," each syllable lingering in his mind with the weight of a cathedral door. He didn't like much that came from Dr. Prophet's mouth. For a heartbeat the corridor noise blurred, and David saw the boy from the baseball diamond, the boy who'd once laughed at starlings, not doctrines.

"I'll think about it," David said, because yes felt like surrender and no felt like losing him forever.

Johnny nodded, relief and worry braided tight.

He pressed a rolled flyer into David's hand, fingers lingering a heartbeat too long. The touch sent electricity up David's arm—the same shock from that first time at City Hall, when everything between them began. Johnny's thumb brushed David's pulse point, and David knew Johnny felt how it jumped.

"Ten sharp," he whispered, leaning close enough that his breath ghosted across David's ear. Then, so quiet David almost missed it: "I need you there. Please."

The desperation in that 'please' haunted David long after Johnny disappeared into the crowd.

David pressed the flyer against his chest, feeling his heartbeat through the paper. His mother would have called this dukkha—suffering from grasping at what was already changing. But she'd also taught him that compassion meant not abandoning others to their pain.

He would go to the service. Not because he believed in their God, but because love was its own dharma.

Eighteen percent might be enough. Love didn't require certainty. Only presence.