Seymour knew that he probably should be spending more time thinking about his soulmate than he did.
It had been easy to lose track of the timer recently. When dealing with a blood-eating plant and the shop suddenly being much busier than before, he could hardly manage to get a spare moment to stop and think about his numbers.
One night, when the plant seemed healthy enough to manage without a meal and he didn't have to worry about the resulting fuzzy head and spots swimming before his eyes, he finally found the time to sit down with a pen and paper to work out the math.
He felt a colt jolt run through him when he realized that there was a little under a week left to go. How had it gotten so close? He had always figured that he would want to spend a long time getting to know someone before he would even consider wanting to see if they were soulmates. But he only had a matter of days left, and Audrey was still the only person his age who he really knew. And that wasn't… well, he supposed he'd always known better than to hope for that, anyway. Even if he hadn't realized before just how much he was hoping for it.
She had always deserved much better than him, and now fate had confirmed it. She had her soulmate, and it was a guy who could afford to give her the life she'd always wanted. He never should have gotten to the point where glimpsing her bare wrist through her bracelets felt a million times worse than that look of relief people got when they saw that his numbers didn't match theirs. It was wrong to still have feelings for her, and he knew that. He had always expected this moment to come. So why couldn't he imagine himself ever falling for anyone else? Why did he feel like he didn't want to fall for anyone else?
But according to the numbers, he was going to. In about six days. Sometime early in the morning, it seemed like. And there was no way to pump the brakes on his timer just because he didn't feel ready yet. Which was… a very scary thought, if he was being honest.
Alright, he needed to stay calm. It was nothing worth panicking over. If he met whoever it was soon, it wasn't that short of a time yet. And while it might be difficult to carve out time for dates while everything was so hectic in the shop, he'd just have to manage. A week could be enough time to get to know someone fairly well, couldn't it? It wasn't as if it had to be a stranger.
Maybe it would have helped his chances of meeting someone if he ever wanted to spend his nights going out to the sort of places where people went for that sort of thing. Though he wasn't even sure exactly what those places were. A club or a bar, maybe? He didn't think he much liked the idea of meeting his soulmate in a big crowd of intoxicated people. Maybe he could try to find a calmer one somewhere...
But after a busy day of dealing with huge amounts of customers and endless questions about his plant, there was nothing he ever wanted more than to sit in a quiet shop and chat over a few rounds of go fish with Audrey. And besides, it was the only time nowadays when she seemed to manage a few moments of feeling happy and relaxed, instead of constantly looking as if she expected danger to jump out at any moment.
He really wasn't sure if he was ever doing the right thing or not nowadays. On one hand, what kind of terrible soulmate was he going to be if he was still very much hung up on someone else? But on the other hand, what kind of terrible friend would he be if he started pushing Audrey away just because he knew for sure that they weren't meant to be together?
It was plain to see that more than ever, Audrey needed someone she could rely on. She'd been forced to become very skilled at hiding things she didn't want others to see, but things had gotten bad enough that he knew something was wrong. And while he might very well have been making the wrong choice, Seymour decided that if he had to choose what was most important to him at the moment, his best friend in the world won out over a stranger he hadn't met yet, even if that stranger was someone he was supposed to end up with.
Another situation where none of his options felt completely right would come along very soon.
There was really no denying that he couldn't keep up with feeding the Audrey II by himself for much longer. At first, he hadn't even hesitated to reject any suggestions of turning to less-than-ethical methods. But he had to admit that it had changed things when the plant pointed him towards one target in particular.
A large part of him thought it was terrible to even consider it. Orin was Audrey's soulmate, after all. The one chosen by fate to be her best chance at a happily ever after. It seemed like it couldn't be right to take that away from her. But the plant had been making some rather convincing arguments as well. It hardly took a few seconds of looking at them through the window to see how terrified Audrey was around him, and that he treated her roughly enough to give her every reason to feel that way.
Seymour didn't think he could stand to see even a perfect stranger treated that way without wanting to help. Even with the aggressive Skid Row rats he was rather afraid of, he still talked Mr. Mushnik into getting the traps that would catch them so they could be released outside later instead of the ones that would just snap shut and kill them. And if he was willing to stand up on behalf of those bitey, beady-eyed little creatures that made him want to jump on top of the nearest piece of furniture, how could he claim to care about Audrey even a little bit and still just sit back to watch her suffer?
He still hadn't decided exactly what he was going to do even as he was walking towards the dental clinic with a revolver in his pocket. Many times, he had worked up his resolve to the point where he was absolutely sure he was going to do it, only to start balking at the thought of actually having to go through with it.
He still hadn't quite figured it out, even as he was sitting in the chair and starting to wonder if those tools Orin wanted to use would make it count as self-defense. He'd never been to a dentist before, but it couldn't possibly be supposed to involve giant pliers and a dull, rusty drill.
He was so busy trying to make sure he didn't get a wisdom tooth ripped out that he almost missed a quick glimpse of numbers on the back of the dentist's wrist. But it caught his attention enough to make him take a second look, and there was no mistaking what he saw there.
"You have zeroes?" Seymour blurted out before he could stop himself.
Orin paused in getting his drill ready for a moment, and then looked down at his wrist, as if needing to remind himself. "I suppose I do. Can't say I've ever paid much attention to this whole soulmate business."
That… that couldn't be right. Audrey said her timer had run out with him. He'd seen that her numbers had faded away. Orin's wrist should be blank, too. Why wasn't it blank?
Seymour didn't know if anything would ever fully absolve him of his guilt over what happened next. But he tried to hope that maybe the way his mind was reeling trying to figure it all out could at least be partially blamed. He didn't have the first clue what was going on when it came to the timer on his wrist, but the dentist's time left would soon run out while he stayed rooted in place.
