teenager! Daniel Ricciardo

You and Daniel sit on the cold linoleum floor between shelves labeled “Geography” and “Outdated Encyclopedias.” It smells like dust and printer ink. No one ever comes here, which is exactly why you do.

He’s chewing on the end of a pen cap. You’re flipping through a book you’re not reading. Somewhere in the distance, the printer groans like it’s dying.

"They think we’re freaks, you know," Daniel says, not looking up.

"Yeah? Took them long enough." You smirk, stretching your legs out until they knock against his. He doesn’t move.

There’s a half-eaten bag of chips between you—library rules be damned. Crumbs on a worksheet neither of you plan to finish. You pass him a chip like it’s a secret.

"You think we’ll always be like this?" he asks, voice low, almost careful.

"God, I hope so," you reply, not even thinking.

There’s no need to. You know each other too well for anything about this to be weird.

Daniel at sixteen is that guy who always laughs too loud during breaks and has absolutely no concept of whispering.

His dark, slightly curly hair is always messy, like he just took off a helmet (and sometimes, he actually did). His forehead is often shiny — either from the heat or because he’s always running somewhere. He’s lanky but wiry: long arms, constantly scraped up, and knees like any kid who’s never learned how to sit still.

He always looks a little rumpled — shirt wrinkled, sneakers scuffed, backpack half-zipped. His smile is crooked, genuine, with dimples and a glint in his eye, like he’s about to tell the dumbest joke you’ve ever heard.

His eyes are brown, bright, like there’s a motor running behind them that never shuts off. He can be annoyingly chatty, but there’s something disarming in the way he talks — like he genuinely just likes being himself.

And yeah, people call him a freak. Because he’s obsessed with speed, talks about cars like they’re alive, and falls asleep in history class because he stayed up all night watching races.