Hate Me Closer (Phan)

Chapter Twenty-One

Dan spent the next week replaying the conversation Phil had with Katherine, struggling to comprehend why two people who should have despised him, if anything, were willing to help him. He didn't believe he deserved it because in his mind he was an orphaned bully, now relying on the care of a family who didn't even want to be part of the guardian program anymore.

He noticed Phil stayed true to his word: he passed by Dan's bedroom door at least twice a day, knocking on it and offering some kind of activity that the brown-haired boy would refuse to partake in. But, Kath would remind her son it's the offer that means more than the actual task, at this stage, so Phil would keep going until one day he'd get the answer he wanted.

Dan laid on his bed, facing the ceiling as he heard Phil approach his door, "Just say yes." Dan told himself. He wanted to accept, but the last three times he'd cowered at the last moment and spat out "no" with more venom than he wanted.

"Dan?" Phil asked, "Mum wants help with my grandma's birthday cake, want to join us?"

But it was the mention of a grandparent that set Dan back this time, "Fuck off!" he screamed, water in his eyes, "Don't you get it? Leave me alone!" however he walked to the door, desperate to take the words back but unable to eradicate the methods he'd used for a whole year in order to protect himself from the world outside his mind.

"Okay." Phil quietly replied with no hurt to the sound of the word, "We'll be downstairs if you change your mind."

Dan ran his palms over his forehead, shaking his head and letting the sobs reach his throat. His hands fell to his mouth, muffling the sounds until he took a step back to get to his bed. His foot caught under a pair of jeans splayed across the carpet, his body being thrown backwards and his head into the wooden bedframe behind him, "Fuck." he cursed, his voice strained from crying.

"Are you alright?" Phil asked, unmoved from the bedroom door but now concerned by the commotion going on through the door. He turned the handle, stepping into his brother's old room and seeing a helpless teenager strewn up into a ball on the floor, his eyes flooded with tears and streaks of water down his reddened face.

Phil wasn't quite expecting this site, so he acted upon his natural instincts and shut the door behind himself, walking to his classmate and sitting beside him on the floor. He looked over at Dan, sighed, and then didn't say another word.

Dan looked directly ahead, his throat raw and his eyes wide in terror. He slowly turned his head towards Phil, who was sat in an almost identical pose to himself, but instead with his head facing the floor. Dan stared. He almost shuffled away slightly, but his foot was still trapped in the material, so he unfolded that instead, tossing the loose clothing to the side. He pulled his eyes back to the boy sat beside him, fiddling with the carpet beneath his weight.

"Um..." Dan tried to find words to say but they didn't seem to exist, "I tripped on my jeans."

Phil smiled, nodding slightly as he looked up.

"I'm okay?" Dan asked, confused as to why the boy he'd bullied now sat in a subtle attempt to comfort the younger teenager.

"Did you cry when you fell, or were you crying before?" Phil asked, not hiding his awareness.

"B-b...hm." neither option was the 'manly' response Dan hoped for, "Before," he admitted, looking at the door to face in the opposite direction of his classmate.

Phil nodded, quietly asking, "Why?"

"I..." Dan was fighting the tears again, "I can't bake cakes for grandma anymore." he scrunched his nose as the water fell down his cheekbone. When his mind would normally shout to him that he was pathetic for letting himself cry, Phil's presence made it seem as though he deserved to let the tears fall.

Phil found himself sniffling at the response, wanting to wrap his arms around the frail figure beside him, but he wasn't only unsure as to whether the boy would appreciate it, but he was also scared of him. Despite this, he sighed, lunging at him with his arms pulling Dan's torso into his own body, his arms wrapped over the other teenager's so that he couldn't move with ease.

"Oh..." Dan chuckled, pushing his weight into the bedframe so that he didn't fall over. He wanted to resist, but then his muscles relaxed and having someone hugging him actually felt comforting. He opened his mouth to ask him to let go, but then a sob released from his mouth and before he knew it, Phil had shuffled himself so that Dan could cry into his shoulder. The brown-haired boy gulped, taking a slow moment as he snaked his own arms around his Drama partner, resting their foreheads into each other's shoulders as Dan struggled for air in the room he didn't possess enough items to fill.

"Sorry," Dan muttered after a few seconds, pulling away and looking anywhere but at the frame he'd just embraced.

"I initiated it." Phil shrugged, giving a small chuckle, "Did you bake with your grandma a lot?"

Dan nodded, "At least every week so she could take dessert to her church. We'd stand in the kitchen, dancing around to the radio as we got flour over ourselves." he paused, "I called her the night before she died. I didn't talk to her about everything that happened that week because I was going to call her the next day and I had to stop to go to supper. I felt so out of place at her funeral. So many people were there and I didn't know a single one. The church was filled, and I only got to experience her for a few months. I didn't get the chance to..."

"Get to know her?" Phil offered the end of the sentence.

"I guess." he nodded in response, "I didn't bake with my parents. Didn't do much with them, to be honest. That just adds to the guilt, I s'pose." he sighed, "I'm still convinced I killed them. Got Mum to look at a horse while driving, and a car came in the other direction. What's more is that I saw that car coming towards us about five seconds before it hit, but I just...didn't think to say anything." he was expecting Phil to reassure him that it wasn't his fault, but he didn't and it almost felt like a relief. He was listening for the stories, not just for Dan's sake, "I don't have any siblings, and my dad's brother died before I was born. Drug overdose. Grandpa died when I was four, so when Grandma died I literally had nobody else. I hated my mum because she forced me to put so much work into getting into Auburn, that's all I did for years. I still feel like they threw me in to get rid of me, but I guess it was the other way around in the end." he laughed uncomfortably before the tears rained from his cheeks again and he was grasping into his sleeves.

Phil kept his eyes on the boy, very carefully putting a hand between his shoulder blades on his back, letting him know he was there. He looked up again after a few minutes, shaking his head.

He mumbled again, slowly dancing his thumbs above his raised knees, "I'm so fucking alone." he sighed, "I was before my parents died. I had Chris and I always will do, but he's more of a babysitter at this point, if I'm honest. He's had to take over caring for me when I couldn't be arsed to do it myself. Now I've killed my parents off in a car accident and drove my grandma to a heart attack and every day I can't help but just think why couldn't it have been me?"

The words unsettled Phil, but he didn't show it, and Dan kept rambling.

"You'd have preferred it if it was me. You should thank Chris, too, because if he wasn't in our class I'd have had you pinned against the wall with a fist to your mouth." he shook his head, "I found you so fucking annoying."

"Why do you hate me so much?" Phil asked unoffended. He spoke as though he was asking how to do trigonometry, not as to why his bully treated him that way.

Dan laughed, grinning with one side of his mouth as he looked at the boy with a heart bigger than his brain. He shook his head, confidently uttering, "I don't hate you, Lester." he sighed, "In fact, I think I'm just jealous of you."