Youth ✄ Phan

14

I just remembered how fucking gay I am like my life has become such a train wreck I literally forgot my fucking sexuality 

Also Bohemian Rhapsody is very good and Mitch is a pure precious golden angel and must be protected at all costs bc if he dies I will literally lose my goddamn shit

Long chapter (wow look my stupid ass is putting in some effort lmao) and some fun little plot twists

MAJOR TRIGGER WARNING

<<Phil>>

As I came to think of it, I truly didn't know anything about Dan Howell. I looked around his home as he lay unconscious on the couch. On the end table by the couch I had put a glass of water and some Tylenol, and had decided to wait. I had seen him pass out and took him inside, but for some reason I didn't know why I had bothered. Looking back on our past, if I had seen him hit the ground so helplessly like that a few weeks ago I would've laughed and called him some rude slur. 

Now, I'm sitting in his home, looking after him as I wait for him to wake up. His living room reminded me of some nineties home. The walls were a panelled style, the top half a soft daffodil yellow with tangerine stripes, and the bottom half white. By the front door was an oak end table with a vase full of pink tulips and a small bowl for miscellaneous items. The TV sat in front of a wide window, with soft orange curtains hanging on the sides, which were a slight shade darker than the stripes on the walls. An archway was on one side of the room facing the front door, leading to the kitchen, and if you made a right it led to some kind of hallway, which I assumed led to the garage and maybe a coat closet. Pictures hung on the walls in nicely designed bronzed frames. Relatives, memories, baby pictures..and a boy. He looked like Dan, if not almost exactly. He had dimples, messy brown hair that curled and waved and contrasted simply with his pale skin, and freckles. He had shiny blue eyes, the only thing aside from some physical features that set him aside from Dan. That, and the fact this boy was smiling. Grinning, actually, almost from ear to ear. Phil assumed that this had been a school picture, considering the background and the charcoal button-down shirt the boy was wearing. In the bottom right corner there was writing that looked as if it was some years old. It was a date and name, and Phil looked closer. 

James, 10.6.14. 

I felt my heart jolt at that, as if it had physically hit my chest. I glanced down at my wrist, where the first tattoo I had ever gotten rested on my porcelain skin. Eighth grade, gotten from a man I knew. A man I had met in an alley that I went to to break bottles when I was mad. It was a date, plastered on the soft spot where my hand and wrist connected in black letters. The date was 10.11.14. It was to represent the day I changed. The day I snapped. The day that the school and anyone I met learned to fear me, to run away for the sake of their lives, to never come near me unless they wanted to see just how dangerous I was. 

I snapped five days before the date of this picture. Who was this kid? Where was this kid? I reached out and gently touched my fingers to the cold glass that guarded the picture, just almost in the center of his cheek. 

I heard a sharp intake of breath from behind me and my hand shot away from the picture as quickly as it had come. I turned around as I realized Dan had woken up and tried to look like I hadn't been doing anything. Like I hadn't just had a moment with a picture of Dan's supposed brother, the one he told everyone "went to somewhere better than here." I walked over and sat back down in my chair as Dan sat up, looking around as if he had no idea where he was. He probably didn't, considering he had been outside when he passed out. He held a hand to his head and seemed to be completely unaware of the fact I was there, so I cleared my throat to get his attention. He jolted and accidentally kicked the couch, turning to look at me with a terrified look, and I felt my heart ache almost unbearably, just like it did whenever anyone gave me that look.