Rumor Mill - Phil

Chapter 6

"Where were you this whole time?" I prompt Dan. We're sitting on the floor against my bed, and Radiohead plays softly in the background as we sip hot cocoa. He's been here for an hour and still hasn't explained anything further to me, and I haven't pushed until now. 

Dan sighs, setting his mug on the ground next to him and smoothing down his curly hair, to no avail. He looks down at his hands in his lap before looking over at me and saying softly, "My ex girlfriend's house." 

"Oh," is all I can say, truly, because he's just gone through hell for me, and I shouldn't complain because we're not in love. We're not, and he doesn't have to answer to me, he doesn't have to look to me for support and comfort. "Oh."

"It wasn't like that, Phil. I...I don't know why I didn't come to you. She was the only person I could think of that would let me stay for a few days. It's just..." Dan's voice trails off, and I start to notice the space between us. "Phil, when I'm around you, everything is surreal, and everything moves in slow motion except my emotions. And I feel like I have all the time in the world to look at you, and talk to you, and get to know you, and make you feel things, but then you leave and I return to myself and I feel sick, and existential, because I'm afraid of how long that euphoria will last when I'm with you, and I start to wonder if it will wear off, and I start to wonder if you feel what I feel or if I'm just creepy and obsessed with a boy I hardly know." I scoot closer to him, his words making me short of breath, and I'm not sure if I'm upset by what he's saying or overjoyed, but I know I can't stand the few centimeters between us any longer. My head falls to his shoulder and his arms wrap around me desperately, vying for my attention.

"You use so many big words, Dan, I could risk calling you pretentious," I say finally, finding no sincere words to match what he's said.

He shrugs, and I can almost feel his smile. "I'd rather you think I'm pretentious than a brain dead stoner."

I roll my eyes. "Dan, having a four day period of experimentation with drugs doesn't make you a stoner. Now you really do sound like a try-hard." 

Dan scoffs, but he squeezes my shoulder to signify he knows I'm joking. I take a sip from my hot chocolate, but find it hard to swallow when the sudden, newly familiar feeling of Dan's lips on my neck presents itself. Everything between us is weighted, and everything is wrong and fucked up, and I realize that, but somehow I just can't stop myself from tilting my head back and savoring the sensation of his lips painting red blooms along my skin. This is what we are, lust filled kisses and unrequited declarations, and maybe we should sort ourselves out sooner or later, but I can only ever see the twisted side of it when he isn't kissing me with his scent clogging my senses and his white noise deafening me. I'm so helpless to him, it makes me laugh out loud involuntarily, and Dan stops his slow, intoxicating waltz on my skin and looks at me with an expression that forces me to explain.

"I am just so incredibly powerless to you," I breathe, almost in pain because he's stopped kissing me. "You touch any part of me and I can't talk."  

"That's because I am entirely infatuated with you, Phil, and you can feel it," Dan says, and the word 'infatuated' puts in a feeling in my chest, a feeling that I can't describe as good, and maybe it's because all the times I have repeated to myself how not in love Dan and I are is being spoken in one sentence, and his lips are back on me, but now my lips are caught up in it too, and he kisses me without mercy, and his eyes are closed in a dark reverence, but mine are open, wide open, because he's infatuated with me, yes, but infatuation is wildly temporary unless you continue to feed it with more and more heat, and I realize that I'm becoming a vice. 

And vices are the sort of things that break you. I am to him as alcohol is to his parents, as the glide of a blade across skin is to me, and I can't stop kissing him despite how sick I feel, and then my sickness turns to cold determination as I find myself tired of him holding me like I'm fragile, so my resolve steels, my eyes close, my tongue grazing against his lips asking for entrance, which he reciprocates immediately, grabbing desperately at my face and pushing the infatuation down my throat by way of our heated kisses. Something takes my mind, drives it, and I push Dan to the ground, hardly breaking our kiss, managing to fall in between his legs and grind down into him as if by some instinct. I don't want to be dominated right now, and I want him to know he doesn't own me if all we are is an infatuation, and if he'll fuck me and leave I want to know that he'll taste me long after he's gone. Long after I'm gone.