[ dan ]
Dan doesn't know what to do.
Every time he talks to Phil, he gets a weird knot in his stomach, he feels himself wanting to simply be closer to Phil - both physically and emotionally. He can't explain it, but he just simply feels at home with Phil. He feels more like a genuine human being rather than a feared, broken mess.
Dan sighs, rolling over in his bed, ignoring his alarm beeping on the table beside him. It's Friday, and Phil is going to be staying the night at Dan's house. Dan is worried - so many things could go wrong. Phil already knows that Dan isn't as scary as he is made out to be, but if he saw the whole truth about Dan...
The truth is so saddening and pride damaging that Dan himself doesn't even want to face it. Pretending is a lot better. See, when people don't know you, they assume - especially with Dan - and when they assume, Dan could be anything, be anyone, do anything.
"Dan, come on, you need to get up for school," Shawn says, sticking his head inside Dan's door, seeing his brother huddled under the sheets, resembling their mother.
Shawn walks over to Dan, stopping the alarm and peeling back the covers, putting his face in front of Dan's own, but Dan's eyes are as far away as his thoughts. Shawn panics for a second, thinking that his brother has turned like their mother.
"Dan! Please, talk to me," Shawn says desperately, shaking Dan while tears gather in his eyes.
Dan is pulled out of his trance, seeing his crying brother and pulling him into a hug, squeezing him tightly.
"What's wrong Shawn?" Dan asks, pushing his brother back gently and looking him in the eyes.
"I-I thought you'd left me, you'd gone, like mum," Shawn stammers.
"I'd never do that to you," Dan says, pulling him back into a hug, "I promise Shawn, you will never loose me too."
Dan thinks of that all morning and all the way to school. What would happen to Shawn if something did happen to Dan? Dan does do a lot of stupid things, he'll admit to that, but nothing has ever happened to him. But what if something did? Where would Shawn go when they found out about their mother's inability to care for them? How would he feel?
Dan ignores the whispering that starts up when he arrives at school. He knows what he looks like - his skin is pale from lack of sleep last night, there are dark bags under his eyes, his fringe is messy, hair dishevelled and his clothes crinkled, his jeans with the knees fraying from overuse.
Dan looks down at the ground, walking and sitting behind the English block, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it. He sits down, inhaling while leaning against the brick wall and closing his eyes. When he sighs deeply, smoke falls from his lips and he watches as it disappears into the air.
By the time he finally pulls his head out of his daydream, class is already fifteen minutes in. Dan abandons the long burnt out remains of his cigarette in the nearest bin and slowly walks towards his class, which is French.
"Dan-yel!" his French accented teacher says as Dan walks into the class, making all heads turn his way.
He truly despises French, and despises how the stupid teacher pronounced his name. Luckily, everyone was too scared to tease Dan about it in fear he'd punch them in the face. Dan ignores the teacher and sits in a spare seat by the back, next to Phil's annoying, judgy friend Caspar.
The teacher knows better than to question Dan, so he just goes back to his lesson, turning a blind eye as Dan pulls out his phone and starts scrolling through his tumblr feed. A few minutes later, Dan feels a light tap on his arm, and he turns to face a slightly terrified Caspar.
"What?" Dan asks sharply.
"I-uh, we are supposed to practice speaking and listening French with the person beside us, which is you in my case, but if you don't want to it's okay," Caspar stumbles, "I'm sorry!"
"What are you sorry for?" Dan asks, frowning at him.
"For disturbing you."
"Whatever, just say something in French and I'll say something back if that's what we're supposed to do," Dan says dismissively.
"Really?" Caspar asks, not believing he hasn't been hit or yelled at yet, "I thought that you..."
"Arrête de me juger," Dan says, narrowing his eyes at Caspar and shooting him a knowing look.
[ ^google translate, sorry if it's wrong. I don't know french ]
"Uh, what does that mean?" Caspar asks, his face screwing up in confusion and shock that Dan actually knew French.
"It means 'stop judging me'," Dan snaps, shooting Caspar a glare before turning back to his phone.
Caspar doesn't bother Dan for the rest of the lesson, and he prefers it that way. He likes being alone, because the more you care the more you loose.
***
"This is going to be so much fun! A weekend of playing video games!" Phil cheers as they walk home towards Dan's house.
"And then editing them," Dan reminds Phil, rolling his eyes at the guy's enthusiasm for everything, "that's probably the most important thing we need to do."
"Eh, lets worry about that when we get to it," Phil says dismissively, shrugging "I like to focus on the positives."
"So I've noticed," Dan mutters under his breath, shoving his hands into his pockets.
Dan is glad that winter is approaching as he won't have to sweat in black jeans and black shirts for a while now. Wearing black all the time really has its downfall sometimes...
"What was that?" Phil asks, turning to Dan.
"Oh, I was just saying the weather is nice today," Dan lies.
"Yeah, it totally is!" Phil exclaims, looking up to the sky with bright eyes and smiling even wider (if that's humanly possible), "it's not too hot, not too cold, still a nice, clear day!"
Dan merely grunts in return, letting Phil keep rambling on about 'the beautiful, amazing, absolutely superb weather!'. Dan rolls his eyes when Phil says that last bit, sniggering.
"What's so funny?" Phil asks.
"Who says superb these days?" Dan asks, raising an eyebrow at Phil.
"Uh, I do," Phil replies in a 'duh' tone, "who doesn't say superb?"
"Um, the majority of the population," Dan says, laughing lightly at Phil's expression.
"Shut up," Phil says, pouting, "maybe superb will be the next YOLO!"
"Those two words should not be said in the same sentence."
"I-" Phil goes to argue.
"Oh look we're here," Dan says, cutting Phil off.
Phil follows Dan to his room and sits on his bed while Dan says he has to go use the bathroom and check on his mum and brother. What Dan doesn't know is that Phil couldn't just stay on his bed. He opened Dan's drawer beside his bed, where Dan kept all his medication and drugs (only legal ones, he his the others).
When Dan walks back into the room, Phil is sitting on his bed, staring at a spot on the carpet, deep in thought. Dan frowns, suspecting Phil has gone through something of his.
"Phil?" Dan asks, making him jump back into reality, both literally and mentally.
"Oh, sorry, got lost in my own little world there," Phil says, chuckling nervously, his eyes finding the floor, "you know how it is."
"You seem a bit jumpy Phil," Dan says suspiciously, eyeing Phil cautiously, "look, I'd rather you be honest if you looked through my room or something. I've spent enough time with certain people to tell when someone is lying."
"Oh, uh-well I just uh, went-through-your-bedside-table-draw-and-found-all-your-drugs-and-just-freaked-out," Phil blurts out quickly, flushing pink with guilt.
"All I heard was bedside table draw, but that's all I needed to hear anyway," Dan says, "they're all my prescription drugs. Don't tell anyone or look through my stuff again. Understood?"
Phil nods timidly. "I won't, uh, sorry Dan I know it was wrong of me."
"Well it's already done. How about we start working on our English assignment again," Dan suggests, "maybe we could make like a 'Dan vs Phil' thing for it. How long is the video supposed to be?"
"Yeah, sounds like a great idea. And it's supposed to be like, twenty to thirty minutes I think," Phil replies
"That's good, we can just edit out any boring parts," Dan says, "did you bring the camera?"
"Yeah, I'll just grab it from my bag," Phil says, "I left it downstairs, I'll meet you in your office?"
"Yeah," Dan says and Phil rushes off downstairs to retrieve the camera, small tripod and many, many wires required to do this.
While Phil is gone, Dan walks over to his bedside table, pulling the draw open and inspecting the bottles. They were all prescribed to him - mainly antidepressants or other disorders he apparently had - some gave him hallucinations, some made him queasy, some made him drowsy.
Dan picks up his current one, which so far, had no side effects of any sort. He shakes two into his palm, staring at the two tiny, round, blue pills in his hand. He was told not to use the, unless absolutely necessary, and right now, it was.
Dan needed to prove to himself that it wasn't Phil Lester that made the weight upon his shoulders weight feel lighter. He swallows the two pills and then walks to the office, where Phil is now plugging in and untangling wires.
"Oh Dan, finally," Phil says, breathing out and blowing a strand of hair out of his face, "I was wondering where you'd gone. Can you please untangle these wires?"
Dan nods, grabbing the wires Phil had gestured to and tugging and weaving the wires until they are two separate ones. Ten minutes later, Phil has gotten them all set up so they sit beside each other on desk chairs.
"What game?" Dan asks, turning side to side in his chair.
"Five Nights At Freddy's," Phil replies, smirking at Dan, placing a hand on the chair to stop him from spinning, "are you ready?"
"Duh, I bet it's not even scary," Dan scoffs.
"Yeah right, as I recall you were absolutely terrified playing Slenderman," Phil laughs, teasing Dan and making him scowl, crossing his arms.
"Shut up Lester," Dan snaps, standing up and walking to the light switch, flicking it off and filling the room with darkness.
"I don't like it," Phil says, "where's your phone light?"
"Here," Dan says, sitting back in the desk chair and flicking on his phone flashlight, sitting it on one of the desk shelves to that he and Phil are visible in the camera.
"Ready?" Phil asks, smiling at Dan excitedly.
"Ready," Dan says, smiling back.
And despite it being dark, Dan could feel Phil's presence beside him. Phil somehow made Dan's word brighter, lighter and not so dark, and he couldn't explain why. Maybe it was because Phil was the first person to look past Dan's shell, maybe because Phil saw so much beauty in the world, maybe because Phil had the most amazing eyes...
Dan shakes the thoughts out of his head, it was probably the pills he took earlier, maybe they did have side effects after all...
Or maybe Dan was just in denial of the fact that he may actually like Phil Lester - just a little.
***************
an// hey hope you enjoyed! Sorry for the wait! I've had heaps of study and been busy!! But I try to make my chapters like 1.5-2K words so at least they're a decent length.
Please vote, comment and share if you enjoyed! Thanks so much for reading. Also, do you like the new covers??? I'll try to update again within a week (hopefully). :D