"And stop calling me out, we're never going to
Put the pieces back together
If you won't let me get better"
***
Phil didn't get a chance to see Chris until after school. He wasn't at lunch with the rest of their group, and Phil searched almost every classroom trying to find him, but with no luck. PJ had made it pretty clear that his message was of utmost importance, and Phil was trying his hardest to relay it, but his friend was nowhere to be found.
"What do you think he even meant?" Grayson asked, standing at Phil's locker and staring off into space, as if pondering this very philosophical, earth-shattering question. "'The journals aren't working'. Seems pretty cryptic, doesn't it?"
"Who knows what goes on in PJs head," Phil sighed as he closed his locker.
Neither Grayson nor Elliot knew about Chris and PJs dark and dreary past together, and it looked like it would stay that way for a while. Phil had only told Gray about PJs message to him because he knew something was up, and he would probably be more willing to help him find Chris if he had at least some of details.
Phil was starting to wonder just how confusingly tangled Chris and PJ were; it was obviously something only the two of them would know about, something personal and unique. He didn't know how Chris would react to him reiterating PJs words, didn't know if he would get angry about it or silently obsess over it and shut himself away again. There was just no telling with that guy. He just hoped it wasn't one of PJs evil ploys to get Chris distracted and emotional before FTC.
It seemed like every time one mess got cleaned up, another one was forcing them to get dirty all over again, and it kept getting worse and worse. There was no telling how long they could keep it up until something broke, something that couldn't be fixed easily.
He drove Grayson home silently, and when he was alone again, he tried his hardest to pile all of their current problems into one organized mess to deal with one at time.
Between Chris and PJ, and PJ and Dan, and Dan and Phil, and Grayson and Elliot and FTC and school and his parents...there was no fucking breathing room. He was holed up in this tiny box, completely overwhelmed with all the responsibilities that everyone was shoving onto his shoulders, and it was hard enough keeping his head above water without all of it pushing him down, but now he was tasked with trying to find a solution to all of it and not fuck it all up again. They had to know by now it was something he wasn't good at.
He drove the Chris's house and was relieved to see his car parked in the drive way. He didn't know what he would have done if he wasn't here.
"What's up?" Chris asked when he opened the door, still in pyjamas; he'd probably been in bed all day. "Nobody's dead, are they? You have this weird look on your face."
"What? No." Phil shook his head. "I just have to talk to you."
"Oh." Chris sounded suspiciously disappointed by that, but he stood to the side and let Phil in anyway.
The house was clean, everything put in its proper place and nowhere near the idea of even cluttered, but Chris's room was a war zone of tangled clothes and cords strewn across the floor and various cups on almost every flat surface. He claimed it was his way of presenting his personality in a physical way, but everyone knew he was just too lazy.
Phil closed the door behind him, and Chris flopped back onto his bed, pulling his laptop onto his chest. "So what do you want to talk about?"
Phil sat at the desk. "Why didn't you come to school today?" he asked. He wasn't purposefully trying to avoid the subject, he just didn't want to cause any problems so soon. He didn't know how sensitive the words PJ had given him were, and it was clear how much it would affect his friend if it turned out to be something he couldn't deal with.
"Seriously?" Chris gave him a skeptical look. "You made it sound important."
"It is important," Phil insisted. "Maybe I was concerned for your health and safety all day today."
"Go fuck yourself," Chris said with a smirk. "Sometimes, I can't bring myself to try and be a capable human being at 5 in the morning. I deserve a break, too."
"Well, you missed some interesting stuff." Phil tugged at the hem of his shirt absently. He averted his gaze to the floor, as if it would make things better somehow.
"Did I?" Chris asked jokingly.
"Yep." Phil said. "Elliot was missing, too. I passed Physics for the first time ever. I talked to PJ."
"What the fuck?" Chris said sharply, sitting up and letting his laptop fall on to the bed. "Why? What did he say?"
Phil stared at him blankly, trying to understand what it was that made Chris so eager to hear about it when he was supposed to hate PJs guts. It was weird, and he couldn't help feeling like there was something else he didn't know.
"He was kind of freaked out, I guess," he said with a shrug. "It was kind of crazy, he wanted me to...tell you something."
Chris shook his head. "I don't want to hear it."
"I don't know, Chris, it sounded really important."
There was a moment of stilted silence, and Phil felt like he shouldn't have been there, shouldn't be the one saying this stuff to Chris. He felt like an innocent bystander to whatever kind of storm it was raging between them. There was nothing he could do.
After another minute, Chris swore violently under his breath and stood up, pacing the room with his arms crossed over his chest. "It's like, every time I try to get rid of him," he said, "he comes back worse than before. I fucking hate him so much."
"He just..." Phil said carefully, sensing Chris's bad mood and trying to prevent it from getting worse. "He just said something about the journals not working. And that it's happening again."
Chris froze, and Phil knew that it was something bad. At this point, almost anything relating to the idea of PJ was bad, but this was probably high up on the list.
"He knows that's not my fucking problem."
"What does that mean?" Phil asked. He knew he was most likely being nosy for no good reason, but he was being dragged into their mess against his will, so he figured he could at least have a basic explanation. "What journals is he talking about?"
Chris sat on the edge of his bed, still agitated. "It's a long story," he said quietly. "Long, and personal, and...dumb."
He knew he shouldn't pry anymore, so he didn't ask for details, but it seemed Chris was already on a roll. He spoke softly, muted and morose.
"When we were hooking up or whatever, he used to have really bad, like, performance anxiety. Which I thought was really weird, cause he's always so confident otherwise. But it was bad. And I felt horrible cause I usually couldn't help.
"He told me it was fine, and that I didn't need to feel so responsible, but I did, so I wrote some stuff for him. It was stupid, just stuff I thought was good about him. Lyrics and stories, memories, that kind of stuff. I gave it to him, and..." Chris paused, shaking his head. "He said it was awesome. And I believed him cause he took them with him fucking everywhere, it was kind of embarrassing. To me. But it made me feel good, knowing he liked them.
"So I kept doing it, buying notebooks and filling them up and giving them to him. I swear, he had like, twenty by the time we gave up on each other."
Chris looked down at his hands, and Phil could see he was shaking a little bit. "I didn't think he'd still have them."
It was a little bit overwhelming, piecing together all the small fragments of what had happened with Chris and PJ, and Phil felt very much under qualified to be trying to help Chris sort it all out, but this was his best friend. The only problem was, Phil didn't know what to say. He'd listened to Chris bitch and moan about how horrible PJ was and how he never wanted to be involved with him again, but he also knew that PJ had to have changed from the ugly, bitter person he had been a year ago.
"I think you need to talk to him."
Chris sighed and shook his head. "I can't, you already know I can't--"
"Chris, I know he was a righteous dick to you, and there's no justifying what he did," Phil said carefully, "but he obviously has something to say to you. Whether it's an apology or not, I think you need to give him a chance to talk. And if you still hate him after, then okay. But if you let this thing keep decaying while you ignore it, you'll never be satisfied."
That was all he could think to say, and since Chris didn't immediately punch him in the face or worse, he assumed it was okay.
His phone started ringing, and he cursed it for ruining this moment of solidarity, but pulled it out anyway.
ex-lover
"Is that Dan?" Chris asked, leaning over his shoulder to see the screen.
"Yeah," Phil said, slightly strained. Now he was the one shaking. "What do you think he wants?"
Because this was the first time Dan had even attempted to reach out to him since they'd split. It couldn't be good, they hadn't been 'good' in a while, but he could feel his pulse start to jump from the hope that maybe.... maybe it wasn't bad.
"I don't know, but you should answer it."
The phone kept ringing in his hand and he kept staring at it with wide eyes. "I should?"
Chris didn't give him a chance to consider before reaching over and pressing the green answer button for him. Phil's heart stopped for half a second before he put the phone to his ear.
"Hello?"
There was a second, an agonizing and anxiety-filled second, of silence, and then-- "Hey." Dan's voice was soft, none of the venom or pity that he recently used when talking to Phil. "This isn't...I'm not interrupting or anything, am I?"
"Oh, no," Phil said with a little less panic in his voice. "You're fine, I'm just at Chris's house."
"Okay." Another pause, and Phil didn't know what to do with himself because he hadn't been expecting this. There was no telling what this phone call even meant, if it meant anything at all. "I just... I've been staring at my ceiling for, like, a fucking hour, and I need to tell you I'm sorry."
"Sorry," Phil repeated. Chris raised an eyebrow at him and smirked, and Phil punched his arm to make him stop. "For what?"
"I think, everything," Dan said. "I keep trying to make myself hate you. Because I should really, really hate you, and I keep doing all of this stupid shit to make it worse. And I'm sorry, cause you don't deserve that."
"Oh," Phil said, and yeah, he really wasn't expecting this. "You don't have to...I mean, maybe I do deserve it."
"You don't. No one does."
There was this tiny, almost minuscule part of Phil that started blossoming at those words, at the fact the Dan still even thought of him as worth forgiveness. This was a step, one single step of the many it would take before they could bear each other again. Phil's grip tightened on the phone at his ear. "Thank you," he said, and his voice was rough with whatever emotion was trying to climb up his throat.
There was no going back to what they had been before, but there was this. And this was good for now.
"Fuck," Dan half-muttered to himself. "Phil, I fucking miss you. And there's no logical reason for it, but I do, I miss you like crazy."
Phil rubbed the back of his neck, pushing down the sudden explosion of butterflies in his stomach and ignoring Chris's insistent hand motions for him to put the phone on speaker. "I miss you, too. You already know that."
"I do," Dan said, half-laughing. "How many people...know about us?"
"Everyone." Phil shoved Chris away from trying to eavesdrop. "Everyone that matters. Parents, the band. Honestly, I think the whole school. Apparently, we're shit at hiding things."
"Apparently," Dan said. "We need to-- I need to talk to you, in person. I need to see you."
Phil couldn't get his hopes up, he knew this wasn't a guarantee of anything, but it was a chance, a chance he had been looking for since day one. "Okay," he said blandly, trying not to sound eager. "When?"
"Tomorrow," Dan said. "I need to think, and I need...I just need a little more time. Is that okay?"
"That's fine." It was perfect. Everything was fucking perfect.
He hung up and stared at his black phone screen in bemusement. There was this irrational and annoying voice in the back of his head saying that this wasn't real, that he was dreaming and he would wake up again just as disappointed as before, but that voice was overshadowed by the giant flower of happiness that was filling the hole in his sternum. They were going to talk, Dan wasn't angry at him anymore, things might actually work out for once.
"So?" Chris broke through his euphoric daydreaming. "What's the verdict?"
"I think..." Phil spoke slowly, cautiously, hoping to whatever higher power was above that he didn't jinx this. "I think things are gonna be okay."
***
a/n: i'm back bitches
not really lmao. if you don't know by now, i'm pretty much abandoning this account. i am still planning on writing, just not phanfiction anymore, so if you would be interested in reading my stuff still, my new account is @strangefaces
i just neeeeeeeed to finish this story i've poured my whole fucking heart and soul and blood and sweat and tears into this dumb story so i will finish
like technically, this is the last chapter and the next will be the epilogue, so stay tuned :)
peace