WARNINGS: DRUG USE, MENTION OF SEX, ANGST, DEPRESSION
Dan's POV
I woke up on Santa Monica Beach in Los Angeles, USA. The sun rose at the other end of the horizon. I let my eyes wander over the beautiful but at the same time intimidating sea.
The waves rustled and everything around me was wrapped in a deep orange, which made this place seem even more breathtaking than it already was.
The first people were already at the pier to work, others had been with me all night.
It was only when I slowly rose from the sand that I noticed the stinging headache and the nausea that I was probably getting used to anyway.
In L.A. it was so much easier to get drugs, go to good parties, forget the consequences.
Meanwhile, it was no longer just cocaine. Exactly as it had been with Tyler back then. Just like him, I just took everything that was offered to me. Everything I could get.
My body already showed me after 10 days how much it resisted it, but I didn't care.
We had stayed in a hotel and had no financial problems so far, but they would come someday. If I still lived until then.
As I walked past the stalls near the Santa Monica Pier to head to our hotel, where Tyler was surely waiting for me with a sermon, my thoughts were all about Phil.
I couldn't stop thinking about what he said before I left.
He wanted to tell me that he loved me. I didn't want him to say it. I absolutely didn't know how to deal with it, so he should let it go, but know I knew it. Despite the knowledge that he loved me, needed me, I left. I hoped that he would get along with it and would eventually find someone worthy of him. Phil was a good guy, a good person.
Sometimes, however, I imagined what my life could be like if I hadn't left. When I imagined myself lying in Phil's arms again, it was a feeling that I have only been able to describe since I had been here on the beach in Los Angeles again.
It filled me with warmth, a warmth that felt so incredibly good, but on the other hand, I was constantly aware that I couldn't stay here forever.
The sun would go down and I had to leave the beach at some point.
It was exactly the same with Phil.
Even though there was nothing better for me than to be with him, knowing that he loved me, I couldn't be certain that I would ruin it with my addiction.
"Well, where did you sleep tonight? Did you do that at all? Or did you rather sleep with someone?" Tyler greeted me grumpily when I entered our hotel room.
"Shut up." I steered against it.
"Sorry for worrying about you, I guess." he replied after shutting his mouth for a few seconds and I had now walked past him into the room and started taking off my sandy clothes.
"I'll go take a shower now. It's been a long night." I announced.
"Daniel, please just tell me where you've been!" He stopped me before I could disappear into the bathroom with fresh clothes under my arm. I stopped with a sigh and gave in. He wouldn't let go after all and I really didn't feel like asking questions from him all day.
"Jesus Christ." I started. "I slept on the beach, okay?"
"At the beach? Why on the beach?" He kept boring.
"I don't know. I can't remember anything that happened last night. So I strongly assume that I was high as a fucking kite." I replied annoyed. When I tried to reconstruct yesterday evening, only blackness appeared in my head.
"When did you become such an asshole?" Tyler asked suddenly in a fragile sounding voice and I felt a sharp pain announce itself and struggled through the pleasant numbness that I had trained myself hard in the past few days.
"You used to be one and now I am. People change." Oh yes, I had changed a lot. Nothing came close to me and to say the least I didn't care about anything or anyone around me. As soon as a thought of the people I loved made its way into my brain, I quickly knew a way to suppress it.
I was no longer the same person as before. I also lived a completely different life, in a completely different country.
Daniel Howell, the shy little orphan from Manchester, from the past, no longer existed.
"Did you think that I'd totally nice to you after everything that has been?" I continued after Tyler hadn't said anything for a while. "I can't easily forget that. And, I don't care if anyone thinks I'm an asshole."
"Yes, you don't care about anything. And I also understand that it's not so easy to forgive me, but that's not the point. It's about how you handle yourself." He replied and I knew that this conversation would take longer. I was getting used to him trying to play mom and trying to convince me to stop using drugs.
"I don't care what happens to me." Tyler closed his eyes desperately. "If you don't like it, you can leave."
"Should I leave you alone in LA while you're taking all sorts of drugs?" He asked mockingly.
"Yes, I would even really like it if you did so. In fact, I want you to go because you really annoy the shit out of me!" I became louder and louder. "I'm going to take a shower now and I want you to be gone until I get out."
"Daniel."
"Fuck off or I'll throw you out of here like you kicked me out!" I hissed and he swallowed hard.
"Okay, okay, but what about you?"
"What about me?" I asked irritably. I wanted him to leave. I don't know why I brought him here in the first place. I probably just didn't want to be alone, feeling that someone who wasn't Phil needed me. But in the end I didn't want to be used by anyone and I didn't want Tyler to question me like a mother.
"Are you going back?"
"Why the fuck should I?" I asked, perplexed, still pissy.
"Because of Phil." I rolled my eyes. He had only mentioned it once, about the flight here, but then quickly gave up. "He loves you, Dan. Think about what is more important to you."
At that moment I realized that I was really like Tyler, who simply ignored that someone loved him and would probably do anything for him. All the shit that had happened and Phil was still there. And I was gone and didn't plan to go back.
"Goodbye, Tyler." Was my answer until I disappeared into the bathroom.
Phil's POV
The conversation with Oliver had been terrible. After I was with Dan, I ran back to the party, but Oliver wasn't there anymore. I had thousands of messages and calls on my cell phone from him. I called and said that Daniel was taking drugs again and wanted to get out of the country. He drove off immediately and we argued throughout the car ride. He said that I should have called him earlier, I tried to talk myself out of it. I didn't tell him anything about Tyler, which is why we went to Dan's apartment, he unlocked it, and we found that his suitcase and some parts from his closet were missing. Just like his passport.
From that moment Dan was gone.
Oliver had apologized for his behavior the next day, but he was right. I should have told him. I shouldn't have let Dan go.
I didn't think he would ever come back, but I just wasn't ready to give up. To admit to myself that he was gone and I had lost everything that had ever meant anything to me.
I was at the tip.
At the edge of the abyss that meant for me to realize that I would never see Dan again.
Oliver was the only one that somehow got through to me. Years of friendship united us and I was just happy that Oliver was the way he was. That he was logical, consistent, because if we were both as broken as I was, it wouldn't work here. Then we would no longer function as humans.
"People want to know what's going on with Dan, Phil, and I would fucking like to know that as well." his tone tightened. "When will you finally tell me where he is?"
"I can't tell you where he is because I don't know." I pressed irritably out of myself, then took a deep breath through my nose to calm myself down. I held my forehead and gathered myself.
"It'll be all right, okay? Don't worry, I will sort it out somehow, we can do this." I talked to him a little calmer again.
"Sure, of course. Phil clears everything up, it always worked great."
"You know what? Fuck you! What should I do, Oliver? Huh? I would like to bring him back, you have no idea how much I would like to, but I just can't do it. Tell me what to do and I'll do it." I asked him and he then seemed to understand that it was hopeless.
"I didn't think Dan would ever give it all up." he almost whispered.
"Neither did I." I sighed exhausted. I wanted Oliver to leave my apartment, but at the same time I didn't want to just kick him out. He was fucked too. But these conversations with him made this situation look so hopeless. It was so realistic.
"We don't know him as well as we thought." I added quietly.
I hadn't shed a tear since Dan had left. Sometimes the pain is just so great that you can't even cry anymore and that's exactly how I felt in the past few days.
But now I noticed tears gathering in my eyes.
Oliver looked at me pitifully and put his hand on my shoulder.
"We've had to go through a lot of shit lately. You more than me, I guess. I know everyone is just thinking about Dan and what about him at the moment, but I didn't miss the fact that you are fucked too."
I just looked at him and then wiped my face. So that's what Dan always meant when he said that Oliver wasn't always a logical asshole.
"Thanks, Oliver." He smiled warmly at me. "I still don't know where he is."
Even when my head became more and more firm that I absolutely had to get it back, this fact thwarted me.
"We'll find out later." Oliver told me and I put all my gratitude in my eyes. "But now you should maybe get some sleep first. I don't want to insult you, but you literally look like shit."
"No, that's not insulting at all." I commented jokingly.
Dan's POV
With the well-known roaring headache, I saw the daylight again, but this time the noise of the notorious traffic in L.A. gave me an inkling that the sunrise had been a few hours ago and I was already in the middle of a new day.
Besides, this time I was not on the beach, but in bed, in a room that was foreign to me.
I heard the fabric of the sheets and the bedspread on my skin, blinked, and noticed that I was naked. My clothes were scattered around the room.
As I looked around, I saw that there was clothing on the floor that wasn't mine. Women's clothing.
In particular, a black bra that got stuck on an open drawer caught my attention. An impulse prompted me to turn around abruptly, but my body didn't participate, so I could only sit up with a paralyzing dizziness and realized that a dark-haired woman was lying next to me.
She slept soundly on her stomach and the duvet just covered her bottom, which gave me a clear view of her bare back.
That made it pretty clear what must have happened the previous night, but I just couldn't remember any of it as always.
Since I had no idea who she was, I didn't know whether it was as clear to her that this was just a one night stand as it was to me. So I decided to run away before she woke up.
As quietly and unobtrusively as possible, I got out of the large double bed and actually made it out of the room almost unnoticed, but when I picked up my pants, the belt buckle clattered and only a short time later I heard the growling woman. I didn't even know her name.
I froze, watching her turn on her back and sit up, still rubbing her eyes tiredly.
"Hey, are you already leaving?" She asked when her half-opened eyes saw me standing here with my clothes in my hands, ready to go.
"Yes, I mean, it was just a one-time thing for me. I just hope I didn't promise you anything else." I said to myself, hoping that afterwards she would let me get out of this uncomfortable situation without going nuts.
If I had made her really beautiful eyes just to get her around, it would only fit my behavior recently. As Tyler had said so nicely: I was an asshole.
Still, I felt the tug in my chest that told me I had a guilty conscience.
"Don't worry, sweetheart. You didn't promise me anything." She laughed lightly. "Can you throw my shirt over?" She asked casually what I did after I put my pants back on the floor.
"We just had a little bit of fun yesterday, nothing more. Stay here, then we can have some more of it." She suggested as she put on her shirt and then stroked her hair.
I shrugged and dropped back into bed. She smiled at me and turned to her bedside table shortly thereafter, and just a few moments later she had brought out a uniquely shaped pipe and a bag with small, transparent crystals. She shook the beg under in front of my eyes and grinned promisingly at me.
I grinned at her, which probably meant that I was there.
Just as she turned away, the phone vibrated in my pants. I got up again to pick up my pants and take out my phone.
Oliver.
His name triggered too many emotions, feelings and memories of my old life, which I had been trying to ban, more or less successfully, of my conscioussness for almost 14 days.
Tyler was gone and a day later I was at the airport to fly back to London. But just before I got on the plane, the heart in my chest beat faster than ever.
I was panicking.
Even if I knew what I could have had, I couldn't. I couldn't go back to Phil no matter how much he loved me, how much I loved him.
I had gone too far without him.
The drugs didn't scar the wounds, but they reliably masked the pain.
Maybe Phil could finally close the wounds. But I was weak when I was with him. Weak and vulnerable if I stopped using drugs and if I were withdrawn again.
A cold sweat of fear had formed all over my skin a few minutes before the plane had left and I just had to get out of there, turned around, pushed through the crowds at the airport without being able to breathe and struggled with fast steps, almost running , into the fresh air.
Without thinking about it, I took a taxi back to the hotel where I had been all the time.
I sat there for the rest of the day until part of me died the next morning thanks to bitter insight.
Without further ado I declined Oliver's call, put the cell phone back and threw my pants in the corner.
The next moment I was lying on the bed with a pipe and knew the next moment that I would have fun with this woman again.
Phil's POV
Half asleep I heard a knock on my door. When it knocked the second time, it completely woke me up and I rolled out of bed, annoyed and tired.
Actually I just wanted to sleep, finally sleep. Since the whole thing with Dan became so difficult, my sleep problem had of course not gotten any better. I've always had trouble falling asleep, plus a light sleep. But when Dan was here, even that wasn't a problem. I just fell asleep, snuggled up to him, and woke up the next morning.
But in the past two weeks, the worst scenarios of where Dan could be and what he might be going through haunted me night after night. That he might already be dead. Dying of an overdose or being pulled deeper into shit by Tyler than he had been before.
What was I thinking about letting him go with Tyler of all people?
How could I have been so stupid and not even considering that Dan was probably even getting his drugs from him and they were now huddled together somewhere under the bridge and putting stuff into their system until their bodies wouldn't take part anymore.
At the thought, my whole body shuddered.
I got up with a sigh when there was another knock on my apartment door. I tiredly groped my way down the hall, whereupon I opened the apartment door. And when I saw who was standing in front of me, I was suddenly wide awake and extremely alert.
"Hey Phil." Tyler greeted me with a clear safety distance from me. He stood uncertainly in front of me.
I stared at his face in disbelief for a while, looking him up and down to make sure he wasn't an evil spirit. Suddenly my brain started to work. What the hell was he doing here? When he was here it meant Dan was back. Or had he left Dan alone? Was Dan still alive?
"What the fuck are you doing here?" I asked as I tiredly ran my face. I didn't trust him.
"Listen, I know it's late, but I just got back and I need to talk to you right now. I know you don't trust me, but I have to talk to you about Daniel." He quickly babbled to himself. He was probably afraid that I would slam the door in front of him.
He seemed to be my only connection to Dan at the moment and if he could tell me anything about his whereabouts, I would do anything to squeeze him out of him.
But why should he help me?
"Okay, come on in." I murmured hesitantly, whereupon he slowly ran past me into the apartment. I switched on the light and went into the living room with him.
"Let's get it over with. Tell me what you know." I made no big fuss. I couldn't stand it for a long time not knowing what was wrong with Dan and what was going on with him. "Where's Dan? How do you know where I live?"
I didn't want to make this a kind of friendly meeting. Tyler and I weren't friends and we never would be. He should just tell me what he had on his mind and then disappear from my life. He looked at the couch, then at me and I nodded, whereupon he sat down exhausted. He was sick and you could see it, even I didn't want to be an asshole.
"Okay. One by one." He probably sensed how restless I was and that I didn't want to hear anything other than answers. "I brought Daniel home when you were living together. I was hoping that you still live here."
"Okay, that makes sense. But where's Dan?" I went straight on. "How is he?"
I was leaning against the wall and he was finally looking up and what his eyes were giving away gave me all hope that he could tell me something good.
"I'm afraid he's not doing well at all." he confirmed.
Swallowing hard, I returned his worried look and crossed my arms.
"Why?"
"Because he's completely lost. He's at parties all the time, gone all the time, high all the time." He explained to me, scratching every bit of self-control that was left in me. He was to blame for all this misery. "You have to help him. He misses you and he needs you, even if he doesn't want to admit it."
"How am I supposed to help him? I don't even know where he is and apparently he doesn't want that either, because otherwise he would have come to me long ago."
"You are as blind as he is." He rolled his eyes. "Listen, I have no idea about you, but it at least looked to me like you would do a lot to get Daniel out of the shit. And what I can say with certainty is that it is fucking urgent that someone does that." he explained to me.
"Where is he?" I asked, slowly sure what I had to do. Tyler swallowed hard.
"He is in America. More precisely in Santa Monica, in Los Angeles." He then informed me calmly.
"He is in America?"
I had a thousand memories that I had shared with him there. I saw the golden sun in the sky, which immediately made me warm, the dark blue water, the high-rise buildings that made up the big city feeling.
Without noticing anything else, I ran into the bedroom, grabbed my phone, and called a taxi. Then I went back to my living room.
"I'll take the next plane to L.A." I told him, and a calm smile spread across his pale face.
"Finally a good decision." he commented, trying to get up, but it seemed unusually difficult for him. He almost slumped, but I held onto his upper arm to support him. He looked like an old man whose bones were no longer playing.
He thanked me briefly and then tormented himself the few meters into our hall, where he stopped short and seemed to be looking at the pictures that hung in it. The pictures were years old. In times when everything was better.
I said nothing about it, just let him be.
He seemed to be completely at peace, so aware of his surroundings that it looked almost scary.
"I strongly believe that you know what I did to him." He suddenly looked at me, but I didn't react. I think my eyes and my position towards him said enough. "I'm sorry, Philip. I am so incredibly sorry."
I swallowed hard but had no response. Telling him I didn't give a shit wouldn't help anyone here, so I just shut up.
"I'm worried about him, just like you." He suddenly explained to me and I actually believed him. He didn't seem to be the Tyler Dan had told me about. He was so calm, maybe because he wasn't high. It felt like I could tell when people were sober or not. He was.
"I have to try to make up for what I did to Daniel. I have to do something before-" He stopped talking and instead looked back at the pictures.
"Before you what?" I directed him to continue speaking.
"Before I leave this world."
Suddenly it seemed to get even quieter around us. I knew he was sick, better than I would like, but I wasn't aware that it would happen so quickly. Maybe that was related to the drugs that only further destroyed his immune system.
There are so many things to say about it. I could have accused him of being responsible for it himself. Could have said that it was fate's punishment for what he had done to Dan. Or I could have comforted him.
But I decided to do none of this and just stand here and let his words stand between us, which somehow linked our stories together, although we couldn't have been more different.
Our paths of life, which would otherwise never have crossed, did so now because of Dan, who had driven us both in a completely different direction than we would have ever assumed.
"How long do you have left?" I asked, with all these mixed feelings inside me, the pity that was paired with pure hate when I thought about what Dan had to go through because of him.
"If things go well, maybe another month." he replied clarified. And suddenly I guessed what it was that he and I had in common in this strange way.
"You love him, don't you?"
He gave me a startled look, probably hadn't counted on this directness. Then his eyes dropped.
"Yes."
"Then why didn't you stay with him in L.A.?"
"I love him, but when you're about to die as I am, you can't waste time fooling yourself. And the truth is that I just didn't want to lie in my deathbed feeling guilty. Besides, he would never have returned my feelings anyway, I mean, I can't blame him."
After these words we said goodbye, because I had no more to say to him, just as he had no more to say to me. I packed some things together and some time later I got a message that my taxi was there.
At the mere idea of how I might find Dan, I took a deep breath so as not to cloud the pain in my brain that I needed right now.
I just nodded and knew that I had confirmed everything that was important to him.
Now it was all up to me.
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what do we think about this mess? what do we think about tyler?
what will happen when phil finds dan? if?
leave a comment or vote if you liked this. thanks.