The door felt heavier than when they left. But it still smelt like home. Or at least it probably would have done if Dan's nose hadn't decided to welcome fifty thousand germs for the holiday season. He was never hugging anyone ever again. He pushed the door, choking on the air, but hey at least it was the air of 'home'.
There was a split second moment where the door seemed to fall backwards and Dan watched it grow closer to his face, like the looming moment of a film where everything goes into slow motion and the character looks up, mouth hung open like a gaping cave and, just move for god's sake why aren't you fucking moving hurls at the TV. And the eyes roll with the sheer stupidity of it all, but Dan was the stupid one, he had leaped inside that oh so cliché show and he finally understood. Because he felt as if his feet were tar, melting into the pavement, and his bones were fucking heavy, and how in the name of the lord was he supposed to move them?
Phil's hand jutted out, catching the door. A weak smile. He was a new man. He felt himself nod. He wasn't sure whether that transcended into the real world.
The top of the stairs might as well have been mount fucking Everest for all he cared in that moment. He felt his back hit the wall. Every. Single. could feel every single bone, metal, dragging him to the bottom of the ocean, the waves of tiredness, of exhaustion, of drowsiness (was that even a real word? Dan didn't fucking know), hitting him as the black water tried to consume him.
The carpet was sand, stroking through his splayed fingers. It was fine. Dan felt soft, he felt his eyes flickering shut, the blackness felt warm.
A hand on his back. He assumed it was Phil's. He was too tired to turn around. For all he knew it could have been the ghost of fucking christmas past. He felt himself grunt in gratitude. Words were too far of a stretch.
Everything felt so distant. So close.
Staircases mastered. Dan wobbled down the hallway. Disorientated. Wait. Wasn't that a fucking train? A fast thing? In Paris? Time seemed to wobble in front of his eyes. The hands ticked round in his mind. Sharp. Black. It was everything else that was blurry.
He'd been standing in the hallway for too long.
The door pushed itself open, watching Dan's eyes grow wider, the crinkling of the forehead, the slight tilt of the head. He felt the wrong stage of drunk.
The room was greener than he remembered. His head hit the pillow and all questions were forgotten, the pillow's arms stretched out, curling around Dan's head, softly stroking his 'travel' hair. If Dan were even remotely awake he'd cry. But he wasn't. The duvet was grateful.
There were no dreams, only blackness like a wall and there was blackness when he woke and oh god had he even slept at all, and he was captured in a world that was halfway between sleep and life, because he was sure he had reached out to grab that alarm clock, he was sure he had seen those bright red numbers glaring into his mind and yet his hand hadn't moved. And it happened over and over again. Ground hog day. Was he dreaming looking at the time? Was life a dream?
Something rolled into him. A log. Less round, a hand falling onto his face. He had no time for questions only blackness. There could have been freaking Godzilla in the bed and Dan wouldn't have given two shits.
And the blackness found him again and hugged him tight.
And he arose to yet more blackness, yet this time it was more defined. It puzzled Dan. Black is black and yet it wasn't. There was black, black where everything was a swamp and Dan wasn't sure whether his arms still existed, and then there was black the one that stretched around him like arms and only made him feel more defined, more aware, as if the black crept into his chest and breathed from within like fire from a dragon, as if the smoke he screamed out curled into letters, you are a person. And there were no choices.
But there was definitely someone else in the bed.
And as Dan grew sharper, so did the fact in his head, moulding itself like a grown-up version of playdoh, one with sharper lines, and one that only existed within the imagination.
The fact had manifested into his mind like a rabbit burrowing by the time he had the energy to open his eyes, like a phone lying on a battery pad, the screen flickering to life, the notification less than 20% but it would do for now.
And there was somebody else in the bed. Somebody Dan knew. The manifestation had a name and its name was Phil.
But the battery was dying once more and it was the same frantic urge of desperation, the same distance, oh god it's dying, the screen's going to go black, it's all going to be black.
And it was. But not the swampy black. And not the defined black. But the soft black that came with the clutching of pillows and a duvet.
Light. There was light. Dan didn't even wish for it but there it was. Life worked like that.
But where the light was not defined and never could be, it did define other things, other people, and Dan had enough energy to prop himself up on his elbows.
His eyes ran over Phil's face and he felt that small flutter he had when the green light had turned on, when the words had popped on the screen like a small child with a bubble, Phil Lester is calling you, and yet the same hopelessness that came alongside it, the same notion of oh fuck, because there was always the worry, tapping at his mind like fingers on glass, and the same expression of the goldfish inside the tank, the expression of will you just fucking leave me alone, but of course the thoughts had the same lace of addiction as tapping on the glass, and the same knowledge that it was wrong, and as a child tapping on the glass, the same idea of now I want to do it more. And Dan tried to tear his eyes away, to turn over and leave because the room really was too green, too green to be his, to be anything but Phil's, and Dan wondered whether on some level he had known that last night when he stumbled upon it and whether he had cared and oh god why had Phil slept here despite Dan being there, and a whole new spiral of thoughts. The flutter just happened sometimes, like a small butterfly that lived within Dan's chest, but he liked it, he liked being a home to something, to someone. It was there whenever the eyes hooked for slightly too long or the small tongue came from the side of Phil's mouth, or his eyes lit up so bright Dan wondered why the world wasn't burning. But it wasn't a crush. He knew that. He knew that. He knew that. He knew that. Fuck.
Phil's lips stretched.
"I know you're here Dan." Came the whisper and oh god was it a flutter trigger, gravelly the ocean floor. Dan wanted to jump from the bed and hide his face behind a towel. He wasn't ready. It had been five years and he would never be ready. Philburned too bright. "And I know you're staring." And he turned over. And sometimes Phil was like this. And Dan was used to it because like the darkness there was Phil and there was Phil. Phil with the checked shirt and the geeky glasses, the clean cut fringe and the adorable smile and there was Phil, Phil with the stubble running across his chin, with the husky voice and the slight smirk, the one that made Dan feel too embarrassed for their skin to be touching the same duvet, the one that made him stutter like his own voice was playing back into his ears, that made his ears burn and oh god I need to move but I can't.
"Now go back to sleep." He said. And the voice was gone and the bird's wings fluttered less rapidly as he turned back over and Dan wondered whether this was still a dream. The self-aware dreams scared him the most. The ones that blurred the lines between reality and this so called 'darkness' and made him question the motives of the spinning planet.
His arms called out to twist around Phil's chest, to lace over his shoulders and Dan wondered whether that was casual enough, friendly enough to meet their vague definitions. The line was chalk that was washing away in the rain.
Deep breath. But the duvet no longer felt like a cloud wrapping around him, no longer felt like the lilting of a wave, but rather like a mesh trap, and Dan felt his legs crawl out from the bed.
He fumbled through the dark, his arms jutted out like a tightrope walker and you'd think he'd know where he was going, you would think after fumbling nights of darkness and quelled nights of tears he would know, but he still felt uneasy.
The light flicked on.
It cast light over Phil's face, his eyes squinted and he was juxtaposition. It seemed to flash across his face. Dan didn't know which Phil he was at that moment, whether he was about to curl his lip and tilt his head slowly or whether he was about to stick his lip out like a pouting four year old wanting a lolly the colour of a fire truck.
"Where are you going?" Phil whispered, his voice laced with sleep, his personality still caught between the two ends.
"Umm back to my room."
Phil's face seemed to fall a little, "Will you please come and cuddle me?"
Dan's foot stepped forward a little, before he drew it back, he was no longer injected with heavy sleep patterns, and he was very conscious of their small amount of clothing, even in the shadowy light. "Why?" he said, his voice growing higher at the end.
Phil looked hurt, layers of his confident and suave façade falling a little to reveal his teddy bear phase and Dan's heart dropped. He was well and truly fucked. Because Phil had him wrapped around his finger no matter which persona he was choosing to be.
A sigh escaped his lips and then he was back in Phil's bed, his arms wrapped around his chest.
His head was like a whirring machine. And Phil could tell.
"What's wrong now?" Phil asked, turning around to face Dan. And Dan became aware of how close their faces were, Phil's fringe dusting across his burning red cheeks. "You've gone red." Phil laughed. And Dan couldn't explain what he meant when he said it, but Phil's laugh was so filled with nostalgia, each note seeming to poke at a part of his last few years, reminding him of half-broken sofas and cold winter air, of the moon watching their conversations and of buffy blaring in the background.
A whisper to his throat, "The line, Phil, the line."
Phil's eyes lit up with a happiness that was in likeness to swallowing rivers. "You're such a dork." And before Dan could recoil, before he could throw up his defence, Phil's face had got even closer. Closer. His lips pressed against his, surrounded in sleep, tasting vaguely of coffee. A flash in the dark, "does that sort out your line for you?" Everything was still whirling. The lamp clicked off. And Dan was glad the dark had come back. "Now go to sleep." Dan smiled into the swamping darkness.
And the chalk line hadn't been drawn again, quite the opposite, it had been washed away. The flickering raindrops taking the colours for their own. And Dan was able to smile. Smile. He still needed lines, the same way he needed to define the different kinds of darkness and the different kinds of Phil, but in the darkness that was half swampy and half-defined, next to the Phil who was both Phil's, Dan felt that maybe he could accept the washed away line. At least for a little bit. He settled back into Phil's arms.
Yes I would describe my writing style as; I try too hard and it never pulls off. Thanks for reading. If you understood any of this, even one sentence feel free to leave a comment.