"I-I just wanna go... g-go to class." The pale boy in hospital gown stammered, his hands and wrists shaking as though he couldn't hold them up on his own. Dan couldn't hold them either, it seemed, because any moment he bushed over the other boy's knuckles, or intertwined their fingers Phil snatched his hand away — afraid. So Dan didn't touch Phil at all anymore.
"You've already been." Dan said calmly, voice void of the pain his chest leaked every time he talked to his best friend.
Phil shook his head, eyes darting around the room, desperately trying to form words that his fraying-away brain wouldn't conjure up anymore. "N-no, I'm not s'posed to be here."
Dan swallowed, placing the barely eaten fruit cup that he'd given up on encouraging Phil to eat, on the bed-side table. This happened too often, and Dan knew where the conversation would end, but he was never truely prepared each time. Somehow he'd leave the hospital with angry tear tracks, and the feeling of throwing up stuck in his throat. His hands would shake, just as Phil's had and would forever do – but at least, this time, Dan would know why.
"This is where you live."
"No! I-I... need t- leave. H-how long h- I been here? M-my stuff isn't here. W-why did you –"
Dan fought the urge to close his eyes. 30 minuets ago, Phil panicked over the same things, the things his brain didn't understand anymore – but he'd forgotten. He'd forgotten.
"Everything's fine, Phil. Your clothes are in the wardrobe draws, the pictures frames are beside you." In reality, very little inside this room made it 'Phil's room'...because it wasn't. It was a hospital room that Phil didn't leave because neither Dan nor Phil were strong enough to live together in their real home anymore. Phil needed constant care, and Dan couldn't do it on his own.
His phone also lay upon the table. Phil hadn't used it in months. Once he'd tweeted random nonsense with the rest of the characters all '?'s, and since then, Dan had deleted all the social media apps off his phone so Phil wouldn't accidentally raise suspicions to any of the people who followed him, nor the millions of lives that saw them as inspirations, rather than two weak boys who had lost everything but each other (but, no, they actually had). The one with the red play button was the hardest, but Phil didn't even notice that anything was different the day after.
Up until a few months ago, Dan would receive terrified-sounding 3AM calls that barely sobbed coherent words like, 'where am I?', 'I don't know where I am.', 'How did I get here?', and 'Will you come find me, Dan.' The younger boy, would spend an hour trying to calm him down, call the hospital, and his best friend only went back to sleep again because of the heavy drugs and sedatives that flowed in his system more than his own blood.
"Th-that's not me." Phil squirmed in the bed, standing up on his feet that didn't quick hold him up entirely, despite the fact that his hospital clothes hung of him in such a way that Dan stiffened every time he saw Phil's sickly body. His attention was caught on towards the picture frame that used stand upon their mantle back at the apartment. "This isn't m- house. Why am I-I alone?"
Dan closed his eyes, escaping the moment, praying to a God that he didn't believe in that a nurse would come in and tell him visiting hours were over. Dan Howell was a selfish, shitty fucking best friend and lover, and there was only so much in an afternoon he could take. He knew what he was, and he hated himself for it – but if this torture lasted any longer than it had to, he felt like his own brain would burn and disintegrate away as well.
"You're not alone. You're here with me, and with the wonderful people here that take care of you."
Phil seemed to pause at that, his eyes going glassy and angry like they normally did when he didn't understand – that was all the time. "No! I-I wanna go home! You're not..." he trailed off, needing to find the words before he could say them. "Where's my family? Y-You..."
Dan was tired. He pressed his thumb and forefinger against the sockets of his eyes, rubbing the oncoming migraine away as if it were that easy. "I'm Dan." He said steadily when he looked up, stars fading into his vision as his eyes adjusted. "And you're Phil. This is where you live now, you've been here for six months. You're here so they can look after you. You're ill."
"I-I need to go home – my class is starting soon."
Dan had to turn away. He told himself he wasn't getting frustrated, that he wasn't going to cry angry tears that flushed down his face, that he wasn't mad at Phil for developing an illness that stole both their lives away. "I-I'll... I'll be back tomorrow, Phil."
"B-But –" he suddenly cried out, because now came the part of the routine where Phil distressed over Dan leaving, though his own brain would never understand why. "No! I can't..."
"You'll be okay. The nice nurses and doctors are here, but I can't stay..." with you any longer, he didn't say. "– here. I can't stay here anymore."
"No!" Phil stumbled over to him, grabbing Dan's wrist tightly, and it was the most amount of physical contact they've had in a month. "N-no, d-don't! Why – y-you going?"
Dan knew explaining things didn't actually work when it came to the illness. It had taken away his ability to remember, to process, to understand – so Dan didn't try and make it any harder. "I need to leave now. I'll be back tomorrow."
Dan went to turn away from the room, but Phil had both his hands gripped around Dan's arms. It surprised him that he looked as weak as he did, though still possessed the power to fight for Dan when he was desperate. The younger boy knew Phil wasn't actually keeping Dan because he knew who he was, or suddenly remember that they had been each other's constant for nearly one decade. If Phil remembered he would've said Dan's name at least once, or hell, even his own.
Dan did give him credit that it took two nurses to hold Phil away from Dan, all while the former kicked and threw his arms around in an effort to stop Dan from leaving. "No! Y-You... you're – wait! You left me! Why did you –"
And Dan had walked away, waiting for tomorrow.
His lungs filled in such a way that taking in air hurt, and he suddenly wished he could stop. As the apartment keys dropped to the floor, Dan eyed the laptop he forgot to shut off with an emotion that burned somewhere between envy and longing inside his stomach. Perhaps it was one of those nights that reminded him it was a good idea to have deleted the apps and websites off his devices that caused that feeling in his gut. Perhaps is was one of those nights where he shouldn't have listened to his yesterday's drunken, 3AM self and fallen into a pit of the past because he couldn't fall in love anymore.
As he stared at Phil, who was really Phil from the paused video, he wanted to scream.
They had made it. They had fucking made it.
This whole year was supposed to be their big finale, Dan and Phil's last act that left behind a legacy they had built from nothing but shitty webcams and Skype calls, insecurities and self doubt, barely-adults who didn't have the slightest hint of where they wanted to go in life and they're twisted ability to fall in love. This was the last thing to do, before the their world slowed down in the best of ways and they could do the things in their life that were meant for whatever people did when they knew they had done it all.
They could've gotten a dog. It's name would've been something awesomely epic, like Zeus or whatever, because Phil would've believed the best dog in the world needed to have the best name. Though, he would've joked about it being something stupid for prosperity's sake and Dan would've known he'd been joking, but act shocked and mortified for about two seconds, before they would've gone with the cool as fuck name because that's what their dog would've deserved.
They would've gotten a house. It would've been fairly close to the city because they still loved it there, but further away enough that they could've had a back yard, instead of dying houseplants that served as their current home's sad greenery.
They would've had children. Somewhere, somehow, they would've found a way to make it possible, and they would've had lazy Sundays with their kid jumping on their bed to wake them up. Together the three of them would've made pancakes and the batter would've gone everywhere while he or she stirred it, but Dan would've kiss it off Phil's cheek, and they'd laugh as their kid squealed 'ewww!'. Dan would've taught them piano, if they wanted to learn someday, while Phil filmed every significant moment of their lives just for themselves, and their child would've shared the same amount of creativity as with his or her fathers. They would've inspired their child to be whatever he or she desired to be, and caught them whenever they fell down both physically and figuratively, and never would've pushed them to abide by the rules society had made up – because he or she would've been absolutely perfect the way they would've already been. And though it would've been terrifying, and new, and everything they hadn't done before, they would've been the best parents to have ever existed.
And now, where where they? They were at an end of an era, but there wasn't going to be a next one – not like Dan had always thought there'd be.
Now Phil's future didn't exist – hell, Phil himself barely existed. It wasn't his best friend that had to told ten times a day what his own name was, or ask why there was a crying, curly brown-haired boy next to him all the time, or ask when he could leave to go to his classes that he'd gone to over a decade ago.
But Dan was at home now, and he heard only the echo of his friend from the things that Phil owned, pictures of both of them, and fucking plushy dolls that Dan now hated the look of.
He hated AmazingPhil's old videos even more. Probably even the ones that saved him, when he was a naive teenager and didn't know what the verb 'to live' or really was.
Dan stared blankly and unemotionally at the laptop in front of him, until he didn't. The word's that were Phil's, but not anymore, bled from the speakers. His lively, youthful demeanour taunted Dan in a way that mocked him from not being able to reach through the computer screen and touch, hold and kiss the past. It was unbearable, and turning the video off wouldn't suffice.
Slamming the laptop closed with enough force that it shook the table wasn't enough.
Throwing it against the glass sliding door, only to hear the satisfying sound of a million shards of glass shattering into the air, still wasn't what he wanted.
He knew what he wanted, and the knowing that that will never, ever happen no matter what he smashed against the glass, or screamed at within the darkness of 5AM, or repeated over and over again to a man who didn't have the ability to remember – was the most completely useless he'd ever felt in his whole existence. It outweighed being unable to get out of bed during his depressive 'bad' days, and it was so much more worse than anything he had dealt with himself. Phil couldn't get Dan up from the floor like he used to, he couldn't save Dan anymore than he could save himself, and neither could Dan.
This was Phil, Dan couldn't save – or what was felt of him.
"I need you back! I need you!" Dan screamed and sobbed and choked on his own breath, as the pictures and mementos and books and everything in the apartment was mocking him of someone who was dead, but all around him and physical a ten minutes drive away.
"Why did you fucking leave me!? I hate you! I fucking hate you!" His hand hit the wall, once then twice then trice, and finally the physical pain of fragmented bones and torn skin erupted in his left hand, and Dan couldn't stifle the cry that left his throat.
"Fuck... fuck!" He shook his hand, knowing that wouldn't fix it, that it was probably broken and might even need stitches from the amount of blood that gushed from the wound, but he didn't give a single fuck.
He wasn't going to the doctor, or A&E. The hospital was a fucking suffocating hell, and if he stayed there for another second he might have a fucking mental break down – if this wasn't one already.
He couldn't listen to Phil asking where he was, or who Dan was, or who he himself was anymore. Dan supposed he was being so fucking selfish by thinking it, but his wasn't something he could do anymore.
He would care for Phil until they day he died, but that wasn't Phil so he didn't care. Phil was dead. He didn't care. He didn't. He really, really didn't.
Because people who destroy their apartments and scream at a old YouTube videos clearly show apathy, right, Dan?
He's had enough. His body slid down the bloodied wall as he cradled his hand across his chest, sobbing hysterically as he choked on his own snot and tears.
He refused to open his eyes. If he did, he'd see what he'd done just now, and he'd see everything he didn't have anymore.