Never in the thirty-two long years of his life has Phil Lester seen the clouds so dark. So grey. As if even the sky itself heard his cries. As if even the sun lost some of its warmth, some of its glow, when the sun of Phil's own life snuffed out. And the clouds have acted accordingly, turning the bleak color of the smoke Phil has turned to as a coping mechanism, opening up and silently letting out the downpour so similar to the tears soaking his pillow every night since. They're even grayer than the day he lost his best friend forever, seven months ago, when it just about seemed that the whole world was encompassed in a sheet of solemn ash.
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His heart is as numb as his freezing hands in his pocket. He doesn't meet anyone's eyes. He's too scared, too dazed. Just a forlorn figure slipping through the crowds, intentionally late for the ceremony he is to attend. He certainly doesn't want to go. Doesn't want to see what he knows he will find there. Doesn't want to acknowledge that life as he once knew it is forever gone.
Phil had debated with himself for the longest time, wondering if he should make an appearance. Both sets of parents fully expected him to. He, of all people, should be able to say goodbye one last time. But it meant looking into a set of closed, cold eyes that wouldn't be able to return his gaze. It meant touching a face that had lost its warmth one long week ago.
Phil looks down, watching himself walk. Left foot forward. Right foot forward. Left foot forward. Right foot forward. Just keep going. Don't stop. Don't give up. Do this for him.
Left foot forward. Right foot forward.
He steps into a puddle forming in a shallow dip in the asphalt, stumbling momentarily. For just a second, as he looks at the cars to his left, waiting for him to cross the street, he wonders what it would be like to be hit by one. How long would it hurt? Phil thinks to himself, pausing a second too long. If I was hit in the right place, would it only last a second? Maybe two? It must've hurt him, but maybe it won't—
When an indignant car honks at him, Phil decides he has used up the allotted time, and reluctantly continues forward. But he does not abandon the thought.
The rain doesn't lessen up as Phil nears his destination. He knows he could've just taken his car, but the ceremony is being held in a local church. He needed the walk. In fact, Phil even finds himself enjoying the sheets of water hitting his face, tapping against his drawn hood. He's the only one crazy enough to be out here right now, all the other passersby in cars. No one questions him, pokes their head out of a restaurant to offer him an umbrella. Asks him if he wants to come inside and drink something hot. It isn't that he's expecting anyone too, of course. But his heart is frozen, frozen like the fountain in the plaza to his right. He could do with a little warmth, something to give him a little cushion to rest on when he stands up in front of everyone and makes that terrible speech he knows was coming for a long time. Tells everyone how much he felt about his best friend. How big his portion in Phil's heart is.
Was.
Finally Phil spots the church. There are at least a couple dozen cars in the lot. A lone tree with nothing on its branches stands drooping in one of the planters, looking sad and lonely in the pouring rain. Phil feels for the tree. He thinks it resembles him quite well.
Each step up the stairs leading Phil to his doom hurts him. Pains him like an actual knife to the foot. Agonizes him to the point where he wants to turn back, run back to his bedroom and sob. And yet he pushes forward, already beginning to cry and trying to tell himself it's just the rain on his face.
He hesitates at the doors. The big, heavy oak doors separating him from reality and the freezing, bitter wasteland he's been living in. When he rests his hand on the slabs of polished wood, feeling the frosted metal of the handles slip over his palm, Phil can hardly force himself to go on. But somehow he does it, throwing them open in an unnatural fury, letting a howl of wind and rain and cold into the ceremony taking place inside the warm interior of the church.
Louise had apparently been in the middle of her speech, and by the red-rimmed eyes that turn to stare at him and the litter of Kleenex balls on the ground, there had already been heartfelt words spoken. But with Phil's violent entrance, everything goes silent. Everyone looks at him, shock and sympathy and alarm and regret shining like dying stars on their faces.
Phil meets no one's gaze, not even Louise's, who uncertainly shifts away from the center of the stage when his intent becomes clear. In that movement, she reveals an open coffin of polished mahogany. The body inside is not yet visible, but as soon as Phil's eyes come to rest on the coffin, he almost loses his balance. Every bone in his body becomes like jello, and his knees threaten to give. In that moment he is certain his heart breaks—an unbearable, undeniable stab of physical pain in his chest, as if someone had stabbed him with a javelin. A fresh wave of tears builds up in his eyes, and a lump burns a hole in his throat.
Left foot forward. Right foot forward.
Slowly, shakily, Phil walks through the aisles of well-worn pews, ignoring his loud breath in the thick silence hanging over everyone. Louise automatically moves aside, her face softening when she and Phil lock eyes.
Phil would love to look at her for the rest of the funeral, much more than this coffin just a few feet away. But he's here for a reason, and he must fulfill it. It's the least he can do, and he knows it.
He tears his eyes away from his friend and manages to look at the foot of the coffin. A few seconds pass. He raises them to the golden embellishments on the handles. He waits again. And then at last, his heart heavy and torn, Phil lifts his eyes to the body inside of the coffin.
And he sees Daniel Howell, his face white and pale and lifeless.
Phil almost bursts into tears right then and there, but he forces himself to open his mouth. He doesn't waste time with formalities, with apologizing for his lateness and abrupt entrance, with going through the motions. It's only him and Dan right now. There's no one else in the room. No one to hear him but the man lying in front of him.
"I didn't think you'd leave me like this," Phil begins, his voice low and raspy and breaking from lack of use. "Not really. I—I thought we'd live a nice long life, get married or—or something—a-and die old. Old and successful and happy." His words catch on the word 'happy', and he has to close his eyes. The sight of Dan's body, chest unmoving without a breath or a heartbeat, is too much to bear right now. But he doesn't turn away. "I know you probably knew this already, but…you really had a place in my heart, Dan. A really, really big part. All of it, actually." He pauses, and then opens his eyes as he admits softly, "You took my whole heart. Every last piece. And you put it together in ways I never could've expected."
Someone lets out a wet sniffle behind him, reminding Phil that there were people listening to this message to Dan. And still he does not care. All he wants to do is pour out his heart, tell Dan all the things he wish he had told him before he died. And so he continues.
"I still can't believe you found me. You know, I was worthless before you," Phil adds, letting out a humorless burst of laughter at that. He shakes his head and grabs the edge of the coffin to steady himself, his vision swimming. A little dark spot on Dan's crisp shirt forms where one of Phil's tears falls. "I never thought I would mean so much to someone. The thought that someone—someone I didn't even know—actually wanted me…it was crazy. It still is crazy."
Phil sucks in a deep breath, his entire body trembling as he does his best to not let a sob escape him. He bows his head, breathing through clenched teeth. He's silently grateful to the audience that no one comments. "We left behind such a legacy," Phil says once he regains control. "You left behind such a legacy. So many people loved you, Dan. Maybe me, too, but I think mostly you. You're so funny and charismatic and unpredictable—they were in it for you. They really were."
His voice gets quieter, his next words meant only for Dan. "I was in it for you," he tells Dan in little more than a whisper thick with emotion. "I always was. I was in it for your humor, your laugh. Your personality. Your charm. Your creativity." Phil thinks for a second, and then lets himself confess things he had never brought to light before. "I was in it for your eyes. God, they were so beautiful, Dan. They still are. I can't see them anymore, but I like to think you're looking at me with them right now. All brown and swirly and deep and sparkling when you were happy.
"I was in it for your lips. You have the cutest smile, you know. You'd show a little bit of teeth, sometimes you'd lick your lips and it'd drive me crazy. I always wanted to see that smile. I wanted to be happy when you were sad so you could be happy, too, and then you'd smile and my whole day would get better. And then—and then—" An actual sob suddenly jumps forward, and Phil has to put his hand over his mouth, his eyebrows scrunched together as he begins to become overwhelmed.
He keeps fighting.
In a strangled voice Phil gasps out, "And then you kissed me, Dan. On my birthday. I remember it like it was yesterday—it was hardly two months ago, so I guess you could say it was kind of like yesterday. But you kissed me, Dan, you said happy birthday, I love you Phil Lester, I'll never let you go—and—and—I loved those lips even more." Fresh tears are rolling down his cheeks now, and he bows his head, wracked with cries and shivers. He barely hears people murmuring with surprise behind him, but it's the last thing on his mind. His voice is nothing but a sob now. "I was in it for your love," Phil cries, his hair beginning to stick to his cheeks with the wetness there. "I was in it because I loved you. I was in it because you loved me. I was in it because—because I needed you!"
His voice fades away as Phil's weeping takes its place, filling the wide room with the sounds of his crying. He can hear people crying with him, too, and normally that would make him feel better. But it doesn't, because they're all crying for the same purpose, the same person. It's not to make Phil feel better. It's to let them know they feel the same way, they're heartbroken too, they're affected the same way.
"But they're not," whispers Phil, his voice nasal and choppy as he pants for breath between sobs. "They're not affected the same way. None of them knew you like I did. You didn't hug any of them the way you hugged me. You never smiled at them the way you smiled at me. You didn't kiss any of them the way you kissed me. You're gone, Dan, and—and you took part of me with you, you know that?" He completely folds in half, practically hugging Dan's corpse. "Please don't go, Dan," he cries out, his lungs heaving. "I need you. I can't do this alone. I need you. I want you. I love you. You can't leave me, not now!"
He might've said some other things, some nonsense. Some sweet nothings that were anything but sweet. Someone's pulling at him, though, whispering into his ear and tugging him away from the coffin. Phil fights against them, not screaming but just fighting. Thrashing to get one last look of his best friend before they cover it up with wood, nail it down, put it in a hole, bury it forever. But just like the way the drunk driver had lost control of his car and veered into the wrong lane, going against traffic, the people who crowd Phil's vision obscure Dan far too fast. Take him away too quick. And they don't even let Phil properly say good-bye, like the way he had planned.
He sits down hard on one of the pews, sobbing into someone's shoulder. He thinks it's Dan's mom, with the familiar way she smells, but it hurts him more than comforts him. Because it smells like her son, so close to her son, and it's too much. If he had more strength, Phil would turn his head, but he can't. And so he keeps crying. And crying. And wishing and hoping with all his might that maybe, somewhere, Dan hears him. And cries with him.
Outside the rain keeps falling, gray and cold, just like the blackened ice in Phil's chest.
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It had fallen then the same way it falls today. It drowns out the cars honking in the distance, filling his mind with white noise. He isn't wearing a jacket, and frankly, if he desired a slow death, Phil could probably just sit out here and freeze to death or die of pneumonia. His entire body is soaked, so he assumes it'd make no difference when he hits the water below.
He hadn't given up. Not for so long. Yes, he had turned to cigarettes. Yes, his bin is full of empty bottles. Yes, the London apartment is trashed. Yes, there are scars strangling his wrists. But Phil had kept going. Kept putting one foot in front of the other, kept walking, kept hoping.
But that was when it was acceptable. That was when his relatives, and Dan's relatives, and all his friends and his friends' relatives were all mourning too. More than half a year later, though, people have accepted it. Accepted the tragic accident as part of life. Even both Phil's and Dan's families have thrown away their last tissue, put away the last box, and moved on.
Somehow Phil has not yet found the acceptance everyone else has. He's still stuck on ground zero, still screaming himself awake at night, still going to Dan's room on impulse and climbing into his bed, only to break down when he finds it empty and wakes up in the morning bathed in the stale scent of the man who died too young. The blankets and pillows are always damp.
People assured him that time will heal. But it clearly hasn't. All time has done for him is remind him of the chances he missed, the hints he never picked up, and the memories he wishes he could relive. If anything, he's just gotten worse. Bad enough that two days ago he was contemplating suicide. And now here Phil is, staring at the churning, murky waters below, frothing white when it collides with the jagged stones of the cliff. He doesn't know how deep it is, but he knows it's far enough that he'll die on impact.
He sidles ever closer to the edge. His toes are already suspended in midair. Phil is shaking and crying so hard that he's surprised he hasn't fallen over yet.
And he stands there. Thinking. Wondering if the skies will part, if sunshine will warm his face, if Dan will come down and tell him that he has so much to live for. That Phil doesn't need him to live, to succeed, to love.
His delirious mind conjures up an image far, far below. He thinks it looks like Dan. Calling him. Smiling at him with those beautiful shining eyes, saying I need you. I'm here for you. I love you. Phil thinks it's the most wonderful thing he has ever seen.
Right foot forward, left foot forward.
Phil jumps.
(somewhere Dan is, in fact, watching him. waiting. crying. because he knows Phil will wake up back in a bed that isn't his. because he knows Phil will walk on a perilous tightrope for the rest of his life, a life of length unknown. treading the thin line between death and life, too scared to die but to broken to live. and Dan wants Phil, too.)
END