Dan slammed his mug against the draining board a little too hard considering the sun was shining. The remaining coffee lashed against the sides of the mug, spitting out in protest. Dan could feel a headache coming on. And the guy was still telling the same story.
The walls peeled orange paint that had long since faded into beige. Strategically placed frames hung over chips in walls, but they were overrunning. They owned all the walls. There was little they could do but sit upon their chairs like moss upon rocks and wait for the end. There was a fog that constantly clung to the windows no matter how much you scrubbed at them. But the capped man still cleaned them; every Wednesday at 10am, the scraping ladder pushed against the bricked wall, a race against the bell.
Dan could never remember the man's name.
He had long since lost count of whose turn it was to wash up the mugs in the sink. They stood stacked high with a kind of precision that comes from teachers whose words on pages have started to buzz. Who spent four years organising puzzles to have energy seep into the rotting carpet.
Out the window the sun shined. Which seemed to cheer people up.
But not Dan, Dan couldn't see the fascination with warm weather. It was boring; it was people lounging on sun chairs hoping to get a tan to pretend to be something they're not, letting skin cancer boil in their blood because pale isn't sexy. It was shorts that were too short, and warm weather that always fell too short, the excited chatter of it might hit sixteen degrees today! Whilst people in every other country laughed. Not Iceland. But then Dan would trade Britain for Iceland any day.
They had interesting weather. The chaotic kind. The kind that Dan liked. Where the clouds turned stormy grey and lightning rippled like a wave, thunder crashing into ears.
312/365
It was just a statistic. And in a way Dan liked it, he liked the continuity, the reliability of rain drops upon the windows, the greyness of the clouds. In the same way that he liked the coffee rings on the desks and the lilting brown stains at the lips of the mugs, in the same way he liked the pencil shavings that seemed to sow themselves into the carpet and the curling pages of the books that lined every room. In the same way that caffeine leaked into the air, the curling smoke like a sauna.
He just wanted a thunderstorm every now and then.
Phil Lester was that thunderstorm.
I'm the new head of Media studies. A firm hand that gripped onto Dan's and eyes that didn't lack the joy like everyone else's. He was quite sure Mr Reeves chair was part of him now. He made sunshine chaotic somehow. Maybe it was the small smirk.
He didn't belong in such a rundown place. But then maybe that was exactly where he belonged, who said that people had to match their surroundings? Maybe the rain had sent him for a reason.
All Dan knew was that his eyes were a sea.
There were three broken chairs in Dan's classroom and none of the windows opened. He taught on the ground floor, which was the most susceptible to burglaries, hence why the windows didn't open. The school had a reputation for having projectors stolen. Sucks to them. None of them worked anyway.
The ground floor saved his heart rate but also meant he had to teach opposite Jewel Figgalapola, who liked to wave and smile, tilting her chest forward slightly too much. Every so often she would invite him home. Dan wondered how she wasn't used to the eyes on the floor and the small whispers of no. Dan wondered whether he would ever be able to tell her the world aloud, gay, the word that fell in wisps around his head. And Dan wondered whether you were even allowed to such a word when you hadn't dated in 5 years. He also high suspected that Jewel was the kind of woman to brush it off, it doesn't matter, I still like you, that kind, the kind either so high in the clouds that the cotton fills their ears or so close to the ground that they just don't care anymore.
Dan wondered how much her parents must have hated her to not realise that the last thing you need with a last name like Figgalapola was a first name like Jewel. Maybe she was just after his last name. He wouldn't even blame her. It did match that of a semi-famous golfer. David Alexander Howell; an English professional golfer from Swindon. Who could top that?
Dan tried six white board pens before one worked and even then it was faint, boiled by the sun; he counted two children asleep. He handed round the sheet and sat down onto his chair. He was almost grateful when it swung back a little to accept him. The constant loose screw that was going to fall out one day. He didn't know why he was bothering. The concept of a spinning chair with wheels was wasted on him.
He wanted to inspire students, he wanted to wave his arms about and explain stories about the span of history, to utilise all the quirky historical stories in his head that his friends complained about before he could even get to the end of his sentence. He wanted to be to his students what his own history teacher was to him, without the off-putting grey squirrel on his lip.
He let his enthusiasm out like the lapping sea, but the sand had soaked it all up. Every year he felt his own self getting dryer, becoming the sand, melting into his chair like he had seen so many other teachers. The moss on the rock. He was 28 and he lived in a one bed flat above an old Chinese takeaway, and he was long since sick of sweet and sour chicken. There was something odd about the luminosity with which it shined. He felt his bones ache when he stood up. He was sure he was going to die at the school.
Who was he kidding? He couldn't inspire people, he could barely inspire himself to get out of the chair. He was sure his hairline was receding.
He was scared that one day he was going to take Jewel up on her offer. He thought about it at night when the wood in the window pane knocked like the coming of the Armageddon.
The bell rang and the sand scattered in the wind. He thought about the bill lying upon his table. The thought of another pressurised signature tugged at his bones.
A knock at the door. The thunderstorm was back, his blue eyes leaking through the meshed glass.
Dan still didn't know why the glass had to be meshed, or why there had to be locks on the cupboard doors, or why his desk was bolted to the floor. The school had a history that could wrap twice around the moon.
Dan still felt a small tug at his lips. A few sand grains sucked into the hurricane.
Phil opened the door, closing it slowly behind him.
"Mr Lester," Dan nodded, "What brings you here?"
Dan noted that his tie had small cats on it.
"Just checking in, is it meeting night tonight?"
Dan got the sense from his eyes that he already knew. He sat down on the desk, kicking his legs like a sandstorm.
"Yeah, till five." Dan said, rubbing his eyes, as if the grey under them would smudge into something more beautiful.
"Long day, huh?"
Dan smiled just slightly, "the longest, yours?"
"Well the computers are a little slower than at my last school, but the seats are a little bit comfier so there's something."
"Oh f-damn I forgot you got to work in the media lounge."
"Yeah."
"Apparently they think that to teach history you have to teach in a building that has lived through it."
Phil laughed, the winds swirled a little.
"Will you show me to the meeting? I err don't know where it is."
Dan sat up, stretching out his arms over his head, his jumper tugging up just a little. He swear he heard Phil's breath hitch. "Yeah sure, let's go" he said, his voice catching midway through a yawn, although he swore there was a small spring in his step.
The hallway had matte photos of the same children smiling, their blazers tugging at their shoulders. Look, kids are smiling. This is a great school. Come here please. We need funds. The patterns of faces repeated themselves after a while, the same six or seven faces, only the most photogenic to represent the school. Some of the posters even had comic sans. There was a small amount of bile in Dan's throat.
He was beginning to feel the sand in his eyes.
"So, umm where was your last school then?"
"Eton."
Dan's feet stopped working. He almost tripped on a non-existent crack, spilling books like a waterfall.
"Eton?!"
Phil laughed, "Eton, yes, I umm actually went there when I was younger."
Dan's eyes grew wider still, growing into small black holes. Phil was scared they were going to start sucking things into another dimension.
"Wow umm what the f-hell brings you here?" He said, a hand motioning to the rather questionable brown stain that leaked onto the ceiling above, the ceiling panel dislodged slightly to reveal the ominous blackness above.
Phil looked down at the floor, "I just want to inspire people."
Dan opened the door to the meeting room, the air beige and peeling like the walls, the people melted into their chairs, the seams splitting and spilling onto the stained carpet. Dan wondered who had settled on orange carpet. He wondered if they were still sitting around this room, eyes boring into the carpet. He wondered whether they regretted the decision.
Teach to the exam was something Dan hated almost as much as you must have more British history in your syllabus which he hated almost as much as the tick box next to 'presents British values'. He often wondered what British values were, and exactly one weaves them into the thick air of a lesson.
There were two piles of paper on his desk. To be marked. To be handed back. Like a constant cycle laughing at Dan's lack of a life externally to the greying windows. Not trapped. Just lacking in will to move.
The papers were organised in order of priority, with his gloomy a-level coursework lying at the top, eyeing him with vengeance like a western film. Dan leaned back on his chair. He didn't even know if he could start, despite the fact that his pens were arranged to fit his colour code.
The thunderstorm was knocking against the pane of the door. Dan leaned forward slightly. Phil.
The door peeled blue, despite the fact it was painted just last year.
"Hi." He said. He looked sheepish.
Dan wondered what commanded someone to come up with a word like sheepish and what commanded them to label it as meaning showing or feeling embarrassment from shame or a lack of self-confidence, because embarrassed was how sheep always looked. Figures. To Dan it was more bored and mildly pissed off, which he guessed worked too.
Phil gripped at a plastic lunchbox.
"Oh you're busy, it doesn't matter." And Dan noticed the level of cheer in his voice, and Dan noticed the prick of his ears.
He turned to leave but Dan sensed he was never going to really go.
"I'm not busy, sit."
"It's just I don't really know anyone in the staff room and well, they said you'd be here, and the media room is filled with some sort of ICT club where everyone has glasses, and…"
Dan laughed, "Its fine, sit, I don't get company very often."
Dan pulled one of the essays of the pile, its paper flimsy under his fingers, the handwriting slanting to the point where it was nearly illegible. It wasn't like Dan hated all of his students. Just some of them. Sometimes he really really hated some of them.
Sometimes he saw a glimmer, a familiar look reflected in their eyes like a moon on the ripple of the lake. A child looking up who wanted to learn, who wanted to do more than breathe the thick air and listen to the echoing losing battle of shouts.
Phil was wearing a paisley bow tie. He had cream cheese and cress sandwiches with the corners cut off. Dan wondered if he was the sort of person with an herb garden on his window sill.
Dan became tempted to ask Phil if he had seen the game last night. Even though he hadn't, he had heard Mr Callaway talking this morning. Dan's television only got static these days, unless you held the receiver out the window, but then you couldn't see the screen, and frankly Dan didn't know who would bother to do that. Sometimes he turned it on just to watch the static it was oddly calming.
Although his DVD player did work. And he did have all 10 seasons of friends on boxset.
"Are you going to eat any lunch?" Phil asked, his sandwich perching awkwardly in his hand, the plastic chair making him look like a giant. Although less Hagrid and more Madame Maxime. Dan suspected Phil the type to speak French.
"I usually get it from the canteen, although sometimes I don't bother."
Dan didn't have a great diet, if you consider it a diet at all, it mostly consisted of whatever lurked in his cupboards or whatever lurked on the menu at McDonalds. Sometimes he went back to the sweet and sour, if he felt low enough. He only hated it when he stood in front of a mirror.
"That's not very good," Phil's brow rumpled like he was actually concerned, "eating is important you know."
"So I've heard."
Dan was mid-lecture, building up to the assassination of Alexander II, with two kids eyes lit up on the front row. Like lights turned on in some sort of game show, the small bead of sweat which clung to Dan's forehead desperate to keep the lights on. Dan hoped there was a prize other than pride. The rain etched into the bricks, encircling the building, hurling and throwing itself against the side of the walls. Rain with a death wish. Dan felt a little too entangled within the weather.
A knock at the door. A thunderstorm within a thunderstorm. A paradox. And Dan could feel the waves rolling over the carpet. Ridding themselves of the sand just a little.
"Mr Howell?" Phil asked, and Dan could see him smirk a little.
"Yes, sir?" He smiled again and two girls on the back room exchanged a glance.
"Do you have those textbooks? I'm covering Ms Frank's class."
"Yeah course, Barney, will you pass Sir those books please?"
"Thank you, Mr Howell."
"You're welcome."
They'd nicknamed him heart eyes Howell. Not to his face, but in whispers that wrapped around backs as he talked to Phil in the corridor. Squatting in the corner of his classroom. Just outside the inches of the school gates.
He had mixed feelings. He'd heart someone mentions love eyes Lester, and he wondered if it was half true. His heart fluttered and he couldn't deny that he cared.
Because fuck he cared.
Phil ate lunch with him every day in his classroom. The rain beating against the panes 312/365 of the time. The rest of the time the sun shined. But it was still chaotic. A thunderstorm lived inside Phil.
They sat atop of opposite desks, Dan's fingers tracing the grooves of the desks as they talked.
"You like game of thrones?!"
"Of course!"
"You?"
"I have all five seasons on my computer." Dan waved a hand nonchalantly towards the computer that sat in the corner.
"No way."
The clock had only moved slightly, the little Black Hand tilted just five minutes more than when the bell went.
"We could watch it now?"
Phil motioned outside the window at the drabs of students walking past.
"We could draw the curtains?"
"Oh I wonder what that would look like we were doing."
They both blushed bright red.
"So shall I?" Dan said, after a pause, motioning the black curtains, light finding the small holes and filtering through like little worms.
"To watch game of thrones?" Phil said, his head moving slowly.
"Not to make out, Phil!" he shouted,
"Just making sure."
But Dan did sit slightly closer to Phil.
It became somewhat of a routine, the inching closer like teenagers at a cinema date, the darkness reminding Dan of his own teenage dates.
Of movies that were blurred with a fear of it's going to happen, it has to happen, of misremembering's of the definition of 'the move' and panicked mid-film chatter than was met with the finger over the lips and the shushes that spat sprinkles of coke down the back of his neck.
The scrambling of hands on desks and on light switches like rock faces at the knock. Sir have you got that essay I gave you? A quick look at the darkness, a quick look at Mr Lester. Routine.
Rumours spread like wildfire.
"Dan!"
The sky was fading. Or at least that was the expression. Dan had never understood why it was called fading, if anything it was boldening, re-defining as the sharp edge of night. The razor cut light that bore down and evoked emotions.
Not fading. But coming into its own.
"Dan!"
Dan fumbled at the lining of his pocket, his books stacked one too high to play the balancing game and yet he was on one leg, his fingers grappling for the key card that would show the green light. The screen on the door was foggy. Dan could already see that one of the streetlamps was out.
"Dan!"
Dan turned around, his books tumbling from his arms like they were floating, flying, trying to form a pattern on the floor. Dan was tempted to look for the spiral. But instead he looked up.
Phil's hair was slightly more dishevelled than it had been in the staff room when he was laughing at Ms May's joke for the third time that week and sipping coffee for the third time that day. His tie was loosened slightly and Dan could see that the first button had been pulled open, the sleeves of his pale blue cardigan pushed up to reveal his lunar wrists, a crater on the moon. His glasses were tucked into the top pocket of his shirt.
Dan tried to regulate his breathing.
But there had been a lot of stairs and now there was a lot of Phil and Dan had to settle for breathing at a deeper level.
"Hey I was looking for you."
"Evidently" Dan waved an arm at the corridor Phil had just ran from, bending down and feeling his suit pants clutch at his thighs. Maybe I should go on a run. Was it really that time again? The time where one feels bad about the body and vows two runs a day only to lie on the sofa. Sometimes Dan measured seasons in fluctuating body confidence.
His scattered arms collected his scattered books.
Phil pulled his key card from his trouser pocket, hearing the beep and the little green light. He swooped down so he was at Dan's height.
Dan was sure the wallpaper had stopped peeling. He was sure he could hear the distant rolling thunder, the promise of crashing waves.
Phil gathered the books in his arms, shaking his head slightly when Dan offered to take them back and Dan was sure he felt the moon smile.
"Where's your car?" Phil asked.
"Phil what the fuck is this some kind of cheesy film…" Dan stuttered, trying to forget dark nights of sing-along films and the clutching of tissues when the music started playing and for god's sake why is my heart beating so fast. "Did someone watch the breakfast club again because frankly I don't want your earring."
"Profanity!" Phil exclaimed, "Besides actually my ears are pierced."
Dan stopped, "You're kidding right?"
"Actually, no." Phil gulped, "I begged my mum for days when I was twelve and she finally gave in, my first pair were plastic skulls from Claire's."
Dan laughed, "Actually you know I had a lip piercing for a while."
"You did?"
"Yeah in my wild sowing straight days."
The air seemed to thicken, the moon passing behind clouds that hadn't been there before, as if quivering in shame and embarrassment. The sheepish moon. The farm creatures made it to the moon.
"At least you didn't get a tattoo in yours"
Dan skipped a beat, in yours,
did that mean, could it mean, was love eyes lester,
Dan wanted to drift behind the clouds too, to hide the deep red petunias that sprouted on his face, to consider the endless possibilities of Phil Lester.
"You got a tattoo?"
"Yeah, it had a girl's name in a heart and everything," Phil looked down at the floor, "the laser removal was punishment enough I guess."
The clouds stopped tingling and fell still, as if they thought that moving would disturb the equilibrium, would cause a ripple which break the moment. As if they had ears, stretching to hear what happened next.
Dan's eyes too had joined the floor, or rather had joined the corner of Phil's flannel shirt, his eyes running over the patterns. He could see the reflection of the flickering street lamp in Phil's glasses.
"Err Dan?"
"Yeah?" Dan's voice was raspy, as if the clouds had fallen down a rabbit hole and into his throat, pouring out like fog.
Phil looked up.
"Would you erm maybe want to get a coffee with me?"
Thunder cracked, and the clouds seemed to scatter like geese. There was a storm on the horizon.
"I would love to."
The rain slammed against the windscreen as if it were trying to penetrate Dan's face. Let's just wait for the rain to pass, had turned five minutes to ten minutes to an eternity where their backs pressed against leather seats encrusted with crumbs and their feet tapped against the unheated floor. Dan couldn't remember exactly what time the heater had shorted out. He didn't miss it much. He almost liked the way the cold ran along his fingers.
The rain still slammed against the windscreen.
And every instinct was wanting Dan to shut his eyes, to screw them tight and draw lines across his eyes, because the water had turned to hale, and his mind told him that a glass screen couldn't protect him, that it would crack a lightning scar. But his eyes were open with fascination. Washing the sand away. He could almost see again.
At one point Dan looked over to find Phil's eyes closed, his eyes softer behind his glasses, and Dan could count the small lines on his forehead. Dan was reminded of the move. Dan was reminded of the rain and the coffee shop that was waiting for the thunderstorm to pass.
The windscreen wipers had long since stopped moving.
Phil tilted his head to the side, his facial features falling to create a small smile, and a look in his eyes that reminded Dan of clouds and cotton. And Dan was filled with a very small shot of possibility. Phil's face rolled against the leather of the seat, his expression relaxed despite the heavy rain, it seemed to speak to him, it seemed to speak to him of future mornings with duvets pulled up to chins and a soft smile that glowed with evanescence, and a drifting thought of happiness that he was too lazy to catch.
Dan almost forgot to breathe.
The rain had stopped (or eased as the majority said, with weather there was always a chance of another round) and the pavements glistened with dew drops, drooping every now and then as if it were taking all their effort just to remain straight and strong.
Like himself, Dan thought.
But it was no time for jokes, the reflections in the puddles showed Dan of the proximity of Phil's hand to his. Dan closed his hand into a fist just to avoid stretching his fingers out, making the leap of faith.
The last thing Dan wanted was to grow into the chairs but there was just too big of a risk. And no one takes risks in a thunderstorm.
The steam curled around the lenses of Phil's glasses, making the whole world fog. And the fog crawled all around. The clear cut rain fell outside and yet inside it was foggy, it was unclear, the wisps of smoke curling around the furniture like a bar from the twenties. The roaring twenties. They did not know what was about to hit them.
And Dan's face was blurred in Phil's vision. And one of Phil's buttons was done up wrong, throwing everything out of proportion. As Phil hastily scrubbed his glasses with the corner of his flannel shirt; everything was wrong.
Except it wasn't. It wasn't wrong. Nothing is ever wrong. It was chaotic, it was the swirling storm sweeping up leaves in its wake.
The lilting music passed overhead for the fourth time. But the voices remained constant, raging within their own storm. And Phil's voice had begun to lilt towards something else, something which was pushing up the hairs along his arms, something which was lilting against the pink of his cheeks, the fog settling and clearing. The thought capitalised itself in his mind. And for the first time Dan could see it clearly. No longer in edges of fumbled ties and dark rooms with scratched desks. This was something that was real.
Phil's lips became pinker the more he stared at them.
The bell above the door rattled as they pushed it open, the rain still constant but lighter, tickling the pools in the street, tiny little circles forming on the surface. The line between art and reality is forever blurred. But there are no lines. Dan was done trying to define them. Trying to draw the lines of his life together, trying to tie them together on a string on a corner of a map, he was tired of trying to draw a line in pen between him and Phil, a certain point where a question became an answer and when an answer became a commitment.
The rain was pounding in Dan's ears. And for once he agreed. For once he listened to the thunderstorm. And for once he leant forward to kiss Phil, his arm lingering upon the rough fabric of his jacket, Phil's hair falling against his skin as his hands moved to curve around Dan's back and two eyes stared from across the street.
"See you tomorrow, Mr Howell." Phil whispered into Dan's ear, turning around, the light shining at his back and a smile that told he was proud to have gotten the line out.
Phil was waiting by the school gate when Dan's car pulled in. The engine stuttered with a passion that Dan felt in his heart, coughing and spluttering like Dan wanted to. His tie felt tighter around his neck. His eyes focused upon a small splash of dirt on the windscreen.
Phil came to the window of the car, his face framed by the bending acrylic of the car body, a smudge covering up the left side of his face. Dan couldn't stop the smile that spread across his face. In the sky the clouds parted just a little, Dan was sure of it.
Phil's fingertips clung to the top of the car door, and Dan could see that they were perfectly white, pen smudged along his index finger.
"Phil!" he hissed,
"What?"
"There are people here."
"Dan, it's not like I'm pushing you against the bonnet of the car, I'm literally just stood here."
"Right." He said, his hand lingering on Phil's sleeve for slightly too long.
There were giggles and whispers that circulated the back of the classrooms. Dan wished he had a net to catch them all. But history was making him smile more than usual. And more people were paying attention, even if it was for all the wrong reasons.
They're totally a couple, did you see the way he touched his arm. I saw them leave in the same car yesterday. The red one, with the bump at the back.
And Dan swore that the staff room hushed a little when he walked into the room. The waves rolled along the orange carpet, gathering the dust and washing away the eternal pencil shavings. He swore he even saw Mr Reeves stand up from his chair. The mugs in the sink had all been washed.
"Did you see the game?" Mr Callaway called, the papers splayed on the table in front of him, with no fingerprints as evidence that he was even intending to look at them.
And for once Dan had the courage to break a lie. "Actually, you know, I'm not a huge sports fan."
Mr Callaway's face dropped a little, a lilting whisper finding Dan's ears, "you know what, me neither, more of a fan of the nature documentaries." And Dan couldn't help but smile.
He swore even the wallpaper stopped peeling.
For once he didn't trip on the third step up.
There was a semi sort of darkness and shoes that quite clearly gripped too tight to their owners. A dance floor which people walked around, ties stretching closer to the floor and a cry of this is nothing like the films. Half-hearted balloons sighed above tables with fake confetti.
And Dan's hand was in Phil's. Beneath the table cloth. But Ms Marram was still smiling at them softly, balancing out the etched scowl across Figgalopola's face.
Phil's suit was a kind of black that clung to all of his features, his blue eyes somehow shining through the shady lighting. Dan wanted to nuzzle his head in the echoing sharpness of his neck, across the slightly stubble that lined it like a painting. Mr Reeves was still trying to make small talk. But at least he had gotten out of his chair, even if he had begun to melt into another.
A few girls in puffy pink dresses smiled and pointed with a subtly that didn't go unnoticed.
In the hallway there were armchairs and slightly better lighting. A staircase that wound with a sign that screamed of forbidden promises. Dan sunk into the one of the left, his hand still conjoined to Phil's with a softness he never wanted to sharpen. The shadow of the balcony falling over their faces as he tucked his feet into the chair. He could understand why people melted into them. He also understood why standing was important.
Their words drifted as Dan looked upon the balcony, occasionally drifting to the softness of Phil's face. Well I think if a killer were to come, he would come from up there. Yeah then what? He'd swing from the chandelier. Like Sia? Like Sia. I mean it would be easy really, where would all the kids go? It would be a blood bath.
Dan yawned nonchalantly.
"Psychopath." Phil brushed his lips against Dan's cheeks.
"Maybe."
At some point they made it to the bar where the lighting shook a little bit more. Where young girls passed and giggled. Where Dan still hadn't let go of Phil's hand.
The man behind the bar had the kind of moustache Dan imagine he was proud of. He twizzled it in his fingers and Dan laughed a little too hard.
And Dan drank a little too much.
"This is our song!" Phil shouted over the music which was pounding louder with every drink.
"Phil we don't have a song, I don't think I've ever even listened to music with you!"
"It's wonder wall, it's everyone's song!"
And Dan couldn't argue with that.
Not even when Phil dragged him onto the floor, hands clutching together and spinning him around, the room too blurry to see faces or hear laughs, but the steady sense of clapping reach the red of his cheeks as he span, and his feet slipped on the floor as laughed slipped on his tongue.
Outside he swore he heard a small clap of thunder.
Thank you for reading, feedback in any form would be greatly appreciated ! hope u have a great day ^-^