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There's a stand off moment where they're three paces away from each other, Dan and his dad staring each other down. Their angry words ring in the air around them. Dan's throat feels raw and he can feel wet spittle on his lip from how emphatically he'd been screaming.
"Dan," his mum says, her hand on his arm. "You need to go to your room."
It breaks the spell. He takes a step back.
His father still stands there. There's something dark on his face, something cold in his eyes.
Dan hates that he knows the same expression is probably on his own face.
*
"I hate it, Phil," Dan says.
He's not crying. He won't cry. He's not a fucking kid.
"You'll be at uni in just a few more months." Phil's being nice, but he's wrong. It's so many months - seven, eight if he can't move over the summer.
"How do you do this?" Dan asks. "How do you live with parents who act like they can't fucking stand you and don't want you to be happy ever?"
Phil doesn't, is the answer. Phil's parents accept him. It's just Dan in this shit situation.
"Dan." Phil sounds pained. "Your mum and dad love you."
Dan feels a hot flare of anger. It isn't love he sees on his dad's face.
Phil just doesn't know what it's like.
*
A knock on his bedroom door wakes him up the next morning.
He's drooling onto his pillow, sleeping hard after being up half the night waiting for his heart rate to calm and his temper to cool. Phil talked with him through most of it. Dan's not sure what he's done to deserve someone who really wants to listen even when what Dan has to say isn't nice at all.
He swallows against a dry throat and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, then calls out for her to come in.
For a moment they just stare at each other. Dan feels frustrated and sad and ashamed.
"You shouldn't catch us off guard with things," she says, sitting on his bed.
She looks tired, hair pulled back and circles around her eyes. He knows he's part of why she looks like that, just exhausted by the shit lot she's got in life with him as a son. It aches at him, gnaws at his heart. He wants to be better. He just gets mad sometimes.
Dan does wait longer than he should to tell his parents things, and he knows it. That little voice in the back of his head is like a countdown clock, reminding him with every morning he wakes up and goes downstairs and says absolutely nothing that he's only making things worse.
But there's always the problem that when he's having a rare peaceful moment with his parents he doesn't want to fuck it up by saying something he knows will make them cross, and when he's already fighting with them he doesn't want to add fuel to the fire and have him say he can't go at all.
"Sorry," he mumbles, and turns over to face the wall.
*
Could they even stop him going?
Dan feels like they could. He feels like they're his mum and dad and if they tell him he can't do something, he might fight it but he'll usually listen.
Why does he feel like he's eight years old again, toddling around in his mum's heels, like he's just looking around him at what he sees and trying desperately to mimic it? It's not just his parents - even Phil, really. He sees the freedom Phil has, and he knows Phil's a few years older but how does he get to the place Phil is?
He's eighteen now, though. He's done with school. Shouldn't be allowed to do what he wants? Shouldn't he have that freedom?
But when he tries to assert it, the second his parents argue back, he just - he just loses it. He knows screaming and shouting and almost-not-quite crying doesn't make him look grown up. But he's not sure what would. He's not sure why they don't just accept when he says something.
*
"It just sucks," Dan says. He covers his face with his pillow and shouts into it. He knows Phil can still hear the sound, even if it's muffled.
"Your mum sucks," Phil says. "Oh, that - heh. That sounded worse than I thought it would."
"I hate you." Dan also hates that it makes him laugh, and then he hates that he stops laughing because he's picturing it and - ew. Ew, ew.
"So do you think you can't come?" Phil asks.
He's trying to sound casual, but Dan can feel the nerves in his voice.
"I'm coming." Dan says it firmly. "I don't care what they say."
"Can I say something without you getting mad?" Phil asks.
"Uh," Dan says, because that doesn't sound promising. "Okay."
Phil chews on his bottom lip, then blurts out. "I don't think I want you to come unless your parents are okay with it."
Dan's throat feels suddenly tight. "Oh."
"It's just - Dan." Phil sounds like he's pleading. "I don't want your parents to hate me. It's kind of like, important to me. I've not even met them yet. I don't want them to think that I'm bad for you before I've even had the chance to make a good impression."
Dan does have to stop and count. He does have to take a few breaths to beat back the initial swell of hurt pride and anger.
"Fine," he says, in a voice that conveys the only thing he has left to feel: defeat.
*
Dan manages to avoid his parents for two entire days before his mum informs him that she's cooked and his presence is strongly requested.
He knows she's just trying to keep the peace. He's also tired of eating crisps and fast food.
His brother's out with friends. It's just Dan and his parents at the table.
His dad barely meets his eye. Dan doesn't say anything, almost a belligerent silence.
His mum finally sighs. "You're both being twats, you know that, right? If I could reach you both, I'd knock your heads together and hope it shook some sense loose."
She sounds so genuinely exasperated that Dan has to work not to crack a smile.
He can tell his dad is doing the same.
"I just want to go see Phil," Dan says. "You let me go to fucking Paris on my own - with my girlfriend. Why can't I go to Manchester?"
He can feel his mum's eyes on him. He's sure she understands that 'go see Phil' has some sort of connotation to it that they're not speaking out loud about. He's not so sure if his dad understands.
He's not sure what he'd even say if he tried to explain it. He and Phil are in that strange state of undeniably something, but neither of them have really said what.
"We knew the people you went to Paris with," his mum says. "We don't know Phil, and it's an entire week."
Dan remembers the last conversation with Phil and crosses his arms sulkily. "Anyway, I might not be invited anymore after all. He said he didn't want me to come unless you were fine with it, because he doesn't want you to hate him."
"Oh." His mum is smiling. Fucking Phil, of course he knew the right way about it all along. "Well, that sounds lovely. Doesn't it?"
She's directing the question at Dan's dad, who is still looking at Dan like Dan is a stranger sitting at his table. Maybe he's catching on after all. It's a queasy realization for Dan. "Sure," he finally says. "You'll have him around, though. We'll need to meet him."
It's neither an admonishment nor acceptance, but it's - something. "Okay," Dan says, because he's sure Phil won't mind.
"There we are now. Grumpy faces gone." Dan's mum reaches out and pats his cheek.
Dan ducks away, laughing. “Ugh. I hate you.”
"Of course you do," she says, going back to eating her meal. "It's your job. All teenagers hate their parents."
Dan meets his dad's eyes. His dad lifts one eyebrow. "And the only one you can keep, apparently."
His dad is smiling, clearly meaning it as a joke even though it doesn’t feel very funny to Dan.
But he pushes past the resentment at the dig and smiles back. At least he's gotten one win today.