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The heat is intense. Sweat beads on his temples, his neck, rolls down beneath the collar of his shirt and heightens the chill. The thrill.
It’s not his to feel but he feels it anyway when he looks over and catches the way the flames cast shadows on Phil’s face. There’s a peace there Dan’s never seen before. He doesn’t blink as he takes in the carnage.
Dan’s felt drawn to Phil from the very beginning. Where children’s faces fall, where grown men look frightened and caged if Phil gets too close - Dan can never get close enough. He feeds on it, the power of Phil’s otherworldliness. He craves it, needs it in and all around him like he needs food and water and oxygen.
He never feels more alive than when he has that marble white skin pressed against his, cold fingers gripping him, lips and teeth on his neck. When Phil’s hands hold Dan’s hips and his nails dig half moons into Dan’s thighs, he thinks about how no one else is strong enough to take this. No one else is worthy of drinking Phil’s darkness.
Phil’s just a man, but he’s not like any other man, any other person Dan’s ever known, and Dan hasn’t been the same since the day they met. For every step a stranger takes further away from Phil, Dan’s always taken one closer.
He’s watched Phil try to make himself palatable for too many years. He’s watched the hurt on Phil’s face etch itself there so often it seems determined to make a permanent home of his features.
People can’t handle him. They don’t know what to do with the way Phil makes them feel. Conversations fall away, tension lacing the air with silence. They slouch their shoulders and back away.
There’s no pain on Phil’s face now, though. He’s not shrinking back and neither is Dan. Phil turns to look at him, his lips drawn up, teeth bared in a kind of reckless joy that makes him look wild. His hair has fallen over his forehead and into eyes that look nothing more than sunken black holes in the flickering light of the blaze. His shoes and socks lie somewhere in the darkness behind them, discarded in the grass.
There’s no one else around and Dan’s glad, for more than just the obvious reason. He’s glad he’s the only one witness to Phil’s catharsis. When Phil looks back to this moment as the start of a new kind of acceptance of himself and his urges, he’ll remember that Dan was right next to him, as he has been for years. He’ll remember Dan’s answering smile and the way they lit the sky on fire together just to watch it burn.
Dan reckons this is what was always meant for Phil. Maybe the confusion and unease all this time has been a symptom of denying his baser instincts, of trying to fit himself into a box that could never contain him. Perhaps he’s not meant to be the kind-hearted weirdo on the internet who spouts random animal facts and pretends he doesn’t know how dirty his jokes can be.
Dan’s spent many a night laid awake with the sound of Phil breathing next to him in the quiet of their bedroom, mind overflowing with questions. Phil makes Dan question all the things he’d ever taken at face value to be true.
Phil’s just a man. He eats. He cries. He bleeds.
He loves. Dan knows Phil loves him, more than he’s ever loved anything.
He’s a good person. He likes making people happy. Mostly from afar, behind the safety glass of a computer and a persona, but still. He doesn’t wish harm on anyone, even if that’s the fear his presence inspires.
But it can’t be said that Phil doesn’t contain multitudes, because Dan’s never seen him look the way he looks now, basking in destruction of his making. Revelling in tearing something down.
Dan’s never felt what he feels looking at Phil now. He’s never felt his arms prickle with goosebumps when Phil steps in closer. He’s never felt what other people feel and he never will, but there’s a power to him tonight that makes Dan shiver.
It’s not fear. He’s not afraid.
He’s mesmerized. He’s drawn in like a magnet, like a moth to flame. Phil watches the flame and Dan watches Phil and he knows Phil would never hurt him. He knows that without a doubt.
But he’d follow Phil into these flames if Phil asked. He’d take Phil’s hand and let the smoke choke the air from his lungs. He’d let the fire take him back to the earth if it was what Phil wanted.
Maybe Dan’s the freak, or maybe they’re equally wrong for this world. Maybe Phil’s right and fate is real, and they were fated to be a beautiful disaster together.
Phil reaches out for Dan and their fingers lace together. Phil’s hands are warm.