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Dan should go for a run. He should really go for a fucking run.
It’s been four days of rainy weather— it’s London, that’s no surprise, but like stormy rainy weather. Too rainy to run in. He almost tried it the day before yesterday and Phil put his foot down over it while Dan did up his laces. “You won’t be running any marathons if you're in hospital with pneumonia,” he said, arms crossed and stare firm.
But Dan thinks he’ll get away with it today. Phil’s buried in editing his next video, headphones on and eyes fixed on the screen. Tunnel visioned to his work the way they both get when there’s something in front of them they can see through beginning to end.
He’s right. Phil doesn’t see Dan change into his running gear. Doesn’t see him slip out the front door. Doesn’t even seem to have moved little over an hour later when a wind-blown and rain-soaked Dan comes back in.
Phil does see him when he makes his way up the stairs and almost slips, grabbing onto the railing and shouting, “Fuck,” loud enough that Phil hears him. He looks up, startled. He pulls the headphones off. He takes in the sight of Dan before him, soaked through and shivering.
“Are you crazy?” Phil asks, frowning.
“Well…” Dan shrugs. “Yeah.” He walks to the kitchen and gets a glass of water to chug. He wonders why he didn’t just stay outside and open his mouth with his head tilted back.
Dan is crazy. He’s depressed and anxious and makes self-destructive decisions and carries heavy bags of trauma with him strapped to all his limbs. If that’s not crazy, he’s not exactly sure what is. But he also hopes Phil will just let this slide. He can’t handle it today. He’s so fucking tired and he just… he can’t handle it.
Phil’s in the kitchen before Dan finishes his water. “Good run?” he asks, already a little less combative. He knows how to handle Dan in these moods. Years and years of practice.
Dan nods. “Slow, against the wind for a lot of it. Good to be out there.”
“I guess,” Phil says. “Your teeth are chattering.”
Dan clenches his jaw to try to get them to stop. “Hot shower,” he says. He sets the half-empty glass on the counter and brushes past Phil to head towards the bedroom. He tries not to slip on the stairs and has about as much success as he did on the way up.
He peels his rain and sweat soaked running clothes off of him like a second skin. They plop to the tiled bathroom floor with too much weight. The sound is oddly finite; there’s no smack or echo.
He turns the hot water way, way up and spends most of the shower just… standing. When he steps out his skin is red as a lobster.
He’s still tired, and he thought he would feel better because he ran but all it did was make his muscles ache. He falls face-first onto the bed, sideways and still with drops of hot water all over his skin. He didn’t even bother with a towel around his waist. He knows he’s getting the duvet all wet but doesn’t care. He knows there will be a poor outline of a man when he stands, darker grey among the lighter grey.
That’s if he stands, of course. Maybe he’ll lie here til he rots, he thinks.
He hears Phil clear his throat from the doorway. He turns his head and looks at him. He can feel the fog rolling in— some days the depression hits him in the morning. Some days it doesn’t get full traction until later. Maybe, he realises, today had been a bad day in waiting all the while.
“If you don’t get dressed, you’ll start shivering again,” Phil says.
Dan doesn’t move.
Phil goes to the dresser and pulls out pyjama pants and a hoodie. He plops them on the bed beside Dan. “C’mon,” Phil insists.
Dan sits up. He grabs the hoodie, sees it’s the dark green one with the rips which he got for Phil about a year ago. He slips it over his head and stands long enough to get the pyjamas on, then lays back down on the bed. He’s on his side this time. He’s looking at Phil.
He knows Phil is annoyed. Maybe even mad. Maybe even worried.
He’s feeling like shit enough to test him. The orneriness of mental illness, the irritability, is poking through.
“I’m failing,” Dan says.
“You’re not failing.” Phil sits at the foot of the bed.
“I hadn’t run for days. I was gonna lose all that hard work.”
“You could’ve gone to a gym,” Phil shrugs, “worked out inside. Or you could’ve just rested. You’re allowed to rest, y’know.”
“Says Mr. Literally-Passed-Out-From-Overworking,” Dan says. He wants to smile. Almost smiles. Things are feeling too heavy already. Fuck, he’s tired.
Phil does smile though. “You’re not failing,” he says again.
“Deadline pushed further out… more people need to say yes, more people need to approve shit.” Dan’s passionate about the projects he’s juggling, he thinks they’ll turn into something he can be proud of. But they’re taking a long time. A long, long time. And there’s an assortment of people he has to answer to for things he never really had to bother about before. And sometimes he remembers being a broke teenager with a few tens of thousands of followers, making videos he had absolute control over. He’s let go of control before, when he had to. When the BBC was involved or when things they wanted for either tour was just too damn impossible. But he never got comfortable with that.
He just needs to know he’s in control.
Too much of his life wasn’t.
His parents or the closet or the goddamn weather— he just needs to know that if everything blows up around him that it was because of the choices he made, not because something else was calling the shots.
Phil is quiet. He looks like he’s reading all of this printed on Dan’s face. He stands and steps into the bathroom and comes back with a half-full glass of water which he places on the bedside table. “Can I lay with you?” he asks.
Dan shuffles over instead of answering, making room. Phil lays a careful distance from Dan.
He’s started to shiver again, but he’s not sure if it’s from the cold or because he hasn’t eaten or the anxiety running through his body which is only being tempered by the fog in his head.
“I should know better,” Dan mutters. He should. He does. He’s gone to enough therapy, done enough self-analysis, he knows why he went running in the rain to try to take back some control and why it was stupid. But the dark corners of his vision tell him they’re delighted he did something stupid. It all proves a point— he deserves to feel bad because he is bad and makes bad choices.
He knows better; knows it isn’t true.
But his brain is very good at lying to him.
“I’m going to start making dinner in an hour,” Phil says, pulling out his phone and setting an alarm. “Think you’ll feel up to it?”
Dan shrugs.
Phil inches closer. He wraps an arm around Dan's waist and Dan moves his head to Phil’s chest. He knows he’s leaving a damp spot there as his curls are still plenty wet, but Phil doesn’t complain.
The thing about knowing better is that it doesn’t magically solve things. Dan sometimes thinks it should. There was a short blip of time where putting a name to his depression, knowing it was a real actual thing happening to him, was such a weird relief. But it didn’t make it go away.
Knowing he went running on a freezing March afternoon because he wanted to take back the reins from the storm clouds doesn’t make the urge to do so go away. It might be self-destructive, it might be punishing. But he knows he’s doing it.
He also knows that it will pass. That there are good days and bad days and days that feel like both. And he knows that a good rest can do wonders.
He’s so fucking tired. He feels Phil run his hand along his spine.
He falls asleep hoping he’ll wake up with an appetite and a little less self-criticism, and feeling like he’s got a little more control.