Work Text:
phil wondered if this was all a mistake.
he pushed his palms into the couch under him to try to ground himself. he feared that if he didn't get a hold on himself soon, he would turn to gas and dissipate into the atmosphere of the lounge.
he wondered if dan would even notice if that were to happen.
on one hand, phil felt selfish for being upset with dan. this wasn't his fault, not really. he's a product of the society that raised him, and that product was a broody, quiet recluse when confronted with things he didn't want to think about. any word that phil could think of to describe dan's mood for the past few weeks sounded negative, but he didn't know how else to think about it.
on the other hand, it wasn't just dan that was upset. it wasn't just dan in this apartment, it wasn't just dan on the radio show, it wasn't just dan on the internet.
it was dan and phil, not dan or phil.
phil rarely got angry. when something annoyed him, he put the incident in a neat little file cabinet in the corner of his mind and reminded himself to avoid that situation at all costs in the future. the heat of the moment would simmer in his stomach, asking permission to boil. phil never granted that.
life was too short for carrying so much anger around.
dan rarely acted out on his anger. when something happened, he held the manila folder of the issue in his hands and stared at it for longer than he wanted to. there was no file corner in his mind; he tossed each folder into a messy pile in the center, so he had to acknowledge it whenever he crossed the threshold of his own brain. the heat boiled in his stomach without permission, although it didn't need to ask to know dan was okay with it happening. dan was always a ticking time bomb.
life was too short and dan was carrying so much anger around.
phil's anger was lukewarm and nearly undetectable. a professor at university told him once that he acted very emotionally mature for his age. he didn't know what that meant until he met dan.
dan's anger was bitter and humid. you could feel him dwelling on something as soon as he entered a room. his eyes would be fixed on the floor, his arms in some self-pacifying hugging motion. sometimes he was quiet, other times he was loud.
the quiet days were the worst, because phil wished he knew what dan was thinking.
on loud days, dan would burst in, rambling loudly about nothing in particular. his thought patterns would fluctuate between past, present, and future tenses while phil tried to clean up the tea he spilled on the counter when dan surprised him with his entrance.
it was clear what dan was upset about when it was a loud day. he would slump over in frustration over something he had seen online about him that day, he would run his fingers through his hair over a future that was always impossible when he was younger, but seemed so tangible now, if not for his present. he would go stoic thinking about his past with his peers, his parents, that one thing that was freaking him out every day for months because he was living in it, but too afraid to fully confront it.
on quiet days, there was nothing. phil spilled tea on the counter because of his own shaking hand, his body reminding him that he still cared about dan, and that he was worried. he would turn and almost see dan in the corners of his eyes, pacing around in front of the television.
but he never would see him on those days, because dan wasn't there. he was spending the day in his own mind, sifting through that pile of folders of issues and remembering each of them in depth.
he would lay beneath his sheets and watch himself shuffle through each painful memory, inspecting its contents and pulling him back to those moments. he would look at something that happened years before, and a tear would fall from his eye. he would find something that happened recently, and he would blink the moisture away. when he imagined his future, another tear formed as soon as he opened his eyes again.
on quiet days he was not angry. he would feel completely empty, hollowed out from the inside until he was a thin husk of himself. he cried because he felt that he should, not because he entirely opened himself up to the whole memory. he couldn't bring himself to relive the full moment and confront it.
so he laid there and remembered the spattering of details. the echoes of laughter in a classroom directed at him. the way one of his brother's friends enunciated the f and g's when he spat that word at him. the chilly mornings in winter when he would look outside and wonder if he could lay somewhere and let the evening snowfall bury him completely before anyone even noticed he was gone.
he felt bad for thinking like that again. there were eyes on him now, and that was the whole problem.
phil never pushed him on quiet days. he let him lay in bed all day. when dan's eyes would close, phil would bring him another glass of water, or retuck the sheet back into the mattress edge. dan never knew it, but phil was still checking up on him, even after everything.
after everything, someone was still there.