Work Text:
Writing it down was the hardest part for Phil.
Putting it on paper, a Google Doc, a sticky note, a napkin—whatever—nearly unraveled him. Even just bullet points. An outline. It didn’t feel like enough to put it to words—another failure of his linguistics degree. What words in what order could encapsulate that feeling? That feeling at 22 in October, and then December, and every month at every age after.
Regardless, the task was to put it to words. What it meant to be online, what it meant to come up in an uncharted niche world that wasn’t as kind as you thought it was when you were blue-eyed and green to the way things were. To say, without blame or fear or shame, what it meant for you to be a safe space for so many people—how it felt to reconcile that with the bitterness you felt toward them. To speak, in no uncertain terms, about what he meant to you—means to you now, why it’s been so long, how you loved him through it, loved him in spite of it, loved him anyway. The task was to put it into words and say it.
Saying it was the hardest part for Dan.
Dan, who could talk his tongue cyanotic, could put it to words, to a number of them. But never the right ones, never the ones that seemed good enough or true enough—so he put it to more words. And a few extra just to get his point across. Thinking, believing, that if he wrote around it enough, the circle would complete on its own. But to say it? To say, unquestioningly, that he was staying—to dedicate himself to the thing he’d spent his life losing a tug-of-war to? He never committed to anything, never believed in anything before Phil. And Phil said that was okay—had said it was okay for going on 15 years now. And Dan knew if he asked, if he batted his pretty brown eyes—even if he didn’t—Phil would say, “Okay. Let’s wait a bit more, then.”
But there’s an expiry date on patience, on Dan’s willingness to shrink himself into travel-sized bottles—he was always larger than life, bigger than the whole sky, stranger than fiction.
The easiest part is posting it.