Chapter Text
The world has frozen. In how the sky is always a dull gray. In how animals never come out of hibernation, and in how the breeze hits like a thousand needles straight into veins. The day is just as bad as night, and not a single person can be trusted. Dan has sworn to never talk to anyone ever again. Not like that will be hard to do, but that's also the reason why he says it. The moment of human contact might be his last. After years of never being able to know anyone, and the rare encounter should be run away from, actually talking to someone will either kill him or leave him distracted. From surviving.
He fears the markets and malls the most, and sometimes gas stations. They always have the highest chance of other people being there, which puts him on edge every time he’s even near one. Like he can feel the red laser pointed at his back. As if any people have guns like that anymore. Something slightly scarier than that would be willingly going into those places.
His shoes crunch on the dead leaves under his shoes, louder than he’d appreciate. A road you’d drive down in the mountains that feels like it will never end stretches before him, and the trees bend over it. The trees look white, even though there is no snow, and the horizon looks cold and it sinks Dan’s heart. Not even sinks; it takes away any feeling, leaving a dull ache of nothingness instead.
There's a break in the wall of trees. Dan can’t tell if he hopes it’s something to loot, or just somewhere that trees have fallen. He needs food, he needs supplies, but he hates the stress. He doesn’t want to die just trying to feel safe for one second. He wishes he could go back to walking through the snow to the store, but he knows nothing will ever be that simple again.
As he gets closer to the break in the trees, suddenly everything gets so much louder, like his mind is instinctively trying to tune into any threat. The crunching leaves are suddenly deafening.
It's a gas station. There's two dull gas pumps and a shop behind it. Dan starts fidgeting with his backpacks straps, scanning the area like the silence is a decoy. He’s always imagined there will be a day where he’ll miss one thing and there will be a knife at his neck that second. Even in the silence. Even in the deafening silence.
The trees slightly sway up close. They loom overhead and Dan feels small in comparison. An ant in a maze of stone and the rolling clouds above. A limb falls nearby and lands in a pile of leaves making Dan flinch so hard he could have fallen into another dimension, which wouldn’t be so bad. (maybe he did fall into another dimension)
The gas station has a chipped off logo surrounded by faded dark blue paint. It really compliments the rest of the cold atmosphere. He thinks about the times when cars would pass through here and the people buying cigarettes or chips from the store. Instead, there is no buzz from the now broken lights, and the wind hums a low rumble through the trees. He used to love how that sounded in the morning. Now it terrifies him.
The door is unreasonably hard to open, and Dan thinks that might be a sign, but he continues trying. When he finally gets the door to budge, it doesn’t even creak, but makes a rough dragging sound like it was molded to the concrete floor. He feels his heart speed up as he walks in. The outside light fades into the room, making everything gray and disturbingly still, like he walked into a movie theatre playing one frame on repeat. He wants to run the other way, but his stomach disagrees, even after seeing the scarce shelves.
He walks slowly, his sneakers make a small thump on the floor and it unnerves him more and more with each step. He eventually walks up to one of the shelves with a couple open cans, the labels unreadable. He kicks a can he hadn’t seen on the floor, and almost curses. He can’t tell if he feels dreadfully alone, or if he feels like the whole world is hunting him down, even when most of the whole world doesn’t even exist anymore.
He finds a freezer with a couple cans high up enough that many people probably looked past them in their frantic searches for food. He grabs them and stuffs them in his backpack, only four cans, but it’s better than usual. He stops when he hears a whistle outside. It’s probably the wind, but he stays still and watches the blurry windows. There's no more sound, and he realizes there is nowhere to go if someone comes through that door. He walks around to the other side of the aisle so that he’s more hidden than before, although not by much. Then he hears leaves crunch outside and he knows he’s completely fucked. It’s not like gaslighting himself into believing it’s nothing will make him safer.
Someone walks through the two gas pumps and Dan ducks behind the end of an aisle. It plays out like a silent film, the frames flickering by as a messy haired man trips into frame, or more literally, the window.
The man doesn’t see Dan. He doesn’t even look into the building like Dan had at first. He just… rubs where his hand slammed into the window to catch himself, and opens the door. Dan feels his breath suddenly stop. Even though this man isn’t as intimidating as some people he came across at the beginning of everything, he is still about as tall as Dan and has a backpack that seems full of things.
The man’s footsteps slow a bit now, but Dan can’t see from his place crouches behind an aisle. He hears cans rustle and then flinches at a crash like the man kicked the same can Dan had earlier. Some of the cans inside his own backpack clang together softly and his heart falls to the core of the earth.
There’s no noise for a second, and Dan hopes it’s just the man being scared of the crash, rather than hearing Dan’s backpack. Dan stares through the little holes in the aisle, although many of them are covered in dust and have no visibility, he sees the man moving through an aisle away from him. Dan wonders if it’s possible for him to run out, but he fears what would happen if the man saw him through the windows.
But then, to Dan’s surprise, the man sits down. He unzips his backpack, rustles through it for a moment, then zips it back up. His backpack doesn’t sound to have much in it, no clanging of cans or metal or anything. He sighs and Dan frowns. He can’t tell what the best outcome of this would be, should he run? Should he stay here? This has never happened before. It just seems like such a bad place to take a rest to Dan.
There's no noise for a while, and Dan had always thought his next human interaction would be frantically running away from someone, so such calm unsettles him. He can only see the man’s boots from a hole in the aisle. Then he realizes he’s paralyzed by the idea of talking to someone. He knows it’s a bad idea, that he should never even consider talking to anyone now. He repeats that he can’t trust anyone in his head. He can’t trust anyone. He can’t even consider it when his gut wants nothing more than that.
His feet move without him necessarily wanting them to. But he has to leave. There’s no other way. His footfall makes small thuds on the ground, which he stupidly hadn’t considered. The man, however, doesn’t move. Dan almost wants him to do something, like he doesn’t know what to do with this peacefulness. How could there be any other way in this world?
He walks out, and he can no longer see the man, blocked by the aisles. The glass door is right there, he could probably make a run for it right now. That is until the man had, in fact, gotten up, and peaked out from the aisle, his eyebrows furrowed in confusion. Dan no longer wants to stay, he has to leave immediately. He doesn’t.
“Oh,” The man says, which Dan just leaves in the unsure air.
There's a long silence, like neither of them know just quite what to do. The man breaks the silence first.
“You can leave, I don’t want to hurt you… not in like… not in a suspicious way,” The man fumbles, “that made it worse didn’t it. I’m just saying-”
“I think I got it,” Dan says and the words feel weird. His voice feels dry, like he hasn’t spoken in years. Then he realizes that's probably the problem.
Dan notices the man getting visibly uneasy as the seconds pass. He would be terrified if he was in this man's position and almost feels bad for not running, but then again, why should he care about the comfortability of someone he found in a gas station.
“Did you find any food in here,” Dan says as if his former thought never even existed.
“No, I’m guessing you took it all,” there's a hesitation in his voice that wasn’t as obvious earlier, “I also didn’t look very hard”
“Do you…” this is a bad idea. This is such a bad idea, “…want some of what I found?”
The man looks at Dan like he just stopped the world from spinning in front of his eyes. Dan takes his own eyes from the man and reaches into his backpack, making the same clanging sounds from earlier. He can feel the man staring at him and it makes him nervous, probably from the fact that he should one hundred percent be hesitant and not turn away from this strange man. He pulls a can of green beans from his backpack anyway.
The man is looking at him with wide eyes, his breath is shallow and Dan can tell he’s as confused as Dan should be of himself.
Dan holds the can out and the man’s eyes dart from it to Dan and back again a couple hundred times before finally taking it without a word. The man probably thinks he’s an idiot with the survival skills of a worm.
They stare at each other for a second before Dan, to all his childish minds protest, turns to open the door.
He barely puts his hand to the handle before the man calls back.
“Wait,” The man says and Dan actually turns back around.
His brows are still furrowed with the insecurity that Dan feels pooling in his own chest.
“I’m Phil”
Now Dan was looking at him with a splitting confusion. When was the last time he said his own name? There was a time he was worried he’d forget it all together.
“I’m Dan”
They stare at each other again. It’s so still and quiet that Dan thinks he might be able to feel the dust crawl along his skin if he really focused. Dan feels a heavy feeling in his chest and he supposes its fear. Or something like that.
“Do you wanna… stay here? I'd say hang out but that feels too- before everything,” The man- Phil says.
“Really?” Is the only thing Dan manages to get out. It’s more to himself than Phil. He knows how dangerous other people are now. For all he knows Phil could kill him and take everything he has now that he knows about all the food he took.
“If you want,” Dan feels like a deer in headlights. And its only three words.
“Okay,” he feels himself recoil, he should backtrack, he should run out the door.
Phil walks behind the aisle to where his things were, and Dan, after hesitating for a second, follows him.
The aisle is where Dan first came in and started looking around. The freezers are dark and he can see the reflection of the white clouds off of some of them. He sits opposite Phil, so he ultimately can't see the door like he always swears to. He’s already put himself into too much vulnerability, but he can't seem to stop himself.
They don’t say a word and Phil cracks open the can Dan gave him. He’s sharing it?? with Dan?? After he gave it to him??
“You can have it all, I have enough,” Dan says.
“So you’re just going to watch me eat,” Phil says sarcastically, but his face stays absolutely stone cold.
“What is this, a dinner date?” Dan jokes back but Phil just bites his cheek.
“That always happens at dinner dates though, you end up just staring at each other creepily.”
“I wouldn’t really know,” Dan says, instantly reminded of how everything is.
“You’ve never been on a dinner date?” Phil tips some of the green beans into his hand.
“No, given…” Dan pauses, “everything.”
“Yeah,” Phil says, drawing it out, “I went on one. It wasn’t very good though”
Dan doesn’t know how to reply honestly. This feels too casual. It’s scaring him in a way. His throat almost constricts at every word.
“That’s unfortunate,” Dan says but it sounds too posh and he cringes.
——
Soon Phil is finished with the can, and Dan has fidgeted and picked the last hangnail off of his fingers.
“How much food do you have?” Dan asks and he knows he shouldn’t care.
“One very old granola bar,” Phil says, his eyes cast down and Dan’s eyebrows furrow again.
“I’m sorry,” Dan doesn’t know why he says it.
“You gave me a whole can of green beans, I should be thanking you,” Phil says
He doesn’t say anything back. Phil zips up his bag but doesn’t get up. He looks at Dan and Dan feels a sudden heavy feeling in his chest, he wants to think it's the impending doom he normally feels, but this time it’s calmer. It’s focused on something, not just a buzzing uncomfortability. He breaks eye contact and looks out the window. The white clouds float by and there is not a sound but the quiet mumble of the wind.
“I didn’t see you on the street, where were you,” Dan asks.
“I was in the woods. It’s not out in the open like the roads or fields.”
“It’s kind of claustrophobic though, isn’t it?” Dan looks back.
“Sometimes. But the open places feel like something's constantly staring down my back,” Phil says.
“I guess so,” Dan picks at the dust on the floor.
“Do you know what time it is?” Phil asks, “if that's even possible to figure out anymore.”
Dan looks back outside. It’s still that weird bright white that the clouds reflect, but it’s slightly dimmer than usual.
“Maybe a little after noon?” Dan replies, “It’s hard to know for sure.”
“I hate this,” Phil says after a pause. There's too much gravity in it and it scares Dan again. There's a sadness that passes over Phil’s face and how it makes Dan feel scares him even more.
“Who would like it?” Dan replies in a futile attempt at comfort, like he’d remember how to comfort someone.
“Is there anyone to ask?” Phil’s voice got quieter.
“You asked me.”
Then there’s more silence. Phil’s gaze is glued to the floor and Dan’s is glued to his dark hair.
“Can you stay?” Phil’s voice sounds like a tree hitting the ground between all the silence. It also might have hit the very ground Dan had been sitting on.
“I-“ Dan stumbles before Phil cuts him off.
“I’m sorry that was stupid,” Phil says, “I just mean- can we talk? Just like two people? For a while?”
Phil says all of this and it doesn’t just scare Dan; it terrifies him. What scares him the most about it is that he says okay.