Chapter Text
The alarm was blasting off, Resistance by Muse gradually rising in volume. Dan opened his eyes and sighed. The brown walls and ceiling greeted him with the same indifference as they always did in the mornings.
“Fuck!” he murmured to himself, suddenly coming to his senses “No no no!” He pressed his hands to his eyes pushing in, trying to block the noise and stopping the tears, trying to grasp the last memories before waking up, trying to hold onto those moments before everything went dark once more.
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They were fighting.
Lately they were always fighting and Dan didn’t know how to make things right anymore. He was walking in unknown terrain, he had nothing to grasp onto and his own sense of reality was slipping through his fingers day by day.
Phil saw it. He could tell Phil saw it, he could identify the terror imprinted in his blue eyes and his face, and in the way Phil now looked at him when he thought Dan wasn’t paying attention. Dan was letting the fear and the darkness surrounding his heart win this time. He didn’t want to, but it had been a really long time since he last felt anything close to hope or happiness, and knowing that he was letting Phil down wasn’t helping at all.
“Maybe it IS you I’m tired of!” he shouted at Phil in the middle of a discussion, he was crying and wasted-drunk and completely out of himself, overwhelmed by the overlapping of memories and the blank canvas he was now trailing, all at the same time. “Tired of your happiness, and enthusiasm and optimism and your FUCKED UP notion that THIS is what I want!”.
Phil looked at him in shock.
“You know what I want??? I want to FUCKING FORGET! I want to forget all the misery and the pain and whatever the hell it is that led me here, to this place and time and instant! I want to miss the point in time I caught this fucking CURSE that keeps me tied up to YOU!”
Phil lowered his gaze, turned around and left the apartment without a word or a look back.
Dan kept drinking and crying until everything went dark, knowing what would come next.
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Tears were falling down his face. His heart was broken, and he basked in the feeling, knowing that it would soon go away and most of it would disappear, as dreams disappear into the back of our minds, leaving but a reminiscence. He grabbed the phone to stop the alarm wishing he could change that goddamn ringtone, because by now he knew it was all a lie and all true at the same time. He turned off the music and the little screen read “19th October 2009”.
“Dan!” his mother’s voice came from down stairs. “You’re going to miss the train!”
He entertained the idea of missing it, giving himself a couple days to completely forget until everything became another bad dream, another pin in his “Failed attempts” box in the back of his mind. He didn’t really know how many there had been. He just knew that, whatever it was that the Universe was meaning for him to do, he still hadn’t done it.
At least, he thought, it always felt like a long dream, and dreams are easily forgotten, and most of the time, he could go by living his life with Phil again… and again… and again. Until whatever the fixed point in space and time they’re supposed to reach comes. And maybe then he won’t even mind having lived a thousand lives just to see him smile.
But sometimes it was too much. And sometimes he didn’t really forget everything that came before, and the memories overlapped and his anxiety grew and his depression got worse. And sometimes he just wanted everything to end, to give Phil an out, to be happy somewhere else with someone who wasn’t cursed like he was.
And this last time, all those memories had been so present and strong and they hurt so bad they were driving them mad, and Phil had been, as usual, because it is in his nature, so caring and loving and understanding… Even when he didn't understand at all.. Of course Dan didn’t really meant what he said, he could never get tired of Phil, he could never stop loving him, and of course that all he wants is to be with him, and work with him and laugh with him and live with him until the reason that take them apart is not a choice, but a natural thing, like a peaceful death, or aliens… who knows.
Dan laughed at this thought, it was such a Phil coded thought, and it gave him the push he needed. He got up from the bed, staring at his 19 year old self in the mirror. By now he couldn’t remember how old they were before waking up, or where they were living.
“Dan?” his mother’s voice came again.
“I’m up!” he announced, stepping into the hallway, “I’m going to take a shower!”
There were some things he remembered more vividly than others, like the first times he woke up to the same alarm, days and days in a row, he thought he was going mad (maybe he did, maybe he was actually stuck in a ward somewhere deep in a hospital, locked away in his own mind).
Every time he failed to take the train to Manchester, or every time he didn’t get off, he would wake up in his bed. And every other time they made choices that pulled them apart, or others made them: violent discussions, break ups… deaths. Dan doesn’t really know what it is he’s supposed to do, he just knows that any path that isn’t by Phil’s side will lead him back to the same date; October 19th, 2009.
He remembers, after an extremely traumatic end, staying in that bed for what he thinks were weeks, always waking up to the same music and same day.
Not today though. There was something different in him this time. He was… hopeful. And that meant a lot. He gave the memory of Phil’s face as he broke his heart one last thought and then threw it away, determined to make amends, even if Phil didn’t know he was doing it. Even if no one would ever know the things he did and said, and how cowardly he had slipped out of existence, holding a bottle and crying Phil’s name.
He showered and had breakfast, and then he kissed his mother goodbye, promising that he would let her know every step of the way where he was and how things were going and then left for the train station. He pressed play on this ipod and let the music engulf him as he tried to block his brain from wandering into the memories, all of his failures, all of Phil’s, all of their mutual agreements to part ways. The recollections were incomplete, more like feelings than actual memories, bits of possibilities, broken timelines.
Sometimes he thought he shouldn’t be able to remember at all, that he was broken and the time police hadn’t caught up yet, and feared the day they would and what that could mean. Other times he thought they were an experiment and they were being closely monitored. He was sure that at one point he had tried explaining Phil the truth of it all, but Phil had panicked and called someone, it was a blur but then he woke up in his bed, so he hadn’t tried that again.
What he did know, is that him meeting Phil in Manchester Piccadilly was a fixed point in time and space, and that it was clearly tied to another point, which they had not yet reached. Whether it was a curse, or a blessing, a magic power or some time loop that science could not yet explain, today, at the very least, he didn’t care at all.
The train arrived to Manchester on time, as always, but this time he held back, watching everyone else get out: the mother with the two kids that were pure chaos every single time, impossible to predict; the man with the creamy suit that sometimes had a suitcase and short hair and sometimes had a backpack and a beard; the old woman that this time was alone when she usually was with her husband, today she had a golden locket around her neck and was wearing black; a group of teenagers only a bit younger than himself that were always so random he couldn’t pinpoint if they were always the same ones or not.
Because the universe was like that, this curse was like that. It was the same but it wasn’t, it was the same people but they weren’t, and every time he got to meet Phil all over again, and they got to make decisions all over again, and they got to fall in love all over again.
That thought brought Dan back to reality and realized he was all alone now, so he rushed outside and walked the whole of the platform last, a bit nervous, thinking maybe he had lingered so much Phil went back home.
But he hadn’t, he was there, biting his lip and staring everywhere, looking for him.
“Hi!” Dan raised a hand to call for his attention, and Phil ran to him.
“You came!” He said excited, his blue eyes sparkling so much with hope and wonder it was infectious.
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” Dan said, and smiled.
He smiled because it was true. He smiled because this time Phil had clearly just dyed his hair and it was shiny raven black and looked like a wig, and he smiled because he was beautiful, and he smiled because he realized he could wake up on that bed this day and live a thousand lives all over again, if it meant that every time he could get to be with Phil.
But mostly, he smiled because this time he was determined, this time they would break the curse. This time there was nothing that would get in the middle of their happiness. This time, Dan thought, is the time we make it through it all.