gemini book one of two // phandom big bang 2016
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Author: @skyboidjh
Beta: @icomparemyselftoyou
Artist: @nataliadeluckah
Rating: PG-13
Summary:
They really didn’t ask for this.
colors whirling, thoughts flashing-
It all happened so suddenly, and then their lives were so different.
it felt as if the butterflies in his stomach had lit themselves on fire.
Then, of course, they’d been taken, and met the others-
you weren’t supposed to find out…
The rest is history.
or, the one where Dan and Phil end up with superpowers after a freak accident, including the ability to feel each other’s emotions, are declared threats by the government, and Phil has a secret.
Warnings: nondescriptive violence, acephobia, mild ableism
Word Count: 4382 for this chapter! (So Many in total)
Twenty-four.
The tiny number seemed a bit underwhelming, compared to the long string of digits one might imagine when hearing ‘identification number’, but Dan supposed that with so few people being assigned them in the building, it made sense.
The living assignments given to them were diminutive, the room being mostly taken up by four uncomfortable-looking cots and a small dresser, holding what appeared to be four sets of basic baggy clothes- denim pants, grey cotton shirts. Dan and Phil had been lucky enough to be housed together with Alan and Janice, so at least they had already met the people who they were staying with once, rather than being housed with complete strangers.
Official schedules were going to be handed out later, in their place they had been given a time to show up at something called ‘individual assessment” at varying times throughout the day. Phil’s slot was at 12:30 PM, and Dan’s was at 3PM. They were told to stay in their rooms until they were given further instructions via intercom or until the time for their assessment came.
The clock above their door read only 10:30 AM, but it felt like it had been years since they had left the hotel that morning. A guard had come and gone with breakfast trays, which lay abandoned and empty next to the door.
Dan and Phil were stretched out across the crappy cots, watching the time and letting their minds wander (there was basically nothing entertaining to do in the tiny room, much to their dismay). At about this time, in two days, they’d be expected at Summer in the City, just starting to get glimpses of the forming line of excited fans, all on their toes in anticipation of two people that wouldn’t be there. Surely they might realize something was wrong soon, Phil reasoned with himself. Both Dan and himself usually tweeted at least once a day, and while missing one day could be seen as normal, two days, especially before a big event like this, would definitely be out of character. He desperately wished that someone might have noticed their absence already, but knew that there was no way. They didn’t have any plans for the next two days leading up to SITC, the soonest they’d be definitely noted as missing would be when their friends saw that they weren’t at the party on the first day of the event.
Their contemplative silence was interrupted by shouting coming from somewhere down the corridor that housed all the dorms. Phil recognized Janice’s voice ringing loud and clear, apparently shouting at a guard as she was led back to the dorm.
“I just want to know about my kids! Please, they were in the hotel room with me this morning, I have to know where they are and that they’re safe!” Her voice grew closer, and Dan pulled on the doorknob only to find it locked. Alan had joined them by the door, exchanging worried glances with the other two.
The door finally burst open, revealing Janice, led in struggling and shouting by two massive guards.
“I just want to know about my kids!” She screamed, voice breaking on a sob, thrashing around in their tight grips on her arms. “I just want to know if they’re okay!”
The guards led her over to the cot nearest the door- which happened to be her own- and gently (as gently as two massively muscular and intimidating guards could manage) sat her down. They attempted to placate her screaming and crying to no avail, whispered attempts at consolation and tentative pats on the shoulder doing nothing to change the fact that they had no idea where her children were. Eventually the two had no other choice but to leave, making promises that rung empty in their eyes about ‘checking the records’ and ‘keeping an eye out’ for the two boys Janice had described to them as they were called elsewhere by walkie-talkies hung on their belts. Dan eyed their compassionate glances at Janice as they left with caution, realizing that these guards may not be the horrible people they seemed to be, yet still suspicious of their motivations.
As soon as the guards were out of the door, Dan, Phil, and Alan gathered around Janice, offering what little comfort they could to the bawling woman.
“How did you get out?” Dan asked a few minutes later, when her sobs had slowed to mere sniffles, “The door was locked when we tried it at first.”
“Picked it with a hairpin,” Janice muttered with a watery smile, “Learned how when I was a teenager, sneaking out to parties and the like. Never thought I’d have to use it again, especially not like this…”
“Come on, let’s look around,” Alan supplied as a distraction. “There must be something mildly interesting to do in here…”
-=II=-
Their lunch trays arrived promptly at noon, containing cold sandwiches and some sort of lukewarm grey soup in a styrofoam cup that none of them fully trusted enough to eat.
“So, these assessments- what d’you guys think they’re all about?” Alan asked in between bites of his sandwich.
“Well, I think it’s pretty safe to assume they’re going to figure out what our abilities are,” Janice replied. “But how?”
“There isn’t much point in worrying about it, it’s not like we can change whatever’s going to happen,” Dan muttered.
“Easy for you to say, you’re going last,” Phil said from his position lying on his cot, tray lying untouched on the floor next to him.
“Sorry, I guess you’re right.”
“Phil, eat something. You’ll feel better if you do,” Janice reprimanded.
“Feel sick,” he complained.
“You should still eat. I know you’re nervous about going first, but I’m sure it’ll be fine! You’re just letting your imagination get the best of you.”
Phil peered over the edge of his cot at them, who had formed a loose circle on the linoleum floor with their trays. He sighed, sat up, and took a bite of his sandwich. “I just hate that I’m not in control of it, I don’t even have a vague idea of what to expect.”
Dan knew this, of course. Phil was the one to panic if they were a few steps behind his schedule for getting to an airport on time, the one to push Dan out of procrastinating the important things because it put him on edge. Phil liked control and order, while Dan would just put off worrying about things, because what’s the point in being worried about missing the bus if it’s already gone and you can’t do anything about it?
Nobody had a particularly good response for Phil, as they didn’t know what to expect either. Phil couldn’t stop thinking, imagining every awful scenario and its outcome- feeling an emotion from someone he wasn’t supposed to, the powers suddenly disappearing and him being thrown out with no way to contact Dan, testing methods that might hurt-
It’s not like they can do anything too horrible, he reasoned. But then again, you are a criminal in their eyes, for some reason.
Phil could feel Dan’s eyes on him.
“Stop worrying, I can feel it from here and you’re practically shaking the room.”
“Easier said than done. I wonder how long the assessment will last?”
“Judging from the time slots they gave us, probably no longer than a half hour to forty-five minutes, if not shorter than that. You’ll be fine, Phil.”
Something about the way Dan said it was enough to calm his nerves for a little while, but it was barely a minute later that he was worrying all over again.
Dan was back to staring daggers at Phil, about to say something else to try to calm him down when Alan stood up abruptly.
“Y’know what, Janice? I say we should check out the… bathroom. Yeah, the bathroom, we’ve gotta make sure that’s got everything we need, so we can ask for more if we need it. Yeah.”
It was a less than graceful exit, but one that Dan and Phil appreciated nonetheless. Dan turned to Phil as soon as they left, holding his arms out for a hug.
On camera, Dan wasn’t the most tactile of people, the result of his fear of people taking his closeness to Phil in a completely different way than he intended. However, when the camera was off, hugs and cuddles were among the best ways he knew to offer comfort when he felt words couldn’t bring across his meaning well enough.
Phil scooted closer and leaned into Dan’s outstretched arms, feeling immediately the worry Dan had described to him- they were both shaking, in fear, in anxiety, in worry for each other- so hard that it did seem to shake the room. They were an earthquake. Dan could feel it too, stronger now, and despite the fog of uncertainty hanging in the air, there was a tug of something new, something floating and giddy and somehow, despite it all, elated.
-=II=-
When it came time to leave, after giving Dan a short, final hug, Phil discovered that the assessment rooms weren’t all that far from their dorm at all, shown on a map in the hallway just outside as three small, greyed out squares in a long line of other small greyed out squares all marked as classrooms. Why would classrooms be needed in a place like this? Phil wondered, Then again, they did say they would train us on how to use our powers. But how would they know how the powers work any better than we do?
His thoughts were interrupted by him turning a corner and finding himself at his destination, a wide hallway bordered by numbered doors all around. He wiped his sweating palms on his pants, looking around for some hint as to which of the rooms he was supposed to go to.
That hint came in the form of a hassled-looking man coming out of the farthest door, cupping his hands around his mouth and shouting, “Twenty one! I need number twenty one in here! If you do not report for assessment you will lose bunkmate privileges and afternoon meals!”
At that, Phil rushed over. Could they seriously take meals away for something as tiny as being a few minutes late? He wouldn’t doubt it, actually. “Sorry if I’m a little late…” He trailed off, not having an excuse for his tardiness.
“Whatever, just hurry up and go, thirty minutes is crunch time as it is. Come on, inside you go,” the man said impatiently.
Phil did as he was told, slipping inside the heavy grey door and looking around. Nothing about it really struck him as extraordinary, with a desk and chair facing to one side and another solitary chair in the middle of the room, facing the desk. The room itself had grey concrete floors and soft off-white walls, lit by some basic hanging lights.
“Take a seat, please,” The man gestured to the chair in the middle of the room, continuing as if reading off of a script. “This is the Center for Civilian Threat’s capability evaluation, as authorized on 7th August, 2014 by…”
He continued to drone on, listing a few laws and legal details that Phil couldn’t make much sense of.
“My name is Cleveland Peckham, and I will be administering this assessment. The evaluation consists of a three minute briefing as required by law, a seven minute interview, followed by twenty minutes of ability tests. If you have any questions, ask them now.”
Phil stared at the man, not knowing where to begin, but before he could form his thoughts into even one coherent question, Cleveland was talking again.
“Excellent. Now we will proceed with the interview, what is your full legal name and age?”
“Philip Michael Lester, 27- What are ‘ability tests’, how do they work?”
“The time for questions from you is over. Yesterday, you checked into a hospital with highly elevated levels of an unidentified gas in your blood and lungs. What is the source of this?”
“I don’t know anything about it, just that someone gassed my apartment? We never really got a chance to find out anything more than that.” Phil couldn’t keep the slight bitterness out of his tone.
“Do you have any ideas as to who would do that?”
“No-”
“If you are caught lying, you will be punished.”
“But I really don’t know!” Phil yelped, panicking a bit.
“This exact concentration of argon gas, mixed with a chemical that has not yet been identified, has caused widespread… anomalies in humans. We have medical reason to believe that you have such anomalies as well. What are they? Again, lying is highly punishable.”
Phil hesitated. What if he ended up having some power he didn’t know about yet? “I can… hear my friend’s thoughts and emotions, if I’m touching him. I can only hear thoughts from him, but the emotions part I can do with other people too. I’m not sure about anything else though, I haven’t noticed anything else, I swear!”
Cleveland scribbled something down on the notepad in front of him, staying silent for a moment. “Who is this friend? Is he here?”
“Yes, he is, Dan Howell,” Phil said.
Cleveland paused for a moment, pen hovering over the notepad for a second. “What is your relation to him?”
“My flatmate, best friend.”
He returned that comment with a surprised look before continuing with his notes. “You said your apartment was gassed, describe what happened in as much detail as possible.”
Phil recounted how he had just been in his room, browsing social media on his laptop when he had noticed that the air felt thicker, like there was smoke coming from somewhere, though he could see none. He recalled stumbling into the hall to find Dan, hearing him call out and then a loud thump as he passed out and slumped to the ground. He had then woken Dan up, and they had managed to get to the front door where paramedics had been waiting, and had gotten help.
“Is that.. All? Or do you need me to talk about the hospital and all that?”
“No, no, that’s enough,” Cleveland muttered, bent over his notepad once more, scribbling furiously. He remained mute for another minute or so, before suddenly snapping the notebook shut and standing.
Phil jumped a bit at the sudden movement.
“Now for the ability assessment, I ask that you please cooperate and follow instructions. Failure to do so will result in loss of bunkmate privileges for two to six months. For this evaluation, you will have several wires connected by tape and a bit of glue to your head and neck, in order to monitor brain activity. I will leave the room and for a few minutes, images will be projected onto the walls of this room and your response will be monitored and measured. For the remaining time, I will return and further instructions will be given at that time. Do you understand?”
Phil nodded, this seemed simple enough. He was slightly concerned about what the images might contain, but if it was only for a few minutes…
He was led to a small side room that he had noticed on the way in and allowed the wires to be put on without a fight, although they did itch quite a lot and the assistant Cleveland had let in to help him was less than gentle, tugging his hair more roughly than necessary and getting glue everywhere- he was sure that’d be a pain to get out of his hair later.
Soon he was sent back into the main room, Cleveland and the assistant remaining in the side room where there were computers and all sorts of weird machines- Phil supposed that was where the data from the wires was collected. He stood in the middle of the room, sighing and bouncing on his toes in anticipation. They were just pictures, he told himself, not real. It couldn’t be that bad, right? He usually wasn’t too bad with horror movies, and he loved horror books- he just needed to keep reminding himself that it wasn’t real, and surely he’d be fine.
The room suddenly grew brighter, a hatch opening in the ceiling and a projector lowered into the room until it was hanging around a few feet from the high ceiling, unlike any projector Phil had seen before. It was bigger, for one, with multiple lenses facing all sides and wires sticking out all over like a science project gone wrong.
The projector flickered to life, and Phil had to take a deep breath at what he saw.
A car was headed straight for him.
It’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real, just stay put, Phil thought, trying to look away but finding that the multi-lensed projector was a 360° view of dark trees and underbrush, no signs of civilizations other than the badly-paved highway under his feet. The car was coming closer and closer, seeming to gain speed as it went. It was maybe only 100 meters away now. 50. 30.
A small child, a little girl with wide brown eyes and blonde hair, stepped out into the road, looking right at Phil. Her eyes widened, almost comically, as she seemed to hear the car, realizing what was happening. But still, she faced Phil, frozen like stone.
All thoughts, reminders that this wasn’t real flew from Phil’s mind. He reached out for the girl, trying to run towards her, but for some reason he couldn’t move.
The realization struck him that if she didn’t move, he would have to watch her die. He screamed, begging her to move out of the way, throwing his outstretched arm to the side as if to show her where to go.
Then, suddenly, she was gone. The car faded, the forest disappeared. Phil looked around in astonishment, seeing the white walls return around him. He breathed heavily, head jerking around to watch the trees fade back into white drywall as he came back to his senses.
A huge gash had been ripped into the wall, following the pattern that he had waved his arm in.
Did I do that?
From the side room, Cleveland emerged. He looked pale, shaken. He remained silent as he approached Phil, bending down to undo the straps Phil hadn’t noticed coming up and locking around his feet and up to just above his knees… which explained why he hadn’t been able to move.
Cleveland looked at Phil, slack jawed, with sweat beading on his brow and eyes wide. He swallowed, trying to regain his composure. “We- we’ll just be moving over to the next open room while this gets fixed up,” he squeaked, not looking Phil in the eyes.
Phil couldn’t stop looking at the huge chunks of what had been the wall scattered across the floor, paint scraped off in some places as if a wild animal had torn through instead of just… Phil. How could he have done that?
Cleveland walked stiffly towards the door, casting anxious glances back over his shoulder at Phil as he went. “C-come on now, we’re running out of time.”
Phil followed slowly, head still craned around to stare at the massive hole in the wall, even as a new group rushed in, apparently to fix it up somehow.
The rest of the test passed in a blur, as Phil was poked, prodded, had blood taken, made to run on a treadmill, subjected to a variety of people projecting extreme emotions (in a way that was frankly, way too loud and hurt Phil’s head), made to stare at very small objects, and most oddly, presented with a dead plant.
“What am I supposed to do with this?” Phil asked tiredly, as the plant was dumped on the table in front of him.
“Touch it. Try to water it. Bring it back to life.”
Phil did, and lo and behold, nothing happened. “What was that supposed to do, then?” he sighed.
The plant was removed from the table. Cleveland and a few others that had come in to help him since the previous room’s incident furiously wrote notes.
“What are you even writing notes on, it didn’t do anything!” Phil leaned his head back, exasperation creeping into his tone.
“You’re free to go,” Cleveland mumbled, face buried in his clipboard.
Phil was too relieved to question it, standing quickly and power walking straight out of the door. Glancing at the clock, he found that it had definitely been longer than 30 minutes. He found his way back to the dorm with ease, opening the door to find Dan sitting on the edge of his cot, bouncing his leg up and down.
Dan jumped straight up when Phil walked in, standing up to greet him and reaching out without thinking twice about it. Dan felt Phil’s relief like a deep breath of fresh air, quickly overlapped by shock slamming into him like a bucket of ice had been dumped over his head, and a pinch of pain he couldn’t quite pin down the source of. Dan pulled back almost immediately, leaving one hand lingering on Phil’s arm. It occurred to him that perhaps they ought to be careful about things like this, to avoid more private emotions being overheard. He retracted the hand, starting to apologize but he was immediately interrupted by Phil.
“Don’t worry about it, I do agree about the privacy thing, though. Maybe we should just ask first, just in case. I’m not sure I can be very articulate in explaining what just happened, so it’s probably best that you did that, so you know- Dan, it was so awful, the first part was okay, just like an interview, but then they said they needed to do ability tests and they showed me things that weren’t real and I busted open the wall, made me run a lot and they cut my arm a bit to see if I’d heal and made me touch a dead plant-”
“Phil, slow down, you’re not making any sense,” Dan said as calmly as he could, “Come sit down and tell me everything in order and… slower.”
Phil nodded and slumped down onto his cot. “It started off kinda alright, there was a guy in the room and he asked me a bunch of questions about what happened with the apartment and what I could do- oh God, I didn’t know I could do the wall breaking thing, he said I’d be punished for not telling them all my powers, I might get kicked out of this room-”
“Shh, don’t worry about it now, tell me the rest,” Dan said.
Phil continued his tale, up to him being moved into the next room.
“Then they made me do loads of dumb things, they cut my arm-” Phil rolled up his left sleeve to show Dan the small bandaged area where the inch long cut had been made, “-and started asking me all these questions about, like, rocket science or something, I didn’t know what they were even talking about, so they gave up on that pretty soon, but then they brought out this treadmill and made me run way too fast until I fell,” Phil gestured to his reddened, rug burned, knees. “Then they brought in a whole bunch of people, made me say how each of them were feeling and this one guy was so angry, Dan…”
Phil trailed off, quiet for a moment. “They tried to get me to say what they were thinking, too, and I couldn’t- that was scary, he was so angry and I couldn’t tell why or if he was going to hurt me or someone else because of it. It got easier from then on, they wanted me to look at some really small things so they could see my brain activity through the wire things and tell if I could see them better than normal or something. Then they brought me a dead plant and told me to touch it? I’m not sure what that was about, they just had me touch it and then said I could leave. It felt like I was in there for years, doing all their dumb tests.”
“I’m sorry,” Dan said, unsure of what else he could say.
Phil shook his head. “It’s okay. I’m just worried about you now, is there anything else you want to know that could help?”
Dan hesitated. “The girl and the car- was there anything else in the room to focus on? I- I know I can’t do what you did, I was trying it when we were stuck in the van. I don’t want to see-”
“There’s a chair and a desk to one side. For some reason, I couldn’t see the projector even though it was right above me, and it was projecting all around- there are straps that hold your feet to the floor, focus on those.”
“Sounds horrible,” Dan muttered with a nervous laugh. He leaned back against the wall, lacing his fingers together and then apart again.
It was 2:45 now, fifteen minutes before Dan’s evaluation was set to start.
Phil tentatively shuffled closer to Dan, their shoulders brushing together just slightly. He managed to catch Dan’s eye, silently asking whether this was okay, and receiving a small nod in return.
Phil’s worry and shock were still swirling in patterns of fog around his head, there was an upwards tug in his ribcage, hope, and a flutter in his stomach that Dan knew but couldn’t identify.
The whole process had gotten a lot less dizzying and shocking since the first time they had done this, now settling into a more pleasant flash of color and thoughts that floated past consciousness did so a lot less… sharply than before.
Said thoughts were ones of fear and worry, yet there was courage there too, softening the situation, strengthening and lifting up Dan especially, as the time grew nearer for him to leave.
The two almost lost track of time, staying like that, side by side, barely touching, and lost in each other’s thoughts.
‘It’ll be okay.’
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