summary: dan’s moving away. phil wants to remember their past one last time.
rating: pg-13
warnings: implied major character death, implied abuse, drinking mentions, implied SMUT woo guys we’re going crazy with vague things today
word count: 1773
note: thank you to the @littlephanwriters squad for betaing 🙂
Twin pale legs dangle off the pier’s end. There’s a nervous tension between the two boys, an unaddressed longing hanging stiff between them, a wall. Their hands lie close, but not touching on the splintered wood, simply basking in each other’s presence like the moon in the light of the sun.
“Today’s the last day.” The words fall like stones into the lake below, and they remain unanswered for quite some time. The silence, tension, begins to build in the air around them, the spice of electricity before the strike of lightning.
“I know.”
“We should do something.” Blue eyes raise themselves from the trance of the water, the sun’s rays glinting off the surface and turning the land around them orange.
“You know he wouldn’t let me. I’m not even supposed to be here as it is.”
“Fuck him.”
“You know it’s not that simple.”
The tension between them tightens and the air is silent once more.
“D’you remember when we were kids? We’d play pirates and cowboys on this dock. Why did we pick those two things, even? What do pirates and cowboys have to do with each other?”
“They’d always fall in love,” the other boy recalls, the sun in his brown hair turning it to gold at the roots.
“And we can’t?”
“You know why.”
The blue eyed one lets out a sigh, curling a pale hand into his midnight black hair. “Still, though, it’s your last day here. We should do something.”
“Like what?”
“Come with me.”
“He’ll notice I’m gone.”
“Please,” the blue eyed boy begs, “Just forget him. Just for a while.”
The brown haired one stays silent.
“Dan, please.” The black haired boy stands up, reaching down a hand to the other’s shoulder.
He flinches away at first, but turns to meet his friend’s eyes for the first time through this entire conversation. “He might… hurt me.”
“I’ll keep you safe.”
Dan considers for a moment, biting his lip, then grabs the older boy’s hand. “Where are we going?” His voice is quiet, subdued in fear.
“Anywhere we can think of.” The black haired boy tucks a sketchbook under his arm. “We can play pirates and cowboys again.”
“Phil, don’t be dumb, we’re nineteen. We don’t play pretend anymore.”
“Whoever said that? Who cares, anyways?”
“It’s just-”
“C’mon, matey!” Phil says in a rough, accented voice. The corner of Dan’s mouth quirks up in a smile.
“I think I’m feeling cowboys a bit more today.”
“Well, awright then?” Phil’s accent shifts again, low and drawling.
“You’re so stupid!” Dan laughs and playfully shoves at his friend. “Pretty sure that accent is offensive.”
“You’re offensive!” Phil says in his normal voice, deep, but light. He smiles widely, tongue poking through a tiny gap in his teeth. “C’mon, let’s go to my place.” He leaves the second half of his statement, ‘he can’t find you there’, unsaid.
The two amble down the dirt path from the lake to Phil’s house, leaning on each other and giggling the whole way, but also both keeping one wary eye out.
It could be said that the two friends were a bit too close, suspiciously so, even. They had thought it themselves, but for an immense fear of losing the other, had never brought it up.
The setting sun painted the late summer trees golden, casting long but warm shadows over everything in their paths. The air was starting to miss the sun’s warmth and chilled a bit, a tiny breeze ruffling the leaves on the trees.
They passed through a brick alley between houses, rusty children’s bikes laying out in the fading sunlight. An ancient tree twisted its way through one of the walls and up to the sky, branches outstretched like the caring arms of a mother.
The boys reached up to its limbs and hoisted themselves over in a many-times-rehearsed motion, making their way through the loved branches and pulling themselves out on the other side, where a peeling white-painted house stood falling apart, the handprints and initials carved into the concrete below the front stoop worn with years.
The house had always smelled like home to Dan, though he had never lived there- like cinnamon and freshly baked cookies, with a hint of citrus and driftwood. He listened to the creak of the steps like the heartbeat of a dying man, feeling the familiar closeness of the walls, softness of the carpet beneath his fingers.
“This won’t be the end,” Phil promised him.
“How could it not be?” Dan responded quickly, an edge in his voice. The tension was back, full of longing and sadness and brick walls. The two sat side by side, a foot apart on the worn rug.
“This place has always been home to me, you know?” Dan said softly, after a moment.
“I know.”
“I don’t want to leave.”
“I know.”
They scooted closer together, Dan’s head fell onto Phil’s shoulder.
“Since today’s the last day we’ll see each other-”
“Don’t talk like that. We’ll see each other again, I promise you.”
Dan’s smile was sad. “Don’t make more promises that you can’t keep, Phil. Since this is the last day I’ll see you face to face, I just wanted to let you know…”
Silence hung in the air. Dan signed, bringing his hand up to rest his forehead on. “I wanted to let you know that I love you.”
“I love you too, you know that.” Phil said immediately.
“No, like-” Dan stood suddenly, barely missing stepping on Phil’s hand. “More than that. You mean a whole hell of a lot to me.”
“I know.”
“I think I love you as more than a friend, and I don’t think I could leave without you knowing that, and obviously you might not want to write to me when I’m gone because of it which I understand, I just wanted to let you-”
Phil was standing now as well, placing two hands on Dan’s shoulders. He shushed him lightly, pulling Dan to his chest. “It’s okay. It’s okay, Dan. You’re okay.”
The two stood there in silence for a few minutes, Dan beginning to cry softly into his friend’s worn t-shirt, the orange light seeping through the window and seeming to intensify Phil’s already sharp features.
It was a moment before Phil could get the words out of his mouth, a soft whisper of “I think I love you like that, too.”
Then they were kissing, and it was soft and tender and tears were drying on both of their cheeks as the last of the light in the summer sky died on their shoulders.
They weren’t quite sure who pulled away first, resting their foreheads together and chasing little pecks of kisses onto each other’s lips as Phil’s hands on Dan’s hips swayed them to the beat of a soundless song. They fell onto the bed sideways, not making any attempt to take their kissing further, just holding each other close and reminiscing.
“You taught me to swim.”
“You were so scared to jump off the dock, remember?”
“All those games of the Sims on your old desktop…”
“I was kind of mean to them, wasn’t I?”
“You deleted all the doors and started a fire!”
Dan could feel the rumbling of Phil’s giggle in his arms and heart. He leaned his head back a bit, opening his eyes to just look at his friend.
“We’re idiots, aren’t we?”
“A bit, yeah.”
The silence this time wasn’t tense, filled with the steady tick of a wall clock.
“You should be headed back soon, Dan, he’ll be wondering where you are.”
“He knows, probably.”
Phil sat up a bit, propping himself up on an elbow. “Then you really should go, if he finds out that you’re with me-”
“Fuck him.”
Phil was quiet for a second, shocked. “But-”
“Fuck. Him.” Dan pulled himself up to sit cross-legged on the bed, and Phil followed suit. “Fuck if he knows. Fuck what he’ll do about it. I’m not giving up my last night with you for anything.”
“I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I kind of already am?”
Dan pulled Phil close and kissed him again, long and slow. Soon Phil’s hands were trailing up his back, tugging at the hem of his shirt. They only parted for a moment to discard it, immediately re-losing themselves in each other.
The last of the orange sunlight pulled itself out from the room, leaving behind the silver-green glow of the moon and glow-in-the-dark stars on Phil’s ceiling.
In the morning Dan awoke half dressed, with red chapped lips and soreness in his muscles, pink light of dawn coming in through the window. Phil lay stretched out on the bed, hogging all the covers and in a similar state, hair mussed and eyes peaceful with a hint of a smile at their corners.
A quick glance out the window showed all he needed to see, an angry, grey-bearded man over on the other side of the brick wall sitting in the back of a pickup truck with innumerable cans of beer surrounding him as he gazed over at the white house, meeting Dan’s eyes with a smile as though he had been waiting for him to appear in that very window. Dan jerked away, sitting back on the edge of the bed and absently twirling Phil’s hair in his fingers.
As much as Dan didn’t want this to hurt so badly, it felt wrong to leave Phil without saying goodbye. He gently shook Phil’s shoulders as he pulled his shirt back on, glancing around for his shoes as his friend slowly awoke.
Phil sat up abruptly, though whether he was realizing what was happening or what had happened last night unclear. He watched in silence as Dan tied up his shoes.
“I’m going to miss you. Please call me, like you said you would.”
“Twice every day, I promise,” he responded immediately. “We’ll see each other again, I promise. I’ll get train tickets, come to visit you this weekend.”
“What if he’s still there with me, though?”
“We’ll figure that out on the phone. It’ll be fine, I promise.”
“I don’t want to go.”
Phil didn’t appear to have a response to that, pulling his friend into a hug. He saw the man in the truck through the window and tensed up. “Will you be alright on the drive?”
“I’ll call you when we get there.”
Phil knew what the avoidance of his question meant, and hugged Dan tighter. “I love you.”
“I love you too. I’ll be fine.”
Phil never did get a call that night.
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