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cas-tellation · 7 years

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Not what you thought (I’m sorry, I didn’t know) (pt. 3)

He’s halfway home already when he hears someone calling his name. He spins around, watching as a tall figure with floppy black hair saunters up to him.

“Phil. Hi.” Dan greets.

“Hi. What’s up?” Phil asks, falling into step beside Dan.

“M’just going home.” Dan says.

“Mind if I accompany you?”

“I don’t mind.”

A month has passed and Dan thinks that things might be okay one day. Not now, because his chest still hurts so much that it’s hard to breath properly and nobody at school really pays him any attention, making it hard to answer his parents when they ask about his new ‘friends’

Phil, being home schooled, brings lunch to Dan nearly everyday, spending the lunch hour together, before Dan has to go back to his classes. It’s a good system, to say the least.

Dan almost feels like he can be more himself around Phil, in a way that he can’t really with anyone else, besides Nicole of course.

He talks with Nicole a lot, though less than he probably should. She doesn’t come up to visit him again, but he desperately wants her to. She’s the only person aside from family and doctors and therapists, who knows that Dan’s trans. She knows pretty much everything, it’s comforting. At school, everybody calls him Dan. But they’ve always made remarks about how feminine he looks. I doesn’t help that he’s only just 5’5”. With Nicole however, it was easier. She knew that he wasn’t cis, but that didn’t stop her from being insanely supportive. The fact that she called him handsome a lot was also nice.

Dan throws his bag onto the damp ground, glaring at nobody. It’s lunch and he’s behind the school again, though Phil hasn’t arrived there yet. He takes off his raincoat, laying it down on the ground before sitting down on it. He tilts his head back, letting it bang against the wall behind him. His head feels so heavy and tired. It had been one of those days. One of the days that somehow seemed to suck all his motivation and happiness away.

He couldn’t bring himself to care about anything. Binder too tight? Oh well, it doesn’t really matter. Failed another math test? Too bad, it’s not like it matters anyway. A certain black-haired boy not showing up with his fucking lunch? Well, fuck him. Not like Dan cares in the slightest. Parents wanting something from you that you can’t possibly give them? Best friend/maybe girlfriend/we-don’t-know-it’s-complicated not responding to his texts? Therapists that can’t seem to find out where his issues had originated from? Oh well, in the long run everybody dies and everything is meaningless.

In short, he feels exactly like he used to feel. Broken. Lost. Making problems up for attention? That’s what his mum had said a few years ago, wasn’t it?

Maybe he should tell Nicole how he was feeling. Talking to a friend was supposed to help, right? But he’d already texted her twice this morning, and neither text had gotten a reply. Maybe she was finally getting bored of him and his gross moodswings. She had other friends. It’s not like she needed him or anything.

Instead of Nicole, maybe going to his parents. They had helped him when he came out. They had gotten him a binder and paid for therapy and fuck- they’d even moved to a new city. All for him. Didn’t that show that they cared? But then again, weren’t they tired of him by now? Maybe he was just making everything up. Maybe he was just a girl who wanted to have more attention. They’d probably be tired of him by now. Who wouldn’t be?

His thoughts are thankfully interrupted by someone sitting down next to him, pressing their sided against his.

“Hi.” Phil greets him, digging in his backpack for lunch.

“My mom made muffins so I stole a bunch of them she might yell at me later because they’re for my aunt who may or may not be coming over later but I’m not sure so it’ll most likely be okay. Or at least I hope it will be. They’re blueberry and chocolate muffins and they taste so good I may have snacked on one or two on the way here but I swear there are tons left I just gotta-” Phil pulls a plastic bag out of his backpack, a few muffins visible through it, “-here, you can have as many as you want my mum made so many of them we have like, enough to feed the whole population of england. Which is a lot of people, but obviously not as much as some countries, y’know? Like China has the biggest population. I’m not sure if we’d be able to feed every chinese person. Or anyone in big countries, really. Like america wouldn’t get any. Or russia. Or canada. There might be enough for Australia but I’m not sure.”

Dan takes a bite out of the muffin that Phil had shoved into his hands.

“How is it?” Phil asks, “is it good? My mum worked really hard on them so they should be good but there might not be as many chocolate chips as there should be because she bought the chocolate chips a few days ago, so i’ve had some time to eat a few. Are there too many blueberries? I really like blueberries but i’m not sure how well it works in muffins to be honest.”

“It’s good.” Dan mumbles through a mouthful. He wonders if Nicole has ever eaten muffins this good. Or if she’s ever made muffins for that matter. He slumps against Phil’s body, nibbling at the food that Phil’s shoving into his hands at every chance he gets.

Half an hour later, Dan’s still sitting there, Phil by his side. The bell is making it’s incessant ringing sound, demanding that all the students get up off their lazy asses and go to whichever class they had next.

Phil nudges Dan’s side lightly, “You have to go.”

Is it normal to feel this heavy? Like the weight of the entire world is on top of you, making it nearly impossible to move or form coherent words. It’s like his body is so sad that it’s just… shutting down, having lost all motivation to do anything.

He wants Nicole to be there because wouldn’t she know what to do? Wouldn’t she hug him and make him tea and lay in bed with him? If it wasn’t too bad, wouldn’t she offer him cigarettes and alcohol, letting him get a feeling of being alive through the addictions.

Phil wasn’t Nicole. Phil just sat there, his side Fully pressed up against Dan’s, worry etched in the creases in his forehead and the dimmed look in his eyes.

Dan’s sorry. He’s sorry that he’s like this. That he can’t move. That he keeps following people around who show their distaste in being around him by ignoring him for days on end. He’s sorry that he might be faking his gender. He’s sorry and he doesn’t want to do this anymore.

Phil doesn’t repeat what he said. He doesn’t tell Dan that he has to go.

Though, later, when Dan still hasn’t said anything or moved more than a slight shuffle, Phil’s the one who pulls him to his feet and walks with him the whole way home.

There’s a sharp pain right by his ribs under his left arm. It hurts to pull the binder up and over his head but he does it anyway. He quickly changes into a baggy sweatshirt, flipping the hood up and stepping over one of the many cardboard boxes that still littered the room to get to his bed.

Philly: Hey kid you still awake?

Dan: Yeah why?

Phil: D’you wanna go for a walk?

Dan: It’s too dark.

Phil: I’ll bring a flashlight.

Phil: Pls Danny.

Phil: I don’t wanna be alone rn.

Dan: Ugh fine where are you?

Phil: In front of your house come outside.

“How the actual fuck do you know where I live?!” Dan shouts, running down the front steps to Phil’s waiting form.

“I walked you home once, you idiot,” Phil smiles a bit, “C’mon.” Phil turns and starts walking in a random direction.

“D’you even know where we’re going?” Dan asks, doing up the zipper on his jumper.

“Nope,” Phil replies, “We’re just gonna walk.”

“Nowhere in particular?” Dan inquires.

“Yeah.”

Half an hour later, they’re sitting on the only two swings in the small children’s park that weren’t horrendously broken in some way.

“It’s cold.” Dan complains, wrapping his arms tightly around his torso.

“Man up, nerd.” Phil teases, though at the same time he’s unzipping his coat and throwing it in the general direction of Dan’s shivering body.

“Why’re we out here, anyway?” Dan asks gently, slipping off the swing to grab Phil’s coat. It was a few sizes too big for him -- because of the fact that Phil was over six feet tall whilst Dan was barely 5’5”.

He pulls it over his shoulders like a cape and sits down on the damp ground next to Phil, leaning against the other boys legs.

“I couldn’t stay at home for any longer,” Phil mutters, sliding off the swing and letting Dan lean against his side, “Parents were fighting.” Phil turns a bit to bury his face in Dan’s shoulder.

“This late at night?” Dan brings his hand up to play with Phil’s hair a bit.

“It-” Phil’s voice breaks and he pauses, clearing his throat before trying again, “It’s just… It’s getting worse.”

Dan makes a sympathetic sound somewhere in his throat and properly hugs Phil for the first time, wrapping his arms tightly around Phil’s torso, trying to ignore the way that Phil’s trying to hold back sobs, but eventually just gives up and cries into Dan’s shoulder.

“It’ll be okay,” Dan says, over and over again, “It’ll be okay, Philly.”

The rain makes it harder to slip out of school at lunch. Whilst students are allowed to go wherever they wanted for that hour, it still looked a bit suspicious when someone leaves everyday alone, rain or shine.

He does it anyway.

In the past months, he’s stopped caring about what other people think.

He has made a few friends, though he met them all through Phil. Trevor, Kate and Julius. Julius and Trevor went to the all-boys fancy ass private school, and Kate went to the same school as Dan, though they didn’t talk much there.

“Hey loser,” Phil laughs, “or, should I say, Mr.Hobbit hair.”

“Fuck off,” Dan grumbles, ducking under the slight overhang, throwing Phil a smile when he passes him a chocolate bar.

“You love me, really.” Phil gasps in mock exaggeration.

Dan ignores Phil’s words, but a thin blush does spread across his cheeks.

Dan feels bad. Really bad. He wants to drink or get high or self harm. He even goes as far to grab a pair of scissors from a cardboard box that he has yet to fully unpack. The metal is cold against his hands. It’s so welcoming. He wants to do it, so badly. And he could, so easily. He thinks about his parents; would they care? Yes. They were his parents, of course they’d care. They had to, that was their job. Still his mind holds doubts about it.

With nothing else, he tries calling Nicole. It’s Saturday, she’d probably be out getting drunk with some friends. He calls her again and again, each time it going to voicemail. Tears are stinging his eyes. He tries calling again, before leaving a text.

She doesn’t respond.

An hour later, when he sends her another text, a little ‘read, 23:00’ appears. Hope blossoms in Dan’s chest for a minute. But she doesn’t reply.

Dan’s breathing hard and he gets to the point where the scissors are positioned over his wrist, ready to slash them down. He doesn’t, though. It’s hard and hurts so much, but he doesn’t hurt himself.

Fuck you, Nicole, he thinks.

#myfics

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