Dan is holding himself together by the seams after running away from a religious cult. He has to ask himself why he keeps going, but deep down, he knows the answer already. It's the same answer it was long before his parents packed up and moved him to a thinly-veiled conversion camp in America—Phil.
Fic Includes: Religious Guilt; Religious Imagery & Symbolism; Religious Cults; Panic Attacks; Psychological Trauma; Angst; Mild Gore; Mild Sexual Content; Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con; Existential Angst; Dissociation; Touch-Starved; Touch Averse; Both Can Be True!
Chapter 1
These days, every time a shoulder so much as brushes him, he flinches. It makes him sick to his stomach to feel it, it leaves him bristled up like a cat about to fight. The crowded plane he’s on now, is, therefore, the worst possible place for him to be.
The woman in the seat next to him has her arm on the armrest and it’s just close enough to Dan’s personal space to make him hypervigilant of every move she makes. Her elbow brushes closer when she turns the page in the book she’s reading and he holds his breath. No matter how much he tries to focus on looking out the window or scrolling on his phone or reading his own book his attention is diverted again to the thin sliver of space between him and the flesh of another human.
Flesh, red and bloody underneath only the thinnest layer of armor. Too easy to break. His mind conjures images, fuzzy and out of focus, that he tries to avoid at all costs, that he tries to push away until they disappear but they never do, they just float softly in his subconscious like a snake waiting to strike, rattling in warning every time he hears the gentle sound of paper on paper and he feels the world shift around him oh so slightly.
Images of muscle, pulled apart in strings and bleeding. Images of her skin touching Dan’s and instantly falling off in waves of pain and gore. He swallows back vomit but the taste sticks to his mouth and leaves his gums feeling clammy and sick. He’d gotten a Sprite from the flight attendant half an hour ago and it sits untouched on the tray table in front of him, gently sloshing against the edges of it’s ridged plastic prison every time the plane hits a breeze. In, oxygen in his lungs, he visualizes it, out, carbon dioxide leaving his nose. Balanced, same amount in, same amount out. Counts of four.
Five things he can see. The clean back of the seat in front of him, the cover of the window, clouds over clear ocean through the window, the woman’s elbow as the page turns- fuck. He closes his eyes so he can’t see it get closer, but he still feels the disturbance in the air around him, in the too-cold jets of AC coming from the vent right over him.
Chris was right. Dan never should have left the community, there they all understood how dirty touch was; the birth of all sin. If Adam and Eve never held hands they never would have been tempted by doing more, by the promise of that touch going further. Mankind was better without, purity was only complete when it was absolute. His shoulder was never brushed in passing there, everyone cleared a wide berth to avoid it. They were cleansed, nothing wrong, nothing that could be spread.
He has the urge to call Chris and beg him to take him back, because he knows as soon as he gets to Phil’s flat he’ll want a hug and Dan isn’t dirty anymore, he doesn’t have those urges anymore, he doesn’t know how he’ll say no and stay pure for God. The sterile voice of the pre-recorded safety message rings out over the speakers and his eyes flash open. He downs his Sprite in three gulps and pushes the tray in front of him up, clicks on his seatbelt, and does his best to ignore the ringing pressure-pain in his ears as the plane glides down down down onto the runway bellow.
The Tube is crowded, always, if Dan can remember one thing about London it’s that, so he takes a cab instead. Chris’ voice rings in his head as he pays the cabby outside Phil’s new apartment building. “The Devil will test you, turn him down and return to me, prove God’s faith and be saved,” It rings, swimming through his mind like church bells the entire time he’s on the lift, the entire time he walks down the hallway, the entire time he’s knocking on the door.
Phil opens the door and tackles him in a hug like it’s the one thing he’s been waiting to do since he was given life. Even though he knew it was coming, Dan can’t help the shiver that runs through him. Immediate, powerful convulsions that leave him feeling the urge to toss his guts up into the nearest toilet. That’s what Chris would want, he’d want Dan to remind himself why he hates touch, especially from other men, that all it brings is hurt and suffering, not the noble grace of the Lord.
He ignores the way he wants to reach out again the second Phil pulls away. He ignores the way his skin seems to burn, but not with pain. In the Community all that meant was that the pain was to be delayed, to be made spectacle and lesson for all. Here, logically, Dan is aware that will not happen, but he fears it anyway. When Phil smiles at him it’s the same in tone and entirely different in weight; lines sink into his cheeks in the familiarity of an expression worn with love and ease. Dan struggles to lift the corners of his mouth past a grimace. He isn’t sure if he succeeds, but Phil makes no comment on it either way.
“Dan, come on in! I wasn’t sure how long you’d be staying, so I got food for a couple days but we can always go to the market, it could be fun. There’s curry on the stove, if you want to set your stuff down and get a bowl,” Phil says, smoothly, like the words aren’t hard at all. Like he’s rehearsed them again and again, waiting for this moment to blurt them out. Dan nods, quietly, and sets his nearly empty backpack by the door before following Phil into the kitchen.
It’s good curry. Dan’s favorite, the right mix of spices and pops of color, a sharp scent he missed so damn much. It tastes different than he remembered, almost too much going on for him to handle. He’s more used to the plain food served in the Community, now, the simple porridge and the treat of honey on Sundays. He chokes it down anyway, even though his taste buds don’t really know what to do with it anymore. It’s delicious, he tells himself, you’ll get used to it again, you’ll get back to normal.
Phil tries to make conversation. Dan spits out answers as simple as he can, if he has to talk at all. He doesn’t ask anything back. He’s careful with his comments, it’s habit to cut his thoughts short at the bare minimum because if he gives too much away it-
He stops himself in the middle of his nod.
“Sorry, what was the question?” He asks. The skin on his cuticle is worn down and rough from where he worries it with his nail for the grounding pain it brings. Pulling his finger from it’s rut feels like two magnets but he does it anyway. He imagines doing that with his mind, too. Dragging it from its well-worn paths and forcing it into a new one. One that feels dangerous, like pain waiting to happen. It’s wrong. It feels bad. It’s better, he tells himself, this is getting better.
“I was asking if you’d seen any good shows lately?” Phil repeats, gentle and patient. The truth is, Dan hasn’t seen any shows since he’d been taken from Phil, since his parents sent him to fucking Wisconsin.
“Nothing great, I guess.” It’s not technically a lie, either, he really hasn’t seen anything great. “Is there anything you recommend?” God, his voice feels awkward. It comes out half-baked and squeaky and he wishes he was better at… this.
“Off the top of my head? Nah, but we could look through what’s on Netflix after dinner, if that sounds fun,” Offers Phil through a mouthful of curry. Dan politely takes his time to finish chewing before he gives the affirmative.
It seems like no time until his plate is stacked on top of Phil’s in the sink, waiting to be washed. Something itches under his skin, something urges him to wash the dishes like he would have at the Community, but Phil is already heading into the living room to sort out what to watch so he doesn’t. He’s spent the last four years cleaning up, wiping away any speck of dust or imperfection that could be hiding the work of the Devil. It feels like a sin to let the dishes sit in the sink but he does it anyway.
He’s been doing those a lot lately, things that feel like sins. Every time he does his insides twist up in guilt, guilt that leaves him feeling sick the stomach with fucking joy. Shame and fear and utter euphoria mix together in his system like he’s crossfaded, like his emotions are a poorly mixed cocktail of substances.
A theme song for a show he will never learn the name of blares out over shitty speakers and Dan stops hovering in the doorway and takes his seat on the couch, one cushion away from Phil. It used to be that space wouldn’t exist. It used to be, he remembers, that his head would end up in Phil’s lap and he would be curled up half asleep feeling like nothing in the world could hurt him so long as he was there.
Now, though, is not how it used to be. He can’t slip that on like a well-worn jacket, it won’t fit his new frame. The space feels like a necessity, a safety-blanket to protect himself from his own mind. So long as he isn’t anywhere near Phil, he isn’t committing the sin that got him sent to the Community. So long as that stays true, then, and only then, is he actually safe.
The bed is soft, visibly so even from the doorway, and he can tell it’s going to make every bone in his body crack as soon as he lays down. Phil has spread a bland, agreeable comforter over it. Boring. No jarring pattern, not at all like how Dan remembers all of Phil’s blankets being. He’d known it was a guest room, but he hadn’t really thought about how truly impersonal it would be. He had sort-of assumed that it would be his old room, still.
He knows it’s stupid, stuck up, prideful, to think that, but he had. It was a perfect picture in his mind, years and years of imagining himself there instead of wherever he ended up. Black patchwork blanket, his clothes in a pile on the desk chair, Phil right outside the door for him to run to whenever he needed.
It isn’t like that here. It’s beige walls and a layer of dust on every surface, a room that clearly never gets used and was made up to be presentable one time. Dan sets his backpack on the floor beside the bed. The only thing in it is his pocket bible, an extra pair of underwear, and his phone charger. He strips down to just his boxers and slips under the covers, silky-soft against his skin. The wall is all he has to stare at but he’s used to that, now.
It blurs together in his mind until morning comes, and he can smell food cooking outside his door, and the familiar footsteps he’d almost forgotten. He puts his clothes back on. Everything feels like a loop, like nothing changed. It feels like a comfort. That’s what he does now. He doesn’t really sleep, because it’s easier if he lets himself drift in and out of consciousness. It’s too hard to pull himself away from real rest if he gets it, so he doesn’t let himself get it.
If he never gets a break, he won’t crave the next one so viscerally. He can’t be slothful without being lazy, and if he doesn’t relax then he can’t be lazy. One more sin to avoid, one more sin they can’t punish him for, he’s being good, he won’t give in to the Devil’s- Stop it. He slaps himself in the face before he opens the door and walks to the kitchen. Don’t think like that, he whispers like a mantra with every step until he has to stop so he doesn’t seem crazy. Crazier, that is, than he seems just by virtue of being him.
Pancakes are filling the air with sweetness that Dan hasn’t tasted in far too long. Phil is standing over the stove with a spatula and he looks up grinning when Dan walks in. He’s still in his pajamas, bright blue bottoms and a worn anime t-shirt that hangs from his frame and leaves one of his collarbones on display.
“Smiley face or heart?” Phil asks while he digs around in a bag of chocolate chips perched precariously on the edge of the countertop.
“Smiley, duh.” Dan feels his throat crack as he says it, he needs water. It occurs to him that he’s allowed to get water like a click in his brain. Like the old Dan is clawing his way to the surface, the Dan that did what he wanted when he wanted. The Dan that felt like he could, without the fear of punishment. He chooses to listen to that person instead of the person he is now. That person was a lot happier.
He’s halfway to the table with a glass of water when he sees the letter taped to the fridge. The sound of glass clinking into pieces on the tile floor comes before his mind registers that his fingers were slipping on the smooth, condensation-damp exterior of the cup. It’s less of a letter and more of a card, really, an idealized picture of the Wisconsin landscape he’d lived in for so long. Airbrushed, far away, far enough away that all you could see in the picture was a valley of grasses and small buildings.
The text over it reads ‘God Loves All His Children’ in pastel yellow cursive. You can’t see the people in the valley, the people who have blank faces and blistered backs, whose hands are raw from the ruler in the schoolhouses. You can’t see the churches with bells that seem to ring for miles or the distance everyone keeps from each other. You can’t see the places where Dan’s blood stains the streets or where he lost his virginity to a woman who didn’t want it any more than he did.
Dan breathes in, and out, in, and out. Robotically, he squats down and starts to clean up the shattered glass at his feet. None of it is small enough to cut him, not worth getting a broom out over. He mops up the water with his shirt, stripping it off without a second thought because if Phil notices he’s made a mess he would die, he would get kicked out and then the only place he could go would be back, back to the valley, back to-
“Dan!” A hand lands on his shoulder, firm but not harsh. “Come on, listen to me, let me get a paper towel, Jesus.”
He listens. He lets Phil pull the shirt away from him and carefully take the three pieces of glass from his hands. The glass goes in the trash and the shirt goes in the hamper. Phil gently cleans up what’s left of the puddle and Dan stays on the floor, eyes fliting after every movement in front of him. His hands are shaking. So are his legs. They give out under him and he ends up falling ungracefully onto his knees.
“I’m sorry,” He chokes out, pulling his gaze away from where Phil is tossing out the used paper towel. He stares at the ground instead.
“It’s not a big deal, really, I’m sorry, it was the postcard, wasn’t it?” His voice is soft and he ignores the smell of burning pancakes to sit in front of Dan on the floor instead. “I didn’t know it would, uh, you know, I guess I didn’t think about it reminding you of that. It was the only clue I had for where you’d gone for all those years, you know, I’m sorry for having it up still.”
“It’s fine. I shouldn’t have reacted like that.” He keeps his reply clipped because he’s worried that if he keeps talking he’s going to say something worse. He curses whoever made tile floors so damn cold. He curses himself for taking off his shirt. He curses Phil for pretending not to notice the scars that mar his ribs.
Phil doesn’t try to respond, he just gets up, walks away, and Dan feels a sick satisfaction bloom inside his chest. It makes a home somewhere behind his lungs, shying away from his spine with a vengeance, burrowing into the mucus membrane that’s supposed to protect his delicate organs. He deserves this, and Phil deserves so much better than to clean up after him. As long as those two things are true, Dan will not deserve him.
Then a blanket gets draped over his shoulders. It’s soft, fuzzy, black, and it smells like Phil’s laundry detergent hasn’t changed since 2007, either. Dan tugs it around himself and picks himself up off the floor. There’s a plate of now burnt pancakes on the breakfast bar with chocolate chips making ugly, lopsided smiley faces on most of them. He flops into the seat next to Phil quietly and chooses to stare at them instead of eating.
He doesn’t know if he’s eaten this much since, well, since the last time he was with Phil. He swallows. There’s a gnawing inside his stomach but he can’t tell if it’s guilt or hunger, and he isn’t sure if he wants to find out. Recently Dan’s had a proclivity towards tossing his guts up when he’s wrong about that.
The bright overhead lighting in ASDA is burning Dan’s retina’s the same way the Walmart’s did in Wisconsin. It rings like a migraine behind his eyes, sharp and unforgiving. Phil is flipping through a rack of t-shirts on clearance, pulling out the occasional black or grey and tossing it in their basket. There are already two pairs of jeans, sweatpants, a jacket, and a pack of socks and trousers. It’d been more noticeable than Dan had wanted it to be that he didn’t really have any clothes.
It’s all plain but Dan isn’t sure he’d even be able to decipher what kind of fancier clothes he would wear. He hadn’t exactly had that choice for the last portion of his life, and even the ability to choose the color of his shirts felt more than a little overwhelming. Phil had picked up on that pretty quickly, he’d been doing a lot of that over the last couple days. Then, he’d been doing that as long as he’d known Dan.
“Alright, that should be good for now, we have all the basics. Come on, we can go check out and head home, yeah?” Phil asks. Dan nods over the ringing in his ears and ignores the stare of the middle aged lady an aisle over. The kid who scans their items has the most empty look in his eyes, a look Dan almost feels more at home around than the brightness he’s faced with on the daily now. He purposely avoids looking at the total Phil ends up paying because he already feels shitty enough and he doesn’t even want to know how much it cost.
He hears the sound of his sneakers on the sidewalk, feels the jostling of strangers on the tube on their way back, tastes the acrid stomach acid bubbling up in his throat as he’s squished in around other bodies. The only reason he doesn’t puke is because he’s pretty sure he doesn’t have enough control over his own body to do so.
It’s all a fake-ass simulation anyways, right? If it’s all pre-ordained, if God had it all figured out before any of them were even thought up, then Dan can’t change any of this. He can’t do anything about it, about how fucked up he is, so why should he bother being present if at it brings him is pain and he’s going to burn in hell no matter what he does moment to moment.
floats in the door more than walks. turns on the hallway light, like a button in a videogame, nothing to it because it doesn’t matter and the world is just a cotton playground for God to move His little dolls around. dan, dolls like dan—and phil, too, probably. he couldn’t say, really, he isn’t phil (unless he is?) so maybe phil isnt a doll and it really is just dan who isn’t real, and not the whole world. There’s a buzzing in the back of his head that sounds like mice skittering in the walls of his brain.
He opens his eyes and he’s sitting on the couch with Phil perched next to him and a weighted blanket over his lap. “Hey.” He tries, just to see if he’s in the real world again, “What time is it?”
“Hey yourself. It’s a quarter to five, Dan,” Phil responds, his voice light as a feather and somehow solid, tangible in a way that lets Dan grip onto it with all his might to keep himself from floating away.
“Keep talking.”
“About what?”
“Anything. Tell me anything. No, not anything. Tell me about what I missed, while I- While I was in… America. Please. I want to know, want to know what happened, want to know I’m not the only one on Earth and it spins whether I’m here or not, Phil, please.” He cuts himself off before his voice starts to shutter out on him and break down into squeaks like a rundown bike trying to fly down a gravel mountain.
“Well, I guess, I guess I’ll start with after you, err, left. It took me a long time to find out what even happened to you-”
“No, I can’t hear—Please, just tell me about something small. Like, I don’t know, when did you buy that lamp,” Dan interrupts. He just truly, truly, cannot listen to however it was Phil felt once his parents found out where he was.
“Oh. Alright, sure, then, if that’s what you need. It isn’t very interesting. I got it off of Amazon, the shade is from a charity shop up North I went to with my Gran a couple years back. Took my fancy, it really brightens up the room. I mean, the red is a little stark but I think it brings it all together. Course I can’t use the lamp itself because of how it tints the light, it makes it just horrid, you know?”
“Yeah. I think I do know. I think I know really well.” Dan leans back on the couch and lets his eyes close, and he feels the fluff and the weight of the blanket as he pulls it further over himself. He feels the shift of the cushions as he curls up with the slightest movements and the tiniest movement of air over his ears. He feels it all, second by second, and he’s damn sure it’s real this time.
Chapter 2
Dan does his best to sleep, really sleep, for Phil’s sake. He won’t stop pointing out Dan’s eyebags or his jerky movements or his constant yawning and the worst part is that Dan can’t really argue with his points, because they’re true. Phil is right. He needs to sleep. Really sleep. Not just doze off staring at the wall and waking himself up before he gets close to dreaming.
It’s easier said than done. The first night he tries he doesn’t get anywhere but more awake, and by the third all he can manage is thirty minutes of actual sleep before his mind shoves him out of sleep with an uncanny dropping in his stomach. He does his best, he does. He even gives in and tries shitty sleep audios and guided meditations but without fail something in them gives him goosebumps and he has to turn them off.
Needless to say, he’s more than surprised when he actually succeeds in sleeping one night. He doesn’t even notice it, not at first, even after he wakes up. And then he gets out of bed, and he looks at the clock, and it reads 3:00 P.M. in glowing green rectangles.
He pulls open the curtains and is met with the dreary backdrop of London, a sprinkling of drops on the people milling on the street below him. In some ways, he almost misses the sun of Wyoming. It barely rained there, nothing like the drizzling of England that he grew up with. No, Dan, stop it, stop thinking about that place like you enjoyed any of it, he tells himself, and he squeezes his eyes shut and pretends his chest doesn’t feel like its going to implode.
Phil is in the kitchen when he finally creeps out of the guest room. His room. The guest room, he settles on, it isn’t really his, it’s temporary, he’ll get back on his feet and move out like he planned on and pretend like he hasn’t spent three weeks wasting his time like a fuckup, just like he did the first time around.
“Hey, sleep well? I checked in earlier and figured I’d let you rest.” Phil smiles at him and half-shuts his laptop. No screen between them. Ironic, but not in the dramatic irony way, in the Alanis Morrisette way. Or maybe it is in the dramatic way. It’s been a long time since Dan’s been permitted to read Shakespeare. He adds it to the list of things he needs to return to, somewhere between listening to Fall Out Boy and smelling fancy scented candles.
“Yeah. I feel… tired. It, uh. Yeah,” He responds, because he wants to tell Phil how he feels. The words stick in his throat and pile up at the edge of his mind and he knows it will be a dam that overflows one day. But that isn’t a today problem and he doesn’t have the energy to start talking about this feelings now when he hasn’t for so long so he brushes it aside and gets a glass of water instead.
Hours slip by and eventually he ends up outside, without an umbrella or a jacket, and he isn’t totally sure why he’s there. It’s nice out. Dark. So, so dark. Phil is at home. Is at his house, his home, and Dan told him he was going for a walk. Which is true. It just ended up being a walk that lasted longer than he expected, and now it’s after ten and his legs are sore and the balls of his feet are screaming at him.
It’s finally almost empty out. He knows he won’t be fully alone, because it’s a city and he never is anymore, but he’s as close as he’s going to come. He finds a park bench and he sits down. Water douses the seat of his trousers immediately but who gives a shit. No one is looking at his ass while he’s sitting on a bench. No one will look at it while he’s walking home later, no, while he’s walking to Phil’s house later.
Cold, windy, hated by his body, his soul feels nourished. Just a little. He asks God what it is that makes him like this and then he backtracks because that’s a selfish thing to ask so instead he asks how he can change to make God proud. God doesn’t answer. He never does, but it makes Dan feel a little bit better anyway. He brushes a hand over the cross hanging around his neck and he pretends that he can feel someone holding it close, warming him up from the inside out.
He brings his knees up to his chest and hugs them, rests his chin on top of them. It’s weird to wear jeans again. He isn’t used to the feeling of denim grating on his skin and bunching up under his legs. Not anymore, when most of what he’d worn for the better part of the last five years was baggy beige sweatpants. He looks at the stars and wonders, not for the first time, if they’re just holes poked in the top of a jar to let him breath.
The image of God as a preteen boy, missing a tooth, a bad haircut, collecting little ant-sized humans in a container stolen from his mother peeks into Dan’s head without him asking it to. It feels almost right, more right than an all-knowing being always in control does. No one all-knowing would choose to put Dan in this world if they could avoid it.
Sunday morning. Wednesday evening. The two times a week Dan lets himself really pray. It feels so ingrained that if he puts it off for even a few minutes he has a panic attack. He talks to God in his head a lot, outside of that, but that isn’t the same. That’s to stave off loneliness, to stave off the thoughts that push into his head without his permission. This is a dedicated time, an hour for him to kneel, still, force his intestines to unclench, and focus.
He grew to appreciate these times, despite how much he had originally hated them. Sitting with his boredom, with his fear and his anger and his hurt actually did make it better, just not in the way he thinks they wanted it to. Getting better to them meant him being free of sin. It meant him following the straight and narrow. It worked, for a little while, until these times of silent prayer let him reflect on how much it wasn’t actually helping him at all.
There was a scar, one of many, wrapping around his ankle in stark lines. This one was newer, still tinted pink and puffier than the rest. It was from when he ran. He thanks God for giving him the strength to yank his foot from the barbed wire fence without screaming. By the time he got into the city, into the arms of a volunteer at a homeless shelter, he was basically crawling to avoid moving that leg and disturbing the shredded skin.
It didn’t really hurt anymore, but Dan sometimes still checked just to see if his foot was even there. He’d been convinced he was going to lose it, and now he just needs to make certain he didn’t. He thanks God for letting him keep his foot. For teaching him to do a better job with the wire cutters next time.
The door creaks open behind him, and Dan has to use everything in him not to jump up at the noise. Phil clears his throat. “So, uhm, sorry if I’m… like, interrupting something,” he says, “but I wanted to let you know that my family is going to be visiting tonight for dinner.” Dan hums a noncommittal response. “Ah. Okay, well, now you know. I’ll leave you to it, I guess.”
It clicks shut. Dan relaxes his shoulders where he’s kneeling. His forehead reconnects with the floor and he resettles his arms stretched out before him, clasped in thanks. A candle burns on the dresser in front of him. He’d gone to the corner store the Sunday after he arrived and grabbed the first one he found, along with a lighter. Phil had given him the money without even asking what he wanted it for.
It doesn’t smell like much of anything. There’d been scented ones next to it but they cost twice as much and he’d already felt guilty enough. The ones in Wyoming had smelled of actual beeswax, had dripped off-golden and hot. This one just collected a pool of sad beige wax in the center of it, corralled in by cheap plastic casing.
He stays until his phone starts buzzing, methodical, time is up. Movement by movement, he unfolds himself until he stands tall, a million pieces of a whole, built up by thousands of prayers and hundreds of bones and more tiny cells than he can even imagine. His heart flutters and he can hear inside of him, a thrumming in the corners of his skull. His breathing is light, the room is quiet and mostly dark, and nothing exists except his body and the false creation of the self.
It smells like pesto sauce when Dan walks into the kitchen. Phil is stirring a pot while he reads from his phone, muttering under his breath about running out of garlic. He’s cleared the table of the usual jumble of cords and adapters and added a fake bouquet of flowers to the center.
“Do you want help cooking?” Dan asks. Phil startles, blinking rapidly before breaking into a thin smile and nodding.
“Yeah, could you get out the noodles? There’s some spaghetti on top of the fridge, the pot for them is the one with the black handle, in the cupboard over the sink. Thanks, Dan, I appreciate it.”
The food is barely done when the doorbell rings, and Phil sets out to answer it while Dan pulls out plates and silverware. As soon as the door opens he can hear the excited, hyper noises of the Lester family. He can almost see the way they’re piling each other in hugs and greetings and the way they happily bounce around like golden retrievers.
They tumblr into the dining room, Phil’s mom and dad and his brother claiming seats like they live there, like they sit there morning and night, muscle memory and not a conscious choice. There’s only one chair left.
Phil ushers Dan to take it and as soon as he sits down the chatter shoots directly at him, a volley of “Oh, it’s been so long!” and “How are you these days?” that make him want to curl up in a ball and start fucking crying. Phil comes back to the room pulling his desk chair with him, and sets it right next to Dan’s seat.
The food is good. Phil’s family is just like he remembers them, warm and welcoming and also so damn overwhelming when he’s not in the mood. Something in him wonders if he’ll ever be in the mood again, at this rate, and the rest of him suddenly feels the need to go to the bathroom even though he hasn’t had anything to drink since breakfast.
Phil looks at him with worry creasing his brow but just as soon it’s gone and he’s back to entertaining, catching up, doing the social thing. As soon as Dan’s around the corner he wraps his arms around his chest like it’s the only thing in the world that’ll hold him together. He falls into the bathroom like the arms of the Lord, closes the door like the golden gates, mutes the noise outside like the cherub’s harps.
He wonders if he’ll go to hell just for visualizing heaven in the off-white walls of Phil’s bathroom. Sharp pains slip around his ribcage, and he thinks he must be finding out soon if he’s having a heart attack. No, no, Dan, calm down, he mutters, it’s just anxiety, that’s it, you aren’t dying, just breathe. He pulls himself to the corner in front of the counter, curls in on himself.
His head hurts now, but that’s from him pulling his hair. That’s purposeful, it’s controllable and containable. That’s him, having power over the situation. There’s a ringing in his ears but he ignores it, along with the dampness collecting on his eyelashes from scrunching his face together as if that’ll fix anything.
He sits, and sits, and eventually he grips onto the counter and pulls himself to the sink and douses his face in cold water. His chest still hurts, but it’s better. Not so much stabbing as a light slap. The Dan in the mirror blinks back at him, ends of his hair dripping and looking like a mess. He’s gaunt, and his hair is still growing back from the fresh buzz they’d given him at the Community at the beginning of August.
It’s nothing like how Dan remembers himself, hair long and shaggy and flattened into a fringe. He reaches out and he touches the cool glass in front of him and he traces the things he’d change. The way his skin has tanned and aged from being outside nearly all day without sunscreen instead of in front of a computer screen soaking in LEDs. The spot on his ear where the piercing closed up. How his eyebrows are constantly creased in worry no matter how hard he tries to relax.
Phil’s family are at the door saying goodbye when Dan comes back out. Every single one of them insists on hugging him before they leave, and his skin feels like a million tiny pimples just popped in every single one of his pores. He doesn’t move from the door, staring at the solid wood until he hears Phil start washing in the dishes, and then he just slips back to his room and stares at the wall for a while instead.
A lava lamp sits shattered on the sidewalk in front of Dan. The bag it was in is torn at the bottom, one so small he hadn’t noticed it until it inevitably got bigger and let the contents spill. He stares at it for a moment before he reaches down and carefully scoops as many of the pieces as he can into the bag again, sideways this time, and chucks it into the nearest garbage bin.
He walks the rest of the way home and he doesn’t even process what happened until he walks in the door and Phil is sitting in front of the TV and the shelf is behind him, still with an awkward, empty space. Phil is absorbed in whatever game he’s playing. He waves at Dan mindlessly and Dan has half a mind to walk back out the door and never come back. It wasn’t a big deal. He knows that.
But knowing it doesn’t stop the swirl of shame in his stomach from eating him inside and making him feel like he might implode. Instead of leaving, instead of running back to his room and picking at his skin until it bleeds or praying for forgiveness, he sits on the edge of the couch next to Phil and he stares at the 3D character on screen jump from ledge to ledge. He perches there until his back starts hurting and then he gives in and leans so he’s actually on the couch.
“I love you,” He says, and he doesn’t really know why. He’s never been one to say things like that, regardless of in what way he means it. Phil doesn’t react for a moment, to anything, to the words or to the screen, where his character falls into a pit of spikes and the screen goes red. Dan can see the cogs in his mind whirring away and eventually he sets the controller down on the side table and turns to face Dan.
“I love you too. Are you alright?” He makes a face immediately after saying it and rushes to correct himself, “I mean, not that I don’t think it’s great to know that, or that I didn’t know that, but it’s weird for you to- I mean, you know.”
“I got you a lava lamp. It fell. No, I dropped it.” He isn’t sure how to verbalize what he means. Usually he’s damn good at that, or at least he’s good at sounding like he means something of importance, but now he isn’t really sure he’s saying anything that matters at all. Or, maybe he’s saying something that matters more than anything that sounds important to other people.
“Oh. That’s alright, no harm done.” Dan nods, slowly, and sinks into the cushions behind him. “Can I touch you?” Phil asks, “I mean, like, I really want to hug you.” Dan nods, again, without thinking, and then he pauses and decides to shake his head instead.
“Not right now. We can try later, I think, but-”
“It’s alright. I know. Take your time, I’ll still be waiting right here.” And Dan ignores the twinge of shame in his chest for having made Phil wait there for him for so long already. Years and oceans away he’d fantasized about it constantly, but now that all that’s between them in the whole world is a few seconds and a third of a couch he can’t make his fucked up brain enjoy a hug, or even just sitting close enough for their shoulders to brush.
He stays on the couch anyway.
Chapter 3
The visceral image of Jesus on a cross burns behind his eyes when he sees God’s son in a manger in every store front this time of year. Looking at the peaceful scene, mother and Holy child crowded by hay and warm animals and golden gifts leaves the metallic taste of blood seeping through his palate, but he still can’t bear to look away somehow.
The toy store they stand in now has a nativity scene, though only a few animals have been set out so far. Still a couple weeks to go until Christmas. But Dan knows what comes next; a manger, and soon enough Mary and soon enough Jesus. And soon enough Jesus is hanging with blood running from nails in his wrists and from terrible spikes in his head, from whip marks on his back and a spear to the side.
And it is Dan’s fault. It is his sin, a drop in an overflowing basin of wrongness. But every drop removed, if placed in righteous hands instead of the Devil’s, is one less thorn in Christ’s crown. He was not in the torrent, and now he has rejoined it. He was in the clouds, floating just below heaven with a sure path in, should God forgive his past, and he rejected it. Dan chose to join the downpour again, to forsake his father, both physical and spiritual, and make his home in Phil’s life.
A Coo-coo clock goes off, chirping with little wooden birds that it is 3 now. Dan presses his eyes shut and stares at the nothingness that greets him. He wonders if Jesus would have scooped his eyes out for the way he looks at other men. He wonders if his lust would have kept him from heaven even if he had chosen to stay in Wyoming. The way he couldn’t help staring after half the men he saw. The way when he was confronted with a girl, expected to create a baby under holy matrimony, he sobbed with her for hours.
When she died, of appendicitis, she was pregnant. Dan had never had sex before her. She wasn’t a virgin, but she was born-again, and she had told him it meant the world to her that he would give her a new first time, the God-approved way now. He didn’t tell her that he pictured the face of a man he’d lived with at seventeen, run away from his parents for, just to get it up. He told her he loved her, even though it wasn’t really true. She cried happy tears, and he cried as well.
A little kid runs past him, followed by his mother, telling him to slow down slow down, we can find a present for your friend just as well without running.
Phil dodges the oncoming traffic and joins Dan at the front of the shop. In his hands a pre-wrapped gift for his niece sits, frilly and pink. Dan doesn’t know what’s inside it, but the tag says it’s from both of them. He tucks his scarf back over his nose and the door jingles over his head as he pushes it open, dutifully holding it for the grandparents and grandchildren that rush in as they’re leaving.
Snow swirls around them, not so much white as grey, more wind than flakes, but still managing to bite into him through the layers of sweaters and jumpers he’s piled on. Half of them he took from Phil’s closet because he can never seem to get warm enough in London anymore. He used to have no problem with it, stick on a raincoat and a fuzzy hat and he could handle any weather England could throw at him, but now it felt foreign to his skin. He weighs less than when he was 17. He wonders if that’s part of the problem.
Phil leads them through barely-familiar streets with ease, stops at a few odd mom-and-pop shops along the way for other gifts, apparently all from the two of them, and stamps his boots on the sidewalk outside of their apartment building. Dan joins him, and as he scraps his sneakers off on the mat just inside the door more mud comes off than ice.
As soon as he’s in the door, layers of protective clothing are stripped off until he stands in only two dry jumpers instead of five in varying levels of dampness. They’re going to Phil’s hometown, leaving early tomorrow to stay with his parents and help set up for all the guests the Lester’s will inevitably have. Dan knows how this drill goes, or at least how it used to. Of course, last time they did this Dan was still six months from turning eighteen and Phil still had a semester of university to attend before graduating.
The train is the same as every train he’s ever been on. Slower than it needs to be, almost stiflingly quiet until suddenly someone is yelling or crying, except now he doesn’t have someone to talk to on his phone the whole way. He stares out the window instead, Phil next to him and carefully keeping his own personal space.
It still smells the same in the Lester household. Like baked goods that are a little ugly but so delicious Dan could cry, and flowers that have been in a vase just long enough to dry out a little. Phil’s childhood bedroom has been changed into a guest room now that he isn’t living there over semester breaks anymore. It still has the same bed, the one that’s too small for the two of them but that fits them anyway.
“Are you sure you don’t mind it?” Phil asks for the millionth time, unpacking his bag of clothes into the drawers without a second thought.
“It’s alright. I promise. If I just can’t handle it suddenly then I can always roll onto the floor instead. No harm in trying, but I think I can do it.” Dan leaves his clothes in his bag, leaves his phone in it too so that there isn’t a chance it could fall out of his pocket if he needs to leave in a hurry. Not that he will. He won’t. He won’t need to leave, he’s safe here, he always has been, but his phone and his clothes stay in his bag anyway.
Dan lays awake, staring out over the near-pitch room around him and training his eyes to pick out every detail, every different shade of deep blue and grey he can distinguish. He builds a room of nightmarish horrors, and turns that, blob by blob, into a wonderland. The pile of clothes hung over the back of the desk chair is a man stalking him, and then it is a cherub, perched on a cloud, giving out heart chocolates.
Slowly, the room goes from midnight to soft grey to sunrise, filtering through the curtains in ribbons of warm blue. He can hear the clattering of pans in the kitchen that he’s grown used to over the last week staying with the Lesters. Phil shifts behind him, a warm body pressing closer to Dan’s back. He breathes in through his nose, out through his mouth, like the counselor in America told him to.
“Morning, boys, your dad is working on breakfast if you want to come down!” Says Mrs. Lester, knocking lightly on the door as she passes. The cheeriness in her voice never seems to leave, a kind of warmth that Dan would find nearly insufferable on anyone else. On her, it just seems right, like if she wasn’t kind then she was dead.
Sometimes Dan thinks about how for years and years he was told she was going to Hell. More often he thinks about how wrong they were, because no one like that could ever go anywhere but the right hand of God’s throne. He slips out from under the covers and off the side of the bed, feet landing on worn-down carpet.
Phil yawns and stretches behind him. “How’d you sleep?” He asks, rubbing his eyes and blinking as Dan pulls the curtains open and lets in the grey winter light.
“Fine.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. No, yeah, no it was good.”
Scrambled eggs sit on two plates on the counter, along with toast. One has cheese, the other one is Phil’s. Dan takes his usual seat in the corner, as close to the wall as he can get. It tastes good. It always tastes good, but he still struggles to choke it down.
They decorate the tree that day. Phil’s brother puts lights up outside and his dad puts a wreath on the door. Dan gets to put the angel on the top of the tree, stretching on his tip-toes to reach the very point. He has to hold onto Mrs. Lester’s shoulder for balance as he sets the small china cherub down, balanced carefully and cupping to the needles below it almost gently.
Ornaments and finery weren’t a thing in the Community. Christmas just meant a longer church service, it meant repenting with twice the rigor and watching yourself three times as hard because the preachers certainly were. They usually fasted for the three days around Christmas, and if you were caught eating you were locked in your room for a week.
Dan swallows hard as he stares at the twinkling string of colored lights and tinsel. The first December he spent in Wyoming he made a tree out of stolen candles and when it has been found they made him put out every wick from Christmas service on a different part of his arm.
The dishes sit unwashed in the sink and even though they have a dishwasher Dan does them by hand after dinner. Phil’s brother is drying them today, standing a respectful distance and carefully wiping down the plates as he hands them over.
Hymns play over a speaker in the living room, bleeding across the house with haunting melodies. Mr. Lester hums along with them, dancing with his wife in circles around the room. Eyes track the movement in the room, bore into Dan’s neck, shift away to watch something else. He glances back and sees Phil, gazing through the bodies around him lightly, a thin smile on his face and a cup of hot cocoa held in front of him.
Dan turns the tap off and hands the last bowl off for drying and dodges the dancing couple across the tiles to the table. Phil follows his movements and sets his mug down in front of him as Dan pulls out a chair to sit in.
“You walk like the seat of your pants is on fire, you know. Ironic, I think,” Phil comments.
“Funny. And here I was coming over here to be nice. Ah well, guess I can always change my plans.”
“I was just kidding, mate, come on. Tell me what’s up.” His eyebrow quirks up and he lays on hand on the table, halfway between them.
“When are the rest of your family going to get here?”
“Probably a couple days out. I know my Grandma is coming down on the 21st, and probably my aunt too. All my cousins are going to be staying for Christmas Eve but most people will only be here for Christmas day and they’ll head out that evening or on Boxing Day.” Dan nods, slowly, allowing himself to process it. He’s got a few more days of relative normalcy, and then he’s going to have to be mentally prepared for fifteen people sleeping in the same house.
He sometimes regrets that Phil’s family is so nice, because it means that most holidays here end up like this. They have the entire time Dan’s known the Lester’s, and based on their family photographs a lot longer than that, too.
The shower water is already hot when Dan steps in a few minutes after Phil. Neither of them take long enough showers to worry about the water heater, and it means Dan doesn’t have to awkwardly stand naked with one arm under the spray until it’s warm enough. The soap smells like coconut and vanilla, a scent that has belonged to Phil for forever. He feels almost wrong when his skin also smells like that, when it isn’t a stark difference if he buries his head into Phil’s hair.
He doesn’t do that anymore, so he doesn’t know why the thought even occurs to him. Really, there’s no way to tell if it would still stand out to him or not, until he does it. Dan turns the water to cold, freezing cold, and forces himself to stand under it until he’s shivering and then a while longer until his mind goes numb and the nagging impulse to go check recedes.
While Phil’s immediate family acts like Dan’s nearly six year disappearance was a momentary blip, the rest of his relatives do not. He gets more probing questions on his whereabouts in the span of two days than he has in the last two months of being back in the UK combined. It comes from a place of goodwill and he knows that, and is reminded of that with every worried glance and attempted comfort thrown his way, but it still leaves a sour taste floating in the back of his mouth.
Christmas day is a blur of wrapping paper and him smiling thinly as people thank him for gifts Phil picked out. No one got him any presents, and frankly he is glad for that. He helps the women cook dinner in the kitchen, turkey and mashed potatoes and more sides than he can keep track of. One them, who had lived in the American Midwest for several years, makes a Jell-O salad that reminds Dan of one of the older ladies in the Community, who had made a tiny batch of a similar dish and snuck it to Dan for his birthday one year.
It’s odd, because in more ways than he was expecting, the world outside that valley in Wyoming is more traditional than he got used to. Most of the boys are lounging in the living room or the garage, watching the TV or chatting about cars or some other thing the world has gotten obsessed with that has passed Dan by. Sure, that was the case in Wyoming, too, probably, but he was never quite solid enough to work with the cattle and get in the in-crowd of men, so he stuck around doing the work of a teenager in the kitchens and gardens.
His shoulders hunch as he stirs a pot under the direction of Phil’s cousin Annie, and then he’s stretching to reach the top shelf of cookie cutters for her wife, and then he’s pulling a dish from the oven and hours and hours of savory-sweet smells blend around him, swirling heat and bubbling sauces building a world he can lose himself in.
Eventually, he is sent to help bring tables together, snapping together plastic ones from storage and laying out tablecloths and scrounging together chairs and stools for everyone to have a seat. Phil is setting the table and his mom is worrying her hands as she slowly loses track of the million things she’s been put in charge of.
When he was kid, his family never did these celebrations for holidays. His mom would buy a pre-cooked dinner to put in the oven and the four of them would sit at the table and eat in cold silence. More often than not his brother would skip out on it, shovel down a plate of food and escape as soon as he could. Dan was supposed to be the good kid, the one who stuck around for Christmas dinner, but even then he still couldn’t get along with his parents. The best they got was Dan’s grandma coming over, and even then it wasn’t anything special, anything social.
Mr. Lester says Grace and Dan tries not to shake as he holds Phil’s hand under the table on one side and Mrs. Lester’s, raised in thanks, on the other. It’s short, and sweet, as are most things he says, nothing like the five-minute prayer before every meal in Wyoming. Forks clatter before they can even say Amen. Everyone talks, like they have been all day, and it bounces through Dan’s consciousness in little pieces of nonsensical thoughts.
Phil’s hand is still entwined with his, balanced between where their legs touch from the crowded seating. His hand is squeezed, softly, and he glances at Phil, who nods to the girl to his right.
“So, you were in Wyoming, right?” She asks, pushing the food on her plate around in circles, “One of my friends lives there, in Cokeville, I think.”
“Yeah, yeah. The Community was farther North.” He isn’t really sure how to respond. He didn’t exactly get a chance to explore.
“I, uh, I wanted to ask if it was–well, she’s been talking about this, like, evangelical over there, one of her friends has been going to this church and she’s worried about it. Like, she’s been super up-tight, and she keeps talking about moving away and stuff. She won’t even shake hands, for some reason, I don’t know, it’s stupid.”
“Hmm. Weird.” He averts his gaze, focuses on every individual spoke on his fork and the way the meat splits into a million layers between them. The table is solid beneath him as he eats. Grounding, a reason to keep his leg still and not bouncing beneath him.
It goes quiet near midnight. Finally, everyone who’s leaving has left and everyone who’s staying has wound down for bed. Two people are sleeping on an air mattress on the floor by their bed, and Dan had to ask Phil to let him sleep against the wall for that night. His spine presses into the cold paint behind him, and his front is only inches away from Phil’s, sleeping soundly without a care in the world.
Three other pairs of lungs breath in the same room as him and it leaves his heart beating out of his chest with a ferocity that he shouldn’t be this used to at all. It takes all the effort in him to even close his eyes, despite how heavy they hang. He runs a mantra through his head over and over again to keep them shut.
Phil is between you and them, he says, inside his mind; they can’t get to you and they don’t want to, and even if they did, they wouldn’t be able to, because Phil would stop them. Phil would keep him safe.
Chapter 4
Phil is bent over his laptop at the kitchen table when Dan slips out of his room in the middle of the night for a drink of water. The lights are off so all that illuminates his face is a stark blue, which reflects off of his glasses with a glare that makes Dan’s eyes hurt. He doesn’t look up when Dan walks in, he just keeps staring at the computer and clacking at the keyboard, eyes unmoving from the screen in front of him.
He watches Phil from the corner of his eye as he quietly gets a glass from the cupboard, turns on the tap, and sips at his water. Dan is always near-silent, but he isn’t ever actually silent, and Phil is always aware of his presence no matter how hard he tries to go unnoticed. Except now, when he seems unaware of the entire world around him, which Dan is included in.
Setting his cup down on the counter, he slips over to the table until he’s next to Phil, and still nothing changes. It’s like Dan is a ghost, unable to affect the physical world around him even though he clearly can, clearly has, clearly is. When he reaches out to touch Phil’s shoulder, it’s with the delicacy of rescuing a butterfly that’s been trapped in a spiderweb.
At first Phil doesn’t react, then, a second later than usual, he startles in his seat, hands stalling their ceaseless typing and his head shooting up to stare at Dan, eyes still mostly blank. “Hey, Phil, what’s up?” Dan asks quietly, pulling his hand away from his shoulder and resisting the urge to wipe it off on his trousers.
“Nothing, why? Just writing an article is all,” He answers, as if it’s totally normal to be awake at 3 in the morning looking more zombie than human. Dan studies him, the bags under his eyes and the smile lines beginning to form around the corners of his lips. His hair now is natural, no more blue-black dye even at the very ends of it. It lays without a part now, doesn’t cover half his face, and all the tiny imperfections of his face are visible. He has a cut on the very corner of his jaw from shaving, something Dan doesn’t think he’s ever seen on Phil before.
Dan doesn’t say anything, he steps back instead and nods lightly, turning to go back to bed.
“Dan?” Phil calls, “How are you feeling? I don’t usually see you out of your room after dark.” He pauses in the door to the hallway and slowly slinks back into the room.
“I’m fine. Just wanted some water, uh, I- You said I could always get some so I assumed that meant at night, too, I’m sorry if I was wrong, I’ll do better, I won’t come out again, I could’ve waited until morning so-”
“Relax. It’s totally fine, love, I’m happy to see you. Just not used to it. Wanted to make sure it wasn’t anything bad, and it isn’t. You did fine.” Dan’s heart is hammering in his chest and he can hear it in the corners of his skull.
“Why are you up so late?” He blurts, before he’s even realized he’s said it.
Phil opens his mouth, closes it again, and thinks for a moment before he answers, with careful words, “I have a deadline to meet for this article. I’m supposed to turn it in noon tomorrow, and I find it easier to work at night.”
Jobs. Fucking jobs. Of course, Dan knew Phil had one, working as a writer for articles and a few episodes of TV here and there, but he hadn’t actually seen him writing much, so he just assumed… he hadn’t assumed anything, because jobs hadn’t actually crossed his mind seriously in years. That had been, for a long time, what kept Dan in Wyoming. He didn’t work a nine-to-five, never would as long as he stayed there. Sure, he had work to do, but he exactly have an employer.
Money wasn’t something to worry about in the Community. It was only something to worry about if you needed to leave. He’d been lucky enough to get a slot at a homeless shelter, scrape up enough for a way to contact Phil, and half his plane ticket back home, and get way out of dodge. And now he stood, barefoot on freezing tiles, and he realized that Phil was working for both of them. He knew that, he felt bad about taking his money, but it hadn’t yet clicked for him that he hadn’t actually seen Phil working.
He walks back to the table and he sinks down next to Phil on his knees, grabs his hand from where it had been resting on his keyboard. It’s held carefully in front of him, close enough that he can feel his own breath bounce off it, and he turns it over so he can see the palm. He inspects the callouses that have grown there, from handwriting drafts and brainstorms a hundred thousand times and from God knows what other work he’s done in the time Dan hasn’t been a part of his life.
They aren’t pronounced, but they’re there, and Dan compares them to his own silently. His are starker, skin not just thick, but rough as well from continued wear and tear. They wrap around his palm and his fingers evenly, a history of blisters, while Phil’s concentrate on his thumb and pointer finger. Phil’s nails are longer, just barely, a sliver of pale ivory compared to Dan’s, gnawed down, torn off in layers.
“You can work during the day, you know,” He whispers, “I don’t mind it. I- I should be working too, really.”
“Oh, Dan, no, you don’t need to. I like having time to focus on you, on being with you again. I don’t mind it. Sure, the budget’s a little tight, but it’s not impossible. I’m not a starving artist, I get good gigs, it really isn’t much of an issue.”
Dan swallows. He refuses to look up at Phil’s eyes, he knows they bear into his skull. He rests his forehead on Phil’s thigh. His gut still turns a little, but here, where no light prevails but the glow of a computer screen and the smoggy moonlight filtering through the gaps on the curtains, it feels a little safer to let himself do this. To let himself feel the softness of Phil’s skin, obscured slightly by a thin layer of sparse ginger body hair.
“Okay.”
Dan breathes slow, careful sips of air. It smells like bleach, but he prefers that over the other smells public bathrooms tend to contain. He keeps one hand on the oddly textured wall of the stall and the other over his heart, imagining the pounding of it slowing until his chest doesn’t hurt. Or, until it’s ignorable at least.
Slowly, he gets up. The toilet automatically flushes behind him and his spine curdles. He washes his hands, and keeps his face pointed directly at his own sink when a guy starts using the urinal directly reflected in the mirror. Blow dryers occupy three spaces in the bathroom but nowhere are there normal paper towels so his hands are dried by the hem of his t-shirt instead.
The table they were led to by the hostess is awkwardly halfway between the toilets and the door, too far from either and not sequestered enough to ever be considered a good spot. Phil is hunched over his phone, scrolling through an endless stream of mostly incomprehensible junk. He pockets it as Dan takes his seat across from him and gives a weak smile.
While he’s been gone a waiter has left an appetizer plate of breadsticks in the middle of the table, glistening with oil and smelling richly of garlic. “I went ahead and ordered for you, Chicken Fettuccini Alfredo, right?” Phil checks, reaching for a breadstick.
“Mhm, thank you.” Dan keeps it short because he’s pretty sure if he talks more then he’ll end up saying something about how he needs to leave, right now, and if he does that then he disappoints Phil on his goddamn birthday. His request wasn’t even that big, just a birthday dinner at some run-of-the-mill Italian place that was far from authentic and delicious regardless.
“Hey.” Phil reaches out and sets his hands next to Dan’s, right there in case he wants to bridge the gap between them. “Thank you. For being here. I- I didn’t want to have to celebrate alone again.” His voice wavers, and Dan looks up, meets his eyes for a moment and diverts his gaze the second he sees how glassy they are. The tears don’t fall, but he knows they’re there and that’s enough to make him want to turn his insides to stone or maybe start sobbing and he isn’t sure which.
He doesn’t have anything to say, so instead he just reaches out and weaves his fingers through Phil’s in warm silence. They stay together while the waiter drops off their food, and for all of dinner and dessert on top. Dan stopped being very good at talking a long time ago. The struggle of finding words is hard in simple times, and impossible when his insides are a bowl of overcooked spaghetti. But he has learnt that it doesn’t make him feel like he’s going to go to Hell just for having someone else see him and Phil next to each other. At least, not as much as it used to.
It gives him a thrill, a spark shifting just under his skin whenever they even come close to touching in public, even something as innocuous as bumping shoulders while walking on a crowded street. He chooses to ignore it most of the time, but tonight he lets it run across his back every time Phil’s thumb rubs another absentminded circle on the back of his hand. Every once in a while he wonders if he would try it again, the stuff they used to do, and then he has to snap out of it sharply because he’s damn sure he isn’t actually ready for that just yet.
After they get home, Phil picks a movie and Dan pulls out a tub of ice cream from the freezer and two spoons. Cake was earlier, with Phil’s family all crammed around him and singing off-tempo. They’ve each had more sugar today than both of them combined should probably have in a week. Only one of the spoons ends up being used, passed between them without a second thought while the other lays on the coffee table in front of them, forgotten by Phil and poignantly ignored by Dan.
One fuzzy blanket stretches over both of them and to keep his feet tucked under it Dan has to press himself against Phil’s side and by halfway through he’s more on top of him than anything. His right arm is squished under him in a way that is vaguely uncomfortable, but he doesn’t care enough to move it when Phil’s shirt has ridden up enough that it’s right against his bare stomach.
It makes him tired, too. Being so close to another warm, solid human being. He can hear the heavy, rhythmic beating of Phil’s heart through his ribcage, slower than his own and soothing in a way Dan has thoroughly missed for a very long time.
But after the movie ends and there is nothing holding the two of them together, Phil pulls away to sleep in his own bed and Dan is left feeling dirty even though nothing even happened. He is left with the urge to scrub his arm until it bleeds as if that will destroy the essence of what he shared with Phil today. That didn’t destroy what he shared with Phil years ago, and he knows it won’t now, either, but he tries anyway.
A voice rings in his head that night, the Pastor welcoming him on his first day in the Community. With open arms and love that the Father extends through us, he had proclaimed, you will be safe from sin here, he had promised, you will no longer be shunned from God’s perfect light. That light had, for the first month of Dan’s time in America, looked a lot like the fluorescent, uncovered, hanging bulb of a single room in the church. He hadn’t been allowed out until he renounced his old ways, and welcomed the overwhelming love of God into his heart.
The lamp in the corner of Mrs. Hallow’s office flickers with a short buzz every few seconds. She left to help a customer find something and has now been gone long enough for the sound to start driving Dan up the wall. He closes his eyes and breathes through it for another moment until he hears the door creak open behind him.
She hobbles across the room slowly, dodging around the knickknacks that clutter the small room with knowing steps. With a huff she collapses into the chair across the desk from Dan and opens the file with his paperwork again, licking her finger to help flip through the pages.
“Sorry about that, dear. I’m getting too damn old to handle this shop by myself, clearly,” She comments with a wink, grinning at him. He smiles back, laughs lightly in the politest way he can manage. Her next sentence is lost behind the rough, guttural cough of a smoker and she takes a gulp of water from the uneven clay mug in front of her before she gets out, “Well, I was going to torture you for a few more minutes with useless questions but honestly, I forgot where I was going with all of them. You’re hired. Mostly because no one else has applied, don’t get an ego, now.”
“Thank you, Ma’am, I’m happy for the job either way.”
“Oh, none of that, just call me Minnie, everyone does. You can start now, if you so desire. I certainly have no interest in adding you to my taxes, I’ll pay you in cash, blah blah blah. All the stuff I put on the listing. I’m assuming you know how to read it because if not we’re gonna have some problems.” She starts coughing again, and she hits her chest with so much force Dan is worried she’ll break one of her ribs.
The listing had just been a printed word document taped on the outside of the window of the Hallow Family Charity Shop barely a block from Phil’s apartment. He had, in fact, read it. Many times over, every step of the way, because it had been so long since he applied for any job that it felt more like starting from scratch than anything. It wasn’t until he’d scheduled an interview that he told Phil what he was doing, and since then he’d been on the receiving end of many worried smiles. Dan felt like a kid being allowed to walk to school by himself for the first time, with his mom watching every step he took down the road.
Minnie took her time giving him a tour of the shop, pointing out her favorite corners and every nook and cranny that hid away shelves and piles of assorted books and music. There were a handful of people shopping, two teenagers sorting through clothing more diligently than either of them would probably do their maths homework and an older man looking at jewelry in the glass case that made up the till’s countertop. Every other step the floor would creak in an almost worrying way below Dan’s feet as he danced around the precarious stacks.
She set him up organizing a pile of clothes that had been donated by type and size, gave him a long run down of every policy of hers, and on his way out the door she handed him a small envelope of cash for his work. By then the sun was low in the sky and Dan tucks his hands into the pockets of his jacket to keep them warm in the rain blowing nearly sideways into him. He is grateful the walk home is short as he pulls up his hood and shrugs into himself, hiding away in the folds of black.
He stops stock still in the middle of the street when he hears someone shout his name.
“Daniel! Daniel James Howell you get over here this instant!” He whirls around and is met with a face full of freezing water, and the sight of his grandmother huddled under a floral print raincoat.
Chapter 5
The wind blusters around them as Dan stares at his grandma, mouth slightly open in a mix of awed shock and terror. He wipes the soaked strands of his hair out of his face and holds his hand over his eyes to check if what he’s seeing is real. She steps toward him unhurried and calm, holding her salmon-pink umbrella close overhead.
“Well, would you look at that. I knew it was you!” She smiles grandly, and hugs him tightly, trapping his arms to his side and nearly bashing his face in with her soggy umbrella. “Come on then, let’s get in somewhere warm and we can chat, yes. One of my bingo girls said she thought you must live around here so show me the way.”
Dan chokes on his words, just gives a curt nod and turns to walk home. He knew his grandma hadn’t wanted him to go to America. She had pestered his mother about it as soon as she knew where they’d gone, but by then Dan had already been accepted and assimilated and his parents were flying back to London with tightly sealed lips about his specific whereabouts. They had only kept talking to him for a few months after that, until the pastor urged him to refuse their calls and cease any connection with outsiders, even the ones that brought him there.
But he also knew that Gran had never been a woman to leave her family in the dark, and he stepped into the lift and pressed the button for 3rd floor with a falter in his step. What if she calls his parents and tells them where he’s living, that he left the place they thought he was finally safe from his desires? As far as he’s aware, they think he’s still living piously, modestly, with nothing to his name but the scars on his skin. The key shakes in his hand as he unlocks the door, enough that he has to twist it twice to actually open it.
“Hey, Dan welcome. Uh, welcome in. Brought a guest?” Phil is obviously trying to hide his surprise behind a polite smile. “I would’ve made more dinner if I knew.” He gestures to the curry keeping warm on the stove, with a bowl of rice on the counter next to it, clearly set out for Dan.
“No worries, no worries, I ate on the train. I’m Ann, Daniel’s grandmother. I suppose you’re Mr. Lester, then?” Phil’s eyes narrow at her briefly, and he glances at Dan, who is still floundering like a fish out of water. He shrugs, and Phil takes that as an affirmative to nod. She takes a seat at the table across from Phil, and Dan follows suit to sit in his usual chair next to Phil. The silence between the three of them is tense, starkly different to the comfortable, calm quiet that tends to breed between Dan and Phil most of the time.
“How’ve you been, Gran?” Dan asks, staring down at the table instead of looking at either of them.
“I’m well. Popsie had a fall, I’ve had to do most of the yard work myself this last month. Due time, 50 years of it being his job, after all. Your brother’s off at college, now, doing something or other with photography. I think he’d be excited to see you again, after so long.” Dan has to pause for longer than he intended just to process that. It hadn’t even crossed his mind that Adrian has grown up all those years he’d been away.
The last Dan had seen of him, he was still an awkward, gangly eleven-year-old with an atrocious haircut and no aspirations. He can’t even imagine what he looks like now, eighteen and getting further in life than Dan ever managed to.
“How’s Mum, and Dad, too?” He asks it quietly, barely whispered, because he isn’t sure if he really wants to know. It’s burned into him, entwined deep in his soul, the love for his parents. But at the same time, he so desperately wants to never even think about them again, about what they did to him.
“Well, they’re alright too. Keep to themselves these days. I took care of Adrian for the last couple years. They never really told him what happened to you, claimed you just ran off. Needless to say, I gave your mother a very stern talking to once I found out, and then she stopped really talking to me as well. Don’t know quite where I went wrong with that girl, but her choices are her own.” Dan lets out the breath he had been holding and relaxes back into his chair.
Really, there isn’t any reason for him to be scared of his parents anymore. He’s a legal adult, they can’t make him do anything anymore, let alone leave the country. But the thought of facing them, of having to look at them again, talk to them again, with the wall of fear planted firmly in the way, makes his stomach turn somersaults in his guts.
Phil reaches out and gently pulls Dan’s hand from where it had landed in his own lap, worrying the frayed edge of his jacket. He holds it, softly, resting it close between them. It’s something to focus on, and he squeezes it before he gets the courage to look up at his grandma again.
“How are you, Dan?” Gran asks, staring him directly in the eyes. He has to search for his words, because he doesn’t want to lie and say he’s fine. Phil had eventually given up asking how he was doing, because every answer was the same, and it never made a difference to ask such a general question. But his Gran, she wouldn’t put up with that and Dan knows it.
“I, uh, well. I guess I’m doing okay. Stop looking at me like that, I’m serious. I’m not lying, it’s true. I’m okay. Not, like, stellar, but… but it’s getting better.” It’s the most Dan has said at once without being panicked about something in a long, long time.
“And Philip? He’s treating you well, yes?” She probes, as if Phil isn’t sitting directly across from her.
“Of course. Always. He’s the only reason I’m still alive.” Dan hadn’t even paused to think before the words tumbled out of him, a jumbled mess of things he hadn’t even consciously thought about. He feels more than hears Phil as he sucks in a sharp breath, his grip tightening around Dan’s hand. Gran stares at Dan, brows creased in concern, for a long while before she decides he’s telling the truth.
Finally, she nods, “Alright,” She says, “I will trust you to care for him.” She looks at Phil intensely, then back to Dan with, “I love you, Daniel. Take care. Call me if ever you need. I ought to be off, last train leaves in thirty.”
Dan is elbow deep in soil, a pile of weeds behind him and another handful of roots being carefully tugged from the ground below him. The sun feels harsh on his back, but comforting all the same. The garden was one of the only places he’d learned to feel safe, surrounded by towering green tomato plants and corn stalks. Here, though, it feels off. He looses more and more of his tan by the day and now the only plants around him are flowers growing in neat rows.
The scent of warm, green plants fills the air, mixing with earth and the fresh water of the irrigation. He was scared, when he’d first stepped into the rose garden, that he would burst into flames on the spot since it was on the same property as a church. He feared that God’s wrath would come down just for being so close to consecrated grounds.
Phil said it would be good, to get out of the house and help the community. He hadn’t known where it was, and Dan couldn’t blame him for that. It was unseasonably warm for February, and he couldn’t argue that the plants needed some care. There were others, too, several middle-age women and a few teens looking to impress schools.
“You know, in– in Wyoming. We, uh, I gardened a lot,” Dan says, simply and quietly, as Phil works next to him. All the other groups are talking to each other, laughing and smiling. He doesn’t have a lot to laugh or smile about, but he has a little, “It was mostly just women and, well, me, there, but-”
“It was mostly women?” Phil tilts his head and looks at him sideways, “I didn’t know that.”
“Well, not the whole, like, group. But gardening and stuff. I never really got along with the jobs I was supposed to do. Horse kicked me in the face and we figured out pretty quick it was better for me to stick with the kids instead of being a man and plowing the big fields or whatever.”
“Oh. So, what, you churned butter and baked bread all day?” Phil grins and then Dan nods and his smile falters a little.
“Pretty much. Not exactly, though, that was still mostly women’s work there. But I was the resident grabber of things from high shelves. And I stuck to the jobs that mostly the young boys did. Not made of tough stock, I guess. Preacher figured God has a different plan for all of us, and mine was to help close to home.”
“That’s not what I would have guessed they would say about it.”
“Yeah, me neither. It wasn’t for lack of trying, though, I just got so much more in the way with a plow I think. Once I literally just dropped the scythe I was supposed to be cutting wheat with. It just about cut off another guy’s finger. Eventually they just gave up with it and let me stick to different jobs, I guess.”
“Like gardening, huh? Does that mean it’s like–was this a bad idea, I mean? You can always tell me if something is, I didn’t know it might remind you of that, I just thought–”
“No, Phil. It’s not bad. It’s not a bad idea. I liked gardening. I like gardening still. It was one of the only okay parts of that place. I got to just be outside, without a sermon or a prayer or someone looking over my shoulder.” Dan forces himself to meet Phil’s eyes as he says it, to pour his meaning out with his gaze as well as his words, even though it makes ants crawl under his nerves.
A honey bee flies between them and drags away both of their attention for a moment as it flaps away in slow, lopsided spirals. It leaves to investigate the sweet scent of watermelon floating towards them from the table where someone is cutting one. Dan redirects himself back to the man in front of him and gives a small smile with the corner of his mouth, just enough to make his dimple appear. He turns back to the plot of soil in front of him, the heavy musk of yellow roses lifting his spirits, allowing his soul to drift in the breeze and harmonize with the chirping birdsong around him.
Phil scooches closer, until their arms brush gently as they work and the warm smell of his shea butter shampoo twines together with the rest of Dan’s world.
“Hi, guys, take a seat,” Says the therapist, smiling comfortably and gesturing to the couch across from her armchair, “I could start with my specialties, but I find that’s never actually very helpful, so we’ll begin this session with a simple introduction.”
The room is small and cozy, just enough space for a small filing cabinet in the corner, an armchair, and two soft blue loveseats across from it with a table in front. A small sandbox fills the last corner of the room, and the table is filled with bright fidget toys and coloring books of every variety. She sits with a laptop perched on the arm of her chair and one leg crossed over the other calmly.
“So, my name is Jenna, I have a husky puppy at home that covers everything in fur, and I’m a certified family and couples counselor. On the intake you wrote that you would like continued sessions for the time being so instead of getting right to the problem, I’d like to get to know each of you. It can be as simple as a fun fact or we could start talking about something more serious. Anything is welcome.”
Dan takes a seat next to Phil, staring resolutely down at his own knees while Phil introduces himself. He doesn’t want to be here. The only reason he was going along with it is because Phil had insisted on it after they’d gotten in an argument about Dan’s going back to work. It wasn’t even big, just some clipped words over dinner and a short apology the next morning, and Dan is more than convinced that Phil is just using it as an excuse to get Dan to go to therapy.
He’s been arguing against it for months now, because he doesn’t need it, really, and he can’t go through that again. He can’t be alone in a room with another person and a clock ticking while they tell him all the things that are wrong with him. Two sessions with the counselor that worked for the shelter in Wyoming had taught him plenty about how to deal with his immediate problems and he just about went crazy just from that.
“I’m Dan.” He doesn’t bother saying more, and Jenna raises one eyebrow at him.
“Alright, then, Dan, did you want to tell me why the two of you chose to seek support right now?”
“We had an argument. It was Phil’s idea, ask him.”
“I thought that it would be good for both of us. To have a space to talk to each other and reconnect, without it turning into a fight,” Phil jumps in, “It- ah- it’s been a while since we’ve been very close, to say the least.” His smile is thin and forced, slowly inching towards a grimace and Dan feels the harsh line of his shoulders soften as he sees it. He swallows, uncrosses his arms, and reaches out to take Phil’s hand. An olive branch, an I’ll try.
“So, if I may ask, what caused the argument? I want to hear from both of you, before either of you jumps to explain yourself, and I want you to listen to the other persons experience too,” Jenna says, “And if it would make you more comfortable, I know I find it easier to talk about important stuff if I can focus on something else, too, so feel free to take a coloring book.”
Dan does, pulling one from the pile along with a collection of different colors to use, while Phil explains his side. “We, uh, Dan got a job, and I’m worried that he’s moving too quickly. He’s always been like that, he’ll just jump into something that could get him hurt and I want to make sure that he’s ready for it before he just does it without even talking to me.”
“Dan? How about you?” Jenna prompts softly, as Dan silently flips through pages of floral patterns.
“I am ready. I’ve always been ready. I don’t need to be babied, I’m twenty-three not thirteen. And it’s time I get a job anyway, I don’t want to be dependent on you, definitely not without contributing my share.”
He tugs at the strings at the rips forming in his jeans and glances up at the clock. 30 minutes left. His lungs fill deeply with air and he counts slowly to ten before he blinks his eyes open again. The time passes with surface-level discussion and Dan is more certain than ever that this is not what he needs. Maybe it helps Phil, to be more certain in his life, or feel like Dan is getting better, and if that’s the case than Dan will bite. He’ll keep going, for him, but not for himself.
They walk out of the building and down the street and Phil pulls him into a chocolate shop out of the blue, buys him a milkshake on their way home. It sits heavily in Dan’s stomach, but in a good way. Two months ago he couldn’t stomach anything richer than cheese, but now he feels comforted by the presence more than disgusted by his gluttony.
Chapter 6
Dan doesn’t totally understand why his heart hurts this much, because it’s the right thing to do and he knows it. His knee bounces up and down rhythmically as he sits in the Kemmerer Municipal Airport in Wyoming, in a dinky blue plastic chair, waiting for the long customs line despite it being near midnight.
There’s nothing in his backpack, it lays flat and empty on his lap. He’d left it that way so that in case he needed to puke he’d be able to, mostly. And a little because he was certain it would have made him puke to bring any of the things he’s had over the last few months.
The devil will test you, Chris says, and you will return to the Lord or be smote.
Dan returns, with a gruff look from the airport guard who approves his papers and a mind that won’t stop running circles. Tiles under his feet carry him along without his legs moving, and the only step he does take brings him directly to the grass lawn outside the welcoming main building of the Community.
He creaks open the door, unlocking it with the key he never got rid of, and despite the late hour a smiling woman sits at the desk. When Dan steps closer, she turns around and starts rooting through a filing cabinet for his name tag. She turns, lanyard in hand, and her face has turned red and scaled, moats of lava connecting the dots of her freckles.
“Here you are, dear, just in time for Sunday School!” Her voice is deep and try as he might Dan cannot make a sound, or step back from her, or even blink. There is no one else there, he realizes, with a sinking terror in his gut, that he is the only person in the entirety of his surroundings, maybe in the entirety of the world.
The cold seeps in underneath the door, through the cracks in the windows, which Dan realizes are shattered and poorly boarded over. He cannot shiver or move or do anything but accept the freezing air as it hits him, turns to water bit by bit. He isn’t drowning in it, it lights him on fire, makes his skin curl up at the edge.
“Sinners must return to Christ, Daniel, you must prove that you accept Him into your heart, Daniel.” The voice is a singsong, and he can’t make out where it comes from anymore, but it taunts him as he breathes in the clean, clear water, as it ignites his inside sharply-
His eyes snap open. The sheets on his bed have been kicked to the foot of it, and a cold sweat has left his clothes sticky and uncomfortable. He pulls himself up and forces his lungs to move, to pull in a thin, shaky breath so his heart can keep beating. The hand he runs through his hair comes away wet and he scrunches his nose at the feeling.
Every joint cracks as he stands up, first his knees and then every vertebrae up his spine as he straightens his back. Halfway across the room his vision blacks out and he’s left gripping the edge of the desk to keep his balance as he sways on his feet. It clears slowly, leaving a soft, almost enjoyable warmth in the back of his head for a moment.
He creaks open his door and slips across the hallway into the bathroom, stripping off his gross pajamas and stuffing them in the hamper to wash in the morning. The mirror dares him to look at it, to look at himself, but he resists the pull sharply and instead forces himself to get through to first freezing minute of the shower to do away with the urge entirely.
Floppy. His stomach has become floppy and loose since he’s returned. He’s gained probably five kilos and almost all of that went directly to his waist. It doesn’t help that he’s looking at it nearly vertically, and he knows that, but it doesn’t stop him from poking at it and imagining the way it used to look, with his ribs just poking out instead of firmly hidden.
Slowly, the water heats up to a better temperature, washing away Dan’s dream and leaving the remnants of fear to collect in the drain protector beneath his feet. His heart rate has finally slowed down enough that he can’t feel it thumping in his chest anymore.
He sits down, legs feeling weak, allowing himself to soak in the hot sprinkle of water until it turns his skin red and his fingers go wrinkled. His nails are soft and they bend far too easily as he massages shampoo into his scalp right there on the tiled floor. No matter how much Dan uses it, it will always be Phil’s shampoo. It will always be Phil’s scent, unchanged for probably ten years.
The water starts to run cold, after Dan has spent far too long there already, so he peels himself up off the floor and pushes open the heavy glass door as quietly as he can manage. Phil’s towels are many, some are clearly ones he took from his parent’s house and others look like he stole them from hotels. Dan’s hangs on the rack in stark black against the eclectic rainbow around it.
He dries off, ties it around his waist, and heads out to the kitchen. It feels dangerous, even though he knows the only person who even might see him is Phil. He squints through the darkness at the clock on the wall, makes out the time as a little after three in the morning. A crawling sensation makes it’s way down his bare back and circles around to trail down his collarbones.
He twists around rapidly, surveying the dining room behind him, but no one is there. The shadows close in as he struggles to make out anything, and his heart rate picks back up. Swallowing, Dan steps so his back is against the kitchen wall, then he darts down the hallway as fast as he can into Phil’s room.
The nightlight here is the only one in the house, one from when he was a kid that Dan got told every story about the first time he slept over. It’s not that Dan is scared of the dark, or that he particularly wants a nightlight–if anything, he’s pretty sure he would sleep worse with one–but right now it seems like the only safe place to be.
“Mmm?” Phil asks, turning over in his sleep as Dan slips into the cracked-open door, “Dan? ‘s ‘at you?” He mumbles, not even bothering to open his eyes.
“Yeah. Sorry, I had a nightmare, I can go I just-”
“You wanna sleep with me? C’mon, I can scare away the monster under the bed.” He pulls the covers off the bed next to him, and Dan goes still and quiet. Then, he figures, fuck it, even if his towel slips off it’s not like it’s anything Phil hasn’t seen before.
He tucks himself in next to his best friend, and in his half-asleep state Phil tugs him close and spoons him without even thinking. Dan tenses for a moment, then he forces himself to breath through it, relax, and he finds that for the first time in a long time he isn’t so scared to go to sleep.