Not on Fire (Phan AU)

two faces

Dan has been semi-seriously burned twice in his whole life.

The first time happened when he was young and he had a sparkler in his hand. At first, he was entranced by the sparks that it emitted and when it was so far away, it didn't hurt, so he didn't think about it when he dropped his arm and let it rest by his side. He can't remember why he did this when he found the sparkler so interesting in the first place, but he can remember the pain, the sparks that once gave him amusement now attacking back. However, he had survived with just a few burns, ones that could be treated at home with ointment, so he felt powerful and in control. It was the spark that started it all.

The second time happened not too long ago when he first set something big on fire. Once again he had become entranced by the flickers of yellow and orange, the dancing flames that engulfed a place whole, that he hadn't thought to step back. At first, he felt the sweltering heat, but then the fire spread, jumping and reaching towards him. It only licked his arm before he ran until he was a safe distance away, but it had hurt for days after, and they didn't have any ointment to put on it, so he just hoped it would be okay. And it had been. It healed on its own, and he was able to wear long sleeves until then.

But he has burned others many times, hurt feelings in ways that could never fully heal, and sometimes, he thinks that he's done this to his parents and everyone who has ever gotten close enough to him to know something about him. So even if he doesn't particularly like Phil (or even if he's not ready to admit that Phil's a good person and would make a good friend) he doesn't want to add him to the list of things he's burned, ruined, destroyed, and in the process, he hopes that he'll stop hurting Louise, too.

This morning he gets up early and doesn't make an attempt to be as late as possible. In fact, he's up before his alarm clock goes off and his mother doesn't have to bang on his door to get him up. He grabs a random pair of black skinny jeans from his closest, puts on his favorite gray shirt and slips on his shoes before stepping outside of his room. He straightens his hair without his mom walking past and finishes getting ready before he'd usually be up.

His mom's jaw drops when she sees him in the kitchen, her eyes wide. She quickly covers up her surprise, but her eyes follow him when he moves to go get a glass of water. He would ask her why, but he knows the answer before the question even presents itself in his mind. He wakes up late, gets to school late, and generally does everything late most days. In fact, this whole thing is surprising to even him and he's the one who is doing it.

He hesitantly grabs a glass and fill it up with water, feels her eyes on him with every move and itches to tell her that this isn't the first time he's ever woke up early, but keeps his mouth shut instead. His parents have walked on broken glass around him for too long, and while that doesn't mean he's going to completely change—for one thing, he's not going to buddy up to them and act like they're best friends and tell them everything—he does want to have a somewhat relaxed and normal relationship with them (whatever that means).

He knows he's not going to be that good at it, and this isn't the first time he's decided he was going to make a change either. However, this is the first time he's actually felt like doing it. Before, his decision had come out of another one of Louise's lectures and he had done it because he felt like he needed to in order to make Louise happy, but now, it's about him and a little bit of Louise.

His shoes squeak on the ground, breaking the silence and shattering it into a million pieces. In his mind, there's glass on the floor now, remnants of the quiet that was once in the room, and if he had to guess what his parents normally feel like whenever they're around him, this would be it. His steps are slow and less sure, which is something he's not used to because he's usually sure of himself, confident in what he does even when he knows he's destructive. In fact, the only thing he's ever been unsure of his taking control of his life; he's fine being in charge when it comes to anything else, but whenever it comes down to power over his life, he always passes it over to Louise, letting her tell him to do whatever she feels is "right." But now, he's two seconds from shutting down just because of the sound of his shoes.

Why he even already has his shoes on is beyond him. Most of his shoes are kept by the front door and the ones left in his room are either his favorites or his least worn pairs. Either way, he doesn't have to be ready for another twenty minutes, but he's already completely dressed, his hair straightened (one of the perks of waking up early is not having to hear that horrible joke). At the very least, this morning Louise won't have to wait for him in front of the school forever because she always gets there way earlier than normal.

"Do you have to go in early for school?" his mom asks, her eyes still glued to him. She has a cup of coffee in her one hand, but her elbows resting on the table, the cup held midway between the table and her mouth, forgotten.

"No, I," Dan says. Once again, he's said something he doesn't know how to finish. He can't outright say that he's sorry and this is him trying to make up for everything because that wouldn't be completely true and that's too blunt for something that's supposed to be subtle. "I just finally went to bed early enough I guess."

"That's good," his mom says.

The conversation never goes anywhere unsurprisingly, but then again, he's talking to her and not being snappy about it, which is what really counts in the grand scheme of things after all. Either way, they sit in silence, one pieced together by broken shreds and tape, one that's not completely quiet but not noisy either. The silence follows them for the rest of the morning, from breakfast to the moment where Dan's getting out of the car to meet up with Louise before school.

"Have a good day," his mom says when she pulls up to the front of the school and stops the car.

"You, too," Dan responds. He opens the car door, but before he leaves, he says, "I love you," loud enough for her to hear him but quiet enough for it to still be considered a whisper. He shuts the door before she can respond and pushes his backpack further up his shoulder.

Louise is standing in her usual spot, leaning up against the building. Her head is turned downward, and she looks like she's doing something on her phone. Her hair is pushed behind her ears so that it doesn't fall into her face.

It's relatively calm outside, with little wind and little commotion. Few students are outside, and the small amount that are outside are scattered about in their own little groups, minding their own business. It's started to cool down, so there's not biting frost to ruin the mood, and somehow, it actually succeeds in relaxing Dan.

"Louise!" he calls as soon as he's within earshot of her. His voice comes out sounding light and airy, happy even, which is so much easier than making his voice sound angry all of the time. The thing is Dan's been living a lie for a while now, acting like he's someone who he isn't. He's a nerd, an arsonist, a movie geek, but he has feelings, one that he had pushed down for so long that he was starting to believe that they were gone forever. However, they didn't and now that he's starting to let them back in, he feels lighter. For a while, he had two faces, but he's slowly taking the mask off, revealing his true self.

She looks just as surprised as his mom: jaw dropped, eyes wide, head titled to the side in confusion. But she's even quicker at hiding it and by the time Dan's standing right in front of her, she's put her phone away and covered the surprise by a smile.

"How did it go with Phil?" she asks, leaning forward expectantly.

"Better than I expected," he says. He stuffs his hands into his pockets and leans up against the building right next to her. "Did you know he knew that it was you forcing me to hang out with him?"

"I'm not forcing you," she answers, sounding offended, but he knows it's all a lie. Their whole relationship is built on her forcing him to do stuff. "But no, I didn't. How did he find out?"

"He overheard us talking about it."

"So does that mean he doesn't want to be friends with you?"

"No, he was just a little upset that I wasn't giving him a chance like I said I was going to."

"So you admit that you weren't giving him a fair chance?" Louise's smile grows to one of victory before Dan can even respond, and she looks as if she thinks she's won.

"I was," Dan argues, "but me and Phil decided that I was going to give him a little longer of a chance, so I decided to even though I've already given him a few."

Louise isn't convinced. She puts her hand on her hip and gives him an unbelieving look, one where she raises her eyebrow skeptically and her smile drops into a thoughtful expression. To top it off, she rolls her eyes.

"Sure," she says, but that's the end of that and she smiles, wiping the previous skeptical look off of her face completely. It's like a complete change in the dynamic of the conversation when she says, "I just know you're going to love Phil when you get to know him. He's really sweet and maybe he'll make you want to be an author again because he also writes stories."

Dan doesn't believe her. There's no way he's going to love him in any way. He'll probably end up liking him enough for Phil to be more than an acquaintance but less than a friend, stuck somewhere in between, but they aren't going to be best friends by any means. Plus, he honestly doubts Phil will make him want to write again. He hasn't written anything in forever because he hasn't had a single good idea or the motivation to do so.

But he lets her go on and on about their budding friendship even if it is all make believe.

***

Teachers are famous for making students do projects with people they've never met, and nothing is more dreaded than when the teacher says that they've picked your partners. Nonetheless, this is precisely the reason Dan knows PJ and Chris. At the beginning of the school year, Dan had been paired up with them to do a presentation. It was easy enough because it didn't require much outside work given that their teacher actually gave them a ton of class time to work on it, but it did force Dan to interact with two people he had only ever seen in passing.

In the short time that they talked, Dan learned quite a few about them. For instance, PJ, a guy with curly brown hair who is around the same height as Dan, is a filmmaker. He makes films with Chris and a few of his friends, and even though Dan's never seen them, they are supposedly amazing. Chris, on the other hand, a guy with straight brown hair who is just as tall, is a class clown and a perverted one at that. He's constantly making jokes, especially s****l ones, and can't take anybody serious for more than two seconds. They're nice enough, but Dan never really clicked with them.

To say the least, Dan's surprised when Phil sits down at the lunch table and asks, "Is it okay if they sit here?"

"Of course!" Louise says. Maybe for her, this is just another opportunity for Dan to make more friends, but he can barely manage just hanging out with her and Phil, so he's not what you'd called excited for them to eat lunch with them. But he knows he's going to act excited because that's just who he is these days and he really doesn't want to hurt Louise.

Phil introduces them, having no idea that both Dan and Louise already know them, but Dan sits quietly, smiles politely, as he does it even if on the inside he's rather stressed. Just when he thinks that he can handle everything, life throws more stuff on his plate.

"Hi," PJ says nicely, looking around at the table.

Louise and Dan both say hi in response, but it's Louise who picks up the conversation to start off with. Dan learns that Phil met PJ and Chris in his third block class, and for the first half of the conversation, Dan zones out. But then he remembers his promise to himself that he's going to try harder in all areas and not just with Phil, so he brings himself into the conversation when they're talking about their favorite My Chemical Romance songs.

"How can you pick a favorite song? They're all perfect," Phil says. His elbows are resting on the table, his chin in his hands.

"Okay but Famous Last Words is clearly the best song," Dan adds in.

"Are you kidding me? Sharpest Lives is," PJ says.

Louise doesn't have much to say. She listens to them, but she's never been that passionate about music in general, and she's never been good at picking favorites for anything.

Somehow, the conversation switches from music to the mall. (Dan thinks it's because Phil mentioned that he wanted to go the mall to look at some albums at the music store, but he zoned out, so he's not quite sure.)

"We could go to the mall after school if you'd like," Louise says, joining the conversation once again. "I've been meaning to go there as I still haven't spent my Christmas money."

After hearing everyone else say they'll gladly go, Dan reluctantly agrees and doesn't miss the smile that Louise sends his way.

It's going to be a long day.