What Are The Chances? | platonic

Dadza and Mumza

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February 24, 2021
| 5:28 AM GMT |
real life

It's been about three days since Lee moved in with the Watsons and officially enrolled into college, which is weird to say because college is completely different in the Philippines. His online classes have already started and his first day of school is tomorrow, a Thursday. Unsurprisingly, he's distracted himself from thinking about how he's probably dumber his peers by reading fanfiction and bonding with Phil and Kristin.

It's so weird to know the private life of a content creator. It felt wrong, like Lee shouldn't be seeing this. Like he's intruding on the privacy of his idol, which he technically is.

And now, well, so much for a distraction. Lee's spiraling again, thoughts going from being an intruder to being terrified of going to a physical school. He barely even talks in his online classes, despite being interested in the A-Levels he chose.

Before he can go further, Lee grabs his phone and opens it on Ao3, looking for angst fics. Spiraling too deep is dangerous for him, considering he has a history of not-so-good coping mechanisms. He also knows he needs a good cry, so angst fics it was.

Lee looks at the time, 5:34 am, and decides that he might just need the day to himself. His skin is crawling and any negative feelings he might assume from either Phil or Kristin will most likely make him cry. It's best he stayed inside for now.

Hours later, around two hours after he usually greets Kristin in the kitchen for breakfast, someone knocks on his door. Lee looks away from the words on his screen and checks the time, 10:42 am. He hasn't even noticed time move.

Another knock interrupts Lee's thought process and makes him sit up, his phone the only light source in the dark room. He closes his windows every night, not liking sunlight waking him up, so the room is almost always dark. He sighs.

Lee stands up, shakes his hands a few times to get the crawling feeling away, and plasters on the usual energy he has. It's not hard since he has practice, but he feels guilty to be lying to Phil, especially Kristin. It doesn't matter though, he's not sure he can take disappointing the couple or making them sad because of his anxiety.

He walks to the door and opens it wide enough to hide behind the door and not look like a creep looking outside. Lee sees Phil on the other side.

Phil smiles at him softly, almost fatherly. Lee can't tell if he's concerned or if he's just checking on his nephew as an obligation. He feels his skin crawling, a sign that he's recently figured out means his anxiety is getting worse.

"Hey mate, did you just wake up?" Phil asked kindly. Lee can feel himself relax slightly at his tone, his brain not finding any reason think that Phil's angry, sad or disappointed.

"Yeah, uh, I stayed up late last night." Lee lied. Well, half-lied. His automatic response has always been to hide his problems, and he feels absolute guilt when he realized that Phil trusts his word immediately. There's no pressing of the issue, no doubt. Just pure trust. Lee's eaten up with guilt.

"Actually-" He starts, clamping his mouth shut again. Lee's eyes stray to Phil's collarbone, avoiding eye contact. He thinks for a second, and opens his mouth again, "I uh, I'm having a bad day. I don't think I can leave the room much without breaking down." He tries to joke instead.

As usual, Lee uses humour to lighten up the sentence he was saying. It feels awkward to be telling this to someone, but Phil trusted him too much. Lee feels so much guilt taking advantage of Phil's trust. It felt wrong.

To Lee's surprise, however, Phil smiles at him. The older man nods, as if it wasn't an inconvenience that Lee wasn't acting like he usually did. It made his head spin.