Adumbrate || Phan

Assailable

A/n: Wattpad got my story back!! Shoutout to Alex from the team for being very helpful and nice! Hope you enjoy the chapter and sorry for the wait :-)
-
"So, you like him?"
"What the f- no? No way?!"
"Right.. but you've been talking about him constantly for 10 minutes."
"So?"
Chris raised an eyebrow at me for a few seconds before smirking and simply saying "alright, whatever you say dude," before getting up and grabbing his coat.
"Where are you going?" I asked.
"To meet PJ," He said grinning at me. "He's taking me to this art expedition thingy, should be cool."
"But you hate those kind of things?"
"Well, let's just say it's not the art I'm gonna be looking at all night." He said. I laughed half heartedly but he accepted it and left, even though he had only been round my house for less than half an hour.
So there I was sitting by myself in my room, home alone for the night and of course, me being a teenage boy, there was one quite obvious thing to do.
Watch an entire season of anime.
-
2 hours in and I suddenly received a phone call from an unknown number. I paused the TV and considered answering for a minute before pressing the green phone on the screen.
"Hello?"
"You still drive, right?" From the thick northern accent, I knew who it was straight away.
"Well, since last night, yes. Why?"
"I need you to come pick me up."
"Why?"
"Irrelevant. Can you just come to the scrap metal yard?"
"The scrap metal- Phil, what the hell are you doing there?"
"Irrelevant. Hurry."
"Wait, there's no way I'm going there, it's practically a death wish. This boy who used to go to my school was sent there by some people a few years ago and do you know what happened to him?"
"Um, he die-"
"He died, Phil. He was murdered."
"Yes okay, it's pretty rough, but I really really need you to do this for me. Please. I will pay you back, I promise."
"And how do you intend to do that?"
"I don't know right now. But please just come now I-" There was suddenly silence at the end of the line for a few seconds before he started to whisper. "I'll see you in a minute." And I heard the beep to signal the call had been ended.
What the hell? Did he expect me to be his personal slave or something? Why should I leave my extremely important schedule behind just to go pick up some random man, putting my life at risk. I turned round to the TV continuing to watch before sighing and pausing it again, my guilty conscience getting the better of me.
He did at least say please.
I guessed Ken Kaneki was just going to have to wait until I got back home. I shoved my coat on, grabbed my keys and left.
-
10 minutes later and there I was at the gates of the horrible place. I got my phone out my pocket and began to ring Phil. It rang for a while with no answer until in front of me I could see a figure coming towards the car. The closer I looked, the more obvious it was they were sprinting. A black haired boy in a flannel shirt slammed the gates shut and darted into my car before saying,
"Drive."
"What?" I asked.
"DRIVE." He yelled. I jumped at his sudden change of tone and started the engine up, trying my hardest the manoeuvre the car into the road without crashing it. When we were at the edge of the road, I stopped and looked at him expectantly.
"What the hell are you doing?!" He shouted at me.
"A) Lower you voice, there's no need for it. B) Put your seatbelt on."
Phil looked at me in an 'are you being serious' expression before muttering curse words and clipping himself in. I nodded and smiled before continuing to drive. I noticed that Phil kept looking behind us, biting his lip slightly.
"Can't you go a little faster?" He asked.
"No. Now are you gonna tell me what's going on?"
"No."
"Okay. Also, why did you ask me to come pick you up?"
"You have a car."
"So does PJ."
"He's with Chris. I knew you'd have nothing better to do on a Saturday night."
"Um, that's not true!" I insisted.
"Oh, sorry, what were you doing, watching porn?" He said mockingly.
"No, I wasn't actually, I was watching a very cultural video about the lives of Japanese... cannibals and how they struggled to live their lives without revealing their true identities."
"I don't know, sounds like a porn storyline to me."
"I don't know what kind of porn you've been watching mate." I said. He laughed. Genuinely. It made me smile. I stopped smiling though when he produced a cigarette out of his pocket and was about to light it up.
"No way. No smoking. Not in here."
"Oh, come on don't be a dick, I've got to smoke."
"You want to smoke, cool, you can do it in the middle of the road. Good luck getting home though." He scowled at me before putting the retched thing back in his pocket. I nodded in triumph.
"I can't go home." He said.
"Why?"
He sighed slightly before muttering, "Irrelevant."
"You can't do this."
"What?"
"Call me out in the middle of the night to pick you up with no warning, then not tell me why, not tell me where to take you and again, not tell me why we're not going home."
"I'd like to go to my house." He mumbled, staring out the window.
"So.. you do want to go home?"
"No," he said, as if I was a stupid child who needed everything explained to them. "I want to go to my house."
"Oh." I said, finally grasping what he was saying. A small silence filled the car for a couple of minutes, neither of us looking at each other or bothering to say anything. Curiosity got the better of me as I piped up,
"Where is your home then, Phil?"
He looked up to the sky for a minute before saying, "I don't know. All I know is that I only feel anything close to homely looking at one place."
"Where's that?" I asked, keeping my eyes on the road.
"The moon." He sighed before laughing slightly and shaking his head. "That sounds so dumb but.. it's always there, yanno? You can always rely on it to be there, glowing in the night sky, reminding you what time it is, keeping you safe as you walk alone in the night, guiding you with it's light and finally, telling you when to sleep, reminding you to rest, preparing you for the harshness of the sunlight the next day. It gives me a sense of security and reassurance... but whatever, it's dumb." I could tell he was already beginning to regret showing me this completely different side to him.
"Phil, that was.... beautiful. I never knew there could be so much meaning behind a glowing piece of rock in the sky."
"It's du-"
"It's not dumb. It's the opposite of dumb." Phil finally looked up at me and smiled.
"You really think?"
"Yes."
A small glint appeared in his eyes before he mumbled "thank you." And I smiled at him, continuing to drive.
"Can I smoke now?"
"For gods sake."
-
I pulled up to the bit of pavement outside Phil's house and he was about to get out before I, without thinking, grabbed his arm and stopped him.
"Phil wait," I said. He looked at me, surprised. "Stay over at mine tonight."
He smirked at me and folded his arms.
"Are you asking me to a sleepover?"
"No, well, yeah, kind of, I guess? But not really. I just mean I don't want you to stay in that house alone tonight."
"Aw, are you worried about me?" Phil said in the most patronising voice imaginable, pouting his lips and laughing. A sudden wave of anger rushed through me.
"Fine go back to your disgusting one-roomed shithole, see how much I care, I'm not the one sleeping by myself with no central heating and a mouldy fridge for company." He didn't look hurt, he didn't look angry, but he didn't move out of the car. He shut the door and put his seatbelt back on and stared out the window up at the moon again. I guessed this was my cue to continue driving and did just that.
The entire journey was silent.
-
I pulled up to my house and stopped on the driveway, pulling the handbrake up and turning off the engine.
"I suppose you want me to sleep in the garage or something?" He said. I laughed slightly and shook my head.
"Nah, you can come in the house, just this once I suppose." With that, we got out of the car and entered the house. I walked straight in and turned round to see Phil hesitating in the doorway. I raised an eyebrow at him.
"Do I need to take my shoes off?" He mumbled. I smiled slightly at the worried look on his face and couldn't help but think how cute he looked. But then I realised that I called Phil cute and cringed at how badly those two words went together.
"Erm, yeah sure, whatever." I said smiling. He nodded and got on one knee to untie his trainers. I kicked my boots off in the middle of the floor. Phil lined his neatly up next to the door mat.
"So I guess you can sleep in the guest bedroom. My mum will be cool with that." I said, leading him upstairs. I opened the door to the plain looking creme bedroom. It was quite bare really; double bed; chest of draws; a small TV in the corner; a mirror in the other, but Phil's eyes seemed to light up at the sight of it.
"Nice." He said, walking in slowly and stroking the duvet on the bed. He turned to me and gestured at the bed. "Can I?"
I smiled at him. "Knock yourself out." He nodded before falling back, collapsing onto the soft mattress, making the cushions fly off the bed. I laughed at the childlike glee he had on his face. It was like he was a completely different person. I looked outside to see the dim light of the moon illuminating the room in a gentle glow, then looked back to Phil, seeing how it hit directly into his eyes, making them shine in a way I never thought possible. He quickly got up from the bed, putting the duvet and cushions back into place.
"My room's kind of a mess, just so you know." I said. He shrugged and followed me into the door opposite. I didn't particularly like my room, it was so hard to keep tidy. Posters littered the wall, clothes littered the floor and paper littered the desk. That was the word to describe my room: littered. But Phil seemed to love it.
"I love it in here," he said, sighing. "It has so much character, kind of reminds me of my old room at my mum's house. I used to have all these posters everywhere, even more than you, I had even them on the ceiling!" I smiled at him.
"Do you still talk to your mum?" I asked. He continued to look at my walls whilst saying,
"Nah, she died when I was 11."
"Oh, I'm sorry Phil."
"It's cool. It was a long time ago. My dad wouldn't let me have any posters up though. He said they looked 'screggy'. I still don't really know what that means." I chucked awkwardly, not sure whether it was the time to laugh or not. He seemed okay with it.
"Did you not like your dad?"
"Not like him? I hated him. I still do. He's an arsehole."
"Ah, I'm sorry."
"You know, he kicked me out of the house as soon as I was 16 and told me I had to find a job and fend for myself. Seriously. He even forced me to drop out of school."
"That's horrible." I said sadly.
"Yeah, it kind of was," Phil mumbled. He sat down on my bed. "He wasn't a good dad. I hated his girlfriend too. Her name was Hatty but I used to call her Fatty behind her back. She looked like this big slug with bad fake tan and bleached hair. She heard me call her it once though and god, she went mental."
"Oh my god, what happened?" I asked, genuinely intrigued at the sudden out spilling of Phil's past.
"Well..." He said, pulling his fringe from off his forehead, revealing four short lines ingrained into his skin. "See those scars? That was from her fake nails digging into me." I winced.
"Oh my god. And it's still there after all that time?" He nodded, smiling a sad smile. "Did she used to hurt you a lot?" Phil tensed up a little. I realised how personal it was and how rude of me to ask. "I'm sorry, you don't have to ans-"
"It wasn't really her. It was mainly my dad. Whenever I did anything in the slightest wrong, he used to get his belt out. I can still remember the sound of how it used to clink when he took it off and the feeling of fear that ran through my body." He shuddered suddenly, closing his eyes and swallowing. "The lashes hurt, sure, but the things he used to say hurt the most."
I shook my head in disbelief.
"I'm sorry Phil, that's so horrible. You should never have had to go through that." He shrugged.
"Do you know what the worst part was?" He said. I shook my head. "He was so... so.. patronising. Everyday until the day I finally left he spent making me feel like a piece of dirt on the bottom of his shoe, like a person who possessed no real importance in the world, or even just like a child. It was the worst when I was a teenager, when I tried to argue valid points and he would just laugh in my face. I hated it." He shuddered again.
"Well, I kind of know how that feels." I said, trying to lighten the mood a little. Phil turned to me confusedly for a second, before clasping his hand over his mouth.
"Oh god." He murmured. I furrowed my eyebrows at him. "Ohgodohgodohgod." Suddenly, a tear fell down his face. My eyes widened in shock. "Phil, oh my god are you o-"
"I'm turning into my dad, aren't I?" he said, more tears joining the first. I shook my head.
"Oh no Phil, I was jokin-"
"I'm so sorry Dan. I'm so so sorry. I've been such a prick to you, haven't I? You've been so kind and understanding and I've just, well, I've just been me. I can't help it, I swear. I wasn't purposely being so rude to you. You didn't deserve it. I don't deserve your kindness. I-"
"Phil, woah. Calm down, I- are you sure this is the same Phil I met a week ago?" I asked, so shocked at this sudden outburst.
"I guess you unraveled an emotional layer." He said shrugging, tears still continuing to fall down his face. He looked so vulnerable, so sad, that all I wanted to do was reach out and hug him.
So I did.
At first he tensed up and I tried to pull away, but then he slowly leaned into it and collapsed onto me, along with the heavy weight of the past memories he'd just had washed over him. He rested his head on my shoulder and continued to cry into my tshirt.
"I'm so sorry Dan." He mumbled.
"Sssh, it's okay. It's okay." I whispered in response, squeezing even tighter feeling the weak body in my arms. It was like all his strength and bitterness had been let out by that first tear and here he was, as young and vulnerable as his 11 year old self.
We stayed in that position for a while, a very long while actually, until we eventually fell asleep in each others arms, the moon shining down on us the entire night, protecting us from whatever may have come between us in that moment, because I can honestly say, I had never felt so at home in my life.