Misfit (Phan AU)

Chapter Fifteen

*Phil's POV*

While my concern for Dan may have been my most prominent thought going into the shower, it was completely forgotten the second I'd stepped under the steady stream of comforting water. He was the last thing on my mind. Though, to be fair, that wasn't really too much of an insult considering there wasn't really much of anything at all going on inside my head, it was just a dull static haze of contentment. 

My only real thought was a repetitive observation of how insanely good it felt to be coming clean again, to have a shower after so long without one. Remind me to never try that again, regardless of how tense the atmosphere in the apartment happened to get. Still, I hope it never reaches a level quite that bad again, we need to figure out some kind of problem-solving method to ensure that.

I was willing to put that whole dilemma on hold though, mostly because I couldn't bring myself to let go of the sense of peace that I'd been wrapped up in since we finally worked things out between the two of us. After so long spent on edge and filled with such an uncharacteristic amount of bitterness, it felt like an overwhelming amount of weight off my shoulders to return to my more docile self. 

Now, after everything was sorted and I finally had a chance to just stand back and think with a clear head, I really couldn't believe I'd reacted the way I had. It wasn't like me to act out in such a brash way, no matter how passionate I felt toward something, I always took the logical approach and thought through the most reasonable way to react. Even as a child, I'd hardly ever reacted to anything with such upset tantrum-like behavior. It didn't make me look intimidating and it didn't work toward fixing things either, it was just the coward's way out.

Part of me wished I hadn't done things the way I had, but at the same time I couldn't really say I regretted it when that course of events was what brought me to this outcome. I wasn't proud of my actions, but I'd be lying if I tried to say I wasn't happy with where they'd led me. There's no telling if things would have worked out like this had I not let my emotions get the better of me the way I did. I wanted to believe that they would have, that Dan would have realized the error in his actions even without my over-dramatic behavior, but I could never be sure. As predictable and habitual of a person he seemed to be, at the same time he was a completely contradictory wildcard.

Perhaps that isn't the most accurate comparison, he's not exactly a wildcard, but he was far from as predictable and monotonous as he tried to act. That's all it was really, an act, an elaborate mask to cover who he really was. Even now I had to wonder if I was really getting a one-hundred-percent truthful look into his thoughts and emotions. 

I didn't really understand it, why he was so set on keeping everything about himself so private and locked away that he'd put that amount of effort into it, but I did know that it couldn't be enjoyable for him. To always be so on guard about what he said and how he acted, the stress that must go into that would be unreal. I just couldn't comprehend how he could think for even a second that all of that work would be worth it, when the alternative was seemingly so easy. How could he find it that difficult to just open up to people? Even just one person?

Before those thoughts had been nothing but discouraging to me, it made me feel like some kind of failure that he didn't even trust me enough to offer even the slightest glimpse into who he really was. He seemed so convinced he pulled it off so well, that no one could even see the slightest crack in the wall he'd built around himself to keep them all out. But everything he did was so unnatural and forced, it was clear to me now that this wasn't really him.

That's why I was coming to realize, that I was far from a failure. The fact that I was seeing through the facade at all was further than anyone else managed to get. I'd been making progress without even realizing it, even if he would have argued against that every step of the way. He'd outright told me now that the things he said to me weren't always truthful, more just thoughtless things he'd blurt when he couldn't accept the way he was actually feeling.