Broken Rules - Phan

Part 16

I'd woken up to the sound of birds yelling and a blinding slither of winter sun creep through my curtains. I woke up to peace, serenity, guilt and a heavily broken heart. I woke up to a familiar sound of paper in my jean pocket.

Pulling it out, I squinted at the curtains, and opened the paper up. It read, '1191'. Locker code. He'd left me something in his locker. I was sure of it. With my back aching and my eyes hanging low, I laid back. I wasn't going anywhere until I'd regenerated.

Walking up to his locker, my hands began to tremble. I unlocked it and marvelled in the black, worn and tattered books. Three in total. I grabbed all of them, left the locker open and briskly walked to my dorm.

I opened the first book, the oldest, and was met with dark paintings full of distress and horror. The first picture was a messy drawing of scattered black lines forming holding hands. It was bleeding black ink. I slowly turned the pages, my fingers stroking each of the pictures fondly. They were full of so much emotion, so much purpose, and yet they made me so sad. They were black with the odd spot of red. The whole book was full of hands. Hands grabbing, hands bleeding, hands balled up into fists. Hands that were dark as midnight and in dire need of being held.

The second book was more abstract, the paint blots flew across the page in such a methodical way. It was so careless yet so organised that I couldn't help but furrow my brow. The colours were still predominantly black though. The only real difference was the amount of hands had depleted and was replaced with foliage. Mushrooms, ivy, trees. They were all casually coloured with dark greys and deep shades of navy.

The last book was the one that hit me hard. It started dark, just like the others. But in a few pages, there was a caramel coloured eye leaking drops of the same colour. The next page was a maroon scarf betwixt the autumn leaves. Then there was me. And I had never felt more beautiful. It was captured mid laugh and, at first, I thought it was a picture. The detail in it made me well up inside. But I blinked back the tears and turned the page. Hands. Hands in colour. Hands full with pink, blue, orange and rich brown. There wasn't a spec of black that coloured in something. A tree. A tree bearing rusty leaves and the same maroon scarf blowing in the wind, the deep pink sky framing it entirely. I pushed on.

There were pictures of me. My dimple, my eyes, my hands. There was the poem, covered in autumn leaves and a beautiful violet sky. I kept gently turning the pages, as if scared to rip them. I stroked the picture he'd done of himself. His nose was wrongly proportioned and his eyes weren't the vibrant blue I knew them to be, but he was so beautiful. The only way I could describe it was art. Phil Lester was art. He wasn't conventionally beautifully, he wasn't masculine. He was art. And there aren't enough words in the dictionary, in the world, to describe Phil Lester. The only one that constantly came to mind was art.

I turned the page to the last piece of art. I held my breath and stroked the last page. I let my fingers trace each line and my eyes soak in what I could only call art. It was a more professional version of the first ever drawing in his sketchbook. But one hand was in vibrant rainbow colour from the arm to the fingertips and the second hand was still messily black, but the fingertips were turning a soft, pale rainbow colour.

That wasn't it. There was a poem written in a scrawley writing in thin black ink.
The bruises on my fingertips
Were black
The soul inside me
Was black
My heart, my head and everything in between
Was black
And then you touched me
Me a black canvas
And with no effort
Everything filled with colour
My mind was clearing
My heart was warming
And my soul felt better
But bruises take a while to heal
And my fingertips, now full of colour,
Are just the start

I stroked the ink with my fingers, tracing every flick and every kink as lightly as I could. I could imagine him, his gentle soul and his bruised mind, mixing all sorts of colours together. And he would've looked at the hands in his first book, bruised, messy and unkind. He would've looked at ours, that fitted together perfectly. I was his fire. He was my ice. And slowly I'd melted him, thawed him. Helped him become the state he was destined to be. And I should've been happy with that. Content.

I didn't want to be content. I wanted him. I wanted us. Never before in my life had I needed someone's touch before. Craved somebody so much. I'd always thought I was weird... Unnatural. That I didn't belong to a sexuality. But it just took time. Time and trust. Unknowingly, Phil had coaxed that part out of me. I didn't want to be content. I wanted him.

~~~~~~~

Holy crapu we are nearing the end.
So close
Yet so far
Aiming for 20 chapters, will probably only squeeze 18
(Ive updated this 3 times bc spelling mistakes sry)
(Plus dat demi Dan tho)