submerged // phan one shot

Submerged

A/N
Hey friends! I have a small little snippet I wrote a while ago that I wanted to publish for you. If I ever have another idea that's not long enough to be a multichapter, then I will post it. Hope you enjoy!

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Summery: Dan can't sleep, so he finds himself in Phil's room for help.
Word Count: 3,131

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In a way, it always ended up like this.

Submerged in the dark. Alone. Trying to fight off thoughts of demons and monsters hidden under the bed and in shadowy corners.

Dan sometimes felt like a little kid trapped in an awkward, adult body. He trouble fearing genuine threats like burglars or rapists or murderers, but dreaming about ghosts or exorcisms or the undead made him want to curl up into a ball and cry. But, he had come to understand, that  that's how things were. 

He was, like most nights, awake at 2 am after attempting to fall asleep after a long night of Tumblr and YouTube. But after ten minutes of laying flat on his bed, staring at the ceiling, he realized that he wasn't going to be able to close his eyes without freaking out over the possibility of what was lurking in the darkness, so he shuffled in the covers and tried to distract himself.

This, he found, did not help that much.

Dan never liked silence. He always needed something to distract himself from his own mind, because it tended to wander into subjects that he'd rather not think about. The inevitability of death, the vastness of the universe, the fact that his life was a downward spiral of events that just didn't seem to matter...

Etc.

Really, the more he thought about it, the more he realized how much of a mess he was. To the world, he hid behind sarcasm and humor, but inside he really just was a plain mess.

All he wanted was just a little white noise. Maybe the hum of a fan, the sound of rain falling onto the apartment roof, anything. He shivered and silently begged for some sort of sound so he wouldn't freak himself out. Almost immediately, he heard something shake from somewhere in the room.

This did not help things.

His mind began to race. What the fuck was moving in his bedroom?! He tried to convince himself that it was probably just a mouse, because there had been mice in his room before, or maybe it was just his phone going off on vibrate on his desk, but his brain kept jumping to the sinister word unknown. He listened intently for the noise again, holding his bedspread closer to his body, and when he heard it again, he shivered and curled up tighter.

He couldn't get rid of the mental picture of some sort of weird creature scurrying around on his floor, and the thoughts were stressing him out so much that he actually felt tears stinging his eyes. His room was so quiet, except for that little rustle coming from the direction of his closet. He felt completely immersed in the possibility of something.

He just couldn't be alone anymore.

Dan tried to consider his options. He could stay awake, waiting for the noise to stop. He could try and force himself to sleep, until he woke up because of the haunting thoughts. Or he could get up and go somewhere, anywhere, that wasn't his room.

He obviously had to get out of his room, but the idea of moving through the darkness with that thing running around made him want to puke. But before he could change his mind, the rustle sort of jerked closer to his bed, and he jumped up and staggered toward his door, disoriented and afraid. When he found the knob, he opened the door, let himself out, and shut it (rather forcefully) behind him, letting out a sigh of relief.