MALADRESSE ✞

1.4

'You're cordially invited to the wedding of Mr Pasquale Jordan Liguori and Mr Christopher James Kendall.'

I scoff as I place the invitation back down on the kitchen counter in disgust, that didn't take them long. How did Phil feel? Wait... has he found out about this yet? Me and Phil have been getting really close after the past three days, ever since we made the video for Phil Is Not On Fire and uploaded it, we've been getting loads of hits and the comments were amazing.

"Dan? You alright?" Phil asks walking in drying his black hair with his favourite dark blue towel. Well, my favourite dark blue towel.

"You seen this yet?" I ask, holding up the invitation.

He takes it from me and reads it, his mouth forming the words, but no sound is made, it's fascinating to watch, the way his mouth delicately bends to make each word that was written on the soft beautifully designed paper, the way his eyebrows scrunch up slightly as he concentrates and once his mouth no longer moves, his tongue pokes out from the corner of his mouth. Something of which I find adorable. 

"They're getting married?" He asks in disbelief.

I mean, I wouldn't blame him, he was once engaged to one of the men who was now engaged to the other man that I was dating. Okay, this got weird and fast.

"I'm sorry, dude, you okay?" I ask in a comforting voice.

Phil doesn't say anything, he just puts down the invitation and backtracks down the hallways until I heard the soft click of his bedroom door being closed and locked. I decided to give him some time alone to process it all, besides, he was more emotionally involved in his previous relationship than I so he deserves to be alone to mull it over. After an hour he still doesn't materialise so I decide to check on him.

"Phil?" I call softly.

"Go away!" he wails.

"Phil, I want to make sure you're alright," I say, keeping my voice calm.

"No! I'm not fucking alright! Now leave me alone! Just like he did! Leave me!" he screams.

"Never." I say.

"Dan, please, I just need more time," he says, calming down a little.

"You can have all the time in the world." I say.

Phil doesn't reply, I didn't really expect him to. He's really hurt. I mean, Phil swore, he never does that. I sit down on the floor next to his door in somewhat of a silent protest that I would never leave him alone and he had to deal with it.

I don't know how long I had sat there for, but my tailbone began to ache like crazy and I was parched and starving, but I didn't want to move from my post. A true soldier would fight all of his or her needs to serve others and since I am no good at any contact sport or sport of any shape or form, I will find other ways of doing so and this, sitting outside of Phil's bedroom door for hours on end, was apparently the approach I was taking.

After a while I must have dozed of into a reckless sleep because I was woken up to Phil shaking my shoulders violently.

"Weak person, strong force," I manage to cough out.

"Are you okay? You were crying and screaming,"

I look at Phil and saw his eyes were red and puffy, no doubt mine were the exact same. He looked more pale than usual and his usual glow of happiness seemed drained and he just looked extremely tired.

"Just a nightmare, it's fine," I say with a scratchy voice, sitting up and leaning against the wall.

"What are you doing out here? Why don't you go and sleep in your safe and comfortable bed instead of out here on the hard floor?"

"A soldier never gives up his post when needed the most," I say.

"What?" he asks, genuinely confused.

"I told you before, Phil," I say, looking him in the eye. "I'll never leave you, when you need me and when you don't, I'll always be here for you."

"Thank you, Dan," he whispers before crawling onto my lap.

"There is nothing to thank me for, Phil, everyone should do this for you, you deserve it,"

"No I don't,"

"Yes you do. And the fact that you don't believe you deserve it makes you deserve it even more. You see this kind, funny, loving person who cares for everyone and always makes sure they're alright before checking on himself. You deserve the world because that's who you help, you help the world and you help many people across the world, you help them discover the best of themselves, help them come to terms with who they are and embrace it like it's the new fashion trend or Pop Tart flavour, you deserve a lot of things Phil, but this pain you feel isn't one of those things,"

"Then why did he cheat on me, Dan? We were engaged. We were happy. Then he has to go and cheat with none other than Pj Liguori, the guy he is constantly bringing home and bragging about, telling all his friends about like he was his fiancé and not me. While I was there. And! To make things better, I had to find out over the phone from you, not him, you, who had found out a week before and had already had the time to kick out the cheating asshole. Who was living in my fiancé's apartment!"

"What do you mean, he was living in Chris's apartment?"

"Chris told me that you and Peej... had a falling out and Pj needed a place to crash since it was your home 'isn't that sweet of him?' I think it was that Chris asked me, well anyway, I offered for him to sleep at mine where both me and Chris was living, well, my name was on the tenancy and Chris just slept there all the time, we used his house as a storage space, but Chris said that Pj needed time alone to think about what happened between him and Dan so he took him to Chris' apartment and... well, he never came back."

"What happened to his stuff that was there when you gave the landlord his property back?"

"I send him a text 'pick up your stuff or landlord gets it. Simple as' if he didn't retrieve his crap then it's his own loss."

"And that it is." I say, resting my chin on his head.

"Dan?" he says quietly after a while of sitting in comfortable silence.

"Yeah?"

"How did you feel... when you found out that Pj was cheating on you?"

"Betrayed, I'd known him for so long and we'd been so close I would never of imagined him to stoop so low although he knows all about my... uh, problems. I felt angry as he was accusing me of cheating before he let it slip that he was the one cheating. Upset that yet again I managed to fuck something up again. I felt more angry at myself than that posh stuck up kid from Lazytown,"

"Stingy?"

"That's the one," I say.

"Why was Pj accusing you of cheating? You weren't cheating... were you?"

"Of course not! I know how horribly heart-breaking and sinful it is to cheat on someone. Well, truthfully it's because I kept inviting you over and you stopping and well on that day that I found out, I was wearing one of your Buffy tops that you had left,"

"Oh,"

"Yeah, I think he just accused me because my actions were similar to the one's he was taking with Chris. He was scared that I was going to find out so he cut straight to it and confronted me about it even though he probably knew the truth and he was just being paranoid. One thing led to another and boom! His secret is out."

"Dan? Can we go on a walk?"

"Where to?"

"We're adults. We can go anywhere!"

"So... the park down the road?"

"Basically, yeah."

I let out a short laugh. "Let's get going then before all the kids take the swings."