I'll Leave You With The Outtakes // Phan

Part 16

"You don't get it," Dan snaps, whirling on him one night when Phil is trying to cuddle him out of feeling sad for not being able to tie his shoe laces. Shoe laces for Christ's sake. "You don't know what it's like to wake up and not be able to pull your clothes on the way you used to, have to use a cane or take ten minutes to walk down the hall to the kitchen, not be able to tie your shoes, to have to struggle to send a fucking text."

He bites down on his lower lip, hard. To stop it from trembling. He is angry, not sad and he wants so badly for Phil to understand but he can't fucking make him understand and he knows it's not fair to try. But it feels like Dan is floundering through an endless pitch black night alone, it's the goddamned most terrifying sensation he's ever felt.

"Bear,"Phil says gently, his irises glittering and Dan knows he's going to cry. "I know, I know. I'm sorry. I just, god. Wish I could get it, wish there was something I could do, wish I could make you better, or help in some way. Any way. Cause I don't know what to do or how to help at all, and I feel so helpless and I hate it Dan, I—."

"I don't want this,"Dan cries suddenly, cutting off Phil and he feels like he's about to collapse, he's shaking so bad, and dizzy, and it's like the walls around him are growing closer. Closer and closer, entrapping his breath and shoving his pulse into his eardrums. "I'm going to...lose...everything. You know that, right? This is nothing compared to what it will be. What are we going to do when I can't even move or fucking talk? Phil,"he whimpers the name,"I don't want to lose you. I don't want to be this in front of you."

He barely has time to process that he's sobbing before Phil is engulfing him, arms wrapping tight around him, fingers digging into the back of his ribs.

"I'm sorry,"Dan whispers, his voice sounds raw even to his own ears,"I shouldn't've—you're trying and I'm being an utter arse about it, you're perfect. Just...forget I ever said anything."

He never brings it up again.

-

Besides Phil, Dan's most comfortable around Louise.

Chris and PJ are too boisterous and too disappointed whenever they see how Dan's changed, Phil loves them, he does. But after a while they start to feel sickly fake. After a while they start to seem sad, but are too afraid to address it. When Dan struggles at something simple they look terrified instead of helping.

Louise, though, has the perfect balance between normal and different.

She is hilarious and sweet, greeting Dan with a grin and a hug and a silly anecdote. There's lots of laughing and storytelling, reddened cheeks. Giggling and announcing of oh my god... She doesn't get frustrated when Dan labors with something, or with how slow he has to take things sometimes. She jokes about buying Dan a cane with a knife in it, for all of his ninja capabilities. When Dan laughs, it's not forced. "What ninja capabilities, do you even know who you're talking to, Lou?"

Phil can't help but feel a small tinge of jealousy, because he's read about Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis patients pushing close friends and family away if they feel that their too different from when they were first diagnosed for their loved ones to cope. And sometimes, it's the loved ones that run away because of the amount of work, the toll and tax of keeping with someone who's deteriorating whenever the disease gets to the worst.

He's terrified, not that he'll ever leave—because he never could—but that one day Dan is going to decide that he's done with him.

He even tells Louise this, in an early early morning phone call...when Dan is asleep. She actually cries then, muffled chokes on a static filled line. Phil just needs to say it. Needs to say that he doesn't want to lose Dan—not just to death, but not to ALS either.

Louise assures him that there's no way, Phil is Dan's caregiver, best friend, business partner, lover. He is Dan's everything, he won't leave that behind.

But Louise doesn't treat Dan like he's dying, and hard as he tries, Phil just can't do that.

-

Dan is filming something.

The first time Phil hears it he almost barges into Dan's room just to see if it's true. It's so normal. So usual. The sound of Dan talking to his camera behind his closed bedroom door.

Phil pauses for a while, and he listens. Not to the words, because they're muffled by wood and plaster and walls. He listens to how Dan's voice sounds, the nice way it rings. The cadence of it, the up and down of the pitch. He simply listens.

It's not the Video Voice. Not DanIsNotOnFire talking into a lens, but Dan. The same Dan who kisses Phil in the middle of Market Street because he can. A whole three hour bus ride to Manchester, just to wander the city again, and observe a creepy statue-man in a white sheet handing out lollies.

Phil doesn't ask about what Dan is filming, and Dan never mentions it.

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