Dan hated crying.
He hated everything and anything about it.
"Only girls ever cry," he would always sigh at Phil whenever he shed a few tears at some sappy romance film.
Dan never cried. He didn't cry when his pet hamster ran away or when his first girlfriend broke up with him, when his dad got admitted to hospital and eventually when his dad passed away.
But now as he clung to Phil's hand and watched the paramedics hook Phil up to wires filled with strange fluids, Dan couldn't stop crying. He bawled and bawled, hot tears streaming down his face and spilling all down his front and all over Phil too.
"Sir, are you alright," a female paramedic asked calmly, placing a hand on Dan's back.
Dan didn't have the energy to reply. Part of him wanted to scream how much he was fucking hurting and how much he hated everything, hated himself, how much he wished he was the one on the stretcher instead of Phil, how much he wished he had never been born, how Phil was fucking dying and why couldn't they save him right now, how much he loved Phil and yet another part of him just wanted reassurance that Phil was going to be okay, and he could carry on being with him, how much he just needed someone to tell him everything was going to be okay even if it wasn't at all.
Instead Dan just shook the paramedic away, closed his eyes and rested his head onto Phil's chest. Instead of listening to the wailing noise of the terrible ambulance siren he focused on the beating of Phil's heart, how it dropped and increased at certain points and how it got noticeably louder too the longer he listened for.
'Everything is going to be okay' he thought to himself. 'As long as I can be with Phil and hear his heartbeat, Phil will be fine. After all Phil is strong. Stronger than Me. Stronger than anyone I've ever known. Phil is a fighter. Phil wouldn't ever give up without a battle.'
