Phil was sitting beside Dan on his bed now. Dan was falling in an out of sleep but was still trying to talk to him, and Phil didn't have the heart to move. It was also comforting to see Dan without personal censors, acting young and more natural. The light was still off, and Dan seemed a lot happier to talk about personal things when he wasn't able to be seen properly.
"Hey Phil, what are your parents like?" Dan mumbled and Phil smiled fondly.
"Kind. Quite protective and only strict sometimes. I'm very close with them," he said and Dan hummed.
"Do you have any siblings?"
"A brother. We're close too, but he lives in Florida," he said and Dan sighed. "Do you?"
"Only child. M'not close to my parents, they think money is love though so they'd disagree." Phil wrung the cloth out and looked at Dan for a few seconds. Sadness was clear on his face. "It's lonely," he whispered and then rolled away from Phil. "I'm lonely."
Phil didn't know what to say. Instead he placed the cloth to the back of Dan's neck, making him shiver.
"S'nice," Dan mumbled and Phil smiled, before he noticed the tattoo where his neck dipped into his back. It was a tiny bottle with the words "drink me" on the label, and Phil smiled. His smile quickly faded when he noticed that the bottle was full of pills, and Phil covered it with the cloth.
"Alice in Wonderland?" he asked and Dan rolled onto his back, hiding it.
"Yeah. It's not such a happy story, even if it's full of colour and people," Dan said dryly and Phil slid the cloth along Dan's collarbones. "Would you get a tattoo?" he shuddered and Phil dipped the cloth again.
"I wouldn't know what to get it of. I could get a stab wound though," he teased and Dan smiled and shook his head, rocking his whole body with it.
"No, I said you didn't need one." Dan smiled for a while and giggled when he wiped his stomach, and Phil felt the muscles clench. He shut his eyes for a while and Phil had thought he'd maybe fallen asleep, but Dan spoke up again.
"Phil, do you like boys? It would be great if you did. One of my models wasn't as pretty as you, and he didn't have such a big-"
"Whoa there Dan. Calm down," Phil blushed.
"He was also rude, and didn't care. And he wasn't blue. Blue is my favourite colour," he mumbled and Phil smiled.
"Am I blue then?" Phil humoured him and Dan nodded.
"Of course." He paused, a delicate smile on his lips. "You're beautiful."
Phil ran a hand through his hair and looked out the window. They hadn't closed the curtains and he could see the other flats barely lit it had gotten so late. Dan couldn't say stuff like this unless he was almost out of his mind, and it was driving Phil a little bit crazy. Dan didn't feel normal to him.
"I'm not blue," Dan murmured and Phil looked over at him again. Dan's eyes were squeezed shut and he was gripping at the fabric of his sheets. "I suck the colour out of people if I touch them. I don't want to do that to anyone." Phil was quiet and wrapped his hand in the blanket before patting Dan's arm.
"How do you see people?" Phil asked and Dan hummed.
"How blind are you without your glasses?" he asked.
"Pretty blind,"
"Take them off." Dan instructed and Phil paused before sliding them off his nose. "Now imagine someone's face and imagine swirls going through them. For each person I see a different colour and I can't stop seeing the colours on them. I've seen them lose their colour when I touched them," he whispered and Phil shook his head.
"I don't think you're like that," Phil said gently. "You give colour to people when you turn them into your artwork,"
"Really?" Dan mumbled hopefully and Dan took the cloth away.
"Goodnight Dan."
A few minutes later Dan was breathing soundly and Phil shuffled off the bed, shutting the curtains and grabbing a spare blanket from the end of it and making camp on the sofa. He looked at his hands in the dark, and if he squinted enough, he thought he saw the blue Dan liked so much.
