Entanglement

touch

Dan POV

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Four days.

I had spent four days wallowing in my own self pity and hatred. I was ripping myself to shreds, convincing myself that I couldn't see Phil until this wore off, and then going against my own words each day. He talked and talked, while I tried to come up with any reason to dislike him, despite the fact that I was supposed to. Yet as I listened to his voice something in my chest continued to blossom and I couldn't stop it. It was as if realizing what was going on had only made it worse.

Unfortunately, I knew that Phil was wondering what was wrong with me. The fact that he was completely clueless to what I was experiencing only made the whole situation more hopeless.

After four days of hiding in my mind and behind my silence, something inside of me snapped. I couldn't continue to live like this, loving an angel and not telling him and wanting to cry every time he spoke and lying awake all night wondering what was wrong with me.

Why was I so scared?

Demons can't feel fear, is what I would constantly remind myself. I wasn't feeling fear because I couldn't. But there was no other emotion I could use to describe why I wouldn't tell Phil what was going on and why I dreaded seeing him despite how happy it usually made me. What had happened to my eternal confidence? What had happened to me?

It wasn't supposed to be possible for me to be scared or for me to love or for me to doubt myself. Those were things that had never happened and weren't meant to ever happen. And they were happening, which made me wonder when my life had gone from slight shitstorm to ultimate dreadful events constantly being thrown my direction while I had nothing to defend myself with.

Hiding my new found impossible emotion was the most difficult thing. Demons could smell fear, and even the smallest anxious thought could be sensed from miles away. I had to push down all of it until late at night or until I was alone on Earth. Luckily, Phil couldn't sense fear.

I had to knock it out of myself. Why did I care so much about pushing Phil away? I knew that if I told him what my problem was he would fly in the other direction as quick as he could. Wasn't that what I had wanted once? For him to get out of my thoughts and my life?

Maybe Dan from months ago had wanted it, but that was not what I wanted now. I didn't know what I would do if I told him how I felt and lost him forever. He was the only person I had ever liked so much, and I couldn't just send him away because of my overreacting feelings. Yet I had to stop living under a shell of anxious questions and desperation; I had to go back to being confident Dan who never would have even cared about admitting feelings to someone. Not that I had ever had feelings in the past, anyway.

If Phil were a demon, there would be no problem with the situation. I would have finally found someone to love, just as I'd been wishing for because of all my friends. Yet of course, because I could never get a break, I had to go and fall in love with a member of my sworn enemy. I had to go and fall in love with someone who I was supposed to hate and never want to be close to.

Right now, the only thing I hated was myself. As I'd repeated multiple times, that only made it worse, since I was supposed to be cocky and strong and full of myself as I'd been before.

So on the fifth day of my strange antics, I decided to change it up. I would put a lie over my face and pretend everything was fine. I couldn't have Phil continuing to ask questions; I would end up snapping right in half and telling him everything.

Yet when I'd greeted him with a joke and he'd smiled right at me, all of it melted away. When he responded with a joke and made me laugh, and sincerely asked how my day was. That was why I loved him. I hated it, but the grin never left my face. He was everything. The face I'd put on was something I didn't need when he was looking at me like that, so it had all been true.