Sighs and Fire (Phan AU) (INCOMPLETE)

(1.16)

A/N: just think, every passing day is a day closer to pinof8

"I think I want to spend New Year's with just us in front of a movie, what do you think?" I asked Phil, who was busy sorting all the baubles into bags. "Why do you want all the decorations taken down anyway? It was only Christmas two days ago."

"It's bad luck to have Christmas decorations up when it's New Year."

"Since when?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. I do this every year," Phil started picking up the small bits that had fallen onto the floor. "Well, it was my parent's thing really and I guess it just stuck, I dunno."

"Oh. Phil... Where are your parents? You never talk about them."

"I don't know where they are," his hands started trembling and I watched him as he started to try and untangle the fairy lights, pulling on the wires too harshly and biting down on his lip.

"Hey, let me help."

"I don't understand how it happened, they weren't tangled five minutes ago," he whined, giving up the lights to me. A couple moments pass and I can feel him watching my face and he takes a deep breath. "It doesn't matter where they are. I have you, and you're all I need."

"Phil-"

"I mean it. As long as I've got you, I don't need anything, or anyone, else." He cups my face. "I love you. I thought this being matched with your other half was a load of- no, Dan, shh, hear me out - I watched my parents who loved each other more than anything else in the world begin to grow apart and their marriage break down, so I thought this love stuff wasn't really real. My parents loved each other to the death but it drove them insane too. How could love be real if after 30 years my parents decide they didn't want each other anymore?"

The room is very still. I think I should say something comforting but my brain has gone silent and I've forgotten how to string sentences together.

"I love you, Dan," he continues. "I love you more than I ever thought possible and it terrifies me to think that any moment you could call it quits and leave me, like my parents did to each other. I don't know what made them snap and that's worse because I don't know how I could possibly prevent that from happening to us."

"Some people love each other for as long as they need to be loved." I recited from the information book about the program I received when I was younger.

"But if you don't need me for as long as I need you? What if I never stop needing you but you stop needing me next week?"

"That's not possible. That would never happen."

"You don't know that. God - I'm so sick of being afraid and I don't want to be anymore."

"So don't be."

"It's not as easy as that."

And then I understood. I understood why he was sometimes so hesitant to be affectionate so I silently vowed to myself that I would be as touchy towards him as he let me. So that night when we were curled up under a blanket and he was leaning against my chest, I held him tighter to me than I usually would and resting my hands on his.

Even the slightest movement of his would send my stomach in a whirl and my heart into a frenzy because he still made me feel the way he did when we first met all those months ago. I was smitten with the boy.

Absolutely smitten.

-

Phil spent the next few days being quiet and wrapped up in his own thoughts. I wish I could've known what was going on in his mind - the silence was becoming too much to bear but I didn't bring it up, knowing his silence was his way of thinking through things, making sense of the world and his life and its situations.