Misfit (Phan AU)

Chapter Thirty-Four

A/n: sup dudes, back at ya with a filler chapter, a little bit earlier than a full month between updates?? idk about u but i can already feel my updating schedule slowly healing. So, as for warnings for this chapter: janman is back at it pressuring phil to winkwonk yet again (its not quite as bad this time though so if u were okay with last time this will be nothing to you).

*Phil's POV*

There were a lot of things I'd grown to miss about living independently, as much as I loved my parents. One of which, something that I'd seriously taken for granted, was the amount of dishes I was expected to clean on behalf of other people. Sure, my parents had cleaned up after me for years, but somehow even that reasoning wasn't enough to make scraping old food into the compost a desirable task.

I'd been standing in front of the sink for well over half an hour now, which wouldn't have been such a bad thing if it wasn't for the room it left for my mind to stray. When I was younger I'd always used this free time to daydream and think up impossible perfect scenarios of things I'd much rather be doing with my time, now all I could think about was Dan.

It started out innocent enough, a fleeting thought wondering where he was right now and how he'd been coping since our split. It'd been nearly a week now since I'd gone to pick up my things, and it seemed like every minute since I'd spent dwelling on the way I'd chosen to leave things. So really, it shouldn't have come as such a surprise when my light hearted thoughts of Dan fell into the same downward spiral they all had over the past few days.

I couldn't shake the overwhelming dark cloud that had been looming over me as of recent, the one so damned insistent that all of this would be permanent. I would always feel like a physical piece of myself had been ripped out of my chest at the loss of Dan, no matter how many weeks I spent desperately trying to move on. At this point it was pretty clear that we weren't about to come back together, but even my feeble hopes that I might someday be okay with the fact that we were apart were quick to be crushed.

He probably hated me now, especially after that stunt I'd pulled at the end of things where I'd run out on him the second expressing emotions got too difficult. It was one thing to hurt him, to spend ages earning his trust only to stomp all over it, but what kind of person was I to pull him close one last time when I knew it would only make the distance hurt even more when I left?

God, what I would give for even an hour where my every thought didn't feel haunted by his memory. It didn't matter whether I was recalling those painful last moments or the happiest times we'd shared together, it had all grown rather bittersweet. It left a bad taste in my mouth, like looking back on any failure would. And that's what it was; a failure. I'd given it my everything, poured so much of myself into that relationship that I felt hollow, and still it wasn't enough to fix things.

"Phil."

"What?" I grumbled, tensing my shoulders as I worked to scrub grime off of one of the final pieces of cutlery settled at the bottom of the sink. I'd been unreasonably irritable lately, generally my family knew to give me lots of space whenever I reverted into my mind. I suppose they knew what an awful place it likely was right about now.

Whoever had chosen to whisper my name just now didn't get the memo though, or so it seemed, considering they decided to make things even more frustrating by refusing to cooperate and simply reply with what they wanted. I turned to look over my shoulder with a glare printed across my features, only for the expression to falter when I was met with a relatively empty kitchen. Aside from my cat, lounged lazily across the floor a few steps from where I stood, there wasn't any other sign of life in the entire room.

I rolled my eyes, looking back to the task at hand and trying to pour all of my concentration into finishing as quickly as possible. I made it through another fork when I was interrupted again, this time by a low chuckle. I whipped my head around, already knowing exactly who my prime suspect was. Martyn and Cornelia had stayed over for dinner tonight, there wasn't a doubt in my mind that he was somehow behind this.