2012

Chapter One

The blue-eyed boy stares at me from a distance.

I guiltily shift further from him, the pain of separation choking me. I reach over to comfort him and freeze, my hand inches from him and yet miles away. The small flecks of sadness in his eyes grow as I attempt to pass off my sudden motion as swatting a fly from the air.

We sit mere centimetres from each other, yet it feels like an eternity. A small smile is forced onto his face as he turns away to look at the camera.

Our souls are connected in some way, I swear. That's the only explanation for how I can feel the same burning sadness that is coursing through his veins. He sighs, expelling a mint-scented draft across the room like the ache I feel creeping over my heart.

He is the ocean, shown in his eyes, his passion for life that crashes in waves against my dull indifference. I am the mud, my eyes murky and dirty, nothing behind them but more lifeless dirt that no one could shape into something worthwhile or interesting.

I taint him, horrible brown dirt leaking into pure blue water, making it ugly, disgusting, something to avoid.

We were once the bear and the loan. Now he is the sea and I am the mud beneath him, left behind.

You should not be able to love someone so completely, so endlessly, that there is no room left for you. Without Phil, I am an empty shell, a husk of who I once was. He was the reason for my existence, the reason I got up in the morning. Our fans call him the sunshine, and they are not wrong; he lights up a room in ways I can only dream of, and I am blinded by him.

Who am I without him? When you define yourself by who loves you for years, and this person leaves you, what are you left with? Nothing. You are not even left with sadness or anger. You feel nothing.

He sighs again.

"I'm going to get something to eat." I nod, knowing this is not an invitation for me to join him.

"OK, see you." I remain motionless, lost the moment he leaves the room. I struggle to see the point in moving, eating, living, if Phil is not there. I do the only thing that brings me joy. I remember.

The first time we met, for real, was when I knew. Not that I wanted to be with him forever,  just that I wanted to be with him. Phil has always emitted warmth and happiness wherever he goes, and I was drawn to him.

When I stepped off the train at Manchester Picadilly and saw him there, on the platform, my heart basically fell out. I dropped all pretence of not being bothered about meeting him and sprinted down the platform, earning a few disproving glares. Throwing my arms around him, inhaling him for the first time, the most magical moment of my life. He was mumbling my name and I was crying and everything was so good. How did we become... this. This mess that we are in.

A sudden crash from the kitchen pulled me out of my mind and back into reality. 

"God damn it!" Hearing Phil yell like that pulls me up out of my seat and into the hallway faster than I can comprehend, and before I know it I'm in the kitchen.

"Phil! What happened? Are you alright?" He ignores me, doesn't even turn around to look at me. I feel something in my chest, a tightness that isn't anger but feels like it could be something.

"Phil! I'm talking to you! What happened, did you--"

"For fuck's sake Dan! Quit panicking all the time! I just dropped a plate, not a fucking nuclear bomb!" He spins around, and the resentment in his eyes was so clear, so obvious. I knew we'd been fighting, and it felt like nothing was going right for us but I never expected Phil to look at me like that. As if I'm a persistent piece of dog shit that he can't wipe onto the grass. I step back, partly out of shock, but partly out of fear. Phil scares me when he's angry. I manage to choke out an apology before fleeing into my room.