24 Hours - Phan

6:00pm

Dan slips into his room and flicks off the light switch, closing the door after him. Crossing to the window, he pushes aside the curtains and slides it up as far as it will go. The room remains slightly illuminated by the streetlights and the surrounding buildings reflect a dark blood red as if they were trying to wring out the last bit of light from the lowering sun.

He can hear a muffled version of Phil's animated voice coming from the shared wall between their bedrooms. Unfolding his tall frame on top of the black comforter on his bed, his eyes close and a soft smile spreads across his face. The cool London air seeps into the room and envelopes him. He concentrates on the rise and fall of the familiar voice and he wonders how many evenings he has spent over the past years just like this, laying in his room listening to Phil. There aren't very many other places he would rather be than right here. It feels like home.

He reaches down to the floor next to the bed and gropes around until his hand finds his laptop. He opens it with a snap and the glow from the screen lights up his face in the almost dark room. A pang of guilt jolts through him and he has the same internal debate he always does whenever he does this. He's well aware it walks the narrow line between romanticism and creepy, but maybe doing this will get it out of his system and make everything easier for him in the long run. And really, what's it harming anyway? It's just more of a guilty pleasure than anything else.

Thinking better of it, he sighs and starts to close the laptop, but then after a short pause opens it again. He takes a deep breath and after clicking through several levels of files and folders, he gets to the one he's looking for but then hesitates. He groans and lets his head fall back against the pillows. How can something feel so good and so bad at the same time? He'd feel more at ease looking at porn in a public place than doing what he's doing right now in the privacy of his own bedroom. After a quick glance at the shut door, he opens the folder marked 'financial'. Finance was the most boring thing he could think of, so it made a great name for an obscure folder in case it was ever spotted by curious eyes. He checks the time and makes a silent promise to himself that he'll stop after 15 minutes and then go next door for a quick appearance on the live stream with Phil. Yes, that is the reasonable and sane thing to do.

He opens the folder and slowly starts going through the photographs. Some of them are everyday moments taken with their cell phones, others are from the fancy digital camera they always take on trips, and some are just screenshots from videos they've made over the years. The light from the laptop flickers over his face as, one by one, the memories float across the screen in front of him. He understands why all of the 'ships' exist. They really do look like a couple despite all of the planning and effort that goes into the platonic branding. As time passes, the moments captured in these pictures have become his own version of the truth. As ashamed of it as he is, he can't help looking at them and pretending that he and Phil are something they aren't. Instead of a friendly vacation to Singapore, he imagines they were on a romantic getaway. Rather than a work trip to the United States, he fantasizes that they scouted for a wedding location.

As the sound of Phil's voice fills his head and the thoughts of the past take on a life of their own in his imagination, his eyes slowly droop and eventually close. He drifts off into a peaceful sleep, dreaming of a raven haired boy with baby blue eyes...