Take Your Chances, I'll Take Mine.

Chapter Six

The laughter spilling out through the bottom of the door was both comforting and saddening. Phil softly banged his head into the wall, simultaneously feeling glad that he didn't fuck up their friendship as much as he had every friendship he had ever attempted at having, and feeling of extremely left out.

Phil sighed. He was spiralling, and he knew it, which only made it all the more frustrating that he couldn't pull himself out of it. Suddenly, entirely unbidden, every single one of his past interpersonal failures flooded into his mind, trying to squeeze out through his eyes. He wiped the tears away furiously.

He wanted to go on and ignore them, or boil over and scream, but he knew it wouldn't matter. He knew that he always had to initiate conversation if he were ever to talk to anyone and that if people were to talk to him he couldn't ever ignore them – having the short attention span he had. This is not to say that he couldn't hold a grudge, but rather, that he couldn't always remember to show it. He was desperate for affection, no matter how much he hated to admit it, under that calm 'give-no-shits' exterior was someone who wanted to be acknowledged, not just be okay at a bunch of stuff.

So he just sat there. On the floor, against the wall, with his head safely buried in his hands as he tried to fight the frustrated tears. He didn't quite manage to succeed.

He could hear the distinctive peals of Dan's laughter through the door, and his stomach clenched. He didn't know what he was feeling, but there sure was a lot of it, spilling through his sit and rising in his throat, almost making him choke on it. Drenching his sleeves in tears as he wiped his eyes to clear his vision so that he could run to a janitorial closet down the hall, slamming the door behind him the second he fully gets into the small room.

He sank down against the door as soon as he has is closed, burying his head in his arms and outright sobbing. His chest heaved and his throat itched and his eyes stung, his breath coming in uneven, hiccuping bursts and racking sobs that made it impossible to stay still.

A small, tentative knock sounded at the door and Phil shot back, holding his breath.

"Hello?" someone called through the door. "Is someone in there? Is everything okay?"

"Y-yeah," Phil called back, wincing when his voice wavered. Coughing to clear his voice of all evidence that he had been so overcome by tears, he continued, "yep, I am 100% fine, totally and completely..." he trailed off.

"May I come in?"

Phil froze. "Um. If you want to?"

The door cracked open just wide enough for PJ to slither through but for no one to see Phil in case they were walking by, a form of courtesy, closing it behind him with a soft sound.

"You wanna talk about it?" PJ asked, and Phil just stared.

"Ideally? Sure." Phil chuckled emptily. "Realistically? I don't want to put my bullshit sob-story on anyone. Feels too much like I'm being a whiny bastard making people feel sorry for me."

"If it feels better, I can tell you my bullshit sob-story afterwards? I can probably win in a whining competition, I made an entire project based on the putrid state of the abysmal washrooms at our school," PJ said, attempting to elicit laughter from Phil. "Mutual exchange, and all that," he stated to bring the conversation back to the topic.

"Fuck it." Phil shrugged. "The SparkNotes version of events is that I accidentally almost initiated a best-friend breakup between my 'sworn enemy–'" he added finger quotes and everything– "and this guy I'm kind of sort of dating? Nothing is official, we made out like, once, but he's apparently had a crush on me for a while, so I thought why the hell not.