The Delinquent // Phan AU

Chapter 11: Clean Bandages

*TRIGGER WARNING - BLOOD AND SELF HARM*

'PHIL YOU DID NOT JUST DO THAT! AND NOW LOOK WHAT YOU'VE DONE, YOU STUPID!'

"Sorry..." Phil grunted, clutching his stomach tightly, "I shouldn't have done that.."

"No Phil, it's not about that you fool." Dan urged.

Abruptly, Phil looked up to see Dan gripping his left arm in pain. Phil was a little disorientated - what did he do? Then he looked down from Dan's face to his arm...

A red liquid covered his hand - blood.

"Oh my God! Dan, how did you-why...how could this happen?" Phil shrieked, leaping back up onto the bed and seizing Dan's arm gently. A blood-soaked bandage wrapped around the boy's forearm, leaking over his hand and staining Phil's bedsheets.

How had he not noticed this beforehand?

"Come on.." Phil began to lead Dan towards the bathroom, walking backwards off his bed and out of his room - holding Dan's arm up supportively and carefully.

Once inside, he closed the door behind the two and left Dan's side. Wandering over to the other side of the small room, he threw open the cupboard above the sink door and began digging for what he needed.

Medicine, pills, CLEAN BANDAGES. Found it.

He took a deep breath to calm himself down; Phil can't handle these kind of situations. They make him very panicky - very quickly. Calmly, he went back to Dan and sat him down on the side of the bathtub, Phil doing the same thing.

Dan flinched as Phil began unwrapping the bloody bandages cautiously, only to reveal something that snapped his innocent and loving heart in two. Cuts. Intentional cuts. Loads of them.

"Dan...I-" Phil paused, incapable of putting sentences together. The cuts were all-over, covering the entirety of his forearm.

"You must of re-opened them when you were tugging down on my arm.." Dan bet, an empty tone in his voice.

Phil's hands were shaking, covered in blood, "...How long have you been doing this for?" He spoke eventually, his voice breaking.

"6 months..." Dan replied simply.

Phil exhaled, dumping the soaked bandage in the bath and standing to get a bottle from the cupboard and some tissue.

"This is going to sting, but it will quicken up the healing process." Phil informed, sitting back down in front of the quiet boy.

Wiping away the blood, Dan flinched and twitched under his grip. Grunting and groaning as the pain shot through him. At least he hadn't punched Phil because of it. Soon enough, the cuts were clean, and Phil could see just how many there were. Too many to count - there must have been at least fifty.

"You know, I'm not too happy with you..." Phil admitted, keeping his eyes on Dan's arm while he wrapped the new bandage around it, "..You shouldn't do this to yourself." In the corner of his eye, he saw Dan raise his head, but then lower it straight after.

"Well what do you expect from me, my life's shit." He drawled, "And anyway, you wouldn't have found out if you hadn't of kissed me..."

Phil's heart skipped a beat - the moment felt like it was from a movie to him...apart from the bit where he got kneed in the stomach. His heartbeat quickened drastically, as if pounding right out of his chest.

"Sorry for kneeing you in the stomach, by the way - it was a reflex move." Dan apologized, a remorseful smile on his face.

"It's alright, it wasn't too bad anyway." Phil accepted the apology, finishing up with the bandage.