alllll the fics

words dan never asked for

Description: ok so i wrote this because i felt sad and i guess i needed to? please note that it is all in lowercase (i know i’m annoying) and although most of it is based on personal things (my previous relationship to be exact), i do not have anyone’s name cut into my chest (i know, bummer).

Warnings: i guess implied suicidal thoughts, just a little mention of blood and scars? idk it’s weird and angsty whatever

                                                   ——————-

he writes them down and he scrubs them off.

he didn’t want them.

he didn’t want to need those fucking words. he didn’t want to feel empty and blank without something written in messy black sharpie across his chest, his forearms, his palms.

so he writes them down and scrubs them off.

no one knows they’re there; dan is just the kid with a tattered sketchbook and long sleeves in the middle of july. he’s messy hair and dark circles and he doesn’t have any stars scattered across his gaze like phil said he did.

'phil.'

that’s one of the words he writes.

why do i need them so much?

scrub it off.

wipe them away, and fucking put them back. what am i doing?

scrub it off.

why am i stuck like this?

phil.

sometimes, the scrubbing doesn’t work all the way. sometimes the word is left faded grey, pressed dark against his pale skin. he used to be tan. but that was before- well, you know.

and he laughs.

it’s funny, because phil is left marked deep into his flesh in that color, and it’s so true. that word won’t leave. that word is carved into him for good. that word is his life, and it’s still holding its shape against dan’s white colored chest, streaked with blue and green veins. he can scrub the words away, but he can’t scrub away phil.

he wonders if maybe there are stars elsewhere in him.

phil told him about the universe. phil told him about galaxies spilled out onto the vast expanse of the sky. phil told him about gold plumes of planets and stars, and he told him about love. he told him all that was in his bones. he told him one day, he’d become that forever.

phil told him he had stars in his eyes.

and he laughs.

it’s dangerous, you know? to hold so tightly onto someone. you can’t put your whole life into that one person. you’ll just get hurt.

dan looks at the words on his skin now.

'im sorry.'

he stares into the black marks across his arm. the fresh ink is just a little wet and it’s shining up at him. it’s stupid, but it’s shiny and it looks soft and it’s like phil’s laying his head down on his lap again, it’s like he has the sky across his body. and it’s beautiful.

dan shudders and scrubs it away.

every day his notebook gets a little more beaten up. he fades a little more. no one sees him anymore. no one cares, not even enough to ask why there are tiny slashes of black pen on his neck.

dan still wrote the words on his body. each time, they got a little more violent; from ‘i still love you’ to ‘i hope you die slowly enough that you can feel how much pain you’ve caused me.’ and the marks start pressing in deeper, and they aren’t washing away as easily. dan wonders if this is because he’s running out of pages, like that stupid notebook. he wants to burn it. he wants to burn it because it still has lines of love songs and snippets of poems written on the blue and red lines. he wants to burn it because there are pictures of stars and galaxies, there are ideas and dreams and phil is living on in the pages of that book.

he doesn’t burn it of course. he’s in too deep for that.

the slashed of pen on his neck get wider and deeper and no one is noticing as he lets himself slide. he stopped washing his face weeks ago (there’s pen there, too). he stopped keeping his hair neat and he stopped caring because there was a whole world out there in the velvet of the black air, so why should one boy matter so dearly?

and then he remembers phil, and he shuts up.

he’s still looking for his stars.

a day comes after an eternity of looking through space. a girl with shiny eyes and clean hair walks after dan down the hall and stops. dan sees her eyes there but can’t appreciate them properly. they’re green, not blue, and he can only like blue eyes because of that stupid word still strung across his chest. the girl points to dan’s neck and asks him what the marks are. dan holds his breath. really, what are they? what am i? what is everything?

dan can’t answer, he shakes his head and walks away. he wishes he could like a color other than blue.

he rewrites the word, rewrites the lines and dots on his neck, they’ve spread down to his chest now. he’s worried they won’t ever stop. he’s worried he won’t ever stop. he’s worried that the girl will come back and see what he’s done to himself. he worries that this is why phil didn’t love him anymore, and his stomach lurches to his throat. and he starts looking for his stars again. phil never lied, not even once (well, once. he said a word that began with l- and ended with -ove). so they must be there somewhere.

years go by. dan’s really lost it now- the word phil is carved into him. actual carving. the kind with blood and pain and a knife. but at least now he knows phil will be part of him forever. and it’s true. phil is a scar.

dan is messy hair and dark circles around dark eyes. dan is long sleeves in summer and a burnt sketchbook (he burned it when he saw phil kissing the green eyed girl). dan is covered with pen and scars and hate, but he’s learned something. he’s found what he looked for.

the marks over his neck.

and the next time someone asked, he showed them. he showed them all the dots of pen, all the grey words faded against his papery white skin, he showed them his galaxies. they were important. they really were.

they were his stars.

and soft fingers are flying over his marks, his pen and his scars and his freckles even, and for the first time in eons, someone tells him that’s he’s covered with stars. a vague resemblance of what might’ve been a smile comes to his face.

stars. he’s covered with stars.

he’s also covered with phil, but he doesn’t care.

scrub it off.