nosebleed ; phan

vii :: control

THE THICK SCENT OF VELVETY LEATHER AND THE BITTERSWEET FUMES OF BURNING WOOD AND NICOTINE FLOODED INTO THE HICKORY-HAIRED BOY'S LUNGS, blowing his tousled, hazel hair away from his eyes as he exhaled. "he's in apartment 318," the brunette breathed, resting his cheek against his the indigo and marine veins that painted his delicate wrist as phil continued to write.

the ravenette's bloodshot eyes were focused intently on the pad of paper he was messily scribbling on, the obsidian ink of the pen mimicking the shade of his jutting tattoos. his bruised bottom lip was dragged between his teeth as his eyes narrowed, his starlit irises hidden by his thick, feathery eyelashes.

"318," he murmured hazily. "so the plan is to get him out of his apartment, kill him somewhere it'll be easy to keep clean, and dump the body in the river on the outskirts of town. sounds easy enough. still haven't decided what i want in return, though," he trailed off, a sultry smirk painting his baby pink lips as his gaze darted up and seemed to trap the mocha-haired boy.

dan felt looking at the obsidian-haired boy was like looking at the sun; staring too long could kill him but he couldn't seem to look away.

dan's heart skipped a beat as the ebony-haired boy continued to talk to himself, the brunette's vacant irises fixated on the charcoal-colored graphite on the hickory-wooden walls. "i want someone dead," his words echoed like a skipping rock soaring across the spiraling ocean of his deafening mind. he told himself it was a toxic concoction of his depressive thoughts and the alcohol stirring in his hollow stomach that had caused him to blurt it out; that he wasn't that reckless.

that he had control.

that the heroin-laced veins etched in his hollow body weren't capable of murder. at least, not of other people. for his own tormented body, he made no such promise.

"cigarette?" the brunette was dragged from the rhapsodic madness that was his haunted mind as he noticed an ashy cigarette held between fingertips the color of moonlight. dan clenched his tapered jaw as he nodded, his bloodshot eyes averted from the petrifying, velvet azure of phil's irises, although it was as if he could feel the ebony-haired boy's eyes burning holes into his delicate skin. "you seemed scared," phil stated as he exhaled faded nicotine and apathy through his bruise-freckled lips.

dan was unsure how to respond. he was scared as hell. but he wasn't entirely sure what of.

he couldn't tell if he was scared of taking his ex's life, feeling the last, desperation-drenched drag of whiskey-and-rosé tainted breath bleeding out from his angelic lips as dan clutched his pretty neck; of watching the boy's mesmerizing, loveshot eyes fade to white at the back of his lifeless silhouette.

or if it was the way phil's slender fingers never stopped playing with a silvery knife; or how his velvety eyes seem to capture dan in a gold-dripping spiderweb of azure blended with viridescence, the way he looked at him as if the dewey-eyed, hazel-haired boy was his prey.

or perhaps what dan was really scared of was the fact that he wasn't scared of either of those things.

he just shrugged, stealing the cigarette from phil's grip and taking a deep inhale, feeling smoke drip its nicotine-tasting clutch around his darkened lungs. "whatever."

"have you ever killed anything before?" phil asked. the sepia-haired boy dragged his bottom lip in between his teeth and bit down as he thought. really, dan howell had killed a lot of things. he had taken a pistol in the form of shattered whiskey bottles and shattered minds and pulled the trigger through carter's heart.

he had wrapped his long, murderous fingers around adrian's bony frame and crushed him, draining the life out of any chance he had to be a decent older brother.

he had killed himself, in a lot of ways. the way he used to wear shirts with sleeves because he was cold, whereas now he wore them to hide the violet-faded-to-violence track marks that painted his starlit arms. the way his training wheel bicycle bruises had been replaced with intoxicated, crimson bite marks and lilac-smudged handprints from cannabis-laced strangers. the way a high had faded into his only means of feeling in control.

"no," he mumbled plainly through a cloud of hazed grey smoked. "never." his eyebrows furrowed for a moment as he took another drag. "what does it feel like? killing someone?"

a smirk peaked at the corners of phil's angel-wing lips, a cigarette held loosely between his pearl-tinted teeth as the cloud-ghosted moonlit flickered against the glinting metal between his ashen, cosmos-printed fingertips.

"control."

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