Bluebird // Phan

Chapter 3: III

III

Sunday was a sombre mess. The sky was a hard grey, bedecked with clouds that promised a woeful day. Phil woke at nearing seven and he scrambled around the room in a hurry to get ready for breakfast. Dan's bed was vacant and made, neat. There was a series of unknown faces that still lay resting in beds, but Martyn was not one of them. Phil remembered a time when he probably would've waited for his younger brother to wake up.
Around fifteen minutes later, Phil met Dan downstairs in the canteen, and his smile was so bright it was blinding. Unlike last night, it wasn't showing any signs of dwindling for anything and it was all for Phil. It spurted up in every direction and warmed his heart with a blanket thick enough to keep the cold out as he walked over, carrying a plate of eggs and bacon.

"Morning," Dan spoke before Phil had even sat down.

"Good morning," Phil's smile made him feel almost inferior in comparison to Dan's. He wasn't about to get all poetic over a smile because it was a smile, for God's sake, but it was just one of those smiles. You know, those. The ones that made you giddy on your feet. The ones that hurt your eyes. The ones that were so fantastic and brilliant that not even dazzling would be the right word.

It was just that-Dan was on fire in the most blissful way possible and how on earth do you describe that?

"I was getting worried," he said, eyes watching every struggling slice of Phil's knife. He'd never really gotten used to using one.

"Yeah?"

Dan swirled a spoon through his cereal and milk, still interested in Phil's movements, and said, "Hhm. Thought you'd got lost. You sleep okay?"

"Good," Phil put a small piece of food in his mouth and chewed slowly. "You?"

"Fine."

"And, um," Phil paused to swallow the food and run his next sentence over in his head. It was like deciding whether or not to throw the grenade, to pull the trigger. He knew it'd shatter the easy atmosphere like a pane of ratty glass, but he went for it anyway. "How are you feeling? After what happened with Miss Leer yesterday, you know."

"Fine."

Phil looked up at him. The boy had finally moved his eyes down to his cereal, soggy in the milk, and his smile was smaller, less intense. It was still there-Phil knew it would've taken a lot to destroy a smile so radiant-but it was beginning to fade, leaving fragments in its passing.

Phil didn't want to compare Dan Howell's smile to the sunset but he was going to.

"I'm always fine, Phil. You don't have to ask," Dan commented, soft.

"I do have to ask. Of course I do. You can't go around pretending to not be sad all the time because-because that's stupid. You're allowed to be sad when things go wrong and you're not supposed to hide it."

"If that was the case, I'd always be sad," Dan was the kind-of person who was allowed to feel sorry for himself because the pity came in such small doses. "Honestly, I'm fine. I know how to be."

"No, you know how to hide it."

Dan didn't answer that. He probably didn't know how.

Phil took a mouthful of egg and then another and another. Voices coursed around them, flowing in between rushes of violent rain.

"Do you think you could teach me how to play today?" Dan asked, like everything was okay. He was that child, it seemed. Not the one who ran from his problems, but the one who pretended they didn't exist.

Phil finished the food in his mouth and replied, "I don't know. Are we even allowed? It's not very nice out."

"Maybe. They usually let us, as long as we don't get too muddy," Dan silenced himself for a moment. "But would you?"