Bluebird; Phan

XII

  Dan Howell grew from a confusingly pretty ten-year-old to a entirely gorgeous sixteen-year-old. There was a lot between the ages, a lot more than expected crowded into six years and Phil couldn't really describe the transition but maybe that was because he'd been there—on the sidelines or some shit—and watched every day of Dan's life.

There was a lot that remained and a lot that didn't.

The tenderness that constructed his appearance, split like perfectly fitting jigsaw pieces all became fuzzy and it lost its shine as Dan grew into his long limbs. The careful corners were scratched away, sculpted into sharp edges and slick outlines. He'd lost a few of the pieces along the way, and that was the best way Phil could describe it.

That childhood glare of light—the one that touched flecks of glitter into his smile—dwindled away behind a blaze of maturity and it wasn't like Phil woke up one day and it was gone, except—

Except it kind-of was, in a way. Because he never realised it was fading. He never realised these things had a time-limit, never realised Dan had a time limit. He stumbled into his youth head-first, like a too-confident diver. His personality scattered, smashed itself into pieces for a rearrangement and to rid of a few that didn't fit.

Dan's anxiety remained like his centrepiece. It grew, developed, and for his eleventh birthday, he had medication. He had it for his twelfth too, and his thirteenth but he didn't take it. By then, he had it in him to form the word no and Phil was there when he flushed the entire bottle of pills down the toilet.

He never said anything about his past, about Sammy or why he was loathed or why he was even at the orphanage and Phil gave up ever trying to figure him out.

Bernie and Elise were never father and mother to him. They weren't to Phil either, not really, but he said it anyway because it made them smile.

To Dan, however, that didn't matter. Because as he grew, he misplaced the ability to put on a front and he'd forgotten how to spell I'm okay even when he truly was. Although that didn't happen often. To Dan, Bernie and Elise were just Bernie and Elise; that couple that lost twin boys once, a long time ago. He told Phil one night that he felt like a replacement.

He did that a lot, admitted things in the middle of the night. He rarely slept in Phil's bed anymore though, and if he did, it was only for the worst of reasons. Like at thirteen, when he was made to go swimming at school and take off his shirt and—

He started straightening his hair when he was thirteen, too. Phil was never sure how he felt about that. He tried to like it but he missed the curls too much; or maybe he just missed the Dan with the curls. He didn't like the Dan with the straight hair.

The Dan with the straight hair only tasted a laugh in the back of his throat months at a time because he wasn't fond of his smile and the Dan with the straight hair smoked behind the gates at school because he insisted it helped with his anxiety. The Dan with the straight hair was I not we and the Dan with the straight hair was beautiful, he was, it was just—

The Dan with the curly hair had died to make room, it felt like, and Phil missed him so, so much.

He tried not to think about it and he never said it but growing up just felt like dying. It did. Like every year, it was getting harder to breathe.

But Phil—

Phil was just fine. Fine with that, fine with everything.

He was always fine.

Martyn moved away somewhere to college, and Phil heard he didn't really speak to Lent anymore. They just grew apart, is all. Dan and Phil had grown apart as well, but in the strangest way. They grew around one another when they were supposed to have grown within. And it all felt wrong, like it had all been blurred and everything that was supposed to have happened . . . hadn't. It was always supposed to. Like an empty voice calling out for an echo because there was supposed to be one. Dan was supposed to take his medication and Phil was supposed to just be fine with him not and they were supposed to be best friends.