CHOKING ON FLOWERS ; phan

6

TWO DAYS AFTER ; 2008

It was bleeding into four am now, two days since Phil Lester helped Daniel kill his parents and hide their bodies under his neighbors flower garden. Phil sat perched on a tomb stone, not Beverly Stone's, in an odd way he felt like that grave was reserved for him and Daniel, even though Beverly was the one buried there. Phil was now sat on Oliver Johnson. The older boy took the cigarette out of his mouth and flicked some ash onto the ground, watching the fire burn out onto the cold dirt over where Oliver's feet would have been. Phil watched a hooded figure walk into the gated field, his eyes scanning for someone, his head stopping once he saw Phil. 

"Don't tell me you started smoking without me." Chris chuckled, coming up and sitting across from Phil on another stone, Emily Custer. 

"No, not yet." Phil wanted to smile, he wanted to laugh and have a good time, to get high and forget about that crazed brunet who wouldn't let him move on. Chris watched as his classmate pulls out a bag from his leather jacket, little grams of marijuana stuffed together, out came a small glass bowl and a white lighter next.

"White lighters are unlucky, you know?"

"Yeah. I want to die, that's why I keep this one pearly white." The raven haired boy plucked out a bud of green, packing it into the bowl, bringing it to his lips when he lights the end. His lungs fill with smoke that he almost can't feel, the drug coating his lungs and filling his chest. He pulls the bowl away and blows it out of his nose like an angry bull, the smoke disappearing into the night, he lets out a staggered cough before passing it to Chris. 

"What's new with you?" Chris coughs back, sucking the smoke into his lungs. 

"It's new if we're talking about the old." Phil lied. He had to keep his mouth shut tonight, he couldn't go around telling people he helped kill Dan's parents. He had even thought about canceling on Chris, but something told him Chris needed to get something off his chest. "What about you?"

Chris took another inhale, stifling a cough to keep the smoke in, soon he exhaled and let out a long sigh, his posture failing him miserably against Emily Custer's tomb. Moments of silence passed between the boys, the light on the weed blowing out when a gust of wind flows by, causing Phil's hair to brush against his face.

"I dunno, man. I just really miss PJ. You know?" No, Phil didn't know what it was like to miss PJ, but he knew what it was like to miss Dan. "I want to break up, Daniel and him, but I can't do it by myself. Something tells me something bad is going to happen and Dan is going to hurt PJ- no offense- and if he hurts my best friend, I just might kill him. You know?" 

Phil nodded but didn't say anything, he knew damn well what it was like to kill someone- well, help someone kill someone. The older boy didn't know what Dan wanted with PJ, was he apart of the plan? Or was he just there to make sure Phil doesn't go anywhere? To make sure Phil wouldn't just get tired of Dan and go around telling people, to make sure Phil would still help. The idea of Daniel being insane had never crossed Phil's mind, not even once, never in two whole years. Maybe that made Phil crazy, he didn't know, but maybe it was for the best that everyone in school feared Phil, whatever Phil said went, so if someone did happen to know what happened to Daniel's parents, Phil knew no one would say anything. 

Everyone knew Phil hated Dan, but everyone also knew he didn't. They knew if you looked at Daniel long enough you'd be seeing in black and blue for a while, they knew if anyone dared to flirt with Dan, they wouldn't have a tongue to speak with anymore. They knew Daniel was his and no one else's, no matter what title PJ Liguori held above his curly head. No one thought to question. 

"Will you help me?" Chris asked.

"Hm?"

"Break up PJ and Dan?"

"Yeah." 

"Thank you." Chris let out a sigh of relief. What was he going to do if Phil said no? What was the plan?

"How are we going to do it?"

"I don't know, I'll think of it when I'm sober." Chris smiled. For some reason those ten words caught Phil off guard, temporarily knocking down his wall of melancholy. Phil laughed for the first time in what felt like decades, his cheeks lifting and his eyes sparkling, he knocked his head back and let out a bark of a laugh, falling off Oliver's gravestone and onto his back. Chris started laughing so hard his throat hurt, both boys laughed for a good three minutes, the cemetery filled with deranged laughter of the two- smoked out- boys. 

Once they were somber once more, Phil stood up and punched Chris on the shoulder lightly, a smile still stitched onto his face. "C'mon, I'll give you a ride home." He didn't even think about how he was going to break up his former best friend- now murderer- and his boyfriend, he only thought about how good it felt to laugh again, how nice to felt to be carefree. He wondered when he would get that back again.