BURN ; phan

f o u r

The hallways were busy with students, per usual, all of them excited to get home for the end of the day. Phil shoved his way through the crowd, gaining angry glares until they realized who Phil was. When he finally made it to his locker, a group of people surrounded it. He groaned in annoyance, shoving through the ring of students only to stop dead in his tracks. Evan stood standing in front of his friend's locker, staring at the writing that was imprinted on it. Faggot.

Evan looked at Phil in shock, quickly jumping into action. "Come on, get to class, nothing to see." The people started to dwindle down, a few stubborn boys wouldn't leave until Evan shouted at them. No one wanted to mess with the biggest guy on the swim team.

"Phil," Evan shook his head. "I don't know who did this - I have a feeling it was Nate, though."

"What is it? Paint?"

"I think so, from the art room. It's dry." Evan touched his fingers to the locker, removing them to show nothing came off.

"This is a violation of school property, we could tell -"

"Tell them it was Nate? Without any evidence? They'll blame it on you, your locker, your problem."

"They could check the cameras!" Phil threw his hands in the air.

"Is it true?" Evan asked suddenly, Phil blinked at him.

"What?"

"Are you gay, Phil? Because if you are you know it's cool, just be real."

"No, I'm not fucking gay." The black-haired boy growled.

"Is this about Dan?"

Phil had completely forgotten about Dan in the last five minutes, not that he hadn't been thinking about him the whole week. His heart sank, if Nate had the nerve to do this to Phil then what could he have done to the brunet?

"No - no Jesus, Evan, he's just my friend."

"Okay, dude, chill, I was just asking. Now let's get this off before they fucking suspend you from practice."

"How?"

"I'll get some water from the bathroom, we can just tell Coach we forgot we were lifting today and skip it."

The older of the two nodded, Evan placing his hand over his shoulder and giving him a sympathetic look. Any normal person would have said that Evan was Phil's best friend, but Phil couldn't care less about titles. Evan was civil to him, and they hung out a lot. But outside of school, they never spoke. They didn't need to. Phil knew Evan would still be there at class the next day and Phil would always read the board for Evan during swim.

They spent the next hour taking trips to the bathroom to get watered down paper towels. The paint came off with little effort, which made Phil realize how much money they didn't spend on the art class. Their paint was so cheap it flaked off.

But the whole time he couldn't get Dan out of his head. He pulled out his phone and shot him a text to make sure he was alright, he stared down at the boy's icon for a moment, just some shitty picture he took when they were on the roof. After a moment with no response, he pushed his phone back into his pocket and grabbed his bag.

They still had practice, after all.

.

.

.

Phil's phone was devoid of messages, especially replies from Dan. Hurrying out of the boy's locker room, his pruned feet almost slip on the tiles. Catching himself on the banister, he slips on his shoes and runs to his car. The keys jingle as he slides into his seat and turns on the engine.