Paper Hearts (Phan)

150 days

We got home a couple hours later, and PJ immediately insisted on signing Dan's cast with an electric green sharpie.

He wasn't supposed to sign the cast.

He's started collecting spare change to bring to the doctor to pay for the cast.

Dan was still pretty tired from the anaesthetics which I thought would've worn off by the time we got home, but he had passed out within the first 2 minutes of arriving back to the dorm.

Cat and PJ were both sitting extremely close to each other on Dan's couch, holding Chris' phone out and watching the video we'd taken. The recorded screeches were quiet compared to the combined laughter of PJ and Cat, who had to pause and rewind the video multiple times to relive the experience.

"Aw man, that's like the stuff you see on those TV shows that air for 20 years with the same host." PJ howled. Chris told them everything he'd been told so they could properly care for Dan as his wrist healed and all the painkillers wore off with large animated movements, waving his hands in the air even though he didn't need to. I'd started tuning out the conversation as soon as he'd finished talking about how the cast shouldn't get water on it, mainly because I'd already heard it 7 times, but also because Dan was starting to wake back up even though he'd only dozed off for about 20 minutes.

He made grabby hands in my direction - well, a grabby hand, signalling for me to come pick him up and take him to his bed so he wouldn't have to use precious energy to get up off the couch that had been wasted screeching at the top of his lungs. Of course I carried him off the furniture and set him down underneath the festive jack o lantern blankets laid out across his bed, because that's just the kind of person I am. And he grabbed my arm before I had started to walk away, and tugged me back lazily.

"Please don't leave me" he whispered, adjusting his arm between the only two pillows on the bed. I heard Chris in the other room continuing with the complicated instructions as to how to care for a broken bone and deciding since there was nothing better to do, I stayed with him.

It was freezing under the covers, and Dan wasn't able to wrap his arms around me like he had been able to before. Instead he stared at the long line of stitches covering the back of his hand and smiled contently while lifting his leg over my torso to trap me next to him.

"See, now for Halloween I'll be Sally and you can be Jack." He mumbled, already dozing off again.

"Whatever you'd like to do." I told him, even though he was already asleep.

His back was inches away from my chest, the ends of his hair flipping back and brushing against my face each time he sniffed, which was more often than I'd expected. His foot was pressed against my shin, and within minutes I was already sweating even though I had just felt like I'd been dumped in the Arctic.

But I didn't leave.

__________

4 hours later, Dan wandered out of his bedroom, clutching a blanket around himself like a cape. Unfortunately, he'd woken up right in the middle of one of PJ and Cat's nightly ramble arguments, where they'd taken a viewpoint on the stupidest topic imaginable and literally discuss it until they got bored or fell asleep in each other's arms.

"I'm just saying, if chairs were alive they'd have to smell your farts which would in turn probably kill them. Because mine are disgusting."

"PJ, you eat like 50 spicy bean and cheese burritos daily, what do you expect?"

"To smell like the princess I am."

"You smell like the milk section in the grocery store all went to shit at the same time." Dan interjected, and Cat agreed, laughing at PJ's regretful expression.