#; whenever he sees a Starbucks coffee he has spasms

[distopea]

You may offense Mads in many way, but if you bring him back a cup of coffee with milk, sugar, and other sweet things to cover the BITTERNESS of the beverage he loves so much... You just made yourself a new enemy. 

[huphilpuffs]

flares

chapter: 14/? summary: Dan’s body has been broken for as long as he can remember, and he’s long since learned to deal with it. Sort of. But when his symptoms force him to leave uni and move into a new flat with a stranger named Phil, he finds that ignoring the pain isn’t the way to make himself happy. word count: 2781 rating: mature warnings: chronic illness, chronic pain, medicine a/n: a huge thank you goes to @obsessivelymoody for beta reading this for me!

Ao3 link || read from beginning

There’s another note on the counter today.

It’s Wednesday. Phil had watched Dan call in sick yesterday. Had helped him write out the letter that’s now folded neatly and pinned to the fridge with a magnet shaped like Mario’s hat. The note is next to it, on a yellow sticky note, handwriting hidden away under Luigi’s hat.

Dan grabs it. Phil’s handwriting is sloppy, rushed.

Good luck today. I’ll order pizza for dinner tonight to celebrate for comfort.

He laughs, quiet and a little forced, before tucking the note into the pocket of his jeans and taking his letter off the fridge.

---

Sue’s smile is knowing when he knocks on her office door that afternoon.

“You’re not scheduled today, Dan,” she says. He watches as she sets her pen down, pushing aside whatever paperwork has been occupying her time.

He swallows.  “I know. I, uh, needed to talk to you.”

Sue’s gaze softens. A gentle smile curls at the corners of her mouth, and something in Dan’s chest clenches, his grip on the letter tightening. He wishes he could tear it up, toss it aside and promise to show up for whenever he’s scheduled next.

She motions to the chair across her desk. Dan swallows against the rush of stupid relief that he won’t need to put effort into standing as he waits for her response. He sits down, smiling to keep from wincing when his knees crack and the muscles at the base of his spine spasm.

He presses the letter onto the desk, the envelope crinkled from how tightly it has been clenched in my fist.

“It’s my two week notice,” he says, a whisper as something cracks in his chest.

Sue’s staring at him like the uni employee did when he announced he would be leaving. There’s something softer behind her eyes, a little more humanity in the way she hesitates before picking up his letter. But the crushing weight of I failed still settles upon Dan’s shoulders.

He’s tired of failing.

Dan swallows. There’s a lump in his throat now. He wants to bury himself in soft blankets and pretend this wasn’t inevitable.

That he hasn’t spent years postponing the day when he just couldn’t pretend anymore.

His eyes are watering when Sue finishes reading the letter, but she doesn’t mention it.

“Would you like regular shifts for these two weeks?” she asks.

He grips the armrests of the chair, not blinking because he knows if he does a tear will roll down his cheek. Words ache inside his chest, desperate pleas of no, I’d rather go home and pretend none of this ever happened, but thinking that feels more like failure than writing out his resignation did.

Sue stares. She lets him sit in silence for a moment before speaking. “Given the circumstances, we can write you off the schedule sooner, if that’s what would be best for you.”

Dan nods. His voice cracks when he mumbles: “I’d appreciate that, thank you.”

He’s halfway out the door when Sue calls his name one last time. She’s smoothing the folds from his letter, running her hands over creases in the page with her palms, and smiling in a way that reminds Dan vaguely of his nan.

“I hope everything works out for you,” she says, an unspoken goodbye.

He smiles. “Thank you,” he says.

The tears start falling somewhere between her office and the sweets aisle.

---

Dan ends up at Starbucks.

He can feel his tears smeared across his face and the swelling around his eyes. As the barista hands over his macchiato, he wonders if anyone was here when he stumbled in after his first day of work, but his mind can’t focus enough to distinguish their faces.

The girl’s voice is chipper, like she can’t tell he’s been crying, when she wishes him a good day.

Dan drops onto a chair, lets his weight sink onto the table. He wants to take a sip of his drink, try to wash away the lingering tightness of tears with the sweetness of caramel and bitterness of coffee. But the nerves in his palm around sting from the heat of his cup, and he can imagine the burn that would erupt in his mouth if he took a sip.

He takes out his phone instead, opens his conversation with Phil.

Dan: i did it

Phil doesn’t respond during the moments Dan stares at his name on the phone screen, so he leaves that conversation, and opens the last one he had with his mum instead. They don’t text often. The last message he sent is two words long and disinterested and follows a mere three messages before that.

He types out another one.

Dan: i quit my job

It takes a minute before his phone starts ringing, his mum’s contact photo lighting up the screen. He almost declines the call, already feeling the pressure of her questions clawing at his mind. But he swipes his thumb across the screen, drags the phone to his ear.

“Hi mum,” he mumbles.

“You quit your job?” she says. And then, an afterthought: “Hello.”

He hums, because it’s easier than saying yes.

“Why?”

“It just wasn’t a good fit,” he says.

“Entry level jobs aren’t about being a good fit, Daniel,” says his mum.

He swallows. Suddenly, the scalding heat of his coffee sounds more appealing than this conversation. “It just didn’t work out, okay?”

She falls silent.

Dan presses his forehead to the crook of his elbow. He drops his phone just long enough to pull his hood over his head, drown out the cafe. He feels twelve again, letting his mum down, listening to the unevenness of his own breathing and crying into his sleeve as he waits for her response.

“Are you going to see a–”

It’s familiar. Dan swallows back a whimper, knowing too well what comes next, but his mum never finishes her sentence.

“Doctors are useless,” he mumbles in response.

She hums, the distant kind lilted with an unspoken stop with the excuses, Daniel. He presses his face harder into his arm, until the bones of his arm ache.

“What about a–”

“I don’t need a bloody therapist.”

He hates that she goes quiet. Hates that he knows every word of this conversation, every undertone and unspoken word and the tight-lipped sorta worry probably written across her face right now.

“Okay,” she says after a moment, soft and doubtful. “Are you moving back home then?”

“No.”

“Dan–”

“I have enough saved for a few months rent,” he tells her. “And my flatmate he’s– We’re gonna try to figure something out.”

She sighs, so loud he can picture the rise and fall of her chest. “You can’t just leech off this boy, Daniel.”

His chest tightens. A tear rolls down his cheek. He almost hangs up the call right then.

“I’m not fucking leeching off him,” he spits instead, because he’s never been good at shutting up. “Besides, I bet you’d rather I leech of him than off you and dad, huh? Bet it’s been great to have your sick son so far away.”

“Daniel.”

If they were in the same room, his dad would be ranting and his mum would be staring and Dan would stomp off and slam his bedroom door.

But they’re not. And he’s not sixteen anymore. And he can say: “He’s my friend, mum, He wants to help me, if he can. And if not, well, I’ll call before I move back in, okay?”

“Dan–”

“I gotta go,” he says, and hangs up before she can say goodbye.

There’s a text notification when the call closes.

Phil: how are you feeling?

Phil: still up for pizza tonight?

Dan closes that conversation without answering, opens his too-empty one with Taylor instead.

Dan: you up to miss your afternoon lectures?

Taylor: always

---

By the time Dan reaches the campus, his bones are rattled from the bus ride and his cheeks feel stiff and sticky from tears. He buries himself in his hoodie, head lowered as he makes his way to Taylor’s dorm. It’s growing warm outside, too warm for all black and long sleeves.

He wonders, briefly, when that happened.

Probably while he was sitting in his pants in the dark lounge back at the flat.

Taylor meets him in the common area they used to share and never step into. Dan lets his gaze flit over the other people there, studying and socializing and having fun. He can’t even remember most of their names, doesn’t feel like he ever lived with them.

Perhaps he didn’t. Perhaps he’d only ever existed in their general vicinity.

They end up in Taylor’s room. Dan’s only been there a few times, on days when Taylor’s roommate was out and she’d barely been able to drag herself out of bed. When his body had been fine to sit at the foot of her too-thin mattress and play phone games until the press of the wall to his back grew too harsh.

It’s messier now, though. Taylor’s side of the room is littered in unfolded clothes, her laptop sitting crooked atop her bed. His eyes still burn and drift out of focus from having cried, but he can tell at a glance that she hasn’t showered, that she’s trying to drown in the oversized fabric of a jumper he’s never seen.

He should talk to her about it, should be there for her more than he has been lately.

But then she’s reaching forward, flattening a hand against his shoulder and pushing him towards her bed. He sits down by the pillow, legs folded beneath him, head falling against the wall.

“What happened?” she asks.

Dan stares at her. They never talk about it, about her problems, but when he opens his mouth it’s to say: “Tay.”

She frowns. “I don’t want to talk about it,” says Taylor. “You don’t get to ask me to miss class and then lecture me on anything, Dan.”

“Were you going to go?”

Her shoulders tighten. She looks like she wants to bury herself in her jumper and never come out, and Dan wishes he didn’t know the feeling so well.

“Doesn’t matter,” she answers. “What happened?”

Dan sighs, chest caving in, body sinking deeper against the wall. “I quit my job.” Taylor looks up, eyes a little wide but not surprised and, well, she did drive him home after he fainted. Dan squeezes his eyes shut against the memory, “And told my mum.”

“Oh,” breathes Taylor. “And what did Mrs. Howell have to say about that?”

He shrugs, even though it aches and he wants to curl forward, hug his legs to his chest and bury his face and the incessant drone of memories in his mind between his knees. Wants to hold on tight, cling to some useless form of comfort until his collarbones bruise from the press of his own legs and his nose feels like it might split under the pressure.

Dan stares at the ceiling, where something’s left a deep brown stain.

“She thinks I should see someone,” he whispers.

“Like a doctor?”

“Or a therapist.”

Taylor’s responding laugh is too bitter, and Dan wonders for a moment if she thinks his mum is right. But when he glances down at her, she has a hand pressed to her own chest, fingers caught in the wool of her jumper. She dips her head, covers her face with her hair just like Phil does.

Dan looks away at the thought and tries to sound like the very idea doesn’t shatter him when he says: “She thinks I’m leeching off Phil.”

“She what?”

He shrugs, hoping it’s dimly lit enough that Taylor can’t see that tears brim his eyes again. “I told her I’m not moving back to Wokingham, not right now at least,” he says, the words not ever hanging on the tip of his tongue. “And that my flatmate was willing to help and, well, yeah.”

Taylor huffs. “Does she have no concept of empathy or, I don’t know, people actually being willing to help others?”

“No.”

It’s a little harsh, he thinks. But Dan closes his eyes, sends silent tears rolling down his cheeks, and lets himself think of how Phil had sat with him in the bathroom after his shower, had brought him crisps and a softer towel and promised with such sincerity that Dan–

“I’m not, am I?” he chokes.

Taylor reaches over, her hand curling a little too tightly around his knee. “You’re not,” she says. “He cares about you. He’s a good person. And just because she doesn’t know how to deal with all of this, doesn’t mean nobody cares or that you’re taking advantage of your flatmate.”

Dan lowers his head again. He wishes he could laugh at the absurdity of it all, the angst he carries with him, but Taylor’s still clinging to his knee the way doubt clenches in his chest.

“He’s too good to be true, Tay,” says Dan.

“Last I checked, he didn’t have wings or a halo, so.” She shrugs. “You should let him help you. If he offers, and he doesn’t seem miserable, accepting willing help isn’t leeching.”

He nods.

“He cares about you,” says Taylor.

Dan doesn’t say anything, because denying it would be a lie, but agreeing feels weighted with things Taylor doesn’t know about. With soft touches and quiet stares and echos of home in Dan’s mind in the middle of the night after only weeks of living together.

“Did you tell him you came here?”

He shakes his head. Taylor sighs. She lunges forward, reaches into his jeans pocket and pulls out his phone. He only realizes she’s unlocked it after a few moments of her not asking him for the passcode.

Then she throws it back at him, Phil’s now-answered messages lighting up the screen.

Phil: you okay? you’re not home.

Dan: sorry

Dan: went to see taylor

Dan: ill be home for pizza tho

He huffs out a laugh. “How did you get my texting so right?”

“All lowercase and no punctuation?” she says, a smile drawing at the corner of her mouth. “It’s not exactly difficult.”

“Shut up.”

She shakes her head, reaching forward to grab his wrist. “Nope,” she says. “You gotta deal with me for the drive back to your flat. You have a pizza date to get to, remember?”

Dan feels his cheeks go pink, but he does climb off the bed, because his shoulders feel lighter and uni dorms are miserable. He doesn’t miss them, he realizes. Doesn’t miss uni much at all, when the alternative is taking care of himself and playing video games and having a flatmate that cares.

“Hey Tay?”

She turns around, hand hovering at the door.

He reaches for his phone, opens their conversation, because they don’t talk about these things but–

Dan: if i need to accept phil’s willing help you should accept some help too

She blinks at the screen for a long moment before typing out her response.

Taylor: i have an appointment at the uni counsellor’s next week

---

Phil ordered his favourite pizza.

It’s sitting on the counter, still warm, when Dan gets there. Phil smiles at him from where he’s standing at the breakfast bar.

“You gonna change into something more comfortable?” he asks.

Dan’s  laugh is too loud, too happy for the day he’s had. “You trying to get me into my pants?”

Phil’s cheeks go bright red at that. He stumbles over words that never become coherent before giggling too, and shooing Dan away to his bedroom.

Dan actually ends up changing into a pair of joggers and no shirt. Phil, he realizes when he steps back into the lounge, is wearing his usual pyjamas and a shirt with Charmander on it. He’s sitting on one of the breakfast bar stools, still smiling even though his cheeks are still blazing red.

For a few moments, they don’t say a word. Phil grabs plates and brings the pizza box into the lounge as Dan settles onto the sofa. The blanket, he realizes, has been smoothed out over the cushions. The makeshift curtain was fixed a bit, straightened over the window. The whole flat is dimly lit.

Phil sits down next to him, their thighs brushing together. Dan’s fairly certain that they could both lean away, put some more inches between them, but he can’t bring himself to do so.

Touch, for once, doesn’t hurt. Not like this.

They eat in silence, too, and suddenly everything feels weighted. The closeness, the quiet, the setup.

And then Phil says: “I think you should meet my parents.”