Out of time

It was late, around 1 in the morning , when Dan finally returned home to the flat that only a few days ago he had shared with his best friend. He had left the gathering after the funeral early and trudged around the still busy streets of London alone. He couldn't bare to see people being happy, he didn't understand how anyone could be happy that Phil was gone. Thousands of people passed him but he felt so incredibly alone. Eventually he found himself walking down the road where he saw Phil take his last breath. He stood to the side of the path so that people could pass without noticing him and he stared numbly at the road. In his mind, Dan could hear the screeching of tyres and the thud of his friend's body hitting the bumper. Pieces of glass were still scattered across the tarmac and there was a small stain in the middle of the road, red and slightly faded, the only thing left of Phil's physical being, the rest was just belongings. And now, shoving open the white wooden door of their flat, he noticed everything. The slight squeak of the door that Phil thought was a mouse when they'd first moved to London, the pitch black darkness that Phil had guided him through so that there was no danger of any supernatural beings creeping up on him, and, above all, the cold, steely silence. Dan didn't bother to turn on the lights. If the monsters wanted him, they could take him. He didn't need to exist anymore, he no longer had a purpose. When he finally got to the top of the stairs, Dan put his keys in the bowl on the hallway table and took off his coat, dumping it on the floor. He had left everything that Phil had touched last exactly where it was, this was Dan's way of desperately clinging on to Phil's soul. Slowly, he walked over to where Phil sat, sat in his spot just like he did and picked up Phil's laptop. He took a moment to look at the jumbled mess of stickers surrounding the Apple logo and remembered when he'd laughed at how stupid it seemed to defile a pristine piece of technology, but now it didn't seem stupid at all. Now it seemed like Phil. He put the laptop down and went to his room. Dan couldn't bring himself to sit in his sofa crease without Phil there to show funny cat videos to. He took off his shoes and lay down on his bed, staring at the ceiling. The stillness of everything was unsettling. He couldn't just lay there, he had to do something, anything. In his pocket, Dan's phone was buzzing continuously with incoming messages of concern and condolence but he wasn't in the mood to answer them. All he wanted was to be left alone. No, that's not all he wanted. All he wanted was for Phil to come back. That, he knew, was an impossibility. Phil was never coming back. No matter how hard he wished, and how hard he tried, Dan would never see Phil again. Dan found that he had subconsciously wandered into Phil's bedroom. He inhaled, taking in the slowly evaporating smell of his friend, trying to cling on to as much of him as possible. Looking around, he saw the tiny lion teddy that sat on his bed side table and featured in every one of his videos. His bed was neatly made and the old wooden box at the foot of it was locked as usual. Scattered around the room were framed photos and polaroid's of the two of them and a few of their friends at different conventions and different countries. One of Dan's favourites was the picture of them under a cherry blossom tree in Japan. He stared at it and choked out a laugh at the memory of Phil getting black ice cream all over his face.

"I feel like a chimney sweep." Phil had laughed. He also remembered Phil getting sprayed by the toilet in their hotel room. The memories that they shared would last forever in his mind, every moment with Phil was a great one. In a feeble attempt to distract himself Dan decided to go and get himself a drink from the kitchen but even there he could not escape the perpetual sadness that was left behind when Phil was taken. As he walked in, he recalled going to get a glass of water after one of his 3 A.M. Tumblr sessions to find Phil stood by the kitchen counter with the cereal cupboard open and a box of Dan's cereal in his hands even though he had his own. The weight on Dan's chest didn't lift, it just got heavier and heavier with every memory that he uncovered. That's when he realised that he couldn't do it anymore. He couldn't live like that. Dan came up with a plan but before he could carry it out he had two more things he had to do. Firstly, he had to water Phil's endless hoards of house plants, so he grabbed a jug, filled it with water and went around the flat, giving each pot its fair share of water. When he'd finished watering every single one, he lit one of Phil's toasted marshmallow candles and returned to kitchen. He put the jug down and took a knife out of the knife block. Dan knew that Phil wouldn't want him to do this. If Phil were there he'd be talking Dan out of it and they'd carry on life as it usually was but Phil wasn't there and without Phil life could never be as it usually was. With a shaky hand Dan rested the blade of the knife on his wrist, right over his main veins, and paused.

"I'm so sorry Phil." Dan sobbed pressing down on his skin and dragging the blade across his wrist with gritted teeth. Blood leaked rapidly out of the cut and Dan dropped to the floor, resting his head on the cupboards. The dull thudding of his own heartbeat filled his ears and tears rolled down his face in rapid succession. Eventually, Dan had lay himself down on the tiles as his own blood pooled around him. This must be what Phil felt, he thought. One by one, things started disappearing and Dan knew that he didn't have much longer. First he couldn't move any parts of his body anymore, then his vision faded to black. His heartbeat had vanished from his ears and was now replaced with deafening silence. Finally, when he could feel his lungs struggling to catch air, he said his final words.

"I'll see you soon."