Not On Fire (Phan AU)

05 | an intervention

Dan tries to ignore his burning desire to set something up in flames, but images of fires dance across his mind every time he closes his eyes and looking at the smoke burn from the end of his cigarette only does so much before it loses all power. And he decides to give into the urge right after dinner, when the sun has started to set in the sky.

                It's still unbearably cold outside, and frost covers the ground where the slippery ice doesn't. The harsh wind comes every so often, blowing harshly and having the effect of pins and needles. The darkening sky does little to warm the temperature, but it makes the fire brighter by comparison and it means less people are likely to be out than during the daytime when the sun is up.

                There's an old shed on the outskirts of town that was once a part of a circus at one point and was used as storage, but the circus shut down shortly before Dan was born and the shed was left abandoned. Originally, they had plans to repurpose it, but nothing ever came out of it because it was so far away from the center of the city, which was where most of the stuff happened.

                Dan had made sure to research the shed fully before heading out. He used to ask about it all the time when he was younger and they drove past it, but if he wants to avoid any serious charges if he ever gets caught, he has to stick to unimportant things, buildings and structures that are hardly ever used and two seconds away from collapsing in on themselves.

                Regret moves through him in waves when he gets a block away from his house. His coat—which he had barely remembered to take in the first place mind you—does little to protect him against the harsh weather when his hands are still very much out in the open, along with his face. He can't drive to the shed, so he's stuck walking as he has no money to take the bus.

                It takes him nearly an hour to get to the edge of town, and his hands and face feel almost numb. Dropping the shopping bag with the bottle of gasoline in it, he takes a few seconds to warm up his hands by cupping them around his mouth and blowing hot air onto them, but it's in vain, as the backside is left exposed to the cold, and eventually, he drops his hands, giving up.

                He grabs the bottle out and walks closer up to the shed. After taking the lid off, he walks around the perimeter of the building, pouring gas as he walks. Quickly, he pulls out his lighter and sets the gas on fire, walking away as soon as it starts burning. The further away he walks, the bigger the flame grows until the whole shed is covered in orange and yellow light. But the wind comes again, and the flames grow weaker against them.

                Still, the sight of the burning shed is enough to fill him with a sense of calmness and relaxation, something he had been missing for the past few days.

                He doesn't wait for the fire to go out completely. The walk back home is long and freezing, and as much enjoyment as he gets out of watching the building burn, he can't enjoy it as much as he would if he was warmer. Sure, the fire keeps him warm, but the backside of him is facing away from it—much like the way the back of his hands had been facing away from his breath—and only half of him is warm; the other half is cold. He uses the image of the fire that's burned in his mind to get him through it, and the hour-long walk feels more like thirty minutes than anything else.

                He sneaks in through the back door. The lights are off in the house, which means his parents are heading to bed, if not already asleep. The house is eerily silent, but when he's walking up the stairs, he notices that the light is on in his room and he knows for sure he turned it off before he left.

                If this is another intervention, he thinks, I swear to god. This wouldn't be the first time, or even the second for that matter, but it's been a while since they've done it. The first time had been shortly after he got his fake I.D. (not that they knew he had it, but he had started to stay out later than they liked, which raised some concerns). They had sat around at the dinner table and waited for him to come back, and when he did, they sat him down and talked to him about how he needed to tell them where he was going and needed to come home earlier. Naturally, it hadn't worked. The next time, they had Louise come, too, and she was able to guilt him into a week-long period of reform where he just wouldn't leave the house except to go to her house. He had figured they were done with interventions after that.