Not On Fire (Phan AU)

07 | a flair for the dramatic

Dan's been teetering back and forth between hating Phil and thinking that, if this was another life, he would want to be friends with him. He's not sure it matters, but he feels like his life has been completely flipped upside down and now it's hanging in the balance. Okay, maybe that's a little dramatic, but Dan's always had a flair for the dramatic. And well, he definitely feels like he has every right to be dramatic right now. If it wasn't for Louise, he wouldn't be in this situation. He would have never given Phil a second thought and he definitely wouldn't be thinking about what ifs and other lives that could make a friendship between the two possible.

And Phil's nice in that annoying, I'll-keep-talking-to-fill-the-silence sort of way. Dan's lived in quiet for quite some time. Sure, Louise gives him an earful whenever he does something she doesn't like, but they hang out in complete silence for the simple feeling of knowing you're not alone. But this is a concept that Phil obviously doesn't grasp, which is irritating, but fresh and new at the same time.

Dan has a habit of making friends for his parents' sake. Well, actually, that's not completely true. Louise is the only one that ever worked out, but when he was in the 8th grade and he thought optimism was a sin and pessimism was the only true way to look at the world because everything was monochrome anyway, he had tried, rather unsuccessfully, to make at least one friend to please his parents. Maybe his pessimism is what turned them off, because whenever Dan started a friendship, he already had preconceived ideas that it was going to fail.

He'd like to think that now he's less of a pessimist, but he'd still be lying if he called himself an optimist. He thinks friendships are going to end, yes, but that's because he knows he won't put the effort into it and not because of them. Either way, the point is that Dan doesn't make friends, so why he's even allowing the mere idea to linger in his brain is beyond him, but he's doing it nonetheless and he really wishes he would stop, because that would make things a million times easier.

It's been a week since the day they discussed bands and the ropes holding Dan back and keeping him from getting close to Phil have only been getting weaker.

Dan remembers a time when actually like an asshole wasn't an act at all, but Louise has definitely sweetened him up in her annoying, yet oddly endearing way. And he's still a bitch—there's no doubt about that—but he's not horrible, so to speak. The worst thing is how he treats his parents, but now, at the very least, he feels guilty about it, which is definitely an improvement, considering how he used to feel about them. Now, most of the time he just acts like an asshole because it's easier than having feelings and letting people in.

And there was a time when Dan didn't have to remind himself that friends aren't his thing. Except that was a darker time in his life and it's probably best that he forgets it. (He's become quite good at blocking out and repressing memories, and he's done exactly that with the specific details of his phase in his life.)

But he digresses once again. The point is, he's been trying his "best" to get to know Phil. He allows Phil to talk his ear off and Dan asks him questions whenever there's a lull in the conversation to keep the attention off of himself. This continues until Dan's 99% sure that there isn't anything else that he could possibly want to know about Phil. He's exaggerating a bit—he doesn't know why Phil moved here, for one, and if he wanted to know anything extra about Phil, he'd probably want to know that. However, despite everything that Dan's learned about Phil that they have in common, he's still struggling with Phil's obnoxious as fuck personality.

Yeah, he's gotten better about that whole asshole thing, but he's not perfect by any means.

And after a week, he's pretty sure Louise expects them to be best friends. He's also pretty sure that Louise doesn't know what best friends should look like considering their unique friendship. But it's probably best that he doesn't mention that to her because he doesn't want her to think that he doesn't appreciate their friendship as it is (and let's be real here, Dan loves the way their friendship works—even if it is odd).