Symbiosis (Phan)

10: brought to u by dans nails they revived both me and this fic from the dead

Growth and change was inevitable. It was something to rely on, something to cling to, as perhaps even if you did despise your current self and situation with every ounce of your being, there was always hope that one day you might wake up and you wouldn't be that person anymore, or you wouldn't feel those feelings quite so strongly anymore.

Today was not that day, not for Phil Lester, at least. But that wasn't the point, because the moment in which he might run out of tomorrows, and even moments themselves, felt an awfully long way off. Things hadn't always felt that way, though. If things still were a long way off perfect, he found he could definitely count on the fact that they had been much worse before. It was constant, like a reminder, cloaked all around him: the unavoidable fact that he would grow, and one day things would be perfectly okay.

He relinquished in the calm that brought him; it was a simple cure for the thoughts that had come along with it. Those thoughts were linked to memories, linked to his past, to the person he'd been when things hadn't seemed quite so hopeful at all and the world had just seemed so much more dark. He knew he had much better ways to waste away the early morning light, to chase the sun up into sky. He might have even considered putting himself to good use, and taking a quick ten minutes to go over his notes from the day before, but that all seemed so much like a distant fantasy the moment he'd let certain thoughts catch up to him.

His bedroom lay illuminated slightly by the first rays of the sun, coupled with long shadows cast against the walls. He sat at his desk before his window, eyes lost out there on the horizon somewhere, as he let his mind grow thin and diluted, crumbling at the edges, as for a moment, even amidst the calm, he came to remember that today wasn't the day. It felt like it would never be the day, as much as he fought to teach himself better.

Tomorrow felt impossible, infinite, and in moments such as these, he was trapped, up inside his head, up inside the person he'd once been, inside the school he'd attended at fifteen, when flickering shades of grey had set into a full dark, impassable abyss of black. It wasn't something he liked to think about, but it was a part of him, and the memories appeared rather hesitant to leave him be, even as the sun had begun to shine brighter than before. Those thoughts struck him even as he got better, and he knew they'd always make him weak, even if just for moments, even if just for small portions of time. He couldn't see himself escaping them, not quite yet, but at the back of his mind, he hoped for the day when he could.

Truthfully, things had gotten much better; Phil was much more at ease with himself, he felt a great deal more comfortable in his own skin, he had friends, proper friends, he had fun, things felt better than they'd even been. And of course, he had Dan, in whatever way that might be, in whatever way the two of them might be connected, and whatever they might come to mean to one another someday.

College didn't suck anywhere near as much as school had, but still, that didn't put a stop to bad days, to his mind slipping back there, to empty mornings painted in dark shades of grey than usual. Still, he did his best to be happy, to keep a smile on his face, because he was Phil Lester and that was what he did; the past was behind him and he could take comfort in the fact that no bad things felt like they might get, that was just a fact that would not change.

He sat there and watched the sun rise to its full height in the sky. He watched the day begin and did all he could to put a smile on his face, reminding himself that a slow distant morning didn't condemn an entire day. It was hard to believe the things he told himself sometimes, the things he pressed into his mind like an anthem of happiness and idyllicism, a life it seemed as if no one really lived, but he tried, he really did try. And no longer was he scared that he wouldn't get there someday, as pathetic as it sounded, it really was true, but he came to regard Dan as proof as that, as a one ever luminescent piece of sunshine, shining starkly even against the darkest and greyest of skies.