Oblivious Hearts (Phan)

Chapter Twenty One

               

Word count: 2044

"The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them."

- Ernest Hemingway

Dan held onto Phil tighter than ever, confused as to what just happened. Clearly Phil knew that man, and it didn't seem as though they were on good terms. Dan had seen Phil be harsh with strangers and arrange his features to look cold and unapproachable, but never before had he seen such fear and repulsion etched across his gentle face. Finally Phil pulled over; they were on the edge of the woods they'd walked in before.

"Sorry," Phil's face was devoid of expression, "I'll explain... Shall we go for a walk?" He said holding out his hand for Dan. They walked for about ten minutes through the trees before they silently came to a stop and Phil sat on the damp earth and leaves. Dan lowered himself opposite Phil and took Phil's hands in his own. Dan waited for Phil to talk, not wanting to push him.

"So that was C-Craig." He swallowed. "He... He was a friend of my dad's, a work friend." Phil started absent-mindedly tracing patterns on the palm of Dan's hand and then continued. "I'd always known I was gay, but it was never something that I thought would be a problem. I didn't 'come out' to my parents as such, we always just talked about sexuality as a thing that was there but not something that had to be labelled, so even from a very young age I would talk about fancying guys without fear." Dan kissed Phil's hand, encouraging him to keep talking, even though he was slightly confused. Hadn't Phil said that he'd been in relationships with women before?... Didn't that mean he was bi?

"So anyway, after my mum died my dad would get drunk pretty much every night and sometimes he'd bring a friend back home from the pub with him to carry on the fun." He almost spat the last words out. "Only Dad would pass out from the alcohol pretty much straight away, and then he'd be basically dead to the world." Phil was staring nowhere in particular, his eyes had a glazed over expression on them, he was clearly deep within his memories. "One night, about a month after Mum died Craig stumbled into my room... He... He sat on my bed and watched me for a while before I woke up, and when I did..." Phil's voice broke, and he swallowed trying to clutch at any bravery still left within him. "When I did he got into bed with me. Of course I called for my dad and screamed when Craig tried to kiss me. But with my dad out cold and me being only 13 it was useless." Dan's blood had run cold, he didn't want to hear what happened next, he could guess but he didn't want it to be true.

"I always slept naked because I thought it was more comfortable and why would I need to cover up in my own home? Not that pyjamas would have stopped him though." He muttered. "Well, you can guess what happened next I suppose... He raped me, and told me it was my fault for being such a dick-teasing faggot." Phil pulled his hands away from Dan's and dug his fingers in the soft, wet earth on the forest floor. "Of course, now I know it wasn't my fault, but at the time I believed him. He promised me he would be back every Tuesday and Thursday, the days he drank with my dad after work. He told me if I wasn't 'ready,' meaning naked, that he would punish me. He stuck to both of those promises..." Phil said, his voice drifting along in the air, the pain hanging in the atmosphere between the two men. "If he caught me wearing anything he'd beat the shit out of me, something my dad failed to notice every morning, even though I'd sit opposite him for breakfast beaten black and blue, that was because he was still high, or drunk, or at least hungover." Dan lightly wiped a tear away from Phil's cheek. This broken boy sat in front of him, having finally poured his darkest secrets out to him, willingly.

Only Phil hadn't finished.

"That wasn't even the worst part." Phil said, even quieter than before. He looked up into Dan's eyes. He took a deep breath. He trusted Dan and it actually felt good to be talking to someone about what happened, but he had no idea how Dan would take the next part of the story. Phil wanted desperately to tell Dan everything, and to get the comfort he'd craved from another person for years, but he didn't want to lose Dan. Phil took a deep breath and exhaled slowly through his mouth. "I was in my last few months of school when my Dad died, apparently from an overdose, which didn't bother me, I was already too broken and I had lost all faith in him... I no longer felt love for him. Craig was there when he died. We were in my room... Craig went downstairs and found his body, yelled up the stairs to tell me what happened and called me downstairs." Dan was shocked at the harsh way Phil had found out about his father's death. The poor, broken boy had suffered more than Dan could have ever imagined.