Not On Fire (Phan AU)

27 | there's too many pieces

The car ride is deadly silent, except for the static of the radio, but the drive is short. Five minutes tops before they're walking through the doors of the police station, leading a handcuffed Dan to a holding cell. For the night.

    It's nothing special--concrete, gray paint, bed to sleep on for the night, and a toilet, too. It's too easy to say that the bed is uncomfortable. Harder than a brick and covered in sheets that feel like plastic. Then again, if you want high class living, you probably shouldn't put yourself in a position that'll ultimately lead to jail time. Seriously. Unless, of course, you have enough money to pay yourself out without even getting a pen mark on your permanent record.

    Dan's is going to be covered in black ink at this rate. How many fires in the past year? He can't even keep count. There wasn't that many, but enough that he passed the five marked and dropped his second hand, figuring counting was pointless. Though there's probably a list of every single one in a file somewhere stuffed away in a desk and being pulled out right now by Phil's dad to look over the notes.

    In other words, he's fucked. There's absolutely no way anyone in their right mind would be able to look everything over and not connect the dots. This wasn't an isolated incident, and anybody can see that without even looking at the facts.

    Where did he go wrong? The better question would be where didn't he. Everybody knows bottling up your emotions is a shit way of dealing with them and should never, under any circumstances, be used. Especially when you already have enough anger issues as it it (as demonstrated by your strange love for fire). He shouldn't have allowed himself to get so close to Phil. Louise was never an issue--had been there for too long to ever truly be one, but Phil was new and that's dangerous. Something he had known for quite some time which had kept him distant from pretty much every person on the planet, including his own parents. Obviously, his problems started when he decided burning things was cooler. Even cooler if they weren't his own property. But he had been safe for a while before his facade started to crumble, before his own personal coating of black paint was peeled off, revealing the ugly truth underneath it.

    The only thing he did right was being strategic up until today. That's all he gots going for him and it's honestly not much.

    The scary thing is: he doesn't regret it. Nothing. Not a single damn thing. Especially getting close to Phil. From the very beginning, there had been something about him and the way that he just went about his life with a seemingly permanent smile etched onto his face, faltering rarely and never for long. It's always been so clear that he just wants to make other people happy with his rather forgiving attitude. As much as Dan had tried to pull away, he was fighting a force stronger than his own.

    He's staring at the ceiling--something he resorts to whenever bored or lost in thought--his back on the bed, arms under his head. He can't even pretend to find shapes in the bumps and grooves, can't humor the idea of normalcy in a jail cell. Normalcy for him, that is. There's no way to pretend this is his bedroom, freshly painted and rearranged. There's a smell to it--clean, sterile, despair, loneliness--that he would never find at home. 

    His parents are probably being notified right about now. They're shocked when they see the number that appears, but answer it regardless because they can't think of any reason why the police station would be calling. They're even more confused when they're told their son is currently in a holding cell for the night until they can properly question him in the morning--but they'll allow it to happen because it's for the best and then agree to come up after getting some sleep to properly deal with him. After the call cuts off, they'll cry to each other, asking where did they go wrong, and struggling to wrap their minds around the fact their son had been the arsonist everyone was afraid of. It's the kind of thing that'll wreck their relationship once again.