Red // Colour Bandits // Phan AU

Chapt3r Thr33

I dig my apple out of my bag and hand it to Chris.
"Here you go, mate- so anyway as I was saying! He's so annoying! He doesn't stop playing talking! And the fact that nobody's brought up his coloured jumper yet is astounding! Unbelievable! I honestly don't know how I'll- are you guys even listening to me?"

"Yeah, yeah, course, I hate it when my parents do that too," Pj says waving a hand in my face.
"What? Ugh, never mind."

I look at Pj and Chris and see they're both staring at the same thing in the distance. Louise Pentland. With her long, curly platinum blonde hair and silver makeup, she's meant to be one of the prettiest girls in our year. Pj's had a crush on her since sixth grade and even now, four years later, he still likes her. It was cute when we first discovered that girls are ok but now it can gets slightly annoying.

"Bye guys."
"Yeah, yeah I totally agree.."
I shake my head and walk over to Mark.

"Hey," I say, uncertain of which character of himself he is currently portraying.
"Hello Daniel!"
"Hey Mark," I smile. "How're you?"
"Are you asking Mark, Markus or Dark?"
I think for a quick second.
"You as a whole," I say, my voice hinting a slight tone of question.

"Well, Mark's great at the moment, actually! Markus is, ya know, Markus.. he's ok today. And Dark, well.. I feel like he came to class?"
"O-o-oh, yeah. But don't worry about it, he didn't get you into massive trouble again. He just called happiness bullsh*t."

Mark nods, opens his mouth as if to say something, closes it and becomes very fascinated with a leaf that's just fallen out of a tree into his lap.
"Bye, Mark!"
He doesn't react even after I poke him so I decide to leave him be.

I'd walk back over to Chris and Peej but they're still looking at Louise and her friends so I find a vacant looking tree and begin to climb. When I'm about half way up, someone says something from behind me, scaring me half to death.

"Hey Daniel!"
"Sh*t," I nearly loose my footing. I turn my head slightly to see Phil, also in the tree. "Phil! You son of a b- You scared me me half to death!"
"Best hope I don't do that again then!"
"I-I- you'd better not you absolute-" I begin talking back to him, when he cuts me off.
"So Dan, I was thinking, you could swing 'round my place after school, we work on our History thing for a bit and then get to know each other," he asks hopefully.

I begin to laugh until I see his confused face. "Oh, you were serious? Yeah, not happening, Lester!"
"Wanna bet, Howell?"

•••

"Pleasure to meet you, Mrs Lester!"
"Likewise, Daniel, dear," she smiles up at me, as I'm a few inches taller than her.
We stand in the doorway for a minute or two before Phil pipes up again. "Yeah, so mum, we're just going to go up and study for our History assignment.
Come on Dan, my room's upstairs," Phil begins sprinting to the stairs, taking them three at a time.

When I eventually catch-up to him, he walks me into a smallish bedroom.
"This's my room," he says proudly. "Hear that? Through the wall? Yeah? Hopefully it won't be a distraction! My brother, he collects old casset tapes and plays them to see what's on them."

I try to hear the 'distraction' I'm supposedly meant to be able to hear, but there's nothing so I just nod and say that I don't mind, purely to get the work done as soon as possible.
"You can sit on my desk chair if you want," he points to a black spinny chair in the corner of the room, where his desk that goes along the length of the wall starts.
"Thanks," I mutter, taking a step towards it and sitting down. Phil sits on his bed and spreads his stuff across on there. Then he stands up and sits on the other end, so he's next to me. Too close for comfort.

"I don't really feel like doing work, do you," he asks, tapping on his knees and screwing his face up slightly.
"Then what the hell am I doing here, Phil?"
"I dunno. Hey, wanna play Questions and Answers?"
"That's called a conversation, Lester."
"Do you want to play Questions and Answers?"
"Ugh, fine," I groan.

"Yay," he claps his hands together. "Can we stand up to do this?
"Why? What's the point in that?"
"To get away from the school work," he says shrugging.
"Yeah, ok, whatever."
We both stand up so we're a good three feet away from each other.

"You can go first."
"Gee, thanks ok.. the inevitable question- why do you wear colour?"
"Why don't you? To fit in with society I suppose," he raises an eyebrow.
I take a step towards Phil, for some reason annoyed at his words. I catch a glimpse of myself in his mirror and can see the annoyed look flickering through my eyes.

"Maybe I like it, Lester."
"No you don't," Phil says says, stepping closer to me.
"It's a long story, that I don't feel you should make time for, even though everyone should've heard it.. Heck, you set of the warning signal! What makes you any different?"
"I just want to finish what the world started."

"Oh my god, Lester! That's not going to happen! You say you can do things, when you know fully well that you can't and if I have to listen to your bullcr-"
"Oh just shut up, Howell," Phil smirks and presses our lips together.

We stay like that for a second or two before I push him away, not really sure of how to react.

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wHaT wIlL hApPeN nExT?