Darkshines

Chapter Fifteen

Phil's POV

Phil had thought quite a lot about what had happened with Dan, after school. What madness had drove him to run after Dan, was a mystery, but noticing the other one having a panic attack, he couldn't just stand there without interfering.
Seeing him like that worried him. And worrying about Dan, made Phil start to worry about himself. Why was he caring about his bully, all of a sudden? Why! Was it some kind of stockholm syndrome or, what?!

Carding his fingers through his short hair, he sighed at himself. He needed to do something else, he can't just spend all his time with this nonsense thinking. Be productive!
Yes, be productive! School work was productive. He decided to go to the local library, to get a nice change in a study environment, so he brought on some decent wearables and took the bike over to the little building, only ten minutes away. 

The parking lot was almost empty, as always, and walking inside there were nobody but the old librarian to be seen.

Phil greeted her with a smile, and sat down with his school books and notebook and begun to work. He more or less actively postponed studying math, he knew he wouldn't understand anything.

A good half an hour into studying, his thoughts were distracted by someone talking outside. He couldn't make out what was said but directed his eyes towards the window by the entrance, spotting two younger boys in conversation. They seemed close, talking enthusiastically with each other.
He watched them talk for a minute, not really thinking of how it'd look creepy, just looking for any distraction from his school work. Then, the brown haired boy gave the other one a sweet kiss and turned to the entrance. Phil hastily looked away, down back at his scribbles as the boy walked in and plopped down at the same table as Phil.

Wow, there's several empty tables in here and you chose mine, thanks, he thought a little annoyed, glancing up at the boy.

He frowned. The boy looked almost just like Dan, only much younger. Could it be his brother? Phil didn't know Dan had a brother, but then again he didn't know much about Dan at all.
He didn't notice he was full on staring until the boy cleared his throat, looking back at him with a confused glare.
"Do I look funny, or what?" he commented and Phil looked away, chuckling embarrassed.

"Sorry, no." he excused and looked down at his math hieroglyphs.

"Sure mate" the boy said and he felt himself being watched for a while, he felt awkward and couldn't exactly focus on his work with such a surveillance on him.

"Are you stuck on that?" the boy asked again, minutes after and Phil glanced at him again, surprisingly.

"Noo... maybe? I'm sure there's some errors in the question itself" Phil said, not really wanting to admit being terrible at math to a kid.

"Can I see? I kind of love math, I'd love a challenge" the boy stood up and walked around the table to plop down beside Phil and looked over his homework for a while.
"No, okay I see, you've got the functions all mixed up here" the boy picked up Phil's pencil and started to write out a formula, "let me show you how you should go about" and then he started go through the exercise, step by step. He seemed pretty entertained by doing this, the kid must really love math.
He ended up going through all the exercises on the paper, explaining to him, and about fifty minutes later Phil found himself understand this part of the math a lot more. All thanks to this smart kid.

"Wow, I can't thank you enough," Phil said thankfully, " I will ace the test now for sure!"

"No problem, it was my pleasure" the boy beamed and stood up from his chair and made his way over to his place.

"I kind of recognize you, what's your name?" Phil's tongue suddenly slipped, not really intending to go there. He scolded himself internally.

"I'm Alex. You?" Alex replied while shoving his stuff into an old-looking backpack, " and who do I look like now?"

"I'm Phil. And it's just..someone I know from school" Phil said, trying to avoid Dan's name by replying more unspecifically.

"Oh, I think I can guess who, upon seeing as your age is the same," Alex chuckled and shook his head" it's my brother Dan right?"

"Oh, um.. yes it is actually" Phil said hesitating, not sure where to go from here as it in fact, really was Dan's little brother he spent time with. It felt weird.

"We are really alike, we get that quite a lot haha. You're a friend of his then? Didn't know any of his friends actually were nice." Alex looked at him with a raised eyebrow.

"Right, we're not.. we're more of acquaintances, really" Phil lied and laughed nervously.

"You should be his friend though, his friends are just a bunch of dickbags and he never seems to be happy nowadays, you seem to be a nice enough person" Alex said cheerfully, now standing up and seeming ready to leave.

"Eh, yeah, I'll think about it.." Phil lied, knowing it wasn't going to happen in reality.

"Great, I'll be sure to mention you too for him. Cheers!" Alex waved a goodbye before skipping happily out of the doors, before Phil had a chance to object, since mentioning him to Dan couldn't really be wise.
He didn't pay much attention to it though, as he felt relieved over finally getting help with his math and so he picked up his books and went outside to go home with a smile.