Midnight Eyes ✵ Phan

*25*

A/N We're a quarter of the way to a hundred so here's a LOOONG chapter!

Phil found himself at his front door panting as if he was inhaling his last breath. He sighed, clutching at his locked chest, his heart rapidly beating for freedom inside. Barely keeping his lungs in control, he let himself in and collapsed onto the corridor's floor. He looked to his left, staring gloomily at the tattered sofa- it's cover a faded beige, fraying at the edges. He could make it if he tried but staring down at his easing legs, he knew it would not be worth the pain.

He had run.

That was why he was so tired out. His legs burned from years worth of neglect and his eyes were watering from the simple pressure of the wind against his face. He hadn't run since childhood and even then he had not been the sporty type, happy to sit inside and chat with his friends.

Running was not an activity Phil would ever think he would partake again. He clearly didn't have the income to get a gym membership, nor would he want to and his new-years resolution of 'getting fit' had been forgotten a day or two ahead. He hadn't believed he would do it when he made it, anyway.

Phil couldn't collect his thoughts. He had been running. Running away. Running faster than he ever had before. Why? What was to be so afraid of? Dan wasn't going to harm him, he couldn't. But, Dan had harmed him. His heart had been weak and now it was crumbling.

Dan wasn't getting out of that cage.

Phil's stomach growled, filling the empty silence- and the occasional heaving- with a dreadful sound. He thought of going to the kitchen, it was closer than the sofa after all but when he got there, he knew he wasn't going to sit down again. The thought was too much to bear. He tried to think of the food, he needed to eat.

It only made him feel sick.

Lately, his savings had gone up. He had bought so little. He had bought nothing, in fact. Everything in his cabinets dated from weeks back. It was on positive, at least. One droplet in a sea of water.

Sitting here was doing him no good so, with the little energy he had gained from his ragged breathing, he clambered to the sofa and collapsed down and leant his head back, giving him an all too clear picture of the ceiling. He wasn't quite sure how you got rid of mould. He had never been bothered by it before so why now was it causing the thin hair on his arms to stand alert.

He shuddered.

He fondled around for the television remote and switched it on. Static. What else had he expected? With nothing to distract him, his thoughts reined him in. He was barely in the land of the living anymore. He wondered, for a moment, if that was what death was like, simply trapped in your thoughts for the rest of eternity.

He chuckled darkly, he shouldn't have been thinking these things. He was tired and Dan had rubbed off on him a little too much. Dan. He groaned. Why had his own mind had to travel to Dan? He had run for a reason but it seemed his physical exertion had not been for much, his mind seemed perfectly fine in bringing the images back even if second-hand.

Phil only wished he could do something, anything. He knew better than that, though. He wasn't a martyr, he didn't fight for much and he certainly was not a strategist. So far, he had come out lucky. And, he was grateful for that. He had found Dan, even if he wasn't sure whether that was a good or bad thing.

But, Phil was normal. Plain and simple. Just like another 90% of the population, he was as normal as the person beside him. He was still him, he was still as unique as a person could be- his DNA altered so little that his looks and characteristics are negligibly different from the next person.