Midnight Eyes ✵ Phan

*29*

A/N Dear god, I had to write 4000 words before this was out due to a dodgy internet connection and a faulty word processor. But it's out, I guess. I'm posting this from my ipad so everything is probably wrong as I always do it from my laptop. Sorry in advance, enjoy.

Janitorial work was as exciting as it sounded. It wasn't as if Phil had been anticipating fun and games but the horrific sense of loneliness and boredom was already sinking in and he hadn't even passed the training stage.
Two days where he would be shown around the exhibits and another telling him what he would have to do if he had to fill in the roles of any of the feeding stations would make up his training. Then, it would be up to him to formulate his plan, which was still unfortunately vague.

Being on-the-job training, he was already gaining a sense of his surroundings and more specifically, the Neko unit. Overall, the layout was simple. With the glass cage at its centre, the metal building led off the right where it joined the other offices. The training rooms, though, diverged from the rest and in the corridor to the offices, there was another staircase leading to the underground training facilities. They had deemed it the safest place, despite its dingy demeanour and cracking walls. If anything, it only made it more menacing, working in their favour.

Phil did his best to clean it, even, hoping that that would make it any better. He assumed it didn't but it was a step in the right direction: step one in what was beginning to look like hundreds.

After his training, though, the descending mood seemed to entrap him. Dan, who he'd had little time to see, was still locked away and despite his best efforts- he still had no plan to get him out.

Nothing that wouldn't end with them both being locked away, at least.

Phil's dampened mood affected everything. Despite his comfort in his new position, the bosses were noticing his slacking as well as his lack of care for any other enclosure but the Neko exhibit.

He was lucky enough that the office worker had not yet mentioned their encounter about the Neko, something that could destroy this all in a moment. That was all any of it was, luck. There were a thousand things to do and a thousand things to go wrong with each of them.

So, Phil picked up his game. Over the next week, he focused and pushed anything Neko related from his mind. And, in that week, there was a moment where he felt normal. The everyday routine of life was comforting: waking up, going to work, going home, sleeping. A boring cycle that was so much better than the chaos he had endured.

In a life where everything was crumbling to pieces, a slither of peace was enough for Phil to nearly leave his mission behind.

He didn't let himself think of that again. Dan was the thing that pushed him in life. Dan was why he had given up his goddamn awful job and pushed away his friends that clearly didn't believe in him. Okay, maybe that last one was a lie. It wasn't Dan's fault, though.

His new job, however, was something that Phil was beginning to fit into nicely. He understood what he had to do and he did it. It was all so straightforward; there was no guessing, no planning, no scheming. He just did as he was told and sometimes if he had the initiative to do more, it was recognised and rewarded. The zoo were surprisingly nice employers and Phil found himself doing better for himself than he had in years. Maybe the pay was smaller but he was willing to sacrifice that for his mental state.

It sometimes did distract him as to why he was there.

That's why, when he was about a week into his job, he finally decided to make a change. His lunch break was about an hour long and he usually, after eating, had about forty-minutes to spare doing very little. So, he dedicated those times to Dan.