a song from under the floorboards // phan

prologue

Phil

The tiny record player in the corner of the room was playing Blister In The Sun on repeat, but Phil was too lazy to get up and fix it. His bed was far too comfortable, even if it was just a bare mattress on the floor, and the heat from outside was already making him feel slow, like he couldn't possibly do anything productive.

It was still early, hours before he would need to be downstairs to open the shop, so he lit another cigarette, closed his eyes and let the music circle through his blood stream.

The first day of August had dawned exactly the same as the days before it, humid and bright and full of potential, the kind of day you could do anything with; meet new people, try new things, fall in love even.

Phil hadn't done much since summer had begun. Discovered a few new bands maybe, and gone to a concert PJ had dragged him to. The sun made him feel sluggish after a while, and painted his skin a painful red that took weeks to disappear, so he preferred staying indoors as much as he possibly could.

He wasn't a fan of summer, and she didn't like him much either.

The song skipped, made a vague scratching noise, and then started over again for what had to be at least the eighth time that morning. It was a good song, at least, one of Phil's favorites at the moment. He'd get tired of it in a week and move on to some other audible obsession, but for now he was content to let it play until it drove him insane.

A knock on his door made him open his eyes. He gazed at PJ warily as his friend stepped into the room carrying two mugs of coffee and wearing a scowl.

"If you're not gonna fix it, turn it off," PJ said, even as he sat down on the smallish bed and handed one of the mugs over. Phil didn't even bother sitting up, just rested the hot ceramic against his stomach and finished his smoke. "We're gonna get complaints."

Phil rolled his eyes. "Complaints from our nonexistent neighbors? Or the imagined pedestrians who have superpowers and can hear the music from two stories up?"

"Fuck off," PJ muttered. He reached over and snatched the cigarette from Phil's mouth. "I thought you said you were gonna quit?"

"Yeah, maybe next year."

PJ hummed and didn't say anything to that, even though they both knew Phil was lying. Phil was used to having this faux argument, where PJ called him lazy and full of bad habits, and Phil said he deserved to have those habits, and PJ told him he was full of shit. But this time, he let it go, and Phil knew there was something worse coming in it's place.

Phil hadn't even started smoking until last year, and once he'd started, there was never any chance of stopping. It was a vice he didn't want to control, and if it killed him along the way then there was no one to blame but himself. That was the way it should have been.

"You're having nightmares again," PJ started with no preamble, leaning back on his elbows and narrowly avoiding Phil's legs.

Phil closed his eyes again, breathed in, and told himself not to kill his friend. Do not kill PJ, do not kill PJ, you can't kill PJ. "They're not bad."

"They sound bad, Phil." And he knew that PJ was just worried because that's what friends were supposed to do, worry about you, especially if you woke them up at odd hours of the night screaming about your dead brother, but Phil sometimes wished he could deal with his grief alone. That he wasn't stuck in this box of a flat with the only other person in his life who would ask him those personal questions he never wanted to answer, or talk to him about how he was feeling and if he needed to take the day off.

He was angry and sad and hopeless and self-deprecating, and he had no idea how he was even supposed to start processing all of that, let alone talk about it.