#phan phic

"I really don't know what else there is to talk about, Phil," Dan groaned. That was his favorite way to end a conversation. I don't know what else to talk about. I rolled my eyes. The last thing Dan ever did was shut up. He'd talk for hours if you let him, unless he didn't want to be around you anymore. Then he would get quiet and say "I don't know what else there is to talk about."

"Just meet with me tomorrow, okay? We don't have to do anything, I just want to talk to you," I begged. I heard his sigh over the phone.

"Fine. We can talk. Just text me the address."

Dan hung up the phone. I kept the phone close to my face with the screen hot on my cheek. I quite liked how it felt. Everything else around me felt so cold. I stared at our empty bed until the phone ran cold too. I was never sure what I was supposed to do with the empty space.

The home we built together was soon to be sold. I wondered who would buy it. Maybe it would be a family and the door frames would be covered in scribbles and milestones. The kid would beg his mother for treats and she'd give him a handful of chocolate buttons. Or maybe it would be some other couple. They'd have a dog named Charlie who would leave his fur everywhere.

Or maybe it would be to a single person. Like myself. He'd move in with his modest furniture. Though he can cook, he doesn't like the activity much, so he orders take out. It's just him and the TV night after night. Does he feel lonely? Or has he gotten used to it? Does he wish he had someone at his side doing these mundane tasks with him?

I threw myself on the bed and let out a big sigh. I stared at the doorway and realized I had left the hallway light on. I didn't really care to turn it off. Ever since Dan left, I've felt weird about lights. I have to have the lights on. When you live with someone, it's completely normal for more than one room to have the lights on. However, if you're alone, it's suddenly a waste of electricity. It's expected that you only light up the room that you're in. I guess I understand it, but I hate it. It's like you have a dollhouse but can only put your dolls in one room at a time. It's suffocating and lonely. So I keep the lights on.

I know that I've wasted a ridiculous amount on an electricity bill that is way too high. That's why I'm moving out. It's been three years and honestly, it's just too depressing. It's a half decorated home with the lights always on, like a starter home in The Sims and my sim is upset because the space is so poorly decorated.

My friends told me that I could decorate however I wanted now that Dan was gone. I hated when people would say that as if it were a good thing.

"Think of all the things you can do now that Dan is gone!"

I don't think people understood that I did exactly what I wanted to with Dan. Compromises were far and few. We almost always agreed on things. Even little things, like decor, we could always find some sort of agreement.

I finally started to doze off. I only woke up because I felt something tickling my chin. My eyes fluttered open and something fluttered back. It was a damn moth.

"Ah!" I yelped, swatting the bug away. I tried to look around to see where it had gone, but my vision was glossy from the dried contacts sitting in my eyes. I flicked the things onto the bed and squinted around. I'd lost sight of the bastard. It must have flown in from a cracked window, another habit I developed after Dan left. Initially, I couldn't stand the place smelling like him. Nowadays though, I wish I had bottled it.

I flopped back onto the bed and drifted off. My brain tortured me with a replay of every mistake I had made. I watched as Dan and I bickered over useless things. I watched as he sat there silent on the way back from tour. I watched him look at me coldly. And I watched as I looked back at him the same. Finally, I watched him walk out the door for the last time. It was quiet. I watched as he held his bag in one hand and the knob in the other. The last thing I heard was the click, but I had to lock the door.

I woke up aching. I brushed my teeth and put in a new set of contacts. As I teased my hair, a fluttering appeared in the lightbulb.

"There you are!" I cupped my hand around the light and grabbed the moth. "Ew," I mumbled as it's little legs squirmed in my hand. I stuck my hand out the window and watched it fly away. It's brown wings were speckled with iridescence that shimmered in the sun.

1881 Bakers Rd, by that weird yellow pub.

I stood on the curb and patiently waited. It felt like ages. Finally, I saw a brown curly fringe tower above everyone else. My heart started to pound. I couldn't tell how I felt. Part of me was overly happy to see him, the other part was nervous. I was afraid reaching out was a mistake. Maybe he was happy without me. Maybe he had realized how much he could do without me.

He stood a good twenty feet away and just stared for a moment. We hadn't seen each other in years. I knew it would be awkward, but I was afraid it would be insufferable. No matter what though, I knew I had to try. I wasn't sure what I was trying, but I couldn't keep living without him in my life. I needed him with me, even if he was just... a friend, I guess.

The corner of his mouth lifted. I could see in his eyes that he was also hesitant but happy to see me. He creases his eyes when he's happy, it's not something he can fake. I waved and Dan also raised his hand in a modest wave.

I walked to him the rest of the way. Finally, we were only a few feet away. Neither of us knew how to break the silence. I knew I just had to say it.

"I've missed you," I confessed. Dan looked off into the street. A bus had just pulled over and an old woman with a cane was hitting the doors. I don't think Dan was paying attention to that though, he just couldn't look at me this close.

"I've missed you, too," Dan admitted. We both watched the bus commotion. The bus driver now stood at the door and was shaking his head at the woman. He wouldn't let her get on. We were quiet for a moment more. "Is that all you dragged me out here to say?"

I scoffed. Now, a man ran up to the woman and consoled her. It must have been her son. He appeared to apologize to the bus driver over and over. The bus driver then ran his hand over his face and gestured for the pair to board.

"No. I... I think we messed up," I said quietly. Dan squinted his eyes in the distance for a moment and then shook his head.

"I don't think we did," he laughed. It hurt to hear him say it.

"Ouch."

"I don't think we messed up, Phil. I think we did exactly what we were supposed to do in that moment," Dan said. I wasn't sure what to say. I wasn't sure how the conversation would go, but I guess I should have expected Dan to be blunt. "And now, we are doing exactly what we are supposed to, in this one."

I turned towards Dan and he turned to me.

"I don't think I understand," I said. Dan looked up at the sky then back to me.

"Honestly, I thought you wanted to talk to me about selling the house. Agents keep calling me, you know... I guess our numbers are still listed together."

"Oh."

"But that's not what this conversation is, is it?"

Dan looked straight at me. His brown eyes bruising into my skull. God, why didn't I practice what I would say other than "I've missed you?" Great job, Philip. I looked at the floor.

"No, it's not," I admitted.

"Then what is it, Phil?" Dan ducked down to meet my lowered eyeline. Now, I couldn't look at him. What was I trying to do? I didn't think about it, I just couldn't live like that anymore.

"What is it? Because I waited for you to call me, for you to text me, for you to do anything that would say that I was on your mind, but you did nothing. So I gave up. I moved on. I did shows. I wrote a book. I watched you do your projects–at a distance of course–but I did all these things and guess what? Every time I did them, I hoped you would just say 'Hey Dan! Saw you did this thing, hope you're doing well!' and instead I got nothing," Dan growled.

"I didn't think you wanted that! I felt ashamed that everything ended the way it did, I didn't think you wanted to hear from me!"

"Of course I did. Phil, you were in my life for 13 fucking years! So what we grew apart, you were still such an integral part of my life and you knew that. I could live without you as my partner, but that didn't mean I didn't want you as my friend."

"How can you expect to be friends with someone you don't know how to talk to?"

Dan stayed quiet. That was the last thing he said to me before we broke up.

"I didn't reach out to you because I know you, Dan. You needed space, so I gave it to you," I said sternly. "I didn't tell you anything because it wouldn't have changed a thing."

We both looked at the floor now. The conversation had grown dreadful. My fingers were tingling with adrenaline as if I were ready to fight a bear, not get in a minor argument with an ex.

"Do you keep the lights on?" Dan asked.

"What?"

"I hate the way my flat feels with all the lights off. My electric bill is terrible, but I just have to keep my lights on."

I wasn't sure why he was changing the subject, but it was better than silence. Better than I don't know what else to say.

"I do. My lights are on all the time," I smiled. I told him how it felt like a dollhouse, then how I felt like a sim. He told me that he played The Sims more often, like a guilty pleasure. The conversation felt familiar, like the ones we used to have every night while eating takeout in front of the TV.

Eventually, the gloomy British weather caught up to us and it started to rain. The first drop hit Dan's head. He looked up at the clouds then back to me. His breath was hesitant and I could see the words getting stuck in his throat.

"Do you want to grab a drink?" I asked, gesturing to the weird yellow pub. Dan's shoulders relaxed and he swallowed.

"Yes, I'd like that," he smiled.

After a few cups of mead (which was all the weird yellow pub served), we both felt looser. I should mention that Dan was a bit looser than me.

"You know, I wrote you letters, Phil," Dan slurred.

"What?"

"Letters? Like with a fucking pen and paper?"

"I know what a letter is, Dan-"

"Every time I really wanted to tell you something, I just wrote it down instead. I have dozens of them. They're quite poetic, really. They're all for you. All of them. In some stupid way, I liked to think you somehow read them all. Like some telepathic letter reading wizard. And I kept writing them. Because it felt like you were still there."

Dan laid his chin in his hands on the table. He stared off the same way he did on the curb, the same way he did on the plane, the same way he did every night. Sometimes the thoughts didn't matter, and sometimes they seemed to eat away at him until he couldn't take it anymore.

"What are we doing, Phil?"

I didn't know how to answer him in a way that felt right. I wasn't sure there was a right answer.

"Oh!" Dan yelped. A moth had just flown across his face and was fluttering around his hair. Dan sloppily swatted his hand around until the bug flew off to some light or other pasty patron. I laughed, then sighed. As familiar as this all felt, I knew that at the end of the day, we'd both go home to our respective places and we'd both sleep alone with all of the lights on. There was no escaping it.

"Come spend the night," Dan said. He had been staring at me the same way I was staring at him just moments before.

"Are you sure? I don't want you to wake up tomorrow and-"

"Just come spend the night with me, Phil. I'm not saying we have to do anything, just stay with me, talk to me. I've missed you," Dan looked at me earnestly. His hand touched mine and it was warmer than a phone screen. His hand was hot enough to warm my whole body. Dan's touch felt like washing your hands under hot water after playing in the snow. It was right. It was healing. I could hear the world around me again.

"Okay," I nodded. Dan was really sloshed. He raised both arms in the air and kicked the bar next to his stool.

When we got back to his flat, nothing really happened. I don't remember much else other than waking up the next morning. We had both fallen asleep on Dan's bed fully clothed. The image of Dan's peaceful face was the first thing I saw. I haven't started my day with that sight in years. I just laid there, taking it all in. The morning felt so different than from what I had grown used to. Of course, I was at Dan's flat, laying in bed with Dan, but there was something else too.

Danny, to his credit, was certainly not freaking out nor flipping out nor any third thing he couldn't presently come up with to affirm his sanity.

But- But! He was going to cross a line soon! The back and forth was extremely annoying.

With a hiss like escaping steam Danny sighed and rubbed his eyes, trying to think up a response to this nonsense as Clockwork hovered above the table, candles below mysteriously not lighting them aflame.

"From the top, as someone with places to be and faces to punch. There was a separate timeline?"

"Correct," Clockwork confirmed, likely having seen bad paths start branching madly by the way they'd gone still.

"A timeline that has nothing to do with us even though it may well resemble the one we’re in?"he continued to press.

"Multiple timelines, but yes."

"And they... collided?" Danny prodded. He was pretty sure that was what Clockwork was getting at, but Clockwork’s typical poetic flow was making Danny anxious he was missing something.

"That is... Not an accurate assessment of the mechanics, but a fair reflection of the results, yes."

White wax popped ominously below them.

"But the situation is done and doesn't need me?"

He was pushing, he knew. That was the point.

"That part of it, yes."

Danny waited, clicks and pops sounding off both near and far as the mechanical clocks in the tower continued ticking, wax giving a well-timed pop as he gave up.

"Right then. I suppose I get to go home then, and catch up on sleep?" Danny offered.

seemed to pierce through, Clockwork shot him a flat look before floating upwards to a mirror.

"The threads of the worlds remain tangled, and many paths remain unclear even to my view. The weave as a whole can tolerate such stress for a while yet, but I worry for individual threads and their viability for replacement if they were to snap."

A moment of dead silence hovered, the gears of the tower themselves seeming to have stopped over the sheer single-minded gall Clockwork must've possessed to believe for a second that that explanation was any clearer than the previous ones.

"What?"

Danny held firm in a brief staring contest, refusing to flinch first. He would not be accepting the implication that some clarification and a toning down of the poetry was too much to ask.

"Not everything from the other timeline left. Some objects are certainly in the wrong time or place for this world. Some people remain different in ways that indicate they'd be from a counterpart world, except for the fact it behaves more like a leftover superimposition from the event."

"So. Things have randomly changed around?"

Danny didn't know how else to process that information; it wasn’t like he could know what things had changed..

"Effectively." They nodded, tapping a mirror. The image flickered and cycled through objects and people at an alarming rate.

"Most things, like the odd card or misplaced remote, do not matter much. I will get to them in due time, and those in the most impacted areas will simply be left with a vague sense of deja vu.”

"Like that weird name conundrum," Danny said, nodding sagely as this bit of the puzzle clicked into place.

"But others, like certain kinds of heavy use objects or people, due to the fact the changes are not true materially, stand to cause harm if left unmanaged," Clockwork continued, brushing off Danny's brilliant deduction.

"I think this is the part where I ask if you are or aren't the world-assigned manager." Danny said, the question clear between them.

Danny was well aware timeline management was a complicated job with many possible pitfalls and failure points, but it was still Clockworks job.

"This is a fair jab, yes. But you remember my chains, no?"

The top of Clockwork's staff tapped the mirror again, the barest flashes of red and badly lit spaces, black and white, and so much else finally settled on an image of the Casper High football field.

"So the Observants have blocked you and one or multiple alterations are going to blow up profoundly. And I get to deal with it for you? Can't you just do it... later, on your own personal event line? Time travel is a thing."

"Ah, but there we come to your personal stake. The things that stand to collapse may well lead to your complete death, and while I am forced to halt my actions, your clock will run down. If that comes to pass I cannot promise the Observants will not simply make me keep the event.”

Few other statements could have made Danny's body run quite so cold as that.

It was a bone deep cold he hadn't managed to feel since the portal put him halfway under, cold permanently banished to something he’d had no business feeling since.

"If I fail, I die?"

"In essence.”

He'd never quite get how Clockwork could say things like that so casually. The expression visible beneath their hood remained blank, unchanging with every heavy word.

"Alright. Alright."

He was definitely not gonna flip his lid on Clockwork. Totally. He was gonna stay calm and collected.

"But then, how exactly do you expect me to fix the timeline messes?"

Clockwork floated down silently towards the table, gesturing with their staff again.

"Look carefully. Do you remember much about the candles from when you entered?"

"Uhm. No?"

Danny thought he should get points for honesty; the contents of the table was the least concerning thing in this conversation.

He took stock of the red candles, lit and wavering as Clockwork waited for an answer they weren't going to get.

"Often things change just beyond mortals' notice, and the changes will appear retroactive through time too. Hold out your hands," Clockwork instructed. Danny obeyed, and suddenly Clockwork was a lot closer. In the span of a second his hands had been grabbed and left tingling, Clockwork reappeared over the table like they'd never left.

"Okay. Creepy. What now?"

"Pick up a candle."

The flames seemed to flicker in time to his thoughts, the fire flaring with his shock and dimming with his confusion and bewilderment.

"Just like, literally?"

"Sure."

Clockwork's plain tone grated at him. For them, that was an admission that the action wasn't the goal and that the real goal had eighty percent odds of not being explained until he figured it out himself.

Danny flew in close and took a candle, a bead of spent red wax making its way down to his gloved hand as he waited.

The waiting was admittedly for show. He could feel... threads in the candle. Tangled ones. And he'd have to be forgiven for not wanting to screw something up.

Clockwork smirked, and Danny knew they'd foreseen that anxiety getting explained from some errant timeline branch or another.

"Pull," they instructed.

The candle in his hand popped loudly as he blinked up at Clockwork. It felt too easy. Pull which thread? From what angle?

Just pull?

Danny didn't outlast Clockwork's patience: he knew he’d have to figure out the specifics on his own, flame hissing  as he carefully phased his hand partway through the wax and picked a thread.

He elected for gusto and slight violence. He was rewarded for his enthusiasm with the candle breaking in half not from the stress of the thread pulling but from his other hand tightening in response. The thread he’d pulled snapped in one hand as he fumbled with the two pieces in the other.

Where there had been a red candle before, it was now white. And it had never been anything but white in their whole conversation, but most certainly been red just five seconds before.

There was a table of red candles in front of him, that he only remembered having one white candle, and he suspected the uncertain dread boiling beneath his forced calm was part of a lesson Clockwork was trying to impart.

"The action itself is easy, but most things affected are more complicated than what wax color I ordered for this example. Some things may be obviously changed, but tied to something else being different. You'll have to follow what you can to find the true offenders, and remember that people can be changed as well."

‘Following what he could’ was much too vague of a mission for Danny's tastes.

"What, no hints about the important things to find?" he asked.

"You've more time than you'd assume, but less than you want."

"Do you have anything helpful?" he asked again. He sighed as Clockwork shook their head, and the candle in his hand flared and popped in response.

The fire startled him being so close, the candle getting dropped in reflexive panic. The flame remained lit shockingly enough, already melting some wax to morph into the tiling grout.

"Could you warn a guy next time we're playing with fire? I swear it's had an attitude with me since I walked i-"