Dan jolted up, instantly feeling like he was going to vomit. "Why didn't I know about him?"

"They didn't get along. . ," Mrs. Lester softly explained. "He moved out pretty quick. . . - Dan, what's going on? You're as white as snow."

Dan shook his head and ran to the kitchen sink, vomiting out barely anything to his lack of eating. Alice hurried over, patting his back.

"Daniel," Mr. Lester said, worry dripping from his voice like the faucet next to him. It was so loud, the faucet dripping. Everything was so loud.

"Did he ever come visit?"

"The last time we saw him was around the time of. . . Phil's disappearance. He was so upset."

Alice gripped tightly onto Dan's arm, almost as if to keep him from slipping away, to keep him from disappearing like his boyfriend. "Dan, we should go."

"Can one of you please tell us what the hell is going on?" Mrs. Lester cried, eyes watering. "If you know something about my baby, please, I'm begging you-"

"Peter killed him!" Dan screamed, throat nearly tearing, tearing like Phil's soul from his body when Peter must've murdered him.

"Dan!" Alice hissed, fear storming the room like a tornado. Dan was a tornado, a storm, and he couldn't stop.

"I have to go," Dan breathed out, hands shaking- shaking just as bad as they did when the cops had come to tell him that Phil was missing. The red and blue lights, the red and blue lights flashing over the walls and across his porcelain skin. "I need to- I need to go."

"Dan-" Mr. Lester reached his hand out, but Dan pushed past him, Alice following suit.

"I'll fix this," Dan promised and left the house, the house once called he once called his second home and now felt like solitary confinement. He rushed to the car, Alice chasing after him. Dan stopped in his place, eyebrows furrowing. "Stay here."

"Dan, I -"

"It's not safe."

Alice glared, beginning to worriedly protest. "It's my job."

"You wanna know what my job was?" Dan began, tears beginning to slip from his eyes. "I worked with my boyfriend. And my second job was simply just taking care of him. I loved it. I love both jobs because I loved him. And now-" his voice broke. "Now I find out that he's been dead all along. Phil is dead!"

"We don't know that-"

"We do! You think I dont know my own boyfriend? My Phil would never act this way. My Phil. . . This is not him, and whoever it is, I'm going to make them sorry." He shoved cash in her hand, telling her to catch a taxi home and get some rest, and with that he hopped in the car and drove off.

He looked up in the rearview, seeing Alice's figure lost of hope until he took a turn and she was gone. Gone just like Phil.

He sped through the drive and parked roughly in front of their dorm, suddenly having the urge to burn the place down, burn it down to demolish the false memories and intangible happiness. When he opens the car door, he remembered Alice still had the gun, and Dan was weaponless- until he realized he still had the knife in his pocket from his false boyfriend.

He reached the door, walking into their bedroom and pulling up the cushion to thankfully still have the knife there. The front door opened and he made a decision: he'd walk in there and let him do the talking.

When their eyes met once Dan was in the livingroom, his knife hidden in his jeans, tension filled the already thin air. The man stared at him, and they kept their distance, the black-haired boy still in the doorway and Dan by the bedroom.

"I know you know."

Dan gulped, "what do you mean?"

"You think I'm stupid?" The house is dark, just the livingroom lamp on, everything dim and hard to make out. But one thing was sure: this was not Phil. Dan's mouth dried, too dry to reply. So the man kept going, taking slow steps toward him, like a panther ready to pounce on its prey. "I see you at your sister's house, you're going to therapy, acting weird. I know you know."

"I don't-"

Dan cut himself off, shrinking into himself as he was shoved to the ground, knife cutting the inside of his jeans.

Dan groaned out in pain, sliding out the weapon and pointing it at the man.

"You couldn't stab me," the man growled, almost like a dare. "I look too much like him."

The man stood over him, his looks once beautiful and radiating comfort now red hot and acidic.

"Peter," Dan seethed, fist shaking with knife in his grip. "Why'd you do this."

"My brother had everything. I had nothing. Nothing. For once, I wanted to put myself in his shoes- have the perfect life. But it's all bullshit."

"Why'd you have to kill him?"

"I was dead to him. So why not make him dead to me?"

"But you came back, wh-"

"Always so fucking full of questions," Peter spat, kicking at Dan's side. "I came back to get you to shut up, to stop looking into things so I wouldn't get caught."

"But I win," Dan sniffled, his voice trembling.

"For now you do. For now, yes, you figured it all out. You solved a case that remained on an office's corkboard for months. But the sad part is you won't live to tell anyone. I'll kill you just like I did your boyfriend. That was the plan all along, don't you see? I'd gain your trust and kill you so it'd seem like a suicide."

Dan cried, "don't touch me!" He hoisted himself up from the wooden flooring, slashing his knife at Peter. "You killed him! And for what! For nothing! For nothing!" He continued slashing, Peter only dodging it and giving little to no reaction.

"I got you to believe me, didn't I? Got you to believe that he came back. I was just planning on coming here and you being my refuge, planning on you to finally shut up and think Phil was back so I wouldnt be handed off to a cement room. But you wouldn't stop questioning everything!"

Peter shoved at him on the last sentence, Dan's back hitting the wall. "Get off me!"

"You couldn't even remember what your own boyfriend looked like. I have greener eyes, lighter hair. I don't have that one freckle on my back. Don't you remember your own boyfriend? Or did I kill him that long ago?"

Dan let out a yelp and slashed at Peter's face, ripping through his shirt and cutting at his shoulder. He hissed, but continued spitting venom.

"You could've had happiness again, but you're so goddamn self-destructive, it's pathetic."

Dan slashed again, tearing through the front of his clothing and slicing at his chest.

Peter killed Phil, the only person who ever fully understood Dan and everything he stood for. He killed everything and anything he ever loved. Now it was just emptiness, a fucking black hole or some kind of void, and he planned on drowning Peter in it.

"He hid things from you! You didn't know everything about him like you so selfishly thought you did."

"That's okay!" Dan screamed, pushing him back and causing Peter to fall into the TV, the device crashing off the table. "That's okay because I knew he knew that he could talk to me about anything. That doesn't mean he had to! That doesn't mean anyone has to! Maybe he wasn't ready yet. Maybe he was going to tell me these things some day, about you, about his mental illnesses, but you took that from me! You took him!" Dan screeched, tears beginning to spill from his eyes. He continued as Peter listen, still looking up at him from the ground.

"You took him from this Earth- from his friends, from his own family. Your own family. You're insane! You should've been the one going to therapy, you should be the one that's fucking dead!"

Peter, blood boiling with rage, kicks at Dan's leg and knocked him down. Dan fell as the knife fell from his grip, and Peter took the opportunity to climb on top of him. They began hitting and strangling at each other's clothes, each other's skin, blood beginning to seep through cloth from nails and teeth.

He's been dead all along. Dan wishes that this man had been Phil's ghost, or a pigment of his schizophrenia, anything but this. Knowing that his best friend and was murdered by his own vengeful brother made his stomach churn and his head throb. Everything hurt.

Dan had a chance at shoving Peter off of him, and took it, throwing the demon somehow considered a human off of him. He grabbed the knife at the side of him, and when Peter turned to clamber back onto the brunette, everything slowed down.

Dan's own breathing was suddenly very loud, the wheezing and stuttery cries leaving his mouth loud. Everything was so loud. Everything was so painful. He felt a pang in his chest and thought, he won, didn't he? He's stabbed me.

But he was wrong. It was just the sense of reality setting in. He took ahold of his heightened senses, his wide, tired eyes and his trembling lips. He turned his snowy white face to see the dying one next to him. He stabbed Peter.

His eyes left from Peter's gasping mouth to the knife stuck in his chest. Peter lay there, hands shaking as he slowly accepted defeat.

"I remember my own boyfriend," Dan began as Peter lay dying, Dan's lips now numbing as he sobbed. "I remember his blue blue eyes, and the freckles on his back- I could name them like a fucking constellation. I remember his dark hair, darker than you, darker than his own personality because he was always so light. I remember his porcelain skin that might as well have been made of fine china, and his slender fingers that were always so cold but so warm to hold."

Cop sirens began to follow his soliloquy in the background, volume growing as did Dan's.

"I remember that he liked exactly two packs of sugar in his coffee, and he loved his bacon extra crispy. I remember his favorite food was potato soup because he ate it all the time as a kid, and that he broke his leg twice. I remember that he loved reading books but never finished them, and loved live music but got anxious at concerts. I remember- I remember everything he wanted me to know, and the things he thought I didn't. I remember everything. I remember Phil, and that's all that matters. As long I keep him in my mind, as long as I love him like I always have, he'll keep living. He'll still be alive. That's all that ever mattered: him."

Peter took his last breath, his lips chapped and eyes that were once half lidded now completely closed. He was dead.

The red and blue lights began. The red and blue lights appeared, flashing over the walls and his porcelain skin. There was knocking, like when the cops came to tell him his lover was gone, and the time he was fooled to think he came back.

The doorknob jangled, and Dan remembered it was unlocked as cops began to flood the room. The brunette stayed on his knees, hands raising as flashlights were shined on him. Alice appeared behind the police, and she kneeled down to speak to him. The red and blue lights ceased to stop flashing.

"You're not in trouble, Dan," she coaxed as she helped lower his hands. "I told them everything, they know this was self-defense. You're a hero, Dan. You're Phil's hero. You always were."

"He's all that matters," Dan spoke, the background shuffling of the cops analyzing Peter's body sounding underwater.

"I know."

"He's all that ever mattered."

"I know."

fin