credit to @HeyImDun on Twitter

tw// descriptions of blood and fighting, sexual references

summary: Dan goes to prison and doesn't remember why. Then he meets Phil who wants to help.

It's only been a week. A week of being shoved in the halls, forcing freezerburned food down his throat, having his wrists scab up from rubbing against the too-tight handcuffs. A week of being unable to sleep on a mattress that may as well be a boulder, a week of being unable to shower in a place that is anything but clean, a week of being unable to remember.

Dan doesn't remember why he's been here for a week. All he knows is that he did something very wrong and he turned himself in at three in the morning a week ago- without even saying what he did. He was covered in blood and simply said,

"I didn't mean to."

They instantly pinned him to the ground and that's all he knows. The rest leading up to here was a blur. Right now, he's laying on his top bunk, his cellmate asleep beneath him. He's had small flashbacks to that night, he knows he had glass shards in his palms and his fingers were aching and his throat burned from screaming at whoever he hurt. And that's if he hurt anyone in general.

The inmates here think Dan is crazy, Dan knows that. He knows they're afraid of him, they stay away from him, because they're scared that he will remember what he did and snap.

Only one has ever spoken to him, a boy with a brown quiff who was known for his schizophrenia. He would tell people that there was a boy named Josh who would drum for him, but nobody ever saw him, and his four walls declared him insane enough. Tyler, the boy, pat him on the back and flashed a grin.

"Looks like you might be one of us, kiddo."

Dan's half asleep when he hears singing next door to him.

"All my friends are Heathens, take it slow."

Dan paused. The voice is pretty- it's a man's voice. He sat up, tilting his head and listening.

"Wait for them to ask you who you know."

Dan knows that song. He doesn't know the title, no, but the voice and the lyrics are so familiar. He waits until the man is done singing to speak up.

"What's your name?"

"I am Phil."

"Your last name?"

"Whatever yours is."

Dan was about to question it when he blushed, although the tone Phil has used wasn't flirtatious- it was casual. As if explaining it to him.

"What does that mean?"

No reply came, but then Dan looked down and noticed the rusting wedding ring on his finger. He stared at it, but when he blinked, it was gone.

-

Dan couldn't stop looking at his hands. His fingers, specifically. He was sat on his bunk, feet swinging as he watched his fingers curl and uncurl. His inmate was in a different cell for the night as his punishment, so Dan was alone, playing with his hands at four in the morning for no reason. He had been waiting to hear the man sing again, but not even a peep came from the cell next to him.

The brick wall that separated them was irritating. He wanted to smash his hands through it, feel the material fall from his hands.

And then suddenly there's screaming.

Dan jumps at the noise, beginning to panic. He jumps down from his top bunk and goes to grab at his bars, shaking them. He looks over to see everybody else is still sound asleep.

"Are you okay? What's going on?" Dan shouted.

"Stop it! Get away from me- you don't wanna do this! Don't do this!" It was Phil. There was the sound of something smashing, glass specifically, and Dan began calling out for help. The inmates then began to wake up, annoyed by Dan's volume. "Don't touch me! Don't touch me!"

And then Phil is suffocating, Dan can hear it. He can hear him gasping out for air, sobs unable to tumble out of his lips as his throat is declined.

Two guards come rushing over and open Daniel's cell, grabbing him roughly.

"Shut up, inmate! It's four in the morning!"

"Help him, please, he's dying! The cell next to me, please!"

They lead Dan out of his room and drag him down the hall, giving him a perfect view of the cell next to him, and Dan nearly passes out.

The cell is completely empty, no sign of broken glass or dead bodies.

Dan spent the night in the cage, but he didn't sleep. He couldn't sleep.

-

Food is not the same here. It's gross. Dan barely eats as it is- it's not like he intentionally doesn't eat, he's just never hungry, but he sits down anyway with a glass of water at a table in the corner. Dan is used to sitting alone on normal days, but today is not a normal day.

Today a boy with blue eyes is walking right up to him and sitting across from him. Dan stared.

"Who are you?"

The boy simply smiled, leaning his head back to sip his own drink when his jumpsuit collar moves down just enough for Dan to see the marks. There's red, bruising marks on his throat- traces of someone's fingers. A shiver ran down Dan's back.

"It's not polite to stare," the boy finally says. Dan snaps out of it, looking up at the stranger.

"Who are you?" Dan repeated, looking down at his own drink. The boy chuckled, setting his cup down.

"Keep asking people questions and you will not find the answers you crave. Ask yourself questions and you will."

Dan flickers his eyes to furrow his eyebrows at him, but the boy is gone and so is his cup too. Dan sits up, looking around the cafeteria frantically to find him. But he's no where to be seen.

-

Phil.

He knows the name. He knows the person. He doesn't know how they look or why he knows them.

He remembers laughing out the name, he remembers crying and shouting it out, he remembers moaning it out as his toes curl, but not the face- only the name.

Dan glanced at his fingers again, curling them. He goes to his mirror and puts his hands up in front of it, staring at the reflection of bruising on the skin. He then reaches and rubs at his neck, scratches at it, and then his fingers curl around his own throat. He doesn't know why he's doing it, he doesn't even want to die, but his body is aching to do this.

"Stop it! Let go!"

It's not him saying that, it's a voice in his head. It's Phil saying it in his head. The wedding ring on his finger glints in the mirror and Dan didn't realize how tight he was choking himself until he let go. He lets out a breath, looking down at his ring, and he feels a weird sense of dejá vù. He remembers pale hands slipping it onto Dan's finger, and then taking his hands and pressing a kiss to his knuckles. His bruising knuckles.

Dan shuts his eyes and imagines it. And it's Phil. It's Phil who was holding his hands, and God the reveal of his face is breathtaking. It's the same boy from the cafeteria, except he looks much happier and does not have any marks- instead Phil has a tuxedo collar around his neck rather than bruises.

"I do," Dan hears himself say. He looked up in the mirror to see himself smiling, instantly wiping it off his face and sighing.

"What the hell are you doing? It's two am, man," Dan heard his roommate groan. Dan turns around.

"Do you know what I did?"

And Dan blinks once and suddenly his roommate is not there, in fact Dan isn't there, he's in a bedroom. It's his old bedroom, he recognized it. He turned around and it's Phil. He doesn't have finger marks on his neck, but he does have hickeys. And Dan doesn't remember giving him those.

Dan is about to question him when he hears himself speak up.

"Where have you been? God, you reek of alcohol."

Dan turned around and saw himself. He looked tired, bags under his eyes with his arms crossed. He's wearing his wedding ring so it's a previous memory, although Phil isn't, and Dan is confused. Dan is watching his own memory like a movie.

"I was out." Phil growled. Dan frowned, stomping forward and taking Phil's hand.

"Where's your ring? Who gave you those?" Dan reached out to brush over the lovebites on Phil's neck when Phil snatched his hand up and yanks it away.

"Where's your off switch? Could you just leave me alone?" Phil snapped. Dan is shocked. He wasn't like this in the memory of them getting married. This is different.

"Quit getting mad at me, you've been gone since ten tonight and suddenly you show up at nearly six in the morning, pissed and snappy and without your ring? You were with someone, weren't you?"

"You're full of shit," Phil sneered.

Dan suddenly shoved a finger against his chest, pushing him back. "That's why you aren't wearing your ring," Dan snarled, getting up in his husband's face. "You wanted to pretend you were single."

"Don't touch me."

"I don't need to, someone obviously already did that for you."

And then, without warning, Phil turns around and slapped Dan. Hard. His face turned at the impact and his eyes began to water, his hand going to hold his reddening cheek.

Phil immediately dropped his hand, jaw dropping. "Dan, I didn't mean to. . . I-"

"I can't believe you."

"Please, I didn't mean to hurt you-"

"Is that so?" Dan's voice cracked at the end, indicating he was on the verge of tears. "Because lately that's all you've been doing! That's all you do! You hurt me, over and over- and why? Why would you do that? If you don't love me just say so! Pack your shit and leave for all I care, and take your goddamn ring with you since that doesn't mean much to you anyway!"

"Please stop fighting," present Dan speaks out for the first time, but they cant even hear him. The couple is yelling at each other, accusing and shoving, and then Dan shuts his eyes because he doesn't wanna see them fight like his parents did, and he hears glass smashing and when he opens his eyes he's back in his cell with his fist rammed against the mirror.

His cellmate is right behind him, shaking his shoulders. Dan whipped around, pushing him off.

"Chill dude! You were foaming at the mouth, I thought you'd die."

Dan is panting, and he knows that the sound of glass smashing was not just the mirror. Something happened that night and he needs to remember.

-

The singing is back. Dan wakes up in the middle of the night and he hears it.

"But after all I've said, please don't forget,"

Forget. That's all Dan has seemed to do, he's forgotten what happened that night. But then Phil is humming the instrumental part and Dan squeezes his eyes shut and he's reliving that same night. Except there's something new.

While the couple in front of him are yelling at each other, there's another sound going on. Music. It's a song from the speaker in the livingroom, the same lyrics and beat that Phil is singing in the cell next to him. It's faint and quiet compared to how loud the husbands are, but Dan can still make out the lyrics.

He's listening to the lyrics but watching the scene unfold, he stares at the way they're pushing at each other and Phil says something but Dan can't hear them anymore, it's as if someone turned up the volume but only got louder with Dan's point of view.

Phil shoved Dan into a shelf and Dan turned around, grabbing a picture frame off it and Dan watched himself as if in slow motion as the picture flew and missed Phil by centimeters. The glass shattered against the wall, denting it.

Shattered.

It's the same noise he heard when he heard the suffocating in the cell next to him that one night, it's the same noise he heard when he punched the mirror.

Phil rushed over to the picture and attempted to try and piece it together, only getting glass in his palms. Dan swoops Phil up and ends up getting blood all over his hands too, and they're yelling again. 

"Get the fuck off of me!"

"I tried to warn you just to stay away,"

Phil lunged at Dan, and they're roughly grabbing at each other and screaming in each other's faces with insults, and Dan runs over and tries to pull them apart, but suddenly the memory of Dan isn't there anymore, and it's just present Dan and past Phil.

"Stop it! Get away from me! You don't wanna do this! Don't do this!"

That's the same voice he heard in the cell. The same pleas.

Except Dan is doing something. He's reliving the memory again, but he's in it. As if he went from third person to first person of his own character. Dan is doing everything, feeling like a game controller.

He can't even hear what Phil is saying, but Dan grabs Phil by his shirt and pins him to the wall. Phil instantly went to forcing him off, shoving at his chest with his bloody hands, smearing scarlet all over his clothes. Dan reaches forward, brushing over the hickeys. And then his fingers curl.

"And now they're outside ready to buzz," the speaker blasts.

His fingers curl like the many nights he watched them do that, like the way they did on himself. His wedding ring glints as he squeezed tighter and Phil can't even cry anymore, his face is turning purple and blue and red and all the colors Dan is feeling right now. All he feels is rage. He wants to stop but he can't.

"Let. . . go. . ." Phil chokes out. And those were the last words that came out of his mouth, because then his eyes roll back and his eyelids shut and Dan lets go, only to watch Phil drop to the floor.

The last line rings out, and the last beat of Phil's heart thumps.

"It looks like you might one of us."

And then everything made sense.

- .- -.- .     .. -     ... .-.. --- .--