Chapter Text
"Hey Phil, do we have anymore painkillers?"
Phil perked his head up from his computer screen as he heard Dan's voice from the kitchen. Unsure of an answer, Phil replied with, "I don't know," before closing his laptop and heading over to Dan's current position.
When he arrived, he saw their medicine cabinet emptied from its contents, and dozens of packets strewn about the tabletop; none of them being the painkillers Dan had requested.
"Any luck?" Phil asked, eyeing the various antibiotics on the bench.
A somewhat aggravated huff came from Dan as he shook his head and made his way over to the tap, where he filled an empty glass with water and downed it immediately.
Phil looked at him guiltily. "I thought we had some Dan, I really did..."
But Dan only waved him away and stared down at the kitchen tiles intently, his fists clenching and unclenching rhythmically to the pounding pain in his forehead.
''Do you want me to go out and get some?" Phil offered, trying to be helpful.
Nodding weakly in response, Dan steadied himself against the bench and breathed out slowly, attempting to gain some composure before walking away from the scene.
"I'm just gonna lay down for a bit. I'll be in my room when you come home."
"Ok, I'll be back in two ticks!"
He heard a mumbled reply from Dan as he walked down the hallway to his bedroom, and Phil couldn't help but wonder what had triggered this sudden illness in Dan. That thought would have to wait for later, though, as now he had to buy painkillers for his flatmate.
~
The apartment was eerily quiet when Phil returned. It was as if a strange aura had taken over the place, and that every normal aspect of the apartment had contorted into a brutal, twisted image of what it had been. Though there was nothing noticeably different about it, Phil concluded, that didn't mean nothing had changed on the interior.
Since Dan shouldn't have moved from his location, Phil ignored the enigmatic atmosphere of the kitchen as he made his way down to Dan's bedroom, the figure of his shadow flickering in the weak light of the hallway. He took a quick peak outside of the window to see a grey, gloomy London spanning the view from behind the glass, with limited artificial lighting illuminating the dark city. It seemed unnaturally quiet for London, but maybe that was because of the time of day. Or rather, night.
Before Phil opened the door to Dan's bedroom, he glanced down at his watch to check the time, perplexed that it had been that long since he'd left the house. It was now 11:45, and Phil couldn't help but feel a little guilty that he'd left Dan on his own for approximately an hour. It shouldn't have taken him that long to find the right kind of drug for Dan, but he knew that if he bought tablets which were too big, Dan wouldn't even bat an eyelid at them, let alone swallow them. As well as that, it was difficult finding painkillers that were strong enough to battle Dan's current condition, as most of the heavy-duty tablets that would ease Dan's pain were only sold over the counter with a prescription. Phil didn't need to think twice about bringing Dan down for a doctor's appointment just for permission to buy the drug, as it was well into the night already and before he left his home Dan didn't appear to be in the best form of his life for the public eye.
As Phil considered telling Dan his many excuses for arriving home so late, he decided he would just apologise and hand over the tablets instead of try to excuse his poor punctuality. He hovered his hand over the doorknob for a moment, but he ignored his hesitation as he gently pushed the door open; a soft screech beginning to echo around the large bedroom from the rusty door hinges.
"Hey Dan, I got your painkillers," Phil whispered, unsure if Dan was asleep when he'd opened the door but was now beginning to wake.
"Pst. Dan. Daaan."
He slowly began to approach the double bed, seeing Dan's still form cocooned inside a group of fluffy blankets a couple of metres away from him. He almost began to walk over to Dan without the goal of being near silent, but an obscure warning from his gut told him to freeze on the spot.
Something was wrong.
Phil still couldn't tell what it was, but he knew something had been wrong all along, whether or not he decided to acknowledged it aloud in his thoughts. He'd known since he'd entered the apartment and the joyous atmosphere he'd become familiar with had crippled, with it being replaced by a strange, abnormal one. One that Phil did not consider welcomed.
He couldn't tell if something related to Dan himself was wrong, or if it was simply something about the room he was in that was amiss. Regardless of what it was, there was something definitely wrong in Dan's room.
Phil stood, motionless, in the middle of Dan's private bedroom, unsure of what to do.
He was mulling over his options with extreme care as he considered the possible outcomes for each action he could take, but soon realised that he was overthinking it and that there was really only one thing he could do in his situation.
Wake Dan up, and hand him the painkillers.
There was no going back now. He was going to give the tablets to Dan, and then leave. He could think about the off feeling he got when he entered Dan's bedroom later, when he wasn't holding the medicine that his best friend had helplessly asked Phil to get for himself.
So with that final decision in mind, he approached Dan's sleeping figure and gently shook him awake, pretending to be oblivious to the sick feeling in his stomach that was screaming at him in warning.