Chapter Text
The Manhattan roads were lined with rainbow--everything rainbow--rainbow banners, signs, painted storefronts and, well, everything. Philip had almost forgotten it was June, or rather, what June meant. The new decor was in striking contrast to the scene he remembered just a few days ago.
They work fast, Philip thought to himself.
He looked over at his friend Phoebe in the passenger seat, “Shit, is it Pride month already?”
Phoebe, who’s brown eyes didn’t bother to even glance up from her phone, mumbled out an apathetic “guess so” as she continued typing away furiously.
Philip, ignoring her obvious lack of interest, continued talking to Phoebe, “We should do something,” he suggested as he looked over at her once more, “when’s the parade?”
“Don’t know,” Phoebe’s dark eyebrows were now sitting angrily above her eyes, the dark skin above the bridge of her nose wrinkling together in little fine lines as she stared down at the screen.
Philip rolled his eyes and turned up the volume on the radio, the sound of Bon Iver’s “Blood Bank” drowning out the wave of lesbian angst coming from beside him. She had been this way ever since he picked her up from her work, didn’t even explain why she was suddenly out of a car, just tossed her purse in the backseat and immediately got to tapping her perfectly manicured nails on her screen once she sat down. Philip assumed it was because of her girlfriend, Maddison, they were always in some type of argument.
“She’s so fucking careless sometimes,” Philip pulled his eyes away from the street to glance over at Phoebe.
“Maddie? What happened this time?” Philip asked.
Phoebe, who was now looking out the passenger window, sighed out a response Philip couldn’t quite hear.
“What?” He asked, leaning slightly towards her in an attempt to hear her better.
Phoebe looked at him and rolled her eyes before closing them tightly, “She stole my car.”
“She WHAT?” Philip whipped his head towards her, causing the car to swerve a little into the other lane. A series of honks sounded off around them.
“Dude, watch the fucking road!” Phoebe grasped the handlebar above her head as she slapped Philip’s arm.
“She stole your fucking car?”
“Well, she didn’t exactly steal it-” Phoebe quickly tried to backpedal on her words.
Philip was now pulling into Phoebe’s parent’s driveway, “Well did she steal it or not, Phoebs?”
“She called me at work this morning, asking if she could borrow my car to run some errands. I told her that if she could find some way to get there that I would give her the keys and when I did, she told me that she would get the car back to me before the end of my shift.” Phoebe explained, rubbing her temples.
“And she didn’t.” Philip said.
“And she didn’t!” Phoebe threw her hands in the air dramatically, “So I fucking texted her, asking her where the hell my car is and she’s not responding so here I am, thinking that she’s gotten into a fucking wreck or something-” Phoebe paused to catch her breath, “but then I get a call from one of her friends telling me that she’s tripping out in some pub’s bathroom-”
Philip’s ears perked up, “She’s still using?” Maddie has had a complicated past with drug use, but Philip was under the impression that it was under control.
“I fucking guess so,” Phoebe answered before continuing on with her story, “So of course I start freaking out on this guy, telling him to get her to a hospital or something, and he’s fucking out of it too so he can’t even spell the word hospital at this point-”
Philip tries to hold back a laugh.
“-and I tell him to give her the phone and so he does and she’s barely able to put words together so I start freaking out EVEN MORE and I tell my coworker to call 911 and send them to the pub’s address.” Phoebe paused and Philip could tell she was calming herself down. “I stayed on the phone with her until the ambulance got there and then I texted you.”
“Is she okay?” Philip turned himself so he was completely facing Phoebe now.
“She’s stable, I called her brother before you came to get me to let him know and he’s been keeping me updated from the hospital.”
Philip nodded his head sympathetically as Phoebe started to cry.
“I thought she was gonna fucking die.” Phoebe sobbed out, Philip hesitatingly reached out to rub her shoulder. He’s never been good at comforting people, he could only think of one person he ever did.
Philip mentally tallied the thought, that was only the fifth time this week, he thought to himself.
Phoebe smiled wryly at Philip’s attempt to comfort her and lightly shrugged his hand off her shoulder, to Philip’s relief.
“Do you want me to drive you to go pick up your car?” Philip offered.
“Nah it’s okay, you’ve done enough for me. I’ll ask my mom to drive me.” Phoebe explained as she opened the car door and stepped out. “Thanks for the ride, Philip. You’re the best.”
Philip made a gesture with his hand as if to say “it's no problem” and waved goodbye to her as she got out.
Phoebe’s parents house was around thirty minutes away from Philip’s apartment but he didn’t mind, the drive home gave him time to think. It took him a while to get comfortable with just thinking. For the first three years after Tivoli all he did was think--think about how Lukas just left him for dust the way he did, think about how Helen and Gabe didn’t fight for him, think about all the potential lives he put in danger by not coming forward about the cabin. It was enough to drive him crazy.
Hell, it nearly did, he thought.
But now, Philip could think comfortably. Controllably. He could choose when to think about the cabin, or Helen and Gabe, or Lukas. If there was the occasional thought gone awry, Philip would tally them and share them with Dr. Bradfield, his therapist, at their next session.
Philip noticed how the Manhattan sky was a smear of grey hue above him as he drove, and it made him think of the sky in Tivoli. That damned place was always so grey. Except on the days when he was with Lukas, when the sky seemed to open up with color around them.
Philip laughed a little to himself, things always led back to him. He thought it was ridiculous for the longest time, how he could be so attached to someone he only knew for a few months. When he started seeing Dr. Bradfield, she had to work really hard to convince him that that kind of attachment to someone you share trauma with is normal. But Philip had, and maybe still has, this sneaking suspicion that even had the cabin murders not happened, he would have followed Lukas wherever he went. Even if it meant a lifelong sentence to the closet, even if it meant staying in Tivoli as some mistress to Lukas in a far off future.
Maybe it’s better that the cabin murders did happen, Philip joked to himself.
The jokes help Philip; if he doesn’t joke around every now and then during these thinking sessions, he’ll get angry or start to spiral. He’ll dig up that feeling of being used out of whatever dark abyss it crawled into and use it to fuel some rage-inspired activity. Philip was like that for the longest time after he left Tivoli, mad. Mad at Lukas, at the world. Sometimes he still is, but it’s a more justifiable feeling. It’s not the same feeling that drove him to not speak to his mother for a year after he got back; not the same feeling that made him sabotage every chance he had at a foster family until he aged out of the system; not the feeling that made him get drunk a few years ago and drive all the way back to Tivoli just to throw beer bottles at the cabin and scream at the Universe.
No, not that feeling. Never that feeling again.