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There he was, with his expensive shoes, low riding black skinny jeans, Calvin Klein pants sticking out, designer t-shirt and leather jacket.
Gorgeous as always.
Dan Howell.
Danisnotonfire.
Dan of the BBC radio 1.
Dark prince of the internet.
Dan of Dan and Phil.
His D-slice.
His…
Sometimes Phil could almost forget the clumsy, awkward kid he met at Manchester station.
Sometimes he couldn’t see that kid in the confident, sassy handsome man he was currently looking at, interacting with all the other youtubers and famous people surrounding him at the party they were at.
Dan had changed, he had grown, becoming an adult, better, a more successful version of himself.
And Phil…he felt just like old Phil. The same Phil that used to talk to a camera about lions and weird people in his small and messy dorm room.
Maybe it was because when they first met he was already twenty two, practically an adult, that he felt like all he had done was looking at Dan growing up, changing, shedding his old skin to turn into an awesome adult, someone that one day will leave him behind.
And he could feel that day getting close.
He heard the music in the background change.
“One day baby we’ll be old, oh, baby, we’ll be old, think about all the stories we could have told…”
God, he hated that song. With a fiery vengeance.
He didn’t want to think about getting old. He was almost thirty.
He didn’t want to think about dying.
Death scared him.
What if after dying all there was going to be was an empty dark void? What if he had to spend the rest of eternity alone, regretting all of the things he had let go?
Wow. Existential crisis incoming. He was actually pulling a Dan.
He didn’t even want to come to this party. But they always invited “Dan and Phil” like they were only one person instead of two.
He looked up from his spot on a lonely couch across the room at Dan, laughing wildly at some comment Tyler just made.
A girl was leaning on Dan’s arm, almost laughing in Dan’s shoulder, and Dan leaned down towards her, to make himself heard over the loud music.
Who was she? He couldn’t tell from here.
Not like it mattered, people were naturally drawn to Dan. Especially now that he was becoming the big thing. The click bait. The six million subscribers youtuber.
Phil was happy for Dan. He really was.
But they hadn’t cared about Dan when he was a nobody.
He did.
He was the one that had liked and believed in Dan from the very start.
He should be the one to laugh into Dan’s shoulder, for crying out loud!
God, he was glad that this whole conversation was going on in his head and his head only. He was disgusted with himself.
It was just… somehow the knowledge of his impending birthday was finally getting at him. Attacking him out of nowhere like a fucking bullet train.
He laughed at himself, knowing that if Dan could hear is thoughts he would make one of his usual double takes, like every time he heard Phil swear.
He sighed and lifted up his gazed from his empty cup, to find a pair of brown eyes looking straight at him, mildly concerned.
Great, he was not only going to ruin the party for himself, but for Dan as well, if he didn’t pull himself together.
He pulled his lips into a thin line, trying for a comforting smile, and then he started to look around to find someone to chat with, someone to fake being alright with.
He just needed to hide behind his crocked smile, like he always did.
He hated drama. He hated fighting. And he knew that Dan hated it too. He was NOT going to be the Drama-lama of the situation. Not tonight, not always.
He spotted a group of people he knew well enough by the bar, and walked towards them, ignoring the hand Dan was waving at him.
This was not the time to be with him. Dan could see straight through him, after all.
He reached the bar, eyeing the different sparkling bottles behind the counter.
“Anything for you Sir?” asked a waiter.
Why not? He was at a party, he might as well try to enjoy himself.
“Yes, please. Anything is fine”
“Hey there, so this is the infamous AmazingPhil!” a voice exclaimed behind him, a little too loudly.
Phil turned, swaying on his stool.
He hadn’t realized that the stool could spin. Or was the room spinning…?
Amidst all of the flicking, sparkling lights, Phil managed to focus his gaze on the face in front of him.
The guy was still speaking, but Phil hadn’t heard a single word. He tried to listen to his voice over the ringing in his ears.
“…so I really like the way you edit your videos, they are so funny!”
Wow, he had heard that already. What was about the way he edited his videos that everyone seems to like so much? Did this guy wanted “some editing tips” too?
Did he even know this guy?
He tried to make out his face more clearly. He was a little blurry. Had he lost his contact lenses on somebody’s arm again? That would be annoying.
Finally the two, blurry twin faces in front of him merged into one and he could see the guy’s face more clearly.
He didn’t know him.
But he looked familiar.
He was young, in his early twenties, maybe, and had a round, boyish face, curly, messy hair and brown eyes.
He was kind of cute.
Dan. He reminded him of Dan. Dan, how he used to be.
Young and innocent, asking him about editing tips.
Was he a demon come to personally hunt him on this already horrible night?
He was probably just a new youtuber he hadn’t yet heard about.
Couldn’t he find another, more famous and successful youtuber to bug? Couldn’t he see he was busy drowning his sorrow in…whatever it was he was drinking?
“eeermh…is everything alright?” the demon-guy asked in a concerned tone.
Phil realized he must have been creepily staring at him for at least a minute without saying anything. His reaction time was slower than usual. He must be more tired than he realized.
“Yeah, yeah, of course” he hurriedly said. No reason to take his frustration on the poor kid. He looked kind of nice. And talking to him suddenly seemed like a better alternative to sitting alone at a bar drinking god-knows-what.
So he pointed to the empty stool beside him. “Sit! We can talk better this way” he said, with a strained smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
This guy was cute, and seemed to like him or his videos. Or maybe he liked Dan’s better and he was the next best thing. He didn’t care. He just wanted to…not think.
Dan had stopped listening to the conversation for some time now. He wasn’t really a party animal. He was glad he got to see many of the friends he hadn’t talk face to face in a long time with, but he was getting tired already of the blinding lights, of his uncomfortable spiky shoes (why had he even thought that buying a crazily expensive pair of shoes with which he could repeatedly stab himself by accident was a good idea, he didn’t remembered. He should have listened to Phil) and by the way, where the heck was Phil?
He had lost him as soon as they had entered the party, too focused on saying hi to too many faces.
He had caught Phil’s gaze later on, for a little bit, but Phil had run away towards the back soon after that, and he had lost him again.
He was a little concerned, to tell the truth.
He didn’t like to mingle into Phil’s business, and he would never force him into conversation with others if he didn’t feel like it, but it was not like Phil at all to keep to himself at a party.
He was a literal ray of sunshine, always smiling in the background around his friends, even when no one was talking to him.
But Phil had behaved a little strangely for a quite a few days now.
It wasn’t obvious, and probably any other person wouldn’t have noticed it, but Dan was not any other person.
Phil was still smiling, still joking when you were looking at him, or when he was in front of a camera, but sometimes Dan would catch him when he thought no one was looking, with his eyes trained on nothing, the light that usually lit his multicolored eyes was not there.
He had thought that Phil was just tired. Tired from their tour, the books, the tatinof movies, so he had not asked him about it.
Thinking back on it, maybe he should have.
“…Dan? Danisnotpayingattention?” a familiar voice asked beside him.
He turned to see a pair of black rimmed glasses looking at him.
“sorry…I was just….”
“Looking for your other sweet half?” asked Tyler, smirking.
“Tyler! He’s not…I mean, we’re not…”
“I know, I know, don’t go off again!” Tyler said, frantically gesticulating to make him shut up before Dan kicked into full-on “no homo” mode.
‘Godness gracianious, these british guys could be such a handful some times’ he thought, sighing.
“But seriously, where is he? Go look for him and don’t come back until you find him! When you’re without him looking all mopey like that you just look weird!”
“I DO NOT---“
“GO!” he ordered.
Dan dutifully obeyed.
Impossible to say no to the Queen.
And he really wanted to see where Phil was, if he was being honest with himself.
He could feel a strange, unpleasant sense of dread slithering down his back.
Phil, on the other hand, was having a great time.
The guy-whose-name-he-couldn’t-quite-remember was quite funny. Or at least Phil found anything that came out of his mouth quite hilarious. Even when he could not understand what he was saying at all. Something about pidgeons. He believed. Or was it someone called Simeon? Either way it was hilarious.
He leaned into the guy, almost dropping his empty cup, inhaling some kind of cheap after shave he didn’t like.
Dan always smelled really good. He was really picky with how he smelled.
NO! HE DID NOT WANT TO THINK ABOUT DAN RIGHT NOW. So he didn’t move, deciding to lean into the guy for a little bit longer than necessary. He could feel the other’s heart beat quite fast.
Phil liked hugs. He loved feeling the warmth of another human being.
He and Dan used to hug all the time back then. They hugged when they first met, that hug he could never forget.
The warmth of another human pressed against him, his breath fogging by his ear, the other’s heart beating fast, the soft hair tickling his nose, Dan’s nervous laughter…
He missed that closeness with him. Lately Dan was all careful to never touch him, to never cross that invisible line he had set for himself.
He hated it.
He didn’t care about Phan, he didn’t want to shag Dan. He didn’t even allowed his thoughts to go there.
He wasn’t really one for that kind of sexual relationship. With any one. All he wanted was that connection they used to have that they seemed to have lost.
He didn’t know how to call it. Love, friendship, a soul bond? He didn’t know. He didn’t care.
Gay, Bi, Straight, asexual, he didn’t know what he was.
Why was people always asking him and Dan about that? He didn’t know! “But you’re a full grown adult, you should know!” they told him.
That was a lie. A fucking lie! It wasn’t like once you’ve reached a certain age suddenly you’re hit by a golden divine revelation shining light on yourself and everything you are.
If anything, with age it only gets more confusing.
What are you, if at thirty you don’t want to have a girlfriend, or a family, or kids?
What are you if all you want is snuggling on the couch playing video games with your best friend?
Why does it matter so much what you are?
Why couldn’t he just be what made him happy?
God, he was drunk wasn’t he? Completely and utterly pissed. Great.
He felt one arm sneaking up on him, rubbing his back up and down.
“Eeermh, do you want to go get some fresh air?” the guy-wearing-some-cheap-cologne said, a little flustered.
That sounded like a perfect idea, actually. Maybe it could help clear his head a little bit, and maybe he could avoid making a fool out of himself in front of a room full of vlogging youtubers and god-only-knows how many other important people.
“Yeah…” he said, accepting on of the three or four blurry, dancing hands stretching towards him.
Holding his hand the whole time, the guy-with-too-many-hands lead him on the terrace that faced the midnight sparkling city scape behind the main room, the one with the huge disco ball and beating music.
Of course, as soon as he got there, the chill air hit him like a ton of bricks, and being the clumsy huge bean pole he is, Phil did a double take and swayed forward, ready to fall on his face, if not for the quite strong arms catching him just in time, magically supporting him whole weight.
“Whoa there!” the guy-who-just-saved-his-face whispered right in his ear “Come here!” he suggested, leading him towards a bench, and adjusting Phil to sit close to him. “Take a breath, you don’t look really good…” he added in a sweet, concerned tone.
“Do you need some water? Or something to eat?” the guy-who-just-wouldn’t-shut-up kept asking him, making Phil’s head spin even more.
He didn’t need water. He didn’t need food. All he needed was his…all he needed was…
“Have you found him yet?” Tyler asked to a very flustered Dan, after catching up to him in the main room.
“NO! I don’t understand! It’s not like he would leave without me!” he wouldn’t, would he?
Tyler could see that Dan was getting quite agitated now. He was sweating from running all over the place avoiding too many bodies around him, his hair was curling up and his face was flushed. He was knitting his eyebrows together and biting his lip, eyes darting around in search of a familiar black head.
“Calm down!” he said, putting his hands in front of him in a placating gesture “Let’s get help from the others and let’s look for him together! This party isn’t really that big, we’ll find him! He’s probably in some smaller room talking with someone!”
They were already attracting enough attention as it was, as an alarmed, over reacting 6 feet 3’’ Dan isn’t something you can easily hide from a crowd.
“Oh my god, dear, what’s going on?” asked a familiar voice from behind him. Louise and Joey had come to them to check on them.
“Where is Phil?” Asked the clever blonde, already catching up on what was wrong.
“I don’t know, it’s like he has fucking disappeared!” Dan complained with a panicked voice.
But then Joey, looking across the room with wide eyes, put one hand on Dan’s shoulder, and pointed toward what he was staring at.
Dan, Tyler and Louise looked at what Joey was pointing at the same time, and all three of them froze. Louise gasped.
There was Phil, sitting on a bench on the terrace right across from them, leaning towards a guy no one of them had ever seen before.
The guy was hugging him, his hand on Phil’s lower back.
They were kissing.
And that’s when Dan lost it.
Tyler and Louise had a few seconds to realize what was happening before they saw Dan power-walking toward the terrace, his face closed off in a blank expression of what Louise could recognize as pure fury and all they could do was watch the shit-storm unfurl in front of their eyes, too late to stop it.
Phil didn’t know what he was doing.
But whatever it was, it had worked. His brain was completely, utterly empty, he felt warm, at peace, kind of floating in a pink cloud.
If only that small voice in the back of his mind would shut up. A small voice telling him that something was completely wrong, a constant, drilling alarm going off inside his skull, trying to bring him back to his senses.
He thought he had heard someone screaming. Someone quite familiar. A dear voice that dragged him out of the black vortex of nothingness that had engulfed him.
He clutched at his head, trying to make the world stop raging behind his eyelids.
He opened his eyes, but the world was blurry. Then he saw someone in front of him, his eyes almost black in their fury, staring straight at him.
Dan? What was Dan doing here? He tried to talk, doing his best to answer the angry remarks Dan was throwing at someone close by.
It was all right. It was nobody’s fault but Phil’s. He didn’t want Dan to get angry. Dan hated to fight with people.
Phil didn’t want to create any problems for him.
So he tried harder, forcing coherent words to come out of his mouth… but all he could feel coming was a surge of blinding nausea.
He tried to brace himself, to stop it, but to no avail.
“I’m sorry….I’m so..r…ry!” he managed to say, his voice cracking.
He felt his stomach churn and his throat burn, and then pain and oblivion.
Great was his last thought Dan is going to hate me now…
“WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?” Dan practically yelled at the guy-that-was-kissing-HIS-Phil.
Phil Lester.
AmazingPhil.
Phil of the BBC radio 1.
Phil of Dan and Phil.
HIS Phil.
HIS.
He was acting like an idiot. WHAT the fuck was he doing?! He was screaming in a crowd full of People. Vlogging people, important people, famous people.
But hell, he was not stopping.
He came to stand in front of them, feeling the eyes of everyone pointed at him.
He grabbed Phil’s arm, wrenching him from the-unknown-guy and pulling him to his feet.
“Phil!” he growled “WHAT ARE YOU DOING? I WAS LOOKING EVERYWHERE FOR YOU AND YOU WERE HERE SNOGGING SOME RANDOM GUY?!” he spat at him through clenched teeth.
He really didn’t know what he was saying at this point. He had been worried, ok? And he didn’t deal well with jealousy. He really didn’t.
He knew he was behaving like an ass.
He could faintly hear in the background Tyler, Louise and Joey’s asking people to stop filming, to leave them alone, and one small disconnected part of his brain registered the fact that the music had stopped. Wonderful.
He was being a drama-lama and he had the whole room's undivided attention. That was truly good publicity.
Even more wonderful was the fact that he didn’t give a damn.
He was focused on the tall man standing shaking in front of him, his head lowered, a hand clutching his black hair.
“Phil! Look at me!” he said, slightly shaking him.
“Hey, let him go, he’s not feeling well!” the random-guy said form behind Phil.
Dan glared at him.
“YOU LEAVE HIM ALONE! Who the fuck even are you? What did you do to him?”
Why was he going off on this guy? He looked utterly terrified of him, and honestly concerned for Phil, which was being silent in a way that should ring many alarm bells in Dan’s brain, but he was too focused on being an ass to notice. He knew it, He knew, and yet…
“Dan…stop..it’s not his fault…it’s not…” and then everything went to hell.
Phil lounged forward, his hands on his mouth, a gagging sound escaping him.
Dan had two seconds to think “oh crap, he’s going to be sick” before Phil did just that. On his 1000+ pounds spiky shoes.
Oh well. They were uncomfortable anyway.
“I’m sorry….I’m so..r…ry!” Phil kept saying, desperate, the ever polite block...
Before fainting right in front of Dan.
“oh, fuck it!” he snapped, catching him just in time, and depositing him on a clean patch of floor.
The next few minutes were a blur. Many of their friends came to help, someone, Alfie, he thinks, helped him carry Phil on a couch in one of the smaller, quieter room, while Joe and Caspar shoed everyone from it.
Paramedics came, saying that Phil was all right, no need for hospital. They just gave Dan some medicines, told him to make Phil drink a lot of water and rest.
Luoise and Alfie accompanied him all the way to his flat, knowing that hurling an unconscious 6 feet 2’’ Phil up all those stairs was not going to be an easy fit.
“Are you going to be alright on your own?” asked a worried Louise once they were at their flat, Phil safely tucked in bed.
“Yeah, don’t worry” he told her with a small smile “you’ve done more than enough already, I don’t know what I would have done without all of you” he told both of his friends.
“That’s quite all right mate!” Alfie said. “It’s the least we could do!”
“Take good care of him!” Louise told him before stepping out of their front door “And don’t worry about the party. I’m pretty sure Tyler will not anyone leave before making them swear to not release any footage of what happened tonight. You know he can be quite convincing!”
“I’ll have to thank every one later, you’ve all been a great help!”
They gave him a comforting hug and left, Louise saying one last “it’s going to be alright!” before closing the door.
Then he was finally alone.
He sighed and flopped on the first step of the stairs, hiding his face in his hands.
He felt like he had been hit by a truck and then run over by a heard of rabid cyclists.
A look at his shoes reminded him he needed to change.
He stood up and started his long trek up the two flight of stairs he need to escalate before getting into his room, shedding clothes has he went.
As he got to his room door, wearing nothing but his jeans and shoes and looked to the right at Phil’s door. It was ajar, opened enough to reveal the sleeping form of his friend buried under his checkered blue and green duvet.
He sighed again.
He took of his shoes without throwing them a second glance, and took of his jeans and went to the bathroom for a quick, scolding hot shower.
As soon as he was done with that he put on an old t-shirt and some sweat pants, took a glass of water and went to put it by Phil’s bedside table.
Thank goodness the paramedics had taken out Phil’s eye contacts. He knew how uncomfortable sleeping with them on could be for him.
He sat on the bed, looking down at his sleeping friend.
What on earth had happened to him? He knew how Phil was usually like at parties. He never drank more then a beer, or one or two of his girly, fruity cocktails.
But tonight he had gotten completely wasted. And he had snogged a complete stranger right in front of everyone.
The memory of that made his blood boil again. It was irrational and selfish of him, to reduce what had happened to Phil to himself and his comfort, but he couldn’t help it.
Not when he was alone in the eerie silence of their flat, staring at Phil’s pale face at three in the morning.
What was he going to tell him when he woke up? Was Phil even going to remember any of it? Should he fake it like nothing had happened? Wasn’t that what had brought this fort in the first place? If he hadn’t written off Phil’s strange behavior like it was nothing serious they might have not found themselves in this situation to begin with.
He was so tired. SO tired. Of everything.
He fell on the bed, turning to face the other man. The room was cold. He tucked himself under the duvet and snuggled the covers close to his face. They smelled like a mixed aroma of scented candles.
He closed his eyes.
And sweet darkness engulfed him.
Ten p.m. found Phil stirring awake, feeling like he was under a pile of slime. Everything hurt and his eyes seemed to be sawn shut.
Where was he?
He finally managed to open his eye to see the familiar blurry colors of his room.
He didn’t remembered getting there.
He stretched his hand to get his glasses, and almost knocked down what looked like a glass of water.
What the heck? He sit up and found the damn glasses, putting them on.
He realized that his throat was actually on fire, and his mouth tasted of sand.
He took large gulps out of the glass, grateful.
But who put it there? And what happened? He felt a sense of dread, like he should remember something awful, but his mind was fuzzy and empty.
Then he felt something stir his covers.
His eyes shot opened wide, and panicking, he turned to see who was in bed with him.
A tuff of curly brown hair was sticking out from the duvet.
“Dan…?” he whispered.
The other man stirred again, revealing his face, but not waking up.
What the actual hell?
He looked down at himself to see that he was still wearing the same clothes he had put on the day before to go to the…party.
THE party.
The one where he had got all depressed, then drunk.
The one where he had decided that snogging a complete stranger he could barely remember was a good idea.
The one where he vomited on Dan’s expensive shoes in front of everyone.
He suddenly felt extremely ill again.
He shot out of bed and run to the bathroom, splashing water on his face.
His head hurt like hell.
What was he going to do? What if Dan wanted him to move out? He had messed up. He had messed up bad.
There was only one thing he could do. He needed to know exactly what happened the night before.
He silently walked back in the room and fished his phone.
Once he was fairly out of earshot, he phoned Louise.
She picked up right away.
“Oh my god, Phil, is it you? How are you? Are you all right? What about Dan?”
“Dan…is sleeping” he said, overwhelmed by all the questions.
“Luoise, I need to know…how bad have I messed up yesterday…? I… I haven’t talked with Dan yet…I’m too scared to do it…” he finished, his voice going so quiet he was afraid Louise hadn’t heard him.
“Oh, dear, no!”Louise told him “No, you don’t have to worry about that! You were sick and you can be assured that Tyler made sure that no one filmed anything! You don’t have to feel guilty about what happened…”
“But…but Dan was furious…I…I don’t know what came over me…I don’t even remember the guy, I had had too much to drink and…and…what if Dan is too angry with me now?! Louise what have I done…?”
He went silent after that, pulling his hand on his mouth, tears blurring his vision, and a new wave of pain erupted in his head.
“Phil, no! No, Dan was just upset, you know he loves you! He would never stay angry at you! You just have to talk it out! It will be all right! …Are you crying? Oh my god, love, no…”
She was just panicking now, going into full mother hen mode as soon as she heard the first broken sobs on the other end of the line.
“Phil? Love? Please say something!!!”
One hand from behind took the phone out of Phil’s shaky hand.
“Louise? It’s me, Dan” Dan said, with a calm tone “It’s all right, I’ve got this”
“Yeah, yeah, I will, don’t worry" He continued, answering whatever question Louise had asked. "We’ll call you later. Thank for Yesterday, bye!”
Phil heard Dan hung up.
His sobs had turned into actual desperate crying, his face was buried in his hands, and he didn’t have the courage to turn and see the disappointment in Dan’s eyes.
“Phil…”
Dan woke up to find an empty bed. It was still warm though, so Phil must have just woken up.
He hurriedly got out of bed and dizzily stumbled in the hallway. He needed to talk to Phil. He needed to know that he was all right.
Then he heard his flat mate voice coming from down stairs.
He sounded alarmed and on the verge of crying.
“-Dan was furious…I…I don’t know what came over me…I don’t even remember the guy, I had had too much to drink and…and…what if Dan is too angry with me now?! Louise what have I done…?”
Needles pierced his heart at the tone of despair in Phil’s voice. Every last trace of hanger that might have still been there disappeared. He just wanted to hug him. Hug him and cuddle in bed all day long, getting out only to make hot chocolate and pancakes.
They used to do that all the time back then, when everything was simpler.
When they didn’t have millions of eyes pointed at their every move.
He went in the lounge, finding Phil shaking by the window, his phone call still going, if Louise’s panicked voice was anything to go by, and his other hand placed on his mouth, trying to keep his sobs in.
Dan took the phone, reassuring Louise that everything was all right, that they were all right.
We will be all right he thought I’m going to make sure of it if it’s the last thing I do.
He hunged up and he threw the phone on the armchair by the TV, placing his arms around his shaking friend, that was now crying his heart out.
They stayed like that for a long time, rocking back and forward, without saying anything, until Phil stopped crying and he finally turned to look at Dan, his blue eyes red and blotchy.
Dan stretched his hand and pulled his friend’s black fringe out of his eyes.
He didn’t pull his hand away after that, letting it rest on his wet cheeks.
Their subscribers often described Phil as perfect, angelic, out of this earth. With his blue eyes, diaphanous skin, perfectly straightened black hair.
But to Dan, Phil had never looked better than now, with bags under his swollen eyes, tear tracks, snot coming down his nose, and the morning rays catching on his blond eyelids.
There was something so real about him, something so human, and imperfectly adorable.
Dan ha spent all those years carefully building up walls between them, setting clear boundaries to make order in the blurry mess that was their relationship.
Casual friends that have just met don’t spend hours talking on Skype until 3 a.m.
Simple friends don’t get lost in each other eyes.
Those boundaries were there to remind to them, and even more importantly to Dan, that they were now proper adults, and that they should behave as such.
What he felt for Phil was not a simple thing, like what he could feel towards a girlfriend.
That “oh my god, she’s everything, I want to kiss her and make love to her so bad” kind of feeling.
Phil was not that.
For Dan, Phil…Phil was home.
He was the one person he thought about when something good happened, and the one he wanted to go to when he needed to complain, or he wanted comfort.
He was the person that knew him best, and that he knew best.
He was the person that could do anything to him, even when nobody else could.
He was the reason why he could see a silver lining in all the crap he had to go through: because all of that, his horrible school experience, his university flop, all of his awkward moments and terrible randomness had brought him to met Phil.
His awkward, socially inept best friend Phil.
“You spork” he finally said, leaning his brow against Phil’s, a smile spreading on his face.
“Dan…I…I-I’m sorry, I…”
“Ssssshh… don't you plunge into iper-apologizing mode again”
“But---”
“NO”
“You---you’re not angry…?”
“Oh, I was furious. I was worried, I was angry, and I was Jealous” Dan admitted.
“But that doesn’t matter anymore”
Blue, wide eyes were looking at him, unbelieving.
“I don’t care about what happened”
“But--”
“Ssssh. Let me finish. I do care about what you did, I just don’t want you to do it ever again”
Dan paused to looked at him, an apologetic little smile playing on his lips.
“I’m not that kind Phil, and I’m quite selfish. I don’t want to let you go. So don’t ever do that again. Don’t you go leaving me for somebody else! You’re MY Phil” he concluded.
“But I thought…you were the one that wanted to leave me…”
Dan scrunched his nose at that.
“Oh, come on...look at you…How could I ever leave you alone? You’re too much of a mess”
Phil’s lip twitched as he felt a huge weight finally disappearing from his chest. “Not as much as your shoes” he said with a small, cracked voice “Sorry about that” he added, fully smiling now.
“Oh well” Dan said, his smile spreading wider, like a moon reflecting light from the sun “let’s be real…they were a pain anyway. Having a pair of shoes made of spikes isn’t as cool as they make it out to be… you can’t even scratch your legs with your foot without digging half or your leg out”
Phil finally laughed at that, a full, happy laugh that lit up his whole face, and Dan’s as well.
“Oh my god, we’re both a mess!” he said between giggles.
“I look like the victim of alien experimentation, and you look like a traumatized hobbit!!!” he spat, Laughing into Dan's shoulder.
“Hey! Don’t curl-shame me! I was busy taking care of your sorry ass you cheeky little vomiting shit! Sorry if straightening my hair was not on top of my list of priorities!!! This guy!” He said affronted, pointing at the giggling mess of a friend he got himself stuck with.
“Can you believe this guy!?” he continued.
“Dan, there’s no camera on! WHO are you even talking with”
“I’M TALKING TO GOD!” he remarked, angrily.
They stopped to look at each other after that.
“Are you implying that the whole world is just God's personal My sims game? Are we even real?!" Phil asked, his eyes going incredibly wide.
Dan stopped breathing for a second, his eye looking at empty space, and then he flinched, in a perfect cringe attack seizure “Oh, god Phil, way to go to give me first class existential crisis material!! ABORT! ABORT!”
The morning turned into afternoon, and their lunch was made of pints of hot chocolate, mountains of pancakes, berries, cream and cookies.
Their kitchen was a mess, all of the cupboards fully opened, the counter covered in flour and many other different slimy substances Dan didn’t want to investigate.
When evening came, it found them curled up on Phil’s bed, watching some really stupid tv show, empty wrappers all around them, laughing their hearts out.
Dan was with his back against the basket-like headboard, with Phil head resting on his tights, a bowl of popcorn in his hands.
“Dan…” he asked looking up.
“What are we?”
Dan looked down to him, and then he looked back up, his eyes surveying all the knick-knacks that littered Phil’s room, the toys, the posters, the books.
When he was small and he would try to imagine his future house, images of those perfect furniture catalogues would pop up in his mind. Like one of those doll houses that looked like no one had ever live in.
That was the dream. Or it was supposed to be.
But how can you leave in a house that doesn’t have pieces of your soul in it? How can you feel like it belongs to you? Or that you belong in it?
This place belonged to them. And they belonged to each others.
They were each other’s home.
Friends, soul mates, lovers, that didn’t matter. Those were just words, they were just labels.
And maybe, one day, the & between Dan and Phil will disappear. Maybe the world as they know it will stop turning, and the earth will go upside down, and for some unfathomable reason they will go their separate way, to never see each other again.
Maybe one day they will die, and who knew what was going to happen after that.
But for now, for that moment, and all the moments recorded in their youtube videos, in the pages of their books, in the hearts of those who loved them, they were Dan & Phil.
Like in the tatinof trailer, that’s how they were going to be always remembered, and that kind of legacy was forever.
“We’re US, you and me…” he said, carding his fingers trough the black fringe.
That seemed to be enough for Phil.
US was more than enough.
“I like US” Phil smirked, his smile as lopsided as his glasses.
When night came, it found them asleep, brows tucked together.
In that moment, all those boundaries that prejudice, the hypocrisy and rules society had forced on them had disappeared.
All that was left were two grown-ass men, asleep like little children, surrounded in discarded sweets, candies, and video games strewed across the bed.
Two grown ass men that together made more than half a century, two responsible adults that should do what the world asked of them.
But, after all, if the whole story of the world is nothing but a few centimeters on the long timeline of the universe, those fifty five years counted as nothing more that an instant.
And as far they were concerned, they would make sure that it was a happy one.