Chapter Text
Phil heard the knock at the door just as he was putting his toothbrush back in its holder. He looked at himself in the mirror—the terror he was feeling was very much apparent on his face—and smoothed his hair and clothes. He looked exactly like a man who hadn’t slept in days and who had just woken up from a nap in a panic. Phil hoped his glasses at least covered the bags under his eyes.
There was another knock at the door and Phil couldn’t put it off any longer. This was it. Not at their management’s office, not at the IRL offices, not during business hours—nowhere that Phil had imagined them having their first real, hopefully calm, sit-down together since everything happened. No, it would be at Phil's own flat, where drool from his impromptu nap was still fresh on his pillow, at half one in the morning. Of course. Phil was surprised Dan had gotten there so quickly, it hadn’t even been 10 minutes since their last text; obviously they lived much closer to each other than Phil had realized. Strangely enough, he found that a comforting thought.
Phil opened the door to see Dan standing there, dressed in all black and looking just as pale and tired as Phil, which Phil also found strangely comforting. "Hey," Phil said.
“Hey.”
Phil stepped back and gestured Dan into his flat. Phil’s heart was beating so loudly, he worried Dan would hear it as he walked past. “Um—” Phil didn’t even know where to start. He was the one who had invited Dan over in the first place, but he didn't know why when he had done it, and he still didn't know why even with Dan right there in front of him.
Dan walked slowly around the room, running his fingers gently over the leaves of Phil's various plants as he passed them, as if checking they weren't plastic. He was looking everywhere but at Phil. “It’s a nice place,” Dan said, peering down the dark hall before heading for the kitchen, the only other room with lights on.
They sat at the small kitchen table, and Phil wondered why Dan hadn’t chosen to sit on the sofa in the lounge. Why choose to be more uncomfortable in an already uncomfortable situation?
“I, uh, have some pizza in the fridge. If you’re hungry,” Phil said. He just wanted to put off the inevitable for a little while longer, but as he said the words, he realized just how hungry he was.
Dan shook his head. “No, I’m good, thanks.” But Phil heard his stomach grumble as he said it.
Phil got up, “Well, I’m having some anyway, so.” He took the box out of the fridge and put the two largest pieces on a plate for Dan, and the remaining piece on a plate for himself. As he waited for the microwave to heat them up, he told Dan he’d barely eaten all day. “I kind of took an accidental nap all evening.”
“Accidental nap?” Dan chuckled, “I’ve been having a few of those, too.” He looked at the clock above the table—almost 1:30 a.m.—and a look of realization crossed his face. "Oh! I’m sorry, did I wake you with my text?”
“No, it’s okay! You might have saved me from starving to death in my sleep.” Phil put the plates on the table. Dan looked unconvinced, so Phil repeated, “It’s fine, really,” as he sat down across from him.
They chewed in silence for a few moments until Dan said, “I think your place is even smaller than mine."
“I don’t need much space,” Phil said with a shrug.
“No?”
Phil sat back in his chair and watched Dan finish off his pizza in a couple of bites. The edge in Dan’s voice, in the question, reminded him why they hadn’t spent any time together recently without someone else there—usually Martyn, or management—some third party to keep them both on their best behaviour, when it otherwise couldn’t come naturally.
When Dan’s plate was empty, he too sat back in his chair and eyed Phil. Silence filled the room.
“I don’t know what I’m allowed to say,” Phil finally said.
Dan bristled at that, but instead of responding, looked away and took a long breath in, and then slowly breathed it out. He turned back to Phil, his face impassive, and asked, “Are we killing the gaming channel?”
“The gaming channel?”
Dan rolled his eyes. “Yeah, that. We’re allowed to talk about that, aren’t we?”
Phil struggled to keep himself calm and seated—he wanted to leave, he wanted to get away from Dan’s tone, from the sarcasm. It had been a mistake asking him over.
“Do you want to kill the gaming channel?” Phil tried to keep his voice even. He thought there would be more pleasantries before they got into anything; in fact, he wished it could've all been pleasantries, even just for one night.
“Oh, so it’s up to me? So I get the blame?”
“I never said anything about blame, I asked what you wanted to do.”
Dan’s arms were crossed and a flush was making its way up the side of his face. “Well, I asked you first.”
Phil sighed. Might as well be honest. “I don’t know what I want to do. I think if we could avoid killing the gaming channel, that would be… better. But I don’t think…" He trailed off, not quite sure how to say it. "How would we film videos together?”
Dan relaxed a little, uncrossing his arms. “We could set up a space at IRL for it. There’s that extra office. Or Marianne was saying she had an idea—”
Phil interrupted him, “I don’t mean where, or the set. I mean us. How would we film together?” They had been alone for barely 20 minutes before the bickering started. They weren’t actors—their tension would be clear as day in a video, and who would want to watch that?
“We know how to make videos,” Dan said in a quiet voice.
Phil looked into Dan’s eyes, relieved that the anger seemed to have left them, at least for the moment. “We did," Phil agreed. "I don’t know if we still do.” Dan didn’t make any move to respond, so Phil continued, “Marianne suggested solo gaming. Like we’d take turns, maybe.”
“Yeah, she mentioned that to me, too,” Dan said, “But it’s DanAndPhilGames, they subscribed to see us both, didn’t they? I think if we were to do solo gaming, it should be on our own channels. Or side channels, maybe.”
Phil nodded. He hadn’t really liked the idea of solo gaming either. Dan was right that the appeal was watching the two of them together. The appeal for Phil himself had been gaming with Dan—if they ended the gaming channel, Phil knew that would be it for him, he wouldn't make any gaming videos by himself. What would be the point?
“Or a new gaming channel entirely?” Phil asked.
Dan laughed. “DanielHowellGames? That does not have a ring to it.” He shook his head. “Gaming’s kind of dying on YouTube, anyway.”
“There’s always Twitch.”
Dan nodded thoughtfully, “Maybe.” He looked back up at Phil. “Did we decide?”
Phil thought for a bit. “I don’t know. I guess we could try filming something, see how it goes.”
“You think we’d fight?”
“I think… we might not be fun to watch.” Phil remembered the last video they filmed, all the way back in November. Some silly game—Eggs For Bart? something like that, some game that had been a maybe for Spooky Week but hadn't made the cut in October—that neither of them enjoyed or understood. They’d played a lot of terrible games over the years, but they could always still find some humour in it, or in each other, to make a decent video. Phil still had the footage; it was 20 minutes of silent annoyance, Dan glowering and Phil stone-faced, watching Dan fail again and again at an unwinnable game until Dan gets up, says fuck this, and leaves the room. There was nothing fun about it, nothing fun about them. It was unfortunately a perfect snapshot of how they had been feeling since tour ended, and it turned out to be the straw that broke the camel's back. A few days after that, Phil had gone to stay with his parents. And a few months after that, Dan moved out. The video was unusable.
“But we could try?” Dan asked.
Phil hesitated before he answered, unsure for a second if Dan was still talking about filming.
“Yeah, we could try.”