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Phil didn’t know what was wrong until Dan slammed his fist on the table.
He jumps, the warm liquid inside the cup he’s holding in his right hand splashes over the rim and it spills over his skin, and Phil swears quietly.
“This has to stop,” Dan says, his eyes still glued to the phone in his hand and a frown stapled to his forehead, “I don’t understand what’s so difficult? It’s my fucking name .”
“You know it’ll take time for people to adjust,” Phil answers as he reaches over the table after napkins. He presses one over the back of his hand and places his cup on another one. “Especially the media.”
“But why the fuck are people freaking out over it? Even the fans are being ridiculous about it and it’s not like I’ve gone and–” he throws his hands up in the air dramatically, almost flinging his phone across the room, “changed my entire channel and turned into someone-fucking-else.”
Phil shoots him a tired look. His hand is burning and it’s way too early for Dan’s high pitched voice. He didn’t even get to take a sip of the coffee before he spilt half of hit over himself.
Dan snorts. “Don’t look at me like that.”
Phil wants to ignore it, he really, really does.
“Like what?” he says anyway, because he’s tired and grumpy and he wants Dan to shut up.
“Like I’m being dramatic.”
“You are being dramatic.” Phil pushes his glasses back up on the bridge of his nose. “Just.. I don’t know, make a video about it? Go rant to someone that isn’t me.”
Dan is quiet for almost a minute, and as the seconds tick by, Phil starts to wonder if he made him angry. He realises, though, when Dan slides his chair back and looks at Phil like he had the brightest idea in the history of ideas, that Phil had said just the right thing. Even though it might’ve been a tad bit too bitchy, Dan hadn’t seemed to notice, and he disappeared from the kitchen with a concentrated look on his face.
Phil takes a sip of his coffee and relishes in that Dan will be working on a script for at least a few hours, leaving enough time for Phil to wake up and come back to life again.
When Dan emerges in the lounge a few hours later, Phil is sat with his laptop over his crossed legs and reading emails. He looks up as he can hear Dan approaching and he sends him a smile.
“How’s the video coming?” he asks before looking back down at his laptop again.
“Really great, actually.” Dan comes to a stop in front of the sofa where Phil is sat, and Phil cranes his neck to look back up at him when Dan doesn’t say anything else.
“What’s up?”
“I need your advice.”
Phil chuckles and scoots over, motioning for Dan to sit down next to him. Dan does, but he’s on edge and he’s got a weird sneer plasted over his lips, and Phil senses that something is up.
“On what?”
“Titles.”
“..okay?”
“I’ve come up with two, and I need your advice.”
Phil nods. “Shoot.”
“Okay,” Dan says and reaches behind him to reveal a piece of paper. Over the white surface are two long and uneven sentences doodled underneath danisnotonfire video: everyone that calls me danisnotonfire from now on will be shot on sight and danisnotonfire more like danhateseverysingleoneofyoufuckers.
Phil looks back up at Dan, and he can imagine how utterly done he must’ve looked on the way Dan presses his lips together.
“Oh come on, don’t look at me like that. It’s a joke.”
“Jesus christ Dan,” Phil shakes his head and Dan only chuckles in response, “you’re such a drama queen.”
“Hmm, I wonder who I got that from.”
Phil slaps him lightly over his bicep but he’s laughing too, and then he says, “Do you have any real title ideas, though?”
Dan shakes his head. “No, just needed some air. And also a kiss, maybe.”
Phil ignores the second part. “I’ve got an idea.”
Later, when Dan uploads the video he'd been working on for the entire day, he’s giggling as he writes the title out that Phil had suggested earlier. He had been right, Dan thought, as he watched the flow of tweets rolling in after posting, RIP ‘danisnotonfire’ was the perfect non-threatening but also kind of threatening title that all of them deserved.