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Phil sits up, clutching his head. He moans, groaning as he tries to stand up. He falls back to the bed, his head hitting the pillow. Looking at his clothes, Phil jumps. He doesn’t own pajamas like those.
“Oh, my head…” He whispers, his vision swimming in and out of focus.
“Shhh. It’s okay, I’m here,” a new voice calls softly. Phil looks up and sees a figure bearing down on him. Knowing that he should be worried, Phil just closes his eyes and allows sleep to claim him.
Phil’s eyes open again. This time, his head hurts less. He looks up, and upon seeing a man sitting in a chair, calls out.
“Where am I?”
The man in the chair looks up, grinning. “Good! I was starting to think you wouldn’t wake up.”
He reaches out his hand, a glass and some pills clutched in it. Phil accepts this, sighing as the cool water hits his throat.
“Why does my head hurt so much? It feels as if some dwarfs are going to town in there.”
“Good thing I’m here then,” the other man said, refilling the now empty glass and passing it over.
“Sorry,” Phil said, sipping his water, “but where is here?”
“Oh.” The other man looks down, slightly crestfallen. “I had hoped that you might recall. I’m Dan. You came to a party here last night and I think you may have had too much to drink.”
The words “you think?” crossed Phil's head, but before he could say just that, the pain in his head intensified.
“More… water…” he croaked, shaking his head. He really had had too much to drink.
A few hours pass, with Phil still laying in what he assumed to be Dan’s bed and Dan passing him more water and Advil. So much Advil.
“Sooo… it’s 12:45. I know you still aren’t feeling great and I have nowhere to be, but are you able to sit up?” Dan asks, his face a mask of worry.
“Yeah, I think.”
Phil sits up, shaking his head to clear his vision. For the first time, the room starts to come into some sort of focus. It was mostly black and white and there was a messy side table to his left. Socks and other clothes lay everywhere and the only other piece of furniture Phil can see is a black dresser.
Dan puts his arm around Phil’s shoulders to steady him as he slides a Haru body pillow to prop Phil up.
“Do you remember last night?” Dan asks, “Like at all?”
“No, sorry. Can you tell me what happened? And who are you? Where am I?”
Dan smiles and drags his chair over to the bed. He sits down and ruffles his hair.
“Where do I begin?”
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“I invited a small number of people over for a, well, I guess a party. And by me, I mean my ex did. We, uh, broke up last night.”
“Oof, I’m sorry.” Phil looks up at Dan, his eyes swimming with sympathy.
“It’s no big deal. But, well, more people began to show up. Lots of people. I don’t typically like people, so it wasn’t what I really considered fun. At some point, you showed up. You, at least, had gotten and original invite, so don’t feel bad.”
“Thanks, I was starting to worry.”
“No biggie,” Dan continued, “anyway, someone started to play music and someone else busted out the drinks. This was around 6:30, mind you. And th…”
“Wait,” Phil interrupted, suddenly going pink in the face, “You’re… Daniel Howell…?”
“Yeah.”
Shit. Shit shit shit. Phil’s brain was firing rapidly. He couldn’t curse, he didn’t do that, but he wanted to. How could he have gotten drunk, at Daniel Howell’s party? How could he not recognize Daniel Howell? He started to hyperventilate, and his eyes grew larger.
“Woah, woah, you good?” Dan asked, bending over Phil.
Yeah, great, Phil wanted to say, I just might have made an absolute fool out of myself at my crushes house, and… Wait. All his thoughts crashed. He was still at Dan’s house. In his pajamas. In his bed. It was his worst nightmare and his best dream all at once.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he squeaked out, his voice cracking in a way it hadn't since sixth grade, “Continue please.”
“So anyway,” Dan said, settling back into his chair, “you started to drink. And drink. And drink. Did I mention you started to drink? I have never seen anyone drink as much as you did in that first half hour. It was almost like you were trying, and failing, to work up the nerve to impress a… girl.”
Dan paused, as if he hoped Phil would stop and correct him. There was no response, except for a small moan of horror coming from Phil.
“So first, you stood up and staggered over to the kitchen. You got into a fight with one kid who was making sandwiches. He was using white bread. You promptly walked over, grabbed the bread, and started running around the house yelling, ‘It’s not white bread! They just want you to think that! You can’t use this! It’s whole grain!’ until you ran into a door frame and collapsed.”
Phil slammed his head into his hands hard enough to lead a bruise.
“Then you put me in here and nothing else happened, right?” Phil asked, false hope making him swell up.
“Not quite.”
“Nooooooo…”
“So after that, some people helped you up and gave you more to drink. I think that may have impacted what happened next.”
“Oh God, what?”
“I mean, you called your father to ask him if he was a virgin. Then you hung up, not getting an answer, mind you, and called the White House. You wanted to ask Donald Trump if the J in his name stood for Jasmine.”
Phil lays back in bed and covers his head with the pillow. “Please man, have you no mercy! Tell me no more!”
“Oh no,” replied Dan with an evil glint in his eye, “I’m starting to enjoy this.”
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“You were quite popular after your failed attempts on the phone and the whole bread dilemma. So everyone gathered around you and tried to get you to do… things.”
“What kind of things?”
“Well at one point someone convinced you to try and bite your own nose. You were rolling on the floor for a good chunk of time screaming, ‘It’s getting away it’s getting away!’. You seemed to sober up a bit after that, so I left you alone while I went to make sure people weren’t burning down my house.”
Phil looks up at Dan, worry etched across his face. Dan, mistaking it for pain, jumps up.
“Are you okay, can I get you anything? You don’t look too good.”
“Yeah, can I have some more ibuprofen, please?”
Dan rushes off leaving a shaken Phil behind. His heart is racing. He still can’t get over the fact that this is Daniel Howell, the Daniel Howell, and that he is in his bed. After a few seconds, Dan returns, his arms full of blankets and water, and he has a bottle of pills clutched in one hand.
As Dan throws a blanket across Phil and leans over to tuck it in, Phil feels his heart rate pick up, almost to the point where he thinks it may burst. Dan is so, so, so close.
“Well, now that I’m better, can you continue the story? Preferably with a ‘and Phil went to bed and woke up now?’”
“Not yet,” Dan replies, “I still need to tell you about the sledding.”
“But it’s Spring.”
“I know. You somehow found a saucer and tried to go sledding down the basement steps. Long story short, we have some dry walling to do and you have some fans who need medical attention.”
Phil feels himself sliding down under the covers. He begins to curl up, and although he would never admit it, he eagerly awaits for more stories. Out loud, he says, “Good lord, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay, you make up for it latter. I think you hit your head pretty hard after the sledding. I mean, you did put it through the wall. There was a lull in the rabid cheering for you to do crazy acts of madness and you went upstairs. After about an hour and a half, I became worried, so I went to check on you.”
Phil, despite his best efforts, feels his cheeks heat up. He’s blushing. “And you found me asleep…?”
“Nope! Apparently you spent that hour and a half trying to drown my goldfish. In water.”
“Is he alive?”
“I mean, you didn’t drown him if that’s what you mean. But at some point when I wasn't looking you got really lonely and tried to cuddle with him. That’s when he died.”
Phil’s face looked like the face of a man slapped by a friend's’ mother. “...I killed your goldfish?”
“Yeah. It’s okay though, he was pretty old.” Dan turns and looks at the clock, which reads 1:56. “Hey, do you want some food? It’s been a while since you’ve eaten.”
“Yes please, I’m starving. Do you have any pizza? For some reason, that’s all I want.”
Phil looks at Dan, who at the mention of pizza, doubled over laughing. He falls to the floor, his face turning red.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, we have pizza. And I’m fine, I was just recalling exactly how we got that pizza. I’ll tell you once you start eating.”
After a while, Dan comes back in to the bedroom with a plate full of warm pizza. At this point, Phil is feeling much better. His head aches less, and he doesn’t feel as dizzy. However, this means his embarrassment can only grow.
While Phil has his mouth full of pizza, Dan begins his new story.
“So this was latter in the evening, before you left the house. You became really distraught about something, I don’t know what. Anyway you were convinced that only pizza could solve your troubles, so you called Mario's Pizza. I thought everything was good, and we would just order some pies for the party, up until you started to rant. You went on what was shaping up to be a very long rant until you were stopped and received ten free pies.”
Phil choked on his pizza. Dan stopped to hit him on the back.
“Oh and you were ranting about Luigi not getting enough credit for his dedicated work and how everything is about Mario. You then progressed to yelling about underrated sidekicks and how you were going to sue the pizza chain for under representation of Luigi. After they gave you the free pizza, you told them they needed to give Luigi some sign time and hung up.”
At this point, Phil has given up on interrupting and is resigned to let Dan finish. He waves his hand in a roundabout manner that Dan takes to mean go on.
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“So after all the fun at my place, the party moved. Everyone took to the streets and ended up near main street at Louise's house. You didn’t want to go, you said something about not wanting to repress your creative designs with the crushing weight of college society, or something. You grabbed my hand and pulled me off to a side street.”
Phil blushes, his eyes opening wide. His heart is throbbing, and his mind is racing. I grabbed his hand? His hand? Oh my God, why?
“Phil? Everything okay?”
Phil just nods and repeats his go on motion.
“Well the first store on this street was a pet store. There was a cat sitting in the window and you seemed to fall in love instantly. Well, it was either the cat or the potted plant, it was hard to tell which. We went inside and you started petting the cat while saying, ‘Look how small this lion is!’”
Phil looks up, a pained expression on his face. “What did the store keep say? And I mean at least the cat was orange.”
“Well first off, he was a gray cat.”
Phil hangs his head.
“Also the store keep was PJ, I think you know him?”
Phil begins to cry silently.
“That’s not all though. Before I convinced you to leave the pet store, you did some other … things. You tried to teach bunnies that death is inevitable and that they will all die. You legitimately stood in front of them and lectured them the same way our teachers lecture us. I swear if I haven't managed to drag you out you would have whipped out a PowerPoint or some crap.”
“My God. What did PJ think?”
“I mean he got the whole thing on camera. I think it was the best thing he's seen in the store in a long time. Anyway you left the store screaming frantically for your ‘herd of precious bunny minions!’ and we continued down the road.”
“Okay, okay,” Phil interrupts, “I’ll admit that some of this is bringing up a kind of recollection, but dude, there is no way I could have been this drunk.”
“Oh you better believe it, baby.”
Dan freezes, a look of absolute terror on his face. He looks away from Phil, and in doing so, misses the look of longing and hope on his face.
What did I just say? Dan thinks desperately to himself.
After a moment's’ pause, Dan continues, “Well this series of unfortunate events is almost over. But the next little anecdote is my favorite. You walked, or staggered, up to a car and whispered, ‘Optimus Prime… I know your secret.’ I mean, the best part was that the car was in fact a yellow punch buggy.”
“My inner Transformer nerd has just died.”
Dan, doubled over with laughter, reaches out to grab Phil’s shoulder as if to stabilize himself, not even noticing the way Phil stiffens slightly beneath him.
“Next, we continued from the parking lot to the main road. On Main Street there’s a fresh produce stand. They have a large variety of fresh fruits and vegetables, including pineapples. Upon seeing them, your eyes seemed to fill with anger and you rushed over to the stand and began to smash open all of the pineapples while yelling, ‘Spongebob! I know you’re in there!’ We had to pay 235 pounds for all the pineapples you destroyed.”
Phil looks horror-struck, “Oh my gosh I’m so sorry, can I help to pay for that?”
Dan waves Phil’s words and finishes speaking, “It’s okay. I got you. And I thought you would want to know, we’re almost done.”
“Okay, thanks. Let’s finish this, shall we?”
“After our adventures down Main Street we finally made it to Louise's house. You know how she has a daughter, right?”
“Yeah, Pearl. She's eight, right?”
“Yup. As soon as we crossed the threshold, you saw her and yelled out your challenge. I think you may have thought she was someone else because you, and I quote, yelled this: ‘For sleeping with my sister I bring upon you this duel of terror! When I cut from you your arms and your legs, think of your errors and never sleep with my sister again!’”
Phil had no words to express his shock and discomfort.
“Was it a good fight?”
“No. Basically you challenged an eight-year old to a fight and got beat in seconds. She made you tap out and you cried for 50 minutes after.”
“Oh well, man. You win some, you lose some.”
“I mean personally, I have never lost a fight with an eight-year old,” Dan pointed out, an air of smugness around him.
“Shut up!” Phil replies jokingly.
“Well now, before I shut up completely, can I tell you the last thing you did during your drunk rampage?” Dan cheekily responded.
“I mean, it wasn’t really a rampage, but sure.”
“So you were still crying about your defeat when you went to the bathroom. I no longer trusted you so I followed you. When I entered, you were drunkenly trying to make friends with a very short, very angry girl. She told you to get away from her, so you looked her dead in the eyes and said, ‘You must be a South Pole Elf.’”
“Is that where this vaguely purse shaped bruise came from?”
“Yeah. Shortly after that you fell into a deep sleep and I had to carry you here.”
“Like Sleeping Beauty, eh?” Phil couldn’t conceal the pink flush beginning to tint his cheeks as he looked into Dan’s deep brown eyes.
Dan just smiled, his gaze dancing around the room, looking everywhere but Phil. “Exactly.” His cheeks burned a similar shade.
Phil finally makes eye contact with Dan, the unspoken question dancing in his eyes. Dan leans over him and Phi can see an unspoken answer is his eyes.
“If you’re Sleeping Beauty, does that make me Prince Charming?”
“I g-guess so…” Phil stammers even as Dan leans in, cutting him off with a kiss.
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