Work Text:
It was a cold night, a really cold one.
The fire was burning bright in the fireplace, and the lights were dimmed, almost every light in the apartment was turned off, and the lights of the city of London where making their way through the big windows in the lounge.
Dan and Phil were exhausted, they were having the worst time of their lives.
In one hand, Dan was struggling every day more and more with his mental health, therapy wasn’t working like it did before, meds were useless and he didn’t know what to do anymore. He literally had like a million things that still needed to be solved in his life, for example his youtube channel, which wasn’t something that inspired him anymore like it did years ago.
He felt like he was losing everything, he felt his own world falling apart in front of his eyes, and every day that passed was harder to find a reason to wake up.
In the other hand, Phil was realising that what one day was his dream job, what one day was everything he has had was disappearing as the days went through. His youtube channel was in trouble like Dan’s was, but the thing here was that Phil wasn’t running out of ideas of videos he could make or that he was going through a lack of inspiration phase, the real thing here was that he was losing the subscribers he gained through the years, he was losing the people that made him what he was today and everything that made him happy.
Both of them were feeling miserable this days, both of them were falling apart.
The worst part about all of this, was that as their own little worlds were falling apart, the little world they were sharing was also falling apart.
Fights were the only thing that could be heard through their walls every day for the last two weeks. They were hurting each other with every single word they said and with every single silence that took over their heads.
Sometimes there were small fights because of stupid and irrelevant things, some other times they were horrible fights, were both of them said horrible things to each other without even meaning to or thinking about it too much before speaking.
Words did hurt, sometimes more than if someone punched you in the face a hundred times.
Dan’s mind was full of horrible thoughts that night, things he never really gotten deep into thinking. His mind travelled through a lot of horrendous places, imagining situations and scenarios were everything was worse than it was at that moment.
Phil’s mind was blank. Literally blank. He had no idea at all of what the hell was happening with his life at that moment, he didn’t know why breathing felt so heavy and wrong around Dan, and at some point he began wondering if things were really going to end this way with them.
What once was Dan and Phil, was shredded into a million pieces, they were not functioning anymore like they used to.
Their life changed in a million different ways.
Since their last tour in 2018, they didn’t feel as good and full of energy and happiness as they did years before. The ending of the tour changed a lot of things, because at that point they knew things were beginning to fall apart, slowly, but still falling. Their audience was going down every day, their influence in the world of youtube was like a thousand times less than back in their golden years. They went from being the kings of youtube, to just another pair of youtubers that didn’t influence anyone’s life. And they knew it. So, their 2018 world tour, was the last time they were ever going to do one in their lives.
Phil stood up from the couch, and walked straight to the fireplace because he was freezing, and he couldn’t ask for a hug from the person who once was his everything to keep him warm.
He stared at the fire, burning the branches of some tree that was cut down to keep them warm. He imagined that those branches were him and Dan, and that the fire was life itself, tearing them down and destroying everything they had achieved through this 10 years together.
The fire also reminded him of his and Dan’s first hug, and their first kiss, and their first time going even further than hugging and kissing. All of those things felt like fire inside him, burning his bones, muscles and organs down. All of those memories he had with Dan that were secured in his mind until the day he died, they were burning inside of him making him feel sick.
Dan was still sitting on the couch, and he looked at Phil walking all the way to the fireplace. He couldn’t take his eyes off him, he couldn't make himself look at any other place than Phil’s body.
There was Phil, Dan thought, the person who saved him 10 years ago. He still looked as amazing and gorgeous as the first time they met at the train station back in 2009, it looked like he never aged, like he was still the same. But he wasn’t.
That obviously didn’t mean he thought Phil changed for bad now, he was just saying that he changed, so as he did.
Memories flooded through his brain. Their first coffee together, their first morning together, their first night together, their first apartment together. They were so young, really young. Dan remembered how happy they were when they first opened the door to their first apartment back in Manchester, how happy they were even though they didn’t have anything else than a little mattress where they had to sleep tangled with each other. But they didn’t care, cause they were together, they were building a life together, and that was their beginning. But who knew they were going to end up here, not talking to each other because if they did they would end up hurting each other more and more with every single word that escaped from their mouths.
After another fifteen minutes of complete silence, neither of them saying anything at all, Dan took his phone and opened spotify. The next thing that filled the heavy air and the horrendous silence between them was a song. It was Iris by The Goo Goo Dolls.
Phil turned around to search with his eyes where was that song coming from, and when he realised it became from Dan’s phone, he smiled. He did because Dan was smiling at him too, a genuine smile he hadn’t seen in Dan’s face in a long time.
They were still silent while the lyrics inundated their ears.
They stared at each other, silently, while Phil got closer to Dan on the couch. He sat next to him, and then Dan leaned his head into Phil’s shoulder.
The lyrics hit Phil in the guts:
And I'd give up forever to touch you
'Cause I know that you feel me somehow
You're the closest to heaven that I'll ever be
And I don't want to go home right now
And all I can taste is this moment
And all I can breathe is your life
And sooner or later it's over I just don't wanna miss you tonight
And I don't want the world to see me '
Cause I don't think that they'd understand
When everything's meant to be broken
I just want you to know who I am
And you can't fight the tears that ain't coming
O r the moment of truth in your lies
When everything feels like the movies
Yeah you bleed just to know you're alive
And I don't want the world to see me
'Cause I don't think that they'd understand
When everything's meant to be broken
I just want you to know who I am
And I don't want the world to see me
'Cause I don't think that they'd understand
When everything's meant to be broken
I just want you to know who I am
And I don't want the world to see me '
Cause I don't think that they'd understand
When everything's meant to be broken
I just want you to know who I am
I just want you to know who I am
I just want you to know who I am
I just want you to know who I am
Phil felt tears rolling down his face, and when he looked at Dan, he saw that he was in the same situation as him.
At that moment, they just stared at each other, with tears rolling down their faces, with lost but at the same time widened eyes, a feeling that was making them realise something.
It was the end, wasn’t it?
It was their end, it was a final point in this journey they’d had together, the last shared breathe and tears, the last closest moment they were having together.
Dan leaned in and kissed Phil, slowly and being careful, and it seemed like he was a bit scared of kissing him, after the last two weeks were neither of them was able to be in the same room without arguing.
They kissed for a long 10 minutes, but for both of them felt it just like 10 seconds.
Was this really the end? After everything they’d been through?
Probably, but neither of them could let themselves lose the other, not when they grew together as persons, when they had been there one time after another for the other, even at their worst times and in their worst nightmares.
This wasn’t the end, because neither of them was going to let that happen.
So Dan stood up, and helped Phil to stand up lacing their fingers together.
They looked at each other again, but this time there weren’t tears in their eyes, this time both of them had hope in them.
They smiled at each other, and they hugged.
Yes, they just hugged, because that was what they needed the most in a time just as horrible as this one. They needed each other more than ever before.
–This had been the hardest weeks of my life Phil, and I know they were the hardest for you too. –Dan said looking at the floor and holding Phil’s hands. –We hurt each other in ways we never thought we would ever be able to, and I thought it was the end.
–I thought the same Dan, were you considering not giving us another… millionth chance? –Phil giggled and Dan did too, but it hurt thinking about how many chances they’d given to their relationship. But the thing was that they never experienced a situation like the one they had lived for the last two weeks.
–I once promised you, that this thing we have here, was a forever for me, at least. And I don’t like breaking promises, dear. So I was going to wait till you said something, I was scared thinking of you telling me to grab my shit and just go wherever the fuck I could if it was as far from you as possible. –Dan sounded so hurt, so much as Phil was.
Both had been suffering, both had been fighting their own demons but without being there for each other.
–Dan... –Phil felt himself at the verge of tears again. –Don’t you ever think about something as stupid as that ever again. And this is a forever for me too.
Another hug.
This time, Phil was the one to start it.
And he then felt it. They both felt it.
It wasn’t the end, not at all.
It was the beginning of another big adventure together. In that moment, in that hug after that couple of words full of strong feelings they shared, they knew it was the beginning of their forever.
Because after this, after the hardest time of their lives, they were going to get out from that huge hole of darkness they had fallen together.
They were going to start this new part of their lives so much stronger than ever before.
The thing is that they had to make their relationship bleed, just to know that it was alive, more than it ever was.