Work Text:
Phil starts his day with the best of intentions, really. It’s a Monday, which the world seems to generally accept as the day to sort yourself out again and return to productivity. It’s also six days into the new year and according to their resolutions, Phil needs to get working on a video. When he tells Dan about his plans after a quick hour-long scroll through Twitter, Dan doesn’t seem to share his goals for the day. At least he thinks that’s the jist of what Dan grumbles into his pillow. But that doesn’t mean Phil can’t make a video today. Or at least draft an outline. That’s the plan, anyway.
What he winds up doing, after getting himself a coffee and a bowl of cereal, is taking a brief detour to Tumblr. But that’s fine because he’s just keeping himself occupied while he enjoys his coffee. Until his first cup of coffee turns into his third cup of coffee and a quick look at tumblr turns into four hours spent scrolling, with occasional interludes to follow some thread of interest piqued by a post. His most recent journey had started with a Buzzfeed quiz promising to tell him who his pop star alter ego would be. He initially justifies it as a potential video idea, but as he goes through the quiz there are enough answers he’d have to change in front of the camera that the idea sours for him.
He gets Taylor Swift, and he’s not sure if his energy is electrifying, but there are enough jokes on the internet about his angry DMs that perhaps the ‘as long as you’re not angry at them’ comment is justified. On a whim he takes it again, switching to viewer safe answers to see who his public facing pop persona would be. How he’d spend a Saturday night becomes ‘staying in and watching TV’ instead of ‘with your boyfriend/girlfriend,’ for obvious reasons, though both are equally true. Or functionally the same. ‘The best revenge is success!’ becomes ‘ignore the haters for role model reasons, and purple is swapped for blue as a signature color for stupid reasons, but he likes both so it’s fine.
He’d initially paused longest over the question ‘If a fan came up to you in a restaurant, how do you handle it?’ Even though he’s probably got more experience with this exact scenario than most people taking this quiz, he feels less equipped to answer it honestly. It depends on his mood, partially. Sometimes, he really wants to ‘just smile and nod’ or ask his non-existent bodyguard to handle it, sometimes. Old Phil of a few years and a few hundred thousand subscribers ago would have chosen, ‘talk to them and offer a photo’ without hesitation. That’s what video Phil would choose. Real Phil had chosen, ‘say hi but decline a photo, this is your time.’ Not because that’s what he does, but because it’s what he wishes he would do.
Despite changing half of his answers, he gets Taylor Swift again, and he isn’t sure what that says about him, or why he hasn’t closed this stupid tab yet. Maybe his online persona isn’t all that different from his true self, whatever that is. Maybe the slight fronts he puts on, like pretending purple isn’t his favorite color to avoid the inevitable idiotic jokes about his sexuality or grinning through an interaction when he’d rather be anywhere else, aren’t really all that radical a change. Maybe it says more about the shitty logic of the quiz and he shouldn’t be taking commentary on his personality from it.
He closes the tab and opens a word doc, types in ‘taking buzzfeed quizzes,’ stares at the words for two minutes, then deletes them. Then he stares at the blinking cursor for a few more minutes and retypes the words. It’s not like it’s the worst idea. People would probably watch it, and he could probably find some more interesting quizzes to take. Less loaded ones. Still, it’s the first video of the year and he kind of wants to do something more. More fun, more new years-y, just more. He deletes them again.
He can’t take staring down the barrel of an empty word doc anymore, so he switches back to tumblr. An almost idea deserves a break, right? Only a few posts down from the quiz, he finds a link to the music video for Disturbia. Honestly, Phil had kind of been hoping for Rihanna, though he knows he’s probably nothing like her, or how her personality would be boiled down for one of these quizzes, and it hadn’t even turned out to be an option for that particular quiz. He’s certainly glad he hadn’t gotten Kanye. Not that any of this matters.
Phil had spent at least an hour at one of the conventions last year– he can’t quite remember which now– in a room with a group of mildly confused straight British boys, watching Tyler Oakley explain the importance of pop queens in gay culture. Phil had stayed mostly silent, while Dan had chimed in a couple of times, voice shaking only a bit. In the end, Phil had been informed by Tyler that his pop queen would probably be Rihanna, based on a handful of old tweets and comments of his that Tyler either had memorized or surreptitiously gathered during his lecture. Phil hadn’t quite been able to tell if the distance Tyler placed between Phil and the topic was purposeful or not.
As Phil watches the music video, something switches in his brain. He only gets about a third of the way through before he’s pulled up the word doc again, plot for a horror short set to the song spilling out of him onto the page faster than he can type, the heavy beats nipping at his heels. He revels for a moment in the rush of getting swept up in sudden inspiration that has no patience for anything but forward, so distinct from the slog of pushing, of trying. Then he gets back to work.
The song stops without him realizing, and it’s not until he has to pause to look up if eyeballs can explode that he hears the silence. It feels sticky and stagnant where he needs fast and movement and more, so he opens up ListenOnRepeat, pastes in the url, and presses play. The ideas that had had pooled in his head while his brain was away fight for his attention when he clicks back to the word doc, and he’s instantly tugged back under.
“How’s the productivity going?” Phil jumps at the sudden sound of Dan’s voice, nearly knocking his laptop onto the floor. Dan just grins, not looking at all remorseful as he leans against Phil’s door frame, a mug cradled in his hands. He’s still in his pajamas, creased from what had seemed like a fitful night’s sleep, and Phil frowns at the bags under his eyes, then sticks out his tongue.
“Amazing, pun intended.” He glances at the clock to see he’d been working for almost an hour, and when he looks back up Dan’s the one who’s frowning.
“Really?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“I don’t know, you don’t normally listen to songs on repeat. At least not ones with lyrics. That’s my existential crisis thing. Were you working on a video?” Just like that, reality comes crashing back down and he’s reminded of the kinds of videos he makes. And the kind he doesn’t. At least not anymore. The last time he’d had a music video on his channel was, what, 2010? What would his viewers even do with a bizarre, horror-esque music video?
“Kinda. I got sucked into an idea I had out of nowhere. I was just playing it out.”
“Cool. What is it?” Dan cocks his head, glancing quickly at Phil’s laptop before looking back to Phil. Phil hears the question Dan’s not asking. He shrugs.
“It’s an old Phil idea. A sort of mini-horror story set to Disturbia. Like those music videos I used to make? I’m not gonna actually make it, though. Just having fun planning it out.” Normally this would be enough. Normally Dan would smile and nod and go back to his own room, or the office to burrow deep into a video game. Now, though, Dan frowns a bit more and comes farther into the room.
“Why not?”
“I just…” Phil pauses, trying to figure out how to put into words what it is they both know, but aren’t quite saying. “It’s not really my style anymore, is it? I’m like… a quirky but relatable nerd. Those videos were just, I don’t know, weird and cringe.”
“You think they’re cringe?”
“Sort of. I mean, you think your old videos are cringe, don’t you?”
“Well they are.”
“They’re not. But you see my point?”
“Not really. People miss your old videos. I’ve seen comments.”
“What are you doing in the comments of my videos?” Dan just rolls his eyes.
“I miss your old videos too, you know? I like your new videos obviously,” he’s quick to add, even though Phil’s not so sure that’s completely true. He knows Dan supports him, used to fangirl his ‘cringe’ videos, even thinks he’s brilliant in a way Phil’s never quite brought himself to believe. But he also know what Dan says about content like what Phil makes now when other people upload them. “I just like your weird brain I guess. Whether it’s making vlogs about your fake interactions with freaks that come up to you on the street–”
“Those are real! You were right there that time the man woofed in my ear!”
“Or creepy as fuck
“Maybe. I’ll think about it. It was just– I don’t know, I was having fun with it.”
“That’s good. They say you should, right?” Dan sounds so tired when he says this that Phil can’t help but shift forward, grab a hold of his wrist. Dan sits down on the edge of the bed with a sigh and a creak, and Phil keeps his grip.
“Yeah. Do you?”
“Sometimes. I… I want to. There’s nothing else I’d rather be doing. For work, I mean. It just feels… hard to have fun, sometimes.” Phil knows this, obviously. No one finds work fun all of the time. There are hard parts. It’s work. Creating takes effort. But he doesn’t think it’s ever been hard for him in the way it seems like it’s been hard for Dan lately. Maybe for a while. “People liked your music video for the BBC. The Nightmare Before Christmas one.” Phil recognizes the evasion tactics and plays along anyway.
“Yeah, but that one was normal. It was just me lip syncing while looking at baubles and eating mince pies.”
“Well it was a Christmas song, so that makes sense. Disturbia’s got some much heavier themes, I can’t imagine you could make a light and fluffy music video for it.” Dan pauses as the song starts another loop, the bum bum be-dums tricking Phil’s brain into a moment of silence as he waits. “It’s funny that you hear this and think of a plot to a horror movie.” Phil decides to ignore the fact that he had just said basically the opposite.
“What do you think about?” Dan stares at the wall for a while, fingers fiddling with his now empty mug. Phil kind of wants to take it from him, afraid he’ll spill the dregs on Phil’s duvet, but he knows better to interrupt him when he’s working up to saying something.
“I don’t know. I guess it just kinda sounds like what it’s like to be in my brain sometimes.”
“Oh,” Phil says softly, reaching out to stop the music without thinking. He’s instantly torn between wanting to comfort Dan and wanting to pick his laptop back up, fingers itching with the new ideas this gives him. He hates himself a bit for that reaction, but before he can figure out how to go about responding instead, Dan’s stood up and started towards the door.
“I’m going to go back to my cave. Let me know if you want to run any ideas by me, once you get them more fleshed out.” Phil doesn’t stop him. Maybe he’ll bring it up later, see how Dan is feeling after a day or two more of relaxation and videos games. He probably won’t, even though he knows relaxation and video games might not be what Dan needs right now. He gets plenty of those. Phil just doesn’t know what it is he does need, or how to give it to him.
Phil’s left alone again, the quiet of his room sounding louder, more disconcerting. He listens instead to the shuffling of Dan’s feet down the hallway, the clinking of Dan setting his empty mug in the sink, of the tap turning on, the fridge opening, Dan making himself a glass of Ribena. Some of his favorite sounds.
The offer to look over Phil’s ideas is always on the table, a given at this point, but the fact that he offered for this means something. Phil’s not entirely sure what it means, but it feels like an affirmation of who he is, that elusive he that changes and grows and cycles back again, but is always someone that Dan wants to know. At least he hopes so. That’s how he feels about Dan. Phil’s always eager to hear his thoughts, whether they’re angry rants about politics, impassioned rants about some pop culture event Phil’s only marginally aware of, or monotone rants about the meaninglessness of existence. Phil wants to hear them all, even when the rest of the world doesn’t.
He’d left off in the middle of a sentence, so he has to go back and read a few lines to get going again, though he doesn’t put any music back on. It feels a little bit more like work again, but he wants to get this out, so he keeps going. A new idea hits him and he has to go back to change a few things, shivering at the thought of this being translated to video as it finally comes together, how creepy it would be. Even though it isn’t going anywhere. He lets himself enjoy the what if.
Maybe he’s feeling nostalgic and resistant to change. What else is new? Maybe he still hasn’t adjusted to the fact that his parents are selling his childhood home and he had to watch potential buyers traipse through the house during the holidays, scrutinizing worth in features he can only see as important memories. He’d scrubbed the spot of red corn syrup in a somewhat inconspicuous corner of the lounge from one of his many early horror films that his mum had finally insisted he clean. He’d slept in the room where he’d filmed his first video for probably the last time. How many videos had he filmed there? How different are they from the videos he makes now? Most people would probably call them worse, and in a lot of ways they are, but he can’t help but prefer them sometimes.
He presses save one more time, then closes the draft.