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Today he did things he does all days. Being quiet, staying out of trouble, doing his work, avoiding the assholes. Which has been essentially everyone in his life, lately.
It feels rather lonely, when all the people in your vicinity are bad, and you don’t associate with bad people.
Dan drops his bag by his bed the second he gets into his room and locks the door. Sinking down on one end of the hard mattress, he drops his pounding head into his sweaty palms, trying to rub the pain and loneliness away.
He can still hear his mom scrambling around in the kitchen. The sound feels intruding, and the metallic clangs echo within his heart. As usual she didn’t even stop to say hi as he went in the door, and he didn’t stop either when she didn’t. He wonders if she ever wants to pull him in a hug, if she even cares enough about him anymore to think about doing it.
A single warm tear drips from Dan’s clammy cheek onto his fingertips, as it has too often lately, and sails through the air onto the grubby floorboards when he doesn’t make an effort to wipe it off. Though it tears him away from his destructive thoughts.
No, he can’t sit here anymore, wallowing in his own self pity. He has to make this day be at least a little different than all other days.
Still Dan pulls his laptop from his desk onto his lap, as he curls up on his bed as usual. The tight jeans stretch uncomfortably as he tries to fit both his tall sixteen-year-old body and his computer onto his bed. Even with his knees by his waist the bed is nearly too small for his long and lanky body, and he tries not to groan at the despicability of it all.
With a silent click the screen lights up, shining an upright rectangle onto Dan’s face.
As he opens youtube with a few more clicks he gets reminded of one thing. All people in his life are bad people. Except for a few, including the ones in the safe bubble the internet has created for him, and other people like him.
One of them uploaded while Dan was in school. It brings a smile on his face, just seeing the annotation next to the name, and he blushes warmly under the intruding gaze of his own brain as he clicks on the channel.
It belongs to his favourite youtuber, one he can’t deny is both funny and really creative. And handsome. He’ll deny that one to everyone but himself. And AmazingPhil himself. But it’s not like someone like Dan would ever have a chance to meet someone as amazing as him, right?
He looks back down at the screen, a blush creeping up his neck again at the very thought of clicking play.
The title is Awaiting The Tide. He wonders what it could mean. Then again, Phil’s titles are always brilliantly mysterious, so he’ll just have to see.
Dan laughs with every other breath, and he even tries to silence himself by pressing his own stupid grin into the mattress. It doesn’t work so well, for even the sound of his voice in the video evokes laughter, and it’s also not like he can help the fact that he has to sneak a peek at that black tuft of hair every once in a while.
It’s a brilliant parody on the typical cheesy drama tv shows, like the ones his mom watches.
He silently wonders what his mom would think of Phil, and his creations. He hopes she’d have a good reaction. He wants everyone to love him, even if he at the same time doesn’t want to risk showing what he watches to anyone, in fear of rejection.
Then again, he’s always confused as to why others would not like Phil.
The video switches from one scene to the other, taking Dan’s breath away again and again, over and over and over.
With laughter and awe. And of course Phil’s blue eyes are pulling him in too. He’s also rather… fit, and he won’t deny himself a peek at his wide shoulders and chest, which make air quip in his throat each time.
Then a frame of AmazingPhil, with his pushed up hair and a ferocious and determined look in his eye, appears.
Before he even begins to speak Dan can feel the smile on his own face melt. The explosive bubbles and flutterings, which grow when he watches his videos, rustle in their dormant dwellings. A warmth grows stronger and stronger in his chest with each breath he has taken, and now it freezes, strong and radiating.
His interest peaking, Dan lifts his head slightly at the sight of Phil holding a horse statue. Curiosity swells within him, but so do those confusing feelings of attraction. There’s just something with that look harbored in his eyes...
“Sorry girls, I’ve chosen Daniel .” says the deep voice he’s grown familiar with, and then Phil licks the statue. Roughly.
Licks it.
Dan pauses within a millisecond and then slams his head into the soft, deafening material of his white pillow. His face is burning and his heart is tearing itself from his chest, within which the light has burst.
There’s something amazing about hearing that phrase roll over such pretty lips, like a ray of sun at dawn dancing across a dark and still ocean roof.
He wants to scream, but bites into his smeary, abrasive pillow instead to soften the noise. He doesn’t want to stir the whole house.
It doesn’t help one bit, and all he can think of as he tastes dried sweat, saliva, and fabric dust all mixing on his scratchy tongue is Phil’s tongue.
One second the whole of it is out for Dan and other fans to see, flashing as a grainy image on a computer screen. The next it’s licking along the inside of Dan’s mouth, making him moan through his teeth into the pillow.
He lets his bite go. A small squeal escapes as he does.
AmazingPhil said his name. AmazingPhil said his name like that.
Dan buries his head into his pillow once more, this time met with a moist surface, but he doesn’t care. He’s shaking from head to toe, and the words are echoing in his mind. Every breath he takes is warm and unsteady, if it does not quip and suffocate itself within his tightening throat. It helps, for at least a few seconds, to try burying all his feelings.
That dumb grin is splitting his features again. His skin is also tepid, and most definitely glowing pink. How could he help it? For the time being, he won’t.
It takes Dan a good long while to look back up again. His eyes are brimming with crystal tears, and he can’t feel his own cheeks with how wide his mouth is. Every moment he lives on, laughter and giggles and especially squeals threaten to rip themselves out.
AmazingPhil said he chose Daniel. AmazingPhil said he chose Daniel over the girls. AmazingPhil said that!
He’s met with the visual of spiky hair again. His chest rises and sinks, still rapidly, and the blush that has now spread all over his face is surely shining brightly crimson red.
When he suddenly wonders what Phil would think if he saw him now, he feels slightly stupid for the next few seconds. Yet that feeling cannot suffocate the swirlings of elated, satisfied emotion in his chest.
Phil still has his tongue out, and his pants are growing tighter by the second as he stares sideways at the screen. Propping himself up on his elbows, Dan lets out a heavy sigh that both sounds and feels lovestruck, as well as disgruntled.
A small voice in Dan’s tired head tells him it’ll one day come true. That AmazingPhil will choose him. That he’ll end up with one of Phil’s arms around his waist, with a loving gaze from those pretty blue eyes focusing on just him, and heated kisses exchanged between Phil’s gorgeous, plump lips and Dan’s chapped, untrained ones.
Too exhausted to brush it off, and too big of a grin to tell it off, Dan simply sinks back into the mattress with a featherlight weight in his chest and a small lump in his throat.
The screen, dimming, smirks down at him. Of course AmazingPhil would never want to do such things with him. Especially the romantic things. He’d have no chance, even if the universe decided they could meet one day.
No, Dan decides he can’t ponder on fantasies any longer, and lets his eyelids flutter shut. The darkness, pressing and empty, sinks down around him. Enveloping him.
He can hear the silence from downstairs, hard on his ears. His mother seems to be done for the night, and Adrian too, and noone has gone to check up on him. It hurts just a bit. Quite a bit.
Dan ignores the heat on his face and in his pants as he tries his best to fall asleep. For what could Amazing Phil possibly want with a stupid fan who’s got no friends, who blushes from hearing him say his name, and gets hot and hard by just thinking about his tongue inside his mouth?
Surely he’d just think he’s weird. Not that he’d say it, because Phil’s nice like that, but he’d think it. Dan is just weird like that, and he makes even people like Phil know it, just by existing. That’s why he has no friends.
Those are his thoughts for the rest of the cold and quiet night, as he drifts on and off into an uneasy sleep.
Dan’s dreams involve a pair of big and pale hands ruffling his brown hair. When he wakes, he is disappointed by the lack of battery on his computer, making him unable to watch the video again. And also longing for the tingling dancing across his scalp to continue.
He scoffs at that last one. Something like the dream couldn’t ever be real. He shouldn’t even let himself wish for it.
And yet Dan will, for another day, and every day. That’s just how Phil makes his brain work.