Work Text:
“What was your first word?”
“Light!”
Dan smiled a bit more sadly than he ever would have predicted at the oldest video of him and his best friend of six years. It seemed ages ago that they had first drawn on cat whiskers, promising each other that they’d dominate the Internet together, knowing it would never happen.
Except, it had.
Here he was, sitting in a new chair, with a new desk, a fancy computer, a nice camera pointed at him from the last video he and Phil had done together, a quality bedspread behind him, the city of London splayed out below his window. He’d scored himself a dream come true, a part in a film (even if it was just a couple of lines). He had won awards. He’d spoken loads of times in public, done hundreds of live shows, and still continued to gain support.
But down in the little YouTube window in his screen, there was a Dan and Phil who weren’t famous, who had just met, who were making fools of themselves because they were giddy with the excitement of having each other, finally, after so long of being lost soul mates. Lines were blurred that night as they would hardly ever be blurred again.
Four million subscribers, and all Dan wanted was to relive the moment five years ago when he’d only known Phil in person for a day.
He hadn’t watched the video in a while because of the things they’d done that night that neither of them wished to remember; they hadn’t even ever really talked about it in five years, so it would be less awkward to laugh together, make videos together, and finally live together as they were now. Dan had buried the memory of it deep inside himself somewhere, knowing as every day passed that it would never be like that night again, and with it had disappeared his wonder, his happiness, his good humor.
Oh, sure, it came out sometimes when Phil happened to wrestle it out of him for a video’s sake, or on nights when he just wanted to let himself go and be silly again. He’d let the “sharpie fumes” get to him during their Phil Is Not on Fire videos, the one night a year he looked forward to the most. But most of the time, he was hard-faced and cynical now, represented often by his fans as the darker of the two. He thought maybe it was because of the slowly dwindling promise of that first day.
The day of Phil Is Not on Fire 1 had been absolutely full of promise. He’d slept in Phil’s room the night before, wondering how on earth it came to be that he had met and successfully befriended the youtuber of his dreams; that was perhaps the first time he questioned if it was really just a “fanboy” thing, or something else. He hadn’t ever really stopped questioning that, if he thought about it now. He usually just tried not to think about it.
But after the video, there had been nothing. A look, every once in a while, that might have suggested something special; perhaps a comment that went awry somewhere in a video that seemed like a Freudian slip. Goodness knows he’d made enough of those, unsure whether he really meant them or not.
Every day that passed brought the lines back into hard, cold, defined existence, and gradually, Dan stopped trying to remember the wonder and the promise that had made him feel so wild and free that night.
Maybe that was why he was holed up in his room with their first video open on his computer instead of prancing around his flat enjoying his good fortune. He’d always thought this was what he wanted… and it was.
Right?
That didn’t stop him from dragging up the old memory, wondering how he ever got to existential crises and trying hard not to be too aware of his social awkwardness. Now all he did in his videos these days was try to make himself look like an arse and see if people would believe him. He got the occasional hate, but mostly, it was just people telling him he was so relatable, he was so attractive, he was their favorite person in the entire world.
It made it worse that he knew exactly how many more subscribers he had than Phil, and they burned in the back of his mind every time he was invited by some corporation or big time company to do something, and Phil was not. It was often he, now, that brought Phil along with him and insisted on his presence, rather than the other way around. He missed being sort of… well, babied, as he had been when Phil had been the one with the degree, helping his younger friend get over his fears and use Photoshop to tailor his creations.
He’d watched Phil’s video “Check Yes Juliet” just before this, and he wished very much that he hadn’t; the whole thing had been a representation of how he felt nowadays, an empty soul in an empty bed. Though, it had made him laugh when Phil cut large eyes and a nose out of a magazine and labeled it “girlfriend”. Phil always made him laugh; it was always Phil who brought him out of his dark moods. Dan wondered how lost he would be right now if not for that.
The current video played on, and he watched a baby Dan face the camera and say, quite plainly, “Well, that was the most fun I’ve ever had—” before Phil gave a smirk and tackled him to the ground in an unexpected embrace. You could hear Dan’s laughter, giddy, but couldn’t see why the laughter was cut short even before the shot ended; that was why they had decided to keep it in. Because nothing was visible of what had actually happened.
It was the only reason Dan had ever struggled with his emotions on the subject, and would continue to struggle for years. He’d almost forgotten, this long in the future, that the moment had been real; he had seen plenty of gifs of “Heart Eyes Howell” on Tumblr (guilty as charged, from days when he had thought about it a bit too much and started to consider things again), but they’d been few and far between lately, and he kept shoving the thought deep down. None of the public could ever know, and the fame helped remind him of that. When he had his cynical, existential crisis days, it was because he had succeeded in this charade fully.
Neither he nor Phil had ever tried to recreate this moment. Sure, they’d tried to recreate the fun time in the other five of the series of videos. But not… well. All the crossed boundaries that no one would ever know had been crossed, all in that single shot. The ones that would never be crossed, or mentioned, again.
Dan dragged his cursor over to a few seconds before again, not waiting for the video to end completely.
“Do you have eyelids?”
“No.”
He wanted to laugh; even a chuckle would have been nice, so he could convince himself he was just enjoying the fun of old videos. But only that sad smile leaked from his lips, still, and as Phil tackled younger Dan again, the smile disappeared altogether.
He watched the bit once more, trying to recreate in his head the short moment they’d shared out of sight of the camera that had made their cat whiskers smudged for the rest of the video.
Phil had been a bit clumsy in his haste to catch Dan off guard, and when he had fallen on top of him, Dan had been surprised to find his happy, surprised giggle cut short by a sudden pressure on his face; specifically, on his lips.
The thought had tickled the back of Dan’s mind every now and again during their chats before they met, and especially the night before the video, when he had slept in Phil’s room; but knowing what he knew about Phil, he never even hoped for such a thing to happen. He still hadn’t been sure what his new friend’s opinion of the matter was, anyway, as there had really been no matter, at the time. But there he found himself, pinned down by Phil, lips forced into an involuntary embrace.
It was an accident, Dan remembered thinking after the initial first split second of pure shock. The two froze, breaking apart instantly. Phil looked down at Dan, probably planning to say he was sorry, and Dan gazed up, terror in his expression, hoping this wouldn’t ruin everything he had just built up with this new friend.
Something in Phil’s eyes softened as he looked at Dan; Dan saw it happen, the way his pupils got bigger and his bright blue eyes got brighter, and everything had been so exciting and new the last couple of days, Dan had figured, why not? And he leaned up to find Phil’s lips again.
Phil had reciprocated immediately, instead of breaking away as Dan had feared for the single shard of time before their lips made second contact, and Dan hesitated before he pressed himself farther up to Phil and wrapped his arms around the older boy’s neck. A good few seconds more, and the short-lived kiss was over; Dan was trying to reel himself in, suddenly panicking as reality kicked in that this was his best friend and not an experiment, and Phil was leaning backwards off of Dan, removing himself.
Phil and Dan hadn’t looked at each other as Phil busied himself with trying to turn the camera off. Dan just stayed stock still in his half-sitting up position, trying to pull himself together and figure out what the hell that was.
That was the last time it was mentioned. Hell, it was never mentioned to begin with.
And Dan had stayed in that permanent feeling of sitting half-up in shock, insides exploding with every thought and emotion imaginable, confused, for years on end.
Now, Dan set the cursor back one more time and let it play out again; he kept forgetting Phil’s devious smirk before he pounced, as though he had planned it all along. Dan had spent a long time wondering if he had; he still didn’t know. If he had planned it, well, nothing had become of it. Nothing lasting, anyway.
“This is stupid,” Dan muttered to himself.
“I don’t think it is,” a familiar voice murmured behind him.
Dan jumped, but didn’t spin around; after so long of the same living situation, he already knew who it had to be. He’d been caught in the act.
“How long have you been standing there,” Dan said flatly. Not a question; just something he needed to know, to gauge his embarrassment by.
“Would it be rude of me to say I’ve been here since somewhere in the middle of ‘Check Yes Juliet’?”
Dan didn’t even look at his flat mate has he groaned and put his head in his hands. He heard Phil edge up near him for some kind of comfort, but felt nothing; Phil was just standing there. He was probably unsure of what to do, and Dan hated himself again; this was why he had buried the memory to never return, he remembered.
“Listen,” said Phil. Dan didn’t say anything; he didn’t turn around, either. “I never apologized for what happened back then and… I’m sorry.”
Dan let the silence ring. They’d never spoken about it; he had almost assumed Phil had forgotten. It had been years. He blinked, several times.
“It’s not that I haven’t thought about what to say to you about it ever, because I have. It cut me up for a long time. It’s just… as it got farther and farther away, it got difficult.” Phil gave a heavy sigh, and the voice he used when he was mothering Dan came out, just as it used to. “It’s not that it didn’t matter to me. It was just too much to handle for me to even begin to tell you about it, or even ask you.”
Dan almost felt as shocked as he had been in the video five years ago; his cheeks burned red again, and he wondered why he could still remember the moment in perfect detail after so long. “I… um.”
He could see Phil hanging his head in the reflection of the computer screen.
“It… it messed me up, Phil. I didn’t know if you meant it or not. We never said anything about it. I thought you thought I was stupid for trying. I thought it was my fault.”
“No,” Phil interjected sharply. “It wasn’t your fault at all. It was mine. I wasn’t really… going for that, but I put us in the situation, and I knew it might happen, and I let it. I knew how crazy you were about me. My fault.”
“But it wasn’t you, I went for it after that, I was just so confused after everything going on—”
“I wanted it to happen.”
Dan let Phil’s words hang in the air, because nothing he could have said back could have saved the meaning of them.
“I knew, though, just as well as you did, that it was too confusing, that it would be grief for everyone we knew, embarrassment for us, possibly not a future if things didn’t work out. So I let it drop.”
“Oh,” Dan drew out. His eyes went down to his shoes. “Oh.”
“Dan… I know why you’re so hard on yourself all the time, and I know part of it is because of me,” Phil continued quietly. “Just… remember that you don’t have to be. It’s really, really late to be saying this, but I wanted it, too. I just… didn’t go after it. For our sakes.”
There was another long pause that Dan allowed before he wanted to be alone to digest this. “Okay.”
Phil rose from his place behind Dan; he stopped before he went out the door. “Sorry,” he offered, and it was the most meaning packed into a tight little space that Dan had ever heard.
“It’s okay,” Dan said. “I mean…” He was about to brush it off, say that it was a long time ago anyway, that it didn’t mean anything now, that he hadn’t actually cared that Phil hadn’t said anything. All that came out was, “…Thank you.”
Phil nodded once before he was out, graciously closing the door behind him; Dan dragged himself over to the bed, dissolving into a mess on the duvet and feeling his chest ache from sadness renewed, for the first time in a long, long time.