Archive of Our Own ^beta

It’s a Tuesday night in London – eight fifty-five, to be exact – and Dan’s trying.

Dan didn’t exactly tell his subscribers that he’s not having a live show today, and it would be kind of stupid to rot around in his hotel room not to because he’s in Anaheim and it’s one fifty-five (oh, the clock just turned fifty-six) and he has nothing on his schedule in the next five hours. So he’s trying to log in to his Facebook so he can access YouNow and manage to set one up in less than five minutes.

Dan had Googled some kind of time converter to see what time it is in Anaheim when it’s this time in the UK because he isn’t in the UK at the moment and he’s kind of confused. Paired with the fact that he’s yawning profusely even though he’s slept his way all throughout the rest of Sunday, he’s even more confused. Fuck jetlag. Fuck time zones.

He’s on by nine oh-two (‘you idiot, it’s two oh-two, stop using London time’) (‘if I’m using London time, then isn’t it nine in the afternoon?’ He laughs to himself. He’s such a massive meme), and there are people greeting him already. As he waits for more people to stream in, he excuses himself to tweet about it:

He goes on with how he usually does in his live shows: he greets his viewers, asks how they’re feeling that day and some respond with appalling things like ‘I’m watching you while I’m in class’ and he has to announce a disclaimer to stay in school and it’s not his fault if you fail but with a hint of amusement in laughter. He’s serious about his viewers staying in school, though. (He feels like Nicki Minaj, sometimes.)

It’s all fine: he’s talking to them about Muse’s newest single, about Kendrick Lamar’s newest album and how it is so fucking good – he talks about the latest Dan and Phil Games video and how he saw the gifs taking over Tumblr. There’s the occasional ‘GET PHIL!!1’ and he explains to them, “Phil is outside at the moment, he has his own panel but he’ll probably be back by two-thirty – that’s nine-thirty for you, UK children! – but he might join us later. I don’t know, we’ll see,” Dan says.

Over all, it’s a very quiet and calm live show. Dan’s having fun, everything is going fine, until the hotel room door beeps and opens, and Phil is shimmying through the small gap.

“Hey, Phil,” Dan greets, bending behind to look at Phil, “how was the panel?”
“Are you doing a live show?” Phil asks, moving closer to Dan’s computer screen. “Hi!” he waves enthusiastically.
“And here’s Phil!” Dan laughs, turning to his audience. “How was your panel, Phil?”
Phil beams, “it went really well. It was very fun.”
“Someone asked what your panel was about, I didn’t catch your name, sorry,” Dan reads from the chat on screen. 
“It was about like content-creating and copywriting and how to prevent someone from stealing your ideas, things like that,” Phil explains, his hands waving about in the way that Phil always does.
“Are we suing Nickelodeon and Buzzfeed, then?” Dan asks, face serious. His eyes follow Phil who goes off-camera to take off his shoes. Phil laughs loudly that Dan’s audience hears it.

The live show goes on with Phil plopped closely beside Dan with his own laptop open and adjacent to Dan’s so he can be seen, and they converse with each other as well as their viewers, who prompt Dan and Phil their conversation topics.

“So like, six-thirty we’re having dinner with—”
“—Cat and Shane, and Ian and Anthony. Grace might be there too.”
“What about Hannah? Mamrie?”
“Yeah, they will. I’m not too sure about Hannah but I’m sure of Mamrie. Lily and Colleen are going to be there, too. And Joey. I don’t know. But I know Cat is going to be there.”
“Hear that, guys? We’re going to be hanging out with the cool kids!”
Phil snorts.

“’What about Tyler?’ Sasha asks.” Dan reads the chat aloud. Phil looks to the screen. 
“Oh, wait, I think Joey will be with Tyler, Troye and Connor, and Alex Bertie, but they might turn up late.”
Dan turns to Phil with a confused stare, but then it clears up in realisation. “Oh, right, he has that panel thing he’s organising. Busy-busy-busy!”

Things go to shit from there.

“Someone asks, ‘Joey has a panel at Vidcon?’ Yes, Joey was invited to Tyler’s panel at Vidcon called… what’s that called, Phil?” he looks at Phil again.
“Oh no, I forgot! But I do know,” Phil announces, “it’s an LGBT panel with Troye, Connor and Hannah, Rose and Rosie, and Alex Bertie.”
Dan rests his chin on his propped-up arm, “that sounds interesting,” he mumbles to Phil. 
“I heard it was going to be longer than last year: they gave him like an hour but now they’re giving him an hour and thirty minutes,” Phil nods to the computer webcam.
This seems to genuinely excite Dan, “oh that’s nice. Do you think we should pop in and take a look?”
Phil freezes.

“What do you think, Phil?” Dan prods. 
Phil turns back to his own laptop, “I don’t know, do you really want to? Because then I have to let Cat know we might run late…” he mumbles, avoiding Dan’s eyes. Dan doesn’t seem to get the hint that Phil is shrinking because he just keeps staring at Phil intently.

Phil decides to laugh shyly, “stop looking at me like that!” and grabs a pillow to whack Dan with it and hide his face in it. Dan yelps, “What was that for?” he asks with an amused tone.
Phil leaves the bed and his laptop to grab his phone from his own bed, “fine, I’ll let Cat know that we’ll be running late because you’re nosy and want to see how they plan a panel your straight boy butt won’t probably understand.”
Dan is mock-offended and throws a pillow off-screen, aiming at Phil. “Shut up!”

“But yeah,” Dan turns to the screen, “I’ll most probably join Tyler, maybe help out here and there. I mean, LGBT people are under so much criticism it’s really heart-breaking, and I really feel their pain, you know? There is so much oppression and erasure and forced silences and like a bunch of hate crimes and such – there was a Glee episode on this, I remember – and I really want the LGBT community of Youtube to know that me – Phil and I – are on their side.” He looks off-screen, possibly looking at Phil. The chat goes wild.

‘OMGOMGO MG OMG OMG GOMG OMG’
‘dan are u fuckng srs’
‘dan is joining an lgbt panel’
‘wtf is happening’
‘why r u joining an lgbt panel’
‘What is HappeNING’
‘is he coming out or smth’

Dan squints his eyes to read better because the chat is moving so quickly he can identify letters but not entire words. “And I think this is a good time to end the live show on. And no, Karen, I’m not gay, if that’s what you’re implying. Tyler and Connor and Hannah are my friends and I’m just really angry at all the injustice and unfair behaviour society points at them and Phil and I want to be able to help out in the fight against queer hate crimes.”
Phil returns to his spot beside Dan, phone in hand, and looks at the chat going on. “Don’t you think it’s a bit too late to join the panel, though? I mean, they have been planning this thing ever since this year’s VidCon was announced. Why not just support it when it comes around?” he suggests.
Dan waves him off, “I’m sure Tyler won’t mind if we join them. We have time till tomorrow. But I’m going to be sure that I’m going to be there, even if I have to drag Phil with me.”

Phil kicks him in the leg but makes it look like an accident as he tries to adjust himself, but Dan knows. And he’s truly confused. Why is Phil so against going on that LGBT panel thing? He just wants to see what happens when organising a panel. What’s so bad about that?

“What?” Dan asks.
“Nothing.”

The live show got boring after that, and Dan decides to finally end it when he sees the computer clock flash two fifty-six. He announces that he’s leaving, calls out some usernames to say his thanks for joining him tonight, and that they all should go to bed because there’s school tomorrow and they wouldn’t want to flunk that. He officially clicks the ‘stop’ button by three oh-six and is about to close his laptop when Phil lunges at it and slams it shut himself.

“What the fuck?” Dan demands, completely astonished at Phil.
Phil’s eyes are wide at him, “are you serious?”
“What?”
“Are you actually serious?”
“Phil! What are you talking about?”
“You-you! You just—” Phil points an accusing finger at him.
Dan points a finger to himself, “me? What did I do?” 
Phil’s face is full of shock, “are you serious?”
“What did I do?” Dan demands again, irritated.

Phil groans, “are you serious? You have no idea what you just did?”
“No!” Dan responds loudly, like he’s about to yell.
“Dan!” Phil’s voice changes from the shocked to the scolding. “You just—you told me you weren’t in love with me anymore!”
Dan is angry. What the fuck? “I’m not!” Where did that come from?
“Then what the fuck was that?”
“What the fuck was what?”
“You! On the live show!”
“What about that?”
Phil slams a hand to his face, “are you serious; you have no idea what you just did on the live show?”

Dan flinches internally at Phil’s tone. “What the fuck did I do?”
“Oh my god,” Phil falls back onto the bed in utter shock and closes his eyes. “The live show is going to get gif-ed on Tumblr and downloaded and posted on Youtube and the fangirls are going to go wild.”
“Phil, I have absolutely no fucking idea what you’re talking about,” Dan calmly tells him.

Phil bolts up, “The LGBT panel, you idiot! It’s not some free panel anyone can walk past and deem interesting enough to be staying for like my panel: it’s invite-only, and those who are, they are actually gay! It’s not for awareness or whatever, it’s for coping with and avoiding queerphobia on the internet and they’ll probably talk about coming out on the internet too. They’re talking about serious political issues – not some sleepover where they spill their feelings out over pillows and popcorn. It’s to help the viewers who are already gay, not those with gay friends.”

Phil leaves the bed to walk away from a flabbergasted Dan and possibly out of the room, but he turns back around. “And you just looked at me in that way and said you wanted to join in – hell, you even said that you were dragging me with you if had to. I can’t believe you!”

“I didn’t know what the fuck it was!” Dan shouts back, “I thought it was a normal panel! I thought it was going to be fun and educational about queerness on the Internet!”

“I remember what it’s called: it’s the Stonewall Panel! Stonewall, Dan! The riots for LGBT rights in New York happened there. It’s exclusively for the queer community, not for straight people like you—”

“It’s not my fault you forgot it was called ‘Stonewall’. And I know what Stonewall is! But how the fuck was I supposed to know it was exclusive?”
“You’re friends with Tyler, what the fuck! Keep up, Dan!”
“I was busy!”
“With what?”
“I don’t know, editing and packing! What about you? How come you know things like these? You were packing too!”
“Because you were too incompetent to keep up with your own friends I had to do it for you! I always do it for you – I always clean up your shit for you and talk to people I don’t know to make sure you’re still on track with these people.”

“Oh!” Dan raises his hands up sarcastically in mock-surrender, “so you’re saying this entire thing is my fault because I’m the one who implied that I was gay and back together with you on a live show to nine thousand people?”
“You don’t even remember what you said,” Phil throws his head back in exhaustion. “You said you weren’t gay.”
“Then what the fuck is all this for?”
“You implied you might be queer, but not gay, and that we’re together again, which we’re clearly not,” Phil runs a hand through his hair roughly, “you know what, just shut up. Don’t go on Tumblr, don’t go on Twitter, don’t go on Facebook, don’t even try to delete the live show. They’ll catch up to your mistake. Don’t. Don’t do anything. I’ll talk to Martyn and Cornelia about damage control. Don’t do anything. Just shut up.”

And with that, Phil walks out of the room. He isn’t wearing shoes.

Dan curls up into a ball and screams into a pillow. He remembers Phil saying that there was going to be gifs of the live show, fangirls talking on his tag about him being possibly not-gay-but-not-straight… This was so counterproductive to the things he did in two-thousand-twelve: straight-up denying the past reality that wasn’t real anymore that he used to be madly, obsessively in love with Phil. This was counterproductive to him making the videos of him talking about Phil private. This was counterproductive to the fact that in past live shows he’s outright said that he was not gay and that he was as straight as a flag pole.
It’s not even his and Phil’s fangirls that are looking at him – the word is going to spread and the entire Youtube creator and viewer community are going to find out about his misconception and slip-up about the fucking panel and think it’s serious. They’re going to say things like they knew it, or they hate him now because he’s gay, or they’re going to mock him because he’s pulling a Connor Franta. It’s all very scandalous, and Dan feels really cold.

What a fucking mess.

He knows Phil’s family treats him like family and they respect each other mutually, so he’s afraid to fight back unlike Phil, who is about to pop a blood vessel ‘talking’ to Martyn and Cornelia about their damage control. 
(More like Phil who was standing tall at six feet is now shrinking like a dried shrimp and now has red eyes and cowering away from the five-foot red-haired fiery Cornelia who is so close to yelling at the both of them.)

In time for Tyler’s panel meeting, their own meeting in Martyn’s room is adjourned and Phil looks at him with ice-cold eyes when Martyn finalises that Dan and Phil ‘are back together’.

Okay, maybe he warrants the cold icy stares from Phil because it was kind of his idea to keep going at it, Connor Franta and his coming out video the only thing in his mind as reference. And honestly, he just couldn’t let this entire misunderstanding affect the entire actual point of the LGBT panel. He’s already announced on a live show that happened three hours earlier and he hasn’t tried to access any of his social media, so by now the Troyler and Tronnor fandoms might have caught on and are probably saying things like ‘silence means yes’ and he can’t just say that it was a misunderstanding because it’s going to shed some really shitty attention on something that his friends have worked on for forever. It would look like a massive contribution to the ‘No-Homo Howell’ meme, and it would go against everything the panel was meant to stand for.
He would own up to it if it means it’s his solely his fault, but since Martyn had played back his live show and caught up to the fact that even Phil wasn’t denying anything, he’s agreed and subjected the both of them to the solution that they should pretend to get back together. And besides, Phil said yes to it after much prodding (more like Phil was scared into this) by Cornelia. The more hours Dan and Phil took away from social media, the more hyped up the shippers are about the ‘fact’ that Dan and Phil are together and are coming out soon and the harder it is to clean this mess up without looking like liars or playing their friends and their audience like jokes to feed into the shipping.

Once the entire convention was over, they’ll hold another meeting to clean this shit up. But for now, they’ll act like they’re in love again.
Dan finally agrees that the Lesters always clean up his shit for him.

Dan spent so much time cleaning himself up that he’s afraid of looking like a homophobic fuckboy who did this to get more attention; but really, the worst part is that Phil is dragged into this. 
Dan knows Phil and knows he isn’t that innocent. He’s said so many crude jokes and disgusting innuendos in the privacy of their own home that Dan would hold back from laughing whenever a fan said that Phil was innocent, but this time, they were actually right. Phil was helpless that even he can’t hold himself up; much less help Dan sort his shit out. Phil shouldn’t be involved in this, but Dan… he’s at a loss of how they will clean this up once it’s all over. So is Phil.

He’s fucked up so bad to the highest proportions.

But honestly, it’s not like it wasn’t true: so many jokes were cracked over ‘heart eyes Howell’ and theories that ‘Phan is secretly back together but are scared to come out because us fans have already harassed them too much when the Valentine’s Video got leaked’, and so many kinky fanfictions (that aren’t the Hat or Vampire or Skin or Milk or Chair Fic) were so well-written and Dan isn’t going to deny that he’s read some of them and didn’t finish it without getting all hot and bothered… It’s not like they didn’t have sex before anyway – he and Phil. It’s just… it has to come back. It’s not that bad, they’ve tried this before.

Phil’s aware of the fanfiction and he’s done it too: he’s read so many angsty fanfictions about him dying and Dan spiralling into depression because of it that when he comes out of his room with red-rimmed bloodshot eyes Dan knows he’s read one. It’s stopped since he found the Vampire Fic. It’s not really that bad.

“I’m sorry, Phil, please talk to me,” Dan begs as they walk through the quiet halls of the hotel back to their room. Phil needs to grab his shoes before they can go to Tyler’s panel meeting.

Phil stops in his way and turns back to Dan, “hold my hand.”
“What?”
Phil tuts before grabbing and intertwining his fingers with Dan’s, and drags him to their hotel room to get his shoes and Dan’s wretched laptop.

Cornelia reminds them via text that they’re not supposed to tell anyone they’re faking it, not even their parents that this was all a lie to clean up Dan’s shit or else the entire fucking world will explode and Tyler Oakley’s heart will break and it’s going to be your fault.
Dan understands: this is Tyler’s baby as much as the #NicerInternet campaign was Dan’s.

Speaking of #NicerInternet, how has the Internet reacted to Dan’s accidental ‘outing’?

With his one hand in Phil’s, he crosses his other arm over his torso and takes his phone out. Luckily it doesn’t fall out.

His mentions are blowing up like usual, but it isn’t anything of substance that relates to his slip-up. He’s thinking of checking his Tumblr tag later when he a text message from Tyler.

‘You sneaky shit. Meet me in the ballroom. Bring Phil if he’s into it,’ followed by a slew of winking emojis that have their tongue sticking out.

‘On our way,’ Dan replies simply but with great difficulty since his other hand is in Phil’s light hold. He could just slip out, Dan thinks, but he isn’t that rude. 
(And maybe he’s missed Phil’s bony hands around his stubby ones, but he isn’t going to tell anyone that.)

He tells Phil that Tyler has texted to meet them in the ballroom and Phil just nods without saying a word and heads to the lift.

He meets Tyler in the ballroom, and Troye, and Connor and Hannah and Joey, and the UK’s most popular lesbian couple Rose and Rosie (Phil makes an octopus flailing movement), and Alex Bertie. They’re all very welcoming and Phil’s irritated persona has changed to his usual cheery one.

They’re all sat on the floor in a circle with one water bottle to each person and a pad of paper and a pen, and Dan suddenly feels out of place because he doesn’t have any water and just his laptop in Phil’s backpack.

“Hey, homo!” Tyler greets loudly, and Connor giggles. Everyone else hollers at them as well.
“I’m not a homo, but thanks for the welcome, I guess,” Dan responds, as he sits beside Tyler and Phil on his other side beside Joey. 
“You know, when I thought that I was denying my gay-ness and then coming out ironically as gay, I thought I was going to be the first and last one. And then came you!” Connor jokes, and Dan chuckles.
“That’s me, I live for the irony.”

Phil taps him on the shoulder and asks him softly, “do you want your laptop?”
Dan nods, and Troye looks at them with one eyebrow up. Tyler hits him on the shoulder to prevent him from saying anything, but he’s flushing.

Dan reckons they’re kind of advanced: all of them are single except Dan and Phil who are acting like a married couple. They’re five levels ahead of literally everyone in the room. Except for Rose and Rosie. They’re two levels higher than them.

Once Dan has set up with his laptop and Phil is leaning his back on Dan’s right arm to see the screen better (and also to play up their relationship), Tyler gets back to business. They’re sat there for two hours just talking about what they’re doing tomorrow, and Dan is taking notes while Phil is throwing out ideas and suggestions and contributing to the discussion that Dan feels kind of left out… and also kind of bad.

Dan forced Phil to go back into the closet that he so struggled to come out of and make evident when he was with Charlie Skies by making Phil delete every piece of their old relationship (except the first ‘Phil Is Not On Fire’ video because it was a series and it was crucial). They shut down their Formspring accounts, their MySpace, their Bebo… everything that they owned where they outlined that they weren’t straight. 
And now Dan sees Phil in another one of his elements: talking about bisexuality erasure and constant invalidation they experience from the monosexuals, charming Tyler with his passion that he coats with his soft tone. Dan looks up at him and coils his arm around Phil’s wasit. He smiles lightly at him, and Phil leans on his shoulder and Hannah is smirking right across him. 
He really shouldn’t have.

Their meeting is finishing up and Dan has one thousand four hundred and fifty-two words keyed in to his text editor. They’re all packing up to go to dinner that Cat and Shane invited them to and Phil is dragging Dan out the door when he tells Phil to go ahead with Joey because he needs to talk to Tyler in private.

“What? What for? Are you going to tell him?”
“No, of course not. Do you think I want to hurt him like that? I’ll just ask if we can take a video of the panel: this will be our coming out video.”
“But Dan—”
“We’ve already outed ourselves on You Now, it’s only polite to make it clear on Youtube. We’ll pretend to break up in like six months – another two thousand-twelve.”

Phil looks mortified. Dan looks behind him and sees Tyler approaching, and takes Phil’s hands in what he hopes seems like a soft and loving way. “I’m kidding,” he whispers, “I’m not gonna do that again. But I’m gonna talk to Tyler, still.”

Phil nods, and pulls a hand out to cup Dan’s cheek. Dan’s chest thuds heavily, he thinks Phil is going to kiss him. Oh shit.

Instead, Phil just looks at him with his twinkling blue eyes, and softly removes his hand. Dan finds himself melting.

“I’ll go ahead, okay,” he says quite loudly. Dan catches on. Tyler is close by. “I’ll see you later.”
“Okay,” Dan nods, “love you.”
Phil hugs him, “I love you too.”

Dan feels eighteen again.

Phil pulls away and skips to the door to catch up to Joey.

Dan sighs, looking at Phil’s retreating figure, not a lovelorn way, but in a stressed out way. Hopefully, Tyler allows the filming of the panel.

What a fucking mess.

Thank God for free water bottles, because Dan can’t stop fidgeting and pressing at the plastic engravings of it but he’d rather do that than jump around backstage embarrassing himself because he’s going to come out live on stage in the biggest Youtube convention in the entire world.

This is the worst thing ever – and he’s checked the ‘phan’ Tumblr tag last night. 
(There were gifs, and there were theories, and Phil still isn’t talking to him unless there were people around, there was the compulsory joke-y clip from danisnotonfirevyou1, more gifs, more theories, more crying… what a wreck he’s created.)

He’s managed to convince Cat to be the camera man of this momentous occasion, to which she gasped greatly and gave both of them a teary hug. 
(“Now you won’t be hurt by the creepy shippers anymore!” Phil jokes, and Cat laughs through her tears. 
“And that,” she says, “I’m just really happy you guys are back together.”) 
She’s in the back of the room with the camera on a tripod, pressing ‘record’ and watching over the camera so no one robs it.

“You may be wondering why there are two more seats unoccupied to the end over there,” Tyler is in the middle of the long panel table because it’s his show, and points to his left side, the far end where Joey is sat. “that’s because they are coming out today to all of us!”

There is a buzz from the audience.

“Let’s all give a warm welcome to Dan and Phil!” Tyler announces, and the crowd literally screams and Dan is going to fucking weep, but he doesn’t.

Instead, like they planned, Dan went out first, and then stopped dramatically to hold out his hand and beckon Phil out with him, and then he took Phil’s hand. Phil acts shy and coy, hiding behind Dan, until they take their seats.

“Hi, guys!” Dan greets. 
“Hello!” Phil adds on.

There’s more screaming, and ten seconds later, the screaming dies. Tyler opens his mouth to speak, but is interrupted by an anonymous yell of “Phan is real!” Tyler rolls his eyes and the rest of the panel laughs, and Dan smiles so widely his dimples come out and his eyes are crinkled, and he speaks into the microphone, “yep, it is.”

More screams come from the audience, and then they get down to business. They talk about bullying first and how to ignore it, then they followed it with how transgender transition is like, how transgender and non-binary bullying is a much more painful issue than cis-queer bullying, and polysexuality erasure in which Phil has spoken more on way more than the other panels he has ever been invited to in his entire life, and appropriate ways to come out and how to handle people who can’t accept you for who you are.

“Speaking of coming out,” Tyler whips his head to Dan and Phil on the other end of the table, “let’s talk about how we all came to accept ourselves and how we came out to our own families! Let’s start from the other end: Phil?”

“Hi!” Phil greets again, and looks at Tyler on the opposite side. 
“How did you realise you were…?”
“Bisexual?”
“Yes.”

Phil bites his lip, and Dan looks away from him trying not to blush.
Wait, what the fuck?

“Um, I actually realised when I was walking with my brother and I spotted this boy and I was like, ‘wow, that boy’s hot! Wait, what?’” This elicited laughter from the audience.
Phil continues on, “But I really didn’t think about it that much until I started talking to this boy on the internet…”
Rose interrupted, “was it Dan?” she asks cheekily.
Phil laughs awkwardly, “actually, no.”
Dan looks at him so fast he swears he almost sprained his neck. His eyes are as wide as saucers. What the fuck?
“There’s another boy, his name is PJ.”

The crowd is going wild, some are even screaming, “AmazingPJ!”

“Some of you may know him as KickThePJ,” Phil keeps going, “anyway, we talked, and I saw his pictures, and he has really nice green eyes and his hair looked so soft I just wanted to run my hands over it. I had a crush on PJ for the longest time but when I met him I realised I would never get with him because he was straight.”

Everyone ‘aww’-ed at him, and Dan even saw Cat doing the same. He hopes she realises he’s glaring at her.

“Anyway, I finally came to terms with the fact that I liked both guys and girls, and as soon as I could I came out to my family and friends.”
“And how was that?” Tyler asked. Dan could see Connor was piqued.
“My brother was weirded out, my mum was pretty okay with it, and my dad didn’t talk to me for a while but he came around because there might be a chance I’d get with a girl. But there was that, now my family is okay with me being not-straight. And then after that I came out to my friends, and I ended up hooking up with one of them a bunch of times until he got a girlfriend and at the same time I met Dan, so it all worked out anyway.”

Dan wants to burn himself.

There was applause, and then Troye took to the microphone, “what about you, Dan? What’s your story?”

Dan grabs the microphone from the table and moved it closer to him, and clears his throat. Silence engulfed the ballroom, and he began to speak.

“I never thought about it at all until I met Phil,” he starts softly.

The audience ‘aww’-ed again.

“Most of you will know if you’re subscribed to me, but, to those who don’t,” Dan looks at Phil with the most ‘heart eyes Howell’ he can muster, “he showed me how it felt like to be loved and to have someone beside you all the time listening to you and reminding you that you’re not alone no matter how hard you struggled. Phil… from the beginning when I first watched his videos till today… I remember that he saved my life. My subscribers know that I was in a bad place and there were so many things I was afraid of, but he held my hand and guided me through it. He is the sun, the moon and the stars to me; he was my home. He loved me, and I regretted it every day that I broke up with him in two thousand-twelve. And I’m so happy that even after we broke up – if you follow me on Tumblr too then you know how messy it was – he still loves me till today and was willing to forgive me and take me back. I could have not asked for a better boyfriend. He is so patient and kind and giving, and when I told him that I wanted us to stop keeping it secret and finally come out, he was all for it. Phil is everything to me, and I will use my entire life to make sure that he gets what he deserves. I don’t deserve him, but I’m sure as hell that I will work for it.”

Phil leans on Dan’s shoulder as the crowd applauded, and once it died down, Phil says through gritted teeth, “I’m going to kill you.”

Dan is back on planet Earth.

Phil slams Dan against the door once it was closed. “How dare you. How fucking dare you!”

“What?” Dan is shocked. “What did I do?”

Phil stammers out a “fuck you!” and falls to the floor sobbing.

“What did I do?” Dan asks again, trying to help Phil up when he yells, “don’t touch me!”

There is silence other than Phil’s sobbing, and then Phil begins to speak.

“How dare you, Dan,” he says, “how dare you. How dare you say those things on the panel, on video!”
“What? What did I say wrong?”
“Everything, Dan!”
“What? I think I did fine! They asked me how I found out I was bisexual, and I told them the truth!”
“That’s the thing, Dan!” Phil flails his arms, “the truth! The real story of how you fell in love with me. And even though it’s not true anymore, I still believe it and now I’m in love with you again!”
“Oh really? If you’re so in love with me, explain to me PJ, then!” Dan shouts back.
“How dare you! And what do you want to know? PJ has nothing to do with us!” Phil answers. Dan doesn’t know how to respond, and Phil sniffs and looks away – anywhere but Dan. “I’m going to get ready for bed,” he declares. He gets up, walks to his luggage, takes out the things he needs and goes to the bathroom.

Dan is on the floor, stunned.

What a fucking mess.

Dan leaves Phil alone until he can’t because he needs his help filming an introduction to their ‘coming out’ video. With how Dan has fucked up, they’re uploading this on danisnotonfire.

They sit in front of the camera, and Dan starts with his “hello internet!” while Phil simultaneously says, “hi guys!”

“So a few days ago I had a live show, and I said something that was supposed to be a surprise—”
“—and there was a bit of confusion and rumours, but—”
“Yes, a bit of kerfuffle,” Dan chuckles, “but now here is the truth.”

Dan makes a mental note to put a jump cut here.

“So, basically, Phil and I have quietly gotten back together and we wanted to not come out yet, and when I had that live show, my mouth slipped and I ended up practically outing us. I don’t quite regret it, though, because now I can hold Phil’s hand without someone screaming and tweeting about it. I could have done it with more finesse, though.”
Phil chuckles beside him. 
Dan goes on. “So we had some friends who heard and invited us to join a panel for queer people on Youtube, where Phil and I decided to officially come out.”
“It was very enriching,” Phil adds with a reflective expression on his face, “and we decided to film it for you guys so you can get the whole picture of us as people, and us as a couple.”
“And before you all comment mean things,” Dan cuts in, “we just wanted to tell you that this entire thing was caused by an accident. We could have come out to you guys with a proper video where every one of our subscribers knew at the same time, but it was very convenient and our friends in the panel allowed for it to happen so we took the chance and joined them. It took a burden off our shoulders, right, Phil?”
Phil nods with a pout, and rests his chin on Dan’s shoulder.

He looks at Phil’s face on his shoulder. He had a pout on his lips. He laughs and runs a hand through Phil’s fringe and leans his head on top of Phil’s.

He is not falling in love with Phil again.

Dan finishes the recording and Phil leaves him, out of their hotel room to God knows where, and Dan kind of feels alone. Not literal alone, but metaphorical alone. Phil’s still angry at him.

He loads the recording of him and Phil and the panel recording from his camera to his computer and slaps everything together on Sony Vegas and uploads it straight away. He writes a simple ‘I hope you understand.’ on the description box, and copy-pastes the standard social media links below it, and clicks ‘Publish (after uploading the video)’ and leaves the computer alone. He’s going to sleep away his problems.

What a fucking mess.

Phil returns with a calmer mind and a plate of pastries. He leaves it on the table when he realises Dan’s asleep, and then begins to rummage for the camera.

He turns on the camera, and without any qualms, presses ‘record’ as he sits beside Dan’s sleeping form. He doesn’t have a proper plan, he’ll just wing it. But this is Phil plotting his revenge.

“Hey guys,” he starts, his smile automatic on his face. “I’m keeping my voice down because they’re asleep, but it’s so cute and I just wanted to share with you guys… someone very special in my life: my boyfriend.”

He pans the camera to Dan, whose face is buried in the pillow and back bare.

He fondles with Dan’s hair, which stirs Dan awake. He groans and turns to look at the perpetrator and realises it’s Phil, holding a camera at arm’s length. He lets out a sleepy smile.

“Hello,” Phil greets with a smile in his voice. 
“Hello,” Dan replies. 
“Feeling better?”
Dan nods against his pillow.

“I brought you some bread, it’s over there,” Phil tells him quietly, and Dan sits up, dragging his blanket up so he can cover his chest. 
“I’ll eat it later. Thanks, love,” Dan leans on Phil’s shoulder, making him look even more vulnerable, especially since his hair is sticking up in places.

Phil turns back to the camera, “this video is just to let you know that this – me and Dan are a thing – we decided that we would much rather come out and not screw up anymore unlike when we first met and we kept it secret that when it spilled there was a lot of drama going on.”
“And,” Dan adds, “Hopefully we don’t. We spent too long not kissing each other when we could have.”
Phil giggles, “Yes, we lost a lot of time, didn’t we?”
Dan snuggles into Phil closer, and Phil puts an arm around Dan’s body, “I missed you.”
Phil kisses his forehead, “I was only gone for an hour.” 
At the contact of Phil’s lips with his head, every nerve ending in Dan’s body stands at attention. What the fuck?

“But before I talk about my relationship with Dan, I just want to make it clear that I am not gay: I am bisexual, Dan is bisexual. We both like kissing girls, and we also like kissing boys. It’s just right now I’m kissing a boy, and that boy is Dan.”
“We could have girls,” Dan continues, “it’s just that right now we want each other.”
Phil looks at him, “we do.” Dan blushes and smiles his dimply smile. Wait, what the fuck? 
Phil doesn’t notice and nods cutely at the camera, “I just hope that this doesn’t change anything – if anything I really want people to be aware that people can like both boys and girls and that it’s totally okay, and if you need anyone to talk to, you can totally talk to an adult or a friend, or you can leave a comment down below and I will try my best to respond.”

Dan has disappeared from his side to go put on some clothes as Phil continues talking to the camera, and when he’s returned from the bathroom, Phil has already wrapped up his video and was removing the SD card from the camera to insert into the card reader of his Mac.

Dan scrambles for his phone to find six messages from Cat asking if they were going to leave their hotel room to eat dinner – ‘I’ll pick you up if you say yes’. 
“Do you want to go out with Cat for dinner tonight?” Dan asks. Phil looks up from the laptop, “what?”
“Dinner with Cat?”
“Oh!” Phil exclaims, “Okay, just give me like ten minutes to edit – I just need the cuts and all then I can render and upload.”
Dan nods, and turns back to his phone, typing out to Cat that they’ll be ready in twenty minutes – just to give Phil some allowance.

Their respective coming-out videos are met with incredibly huge responses.

There is the usual ‘why are the hot ones always gay’ comments from straight girls, which Dan replied to with, ‘im bi and im hot why should I deprive people of my hotness’. Along with that are ‘phan is reAL1!!!!1111!11’ comments from younger viewers that his mature audience still hasn’t accessed to tell them to stop treating him and Phil like fiction.  

Then there are the homophobic comments which Dan chose to ignore till it’s shoved to the bottom of the feed never to be seen again, and there are nice supportive comments and some are debates that resemble Reddit threads discussing bisexuality and erasure. It’s very enriching, and Dan makes a mental note to participate later.

Phil’s channel is a bit different.

Other than the customary ‘why are the hot ones always gay’ that Phil doesn’t respond to unlike Dan, he gets more encouraging and loving comments from his subscribers, telling him that they still love him and support him no matter what, and that they hope he’s happy with Dan. There are ship-py comments as well, but it’s a bit more articulate compared to Dan’s which was more all over the place and childish in tone. Sure, there were emojis, but they weren’t as bad as a drunken man typing a hateful letter to his wife.

There is one comment that caught Dan’s eye, though.

Hey phil! I’ve been subscribed to you about a year ago and I didn’t understand much about sexuality. Your video and the video on Dan’s channel was very comprehensive and I just wanted to say thank you for coming out as well as taking the time to explain what polysexuality is, because I felt this way but didn’t have proper guidance to realise this for myself. I showed my parents the videos and they seem to like you guys, they were a bit wary but they did say they were still willing to love me. And I’m sorry it didn’t work out for you and PJ, it must have been so awkward! Don’t worry though; Dan is just as pretty as PJ and hopefully as kind and thoughtful. Hope he treats you well!

‘Hopefully as kind and thoughtful’? ‘Hope he treats you well’?
Dan forgets sometimes that there are people subscribed to Phil that aren’t subscribed to Dan.
He begins to type a reply.

Excuse u I treat phil like a prince
im jk I love phil very much and everyone wishes they could be pj even I do

He clicks the ‘reply’ button, and then closes the window when he hears Phil groan on his own bed.

“What’s wrong?” Dan asks, turning to him.
“Listen to this,” Phil tells him, “Am I the only one who doesn’t support them? I mean, I’m not homophobic or whatever, it’s just that Dan is so hot and Phil is just so ugly. Dan deserves someone better, really, not someone with dull eyes that look too big for his face or a weird nose. And Phil acts like a child in his videos, why the hell would Dan want to go for that? Unless Dan is secretly a pedophile or has some sort of daddy kink that only Phil would go along with, I don’t think Dan and Phil look like a very good couple. Dan deserves more than a disgusting boy with a disgusting accent and an even more disgusting face. How is it that even after seven years, Dan is still in love with Phil? He looks like a deformed alien. I wouldn’t be surprised if Dan, after Phil, would start an affair with Zoella. At least she’s a looker, and I think Alfie would agree with me.”

“What the fuck?” Dan yells, and lunges himself onto Phil’s bed to grab Phil’s phone. “Where the fuck—Sugarscape?” Dan looks up at Phil, whose eyes look kind of glassy, and Dan kind of wants to charter a plane to London to start a massacre at the Sugarscape headquarters.

“Nevermind, Dan,” Phil takes his phone from Dan’s grip gently, “it’s fine. It’s not that bad. I’ll get over it.”

“No, Phil! Who wrote that article, tell me. I’ll fucking–”
“Sit in silence and ignore it. They’re a hater.” Phil holds him down. “And it’s not like they’re wrong, I mean, my nose doesn’t really look as normal as it’s supposed to. I broke it, remember? I told you about the train incident.”

“But that’s fucked up, Phil. They’re hurting you.” Dan insists.

Phil shakes his head. “It’s fine, okay? I’m fine. This article will disappear and it will be all okay. Let’s not talk about this anymore, I’m tired.”
“It’s eleven forty-five,” Dan points out, “you only ever sleep in the day when something is bothering you.”
“And that would be you. Stop, Dan, I’m fine.” Phil lies back in bed and turns away from Dan.

Dan hates it when Phil gets insecure. Not because he doesn’t know how to handle it – he and Phil had been friends since forever – but because it’s all not true and the people who perpetrate it are a bunch of writers on online gossip columns who don’t bother to watch even more than ten of Phil’s videos to actually know his true self and his true story. Phil has bared his entire being on the internet on his channel, and there are people still spreading lies about Phil being less than perfect just because they think he has an ‘ugly nose’ or ‘really big eyes’ or things that he can’t change for himself.
‘Thinks’: it’s an opinion made by a brutally opinionated columnist on an online publication that used to say nice things about Youtubers. Now they’re being rude and heartless, and it’s all so unnecessary. Who allowed for this content to be made public, anyway? Who gave her the permission to be so mean? This goes completely against Dan’s #NicerInternet campaign with the BBC. It’s so shit.

And Phil. Even if everything has died down: the articles would stop, the comments would stop, the shitty text posts on Tumblr would stop, Phil would still be thinking about it and this would be what keeps him up at night other than really potent coffee. And even if Dan tells him it’s not true and spends the next three months trying to prove to Phil that he’s nothing but perfect to Dan and to everyone else in his life, he still won’t be able to stop Phil from thinking about how people think he is anything than he truly is on especially bad nights. God, Dan so badly wants to retaliate for Phil.

He opens a new internet browser window and accesses Tumblr, pressing the ‘new text post’ option. He’s going to cause a ruckus, but to defend Phil’s honour; he’s willing to do it.

What a fucking mess.

Thirteen thousand notes and rising.

And Martyn’s angry and fuming.

“What is this, Dan?” he asks, frankly too tired to be dealing with this, but he still is.

“It’s a Tumblr post,” Dan responds, pretending to be nonchalant but he’s actually terrified of how Martyn and Cornelia are reacting to the post.

“It’s not just any Tumblr post, Dan. People are going to talk.” Martyn groans, throwing his head back and pressing a hand to his forehead, “it’s too early for this.”

“Thirteen thousand notes, Dan,” Cornelia repeats, softer and less angry than Martyn but still agitated nonetheless. “Thirteen thousand people read your post and spread it around.”
“Yeah, so? Do you even know what they wrote about Phil?”
“We know, Dan, but we’re not stupid to pick a fight with them. It’s just you and Phil, Dan, and you’re fighting an online gossip column.”
“It’s slander!” Dan cries. “Stop acting like Mother fucking Teresa and just—it hurt him, I saw it! I just wanted to defend him like a good boyfriend.”

Martyn sighs, “Dan, you didn’t have to. Even more reason that you shouldn’t have because none of this – you two are not actually real.”
Dan refuses to look at them. He feels alone.

“Do you remember that you’re not real, Dan? So even if you say that – what was that?” Martyn asks Cornelia, who whips out her phone and reads the post out loud. 
“Even if you say that his eyes are the most beautiful shade of blue on dark rainy days and a piercing grey-ish silver in the sunlight, you’re not really defending his honour as much as you digging a deeper hole for us to bury ourselves in when we admit that this entire thing was caused by a slip-up.”
“I know what I wrote, Nelia. But what else was I supposed to do? I’ve always defended him even before this.”

Martyn just nods. “Probably not put in writing how ‘he didn’t put his arm around my waist while we slept that night because he felt so insecure and believed you when you said that he didn’t deserve me. I felt inadequate because I tried so hard to make him feel special and like a prince and that world is at his feet but you’ve ruined my hard work and I hope karma gets you back’.”

Cornelia snorts, “a bit violent, aren’t you?” she jokes, “I mean, it’s a very romantic sentiment, I won’t deny that.”
Martyn nods, a small smile on his face, “wanna tell us something, Daniel?”
Dan forces himself to laugh. “Nah, man.”

“You sure?” Cornelia raises a brow, “your post said—” Cornelia looks at her phone again, and Dan wants to put up a fight to claim it from her, grunting, but Martyn is staring at him sternly to prevent him from taking it. “’His lips were soft and supple like it was made of plush. It was a stark contrast to my dry, chapped lips. I would kiss him all the time if it weren’t for all the people looking at me and saying that I act like a giggly school girl’.” 
Martyn raises a brow at him, amused, “Really, Dan? You sure?”
Dan is truly laughing now, “shut up!” He feels shy, and he’s sure his cheeks are a rosy pink.

Okay, what the fuck?

Dan sighs and turns to look at Martyn with imploring eyes, “what do we do?” he asks.

“Well, you can’t take the post down because people have already spread it around,” Cornelia enumerates, “we’ll think of something. For now, get ready to get your ass whooped when Phil wakes up.”

Dan sighs.

What a fucking mess.

Cornelia was not kidding, because when he returned to his and Phil’s room, Phil had already bathed and dressed and sat on his bed, staring at the door until Dan returned.

“Good morning,” Phil greets with a deep voice. It’s not a good morning at all. He’s fucked, but that deep voice makes Dan kind of want to kneel down and let Phil do his bidding. It’s the least he can do, right? He deserves punishment. He’ll let Phil fuck him up.

“I’m sorry!” Dan exclaims, and he’s close to truly dropping to his knees, “their article just pissed me off, you didn’t deserve that at all. I put it under a read-more; I thought people would just brush past it like they would. I’m so sorry. I know you told me not to but I was just so angry.”

Phil just exhales and slouches on the bed he was sat on. He looks away from Dan, and Dan takes this as permission for him to move from the spot he was standing in front of the door to sit beside Phil.

“I don’t know what to say,” Phil mutters softly, still not looking at Dan.

Well, at least Phil still isn’t attempting to drown him in their en-suite bathtub, or breaking the furniture on his head. He’s still alive.

Barely.

“I got an e-mail from the writer in the night,” Phil breaks the silence. “She offered her deepest apologies and removed the article. She almost got fired, did you know? They’re forcing her to take unpaid leave.”

Dan nods at this information as Phil continues talking.

“You can’t do things like this, Dan: running your mouth on the internet just because something someone said affected you personally and it’s like you’re a big baby. I mean, hashtag Nicer Internet and all, but Dan—”

“Phil.” Dan interrupts, “they started it. All we did was come out and then they said that you didn’t deserve me. You didn’t do anything to warrant that. And this is me paying you back for taking care of me—”
“I got that, but you didn’t have to say that you would kiss me every moment you got,” Phil replies pointedly.

Dan avoids Phil’s gaze, “I just… got too into it, I suppose.”

“Whatever,” Phil rolls his eyes. “My mum read that post. That’s how I found out. She was crying because we’re back together and congratulating me and scolded me because I didn’t think to tell her.”

“Oh shit,” Dan’s eyes widen. “Parents! Shit. I’m so sorry, Phil.” He buries his face in his hands in shame. Phil snakes an arm onto Dan’s shoulder. 
“Hey, it’s okay. It’s fine. I thought the post was sweet, very romantic. It was like I was back in two-thousand nine, but instead I’m you and you’re me. So, thank you.”

Phil leans his head onto Dan’s once he’s no longer speaking. Dan lifts his head from his hands and is met with Phil’s face too close to his, and Dan suddenly realises Phil’s arm is gone from his shoulder and a hand is holding Dan’s chin and Phil’s lips are pressing against his own ever-so-softly. Dan’s breath hitches, and he notices Phil’s eyes are closed lightly. Dan’s eyes flutter shut too.

It’s two or three beats, Dan can’t remember, but Phil pulls away as gently as he came, and stares at him with shimmering eyes. Dan thinks he’s going to cry.

“Sorry,” Phil whispers, “I just got too into it, I suppose.”

Dan tries to speak but his mouth is hanging open and his voice box is locked for no fucking reason and Phil is getting up and leaving the room and Dan is staring after his retreating back and Dan just wants to scream and cry at something but he can’t because his body is frozen there just shell-shocked what the fuck.

What a fucking mess.

Anyone who’s anyone in Dan and Phil’s adjacent life won’t let the Tumblr post die down.

Dan expects his Tumblr followers to not let up with it, and he understands when the notes go up to seventeen thousand. What he doesn’t understand is how the Trevor Project and their own workplace, BBC Radio One, are both insisting to speak about their coming out, their relationship – especially Dan’s rapid-fire defence of Phil’s honour and identity after a rude article was written.

They’re already back from Vidcon and Dan was hoping that life would return to its original pace of hurriedly editing videos and haphazardly uploading them with wet hair dripping on the keyboard, but no, it wouldn’t.

The Trevor Project, being an American LGBT organisation, was done while they were in Anaheim. They flew a journalist over to interview the both of them while Martyn and Cornelia watched over them like hawks might they slip up or the interviewer might ask something invasive. No one did anything wrong, though. They didn’t slip up too, mostly just using references from two-thousand nine, the year of almosts and could-have-beens, the year where things happened but were never named or labelled clearly for them to recognise that this was real.

What made Dan nervous was the Radio One interview, though.

They were on Nick Grimshaw’s breakfast show, which was fine because Nick was their friend. It was actually pretty funny, despite Dan’s clammy hands. And besides, Nick already knew them well enough to know if they felt strange or uncomfortable. He already had a set of questions to ask, but he had his own to make them comfortable. It went well, it was very fun and he made them laugh way too many times to count.
Okay, maybe the interview was the one that Dan didn’t mind. The accompanying photoshoot that the BBC had requested them to do was the one that made Dan sweat beads as big as pearls, and its ten degrees outside.

It wasn’t really that big of a deal; it was just a cute photoshoot with a white backdrop and lots of cute plush toys. Phil found the Kerropi plush toy in record time. Phil was given a pair of fake glasses while Dan’s hair was just brushed to look like he just woke up. It was kind of endearing, and somewhat fun. Dan can’t believe there was no Totoro though. Totoros are crucial in any Dan and Phil shipping shindig. 
It wasn’t really that big of a deal, he convinces himself, they’ve done this before. They had EE, and the other Radio One shoot for their own radio show, some convention things, even for their book, and yet, Dan has a nagging feeling in his chest that implies that even though it’s the same, something’s different.

It’s more intimate. It’s more close-up, more focused on their romantic relationship – if ever there was even one – and less on their dynamic as a duo on the internet leading their internet cult. It was pretty.

There’s around fifty photos, but there is one picture that Dan absolutely adores.
It’s a simple shot – portrait layout. Dan is on the left like always, his hair flaying a little bit upwards. He’s looking at Phil who is on the right, the Kerropi on his lap with a death grip on it. His head is on Dan’s shoulder. Dan has a light, fond smile on his lips and Phil looks a bit more relaxed, eyes directed to the camera, as if he was saying subtly, ‘bet you want to have a love like ours.’

Dan is jealous of the photo, which doesn’t make sense, because that was him not ten minutes ago doing the exact same pose, and yet he feels like a different person from the outside looking in. He looks at the photo with a contorted expression on his face. It looks so real, and it’s making him feel strange things.

He secretly asks the photographer to e-mail him the photo. He wants to print it out and hang it up on the wall at home or put it on a small picture frame or something.

What the fuck.

Things finally – finally! – go back to normal once the Radio One interview is finished. Dan is rushing through videos and meals, Phil is still wearing mismatched socks around the house using that app to boil the kettle over the Wi-Fi with his hair sticking up, and Dan swears he’s burnt his hair not blow-drying it before straightening it, but he can’t be arsed when he’s so lazy and he’s jumping from one project to the next.

(People still comment on their coming out videos, which is kind of scary because the views are surpassing the Phil is Not on Fire videos and the Photobooth Challenge, and Phil’s gotten three million during the kerfuffle while Dan was close to five million, but they ignore it.)

Dan was close to forgetting that to the world they were finally a real couple when he comes home and he hears a fucking giggle coming from their lounge.

“Phil?” he calls as he reaches the second floor and is pushing the lounge door open. 
He wants to rip his heart out.

He sees Phil and PJ on the couch, sharing Phil’s Macbook, looking at what look like cat videos. PJ raises an arm to rest it on the back of the couch, right behind Phil’s back, and Dan wants to burn his eyes and PJ’s and he’s not sure where the strong emotion was emanating from.

What the hell, Dan thinks to himself angrily, and he doesn’t realise he’s said it out loud until Phil and PJ whip their heads to the door to look at the source of the voice.

“Oh,” Dan stutters, “um, hello.”
“You’re home,” Phil states.
Dan can’t even bring it in himself to be sarcastic, he’s just suddenly heartsick. 
“Uh, yeah…” Dan mumbles, looking away.
“How was it?” Phil asks.
Dan can’t stop stuttering to give Phil a proper answer to his question of ‘how was it, Dan, how was the thing? How were you going out with your own friends?’ and Dan can’t stop thinking of how he should assert the fact that this was his house and PJ was disrespecting it by sitting in his couch but he’s come over so many times and he’s sat on that couch so many times before so why was Dan getting touchy now?

“I-um… I’m very tired,” Dan manages. PJ’s face clears into one of worry. Dan turns to leave the lounge, “I’ll just be in my room.”

And with that, he’s gone.

He’s on his bed, burying his face in his pillow. He’s never had this murderous feeling before. His head is whirring with so many thoughts, all fearful and in denial of what the Devil’s advocate in his head keeps telling him. He ignores him, like always, as he laughs a mischievous mocking laugh. ‘Liars go to Hell, Dan,’ it said.

He may be sexually ambiguous, he knows that. He might be bisexual; he’s open to that idea. But to be enamoured with Phil again, wishing to return to their whirlwind romance when he was eighteen and insistent to his mother that even though Phil was far away and four years older, Phil takes care of him so well and makes him feel like he’s whole again… it terrifies Dan. It was already trouble enough to tell Phil he doesn’t want to do anything anymore and just wants to be friends, and then moving in with him even though he so clearly wanted to get away from Dan just so he can stop hurting. It was already trouble enough for Dan and Phil to pretend everything was okay for everyone that watches them even though the hole was huge and gaping and they just put a cloth over it to say it doesn’t exist. It was already trouble enough to be called ungrateful by his subscribers in two thousand-twelve, where he outright denied the existence of the reality of him and Phil when it was true and it just hurt him but his logic went over his heart.

He’s hypnotised himself: he didn’t love Phil. It worked for a while, but now the spell was wearing off. The memory of Phil’s small but soft lips on his own as they sat in silence in their hotel room, and the earlier sight of PJ sitting too close to someone he was supposed to be dating makes him want to yell out loud that the world wasn’t fair to him.

Whatever this is, he doesn’t understand and he’s racking his brain for an explanation. He hates being in the dark, he hates being the dumb one.

In his rage, he throws a pillow at a far wall; hitting his mirror and making it fall over into pieces.

Fuck.

As if he didn’t need any more bad luck.

Dan is on Tumblr one day and another fan decides to write fanfiction and ends up tagging it with ‘danisnotonfire’, and for a joke he decides to read it, and maybe if it’s good enough he’ll even give it a like.

Okay, that was a mistake.

This fanfiction is incredibly sexual, why didn’t the writer explicitly say that it was?

Dan was supposedly obsessed with getting off, and he’s trying to find a solution for it when he decides to buy a dildo and Phil teases him for it – both playfully and sexually.

Holy shit.

‘I have a theory,’ Phil murmured against Dan’s chest, kissing his sternum and licking the dip in his chest where his ribs met.

‘Hmm?’ Dan whimpered; it was all he could manage.

Phil continued his ministrations, moving his hands down to flick open the button of Dan’s jeans and tease the zip down.

‘I think if I can give you a mind-blowing orgasm, then it might solve your… problem,’ he paused to lick the thin trail of hair that led to Dan’s crotch. ‘If it doesn’t, well, I’m sure we can find a way around that too. What do you say?’

Oh my god.

Okay, his mistake. He didn’t read the summary.

‘In this fic you will find frustration, orgasm denial, dom!Phil and everything you have come to expect from this goddamn ship…’ sweet Jesus in Heaven. He thought he was being written into loving vanilla sex with Phil! Orgasm denial? Dan needs a minute to breathe.

And once again, for another joke, Dan decides to send Phil the link to it, adding a personal message of ‘wanna try this one day?’

‘omg’
‘where the fuc k did u get this oh my god’
‘why the fuck are u reading this’

‘I saw it on my tag’, Dan responds. ‘you didn’t answer the question’
‘wanna try it one day?’

It’s ten minutes before Phil replies. Dan assumes it’s because he was reading it. 
‘Oh my god’

‘say that irl it will be much kinkier’

‘shut up dan’
‘where did u even get this anyway’

‘it was on my tag’
‘incredible isn’t it’
‘wanna try it’
‘me spread on the bed tied up and u teasing me with a dildo while I beg for u to fuck me’

‘fuck off dan’
‘don’t’ 
‘go read ur straight danrific fanfiction’

Dan forgets to reply when he finds another one called ‘Flower Shop Punk’, and the writer has Dan writhing on a cash register table surrounded with flowers and moaning for Phil to fuck him, calling him ‘Daddy’.

He needs a cold shower.

Why the fuck is he reading fanfiction of him and his best friend – who is literally in the other room – anyway? What does he want? It’s not like they talked about their kiss in Anaheim, so why is he feeling all flustered and bothered with the fact that his viewers have written him and Phil having elaborately kinky bum sex? And Phil doesn’t seem to want to talk about the kiss. Or Anaheim, in general. So what makes Dan think that Phil will ever kiss him again, much less commit sodomy with him?
What if this entire crisis over Phil was all for nothing? What if… it’s all just a fluke?

What is he talking about, it’s always been a fluke the moment Dan said to Phil’s distraught face, ‘I just want to be friends with you.’

Motherfucker.

It has truly always been a fluke ever since.

And he so badly wants to do something about it, and while racking his brains for new video ideas he’s also trying to generate ideas on confronting Phil about this entire thing. He just wants clarification of where Phil stands on the matter so he can imitate him, because frankly, he’s getting way too invested for this to be considered a ‘fluke’. Phil isn’t. Phil is grown up and he knows his thoughts on the matter and had already calculated his next moves well enough into next month. Dan seriously feels eighteen – all fluttery and insistent, but also helpless and hopeless.

He stays in his room for the week, only ever coming out when he hears a door shut so he can get food. He hasn’t seen Phil in that time. 
Okay, maybe he did, but he quickly shut the door at the sight of a wisp of dyed black hair and slides his back against the door until his butt touches the floor because he is so weak – both physically and emotionally.

But when he comes back out and shows himself to Phil all showered and dressed and hair straightened, Phil only glances at him, says, “oh, hello,” and turns back to the television, where he’s playing an episode of Cowboy Bebop. 
Bless Phil for being so understanding – he knows when Dan needs to be alone, and lets him be. Especially during his existential crisis period. 
Heck, bless Phil for being all that Dan needs in a person and more, and he’s already admitted it to Phil and the entire world, but Phil hadn’t received as well as he hoped he would have because it made Phil fall for him again.
What a shit.

Dan goes on about his day, resolving to film a video. He had abandoned his channel for almost a month now going two in favour of going into an existential – no, a romantic – crisis, but now he’s looking for the camera and opening the airing cupboards to find the tripod, fluffing pillows up on top of a chair to get the perfect height for him at the angle he sets the camera up on – it’s all routine to him now and at least there is one thing that’s normal.

And Phil may have only glanced at him, but it isn’t once. 
It’s in random intervals all throughout the day – and when Dan does catch him (four times in two hours), he realises there’s a worried glint in Phil’s eye every time, and his throat bobs to prepare himself to speak, but before he even opens his mouth, he had already decided against it.

Other than that, it’s the regularly-scheduled programming of the Dan and Phil Show.

But Dan feels like it’s a special episode.

Dan feels like it isn’t the normal slice-of-life, romantic-comedy that people have decided to subscribe to them to see – it’s like this is the episode with the cliffhanger until next week and Dan doesn’t know how to live through the fictional world, how on earth is he even alive in his own when there’s an oncoming… whatever the fuck is happening soon to them?
Phil was the person who helped through his mental breakdowns, nursed him back to sanity and patiently waited for him to come home from the black hole he created for himself in his mind and on the carpet on the landing of their staircase, but how will Phil do that this time when… he’s the cause of Dan’s heartsickness?

Dan decides he’s just gonna ride this out…

Until it’s already been a month into this space trek into the black hole of his mind – and this year might as well be the longest with all that’s happening, and his actual existential crisis in two thousand-thirteen happened. That’s terrifying.

Sometimes he thinks this is going to cause his downfall – this is going to affect all the other aspects of his life: his career, his personal life, hell, even jacking off is at risk if it’s about Phil!
And he wants to break away. He wants to call Martyn and Cornelia and ask them if they can pull forward the fake break-up, to quickly think and bring up ideas on damage control, but then they go out in public – probably shopping with Phil or going to the BBC with Phil or at a party their friends have thrown and he takes Phil’s hand in an assuring way over the table when they’re eating, or snaking a possessive arm around Phil’s waist when speaking to a fan and… Phil smiles so lightly and so fondly and there is a spread of light pink over the bridge of his nose and across his cheeks and Dan just wants to nuzzle Phil right there and press his face against Phil’s face and close his eyes and be engulfed by Phil’s careful embrace and just disappear from the world content and happy.

Dan is completely enamoured – completely and utterly enamoured and he’s such a massive sucker for Phil ever since the beginning so really, he’s the fluke around here.

Why is he such a piece of shit?

He and Phil get an e-mail (separately, of course, but the language in the e-mail spoke to the both of them) the next day, asking the both of them – the British Youtube community’s biggest gay power couple (he straight up denies that because Rose and Rosie exist and they’re actually real) – if they were interested in holding a talk at Summer in the City this year on the LGBT community. They’re asking Dan and Phil if they want to talk about coming out, encouraging youngsters to go on the road of self-acceptance, on bravery, and the story of their own self-acceptance as well as coming together as a couple and understanding that they were okay and this was an ‘okay’ love.

Of course, they’ve already signed up for Summer in the City at the same time as Vidcon, and with how Phil spoke at the Vidcon panel given the literal overnight that they were given for damage control, it should be okay for them to do this. In fact, they might do better for Summer in the City, seeing as how they were given a longer time to prepare – Summer in the City is in a week’s time, but what terrifies Dan is the fact that it’s the both of them alone.

No Tyler, no Joey, no Troye, no Connor. Hell, there’s not even a Rose and Rosie! It’s just them, playing the happy couple for an hour, shitting in front of their audience and they will enjoy it.

Phil agreed to it, of course, after speaking to Martyn and Cornelia. Dan said yes too, after Phil.

Dan agrees within himself that this e-mail from the organisers of Summer in the City is a wake-up call to quickly formulate a plan. A plan to do what, Dan doesn’t know, but this is his own damage control on himself and what he’s about to do with Phil at Summer in the City.

This is… This is going to be the last thing that they were going to do as a couple, and then in five months, they’re going to pretend to break up and they’re going to go back to normal – whatever ‘normal’ is for them – to hell with what their subscribers think. There would be no more reason to pretend they’re in love again. It’s gonna be fine. It’s fine.

They take that week and make the best of it: they take a train to Martyn and Cornelia’s house out in the west coast, and they stay over for three days planning all that they’re going to discuss in the talk in extraneous detail.
Phil is participative and Cornelia is as opinionated as ever as Martyn presents the simple ideas and Dan contributes as much as he can even though he isn’t as wordy as Phil, nothing comprehending in his straight-boy brain. 
And he feels so sorry for Phil for dragging him back into the life of secrecy, for pretending to be straight and hiding from the world and the possibility that his actual soulmate (the thought stings Dan way more than it’s supposed to) might see the video and brush past because he knows he has no chance on this ‘straight’ boy.

So Dan keeps this inner turmoil to himself, biting his tongue whenever the temptation of waffling about his irrelevant and unhelpful thoughts rises in his throat, which was proving as gradually difficult as the first day of Summer in the City and their talk draws closer and closer. By the morning of the convention, Dan had resorted to wearing headphones so that Phil doesn’t speak to him, and he won’t get triggered to speak to Phil, because if he does, he’ll probably burst into tears and in his words might tumble out without prompt.

Phil knocks on the side of his headphones. Dan shoves them down to his neck, “yeah?”
“Are you alright? I mean, I understand that you’re nervous, but you aren’t even babbling to me like usual anymore.”

Dan forces himself to smile lightly and not throw himself at Phil and coil himself around him and ask him to retract all their plans for Summer in the City and just tell the attendees the truth, and he manages not to when he hears a gasp from the carriage door closest to them and he sees a girl stood there staring at them with wide and admiring eyes, and Dan reaches his left hand to claim Phil’s right hand and fiddle with his limp fingers.

Phil’s face erupts into that rosy blush like it always does whenever he comes in physical contact with Dan, and Dan’s smile morphs from forced and fake to a fond and endearing one. Phil is so adorable.

What the fuck.

They arrive at the venue within a blink of an eye and it only became recently real to Dan in that moment that they were going to do this – another week of acting like he’s in love with Phil, a punishment, a heaven on earth. And when they alight from the taxi that they hailed from the train station and greeted by a burly group in black shirts with the Summer in the City logo on them which Dan assumes is the security detail that were assigned to lead them inside so that the subscribers don’t throw themselves at the Youtubers, his hands are starting to get clammy and stiff, and even when Phil takes his hand in what is supposed to be part-assuring and to milk the crowds of their reactions, Dan still isn’t feeling calm. His heart is thudding in his chest and Phil squeezes even harder, and drags him towards the doors.

There wasn’t much to do in the first day – they stood in their merchandise booth with Martyn and Cornelia, greeting everyone and talking to them and taking pictures and giving out hugs and cheekily feeding each other frozen yogurt while Cornelia rolls her eyes at them.

They were invited to Troye Sivan’s hotel, where they ordered room service and generally just acted rowdy, and Dan is kind of tipsy off the cider and wants to cuddle with Phil, but Phil is busy talking to Jack about some editing issue, and Dan just keeps trying to snuggle into Phil. Phil lets him, even putting an arm over Dan’s shoulder, but his attention is somewhere else and Dan is just grunting in his ear to love him, you idiot, and he puts a leg over Phil’s long ones and Jack just raises a brow, calls Dan a jealous bitch jokingly, and walks off to Louise laughing. 
Louise is vlogging and when Jack gets her attention, he complains to the camera what Dan was trying to do, and Louise pans the camera to Dan and Phil, zooming in teasingly and Dan tightens his grip around Phil’s body and hides his face with a childish noise. Phil only chuckles.

“Dan, you’re so clingy!” Louise exclaims, and Phil rubs Dan’s arm.

What a massive shit storm the comments section will be in this video.

Dan underestimated just how many people were coming to their stage.

There were so many people – in fact, probably every teenage girl in England and possibly a third of the teenage boys were in the audience that day, and there were parents too, and they were so interactive and playful that barely even five minutes before they got onstage, the adrenaline was pumping through Dan’s system and the thought of the surprise he planned for Phil (and the audience) was making it course through his veins even faster.

They sat on the stools set up on stage, just briskly conversing with each other and their viewers, who raised their hands to ask questions and clarifications from the both of them about them, their love, how to recognise that you might be queer, how to cope with being queer, how to come out, appropriate actions when you’re being bullied for being queer and the like. Dan recognised he spoke way more in this panel than the one in Anaheim, which confused him but made sense to him at the same time.

“—which I guess is kind of stupid, I mean I know when Dan denied being anything but straight I know it hurt me a lot, so getting rejected in a very homophobic way is stupid.” Phil spoke, “but the thing is, you don’t deserve to be the receiving end of such bigotry. People have to realise that this entire confession thing is completely, one-hundred-percent feelings, so if they reject you in any way that attacks you as a person, I think it’s because they’re ignorant. And you don’t stay with them. You get up and out, and you find someone else that shares your feelings. It’s one thing to be rejected, but it’s another thing to be bullied just because of what you feel.”

“Yeah, but if by some plot twist that person comes back to you and says, ‘hey, so, you got me thinking, and I think I’m in love with you too’ like some fan fiction or they want you back as a friend because you were very reliable or some other reason like that, do not forgive them right away,” Dan adds. Phil laughs off-mic, loud and unashamed and bashful, his tongue peeking out of his mouth. “They hurt not only your feelings but they insulted your identity as a person and we think that they either respect you first before you return their respect, because obviously when someone offends you, you lose all your respect for that person and hate them.”

Phil nods, and cuts in as well, “not to say that you should hold a grudge because that will really mess up your zen, but it’s just that you have to be cautious of the people you interact with. I suggest you drop hints instead of dropping bombs, so that they will accept you once you come clean instead of deserting you when you need them the most.”

“Yeah, like me and Phil,” Dan says, distractedly taking Phil’s hand in his own and caressing his thumb over his skin, dragging it onto his lap. ‘This is it,’ Dan thinks. “When we broke up I started going no-homo all over the place until just one day I realised I couldn’t get anything done if it weren’t for him, and I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him—”
“Glad to know you think I’m your doting wife, Dan,” Phil jokes, and Dan doesn’t wait.

He turns his head as casually as he could, and pressed his lips hard against Phil’s slightly open ones. Phil gasps into the kiss, eyes fluttering closed and kisses back, and Dan’s heart is thrumming and he feels like he’s in heaven, and he smiles into it.  Phil flings his arms around Dan’s neck, pulling him closer and then pulls away, pressing his forehead against Dan’s and laughing. 
“You are.” Dan says into the mic, looking into Phil’s eyes. 

What a fucking mess.

They leave the stage, and Dan might have floated away if it weren’t for Phil’s fingers lightly tangled around his own and dragging him around in his daze.

Backstage, Zoe and Alfie give them hugs and told them they were very cute, Zoe spazzing about the kiss. Joe and Caspar followed, Caspar smiling shyly at Phil and then putting his head on Joe’s shoulder, to which Phil laughed at. Dan stuck his tongue out to them, clutching onto Phil’s arm tighter. Tyler Oakley comes up to them and outright screams about his ‘twink friends being the cutest couple on Earth’, to which Phil denies because, “I am definitely a bear, Tyler. Dan here is the twink,” and Dan is just way too infatuated to even argue. 
Meanwhile, Martyn and Cornelia follow closely behind them, trying to figure out what just happened, because clearly, that wasn’t in the script.

He must look stupid, Dan thinks, standing around not saying anything to the people that were trying to speak to him, instead only shoving Phil around as his shield to interact with these people for him, but you can’t really blame him. Not when he just had the most breath-taking kiss with Phil, the handsomest man in the world, in front of hundreds of people who supported them and believed in them.

They return back to their flat after dinner with everyone, Dan kind of jittery ever since they boarded the cab because they were finally going to be alone together in the privacy of their own home.

And Dan is internally beaming when Phil is leading the way back upstairs to their house, up the stairs and into the second floor. 
He so badly wants Phil to have him on a bed, to hold him carefully and kiss him on every inch of skin and caress his skin, to be gentle and to take care of him and show him how much he loves him – similar but different to their first time in Phil’s childhood home, where Uma Thurman gazed upon them.

But instead, Phil enters the lounge and puts his keys on the mantle and then turns around to look at Dan, and laughs in his face. Dan’s face falls. 
“You could have warned me we were doing fanservice.”

What?

“What?” Dan stutters, “What, Phil—”

He didn’t… get the message?

Phil only brushes past him, “it’s alright,” he says, “I mean, it makes sense that you would want to do that. It will be difficult to explain tomorrow, though.”

Dan tilts his head in confusion, “tomorrow?” His heart is falling into his stomach and is corroding in the hydrochloric acid. What was happening tomorrow? Why didn’t Phil understand what he was trying to say with the very public display of affection – on stage in front of hundreds of people? Why isn’t Phil understanding and pushing him onto the couch and ravishing his neck as punishment for pulling a stunt on stage?

“Your live show.”
“What?”

Phil stops by the lounge door and turns back to Dan.

“Er, your live show? On You Now?” Phil says, trying to refresh Dan’s memory. Dan shakes his head slowly in confusion. Phil raises a brow, alarmed. “Tomorrow, Dan. Cornelia said…”
“What?” Dan feels like a clueless five-year-old.

Phil sighs exasperatedly, “you’re telling the truth, Dan.” he explains slowly.

Dan is on the verge of crying. “O-oh,” he croaks out. So Phil… didn’t get it? Phil doesn’t love him?
Phil snickers, “seriously, Dan, you even have it on the SITC text edit file to remind you.”
“…I forgot.”

Phil didn’t get it.

He thought kissing Phil on-stage will make Phil question the reality of everything, to make Phil realise that he was as in love with Dan as Dan was with him like in two thousand-nine, to speak to Dan and clarify with him the kiss, to which Dan will admit that the kiss was real and they will spend the rest of the night in each other’s loving embrace, peppering kisses on every bit of exposed skin.

But Phil didn’t get it. He only left the lounge and went back to his room, and Dan stands frozen in the middle of their lounge, feeling completely bereft of everything he ever possessed.

What should Dan do? Should he try again? Should he burst into Phil’s room right now and confess what he had been trying to do? 
What had he been trying to do, anyway?

Okay, that makes sense. Even Dan didn’t understand what he himself tried to do out there, so how much more would he think that Phil would actually catch his drift? He should really confess.

Or… maybe Phil did.
Maybe Phil did understand what Dan was getting at. Maybe he knew what Dan was trying to do, but he’s intentionally acting clueless so Dan will get discouraged and stop pining after him because it isn’t in his heart to reject Dan might their friendship be jeopardised.
Hell, their friendship was already jeopardised with the existence of Dan’s feelings. Phil was only trying to salvage whatever remains he can find of it, so when Dan realises that he can never have Phil, at least he still has something to return to.

The longer he stood there and considered this idea, the more real it seemed to him. There was so much drama when they broke up in two thousand-twelve, Phil wanted to avoid it as much as he can single-handedly because he was too hurt but Dan was his best friend first and lover second. Everything would fall apart, and he and Phil have invested too much into each other and with each other that if he took this leap of faith… he might not even get to the other side safe and sound. He might fall into the ravine and die. Phil can’t risk that, and Dan understands, but at the same time, he doesn’t.

He doesn’t understand – why couldn’t Phil get it? Dan kissed him and practically bared his soul out on that panel, expressing his guilt in denying the love they shared so long ago and in essence proposed to him by calling him his wife, which is to mean the person you would spend your entire life with. And to top it all off, he kissed Phil, long and hard (no innuendo intended. Jesus Christ, Dan, you really want to get into Phil’s pants don’t you?), literally professing his dormant love and adoration for Phil. Dan was a man of many demands – one of them being attention and validation, but even he knew the kiss was too much. It was too much for someone who kept nagging Phil to go on Skype for the longest time. Phil had to realise that somehow. Phil had to realise that Dan was being proactive in trying to win him back. Phil had to realise something.

But he didn’t say anything. What is that supposed to mean?

Dan flings himself across the hall and into his room, not bothering to take off his shoes or change his clothes and just dumps himself face first onto his bed. He stays there, the thick sheets against his nose constricting his breathing (and kind of hurting his nasal cartilage) for who knows how long. He moves his head occasionally to get gasps of air, but other than that, he freezes on top of his blankets.

Why is he reverting back to his two thousand-nine self: pining after Phil and wondering when they’ll kiss again? He really wants to kiss Phil again. 
But will Phil let him?

He stays that way, questioning his entire life up to this moment, until he hears some shuffling outside, an opening and closing of doors, and a shout from Phil. 
“Do you wanna get pizza?”

Dan lets out a muffled answer of ‘aaaa’, face still pressed onto his pillow. He doesn’t understand what he just said, and he wouldn’t put it past Phil to understand it either, but he doesn’t prod anymore and but calls back to him, saying that the pizza will get here in thirty to forty-five minutes.

Dan doesn’t want to answer, but his mouth was sentient and moved without his instruction.

“Aaaa,” he called back in a monotone without a thought.

What a fucking mess.

Dan reckons it’s too early to feel butterflies fluttering around your torso.

He wasn’t in his own room but in the lounge, lying on the small couch, his head on a hard surface when he recognised the feeling of being stared – the same way he felt whenever he walked out of the BBC and was followed by the hordes of girls towards the train station. And then, he feels a light pressing against his hairline.

He blearily opens his eyes: sunlight streaming in through his lashes and seeing an expanse of green cotton.

Is he lying on… Phil…?

And did Phil just kiss his forehead?

No way.

No way.

No fucking way.

There’s only one way to find out.

He pretends to get comfortable, snuggling into Phil’s chest to see if Phil was staring at him when suddenly he feels hyperaware of everything.

Phil’s arm is around the back of his neck, their legs tangled with each other as they lie on the brown suede. Phil’s breathing is tickling Dan’s face, Phil’s head resting on his, his glasses wonky on his face. Dan’s arm is wound around Phil’s waist; Phil’s resting on top of his. Dan rolls his eyes up, struggling to see through the fine hairs of his lashes to look at Phil.

Phil was wide awake. Phil was wide awake and staring at Dan. Phil was wide awake and staring at Dan in his sleep. Phil was wide awake and staring at Dan in his sleep intently.
Phil laps a tongue across his lower lip and a light fond smile ghosts through his face, and Dan almost gasps.

It comes out halfway, bobbing in his throat like a hiccup. Phil freezes beneath him and the smile is gone now, and Dan has to pretend to wake up in the only way he knew how: by whining and cursing the bright sun.

“Morning,” Phil greets shyly, and Dan crinkles his nose. 
Dan wants to snuggle even closer to Phil. “Cowboy Bebop must have been wild if we ended up sleeping here,” he jokes.
Phil chuckles.

“It must have been. Breakfast?” 
Dan nods against Phil’s chest, closing his eyes lightly.

“Uh, Dan,” Phil calls after a short while, “I kind of need you to let go so I can make coffee.”
‘No,’ Dan wants to protest and press himself tighter against Phil, ‘I want you to stay here and snuggle with me till it’s eleven-thirty and give me tiny kisses on my face.’ 
But he doesn’t. 
Instead, he laughs awkwardly and untangles himself from Phil, removing his arm from Phil’s waist and sitting up on the couch. Phil slides himself down from the couch onto the floor, and then gets up, amused with himself as he walks out the door.

Dan stares at Phil’s back, zoning out at a particularly non-interesting spot on their white wall as his mind reels on the wonderfully loving wake-up call he just had. And all throughout breakfast he reflects on the previous week at Summer in the City with the hand-holding and the kissing and the possessiveness, and throughout the day he recalls the previous month in the Nick Grimshaw show and the BBC photoshoot and the Trever Project interview and the entire panel with Tyler and Joey and Hannah and Troye and Connor and Alex and Rose and Rosie at Vidcon, and the live show that started it all.
And as the sun goes down he remembers everything: Phil tweeting him, Phil on Skype with him, Phil encouraging him to start his own videos, Phil meeting him in Manchester, kissing him in Manchester, having sex in Manchester as Uma Thurman threateningly held her sword lest someone walk in on them even though literally no one was home. 
Dan’s holiday to India where he realised that being away from Phil pulled at his heart strings way too hard for him to breathe right, and then the Sanyo sponsorship where they went to Jamaica and just laid in bed till two in the morning in comfortable silence and light smiles that hurt his cheeks but couldn’t stop because it felt so right, and when they went to Portugal, when they moved in together in Manchester, when Dan dropped out of university and Phil took him in an understanding hug, when they broke up but decided to stay friends, when they moved to London…

It’s all very Drake-like, he supposes, starting from the bottom, and now he has what technically is an entire cult for him and Phil, and it’s all thanks to Phil because he believed in Dan and encouraged him. His entire life has been formed under the guidance of Phil.

And he was strongly considering giving up on getting Phil back and just be content with what they have the same way Phil did after they broke up but saw each other every day, but with how the morning played out: Phil was in his arms and Phil kissed his head a ‘good morning’ and he looked truly happy having and holding each other through the night; maybe Phil wants this too. Maybe Phil still loves him and wants him back.
But no one will know unless somebody says something. And for some reason Phil had become so elusive since they started this fake dating stunt, keeping professional and true to character that Dan will have to drop dead first before Phil makes the first move.

So Dan does.

Doesn’t drop dead, of course, but ten minutes before the live show, he might as well have offered himself to Death.

He enters the lounge and stands by the door, just staring at Phil until Phil gives him his attention.

“Dan? Do you need anything?” Phil asks, eyes still pointed to the television.

Dan croaks, but no words come out.

Phil is worried, “you alright?”
Dan grunts uselessly.
Phil nods slowly and encouragingly, beckoning Dan over to sit with him.

“No,” Dan answers. Okay. He can do this. He got one syllable out. It can’t be that hard. 
“Okay…” Phil trails off, eyebrows knit together.

“Don’t-don’t say anything. Okay. Just. Let me talk.” Dan commands, and Phil turns off the TV and shifts his entire body so he is facing Dan. Dan feels like he’s at one of his piano recitals again. Why is it so hard?

“I just—the kiss yesterday. At Summer in the City. And I called you my wife. And that,” he says brokenly, and Phil’s Adam’s apple bounces in his throat, mouth opening to respond but Dan holds up a finger to stop him. 
“The kiss yesterday was real. And the hand-holding, and all the other couple-y things we did. Whatever they were. I. I kissed you because. Bec-because. I-um. I kissed you because… shit, um. I kissed you because I wanted to tell you without actually telling you that I wanted you back. Which I thought was a thing. I-um, it was a grand gesture, and, um, I thought you would get it, or maybe you did, but didn’t say anything about it? I don’t know. But it was stupid that I assumed you would get it, because judging from your face right now you didn’t, and I don’t know what to think but I know that um, I love you, and I wanted you to know that. Like, literal romantic love. Not platonic or whatever like we used to tell people. I liked kissing you and sleeping with you on the couch and stuff, and holding your hand and telling Jack to bug off because I wanted you. And. I think I’ve read all of the porn written about us and I like, kind of want to get tied up and hit by you. But like. Also have loving sleepy sex with you. And I kind of um, wanted to stab PJ when he came over, and I.”

He glances to the pixel clock on their window and realised the time is five to nine, and he starts spluttering.

“And I have to go, I have a live show in five minutes and. I just wanted you to know the truth, without like, I mean, my truth, that um, I liked kissing you way too much and um, I got too into this faking thing and I want it to be real, but in five minutes I uh, I have to tell everyone that ‘phan is not real’ again or like. Whatever. And they will hate me, and that’s okay, but I don’t want you to. And this is so shit, because like, I have to go now but I’m making myself all flustered and like, they’ll notice like they always do. And it’s okay if like, you don’t love me anymore, because I literally did the same thing to you, and that’s fine, I don’t expect anything from you, but I just.”

Two minutes.

“I just wanted to get this off my chest, because I thought you deserved to know. And like, you can get angry, or whatever, but I don’t want you to hate me, or anything, because I love you and like, you’re really fucking important to me. And I’m kind of like hoping that, like, you feel that way too, because this morning waking up next to you with a kiss on my head was like, really nice, and, wait, more than nice, actually. It felt right. And I just keep talking because like, I’m trying to brace myself if ever you like, reject me, because that’s fine and I respect you, I more than respect you, and I want you to be like, happy, and stuff.

Thirty seconds.

Shit.

“So, like, yeah, I love you. A lot. Very, very much. And like, I’m sorry I threw this at you now, because like. It’s really not a good time and I really have to go. Sorry.”

And Dan dashes out of the lounge, leaving Phil with red glassy eyes, and enters his room, jumping on his Mac and logging in to You Now.

Standard protocol: he was four minutes late, greets the people already waiting for him, tweets the live show link, does a little Inception on his Macbook, and musters up a smile for his audience, even though he is flustered and just wants to bury his head in the sand.

“Genevieve is asking how the talk was at Summer in the City! Alright,” Dan says way too enthusiastically to be considered genuine. “I have something to tell you guys about Summer in the City, and it’s going to break a lot of hearts, but—” There’s a knock on the door, and from the screen, Dan sees Phil’s head sticking out around the corner. 
“Bear?”
Dan’s heart stutters in his chest. “Yes?”
“Are you gonna tell them about the thing?” Phil asks.
“Yeah.”
“Can I join you?”
“Okay, yeah, sure.” Dan answers, avoiding Phil’s gaze and chose to look at the chat instead.

Phil enters Dan’s bedroom, grabbing the piano stool and sits on it beside Dan, showing himself to the camera.
“Hello.”
“Hi, Phil – what are we talking about?”
“The thing in Summer in the City.”
“Oh, right. Okay, so, guys, see – the entire thing from Summer in the City that we wanted to tell you about is that—”
Phil interrupts him, “–Dan and I are getting married.”

Literally everyone in the chat is crying.

‘what’
‘oh my fucibgn god’
‘I cmrubttif’
‘im crafting so hard rin’
‘hogn my godn’

Phil snorts as he looks to the screen and sees Dan flushing red. He smirks. 
“We didn’t actually get officially engaged, see, I don’t have a ring yet and Dan – show your hands, Dan – I haven’t gotten one for him either. But like, I’m sure someone uploaded the talk onto Youtube and some of you might have seen there was this bit in the end where I said I was Dan’s ‘doting wife’ and he agreed, and when we left we talked about it and we decided that seven years is too long of a time to be together and not settle down yet,” Phil babbles, putting his head on Dan’s shoulder, “so we decided that when Dan got a bit older, like, say—”
“—twenty-five—” Dan supplies.
“—yeah, then we can properly plan this entire marriage thing. Like, why not make this ‘forever’ thing official, right?”

They playfully talk about colour schemes and locations where they would want to get married, Phil crying out a ‘no!’ when Dan jokingly suggested Comic Sans for the invitation’s font on black card paper. 
“I don’t know, we’ll see,” Dan smiles, weaving his arm around Phil’s waist and resting his head on Phil’s shoulder.

The chat had died down gradually after some contributed ideas for the eventual wedding, some even asking if they were inviting Chris Kendall to it, seeing as how he predicted it. 
“We will, definitely,” Dan answers. Phil doesn’t say anything, and that was that.

They end the live show as per routine, calling out names and shouting goodbyes, and then trying to work out how the ‘end show’ button isn’t working and not letting them off the hook.

Once the screen had gone back, Dan closes the window and shuts down his computer, ignoring Phil as he stared at Dan’s profile.

Dan gets up and tries to shove his way past Phil so he can collapse to his bed, but Phil grabs his wrist and gets up too so he can meet Dan’s eyes.

Phil intertwines their fingers together and Dan’s eyes dilate, looking down to look at his hands in Phil’s. He looks up and is met with Phil’s piercing blue-green-yellow eyes.

“Do you really?” Phil whispers, soft as the wind. Dan doesn’t answer, too mesmerised at the close proximity with which he is viewing Phil’s eyes from. It’s been so long since he looked into Phil’s eyes like this. “Do you really love me?”
“I do,” Dan stammers, completely enamoured with Phil’s eyes, voice, lips, cheekbones, hair, hands, arms, legs, everything.

Phil grins smugly, “then you may now kiss the bride.” He grabs Dan’s head, pressing his lips to Dan’s firmly.

Holy shit.

Holy fucking shit.

Phil is meshing his lips against Dan’s, and Dan swears his heart is beating so fast it could beat a hummingbird’s wings. In fact, he could be a hummingbird, because he swears he’s flying.

Phil’s lips are still on Dan’s when he takes his hands from Dan’s face and guides Dan’s hands up to wrap themselves around Phil’s neck, and Phil circles his arms around Dan’s waist, and Dan feels eighteen again.

It feels so liberating to kiss Phil, and he wants to keep going when the landline rings.

Dan groans as Phil pulls away, and tightens his hold around Phil’s neck. “No,” he mutters, eyes still closed. Phil laughs, light and happy, and kisses Dan’s nose. 
“I’ll be back, okay?”
“No,” he whines, elongating the word.
“Come with me, then,” Phil says, tugging Dan’s hands away from his neck and turning around, pulling Dan with him to the hallway, where their house phone is attached to the wall.

Phil picks up, “hello?” as Dan wraps his arms around Phil’s waist, placing butterfly kisses around his neck.

It’s Martyn.

“Are you two serious?” he says from the other line.
“As serious as you and Cornelia,” sasses Phil.

There’s a sigh of exasperation and Dan presses his mouth on Phil’s skin to muffle his laughter.

“Ugh,” Martyn groans, “fuck you two. Especially Dan.”
“Didn’t know we were having a foursome.”
“Fuck off.”
“You called my house!”

Dan lifts his head and laughs, loud and fearless.

“Yeah, about that. Whatever that live show was – you’re engaged now?”
“We’re talking about it. And what do you want, I was about to get laid!”
Dan’s eyes widen and he giggles. “Phil!” he whispers.

“I don’t want to know, dick. But yeah. I’m out. Good. You’re on your own.”
“Aw, really? I wanted you to be my maid of honour.”
“Flattering. No, but seriously, is this for real or are you guys just milking the kids again?”

Phil turns to look at Dan – Dan who grew up right before his eyes into a dashing, opinionated young man from the little boy damaged by the taunts and mockery in his younger years. His chin was on Phil’s shoulder, somewhat weighing him down, but he looked so relaxed and in element just from the plain physical contact with Phil. Dan meets his blue eyes with his warm brown ones, and he knows.

“Yeah,” Phil says into the phone. “It’s for real.”
“Alright. Be careful. Get checked. Be safe. Use condoms. Bye.”
“Bye.” And as soon as Phil hangs up, he pushes Dan against the wall and attacks him with his lips again, pressing his hands above his head and intertwining their fingers together.

“I have a theory,” Phil mutters against his lips with a smirk.
“Mm?” Dan responds, too occupied with making out with Phil to actually say a word.
“If I can give you a mind-blowing orgasm then will you marry me?”

Dan outright laughs. “You read the fanfiction I sent you!”
Phil shrugs. “It was hot. So, will you?”
“Convince me.”

But in all honesty, Phil didn’t need to.

Because no matter what, Dan will say yes.

The mess isn’t really that bad.