Archive of Our Own

So the thing is, Phil has never been in love.

It’s not a huge deal and he’s not wrecked over it or anything. Phil has a lot of things going for him: a nice family, a good education, a dependable internet connection. And he’s grateful, honestly. Phil Lester has good prospects and a toothy smile.

But there’s something about loneliness that digs at him, sometimes. The thought that maybe it’s too late for him, maybe he missed his chance somewhere along the way. There’s a pub night he should have gone to, or a train he should have missed. There’s someone he should have met by now, right?

Like, when Phil's parents were his age, they’d already settled into the rhythm of life, into the rhythm of each other. But here Phil is, completely without rhythm. (In many senses, admittedly. Like, the kid can't dance. But specifically in the domestic life sense.)

He’s still happy, is the thing. He’s making things, and getting paid for being weird, and he has a participatory audience that supports his sarcastic lion habits. It’s bizarre and really cool and he loves it.

But also sometimes when he listens to music—mostly the brooding, indie stuff that he owns on CD and still plays on his stereo—he’ll hear a line about love, or about heartbreak, and it just hits him. It hits some chord buried deep inside his chest, probably near his lungs, because it takes him a second to remember how to breathe.

And sometimes, sometimes, it’ll hit so hard that he literally curls up into himself. He’ll be on his bed, minding his own business, and then his body starts to physically ache. It'll hurt enough for him to tuck his arms around his knees and bury himself under his comforter and not even think about how ridiculous he looks.

Phil just kind of wants to fall in love with someone.

So when he meets Dan, Phil is hopeful. He’s not expectant, because he knows, rationally, that expectations would put too much pressure on an already-fragile internet bond. But still. Hopeful.

—

To be honest, at first, Phil is a little worried that he’s being catfished.

In the very beginning, Dan comments on his videos, and there’s not really a face attached to that, just a username. Phil has no reason to suspect that someone would lie about being named “Dan” in order to leave faceless youtube comments, so that’s fine.

But when Dan and Phil start interacting more, when there are Facebook pictures attached to the name, Phil gets a little suspicious. Because Dan is, objectively, very hot. Maybe too hot. Phil is used to meeting people on the internet. He's used to befriending them. He's used to sometimes flirting with them. But he isn’t used to such young people with such nice faces and such pronounced collar bones reaching out to him so eagerly.

And Dan seems pretty fucking eager. He tweets his comments after every video, DM’s him about Muse for hours at a time. It's pretty obvious that he never leaves his laptop.

So for a while, Phil isn’t sure if Dan is actually real. Maybe this is a prank. Maybe Dan is actually a 40-year-old woman in Kansas.

But then Dan DM’s Phil asking if he wants to Skype ("but like, it’s totally okay if you don’t, because maybe that’s weird, but I promise it wouldn’t be weird”). And Phil says yes, even though he’s a tad apprehensive. Because he's also enormously curious.

And after ten minutes of Skype crashing and restarting and refusing to show video (ugh), Phil finds out that Dan is real. Dan is very real, and Dan is very hot, and Dan is very nervous. (Phil is equally nervous, so things work out.)

Three hours later he’s still there, on Phil’s computer screen, yawning and scrunching up his eyes and smiling without teeth. Phil smiles back at him and says, “You should probably go to bed.” And Dan fake whines and says he usually stays up until four a.m. anyway. And Phil laughs and says, “That doesn’t sound healthy.” And Dan says, “Love is pain,” in this really melodramatic voice. And Phil laughs even though he doesn’t fully get it, because he’s sleep-deprived and kind of giddy.

So they just look at each other and laugh with each other. And that’s their first Skype date. And it’s incredible, and it changes everything, forever.

Because now Phil knows how real Dan is. He really knows it. He knows the way Dan's accent curls around his tongue, biting and posh. (Dan blushes when Phil points it out and rejects being labeled as posh outright.) He knows that Dan's bedroom really is small, and really does have ugly brown walls, though they aren’t as bad as Dan had made them out to be.

It’s so nice, to know these things about this person. To see them, to hear them. (And to not be catfished.)

When they finally hang up, after a brief four hours, Phil shuts his computer with shaky hands. He puts his palms against his cheeks (which are very warm) and just smiles and smiles until his face muscles are exhausted. And as he drifts to sleep, he silently asks his subconscious to maybe put Dan in one of his dreams, please. Please.

—

“So you’re an Aquarius, eh?”

“Yeah,” Phil nods. “How’d you know?”

“I saw your tweet,” Dan says, wiggling his eyebrows. Phil is confused for a second, but then Dan starts laughing loudly enough for Phil to realize what he’s talking about and moan accordingly.

“Noooo,” he says, “That was just a joke!” (Which is only half true, but he doesn’t really want to get into a discussion about his weird feelings about love during a Skype call.)

“Yeah, all right,” Dan drawls, raising his eyebrows. “You’re so lame, Phil. ‘Short walks through space.’ What does that even mean?"

Phil does that thing where he kind of puts his hand over his mouth while he’s laughing, and shakes his head. “Well, what’s your sign?” he asks, only a little desperate to change the subject.

“I don’t know,” Dan says.

“What do you mean you don’t know? How do you not know your own star sign?”

“I don’t believe in astrology, obviously,” Dan says, giving a weak eye roll. “I’m more rational than that.”

Phil gives him a quick disappointed glance before he types up a quick google search. He consults Facebook first (because of course he doesn’t know Dan’s birthday by heart, that would be, uh, ridiculous.) And then he announces, in some weird broadcaster voice that seems appropriate, “You’re a Gemini.”

“Oh,” Dan says, “Yeah, I guess that sounds familiar.”

“See, I told you that you knew,” Phil says, grinning.

“Well, are Aquariuses and Geminis compatible?” Dan asks.

Phil’s chest constricts.

“Not sure,” he says, hoping that his words don’t sound as choked out as they feel coming from Phil’s throat.

“Come on, look it up!”

“What happened to your ‘rationality'?” Phil counters.

“Well I’m not gonna believe it,” Dan says, “But I at least want to know what the star people have to say.”

“The star people,” Phil repeats. “People who live in the stars?"

“If you’re not going to look it up I will,” Dan says. Phil watches as Dan’s eyes glaze over, shifting focus from Phil’s face onto Google. “Do you think astrology dot com will do the trick?”

Phil laughs and gives a little nod. “Good domain name, sounds reliable.”

“All right, let’s see,” Dan says. Phil hears a loud click, because here, in the glorious year of 2009, bulky Windows laptops are the norm.

“Okay,” Dan starts to narrate. “So apparently we can ‘enjoy a wonderfully stimulating mental connection.’ Great.” Dan rolls his eyes, but keeps reading. “'Gemini is in love with ideas, and visionary Aquarius is full of them.’ Okay. ‘The only trouble that may arise’—fancy wording for an astrology website—‘is if Gemini dawdles a bit too much for Aquarius’s fast-paced, forward-moving standards.’ Sorry if I’m not fast-paced enough for you, Phil.”

Phil giggles. “Oh, you’re quite fast.”

“I am extremely lazy, to be fair,” Dan says. “What else? ‘Both their minds are so quick they can easily come up with newer and better ideas and, with Aquarius’s determination at the helm, put their ideas to action.’ Blah blah blah. ‘Aquarius is the great humanitarian of the Zodiac, Gemini is a great thinker and conversationalist’ blah blah blah. ’Successful verbal interaction,’ whatever that means, ‘makes theirs a healthy relationship.’ Okay, thanks, astrology dot com.”

“Weird,” Phil says. “Do you figure it’s true?”

“Phil!” Dan sputters. “Of course it’s not true.”

“I mean, it doesn’t sound that far off,” Phil says. “We do have successful verbal interaction. How long have we been talking now? Three hours?” Phil glances at the little timer on Skype, sees that it’s fast approaching the four hour mark.

“Okay,” Dan says, “But what about all this talk about us having ‘newer and better ideas?’ Ideas about what? The best track on the newest Muse album? Come on.”

Phil laughs, but he actually has an answer, and what he thinks is a pretty good one.

“When you read that part I was kind of thinking that it might mean ideas for videos,” Phil says.

“The problem with that, Philip,” Dan says, “is that I don’t make videos.”

“You should, though,” Phil says, no hesitation.

Finally it’s Dan blushing.

“You’ve thought about it,” Phil says, sure of the words as soon as he’s said them, because now Dan is blushing even harder. “You totally should! You would be great at it.”

“No, I’d be awful,” Dan says. His voice is a tad softer, his head tilted down a little bit. It’s a subtle change, but Phil catches it.

“No, you’d be great! The star people said so,” Phil insists. And for a second Phil feels the painful urge to put his hand on Dan’s shoulder. He wants to lean in, give a nudge so that Dan has to look him in the eyes and find comfort there. But Phil can’t do that, obviously. There's a screen and hundreds of miles in the way. So he just says, “I really think you would make really cool videos. Honest.”

And Dan tilts his head back up and says, without irony, “Well, I’m not sure how much I trust you, amazingphil. But if the star people say so, it must be true.”

“Oh it is,” Phil laughs.

Later, when he’s thinking about the conversation, Phil has to bite on the inside of his mouth to keep himself from smiling too hard. Because the star people also say that Gemini and Aquarius are Very Compatible, and he can’t let himself believe that Dan is implicitly acknowledging that.

Hope without expectations.

—

Phil has never been in love before, so he isn’t sure what it feels like.

He doesn’t really think the first few minutes of meeting Dan feel like love. Phil's dominant emotion in the Manchester train station is Crippling Fear. But after five minutes of Phil being a complete mess, the nerves fade, replaced by a nice sort of Disbelief. (Dan is real. Dan is real. And Phil can touch him. Incredible.) And then Disbelief turns into Affection, when Phil finds out how nice it feels to hold Dan's hand, and how doubly nice it feels when Dan squeezes his palm a little too tightly.

Affection remains the feeling of the day. They sit down for coffee (because neither of them really slept the night before and adrenaline can only go so far) and lean their heads toward each other, because even the tiny square table feels like too harsh of a barrier. They step into weird shops and hand each other the funniest items they can find, letting their fingers brush, grinning. Phil laughs at everything Dan says, and Dan blushes, and then Dan laughs at everything Phil says, and Phil blushes.

Everything is warm and symmetrical and disgustingly comfortable. And something swells up inside Phil that isn’t quite love, but still feels important.

—

Phil isn’t sure what love feels like until that week in December, when he figures it out.

He figures out that there’s Dan and there’s everyone else. And if Phil had to choose between the two, he would choose Dan, every time.

—

Their first couple months of being in love are vaguely nerve-wracking. It’s the honeymoon phase, which is clunky and hyper-sentimental at the best of times. But there’s an added pressure now, because Phil doesn’t know how long this thing is going to last, but he wants it to last a while. (He low-key wants it to last forever.)

Phil tries not to reflect too much on his past relationships and their inevitable ends. The first person he ever dated, Lucy: clammy hand-holding and silent cinema dates and a half life of three weeks. His first boyfriend in university: two months of head-over-heels something that devolved into overgrown apathy. His second boyfriend in university: a month of marathoning Buffy together followed by a summer without any contact, coming to a head in an awkward September reunion and a mutual decision that nah, obviously not.

But Phil doesn’t really have to think about the people he’s dated before, because Dan doesn’t really remind him of any of them. Their dynamic is different. (The word he wants to use is “special,” but he won’t get that corny, because it’s probably bad luck.) They’re committed to each other in a way that Phil has never experienced before.

Like, they Skype all the time. All the time. When they’ve gone too long without talking, Dan shows up on Phil’s screen looking flushed and tired, and says shit like, “I just missed you so much,” in a way that Phil really believes. Dan visits at least once a month, but usually more, and they split the cost of the ticket without ever talking about it. They go on holiday together, multiple times in their first year of knowing each other, to soak up the sun and to soak up each other. Dan meets Phil’s parents.

After all that, when the summer settles down, Phil’s worries are muted. When Dan moves into university, but ends up mostly living at Phil’s apartment, they all but dissipate.

Phil finds his rhythm. It's somewhere between Dan's sharp collarbones and his soft hips; to the tune of the Final Fantasy 7 soundtrack and the beat of spoons clanking against cereal bowls. It’s waking up in the morning and seeing Dan’s quiet face. It’s squeezing Dan’s hand before he leaves, brushing his fringe to the side to kiss him properly, smiling kind of sadly but knowing that he’ll be home soon.

Phil’s rhythm is knowing that the final piece in his life is Dan Howell, and thinking (hoping) that he’ll probably never need anyone else.

—

—

Phil is so confident in his own rhythm that it takes him a while to notice that Dan doesn’t have one.

When Dan first tells Phil about how awful of a procrastinator he is, and how hard it is for him to do things, Phil just kind of nods. He’s met tons of people who procrastinate. Phil has holed himself up in his room to play video games for entire summers. It’s kind of a normal thing. That’s why Dan can make a video about his laziness and be #relatable.

But then Phil picks up on the fact that Dan always has bags under his eyes, and his face is blotchy when he gets out of the shower. Phil can write it off as just the way Dan’s skin works—some people are like that, he’s read it online, he thinks—but it fits into this larger picture of Dan maybe not being okay, all this maybe not being normal.

Dan collapses onto the floor sometimes. A couple minutes later he can laugh it off, but while he’s facedown on the carpet he doesn’t say a word.

Sometimes he goes days without visiting, and then at two in the morning he calls Phil from his dorm room, voice desperate, telling him how badly he needs him.

“Just come over, then,” Phil says, figuring that it’s easy enough to catch a cab in Manchester, even in the middle of night.

“I can’t,” Dan says. “I’ve got all this shit to do, and I just, like, can’t do it, but I can’t not do it. I don’t know.”

“Well,” Phil says, “Just tell yourself that when you’re done, you can come to my flat, and we can watch Death Note together. Is that enough of an incentive?”

“I guess.”

Phil smiles into the phone, because he honestly assumes that it will be enough. He figures that the things that he uses to motivate himself will probably help Dan—they’re pretty similar people, it would make sense for their coping mechanisms to overlap.

—

Dan isn’t coping, though.

It’s three in the morning on a Wednesday, and Dan has to be back at school in seven hours, but he’s sitting on Phil’s living room floor, watching Phil play Sonic.

Phil is not great at Sonic—which doesn’t make sense, because he’s put hundreds hours of his life into playing it—but he’s doing his best. And for once, Dan isn’t trying to mess with his head or whine for attention. So Phil is actually doing pretty well, might actually get through a level without dying at all.

But, from the corner of his eye, Phil sees Dan’s chest heave. He hears Dan sigh. And then:

“I don’t think I’m ever going to be happy,”

Phil is too deep into the game for the words to fully register. He doesn't really reflect on what Dan is saying, what the implications are. (And there are implications. Phil is happier than he’s ever been, so Dan not being happy, thinking that happiness is impossible, raises some questions.)

But Phil knows enough to put the controller down, grab Dan’s hand, and bring him to bed.

—

Phil is relieved when Dan decides to take a year off from uni.

First of all, it makes the apartment feel more like a home. Now when Phil wakes up, Dan is always next to him, and there aren’t any lecture halls to steal him away. They have breakfast together every morning, uninterrupted by exam schedules or paper deadlines. If Dan is filming a video, Phil is always there to hold the camera or serve up his awkward acting skills. And at night, Dan doesn’t have to pretend to read over a law textbook for half an hour. Instead, he can just nudge up against Phil and play Spyro until their vision starts to blur.

Second of all, and more importantly, Phil assumes that removing the biggest stressor in his life is going to make Dan okay. There won’t be any more nights spent facedown in the hallway. There won’t be any more “Have you ever thought about dying?” questions mumbled into his pillow.

And for a while, it works. Every day for the first week of freedom, Dan says, matter-of-fact, “This was such a good decision. I, like, literally feel better, physically. And my videos are actually going to be decent now.”

Phil nods and smiles and chews his cereal. He’s pumped to see what Dan’s videos look like when he has more time, because even just doing youtube as a hobby, Dan makes great stuff. And, youtube aside, Phil is just glad to see that their lives are syncing up and evening out.

—

But then again, maybe not.

—

Phil is sweating when he gets to the door because, on a dumbass whim, he decides to walk up a few flights of stairs before retreating to the lift in shame. But still, fitness.

“Dan,” he calls, only a little out of breath, “Come see what I’ve gotten at the shop!"

He sets down the plastic bags and starts unpacking. He’s expecting Dan to come up behind him, wrap his arms around his torso, rip open the bag of Maltesers. But after a minute or two, nothing. He glances over his shoulder.

“Dan?” he calls again. Still no response.

He moves out of the kitchen, heads toward Dan’s room. It’s not in Phil’s nature to panic, so he doesn’t.

“Dan?” he says, knocking on the door, waiting one second, two seconds, then pushing it open.

Dan is folded beneath his desk, cradling his knees, tucking in his chin. The iMac screen is still bright, opened up to a video in the middle of being edited.

“There you are,” Phil says, “I was worried you were going to jump out at me for a prank video or something.”

“Oh,” Dan says, monotone. “No."

“What’s wrong?” Phil asks.

“Nothing.”

Phil actually laughs, and then feels bad, not sure how serious this is. “Obviously something’s wrong,” he says. “What’s going on?”

Dan shrugs. Phil frowns. It’s not a typical exchange for them, but somehow it still feels natural. The roles make sense. Phil crosses the room so that he can settle down next to Dan and lean into him, which is significantly more typical.

“What’s going on?” he repeats.

Dan shakes his head, but Phil can tell there are words in him, so he waits. Seven, eight—

“Do you ever just hate having to look at your own face?” Dan says. “Like, when you’re editing a video, just constantly having to see what your face looks like, and then knowing that other people are going to look at it and, like, form an opinion on it?”

“You have quite a nice face, though,” Phil says, because it’s the first thing that comes to mind, and it's also the truth.

Dan sighs.

“I mean, obviously that’s what I want people to think,” Dan says. “But also, I don’t want them to like, only watch me because of my face? But maybe I do want that. I don’t know. It’s hard to tell what I want. I just, like, know that I hate looking at my face. It’s miserable.”

Phil thinks a little bit, makes sure that Dan has said all his words. “I think, at the end of the day, you can only control so much, right?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you can’t control your face,” Phil says, and then giggles a little bit, and waits for Dan to crack a smile. “And you also can’t control what people are going to think about your face. So you may as well just, make things that are cool and fun, independent of your face, and then hope that they like that.”

“But what if they don’t?” Dan asks. "Do you change what you’re making, if people don’t like your stuff? Do you make something awful if it appeals to more people?”

“People do like our stuff,” Phil says. “So we don’t have to worry about that."

“But what if I want more people to like my stuff,” Dan says. “Does that make me a terrible artist? Are we even artists?”

“Whoa, hard questions,” Phil says, nudging Dan’s sides. “Um, if you want more people to like your stuff, you promote it. Collabs, social media. You know that.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Dan says. “But artistic integrity? Where does that come in?"

“I thought you were freaking out about your face.”

“Phil,” Dan says, tone steady, face serious. “I’m freaking out about everything. All the time."

Phil blinks.

“Why?” he asks.

And he’s genuinely confused, surprised, the whole shebang. Because Phil had kind of thought that this part of Dan—the part that overthinks everything, that both fears and expects failure, that hides from the world—was specific to when he was going to university, or thinking about his future as a lawyer. He thought this part of Dan was gone, honestly.

Dan stands up, rubs his shoulder, then his face.

“Once an emo kid always an emo kid, I guess,” Dan says, and he smiles, and it’s fake, but Dan is so good at fake-smiling sometimes.

So Phil almost lets himself believe that it’s real.

—

The thing is, it would make sense for Dan to smile. Dan has reasons to smile.

Dan is beautiful and smart and kind, and he has to know all that, because people on the internet tell him, and Phil tells him, literally all the time. Dan has a job that allows for creative expression and fame and flexible hours. He’s luckier than just about anyone else in the world, because finding a job like that is hard. Dan has his health and he has a decent family. And Dan has Phil—he has love, and commitment, and security.

And all that should be enough for him, right? All that should be more than enough. But it’s not.

Phil doesn’t know what else Dan needs. Dan probably doesn’t even know what else Dan needs. So of course Phil doesn’t really know how to give it.

But he does his best, because that’s all he can do, that’s all he’s ever been able to do, and it's always worked out for him.

When Dan sees himself in the mirror and mutters that he looks awful, Phil says, “No you don't,” right away.

When Dan locks himself in his room for more than a couple hours, Phil notices, knocks on the door, asks if he wants to get a milkshake, on him.

And sometimes Dan is just sad, and Phil can’t do anything about it. Sometimes he collapses on the floor and doesn’t want to talk. Sometimes Phil doesn’t want to ask. But Phil is fine with those days, accepts them into his rhythm. He doesn’t need everything to be perfect, but he recognizes that most things are, and that’s where he puts his focus.

—

—

2012 fucks up all of that.

—

“Why do these people care what the fuck we’re doing?” Dan says, mostly to his laptop, but also to Phil, who’s sitting beside him. “Like, why does it matter to them what we do in private?”

Phil shrugs. “You know why,” he says. “Because that’s like half the appeal of the internet. People like seeing personal stuff.”

“But what if I don’t want them to see personal stuff?” Dan asks, exasperated.

“Then don’t put it on the internet.”

Dan glares, narrows in his eyebrows, a classic expression at this point. “Oh yeah, as if it’s that easy.”

“No one forced you to put your nudes on dailybooth, Dan,” Phil says.

“Oh fuck off.”

There’s an unspoken, “No one forced you to answer those formspring questions, Dan. No one forced you to tweet about having sex in my room. No one forced you to publicize our relationship on every social media platform for an entire year.”

Phil doesn’t say any of that, barely even thinks it. But Dan still slumps further into the couch, gives a small shake of his head, sighs.

—

Maybe Phil wouldn’t even mind if everyone knew about their relationship. He’s not ashamed of it, obviously (as if anyone could be ashamed of dating Dan). He’s not too worried about homophobia, because he learned how to handle that shit a long time ago.

But Phil knows it’s easier not to be public with relationships. He’s seen internet breakups before, how they take over hashtags, how they rip up the people who are involved and the people who aren’t. And even though he doesn’t think he’ll break up with Dan—because this feels pretty forever, three years later—there are advantages to having privacy. There are advantages to drawing a line between the personal and the internet.

So he tells Dan early on that it’s probably for the best if they don’t throw out too many specific words, if they keep separate bedrooms, if they avoid direct questions.

And Dan says yeah, of course, secrecy is fine with him.

But.

—

The video gets leaked, again and again. It spreads the way only a file can, duplicating itself exponentially, hidden links on third-party websites. Phil reports video after video, running his fingers through his hair until it’s greasy. Sometimes muttering to himself, sometimes shaking his head.

Dan hears him, sees him.

Then Dan starts replying to tumblr messages. The weird ones. The rude ones. And he’s just as rude back, just as biting. He tells people that they’re stupid, that they’re crazy, to think that he and Phil are actually together. Tells people that it was a joke, clearly, god.

Phil doesn’t realize until he sees his dashboard.

“Why’d you answer all these?” he asks, looking up at Dan, not knowing where to place his own tone. “You didn’t have to do this.”

“I figured you'd want me to,” Dan says.

“What?”

“I know you’re really upset about this. About people thinking you love me,—“

“I mean—“

“—and if you don’t want people to know you’re dating me then I’ll make sure they don’t,” Dan says, and he’s basically gritting his teeth.

“What’s going on?” Phil asks, because he knows how to pick up on obvious interpersonal cues, and Dan is making literally zero effort to hide his feelings.

“Nothing,” Dan says. Except he snaps it instead of saying it, and then he’s walking out of the living room, slamming his door.

—

One day of silence.

Feels like weeks, somehow.

—

Phil ends up just texting Dan from the other room. He asks him what’s going on, says that he’s confused.

Dan doesn’t respond, but he shows up at the breakfast bar the next morning (early afternoon). Huge bags under his eyes, broken blood vessels, gravelly words.

“Give me another day, then we’ll talk,” he says. “Just let me put it off one more day.”

—

Two and a half days later Phil is sitting on the couch. Dan’s standing in the doorway, posed like he's ready to run.

“What’s wrong?” Phil says, and he cares about the answer, but he’s still pretty unsure of what it’ll be.

“If a tree falls in a forest, but no one’s around to hear it, does it make a sound?” Dan says. He holds eye contact for two seconds, three, before speaking again. “If two boys fuck in their shared flat, but don’t tell anyone, are they really dating?”

Phil wonders how long Dan had been planning that, as an opening statement.

“Dan,” he says, soft. “It’s easier this way. You said it yourself, private things should stay private, and this is how we do that.”

“And you don’t feel weird about it at all? You don’t feel uncomfortable lying to thousands of people? People who are constantly trying to dig the truth out of your soulless eyes?”

Phil kind of wants to laugh at “soulless eyes”—because it was intended as a joke, right?—but there’s no laughter in Dan’s posture, arms folded tight against his ribs, back bent.

So he says, “No, I honestly don’t feel weird about it.”

Dan’s eyes roll all the way back into his head, and he throws out his arms and shakes the air. “How? How do you not feel weird about anything, ever? How are you completely chill with a secret fucking relationship?”

Phil thinks before answering, but there’s not much to think about. “I mean, the secrecy doesn’t affect us that much, I don’t think? We can edit anything out of videos, so we can do whatever we want to, as long as we’re at home. And PDA is weird anyway. I don’t need to eat your face in public.”

Dan shakes his head. “That’s not what it is. It’s not about eating your face. It’s about, like, meaning something to each other, right? And showing people that meaning.”

“You do mean something to me,” Phil says, and he doesn’t say “you mean everything,” because his cheesiness-filter is on. “You know that and I know that, and who else needs to?”

But Dan just kind of brings his fingers up to his temples, breathes out through his nose.

“How do you do that?” Dan asks.

And Phil waits a moment before giving the obligatory, “Do what?”

“Pretend that everything is okay. When it’s clearly fucking not."

Phil takes a breath before this one, because it’s important. “Everything is okay, Dan. You have a hard time with some things, and I get it. Death is inevitable and all that. But I promise, everything is okay.”

Another breath.

Dan brings his hand down from his face to look at Phil. Straight in the eyes. He’s squinting and his lips are pursed and he looks completely ravaged. But it’s like his entire face is committed to whatever it is he’s about to say.

“Have you ever thought about our age gap?” Dan asks.

And that stops Phil cold.

“You haven’t, have you?” Dan says. “You act like you’ve thought about everything, every aspect of your whole life, and made peace with it. But you haven’t thought about everything. You can’t possibly have.”

“Of course I’ve thought about our age gap,” Phil says, steady.

“Yeah, and how did you justify that one? How’d you justify the fact that I was eighteen and hadn’t even started uni when we met, and you were a full-fledged adult practically ready to be married.”

Phil blinks, on purpose, because he needs to do something with his face.

“I wasn’t ready to be married,” Phil says. Dan starts to protest but Phil nods before he can start and says, “But you’re right, I did want an, um, a committed relationship. A real one.”

He wanted to be in love. That’s fair, right?

“So you met me, and fit me into your plans, and then you let me drop out of uni and give up my entire foreseeable future.”

“Dan,” Phil says, and his voice is still steady, still serious, but his face is getting hotter. “Leaving uni was your decision. You knew that’s what you needed to do.”

“But you let me do it because it was better for you,” Dan says. “You let me drop out so that I could live with you and pretend to be an adult, so that we could live out your domestic fantasy.”

“You were an adult.”

“Was I, though?” Dan says. “Am I an adult now, even?”

“Dan, of course—“

“No, I’m serious, am I? When did I get the chance to become an adult, Phil? My audience expects me to act like a fucking 17-year-old, and I do. And your audience expects you to be a fucking 12-year-old, but you were grown up before you ever turned on the camera, so it’s fine, you know who you are and all of that shit. But what about me? When did I mature? When did I develop a stable sense of self? Tell me where the aging process happened, because I honestly don’t know.”

“Dan,” Phil says, and Dan doesn’t make any move to interrupt him, but Phil can’t think of anything to say, so he slumps into silence.

“Say something,” Dan snaps.

“I thought you were ready,” Phil says. “I was ready to settle down and I thought you were, too.”

“I was eighteen.”

The words are sharp and they are heavy and they are true.

Part of Phil wants to take the easy route and tell Dan that he should have said no, then. Even if he was eighteen, Dan still should been old enough, smart enough, reasonable enough to have said no before all of this happened. Dan should have said no if he didn’t want to move in with Phil, he should have said no if he didn’t want to make videos, he should have said no if he didn’t want to fall in love.

But Phil knows that it wouldn’t be fair to point that out, because it isn’t really true, and because if Dan had said no, Phil still would have wanted him to say yes.

The fact is, Phil wanted to be in love so bad that he probably would have done anything to make it happen. He probably would have ignored things he should have noticed. And maybe that’s what happened. And maybe that’s what fucked over Dan, the only person that Phil has ever loved.

Shit.

“I’m sorry,” Phil says. “What should we do?”

And Dan just shakes his head and crushes his eyes shut and says, “It doesn’t even matter anymore.”

—

So the thing is, for the first twenty-two years of his life, Phil had never been in love. But then he fell in love with Dan. And now, here he is, still in love with Dan. Horrifically in love. Comfortably in love.

So the thing is, Dan is broken.

No, he’s not broken. “Broken” is not the right word, it's not a good word. “Broken” is melodramatic and kind of dehumanizing. Phil would never, never use the word “broken” to describe Dan. (His brain doesn’t operate on that weirdly intense poetic level, anyway.)

Dan isn’t broken, but he needs something. And Phil doesn’t have it, whatever it is. Dan needs more than just Phil’s love, and more than just internet fame, and more than just a home and a healthy family. Phil has known that for a while, has been able to infer it pretty easily, just glancing at Dan’s tired eyes.

But what Phil hasn’t thought about, but is now very clear and very painful, is that Phil is at least a little responsible. Obviously he never meant to hurt Dan, because like, he would never. He loves Dan. That’s the whole point. But there are problems that Dan probably could have solved if he hadn’t been an internet celebrity, if he had gone to college and been a normal kid for a little while. There are problems he could have solved if he hadn't had so much attention given to him—positive and negative—without having a way to, like, process it. There are problems he could have solved if he had been in typical, short term relationships, before jumping into a longterm live-in situation in the public eye.

And Phil wasn’t thinking about that when he nudged Dan into this, because he’s not a therapist and there’s not a handbook for How To Be An Emotionally Healthy Closeted Youtube Celebrity. And also, like, he and Dan are different. They process things differently and they see the world differently, so Phil couldn’t have predicted these problems.

Phil couldn’t have predicted them but they still happened. They’re still happening, clearly. And that sucks and he’s sorry.

But Phil is reasonable enough to know that the past can’t be rewritten, and he’s optimistic enough to believe that there’s a solution somewhere. Dan is struggling and hurting and has to resolve some parts of himself. But that’s possible, right? There is a way, there is a way, to make things right.

—

—

After two hours of thinking, and googling, and more thinking, Phil figures it out.

It’s awful and heartbreaking and he’s sick to his stomach. But it’s a solution. The only one, probably.

—

He goes to Dan, clears his throat, blinks a few times. No tears, not yet.

"I think we need to break up.”

“What?”

“I think," he says, fully closing his eyes, "we need to break up.”

It’s the most gut-wrenching thing that Phil has ever said, and he says it twice. But he knows it’s the right thing to do. So he fucking says it.

He opens his eyes and Dan is shaking his head.

“No, Phil. We can't break up.” He sounds almost annoyed. And Phil is almost annoyed at him for almost being annoyed. But there's something else in his tone, and Phil can guess what it is, because he feels it, too. Fear, right? Fear and sadness and the anticipation of grief.

So Phil just sighs, because he knows that now he has to rationalize it, and he knows that Dan isn’t going to be able to look at it rationally, and he knows it’s going to hurt.

“This way, you can go back to uni,” he says. “Not for law, obviously. But you can study theater, or fine arts, or something.”

“Fuck, Phil.” His voice breaks. It's subtle but. It breaks.

“You can figure things out, this way,” Phil continues, trying to catch Dan’s eyes, shielded by his palm. “You can grow up properly, normally. That’s what you’re missing, right? That’s what’s going to help you feel okay.”

Dan takes his hand off of his forehead, looks up at Phil. His eyes are sharp and sad and dull. He’s breathing hard.

"No."

"Dan," Phil says, voice sturdier than it should be, than he feels. "I just want you to be okay."

“Phil,” he snaps, sharp, loud. “I’ve never been okay."

And things are quiet for a second. Tense.

Then Dan speaks again, slower this time. Careful with his words.

"Phil. I’ve always, literally always, hated myself.” He takes a breath, almost winces.

"Shit." Phil thinks, and then says. He reaches out, puts a hand on Dan's shoulder, lets his fingers spread out against his shirt. His stomach clenches.

“No, listen,” Dan says. “I have to, like, explain this.”

“Okay," Phil says.

“Okay. So like, obviously the age gap thing, and the weird secret relationship thing, and all of this stuff, it doesn’t help. It probably makes it worse. That’s true. I meant what I said.”

“Yeah,” Phil says. That’s exactly what he’s saying. That’s why they need to break up.

“No, listen. Because like, the one thing that does help, the one thing in the entire world that lets me forget about all that shit, and all the weird stuff happening to me internally and externally and whatever, is you, Phil. Okay? You let me be okay, or, as close to okay as I can get. You’re the only person. It’s stupid and cheesy but it’s true, okay? So you can’t fucking break up with me. Or, I mean, you can. But don’t do it because you think it’s going to help me. Because it fucking won’t.”

Phil is quiet.

Dan takes another breath. More words. "It’s too late for me to go back to uni, Phil. I like youtube. And I like being with you. I love it, okay? And maybe it fucks me up a little bit. Maybe it’s not perfect. But it’s worth it, I think. So please, don’t do this.”

Christ.

Phil is thinking. Trying to figure out whether this is a justification that works for him. He’s trying to figure out if Dan is being serious, if he’s being honest. He can’t tell. He doesn’t know.

“I don’t want to fuck you up at all, Dan,” he says, finally, quietly. It’s the most honest thing he can think to say. “Not even, like, the minimal amount.”

Dan smiles, thin and watery, and shrugs. “Isn’t that kind of inevitable?”

And Phil says, “No,” immediately. Because no, of course it isn’t inevitable, of course he doesn’t have to fuck over the person he loves.

“I mean, love is pain, like, inherently, right?” Dan says.

And Phil disagrees, he disagrees so hard. Phil has never believed that love has to be tragic and painful and destructive. Phil sees love as a settling, as a comfort. That's what the last three years have been for him. So.

“No,” he says, quiet. “No, I don’t think so.”

But he looks up at Dan, and he knows that just talking about ‘love,’ exchanging definitions, isn’t going to do anything. Isn’t going to solve any problems.

Because they’re different. They have different experiences with love and different expectations for it. And they probably should have talked about this in 2000-fucking-9, but here they are now. Now, with so much left to be resolved, so many bridges that need to be crossed.

But they still love each other, is the thing. Phil knows that he loves Dan, that he always has. And Dan is telling Phil, explicitly, desperately, that he loves Phil. And maybe that’s enough to hold onto, for now. Maybe that’s enough of a starting point.

All this is going through Phil's head, fast. Instantaneous closure. And it makes sense to him in the way that everything makes sense to Phil. This is how they're going to do it. This is how they're going to take the pieces of whatever it is that they have and make it okay.

So Phil takes another breath.

“Just,” Phil says. “Just tell me when it gets too bad, okay?"

Dan nods, and looks off to the side, like he’s really thinking about it, really committing to it. Phil hopes he is.

And they don’t break up. Dan doesn’t go back to uni.

But things change. Because Phil knows they have to.

—

It mostly comes down to intentionality. It mostly comes down to Phil recognizing that there are problems, that things aren’t perfect, that they need to work at this love thing.

Phil is deliberate with Dan, now.

He catches Dan’s eyes during radio shows, when things are rough, and brushes their fingers together. He makes sure that they’re always sitting next to each other, at every event, every interview, every business meeting. He texts Dan constantly when one of them is traveling, sends him dumb cat photos and expects sarcastic responses (which he gets). And when Dan is getting quieter, when he seems to be getting into a weird headspace, Phil talks to him, doesn’t try to brush it under the rug, or drown problems with milkshakes.

And it goes both ways. When Phil needs support, Dan gives it. Dan gives it fully, passionately, like there’s nothing that makes him happier. Like his life's purpose is to help Phil through the occasional rough spot. (Phil trash #1, motherfuckers.)

And they don’t come out, but Phil makes sure that everyone, everyone, knows that they mean something to each other. That they mean everything. Because it’s the truth. And because it makes Dan feel about a billion times better.

It’s still difficult, and messy, and hugely frustrating, trying to make this unconventional-as-fuck relationship work. Trying to get through the hard things. Trying to mutually understand each other, to feel okay. But they try so hard to make it work.

Because this is the first time Phil has ever been in love, and he wants it to be the only time.