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Twisting around a little in Phil's arms, careful not to wake the adorable dork he had fallen in love with, he saw that it was nearly 2 in the morning.
Most nights if he was still awake at this hour it would be with an existential crisis, wondering about the validity of his own existence But tonight was, thankfully, crisis free.
Today would be 6 years since they first met at the station in Manchester, since it was now technically the morning of the 19th.
As happens sometimes, Dan found himself back in the mindset of his younger self, back at the start of 2009, before Phil even knew he existed. If someone went back in time and told nearly 18 year old Dan Howell that he would ever get to meet AmazingPhil, let alone live with him for years, write a book, go on tour and most importantly be his boyfriend; the younger version of Dan would not have believed you. He was just another crazy stalker-fanboy, lost in endless pages of replies and comments.
He thought about that first meeting, the moment between getting off the train and spotting the familiar face in the endless crowd where he had panicked just a little bit. Surely AmazingPhil wouldn't be here, surely he wouldn't actually have wanted to meet him!
He thought about their first video together, the first Phil is not on fire. He thought about the bits they had edited out. The bits where they had rested their heads on each other’s shoulders, the bit where they kind of forgot about the camera and just talked for about ten minutes, about Dan's life and his family and all the bits of his past he will probably never share with the Internet.
Dan thought about the first few videos on his own channel, how Phil always said that they were really good after he uploaded a new one. Thinking back they both knew the early videos were horrible, but at the time they had both tried so hard to make them worth watching. He thought about how Phil had helped him cheer up after he got his first hater comments, and every time since, where they had helped each other through countless moments of self-doubt. He wondered when it had stopped being AmazingPhil and just become Phil in his own mind. Sometimes it was still AmazingPhil, like the time when he made a video reacting to his old videos. Without thinking he had said that the really good friend he had made recently who had convinced him to start YouTube was ‘basically AmazingPhil on skype.’
He thought about the moment when Phil had suggested that they move in together. That had been another of those moments where he considered how improbable the whole thing was. Why would AmazingPhil, YouTube star, want to live with Dan Howell, random stalker-fan?
He remembered when he first found out that people shipped Phan. He remembered 2012. They weren't together then, but they might have been soon. Dan didn't like thinking about 2012, everything got so awkward for such a long time.
He remembered starting the radio show, starting the gaming channel and making the seven second challenge app. He remembered once saying 'We should totally write a book, that would be so cool.'
He thought about the book release and the tour he was on now. He thought about their 6 YouTube channels, their millions of subscribers and all the people who had helped get them to where they were.
He remembered that he was cuddled up in the arms of AmazingPhil. He, the greatest stalker-fan of all time, was best friends with, and, as of backstage before the first tour show, the boyfriend of, his idol. He was here, snuggled up close to Phil Lester at nearly 3 in the morning, and that was unreal. If he hadn't lived it he would swear it was fanfiction. Nothing this perfect happens in real life, and yet it did.
Content with his world, and conscious of his reality, Dan Howell, Phil trash #1, curled up a little under the covers and tucked himself a little tighter into his boyfriend's arms.