Archive of Our Own ^beta

1995

Making wishes is hard.

Phil learns this on his sixth birthday, stood up on a stool to face a nice cake thick with buttercream icing that his mother made, laid out on the counter. His family stand around him and the flame in the candle makes his cheeks warm.

“Make a wish, Phil,” his mother says, putting her hand on his shoulder. A couple of kids from the school down the road and from the neighbouring houses in the village are still singing happy birthday, and his mum joins in once she steps back and gives him a big smile.

Making a wish should be the easiest of requests, but Phil, in the moment, realises this is far from the truth; he doesn't know what to wish for, especially on a day when so many material ones come true. For the longest time he'd said if he were granted three wishes he'd ask for a scooter, but he'd received one this morning, all wrapped up in blue paper, and now he doesn't know what else to fantasise for.

If he were older, he could wish for world peace or for his mother's happiness. If he were younger it wouldn't matter at all. If he'd prepared a little bit, he'd probably come to the conclusion that he'd like to fly, but he hasn't, and his mind goes blank. He feels unnecessarily anxious about the whole thing, but this is his wish, and it has to be said at the end of the singing and he can't keep everyone waiting.

“ Happy birthday to Phil, happy birthday to you!”

His school friends cheer, and Phil blows the candle out. He wishes for a pet cat, inspired by the picture on the 1995 calendar hanging on the fridge.

Later, he remembers he's allergic to their fur, and feels like it's been wasted.

::

Phil, strangely, isn't actually all that tired when he makes his way up to bed later, when his friends have all gone home and all of the toys have been put away. His wasted wish still lingers in his mind, though – because now, in hindsight, so many ideas flit through his head, of what he could've wished for, and how he won't have the opportunity for another year.

Phil's made wishes before. At night when he sees what he thinks is the first star, but probably isn't, and just after watching Aladdin. But he's never had a wish that felt official, one that wasn't for his mum to let him stay home from reception the next day, or to be a superhero, or to be able to talk to animals. Nothing that was actually possible, then. And the thought nags at him perhaps unreasonably, but persistent all the same, and all he wants is to take back his wish.

When his mum comes in to tuck him in and pull the thick blue duvet up to his neck, almost stifling, Phil voices his concerns in a soft voice. And she laughs, and strokes back his hair, and says: “Well, if that wish wasn't real, why not make another one?”

“Can you do that?” Phil asks, voice awed and eyes wide, and she said, “Of course. It's a wish. There aren't any rules.”

She leans down and kisses the top of his head as he stares out at the view from his bedroom window, the dark sweep of sky, and the array of spangled stars, and the hanging moon. His mother stands up and draws the blinds.

“If it makes you feel better, wish on a star,” she tells him. “Goodnight, Phil. Happy birthday.”

The stars have been taken away from him with the sweep of the curtain so carelessly in front of the windowpanes. But Phil's heart races restlessly, and it's too hot underneath his covers. He shifts and squirms for what feels like hours, and he wills the curtains to move themselves, too far up for him to reach. They don't, of course, and Phil feels too many wishes on the tip of his tongue.

To fly a plane. To be an astronaut. To discover aliens. To be an alien –

His mind is a hundred colours, flitting from different ideas and Phil pictures the hands on the clock depicting the way that time is running out. Because everybody knows that wishes mean far more when they're spoken, secret, on your birthday, and Phil doesn't want to wait another year.

Irate, he tosses again, turning over agitatedly as the sprawl of wishes hang heavy over him. And when he does so, something catches his eye: a book thrown haphazardly at the end of the bed, forgotten from the night before, when he'd sat on his mum's lap and read stories about Daniel Howell, the boy who never grows up.

There are more books about Dan, the boy whose name seems synonymous with adventure, than Phil can count. He's a boy who doesn't have to abide by the laws of anybody, not his parents’ or his teachers’ or the laws of the possible and impossible.

Dan's flown a plane. He's been an astronaut. He played with aliens in space, and found that on another planet, he was an alien too. He's learned to fly, he's talked to animals, and somehow still manages to pull pranks and spread mischief, and make all of the people on the illustrated pages laugh, so the thick books, too long for Phil to read alone, end with waving drawings and smiley faces, and each and every time, Dan is the hero.

And the thought of his stories makes the flurry of indecision flooding Phil's thoughts a little easier to deal with, because when it comes down to it, there's only one real wish because there's only one way any of the others could ever feel plausible, if he went on an adventure with the boy in the books.

Determined and desperate, and maybe dreaming a little, Phil pushes off the bed covers and climbs out of bed. He pads across the floor, making sure to avoid the creaks that'd tell tale to his endeavors to his parents downstairs, and he heads to the window. It's still too high, so after a moment's defeat, he drags over a toy box sitting in the other corner of his room, and wobbling slightly, climbs upon it, so that his head just about reaches over the windowpanes.

He pushes back the curtains. There is no first star to wish upon, nor a falling one lighting up the sky. But the sky is lit up with glittering stars, like little beacons upon an indigo sea. It looks like magic, and Phil decides that he doesn't need a first star set in mind, not when he can wish upon them all.

He leans forward and undoes the latch of the window, letting it fly open and the cool breeze hit his face. He looks up at the stars, and the way that he shines, and he thinks about the illustrations on the covers of his hard-back books, smooth and painted, a boy with a smile and a sword in his hands.

And he whispers into the night, before the clock strikes twelve, his birthday wish, the first he's ever meant.

::

2015

At the best of times, working at the local library isn't the most exciting of occupations.

It's not something Phil had particularly envisioned himself doing as a child, or a teenager filling out university applications and discussing media and filmography with his career's advisor, but it's not too bad; it pays the bills, and being surrounded by what seems like a limitless collection of books is far from a bad thing.

Phil likes books. He always has done. From raking through the hundreds of pages of each Harry Potter novel, to the lengthy anthologies of poetry that studying English at school promised him. He likes the way they feel, with smooth hardback covers, or the easiest paperbacks that don't make his arms ache to hold. He likes the way that they smell, old and musky – it's one of the perks of working at a library, actually, along with the fact that whilst hiding in the aisles of shelves upon shelves of stories, no one is around to notice if he flits through a couple of pages and has a quick read when he's supposed to be finding a particular novel or working at his desk.

Because he's always loved to read, all the way from childhood when he'd spend hours pouring over a Dan Howell book, stories about a teenage boy who sailed pirate ships and saved the world. His mum used to read them to him, a chapter every night, and once Phil was old enough to read the words himself he could never put them down. Now, his tastes are slightly different, and he alarms himself a little too much by insisting upon reading Stephen King novels at one in the morning, but that's the best part of books and stories, and the thing Phil loves the most – that they make him feel things.

Whether a good or a bad feeling, that's irrelevant. But when you've found a book that makes your heart race, or makes you wish you could be anywhere else, makes you feel, it's a good story no matter what the content truly is.

So, Phil doesn't mind his job too much. He enjoys it sometimes on slow afternoons when it's a nice day outside, and so people entering from town are few and far between. He likes the peace and the quiet and the smell of books and the way that the room, technically, is filled to the brim with fantasy – but it's boring, too.

It seems foreign to Phil that being surrounded by stories all day could ever be boring, but it does become so. When his head hurts and the words on the page just serve to make his eyes ache. When children in the aisles won't stop squabbling and don't seem to understand the concept of quiet. When families bring in their too-young children, because nobody comes into a library hoping to hear the high pitched shriek of a baby.

Nothing happens, at a library, is the thing. It's not like working in a shop, where business is slow at the best of times but there's regular interaction and occasionally things will actually happen. Or a coffee shop where you might meet an interesting person over the counter every once in a while (but then again, Phil's knowledge of the cliched meetings of coffee shops does, first and foremost, come from books). It isn't like in bars or clubs where something is bound to happen so often that it actually becomes tiresome.

It's a library: people come to study, they come to read, they come to browse for hours and pick up books, or to drop their children off at a corner for some poor volunteer like Phil to come and read them stories – that's part of his job title too now, apparently. It's a library, and the main thing it's associated with is quiet.

Phil likes his job well enough, but that's one thing there is: silence. And sometimes, he tires of it. Sometimes he wants something more exciting, adventurous – like the books the people here slave upon, reading into worlds about dragons and monsters and another universe altogether, so they can forget that they're really sat in a hall, with stacked books for wallpaper, no central heating, and unnecessarily high ceilings. Phil likes to do the same, but often he can't.

It's all very well reading stories about adventure within the safe confinements of paper tales and printed ink, but sometimes, Phil almost desperately wishes for some kind of action in his life, some kind of adventure. And whether it's a story he used to familiarise so well with, of a teenage boy stealing a rocket ship and sailing through the void, or whether it's something small, ordinary, but just big enough to make his life seem more interesting, less monochrome, for even just one day – well, Phil isn't picky.

::

Mondays are traditionally the worst day of the week, particularly for work, and Phil's job is no exception in spite of the fact that he works on Saturday mornings. Even though unlike school the weekend isn't a break from his routine or his job, there's something about an early Monday morning that just feels unforgiving, makes it feel like the days leading up to his next day off (actually only two, but that's not quite the point) are looming out.

There's just something about Mondays that doesn't sit right with anybody, including Phil. Maybe it's something in the water.

It's a cold morning though, and Phil hates the build up to winter. It's October, and most mornings greet Phil with icy winds brushing against his face and slippery pavements wet from rain, grey skies and threatening clouds that make the city look bleak, decorated only by the scarce trees, skeletal from the cold.

It's only October, and he's already wearing woolly gloves.

The problem with the library is that it's always freezing. It's a big, drafty building that's been standing for well over a hundred years, and is additionally, apparently not important enough to be fitted with any kind of modern heating. And so when Phil finally comes in from the cold, he's still shivering, and rubbing his covered hands together for some kind of heat. The stone walls and wooden floors somehow make him feel even colder.

He warms up over the course of the morning – though his ears ache a little bit just from the sting of the mornings wind, and it puts him in a bad mood. The dull kind, that hangs over his head and tells him that he shouldn't have given up on university, that he's wasting his life in a job that really isn't going anywhere and yet, there doesn't seem to be many better options. He's painfully aware of the mediocrity of his life, his occupation. The senseless routine is almost biting. Every day he wakes up, spends too long in the shower, ends up having to run to avoid missing the bus by half a second into the centre of town before making the walk – usually in the rain, after all, it's England – to the library. He'll grab a coffee on his lunch break. Afterwards, he'll repeat the same journey home, although with less risk of a hernia. Might ring up his mum. Might see a friend. Most likely will make pasta and watch a documentary on anything between the paranormal and the development of culinary appliances over the century.

Sometimes he'll read a book. When he's at home though, not too often. He's surrounded by enough at work.

Usually at work, when there's not much to do, when the flurry of customers coming up to the desk is slow and there are no books to be sorted or children to read to, or lost looking people to assist, Phil will immerse himself in a book, and temporarily disappear into a different world. Just for a moment. One a little more exciting than his own. But sometimes, he's just not in the mood. Sometimes a book is the last thing he wants, and he craves something rather than just a story.

Today is one of those days. Monday mornings are always slow, with the people at work, and the children at school. The building is dotted with elderly people and the occasional younger face, but most seem contented to flick through pages and browse the shelves. Phil has had very little human contact in the two hours he's been working. He's not sure if it's a good or a bad thing.

He's at last freed from watching the hall clock move and contemplating rereading the Harry Potter series in order to re-organise the shelves in the fantasy section. It's not the most enthralling of tasks, but he's glad to be moving onto something that requires – well, doing something. He's perfectly content with leaving the desk to a co-worker, Jenny, who seems to feel the exact opposite to how he does but then, there's just something down about Phil today, something dissatisfied. Maybe a little sad. Maybe.

The problem with the library is that Phil almost resents the public who use it for their inability to ever put things back where they belong when they're browsing, even though it technically does give him something to do. It's just aggravating to see how some don't even bother leaving it in the right alphabetical section, or even the right genre, leaving books haphazardly wherever seems easiest as if it'll fall back into it's correct location by itself, as if by magic.

He's down to the F category of the section when he feels himself sigh with frustration, as someone has yet again put a book back onto the wrong shelf – it's clearly marked with F, doesn't take a genius to see it, yet the title of the book reads 'The Songs of Enchantment'.

Phil raises his eyebrow. For a start, clearly, this book does not belong in the F section, not even close. He takes a moment to silently curse whoever cannot tell the difference between an F and an S, and questions what they are doing in a library to begin with.

And then he takes a moment to consider the title, and his eyebrow doesn't move. He's utterly alone, but that doesn't stop him from exaggerating an unimpressed expression upon his face. Clearly, the latest influx of young adult fiction fantasy authors were running out of ideas.

Still, though, it's a pretty book, he can appreciate that. It's a hardback cover, one carefully illustrated, with intricate patterns of pastel colours making out faded images that he can't quite process, faded with age. The letters are emboldened and striking, large and standing out over the paled images, not worn at all over time, looking almost dramatic in contrast to the pallid colours in swiped of a golden brown, which feels hard to touch, when Phil runs his finger over in curiosity. It's an encapsulating cover, he supposes, and his eyebrow has drooped, and the line of his mouth curls less so than it did before.

Phil has always been one to flick through the pages of books, in particular those he has never come across. He has definitely not seen, and cannot for the life of him recognise all of the books within the library – it's a huge building, and it's filled to the brim, and he hasn't got a chance of ever memorising that many titles. He likely hasn't even seen all of the books in his months of working here. But the fantasy section is one of which he has familiarised himself with over the years as he's scaled through the pages of another new book. It's a genre he's always liked at it's best, and though in his picky tastes he often rejects the books he finds, the curiosity of learning the idea of another land always intrigues him.

That's what it is, probably. That's what draws him to hold the book out in his hands, and turn over the front cover.

He'd assumed it was a new book, pumped out during the craze of fantasy worlds and teenage protagonists on extraordinary adventures, in spite of the cover – he'd assumed it to be carefully designed that way. But the pages are worn, the corners bent and even ripped a little, in places, and the colour slightly yellowed. That's what he sees, when he opens it mid-way. Curiously, he flicks it back to the middle, and finds the first few pages that should be in every book missing.

There is no publication date, no information about the author or other books in the series, no copyright claim. When he checks back, there's no author on the book, either, and no publication details of any company on either side of it's cover. There's nothing along the spine. Not even the repetition of its title.

There isn't even a sheet stuck on to show that it's owned by the library. There's no list of names and dates in which it's been checked out and in. It's as if it isn't a library book at all.

Phil is a little intrigued.

He opens the book up again, and begins to flit through the pages. The first are a little unexpected, with descriptions of different stars and their placements, with diagrams of constellations and moon charters. The book lists off different types of skies and different alignments between the placement of the sun and the time of day, all which seem to combat the ideas Phil has in his head that he'd learned through school. There are pages that discuss myths and folklore, across different cultures that Phil doesn't really understand. Descriptions of rituals. How they relate to the stars, the moon, space.

Phil, not really understanding too well, and a little bored by the influx of factual information, skims a couple more sentences before flicking through more pages, until he reaches the end of the small, black print, and onto some that look a little like the books of poems by ancient laureates he had to read in school, or the little hymn book his grandma keeps in the living room. It doesn't look like a poem, though, or any type of song. The words are in English, but don't seem to make much sense, at least, not to Phil.

He wonders, with the nature of the strange book, if they are supposed to be spells.

A smile twitches at his lips. A spell book. Surely, this wasn't something the library ordered in, and the lack of any proof makes it hard to believe it's a donation. He figures someone must have left it here – they have plenty of weird people walking in through those doors, because weird people love to find weirder people in the form of stories – either accidentally, or perhaps even on purpose, to line dreams with tales of witchcraft. Phil shakes his head a little – but he keeps reading.

The writing – the spells? – are in English, which surprises him a little as he'd expected some clichéd Latin phrases which he'd have had no idea how to pronounce. The titles are written in grand calligraphy, in black ink that curls, reading out names such as 'Sleeping Song', and 'Beauty Bewitchment', and 'Lucid Lullaby'. The spells themselves don't make much sense to Phil, but the intent seems clear. Spells for knowledge, spells for a superior power. Spells for light, change, sleep. None of them peak his particular interest. They don't look like he’d expect them to, either. Given the previous pages he'd have expected instructions for brewing a potion with eye of newt underneath the second stage of the moon – but these are just short incantations, sentences that run into each other without seeming to make much sense at all. Like gibberish.

He flips his way, losing interest now, to the mid-section of the book, and his eyes rest upon a page entitled 'Covet Curse'.

the bluest day brings back desire

returns an ancient dead aspire

the truest wish the heart did drew

the first you made makes life a-new

The words seem a little raised, slightly, as if they've been printed onto the page differently, a little like the title of the book itself. Phil moves his finger onto the page, and, absent-mindedly, curiously, murmurs the words out loud as he trails his the pad of his fingertip along the letters, feeling the touch of them against his skin, definitely different from the rest of the words of the book, the quirky rhyme ringing in his head for a minute, making sense of it. He studies the page curiously –

And then he snorts in disbelief, and closes the book with a snap. He takes it to the lost and found section. It's a pretty book, he figures, very atmospheric and probably interesting, if you're into that kind of thing – even more so if you believe, and so he figures that whoever has left it here, as it clearly isn't the registered property of the library, will want it back.

::

Tuesdays are better than Mondays in some respects.

In a sense, it's not the first day of the week anymore, which ultimately means it's closer to the end. But you're still not even half-way through. Phil has found that the weather is almost always worse on Tuesdays too, but that might just be the fact that he only ever takes notice of the way the world looks outside on a Tuesday when it's raining.

Phil detests Mondays, but it'd be a lie to say he's a particularly big fan of Tuesdays. At least he doesn't work the morning shift.

At the very least then he doesn't find himself rolling out of bed at half past eight already at risk of missing the bus – because he really hasn't aged in the past ten years at all – but he does wake up feeling groggy, in a haze where the world feels slow, almost as if he'd fallen asleep under strong medication. He lies for a few seconds, arms cold where they poke outside of the duvet covers, and he doesn't feel like he ever wants to move.

Seconds later the unnecessarily loud alarm clock on his phone decides to go off at absolute full volume though, and so he does move (if unintentionally) when he jumps, startled, and almost falls out of the bed. He decides, at that point, that it might be time to wake up.

::

It's a slow morning, lazy and lethargic. Phil eats cornflakes for breakfast and brushes his teeth. He doesn't feel in any sense of rush, for a change, even though the clock hands move as fast as they always do, and he's running about as late as he always is.

He feels oddly calm, as if sleeping and dreaming have wiped the world clean, have wiped him clean of anything to do with worry, or hurriedness, or fear in any shape or form. He feels refreshed, like he's slept for fourteen hours, not seven. Momentarily, his mind focuses on the concept of dreaming, and he thinks but he can't pinpoint one for the previous night. He knows he dreamt. He can almost see flashes of memory indicating blurred colours and lights, split second scenarios that flicker in brief images for a few moments and then disappear so that all Phil can seem to make out are connect-the-dot clues that he can't put together. He knows he dreamt, can recall it in swipes of shade and hazy recollections, but he doesn't know what he dreamt.

He might be late for work. He leaves the house perhaps a little too late, and the lift down to the bottom floor of the building feels too stuffy but then, that's nothing new. He shares a nod with his neighbour on ground floor, and makes for the exit just in time.

Looking at the space outside of his apartment building, sat idly in the centre of countless others that tower to frame the city scape, Phil feels the same drowsy haze and brushes of surreality that he had when he looked in the mirror, still brushing his teeth and thought: what did I dream about last night.

It's not that things are wrong – it's just that they're a little not right. Like looking at a spot-the-difference game that used to sit on the bottom pages of magazines and children's activity books, where the differences are subtle and slight. Where the little girl would have the wrong coloured bow in her hair, or the cat would have a longer tail, or there'd be an extra tea cup set up over a plain white table cloth.

And Phil wonders if he's stuck in between the pages of the children's activity books that are supplied one too many in the kid's section of the library, or if he's simply still inside a dreamlike stupor. Or maybe, the town council just decided to repaint the fading walls of the white Newsagents' building, directly across the street, green during the night.

But the streets are free from the clinging stench of paint, and the bus stop has moved even further down the road, Phil's sure of it, because he stands there (or runs toward it) at least once every day, and he could swear on most of what he holds dear that it's never been in front of a barber shop that he's never even seen on the road.

And the Cancer Research that used to stand in its place is apparently not even on the street at all.

Phil blinks. More than once. Repeatedly. He doesn't even blink, after a moment – he closes his eyes tight for about ten seconds and when he opens them he expects to either see the building arrangement and colour scheme of Richmond Street as it once was and should continue to be, or to find himself in his bed, blinking his tired eyes awake to find he's even later for work than he thought he was.

Neither prediction happens. Phil opens his eyes again and sees the expanse of street exactly how he'd left it.

What's more, the world carries on as normal. Nobody else seems to be in any way startled over the strange state of disarray that the street is in. Nobody looks disconcerted by the way buildings have changed in colour and seemed to have sprouted legs and walked. Nobody bats an eyelid to find shops that have never existed open and ready for business. He hears the chime of a bell, and sees a woman pushing a baby in a buggy through the door of a post office which he could have sworn he's never seen in his life, as if it's been there forever. Phil feels like he's been asleep for the past ten years while the world has gone on without him.

In a moment of horror, he wonders if he's been in a coma for a decade or something – but when he frantically checks the date and time it matches up to what it'd said yesterday on the corner of the library computer seen, to what the newspaper left half unread on his coffee table read last night, to what he knows it is.

It's a very strange feeling, he finds. Waking up in your own bed and stepping outside to find the world around you has completely changed. It's the most bizarre thing he's ever felt, to feel completely lost, and dazed, and drowsy, on another normal and mundane morning of his life.

The world carries on without him. Phil looks around frantically, and nobody recognises his inane confusion in the sleepiness of this side of town, post rush hour.

Across the street though – there's a boy. And he's tall and lanky looking, his arms folded. He looks nothing if not completely usual, with brown hair, wearing all black, but Phil notices him because he's turning his head and darting his eyes down each end of the street. Phil squints over the way, and sees the manner in which his eyes are widened in confusion, and the reason he stands out to him is because he too looks as if he's stepped out into a world that's bizarre and ridiculous and not quite right. Because the expression etched onto his face is a visual depiction of everything that Phil is feeling.

The boy isn't a neighbour. He isn't a colleague, and Phil's sure he's never seen him in the area. But there's just something about him that feels so strangely familiar, like another page in a book out of place.

Phil can't put his finger on it, can't quite place where he's seen this boy before, but he's sure that he has. There's just something about him that seems so vaguely familiar, like a childhood friend he hasn't seen in years, someone who looks completely different now, over time, as the years and settings have changed, but still carries that distinct familiarity.

But then, the entire world feels peculiar this morning, so Phil supposes it could be anything. He could be anyone. And no matter who he is, he's the only person who seems to recognise the state of the world right now, and how it's just a little bit out of place. He's the only person Phil has seen who seems aware of his surroundings. And it might be something completely unrelated. He might be looking for his late carpool to work and his resting face is just particularly distressed. He might be out of his mind on drugs. He could be an escaped convict working on his next move. Phil doesn't know. But ultimately, he's his best shot.

Phil's still staring at him, unabashed when he probably should be, even when the boy finally notices and glances over. Maybe, though, he recognises similar looks on Phil to his own, in the same way that Phil has.

Neither of them do anything for a moment. Phil thinks, screw it. He's probably late for work. Screw that, too. And so he crosses the street, and the boy waits, and he shifts awkwardly and Phil sees his gaze slide around the views of this little old road, like he knows it, when Phil knows most of the residents of this place and he's never seen him before in his life. Except for the fact that he's sure he has, feels this inkling of déjà vu whenever he looks at him, yet can't put a name or a location or a time he's ever seen him around here to that face. But Phil watches him, as he's crossing over the road, and no cars come by, and watches this boy watch the world like he's still sleeping and dreaming.

“Please tell me you're seeing this too,” the boy says, before Phil has any chance to even open his mouth, let alone speak. He's just about on the pavement, and this stranger is looking at him with slight confusion and obvious distress. “Because I asked my roommate if he was seeing it and he asked me if I was on drugs and I've been too scared to ask anybody else because they all look completely normal and I don't want to get, like, sectioned, and I don't even take drugs. Ever. Let alone last night. I just woke up, and everything was weird, and then you – are you seeing this?” the stranger looks very flustered when he stops talking, for just a second, and catches his breath. He adds, as an afterthought, “Sorry, I'm rambling I know, I just.”

“By seeing this, do you mean that this street looks completely different to how it did last night?” Phil asks. “Because yes. That's exactly what I'm seeing, and I don't understand at all.”

“My flat should not be this far up the road,” he blurts out. “I – I live in this building, right here,” he gestures to the shop behind him. “I mean, above it, but. There isn't a block of flats opposite me. There's a house. Just a normal terraced house. Which isn't even here anymore. It might be down the road. Everything has like, moved around, and it makes no sense.”

“The Newsagents' should be white,” Phil interrupts, dazed. “The walls, I mean. They're meant to be white, not green.”

The stranger blinks at him. “They've always been green,” he says.

“They haven't,” Phil says. “And this road doesn't even have a Specsavers.”

“It does!”

“Not that I've ever seen. And the Cancer Research has gone.”

“When has there ever been a Cancer Research here?”

Phil glances at his watch. “I'm really late for work,” he says, but not in an urgent realisation kind of way. He says it languidly, too relaxed. Like he doesn't really care. In light of disappearing shops and building walls that change colour and a boy he doesn't know who could be colour blind, but could also be completely correct, work doesn't really seem like that much of a big deal.

“Me too,” the boy says. “I was waiting for the bus. But the 10:44 never came,” he laughs, a little hollow. “Jesus Christ, I'm going insane. At least the fucking bus stop is in the right place.”

Phil frowns. “There is no 10:44 bus, just the 10:32 and the 11:03,” he's strangely proud of his ability to remember bus timetables off the top of his head. He thinks about this in the intermittent silence, where the stranger boy – Phil should probably call him a man, he's clearly an adult, and yet there's something unmistakably young and boyish about his face – gapes at him, looking a little like he's going to cry. Uncomfortable with the silence, he points out another realisation that hits him. “The bus stop isn't in the right place, either. It should be further down the road,” he gesticulates awkwardly, and then, for some reason he adds, “I run for it like, every day. Sometimes around this time, sometimes earlier. I'm always late.”

“I've never seen you,” boy-man-stranger says. He sounds a little too distressed about the matter. “Like. I mean. If we live in buildings opposite each other, and we get the bus at similar times, and we both run for the bus, then how come I've never seen you? It's okay that I don't know you. I don't know a lot of people. But I've never seen you.”

“Not around here,” Phil agrees.

The stranger looks at him, and tilts his head to the side. “There's something about you that seems familiar.”

Phil swallows. “I was thinking the same thing,” he admits. “About you, I mean. You seem familiar. And I don't know how. And I don't know if it's supposed to correspond with the fact that the entire world has like, turned on it's head and this street feels like it's being flipped inside out, but. I don't know you at all, and yet I feel like I've seen you before.”

He receives a nod in response, first, and then the stranger demands, “What's your name?”, and Phil says, “Phil Lester.”

The boy looks at him with wide eyes, and Phil wonders if they have met before, maybe. He definitely recognises the name, and Phil doesn't know if that's supposed to mean anything. He's not sure Phil Lester is a name easily associated with anything at all memorable. But the boy shakes his head, like he's dismissing a thought from his head, and Phil asks, “What's yours?”

And the stranger says, “Dan Howell.”

::

Eventually, the bus rolls around to the stop, ten minutes late, and Phil wonders if it’s a coincidence or another aspect of this counter world where things aren’t quite right. After all, it’s him that never arrives on time, not the bus.

It seems a little nonsensical to him at first, to go into work, but he realises he’s not sure what else to do. Pacing around his flat will doubtlessly make him go mad, he can’t talk to any of his neighbours if all they’re going to do is suspect either drugs or that Phil Lester has finally cracked, and talking to the only person who sees the same shattered sight, Dan, in this frozen position on a pavement full of misplaced buildings, is just making his head ache. And so he pays his fare, fumbling around with change in a daze, and when he wanders over to the seats he studies each face. It’s not unusual for him not to recognise a single person seated there; it’s not exactly a small area he’s living in these days, and this bus route spans miles over the city.g But today, for whatever reason, when his eyes settle over the faces of all of these strangers, he feels a thin layer of anxiety, like black ice, that wonders incessantly whether they should really be here. Whether their presence is perfectly normal, or not quite right. He wonders if, like the buildings, they’re mismatched people pulled from the wrong storybook, if he could pull up their coat sleeves and find faded patches of oddly coloured skin, green or pink or yellow, too big to be bruises. If they’ll have pieces of Frankenstein’s monster haphazardly sewn into themselves, out of place and dreamlike, the way the Phil’s own street has become.

He feels a little bit queasy when he takes his seat.

Dan follows him onto the bus, seeming to share Phil’s notion of going to work but he doesn’t ask for details because he claims to work at Olding’s Older Novels, a secondhand bookshop on Cleaver Street, and Phil has never heard of either.

He thinks of Frankenstein’s monster again, and contradictory things sewn against each other. Wrong. Working, but not quite right.

Dan takes a look at the seat Phil picks, a window seat in the mid–section of the bus, and he glances at him with a tentative uncertainty, before he decides against approaching and chooses to sit a few seats before. Phil can’t help but notice how his knees are shaking, moving up and down, restless, like he can’t keep still for the life of him. Phil realises that he himself is tapping his foot sub–consciously against the floor, and the old woman in the opposite aisle seat is shooting him daggers. Her eyes are brown, not fluorescent pink, but the world still feels dreamlike, she feels dreamlike. Phil wonders if he ever really woke up, but when he bus jolts to a start, he hits his knee against the seat in front, and feels it more than he should.

He’s never paid too much attention to the city outside on his bus journeys, preferring to play candy crush for the entire time rather than save the sight of bleak town buildings. Today, he looks at each and every one, and he may not have each street view saved like a hanging painting on the inside of his mind, but he can tell from what he does see that things are off. It’s not just his road, it’s the whole city; it’s misplaced and mismatched and topsy turvy, like it’s all been shaken around in a jar and poured out at random in a tumble of multicoloured paint. It makes Phil’s head ache, and he feels the tugs of a migraine in the corners of his eyes, already, and his shift hasn’t even started. And he’s still late for work. And he still feels as though he’s not yet woken up, the world garish and dreamlike.

Phil looks to the front of the bus, at Dan, at his slumped shoulders and hair messy from a back angle. He feels dreamlike, too.

And he thinks about his name – Dan Howell – and how he resembles the illustrations of the teenage boy Phil used to read about as a kid, always hoping he’d grow up to be just like him, remembers the carefully coloured drawings of a boy in tatty clothes, with a slight curl in his brown hair (always messy – a young part time superhero doesn’t have time for combing his hair, after all) and big brown eyes. He’s got the same name as the children’s book character who hosted the dreams of every kid Phil knew, growing up. Maybe there’s something about him, then, his name, that brings the dreams out, chases them out of dark corners and turns the world into running colours. Or maybe the entire world has just gone a little bit insane, and a boy with a painfully common name and an average outward appearance is here to share it. Maybe the universe is playing a trick on him. Dan could be in on it.

Sighing, Phil rests his head against the window, and leans against it and tries not to look at Dan’s slumped shoulders ahead of him, and wonders if maybe he’s the one who is losing it, not the world.

Somehow, looking at him leaves a feeling of unease that sits in Phil’s stomach, and rests on his shoulders. Maybe it’s because he’s never really been one to relish the world of his subconscious.

::

Phil barely recognises when to stop the bus, save for the tall, looming old stone building opposite to where the library stands. This road too is not the way it was yesterday, with everything just a little wrong. Odd. But Phil presses the stop button in a sudden rush anyway, and hopes that his workplace hasn’t been replaced with like, a pharmacy or a police station or something.

What would he do, if that did happen? What’s happened to the people working in the shops Phil’s seen replacing ones he once knew? Are they still there, with rewritten memories insisting that they’ve always worked there or have they disappeared too, along with their buildings, to be replaced with patchwork people in a makeshift city?

He stumbles out of the bus, and to his surprise, Dan follows a moment later. Phil’s immediately weary, and can’t help the words tumbling from his lips when he turns around and says, a little too accusatory, “are you following me?”

Dan looks incredulous, and for moment Phil feels bad because he’s seen the unsurety and anxiety within him today. For a split second, it seems to flash, and then Dan just looks irritated.

“Yeah, definitely,” he says. “I mean, why wouldn’t stalking you be my top priority when I’ve got a job to go to and, oh, don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the entire city is backwards?”

“Alright, alright,” Phil says hastily. “I get it, I didn’t mean that, I just–”

“Yeah,” Dan interrupts, but he doesn’t sound so angry. “I know.”

Phil nods. “So, you work around here? I’ve just never seen you. Assuming we get the same bus route at similar times. It’s a bit weird, don’t you think?”

Dan shrugs. “Maybe,” he says, and then adds, “but you know, a lot of people take that bus. We’ve probably just never noticed each other,” and it even sounds like denial.

“Maybe,” Phil agrees, even though he doesn’t, not really. “How far is Cleaver Street then?” he asks. He feels a little compelled to make conversation now, after inadvertently offending Dan. His mother always taught him to be polite, that even in an apocalypse you shouldn’t forget your courtesy. The city seemingly moving itself around can’t be much different.

Dan looks at him strangely. “This is Cleaver Street,” he says, and Phil frowns.

“It isn’t,” he argues. “I’m sorry, it’s – it isn’t. This is Fentom’s Circle. I work here, see, in the library.”

“But there isn’t a library here,” Dan protests, the irritation on his face now replaced with a slight curl of anxiety once again.

“Did you get off at the wrong stop?” Phil asks, calmly, and Dan glowers at him.

“Did you?”

“I definitely didn’t. Are you new to the city? I got lost loads of times when I first moved here–”

“I’m not new or lost and I didn’t get a wrong bus,” Dan snaps, the agitation only fuelled by the slow pull of fear and uncertainty, and most of all unfamiliarity. “We both know what’s going on here, Phil.”

“I thought you were in denial,” Phil says, weakly, and Dan shakes his head.

“It’s kind of hard to be, given the circumstances,” he mumbles, and gestures, and Phil turns around to the small, inner–city park, with perfectly placed trees planted in circles that interrupt the pavements, and wooden benches, and white stone to walk upon. It’s a lot cleaner than Fentom’s Circle was. If he peers sideways, Phil still sees masses of ivy crawling up the side of the Primark building – less than perfect. But Phil’s eyes are lulled over to where Dan’s gesticulating, following his gaze, and there’s a sign he’s pretty sure he’s never even seen. In part because this sign is made of stone, and Fentom’s Circle has a typical street sign followed by directions to the roundabout and library and club, but partly because the engraved, shapely writing is not spelling out Fentom’s Circle, not ‘city centre’, nor ‘the Circle’. Phil looks up, and he reads, 'Cleaver’s Circle’, and he doesn’t understand, not a bit, not at all.

“Oh,” Phil says eventually. He swallows. “Right.”

He doesn’t say anything else on the matter. In fairness, Phil doesn’t suppose there’s anything else to say – they’ve pretty much covered it all, when it comes to expressions of shock and confusion and unease. They don’t know what’s going on, but they don’t know how to work out what is, and they have even less of an idea of how to fix things. There are so many questions, but nowhere near enough answers. Phil’s not really sure how much it would be worth voicing them.

And so Dan doesn’t say, “what the hell?” and he doesn’t bother asking rhetorical questions. He wears an anxious expression on his face, but looks more tired than anything, when he tilts his head to the side and asks, “so, where’s this library you work at, then?”

::

Dan accompanies Phil to the library for two reasons. One being that the solutions to these kinds of things always seem to reside in books, or at least that’s what seems to happen in the films and science fiction novels, and that’s as much experience as Dan has in this particular criteria, of which Phil doesn’t have much to compete with. Two, Phil is the only other person who is actually recognising that anything is at all out of the ordinary; Dan’s roommates and any of his friends he dared approach either thought he was joking or, when he pushed, it looked concerned for his mental stability, and all of the passersby they’ve seen look easy and at peace, completely relaxed even though the world isn’t working right. It’s unnerving, at the very least, to see how the citizens carry on as though nothing has changed, while the backdrop they’re against has morphed entirely, and Phil probably feels enough anxiety and confusion for the vast majority of the city. Dan claims that they should stick together – or at least be in contact – to make things easier, so that they each have someone else acknowledging that all isn’t entirely ordinary. Phil can agree with that.

Something about his assertion and the way he knows what to do and the way his anxieties seem to melt away in the face of reason, when required, remind Phil all too well of someone. Like an old friend. If he dwelled on it, the recognition would probably click, out of familiarity or a running wild imagination. But he doesn’t, and maybe he doesn’t even want to.

It remains unspoken, but Phil can’t help but feel relief at the idea of having Dan with him, not only to settle his worries (and loneliness – for he can’t help but feel segregated from the rest of the people he sees, as they are clearly under the impression of living in different worlds) but also because it makes it easier. Phil knows Fentom’s Circle; knows it like the back of his hand, at this point. But this isn’t Fentom’s Circle. The entire city centre is different, merging with an alternate one that Dan knows himself, far too well: Cleaver Street. It’s useful having Dan there to guide him, when the city that he was once used to integrates with Dan’s home. And even though it becomes even more disconcerting to know that something is seriously wrong, when it seems almost as though two separate locations have slid together and not fit quite right, it’s comforting to know that wherever he’s going, he’ll have a way to get back home.

“It’s weird,” Dan says. The city feels quieter than usual, which is strange, because it’s not. Everything seems to Phil like it’s moving in a slower motion at a lower volume, but it isn’t, really. It isn’t some kind of apocalyptic catastrophe, and there’s nothing different about the ordinary people. That’s what makes it scary, in a sense, but. It feels quiet, when it isn’t, like a side effect. Phil shakes the mess of thoughts, tangled like cobwebs, out of his mind, and he turns to listen to Dan. “It’s like – you know this city, and I know this city, but it’s like. It’s entirely different for each of us, somehow. It’s like we’re from two different places that have been, I dunno, merged together on google maps.”

“Was just thinking that,” Phil says. He pauses. “Is it like – I don’t know,” he laughs awkwardly all of a sudden. It’s a stilted, uncomfortable sound, but he doesn’t know how else to fill the gap between the speed of his thoughts and the slowness of grouping them together into words. “I don’t know quite what’s going on here, and this is, you know. Insane in itself. So forgive me if this sounds insane too, but do we even come from the same city?”

Dan blinks, a couple of times. More than necessary, and takes in Phil’s words.

“I don’t know,” he says, finally. “I live in Dolchester.”

Phil slows. “So do I.”

“But – there’s nowhere in Dolchester called Fentom’s Circle, let alone like, a city centre. It just doesn’t exist here. I’d know, I’ve lived here my whole life.”

Phil thinks about a series of books with a lot of words and even more stories, about a boy born in a place called Doll’s Grove. He can’t quite push the thought out of his head for some reason. It’s small, and insignificant, and a fragment from his childhood, but it clings to every thought he has and sticks on the back of his brain. He tries his best to ignore it.

“I’ve lived here for years,” Phil says, eyeing Dan unsurely. “I grew up in a town just outside the city, and I went to university here. I know Dolchester Dan, and it’s–”

“Completely different to how it is for me,” Dan finishes. He winces. “You know, my heads really starting to fucking hurt.”

He’s looking at Phil almost incredulously though, as if Phil said something that’s startled him like a bucket of ice cold water, with wide eyes that have been glazed and staring since before Phil had even started speaking.

“What?” Phil asks, and Dan studies his face for a moment, oddly attentive, before he turns away and looks at the floor, shrugging.

“Nothing,” he says. Phil wants to push him, but then he remembers: he doesn’t know Dan. Not really.

So he doesn’t.

They walk in silence for a little longer, Phil still not totally sure of where he’s going. But he begins to recognise signs and monuments that point to it, and it becomes easier to fit together a map of his Dolchester against an implied image of Dan’s and find his way. They turn a corner, and Phil closes his eyes for a moment, bracing himself.

“This is it,” he says, and his eyelids flutter open.

At first, he feels immense relief, because the big, expansive building that he’s used to is there, with the same brick walls and hanging windows and slanted rooftop, an ancient looking building still preserved despite whatever has breached the city and turned it upside down. For a moment, he grins - and then.

“Jesus Christ,” Dan mutters, and Phil falters, and drags his eyes down the presentation of building before him. He notes the grand door, never before seen to him; a different size, a different wood, different altogether. And then the engraved writing that looms above it, a stark sign that matches the grand and ancient appearance of the building. And while the library has stood for hundreds of years, it’s always looked more drab and half falling down than magnificent in any way. It’s the same building, kind of, with an enhanced and alien grandeur to it, and its name now reads, ‘Olding’s Athenaeum’.

“What does that even mean?” Phil groans.

“It’s like a library, and a place for studying literature and shit,” Dan says absently. Phil remembers his childhood hero and how would read, all night long. He remembers highlighting a passage about how books are the fuel that fire adventure. He’d liked the sound of that a lot, and bought another Dan Howell book two days later. He’s almost entranced in the memory, not even realising that he’s descended back into this line of thought, when Dan’s voice cuts through his dreaming. “Phil? Is this not it?”

“I mean,” Phil gestures kind of hopelessly. “Kind of? Yes and no?”

Dan sighs. “It’s another merge, isn’t it? You know. Your version and mine. How they sort of – fold together. For whatever reason.”

“Yeah,” Phil swallows. “I guess so,” he glances at the sign. “Olding. That’s the–”

“Name of my workplace, yeah,” Dan says, frowning. “Looks like my bookshop and your library are the latest combination.”

“Who is Olding?”

“No idea. If he’s the owner, I don’t know him. The manager is called Tony Brown.”

Phil cracks a smile at the dryness of Dan’s tone, and reaches for his wrist.

“Come on,” he says. “Nothing significant in our lives have mixed together yet – our houses are separate, for example. If these two are, then maybe there’s something special about them.”

“Maybe,” Dan echoes. He ponders for a moment, and then, unable to stand the tension lurking there ready to pounce, from the weirdness of the situation or from the fact that he and Phil do technically remain strangers, he says, “let’s see if we still have our jobs then.”

::

The room that they're greeted with seems to be a foyer, and Phil has never seen something that is such a stark contrast to the library.

The flooring is black marble, as opposed to the creaky floorboards that he is accustomed to. Instead of bleak stone walls sloppily painted in fading cream, the room is lined with dark red wall paper that stretches out and covers the ceiling in a further contrast to the slightly chipped one of the library, of which Phil had always held lowkey concerns that one day it was going to collapse completely. The only thing that seems to hold slight resemblance to his own building is the way the walls are so tall, looming over them. It isn't drafty and cold like the library though; candles rest upon the walls, and on several of the shelves, giving the place a strange, dim light which accentuates the warmth of the rich colours.

It looks as grand as the entrance of the building, and Phil thinks that if this is a merge then it must be biased towards Dan's bookshop.

“Wow,” Phil can't help but say, is sure the awe must show on his face. He's never been in a place like this, a room that holds such grandeur, and he feels as if he doesn't really belong.

“I'm guessing this isn't the spit of your local library, then?” Dan asks, and Phil shakes his head.

“No,” he says. “Definitely not.”

“It's very...” Dan struggles to find the right word. “Fancy, I guess. Isn't it?”

“Is this not what your bookshop looks like?”

Dan gives him a look. “Have you ever seen a bookshop that's this posh?” he asks, and Phil flushes a little. “I mean,” Dan continues. “It's. The interior and the colours and the candles and everything – it's a little like Olding's, I guess. Just, if you made it a thousand times fancier.”

“I wonder why it's so different from both places then,” Phil wonders aloud, and Dan shrugs, and doesn't answer, so he continues to talk. “It's like it's still merged, but it's different, too. Like it's merged with something else, maybe.”

“Maybe,” Dan agrees. And then, looking a little stricken, clearly the result of an afterthought, he says, “or maybe the reason this place is so decorated and fancy and everything is because it's special. Or important.”

“That could make sense,” Phil nods. “I mean, nowhere else has had this kind of treatment, after all. It's just these places. And they're places where we go often, so...”

“So we might find something in there,” Dan finishes.

Phil nods. “We might,” he says, but if his voice carries any kind of confidence, it isn't really fuelled by hope.

He watches as Dan takes another look around the room, his eyes darting all around to take in every detail; the dust settling in the corners and cracks on the ceiling, strangely reminiscent of the ones that blemished the stone expanse of Phil’s library, while still the same colour as the walls. A slight chip in a vase balanced on one of the protruding shelves, a couple of old books with leather covers and yellow pages peeping out. He looks a little uncomfortable, and Phil supposes he can’t be blamed, when he’s looking what is essentially a bigger, grander duplicate of a place he well knows. By this point, Phil knows the feeling.

“Shall we go in then?” Dan asks, after clearing his throat.

Phil takes one last glance around, while Dan’s eyes, disconcerted by satisfied, rest upon him.

The room smells a little musty, old. Like the library. It’s another detail that makes it painstakingly familiar.

He nods.

::

When they push open the large oakwood doors, they are greeted with the sight of books.

It’s like the library, eerily familiar in its layout with rows upon rows of books that Phil swears are positioned the same as at his place of work, though the shelves are thick wood instead of cheap metal. The amount of books are very different too, and if Phil had thought there were a lot in the library, this place makes it look like a mediocre collection. The shelves are filled to the brim from end to end with books, hardback and paperback, with spines of all sorts of different colours from black to deep purples, and rich reds and sea blues. It’s a little like the treasure trove from fairy stories, and the buried chests in pirate’s tales – the genie’s cave in Aladdin, filled with jewels and secrets and gems, though he supposes only some people would find any kind of treasure of gift within these walls. To many, it’d be a disappointing end to an ancient map and a lengthy quest, but Phil himself is in awe. They may not be real jewels or treasures, and maybe that would be a better sight to happen upon. But some of the books are old, and grand, and clearly expensive, bathed in rich, warm colours, until they glint in the dim light of a room lit only by candles resting on walls and topping bookshelves, and so they glow like rubies and emeralds, and cuts of sapphire stone.

The amount of books is a big part of what has Phil awestruck with wide eyes. They are everywhere, filling not only the shelves, but the spaces between them, with piles placed in front and mid–way between aisles and across floor space. They sit upon the shelves in haphazard piles that sometimes almost reach the ceiling. Some of the ones that make small mountains across the floor have toppled over, like volcanoes that have erupted, with some caught open half–way, and so worn pages spill onto the floor like lava, on the snow that peaks the tallest mountains as they soar into the sky.

It’s a fancy room too, echoing the aesthetic of the previous with deep red–purple walls and redwood floorboards that creak beneath their feet. Paintings with gold frames of faraway places, like seas and forests and kings that seem to stitch together stories in themselves. It feels fitting that so many books reside here when it feels like a place pulled out of a fantasy novel.

“Jesus Christ,” is what Dan says, his voice low.

Phil, at the height of his intelligence, says, “That’s a lot of books.”

Dan laughs a little – not out of humour, exactly, it’s not the kind that shakes and flickers inside eyes, but rather an unsettled, nervous kind.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Shit, that’s – yeah. That’s a lot of books. More than your library’s, I’m guessing.”

Phil nods. “And more than your shop’s.”

“By far,” Dan confirms. “It’s… a little like the shop, with the book piles. That’s a bit what it’s like. Because we get donations, and Tony goes out and buys a shit ton of secondhand novels for like, a fiver, and sells them on. But no one ever really organises them as well as they should. I mean, we have a few shelves, but mostly they just get all stacked up in a mess.”

“Well, the shelves are definitely from my library,” Phil confides. “It’s – painfully organised, to be honest. I spend half of my life doing it. We just have rows and rows of these shelves and they always seem to be full.”

Dan slides his gaze across the scene again, and raises his eyebrows.

“So essentially, this could be all of the books from both places, all put together,” he muses. “That – is totally insane, but would make sense given the rest of today’s events.”

“Plus a few hundred more,” Phil adds wearily. “There are so many, it’s – it’s very strange.”

“It is,” Dan agrees. “But with the way everything is in here, how it’s all so special and decorated and everything. Something about it feels special. Don’t you think?”

He does, but saying it out loud feels crazy. So Phil shrugs, and he says, “I hope so.”

He takes a step forward, bold, like he knows what he’s doing. Posture good, walking with purpose – and then he stops, in wake of the realisation that he has no idea where to start.

“Um,” he says. “It’s great that we’re here and everything – but what are we actually supposed to do?”

Dan bites his lip. “This is always a lot easier in books, isn’t it?” he mutters. “There’s like an unspoken agreement between fictional characters on what to do in any kind of… unusual situation.”

“Not a manual I’ve ever read,” Phil mumbles, and Dan says, “Same.”

They’re quiet for a few moments, and Dan says, “um. Maybe we could find someone? Or something? If this place is so special there might be someone here who knows what’s going on.”

“Good idea,” Phil agrees. “But it looks pretty dead,” and then a thought settles in his head and as a consequence, anxiety settles in his stomach. “Shit, Dan. None of our co–workers are here. None of mine are working the library and your manager isn’t here–”

“Oh God,” Dan says. “You don’t think–”

“They might just not work here in this world,” Phil interjects, not wanting Dan to say anything, but the other man shifts uncomfortably, and then he speaks.

“Or maybe there are some people from our old ones who just don’t exist in this one,” Dan says, and saying it just makes it so much scarier, and Phil didn’t shut his ears in time.

The tension slides between them, too thick to try to cut through.

::

They spend hours wandering around only the one room of the athenaeum, though with the expansive size of it Phil supposes it’s better called a hall. They don’t find anything though, not from sifting through novels and skimming at pages and examining the backs and fronts of books they feel a little uneasy of even holding in their hands. It doesn’t do any good, not with the sheer amount of books that there are, and things they could say, and what they could miss. It’s an overwhelming task, and not one that can be done with only two people who don’t even know if this will achieve anything at all.

Strangely, no other person enters the hall during the length of time which they remain there, not a single one.

By mid–afternoon, they call it a day, too tired and overwhelmed by the day to the point where their eyes are stinging, backs and knees and elbows aching, both a little disenchanted.

“I wanna go see my family, too,” Dan mumbles. “They don’t live too far across the city, and. I need to know if they’re still there, you know? And not, like. That they haven’t stopped existing or something. Or whatever. However that’s happened.”

“We don’t know it has happened,” Phil points out, because someone has to be the voice of reason, and it’s not going to be Dan. Dan just shrugs, though.

“I know, but it’s just something I have to do.”

It rests on the ridges of his thoughts that Dan Howell, the story book boy, loved his family a lot too. They were written into his adventures sometimes, sewn into the start or the middle of the end. Phil remembers his mum and his dad who both smiled a lot, and his brother, Jake.

“I understand,” Phil tells him. “We all have family. My parents are out of the city, though, so I don’t know – but my brother lives here, so maybe,” he knows he’s rambling, but Dan just nods, sympathetic.

“Call them if nothing else,” he suggests. “It might just be the city,” he pauses. “My brother – he’s at uni up country, too, shit.”

At his words, Phil experiences a twang, that’s how he’d describe it. Something that tugs at his brain and tells him: think. Something that pulls at his heartstrings and spills butterflies loaded with nerves to use like knives in his stomach.

“You have a brother too?” someone says, and it must be him, because there’s no one else around to speak.

Dan glances at him. “Yeah,” he says. “Name’s Jake. I’ll have to ring him, I think, oh fuck.”

Phil feels another twang. Then another, and another, and another.

::

They part ways on the stone steps of the athenaeum, and board separate buses to opposite ends of a mismatched city, with plans to meet at the bus stop tomorrow at ten. With his co–workers, and job, and life disappearing, his schedule isn’t really an issue anymore.

Phil’s heart doesn’t stop racing until an hour after he gets home.

He googles the word ‘coincidence’ for good measure, and takes comfort in the different ways in which strangers have reiterated its meaning.

::

“Hello? Phil?”

“Mum. Hi,” he says, and he breathes out a sigh of relief, filtering dust out of his throat that had slowly gathered amidst his growing panic that she’d never pick up.

“Are you okay, love? What’s the matter?”

“Nothing, nothing, I just – wanted to check in and see if you were okay. And the family and everyone. Just… if you were all alright.”

“That’s very thoughtful of you,” she says, and he hears the smile in her voice. “Well. We’re all good this end, and you know your brother just got this new promotion, so that’s…”

::

Waking up in the morning feels like a dream in itself.

For a moment, Phil lies still, pressed together underneath crisp white sheets, and he wonders if the city has been put back together. The sunlight is filtering through the blinds in beams, scattering shadows across the walls, and that thought startles Phil awake in much quicker time than any of his alarm clocks ever has.

He almost trips just getting out of bed, and then again when he makes a mad dash from across his bed to the window on the other side of his room and frantically tears the blinds open.

Disappointment hits him like the most violent punch in the gut when he looks out of clear glass and all he can see is a Newsagents’ with walls that are still painted green.

::

It turns out that he wasn’t dreaming.

::

It’s strange walking to meet Dan again, strange having to readjust to the new way in which the streets are paved and houses placed. The oddest thing is the sense of familiarity he feels when looking at buildings clearly misplaced, recognising them from yesterday and thinking, “yes, this is the way”, when the day before it wasn’t at all.

Dan’s shivering in the October cold when Phil approaches him at the bus stop. He doesn’t even know if a bus is due any time soon and, if one is, where they’d go. But it feels like a good place to start, especially seeing as neither of them are looking at the same route when they talk about a single street anymore. It’s still mapped out differently in each of their minds.

“Hey,” Phil says, offering a strained smile. Dan’s arms are folded, and he’s a pretty tall guy, but he looks incredibly small.

“Hi,” Dan says. “So it wasn’t a dream. And if it was hallucinogenic drugs, it’s taking a suspiciously long time to wear off. So that kind of sucks.”

“Yep,” Phil says. “Either we’re both crazy, or this is an actual thing that’s happening.”

“Seems that way,” Dan mutters. He shrugs his shoulders, as if trying to shake off his mood for Phil’s sake, and tries for a smile. “What today then? The athenaeum again?”

“I was thinking actually,” Phil begins. “You said yesterday that your apartment hasn’t changed, right? Like the building, your flat – everything’s the same?”

“Yeah?” Dan looks a little confused. “Why? Has something changed for you?”

“No, but I’m thinking that might be the significant thing,” Phil says. “You know, rather than looking at the things that have merged – like yesterday – it could be a good idea to have a look at the things that haven’t.”

“Yeah, that’s a good idea,” Dan agrees. “It’s worth a shot, right?”

Phil nods. “Who knows, maybe we’ll find a crack in your wall and this is actually just a new season of Doctor Who?”

“Hope it is. Maybe we can sue the producers and get rich,” Dan says, and he grins when Phil laughs. “I live just down the street – obviously. You wanna come over?”

Phil agrees, and they head down the street to his house.

“Out of interest, what’s this street called? Your version of it, I mean, no offence,” Phil says hurriedly, and Dan laughs a little.

“I’m not offended,” he tells him. “It’s Woodglenn Road, though. I’m guessing you’re about to tell me something completely different.”

Phil just stares at him. “Really?” he asks. “Woodglenn Road, are you sure?”

Dan gives him a strange look. “Um,” he says. “Yeah?”

And the thing is, Phil’s away again, his mind reaching out like tiny hands made out of matter that join up dots and slot things together. And right now he’s thinking of Dan Howell and all of his adventures that tended to start in his home at Woodglenn House, right on the edge of Doll’s Grove.

“Right,” Phil says hastily. “Sorry I just–”

“What?” Dan asks, weary, and Phil says, “I just recognised the name, that’s all. I think I knew someone from there, once,” and Dan buys it.

Telling Dan that he has eerie similarities to a children’s book character would be insane, he knows this. The entire world they’ve fallen into is backwards and odd and strange, but that’s too far. Too crazy. He can’t say it, and it weighs heavy on his tongue and he tells himself he’s just tired.

“What about you, then?” Dan asks. “Because I’ll take it it isn’t Woodglenn.”

“Nah,” Phil says. He smiles a bit but it’s the shaky kind, and he hopes Dan doesn’t notice. “This street is Millfield court in the – my normal world.”

Dan gapes at him, staring with incredulous eyes, and wonder creeps upon Phil’s thoughts and he thinks: something isn’t right here, and Dan might know more.

Tentatively, he reaches out, touches his shoulder, says, “Dan? What is it?”

Dan is only startled though, jumping back into reality, face white when he automatically moves back from Phil and plasters a smile on his face. “Nothing! Nothing, I’m fine. I just spaced out. Sorry.”

Phil quirks an eyebrow up, and tilts his head, and a confrontation is hot on the end of his tongue.

Dan says, “So this is it,” gesturing towards the building Phil had seen him outside of yesterday, and the words die on his tongue.

::

Dan’s flat reminds Phil of the illustrations that resided on the odd pages and the covers of all the many Dan Howell story books he used to own. It’s an involuntary thought, one he momentarily tries to ignore before he feels it weighing down in his chest before he accepts that it is futile, and he can’t just dance around it.

The walls of Dan’s flat are green.

“Sorry,” he laughs awkwardly. “It was like this when I bought it? Not even really a fan of the colour green but like, I can’t change it.”

“It’s okay,” Phil says. His mouth is dry and he is thinking about Dan Howell’s storybook house, with the green walls and wooden tables and chairs and the homely feeling of sofas draped in patterned blankets. And Dan’s walls are the same shade of green, his kitchen table and chairs are a matching mahogany wood. All that’s different are the family portraits featuring cartoon faces and the living room rug shaped like a dog (which Phil is slightly disappointed by, actually), and of course the size, as the large Woodglenn House has been condensed into a typical small flat. Of course, most of the rooms in Dan’s house were never described or illustrated in the books, but it’s as if the visible fragments from Phil’s childhood dream home have been taken and slotted into a doll’s apartment for a prank.

He swallows, and he doesn’t speak, though he’s itching to. He’s dying to scream, really, to raise his voice and demand to know what the hell is going on.

Maybe Dan knows, he thinks vaguely. Maybe Dan’s in on it. But there’s just something about him that makes Phil trust him, that tells him this isn’t all a sick prank. And he doesn’t know why, or what it is, because he’s just met the guy. But he feels it, and that’s what drapes over his thoughts like a bulletproof vest and stops the paranoia from shooting to the forefront of his focus.

Even Dan Howell’s fucking owl clock, a main feature of so many stories when magic inclines it to talk, ticks away on the living room ceiling and makes Phil feel like he’s being mocked with each movement of the hands. He stands with his hands in his pockets, staring at the blanket left in a pile on the floor that he’d been gleeful to not find on the sofa until just spotting it, and he’s sure that the owl’s beady eyes are watching him.

It’s a slight consolation to find a blue and navy and black blanket instead of a red check one, but only a bit.

::

They turn the house over, pretty much.

Phil’s not exactly sure what it is they’re looking for, but he keeps his eyes peeled for something, anything strange. Anything reminiscent of science fiction, something abnormal or supernatural, a trace of magic or fantasy, maybe. Like – Phil doesn’t know. A real crack in the wall overspilling with glowing light and eerie noise, or pixie dust lodged in corners of rooms or in the tiniest gaps in the floor boards. Talking birds and butterflies and moths, or luminescent tap water, or things that move without anybody touching them. Anything.

But there’s nothing.

They move the sofas and pull up the cushions to scour beneath them, pull open every kitchen cabinet and cupboard, emptying cutlery from drawers and old tins and magazine articles. They pull down pictures and rip open the shower curtain and they strip the bed of its covers and mattress. Phil knocks Dan’s bright red alarm clock and a box of tissues off the table, just barely saving a glass of water from an untimely demise. Dan’s (mostly black) wardrobe is dumped on the floor while searching, and any loose floor-boards are pulled up. Even underneath the ridges of the windows are carefully studied while the window is pulled up, and yet, still. Nothing. His shoulder jerks as he pulls the windows back down again, knocking a copy of a paperback book off of the windowsill ledge. He glances down at the book, just for a moment. It’s a little strange, a dark cover with an illustration of a cartoon boy. He looks almost familiar.

Dan calls him back to the kitchen, interrupting the moment, and Phil lets it fall to the back of his mind, pushed further and further when Dan reveals that he hasn’t found anything either.

And so they end in a similar state to the previous day and the athenaeum, except this time Dan’s entire house is left in a state of chaos and mess. At least it matches the city, Phil thinks.

“Well, that was pointless,” Dan sighs, collapsing onto a pile of discarded duvet covers and staring up at his ceiling. Phil wants to join him, but remembers they don’t actually really know each other at all, and so he just sits down on the floor politely.

“Yeah,” he says. “I’m really sorry about the mess.”

Dan waves it off. “It’s okay,” he says. “I mean, having my entire kitchen on my living room floor isn’t really my aesthetic, but I’ll tolerate it in a time of crisis.”

“I’ll help you tidy it up,” Phil offers, and Dan smiles.

“Thank you,” he says. “I will 10/10 take you up on that offer, but I think there’s something we have to do first.”

“My flat?”

“Your flat.”

::

The short walk to Phil’s flat is mostly quiet, with the idea that they aren’t going to find anything and be faced once again with hopelessness looming over both of their heads. There’s intermittent conversation though, and it’s strange, because it’s not as shy or as awkward or based around pre–determined smalltalk as it should be. He’s known Dan for a day, but it’s that same old familiarity again, the one that makes it feel like he’s known Dan far longer than he really has. It’s comfortable, talking to him, and it feels like a relief to have someone around who doesn’t see the world in a perfectly ordinary light and thus doesn’t look at Phil like he’s crazy. It’s nice. Phil apologises for the mass of steps there are to climb and the fact that the stairwell smells very faintly of cat pee, and the two of them exchange teasing banter when Dan’s out of breath after the first flight of stairs.

“Listen,” Dan argues, as Phil rolls his eyes. “It’s not my fault–”

“I think it is, though,” Phil interjects, grinning. Dan begins to loudly protest as he moves to walk in Phil’s front door, and then –

He stops. He pauses. Just freezes up, goes silent, and stares.

“Dan?” Phil asks, worried, poking at him a little. Dan’s mouth is agape, and he’s staring around the room, looking like he has just witnessed the dead rising. The moment Phil touches him though, he jumps, startled, and then stares at Phil momentarily. “Dan, what is it? You’re freaking me out.”

Dan looks at him for another second, and then blinks, finally. Then again, and then he shakes his head and grins.

“Jesus,” he says, clearing his throat. “I just – your flat is a hell of a lot nicer than mine. I think I prefer your version of this street.”

That’s not it. Phil’s sure of it, he could swear on it. Dan’s smile is too bright, and his tone has changed too quickly, and he’s lying through his teeth.

Phil wonders what exactly Dan saw, when he looked through at Phil’s home, and if it was anything similar to what he’d seen at Dan’s. It’s prickling underneath his skin, but he can’t say anything now, not yet.

It’s looming over him though. And not for the first time, Phil has seen his own feelings reflected in Dan’s face. It’s not like he hasn’t told his own lies today.

“Dan…” Phil starts, but he’s cut off, by Dan striding further into the apartment, his back to Phil, his face hidden.

“Let’s get started then,” Dan says, ignoring Phil entirely. “Maybe we’ll find something this time.”

Phil sighs, but he can’t exactly refuse, and so they begin. They start with the sofas, stripping them of their cushions and digging into the edges, but only retrieving the odd 2p coin. They look beneath the rug and behind the TV and Phil even checks the insides of the plant pots, but there’s still nothing.

“I’ll do my bedroom,” Phil says. “Do you wanna–”

“I’ll take the kitchen,” Dan interrupts. “It’ll save time. I think we might need to go to the athenaeum after all, if we don’t come up with anything.”

“Good idea,” Phil says, and he leaves as Dan heads into the kitchen.

He strips his bed of sheets and the duvet and eventually pushes the mattress of the other end, but for nothing. He comes up empty handed once again, and again when he kneels down to check behind his bedside table, and then under the bed itself. With a frown etched onto his face, he picks himself up off of his knees and moves over to the wardrobe, opening it up and rifling through his clothes, even checking pockets, checking everything, every nook and cranny, standing on his tiptoes to feel around the shelf at the top for any abnormalities.

He hears footsteps behind him, padding into the room, and he’s about to ask Dan if he found anything. But all of a sudden, there’s a crash, and it rings loudly right in the core of his ears, and feels, for a moment, like the world has been shattered.

And then he loses his balance, and everything goes black.

::

When Phil wakes up, his vision is blurry, eyesight made up of faded images hidden behind shadows and bright circles and lines of light.

His head hurts, and he can feel the plush of the soft blue carpet against his cheeks. He feels a little like the way the word groan sounds, groggy and stilted, and he waits, patiently, for the world to make sense again. He moves his head a little, letting out a little incomprehensible murmur, and his vision begins to clear. He sees the ceiling, and the light that hangs off of it, and the edges of his mattress, and the bottom of his wardrobe, and -

Dan standing above him, poised almost like he’s about to charge into battle, holding between fingers that tremble just slightly a fucking frying pan.

Phil’s first thought is: so that’s what happened.

Phil’s second thought, once he’s actually registered what’s going on and instantly feels panic crawl up his throat, is one that he verbalises.

“Dan?” he half-shouts, immediately turning over and trying to shuffle back and away from him, still mostly on the floor. Dan moves with him though, still armed with a frying pan, as if he means to go in to attack. “What the hell are you doing?”

"Don't move," Dan warns, inching the frying pan lower, towards Phil's face. "Stay back, okay?" He's trying to sound threatening, Phil can tell, but his voice keeps trembling, just slightly, and he's scared. He looks like a little kid, afraid and lost and confused.

Oh God, Phil thinks. Dan was right. We are going crazy. And now he's totally lost it.

"Dan, what are you doing?" he asks again urgently. "What's going on?"

"Good fucking question," Dan bites out the words in such a way that it almost sounds like a snarl has been ripped from his mouth, and it's bordering on disturbing. He's angry, Phil realises, there's anger bubbling in there too, along with the fear, and that's probably not a very good question. "What's going on, Phil? Is that even your real name? Who are you?"

Phil stares at him, bewildered. "I don't know what you're talking about," he insists. "I'm – I'm Phil. You know that. We're friends, Dan-"

"We're strangers," Dan interrupts harshly. "And you don't know me. You don't know anything about me, so why? Why are you doing this?"

"Doing what? I'm not doing anything at all, I'm lying on the floor and that wasn't exactly my decision-"

He shakes his head violently. "You know what I'm talking about," he insists. "You're trying to make me go crazy. I don't know how you've done it, messed up Dolchester all over – but I know what you're doing. Why? Why the fuck are you doing this to me?"

He thinks I'm the one who did this to the city, Phil thinks, momentarily dazed. No wonder he's so scared. He knows he needs to dislodge the idea, though, dissipate the paranoia, before it digs deeper and spreads like a disease. If he thinks that way, he could be dangerous. People always are, Phil knows, when they're desperate.

"I'm not, I promise," Phil tells him, hoping to reassure him, to calm him down or something, make him think in a state of rationality instead of panic. But Dan just ignores him and keeps shaking his head, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

"I don't believe you."

"Dan, what's going on?” Phil tries instead, keeping his voice as levelled and calm as he possibly can, though that's no easy task. “Talk to me. I don't know what you're talking about, I swear. Just explain it to me, and I can help you," The carpet is itchy and hot, and burns against his chin, and there's a dull ache in the back of his head and a ringing in his ears.

Dan just stares at him, and he kind of looks like he's on the verge of screaming or passing out. "How could you not know," he says, voice small. "You're not even real."

Phil's heart begins to beat even faster, because this is getting more than a little scary. Dan is acting paranoid and volatile, and Phil still doesn't know why, or what could have triggered all of this. The trouble with it is that Dan's right. They are strangers, and he doesn't know Dan.

"I am real," he says firmly, more confident than he feels. "I swear, Dan. You know I am. Touch my arm, you'll feel it-"

Dan shakes his head again. "I know you're real, you twat," he snaps. "I don't think you're saying you're a fucking ghost or a figment of my imagination. But you're lying to me, aren't you? You're not Phil Lester. So who are you, and what do you want?"

Phil can't help but lose the calm demeanour. It falls away in fragments, because his head is hurting, and the carpet is burning, and he's had enough.

"Have you gone insane?" he near shouts, voice carrying, too loud in such a small room, the thin walls pushing back the words.

"You tell me," Dan urges the pan closer to him. Phil kind of wants to laugh, but not because anything is particularly funny.

"Nothing you say is making sense!"

"Nothing about you makes sense!"

Something about his words, and the way he shakes, makes Phil wonder. Wonder if maybe he's feeling something similar to himself, a painstaking familiarity, and ideas that cross the line between reality and bad science fiction movies. If he feels them in his chest and in the questions on the tip of his tongue and the thoughts in his head, and buried under his skin.

He wonders, but he doesn't say a word.

Phil raises his head, just slightly, enough to make Dan recoil a bit. He looks at him and, tiredly, he says, "I don't know what you're talking about."

Dan catches his eye, and holds the glance for a few moments longer. He breaks the contact in a sudden movement, as his eyes sweep the floor and then close, staying so for a few moments before he reopens them and blinks. Like the whole world is a dream.

He laughs, then. And it's shaky, like the opening moments of a sob. But he laughs, and he looks at Phil again.

"You know," he says, moments later, and he isn't laughing so much but it can still be heard in the cracks of his voice. "Ever since I met you, it felt weird." Phil wonders.

Dan continues, "Everything about you felt. Just. I can't put it into words, but there was just something about you, and it felt weird." Phil wonders.

"You make me feel weird." He wonders.

"And it hasn't gone away. It's only got worse." He wonders.

"Everything about you – your name and the way you look and your brother and Manchester and where you went to uni and-"

Phil wonders, and wonders, and wonders.

"And then I came here," Dan says, and his voice is thick and distraught and so scared. "And it didn't make any fucking sense because I've been here before. Except I haven't, because it isn't fucking real."

And Phil knows.

A lot of things make sense now, he realises. A lot of moments that didn't add up before and details that didn't make sense and reactions that seemed out of place, they all slot into place and fit, suddenly. Dan's reaction upon entering Phil's flat. The way certain meaningless words of Phil's had invoked such violent reactions of Dan's, wide eyes and stricken stares, like he wasn't sure what he was hearing. All of it makes sense now, and Phil realises the entire time he's been seeing pieces of his own feelings, and paranoia, and confusion in Dan. Dan had the same suspicions and the same probing thoughts and the same wonder as Phil did. The only difference is that Dan decided to act on them.

"I think I'm going crazy," Dan continues. "Because you're not a real person – you can't be. You're Phil Lester, the detective, it's the only thing that makes sense because I know everything about you without knowing you. And that sounds crazy. But the entire world has gone crazy, hasn't it?" That laugh again. "So maybe you are Phil Lester the detective. Would only be slightly crazier than everything else that's happened, I guess, wouldn't it?"

It takes Phil a long time to know what to say.

There are goosebumps littering his arms, he's sure. He can feel the way they tickle at his skin and make it crawl, and he can feel a slight chill running along himself, one that wasn't there before. The carpet still feels like it's burning his neck, his chin. His head still hurts, but the ache is less obvious to the pounding in his chest.

"Dan," he says, slowly.

Dan is blinking back tears, and he mutters out a quiet, "What?"

"You're not crazy," Phil tells him softly. "It's okay. You're not crazy."

"I feel it," Dan sniffs. "And why should I trust you? I don't even know if you're... you could have been sent by someone to drive me insane. Couldn't you? And that's why everything is so screwed up."

"Nobody sent me to do anything," Phil promises. "I didn't do this to Dolchester, I don't know why it's happening, but I didn't cause it. I'm as scared and confused as you are." He pauses, considering for a moment. And then he continues, speaking the words that just then, Dan had been to scared to verbalise. "And I'm not some fictional character somehow brought to life, either," he says. "I'm not the detective character. I'm real."

Dan shakes his head tiredly. "But how can you be so-"

"I think something else has happened," Phil interrupts. His voice is hushed; it doesn't really need to be, but it's like he can't speak any louder, somehow. Like his words must be confined to the quiet.

Dan looks up, wide and doe-eyed. The pan is still in his hands, but no longer poised and dangerously aimed towards Phil's skull. It hasn't been for a while.

"Like what?" he asks.

"I've never heard of these detective stories," Phil begins. "This Phil Lester character."

"How?" Dan sounds incredulous, and maybe a bit suspicious. "They're so widely known. Everybody's heard of them or read them. There are rumours of a film adaptation for God's sake."

"I've never heard of it," Phil repeats. "But I know what you mean. Everything you said about recognising me and my name and knowing things about me, I feel all of that, too. But not with me. With you."

Dan stares at him. "Are you being serious?"

"Yes," Phil says. He doesn't say anything else. He has to hope that Dan will trust him. But when he hears no reply after a few long moments, he continues.

"There's a character I grew up with," he confesses. "A children's book character. There were so many novels about him. Some big and long and some smaller, ones for littler kids – but there was this boy. Dan Howell."

Dan drops the frying pan. It falls to the carpet with a heavy thud.

Slowly, Phil sits up, hesitantly so that Dan can protest, but he doesn't.So Phil remains on the floor, but seated, this time, with less pain in his body and the heat of the itchy carpet no longer against his skin.

"He lived in a place called Doll's Grove," Phil continues, glancing at Dan. "He had brown eyes and brown hair. He had a brother called Jake. And all this time – all the things you said – they reminded me of him, too. And I kept putting it down to weird coincidences, but I don't think it is. And I wondered if I was going crazy as well, but now I'm not so sure." He pauses. "Dan, I don't think either of us are going crazy," he says.

"This entire thing is crazy," Dan says tiredly. "But. Yeah. Maybe you're right, then. If you're feeling it too. If it's happening to you too. If you're not lying to me."

"I'm not lying to you," Phil says. "I promise."

"How do I know that, though?" Dan asks, and Phil shrugs.

"I don't know," he says. "I can't prove it. I guess you'll just have to trust me."

Dan is quiet for a long moment. "I want to," he says. "I just don't know if I can."

Phil considers this. On the one hand, he's pretty sure that he has Dan at least hesitantly trusting him. It isn't as if Dan is completely disbelieving and suspicious, the way he was before. He's trusting Phil tentatively, and Phil sees this in the small things, like the way he put down the frying pan, and allowed Phil to move. And in any case, Dan doesn't have much choice other than to put his trust in Phil. They're the only two people in this position, after all; they're both seeing the changes in the city and the residence of abnormality, even without the new revelations, as if they've been put in a world where everyone is present but they're the only people who are really there. Anyone else would think Dan is crazy. Phil is the only one he's got, really. The only one who will listen.

But the problem is that Dan is a suspicious person, naturally – Phil can read it in him. His instinct is to mistrust Phil, and he's likely to sway towards the natural urge that he has.

If Dan doesn't trust Phil, things could be difficult. It will cause problems and hinder their efforts and make it even harder for the two of them to figure out what's going on or to fix it. Worse so, if Dan's stance changes, and he loses what trust he already has in Phil, he could abandon him altogether, or become violent again. And this time, it could be worse.

Phil feels hopeless thinking about it. There's just no way – it sounds crazy because it is. It makes no sense in any logical or realistic or possible way ever, it breaks a barrier between the real world Phil knows and a fantasy alternative that he doesn't know how to live in. He doesn't know how to prove it. Not to Dan, not to anyone.

And then, stark in his mind, carried in a scarlet red thought, is the book.

The book found in Dan's flat, the one with the cartoon boy on the cover, the one with the dark hair and the fringe in the backdrop of dark blue, the one that had almost meant something to him, with an image he'd almost recognised until Dan called him away and he pushed away the thought that somehow settled on the edge of his mind.

In hindsight, he realises that this must be him, the fictional detective, Phil Lester, who mimics his entire life. He hadn't at the time, but now it feels clear in his mind, and he knows it with complete certainty that that was the book. His book, he supposes.

He lingers on this thought for a moment, and that's when it becomes painstakingly clear. If the books about him are here, have made it into this world, then so might have the ones about Dan.

"Actually," Phil says, breaking through the uncertain silence that has built in between them. "I think I can make you trust me after all. I think I can prove I'm not lying."

And maybe they can find something else in the books, too. Maybe, if they look into the lives of their fictional counterparts, they can find a way to climb back into their own realities. After all, Phil thinks, and he considers the athenaeum, books are always the best places to go when you need answers.

::

Phil can’t be sure if the athenaeum will have the books he needs, and thus if his attempts to gain Dan’s trust are simply wasted time. He has an inkling, though, a strangely sure feeling in the pit of his stomach. After all, the athenaeum, as Phil sees it, seems to be the place where their two worlds meet, a joining point for the invisible borders, like two pages from separate books sewn together.
The thought of it makes his blood feel a little cold, though. The idea of two worlds. He’s refused to acknowledge it completely yet, to sit down and think about the ramifications of it all, if it turns out to be true. What it means and why it’s them and how they fix it. Because surely, they have to fix it: Every time the thought passes through Phil’s mind, he freezes. He feels the scatter of goosebumps against his skin and a numbness in his chest ready to be impaled by the stark contrast of anxiety. He feels slightly faint, too, and then he brushes it off. He forces himself to think about something else, like how he should call his mum sometime soon, or how Dan actually has really pretty eyes, or who Olding is and why his name is inexplicably recurring.
He has to. To push it out of his mind, forcing it out with clammy hands, far away, saved for another day, until he absolutely can’t ignore it anymore. He knows, vaguely, that it’s probably not the best solution, nor is it long term. But he has to, or the anxiety will slip inside the cracks in his mind, and build a home.
::
The athenaeum still takes Phil by surprise every time he sees it. Namely, he supposes, because it’s such a sharp contrast to the old and pale grey library that once stood there, and that Phil still expects to. But it isn’t, every time, it isn’t there.
It’s already getting quite late, the thick clouds darkening, but Phil didn’t want to wait for the morning when the night may be spent by Dan’s mind piling together a hundred reasons why he shouldn’t trust him. He feels a sense of urgency around it, around this whole thing. Like if they don’t move fast enough nothing they try will work and the world will stay like this forever, a piece of reality misplaced in a mismatched joining of fictional worlds. If they blink, they’ll miss it, and you can’t afford to miss anything when you’re looking for clues.
He explains this to Dan on the bus ride there, one that shakes as it moves and seems to take forever. Dan looks at him oddly, and smiles.
“What?” he asks, a little self-conscious.
“Nothing,” Dan says, but when Phil shoots him with an unconvinced look, he sighs, and confesses, with lips still tilted upwards. “It’s just, that’s definitely something that the Detective Phil would say.”
“I thought something similar about you and Story Dan,” Phil tells him. “It’s weird, isn’t it? That we’ve known each other for such a short time, yet we know pieces of each other that we could only know after years of friendship.”
“It is,” Dan agrees.
I feel, sometimes, when you say certain things, that I’ve known you forever, Phil thinks.
Dan gives him a look that says, same.
When they finally step off the bus, it’s dark and it’s cold, but the entrance to the athenaeum is lit with dim gold candles that bathe the street ahead of it in white light and cast shadows where the people walk. Even now, it’s beautiful, hidden in the sweep of darkness, nothing like the library and how it stood like an old haunted house, and was only washed in moonlight on rare occasions.
Something Phil notices, that he’s never noticed before, is the way that the people ignore the presence of the athenaeum entirely. In retrospect he can see how it was not observed nor acknowledged before, with people always walking straight by in the middle of their busy days and bustle, not even giving half a glance to the building,its beauty and its grandeur. They’ve not seen anyone else inside, either; it’s like maybe no one sees it the way they do. And maybe, Phil thinks, they don’t.

He suggests this to Dan.

"Well," he says, slowly. "It would make sense, wouldn't it? We're the only ones who can see what's happened, how everything's changed. So it would make sense that both of us can see this, too."

Phil nods, a silent confirmation, and then they're silent as they take a few steps inside. Once again it's devoid of any presence except their own; there aren't any workers or librarians or cleaners, no guests or owners or anyone at all. They pass through the reception room and into the main hall, still stacked with the sprawling shelves and books. There's a desk in one corner, one that seems used and lived in with novels stacked like jenga blocks in a messy pile and pens without caps and a lit candle flickering, but there's no one sat there working, and likewise through the maze of bookshelves, there isn't anyone stacking, or checking, or searching.

"I forgot how big this place is," Dan mutters.

"I forgot how quiet it is," Phil confesses. And it is that, too. The only sounds he can hear are their own voices, too sharp and loud amidst the stillness. Their footsteps, too; their breaths. The crackling of flames in the grand fireplace at the end of the hall.

They don't say very much after that.

It's easier this time, though everything is too large and expansive and there are so many places to look. The difference between now and before however is now they actually know what they're looking for, and they know, at least vaguely, what's going on.

It should take them hours to locate the books, really. The shelves aren't well marked, it's not organised and suited for searching for exactly what you want, the way Phil's library is - yet it doesn't. It's almost as if Phil knows where to look, because he has these feelings, instincts he supposes, that seem to guide him where to go, as if someone secret is gently whispering in his ear and encouraging him which is the right way to go. It's this feeling, a tugging urge, a vague knowing. It tells him to go down to aisle twelve, to turn right, to take a good few steps. Then forwards, then back - it twists and turns a little, not always working quite right. It still takes time and Dan is growing frustrated and anxious, but Phil doesn't stop searching through the rows of books in aisle twelve. And then, he crouches down, to the bottom shelf on the right side of the last block.

He doesn't see anything at first. But he peers closer and between the two thick bindings of a couple of large old novels, his eyes rest upon a thinner cover, hardback but still quite small,  few hundred pages long. It reminds Phil of his childhood, tucked up in bed, his mother's soft voice reading through Dan Howell's stories. Tentatively, he rests his finger upon it, strokes along the hard cover, and then he pulls it out, and stands up.

"Here," he says, quietly, and he passes it to Dan.

Dan looks incredulous, as if maybe he hadn't quite believed Phil regardless of all the crazy they've seen in the past few days. But he takes it in his hands, and he studies the boy illustrated on the front, dimpled smiles and brown eyes, carefully stitched in colours.

"Oh," he says, in a quiet voice. Phil watches as Dan trails his finger along the cover, over the slight bumps where The Adventures of Daniel Howell sticks out a little bit, layered over the rest of the cover in emboldened blue print.

"Yeah," Phil says. "It's like I said. The same thing has happened to both of us."

Dan isn't listening though. He's too busy reading through the pages, flicking through the book, eyes widening at what Phil presumes are the odd illustrations at the start of each cover which he knows will detail uncanny resemblance to Dan and his home and his family. Phil watches his eyes scan, pick up details about his own life in the pages, see fragments of himself in things that this fictional boy says. He watches as Dan reads, confusion etched onto his face. He gulps.

"I believe you," Dan says eventually. He closes the book, and it shuts with a snap. Phil breathes out a sigh of relief.

"Thank you," he says.

Dan doesn't respond though, too busy shaking his head. "Fuck," he mutters. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck."

"It's okay," Phil offers tentatively. It's not, really - of course it isn't. Everything is all messed up and out of place and they haven't the slightest idea of how to fix it. But Dan looks like he's on the verge of screaming or crying or something, and Phil has to reassure him, even if he does with probable lies and empty words. Dan needs comfort, and so Phil will comfort him.

"It's not," Dan replies, voice flat. But Phil stands up, and steps closer towards him.

"Maybe not right this minute," Phil says. "But it will be."

Dan gives him a blank look, and Phil clears his throat, and carries on.

"This is like... you know. A broken arm."

"A broken arm," Dan repeats.

"Yeah," Phil says, nodding as if he knows what he's talking about. "A broken arm. As in, it heals, it's temporary. It doesn't have to be an arm. A broken leg. A bad scratch. The flu. Or - I don't know. Exam season, high school, a particularly storyline on Eastenders. Hair dye. It's all temporary Dan, not permanent. Nothing's going to stay like this, it'll change, and it'll go away. So - maybe it's not the best right now. Maybe it is pretty bad. But it'll be okay, because it's temporary."

"It's temporary," Dan says.

"You're like a broken record," Phil tells him, but he's smiling. It's a little shaky, but Phil figures it'll help Dan.

It does. Dan takes a deep breath, eyes on the floor, and then he looks up and stares at Phil for a moment with wide brown eyes. For a second, he looks like he's going to throw his arms around Phil and hug him close. Phil's kind of disappointed when he twitches, slightly, but doesn't actually move.

Then he says, "Thank you, Phil," and smiles, and Phil feels the way the word soft sounds, just for a moment.

::

In the end, it works out that Dan comes back to Phil's for a little while, because neither of them really want to be alone. They don't really feel like strangers, even though they technically are, and Phil supposes that's the result of years of reading about each other and their stories. It's hard to feel unfamiliar towards someone when you've read their names a thousand times. Phil feels like he knows him. He does in some respects, he knows his personality, mostly, aside from the few aspects that do differ. He knows his family, he knows his birthday, even. Sometimes he even knows what kind of thing Dan will say before he says it, and he knows the same applies to Dan himself, and the storybook character of Phil which he knows so well.

"This is so weird," Dan tells him, shaking his head as they walk up the road to Phil's flat from the bus stop. "It makes sense now though, I guess. Why the whole time you felt so..."

"Familiar?" Phil offers, and Dan nods.

"Yeah!" he says. "I knew I'd met you before somewhere."

"Guessing you didn't expect it to have been between the pages of a book, though," Phil teases, and Dan laughs even though it isn't really that funny.

"I guess not," he says.

He's starting to shiver, so Phil quickly fumbles in his pockets for the keys and lets them in, guiding Dan through the dark up the stairs. It feels like years since they were last year, since before, when they'd figured it all out, but he knows it's not. It's been barely hours, but so much has happened, they've learned so much. And in the most ridiculous way possible, things are starting to make sense.

The flat is still in a state of disarray when they make their way into Phil's home. They'd had no time to fix anything up before leaving for the athenaeum, so it's still all turned over in a state of obvious mid-search.

"Um," Dan says, blushing red, because it was sort of his fault they'd left in such a hurry. "Sorry."

Phil just smiles. "Don't worry about it," he says. "My head doesn't even hurt anymore."

He laughs at the little groan that Dan emits.

"Oh God," he says, "now I'm really sorry."

Phil shakes his head. "Don't be," he says. "You were scared. I get it."

"I guess it's a bit of a scary situation," Dan says. "I mean, I still don't have the slightest clue about what's going on."

"Me neither," Phil frowns. "Are we even real?"

"Don't start," Dan says. "We've been through this."

"No but I mean," Phil says slowly. "If there's a me that's here right now and another one that exists as a fictional detective, then which one is the real one?"

Dan blinks. "Well you, I guess. You're the one who isn't a fictional character."

"Does everyone have a fictional version of themselves in another universe?"

"I don't know. Maybe."

"There'd need to be a lot of books."

"Well, maybe they're just characters in other people's books."

"What makes us so special, then?" Phil asks. Dan shrugs.

"Hell if I know," he says. Phil opens his mouth to ask another question, but he's interrupted by Dan pinching him sharply on the arm.

"Ouch!" Phil yelps, jumping in surprise and turning to glare at Dan, who just grins. "What was that for?"

"Mostly to shut you up," Dan says. "Partly to check if you're real or not. You are, by the way."

"Thanks," Phil says dryly. "I'm sorry. I'm just - I'm curious, I guess. About how this happened."

"There are multiple universes, I guess," Dan says. And then he stops himself and pauses in surprise. "Jesus Christ, I can't believe I just said that so casually in normal conversation."

"I know," Phil titters slightly. "It's so weird, isn't it?"

"It is," Dan agrees. "But yeah. That's what I think. And I guess we still exist in these other worlds. Just differently. Like we're the same people living different lives - or not so much living, I guess."

"You reckon there are others?" Phil asks. "Like maybe ones where our fictional selves really are alive, and they read books about boring boys from the city?"

"Maybe this is a book," Dan offers, teasingly. "It'd be a pretty good one."

He's joking - but Phil can't help but still quietly entertain the possibility.

::

Dan ends up staying the night, sleeping on the sofa with a couple of warm blankets and some cups of hot chocolate. He keeps saying thank you no matter how many times Phil tells him not to and they both can't help but laugh when they see the frying pan still left on Phil's bedroom floor, although Dan insists on apologising profusely for fifteen minutes.

They talk about universes and fictional worlds and books and childhood heroes for a little while longer. There are moments when it gets a little too deep though, and so they stop. Phil puts on some old comedies and they laugh a little too loudly but nevertheless it does ease the tension that continually seeps between them. It feels a little easier to breathe. Phil shuts the curtains tight so they can't look outside and see the skin of Frankenstein's monster etched all over the city, and it's easier still.

Half way through the second movie, Phil turns to the side, and realises Dan's slumped against him, asleep. He doesn't know how long he's been there, if he's only just slipped into slumber or if Phil just hadn't noticed the gentle press of Dan's head against his shoulder. He looks peaceful, and after the past few days they've had, it's good to see him rest.

Phil moves up and turns off the TV, coaxes Dan down so that he's lying across the sofa and props his head up on a little pillow, drawing their previously shared blankets over his body.

"Night, Dan," he whispers.

He'd thought Dan had slept all the way through the movement, but he supposes he must have inadvertently woken him at some point, because as the living room door clicks shut behind him, he hears a quiet, "Thank you, Phil," and he smiles.

::

The next morning when Phil peers out between his bedroom curtains to inspect the view, the city is the same as he'd left it last night. He feels the usual twinge of disappointment, the same sting of anxiety, but somehow it feels a little less dreadful than usual.

::

The days pass by slowly, like the way sand slips through an hour glass piece by piece. Nothing changes. None of the stitches between Dan's world and Phil's are unsown, and they remain members of a patchwork world.

Like an hourglass, though, as each day goes by, Phil can't help wonder, urgently, if time could be running out.

::

Phil knows he’s been spending a lot of time away from home lately. He and Dan spend most of their free time together in the athenaeum, or wandering through the streets and teaching each other how they once looked, mapping out new routes to get around without each other. Not that they do. It’s a lot nicer in Dan’s company, Phil finds. It’s less lonely, and it feels a lot less scary. He spends a lot of time at Dan’s place, too. Dan lets him read through the Detective Lester books, and it’s strange, to read about someone who is unmistakably him, but has been shaped slightly differently from the ways in which they’ve lived. Detective Lester is him, but in a very different world.

He supposes that’s the point.

And so Phil knows he might have missed a lot of what’s been happening in the humble place he calls his home, in his nice little building with the friendly neighbours and the steep steps. In a way though, that’s what he’s wanted. He hasn’t wanted to be around there, to look out of the window and see streets painted wrong. It feels like looking at a perfectly organised shelf of books to find someone has come along and mismatched the order of the books, ruined the colour code that had fallen so perfectly into a line of dominoes, or the alphabetical order from A to Z with numbers on the ends. It feels like at the library, he supposes, back at work, but brick-built houses are a lot harder to rearrange than a collection of paperback books left in disarray. He doesn’t think any amount of absence could explain missing a new neighbour move in, though. Especially when he hasn’t seen any hint of a ‘for sale’ sign in the building, and no one looking to move.

That’s what it seems, though. And Phil could understand missing the process when it was one of someone living on another floor, someone he hadn’t known. But when Phil sees a stranger with a box under his arm, fumbling with the keys outside of no.5, he’s confused. He’d known Mike. Mike was nice. Pleasant. He always said ‘hello’ when they passed each other in the mornings, or when they were getting the mail. Phil considered them friends – the kind you could go to if you’d ran out of milk, at the very least. Maybe watch a game of football together if Phil wasn’t as intolerant towards watching sports as he is of dairy products.

He’d imagined that if Mike was moving, he’d say something. But this person is undoubtedly a stranger, and the flat is undoubtedly Mike’s.

“Hello,” Phil says. “Are you-“

“I’m the new tenant!” the man explains. He’s friendly and smiling, but Phil feels strange. “Sorry. I’ve been here a few weeks now, but I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Max.”

“A few weeks?” Phil asks, weakly. He knows he hasn’t seen Mike in a while – but surely it hasn’t been that long. He wracks his brain for a memory to go upon, but nothing springs to mind, nothing at all. Like it never happened, or it’s been flushed far away.

“Yes, we moved in last month, but I haven’t seen you around to introduce myself or my wife – sorry, I didn’t catch your name?”

Phil tells him, but his mouth feels numb. He makes his way through a few minutes of small talk, and then asks, “do you know where Mike Oswald has moved to, by any chance? Or have a phone number, maybe?”

Max looks at him, a little confused. Or maybe he’s just irritated that Phil had cut off his small speech about the importance of preserving wildlife in urban environments. “I don’t know a Mike Oswald,” he says. “Never heard of him. Sorry.”

::

They're at the athenaeum bright and early. It's been concluded that it's their safest bet, since it's right where the seams of each world seem to join together, and the contents of their homes had been no help.

It's a little like before this time, because neither of them know what they're supposed to be looking for. It's the most productive thing they could possibly do though, and neither feel like just sitting down and doing nothing.

"It's out of character," Dan says dryly, and Phil laughs at him, and doesn't say "same" like he's thinking.

Usually Phil can spend days at a time doing very little. Playing stupid little iPhone games and watching videos on the weird side of YouTube and reading more Stephen King books than he has friends. He often loves the feeling of being free, having nothing to do, nothing weighing him down to a certain time or place. It gets tedious after a while, admittedly. From the sounds of it, he's not as bad as Dan, who claims he could at Guild Wars 2 through the apocalypse without actually realising, but it's still a pretty long while.

Now though, strangely, doing nothing feels like a waste of time, feels like it should have been better spent on something else. Figuring out the situation, figuring out why, and most importantly how to fix it.

He still hasn't heard from any of his co-workers. He tells himself not to worry, that it isn't serious, that in this new world (though thinking those words makes his head spin) they just have different jobs and are different places. He tries not to think about it at all, really, to stave off the anxious thoughts and consequences of what feels like a bad dream. But sometimes he remembers. He does think about it. And he worries, and he thinks that the Earth can't keep turning like this. He knows that they need to fix it, but it's a giant task, one that they can't comprehend how to tackle.

"I just can't think of what we can possibly do," he'd told Dan the other night, frustration built to the maximum.

"I'd normally say wake up," Dan had said. "That's what you'd think, because this can't possibly be real, right? But it doesn't work, even when you do wake up."

And he's right. The city, the situation, the entire world - it all feels like it's been bathed in dream light, so that nothing feels real anymore.

"I still feel like I should be at work," Dan tells Phil as they wander further into the hall. "I feel like this will all be over and I'll go in and have been fired for missing too much."

"Well, y'know," Phil shrugs. "We have technically been going to work."

"True. Though it hasn't been doing much good, has it?"

Phil nudges him, shaking his head. "Don't be so pessimistic," he scolds.

"But Phil," Dan says dramatically. "This is who I am."

"Does it have to be?"

"Yeah. It reflects my aesthetic."

This is one of the reasons why Phil is grateful, though it might be a little bit awful, that Dan is stuck in this space between worlds with him. It’s so much less lonely having someone to share all of this with, to have one person who won’t look at him as if he’s crazy in amidst it all. And there are moments in which it almost feels normal – almost. Moments wherein little jokes and laughter slip through the cracks in an atmosphere so thick and tense that it could choke, when easy banter passes between them and Phil feels like he’s known Dan for years.

In a way, he has, but this is different. Dan was always a childhood hero. Now, it’s like he’s an old friend.

He’s definitely a friend, whether old or new, Phil thinks.

The process through searching the athenaeum has been one long and drawn out. It’s been two weeks now, and Phil doesn’t feel like the stitches of the city skin pulling or stretching far at all. They are still in place, holding them in, and they aren’t any closer to understanding the material.

There are just so many books for them to trawl through, an impossible amount that seems to span on forever and ever. Phil feels as if every time he flicks through a book, skim reads until his eyes blur blue at the sides, another two, three, four are added to the endless pile of books that stand in towers through the hall. They can’t scour each from top to bottom, from first page until last, of course, they don’t have the time. But it leaves Phil uncomfortable each time he sets down a book back into the shelves, in case he’s missed something, a clue, a hint, a way back home.

He can’t help but think about the character Dan grew up reading about, Detective Lester. It pulls a little at his heartstrings when he does. He bets he’d know what to do, that he wouldn’t miss a clue. He wonders how alike he and Dan really are to their fictional counterparts after all, sometimes.

(And then he looks at Dan, and the way he laughs at things that shouldn’t be funny and he thinks of the boy in the books, and he sees him in the way he thinks on his feet, finds it hard to trust. But then he sees how he doesn’t know what to do, either, whereas Daniel Howell might do. He considers, then, that maybe he isn’t giving them enough credit. After all, the boys in the stories were written for adventures.)

::

Time drags at the athenaeum. Sometimes Phil feels like the days are merging and spilling into each other, a repetitive cycle of reading blurbs and skimming pages and piling hundreds of books old and new on top of each other. It makes Phil think of when he was a child, building tower towns out of novels and being scolded for treating them like toys by his teachers. He did it with his Dan Howell books, though, and no one ever told him off there in the spaces of his own home. Creativity wasn’t confined there. Now, he thinks about those book tower towns, and castles made of stacked up novels, and finds it a little eerie, just how much that reflects the Dolchester he now stands within, a city made up of stories.

There are good moments with Dan. The two grow closer every day, and it’s nice, sometimes. The jokes shared between them and the conversations that are drawn out of the books they find, revealing interests they share. There are good moments with the books, too. Phil finds a lot that he’d love to read, and his eyes start to focus on the text a little too much more than once. And then Dan says, “Phil,” in a warning tone, and Phil reluctantly puts it aside. He has a separate pile of books, of ones he’ll take home to read. He wonders if they’ll disappear too, after the athenaeum does, or if they were always residing within the library and he never cared enough to look.

There are good moments, but on the whole, life moves slow and the experience feels unbearably dull. The best word Phil could use to describe it is ‘grey’. And it’s frustrating, because time keeps passing by - there are endless reminders, the ticking of the clock stood high on the wall, and the digital time staring in bright white every time he turns on his phone, the six o’clock news. The eleven o’clock news announcing ‘tomorrow’s headlines’, and making today seem useless. Useless - that’s another word for how Phil feels. He doesn’t feel as if they’re making progress. This isn’t what happens in the movies, he thinks, stifled and irate, as he puts down another book that doesn’t help. There aren’t stilted moments and long silences and days on end where nothing happens, nothing moves. Everything is fast-paced and action-packed, eyes wide open, no time to even sleep. Phil has far too much time, but he never seems to easily.

It’s never like this in the book he skims through, either. And it wasn’t in the Detective Lester novels, he’s sure, nor in Dan Howell’s adventures. Phil thinks that if this was a book, it’d be becoming a pretty boring one.

It’s almost fitting that these are the thoughts in his head when he finds it, finally. He’s been in a bad mood all morning, scarcely even talking to Dan. Phil isn’t often one to be sullen, but today he is agitated and he feels hot underneath the collar of his shirt with irritation, and he’s frustrated from staying in place. He wants to move forward. He’s tired of being stuck in a stalemate, and as this passes through his mind, he reaches absently into the first shelf of the next row of books he’s to study, and pulls out a hardback novel, obviously faded with age and tattered slightly, at the sides. Its cover is made up of pale colours and pastel illustrations, bleached white over time. The large, emboldened letters of the title sweep over the surface, distracting from the aged imagery that disappears like ghosts behind it.

Phil reaches out a trembling finger, breath hitched, and he trails his index finger over the words to spell out in a sign language, ‘The Songs of Enchantment’.

He doesn’t know why he never saw it coming. Why he didn’t search. But the book had slipped his mind weeks ago, and only now does he remember the strange book he’d found in the library, only hours before he’d woken up and discovered the world in disarray.

It hadn’t struck him as an important moment. Or an important item. And until now, as he holds it in his hands once again, the way he did weeks before, and thinks of strange spells written like poems, it hadn’t crossed his mind even once. He’d forgotten it entirely. Because spellbooks are for little children who believe in magic or adults who believe in the occult, and Phil is neither. Because there is no such thing as magic.

Magic and spellbooks and curses aren’t real, Phil thinks, thoughts whirling and leaving him dizzy, no more so than multiple universes and fictional characters coming to life, anyway.

Phil looks up, and sees the section he’d found the book in marked and named. ‘F’.

“Phil?” his chain of thought is broken sharply at the sound of Dan’s voice, and he looks up quickly to spot him walking over looking curiously at the book in his hands. And for good reason, too; the grandeur of the book itself, though worn and aged, almost reflects the athenaeum itself. “What’s that?”

“Hi,” Phil says, weakly, and he holds the book out properly to Dan, to give him a better view, wondering where to start with this book, what’s inside it and what he’s now beginning to think. “I… I just found it.”

There’s a strange look on Dan’s face.

“You found this here?” he asks, after a moment, and Phil nods.

“Yeah, but I… Dan?”

Dan’s staring at the book, and doesn’t even seem to be listening to Phil. He wonders momentarily if Dan is just excited by the prospect of Phil finding a book that might actually be some kind of lead, but instantaneously he knows that this isn’t the case. He doesn’t look excited or happy, really, he just looks startled.

He looks the way Phil felt. Phil realises this, and his eyes widen, slightly, and he holds the book tighter. He’s looking the way I must have looked, he thinks numbly, like he’s seen it before.

It comes in a daze, and the frustration and stuck-in-space anger that’s been building over time promptly melts away. The realisation that they may, actually, have found a lead has Phil feeling like there might as well be cold ice water dripping down the back of his neck, in any case.

“Dan,” Phil prompts, quietly.

“I’ve seen-”

“You’ve seen it before,” he finishes for Dan, who just looks at him blankly, and then nods. He reaches up and wipes his eyes with his sleeves, as if he can’t quite believe he’s seeing things right.

Clearly we’ve had similar encounters with it, then, Phil thinks. He wouldn’t be having the same reaction of disbelief had he not been reading about spells and magic words and the alignment of the moon.

“You have too then,” Dan says, and this time it’s Phil’s turn to nod. “I haven’t thought about this for weeks. I’d forgotten all about it.”

“Me too,” Phil cuts in. “But I remember. I found it, in the library - no labels or anything, in the wrong section. It wasn’t even a library book. And that was the night before everything - well, you know.”

“Yeah, I know.” He’s quiet for a moment. They both are, actually. The weight of the book in Phil’s arms reflects that of the silence that settles around them until moments later, when Dan snaps out of thought and turns to Phil, suddenly asking, “can I look at it for a moment?”

Phil shrugs, and doesn’t even say anything before handing it over to Dan. He’s thinking. Everything about this scenario points to something about that book - especially now that Dan’s admitted to seeing it too - having something to do with what’s happened to them. The very idea of it makes his head spin, the notion that there’s something special about certain books and words, that maybe magic exists. He daren’t even think it. He’s always had a good imagination, he’s always been open minded. Maybe aliens really do exist and the Loch Ness Monster is residing somewhere out in the Scottish waters.

But this doesn’t rest well in his head, or settle in his stomach. This is on another level, beyond something that can be explained by science. Phil has always been an imaginative guy, but this is very different from what you dream up inside your head. Unease washes over him, and Dan turns the pages slowly, reading carefully, in a way that Phil never did.

Dan is the one to break the silence again.

“There was this…” he sounds only half there, too enthralled to really focus on what he’s trying to communicate to Phil. “This. I don’t know what to call it. I thought of it as a poem, before. It was like some sort of - spell, thing. Like a fake spell.”

“It is a spellbook,” Phil reminds him. The ‘fake’ hangs in the air. Phil is thinking about heavy books and marble floors and blue paint. He is not thinking about books that are sold to little children who like to pretend to be good and bad witches in intricate games, casting spells over ponds and at the foot of old oak trees, or what would ever happen if those spells weren’t just words written to spook or entertain children, if maybe they meant more.

“A spell then,” Dan says. His voice sounds strange. His eyebrows are knitted into a frown. “I remember - I found this book at Olding’s. It was in the book shop, really old. There was no price tag on it, and I didn’t know where it was meant to be. I remember I looked through, and found this poem, I thought, a spell I suppose. And I read it, and it was weird.”

“Really?” Phil asks. He recalls a similar story, a similar spell. That isn’t a surprise - the book is full of them, after all. But he lingers on Dan’s words and he wonders. He thinks about the symmetry between them, and all of the other coincidences and conveniences, and again, he wonders. “Do you remember what it was?”

“It was like… I’ll know it when I see it. The title was kind of weird. I think it was alliterative.”

“Can I have the book again for a second?” Phil asks weakly.

It could still mean nothing, he thinks, as Dan hands him back the book and he immediately begins to flit through the pages. The titles are all quite alliterative, and the spells they recite are all very weird, using strange words and half rhymes. He doesn’t quite remember his spell, but he remembers reading out the words in bemusement and tracing his finger along the letters. It’s like Dan said, he’ll know it when he sees it. He skims the spells, and he focuses on the titles, but they mean nothing to him.

And then, on the further side of halfway through the hundreds of thick, yellowing pages, the title seems to capture him, glaring out from where it’s trapped on the page. He recognises it immediately, and a cloudy memory becomes clearer as he settles his hands on the book to smooth down the page instead of turning to a new one, and begins to read ‘Covert Curse’, once again.

“Dan,” he says. “Dan, I think I’ve found it. Was this it?”

Dan looks up and blinks. “How could you have found it, you don’t-”

“I just think I have,” Phil says.

I probably sound insane, Phil thinks. But it doesn’t bother him anymore, not after everything. He knows that Dan will understand. In this world, it seems that strange things find the two of them like moths to a flame, and if it is some kind of delusion - well, they’re both as mad as each other.

Dan just nods in understanding and Phil wants to laugh at it all. He doesn’t, though. He moves a little, allowing space for Dan to move in beside him and read over his shoulder. And Dan was right, Phil thinks, it is like a poem. He’d thought something similar, probably. He’s only read the words once, and they’d been absent from his mind and his conscious for weeks. But now, seeing them again, they feel impossibly familiar.

the bluest day brings back desire

returns an ancient dead aspire

the truest wish the heart did drew

the first you made makes life a-new

“This is the one,” Dan says, voice low. Phil doesn’t know why they always speak so quietly here. The athenaeum is always empty. They could scream from the top of their lungs and no one would hear it. They’ve never seen a single other person, and if Phil’s suspicions are correct, the people outside walking the streets wouldn’t hear anything, either. They could shout, but they never do. “You read it too.”

It isn’t a question, but Phil gives him an answer anyway, “Yes.”

“You think-”

“Well, it must be, surely.”

“Not necessarily,” Dan protests. The conversation is half blank spaces, but they both know what they’re talking about, exactly how to fill in the gaps. “It could be a coincidence.”

Phil snorts. “Really?”

“Well. It could be,” Dan says shortly. “There’s no proof.”

Phil appreciates not wanting to acknowledge the situation, but he doesn’t really have the time for avoidance tactics right now.

“There’s also no proof that I don’t turn into a sword wielding samurai at night,” Phil says. “But that doesn’t make the likelihood any bigger.”

“Knowing this place, I wouldn’t be surprised,” Dan mutters.

“See? So why should this surprise you any more?”

“I don’t know,” he shrugs, unhappily, and Phil gets it. He does. Everything is strange and tired and it all feels kind of sad, sometimes. Life isn’t awful here. Dan isn’t awful. But it isn’t home. It’s a fake, and it isn’t even trying to pass off as the original.

“Dan,” Phil says. “Think about this properly, what we have here. Don’t think of it as more questions and more headaches and more things that don’t make sense. This could help us figure out why we’re here. It could help us figure out how to get everything back to normal.”

Dan looks up with brighter eyes, like the thought hadn’t even crossed his mind.

“Oh,” he says.

::

They decide to call it a day, to wait until morning before investigating the book further. It’s a good idea. Phil knows this. The afternoon is drawing on into evening, the sky already shadowed with a sweep of indigo when they finally do leave the building and clamber onto the bus home. He’s tired, too, with a migraine pulsing in the side of his head and stinging at his eyes. There are aches and pains all over his body, it feels like, with a crick in his neck and a pull in his lower back from all the bending down to read all of these bloody books. He needs a long shower and a good rest, he knows this.

But it’s the last thing that he wants. He’s had a sick feeling in his stomach ever since he’d found the book, out of place in the F section once again. He wonders if there’s some kind of mocking meaning to that. F for fictitious, like the way the world feels. F for fool, like the way that Phil feels. It’s the kind of anxiety that lingers and settles, and his finger tips are itching to comb through the book and find answers. He feels like he won’t be able to rest easy until he has answers.

They’re so close to finding certain ones, but the book in itself only raises more questions.

It’s a good idea in theory, but Phil still spends half the night awake in bed, eyes staring at the ceiling, glazing over to the end of his bed, opposite the part of the room where Dan had knocked him down and accused him of being the enemy. He doesn’t get much rest, but the ache in his head goes away, eventually.

::

Morning comes with vague optimism coated in the pale blue light of the sun. Phil thinks about the book without tasting oil, and texts Dan a good morning message with a smiley face, saying ‘we’ll figure it all out today’. Dan replies with a single smiley face, and Phil gets it.

On his way to the athenaeum for the morning, Phil darts into the Newsagents’ on the opposite side of their now shared street. He kind of thanks whatever higher power there might be in the world for convenience shops, because the current situation he has found himself in has left very little time for food shopping. It’s weird to him that in states of strangeness and times such as these, you still have to do the ordinary things, like eat and shop and live. The characters in stories and movies never seem to do so.

The walls of the Newsagents’ are still green. This does occur to him, but less prominently than it once did.

He’s been inside several times since everything changed and rearranged. It’s remained the same in spite of everything; the stacks of cans and newspaper stands in the same order and array as they always were, biscuits on their usual shelves, chocolates piled together at the front of the store, the checkout by the door. The inside walls have changed colour too though. White where they used to be yellow. This doesn’t occur to him.

Phil’s always liked the Newsagents’, though Mrs Walker does remain the main reason it’s where he buys most of his food when he can’t be bothered to trek into the local supermarket. It’s her kind attitude and cheery conversation, the way she always asks how he is, and offers him a sly discount on anything sweet like a second grandmother.

The colour of the interior walls may not occur to him, but this is because when he enters the shop today, something else does: Mrs Walker isn’t there.

Phil immediately frowns, taken aback by the young girl standing in her place, slumped over the checkout, looking a little bit bored and very out of place, in contrast to the image Phil has stuck in his head, of a smiley old lady hunched over, counting coins and asking Phil about his plans for the weekend.

Mrs Walker is the sole owner of the shop. Phil knows this. When she isn’t in, the shop isn’t open, and she only ever hires a couple of the local teenagers to help out during the summer months, alongside a couple of people who stack the shelves and help out in the back. Mrs Walker always runs the checkout. Phil doesn’t think he’s ever seen anyone else doing it, except for the few times she’d come down sick and asked her nephew in.

Curiously, Phil does his round of the shop. Picks up the basic necessities – tea bags and bread and ice cream – and makes his way to the cashier.

“That’ll be £6.58,” the girl says. The name on her tag reads ‘Fiona’.

Phil hands out the money in almost exact change, spare for a few pence. He hands it over, and asks, “is Mrs Walker ill again, then?”

Fiona raises an eyebrow, and looks momentarily confused.

“Mrs Walker…?” she prompts, as if for a better explanation, as if she’s never heard the name before.

“The woman who owns this shop,” Phil explains. “She’s worked here for years. Barely ever takes a day off. She was here, just last week.”

“There’s no Mrs Walker in the staff here,” Fiona says, coughing a little. Clearly, she doesn’t think Phil is in the sharpest state of mind. “I’ve been working here for months. Never heard of her.”

Phil gapes at her. “You can’t have been,” he argues. It doesn’t make any sense. Mrs Walker has been in the shop even since her shop walls changed colour and the world turned over. This isn’t like the staff at the library, not like his co-workers, and Dan’s manager, Tony. She was here after everything changed. Phil bought bread from her, just last week. He tells Fiona as such, and she just shakes her head, looking a bit alarmed.

“I’m sorry, sir,” she says. “Are you quite sure you have the right address?”

Phil is more than quite sure. But saying so will achieve nothing now, and there’s no reason that Fiona would be lying to him. It doesn’t make any sense, not at all, but nothing does, lately.

He wants to put it down to another bout of crazy, just another thing that doesn’t make sense, another work of the world that feels more like it should be placed in between the pages of books. He has a feeling though, one lodged in his stomach like a knife that bleeds sickly into his stomach and dry into his throat, that there’s something not quite right about this.

Wrong doesn’t always mean bad. But Phil can’t shake off the feeling that this time it does.

::

There are tables in the further end of the athenaeum's main hall. Phil has noticed them in the past, but in fleeting, brief moments where they meet his line of vision and then drift out of focus when something else requires his attention. He and Dan have only wandered around the full length of the hall once, in curious exploration; the rest of the time is spent working slowly down it, day after day, looking for clues buried beneath book pages.

They remind him of the tables in the library in which he once worked, and he supposes that if the athenaeum is really built upon the split of two worlds, his is where they come from. Of course, they’re different from the library tables, which were old and worn, and an ugly grey white colour, with legs that shifted every time you leant too close against the surface. That’s the case with everything in the athenaeum though, so it comes as no surprise. The tables are long and fancy, with sturdy legs and a large oak surface, dark in colour, shadowed underneath the dim gold light.

Phil takes a seat at one end of the first one he reaches. It feels too empty, and Dan sitting down beside him doesn’t help. The chairs make a shrill kind of squeak when they’re dragged out from underneath the surface, and Phil, overall, feels disconcerted. That, however, may just be the fault of the book, and the encounter with Fiona the checkout girl, and the peculiar absence of a woman who should have been there but wasn’t.

He doesn’t tell Dan about it. He considers it, has done several times since they’d met up at the bus stop, and both confessed to sleepless nights. Phil had felt the words on the tip of his tongue, but moments later they melted like soft toffee sweets, and stuck to his gums as secrets. He wants to tell him, and vaguely, he knows he should. He’s got a bad feeling about it, but he doesn’t want to worry Dan. He knows how easily he panics. He’s far more paranoid than Phil is, with a mind that’ll jump several hurdles in a millisecond. And in any case, he seemed optimistic today, the same insipid kind of cheerfulness that Phil had when he woke up. He doesn’t want to take that from him.

And so, however unwisely, Phil does not say anything to Dan. He firmly pushes it to the back of his mind, and focuses on the task at hand, and the book that may answer questions.

It sits on the table before them, wide open so that the childlike rhymes of the Covet Curse stare back at them, almost mocking.

So close, Phil thinks. It feels like we’re so close, but we’re not, really. Not at all.

Because this is a book of spells, not one of answers. The athenaeum is the place to go when you want explanations, but the athenaeum is a division of a bookshop and a library, and this book had belonged to neither.

“I guess the first step is to figure out what it means,” Dan says, lamely. That’s obvious, of course, but Phil figures that there’s nothing else he could have said.

“Covet Curse,” Phil reads out, voice weary. “The ‘curse’ part isn’t really very encouraging, is it?”

Dan actually laughs a little at that. “Not really,” he muses. “Whoever wrote this got straight to the point.”

“Well, at least the meaning is fairly simple. Covet is like desire, right? So you’d assume from the title that’s what it’s going to be about.”

“Isn’t it particularly wanting something that belongs to someone else?” Dan asks, and Phil nods.

“That would actually make sense, given the circumstances,” Phil murmurs. “If for example you wanted something that I had, and vice versa,” he pauses. “Or maybe not even us. But maybe you wanted something from the fictional version of me, and I wanted something from the fictional Dan Howell.”

“God, this is complicated,” Dan says, letting out a shaky half-laugh, the kind Phil’s learnt to expect from him whenever he feels out of his depth. “Are you saying you envied a fictional teenager, Phil?”

Phil shrugs. “You live a cool life, trust me. You haven’t read the books, so you wouldn’t know.”

Dan just smiles like he’s endeared.

“Maybe we should focus on the actual… I don’t want to call it a ‘spell’, but I guess that’s what it is,” he says, a moment after, wrinkling his nose as he utters the word. “That feels so fucking weird to say, Jesus Christ.”

“I know,” Phil agrees. “I really haven’t adjusted to any of this yet. Every time I try to think about it, I get a headache.”

“Me too,” Dan says. His eyes scan the page. “It’s like a poem. It’s like being back at school, analysing poems for English. I was good at that.”

Phil groans. “I was crap at it. I’ll try and redeem myself now, I guess.”

“Well it’s a good thing you’ve got me to help you, right?” Dan jokes.

The light hearted exchanges between them and the intermittent banter is what is keeping Phil sane, probably. He muses over this as the chatter between them dies, and Dan turns to look down at the page again, studying it intently. It takes the edge off, makes it all feel a little less serious, a little less intense. It’s still scary, and Phil still feels its weight upon his shoulders, but Dan makes it easier to carry.

“It’s pretty simple,” Dan says eventually. “Look at it, properly I mean. I’d say the meaning translates fairly clearly.”

Phil would have to agree. “Well, bluest day is obviously going to mean a bad day, isn’t it? And bringing back desire is obvious. Being sad is going to make you want something you desire even more, if it’ll make you happy.”

“Were you upset?” Dan asks, suddenly, and Phil blinks in slight confusion from the outburst until Dan adds, “on the day before. When you found the book and read the poem. Were you upset?”

“It feels like it was ages ago,” Phil says, but he thinks as hard as he can. It feels like so long ago, he realises. He’d felt this when he’d remembered the old library tables. He can barely remember the library layout. It’s been weeks, but it feels like far longer. “I… I think so? It was cold, and I kept thinking about how I was stuck in my job and how I was just unsatisfied with everything. And it was a Monday.”

“It was a Monday for me, too,” Dan says.

“Were you?” Phil knows what it’s about, now. He considers. He doesn’t know if he’d call the day he found the book his bluest day. But surely thinking about your life and realising you’re discontent is the bluest mood you can get. “Upset on the day, I mean.”

Dan sighs, and considers, and scratches the back of his neck. “Well, yeah, I guess,” he says, a small frown on his face. “I was kind of like you, I think. Just… nothing awful had happened. I got drenched by rain on the way to work and Tony was yelling at me and it was like you. I looked at my life, and I thought, I fucking hate my job, and yeah, I was unsatisfied, too,” he pauses, and Phil doesn’t interrupt his thoughts. “I dropped out of university, you know. Like a year ago. And I thought - I don’t know what I thought. But it wasn’t what I had, back home.”

Every word he says resonates with Phil. He tells him about the bluest mood theory, and Dan doesn’t say anything, but the silence almost whispers an agreement.

Dan clears his throat, and moves on.

“Ancient dead aspire. Same as the desire thing, right?”

“Yeah,” Phil agrees. “But it’s got to be something older. So it’s not something that either of us wanted on the day, or that week, or even that year. It was something we didn’t think we wanted anymore, but maybe always did. That was so old neither of us could even remember.”

“The truest wish the heart did drew,” Dan mutters.

“Something you really, really want,” Phil supplies. “Something not superficial or fleeting, I suppose.”

Dan doesn’t seem to be listening, though. His eyes are fixed upon the page, and he looks almost lost in a land of thought. He leans forward, and Phil hears him muttering, “brings back desire, an ancient dead aspire, truest wish,” all while tapping the thick pages with his finger tips impatiently

And then he says, “the first you made.” He’s quiet for a moment, and then he looks up, and stares at Phil. “The first you made, the truest wish,” he says, and Phil blinks.

“Yes,” Phil says, intelligently.

“The first real wish you made,” Dan says, grinning with satisfaction. “See? It’s like you said. It’s not a recent wish - it’s the first one you ever made that you really meant. That’s what the covet is, or what the reader covets for.”

Phil nods enthusiastically. “Right! It all makes sense.”

“Except,” Dan’s smile fades. “Curse.”

“Oh,” he swallows. “Yeah, I’d forgotten that bit. And there’s the last line.”

“Makes life a-new,” Dan says, softly. “I think we both know what that means.”

“Whatever you first wished for will come true. It’ll replace your old life, essentially. It’ll create a new one.”

“I guess that’s why it’s a curse.”

Phil bites his lip. “Does that mean - did we wish for this?”

“Apparently,” Dan’s fingers are tapping restlessly on the table, over and over again, like the beat of Phil’s heart moving at an erratic pace as anxiety swells inside of him. “I don’t even know what my wish could have been. I’ve made hundreds of wishes in my life. How do I know which is the truest?” the tapping of his fingers increases in both strength and speed.

“I don’t know mine, either,” Phil says slowly.

Dan stops tapping. His fists curl into little balls, and rest on the oak table. Phil can’t remember what the library tables look like anymore. Were they really grey, like his memory tells him, or is that his imagination filling in the blanks from what this new building and this new world has replaced?

“So, that’s what’s happening,” Dan says, voice flat. “We wish something, both of us, however many years ago, and neither of us can remember what. And then we read this fucking spell on a bad day, and whatever it was came true, and it rewrote our lives. It made a whole new world, Phil, what the fuck-”

Phil feels lightheaded.

“And Dan,” he says, voice quiet, but he cuts off Dan’s ranting in an instant, all the same. “There’s nothing in that poem about making the world go back to normal, either.”

::

The athenaeum is not the kind of place either of them want to be after such a revelation, far too intense and looming and almost claustrophobic. It takes fifteen minutes alone for Dan’s hands to stop shaking, and neither of them become much use, too flustered and panicky to focus on anything. Phil tries to read over the lines of the poem again but sees only blurry black letters and the rhymes make his eyes ache. They can’t just leave it though, not here and now, too caught up in the moment and stuck on adrenaline.

What they do do is move the conversation, and the spellbook to a different location.

There’s a little café not too far along. Phil recognises the placement of the building in amidst a little group of shops, but he’s never been inside, and so he doesn’t know if anything has changed. He asks Dan.

He shakes his head. “No,” he says. “But I don’t remember if it was here before, either.”

Phil wonders what the world looks like in other places, how it’s looking in cities where only one of them have set foot, or where neither have ever been. He wonders if this has carried far across the expanse of the globe or if it’s just settled in one frozen city, wonders if people drive through on holiday, on their way to other places and notice what’s gone wrong or if the world outside is cut off from the magic working inside the borders of the city edges.

He wants to voice all this to Dan. The two of them have these kinds of conversations a lot, and Phil is grateful to be stuck here with somebody who understands the way that his mind works, whose curiosity and interest is peaked in the same kind of ways. They can talk for hours about what this might mean, about different theories and ideas, what they imagine might be somewhere else, where they’d like to go and look if they had the time to spare outside of their current focus. Phil thinks that maybe when this is all over, he and Dan could write their own book.

That thought stays with him, though, lingers for a moment and Phil doesn’t understand why it seems to repeat inside of his head and tug at his heart in a strange kind of way. And then it hits, the realisation, strangely redundant, that if they figure all this out and undo the spell, he’ll likely never see Dan again.

It’s not as if Dan will be living in his version of Dolchester, nor anywhere else - he won’t find him in any of the surrounding towns because in Phil’s universe, in the world he’s come to know, Dan is a work of fiction. Dan doesn’t exist.

The thought leaves his chest feeling empty and cold, as if he can feel dripping ice inside of himself, cooling and stinging. He doesn’t say anything. He knows they don’t have time for this kind of distraction but it sits heavy upon his heart as if waiting for the right moment.

Dan glances up at him, wearily.

“What is it?” he asks, and Phil shakes his head.

He can’t tell him now. Perhaps this is something Dan has already figured out, perhaps it’s something that won’t trigger any kind of concern from him. But Phil gets the feeling that Dan cares for him in a similar way that he does, in a strange sort of way, but it lies deep, all the same. It’s only been a few weeks, but he does care about Dan. He’s the kind of boy who makes it hard not to care, Phil thinks. And if Dan does share that notion, they don’t have the time, nor is this the place for an emotional interlude.

So Phil packs these thoughts back into boxes, two sets: one for the questions of places and people, no doubt a trigger for a lengthy discussion they’ll have, solemn and quiet but somehow never too heavy for either of them to hold each other up, and the concept of them leaving. That one fights its way through packaging and claws through the layers that push it further down into his thoughts.

“Don’t worry,” he tells Dan.

The café is nice and quiet, but not too quiet. It bustles towards the front, so they sit at the back, where people don’t really seem to notice them. The lighting is dim and the room feels warm. It’s what Phil needs as a winter afternoon dulls into evening, the sky fading into darker colours through the big windows at the front of the shop. Phil looks around. He studies the faces of the people, customers and staff, and he orders a cup of coffee and he looks at the decorations on the walls, at hanging art that surrounds him. He looks at Dan, too, and he looks outside. For as long as he possibly can, he puts it off, and then, Dan’s pulling the book out of his bag, and spreading it out on the table surface, careful not to rip fragile, ageing pages, and Phil is forced to acknowledge it once again despite his greatest efforts.

Dan clears his throat.

“Okay,” he says awkwardly. “Right, um. I’ve been thinking, since we left the athenaeum. There’s nothing in the poem about how to make things go back to normal… but surely there is some way? Like you said, none of this is permanent, right? It’s all temporary.”

I remember, Phil thinks. He’s not entirely sure he believes past-him, knowing how easily he’ll fall into the game of saying anything, just to stop someone from being scared for a bit. Could they ever be stuck here forever, in a world that shouldn’t really exist? It’s sounds unbelievable, but that word doesn’t really apply in whatever dictionary can be found in this world.

“I remember,” Phil says, regardless. “I guess so.”

“It just, it makes sense to me that if this - spell, curse, whatever - is based around a wish, then maybe the way to undo it all is for that wish to come true?”

Phil frowns. “But I thought that was the point,” Phil says. “The wish came true, and that’s why we’re here.”

Dan shrugs, and bites his lip. “I don’t know,” he mutters. “It’s just that in this kind of situation it would surely make sense that to undo all of this we have to follow what brought us here in the first place. Like - maybe the wish doesn’t come true as such. Maybe we have to do that part.”

Phil nods, slowly. Dan’s words are taking a little time to sink in and make sense. He’s talking in scrambled sentences, with flushed cheeks, clearly flustered and distressed, not at his most coherent. But he kind of makes sense.

“I think I know what you mean,” he confirms. “Like - if the ‘true wish’ or whatever was to like, own the fastest horse ever, I’d have woken up with a horse but I’d have to train it? Is that what you mean?”

Dan stares at him for a few seconds, and then laughs, despite himself.

“God,” he says. “That was the most fucking terrible example you ever could have given.”

Phil can’t help but smile. “I was under pressure,” he argues, but it’s weak, and he doesn’t really mind. It’s nice, to see Dan grinning like that, despite the current predicament; it eases the tension, cutting through it like a knife through butter and Phil could easily relax into this, something easy and chilled and slow, hazy and lethargic, where he didn’t have to think so much and everything wasn’t so bloody cryptic.

“Yeah, sure,” Dan says. “You just have a weird imagination. And a horse fixation.”

“The name Philip means ‘lover of horses’,” Phil admits, a little embarrassed, and Dan snorts.

“No way,” he says.

“My secret has been exposed.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if that was your wish, then,” Dan mutters, but then he straightens up. “But anyway, yeah. Your example, albeit weird, was what I meant. That would make sense, wouldn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Phil says. He’s not entirely convinced but it seems to be the best bet they have unless there’s an anti-spell somewhere inside of the book, a curse-breaker ready to dismantle any and all fictitious worlds this book can create. “It’s a possibility.”

“Which means we didn’t wish for this world, exactly,” Dan says. “But we wished for something in it. Or something that can only be achieved here. Or maybe it has nothing to do with the actual world, but this situation was one that was needed to fulfil the wishes. You know?”

“Um,” Phil’s head spins, and he realises he’s a lot more tired than he previously thought. “Yeah.”

Dan seems very focused, and Phil feels guilty for being so unable to keep up with him.

“That gives us something to go on,” he continues. “Like, a lead. There are thousands of wishes we could have made. Hopefully, this narrows it down a little.”

Phil thinks, yeah, if your theory is correct. And then yawns, accidentally, and he’s about to apologise guilty but Dan’s already just shaking his head and smiling.

“You’re knackered, I can tell,” Dan announces. “It’s okay. Let's just call it a day, and maybe tomorrow it’ll all be clearer.”

“Maybe,” Phil agrees. “I hope so.”

They make their way to the bus stop in silence. The spellbook looks heavy in Dan’s arms. The chill in the wind gives Phil goosebumps and as hard as he tries, he can’t remember a single specific wish that he’s ever made.

::

The bus wheels roll forward. The evening is quiet, feels too desolate, and Phil thinks about his new neighbour, and the young girl in the Newsagents’ and the strange spellbook and a thousand sheets of paper, besmirched by endless lines of black ink.

“Dan,” Phil says. “I think people are disappearing.”

Dan tenses up, but he doesn’t react in a harsh bout of fear. He doesn’t jump up, or begin to shake, or respond with visible anxiety or distress. Phil notes that his hands curl up into little balls again, and his shoulders droop, just slightly.

“So do I,” Dan replies quietly.

Neither of them say anything else after that, and Phil realises that the same suspicions that have haunted Phil over the past few days have been hanging over Dan’s head, too, a looming shadow in the dim gold light. That’s why he didn’t react in fear, the way Phil had been expecting, because he already knew. And Phil wonders who in Dan’s life has so far been replaced, who he woke up expecting to see but didn’t, and how long he’s been hiding his thoughts.

The bus draws to a halt in silence, and the two of them, with a few other strangers, make their way off and onto the pavement, drenched underneath a wave of street and starlight. It isn’t as cold anymore.

“Do we need to talk about it?” Phil asks, uncertain. He doesn’t know whether to go home, or to follow Dan into his house.

What he really wants is to sleep. He can feel the weight of the heavy book sat slumped between Dan’s arms in his own, even though he isn’t even touching it.

“Tomorrow,” Dan decides. Phil wonders if either of them will even sleep.

He nods in agreement, and turns away to go home. Even if not, it’s worth a try, he thinks.

::

At first, they don’t talk about it. The quiet admission sits idly around them and Dan’s kitchen feels too small but at least it isn’t the athenaeum. Sometimes Phil feels like all of those books are piling up like looming towers around him, creating a feeling of claustrophobia as if they’re the walls that lock him into this world. It’s always weird being here, though - he still recognises it from the stories he used to read, the colours of the walls, the counters. He recognises miscellaneous items and assorted memorabilia from vivid description and illustrated coloured pages, like it’s all been pulled directly out of the storybook. In some ways, Phil supposes, it has.

“About yesterday…” Phil begins, but Dan cuts him off.

“Do we really need to go into detail?” he asks wearily, and Phil realises he doesn’t want to talk about it, as if not doing so will stop it from actually being real.

“Not detail,” Phil says. “We need to talk about it, though,” he pauses. “We should have spoken about it yesterday, really. I didn’t sleep at all.”

“Me neither.”

“When did you notice?”

Dan shrugs. “It always kind of stuck with me,” he begins to confess. “Our colleagues and bosses and stuff - when they all vanished, it kind of stuck with me. Obviously they weren’t here anymore. There wasn’t a trace of them anywhere, as if because they weren’t needed, they weren’t here at all.”

Phil nods, prompting him to continue.

“It wasn’t until weeks later that anybody else did. And it isn’t anyone really, well, significant in my life or anything. My mum’s still here. I called her the other night, but like. It’s just people who you wouldn’t think you’d notice were gone, but you do. People who own certain shops. People who live down the road. Those sorts, you know? They’re not friends or anything but they’re there. Or, well. They were.”

“It’s the same for me,” Phil agrees. “I didn’t notice it at first. Not until recently. If anyone went missing before that, I didn’t notice.” It’s a harsh admission, maybe, but Dan nods in agreement. “I kept remembering and wondering where everyone who’d worked at the library had gone. Or the locals who visited it all the time. I never saw them. But I dismissed it. And then it was my neighbour - he moved out and didn’t even say goodbye. And then this woman, this nice old woman who always worked at the Newsagents’...”

“I know,” Dan says, quietly.

“What does this mean?” Phil asks. “Does this - is it going to keep happening? With people just disappearing until we figure out a way to stop it?”

“There’s nothing about that in the book,” Dan frowns.

“I don’t think a magical spellbook really has to adhere to any rules, does it?”

“It does up the stakes a bit, doesn’t it?” Dan’s tone is dry and the comment offhand, but there’s no lightheartedness nor any humour within it. He sounds kind of lost, and very tired, like he doesn’t really know what to do from here, or where to go.

Phil doesn’t know how people in stories do it, how they continue to face event after event as they all unfold around them. Every time they seem a step closer, every time the mood feels lightened, his chest easy like he can finally breathe, something else happens to remind him that this isn’t the real world and, what’s more, it shouldn’t be. It’s as if the world itself is telling them to hurry up and get out, that they don’t belong.

What if I wake up one day and Dan’s the next person to disappear, Phil wonders. His heart races at the thought, and he thinks he’d go crazy very quickly, stuck in this cycle alone.

It feels very anti-climactic, this revelation. Phil feels the sweat on his palms and the anxiety curdling in his chest, and he sees the way Dan’s foot taps over and over against the floor, like his legs are shaking. But neither respond with an outburst of panic, not outwardly, at least. Maybe it’s because he’s too tired to do so at this point, or maybe it’s because he’s been suspecting it for a while, and Dan has too.

Maybe the panic will come later. It usually does. Or maybe Phil’s just getting used to things getting weirder and weirder and knows there isn’t really time to freak out every time something like this happens. It’s a bizarre state to be in.

“We should probably hurry up, and get this figured out then,” Phil murmurs. Dan nods, and Phil notices when he takes a deep breath, like he’s saving the fear for later.

They set off towards the athenaeum for the day, and Phil waits for his own worry to come.

::

Phil spent half of the night thinking it over, and continued to do so into the morning, with the cold air against his face in the midst of the morning breeze and as Dan made him coffee in a room of sudden warmth. He’d considered it on the bus, on the walk up to the athenaeum and as they’d walked up the large stone steps and closed the vast door, as his chair had squeaked against the floor when he’d pulled it out to sit down, surrounded by book towers and dim lights once again.

But none of it helps: for the life of him, he cannot remember what he could have possibly wished to get himself here.

Dan is in the same position, it seems. Like Phil he has wracked his brain and searched every available memory he can think to access. He’s studied his childhood self and spent the whole night tossing and turning, from how he tells it, despite the ghosts of the conversation with Phil haunting him in the dark. And he, too, can’t think of a single specific wish that could warrant the whole world to change.

They try everything they can think of. More practical methods, such as taking it in turns for one of them to pace around the area while the other calls out questions about what they really wanted at different ages, about who they were and what their fleeting fixations were from six months ago to sixteen years ago. It doesn’t help much, though - it’s such a broad amount of time that Phil can’t focus on one time period before he’s stretching his memories even further, and Dan ends up with a headache. They try drawing out mind maps about what they’ve wanted in the past, but it’s too weird. Phil feels like he’s doing a character study of himself, like they really are turning into storybook characters. It makes him a bit uncomfortable.

Dan suggests that they search inside of the books to see if an answer becomes apparent. It’s a good idea, but it proves futile rather quickly; there’s the old issue of time, of course, reemerging once again as a grim reminder that time is running out. Phil thinks of an old grandfather clock and the three blind mice, and feels a bit sick. There’s too much to read, is the thing. There are multitudes of Dan Howell stories, short enough in length but too many in numbers and different adventures, any of which could warrant a wish to be made. Phil’s character has fewer novels dedicated to him, but they’re longer books, proper novels with lengthy stories and small text. They flick through the pages of each series but neither can even concentrate properly, too concerned over the prospect of possibly wasting time with a task that requires more attention than they can afford to give.

“I don’t think we’d find anything,” Phil says eventually, breaking the spell of quiet study that has grown between them. “Honestly. I don’t remember anything about any wishes. And it’s been a while, but - it doesn’t seem like the type of thing that’d be in those books. They were more adventures and pirates kind of thing, you know?”

“Yeah,” Dan sighs, closing the book he’d been skimming for answers with a clear and frustrated snap. “Honestly, Detective Lester stories weren’t really the kind that had quick breaks for shooting star wishes or anything. It was a long shot.”

“It was a good idea,” Phil tells him. “It definitely fits with the theme we’ve been seeing around here, in any case.”

“Yeah,” Dan agrees tiredly. “Makes sense it’d have to be shaken up a little, right?”

“Maybe we’re going about this the wrong way, in any case. We’re trying to think of a specific thing we wished for - which could have been almost anything - at any point in our lives. It’s probably stupid trying to just remember what it was. There are hundreds of different possibilities. I can barely remember anything I’ve ever wished for, can you?”

Dan shakes his head. “That makes sense,” he says. “But what else can we do?”

“Maybe if we can pinpoint when the wish was made, we can try to figure out what it could have been based on what we were like at the time, or things that happened at that age. It’s a smaller time span, you know? It narrows it down a little,” Phil explains, and Dan considers for a moment.

“That’s a good idea,” he says. “I mean, in theory. But how do we figure out when it was?”

Phil shrugs. “Truest wish,” he echoes the words of the spellbook. “The first you made. I’m sure a lot of the wishes people make are ‘true’, unless maybe it doesn’t count the really superficial ones.”

“So the aim of us being here isn’t to date Beyoncé,” Dan says sarcastically. “Great. Increases our chances a bit.”

“My love for Beyoncé is in no way superficial,” Phil says, very seriously, and Dan chuckles a little bit but doesn’t speak, doesn’t interrupt the chain of thought he notices that Phil has become immersed in, sitting still and quietly.

“It’s the first wish you ever truly meant, right?” he voices, a couple of seconds later.

“That’s what we decided,” Dan confirms.

“If it’s the first, I reckon childhood is a good place to start. Like, not too young. Not a toddler or anything. But little kids make loads of wishes, don’t they? They’re all - they’re innocent and stuff. What could be truer than that?”

“That’s disgustingly cheesy,” Dan tells him. He pauses, though, and considers his words. “But maybe, I suppose. It’s worth a shot,” he looks at the collection of discarded novels and children’s books, strewn across the floor in disarray. “I’m all out of other ideas anyway.”

::

Phil spends the rest of the afternoon, as does Dan, scouring for remnants of his childhood.

He searches his apartment for anything brought with him after moving out of his family home, any childhood momentums that could act as a key to whatever wishes he’s locked up with the passing of time. He calls his mum, too, and she quickly becomes confused as to why Phil is half interrogating her down the phone line over his desires as a ten year old. She complies as best she can, but Phil is fairly sure she can’t remember any more than he can. Still though, she tries - she even digs around in some of the old cupboards and drawers to pull out what she describes as Phil’s old drawings from primary school, and even a Christmas list or two that have been stashed away with all of the other childhood tokens she’d wanted to, for whatever reason, savour.

Phil has never really understood his mother’s need to hoard remnants from the past, items that were damaged or tatty or utterly insignificant, that held no use but maybe the key to a fond memory of a smiling little kid. Now, he still doesn’t really get it, but he appreciates it a hell of a lot more.

::

“Did you find anything?” Dan asks. His voice sounds crackly over the phone, almost different. It’s the first time Phil’s ever actually called him - with them living within such close proximity, most of their conversations are had in person. But it’s a cold night, and Phil would much rather stay in place, curled up within the warmth of his own bed and the comfort of his warm duvet stretching from his shoulders to his toes than to go outside and have this conversation.

“Not really,” Phil replies, trying not to feel too discouraged. He’s got a list on a sheet of paper of possible ideas, but in all honesty they all sound incredibly unlikely, not special enough to be his first true wish, or incomprehensible to why this world would have emerged in the process. It’s all he can think of though, and so he figures it’s worth a try.

He studies the list before him, doubt again flickering through his thoughts. Some of the more likely things he’d probably meant still seem a little impossible. He’s fairly sure his first childhood wish would have been to fly a spaceship to the moon, but that’s not looking likely, and nor is his long lasting ambition to be a superhero. He’s already made one attempt, but it seems that he’s still lactose intolerant even in this world, and the glass of milk he’d downed as a part of his experiment is actually still hurting his stomach.

“But I’ve got a couple of things I could try,” Phil adds a moment later, so as not to let negativity settle over the conversation. “Have you?”

“Same, really,” Dan responds. “Nothing seems very likely, but it’s worth a shot. It’s the first true wish, right? We could have been five. It could have been the most ridiculous thing.”

“It probably is,” Phil tells him. He thinks about the milk again. It had seemed a pretty viable option, to be honest - five year old Phil did hate that eating too much cereal gave him stomach aches, but perhaps he hadn’t read that much into it at that point.

There are a couple of other ideas that he has, but some are just too impractical for testing; he’d had a fleeting dream of becoming a police officer, for example, until he realised that’d be the worst career path for him possible (honestly, he finds some irony in Dan’s detective stories for this one reason) but he doesn’t really suppose he and Dan have enough time on their hands for him to go through the entire police training process, just in the vague hope that something might work out.

“My truest wish was probably to complete Super Mario 64 on the Nintendo 64, to be honest,” Dan tells him. “And my Nintendo 64 is long since dead.”

“Maybe that’s the catch for this universe,” Phil suggests. “It seems like everything is normal - to an extent - but really all the Xbox’s and WII consoles have been replaced with N64s.”

“God, I’d kill past me for making that wish if that were the case,” Dan says.

“I think most of the population would, to be honest.”

“Guess we’d better get started collecting stars, right?”

“Right.”

They share a couple more ideas, ones too ridiculous to have made the list, but it’s nice. It eases the tension, makes everything feel a bit nicer, more light-hearted. Phil gets tired of the intensity and the pressures of real life sometimes - that’s why he’d turned to books in the first place. It’s nice to tune it out sometimes, to exchange the hurried conversations and hushed voices for relaxed banter and easy laughter.

It’s always easy with Dan.

Phil ends up falling asleep while the call is still going. He wakes up with the line disconnected, wonders if maybe Dan had been the one to cut the connection at some point after. But he finds his phone on his pillow, left haphazard, a text on the screen left over from last night that just says, wtf rude and so he wakes up with a smile. He thinks that things aren’t any better, perhaps, as the pale grey light streams in through the curtain cracks, but they feel brighter, like city lights flaring up after dark.

::

The phone call with Dan had been nice, a way to relieve the loneliness that usually creeps in at night, but most importantly it leaves a thought, an idea that sits idly in Phil’s mind.

He holds his phone in his hand for a long time, moving his fingers over the touch screen buttons, tapping out numbers experimentally, scrolling through his contact’s list until his finger lingers upon the name of one of the other women who had worked at the library.

They hadn’t been close, not by any means. But they’d known each other. She’d been a constant in his life, if only background noise, the blur of colour outside of the camera focus. She’d been there, still, and he wonders for her, for whether she’d recognise him now if she saw him in the street, in this strange new world. He wonders, more so, if she’s even here at all.

He pushes down, and dials her number.

It dials, at least. The tone rings out almost ominously in the emptiness of a quiet morning, and Phil waits.

It rings to answer machine.

::

They spend the next few days mostly attempting to fulfill some of the potential wishes they could have made. It doesn’t go very well, if Phil’s honest, but in spite of the urgency he feels like an itch crawling beneath his skin, it’s somehow pleasant, a welcome escape from the musty space and the endless books of the athenaeum. It’s nice, for once, to be able to look for answers elsewhere.

They start with the easier things, like places they’d wanted to visit, and things they’d wanted to do. Dan, bracing himself, eats three bags full of candy floss because his mum insisted over the phone that it was all he’d ever ask for whenever they went to the beach or the fun fair or - well, anywhere really, regardless of stock. That isn’t a fun afternoon for either of them. Phil seeks out the nearest stable to the city and has to get a bus a mile out to ride a horse, and it’s the most terrifying experience of his life; he falls off and into the mud and ends up with a pretty impressive black eye, but he figures it still counts as achieving his apparent dream of taking up horse riding, which had over taken his fantasies after ‘Spirit’ came out on video player. And then, with the help of Dan, he successfully prank calls his brother after years of never managing to get his own back.

But none of these things feel like real wishes to Phil - like true wishes. The problem, he thinks, is the age. Had they been older and it not been the ‘first’, the possibility of it being any of the ridiculous antics that they’ve come up with would be reduced significantly. But Phil remembers his childhood, and his renegade imagination, and sees a similar one even now echoing in Dan. He remembers, at the very least, believing in the power of wishes with every inch of his being. Any wish he’d made at that age would have been ‘true’ by anyone’s standards, regardless of how meaningless it seems now, decades later.

Phil thinks miserably, while googling ‘How to Juggle’ on WikiHow, that it could honestly very well be any of these things. They’re the type of wishes he’d have made, and his belief in wishes and magic may not be now, but back then, it was as true as it could be.

::

Phil has his doubts, but Dan, at the very least seems to think there’s some hope in adopting a cat.

“I always wanted one as a kid,” he explains. “Like, for a ridiculously long time. We had a dog which was why we never could but that never deterred me. I’m pretty sure it was at least five of my childhood birthday wishes, easily. All my mum talked about on the phone was my obsession with owning a bloody cat. It’d make sense.”

“I guess so,” Phil agrees, though he’s really not feeling very high in confidence. He feels like they’re taking very blind leaps of faith, and it passes the time, sure, makes him feel like they’re doing something when they’d have otherwise felt helpless, but he can’t help feel that it’s being wasted. “What would a cat have to do with coming here, though?”

Dan almost glares at Phil for that, silently reprimanding his negativity before he gives him an idle shrug in response. “I can’t have a cat back home, can I?” he asks. “Couldn’t growing up, and my apartment doesn’t allow pets.”

“I’m pretty sure that rule still stands here, you know,” Phil points out. He figures that maybe he should point out the illegality of Dan’s actions, in regards to adopting a cat into a building that clearly states ‘NO PETS ALLOWED’, but fuck it. It’s fairly low on his list of priorities right now.

“That’s the thing though,” Dan says. “Does it stand? Probably not, considering this entire world isn’t even real.”

Admittedly, Phil doesn’t have an answer, or an argument against that.

Honestly he wouldn’t be surprised if a pretty big percentage of Dan’s hope and confidence was actually supplemented desperation. Dan’s bad at acknowledging his feelings, worse still at talking about them, but Phil knows that the past few days have been getting under his skin, the threat of disappearance most of all. It’s really freaked him out, made him more desperate than ever for a way out. Phil knows that he’s studied the book from end to end at least three times now, analysing every last detail down to the smallest tears in the pages, but to no avail. If there’s an alternative, or if they’ve got their escape plan wrong, there is no sign of it in the book and they have no clue where else to even begin searching.

He’s noticed Dan’s growing frustration over the past few days, too. Neither of them have any idea how, once the reversal motion is begun, it will even work. Whether the world will go up in bright lights or whether they’ll wake up in a rewritten world, neither of them have the slightest clue, and so every moment is spent in waiting, in anticipation. And when nothing happens, Phil catches the glimpses of frustration and anger that builds and boils within him, sees it in slights, the way he grits his teeth and rakes his fingers through his already-messy hair and stays almost soundless while Phil tries to fill in the blanks with reassuring words. Not that Dan listens, anyway. Every failure leads him to grow even more irate, distanced. It’s tiring.

This morning, however, Dan seems bright with new hope. If adopting a cat can solve all of their problems now, Phil will be damned, but he supposes people will believe anything when they’re in a state of hopelessness.

It’s a cute cat at least, and the trip down to the animal shelter seems to ease some of the tension off of Dan’s shoulders and from between the two of them, where frustration has built and began to erode the easiness away like rough waves against white cliffs. It’s a nice distraction from the urgency of their lives these days, from awkward silences and sharp anger and cutting anxiety. Phil spends most of the time sneezing, but then, that’s nothing new.

Dan takes home a small cat with a dodgy eye and names it ‘Thor’. The look on his face is so bright and happy, a plastered grin that lights up his eyes, too, as he cuddles it to his chest and lets it purr against him, stroking over his back and raising the pitch of his voice in a way that is half cute, half hilarious. Dan flips him off, but quickly returns his attention to the cat.

Forget wishes, Phil thinks, the image striking his tired mind as fairly bizarre at this point, sitting in comparison with the rest of the world, the rest of the feelings that have struck him lately. This place feels like a dream land.

:;

Dan spends the remainder of the day with the cat.

With, actually, might not be the best word to describe Dan’s chosen course of action for the afternoon. After smuggling the cat into the building, Dan sits Thor down inside of his new home and waits. And observes. That’s the best way to describe it. He sits down, on the carpet, and watches for hours with a straight face, as if he really believes this has half a chance of working.

Phil at this point more or less gives up on the entire plan, and takes to once more studying the spell book - mostly out of sheer helplessness - for any alternative option. He’s tired of wasting time, restlessness building inside of his body, growing underneath his skin and clawing up through his throat. He feels like he can’t sit still, he keeps twitching, wanting to pace up and down the flights of stairs outside or around the long lengths of pavements through the town. Moving would be better than just sitting here. Anything has got to be better than nothing.

And still, all Dan does is watch the bloody cat.

As it turns out, Thor is actually an exceptionally lazy cat. He sprawls himself out over Dan’s living room rug and lies there for almost two hours. Dan tries to play with him, taunting him playfully and teasing him with little feather-end toys and string, cooing and calling out to him all the while, the way he says that he so dreamed of doing back when he was a little kid - doing what he would have done, had his birthday wishes all those years ago come true.

But nothing happens - sparks don’t fly and magic doesn’t fizzle up in the air like fireworks, buildings don’t move, skies don’t split. The world stays very much in place, and in turn, so does Thor.

“Why won’t it do something?” Dan complains, scratching the back of his neck irritably.

Phil’s own neck is starting to strain from leaning forwards so much to read, and he fights the urge to snap at him out of frustration.

“It’s a cat,” he says calmly. “They don’t do much.”

“Nothing is happening,” Dan echoes, shaking his head. “How is anything meant to happen if this cat just lies there like fucking Snow White?”

“Sleeping Beauty,” Phil corrects. Dan doesn’t respond.

“It’s not working,” he says.

“Dan-”

“Nothings working,” Dan says. His voice is flat, and Phil wants to disagree, but he can’t, really. The cat idea may have been on the side of ridiculous, but everything they’ve tried both within the realm of reason and beyond has proved futile, and they’re running out of ideas.

Phil thinks of the list of wish possibilities, and imagines crossing another one off of the list.

Dan’s knuckles are white with frustration. Thor is still sleeping. Phil thinks, tiredly, they should probably find him a new home.

::

The atmosphere in Dan’s flat that night is dismal.

They’ve ended up spending the majority of their evenings together as of late. It’s nicer to be close to someone else, to feel less alone. Phil can say whatever he wants to Dan, about the world, or the spellbook, or his hopes and fears. But he can also make bad jokes and puns and watch him roll his eyes with a half-smile. That’s what he likes about it: that he can say anything, unlike when he shares a phone call with his mum and watches his words and stumbles over his tongue because she’s living in some kind of oblivion. The nights with Dan are usually good, a way to ease the anxiety that otherwise overtakes. Lately, it’s been harder, with tension seeping in between the cracks whenever they have to tick another title off the list, but tonight is a step further even from that.

Dan’s been off all evening, downcast and quiet, barely talking to the point where Phil doesn’t really know why he stays other than the fact that he doesn’t want to go home, and doesn’t really want to leave Dan alone like this. Phil does attempt conversation a good few times, tries to elicit a smile from Dan but to no avail. In fairness, Dan doesn’t ignore him; he replies in conversation and responds with something akin to a half-smile, but it’s clear his focus is not on Phil, nor whatever topic they’re on. He’s only half there, giving half-hearted responses, but still staring into space, a frown tugging at his features, his knuckles white.

Phil worries, but he isn’t really sure what he can do. Dan clearly doesn’t want to talk. There doesn’t seem to be much point in bothering him further.

So he makes do with what he has. He stays, awkwardly pottering around this place, comfortable but acutely aware that this is not his home and these aren’t his things. He makes food that Dan doesn’t eat and does the washing and doesn’t know where to put the clean crockery. There was nothing in the Dan Howell storybooks about which cupboard is for plates and which is for glasses, and Phil thinks it odd, absently, that at least in his head he is still comparing Dan in everything he does to his fictional counterpart. They’re one character, but two entirely different people, he thinks. And in some ways I don’t know him at all.

After that, he talks less to Dan, and focuses more on the book, on the wishes, and on a blank sheet of paper intended to list ideas but which remains blank. Phil chews at the end of his pencil, and the expanse of empty white space makes him feel agoraphobic, in some ways.

The tension builds all night, but slowly, subtly. It slips in between the gaps in conversation, and festers in the silences where Phil sits and shifts and doesn’t know what to do. It grows when Dan is tapping his fingers agitatedly against the arm of the sofa, and as the clock ticking seems to echo. It’s like a hidden bomb in an action film but before the protagonists are aware of its presence. It creeps unexpected, and Phil waits like a sitting duck.

At nine o’clock, unable to cope with the strung out silences anymore, and with eyelids heavy, Phil gathers his things and prepares to leave.

Dan barely seems to notice when Phil announces his departure, looking up as if he’s only just begun to listen when Phil coughs awkwardly and says, “Goodnight, then.”

“Oh,” he says. “Right. Sorry. Bye, Phil.”

“Bye,” Phil repeats. He hesitates, takes in the slump of Dan’s shoulders, and the worn look of dejection etched upon his face. He feels guilt claw at his heart, and he’s not really sure why. There’s a sense of helplessness about the whole situation, when he knows how Dan is taking this disappointment and fear and yet there’s nothing he can do for him.

With sympathy clawing at his throat and his fingers itching to reach out and take Dan’s hands and tell him it’ll be okay, Phil musters up his best supportive smile, fills his voice with tones of hope and says, “Don’t worry, Dan,” as soothingly as possible, carrying on when the other looks up, “we’ll think of something. There are a few more options on the list, right? And after that we can look into other ideas - ”

“What other ideas?” Dan asks sharply, cutting Phil short and smacking the smile straight off of his face. The edge to his tone cuts, and Phil stares at him in surprise, blinking in confusion as Dan draws blood. “God, that - you piss me off so fucking much when you pull this shit, you know that? You’re being all happy and positive and stupid as if there’s anything to fucking smile about. We’re fucked, Phil, I don’t know why you won’t bloody acknowledge that instead of trying to play the agony aunt.”

Phil stares at him. He doesn’t say anything for a moment, nor does he feel anything. And then he does. It comes slowly, this white hot anger that seems to bleed into his body, starting small and flooding through as if to taint every part of him until all he can see is red, and all that he feels is this simmering rage, like boiled water that hisses and burns, and he stares at Dan, and he’s furious.

“Fuck you,” he bites out. The words don’t feel like enough - they certainly don’t verbalise what he’s feeling right now, not even close, but they’ll have to do. “Fuck you Dan. Are you really going to stand here and tell me to stop being hopeful about this when me being hopeful is the only thing that’s holding you together right now? What, would you rather I give up and do nothing and be as miserable and useless as you’ve been tonight?”

Dan, to his credit, barely even reacts to Phil’s words. At least not visibly. Phil knows that he feels it and he knows in the morning he’ll have guilt stuck to his insides like tar but right now he doesn’t care. All he wants is to pass on this anger, to push it aside and onto someone else, to cut Dan like his own words cut and to make him share a fragment of the frustration that’s been clotting in Phil’s blood and catching underneath his fingernails and poisoning his mood for the past week. It’s not fair that Phil has to feel it all, especially when so often his irritation is caused by Dan, and his attitude, and the way he shuts down. It isn’t fair that Phil’s had to take Dan under his wing and help him when Dan won’t return the favour. It’s not fair that Phil has to feel it all alone. It sounds awful, but there’s a part of him that just wants Dan to feel it too.

And so Dan flinches at Phil’s first words, almost recoiling like he’s been hit at the bite in his voice and the harshness of his speech, but his face hardens into steel and he stands, stoic, arms folded in defence. Obvious hurt flickers in his eyes but he stands like a statue, as if he refuses to feel it, and Phil hates it. He hates Dan in this moment, knows it won’t last but right now he hates him, and what he said, and the way he stands there and listens and doesn’t feel any guilt for the unfair words that’d spilled from his lips.

“I may have been miserable,” Dan replies, voice hard and flat. “But I’ve been about as much of use as you have, Phil. You may have tried shit tonight but what do you have to show for it? Absolutely nothing. You preach all of this positivity and hope but you’ve got no idea how to get us out of here. The word useless fits your description far better than mine - ”

“You’re such a prick!” Phil yells, fury turning his knuckles white, his throat dry. “Why do you have to be such an unfair arsehole?”

“I just want you to stop pretending that everything is alright. It isn’t fucking alright, Phil, pretending that it is won’t make it all better, it just distracts from the seriousness of the situation - ”

“I was trying to make you feel better!”

“Well I didn’t fucking ask you to!” Dan near screams, voice cracking in frustration. “You’re not my mum, Phil, or my caretaker, or my babysitter, I didn’t ask you to do shit for me.”

“I know you didn’t. I did it because I wanted to. Because I-”

“Because you what?” Dan sneers. “Feel bad for making the stupid wish in the first place?”

“Don’t you dare pin this on me,” Phil snaps, voice seething. “You made a wish too. I know you did. We said - the book-”

“I know I made a wish,” Dan retorts. “So it’s my fault, too. But that doesn’t mean you’re free of blame. So you can stop acting like good Saint Phil and you can take a break from your hero complex. People are going missing and we don’t know if they’ll ever come back. We can’t fix it, and to top it off, it’s all our fault.”

“It’s not our fault.”

“That might help you sleep at night, but it still isn’t true.”

“God,” Phil shakes his head, near ready to claw all of his hair out, fists clenched and teeth grit. He feels so much anger, so much hate. Enough to fill the pages of all of the books at the atheneum. Nothing is fair, none of this is fair. Dan isn’t fair. “Do you get off on this or something? On being some whiny, angsty little kid who can’t say anything that isn’t self-depreciating and can’t function without playing the victim? Can you not do one thing without resorting back to the mindset of a five year old? I’ve been trying so hard to sort all of this out, to resolve it or at least make it better somehow, and all you can do is turn over and play the victim like some kind of baby when your first idea doesn’t work out. When there isn’t an immediate solution, all you can do is turn over and die. Well fuck you, Dan, fuck you and your mindset. I don’t need it, or you, and I don’t want to deal with it or you or anything to do with your childlike brain function anymore.”

The words keep spilling out of his mouth long after he intends to finish the sentence. He doesn’t even know what he’s saying, feels like he’s throwing knives blindly, and every word cuts himself as much as it might Dan. The armour he wears upon his emotions takes the wear, too. Phil sees him wincing, watches the hurt flash upon his face and rest upon his features, but he can’t seem to stop, as if he isn’t really there.

Until he is, and the words stop, and he stops. Dan stares at him, eyes big and wide and hurt and Phil feels like he’s looking at them from a third party perspective, as if the room is covered in blood stains and broken steel swords, and the two of them are covered head to toe in battle scars. Immediately, he feels sick.

He thinks, this isn’t me.

But underneath the regret and the instantaneous guilt and the sickness that curls in his stomach at the look on Dan’s face, Dan’s own words still cut deep. Phil feels the ache of wounds that reach way beneath the surface, and anger still bubbles beneath his skin, frustration crawling like insects along his insides.

Phil doesn’t say anything. He turns around, and walks away. The door clicks shut behind him, and even the air outside in the street, crisp with the chill of mid-November, feels hot and stifling. Phil supposes it makes sense: even out in the open air, the free city space, underneath the colours of the sky, they’re still trapped.

::

Phil goes home, but it doesn’t feel that way. His flat is too quiet and too empty, feels too large and expansive when he’s devoid of company, even though he’s lived alone for years now. He’s not entirely sure how that works, but the presence of Dan is somehow missed in a place where he didn’t belong in the first place.

The night draws on, later and later, and Phil feels wide awake despite the fatigue and exhaustion that’s been weighing him down during the day as of late. It’s not unusual for him to be alone at this hour. He and Dan rarely spend the night together, he should be used both in his normal world and this new life he is living to being alone right now, to being without him. It’s not so much the physical presence that he feels an absence of, maybe, but the thought of having someone there. For the first time since he first woke up, he feels truly alone.

::

It’s gone midnight, Phil half falling asleep against his will on the sofa (he doesn’t like to go to bed angry, so he avoided it altogether) when his phone buzzes and lights up, washing the room in shadows as the screen glows a bright white. Phil almost loses his balance and falls onto the floor as he reaches to pick up his phone, and then repeats the motion when he reads the words lit up on the screen.

Dan | 00:53
are you awake

Phil unlocks the phone and goes to type out a reply instinctively, the idea of the silent treatment or waiting until morning not even occurring to him. But before he can even finish typing out a short reply, the typing icon appears on the screen, and a new message is popping up from the same contact.

Dan | 00:53
i’m really sorry

Dan | 00:54
also this sounds really creepy i’m sorry again but i’m outside

Dan | 00:54
can i come in please i want to speak to you

Phil doesn’t bother replying. Instead, he stands up, almost trips over his own feet and fumbles for the key to unlock his apartment and step outside. He tries his best to stay quiet, padding down the hallway while at the same time moving faster than is probably necessary, half-hopping down the stairs to reach the building door and let Dan in.

He opens it wide, and immediately the cold air rushes in and Phil regrets only wearing a t-shirt instantly. Dan’s had the same issue of not planning ahead though, his arms bare and littered in goosebumps, his arms folded in a self-hugging motion to warm himself. He looks surprised when the door opens, white light washing down over him, illuminating his face and the deer caught in headlights expression etched onto his features.

“Phil,” he says. “I didn’t know if you were awake.”

“It’s a good thing I am,” Phil replies. “You probably should have checked that before coming over here.”

“Probably,” Dan agrees, tiredly. His teeth are chattering.

“You’re freezing,” Phil says. “Come on, come inside.”

Dan doesn’t argue, allowing Phil to usher him in through the door, up the stairs and into the warmth of Phil’s apartment, Phil himself squinting when he haphazardly reaches for the light switch so that he can finally see Dan properly, though it takes his eyes a minute to adjust to the brightness.

“Thanks for letting me in,” Dan says. His voice is soft, and oddly formal, like he doesn’t know quite what to say. It’s warm, but his arms are still folded, defensive, like he’s unsure of what to do next, or wading into unfamiliar waters. Phil feels the same.

“Of course I let you in,” Phil tells him. “I’d never shut you out.”

“I was worried you would,” Dan admits. “I was worried you hate me.”

Phil shakes his head. “I could never,” he promises, and it’s true, in spite his thoughts during the initial argument. Dan frustrates him, yes, made him angry, made him feel something akin to hatred in a second, when the entire world burned red - but that was just feeling, in the moment. Temporary. Like flames that burn to a pile of ash and soft clouds of smoke, but the heat has ebbed away. He could never hate Dan, and he’s not sure why, because he doesn’t know him well, not really. But he couldn’t.

“Well, good,” Dan says, and he tries for a small smile. “I’m sorry I was such a prick.”

“Dan-”

“No, let me finish. I was an asshole. I was like - the biggest twat ever and you didn’t deserve that at all. I was childish and immature and pitiful, everything you said was right. I was playing the victim and being pathetic and I wasn’t helping. And I’ve realised that now, and I’m so sorry. And I’m even more sorry for taking my frustration out on you. You were trying to help, to make things better when I just wanted to sulk like a little kid, and I’m really, really sorry.”

“Are you done beating yourself up yet?” Phil asks weakly.

“No, but I’ll take a break if you want me to.”

“Please.”

“Okay. I’m still sorry though.”

“Apology accepted,” Phil tells him. “And I’m sorry too.”

“Don’t be,” Dan starts, but Phil immediately cuts him off.

“No,” Phil says firmly. “I know you’re all set to demonise yourself and act as if you’re the worst man in the world, but you aren’t. You acted shitty, and I didn’t deserve what you said, and I was so angry with you. But you didn’t deserve the things I said either. You freaked out, and I shouldn’t have responded to that in the way I did. I let you down.”

“You really didn’t.”

“I’m still sorry. You can’t stop me from being sorry.”

Dan rolls his eyes. “God, fine,” he mutters. “Apology accepted.”

“Good,” Phil says, and he can’t help the smile that spills onto his face, big and wide and bright, his eyes probably shining something ridiculous. Dan just grins in return though, relief evident in his face and the way that his muscles immediately relax, the tension and nerves ebbing away.

“Fuck it, come here,” Dan says, and he leans in and envelops Phil in a hug. Dan isn’t the most tactile person - they’ve spoken about this before. He’s awkward with physical contact a lot and he never really knows how much of himself to give. But here, and now, when he pulls Phil close to him into an embrace, he gives all of himself, hugging him tight as if he’s holding him together, as if he never wants to let go.

It’s nice. Dan is warm, and he holds Phil tight, and he buries his head into Phil’s shoulder, and being this close to him feels better than it should be. Phil doesn’t really want to let go, and when he does, he misses the touch instantly.

“Thank you,” Dan mumbles, and Phil just smiles.

They sit together on the sofa, knees up and touching, melting back into the big, soft cushions, and it feels good, like Phil is resting for the first time in a really long while. There are a thousand worries in his head, still, but currently they’re faded, pushed down, at least for now, with the relief of having Dan’s friendship safe and not lost in bitter words and anger falling over him like sunbeams. It chases away the shadowy thoughts and problems, and they’ll rise again at dusk, he knows this, but that’s okay. It’s now that matters.

They don’t talk about the book. They don’t talk about the world, and the people disappearing, or the athenaeum. They are problems for the morning, and right now, they are still bathed in moonlight, and dawn is hidden away.

“I’m really glad I met you,” Dan says, suddenly. He breaks the prior conversation, a soft and slow lull, something about old cartoons or maybe horror novels or action films or rock bands. But whatever it is, Dan breaks it, and Phil turns to look at him, inquisitively, and he swears he sees pink dusting along his cheeks.

But Dan keeps speaking and his voice is softer than usual tonight. And Phil just listens.

“I always wanted to, when I was younger, you know?” he continues. “Like, when I was thirteen, fourteen maybe - I completely immersed myself in your books. The ones about you. They were all I read. I had every single one. Queued outside the bookshop for the first release of the latest one, I won’t even lie. I absolutely loved them. I still do. I still have every single one.”

“Really?” Phil asks. Because he hadn’t expected that. He knew Dan liked the books, knew he’d read and owned them, but not that he loved them so dearly. He’d never guessed that.

“Yeah,” Dan laughs a little bit. “It’s pretty sad to be honest. I’d read them on the bus, at school, everywhere,” he pauses. “I went through this rough time a few years back. Things were bad for a while. I was really… unhappy, I guess, and lonely, and things just sucked at school and at home and - you get the picture. And those books, they helped. They distracted me and made me feel less alone, I’d completely lose myself in them, in this world with you, it was like I was there.”

“I’m glad that they did,” Phil says, quietly, and Dan gives him a shy smile.

“I wanted to meet you so badly,” Dan admits. “I wanted to go on adventures with you and solve mysteries and be like, your sidekick or something. Be your friend. You were so cool.”

“Were?” Phil sniffs. “Excuse me.”

Dan laughs. “Okay, are,” he says, rolling his eyes. “And I know you aren’t the guy from the books explicitly. You’re - different, though you’re the same in so many ways. But I’m so grateful that I got to meet you, both as my favourite ever book character, and as you, a real person. You’re both great. You’re almost as cool as him,” he pauses, and then adds with a smirk, “almost.”

Phil laughs too, and elbows him in the ribs.

“Rude,” he says. “I was like that with Dan, you know. The storybook character. I idolised him as a kid, followed all of his tips and tricks, wanted to leave my entire life like you - like him,” he pauses. “I’m glad I met you too. Both as my childhood hero, and as my best friend.”

At his words, Dan’s eyes light up.

“I never had a best friend before,” he says quietly. “That’s why I loved your books so much, I think. It felt like you - like he, Detective Lester, was my best friend. And now you are. That’s so cool.”

“It’s pretty nice, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Dan doesn’t say anything for a moment. “God, it’s still surreal. I know you’re not him, but you are at the same time, and not just because everything is the same. You’re so much like him in your personality. I think it’s why you like him so much. Everything I liked about him, I see in you. And that’s - it’s so cool, that I got to meet you, and to actually be friends with you. I used to wish for it so much. I wished that I could meet you, be friends with you, be your sidekick and your partner. I wanted to solve mysteries with you so badly.”

“Me too,” Phil confesses. “Well, it’s not the same, I guess. But it’s similar. I used to wish desperately that I could meet you one day. To go on adventures with you. I thought it’d be the best thing in the world.” Silently, he adds, it is the best thing in the world.

Dan smiles at him, and they’re both quiet for a moment, the words sinking in. The atmosphere is heavy and slow, but for once, it isn’t weighted. It’s light, and it’s nice, and it feels good. Everything feels soft and nice and okay, finally. For once, things feel okay.

And then Phil hears Dan’s words echoing inside of his head again: I used to wish for it so much. I wished that I could meet you. And it clicks.

It clicks so clearly and obviously that Phil sits up straight, moving so fast that he almost knocks over his hot chocolate, as he sits up and stares at Dan, his mouth hanging open, unable to even form words. He just sits and gapes at him, as the world goes to white noise and his brain falters, no words able to make it to his mouth.

“Phil?” Dan asks, confused, but then a moment later, Phil watches as something clicks in Dan’s head, too, as the dots are connected and everything makes sense. His dark eyes widen and his mouth slides open and he stares, incredulous, the two of them in a stunned, stuttered silence.

“Oh my God, Phil,” Dan says, the first to break the silence, as Phil’s mind keeps running itself into overdrive. “Jesus Christ. Fuck.”

“Dan,” Phil says, intelligently. “Dan. Oh my God.”

“I know,” Dan says, his eyes still wide as moon pools. He reaches up and scratches his neck, looks like he doesn’t even know what to do. “This means - this is it isn’t it? It has to be.”

“It’s the last piece,” Phil mutters. “It has to be. These had to have been the wishes.”

“They were,” Dan mumbles. He flinches, as if his head hurts, reaches up to touch it, looks at Phil like he’s remembering, a dazed expression on his face. “I remember. I couldn’t before. Maybe I wasn’t thinking. I thought it would have had to be a wish when I was a kid, right? But it didn’t. It’s just the first wish you really meant. And I remember - I was like thirteen, maybe, and I remember I’d had a bad day, and I felt like shit and everything was awful and I read the latest of your books to make myself feel better and I remember I saw the first star, and we didn’t see them a lot where I lived, because of pollution, but there was one in the sky and I wished I could solve a mystery with you.”

“A mystery?” Phil asks. His eyes are wide, almost watering from gazing so hard at Dan, trying to piece everything together and make sense of the influx of information he has just received. His mind doesn’t seem to work coherently, it flits from thought to thought in a random order, abandoning the prior until whatever dot-to-dot piece he tried to map becomes a web of tangled black lines. “Is that - like -” he fumbles for the right words, fights to stay on track. “Like we need to go out and solve a crime?”

“No, no,” Dan shakes his head violently. “Don’t you get it? We’ve already solved it. This was the mystery. Figuring out where we are and how and why and how to get home - this was the missing piece, the why, and remembering that has fixed it all, connected the dots. We solved the mystery. We’ve done it. I can feel it.”

Phil can’t help but be a little skeptical of that, perhaps at the wildness of his expression or the way that he talks so surely with words that sound like utter madness. He can’t help but wonder - is Dan sure? And what happens if he isn’t, and it isn’t, and he crashes again, this time even further?

He’s thinking this when he himself remembers.

Phil thinks his own actions must mimic those of Dan, just moments before. His eyes snap shut, suddenly, as the world feels white hot for a split second, and there’s a ringing in his ears, just for a moment. And then there’s a dull ache in his head and he remembers, remembers that night, that birthday, he’d just been a little kid with buttercream icing staining his lips and the sky lit up with stars, his mother’s comforting words, and the best friend that lived on paper. His head throbs, and he remembers.

I wish that I could go on an adventure with Dan Howell.

“Phil?” Dan’s voice breaks the spell, pulls him out of the trance he’s under, of fading memories and the pale colours of the past. But the memory resonates in his head, clear as day, and he remembers.

“I wished I could go on an adventure with you,” he blurts out, voice raspy, his mouth suddenly dry like he hasn’t touched water in a week. “That’s what I wished for. I was little - six, I think - it was my birthday, and I screwed it up, and - that’s what I wished for. I wished I could go on an adventure with you, and I did.”

Dan gapes at him, and the words fall out of his lips at alarming speed, incoherent, falling over each other. “You - so that - this was?”

“Yeah,” Phil nods, because he gets it. “This was it. And we did it. I did - I went on an adventure with you. This was - I came here. And met you, and we figured out your mystery and the people going missing, that’s a part of it, we had to figure it out to save them, and to get home, that was the adventure - and we’ve done it.”

“You can feel it, can’t you?” Dan prompts, and Phil nods again enthusiastically. Because he can. It’s a feeling that’s hard to explain, one that lurks underneath skin, this knowing, an instinct that lies deep and settles the stomach. Phil remembers this in the athenaeum; the same knowing, the same instinct that told him where to go and where to look. This time, it tells him that he doesn’t need to look anymore.

“I can,” Phil confirms. He feels lighthearted, disbelieving. Like dream dust has come down and filled his throat and touched his skin and disappeared into his blood and the world isn’t real anymore.

“We did it, Phil,” Dan says. His voice is full of all the wonder in the world. Phil can hear his own feelings in the way that he speaks every word. “We did it. We figured it out. We’ve done it.”

“We have,” Phil says. “Jesus Christ, this feels surreal.”

“I know,” Dan laughs. “I can’t believe it. After all this time. It was that simple.”

“I can’t believe we didn’t figure it out. It just - it never even occurred to me. It probably should have. What does that say about us?”

“That we’re as slow as each other?” Dan offers. “I don’t know. Maybe it wasn’t obvious because it seemed like it should have been. We had other things on our minds.”

“Maybe we’re just not very good at this,” Phil suggests, and Dan laughs again.

“Probably,” he says. “God. I feel so - light? Do you have that? Like. Everything is going to be okay. Everything is going to go back to normal, and everyone will be okay, and things won’t be all strange and messed up anymore.”

Phil does feel it. He knows exactly what Dan means, how it feels to have the weight of the world breaking your bones and pushing down upon you for months on end. To suddenly have it removed, to feel the relief, and the hope, to see the light at the end of the tunnel, it feels like something akin to Heaven. Like he’s seeing the world in brighter colours now, in spite of the dim gold of twilight. Like he can breathe easily, without a crushing weight upon his lungs. Like he can put his hands out in the air and maybe touch the sky, because there’s nothing holding them down, sealing them shut in a world that isn’t right.

Phil thinks about the mundaneness of his boring job, of the library, of grey slate and pavements and day-after-day same old schedules. He thinks of morning routines and early nights and finding the right bus fare in the mornings. And he smiles.

Once, Phil had wished for action, and craved excitement and a break from the same old repetition of day to day life. Doubtlessly he’ll crave it again when months have passed and he settles back into the same old life he used to detest. But right now, in this moment, it sounds like the best thing ever.

Back to normal, he thinks. Everything will go back to normal.

And then, like before, it clicks.

Normalcy is good. It is. Phil misses his everyday life and his usual world, he misses his routines and his schedules and his usual way of living. But there’s a catch, isn’t there, one that hits him suddenly, another dot joined up to form a pattern and a picture that Phil really doesn’t want to see, an unwelcome reminder. Because normalcy has a lot of things, it has safety and security and the world moving the way it’s supposed to - but it doesn’t have Dan.

Normal life, his old life, the real world - it doesn’t have Dan. At least, not aside from a boy between book pages, living different lives every day.

The thought hits him, and promptly drags him down, slowing the world so that it blurs into something sad, and he watches Dan, and the way that he talks animatedly and excitedly with happiness shining on his face, but he doesn’t hear a word he says.

You’re my best friend, he hears Dan say inside of his head, and it hurts, aches, cuts deeper than any of the cruel words the two had exchanged in the heat of the moment. This hurts like a slow burn, a dull drag that moves across his body until he feels it everywhere. He’s never going to see Dan again. Dan only exists in a mismatched world of childhood dreams and forgotten wishes. He doesn’t belong in Phil’s world, not his real one, at least. In the real world, he remains banished to the pages, a childhood hero, a birthday wish, but not a real person.

Dan is still talking, but his words seem to slow until they trail off into quiet and concern as he registers the look on Phil’s face, the way that he stares ahead, horror written on his face, probably. Phil isn’t very good at hiding his feelings. Not when they’re red and raw and scathing.

“Phil?” Dan asks, voice uncertain now. He’s lost the animation from before, the bite of feeling and technicolour. This makes Phil think of how he’s fading, and that soon, he won’t be here at all. “What’s wrong?”

Phil shakes his head, not wanting to say anything, but of course Dan won’t take his reluctance for an answer and repeats his name, says it again, frustrated, worry evident in each syllable until he demands, “What’s wrong? Tell me!”

“We don’t have long left,” Phil says. His voice is flat, but soft, and he almost winces as he watches the realisation unfold on Dan’s face. He’s an open book, and his expression announces every last little thing which he feels. He’s easily read, and Phil is better than most.

The hurt on his face cuts deeper than most swords, and stings sharper than poison, Phil’s sure.

“Oh,” Dan breathes out, and Phil hears a thousand things in one little noise. Dan doesn’t say anything for a moment. He just sits there, and he takes it in, and Phil kind of wants to cry. And then the words come back, and Dan utters out a sharp, “fuck,” and once again, Phil hears everything he feels.

“I know,” Phil says, quietly. “I’d never thought of that.”

“Me neither,” Dan mumbles. “It never occurred to me that going home means leaving you.”

It hadn’t to Phil, either. It seems strange to him now, in hindsight, that he’d never made this connection. He and Dan had had a hundred conversations about leaving and going home and returning the world to normal, but at least to his memory, never one about saying goodbye.

“Maybe it won’t work like that,” Phil says. But he know it will.

“Maybe,” Dan says. He pauses. “You know, we’ve spent all our time here trying to leave. And now that we can, I can’t help but feel like maybe it isn’t so bad.”

“I know,” Phil agrees. “I miss the normalcy of it, and I miss things being boring and usual. But I won’t when I get home. When I get home, I’ll miss this.”

“I’ll miss you,” Dan says. “Most of all. You’re so important to me, Phil. You’re the first best friend I’ve ever had.”

“Don’t,” Phil begs, and Dan stops speaking, but the words hang in the air and Phil feels them, too. He knows exactly what Dan means because the same thoughts are running riot in his head. He’s had friends before. Good friends, best friends - but he’s never had a friend like Dan, and he doesn’t suppose that he ever will again.

“We have to go home,” Dan says, voicing what they were both speaking after a few moments of utter quiet. “That’s what this was all about. Getting home.”

“People will keep disappearing,” Phil confirms, with a nod of his head. “And there are things we both miss. I just…”

“I know,” Dan says. And Phil doesn’t disagree. Because he probably does.

“I never thought we’d want to stay,” Phil admits. “Especially not with all of the time we’ve spent on escaping, but-”

“It’s not that I want to stay,” Dan says. “Because I don’t. Everything is weird and unfamiliar, and I don’t like it. That hasn’t changed. I just don’t want to leave you. You’re the only thing I like here. And you’d be worth staying for. But we both know that we can’t.”

“We can’t,” Phil nods. The silence stretches out between them, and leaves a hollow feeling in Phil’s chest. The minutes pass, and Phil can feel the warmth of Dan’s body against his own, and he thinks about how soon, all of this will be gone.

But there’s no point dwelling on that, and he realises this moments later, when all that there is is quiet and Dan and the two of them here together, stuck in this strange little world for just a bit longer. It’s their story, and they don’t get to choose the ending, but maybe they do get to write it.

There’s no point in sitting here, moping, sad. Phil feels that image of an hourglass again, sees the sand grains falling down the rabbit hole, faster than ever. And he makes a decision.

“I don’t know what we need to do to get home,” Phil says, clearing his throat and breaking the silence. Dan looks up at him, curiously, and Phil continues. “I’d imagine we need to look over the book again - our best bet is the athenaeum. It seems to be the foundation for this world, so I’m guessing we need to go there. So let’s do that tomorrow.”

“Yeah?” Dan asks, eyebrow raised, and Phil nods.

“Yeah,” he echoes. “But for now - let’s not think about it. We can figure out how to go home and deal with leaving and feel sad and say our goodbyes in the morning. But for now, let’s not waste our time together. Let’s not dwell on it. Let’s just forget it, and be together, and be happy.”

“Be happy,” Dan repeats. He’s quiet for a moment, and then a smile breaks out onto his face, and something about it makes Phil’s heart ache but in the best way possible. “I like the sound of that.”

He soon learns that it feels even better than it sounds.

::

The night so far has been all kinds of extraordinary, like real life has been surged through a dream filter and the results have been shown on the other side. The rest of it, however, the run to the onset of dawn is beautifully normal, at least for them.

Phil tries to push any ideas and any thoughts and any worries about leaving and saying goodbye and losing Dan to the back of his mind. For once, it works - at least mostly. It lurks there, at the back, creeps forward a couple of times. It’s a lucky thing that Dan’s laugh is so distracting.

They finally have a game of Mario Kart and put each other to the real test. It’s difficult, doing so at this time of night, when Dan wants to shout but Phil has neighbours. He muffles his groans of frustration and yells of triumph into one of the sofa cushions instead, and Phil rolls his eyes when Dan does it yet has no shame when it’s time for his own defeat or celebration. Dan calls him a hypocrite. Phil tells him he’s a sore loser. It’s hardly a lie.

They watch the first episode of Death Note, because Dan’s never seen it and Phil honestly finds that insulting.

“I never thought you’d be one of those people,” Dan says.

Phil looks up at him, confused. “What do you mean, those people?”

“The ones who make comments about everything that happens in a show or a film,” Dan says, flicking a chip at him (kettle chips are apparently the only thing residing at the bottom of Phil’s freezer). “Shut the fuck up.”

(Phil doesn’t.)

It turns out that Dan plays the piano. This is something that Phil has never known about him, that differs to the facts of which he knows about him through reading his stories. It’s something he feels like he should know. That maybe he would, had they met under different circumstances, and henceforth spent time together in different places.

A lot of things might be different, had they met under different circumstances. Phil thinks about this vaguely quite a lot. But especially tonight. He wonders, what if, but of course he doesn’t get any answers.

Dan talks about his piano playing, though. He can’t demonstrate any of it to Phil, because his keyboard is at home and he can’t play it at night anyway or his neighbours will quite literally murder him - but he promises that he will someday. They make a lot of plans for ‘someday’, ‘some time’, ‘soon’. They make a mental list of films to write, of places around Dolchester they need to go. Dan promises to learn some of Phil’s favourite songs on the piano, and every time he says one of these words - ‘soon’, ‘some day’, ‘sometime’, Phil feels something heavy pull on his heartstrings and refuse to settle in his chest. There’s this sharp, distinct sadness that he feels far more acutely than he’d ever like to admit. He pretends he doesn’t, and Dan does, too, but Phil is fairly sure that it’s something they both feel.

And late night TV sucks, but it’s better with a friend. They flick through the TV channels, watching ten minute sequences of soap opera reruns and old, bad horror movies, request music channels and teleshopping, mocking the poor acting and making sarcastic comments and new inside jokes until Phil’s sides are hurting laughing and he’s a bit scared they’re going to wake the neighbours.

The entire time, they’re absently moving closer together, as they laugh and watch and commentate, and share jokes and comments and lean closer to hear each other, until they’re pressed up close, accidentally, bodies touching. It’s not uncomfortable though, nor is it awkward. Subconsciously, they almost melt into each other, reacting to the warmth and falling against one another until they’re almost curled up together. It’s nice, being this close to someone. It’s even nicer when you feel like you’d kind of like to stay in this one position forever.

The view from the window shows the sky, lightening in wake of the early morning and the break of day. The sunlight streams, a break from the usual blur of British grey, creating swirls of red through the dusty coloured clouds. Phil lets out a yawn, unable to stop himself, the tiredness catching in the corners of his eye, and Dan looks like he’s about to fall asleep against his shoulder.

Phil thinks, I wish I could stay like this with you forever.

“I’m really glad I met you, Phil,” Dan mumbles, half-asleep.

Phil tells him, “Me too.” Dan’s hand reaches out and touches Phil’s. It’s a light touch, not a grasp or grab by any means, his fingers gentle and hesitant, made clumsy by his exhaustion. But just barely, just about, their fingers thread together in the softest, smallest of touches.

He falls asleep happy. He thinks, in the morning, we’ll finish this, and forgets they have to say goodbye.

::

Phil wakes up with a crick in his neck.

It hurts, and he sits up in bed already reaching to massage the back of his head and try to soothe the ache, wincing at the pain, the other hand bringing itself up to rub the sleep dust gathered in the corners of his eye, and wake himself up. The bed feels strangely cold for a night of sleeping, his sheets and duvet too stiff, and the bird song creeps in through his bedroom window.

Everything feels strange, stilted, and unfamiliar for a moment. It takes the world a moment to come together in pieces, fragmented. He sits there, in bed, and he wonders, what’s missing?

There’s no word to really describe the way in which he remembers, he just does. One minute he sits there, dazed and disconcerted with a cloud of confusion hanging over him like a shadow. And the next, the shadow moves as if the sunlight has shifted in an open space, and taken the darkness away, moved it across a couple of inches, and he remembers.

He remembers a night full of mixed emotions, enough to make him sleepy; of anger and sadness and loneliness and resolute joy and laughter and happiness that spread through the room, and a smile that could have lasted for hours. He remembers the lightest touch of a hand and a head on his shoulder and falling asleep on a storybook boy.

But he doesn’t remember waking up and moving to his bed, and he doesn’t remember pulling the sheets up to his throat the way they had been, pulled up so tight and stiff around his body. He doesn’t remember Dan leaving, yet he’s nowhere to be seen.

His heart begins to race, the thump playing too loudly in his head, a revving engine. Phil pulls the covers off of himself completely, climbs out of bed, pads anxiously out of the room. The door creaks, but there are no other sounds. Phil expects to find Dan curled up in a ball on his sofa, on his living room rug. He wants to find him making pancakes in the kitchen as if they’ve done this a thousand times before. He wants to find him sitting over a cup of cooling tea, with his hair curling over his face, and a tired smile shaping his lips.

He doesn’t, of course. The apartment is empty and Dan is gone, and so are all traces of him.

::

Phil hopes, desperately, while he’s running down the stairs in check-patterned pyjama bottoms that he doesn’t remember falling asleep in, that Dan has gone home.

Home as in the one up the road, that’s never too far, that Phil can reach at a moment’s notice. But even as he races down to the bottom floor, and braces himself before the exit out onto the busy street, something inside of him already knows that this won’t be the case. The knife is inside, and when he steps out onto the road and sees the white walls of the Newsagents’, somebody twists the blade.

I wish it was green, I wish it was green, I wish it was green.

The streets look exactly as they should, and it’s the worst thing ever.

Phil stares around in horror, as Frankenstein’s monster is dead, and the city has returned to its usual layout. There’s a Cancer Research, right where it should have always been. There’s not a sign of Specsavers. The bus stop is back in place and the barber’s shop has disappeared. Richmond Street has been rewritten, the first draft put back in place.

“You alright, Phil?” a concerned voice asks, and Phil whirls around to see Mike, the neighbour he’d thought had left, standing by the door to the building with his usual work briefcase with worry lines written on his skin. He’s obviously about to return home after a business meeting, or something of the sort - but he certainly hasn’t moved away to be placed with a new tenant.

“I’m fine,” Phil says, weakly. He turns away, making it clear that he doesn’t want to talk and he feels rude, and he feels guilty for being so curt and he should be happy to see Mike home and the new man gone, to see the disappearing people have all been returned, safely, it does in fact, he’s relieved, but he can’t think about that right now. He can’t think of anything. His mind is all white, and all he can think about is Dan, Dan, Dan.

Dan’s apartment building is gone.

Dan is gone.

Phil never got to say goodbye.

::

There’s no hourglass anymore.

But time passes slowly. As if there’s all you could want in the world. Phil watches clock hands turning, and wonders who set the world in slow motion.

::

He wonders if it was a dream.

It seems like the logical conclusion most days. Nobody else remembers any change in environment or scenery, any shift in the city at all. Nobody remembers any building as grand as the athenaeum, or white walls turning green over night.

The calendar dates never changed. This is something that Phil realised towards the end of his first full day - home feels like the wrong word, but it’ll do - home. The date said it was still October, not nearing the end of November, not even close.

Everything is normal, and no one remembers anything. His colleagues remember seeing him the day before. It could have been a dream. That would make sense, he supposes. But it doesn’t feel like a dream.

He doesn’t recall what happened the way people remember dreams. The scenes aren’t fragmented and faded and broken up by black spaces and blank stretches of time. It was surreal, dreamlike, but not in any way that seemed wholly unrealistic,

Phil remembers the way that everything feels: he remembers the fear and frustration, the weight of heavy books in his arms and the dust that smeared off onto his fingers, leaving the palms of his hands feeling chalky and horrible. He remembers the the feeling of Dan’s head against his shoulder. He remembers the feeling of Dan’s fingers lightly interlacing with his own. He remembers the warmth of his body and how it felt to be close to him. He remembers not just the movement, how it happened - but how it felt. He remembers it all in great detail.

It doesn’t feel like a dream. The place felt like a dream world, a place bathed in magic and built on impossibility, but it wasn’t a dream in the sense that whatever was happening wasn’t really happening at all.

It felt real.

He wonders if it was a dream, but he knows in his heart, somehow, that it wasn’t.

::

It takes a while to adjust.

Phil missed normalcy, but as predicted, he tires of it very quickly. He remembers his hatred for Monday mornings. Tuesdays still suck, and Wednesdays still drag.

He never finds the spellbook, The Songs of Enchantment, inside of the library again. He never finds a copy online, either, when he dares to try on an incognito tab at four in the morning.

He does adjust, eventually. Phil begins to settle, and get used to reworking the maps in his mind and his sense of direction to the way things used to look originally. He gets used to white Newsagents’ walls, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t always hope for green in the mornings. He gets used to showing up to work, to spending time with the family, to going out with friends. Just like normal.

He doesn’t adjust to missing Dan, though. That’s a lot harder.

He’d once felt lonely, stuck in a world where nobody could relate to him, because nobody would believe the truth in his most basic thoughts and feelings, because nobody but Dan understood what he was seeing. He felt disconnected from his family, and his friends, and his colleagues, and he’d felt alone, sometimes. And if he never really was, the loneliness could creep in at times. It waited like a shadow, and when it could, it’d crawl out and bathe the world in gloom.

And now Phil has his friends, and his family, and his colleagues. And they can relate to him when he points out the colour of the walls. And they understand him when he talks about his day, or a particular shop in Fentom’s Circle.

But they still wouldn’t believe the truth in his most basic thoughts and feelings, and they still wouldn’t understand what he’s thinking and feeling. And so he still feels disconnected from them, but now, he doesn’t even have Dan. It’s like there’s a hole. And it makes little sense, perhaps - because he hadn’t known Dan too long, and maybe, really, he didn’t know him too well.

Phil feels his absence regardless.

::

Phil misses Dan, but it gets easier with the passing of days, and then weeks, and then months.

He still wonders if it was a dream, sometimes. But he takes a moment to remember - and when he does, he sees still images, and short sequences of motion, and pictures, and captured moments, and he sees them all as memories, and not dreams. He takes a moment to remember, and each time, he knows it wasn’t.

He misses Dan, but the weight is lifted with the relief of time, and it stops hurting. It’s a bittersweet sting, a temporary ache whenever he thinks about it. And he still feels that absence, but when he thinks about Dan, it’s always with a smile.

::

February isn’t a great month.

It’s still cold, for one thing, even after so many weeks have passed, the weather still automatically falls into the same old pattern of early nightfall and grey day skies. Phil shows up to work drenched from rain most days a week, but most of the time he remembers to bring a coat now. It’s been four months, and he’s in his mid-twenties, but he figures he can still call that growing up.

His time at the library is coming to an end, a job prospect looking new and shiny and exciting for him towards the beginning of March. He’ll miss the place - the high ceilings, and the cold space, and the hundreds upon hundreds of books, for some reasons more conventional than others.

Phil is an optimist, and he defines that with the belief that maybe next month Mondays won’t feel so awful. At the very least, today is Friday, and Fridays usually feel good. They’re a day of tiredness and a natural urge to be lazy and collapse down onto the bed and do nothing, but Phil is saving that for later; the morning shift always seems to go faster on Fridays.

The prospect of a new job seems even more exciting when Phil realises he’ll never again have to deal with delivery days. It’s tedious, gathering new books and getting them labelled and then finding the right shelf in the right section to place them, doing this over and over again depending on the size of the order. Phil begs his co-worker to trade her current position at the front desk, but with a smirk, she refuses his desperate begging and leaves Phil to his fate.

It could be worse, he tells himself, ever the optimist. It could be raining.

And so, Phil spends his morning sorting out the delivery books, allocating them over and over to different sections and running all over the building to polar opposite directions what seems like each and every time. Now, he can appreciate that the library isn’t as big and expansive as he once thought it was, but it doesn’t make the task any less enjoyable.

He comes to the end of the pile eventually though, underneath piles of best seller’s and old classics and crime fiction and mills and boons. It’s a children’s book, a single copy. It’s a Dan Howell novel, and Phil’s breath hitches, for a moment, the way it always does when he sees that name now.

Phil looks at the book, and he picks it up, and he studies the front cover; there’s are two boys on this front cover, one who is clearly Dan, illustrated in his messy, cartoon way, with brown hair and his trademark clothes and a big, mischievous smile. But next to him is another animated figure of a boy, this one a new character, yet familiar to Phil all the same. A boy stood beside Daniel Howell, with exaggeratedly white skin and black hair and bright blue eyes, a grin drawn on his face. It’s drawn almost as if they’re looking at each other, as if they’re sharing a secret.

Phil looks at the cover’s text, drags his finger over it, slow and gentle, outlining each of the words that spell out the title of the story, and the series author. And he reads, with a strange calm, and a curious lack of surprise, Daniel Howell and the Boy Who Walked Through Worlds, by K. H. Olding.

Phil moves the book closer. He holds it to his chest, and he smiles.