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Dan woke to sleep being shaken from his eyes, the sun blazing through their blackout curtains. The world was blurry, but a hissing noise crept through his sleep-delirious state. He could just make out the culprit of this cruel awakening- Phil’s blonde hair pierced through the room like lightning through storm-clouds.
“Phil,” Dan spluttered out, more of a moan than a word. He grabbed at his pillow, hoping Phil would notice that the shaking was giving him vertigo. The world shuddered to a stop. Dan opened his eyes hesitantly, as the rhythmic hissing continued. He recognised it, now, as Phil’s laughter, badly muffled by his tongue sneaking between his teeth.
“Wha’s the time?” Dan mumbled into the pillow. He shuffled over, checking his phone: 11am. On their day off. “Ugh, too early.” Resisting the urge to bury his face in the pillow, he propped himself up on one elbow, and was met with Phil’s face, pink with suppressed giggles.
“Sorry, sorry! I had something to show you, it couldn’t wait!”
“Fine. This better be worth it, you dick,” Dan said.
He ran his hand over his face, both to pick out the last echoes of sleep, and to hide his stupidly fond smile. Phil scrambled to unlock his phone. Dan squinted at the sudden light- he’d converted Phil to dark mode, but the fucker still insisted on having the brightness on max. Once his eyes adjusted, though, Dan did appreciate the way the light shone through Phil’s hair, making him look even more golden and angelic.
“Gimme a sec,” Phil said. Dan peeked over his shoulder, recognising the mishmash of cute seal videos and all-caps phandom shitposting as Phil’s twitter timeline.
“You’re subjecting me to twitter this early?”
“Shhh it’s fine,” Phil said, pushing him onto the bed and smushing a finger to his lips. He drew it away as Dan tilted his head, ready to bite it.
“Will I have to retweet another of your stupid tweets again?” He groaned in faux-annoyance. Phil shook his head, a dangerous smile playing on his lips. “So I’ll have to make a tweet of my own ? You’re tricking me into creating content? Oh you sneaky fu-” Phil silenced Dan’s grumbly outburst by shoving the phone in his face.
“See for yourself. Maybe you’ll want to tweet without needing my help.”
“Mm?” Dan hummed, going cross-eyed from trying to see the screen. He eventually grabbed it, and flashes of red and pink appeared onscreen: an all-too-familiar scene of Dan in the summery outfit from their dress-up video. His face was flushed far too obviously as he looked Phil up and down- or, at least, too obviously for their pre-hiatus standards. It gave Dan a little thrill each time they kept a clip like that in, nowadays; knowing they’d finally created a space where they could be themselves without worry.
The post came from a phan account, clearly, but Dan paid little attention to the actual tweet. He was all too aware of the darker depths of their fanbase. Instead, Dan rolled his eyes, looking at Phil in a way that vaguely conveyed the message ‘I’m gonna murder you.’
“Is this it? If you wanted my attention you know you could’ve jus-”
“No, no scroll up.” Phil flicked the bedside lamp on in anticipation of Dan’s reaction.
Dan scrolled up with bated breath…and the title ‘International Yaoi Day’ came into view.
“Oh!” Dan’s eyebrows shot up. He giggled in a high-pitched way that always reminded Phil of his stints as Sister Daniel. He kept scrolling down, eyes crinkling further and his giggles turning to screeches as he realised a sizable portion of the tag was just photos and videos of him.
“So how do you feel about being the new face of Yaoi, Dan?” Phil said, miming handing him an invisible microphone.
“Fuck off,” He cackled, pushing Phil’s hand away.
“I’ll take that as a ‘no comment,’ then, Mr Howell,” Phil continued, putting on an absurdly posh voice. Dan rolled his eyes, still holding Phil’s closed fist. He leveraged that fact, as he flopped back down on the bed and pulled Phil with him.
“Oi! I’ve just brushed my hair, idiot!” Phil said, but his attempted tone of annoyance was interrupted by barks of laughter. Dan pushed his fingers into Phil’s hair, messing it up even more. “I’ll get you back for this…maybe I’ll make a yaoi-day tweet about you,” Phil continued.
“You’re the actual worst and I hate you,” Dan said, grabbing Phil's phone and chucking it across the bed. “Keeping you here now so you don’t disgrace me,” He continued, pulling Phil closer.
Dan buried his face in Phil’s hair, arms wrapped around his waist more tightly than necessary. He was less than subtle about the fact that he was missing that day’s lounging session in bed, and that maybe- just maybe - keeping Phil away from twitter was a thinly veiled excuse. Phil struggled against him at first, but eventually relented.
“You’re literally like a human weighted blanket or something. Clingy,” Phil giggled.
“Oh, so you want me to stop?” Dan teased, pulling his arms back.
“No! Stay!”
“Fine…” Despite his words, Dan pushed his face back into Phil’s hair far too quickly for his exasperation to be even slightly believable.
. . .
The rest of the afternoon passed languidly, through a golden filter of bedsheets and cuddling and giggling at stupidly funny tiktoks. They really couldn’t resist any sort of temptation. They probably had a million-and-one emails to write and videos to pre-record, but their bed was too warm to leave and Phil’s blinding smile and Dan’s soft arms were too magnetic to stray from. What was that thing Phil kept saying? All pleasure, now?
“Daaan,” Phil groaned from beneath his warm embrace. “I need advice.” Dan bent his neck around to face him, knowing that his ‘serious’ tone was hiding a more sinister underlayer.
“Okaaay?” He responded, sceptically.
“What should I do if my tiktok feed gets so bad that I’m getting edits of us to that one anime sound on my for you page?”
“Oh fucking hell,” Dan cackled, rolling off him. “Do I even want to know which anime sound?”
“The one where that one couple is on top of- “ “WOOOAH!” “No, I mean- their voices are over the top of the song Line Without A Hook?”
“Ohhh ‘kay. Hm… Delete tiktok?”
“That’s your answer to everything!”
“It’s cause I’m right,” Dan deadpanned. He reached back over to grab his own phone, though- Phil’s tiktok dilemma had reminded him of the twitter shitposting he really should respond to. This time, he didn’t even need to click onto the hashtag itself: his face was blasted across the explore page with the words “Yaoi Day Celebrations” plastered over it. It was the same goddamn clip again. He didn’t have to dig too deep for the sarcastic tone he needed for the tweet, though he really found it all too funny for his own good.
As he pressed send, he sent a message to Phil (despite literally lying next to him.)
check twitter bitch
(phil) I’m scared……what have u done
“Nooothing,” Dan said aloud. Phil’s eyes crinkled at his tone. He grabbed his phone, swiping off of his cursed tiktok feed and onto twitter.
I don’t want to know why I’m the banner for yaoi day but cheers to all that celebrate
Phil read the tweet, a hissing laugh escaping him before he’d even seen the photo Dan attached. He scrolled down, seeing Dan reply in real time- from his totally untrue claims of keeping phan twitter stored in a ‘pandora’s box’ to his single word reply of ‘repent’ to one of the people behind his face trending under Yaoi Day.
Dan collapsed back onto Phil’s chest, sliding his phone under his pillow to be momentarily forgotten. Phil did the same.
“Happy now?” He drawled, despite the obvious twinkle in his eyes at having made Phil laugh. And, Phil, despite enjoying Dan’s sarcastic responses, matched his energy with fake disappointment.
“Dunno…your tweet was underwhelming compared to what I would’ve twote.”
“Should I even ask??”
“Would probably be a line or two about how I’d like to mark the day…” Phil fluttered his eyelashes, and Dan smiled wolfishly. He grabbed Phil’s waist, leaning in closer.
“You wanna celebrate it, then?”
“Hold on, gimme a sec,” Phil said, rushing to grab his phone. Dan gave him a look.
“Are you addicted? Should I call the tiktok police or something?” Phil shook his head. “Twitter police then?” Phil raised an eyebrow.
“Shut up just- there, okay! What were you saying?”
. . .
Later that evening, during their nightly scroll-and-chat ritual, Dan remembered Phil’s strange twitter-related behaviour.
“You never told me what you were doing earlier…”
“What, when?”
“Twitter police thing.”
Phil burst into a cheeky smile. “Guess you’ll have to see for yourself…”
Dan checked twitter for the first time since he’d tweeted- the timeline was just as mad as usual, with people responding to him in all-caps. Nothing much mentioning Phil, though; apart from a few tweets referring to both of them or repeating ‘Oh I’m sure.’ He tapped onto Phil’s twitter account, scrolling down and expecting some casual but humiliating tweet. But what he found was something much worse than an original post…
Dan frantically searched his verified notifications, checking that it was real. The tab was full of responses to his most recent tweet; the scandalised and desensitised, the horrified and the hysterical.
And there it was, inconspicuous among those quote-tweets and replies. He could’ve missed it, if he wasn’t looking.
Phil Lester. Retweet.