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~***~
Dan was lying on Phil’s bed looking up at the ceiling. How hilarious would it be if he taped a giant poster of Delia Smith on his ceiling so that Phil would wake up the next morning and scream in genuine terror as Delia Smith’s eyes looked down at him? Dan chuckled at the thought but then realized it wouldn’t work since he would most likely end up with a broken eardrum due to the screaming and possibly a broken face (Phil flails like an octopus when he gets scared...) considering that he and Phil regularly spoon sleep together in Phil’s bed now.
He’ll figure something out.
A smile grew across Dan’s face as he pictured an octopus with Phil’s face flailing its tentacles into the air but the daydream suddenly vanished when he heard the front door of his and Phil’s flat open.
Shit. He’d been avoiding this.
He heard Phil set down what sounded like grocery bags on the counter and heard him begin to unpack them. Dan should really be out there helping him but he just could not find enough courage in him to go out there and do it.
Today was one of those very rare days where Dan was trying to avoid Phil.
Dan focused on the ceiling lights and attempted to blind himself to later use as an excuse for being anti-social. It didn’t work. He closed his eyes and saw thousands of multi-colored starry dinosaur plant shaped dots spin around his eye sockets. I wonder if that’s what the human body looks like on the inside? Dan’s thoughts were once again interrupted by Phil.
“Dan! Are you serious? You promised me you would plug in the cameras this morning to charge all day! How are we supposed to make the coming out video now?” Phil yelled as he stomped into his bedroom and holding their cameras to find Dan innocently lying on his bed.
Dan felt terrible. He had done it on purpose. It has been a little more than a month since Phil had proposed to him by the fountain where they had first said “I Love You” years ago. Dan can easily say that that was by far the greatest day of his life. After Phil sang him their favorite song and proposed, they had partied with all their family and friends. Later that night He and Phil went to shakers and got the craziest combination of milkshakes ever and went back to their flat to celebrate privately. Everything was perfect.
Later that week they sat down and discussed when they wanted to have the wedding. Both agreed to marry in the summer. Unfortunately that was as far as they had gotten to planning it because they both started coming up with their own crazy ideas for their dream wedding. Dan wanted to get married underwater and Phil wanting to walk down the aisle with a lion on a leash.
“A lion? You want to walk a lion down the aisle at our wedding? What do we look like? The Crocodile Hunters?” Dan laughed while tossing their notebook of wedding ideas into the air in defeat.
“No Daniel! If we were The Crocodile Hunter then we would be walking crocodiles down the aisle! And what about your idea? Getting married underwater sounds disastrous! Have you seen the movie JAWS? Oh wait, no you didn’t… you were hiding in my lap the whole time!”Phil replied giggling as he knocked Dan’s furry hat off of his head.
Dan whined, “Stop! My hair is curly and ugly today! Don’t look at it! And I was not afraid of JAWS. I just thought you smelled good and decided that your scent was much more interesting than a stupid shark eating people…..”
Dan got off the couch and snatched his fuzzy hat off the floor and put it back on his head. He proceeded to sit down cross legged in front of the TV and turned away from Phil. Phil laughed as he watched Dan pout through the reflection of the black TV screen. Phil crawled over to Dan and wrapped his arms around Dan’s torso and dragged him backward onto his lap.
“So you think I smell nice hmm?” Phil asked as he nuzzled Dan’s neck. Dan shivered at the touch and exhaled shakily as he felt Phil nip at the skin just under his ear.
“We’re supposed to be talking about the wedding, Phil. Save the foreplay and biting for later hmm?” Dan replied as he reached for the magical notebook of wedding ideas.
Phil pretended to pout as they reopened the notebook and tried to think of ideas. It ended with them playfully bantering back and forth again until Dan straddled Phil on the couch and began kissing him until they both lost their breath.
Yeah, the wedding planning did not get done that day.
Weeks later, here they were: Dan continuing to look up at the ceiling while Phil barged into the room huffing and puffing over the video cameras.
It wasn’t that Dan didn’t want to make the Phan Coming Out video. He did. He wanted to watch the madness take place in his Youtube comments and Twitter timeline from his laptop. He knew a lot of people would support him and Phil’s relationship, it was just that small amount of people that would be disgusted in him that bothered him. He had nightmares of watching video responses of people repulsed by both of them and the hate comments that he would receive genuinely scared him.
Dan always came off as an IDGAF kind of guy but when it came to Phil, the love of his life, he wanted people to approve of them. It was hard to explain. He had wanted to make a video about it before but decided against it because 1. He and Phil were still under cover as heterosexual best friends and 2. Talking about the fear of hate might make the haters flood his comments even more.
There was another reason why he was avoiding the making of the video… the people that would hate him for loving Phil would remind him of his own fathe-
“Dan, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you! Don’t cry! Please, I love you.” Phil immediately went over to the bed and grabbed Dan into a tight hug.
Dan hadn’t even realized he had started crying until Phil had mentioned it. He looked up into Phil’s eyes. He knew he was going to have to tell him about this someday.
“I unplugged the cameras from the charger on purpose.” Dan hadn’t expected to start sobbing like this. He went from tear filled eyes to a waterfall of sadness in one sentence.
Phil held him even tighter and whispered in his ear, “Shhh.. it’s okay Dan. I’m not angry anymore. I understand now that you aren’t ready to make this video yet. It’s okay. We can wait until you’re ready. I just want you to know that most of our fans will love us regardless of who we love. Some of them may love us even more considering 80% of our subscribers ship us together anyways. If people hate us after this video then oh well. They wont affect how much you mean to me. In fact, as long as I have you then I don’t care if the world implodes. You’re everything to me Dan. I just don’t want to see you cry like this…”
Dan rested his head on Phil’s shoulder and sighed. God, he loved Phil so much. He was literally the greatest human being that had ever grazed the Earth. Unfortunately, Phil still doesn’t understand the full picture and now Dan has to explain why.
“I love you so fucking much, Phil. I’m sorry about being such a twat about all of this. You are partially right. I am afraid of all the hate that we will receive. It’s not just me that I’m concerned about though. I don’t want to deal with that flicker of pain that I KNOW both of us are going to feel when we read hate. I don't want you to feel hurt either. Am I making any since?” Dan asked while turning his head to look into Phil’s eyes. Dan was still avoiding the subject that he needed to tell Phil...
“I know what you’re saying but come on Dan, you worry too much! I think you should review your video about caring too much as well,” Phil laughed and kissed Dan on the top of his head, “Do you at least feel a bit better talking about this?”
Dan nodded and put on the best fake smile he could, “Yes, thanks Phil.”
Phil smiled back and went to get up. “Alright, well I’m going to heat up dinner. I suggest you come out of this room and eat soon before you morph into the bed. It would be very difficult to marry a mattress.”
Dan laughed, “Yeah, marrying a mattress underwater while holding a lion on a leash.. if that image doesn’t scream Phil Lester, I don’t know what does.”
~***~
Dan surprisingly went to bed early that night. He felt Phil join him a few hours after he dozed off with his Nintendo DS in his hand. He vaguely remembers Phil shutting off Dan’s game and pulling the covers over him. He did, however, remember the nightmare he had that night. It was more of a memory from years ago than an actual nightmare, but to Dan, it was a nightmare none the less.
In his dream, Dan was sitting on his couch in his parent’s home on a hot summer day before he "attempted" going to college. His mom had went out shopping and his little brother was over his friend’s house. It was just Dan and his father home. His mother had known about Phil and the fact that Dan loved him. Dan found it very easy to tell his mother because she had been very loving toward him and all the previous decisions he had made in his life (ie: college, youtube, and now Phil). His father, on the other hand, was very homophobic. He remembered his father talking about gay people at family gatherings.
“I don’t understand why they would let that man play football. He’s a faggot. That sport is for men, not for boys who suck dick. It disgusts me,” were just a few of the comments that he heard at the dinner table last Christmas when his father and uncle were discussing the football player who publicly announced his sexuality in a press conference.
Dan remembered sinking into the table after hearing that comment. He had just kissed Phil under the mistletoe the night before at his house. What would his dad think of that?
Dan continued to lay on his parent’s couch when his dad had walked into the room and joined him. “Anything on the tellie?” he asked Dan as he plopped down onto the couch opposite of him.
Dan shook his head. “No, nothing but stupid football.”
Dan’s father scowled at him. “I still don’t understand how I raised a son who hates sports. All you do is run around with that video camera of yours. It’s weird.”
Dan rolled his eyes. He was used to comments like that coming from his dad. He had decided that he was a disappointment to his father since the day he was able to say no to all the things his dad apparently loved. Dan was the complete polar opposite of his father. It made their relationship much more difficult that way.
If he was ever going to tell his Dad about Phil, now would be the time. All he had to say was that he liked Phil. That’s it. He could even explain that he still found girls attractive too so that his dad wouldn’t be as mad. It was true. Dan had been straight his whole life until he met Phil. It was like he was straight unless the person was named Phil Lester. He wasn’t sure what that had meant til much later.
“Dad, I love Phil.”
The room had been quiet before he had said anything, but now that Dan had said the words that he had been so afraid to say it seemed that the whole entire world stopped spinning at that moment. The universe was silenced.
Dan studied his father’s face for a reaction. It was completely blank. Silence devoured the room for almost a full minute before Dan’s father picked up the remote and shut the TV off.
“What. The. Fuck. Did. You. just. Say. To. Me?” Dan’s father growled from the other couch.
Dan’s heart nearly stopped out of anger or fear, he couldn’t tell which. Probably both.
He searched in himself to find the courage to speak, “Dad I’m not going to hide this from you anymore. I love Phil Lester, the boy I met from Youtube. I met him a few months ago and we have gotten along very well and well I still like girls and stuff but I feel different when I am with Phil he is really nice and I-“
Dan’s father jumped from the couch and nearly ran across the room toward Dan. He held Dan up by the collars of his white shirt and lifted him from his couch. All Dan could do was flinch.
“You will NEVER, EVER, say anything like that again.. you hear me? You are disgusting! I did not raise my son up to be a faggot! You got that? If I ever catch you with that kid ever again I swear I’ll kill that little gay boyfriend of yours and throw you out on the street. I am not about to pay thousands of pounds for my son to run off to college and fuck around with other guys. I don’t even know if I can call you my son anymore. You’re sick…. Fucked up in the head.”
Dan’s eyes filled with tears as he watched his dad scream more profanities at him. His dad was never really physically abusive toward him in the past, but after he was through destroying Dan with pure hate and anger he picked up his mom’s glass vase from the coffee table and threw it as hard as he could at Dan’s head. He then grabbed his cars keys and slammed the front door as he left the house to drive off to some bar outside of town.
Tears were flowing down Dan’s cheeks. The blow to the head was really hard and his left eye was throbbing. He felt something hot and sticky flowing down his head. He reached to wipe it away before he realized it was blood. He got up from where his dad had left him on the couch and walked over to the hallway mirror. Blood was running down his face and onto his white shirt. He looked at the damage that had been done. Swelling was starting around his left eye. Blood was oozing from an gash somewhere above his eyebrow. His face was pale and exhausted from crying. Dan avoided meeting his eyes with the boy on the other side of the mirror. He was too ashamed to look.
All he remembered after that day was the questions from his mother when she came home. “No mom, it’s okay, I just fell. I’ll be fine.” That didn’t work for very long… his mother knew the very moment Dan’s father walked in that night what he had done to Dan because of his sexuality. The worst part about the whole situation was that his mother did absolutely nothing about it. She never said a word to either of them about Dan’s black eye and where it had really came from. She completely ignored it. Dan still resents that quality that he inherited from his mother to this very day. Neither Dan nor his mother like negativity. They try their very best to avoid negativity at all costs. If there’s a problem, you pretend it doesn’t exist. That’s the Howell motto.
The week after Dan outed himself to his father, he remembers leaving for college. His dad hadn’t spoken to him that entire week. Dan’s father was “busy at work” the day Dan said his goodbyes to his family. After dropping out of college a few months later, his father decided to disown him completely. Dan still goes to his parent’s home for the holidays. His father usually leaves to spend Christmas with his parents in the north. That part he had always left out when Phil would ask how his holiday break was. Dan can still taste his own blood and feel his eye start to throb when he starts thinking about what had happened to him that day for too long.
~***~
Dan woke up in a cold sweat with the covers thrown off him. Phil was staring down at him, concern flooding his face.
“Holy shit Dan! I was getting ready to call an ambulance or something. You wouldn’t wake up! You kept screaming and you’re sweaty and you're cold and I think you were crying and I thought something was very wrong oh my God Dan thank God you’re awake!” Phil threw his arms around Dan and layed his head onto Dan’s chest.
Dan could feel Phil shaking. He didn’t mean to worry him. He didn’t even know he was acting like this is his sleep. Dan calmly began petting Phil’s back and looked down at him, “I’m sorry for scaring you. I think… I think I had a nightmare. Phil quit shaking, I’m fine!”
Dan lifted Phil’s chin up to see his face. Phil’s blue eyes were surrounded by red and a single tear descended down his left cheek. Dan rarely ever sees Phil cry. Phil was usually a strong person, something that Dan was always envious of.
“Phil…”
“Dan, you have been worrying me lately. Something’s on your mind and I know it. Is it us? Are you starting to have second thoughts about the whole marriage thing? I love you more than anything else in this entire universe Dan and you know that. I just want to let you know that if you don’t feel the same way yet then that’s fine too. I can wait for you… I can even-“
Dan wrapped his arms tight around Phil and rolled them both onto their sides so they were staring at each other. Dan’s heart was broken. He had no idea that Phil thought this was happening. Dan was acting weird about the video and being a bit withdrawn lately but he didn’t realize that Phil would receive these actions differently then Dan. It was his fault for scaring Phil when in reality, he just wanted to run away from his problems as usual. Dan decided it had to stop, the running away had to stop.
“Phil, I promise that none of this has to do with me not wanting to be with you. I knew from the day I watched you on Youtube that I wanted to be a part of your life. Don’t EVER think that I don’t want to be with you. I love you Phil Lester.”
Phil looked at Dan, unblinking, and smiled.
Dan continued, “I do have something to tell you though. I am sick of avoiding my problems. They fester in my brain and literally drive me insane… as you probably noticed tonight while I was apparently screaming like a gorilla in my sleep.”
Phil chuckled and waited patiently for Dan to speak.
“Do you.. Do you remember who you invited from my family for the wedding proposal last month?”
Phil thought for a moment then replied, “I believe I told your mom to invite your entire family.”
“Do you remembered who in my family showed up?”
“I saw your mom and your brother. Dan, what are you on about?”
“My dad wasn’t there. The dad who has loved me and has put up with me for the past 21 years wasn’t there to support me. Want to know why, Phil? Because I’m a faggot. Because the thought of me liking another boy disgusts my father to the point of revulsion. The one person that I have tried so hard to be accepted by my whole entire life decided to disown me for loving you.”
Phil’s eyes were wide with sadness and disbelief. He rubbed Dan’s side while Dan broke his composure and started sobbing into the sheets. Dan’s body shook and tried to rid itself of the pain and rejection that had been held captive inside him for so long.
Dan looked up at Phil in disgust at the memory of his dad’s harsh words, “You know what that bastard said to me? He said that he was going to kill you if he ever saw me with you again. He threw a fucking vase at my head. Remember that time I came to your house with a black eye? Remember when I told you I fell down my stairs?”
The realization of what Dan had just said to Phil had hit him like a freight train. He remembered that day like it was yesterday. Dan had come over to play videogames with him and Phil immediately asked what had happened to him when he saw the huge black bruise darkening his eye. Dan gave him a shy smile, “I fell down the stairs yesterday... I’m such a klutz.” Phil remembered laughing and teasing Dan about it for the rest of that evening. He had no idea. Dan had hid his emotions so well.
Phil suddenly thought of all the times Dan had said the word “parents” with pride when they talked about their home lives. He couldn't imagine having to hide something that painful in his past so that he could attempt to forget it and pretend it never existed.
Phil held Dan’s head and rubbed the tears from his cheeks with his left hand. Dan looked into Phil’s eyes.
“You should not feel like you have to hide something like that from me, Dan. If your father is willing to miss out on watching you live your life and be happy then that’s his own problem. That’s not something you should have to burden yourself with. I know that no one is ever going to love you like your father would, but you are loved by so many people out there, Dan. The fact that you came over my house a day after your father threatened you shows that you are a strong person. Don’t ever forget that. I just don’t want you to feel like you have to be brave all the time though. Problems aren’t meant to be kept inside, especially one like that,” Phil said and gave his boyfriend’s hand a squeeze and held it by his heart.
“It’s hard to be strong when you know people are going to hate us for getting married. I know this sounds absolutely ridiculous. I shouldn’t care about what others think. It’s just the reminder of my father hating me that I see in every hate comment that hurts the most. I love you so much Phil and I want to be with you forever. You are literally my soul mate. I felt so alone before you and I owe you so much for everything. You changed my life.” Dan planted a soft kiss on Phil’s face.
“Dan, I promise to always be there for you with every hardship we face. We’re in this whole marriage thing together. Any hate you and I receive will be taken with a grain of salt. Why? Because every time that you feel hated I will give you 10 reasons why I love you. Is that a deal, Mr. Daniel Howell?” Phil asked.
Dan smiled and laughed. Phil always knew how to make everything better.
He replied, “That actually sounds lovely, Mr. Phil Lester… On one condition though: You have to tell our viewers about how you actually wanted to walk a lion down the aisle on a leash!”
Phil rolled his eyes, “I suppose so… On one condition: You tell them about your underwater wedding fantasy! In fact, we’ll take a vote on who has the better idea!”
“Deal,” Dan agreed. Both of them held each other for a while, in silent content. Dan felt like a million pounds had been lifted off his shoulders.
Phil broke the silence after a few minutes, “One more condition though, you have to promise me that you will stop holding in all your problems. For now on I want you to be more open about your worries and fears. It’s not right keeping them inside like that. Deal?”
“Deal.”
~***~
They were seated in front of the couch that very next week. The camera’s light flashed red after Phil pressed the shutter button.
Recording On.
“Hello internet!”
“Hi guys!”
“We are both sorry that we haven’t posted a video in the past few weeks. A lot of craziness has been happening lately and both Phil and I decided we should let all of you guys in on it.”
Just under the view of the camera, Dan reached for Phil’s hand and held it tight. Nerves.
Phil squeezed back reassuringly. It’s okay.
“Dan and I are in love and we are getting married this coming summer…….”
Everything is going to be okay.
~***~
Later That Evening:
Dan was sitting at the computer waiting for the video to load onto Youtube and eating a bag of Malteasers. The video had went well and he felt much more confident about everything after he and Phil talked about it finally. Dan was just about to get up and grab a glass of milk when he heard Phil screaming at the top of his lungs.
“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!"
Dan looked over to find Phil walking out of the bathroom. Phil’s face looked displeased. Dan couldn’t help but giggle.
Phil held up a poster of Delia Smith holding a pie in her hand. “Very funny Dan… next time you decide to hang Delia Smith on the back of the toilet seat to scare me remember that I have that video of you shitfaced and slow dancing with that cardboard cutout of Obama in Vegas.”
Dan’s eyes lit up in pure horror. He jumped out of the computer chair and proceeded to chase Phil around the flat with Phil laughing hysterically all the while.
The End