Chapter Text
At the academy, Dan Howell is famously impossible to date.
It isn’t for lack of trying. People try constantly, with varying levels of confidence and success, usually somewhere between nervous admiration and spectacular embarrassment. It never seemed to matter who they are, first years and final years alike, confident theatre students, shy writers, musicians who spoke mostly through eye contact and meaningful playlists. Girls slipped notes into his bag between lectures. Boys lingered after group projects with carefully casual invitations that were never quite casual enough. Someone once left a handwritten note folded into the shape of a heart on his desk during lecture, unsigned but written in painfully neat handwriting. Another time a presentation had ended with a final slide that read, “Also, Dan, would you like to go out with me?”, which he still wasn’t entirely convinced had been approved by the lecturer.
Dan never understood it, not really. He knew he was tall enough to be noticeable in a crowd, knew people sometimes went quiet for a second when he walked into a room, but none of it felt particularly intentional. His hair was always carefully straightened despite its stubborn tendency to curl if left alone too long, falling across his forehead in a way Louise insisted was unfair to the general population. His chocolate brown eyes gave away more emotion than he ever meant them to, which Chris claimed was the real problem. Apparently he looked like he was listening even when he wasn’t trying to be, and people seemed to mistake that for something deeper.
Whatever the reason, attention followed him easily. He had smiled politely through all of it, thanked them sincerely, and said the same thing every time.
He just wasn’t interested.
Most others accepted that answer eventually. A few assumed he was secretly seeing someone. Others decided he must be heartbreakingly picky, or emotionally unavailable, or perhaps waiting for someone impossibly perfect. Louise claimed he simply liked keeping people guessing.
Dan let them believe whatever they liked. It was easier than explaining something he didn’t fully understand himself. Easier than admitting that every attempt at romance felt faintly misplaced, like trying to remember lyrics to a song he was certain he already knew. As though the person he was meant to love had already happened somehow, and everything else felt like a rehearsal.
The Manchester Academy sprawled across a cluster of old brick buildings just outside the city centre, equal parts university campus and slightly disorganised boarding school. It attracted a particular kind of student: musicians hauling instrument cases through corridors, film students forever chasing the right lighting, writers half lost in notebooks as they crossed the courtyard. Students lived in mismatched halls connected by narrow walkways and communal kitchens that always smelled faintly of toast and instant noodles. Music drifted from open windows at all hours, piano notes sometimes carrying across the courtyard long after midnight. Someone was always rehearsing, filming, arguing about coursework, or attempting group study sessions that inevitably dissolved into chaos in the common room downstairs. It suited Dan. The noise, the constant movement, the comfort of never quite being alone unless he wanted to be. The academy felt alive in a way that made loneliness easier to ignore.
Dan moved easily through it all, well liked without ever trying particularly hard. He made people laugh. He remembered small details about them, favourite snacks, deadlines they were worried about, the names of siblings mentioned only once. He listened when others talked, which apparently counted as a rare and admirable quality. He had friends who dragged him into late-night takeaway runs and pointless debates about obscure game mechanics, friends who occupied his space so naturally it felt like they had always been there.
Still, there was a distance he never crossed.
Romance existed somewhere just outside his reach.
“Alright, explain it again,” Chris said one evening, leaning back and pushing his brown fringe out of his eyes. “You’re telling me not one person here is your type.”
Louise snorted from the sofa, blonde hair falling forward as she sat up. “He doesn’t have a type. He has emotional avoidance.”
“I do not,” Dan said, not looking up from the controller in his hands. “I simply possess standards.”
PJ paused the game, glancing between them over his round black glasses. “Your standards appear to be theoretical.”
Dan rolled his eyes, guiding his character across the screen. “Maybe I just enjoy peace and quiet. Ever considered that.”
“You willingly chose us as friends,” Louise said. “Peace and quiet was never an option.”
They laughed, the easy kind of laughter that filled the room without effort. Dan smiled despite himself, a sense of ease settling comfortably in his chest. Moments like this were enough. More than enough, really. And yet part of him always felt unfinished somehow.
Later that night, when the corridors had gone still and the soft hum of distant music faded into sleep, Dan lay staring at the ceiling of his room. Rain tapped gently against the window, steady and constant, blending with the faint sound of someone practising scales somewhere in the building. He waited for rest to come.
It always did eventually.
The dream arrived gently, as if he had stepped back into a moment already in progress, a life continuing without him until he returned.
Warm light spilled across a small living room he somehow knew by heart. A piano sat near the window, half covered in scattered sheets of music. A television murmured quietly in the background. Someone laughed behind him, soft and warm, close enough that he felt it more than heard it.
There was a presence at his side, the comfortable weight of another person leaning into him like they had always been there, like they belonged there. Their shoulder pressed lightly against his. Fingers brushed his sleeve, absent-minded and affectionate, the gesture so familiar it barely registered at all.
He didn’t question it. He never did. In dreams, everything made sense.
They talked about nothing important. Small things. Jokes half finished before laughter interrupted them. The kind of conversation that didn’t need effort, only continuation. A soft ease lingered in the air, carrying a fresh scent he recognised but couldn’t quite name.
He knew this person. Loved them, completely and without hesitation.
He just couldn’t see their face.
The moment stretched, peaceful and ordinary and perfect, until morning pulled him away too quickly. Dan woke in the dim grey light of Manchester, the warmth gone, the room suddenly too empty. For a few seconds he lay there, heart aching with a loss he couldn’t name. It faded, as it always did.
It always faded.
By breakfast he would barely remember anything at all. Only the feeling remained. And the strange, lingering certainty that somewhere, somehow, he was missing someone he had never met.