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“I think I need to break up with Phil,” Dan says. Or, declares. That’s more accurate. He says it like it’s some sort of earth-shattering statement.
His therapist, Isabella, doesn’t react accordingly. She just nods, and gets this expression that’s a mix of clinical and concerned on her face. Before speaking, she scribbles something down on her notepad. Dan hates that fucking notepad. It’s a reminder that he’s being observed, that everything he’s saying is being filed away, and that inevitably, it’ll come back later.
“Is that something you want to do?” she asks, when she finishes noting down whatever it is she’s thinking.
“Well, I just said it, did I not?” Dan deadpans.
He’s being a bit of a dick. He’s well aware. But Isabella isn’t a stranger to this side of his personality.
It had taken a while to find a therapist he could actually be honest with. There was always the underlying anxiety of them being some sort of secret fan of his, or having spent any amount of time on Youtube between the years of 2011 to 2016. Isabella, thankfully, is neither of those things. She has this air of wisdom about her, and a small pin in the colours of the lesbian flag is always fastened to her shirt, and that combination of things is enough for Dan to feel like he can trust her.
“You said that you think you need to break up with him,” she says, voice measured. “There was nothing in that sentence about what you actually want.”
“What I want,” Dan says, “is for him to be happy. I’m holding him back, I—”
Isabella frowns. “Did he tell you this?”
“No. He’s too nice for that. But I know he’s thinking it.”
How could Phil not? He’s never spelled it out to Dan, never said it outright, but he has told him that he thinks he would have come out already, had Dan’s…issues not been a factor. He’s never even used the word issues, actually. He’s much too kind to do that, even when Dan deserves much worse than some potentially insensitive language.
Phil is too good for Dan, is the point. And he has so much less emotional baggage, so much less difficulty with accepting himself. Dan has known that he’s some flavour of queer for over a decade. He’s known he’s gay for at least eight years. And still, the idea of people outside of his and Phil’s tightly-knit social circle finding out still terrifies him. It’s stupid. He’s stupid. It would be better for Phil if Dan freed him from everything that comes with being tethered to him.
Isabella sighs. “Listen, Daniel—”
Dan likes that she’s always called him Daniel. It creates even more distance between his online persona, between Dan from Dan and Phil and Daniel Howell, the real guy.
But the thing about Isabella only ever having known Daniel Howell is that she’s never seen him through the lens everyone else has. And that makes it so much easier for her to see right through him.
“If you broke up with Phil, it would be an act of self-sabotage. Plain and simple. One thing I’ve noticed about you is that you never seem to think you deserve good things. Everything you’ve told me about Phil—that he’s the first person who made you feel loved, that he understands you, even when no one else can, that you think he’s your soulmate—tells me that he’s another good thing you feel the urge to deny yourself of. But he wouldn’t have stayed with you all these years if he thought you were holding him back.”
It’s only now that he truly realises how much he talks about Phil in here, because she’s captured how Dan feels about him so perfectly. Breaking up with Phil would destroy Dan. They’ve survived for so long, the two of them, in this strange online bubble, because of how strong their love is.
So he won’t end their relationship. He can’t.
“You’re right,” he says.