Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Manchester, June, 2012

Phil Lester watches his career begin from the comfort of his small, crooked flat in a less crooked area of Manchester; witnesses it unfold on his laptop screen, the figures jumping with each refresh of the page.

Outside, it is raining for the first time in ten days, and everyone is buzzing from it behind closed doors. Dusk sits on the horizon, the sun sliding down its back. The air is thick with the smell. The flowers on the windowsill opposite bow their heads, hiding their smiles behind fringes of water. Above him, his own window is cracked open, and the draught spins around his head. Phil uses it as justification for the jumper he’s wearing. He hasn’t worn it since March; it’s baggy and woolen, and caves down at the point between his chest and neck.

His laptop sits, askew, on the desk in front of him, A DEER AND AN OIL LAMP open. And for the past hour he’s leant back in his chair - legs crossed, fingers crossed over his coffee mug, almost cross eyed from looking at the screen, he’s sure - and watched the total hits on his site increase.

Until now, he’s always put more love and hours into his writing blog than he’s got out of it, but he’s never stopped using it; at the least, it is the perfect place to keep all his thoughts, the ones too swollen and jagged. He takes pride in it the same way an amateur gardener must take pride in their orchid: quietly, gently, secretly, but the time taken to coax it into being never discredited.

His stuff is obscure, personal, surreal, raw - nothing that immediately sells, he knows. He knows that audiences take a lot of convincing and sampling in order to fall in love with this kind of writing. He never expected it to happen with his work. His meanings are too buried, his words too long or too short, his descriptions flowering into florid. Nothing the casual reader would want to read.

Until now.

Why A DEER AND AN OIL LAMP is any different, Phil doesn’t know. He can’t even comprehend what’s happening to make the hits accrue so rapidly. A whole lot of sharing on Twitter and Facebook, surely - but did people really do that? Apparently so, because his work has never been recognised before, but now his blog is proverbially and virtually thriving. How does the Internet even work? How do people even get famous? It’s happening to me right now and I have no clue. God, Phil has never felt older. And he’s only 25. And one can hardly call this “fame”.

Still, when the number crosses into five figures - small, yes, but large for him, and it’s only been a number of hours - Phil’s smile bites deep into his cheeks. Closing the tab, he sits back and basks in it for one disgustingly self-absorbed moment.

“I did it, Minton,” Phil calls. “I hit 10k hits.”

Minton says nothing. Phil twists his head to look at him, barely remembering to hold his mug steady. Minton huffs, rolls over onto his other side, before huffing again and slinking away. To be fair to him, Minton is a dog, so Phil forgives him for his silence.

“Yeah, well,” he says, “we can’t all have as high standards as you.”

-

London, August, 2016

“Pass me that mug, would you, Minton?” Phil asks, waving his right hand in a rough direction.

Minton grunts, giving Phil a look before slipping away into another room.

“I’ll do it myself, then,” Phil sighs; an outstretched hand, fingers and thumb curved into a semicircle; a mutter grated between teeth; a spike of gold in his irises. The mug flies into his hands. Checking the clock seated at the base of his computer screen, Phil shuts the laptop lid and stands. He gathers up the selection of used crockery and carries it through to the kitchen before dumping it all into his sink. Another flash of gold, and a plate rises into the air, levitating under a jet of tap water as a brush scrubs at it. Phil leaves the room, safe in the knowledge that he lives four floors up - away from wandering eyes.

He meanders about his apartment, collecting his phone, bag, and keys. He has twenty minutes until his meeting, and Gwen’s scheduled it for just before rush hour hits: he’ll get there in good time, and if he’s not, it’s no worry. Gwen always receives him with an unravelling smile, no matter the state he’s in.

He’s in his bathroom (bent over the mirror, smoothing down his dampened hair, a thumbnail scratching at a bathroom tile gilded by limescale) when a clarion crash resonates out from the kitchen. “Shit,” he hisses, racing along the hallway and clinging onto the kitchen door frame to stop himself flying into the oven. His collection of plates and mugs are lined up on the table, no damage done. He expels a long breath. “Good work, guys,” he says, and dismisses them to their correct cupboards with a wave of his hand and an exhaled spell.

Phil yells goodbye to Minton and locks the door, unlocking it again seconds later to grab his bag and nod to Minton like nothing is amiss before locking it for good.

-

He’s hardly a minute late. Breaths heavy as he pushes against the glass door, he waves to Michelle, the agency’s receptionist. She smiles back at him - the shape warped by the phone pressed to her cheek - and gestures to him to head up the stairs. Nodding in recognition, he does as he’s told, and finds the door at the far end of the landing propped open for him when he reaches the summit. Jake and Lily must have clients in, too, for their office doors are shut to him as he passes.

“Hello?” He sticks his head around the door, “I’m looking for someone with an angel complex and foolproof optimism, have you seen them?”

Client photos stare back at him as he peers around, backed up by a blinding view of London. Dusk is drifting in, and the sun is heavy in the sky, so the city stings from a sunlight like antiseptic. In the centre lies the desk, uncluttered and organised; behind it, a row of filing cabinets labelled with letters of the alphabet. Gwen has a lot of clients, and a lot of work to do for each one, but she does it all so effortlessly, so seamlessly, that Phil wonders how she makes the working day last.

Not that he doesn’t appreciate it - Phil will be endlessly thankful to Gwen. He’s worked with her since he moved to London, when his work started trending, when the attention and the comments and the love started totting up into alphabet-block towers. Phil’s blood was made of soda in those days, he’s sure: his step always accompanied by a spring, his clouds more silver than grey, words rolling off his tongue and onto his fervent fingers. His paradise had come early. With it, though, came shock, an instability. Gwen quelled that anxiety, sorted his workload and expectations into manageable lumps so he didn’t have to. The thought of finding a different agent has never crossed his mind.

Sweeping her curls off the frame of her glasses, Gwen looks up from her computer and smiles at him like he’s a stranger. “What a coincidence! I’m looking for a guy with an alien for a head and an irreproachable ability to be late to meetings. Maybe we can help each other out?”

Phil crosses the boundary, unhooks his bag off his shoulder, and sits down in the chair opposite her. “At least mine was kind ,” he grumbles.

Gwen’s smile softens, becomes more authentic on her face as the act is lost. “I’m sorry, love, but this is a tough business. Kill or be killed.”

“Thinking of going into acting, then?” Phil leans back in his seat and plays with the bowl of wrapped mints Gwen leaves on her desk, ignoring the notice for visitors that she left for his benefit.

“Exactly.” Gwen finishes typing and spins in her chair so she can see him better. “And maybe I love aliens and poor punctuality, anyway?”

Phil shrugs, petulant. “You could, I don’t know you.”

“Well, I do.” Her dark skin glows in the August summer, her blouse bunches in ripples around her shoulders. Her eyes, when they meet his, nurse a maternal type of reassurance. Phil has always felt like she’s a younger version of himself: in reality, she’s a year older, but she’s always smiling. Grin like that, Phil told her once, and she could get a free bus ticket. (Gwen had flushed and punched him in the arm.)

Phil finds his smile again. “Good. You wanted me?”

“Yeah.” Never one to reach the point straight away, Gwen folds her hands in her lap and catches his gaze in her own, saying, “How’s Jelly Hearts going?”

“Alright, yeah.” Phil nods. A couple of months ago, his publishing agency, after considering the zenith of his success, commissioned him to write a novel of the same tone as his blog posts. A surreal work, then, “like real life but more,” he’ll tell anyone who will listen. “A few ups and downs, I’m not one hundred percent sure of a direction yet, but it’s good.” In reality, there are more downs than ups, but it’s always like that with writing, and Phil’s motivation rests in optimism. He just needs a distraction, a new offer of inspiration.

“You’re nervous for it?”

“Of course I am. I always am.”

Gwen nods like she’s heard it before. (She has. Phil never stops telling her.) “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure you don’t make a clown of yourself. But, honestly, all the good stuff comes from you. You’ve nothing to worry about.”

Smiling like he can never hear that enough, Phil says, “Do we have a deadline yet?”

Gwen rolls her eyes. “You know we don’t like deadlines here.”

“Yes, I know , but you hardly want me finishing in 2020. I need something to aim for, Gwen,” he implores, one cheek bulging with a glacier mint.

“If you’re confident, aim for Christmas. Santa practically sells things for you. If not - well. I dare say this won’t be appropriate for Valentines’, will it?”

“With all the unreality and soft gore? Nah.”

“That’s the perfect tag line,” Gwen comments.

Phil shrugs, placing another sweet in his mouth. “You’re the publicist.”

“I’m going to take one pound off your income for every mint you steal from me, I swear to God.”

Widening his eyes, Phil warns, “You wouldn’t.”

Gwen shrugs, the complacent, virtuous smile she wears perfected. “I’m the publicist.”

Phil grumbles, “I’m your friend,” but doesn’t pursue it.

“I’ve confirmed the final venue for your book tour,” she tells him, rustling through the paper on her desk to pull out a printed email, with a screenshot of the venue’s website attached, and sliding it across to Phil. “I got you one in Prague, like you wanted.”

Phil eyes the place, an ornate building to match Europe’s diadem of a city, with intricate masonry and smooth pillars either side of the door. “Thank you.”

“So we’ve got seven stops in the US, two in Canada, two in Australia, then finishing in Europe with nine stops. Everything good?”

“Absolutely.” His face can’t contain his excitement. It fizzes in his stomach, his leg bouncing up and down, and he thanks Gwen once, twice.

“It’s no problem, Phil, it’s my job,” Gwen replies. “I’m glad you’re happy,” she adds, and she smiles before her eyes duck to the table and her lips tighten.

“But…” Phil prompts.

“Well, sales haven’t been brilliant recently - you’re selling, but there’s been no new content, so. Well. You need publicity, and decent accommodation, and we can afford it, but higher powers think we could do more to help you keep going until your book comes out.”

“So…” Phil releases the email and it floats down onto the table. He narrows his eyes in thought, and is only half doing it for Gwen’s benefit. He doesn’t know what to expect from the second half of this - she could say anything, and he can only assume the worst.

“So , you were invited to that writing con in LA at the end of this month. You’ll get paid, so we’ve accepted it -”

“Is that it?” Phil slumps back in his chair with a theatrical sigh of relief. “Christ, Gwen, you made it sound so dire! Like I had to sell my body! Not like that,” he addresses Gwen’s raised eyebrows and slack mouth. “Not like that. I didn’t mean that. This got weird,” he admits.

“Yeah...You’ll have to do a meet and greet on the first day, and there’s a couple of panels lined up for you.”

“On?”

“One on the use of narrative and plots in modern lit, whether there are cliches and if that’s okay, that kind of thing. The other on pop culture and its influences in a number of different genres. Basic stuff.”

“I take it we don’t know who else will be on these panels?”

“TBC. You’ll go straight to your first venue at the end of the second day. It’ll be tiring, if anything. So, you’re not mad?” She looks at him askew, managing to still look guilty as she does it, biting her lip and tugging at the neckline of her shirt.

“Why would I be?” Phil frowns.

“You’re pretty, but you’re no social butterfly.”

“Gwen, I’m doing a world tour after this. I can hardly be angry.”

“You never know with these writer types,” Gwen teases, but relaxes.

With a flourish of his hand, Phil conjures a blooming flower, and passes it to her across the desk. “A token of my thanks.”

“Phil, for God’s sake,” Gwen laughs, slapping his wrist before plucking it from his fingers. “You shouldn’t have!”

“It costs me nothing.”

“No, as in, you really shouldn’t have, someone could see!”

“The door’s, er, shut, Gwen.”

She rolls her eyes. “Okay, I hate boys making magical flowers out of nowhere and giving them to me. You’re my worst nightmare and I’d like you to leave my office right now.”

Slowly, Phil stands, bending over to pick up his bag, and grins at her. “Meeting over?”

“Almost.” Kicking her chair back, she picks up a pile of magazines and offers them up to him. The Sauceror splays across its front in Alice In Wonderland font, a comic Phil can’t be bothered to read sitting below it, detailed with speech bubbles and pointy hats. It’s a typical sight when it comes to the satirical magazine: a popular media made purely to mock the magical community. “Want them?”

“Sure.” He waits for Gwen to lift them higher. Once they’re in his direct line of sight, his eyes flash gold, and a fluorescent pink flame bursts from the centre. The glossy pages disappear in a matter of seconds. “You’re a hypocrite,” he says.

Gwen grins at him, and nods.

“I’ll text you.” He heads for the door.

“You better, Lester,” she replies, fingers gripping the desk to haul herself back to her computer.

“When do I not?”

Gwen shrugs a shoulder. “Hope the novel writing goes well. I’ll get the travel info to you ASAP.”

“Thanks, Gwen. See you.”

“See you. Now, go, I’m a busy woman!”

“You could’ve fooled me,” he quips, and laughs at the kiss she sarcastically blows his way before the door shuts behind him.

-

Two weeks later, London is reposing in a light drizzle as Phil packs up his belongings. He chooses and folds his clothes himself, but he has a habit of not shutting drawers and doors behind him, so does so with a sweep of his hand and a muttered spell. A song is rippling out of a speaker next to his bed, ubiquitous and subtle. Extra time is taken deciding which case each item belongs in - one case will be sent ahead to the tour bus, the other he’ll keep with him at the convention - but he sets about the task happily, enjoying its mundane solace.

Half five in the evening, and there’s an obnoxious knock on his door. Dropping a pair of jeans onto his bed, Phil hurries to the door and opens it. “Jack,” he greets, with a smile and gesture inviting him in.

“Phil,” Jack replies, in the same formal tone. Though dampened by the rain, his blond hair continues to stick up from his forehead; tiny sugar grains of rain cover the lenses of his glasses, and he wipes them carelessly with two fingers as he shrugs off his jacket and kicks off his shoes. “How’s packing going?” He follows Phil back up the stairs to his bedroom.

“Good, fine. I don’t think I’ve forgotten anything,” Phil looks over the separate piles of belongings placed on his mattress, and gives a wide sweep of his hand. “Do you want something to eat? Drink?”

“Nah, mate, you’re alright. Charger?”

“What?”

“Have you packed your charger? And your adaptors?”

“Ah, no.” Phil laughs before scurrying across to find a spare in the mess of his electronics drawer. He leaves it open - Jack closes it for him.

“Thank you, twice over,” Phil says. Jack does know about the magic, does know Phil could have done it himself. Jack’s just a man of habit and respectful chivalry.

“De rien. I came over to ask about your fucking house plants.” Jack jerks his head towards Phil’s windowsill, where a quarter of Phil’s collection cast fronded shadows on the white paint.

“What about them?” Phil pouts, stroking a particularly broad leaf of a plant on the far right.

“You need to water them, Phil. You asked me to water them,” Jack reminds him harshly, but cracks a wide, wonky grin.

“Yes! Thank you. I can give you the spare key now?”

“That’d be best.” Phil registers his reply and sets off to find it. “You don’t have a convenient flower pot outside your door to hide it under.”

“All the plants, but none of the tools,” Phil agrees, raising his voice from the office room next door.

“Some would say that’s a bad situation to be in.”

Phil returns and drops the key into Jack’s open palm. “They would, yes. I might agree, some days.”

“Only in secret, of course.”

“Of course. So. Cacti need watering once or twice a week, depending on hot weather.” Jack snorts, raising his eyebrow at the clouded glass. “Exactly. More’s needed on the hot days. The rest need it every two or three days. The one in the hall needs periods of dry soil, though, so watch out for that.”

“Got it.”

“If you see any stray cats, don’t let them in. I’m allergic.”

“Not even the cute ones?”

“Allergies don’t relent for anyone, Jack. It’s the harsh reality of life.”

“Write a book about that and see if it sells.”

Phil huffs a laugh. “Maybe I should. As good an idea as I’ve got so far, anyway.”

Clapping him on the back, Jack says, “You’ll get there, mate, you always do. Unfortunately for me.”

Phil wrinkles his nose at the insult and swats him away. “I rely on you in times of need.”

“Of course. When are you back?”

“Two or three months.”

“Christ, that’s time for me to host, like, ten house parties, and not have a permanent hangover.”

“I know,” Phil says, feeling a pail of homesickness overturn in his stomach.

“If you fancy more travelling after all that, I’m going to New Zealand in eight months or so.”

“Really? What for?”

“I got that film deal, didn’t I?” Jack’s mirth glistens all over his face like morning dew, dressed in a quintessential smile. Jack makes it a habit to toy the line between cockiness and pride, and he does it well.

“You did? That’s amazing!”

“It’s pretty cool, yeah,” Jack figures, causing him to laugh, loud, while Phil rolls his eyes.

“Why are you inviting me? I know nothing about film, and surely there’s some limits to your power.”

“I’m the director.” Jack lifts and drops a shoulder. “I am The Power.”

“The Power? And you choose me?”

“You and a few others, if they’re up for it, yeah. I have a say over the production and cast, and you’ve a way with words, Phil.”

“Well,” Phil hastens to disagree, dipping his head. His fingers toy with the discarded pair of jeans.

“You’re going on a world tour, I’m taking no bullshit from Humble McLester today. If you want, you can come. And, if you’ll pardon me saying, it’s in New fuckingZealand. With me. What’s not to love?”

“The spiders?” Phil offers.

“Apart from the spiders, what’s not to love?”

Closing his eyes, Phil exhales heavily through his nose, and finally acquiesces with a nod. “It does sound pretty good, yes.”

“It’s up to you, but the offer’s there.”

“Thank you, Jack, I really appreciate it.”

“I know you do, you’re too modest, that’s why. But even I must agree that I’ve been the real hero today.”

Smacking his shoulder, Phil tells him, “Yes, I’m forever in your debt, Sir. Now, please, go away.”

“You’re kicking me out?” Jack laments, puffing out his chest as Phil begins to crowd him out of the door.

“My flight is at four am tomorrow and I haven’t sorted out my socks yet.”

“Fair. You’ll show me to the door?”

“You know where it is.” Phil wildly points down the stairs.

“Etiquette doesn’t care, Phil.”

Again, Phil sighs, wondering how it’s possible that he ever has any air left to breathe when Jack’s around if he’s always exhaling it out in despair, and tells him as such, adding, “And fine, I’ll show you to the bloody door.”

-

The flight over to LA doesn’t ever get any shorter, so when their taxi pulls up at the hotel hosting the convention, Phil’s head is leaning against Gwen’s, all height-differences set aside. It was an overnight flight, allowing him to sleep on the plane, and it’s approximately six PM in the UK right now, so his jetlag isn’t awful yet , but he knows feeling like death will only get closer as the day unravels. They couldn’t get him a hotel room for the day before, which means it’s day 1 - which means he has a meet and greet, with a duration of three hours, and a panel. Which means his chances of collapsing are High on the Phil Lester Scale Of Doom.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Gwen chides him, dragging her suitcase over the rugged ground much more successfully than Phil does. “They’ve got coffee machines. I’ll keep your levels high.”

Phil can see the crowds from here. The foyer of the hotel is made of glass, and it sits down a long slope. The queues are inert but for a few shuffling feet, the myriad colours of the people’s hair and clothes making a swarming mass of crows’ wings. Phil swallows and squeezes the handle of his case tighter.

“True,” he accepts. Gwen leads him down a path that will take them to the backstage entrance - away from the swarm of people, thank God - and he follows, walking by her side. “It only works if it’s good coffee, though.”

“I’ll try.”

“You’re my agent, Gwen, not Jesus. You turn stories into books, not water into coffee that isn’t shit.”

Holding a door open with her foot, Gwen removes her sunglasses and tells him, “That was some beautiful poetry, Phil. Have you ever considered going into creative writing?”

Phil throws her a look and transforms it into a cordial greeting for the pair of security guards walking towards them.

“You guys know where you’re going?” one asks.

“Hotel and then meeting room one,” Gwen replies. “I’m half there.”

“Ah, that’s easy, for the hotel you just walk that way,” he twists his arm to point down the corridor, “and keep walking. You’ll get to a staircase. Red carpet, predictable, easy to spot. The meeting rooms are signposted from there.”

“Thank you,” Phil says.

“No problem,” he says, and his silent companion smiles at them both. “See you around.”

-

As the guard said, finding the hotel is easy enough. An escalator and a set of three steps takes them to their adjacent rooms; a simple but pleasing affair: cream carpets, double bed, two lamps, a wooden desk painted white, a wardrobe - the same colour, and, to the side, an ensuite with a shower and a deep bath. Phil dumps his case on the bed and hurries to smooth down the pristine sheets; next ducking into the bathroom with a comb he stuffed in his travel bag, he sorts out his mess of hair, finds a clean set of clothes to change into, realises he now needs to tidy his hair again, and finally emerges to meet Gwen.

“It’s not the best arrangement. I know that and I’m sorry,” Gwen comments, smoothing down a wrinkle in her blouse. “But this is only a low-key event, hardly ComicCon.”

Phil snorts, “Low-key .” He can hear the hubbub from here, spiralling up along corridors and through windows until the plosives gnaw at his ears.

“It’s not ComicCon,” Gwen repeats, kindly, as she ties her hair up in a ponytail.

“I don’t suppose my work would ever qualify for ComicCon,” Phil says as they set off down the corridor.

“Of course it does. Give it a year or two, and maybe a feature film.” Gwen presses the down button for the lift, and it lights up in a halo of white around her finger.

“Poems don’t make films, Gwen.”

“No, but bestselling novels do.” The lift doors shudder open - the inside is coated with a red carpet that creeps up onto the walls, and Phil stares into his own gaze. The mirror is severed in two by a hand rail. Gwen casts a knowing grin at him in the reflection; he cocks an eyebrow in return, ignoring the stutter of blood in his cheeks. “What’s it to be, Christmas or Valentines’?”

“Sometime in between,” Phil answers, stepping in and blocking the door with his arm. “You coming?”

Gwen says, “I have to, don’t I?” and goes to stand beside him. Phil removes his arm, the lift offers a lilting, “doors closing,” and the lift jolts down. After a few moments of silence, Gwen says, “I know you won’t have much time to write during this tour, and that’s okay. I don’t want you to overwork yourself, or beat yourself up, or any of the other foolish things you tend to do. Rest time is for rest, yeah?”

Phil bows his head. “What if I get a really good idea?”

“Then you write it down, you twat. But none of that,” here, her voices goes robotic, “‘I must write five thousand words a day’ crap, okay? It’s -”

“Crap,” Phil finishes, while the lift doors open again. No one in the lobby is listening to him to give him a disapproving look, except for Gwen, and she just looks proud. “Don’t worry, I’ll be good.”

“You always are,” Gwen sighs, squeezes his shoulder, and subsequently tugs him out after her.

“What does that mean?”

“It means you should be quiet and help me find your damn meetup.” Gwen cranes her neck, looking around. “Can you see any signs?”

“What, is it hard to see from down there?” Phil teases, but follows suit. “Maybe we should ask for help?”

“No way. I’m a qualified adult. A professional.”

“We have twenty minutes.”

“A professional, Phil.”

-

It takes a few extra minutes, but they manage to find the correct hall without any external help, and they have time to find a water cooler and coffee dispenser (not in the same place, alas) while Phil scoops his nerves together and pushes them aside.

The hall is cavernous, the roof arching away until Phil’s eyes start to strain; the metal ceiling is corrugated like a rib cage, and noise palpitates in its echo, a thrumming mess of beats. Behind a line of black screens, people fill the spaces between the plastic fences; Phil isn’t a household name by any means, but this is a large crowd, larger than any he’s ever seen before - he dares to peek out behind the screen and can’t even see the end of the line - and larger than he’ll see again for the rest of his tour. The convention hadn’t seemed like a big deal, just a pit stop to make the next months work, but now the sting of voices flips that attitude on its head. The hall is large enough to erase any uncomfortable stenches, but the LA heat blankets everything. Phil still accepts a coffee from Gwen, though. His eyes already feel like they may drop out and roll away, he’s so tired.

“You okay?” Gwen asks him, squeezing his wrist.

“Yeah, yeah,” Phil mutters. His body is trembling - half from fear, half from excitement.

They head back to Phil’s station. Phil finishes his coffee with a gulp and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

“They’re ready for you now,” Gwen informs him as she appears behind him. “You look fine.”

Phil blinks. “I didn’t ask.”

“I know.” Gwen gives him a quick hug - a comforting pinch at his waist when she loops her arms round him. “Only three hours to go!”

“Only three hours,” Phil agrees, and smiles at her once before pushing past the screen.

-

Unluckily for Phil, the coffee Gwen gives him, although it looks convincing enough, is shit, and does nothing for his energy levels. As much as he loves meeting readers, as much as he enjoys talking to them and consuming split seconds of their stories, he cannot dispel the drooping, withering feeling that accrues with the minutes. By the end of it, he needs a new set of clothes, a shower, and a nap.

“You have time for none of those things,” Gwen says, with little apology in her voice, as she hustles him out of the hall and down a long, bare-boned corridor.

“But I feel fucking awful,” Phil objects, rubbing his right eye with the heel of his hand. This was always destined to be a trainwreck.

“But you only half look it.” Gwen uses the same disgruntled whine Phil did, and he aims a flimsy slap at her arm. He misses.

“This is Hell.”

“Hell doesn’t care if you need a shower. Hell cares about schedules, and you have a panel on,” she checks her notebook, “The Hero’s Journey: the use of narrative in the modern day. You don’t have time, unless you can wash in three minutes and not fall asleep.”

“Well-”

Gwen throws a look around her, then dares to whisper, “Don’t you know any healing spells? Or something to tidy your physical appearance, at least?”

“I’m too tired to do anything serious, Gwen, they’re not exactly common nature to me! I try to avoid it whenever possible,” he hisses back.

“And I appreciate that! But it’s either that or stop complaining!”

“I’m genuinely too drained to help myself not be drained. But.” Sighing, he mutters a short spell under his breath - something his uncle taught him, when he was ten and forever in his mother’s bad books for poor personal upkeep.

Gwen eyes him up and down as his hair straightens out and his clothes settle down, creaseless once more. “Better. Thank you.”

“That coffee was shit.”

She pats his shoulder. “I know, love. Have another, and put a brave face on, yeah?” She reveals another paper cup and presses it into his hand.

“You kept that hidden.”

“I thought I’d fend off all complaints first.”

Phil raises his eyebrows, grumbles, “Well, fair enough,” and takes a gulp of the bitter coffee, forcing it down. “Where are you taking me?”

“Somewhere to hide your body, if you keep up this attitude.”

“Christ, to think I used to describe you as kind.”

“Sorry.” Gwen bites her lip. “Assembly hall 2.”

“That…” Phil shakes his head. “Means nothing to me.”

Gwen lets go of a teasing laugh and guides him down another corridor, this one lined with doors. “I didn’t think it would.”

-

“You’re talking crap,” he says, pointedly ignoring the please note that some audience members are under 18 note propped up on the table in front of him, too tired to care that he’s interrupting some pretentious kid who must think he’s so unique and revolutionary that he can insult the literary world’s classics. He's not in the mood for that. He has a whole collection of reasons why he’s disgruntled, and will never stop using these as justification for his outburst. If the convention hates him - well, they should have kept their guests supplied with reliable caffeine. His feet ache, there’s a swelling weight in his head, and his favourite childhood author is being insulted. He barely feels like himself. He barely registers the idiot’s face as he twists to face Phil, who’s barely spoken the past half an hour, with a look of surprise and entertainment. Phil decides that he can be the one he takes his anger out on. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

“Um,” the panel moderator begins. She can’t continue for the yells and heckles that detonate in the audience, as if Phil is immolating this guy, not interrupting him during an analytical debate. “Mr Lester, do you have something you have to say to Mr Howell here?”

Phil wasn’t listening to the other panelists’ names when they were introduced, and he couldn’t care less now who this guy is, just that he’s wrong. “Yeah, actually, I do. You can’t bring Tolkien into this, of all people. The man’s a genius!”

“How? I could’ve plotted his stories when I was 12!”

“His world-building skills are beyond incredible!” Phil retaliates, fist crushing his plastic water bottle. Gwen’s going to have his head later, but it’s too late.

“What, because he threw in some fairy words and people with large feet? Some hocus pocus and voodoo shit? He was one adjective away from having witches with pointy hats and cats that spoke. His trees spoke.” A titter ripples through the crowd.

“Those were part of the universe he set his stories in,” Phil fights back, assembling the perfected look of nonchalance towards Howell’s outright disdain for magic - he’s had years to get it right, after all.

“Anyone can do that. His plot, though, God, I’ve never seen something more predictable in my life.” Howell slouches back in his chair, mouth slick with complacency.

“Predictable?” Phil cries, and coughs, cringing at the high octave his voice has taken.

“Predictable underdog as a predictable hero, predictable sidekick, predictable battle between good and evil, and finally a predictable triumph for good.”

“It was less predictable when he wrote it, back when the fantasy genre wasn’t worked to death.”

“Now that’s crap. Why are you defending him? The best part of those books is Frodo’s doomed love for Sam, and Tolkien likely didn’t even intend for that.”

“Those bestseller charts disagree.”

Howell regards him with brief shock, his jaw slack with a smile, as if his mere look could make Phil blush from his own idiocy. “What kind of stuff do you write?” He asks this as if it is not for his own interest, but for the interest of his argument - perhaps he has read Phil’s work, then, or at least knows who he is. If only Phil could say the same about him.

“Poetry. Surrealism.”

“Then why on Earth are you defending The Hero’s Journey narrative? That’s literally all The Lord of the Rings is, and you, of all people, should hate it.”

“Okay, no, that narrative is awful, but the Tolkien universe makes it into something else,” Phil insists, recalling the awe his small, teenage heart had for those novels.

Howell snorts. “What, so he adds a bit of sorcery and some old wives’ tales, and all his literary sins are forgiven?”

Phil literally doesn’t know what Howell’s talking about. Howell doesn’t know what he’s saying. Tolkien’s works are masterpieces, some of the greatest, most lovable stories the world has to offer. The type of narrative used is irrelevant, as long as he pulls it off, and Tolkien did more than that. He says as such, finishing, “There are no sins to forgive! He certainly does not use magic to make his work readable.”

Dan cocks an eyebrow. He tilts his head towards Phil. “Some might say you need some black magic to make your work readable.”

Refusing to go quietly, Phil opens his mouth to speak, to combat the low blow - lower than Howell knows, and it’s staying that way - with what a brilliantly unique insult or something lame like that. He may be pissed off and his pride may be at stake, but he’s still jetlagged. But then, perhaps luckily for him, the moderator cuts him off, and another panelist starts discussing the use of the unreliable narrator and Gothic murders. Phil slinks back in his chair and tries to rest without making it look like Howell’s comments have shaken him.

-

“What the fuck were you thinking?” Gwen demands. Or, more, hisses at him through the bathroom door as he changes for his long-awaited shower. He locked the door to his hotel room, but when Gwen started threatening to break it down with all her furious knocking, he figured it was better to let her in than let her get them both in their neighbours’ bad books. Sometimes magic has its uses, and he didn’t even have to leave the bathroom when he signed his death warrant.

Phil winces as he undoes his belt. Gwen hardly ever swears. “Honestly, Gwen, I haven’t had a coherent thought since I left England.”

“Don’t guilt me, Lester, you must have known what you were doing! Do you even know who he was?”

“As I said, Gwen, I really wasn’t thinking at all.”

“I don’t know how you could have failed to recognise the face of a literary celebrity, Phil.”

“He can’t have done that well, if he was on that panel.” Phil pulls a face in the mirror. His eyes are supported underneath by a livid purple; his fringe is splitting apart in three separate places.

“Well, surprise, it was Dan Howell. Dan bloody Howell, Phil! You interrupted Dan Howell, and asked him who the hell he thought he was! Dan Howell! And that was only in your opening statement!”

The name rings a bell, but Phil can’t place it. “Who?”

“Dan Howell.”

Phil sighs forcefully as he pulls off his shirt. “You’ve said his name enough times for him to appear in my mirror, Gwen. Who is he, other than some pretentious writer who assaults innocent panelists?”

Gwen starts listing achievements, “Existentialist fiction writer -”

“So he is pretentious, then.”

Gwen bashes the door again to silence him. “New York Times bestseller, Britain’s hottest man according to Sugarscape in 2015.”

Phil snorts. “Not hot enough for me, clearly.”

“You just insulted the nation’s sweetheart.”

“I thought I was the nation’s sweetheart,” Phil grumbles, frowning.

“Not anymore.” Gwen sighs. “Mean anything to you?”

Phil scratches his head. “Not really, no. I’m still stuck on how in hell he gets to be Britain’s Hottest Man, honestly.”

“Our Diadem? Through My Eyes? Roses Gone By June? Ring a bell? Because they should: they’re all best sellers.”

Turns out they do ring a bell. Phil can remember Jack recommending the latter to Phil, saying a friend wrote it and that it was, in every way, incredible. But then, Jack quintessentially recommended any book his friends wrote, and Phil wasn’t persuaded completely. Still, he hasn’t been living under a rock for the last few years. He leans forward, head against the door, and thinks. It takes a few moments, but then memories of newspaper reviews (he doesn’t read them just to see reviews of his own work, he has interests in the literary world, shut up Jack) of Roses Gone By June float up from the fog: Howell’s new release being the On The Road of the modern day, Orwell resurrected on our book shop shelves, and other words of praise any author or poet would die to hear.

Phil edges open the door. Gwen stares at him through the crack, only looking half furious. “The Guardian-acclaimed modern Beat Generation boy?”

“That is the term they’ve coined for him, yes. Amongst others.”

“I regret nothing,” Phil announces, insistent, but slams the door shut again. Hemay be tired enough to argue with Dan Howell, but he'll never be tired enough to make the foul move of arguing with Gwen. "He had it coming."

“Maybe he did, Phil, but not in front of a hall of fans! All of whom have blogs and Twitter accounts.”

“Yes, okay, maybe I regret that now, but he insulted Tolkien! I couldn’t care less if he has fans.”

“Your priorities are messed up.”

“I’m very jet lagged and very sweaty.”

“Gross.”

“Exactly.”

Her voice taut with fake pleasantry, Gwen asks, “Oh, also, do you want to know who his father is?”

No, not really, but Gwen’s soldiering on, “The editor of The Sauceror.”

Phil bristles. The Sauceror, Britain’s number one satirical magazine, prides itself on belittling magic users to the point where magic is a nationwide laughing stock. Magic isn’t illegal, but prejudice against it isn’t, either. Phil can’t exactly say he’s let down by this information: Howell was a dick, anyway. “That explains it all, then.”

Gwen’s voice is quieter, more lenient and kind, as she says, “I think the only person he was insulting was Tolkien.”

Phil snorts. “Really? You think so? Really?”

“Okay, so he was mean to you.”

“You got that right.”

“But the magic hating is in your head, Phil. I think.”

Perhaps Gwen has a point. Looking back, Howell might have been a dick about Tolkien, but any mention of magic was for insult on Tolkien’s part, not magic’s. Phil hands it to her that the talk of magic was coincidental to the topic. But part of him, the stubborn, proud part of him, clings to his resentment. “Can you blame me?”

“No, I can’t.”

Phil thinks for a moment, and adds, “That last comment was rather hateful.”

“Again, it insulted you and your so called “poor” writing, not magic.”

“It still hurts, though, doesn’t it?” Phil doesn’t use magic to help his writing: it’s not black magic, after all. He reckons it’s very impossible to do so. But his writing is an important part of him, and, though Howell doesn’t know it, his magic is, too. He just had two major parts of him attacked by a stranger, and then his shame was painted up on the walls for everyone to see. He feels a bit like he’s melting.

“Yeah.”

To get the water warm, Phil sets the shower running; he could use magic to heat it up, but running water is difficult and he’s not opposed to being normal once in awhile. He tugs on a dressing gown and opens the door again, to be heard over the roar of water. One hand remains on the door, the other hangs by his side. “Can I present my case now, your honour?”

Softly, Gwen smiles, and presses her fingers to Phil’s wrist in an apology.

“I might have started it, but he provoked me. Yes, it was a trivial argument, but the coffee was shit.”

“Was it?”

Phil glares at her, and continues, “Anyway, provocation aside, Howell was more of a dick than I was. In the end, at least. He fought back twice as hard as I did. He said my work’s unreadable! Did I ask for that? No, I did not. I was a pile of dust on the ground, Gwen, I really was.” He says this last part with a lamenting, pitiful lilt - acting the part of the sorrowful accused.

“You picked the fight.”

“I wasn’t myself! Surely lack of caffeine and sleep are just grounds for a not guilty ruling?”

Regarding him for a moment, Gwen sighs. “It’s not about whether I think you’re innocent. My job is to make sure your books sell, and that includes keeping up a decent public image.”

“Fine, fine, I’ll apologise,” Phil concedes, and Gwen nods in thanks. “But I think it’s only fair that he does, too, don’t you think?”

Gwen looks at him, considering. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thanks Gwen. I think I’m wasting water, so if you could go now, that’d be good.” The bathroom is full of swirling steam.

“Yeah, you are. I’ll come back in an hour for the party.”

“Party? Gwen, I’m exhausted.” Phil slumps against the door.

“And what happened to that apology?”

“Ugh. Okay, fine. Bye.” Straightening, Phil returns her smile and closes the door.

-

Though Phil may not have any connection to black magic, or anything advanced, really - rituals, hexes, Old Magic and the like aren’t his thing, and he doesn’t imagine they ever will be - he’s spent the past few years perfecting healing balms and potions. They’re the most tame form of tangible magic, he feels; the simple spells he conducts are subtle tweaks to the steady constant of reality, and he hates to go any further - for fear of discovery, for fear of hating himself. The use of magic is an ongoing discourse - a topic that resulted in many insults and ill-placed words. Phil can cope with balms and remedies. He can use them to help himself and others.

He’s also managing to make them smell wonderful.

He uses one of these balms - strawberry scented, barely - in the shower, to soothe his aching muscles and revive himself a little. His brain is threatening to fall out of his ears, his flesh is marinated in cider, he’s Sisyphus at the top of his mountain, so he prays that it will have an effect as he works some into the back of his thighs. When he steps out, stretching his muscles and feeling no protest from them, he mutters a thank fuck; unlike last time, the improvement is noticeable, and, like last time, the improvement is urgently needed.

-

In the time remaining before Gwen comes back, Phil sets to unpacking. With a wave of his hand, the clothes in his suitcase rise up and carry themselves over to the open wardrobe; Phil flicks his finger once, twice, and a smart shirt and ironed trousers leave the parade and land back on his bed. He changes into them, boils the kettle, and makes himself a cup of tea. Settling back on the bed - the mattress is comfortable, and bounces under his weight - he sits back with his drink to wait.

Would Howell even be at the party? Perhaps he has somewhere else to be, or perhaps his agent isn’t a ruthless person who cares about how many hours sleep he gets. If they are, then Phil won’t have to humiliate himself further. This is the preferable option.

But if he is there, will he even hear Phil out? He might catch one glimpse of Phil and slap him. Or sneer and jeer at him. The latter would be worse.

Phil doesn’t have a good history with words. On paper, he’s fine, but speaking to strangers sets a capricious worry into motion in his head. He tries to treat it like he would writing, rehearsing what to say in his head over and over, but he never knows how to start, how to initiate. He’s been known to hover, caught in the issue of how to approach them. And Phil knows Howell, in a way, but they’re definitely not on good terms. He’s going to blurt out some heartless shit, or practically fall to his knees and tear his weakness and foolishness out for Howell to pick at.

This is going to go awfully.

-

Exactly an hour after her leaving, Gwen knocks on his door. Phil unlocks the door from where he’s sitting, his laptop balanced on his crossed legs, and Gwen doesn’t look surprised when she opens it to see Phil there, not behind it. She’s changed her clothes, too, into a yellow and blue top tucked into denim shorts (the top is designed to be loose, slumping over her shoulders and billowing under her arms but tightening where it’s tucked in). Her hair is down and her lipstick isn’t smudged.

“Are you clean now?”

“As I’ll ever be. Where do I take this?” Phil pushes his laptop off him and, picking it off the bedside table, brandishes his tea mug. He had really wanted a drink, but the consequences are making him regret it.

Gwen closes the door behind her. “Can’t you wash it?”

“I can’t make water and washing liquid out of thin air. I’m not that magic.”

“Well, you’re gonna need to be. There are some very angry people on Twitter.”

Phil pulls a face. “Angry?”

“I’m not sure if angry is the exact word to use, but I’m going with it. Your fight with Dan has really done...something.”

“I thought we’d decided he deserved it! And where are my fans, huh? I have fans too.”

She steps farther into the room. “Oh, believe me, there’s hostility on both sides, don’t you worry. Are you offering to pick up the corpses? You guys started something of a war out there.”

“Not really. Is Howell gonna apologise, too?”

“Not if you keep addressing him by his surname, no. Come on, we need to get going.” She walks back towards the door.

“Gwen?”

“Yes?”

“My mug.”

“The cleaners will sort it out, just leave it.”

“Oh. Right.” Sheepishly, Phil places it back on its coaster, and stands up.

“Haven’t you been to hotels before?”

“Not often .” He catches up with her, locking the door behind him.

“That’s going to change soon,” she enthuses, nudging him in the ribs with her elbow. Phil throws her a smile and breaks it at the thought of all the people - strangers - he’s going to meet. It’s excitement or dread, the feeling, but either way, it drenches him, shocking him cold. His smile lies in pieces on the floor as he jabs the lift button.

“Why am I doing this, Gwen?”

“Doing what? Please don’t tell me you’re second guessing your whole career.” Gwen’s brow furrows and her fist tightens.

“Why am I about to sacrifice myself in public by apologising to that idiot?”

Gwen slaps his shoulder, “You dick! I was really worried!”

“Ow!” Rubbing his shoulder, Phil adds, “And who says this isn’t an important thing?”

Gwen shakes her head. “You’ll be fine. Can’t you make this lift come any faster?”

“I’m devastatingly handsome, Gwen, not some sort of time-manipulating cheat.”

-

The combined bar and party room of the hotel is burnished by neon bulbs. The room weeps red and pink light; it splits at certain angles in the lenses of Phil’s glasses. The ceiling stoops low, and the light fixtures are stuck to the walls, so areas of the ceiling are layered in shadow - the light ripples away and out. At the far side, a long table draped in a white cloth holds myriad plates of party food. The scent of alcohol and freshly baked cake drifts along in a room that is alive with voices. A pop song is playing, but not blasting; guests line the bar and stand in bouquets in the empty space. Phil knows none of them. Except -

“Nope. No, Gwen, I can’t.” He walks backwards a few steps, shaking his head.

“Yes, you can.” Gwen catches him by the elbow; the white of his button-up is stained a feeble red. “You have to. It’ll be okay: I’ve met him, he’s really harmless.”

Phil looks back to Howell. He’s sat alone at the bar, legs crossed and his hip against the ledge of wood; his eyes are fixed on his glass, but he shifts on his stool, as if he’s waiting for something. Like Phil, he’s wearing a button-up and jeans, but his shirt is black and graceful down the slope of his shoulders. He’s not sneering or beating anyone up, which is something; not unsurprising, really, but Phil had built up a much more menacing image of him in his head. Now, he at least looks harmless. “His father isn’t,” Phil worries.

“You’re not meeting his father, and I don’t imagine you ever will. It’ll be okay.”

Phil chews the inside of his cheek. “Can’t you come with me?”

“Now that will make you look weird.”

“Touche.” Phil smooths down his shirt, breathes out deeply, and flips Gwen off for her histrionic eyeroll before setting off for the bar.

Dodging a number of people on his way, Phil forces himself not to float uselessly by Howell for any length of time, instead going straight in with, “I’m really sorry.” By skipping any proper introductions, or even a declaration of his presence, Phil makes himself even more anxious. He stands helplessly, curling and unfurling his fists as he watches Howell look up at him. His eyebrows raise, but he doesn’t look disgusted by Phil’s arrival.

“I think I should be the one apologising,” Howell admits, twisting around so as to see Phil better. Both his hands are still on the bar, so one arm is crossed over his lap; three fingers rub at the condensation of his glass.

Phil’s mouth cracks open in surprise, but this doesn’t stop him from saying, “Good, because I’m only doing this because my agent told me to.” He regrets saying this, but only until Howell’s lip pulls up in one corner, and he laughs - cordially - shocked out of him by Phil’s irreverence.

“Same, except I was sat here gathering my wits and putting it off.”

“Ah. I think we’ve been set up.”

Howell laughs again (and it’s not an ugly sneer at all). His foot kicks at a nearby stool, and Phil takes it as an invitation to sit down.

“The coffee was shit,” Phil declares, just as Howell explains, “I’m very jet lagged.” They smile upon realising, and Howell looks at him like he’s amused by something.

“That too,” Phil says. He ducks his head.

“To be honest, though, I haven’t got an excuse. You were defending a crap author. I just outright insulted you.”

Phil shakes his head firmly. “I sinned, too. I asked you who the hell you thought you were. And, I must admit, I didn’t recognise you at all.”

“Well, that’s just outrageous,” Dan jokes.

“I haven’t read any of your work,” Phil blurts, as if being forced into a confession by guilt, and he’s only half joking.

“And I have read none of yours.”

“It would appear,” Phil begins, slowly, and meets Dan’s gaze, “that we are as bad as each other.”

“Yes,” Dan agrees. “Perhaps we should buy each other a drink, and be done with it.”

“Surely that’s perfectly redundant.”

“If we order the same drink, yes,” Dan says, as he raises his hand to get the bartender’s attention.

“Then I’m getting whatever you get.”

“Ugh, don’t be like that. I crossed more lines than you did, I deserve to pay more.”

“Then think of me refusing that offer as me being a dick, and we’re equal.”

From the corner of his eye, Dan looks at him, and tries to look annoyed. “The cheap beer, please,” he says, when the bartender asks what she can get them. She turns to Phil expectantly.

“What he’s getting,” he tells her, and as she walks away he returns Dan’s glare and fixed jaw with an outrageously wide, innocent smile.

“What a dick,” Dan whispers - whispers after leaning closer so Phil can hear it over the music. Also grinning.

“Now we match,” Phil states. “So, tell me, what did Tolkien ever do to you?”

-

They’re halfway through an argument about which movement that emerged out of the twentieth century was the best, when Gwen comes over with another woman. Her blonde hair is cut to her jaw, and despite the neon lighting Phil can make out faded hints of pastel colour running through it. She and Gwen are laughing as they walk.

“You guys are getting on, then?” Gwen says, and Dan stops butchering Hemingway to smile up at her. (Howell becomes Dan when Phil lets ‘Howell’ slip mid-sentence and is received with a, “Please, we can either be friends, or you can keep calling me Howell.” Phil’s stubborn, but - and he hates to admit it - he’s taken to Dan, despite his cutting humour and awful literary tastes. The next time, he says ‘Dan’, and watches Dan’s knowing smile ripple across his cheeks.)

“Fitfully,” Phil replies.

“I understand,” says the blonde woman. “I know more than anyone how much of a pain in the arse he is.”

“I am right here,” Dan says, pointing to himself.

“I’m Dan’s agent, Louise,” she says, offering her hand. Phil shakes it.

“Phil. But you might know that already.” He gives Gwen a pointed look, and she shrugs.

“I feel like I should apologise on Dan’s behalf. So, I’m sorry for his behaviour, his big head overwhelms him.”

Phil laughs. “I’m sorry, too.”

“What for?”

“Having to put up with him.”

The three of them laugh - while Dan crosses his arms and scowls.

“It’s a sign of affection, I promise,” Phil tells him.

He replies, “Fuck you,” but his face lifts a little.

-

Gwen and Louise pull up stools. The four of them sit in a circle and chat for a while, and Phil barely touches his drink. Louise is bubbly and reckless in her humour, but never to the point of insult. Her cheeks are painted pink, but it’s natural flush. Dan is cordial and charismatic, but keeps a little bit of dry humour and gloom for himself. Gwen is her usual self: following the tone of the conversation faultlessly, forever willing to put Phil down with her quick wit, offering support when she sees fit.

They talk about plans for tours and life in general. Dan’s on a tour, too, but with more stops and longer flights; he also happened to call the flight attendant “Mum” on the flight over. Louise doesn’t hesitate to expose all his slip ups, and Dan doesn’t hesitate to hurl swear words back for her effort. They make Phil’s ribs hurt.

“Dan wanted to go and see the Perseids,” Louise says. Dan buries his face in his hands and groans like an embarrassed teenager; to be fair, though, he’s probably only a few years older than that. (“Or six,” Dan will tell him later.)

“We’re not too close to the city centre, it wouldn’t be too much work to get out of the range of the streetlamps, would it?” Gwen asks.

“About an hour, at most,” Dan says, deciding to speak for himself. He sits up. “But I don’t have a car, nor the money to rent one.”

“I told you he couldn’t be too successful if he’s here,” Phil says to Gwen, with little hostility. She shoots him a look of disdain.

“Shut up,” Dan says.

“Oh, Phil, you wanted to go and see them, didn’t you?” Gwen says. God knows why.

“Did I?” (He did. He knows this.)

“You could car pool, or whatever,” Louise picks up where Gwen left off. “You could afford it then, surely?”

“That would be perfect!” Gwen claps her hands together, and responds to Phil’s look of what the hell are you doing with one that says this is revenge for his previous slight.

“Would that work for you?” Louise asks Dan. He looks to Phil, who concedes with a small nod.

“Sure.”

They’re both skeptical and awkward about it - they may get on, but they’ve known each other approximately an hour - but there’s no denying the convenience of it.

“But,” Phil interjects, “who’s going to drive? We’ve both drunk alcohol.”

“Phil, honey, you’ve barely touched your drink,” Gwen points out.

“Oh, yeah.” Phil drops his head in defeat, and lets Gwen hurry him away, saying over her shoulder, “We’ll see you both outside in ten, then?”

-

“What the hell are you doing?” Phil hisses as soon as they are out of earshot.

“Jumping on an opportunity,” Gwen replies simply. Her hand still cups his elbow as she guides him to the lifts. “Don’t hiss at me, I’m not the only one who’s made annoying choices today.”

“You’re sending me out into the countryside with a stranger.”

“You’ve chatted for over an hour, you’re not strangers any more.”

“We’re practically mortal enemies.”

Gwen shakes her head. “You sorted out your differences.”

“From the world’s point of view, we are still mortal enemies.”

“Exactly. As your agent, I’m telling you that you need to change that.”

“How are they gonna know what I get up to this evening? It changes nothing!”

“You can tweet, can’t you?” Gwen looks sideways at him. He nods, slowly. “There’s your solution.”

“But -”

“Phil, you wanted to see the Perseids. I honestly don’t have any ulterior motives for this. Except the obvious PR benefits,” she admits under Phil’s accusative glare. “I just want you to have fun!”

Phil sighs. “I can’t fault you, then.”

“I won’t let you.”

Phil steps inside the lift after her.

-

It takes an hour and a half to get far enough away from the streetlamps. A few stars appear if Phil looks long enough, leaking out drops of sharp blue; clumps of cloud stop up the wounds, and most of the sky is bloated with the same dusty grey. On the horizon, the outline of the National Park is a slumping corpse.

“I don’t think this is going to work,” Phil states, eyeing the clouds.

“Why not?” Dan doesn’t look up from his phone. Without the city lights, the car is dark, and Phil can only see the features the light of Dan’s phone hits; his nose is prominent under the influence of heavy shadow, the high edges of his face cast in neon blue.

“It’s really cloudy.”

“Ah.” Dan raises his head, pressing the screen of his phone to his lap so he can see the unabridged night, and squints upwards through the window. “Is it going to rain?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.” Returning to the road, Phil clutches the steering wheel as he waits for the light of his headlights to alight on the upcoming corner.

“We should have checked the forecast before we came.”

Phil squares his jaw. As the tight turn becomes known to him, he spins the wheel three hundred and sixty degrees. “Yeah, we should have.”

Dan opens the weather app on his phone, then curses. “There’s no signal.”

“Well, that’s obvious, Dan,” Phil says, and doesn’t wave his hand behind him at the retreating cityscape. The road continues to snake through rusting soil banks and low shrubs.

“Not really our fault though, is it?”

“Our agents aren’t the best event planners,” Phil agrees, looking at Dan in the front mirror. Dan grins.

“No. But we have been set up by them twice in a very short amount of time, so they must be persuasive.”

“Or, we’re pushovers.”

“I’m not a pushover.”

“I am,” Phil says, and smiles sheepishly.

Dan laughs. “Did you know #TolkienGate was trending third in the world?”

Phil widens his eyes. “ What ?”

“I’ll take that as a no, then. Clearly Gwen spared you the guilt of a ruined career.”

“Hardly.” Phil considers for a second. “We’re not ruined , are we?”

“It depends. Is your writing better than your arguments?”

Phil pulls a face. He looks at Dan again in the front mirror; behind it, a massive cloud swarms forward across a patch of open sky. “I’m afraid you’ll have to be the judge of that.”

“Aw, a pushover and a self-doubter! You’re adorable.” Dan leans forward, looking past Phil to the side of the road. “Pull over here.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m bored and there’s no point going on any further. This is the best we’re going to get.”

“Okay.” Phil puts his foot down on the brake.

Looking at him, Dan says, “You really are a pushover.”

“Self-proclaimed.” Phil catches the door handle and pushes it open, twists and kicks his feet out. “Coming?”

“Obviously.”

-

They both lie on the car bonnet, faces tilted to the sky. Mercifully, the radiant of the meteor shower is, for the moment, free of cloud. For twenty minutes they sit in attentive silence, scouring the sky for meteors.

“There’s one!” Phil cries, as a line of fishing wire appears in the wake of a furious, fluorescing ball of silver. The wire trails behind it before it is wound up and stashed away, and it disappears.

“Where?” Dan pushes himself up and follows Phil’s finger.

“Too late,” Phil grumbles.

“Ugh.” Dan falls back against the window; there is an angry thump. “Ow, fuck.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, fine.”

“Well, if you’re seeing stars, either you’ve got concussion, or you’re seeing the Perseids.”

Dan stares at him. “You’re so weird.” He shakes his head, squeezes his eyes shut before opening them and casting his gaze to the sky. “I’m seeing nothing.”

“Then you’re really blind.”

Dan swats his leg. “Says you, Captain Specsavers.”

Phil huffs and flips him off. Dan laughs. His eyes focus on a spot behind Phil’s head.

“Holy shit, look, there!”

Phil looks. “I can’t see anything.”

“You missed it.”

And so it goes for another half an hour.

-

As midnight crawls closer, coldness prickles the air like electricity, and rises to spikes in Phil’s chest. Dan’s focus is saved for the sky, not him, so he casts a warming spell, thinking he deserves some comfort while stuck out here. It’s all Gwen’s fault.

“I think I see - oh, no. It’s a plane,” Phil realises, rather stupidly, and presses his mouth into a fine line against his laugh.

“Oh my God. Do you know what a meteor looks like, Phil? Do you?” Dan shakes Phil’s shoulders, and pulls his hands back, marvelling. “How are you so warm?”

“Um,” Phil answers. “Human radiator.”

“Lucky, I’m freezing.”

Phil takes pity on him - he has something of a weak spot for underdogs - and pushes the warmth out to greet Dan when he’s not looking.

-

Though it’s not successful in terms of meteor spotting, the time spent together is long enough to solve any literary disputes they may have. Dan is a harsh critic, and prefers the raw meaning of writers like Hemingway and Orwell to the great, intricate images the Romantic and Gothic eras have to offer.

“So you’re published?” Dan asks. His hair is curling around his forehead, but the night is dry, so Phil concludes Dan’s hair straighteners must be shit. “Well, obviously,” he chastises himself, “but I know nothing about your work.”

Phil smiles at Dan’s rambling. “I’m published online.”

“That doesn’t count.”

“Yes it does. I post it and it says ‘PUBLISHED’ at the top.”

Dan snorts.

“It counts!” Phil insists.

“I have four books published,” Dan says, offering the information rather than boasting.

“I have a few ebooks.”

“Of course you do. These Millennial types, all electronic.”

“I’m older than you.”

“You’re more digital than me, too.”

“I was commissioned to write a novel and I’m unsure how well it will go down or if I’ll ever get it done,” Phil admits, staring up at the sky. Most of the Northern sky is covered: they’ll have to return home soon.

“You’ll get it done,” Dan says, softer. He frowns, then, looking around him. “Has it got warmer?”

“I think so,” Phil lies.

-

By the time they decide to head back, the whole sky is clouded, and the grey has swollen into a cavernous black. However, they’re in the middle of a Shakespeare discussion by the time they enter the hold of the city again, so decide to stop off at a McDonalds - they stay there until midnight.

“No, but when Lady Macbeth says, what, that she needs to be ‘unsexed’,” Dan argues as they wait for their orders, “she’s showing not only that she needs Macbeth to do her dirty work for her, but that her nature is not made to do such a crime. She’s pressured into such extreme measures of obtaining power by a bigoted society -”

“Yes! That’s what I’m saying!” Phil exclaims, gesticulating wildly.

“I - wait. You mean, you and I think the same thing?”

“Yes!” Phil nods eagerly.

“Oh, fuck.” Dan massages his temples. “I think I need something a bit stronger than a chocolate milkshake.”

“You do not.” Phil grabs Dan’s hand and pulls it away from his temples.

“I never thought I’d fucking agree with you! I must be going mad.”

“You must be,” Phil nods, keeping a firm hold of his wrist. “Your brand is falling apart.” He cannot help but smile.

-

“Goodnight,” Phil says when they stop outside Dan’s hotel room.

“It’s also goodbye.”

Phil frowns. “Why?”

“I’m leaving tomorrow morning. I have a signing at Barnes & Noble, then I’m off to San Diego.”

“Lucky bastard.”

“Hardly, I have to get up at 6.”

“You poor bastard,” Phil amends, and sticks out his hand. “Bye.”

Dan shakes Phil’s hand. “Bye.”

-

“How are you this morning?” Gwen asks, slipping into the chair opposite his. She’s brought a chocolate bar and her phone with her, both clutched in one hand.

Phil looks up; he’s slumped over his hotel coffee, one hand holding his head up, the other scrolling through his Twitter feed. The hotel cafe is empty enough that he’s daring to use magic to control the teaspoon, and he watches it twirl in the liquid; the table is against a wall, and he’s slumped in front of it in case anyone does happen to look. “Still feeling shit.”

“I can tell; you get reckless when you’re tired,” Gwen comments, and stares forcefully at him until he sighs. The teaspoon drops to the side of mug.

“The coffee’s still shit,” he grumbles.

Gwen ignores him. “Are all your differences solved?”

“Still got differences, but we’ve put them aside,” Phil says into his hand.

“Good. Does Twitter know that?”

Phil groans. “What are you on about?”

“People got quite angry with the both of you, as you probably know.”

“I was trending.”

“Yes, exactly. So you need to tell people you’re both friends now, or face the consequences. It won’t be pleasant.”

“Twitter is never pleasant.”

“This is a whole other level, Phil. You insulted people’s idol. You both did,” she adds, before Phil objects.

“I’m too tired to tweet anything meaningful. I’m sorry I can’t be a part of your social agenda.”

Gwen kicks him under the table, and slides the chocolate bar across to him.

“I take it back, I love you.”

“Love you too. Now, please hurry up, or we’ll be late.”

-

Phil Lester @AmazingPhil

still exhausted after watching the perseids with @danisnotonfire last night. we saw 5.3 meteors and a flying goat.

-

Later, Phil will wish he were late to that panel: ten minutes in, a vigilante in the second row chucks a hardback book at his face.

Phil hates using magic in public, never uses it automatically, and he’s not about to start. Plus, he’s still jetlagged and very tired. So when, instead of deflecting the book before it even reaches him, Phil avoids exposing his secret and flings an arm out to prevent any brain damage, it is perfectly justified. There’s no time for panic, just a shocked yelp, as the book smashes into his forearm. The force sends him flying backwards. As gasps of horror and outrage boil up from the audience, Phil falls to the floor, grimacing. The offending book is on the floor beside him, pages splayed open. The front cover reads A Guide To Black Magicke in a gilded gold, curling font. Well, that’s just horribly ironic and macabre, isn’t it? Phil thinks. A pain sprouts in his lower arm; it smarts and explodes in the front of his head, making him hiss air out of his gritted teeth. It feels very much broken. He tries to rotate his wrist.

“It’s broken,” Phil tells Gwen when she appears above him, looking concerned and vengeful, and he cradles his arm to his chest.

“Is that a fake book on dark magic?”

“It is indeed.” Phil nods. He’s managed to sit up, and rocks back and forth in an attempt to quell the pain.

“Oh, Phil,” she pities, stifling her smile with a hand to her mouth.

Phil sighs. “You can laugh, I won’t be offended.”

Removing her hand, she gives a disbelieving laugh, but only for a matter of seconds. “I think I’m too shocked to properly laugh, don’t worry. But - oh my God.”

“It is quite funny, yes,” Phil agrees, poking the book with his toe.

“I think they planned it to be.” Gwen picks it up by pinching the top of its spine. “I think I might frame this.”

“Good luck, it feels at least 500 pages long.”

Gwen’s face descends into guilt again. “Does it hurt a lot?”

“Quite. Don’t blame yourself. Dan said I needed black magic to make my writing better; I’m sure they were just trying to help out by giving this to me as a gift.”

She smiles gently. “They’re calling 911. You sure you’re okay?”

“As long as Royal Mail don’t use this method of posting in the future, I’ll be totally fine.” He shuffles forwards, and, shutting his eyes against the glaring sting of pain, leans against her legs.

-

It only takes an hour for the Internet to milk the accident for all it’s worth. Dan must have heard about it, because Phil gets a text while in the hospital waiting room that reads, “oh no. ”

Phil sits in his hotel room, his arm in a cast and sling, staring at his laptop screen; he alternates between feeling glum and sorry for himself, and laughing aloud.

“You are most certainly trending now,” Gwen announces, sitting down on the bed next to him and crossing her legs. She holds out her phone for Phil to see. He sees the phrases #TolkienGate, #RIPPhilLester and #HowellIsGoingToJail before he looks away.

“I’m not dead,” he says, “But I may as well be. Take my laptop and my phone, it’s not like I can use them anymore.”

“You’ll learn,” Gwen comforts, patting his knee.

“Can we postpone the tour?” he asks, half hopeful.

“No fucking way, I am going to Canada if it’s the last thing you do.”

“Glad to see you’re as selfless as ever.”

She shoots him a guilty look and returns to her phone. She gasps.

“What? What is it?”

“Pre Orders for Jelly Hearts are through the roof! Your ebooks are selling again, too, you’re in Amazon’s top ten!”

“But there’s not even a release date yet!”

“I know! You’re a martyr.”

“Take that, J.K Rowling.” Phil’s phone rings, and he answers it after squinting at the contact number.

“Phil Lester, valid author and saint speaking.”

Dan laughs, the sound crackling down the phone line. “I called as soon as I could. You’re not gonna drop this, ever, are you?”

“Of course not! This was the turning point in my career. I’m a martyr now.”

Dan is silent for a moment. “I’m really sorry. It’s always me apologising, isn’t it?”

“Two out of two times, yes.”

“I must be a bad person.”

“Dan, it’s not your fault.” Phil rolls his eyes. “How were you to know some teenager would become a vigilante for you?”

“But if I hadn’t said it in the first place,” Dan argues.

“Nonsense. I refuse to blame you, and I hope you do the same.”

Dan sighs. “Fine.”

“Good.” Phil shifts on the bed, making himself more comfortable, and leans back against the headboard. “Now, do you want the good news, or the bad news?”

“Both.”

“The good news is that my fans can write some beautiful eulogies for me in the instance of my actual death.”

Again, Dan laughs. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you.”

“What’s the bad news?”

“According to the Twitter trends, you’re going to jail. I’d hate to argue with the majority, so I’m sorry to say that you’re a criminal now.”

It takes a few seconds before Dan can talk again; his laugh is loud and billowing. “You’re liaising with one of the world’s Most Wanted.”

“Actually, you called me.”

“To apologise!”

“It’s not enough for the LA PD.”

“Sorry PD. When do you leave?”

“Tomorrow, at noon.”

“Where to?”

“San Francisco.”

“Exciting.”

“Hopefully,” Phil says.

“I have to go. Maybe our paths will cross,” Dan ponders. “If not, you have my number and my email.”

“No one uses email.”

“They do when international texts cost an arm and a leg, and there’s no time to call.”

"I do only have one arm to spare now."

"Exactly."

Phil bites his lip, smiling. “You flatter yourself, thinking I’ll be in contact.”

“We’ll see, Lester, we’ll see. Sorry again.”

“Stop blaming yourself,” Phil tells him, and hangs up.

“Was that Dan?” Gwen asks.

Phil nods. “Apologising for indirectly breaking my arm. I said to you that we’d put our differences aside.”

“And I believed you. Just didn’t know you two were in contact?”

“We’re not, really.”

“Well, I hope you’re still up for talking. You’ve got five requests for interviews already.”

Phil’s arm throbs constantly and the cast itches relentlessly, but he finds he can’t care as much anymore.

-

Phil Lester @AmazingPhil

now i'm dead i have much better dealings with the devil! black magic really helps my writing. expect countless bestsellers from now on. #RIPPhilLester

-

Dan Howell @danisnotonfire

how to make me hate you #666: throw a fucking 500 page hardback book at my friend's head. leave the dramatics to me, please.

-

After San Francisco, they head up north into Canada, and Phil stares out of the hotel window at Vancouver’s mountains as he picks up his phone.

phil: why is martyrdom so boring and tiring

He doesn’t expect a reply any time soon, so returns to the word document he has open. A coffee sits on the table beside him, steaming. He hasn’t got used to only having one working hand, yet, so he’d got the drink before thinking it through.

His phone vibrates in his pocket, catching him by surprise.

dan: what does the afterlife look like?

phil: lots of mountains. the imminent threat of moose.

dan: moose? is that the plural of moose?

phil: idk

Phil gives up writing for the moment; he takes a sip of his coffee, then calls behind him, “Gwen! What’s the plural of moose?”

Gwen emerges from her bedroom - their rooms are adjoined - and stands at the divide. “It’s just moose, isn’t it? Like sheep?”

Phil nods, and fumbles with orientating his phone in his hand.

phil: gwen thinks it’s moose.

dan: hi gwen

“Dan says hi,” Phil tells her as she walks back to her room. She stops.

“You’re talking to Dan again?”

“It’s hardly cause for an ‘again’,” Phil tuts. “Yes, we’re texting. Our telepathic channels are down.”

Her eyes go to the top of her head. “Self-sacrifice has made you more sarcastic.” She considers, next saying, “Or maybe it’s pining.”

“Pining?” If Phil were still drinking his coffee, he’d spit it out, if only to make a point. “It’s been a week. And I hardly like him.”

“Okay,” Gwen says, in a way that says, sure, whatever you say .

phil: gwen says hi

“I’m having to be civil on your part,” he comments, and he looks up at her.

“Sorry. Hi Dan.” She perches on the end of Phil’s bed. (It’s too big, too soft, and too anonymous. He’ll get sick of hotel life by the end of this.) “Now you’re not lying.”

“It was a lie at the time.”

His phone buzzes again.

dan: @gwen; is phil annoying you with all his moose talk? i can sort him out, if you know what i mean. i know people.

Phil scoffs, but grudgingly shows Gwen the text. She smiles, and prises the phone from him to reply.

phil: gwen here. i’m coping fine, thank you. moose talk is tiring and bearable. the hotel have lots of spare pillows, anyway, if the worst comes to worst.

Phil reads the text, saying, “I am such a victim!”

-

After Vancouver, they dip back into America. Seattle is thriving and decadent, framed with fantastical mountains and the rippling blues of the ocean. Phil buys two magnets for his fridge, and sees approximately three stores advertising Dan’s new book in their front windows. He snaps a picture of each one, sends them to Dan, and finishes the medley off with, “i’m not giving in. yet.” In reply, Dan merely sends him the middle finger emoji. Phil nearly laughs in the taxi.

-

Phil knows Dan also has a stop in Denver, but he’s still surprised to see him there.

It’s 10PM in Denver airport; it’s busy, an electric mess of rolling suitcases and screaming children, and Phil’s only just arrived but he already wants to leave. Dan’s sat on one of the plastic benches, and stands when he sees Phil.

“Phil!” he calls to get his attention. Phil looks around blearily for a few seconds, trying to identify the location of the noise; by the time he focuses on Dan, he’s only a few metres in front of him.

Dan wraps Phil in a careful but relieved embrace. Phil lets go of his case to put an arm around him - his broken arm hangs by his side. “How are you?”

It’s so peculiar to hear his voice again. Since the phone call post-TolkienGate, their communications have been textual. “I’m okay. Tired.”

“Same.” Dan pulls back, and, pointing at Phil’s cast, says, “Sorry.”

Phil has enough energy to pointedly roll his eyes. “It’s not your fault I apparently died three weeks ago.”

Dan regards him, taking one of his bags for him. “You look dead.”

“Thanks.” Phil thumps him with his broken arm.

“Ow!”

“This makes a mighty weapon,” Phil supposes, twisting his arm to show his cast: it’s covered in plenty of signatures and silly doodles, but Phil saved space for certain people.

“Do you want this bag back?”

“No, no, you can carry it, if you insist.”

“Hi, Gwen.” Dan turns to her.

“Hi, Dan.” She smiles knowingly at the two of them.

“We should get going,” Phil says, shifting under Gwen’s gaze. He sets off, tugging his suitcase along behind him, and Dan walks in time with him. “Your turn,” Phil tells him. “You look a bit like Hell.”

“This is Hell.”

“Says who?”

“All the Mulders out there.” Dan tries to make a triangle with his hands, despite one being weighed down by Phil’s bag.

“Take your tin foil hat off and keep walking,” Phil says.

-

They’re doing talks at different venues, and are thus staying at different hotels. They only meet up at all because Dan waited for an hour and a half after his arrival to see them.

“How’s your arm?” Dan asks, bringing over three coffees to their table in the airport Starbucks.

“Still broken. I’m running out of painkillers.” Phil kicks out a chair for Dan with his foot; Dan nods in thanks, setting the drinks down on the table. The surface is covered in rings.

“We’re going to get you more, calm down,” Gwen says.

“And your book?”

“Thirty thousand words,” Phil recounts.

“That’s good!”

“It’s overwhelming,” Phil corrects. He’s mastered picking up things with one hand by now, and braces himself for the scalding punch of his coffee as he takes it to his lips.

“It’ll be great,” Dan says, matter-of-fact. He says it so firmly that Phil goes weak - at the assurance, maybe, or perhaps he’s swooning. It’s not unknown to him. Embarrassing.

“Don’t bother,” Gwen tells him. “I’ve tried making him realise how good he is, to no avail. Part of me thinks he’s fishing.”

“You make me sound ungrateful.”

She bites her lip. “Sorry. I know you’re not ungrateful, just a humble pain in my arse.”

Phil sets his drink back down on the table, and makes eye contact with Dan as he looks to her. “I’ll take it.”

-

Before long, it’s goodbye again. There’s no time for a rendez-vous at a later time: both of them leave tomorrow evening.

“Where are you heading next?” Phil asks this into the junction of Dan’s shoulder.

“It’s a surprise. I’ll email you.”

“Email.” Phil raises his eyebrows. “That means I should expect something long, then?”

“A transatlantic memoir,” Dan says. “I’m trying to be enigmatic, let me.”

“I wasn’t objecting.”

“I can feel you judging me.”

“I am doing no such thing.”

“No, you’re too nice for that,” Dan concedes. He squeezes Phil’s waist and disappears before Phil has a chance to retrieve himself.

“It would appear,” Gwen says, appearing in Dan’s place, “that Phil Lester’s surrealist heart has been softened.”

Phil finds Dan again in the crowd; he’s standing in the line for security checks, and upon seeing Phil he waves. “Don’t be ridiculous,” Phil scolds her, smiling and waving back.

-

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: amsterdam

Phil,

Let’s pretend this isn’t my first email to you, and let’s pretend it hasn’t been days, and get down to business.

I’m in Amsterdam, have been for three days. It took 11 hours to get here, and another two hours to find our hotel. I actually got here four days ago, but Louise and I passed out in our rooms and didn’t resurrect until noon the next day. It was a relief to have a proper bathroom again. I hadn’t showered in over 48 hours, nor brushed my teeth. I’m sorry to tell you that, but integrity is a thing, and I’d hate to be one to keep up some level or pretense. Though, you’re a surrealist writer, maybe you like that kind of thing.

They filmed TFIOS here, didn’t they? I think I saw Hazel and Augustus’ bench yesterday, but I didn’t want to sit on it. They don’t deserve my butt warmth.

I’ve seen work by Van Gogh and Rembrandt and others. I feel bad that I don’t remember their names. That was the one thing I could do for them.

The Anne Frank Museum was...something. Call me pretentious, but the feeling of fleeting life, and the knowledge that her bravery, strength and, honestly, fame, only came about in such shit circumstances - I wish I could capture those perfectly in my stories, but at the same time, I don’t want to touch those thoughts with a ten foot pole. People will have to cope with the existential ramblings of Roses Gone By June (available in all good bookstores.) (I also saw my books available in Amsterdam’s stores. Translated into Dutch. Fucking crazy.)

The canals are gorgeous, and the houses one goes past while journeying down them are the cute opulence I’d hope from Northern Europe (as North as I’m going, anyway.) The Gold Age was something else. The houses are so narrow, Phil, but still idyllic. I didn’t think gables could ever look more attractive. I half want to live here, but I said that about all the cities I’ve seen (Vancouver, Toronto, Seattle, NYC…). No matter, for London is my true home and destination.

There are so many fucking cyclists. It makes me exhausted looking at them. While going down the canal, I saw a man with his cat in his basket. It was adorable but also terrifying. The last thing I want to witness on my world tour is kitten murder.

Onto Hamburg next. Hope this was the Transatlantic Memoir you were expecting. (Yes, I know you didn’t ask for one. No, I don’t fucking care.)

Send my love to Gwen.

- DH

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: RE: amsterdam

dan,

please don’t destroy amsterdam, or its kittens! i’m going there in a few weeks! D: (apologies for the emoticon, but i refuse to use emojis in an email. it’s not professional and i have standards to uphold.) (using no capital letters doesn’t count.)

as i write this, i am sat on a plane on the way to toronto! so of course i won’t send it now, but if we’re going to be a pair of people who pretend a lot, i may as well as ask you to pretend that this is being sent from a very high elevation. (i guess that’s what writers do best, though. pretending is our life.)

it’s the very tail end of dusk, now, and i can’t see the clouds anymore. i don’t know why, but it’s very unsettling. america looks beautiful at night, as you can imagine, so i guess it’s a silver lining...gwen & i are trying to guess the states as we go over. we have no way of telling who’s right, or when we enter a new state, so the game has it’s issues. we’re working through them.

sorry if my emails aren’t as structured as yours, but free writing and association are things i do for a living, so cut me some slack. you stick to your existential worries and i’ll stick to farming giraffes and playing harmonicas for lullabies.

(i know i already said, but cities are awfully pretty. each new light fills the space between my heart beats. i’ve never seen a firefly in real life. miami disappointed me there.)

i was in miami. i saw lots of crocodiles. i met a woman who knew someone who knew someone who had six fingers. i also went to a cafe where all the drinks were served in matte black cups, and the main light sources were fairy lights. i thought of you, but the lighting was too poor to send you a decent picture. oh, the sacrifices we make for aesthetic! also, you were right, international texts and calls are blooming expensive. i’ve already lost 3 out of my 5 legs.

i’m only in toronto for two days, then chicago for two, boston for one, and then it’s an overnight flight to AUSTRALIA. the last time i went there was when i was 9. i won’t sleep on the plane, though, just like how i won’t sleep now. perhaps those 23 and a bit hours are the perfect time to write true surrealist lit.

would you like me to document my own memoirs for you, or is that your thing? i’d hate to leech off the ideas of a true expert.

gwen says she sends her love, too, and is reconsidering your offer. you know, the one where you said you knew people, and could sort me out. that one. i’m trying not to type it, but she’s put some kind of curse on me, and i can’t control my fingers anymore. (speaking of curses, my cast has to be on for another six weeks or so. turns out it fractured in two places, and part of the tissue is damaged.)

phil.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: RE: RE: amsterdam

yes please.

- DH

-

Perth, Australia. The bending back of river, the shelves of sand in the suburbs. When it’s dark, the skyscrapers cast iridescent beacons of light; reflections spreading their wings into stripes on the water; a transient phenomenon that looks like it could last forever, like you could touch it. It’s early September now, so the temperature is mild, but it’s humid, and Phil gives up straightening his hair or kidding himself that he can wear jeans comfortably. Toronto was stunning, Boston was stylish, Chicago was excessive, and by now Phil is wiped out.

His readings are similar in format, and in people, to a certain point - many are students, with dark-framed glasses or mustard yellow sweaters, who bear poignancy on their chests like they are the only ones - but his audiences come up with enough different questions and are so welcoming that Phil is not bored yet.

The hotel food is the same. The pillows never have enough substance, and he wakes up with kinks in his neck. Gwen has stopped wearing lipstick every day. He talks to plenty of people each day, but comes back to his room feeling isolated and hollow, despite the thrumming excitement ruling his viscera. Every city he visits infatuates him and he wants to write love poems about them, but at the same time he longs for his home.

(He has twenty stops overall. Dan has twenty eight. He can hardly imagine how homesick Dan is - if he is at all.)

Perth, Australia. Phil wakes up with his duvet slipping off the bed - a double, with four pillows. His arm doesn’t throb immediately, which is a small achievement. Clumsily, he searches for the newly-filled pot of pills, and drops two in his mouth; water splashes onto his pillow as he picks up his glass and drinks.

After ten or so minutes of scrolling through his social media and trying to convince himself to get up, his phone buzzes in his hand. Phil’s excitement flares upon seeing the caller ID Dan Howell on the screen.

“D-slice!” he says, his voice rough - it’s the first time he’s spoken today, and he had three readings yesterday.

“Phil?” Dan’s voice is lazy, doused in soporific. Perhaps it’s his phone’s speakers, but he sounds much quieter than normal.

“That’s me.”

“Oh, good. I was worried someone had kidnapped you, but it turns out you’ve just stooped low enough to call me ‘D-slice’.”

Phil rolls over and presses his cheek into the pillow. “I’m cooler now. I’ve changed. You’ll have to accept it.”

Dan yawns. “I’ll stick around, but don’t be flattered. I just can’t be bothered to hang up.”

Laughing quietly, Phil says, “You’re yawning.”

“Well observed.”

“Where are you?” he asks, as if he didn’t look up Dan’s tour schedule. (He did, but that was over twelve hours ago.)

“Venice.”

Phil gasps. “On a scale of one to ten, how pretty is it there?”

Dan hums, strained as he stretches. Phil’s chest aches. “Nine and a half. I’m too busy to properly enjoy it.”

“Have you had a tour?”

“Oh, yeah, but I’m too preoccupied by work to be a real tourist.”

Phil tuts. “You mustn’t be too hard on yourself.”

“I’m on a world tour for my book. It’s what I’m here for.”

The sun is crawling up the sky and, from its new position, slots coins of golden morning through the gaps in the curtains; the light rolls around the carpet, in shapes like pillars and paint strokes, splitting Phil’s tired face in half. His eyelids are drooping again, but their taxi arrives in forty minutes to take them to the first venue - a lecture theatre in the university.

Phil gives up and moves on. “What time is it?”

“Two fifty AM.”

Clicking his tongue, he says, “So you can’t sleep.”

“Probably.”

“Is that why you called?”

“Probably.” Phil stays quiet, coaxing more words out of Dan. “I have a lot on my mind.”

“No jet lag?”

“Well, that too,” Dan concedes. “But I’m exhausted.”

“So you think I’m the one to listen to you empty your mind?”

“You’ve got more room for it.”

“Are you implying my head’s empty?”

“Ehh.”

“That my brain’s small?”

“Perhaps.”

Phil scoffs. “I’m contacting Vanity Fair. I’m going to expose you for the arsehole you are.” All of the interviews he had after the book scandal have been published, now, and Jelly Hearts has only dropped down two places on Amazon’s lists. “I need the publicity.”

“And I’ll happily give it to you.”

Phil smiles to himself. “So, Howell, tell me your darkest secrets.”

-

http://nineleggedoctupi.co.uk

ROSES AND A DOZEN BLACKBIRDS

friend, and

the roses bloomed well last summer.

in december i picked them

and left them at your door

and it rained thrice since last week.

when you said you were too full,

i left your heart out for the birds,

and they pecked and pecked and pecked,

and you, object object objecting,

finally felt at peace.

sorry i couldn’t ask your permission,

but a barbed voice pulls my brain apart

until it i cannot bear.

now our minds are bare.

the roses, you prompt, yes, roses,

friend, the birds turned your heart to shreds

and my gory pulp of wet rose replaced it.

we beat together. stop beating

yourself up.

when (or, if,) you dig your own grave,

i will scatter it with rose petals

and your lips will still

look gorgeous in the light.

you grow around my chest.

i know you would do the same

for me

the rose-planter, the heart-leaver,

the emptier.

-

Dan Howell @danisnotonfire

now i have space in my heart to enjoy this tour. thank you to everyone who has come to see me, or is, or will.

-

Somewhere over the Indian Ocean, Phil loses all his despondency and loneliness, and falls in love with the touring wholeheartedly.

Rome is dusty and the ruins are falling apart. Gwen buys them ice cream in honeycomb cones and they sit outside the Acropolis. After kicking off her shoes, Gwen tells him about mythology, regaling him with the tales of punishment and pathos and blunder as he sits: listening, nodding, catching ice cream with his fingers as it drips down his chin. They stop off in a market on the way back to the hotel, and Phil buys her a pair of strappy sandals.

phil: rome review: old; hot and arrogant in the face of september; i could not explore enough of it. 8/10

Madrid is the same, with temperatures climbing into the twenties, but the buildings are polished and sparkling white. His audiences throw enthusiastic applauses around his head and ask him to sign printouts of his poems translated into Spanish. Paris welcomes him with lights throwing stunning architecture into glory despite the late hour; he walks the wide boulevards and cranes his neck to spy the top of the tower. The cityscape is dotted with grand peaks of towering buildings, draped in Renaissance clouds. Phil practises his intermediate French and buys a bouquet of flowers from a street vendor; retracts one, presses it dry between the pages of a hardback he brought with him, and presents the rest to Gwen. She asks him what she’s meant to do with them, they’re going to Amsterdam tomorrow, but hugs him anyway. He tells her she can do whatever she wants, so after dinner they catch the metro; Gwen throws each flower into the Seine, and they watch them drift away with the current. No one is around, so Phil makes them levitate and skim and dance along the water, before dropping under the water in a cloud of confetti.

“Are they gone?” Gwen asks.

Phil shakes his head. “I don’t like making things disappear. Conservation of mass. They’re still there, underwater.”

“But you’ll still happily conjure flowers out of nowhere for me.”

“Intermittently.”

In a small charity bookstore tucked behind the high streets, Phil buys a copy of Dan’s Roses Gone By June . It’s well-loved, and the cover is almost fuzzy beneath the pads of his fingers. On the train from Paris to Amsterdam, Phil juggles reading it with taking pictures of the French and Belgian countryside. He sends all the photos to Dan, even though Dan is currently on a flight from Iceland to Tasmania.

By the end of the three hours, Phil has cried, finished the book, cried again, and fallen a little bit in love with it. He doesn’t tell Dan this, however, just texts him a couple of short sentences.

phil: read your book. it was alright.

An hour later, Phil is settled into his hotel room with a decaffeinated coffee and a copy of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire translated into French.

dan: same to you.

-

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: iceland & tasmania

As I write to you, I am desperately trying to stay hydrated. As you know, Australia is awfully fucking humid and Tasmania is just the same, just a bit more tropical. I’ve gone through three bottles of water already. I’m a full time hobbit now: according to Twitter, it’s a good look. But my thighs are constantly itchy from heat rash and there’s the severe risk I may drown in a pool of my own sweat (giant height be damned!), so I’m not so sure. Louise is convinced I could get a tattoo and it would burn right off my skin by the time we leave Sydney.

When you’re on a tour of the world, you think you’ve seen everything. And then you go to Iceland, and you have to reevaluate your life choices.

It’s honestly something else, Phil. The geysers, the dormant volcanoes, the ice peaks, the waterfalls. The whole country is dynamic. We spent two out of the three days in the capital (which, btw, runs on geothermal power, that’s how many fucking volcanoes they have), but on the last day we went out to the countryside - except, countryside isn’t a fair word to use. It’s breathtaking, and no two parts are the same. Needless to say, I felt perfectly at home on the black sand beaches. Our flight was at three AM, so we stayed and went Northern Light-hunting. We saw a few. I almost cried. We felt like crap when we finally got on the plane, but it was worth it.

Onto Tasmania. The landscape is gorgeous. The water is so blue and the trees are so green. There are coves that display perfect gradients, from the white of the sand, through to turquoise, and finally to the jewelled blue of the depths. I’ve only just got here, and I’m already convinced this is a snapshot of paradise (corny, sorry). I wish I had time to do the hikes, but, alas, we are only here for a day. My main concern should be if I will become a sopping sponge by the end of my reading. It’s only a small audience of 200, but no one should have to bear witness to that .

I hope you’re reminding Gwen constantly that my offer still stands. Have a good time in Amsterdam. I highly recommend walking along the canals at dawn, if you can be arsed.

- DH

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: amsterdam revisited (feat. berlin)

dan,

firstly, gwen thanks you again for the offer, but thinks you should wait until we get home. at the moment, she’s using me to get her around the world, and she’s enjoying it too much. murder would definitely ruin her experience.

amsterdam is just as you described, but also more. i won’t blame you for that. you may be a bestselling author, but no one can deliver the high points of a place quite like truly experiencing them can. your vocabulary, though, needs work. (i’m kidding, of course. but your book will come later.) i dragged gwen out at 5am to see the sunrise, but ended up caring more about the houses. you’re right, the golden age is a gift to humanity. i also saw The Bench, but didn’t want to sit on it, either, so i just stroked it. thank god the streets were empty, or i might have been arrested and you’d be receiving a ransom note instead of this email. i didn’t have time to go to all the art museums, but i did visit van gogh and anne frank. i thought i’d be fine, i’m not normally the sentimental type (not like you are) but by the end of it my stomach was a pit of slithering snakes.

i blame paris for this, but i have become slightly captivated with french musicals. i’ve downloaded a few on spotify (one on king arthur, the other on the sun king) and they accompany me on my journeys. i have tried to become fluent in french over the past few years, but mostly i just zone out and listen to their sweet, sultry voices… i hate to say it, but i think it has become an obsession.

which brings me onto your book.

i hate to admit it. i wanted to play it cool. but, holy shit. i didn’t know you were that good.

like, of course you’re good. i promise i had total faith in you. i just didn’t have any plans to cry on the train from paris to amsterdam. i loved it so much, though, dan. i almost went to bed with it, but alack, alas, i had already finished it. (not like that. NOT LIKE THAT. i meant reading it in bed. i was prepared to stay up into the early hours of the morning, and i would have got the robins to read it with me.)

i almost forgot berlin! sorry berlin, please don’t strangle me with sausages. you’ll completely ruin gwen and dan’s plans. anyway, berlin is good, but we leave again tomorrow. i’ve only seen the parts of it available to me on the way to and from my venues. the architecture is so eclectic, and parts of it look squeaky clean. the mix of old and modern is confusing, but i love it.

i go to prague, next. it’s not an obvious tour stop, but i’ve always wanted to go.

written another ten thousand words. i might release it on valentine’s day, just for the irony. i know books are normally announced way in advance, but, alas, i am a surrealist. fuck the bourgeoisie!

phil.

(ps. hope you can return my compliments with compliments of your own. anyone can access my blog for free.)

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: RE: amsterdam revisited (feat. berlin)

I wish you an excellent time in Prague. I have never paid attention to that corner of the globe, but after Googling it I regret that decision. It looks stunning. You must send me pictures.

I almost wish you had been spotted stroking Hazel and Augustus’ bench: that’s so weird and you need to be stopped. I’m glad you saw the beauty of Amsterdam like I did, though. (More like AmsterDAMN, amirite, hahahahaha…)

I must admit, I doubt I’ll ever listen to a French musical. But I’m sorry for making you cry on a train. I hope you had tissues.

Of course I’ve already read your stuff, you twat. And as I read down your blog (I scrolled through ten pages in one go, once. It was while in San Francisco.) I feel ever more idiotic for the things I said at that damn panel. I’ve never been entirely sure what Surrealism was, or what it meant to me, but I love your version of it. I especially love A MELTED BOULEVARDE, it’s so fucking weird, but incredible. I won’t lie, I don’t always understand poetry. I just read it and let the words flow over me. I did that with yours, too, but I must admit, the mere flow of the words was enough. Move aside, Andre Breton.

I go to Perth tomorrow, and we’re staying there for six days. At last, I get some time to do touristy things. Australia and me have a love/hate relationship. Hate is a strong word. The weather isn’t too bad, now, but the threat is always there, lurking.

Only a couple weeks and then I’m back in London. And only one more week for you! You lucky bastard. I hope that we can meet again in our home city. I realised I never battled you at Mario Kart. We both know who will win, of course.

- DH

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: prague

dan,

holy wow! wowowwowow. prague is incredible. there are so many bridges and spires and statues, for one thing. it isn’t the city of a hundred spires for nothing. it’s the perfect mix of gothic, baroque, and river (i swear it’s at least 33% river.) a notable point of prague, of course, is its astronomical clock. it’s so peculiar, but i loved it. i’ll attach an image below, while i remember!

i wish i could say more, but you honestly have to go there to understand. or just go on google images and never stop scrolling down. either works. (perhaps i will drag you with me for an overnight trip in december, if you can make the time for a peasant like me.) one thing i can say is that there are a lot of statues of saints. we found a place that does marvellous pastries.

thank you so much for your kind words about my work! don’t worry, i’ve almost forgotten about your insults. do you want to know a professional’s thoughts on poetry? no one really fully understands poetry. it’s just what sounds good. there is meaning, but who can fully understand what “We are the sighs of the glass statue that raises itself on its elbow when man sleeps / And shining holes appear in his bed / Holes through which stags with coral antlers can be seen in a glade / And naked women at the bottom of a mine” means? looking at you, andre breton.

enjoy perth while you can. you’ll miss it once you’re gone.

i go back to london in seven days, yes, via dublin and edinburgh. if only i could get a taste of the welsh, too, but we ran out of time and money. i love travelling and meeting people, but i have had to read the same poems over and over, and i am ready to fall into my bed and sleep for two weeks. i’ll wake up in time to welcome you back, though. you’re probably right about the mario kart tournament, but i challenge you to a duel anyway. i have to defend my honour. my cast comes off the day before i get back. i’ll be waiting for you.

phil.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: prague. again.

i miss you quite terribly. it is not an outright thing. but i keep seeing things and thinking of you. i want to spend time in your company again. can you blame me, when we get on so well? i’d accepted i wouldn’t make any new friends, but you’ve come and messed the norm of my life up. i can’t hate you for that. i want to see you again. i can’t remember what it’s like to laugh with you. i have a bad memory. i have a bad memory and i miss you.

i wish i could tell you about my magic, but i am scared. i wish i could tell you that i fancy you quite a bit, but i am scared. it’s dumb. i care for you, and trust you, and yet cannot bring myself to trust you with that knowledge. i think i would hate to put you in that position. i cannot have you choose between me and your father. you are too loyal, and you blame yourself, always. it would tear you apart, and it would be my fault!

telling you about who i am, what i can do, would be like placing my bloody, beating heart in your hands. you are standing over a ravine. i am bleeding out. that is the only way i can see us ending up, if i tell you. (i don’t know which secret i am thinking about, now. both.)

it’s not prague that has brought this on. i’ve been thinking about it a lot, in my travels. paris is the romantic city, but i love prague more, and i want you to be he-

DELETED

-

The final day of his tour, after his final signing, Phil sits in a local pub with Jack. His cast is off, his legs are crossed, and condensation rolls down his glass. Dan is asleep in a hotel in Adelaide.

Relieved to speak to another friend and to be home, Phil tells Jack everything. Without any hesitation. There isn’t much to tell, after all; other than the whole black magic accident (Jack begs for a personal recount of the tragedy) all Phil has to admit to is his newfound crush for bestselling novelist and Sugarscape’s Hottest Man of 2015 Dan Howell.

“But more of a concern -” Phil says.

“Sorry, more of a concern? More of a concern than the literary assault, pining, and transatlantic longing?” Jack interrupts. He leans forward in his seat, pushes his hair out of his face.

Phil bats him away. “ Yes, Jack, I know it’s hard to believe, but more of a concern to me is the whole issue surrounding my...magic.” His voice dips, and he conceals his mouth with his hand. This area isn’t known for it’s violence - otherwise he wouldn’t live here - he doesn’t want to reveal his secret to everyone.

“Ah.” Jack withdraws.

“Exactly that,” Phil agrees, sighing. “All my closest friends know, and he’s one of my closest friends.”

“Then what’s the issue?” Jack spreads his hands wide.

Phil shoots him a look, are you serious?  “His father, mainly.” Jack gives him a blank stare. “Ivan Howell. Better known as the editor of The Sauceror,” he continues, helping Jack along.

Eyes going wide, he says, “The Sauceror? ” He leans back in his chair and whistles through his teeth. “Shit, man, you’ve hit the jackpot. Have you considered writing a book about it?”

Phil ignores him. “How did you not know that? Do you live under a rock?”

“A film-making one,” Jack answers absently. “So his dad’s a satirical editor. How is that a factor here?”

“Dan’s grown up in a magic-hating household! I don’t know his views on magic, we avoid talk of it at all costs, but I’d be willing to bet he shares the same views as his dad. Maybe the fact we never talk about it is a sign that he hates it.” Phil cards his fingers through his hair, pulling at his scalp.

“You know his swipe at Tolkien doesn’t mean he hates magic, right?”

“Or so Gwen said.”

“So go for it.”

“But I don’t know how he’s going to react!” Phil bursts, anxiety searing his sides. “I want to tell him, but I don’t. It’s tearing me apart! It’s not lying, but it is. It’s not a betrayal of trust, but it is. And then there’s the fact his family’s fortune comes from hating me. And the fact we’ve only known each other, like, three months.”

“And there’s the whole...feelings,” Jack swallows the word and pulls a face, waving a hand as if batting the word away, “thing to weigh up.”

After a few years in the spotlight, Phil has perfected the art of not blushing - even if he finds it bloody hard not to do. “I don’t see how that’s relevant at all,” he deadpans.

“Oh, I don’t know, it feels rather relevant to me.”

“Really? That’s odd, because I don’t think it is.”

“It means you’re more invested,” Jack explains. “And - well. If Dan finds out one hidden part of you, you’ll probably spill your whole heart to him. Or he’ll figure it out.”

Slumped in his chair, “God. Fuck.”

“But you’re right, I don’t think it’s too relevant.”

Phil groans from behind his hand.

“Leave it a while, mate.” Jack places a hand on Phil’s shoulder. “He may come back and you’ll discover that actually you hate him.”

“What if I don’t?”

“Be a wonderful person. Use your magic for him. Ensure he can’t hate you. Even better, make him fall head over heels in love with you with all your chivalry and sorcery.”

Phil snorts. “As if.”

“It worked for me.”

Phil looks at him through a gap in his fingers. The bar is poorly lit - on purpose, and Phil isn’t complaining - but Phil can easily make out Jack in the humming amber glow. “No it didn’t. You’ve been single three years.”

“Yeah, you got me.” Jack takes a sip of his beer, and winces. “Can you cool this down for me, please?”

“Yeah, sure.” Once he’s sat up again, Phil waves his hand in the glass’ general direction.

Jack gasps and his stomach folds. “You missed.”

Phil grins. “I know.”

“You’re a bastard, even if you are a lovable one.”

“Let’s hope so.”

It is the only time Phil talks about it all out loud.

-

Dan Howell @danisnotonfire

ich bin london

-

Train stations during winter are never fun places to be. It’s only November, but Kings Cross is burning cold; the temperature wraps around his waist and claws at his eyes. The wind streams through easily, and his coat billows out around his legs. Phil should have worn a jacket underneath his coat. At only seven o’clock in the evening, the outside is already jet black in the spaces salvaged between stores, houses, and street lamps. Bold against the night, pure white light rains down from the station’s ceiling, the intricate roof design looming and stark. At the moment, it is rather quiet, but several trains are due in soon - including Dan’s - and once they arrive, the station will become a breathing body once more, and the commuter’s breath will amalgamate into clouds above their heads.

Finding a plastic seat, Phil sits with his hands dug between his legs, and he watches the arrival board with controlled interest. He would use a spell to warm himself up, but Dan’s train from Manchester is due in three minutes, and it would be suspicious if Phil’s body temperature were normal in spite of it being near freezing, so he decides against it, instead settling down to wait. His knee bounces, and he hums a pop song under his breath.

Phil sees Dan before Dan sees him. Being as tall as he is, his head floats above most others, and Phil would recognise the disgruntled fringe anywhere. Dan’s coat is thick and black, cut off at his waist, the bagginess reeled in at the neck and the bottom of the sleeves. His suitcase rolls along dangerously near his heels as he takes his ticket from the barrier and strides out, head turning back and forth. Finally his gaze alights on Phil, and his face splits with a grin; heading towards him, he doesn’t run, but his steps have a clear purpose. Phil stands, smiling widely, but stays where he is.

Dan lets go of his suitcase and walks into Phil’s arms.

“Hi,” Phil says.

“I’m so fucking cold,” Dan mumbles.

“I’m sorry.” Phil rubs Dan’s arm with his hand to warm him up, and then pulls away. “I have a taxi waiting outside.”

“Brilliant.” Dan picks up the handle of his suitcase again; Phil offers to take his backpack with an outstretched hand, but Dan declines him with a shake of his head.

They decided a couple of days ago that it would be better if Dan spent the night at Phil’s when he got back to London: Phil’s house is closer to the station, for starters. His house has also been lived in for a week, and the central heating will have been on all day: in comparison, Dan’s apartment would be an arctic husk.

“The heating’s on, and I’ve got two plates warming in the oven.”

Dan follows Phil out of the station. “Pizza?”

“Of course.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re an enabler,” Phil tells him, pointing out their taxi. “I should be trying to eat healthy.”

“The sacrifices I have you make for me.” Dan’s face falls, and his eyes go to Phil’s arm.

Smiling fondly, Phil lifts his arm. “Relax, the cast has gone. It doesn’t hurt anymore. You’re cleared of your sins.” He tugs his sleeve down, and Dan studies the skin - it is blooming red from the cold, and there’s a rash near his wrist from where the cast itched, but otherwise it is clear. Dan brushes a finger along it, where the breaks were, and Phil’s arm tingles. “You can’t even tell that it used to be one hundred percent bruise.”

Dan bites his lip, but doesn’t apologise again. “I never got to sign your cast.”

“Don’t worry,” Phil waves to the taxi driver, who opens his door and steps out to help Dan with the boot. “I still have it at home. You’ve had months to plan your design, I have high hopes.”

-

Because Dan insists he is too tired to play Mario Kart, (“ It would be embarrassing for you if I played you and still won,” Dan explains. “Which is exactly what would happen. I’m doing you a favour.” Phil is inclined to agree. ) they decide to watch a film on Netflix instead. Phil sets Dan the task of finding one while he attempts to get the pizza out of the oven.

“Ow, shit!”

“Are you okay?” Dan jumps up at Phil’s exclamation, rushing through to stand at the kitchen door.

“Yeah, fine,” Phil mumbles around his finger, “just burned myself.”

“Of course you did, you twat. C’mon, run it under some water.” Dan catches Phil’s elbow and tugs him up, guiding him over to the sink; he runs the cold tap, and sticks Phil’s throbbing finger under it. Phil gasps - the freezing cold sears his skin.

“ Ow .”

“You have to keep it there,” Dan tells him. He takes a look at Phil’s face, contorted in discomfort, and adds, “Sorry.”

“I’m sure you’ll find a way to win my love back,” Phil says through gritted teeth.

“Don’t be dramatic.” Dan returns to the oven and ducks down, picking up the discarded oven gloves and pulling open the door; with ease, he extracts the pizza tray and places it on the top.

“Pizza cutter?” he asks, looking back to Phil. Phil nods to Dan’s left, and it takes a lot of his control not to make the drawer nudge itself open.

“Thank you.”

Dan turns around. There’s the low rumble of the drawer as it opens. As he rummages through, Phil stares at his back. “You come in here, demanding food and refuge, and now you want the pizza cutter.”

Dan spins back round, pizza cutter in his lifted hand, and he flashes Phil an eager grin. “Sorry. I promise I’m a good guest.”

Phil stares blankly back at him. “Did I mention you’re stealing my jobs.”

Dan snickers, “Phexit.”

“More like Dexit. I’ll do it,” he addresses Dan’s raised eyebrow, “I will! I’ll kick you out. Also, make sure those slices are even.”

“I am, calm your tits.”

When Dan walks over to drop the cutter in the sink, Phil says, “Hi.”

Dan turns his head. Blinks at him. “Hi.”

“Um,” he says. “Excuse me, plates are in that cupboard down there. Stop dawdling.”

“Sorry, Sir ,” Dan mocks, but follows Phil’s hovering finger.

“Right, I’m done here,” Phil announces. He turns off the tap, shakes his hand dry, and leaves Dan moving pizza slices from the tray to the plates.

He has some soothing salve in his bathroom, and he pulls the tub out of the cupboard under the sink. He tuts when he sees it is nearly empty, scoops out what he can, and rubs it tentatively onto the blistering skin. With a little muttered spell, the pain already begins to recede.

“Phil! Get your arse in here!” Dan calls.

“Coming!” Phil rushes back to find Dan lounging on the one three seat sofa, feet kicked up on the table next to the plates, hand on Minton’s stomach. He scolds, “Be quiet, I have neighbours,” and gestures to Dan to get his feet off the furniture. He rolls his eyes, but obliges.

“So you’ve met Minton?” Phil nods to Dan’s lap.

“Of course I’ve met Minton, he’s the best dog around. Aren’t you?” He scratches the back of Minton’s ears, and Minton begins yapping.

“Man’s best friend,” Phil says, dryly.

“What breed is he?”

“Who the fuck knows. He’s Minton, that’s all that matters.”

“Touche.” Dan watches as Phil taps his thigh, beckoning his dog to scurry over to him. “Are you sitting down?” Dan asks him.

Phil nods, but then raises a finger, “One more thing.”

“Ugh.”

“You won’t regret it!” Phil calls to him, as he runs into his room, lifts his hand, and his old cast and a black marker pen fly into his open hands. He goes back to the lounge. Minton lies on the floor, nose on his paws. Dan props up his head with his right palm to his cheek; the right sleeve of his jumper pools around his elbow. He grins, waving the items in front of him, and says, “I’m back.”

“Oh my God, I thought you were joking ,” Dan laughs. He makes grabby movements with his hands until Phil walks over and gives them to him. The pen lid comes off with a pop, and Dan balances the cast on his lap.

“Don’t get pizza on it,” Phil cautions.

“I haven’t touched the pizza yet.” Dan brings it closer to his chest when Phil sits beside him and cranes his neck to see. “Don’t look, you bastard, it’s a surprise.”

“Alright, sorry.” Phil holds his hands up in surrender, and leans back heavily into the sofa. Dan makes a few finishing touches, and chucks the cast back.

“Watch it,” Phil says, the cast hitting his thigh. He picks it up, and stares at Dan’s sketch. He can feel the beginnings of a smile as he asks, “What is it?”

“An elf,” Dan answers simply, watching Phil and smiling, with his hand pressed to his mouth.

“Dan.”

“Phil.”

“Why is it named after me?”

“Would you have preferred an alien? Either would be applicable.”

“What are you on about?” Phil asks, but he thinks he knows, and he’s fighting the smile even harder.

“You look like an elf! You have pointy ears.”

“I do not, ” Phil objects, but Dan has buckled into laughter, and Phil’s chest aches: he is rather endeared. “Right, give the pen to me.”

Dan grabs the cast off him after a minute or so of drawing. “Phil, what is it? Or more, what is it meant to be?”

“A hobbit. A very accurate hobbit.” Phil takes the cast back, and writes a final word. “There.”

“You named it after me.” Dan stares him down, the cast hanging from his left hand.

“Yes.” Phil struggles to tighten his mouth into a serious line.

“You’re calling me a hobbit.”

“Not at all.” Phil sniggers, and hides it with a cough. Dan’s stare intensifies.

“Right, whatever,” he dismisses after a moment, turning back to the TV screen.

Phil watches as Dan takes a piece of pizza and tears at it with his teeth, and says, slowly and innocently, “Dan, are you trying to angrily eat pizza?”

Through a mouthful, “Fuck off.”

“Dan…”

“What?”

“You hav-have a bit of sauce…” Phil trails off, unable to stop laughing.

“Fuck. Off. ”

-

Despite the hobbit disputes and apparently constant insulting each other, their friendship manages to function, and a few days later Phil is heading round Dan’s for the Mario Kart tournament he was promised.

Dan’s house is only a few streets away, so Phil decides to walk. At four o’clock in the afternoon at the end of November, he catches the last moments of light before dusk, and he basks in them. The line between light and shadow is crisp; the air bounces against his chest and rattles pleasantly in his lungs; a rose flush rushes to his cheeks, and his fingers tingle. His jacket flaps around his abdomen, and the plastic carrier bag he has bashes against his leg.

Dan’s house reminds Phil of Amsterdam. It is terraced and narrow, painted jasmine white with a blue door; the number 241 is nailed to the front, above the knocker, and is coloured gold. The roof is lined with black timber three stories above Phil’s head.

The knocker is algid in Phil’s grasp. Knocking three times, he feels the vibrations reverberate through the wood. With the road’s clamour masking his footsteps, Dan catches Phil unawares as he swings the door open, and Phil startles.

“There is a doorbell,” are the first words Dan says to him, standing on the step above Phil.

“Boring.”

“And a door knocker isn’t?”

Phil studies the knocker: a basic shape, with a curve attached on a hinge to a shield shape, both metal. “You could do better.”

“Noted.” Dan picks the curve of metal up with his finger and lets it drop back down. “Come in, then.”

“Thanks.”

Silent, Dan walks back into his house, and Phil follows him, closing the door gently behind him. Dan waits for him halfway down the narrow hall, wearing a similar but not identical jumper to the one he wore when Phil last saw him and thick slipper socks on his feet. Wooden panels cover the floor, leading into carpet at each doorway and at the foot of the stairs; at different intervals down the way, a line of pegs for coats and jackets, a mirror, and one shelf of books line the wall. The lampshade is basic, and the overhead light is turned off - the light, instead, comes from a string of bulbs held up by hooks dotted along the edge of the ceiling. Phil almost expects to see a porthole, it’s so cabin-like.

Phil looks around him, and says, “This is nice.”

“I try.” Dan kicks at his right foot with his left.

“I really like it.”

“You can’t soften me up with pleasantries, Lester. I will beat you at Mario Kart. It’s gonna fucking happen.”

“Not while we’re stood here, you’re not.”

Dan grins. “Follow me.”

The living room is the first door on the right. As they turn to go in, Dan points at a door across the way - tucked under the staircase - and says, “The loo’s there.” Phil nods and doesn’t stop walking.

The overhead light is switched on in here, but shines dimly. The room is blooming with warm colours; almost golden armchairs and sofas, lamps and tangled fairy lights that undulate a colour that reminds Phil of buttercups; a light brown rug slumps across the carpet. A mantelpiece lies under the mirror, decorated with trinkets and photographs. In the corner, under the window, Dan has a desk covered with manuscripts and pens, with his laptop balanced at the end; the whole wall above it is one massive book case. At the sight of it, Phil’s mouth falls open.

“There’s another one by the stairs,” Dan tells him.

“I love it.”

“Because you’re lame. The number one loser.”

“And you are…?”

“I’m lame too, I’m just cooler than you because I own the fucking thing.” Dan grabs a remote - the TV is already set up, and is on mute - and plonks himself down, kicking his feet up.

Phil does the same, without putting his feet on any furniture, and says, “So, what’s your battle plan?”

“You’re getting no tactics out of me.”

“But -”

“Nope. You think you can break me, but you can’t.”

“I’ll just have to beat you instead, then.”

Dan snorts. “Dream on.”

-

Phil doesn’t know how they manage to make Mario Kart last more than two hours, but they do. Dan tells him it’s because he’s a sore loser, and keeps demanding more rematches. (Phil thinks it’s because Dan enjoys winning, too, but keeps his mouth shut.) Half way through, Dan goes to collect snacks from the kitchen. Phil follows him with his eyes until he’s out of sight, then expels a heavy breath and leans back in the sofa.

He could tell him. Just like that, as he comes in the room: take a handful of Doritos from him, then say, “Thanks. Hey, by the way, I have magic.” Could even go as far as adding, “Also I’m afraid I’m quite a bit in love with you, despite only talking to you in person a few times and keeping a very big secret to myself. No one wanted this to happen, especially me. Hope we can still be friends.”

Phil doesn’t tell him, but he does stick his hand in Dan’s face when he wins for the fifth time. Half way through the snacks, Dan brings in a bottle of wine, and Phil feels his brain whirlpool away into giddiness as the evening progresses. Even then, he tells him nothing, just swears and complains about his temperamental remote (“ Aw, blame the remote, Phil ”). When drunk, Dan leans his head forward as he laughs, curling against it like it’s a blow to his chest, and his hair tickles Phil’s nose. What must be a very drunk part of Phil’s mind considers Dan is flirting with him, but that thought is quickly dismissed.

“Pay attention, you spork,” Dan says, Phil falling off the track for a third time.

“I’m trying , be kind.”

“How are you trying? People who try don’t fall off three times.”

“It’s a hard track!” Dan rolls his eyes - they’re glittering behind the folds of his grinning cheeks. The room feels warmer, Phil’s face burning a merlot red, and he says, “Move over, you’re in my line of sight.”

“And that’s a bad thing?”

“I can’t see the screen.” He can, but he’s getting distracted.

“Your loss,” Dan grumbles.

-

Eight o’clock, and Dan has fallen against Phil’s side. The waiting screen loops and loops in front of them.

(He’s so warm , and the shadows of his eyelashes tickle his cheek bones, and the stain on his lips, swollen, is a presage.)

Phil begins shifting, unhooking his legs from each other and placing his hands on either side of him - missing Dan’s by a centimetre. “Uh, I’m gonna go.”

Dan blinks up at him. “Already?”

“I have work tomorrow.” Phil shrugs apologetically.

“Okay.” Dan sits up and wipes his eyes. “Okay. Did you bring anything?”

“Nothing, apart from this.” Phil pats his jacket, messily folded beside him.

“Cool.”

Dan yawns. “I think you need to sleep,” Phil says. and brushes a crisp crumb off his shoulder.

“Thanks,” Dan says, and continues, “don’t be ridiculous, I’ll be fine. It’s you.”

Phil raises his eyebrows. “Me?”

“You tire me out. You bore me,” Dan teases, and Phil’s heart slumps. Only a little. He’s not that embarrassing.

“Sorry to ruin your evening.” Phil stands up.

“You didn’t.” Dan reaches out to swat him, but can only reach Phil’s waist - this doesn’t stop him.

“Should I help tidy this up?” Phil begins to collect the series of plates and glasses scattered over the table, his feet sinking into the rug.

“Nah, I’ll do it later.” Working himself up to it, Dan pushes himself up into a standing position. “Let’s make your exist swift and clean.”

While Phil toes on his shoes and puts on his jacket, Dan leans against the banister, hair split over his forehead, lips parted. (Mouth breather.)

“Goodnight,” Phil bids him farewell, fingers clasping the door. Whispering a canticle, the wind sweeps into the narrow hallway.

“It’s only eight.”

“Goodnight,” Phil insists, smiling.

“Goodnight,” Dan acquiesces. He stretches a hand out and paws at the air. Phil waves back, and turns, and shuts the door. (He doesn’t hug him. He thinks if he did, he might never let go.)

-

Dan Howell @danisnotonfire

can't believe i beat @AmazingPhil at mario kart. wait, yes i can. he was shit.

-

With Phil’s commission and Dan’s new ideas for another book, there’s no time for the trip to Prague. They do talk about it, which catches Phil by surprise. When Dan brought it up, he had stayed silent until Dan reminded him he needed to speak. When Dan said he’d love to go, but everyone is too busy, Phil had nodded and said, absolutely, I agree. When Dan said he’d love to go next year, though, Phil enthused over the suggestion, and felt his chest balloon until he could float away.

Still, they visit each other plenty over the next month or so, and Phil can’t quite believe his luck. They text and call over Christmas, and Dan invites him over with some friends for New Year’s. Phil thinks he might be dreaming.

“I’ve got a new idea for a book,” Dan tells him, seven minutes to one in the morning. Everyone else has left; the window was left open, and the breeze flaps between them like a feather.

“That’s great.” Phil turns over on the couch to face him. Dan’s eyes fix on his in the low light, and don’t stray away. Phil hiccups, squeezes his eyes shut, and when he opens them again, Dan is still watching - smiling, gently, like he doesn’t know he’s doing it.

“This one is going to be happier, I think. It feels like it. I know what to write about. I don’t - I like writing poignant stuff, I won’t take that side of it away. But I have the beginnings of a new perspective. I could write about friendship and love now, if I wanted…” Dan tugs at the collar of his shirt.

“Instead of loneliness and doom,” Phil finishes the sentence for him.

Dan nods. The shadow sharpens his jaw. “People like my stuff because it’s dark.”

Phil shakes his head. “Don’t worry about that. Your work is incredible; they won’t care what the tone is, as long as you are your genius and profound self.”

“People like my work because it reminds them of their own humanity.”

“Humanity has more faces than just pity and evil. Than insecurity and doubt. Love is also humanity.”

“One day I think I will learn those faces as well as I have learnt the bad ones.”

“You recognise them?” Phil checks, propping his chin up on his hand. The cheap beer is fizzing in his fingers.

Thinking for a moment, Dan hums to himself. “Barely. Like a celebrity I’ve seen on the TV a couple of times.” He grins, and Phil laughs with him; the sound tangles in the quilt Dan has thrown over the seat, and is dislodged when Dan pulls his chair closer and Phil’s heart thumps in his chest. “When I know them better, I can name them, and I can write about them like I can write about the people I love. When,” he repeats, scoffs, and says, “if.”

“You will.”

“Thank you.”

“What for?”

“Because you’re the one who’ll make it happen.”

“Ugh, don’t say I’m the annoying social butterfly who sets you up with everyone in this extended metaphor.” Phil buries his face in the cushions.

“No.” Dan kicks him in the stomach - not hard, considering he is sitting upright in an armchair, less than a metre away from where Phil lounges, recumbent, on the sofa. “You’re the one who insists we have mutual interests after I’ve given up on them a few times. Eventually, I give in, and I fall deep in platonic love with them.”

“So this isn’t a Blind Date situation.”

“I’m not enabling your guilty pleasures.”

Phil glares at him, and Dan pretends he can’t see.

“Do you want to see some early plans and shit? When they exist?”

Staring up at the ceiling, Phil comments, abstractedly, “You’re a pretentious dick whose work has started filtering into his everyday speech.”

“Only my drunk speech.”

“And you live in a shithole and you buy too many fairy lights, in spite of your three billion best sellers.”

“Is that a yes?”

Phil chucks a cushion at him; Dan flails to catch it, and still fails.

Quietly, Phil laughs, and turns over on to his side. Dan stares back at him. The traffic is humming quietly on a faraway main road, the gentle purr of engines. Not looking away, Phil lets his arm swing into the space between them.

“You’re not allowed to tell anyone. This never happened,” Phil tells him.

“What didn’t?”

“Of course I want to read it.” Phil’s breath is dampening the fabric of the sofa. “I want to read any drafts, plans, or works in progress that you have.”

“I can’t believe it.”

“What?”

“I’ve found someone to go through drawers of junk for me. I’ve been meaning to have a sort out for years.”

Phil makes his fingers twine in the shaft of street light that falls in the room. “You’re very lucky I’ve already used the cushion.”

“Yes,” Dan says, pensive, with a cadence that would carry away on the wind. “I am lucky.” From his slouched position in his chair, he reaches out and touches Phil’s fingers with his own. They each hold their hands there.

“I do love you,” Phil decides he wants to tell him, as if there is any question, any doubt brought into this small space. His stomach does not twist or spit.

“That’s what I mean.” Dan squeezes Phil’s fingers, then retracts his hand. “I love you, too. You are the greatest friend I’ve ever had.”

Phil is, somehow, content with this.

-

The first time Dan leaves something at Phil’s house - a phone charger , out of all things - Phil calls him up, and delivers it the next day. But as their visits become more and more frequent, and more and more of their belongings mingle and mix, they give up. They see each other most days, anyway, and in terms of time spent at each residence, Dan’s house is as much Phil’s as Phil’s house is his.

“Stop feeling guilty. Your home is my home,” Dan tells him, with a flourish of his arm, when Phil apologises for being over so often.

Phil ducks his head, squeezes the arm of the chair instead of Dan’s hand. “Thank you.”

Dan drops his cordiality to say, “don’t thank me, I don’t have any choice, you just won’t fucking leave and the situation’s been forced on me,” but Phil can identify the glow in his eyes, the giveaway tenderness to the edges of his smile.

“At least I don’t leave Minton behind,” Phil points out.

“I fail to see how that would be a bad thing.”

After that, Dan turns up at Phil’s house unannounced, whenever he pleases, and Phil follows suit.

(“At least I have magic,” he tells Gwen, “so I can quickly tidy up when he shows up.”

“Hiding the evidence, are we?”

“I would do nothing of the sort.”)

-

“Isn’t your meeting with Gwen now?” Dan asks from a seat in Phil’s lounge. He takes up the whole sofa, his laptop balanced on his bent legs. Minton is burrowed in the space between his feet and the back of the chair.

It’s the middle of January, and Phil’s book is heading towards the final stages. The meeting is for a general check in, and to show some possible front covers he could have. It’s all a little daunting.

“Yes,” Phil laments. “Are you in the middle of writing?”

“Yes.”

“So you can’t really...move…”

“If you need…”

“No, no.” Standing up from his place across the room, Phil stretches his legs and arms. “You can stay. I’ll be back in a few minutes, anyway.”

“Or twenty.”

“Well, obviously. It was a figure of speech to emphasise the temporary nature of my departure.”

“Don’t patronise me.”

“Don’t be pedantic, then.” Phil flicks his head on his way to the front door. He pulls on his coat. “Behave.”

“The place will be more squeaky clean than when you left it.”

Phil audibly scoffs. “I asked for good behaviour, not a miracle.”

Dan begins to sing, “You gotta have fai-”

“No!” Phil objects, and cuts him off with a slam of his door.

-

Dan looks up from his laptop when Phil returns, the door clunking shut behind him. “How’d it go?”

“Good, fine, yeah,” Phil replies, fighting to catch his breath.

“‘Good, fine, yeah’,” Dan repeats with a derisive emphasis, Phil unzipping his jacket and chucking it on the floor beside him. He frowns. “Did you run here?”

“I didn’t fancy your chances with Minton. If he attacked, it would be game over for the nation’s sweetheart.” Phil leans far back into the sofa, expels a strong exhale before sitting up again. “Okay, I’m fine. Speaking of, where is Minton?”

“In the kitchen, eating, as harmless as ever. It’s the house plants I need to watch out for, I swear one winked at me earlier. Should I call someone?”

Phil deems it inappropriate to mention the singing herbs in his garden. “When will the questions end?”

“Not any time soon.”

Phil collapses back into the sofa, chest falling and rising while he stares at the ceiling.

“Don’t kill me…” Dan begins.

Phil looks at him askance. “What is it?”

“I never asked -” Phil rolls his eyes and settles down to listen, “but why is he called Minton ?”

Phil cannot help but grin. “My dog ate my shuttlecock.”

“Say no more, oh my God . You’re so lame.”

Phil shrugs. “I’ve been called worse. You said he was eating?” Dan nods. “I don’t know how much food was left.”

“He hasn’t come back to complain. I’d quite like to join him,” Dan hints.

Sighing, Phil asks, “What’s the time?”

“Just past seven.”

Phil lifts his hands and lets them drop heavily back onto the sofa, on either side of him. “But I just sat down!”

“But I’m hungry!” Dan argues, in the same disgruntled tone. He pushes himself into standing and hits Phil’s shoulder. “C’mon, Grumpy, I’m sure there’s something in your massive fridge freezer worth your pain.”

“I severely doubt it. Freddos aren’t cheap anymore,” Phil grumbles, but concedes. He tidies up Dan’s cable and laptop with a tired sweep of his hand, before following him down the corridor.

Dan shouts, “And boy do I know it!”

-

“I never asked,” Phil says, finishing his mouthful of pasta, “how your writing went.”

Dan looks at him over his own bowl, fork stuck into the food. “I thought you were done with questions.”

“Stop living in the past,” Phil quips.

Dan gives a sliver of a smile before looking back down at his food. “It went okay, I think. Got a few scenes written down when they came to me. Nothing spectacular.”

“I’m sure that’s not true. Scenes came to you, at least. That’s always a good sign.”

“Mhm.”

“Any bestseller material, do you reckon?”

“Phil, you know as well as I that material never seems like bestseller material.”

“And yet, somehow, we manage it,” Phil adds.

Dan nods, turning thoughtful for a moment. “We could be the ultimate writing duo, couldn’t we?”

“That’s what Buzzfeed thinks.”

“Okay, but you know what I mean. We get on well. We both write, and apparently we write well.”

“‘Apparently’? Speak for yourself, Howell.”

“Never have you ever sounded less like Phil Lester.” Dan kicks him under the table. “What I’m trying to say, if my critics will let me, is that if we did something together, wrote something together, we could, theoretically, break the literary world.”

“I have always wanted to do a Kim K,” Phil fancies.

“Who hasn’t wanted to be poured in some ambiguous oil substance while posing nude in front of a camera?” Dan clears his throat. “Anyway.” Waiting for a reply, he shifts in his seat, pushing pasta round his plate.

Phil puts him out of his misery. “I’d love to write something with you, Dan. One day. I don’t know about now, I have my book and you have yours…”

“No, I know. Not now, obviously. And I will procrastinate the idea for ever.”

“So will I. Maybe we aren’t the ideal writing couple, after all,” Phil muses.

“It might result in a double murder,” Dan agrees.

“The risks would be worth it. Maybe I could finally find out how you come up with all those incredible quotes.”

“And maybe I could prove that you’re high when you write.”

Phil pulls a face. “My trade secrets will be protected by contract. Gwen can compose one.”

“Deal. No one’s questionable, maybe illicit, methods will be exposed.”

“But what would we write about?”

Dan finishes, pushes the plate away from him, and leans back in his chair. The kitchen is partly lit, a backdrop of shadow behind their table. Phil’s eyes are attracted to the only light - the crest of it as it drips down Dan’s nose and neck, the moon pinned to the corner of the window behind him. “The ideas will come to us naturally. They always do.”

“That always ends in me bearing my whole heart,” Phil says, “and it gets messy.”

“Me too.” Dan smiles at him, a treaty balanced between them, a sign of vulnerability, all in that one look. He lowers his chin and dips his voice and says, “I’d trust you with mine.”

“O-okay.” He stutters, but there is a flood of confidence in him, for it is true, “I’d trust you with mine, too.”

-

The end of January is at his back, a drape of wind on his shoulders, and leaves that should be long gone kicking around in the seams of the pavement. The door knocker is cold in his grasp. It falls back to the door, bouncing once, and Phil goes down a step. He looks around while he waits: the charcoal clouds in the dimming sky, the floods of light flat on the floor, the flicker of satellite skimming the rooftops.

When Dan answers the door, Phil turns his head back, looking sheepish and feeling guilty. “Sorry. You weren’t answering your phone,” he explains. “I wanted to check you were okay.”

Behind his watery eyes and swollen nose, Dan softens. “I haven’t been abducted by aliens, or kidnapped, or killed by a Game of Thrones cliff hanger. I’m just quite ill.” His voice is nasal and rough.

“I knew you were ill, I didn’t know how bad it had got.”

“Worse. And my phone is lost in a pile of tissues. Sorry I didn’t answer you.”

“You’re forgiven. May I come in?”

“At your own risk.” Dan leaves the doorway open for Phil to enter. Phil shuts the door, the warmth of Dan’s home soaking into his skin immediately, and hangs his coat on the hook he always uses.

“You weren’t joking,” Phil says, entering the living room and observing the bins full of tissues, the pile of blankets left on the floor.

“Everything I say is filled with sincerity, Phil,” Dan tells him, and sits down in the crease he’s made for himself. “I got this far, and now I’m stuck.”

“It hurts to move?”

“It hurts to not be lazy,” Dan corrects, shooting him a reassuring but entertained smile. He clears a space on the sofa, and gestures for Phil to fill it. Phil does so. “It’s the thirtieth today, right?”

“Yes.”

“And your birthday is…”

“Tomorrow, yes.”

Dan coughs. “Sorry my lungs hate you.”

“I think they hate you more,” Phil tells him, sympathetic as he puts a hand on Dan’s shoulder and bows his head to study Dan closer. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“It’s just a cold, calm your worried tits.”

“I think that was a compliment. Anyway, I brought something for you which I thought might help.” Phil pulls a tub of a balm he made out of his bag. “You rub it on your nose and under your eyes, and it makes it less sore and swollen.”

“I didn’t become friends with you for your herbal bullshit,” Dan argues weakly.

“It works.” Phil shoves the tub in Dan’s face. “Put it on.”

“Why?”

“So I can prove you wrong,” Phil insists, only half lying, and puts the tub under Dan’s nose. “Put it on, or I will.”

“I’m letting you nowhere near my snotty face,” Dan warns. He sighs, and takes the tub from Phil. He stands and walks into the middle of the room, so he can see himself in the mirror. The tub opens with a pop, and Dan wrinkles his nose. “Ugh, this stinks!”

“Oi, you have a cold! You can’t smell, I’m sure it’s just a placebo effect.”

“Okay, Frankenstein.”

“Dan.”

“What?” Dan turns to look at him, a dollop of balm on his fingers.

“You don’t need that much.”

Dan squares his jaw and glares into the mirror. “Thanks for telling me, Phil .”

While Dan rubs the balm into his skin, Phil taps a tune onto the seat of the sofa; when Dan turns back around, the light green of the balm faded into his skin, Phil mutters a quick spell. The balm glows for a split second in the low light.

“And now?” Dan asks.

“We wait.” Phil gives him a shit-eating grin. His head throbs with the ache to just tell him.

-

“How do you feel now?” Phil asks two hours later, with the sky like treacle and his eyes straining in the low light of the room. Dan refuses to turn anything other than the lamps and fairy lights on, and Phil has to take pity on him, apparently, because he’s ill.

“I am still 90 percent mucus,” Dan replies, “but I don’t feel like it anymore. My face feels better.”

“Good.”

Dan lolls back in the sofa, and Phil leans on his side to join him. “I can’t believe that herbal bullshit of yours worked.”

“Oi.” Phil prods his arm, and Dan opens one eye to regard him. “You can’t call it bullshit if it worked, Dan.”

“Well, we think it worked.”

“Your face looks better.”

“Maybe it’s a placebo effect,” Dan argues, standing to walk to the mirror. He pushes his chin out and twists his neck, the light moulding around him.

“Sure it is,” Phil teases, coming to join him and staring pointedly at the space under Dan’s eyes - once irritated, now pale and milder. “That’s why I think it looks better. A secondhand placebo.”

“You think it worked because you want to be proved right, you dick.”

Phil laughs. “It clearly did.”

Dan throws a pointed finger in the direction of the pot, perched on the shelf over the fireplace. “What’s even in it, anyway?”

“Um, mint, lavender,” Phil recounts, hand rubbing his upper arm. “And some, er, other things.”

“Sounds like bullshit.”

“If that’s the case, you can wash it off and I’ll take the rest home.”

Dan picks the tub off the mantlepiece and plays it between his hands. “I’d rather not.”

“You’re just being stubborn,” Phil realises, gleefully.

“And that is exactly why. I can’t fit you and your ego in this house,” Dan says, deadpan, “it’s just not possible.”

-

“So, what are your thoughts on Zealand?” PJ has two mugs of steaming tea in his hands, pushing the door of his lounge shut behind him.

Phil takes his mug from PJ, fills his cheeks with air and releases it slowly. PJ is a close friend of his, and is working alongside Jack for the New Zealand shoot, and when PJ invited Phil round his home to catch up, Phil accepted with the expectation of the topic being brought up. Not this early on, though, but then PJ was never one to be mindful to the predictable.

“I have no certain answer to give, Peej,” Phil says, carefully, “I’d like to go, but -”

“You want to go, what’s the problem? Is it Jack? Because that I can understand.”

“ No , it’s not Jack,” Phil says, elbowing him in the side - his tea sloshes, cresting just beneath the rim. “You’re an awful friend.”

“I thrive off the make believe, off the reaction certain words can provoke.”

“An awful friend,” Phil repeats, and takes a hesitant sip of his drink.

“Perhaps by standard conventions,” PJ accepts. “But, seriously, what’s the issue?”

“I have a life here, PJ. I can’t just take off for three weeks or whatever and leave all my shit behind.”

“It would be work.”

“I know, I know, but I - I don’t know what my life will be like in a month. I’ve already had to push the release date of my book back, I may not be able to risk it.”

“The New Zealand air works wonders on the imagination.”

Phil gives a fond smile, gazing at the ripples of his tea. “I’m sure it does. But I don’t think leaving home for so long is for me - for my job or me personally.”

“You’re allowed to have doubts,” PJ says, watching him over his cup of tea.

“I know. I’m allowed to have doubts as long as I leave enough room for me to grow,” Phil replies, raising his eyebrows at the line. “But, Peej, there’s growing, and then there’s being flung out of a plane.”

“That wasn’t on the schedule.” PJ frowns. Phil gives him a levelled look, and PJ obediently drops the facade. “I know you’re busy. It’s okay if you can’t come. But we could really use your expertise. You can work magic on anything. Pardon the pun,” PJ adds, in response to a look from Phil.

“I’ll think about it,” he promises PJ. He turns his gaze to his surroundings; PJ’s lounge is cosy, with block colours and the lilting scent of a winter candle, surfaces packed comfortably with trinkets and books and camera equipment. There’s a photo of himself, PJ, Jack, and some other university friends propped on the mantelpiece.

“You may hate the idea at first, but you may find that you love it.”

“That doesn’t always happen,” Phil points out, not comforted. The book tour was one thing: he was always moving, then, seeing new people and sights. He was the centrepiece to that journey, in a way. On a film set, in the same location for three weeks, he’ll be navigating his own wishes and needs with a whole crew. He won’t be able to collapse in a heap when he needs to, and he won’t constantly be busy - he’ll be following the path his superiors set for him. Plus, he can only take so much travelling in one year.

“It’s happened before.”

Phil looks at him. “When?”

“Two words: Dan Howell. I specifically remember that there was a hashtag revolving around your feud, but now you’re best of friends.”

Phil snorts. “Dan hates Tolkien but his personality redeemed him. New Zealand isn’t a person.”

“You can’t say I didn’t try,” PJ sighs. “How is he, anyway?”

Clasping his cup with two hands, Phil shrugs. “I don’t know. Fine, last time I heard. He couldn’t make it, all I know.”

“Yes, I figured that much,” PJ says. “Probably on a date with Kate .” He wears a childish, teasing smile.

There’s a plunging jolt to Phil’s stomach, the scaffolding of his body falling away under itself - like his tea has transformed into acid, like he’s fallen from a tightrope and his body has folded in two with the impact. “Wh-what do you mean?” he asks, with a wide, beseeching gaze.

“You know, Kate? His girlfriend?”

Phil pushes his lip into a firm line and shakes his head. A tidal wave of white noise is flooding his head. The moon and sun have collided in the space between his eyes.

“You didn’t know? Oh, Phil, I’m so sorry…” PJ moves forward to wrap an arm around Phil’s shoulders, but Phil withdraws. Keep it contained . If he moves now, if he breaks the walls he’s desperately building up, everything will be drawn to the surface like blood to a wound.

Phil wills his hands not to shake. He stares at the dregs of his drink. The mug has gone so cold, suddenly. “What do you mean, sorry?”

“Well, um, you two are so close, and he didn’t tell you. That must be hard to find out,” PJ explains slowly. Phil blinks forcefully. “Also,” PJ continues, met with a stony silence, “it’s obvious you care for him quite a lot. I just assumed…”

Phil shakes his head again. “It’s not like that.” Gritted teeth. It’s not harder to breathe, but each breath is heavier. He’s conscious of every part of his body, every root and branch and pulse.

“Okay. I’m sorry.” Phil hates how PJ’s speaking: careful and soft, as if more than a silk touch will dismantle him. More so, he hates that it’s true.

“It doesn’t matter,” Phil declares, forcing the rest of the tea down his throat.

“It does, he should have told you. You shouldn’t have heard it from me first.”

“How long?” Phil asks. He buries his head between his shoulders, pushes his beating heart six feet under.

“Phil, I -”

“How long have they been dating?” Phil presses.

PJ sighs. He catches one of Phil’s wrists in his hand, holds it tight between his palms until it stops quaking. “A month, I think.”

A month. Just after New Year’s. When Phil gave him the balm and said he’d trust him with his heart.

“Do I know her?”

“No. None of us do, really.”

“‘Us’?”

“His friends. Your friends.”

“Right.”

“This isn’t about you, Phil. This isn’t your fault.”

“I need to go.” His voice wobbles and his mouth is filling with rocks and his legs bend under his full weight when he stands up. “Minton needs feeding, and the windows are open, and I think it’s going to rain.”

PJ stands, too, placing himself between Phil and the door. “Phil. He should have told you. Don’t let yourself think this is your ruin.”

“No, yeah, you’re right,” Phil says, voice pulled tight. His hand goes to his mouth. He blinks hard. “Um. I just need to go.”

“Okay.” PJ watches as Phil gathers his belongings, knuckles white and heart pumping salt around his body. “At least let me walk you home? Please?”

“No, that would be a waste of your time. I’ll be okay. I’m not angry at you, Peej, you’re right, it’s about him, he should’ve told me…”

“You’re gonna talk to him about it?”

“Probably.”

PJ nods. “Don’t let it ruin the pair of you. Sort it out as friends.”

Phil gives a weak smile. “I can’t make any promises.” PJ opens his mouth to speak again, but Phil cuts him off. “Thank you for having me. I’ll text you when I’m home.”

“Phil.” PJ makes him stop just before the front door. “I’ll say it again, don’t think this is your ruin. This isn’t everything you are.”

“No, but it damn well feels like it right now.” Phil grips the doorknob but doesn’t open the door.

“ Phil .” He wishes PJ would stop saying his name, stop making it obvious there’s nothing he can say to help.

“I’ll sort it out. I will. I’ll sort it out, and it’ll be over.”

-

Phil would go over to Dan’s right now, if he could. He’d go over, and yell and cry and ask questions he doesn’t want to know the answers to. But he’s scared away from the thought by the knowledge that Dan most likely isn’t home, and that, if he is, Phil will have to meet her.

And if he were to go, and Dan wasn’t home when Phil got there, Phil would wait, knees tucked to his chest, and he might meet her if she comes back with Dan. And she would be beside Dan while Phil hurled everything he had, and clutched to Dan with bloody hands afterwards.

And Phil can’t do that. He’s heartbroken, and a liar, and a sorcerer, and a whole variety of things Dan would probably hate him for, if only he knew - but he’s not a homewrecker. He can’t walk in and lose his temper, use his grief to tear them apart.

The other thing stopping him is himself. The state he’s in - eyes stinging with tears, fists quaking, emotions raw and slick over his skin like his heart is jelly, or a pulp of rotting roses - he never wants Dan to see. It’s not a good plan, if he wants to win this...whatever it is. He’s too vulnerable, too easily read.

So he’ll return later.

Water is sticking to the sides of the road, dirtied and clogged with damp leaves. With each passing car, there is a splash like the hum of thin metal. Phil stares blindly in front of him at the austere brick walls, the splashes and the reddening crescent patterns on his palms merely distant details. He almost misses his bus. He comes back to himself, gets on, buys a ticket, and slumps against the window.

He’ll return later. Not much later - no, his patience can’t stand that. At around eight, probably. He could text Dan, he supposes, and innocently inquire into whether he’s home or not. No. That would feel untruthful.

He’ll return later. His broken heart will crumble into embers at the bottom of his chest, and those embers will kindle into anger - a coiled, burning fury that nothing will extinguish.

Betrayal and heartbreak are funny things: the key emotion is hurt, a weak, brittle feeling, and with it is the knowledge that, maybe, it is not their fault. And yet it transforms into a chimera, a beast of aggression that is perhaps undeserved, but necessary, if only to conceal the fragility underneath. The blazing flames of a fire are only found to hide the gaping holes left behind. Phil does not want to listen to this visceral call for vengeance and pain, but it feels like it is the only way out. He’ll regret it, but it’s the only way to emerge with any dignity.

Phil’s foot falls through the gap between the bus step and the pavement; he stumbles on, dodging a passerby. The bus kicks up a wave of water as it takes off, hissing, and Phil watches the distance spread out between them.

-

The following hours pass in the prickling sensation of fidgeting fingers and bouncing feet. Phil thought he perfected the art of passing time, especially when a designated part of the future was greatly anticipated, but the slow crawl of the minute hand tells him otherwise. He works on his book the best he can, skipping the joyful part he’d planned to write and approaching a scene of split fists and split trust and split ends; he stands up four times in an hour to get another glass of water. Minton rolls on the carpet at his feet, and Phil prods him a few times with his toes, knowing that as soon as he leaves his work, he won’t be able to return.

He awaits eight o’clock with a sour taste in his throat, with impatience and anxiety, but he has no idea what he will do once the time comes. He gets as far as Dan answering the door, and then the scene shatters. Not wanting to think about it, he decides the words will come to him in the moment, and starts describing what heartbreak looks like in a country town where time runs coils around people’s heads and singing makes the crops grow.

-

Black slugs of cloud squirm in the dusk, ensnared in a net of mist and navy blue. Houses are illuminated by light hanging down in long strands from concealed fixtures and old lampposts, casting their faces into porcelain; shadows messy and the shades coming down in rough shapes, like mould or dried blood. Footsteps are loud and echoing on the pavement. Cars slip past. The world is aching and still: a photograph sewn into the sky, each street a reflection of the one before.

He stands alone on the doorstep. He holds himself still, as he hurtles towards an inexorable event. Half of him hopes that when Dan opens the door, he is alone - the other half of him dares to hope he never will. The embers are turning over in his stomach, glowing a comfortable warmth, ready to ignite and flare up at the slightest provocation. His body hums with the promise of something - redemption, perhaps, or a solution - but that will surely fall apart soon.

Soon gives way into now . The door clicks open.

“Phil!” Dan’s smile is a gaping trap door. In a faraway part of Phil’s mind, he recognises the jumper Dan is wearing. “I wasn’t expecting to see you today.”

“Today is truly a pioneer of surprises,” Phil says between his teeth.

Dan’s mouth swings shut. He frowns. “Are you alright? Has something happened?”

Phil almost shakes his head to quell his worrying, but he fights the urge. “Are you gonna let me in, or not?” he snaps. “Please,” he adds, not quite belatedly - in an act of guilt, or in an attempt to conceal his true motives, he can’t decide.

“Of course, sorry.” Dan steps aside, beckoning him in and scratching his temple. “You must be cold,” he says, gesturing to Phil’s light jacket and shirt, clearing his throat.

Dan doesn’t know that Phil has a spell working away on his body right now, making his body flush an easy red with heat. Phil just humphs an agreement and pushes through the doorway.

“Do I need to take my shoes off?” Phil flings the question behind him as he works his way down the gangway of a hall, sidestepping a pair of trainers and a pile of books waiting to be taken upstairs.

“Stepped in any shit recently?” Dan fires back. Joking. Phil ignores him.

Phil walks into the living room. He turns the light on, not having to look to do so. The curtains are pulled shut, a gap buckling between them; the room is tidy, but lived in: the way Dan often leaves things. The casual and careful footprints of an occupant who either doesn’t stay anywhere long, or is so consistent in his location that the room around him is barely affected - just a small bend or wrinkle in the appearance of the room, a mug left on the side, a cushion falling onto its side. Dan never struck Phil as being a hurricane. Clearly, his habits don’t reflect his true nature.

Phil turns to face the door as Dan walks through. Molten rock is building pressure in the pit of his stomach.

“Are you not staying long, then?” he asks Phil.

I don’t plan to , Phil thinks.

“So,” Dan goes on, clapping his hands together. His eyes go up to the main light and come back down. “For what do I owe this pleasure?”

Phil knows he’s tantalising him. As soon as Dan opened that door, Phil threw him into a whirlpool of twisting reasons and veiled thoughts; Dan is desperately trying to catch on, to feel the situation and figure it out. He doesn’t know the fruit he’s reaching for will pull away when he comes near.

Dan tries one final time, “Phil,” stepping forward with a hand offered out. Phil has had enough.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Dan’s hand falls back to his side, a hollow clap on his thigh. “What are you on about?”

“You didn’t tell me,” Phil says, slowly, staring at the ground at Dan’s feet, “and I’d like to know why.”

“Didn’t tell you what ?” Cold water is pouring over his head and Dan fights to keep above it all. Phil almost hates to put him through this, but he’s started now, and he can only stop once the flame has burnt its way out - run out of fuel.

Phil tries a different approach. Brutally, with little patience, “Who were you with today? Who have you been seeing recently?”

From a blank stare, Dan’s face contorts into one of wide eyes and parted lips. His fists clench. “What about it?”

He won’t say it. Phil doesn’t intend to, either. This whole argument will rock over them without the fire lighter ever being acknowledged.

They stare at each other for a long moment. Phil studies Dan’s face for a signal of anything, and finds nothing.

His voice is almost a whine. It breaks as he says, “Why didn’t you tell me? ”

“It never came up?” Dan tries, floundering for an answer. “Phil, I don’t know. There’s no reason, it’s just an action I took without any thought. It was never made with malicious intent, I promise.”

Phil shakes his head. “Everyone else seems to know. It’s clearly not a secret. Do you not trust me?”

Dan stays quiet, eyes beseeching Phil to please do not do this .

“ Dan ,” Phil sighs, the word shaking, lamenting, and pinning his feet to the floor and his world upside down. “You told me you trust me with your whole heart,” he says, finding Dan’s eyes. He says it quietly, a rueful memory he is hauling to the surface rather than a direct bullet.

Dan’s expression strains, bends, and falls with the weight of his anguish. “I wasn’t lying.”

Phil’s finger picks at a spot of loose skin on his thumb. “I can’t see how it’s true.”

“Please, don’t do this.”

“I don’t know what ‘this’ is, but I’m not doing it.” His stubbornness will protect him where his hope couldn’t.

“You’re making this a bigger deal than it is. This reflects nothing about you, Phil. This is just me being forgetful.” Dan finishes disheartened. Fog fills Phil’s lungs and he can’t see the end of this anymore.

“Everyone else knows,” Phil croaks. He doesn’t know how to feel - wants to believe Dan but can’t make himself see the sense of it, wants it to mean nothing but wants to expel the sourness of his broken heart from his body. For the life of him, he can’t let go of this.

“And?”

“And I deserved to know!” Phil exclaims. “I can’t see why you would choose not to tell me! I wouldn’t be any different from anyone else! I would be happy for you!”

“Actually,” Dan says. He grits his teeth. “I owe you nothing. You want an answer, and I don’t owe you that either, but I would give you one, if I could. But I can’t. There was no conscious decision, no conspiracy, no anything you seem to have decided there was. In the nicest way possible, this is nothing about you. We are still the same as we ever were.”

I owe you nothing . Of course, of course, of course.

Phil wipes at the tops of his cheeks. Dan watches him do so, hopelessly, and says, “I don’t understand why you’re so torn up about this.” It’s unclear whether he’s angry or in mourning.

Resolute, Phil shakes his head.

“Phil, you could talk to me.”

“I don’t owe you anything,” Phil spits Dan’s words back at him - Dan flinches - and feels awful for doing so. “I don’t have to talk, or explain why I’m going to leave now.”

“We’re still the same people, Phil. We’re still us. Us , together.” Dan gestures between the two of them, but the movement just sends a coil of pain through Phil.

“Not if you keep things from me.”

“But it’s such a trivial thing.”

“Then why was it so difficult to tell me?”

(Phil could ask himself the same question. The us Dan speaks of never existed, by Phil’s standards. Phil’s magic is a clear deceit. More secrets lie between them than he ever realised, and he’s just discovering how difficult it is to navigate a forest of towering unknowns to find each other.)

“I told you, there was no fucking decision not to tell you! It just never occurred to me.”

“Message received and understood,” Phil replies, cruel and sharp, and he heads for the door.

“I don’t want you to leave,” Dan orders him. He steps in front of Phil.

Phil raises his eyes the centimetre required to meet Dan’s gaze. Their shoulders are bare inches apart. “You don’t have a choice.”

The walk from the lounge door to the street, and then back home, is nothing but blank. Phil forces his feet into a chase after each other, rattling reasons and laments around in his head. The sky is a sterile, stinging slate of black.

Being with Dan made him feel confident, happy, centreless. Now, all that space makes him feel empty, empty, empty.

-

Phil hardly sleeps, and the next day he feels awful. Hollow, but painfully heavy; harsh and hard, but weak and soft, as if tree sap will start gushing out of his mouth. Erratic and short tempered, he spends the day sulking in front of his computer.

Phil doesn’t use magic on a person’s brain, whether that be his brain or someone else’s, by principle. He doesn’t mangle feelings or mute outrage or mould intentions. Not only is he dangerously incapable, but he doesn’t want to. Sometimes, being able to fly a dirty spoon over to the sink feels foreign enough. And there are the risks, risks anti-magics never hesitate to bash around sorcerers’ heads.

Thus, he is left unaided as he attempts to work on Jelly Hearts . Once it’s been two hours and only three hundred words find their way onto the document, he gives up.

Dan hasn’t texted or called. It could be worse, Phil decides: he could be texting Phil to say he never wants to see him again.

Phil can’t stop worrying his lip. His thoughts bounce around the room. He can’t stop seeing Dan’s face when he let his missiles loose: gaunt, coiled tight - a tight wound - mouth open like he was waiting for something to fill the gap. He can’t stop tripping and hurting and attacking. Once he’s tried for hours to stop thinking about it, he gives up.

Phil pushes himself away from his desk, rumples Minton’s fur, and goes to the kitchen.

-

Mist crumples around the seams of the street, but a flush of rose reposes on the very edges of the sky. Only some houses have their windows alight. Residual warmth rests on the top of Phil’s hands, battered about by his short breaths. The conclusion is clear. It is not quite nighttime, yet.

Two clicks sound from the door, so Phil turns his back on the street.

Facing Dan is like facing the situation as a whole. He looks quaint and young with his sagging, woollen jumper and curling hair; it makes Phil wish for the before. For this is the after: Dan, eking out his youth, his gentleness still not time-worn, but smooth and rounded - except for the scar across his face, the ridge of a frown that light falls off. Phil flounders for a reaction to focus on (anger, regret, surrender) as the scene looms over him, backed by flat shadow and undefined endings.

The moment is like so: energy pours out of it, silence floods into it. A wasteland, roaring for life again.

He gives in and obeys its longing. Words, throbbing and thrumming, trickling through a sluice. “I’m sorry. I-I’ve come to say sorry. I mean, I’m sorry, and also I’ve come to say sorry. In a bit more detail, I mean. If I can.”

Dan stares at him for a heartbeat. Phil stares back, throwing the trapdoors of his chest wide.

Finally, “I didn’t have to open the door to you,” he states, his feet fidgeting. He means it to be harsh, maybe, but it sounds like a reminder, a this is what you almost lost, but I will bring it back to you. Neither of them know which it should be, Phil decides.

“But you didn’t,” Phil offers, smiling weakly. Then, to stop it sounding like a boasting retort, he adds, “thank you.”

Dan straightens his back and sighs. “Come in.”

“Thank you.”

Dan stands halfway down the hall. Phil toes his shoes off, keeping a firm hold of the box in his hands. Dan watches him and says nothing. “I, er, brought you something,” Phil says, struggling to lift the box higher. If he were to laugh, it would be awkward, inconsequential, so he doesn’t.

“What is it?”

Phil strokes his thumbs over the foil top. “A surprise. Can we, um, go to your kitchen, please?”

Dan takes a step forward, and he looks like he wants to smile. He narrows his eyes, not unkindly, and fishes for an answer, “so it’s food, then?”

Phil grins, inclining his head, and doesn’t give in. “Kitchen.”

Rolling his eyes, Dan turns on his heel and says, “ fine. ”

Dan speaks almost like it hasn’t happened - and part of Phil aches, because he understands, and the matching frequencies make him tremble and shiver. He doesn’t hate Dan. He hates the situation they’ve fallen into. He wishes it were over. That’s why he’s here - and, hopefully, that’s why Dan let him in. Hope is a viscous, vicious thing. But his magic is bubbling to the surface. But Dan opened the door. But Phil feels more alive than he has in a while. The recovery after a disaster feels better than constant happiness, he decides. Hope simmers and deceives, but when it goes off, it goes off .

The kitchen is as Phil remembers it, but tidier. The piles of unwashed cutlery have vanished; the scent of disinfectant ebbs from the crooked edges. On one wall, underneath the high window, is the cooker, and beside it is the back door. Cupboards and drawers fill the longest wall, topped by a work surface. Opposite them, under a clock with a shiny, modern face, is a table for two.

“So?” Dan prompts. He leans against a cupboard. One of his arms slings across his chest to hold the other by its elbow.

“I made you a lasagna,” Phil explains, unfolding the foil from around the edges and removing it. It glistens where he discards it on the table.

“A lasagna ,” Dan repeats, patronising. He feigns intrigue as he walks over and stands over the glass dish, but Phil knows he’s only half-joking. Dan trails a finger over the glass lip. Turning to Phil, he asks, “Why?”

“Because,” Phil begins, “it represents apology in some cultures.”

Dan cocks his eyebrow. “And what cultures would those be, Phil?” he teases.

“Very remote, very dead ones.”

A smile edges onto Dan’s face this time, smudging his lips. “I see. An apology lasagna.”

“The tomato means ‘you didn’t deserve it’, the cheese means ‘it was my fault and I regret everything’, and the pasta means ‘I’m a fucking idiot’.”

Dan snorts, and raises a hand to cover his mouth. “And the seasoning?”

Phil thinks a moment. “‘What they said’.”

Dan bites into his grin and nods sagely.

“Which, overall, means ‘sorry twice over, please forgive me’,” Phil continues, hinting as unsubtly as he can, and watches Dan switch between watching him and the pasta.

“Well, I can’t fucking refuse, can I?” Dan catches Phil by the elbow and tugs him into a tight embrace. Phil holds him and lets the anxiety in him deflate, lets the tears manifest into tiny beads of water before he blinks them away.

“I’m sorry,” he tells Dan. It feels too easy, in a way, but what seemed like an apocalypse was just a thunderstorm with an ending. Enveloped by him, Phil has no space left to worry over it - he is too near him.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I should have.”

“No.” Phil shakes his head. “You were right, you don’t owe me anything.”

“I do. I do owe you. More than I can say.”

“The dramatic writer’s back,” Phil goads. He pulls back a little, “are you crying?”

“No, you just stink of onion.”

“Oh.” Phil laughs.

“To clarify,” Dan says, “I won’t always accept pasta in return for my forgiveness.”

Phil tightens his grip. “I know. Just this once.”

Dan agrees, “just this once.”

-

At the end of their meal, Dan picks up the tin foil, and begins folding parts and flattening others.

“What are you doing?” Phil asks. Dan says nothing, just hums and raises his eyebrows.

“Dan.”

“Phil,” Dan replies, and places his creation on his head.

“What are you doing?”

“It’s a conspiracy nut hat, obviously. So the government can’t read my thoughts ,” he says, explaining it as if it is obvious.

“I really think that’s the least of your problems,” Phil states, staring at Dan’s head and trying not to laugh.

When Dan moves his head, the hat goes askew, and so he lets it fall off and onto the table. “I was obviously joking.”

Eyes wide, Phil nods, “yeah, obviously,” and ducks when Dan throws the foil his way. He uses magic to ensure Dan misses. Dan doesn’t notice.

-

“We will get that collaboration done one day,” Dan tells him. He’s lounging on the sofa, legs kicked up next to Phil’s on the coffee table, looking thoughtful and distant and palpably loyal. It’s not a promise, but a prophecy - his eyes tell Phil as such.

Phil’s voice is a sponge in his throat. “‘Collaboration’?” he repeats, finishing a pattern on his thigh and looking up with a sly smile, “who are you?”

“A guy who’s trying to do his best, fuck you.”

Sitting with the lights off is becoming a tradition. Phil cannot ignore the softness it brings to the space, despite the way his eyes strain and how he trips in the darkness. A slope of light from the window reflects off the corner of the mirror. Otherwise, the room is a tunnel of black; they are eternal, blissfully naive.

“I think, in this case,” Phil says, “it’s the thought that counts.”

“Are you implying we won’t do it?”

“It’ll take a miracle to get us to actually sit down together and write for any length of time. Dan,” he tacks on the end, like it makes the statement more real.

“I’ll do whatever it takes,” Dan declares, pushing the hair out of his eyes and letting his cheek rest against his palm.

“What’s your plan of action?”

“If we live together in isolation, we’ll have no choice but to write.”

Phil’s head lolls to one side. “Torture.”

“Exploiting our survival instincts.”

“I’ve seen how you cook, Dan,” Phil comments, teasing, lifting one leg unnecessarily high and crossing it over the other, “you don’t have a survival instinct.”

“You just have no appreciation for ambition. A true Philistine.”

“ Phil istine.” Phil laughs, and bites into his hand. Dan glares at him before gazing forwards once more.

“It would be a nice house,” he muses. “A cottage. In the forest, and there’d be a stream at the bottom of the garden.”

Phil closes his eyes. His head leans on Dan’s shoulder; he can feel the jagged movement of Dan’s jaw. He allows himself a smile. “It sounds wonderful. If we enjoyed living there, what would our incentive be?”

“If we hated it too much, we’d just run away. We have to stay long enough to produce our one hundred and something thousand words,” he reasons. “It would be real old-fashioned, though. Think Hound of the Baskervilles , with more Microsoft.”

“Doing that. Tell me why I’m doing that.”

“There’d be no heating. We’d need the body heat just to survive the night.”

“And the body heat would come from writing?” Phil asks, glancing up as his head shakes with the decline of Dan’s nod. “A foolproof plan.”

“I thought so. We will cultivate our own stardom.”

“Disgusting,” Phil says, because it isn’t. “I’m not being Watson.”

“I never said you would be.”

“It was implied.”

“How?”

“I -” Phil pauses. “I don’t know. But it was.”

“Foolproof.”

“No less than the rest of this,” Phil points out.

“Bullshit. My plan is perfect. Our lives will culminate in this cottage. The birds will sing our names.”

Phil snorts. The pretentious writer snark is implied. “How will we afford this cottage of productivity, then?”

“Sell our bodies.” With Phil jabbing him in the side, he finishes, “to science .”

“Not the most attractive of options.”

Dan grunts in agreement. “Alternatively, we train Minton to do a few tricks.”

“I prefer that one,” Phil admits.

“We could use him to intimidate people into giving us money.”

“He could be the Hound of the Baskervilles.”

Dan laughs - like he’s been waiting to do so. A sound that heads straight for the corners and the ceiling and the taut strings of Phil’s heart.

“No, listen,” Phil insists, with a laugh he can’t quite swallow, “it could be a great tourist destination. We’d act Victorian, and Minton would scare the shit out of everyone. Like the London Dungeons, but with more dogs and less history.”

Dan laughs again, a hand pressed to his stomach. “Fuck, don’t make me laugh. I’ve too full a stomach to laugh.”

“Occupational hazard,” Phil says. He watches as Dan momentarily touches his thigh with his free hand, his wrist twisting to accommodate the movement. An affectionate gesture with an unknown meaning.

They find the silence that has been waiting patiently for them. The sky spins out from them behind the panes of the windows, revealed by a curtain not perfectly shut. No stars anchor the distance. This is not a disappointing fact. Engines hum in their trundling, as if movement is a comfortable puzzle. Asynchronous and transient, the outside world is not a sound, or a sight, but a proposal: not an existence that can be taken in one go, but experiences trailed lazily over each other, one tried and tasted before moving on to the next. The odour of tangy salt followed by the spindrift lining your cheek.

Dan’s hand does not return to Phil’s leg. This is maybe a disappointing fact.

Phil cannot admit it out loud. All of it: the silken wash of magic in his blood, the clumsy knot of love in his heart. This is a disappointing fact. Perennial silence lives on in the bumps of his tongue.

“I always forget how we met,” Dan says. “Like, I don’t forget . If you asked, I’d know. I do know. But when I see you, or think of you, or whatever, the experience never comes along with.”

“It feels like it was so long ago,” Phil supposes. “It’s quite a surreal tale.”

“Perfect for you,” Dan replies automatically. Next, his more developed thought, “I guess it’s not something you tend to want to remember.”

“You got me hit in the arm with a book of dark magic,” Phil says, incredulous in the face of Dan’s understatement.

“You say that like I planned it,” Dan objects.

“Maybe you orchestrated the whole thing. Maybe , you liked me so much, you needed a way to keep me close.”

“Are you suggesting I wanted you injured so I could stay with you forever?”

“Not suggesting. That’s exactly what happened. Injured, or worse .” Comically, Phil widens his eyes.

Folding his hands behind his head, Dan settles back into his seat. “Browning would be proud.”

“Which one?”

“Both,” Dan answers. His eyes are shut. Phil feels almost guilty looking.

“At once? Impressive.”

Dan’s teeth show between his lips. He settles into his next sentence, like he’s already tried it on for size and decided he’s in love with the way it feels. “We will cultivate our own stardom.”

-

Phil doesn’t go to Gwen’s place often, but when he does, the distance only makes it more special. It preserves the oddities and the novelty. The burning candles and mismatched cushions are still endearing and homey; the lingering scent of spices and coffee is still comfortably alien; the spacious, airy character of the rooms still cause his lungs to balloon and his heart to settle. Gwen’s apartment exists when Phil isn’t there - items are moved, cupboards are restocked - and, hence, it doesn’t carry a hint of Phil. In a world where he frequents the same destinations over and over, and thus leaves visible fingerprints and lasting impressions, it is good to have a place that he knows, but doesn’t know him in return. Not enough to reflect him and his habits back at himself.

They sit in her lounge, her on one half of a sofa with a suede-type texture, him slouched over an armchair, an oriental-type rug at his feet. When he first visited, Phil didn’t know how to interpret the conglomerate of furnishings; while he saw it as random and cosy, Gwen had called the style ‘modern vintage’. Phil told her that if she kept using juxtapositions like that, she could rival even Eliot himself. In reply, Gwen offered him a milkshake. Now, she twists a hunk of hair into whorling knots while she chats about recent movies she’s seen and her quest for a jacket that isn’t made out of that gross, shiny material, you know the one I mean . Phil listens, gaze switching from her gentle, glowing face to the canvas print hooked on the wall behind her. From the kitchen wafts the suggestion of sweetness. Phil hasn’t asked what Gwen’s baking.

“Hey,” she says - not to revive his interest, or to chide him, but to anchor them both to a new point in the conversation, in the way she so often does. She stretches a leg out to poke him with her toes. Her slipper socks tickle the inch of bare skin between his jeans and his sock. “Have you learnt anything new, recently?”

By anything new , she means spells. Phil knows this and says, “Turtles can breath through their butts.” He arches his back to reach an itch. Gwen pulls a face at him. Phil pulls one back. The hostility ends, Gwen smiling contently and curling into the sofa. “I haven’t practiced it much,” he tells her. The magic is already brimming over his bones. Well-versed in the transformation though he is, the change never goes unnoticed: an arid desert flooding with sparkling water, light surging into a vertiginous cave. It’s not that Phil doesn’t feel alive when his magic is buried and waiting. He just feels more alive like this, one hundred and ten percent, the limit of possibility lifted higher.

“Breathing through your butt?” Gwen teases, kindly.

Phil lowers his head, acknowledging a retort well-deserved. “It could go wrong.” He means the spell.

“See this as another practice,” she encourages. She trusts him, her eyes are telling him. She knows he believes it could be imperfect, and has put some leeway each side of her expectations to deal with this. But her belief in him, in contrast, is unwavering as her patient gaze. Some days, this is all he needs. Today is one of those days.

The hunched ceiling of Gwen’s living room fills with smoke.

Not smoke, but clouds.

The change is sudden but undetectable, so it feels like it was always this way. Tinged pink and with the texture of cotton rather than steam, the flurry makes the ceiling feel higher; the beams are invisible beyond them, and the clouds seem to be infinite. Like Renaissance paintings, they are not the real thing, but the ideal thing: lush and bold and ethereal.

Once the clouds have ordered themselves, ascertaining their existence, they burst into a hundred thousand snowflakes. Fluttering, they start to cascade through the fabricated metres of open air, and the sound is almost silent, whispering, magical, magical.

As they swoop closer, it becomes clear that the snowflakes are not snowflakes, but petals, pink as candyfloss. They grow into their role in front of Phil’s eyes. It’s impossible to tell if they were always petals, or if their nature was swapped like the smoke’s had been.

Gwen’s gasp snags in her throat. Her eyes are wide as saucers, bright as lanterns. Her apartment may not reflect his personality back at him, but in this moment, with his newly-unearthed trick unfolding before him, he knows that she does. Her wonder is his wonder. ( Unearthed is better than learnt , or discovered , he finds. It is his action and his state of being. It is him, past and present and future. With each new spell he performs, it’s not a case of trying or exploring, but of rediscovering. Déjà vu. The potential to do it fits him easily, like it’s always been there, simmering, waiting.)

Phil catches one on the tip of his finger. He pops it on his tongue; it melts into sugar and trickles down his throat. Gwen does the same but with two, and sucks on her finger, eyes displaying easy concentration. Phil’s insides feel clean. Not empty, but glistening with the residue of magic.

“Done,” Phil announces, and the shower of petals vanishes. The magic recedes slowly, viscous and reluctant. He doesn’t feel empty without it, not quite. Just like some part of him is locked away.

“Impressive,” Gwen says, because she means it. “I have a magic trick, too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. They’re called muffins.”

“Goddamn,” Phil says, as Gwen stands and passes the boundary between the living room and the kitchen. Gwen’s apartment is a group of rooms linked together by wooden-framed doors; one can make their way round most of the floor without using a single corridor. In a deep, booming voice, he continues, “Only the most powerful of magicians can conjure such a beast.”

“Just because you can’t bake!” Gwen calls from the kitchen. If he looks, Phil can just see her through the open door - bent over the oven, pushing her hair behind her ears and checking the cakes are cooked.

“That’s not true,” Phil rebukes, “but don’t be offended that I’m staying here and not coming to help.”

There’s the rattle of a cutlery drawer opening. The scrape of a baking tray dragged out of the oven. “That would be hypocritical of me, as I was the one who cursed you to stay glued to that seat.”

“Watch what you say, or you’ll end up with the press at your door asking about your preferred method of witchcraft,” Phil warns her. He says it mostly in jest, but they both know that similar scandals have, and will, happen.

The muffins have made it onto a plate on the kitchen table unharmed. That, Phil thinks to himself, is where his skillset falls short. At least half a muffin would be on the floor, or stuck to the tray, by now. Gwen uses a butterknife to paste icing onto them, “Being the cause of a scandal sounds like fun,” she muses, using the blade to pull the icing into a peak.

“You’d bring my career down with you,” Phil points out, “and you’d end up on the front cover of The Sauceror .”

“That is on my bucket list.”

“It’s not on mine.”

“Shame.” Arranging the muffins in a circle on a plate, Gwen brings them through and stands beside him. “Want one?”

“Of course.” Phil takes one. “Thank you.”

“We each have our magic tricks,” she replies, in an enigmatic way he knows is a joke.

Biting into the cake, Phil smiles, even though the comment has injected a vial of dread into him. Gwen is not one to ignore the elephant in the room; she does not leave things undone, but attends to them until they are complete, or solved, or finished. To abandon them, in her books, would be an act of dishonour. That is why she has her job, and why she is so good at it - normally, Phil is grateful for her perseverance and shrewdness. Now, however, with the conversation on the topic that it is, Phil feels he knows what is coming. That doesn’t stop him trying to steer away from that fate though, as he utters a delighted noise and asks, “What flavour?”

“Coffee and honey. How’s Dan?”

Gwen was never one to beat around the bush, either.

Phil closes his eyes and sighs, even though he predicted this. “You have his number, don’t you? Ask him yourself,” he quips, feebly.

“You know what I mean.”

Phil does, indeed, know what she means. “The muffins are nice,” he comments - again, feebly. Gwen’s stare is watchful. Phil can’t lie to her, so he doesn’t try.

“I know,” she says curtly. “Have you talked to him yet?”

“What is this? Do you all have some mission involving me and him? Will you get some gratification from me ‘talking’ to him?”

When she speaks again, the edge to her voice has diffused away into gentle analysis. “Phil, you know that isn’t what this is about.”

No. This is about Phil wanting Dan to know the real him: the one who donates to charities for homeless sorcerers, who uses healing charms and balms to heal his friends when they’re sick, who can conflate beauty and impossibility on the tip of his finger, if his concentration is in the right place. (Maybe, he wants Dan to know the part of him who pines for sarcastic, overthinking authors, but that conclusion is undecided.) This is about Phil knowing exactly what he wants, but not being able to say it. Finding the courage to tell Dan is like finding the courage to address Parliament. These parts of him are rust. Just because he’s covered them over with coats of paint, doesn’t mean they’re not still there. If he tells Dan, Dan will know he’s lied. Dan will know he has only befriended a fraction of him, only knows a fraction of him. What Phil doesn’t know is if Dan will be willing to stay around long enough to learn the rest of him. ( Unearthed .)

He hasn’t always been caught in this awful purgatory. He hasn’t always had these feelings towards Dan and towards himself - feelings that bubble and boil, that sing the fragile supplications of his heart. But - much like the smoke, and the clouds, and the petals - it feels like he has never been anything else.

Phil has always had magic.

He reels himself back in. His emotions are gulping for air, for his voice to break, for his resolve to melt, but he ignores it. “No, I haven’t talked to him.”

“I’m guessing you don’t have any plans to,” she says. Again, not reproachful or disdainful, just observant.

“Honestly, the whole Kate thing put me off. I’m taking it as an omen.”

“You’re a writer, not a soothsayer.”

“Who says I can’t be both?”

Gwen sighs - not at him, but at the entire situation. The room feels smaller when possibilities are weighing in from all sides. She pats the space on the chair beside her, deciding close proximity might help her in her effort to get past his emotional barriers. She isn’t wrong. He doesn’t want her to win, but he knows he can’t resist her knowing gaze, so he pushes himself up, walks the three steps it takes to reach her, and falls down beside her. Immediately, she curls up beside him, head on his shoulder, hair tickling his cheek. “You have to talk to him.”

“And tell him what? My dirty secret, or my dirty secret?”

“Phil.”

“You know that’s how it is,” he says, sulking, sullen.

“They’re not dirty .”

“But they are. Side effect of being magic and being gay: at least one person thinks you’re disgusting.”

“Doesn’t mean everyone thinks that.” Somewhere in the conversation, their voices became quieter. Evening sinks down around them. They sit in a low, bronze light.

“No,” he concedes. In the time Phil has known him, Dan has never said anything outrageous or even slightly offensive about magic - except for the time on the panel, but Phil has mostly come to agreement with Gwen that the slight was at Tolkien, not sorcerers. Somehow, Dan is not his father. But there lies the problem: his father. His father, who writes for a satirical paper, whose pride and joy is his column on the invasion of trolls on the everyday world. As much as it folds him inside out to think it, Phil can’t trust him. Opinions learnt from childhood are fickle, unpredictable things. He simply can’t gauge how Dan will react to him: Phil the sorcerer, Phil the hypocrite, Phil the liar. “But some do, and it hurts more when it’s someone I care about.”

“Side effect of being human,” Gwen says it like an apology, and stills his hand under hers, stopping him from worrying at the loose skin around his nails. “You tell him however much you need to tell him.”

“How?”

“You invite him over, sit him down, open your mouth, and say, ‘Dan, I need to tell you a few things’.” The response is immature and puerile, but it lightens the mood - an effect he knows she desired. “Optional step would be to tie him down.”

“To stop him running away, or killing me?”

She considers. “Both.”

Barking a laugh, he says, “great,” even as nerves swing his heart off the edge of a precipice.

Pressing closer to him, she lies an arm across his chest; his heart beats, palpably, almost audibly, against her arm. A bird, caught and begging for escape. “I know I’ve said this before, but you’re going to have to tell him.” Gwen knows she’s repeating herself but she says it anyway, because she knows that, in order to truly get past his defences, she has to approach from different angles. Her voice is only a suggestion, warm and rich, the embodiment of a fingertip search, pushing only as much as he lets her.

He lets her.

His defences are habitual, but the need for a listener is visceral. He lets her prise him open and he lets her cradle his broken parts - his worries, his problems - in the palms of her voice.

It is hard to imagine, almost, how the Gwen who quips and teases is the same Gwen who cares without pitying him, who navigates people so carefully to avoid hitting a wound. But the intelligence she uses for her witticisms is the same as the wisdom she uses to comfort him. Her commitment to finding a solution is the same as her commitment to guiding him through this, ensuring he isn’t alone or abandoned. In reality, Gwen has hardly changed over the last fifteen minutes.

“But what if it goes wrong?”

“It won’t go wrong. Dan cares about you. That comes first.”

Phil feels his body go as heavy as his voice. “But what if it doesn’t?” Gwen can do a lot, but she can’t predict the future, nor can she promise it.

“Then he’ll become another anonymous dick who hates you for no reason. He can’t be vocal about it, it will cause a PR nightmare.”

Imagining Dan as a stranger is almost impossible. To know his existence, but not know him. That is a predicament Phil has not yet found himself in. There is only this: the moment before knowing Dan, and the moment after. Phil was never the smoke, or the snowflakes. He has only ever been this, him and Dan, Dan and him, us . And when he wasn’t, he was just Phil, not Phil and then Dan.

Side effect of being human .

“But I don’t want to lose him.” He doesn’t mean for it to come out like that, like a wail and a whimper and a pointless objection. The word lose snaps between his teeth and dusts the dip of his collarbone, the curve of his chest, and the tumid shape of his heart.

“Oh, Phil, I know. But if you carry on like this, you’ll lose yourself.”

It hasn’t felt like Phil is losing himself. If anything, he feels more conscious of himself, the weight of his decisions tying his body and mind together. It’s been like he’s working towards something, where the destination isn’t something he’s desperate to reach. It never seemed possible that things could be lost along the way.

But Gwen doesn’t lie.

Dan cares about you. That comes first. It won’t go wrong. You’ll lose yourself.

Phil doesn’t say anything. Gwen lets him.

“You have to put yourself first.”

This doesn’t feel like putting himself first. This feels like putting himself on the front line.

“I don’t know,” Phil answers an unasked question. The question as a whole, he supposes. Gwen has pointed his destination out to him, sitting blurry and hazy on the horizon; it is just a case of when he chooses to arrive at it. “I don’t know.”

-

Dan breaks up with Kate.

There’s no great change. One day, he’s dating her, and the next, he’s not. Both days are identical, mostly.

“I’m sorry,” Phil tells him, and he is. He shouldn’t feel any pleasure from this new knowledge, and he doesn’t. Dan hasn’t confessed his love to him , so nothing alters his mood on that front.

“It just wasn’t working,” Dan says, answering a question Phil hasn’t asked. “She told me that Kanye’s an arrogant prick, and I couldn’t take it anymore.” He shrugs, smiling like he’s the butt of the joke. It means that the real reason is something Dan either doesn’t want to talk about, or doesn’t deem worthy or interesting enough to talk about, so Phil happily leaves it alone. He accepts that he isn’t the cause, because he is so rarely the cause for things.

“Would you like to come round,” he says instead, “and eat ice cream and watch shit but great panel shows with me?”

“That sounds fucking marvellous,” Dan tells him.

“I have Ben and Jerry’s,” Phil says. A disjointed sentence, but somehow it fits.

Dan gives an appreciative nod, then pauses, pulls a contemplative face. “Are people going to judge us for this?”

“They can’t if they don’t know about it,” Phil points out, elbows bent, hands raised.

“Well I’m not gonna fucking tell them,” Dan remarks. “Are you gonna tell them? I’m not gonna.”

“I’m not gonna tell them,” Phil replies, grinning.

“We’re not gonna tell them.”

“Good.”

“Good.”

There is only this: him and Dan, Dan and him. The moment after knowing Dan. Us .

That comes first.

-

Mist twists around on the ground, splaying apart before coming back together as Phil walks through it. Cold tingles in the air, but there’s green on the trees. The frost twinkles, basking in the tendrils of morning sunlight. Minton buries his nose in the long grass that lines the pavement, and emerges with his face shining with jewels of water. Phil laughs fondly at him, and turns his face to the sun’s warmth while he makes his way towards Dan’s house.

“Morning!” he greets, cheerful in the face of Dan’s disgruntlement. “I need to walk Minton, and I thought you’d want to experience the first glimpses of spring with me.”

Dan smiles appropriately at his sarcasm, then says, “Phil, it’s fucking eight in the morning.” He rubs his eyes, the cuff of his pyjama sleeve falling down to his elbow, but he’s been awake for longer than a few minutes: his hair is smoothed down, and there’s socks on his feet. The red of sleep has faded from his eyes. Minton snuffles around his ankles, and his smile returns.

“And you’re awake,” Phil points out.

“Maybe I was asleep until you knocked on my door.”

“You’re still awake now,” Phil argues, because he can’t prove that Dan’s right or wrong, so there’s no point trying.

“Begrudgingly,” Dan states.

Panting, Minton sits at his feet, and he leans down to rub his ears.

“Does that mean you’ll come?”

“I’m not even dressed yet,” Dan complains, which means yes .

“Which means you’re gonna get changed,” Phil interprets, slowly, and grins as Dan rolls his eyes, steps aside, and lets him inside.

“Minton’s not allowed on the sofas,” Dan tells him, dragging himself up the stairs. “As much as I love him.”

Phil calls after him, “I’ll try!” because Dan knows that’s the best he can do. “You’re a mischievous mutt,” he then says to Minton, who peers up at him, his tail repetitively hitting the side of the stairs.

Phil moves to stand in the living room. Dan’s laptop is whirring from the seat; busy notes on paper cover the table, a pen on one end of the table, its lid on the other. Phil doesn’t dare read them as he gathers them into a pile, puts the lid on the pen after adding to an empty piece of paper, tidy house, tidy mind.

Bounding down the stairs and pulling a sweater over his head, Dan announces, “We are getting coffee on the way,” to Phil, who is sat on a sofa, restraining Minton with both hands around his neck. “I insist. If we’re going out this early, I am getting some caffeine in my system.”

“Doesn’t coffee undo all the goodness this exercise is doing?” Phil asks, standing up and winding the lead around his wrist.

“I thought we were going for the beautiful bond of companionship and the turn of the seasons.”

“That too.”

“Well, then.” Dan flings the door open and stands, grinning, beside it. “Let’s go. Coffee’s -”

“On the right, I know,” Phil finishes for him. Minton bounds outside, and his arm stretches out in his attempt to stay still. “You’d think you didn’t know me at all.”

-

Coffee clutched in their hands, they weave their way to the local park - a quilt of grass, trees, beaten tracks, and a small river estuary sewn into London’s mass of roads. A crisp smell carpets the earth. The frost has mostly melted away into puddles of glass; the trees are wisps of brown and black, light falling down between the branches and catching in their eyes. A flock of birds takes off when they pass. Other than the beating of their wings, the park waits in silence. They are the only ones there.

“Where is everyone?” Phil wonders aloud. Minton’s paws skitter across the ground; his voice skitters through the quiet air.

“Did I fail to mention that it’s really early, Phil?”

“Eight isn’t ridiculously early.”

Dan shrugs. “This park is never teeming with people, though.”

“I suppose.” Phil leans down and unclips Minton’s lead. “Where should we go?”

“To the river? We follow it round and then head back,” Dan suggests. He points, coffee in hand, to his left, where copses of trees line a distant river bank.

“Sounds good.” Phil whistles for Minton, clicking his fingers by his thigh, then - once Minton has capered up to him - sweeps an arm out. “Lead on.”

-

For a few minutes, they walk in silence: it is easier to accept the quiet than to fight it, after all, so they sip their drinks and squint into the sun. The beaten track runs close to the river, the ground caving away into water only a few footfalls from the edge of the path. Sparkling in the sunlight, the water foams and froths and rushes past, the river tumid from the recent rain. Dead leaves speed past and away, caught up in its turbulent flow.

Dan comes to a stop. Staring out at the water, hand supporting his elbow, finger and thumb pressed to his mouth. Leaving Minton scurrying in the undergrowth behind them, Phil trudges off the path to join him, wetting the bottoms of his jeans.

“Hey there, stranger,” he says, surveying the scape before him. His eyes flick to Dan and away; Dan’s do the same as he hums a hello.

“Is the caffeine paying off?”

“Definitely. I’ve never felt more buzzed.”

“I can tell.” Phil dropped his coffee cup in a bin a while ago, so stuffs his hands under his armpits. “I, on the other hand, am very cold.” He takes another step to the side, filling the space his arms had taken.

Dan says, “You should have worn more, then.”

“I’m wearing a coat,” Phil huffs.

“You call that thing a coat?” Dan eyes the garment - it is more of a jacket, to be fair, but it’s never failed to keep him warm before - and rolls his eyes.

“You told me to buy it!”

“That’s what you get for choosing a shit friend, then,” he teases.

“Oh, I don’t know, it’s not all bad,” Phil admits, and sways a bit to keep warm.

Barely, Dan smiles, shape sharp as a scythe, but doesn’t acknowledge it; he looks at Phil askance and asks, “And how would that be?”

“Your central heating is much better than mine.”

“I forgot you’re practically incompatible with temperature,” Dan remarks. “My house is older than yours, though.”

Phil thinks for a moment. “It’s to compensate for all the shit parts that come with old age.”

“Ah.” Dan’s hand drops to hold his other elbow. “That explains it.”

“Just call me Sherlock,” Phil says. Dan’s mouth opens to speak, and he cuts in, “Don’t. But I was just saying.”

“That’s my thing,” Dan mutters.

Clouds bundle around the sun, but the rest of the sky is a glaring, stinging blue. Too lively for algae but too narrow for life, the river runs with dye - light’s reflection on the surface kicking up colour too tangled to sort through. Much like the thoughts in their heads.

“What’s on your mind?” Phil asks Dan. His silence is too focused and stoic, as if he could unscrew it and noise would leak out.

“Want a list?”

“It feels,” Phil says, “as if we have all the time in the world.” It is not a direct answer, but it’s not not one, either.

“It’s an illusion. Or the caffeine.”

“Surrealism never sleeps.”

“It’s my Dad’s birthday next week; I’m probably gonna have to go home for it,” Dan admits, speech settling on a sigh. “How’s your book going?” He directs his gaze at Phil.

“Okay, actually. I’m near the end,” Phil replies. “Which is the hardest part. I kind of never want to go near it.”

Dan nods in grim understanding. “You can do it.”

“I have to, deadline’s soon. Editing’s gonna be hell.”

“It always is.”

“I’ll hate myself by the end of it.”

“Probably,” Dan allows. “But your readers are there to do the loving for you.”

“Only if there’s something for them to love.”

“Bullshit. You’ll do it. If you want my advice -”

“Not really,” Phil taunts.

Glaring at him, Dan continues, “Just remember there’s nothing stopping you improving a sentence you hate until you don’t hate it anymore. Nothing is perfect first time.”

“I’ll say. I’ve seen the photos, Howell. That hairstyle took some time to perfect.”

“Fuck you! Yours was just as bad!”

Phil laughs. Cold air fills the back of his throat. “Yes, but my time was bef- MINTON. MINTON, STOP.”

“Too late,” Dan notes, as a splash follows Minton’s descent into the water. “Can he swim? Should I be worried?”

“It’s not the swimming I’m worried about. He can never get out again.” Phil stares out at the water, taking a step forward as he cranes his neck. His foot rests on the beginning of the hill.

Dan holds out an arm to stop him. “I’ll go.”

“He’s not your dog, it’s fine, I can get him,” Phil objects.

“I’m much more coordinated than you. It wouldn’t do if we had two idiots in the water, would it?”

“I’ll interpret that as you looking out for me,” he says. “Go on, then. Be a hero.”

“You got any treats?”

“You haven’t even got him yet.”

“Not for me, you twit. For Minton .”

Phil grins. “I know. Here,” he says, and drops a handful into Dan’s outstretched hand.

“Thanks.” Starting down the slope, Dan digs his heels down in the ground for anchorage, arms out at both sides. He moves quickly and efficiently, though, and within a few seconds he is at the water’s edge. The ground drops away just at the river’s edge, but the water level is higher than usual, so bubbles gurgle at Dan’s toes. “Minton!” he calls, beckoning with the biscuits. At the sight of food, Minton barks and paddles towards him. Dan backs up the bank. Minton follows him, scrabbling at the grass with his paws. Grabbing a hold of his collar, Dan yanks him out; the gradient is steep, even at the water’s edge, so the maneuver takes an agonisingly precise amount of balance. Phil need only be tense for a moment, however, as Dan succeeds in helping Minton up and over the edge.

“Thank God,” Phil exhales.

“There you go.” Dan ruffles the shaggy fur on Minton’s head. “You bastard ,” he adds, when the dog shakes himself dry and leaps up the hill.

Phil laughs.

He almost misses it: the thud of wings. A pigeon, wingspan wide, flying in front of Dan’s face as he picks his way back up. Dan’s feet slipping on the slimy grass. His arms windmilling out behind him. Body teetering backwards. “Shit, shitshitshit,” Dan exclaims. He starts to fall.

The water hisses and hungers under him. The sun blinds them. The only sounds: the water, Dan’s yell, Phil’s blood in his ears. His heart is on the floor at his feet, floundering.

Phil acts before he thinks.

It couldn’t have ended any other way. If Dan falls, he could bash his head on the bank, or the bed; the water is fatally freezing; he would most likely survive, probably, but that thought is not strong enough to fight his instinct: he can’t let him fall.

Phil’s hand snaps out in front of him. He doesn’t even have to think; the magic is there, screaming for life, begging for use. With just the slightest call for it, it’s there.

It rockets up from his feet, branches into each of his fingertips, filling his eyes with gold. His mind bursts into life, the adrenaline and panic and short-notice erupting as sparks and bullets in his skull. The words are quiet but acute, hissing out from his teeth. Within a heartbeat, it’s gone. His head falls back into silence. The power simmers away under his skin.

Dan stops in mid air, remaining dog treats levitating above his head.

The dread is already building as Phil twists his fingers. It is not a spell that has saved Dan, but Phil’s magic itself - embodied as a corporeal force holding Dan up, wind pushing him up into a stable position once more at the movement of Phil’s hand. It obeys his will.

Dan’s eyes are wide, his body still ensnared in his panic. Phil can’t stand to look at the sight any longer.

Time restarts.

(Except time never really stopped.)

Phil’s heart restarts.

(In reality, in those moments, he had never felt more alive.)

Dan’s arms fall down to his side, his chest heaving. Blinking, he looks around. Phil waits for the words to come.

They don’t. Dan starts clambering back up the bank.

“What was that?” he asks, bewildered. He does not demand - he doesn’t think it was Phil - but his face is twisted with strain.

Phil really wishes he found the courage to tell Dan before he found out for himself, but that didn’t happen. Standing parallel to Dan (the water gurgles and the light falls through onto Dan, a spotlight, a spearhead), Phil has a choice.

It is not a difficult one to make.

Up to this point, it was lying by omission. Now, it would be plain lying.

Gwen’s words come back to him: you’ll lose yourself .

It’s not that Phil doesn’t feel alive without his magic. But the truth is, without it, knowing himself is impossible - just as knowing a painting is impossible when part of it is covered. He uses it, and every part of him is clear, palpable, tangible. Even when he’s not using it, it’s there, tucked away in his back pocket. He knows it is there. He is one hundred percent, because he still has it within him. And when he uses it, he truly becomes that one hundred percent, truly knows himself.

Dan cannot know him, one hundred percent, if he doesn’t know about that vital part of Phil - just as knowing a painting is impossible when part of it is covered.

It’s not a difficult choice to make. It’s just a difficult choice to act on.

“I -” Phil starts.

“It was magic,” Dan cuts him off. “Sorry, I’m answering my own question, it’s just. Fuck .” He lifts a hand to his forehead. Phil shifts on his feet. “I was on the bank, and I was falling - properly falling - and then I wasn’t. It was so...fucking bizarre . Incredible.”

Phil’s hopes soar. Dan doesn’t hate magic - he sounds awe-filled, reverent. Perhaps this won’t go as badly as he thought.

“Who was it?” Dan asks him.

“What?”

“Who did it? Where are they? They must be somewhere, I need to thank them.” Dan cranes his neck, edging onto tiptoes in the long, wet grass.

“Dan,” Phil says. Simply. “There’s no one else here.” He offers a wet smile. Loose as thread.

“No, we saw a jogger earlier. This place isn’t totally abandoned. Where did they go? Did you see them?”

“ Dan ,” Phil repeats. He feels like crying: his heart bows and bends, his voice choking. “There wasn’t ever anyone else.”

Dan stops searching. “What are you saying?”

Phil swallows harshly. His face crumples up, he can feel it, and he works quickly to smooth out the creases. “It was me.”

Dan looks at him.

And looks at him.

He smiles, barks a laugh. “Very funny.” He slaps Phil on the arm. “Where’d they go?”

“Dan, stop.”

Dan laughs even as his brow furrows, even as the sound gasps out disbelief rather than good humour. “W-what? You’re not a sorcerer, Phil. I’d know. You’d’ve told me.”

Dan’s trust dismantles him. His insides have fallen apart, he thinks. It means nothing that, somehow, he is still standing.

Phil shakes his head. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for joking?”

Again, Phil shakes his head. “I’m sorry .”

Dan says nothing.

With a stuttering breath, Phil reaches out a hand, palm down, and casts a spell, loud enough for Dan to hear. The grass shakes the frost off its back, moving of its own, impossible accord. Dejected, Phil moves his hand aside, and the frost takes off on the flight of an unfelt breeze.

All play is lost in Dan’s expression. Phil looks back to him, because there is nothing else for him to do, and all he sees is ugly shock: Dan’s mouth hanging open, Dan’s eyes wide, Dan’s feet stumbling back a step. Away, away, away. The confusion doesn’t last long, dilapidating into anger and disgust. Phil would burn the stars, he would rewind the sun, he would dismantle the moon, if it meant he never had to see that face again - both in reality and in memory.

There is no coming back from this.

“ Dan ,” Phil tries. A sob and a wail and a pitiful, pitiful question. His brain can conjure up nothing else; that is all there is left. “Say something.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I have magic,” Phil says. It has never felt more true. He is falling, and all he can feel is the electric throb of a pulse in his veins.

“No, not that. I can fucking see that.” Dan kicks the grass. Phil flinches. “I don’t understand how this is how I’m finding out that you have magic .”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Phil accuses, frowning.

“It is.”

“I don’t understand -”

“Makes two of us.”

“You were so fine with it just now,” Phil continues. “You wanted to thank them. So thank me.”

“That was before I knew it was you !”

In a detached part of his mind, Phil realises he is crying. His face aches like he has been crying for months.

(He longs for him, as he has for months.)

“What does that mean?”

“It was fine for the sorcerer to be just that: a sorcerer. But you ...Someone close to me, someone I was supposed to know .”

Dan’s childhood upbringing had made an impact, after all.

“I wanted to tell you, I did. But this is so terrifying and I’m a coward and I never meant it to go like this -” Phil reaches out for him, but Dan backs away, keeps on backing away. He looks at Phil - disgusted. Phil’s sobbing and his nose is running - a mess. These are not related.

“So, what? It just never came up?” Dan spits, hands whipping out from his sides.

The trees are wisps of colour no longer, instead haunting, skeletal silhouettes. Phil is falling away into the blue waters of the sky. A lump forms in his throat, and he cannot find a way to speak efficiently, so all his emotions - regret, loss, the slight pinch of anger that Dan should hate him for this, everything else rotten - fester in his chest.

There is no coming back from this. He will never be able to wipe the gore from his insides.

Phil bites his lip and shakes his head.

“How about the first time we ever spoke? Did you decide not to tell me to make me the bad guy? So you could hate me in private?”

“No.” ( I was so scared.)

Ire pinches Dan’s eyebrows, face contorting into vindictive disbelief as he demands, “Were you ever going to tell me?” His voice carries it all: Phil the sorcerer, Phil the hypocrite, Phil the liar.

“I wanted to -” Phil starts, then discovers there is no but . He wanted to.

( I am so scared. )

“Stop,” Dan interrupts. He shuts his eyes and sews himself back together. “Shut up.”

Phil shuts up.

It is impossible to tell if Dan hates the magic or the lying. It doesn’t matter. Both lead to the same conclusion: Dan hates him.

There is no coming back from this.

Minton barks at a fleeing bird. Deliberating calling him over, Phil decides against it.

“You’re a hypocrite,” Dan states, pointing at him with all four fingers. It’s Phil’s turn to close his eyes, shield himself from the oncoming meteor shower: it begins, and so this ends. “Is that why you got so mad about Kate? Because you looked at me and all you could see was yourself?”

Kate hurt because Phil loves Dan. This hurts because Phil loves Dan. He doesn’t know why it hurts Dan: a childhood roaring to the surface, or a betrayal tearing him apart?

“You’re right,” Phil says, because he is. There is nothing he can do about it.

Dan soldiers on like Phil said nothing, “And you had the audacity to get mad at me for lying?”

“Dan, please .” Phil reaches his arm out, reconsiders, then pulls his fingers into a tight fist.

“Did I really mean nothing to you?”

Dan is nothing in the same way outer space is, the same way a black hole is: a nothing so vast that it is something. A nothing that aches when Phil feels its outline with the pads of his fingers. An emptiness with the instinctive need to be filled.

Phil daren’t say, “ I wish ,” as the gap crumbles and grows. The only other option is to pretend recovery exists in this moment: “ Please , Dan, don’t.”

“You blamed me for keeping secrets. And you were right, and I knew that. I hated myself for ever keeping that from you. But you - this whole time, you lied about this .” The last word is a knife, and Dan delivers it as such. The sound hums as it slices the air into cubes.

“It’s not the same,” Phil insists. Petty, he thinks. Coward . It’s not the same, because Dan’s secret meant nothing, but Phil’s means everything. Is everything.

“ How is it not the same ?”

“Y-you omitted a small thing, something no one could be mad about,” Phil stutters. The anger and defense start to rise, and Phil lets them. They will be a temporary antiseptic for the pain. “People kill sorcerers.”

“And that’s my fault?”

“Obviously not , and you know that’s not what I mean.”

“No. My mistake. You mean that you couldn’t fucking trust me.”

A confession, thin as ice, thrown for the wind to gorge on, “I couldn’t trust myself.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

It means more than Phil can ever go into. Beyond himself, within himself.

Teeth gritted, he plants the bomb, “We’ve both lied.”

“It’s not relevant. My lie is not relevant to this, no fucking way. The only relevant thing is that you’re a hypocrite, and we’ve covered that. They’re incomparable. It’s not like we’re together. I had no obligation to tell you about my dating life.”

Bang.

Perhaps it’s because hearing the reminder aloud - they’re not dating, why doesn’t he remember this! or maybe the issue is that he can never forget - hurts, but Phil lashes out. “So how am I under obligation to tell you something that terrifies me? Like you said, it’s not like we’re together ,” he sneers.

“We’re friends, though. Or, we were. I don’t even know you.”

“You knew everything that mattered.”

“That’s a lie.”

“Is it? How does my being a sorcerer matter?” he challenges.

Dan flares; Phil burns from the heat. “It clearly matters to you.” The nausea hits Phil in a split second: the correct string plucked, the wound pricked, the bruise kicked. “Your whole heart, you said. I believed you. But that wasn’t you, and I might have gone my whole life not knowing that I only saw half of you. I know you well enough to know that everything matters to you. This matters to you. It should have mattered to me. I - I thought I knew you .”

“You do .” Even as he says it, Phil knows it isn’t true. He thought it was true - in reality, though, Dan only knew the version of him Phil wanted him to know. Dan knew that version fully and wholly. But a version is not the truth.

“Now I do, yeah. Now, I know that you’re a liar and a sorcerer and a coward.”

One last plea. He has to try. If he got into this by lying, maybe he can get out of it by telling the truth. One more confession, and the bowl may brim. “I used it for you. I did it for you.”

Dan’s expression flickers between betrayal and anger. Raw. Scorched. A rut they can’t get out of; disbelief protrudes in his twisted mouth, a gnarled look. “How can you say that when all you’ve done is hurt me?”

I don’t know , he thinks. I don’t understand it either. All he knows is that these parts of him coincide - he loves him and he breaks him. “Because I love you, Dan, a lot - you’re my best friend, and that never stopped -”

“No. No.”

Phil closes his eyes against the solar storm reeling his way.

“Stop lying,” Dan tells him, an order cracked over the whip: despondent, surrendered.

“I mean it,” he says. “I mean it.” If he chooses to, then Dan knows. Dan knows how much he means it. Phil’s torn the truth out of his chest for him to see, if only he chooses to look (and he probably does). My whole heart.

Dan’s fury made him seem so large, so endless. Now he’s as small as Phil feels - it’s the distance that engulfs them. “Then you’re lying to yourself.”

With balled fists, Phil swipes the tears from his face. Forces air into his lungs, pushes it out again. “I’m going to go, now.” A sliver of his heart hangs, dripping, in a branch of a nearby tree; the corpse of his shadow lies, slumped, face down, in the water. The bomb has long since detonated. All that’s left is Dan’s desiccating stare and Phil’s withering self. The worst kind of argument is one where you know they are right; you end up hating yourself, and they discover that they never want to be right again, if it means having to land with nothing to break the fall, no resistance to fight and no compromises to salvage for later. No one emerges from these completely whole.

“Fine,” Dan says.

“Fine.”

Dan leaves first, for which Phil is thankful, because his feet are tied to the spot. He doesn’t want to watch Dan walk away, but he can’t sever his eyes from the sight. Meandering over to him, Minton presses the wet of his nose to Phil’s ankle. Phil doesn’t let himself ask Dan to stay until he is too far away to hear.

Together, they weren’t who they thought they were. Hunched and acute, Dan’s outline fits differently into his vision. Phil feels different in his own skin. His lungs are lined with smoke.

“C’mon, boy, let’s leave.”

There is no coming back from this.

-

Gwen promised him that he would lose Dan, or he would lose himself.

As it turns out, he has lost both.

-