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Dan wakes to the sun pouring through the cheap blinds, spilling across the cheap floor, climbing up their cheap bed and settling over their cheap duvet. He groans softly, rubbing a hand over his face. It’s too early. He curses himself for the millionth time for forgetting to dig through the boxes for a set of curtains. He sits up, as he often does these days, with an ugly pounding hatred in his gut.
It’s a general kind of hatred. For a lot of things; the bed, the sun, the stowed-away curtains, the whole flat, the building, the street, the world, the year. It’s habitual. He’s learned to move around it.
Oddly, Phil isn’t next to him. In their usual routine, the sun wakes them both up, and they grumble cursory good mornings before rolling out of bed and going separate ways.
It’s a far cry from how their mornings used to go. Dan thinks, briefly, wearily, about pools of sunshine and tangled sheets and toothy grins, about mussed black hair and heads curled up next to heartbeats, about two kids who seem so young now. So far away. If he were a different Dan, in a different flat, a different year, a different universe, then he would probably look back on this with fond nostalgia. He would tell himself to fix it, to remember how it felt like to be so happy waking up next to Phil he thought it had to be a dream. The Dan he’s been lately can barely manage the good morning.
Dan rolls out of bed. He throws on a shirt, tugs on some socks, and wanders out of the bedroom. He stubs his toe on a lone box in the hallway and curses to himself before stumbling into the kitchen.
It’s impossible to stop seeing boxes once you’ve started thinking about them. Containing them in a singular room had proved impossible; now they spilled into their living spaces, lining hallways and stacking on tables. Their kitchen cabinets were half empty, everything still packed away, which meant half the time they couldn’t find what they needed.
Dan walks through the kitchen and grimaces. Phil hasn’t refilled the coffee machine, even though Dan always tells him to, and he hasn’t switched it off either, even though Dan repeatedly reminds him how much it runs up the electricity. He reaches over to turn it off; who needs coffee, anyway, when there’s nothing you need energy for.
There’s a dirty mug laying on its side in the sink. Dan feels a bit strange. He frowns, realizing that he still hasn’t seen Phil. He’s nowhere in sight- and, well, that was a little hard to accomplish in this flat. “Phil,” Dan calls, but gets no response.
Dan wanders through the flat, poking his head through doors and around boxes and finally returns to the kitchen. Phil is nowhere to be found. Dan yells his name again, heedless of their neighbors, and then pauses when he catches sight of something pinned to the fridge.
It’s a hastily scribbled note, written on the back of a napkin. Going for a walk :) be back soon!
Oh. Dan squints at it, thoughtful.
Phil isn’t usually the type to go on walks. That was more Dan’s thing. But, well, everyone got stir crazy eventually. Dan shrugs to himself, reaches for a nearly-empty box of cereal, and gets ready for the day.
Lockdown days are long and porous. They consist of a lot of emails, and virtual meetings, and ordering groceries. People telling Dan they can’t do what he wants, but promising to keep trying, and then sending him the exact same message two weeks later. Dan writes to keep himself sane.
It’s nice, at first. Dan enjoys the luxury of getting to sprawl all the way out across the sofa (not that there’s really room to sprawl, even with just one of them). He plays his music out loud. He exists, without the press of another body in the same space.
It’s not that he’s tired of Phil. It’s that he’s tired. It’s like someone’s thrown a blanket over his brain, muffled the outside world, made everything quiet and faraway. His online therapy sessions are stuck in a perpetual stalemate of I-know-you-know: and what they both know is that Dan’s not getting better.
Maybe he never will. Maybe he’ll be like this forever. Dan hates not even being able to care.
The stupid fucking fake flat doesn’t help.
It’s a while before Dan glances down at the clock in the corner of his laptop and realizes it’s been nearly two hours. He frowns, for a second convinced he’s read it wrong. Phil usually gets tired of walking after around seven minutes. Where the hell has he been for two hours?
Dan’s hand goes instinctively for his pocket to fish for his phone, and then freezes. He doesn’t have it. Actually, he hasn’t looked at his phone all day.
“Huh,” Dan says to himself. Out of nowhere, his brain floods with panic.
Because Phil was clumsy, and accident prone, and got lost nearly every time he had to navigate. He’s probably not back yet because something happened. He’s probably texted Dan a million times. He’s probably gotten lost, or mugged, or else found a way to fall down a well. Dan curses, shoving the computer off his lap and sprinting back to the bedroom, tripping three times along the way.
He grabs his phone off the charger. The screen lights up with notifications. Dan scrolls through them in trepidation. There…is nothing from Phil. Not even a courtesy hey, I’m on a sidequest message.
Dan frowns down at the phone, as if he can will a WhatsApp text to pop up with the power of his mind. Unsurprisingly, nothing happens.
“He’s probably not dead,” Dan says to the room around him. “I’d, like, know if he was dead.”
Talking to yourself is never a good sign.
Dan falls back on his bed and frets and worries for two minutes before he realizes he can ping Phil’s location. He does so, and it comes up as the park a few blocks away from them. Oh. That’s probably fine, then. He’s admiring other people’s dogs or something.
dead? Dan texts him anyway, because it doesn’t hurt to make sure.
The little checkmarks don’t pop up. Dan sighs and hits the call button, which is only ever used as a last resort option.
Phil doesn’t pick up. The voicemail beep chirps at him smugly.
“You’re a fucking twat,” Dan says right into the phone speaker. He thinks about saying Come home, and then decides that’s clingy and ridiculous, and hits the hang-up button instead.
He sighs, splaying back on the bed and dropping his phone on his chest. Well. Phil was fine, probably having a lovely park adventure, or whatever. Dan was fine to get on with his day.
He doesn’t get very far.
The silence in the flat is distracting. The emptiness is distracting. Dan has spent months wishing that there was more space, that they could get just a bit of distance between them, that they didn’t have to be stuck here of all places. Now that it’s just him, with no Phil, alone for hours…Dan realizes that he hates it a bit.
“This is stupid,” he says, talking to himself again, staring at a Word document he hasn’t touched yet. Writing is never this hard. Maybe it’s the quiet, the muted worry that Phil’s in trouble somehow, the novel strangeness of a flat bereft of anything but Dan and the boxes. He’s used to noise, somewhere out of view. He’s used to Phil opening the fridge, humming to himself without realizing, chattering to a camera behind a closed door. Your video ideas get weirder every month, Dan had commented idly once, and Phil had just shrugged and said Well, I’ve got to do something, haven’t I? It had twinged Dan’s heart more than he wanted to admit.
It gets worse when Phil doesn’t text him, doesn’t call him back, even when another hour has passed, and another after that. No matter what he tries to do, Dan just can’t get rid of this stupid nagging tug at the back of his head. The feeling that something’s missing, that he’s forgotten something. Well, there obviously is someone missing, but Phil is the one who’s forgotten to check his fucking phone.
When Phil’s officially been gone for more than four hours, Dan starts pacing. He thinks about how cold it is, and finds himself rifling madly through their coat peg to make sure Phil’s taken his heavy jacket. When he realizes that it’s past lunchtime, the anxious preoccupation turns into a full-time constant worry.
Phil never skips lunch. If he’s not home soon, Dan’s going to bloody well go out and find him.
He orders food, for both of them, almost stubbornly, like it can will Phil to walk in. It very nearly works.
The food gets delivered. Dan eats a few bites before realizing he’s not hungry and stows it away in the fridge. He pulls out his phone and texts Phil a string of emojis that he hopes convey his feelings. He hears the creak of the front door opening seconds later. Finally.
Embarrassingly fast, Dan scrambles towards the foyer. There he is. Looking a bit red-faced and shivery, but otherwise, his same intact Phil.
“Oh,” Phil says, when Dan comes into view. He’s smiling, a bit meekly. “Hi. Hold down the fort while I was gone?”
“What?” Dan asks, almost taken aback. A dozen accusing questions rise in his throat. And maybe it isn’t such a big deal, in the grand scheme of things, but it’s been hours. He wants Phil to say sorry for leaving and give him a thorough explanation that includes a promise to never disappear again.
Phil reaches back to close the door behind him and twist the bolt. “Were you productive, with the place to yourself?” He turns back to Dan’s face and squints. “Dan? What…is it?”
“You just left,” Dan says, before his brain can catch up with his mouth. He feels hurt and tired and guilty. “You didn’t text.”
And there’s a moment, where Phil’s expression freezes. He buries his knuckles in the pockets of his coat, pulling it tight around himself, like a lifeline. Dan can see him trying to work out how to respond, how to manage his reaction.
It dawns on Dan half a second later. His heart drops like a stone all the way to his toes. His face heats up, a million memories flashing their way through his head. Because it would be impossible to even count how many times Dan has just disappeared, wandering for hours, walking laps around London streets, no matter how cold or how rainy, leaving his phone in the flat, or ignoring any messages if he did have his phone, reappearing half a day later like nothing had happened, snapping at Phil if he committed the unforgivable crime of stammering through a what’s wrong. How many times has Dan been unable to meet those blue eyes, big and scared and helpless, arms hanging limp by his sides, biting his lip and swallowing a question when it was clear Dan wasn’t going to answer. It was entirely possible that there had never been a bigger fucking coward in the history of the world.
All of a sudden Dan feels sick with himself. He can’t stand it. Dan Howell the hypocrite, Dan Howell the selfish ass, Dan Howell the man who insisted on ruining his partner’s life over and over again, in one big endless loop, because he was too scared to-
“Thought I’d put the note on the fridge instead. You never check your phone.”
Dan blinks. The words are light. Gentle. Phil, no longer frozen, gives him a tiny smile as he takes off his coat and hangs it on the peg they have in the corner.
“What?” Dan says, lost. He feels dizzy.
“You never check your phone first thing in the morning,” Phil says. “I thought you’d see the note first.”
Dan’s lips part slightly. “I did,” he says, fumbling. “I did see the note first. You were right. Look, Phil, I shouldn’t have-”
“I’m sorry for not texting,” Phil interrupts. “I should have. I was just in my head.”
He’s standing awkwardly in the hallway, stretching out his fingers and closing them into fists. Like he’s waiting for Dan to say something.
He’s trying, Dan realizes, very hard to glide past the tense memories entirely. He’s trying to give Dan an out. And it wasn’t fair, that Phil could be so good, so gracious, even when Dan was being a complete fucking asshole. Why couldn’t Phil blame him, for once, or snap at him, or reveal the existence of some thinly veiled resentment? Why was he so…so…
“You’re not real,” Dan mumbles under his breath, almost wonderingly. And then he shakes his head. “Whatever. There’s food.”
Phil nods slowly.
They eat, mostly in silence. Dan doesn’t press. He sneaks glimpses over at Phil, more often than he probably should, trying to read his emotional state as well as just look at him. His black quiff, his red cheeks that are slowly returning to his normal pale complexion. How can a person miss someone so much in only a few hours? When you see them every day?
They clear the table when they’re finished. Dan looks at him across the kitchen, helplessly, unsure of what comes next in this script. Phil just sighs, and says “C’mere,” and falls dramatically onto their tiny couch.
Dan follows. He sits carefully on the couch next to Phil, who has leaned all the way back and is staring at the ceiling.
It’s quiet.
“So,” Dan says, because he can’t stand the silence.
Phil blinks slowly up at the ceiling tiles.
“You’re mad,” he whispers. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think…I dunno.”
“I’m not mad,” Dan protests, even though he had been, a little. “It was just a long time.”
Phil glances over at him. Dan wants to reach over and brush back a strand of hair that’s floppier than the rest of them.
“Just wanted to clear my head,” Phil murmurs. “I didn’t think about how long it had been. I thought you’d…”
There’s something tucked away, hidden in the end of this sentence. Dan frowns.
“You thought I’d what?”
There’s a pause. Phil grimaces. “Thought you’d be glad. To have…some space for a bit. You know.”
A rush of defensiveness fills Dan’s chest, and then it’s overtaken by guilt. A few hours ago he’d have thought the same thing.
He brings his knees up to his chest, hugs his arms around them.
“I wasn’t,” Dan says softly, staring out at the room. “I didn’t like it at all.”
Phil makes a small, surprised noise. In his peripheral vision Dan sees him start to reach out an arm, hesitate for a moment, and put it back down.
Dan wants to ask. He wants to know. He thinks, he never asked me, thinks, I never let him ask me, thinks, but he’s better than me in every way possible.
“Why’d you go,” Dan ask, before he can chicken out of it.
Phil lets out a sigh. He tilts his head all the way back, closes his eyes.
“You know,” he says, “next month it’ll be a year. Since I’ve…”
He trails off. Dan fumbles for a moment and then realizes exactly what he means.
A year since Phil’s seen his family.
And if Dan has been the one hopeless and drowning and fighting for air, Phil has been the one missing people. Dan sees his family as little as possible, even when there isn’t a pandemic on; separating the Lesters for more than a few months at a time is akin to depriving someone of oxygen.
“Oh,” Dan says. He can’t think of any other words.
“I thought,” Phil says, and then chews at his bottom lip. “I thought maybe I could just start walking to Rossendale. That maybe I’d make it there eventually. And then I remembered they don’t even live there anymore. Isn’t that dumb?”
Dan shrugs helplessly. He feels selfish and useless and embarrassed, like he’s eighteen again.
It’s quiet again. Phil reaches over to poke gently at Dan’s shoulder.
“Hey,” he says. “Hey. I’m sorry I was gone for so long. I really didn’t think you’d care.”
Dan turns to look him in the eyes, tries to fit all of the sheer incredulity he feels into his expression.
“I didn’t mean it like…” Phil falters. His hand reaches out again, just barely skimming the edge of one of Dan’s curls before retreating back. “You know. Just…”
Phil is a very physically affectionate person, when he’s allowed to be. Sometimes when Dan’s in a particularly bad place he’d rather die than have someone touch him. Phil’s gotten really good at holding himself back these past few months. All the years of pretending in front of a camera probably helped, Dan thinks bitterly.
Dan sighs. He moves closer, leans their bodies together, reaches out to loop his fingers around Phil’s wrist.
Phil goes stiff and frozen, like Dan’s a scared animal who will bolt if he moves a muscle.
It makes Dan laugh softly. He presses his thumb over Phil’s pulse point.
“I missed you,” he says. “I didn’t like when you were gone.”
Phil blinks. “Dan,” he says simply, tone unreadable.
Dan puts his free hand over his eyes, because he has to hide a bit if he wants to say this. “I know I’m not good right now,” he mumbles, unsure of what exactly that’s even supposed to mean, “and I hate this flat and I hate that we’re stuck inside and I hate that all the stuff I want to do keeps getting delayed and I hate that our house isn’t ready.”
Phil sucks in a breath. “You know I hate all those things too.”
“I wasn’t done.”
“I know. But I do hate all those things, Dan. You’re not the only one who…”
He trails off with a little exhale. Dan peeks at him through his fingers.
It was really easy for Dan Howell to feel like dead weight. It was spectacularly easy for him to feel like the one who was fucked in the head. The one who was not well. Mostly because they were true. But in this circumstance…none of this actually was his fault, was it? All outside factors. All things that effected Phil just as much.
“You’re better at hiding it,” Dan whispers.
Phil gives him a sad smile. “Until I wander around a park aimlessly for four hours, you mean.”
Dan squeezes his wrist. “What I was going to say before I was rudely interrupted is that…despite all that.”
“Yes?”
He shrugs. “I still don’t like when you’re not here. I don’t feel better when you’re not here. I don’t know why you would think that.”
Dan has never in his life felt better when Phil isn’t there. He just doesn’t work like that.
Phil lets out a breath. He wriggles his hand from Dan’s grip, sliding it down and twining their fingers together.
They don’t say anything. Dan squeezes his hand for dear life, trying to say all the things he’s woefully neglected in this nightmare of a year. Phil squeezes back just as hard.
“Is this what it’s like for you,” Dan murmurs under his breath, memories of Phil’s sad blue eyes vivid in his mind. Guilt seeps into the words like spilled syrup.
Phil winces minutely. His thumb traces over Dan’s knuckles. “Guess so,” he mumbles. “I just worry.”
Story of Phil’s life.
“You should get angrier with me,” Dan says, and he tries to make it wry but it comes out horribly sincere. “I hate that I do that to you.”
Phil huffs and shrugs. “Never angry,” he insists. “I just…”
“Just what?”
Phil shakes his head, free hand reaching up to adjust his glasses. “I can’t help,” he says miserably. “Nothing I do helps. That’s the worst thing.”
Dan could die. He stares down at his lap, nearly ashamed.
“Well,” he says, and this time hits closer near the mark of humor. “We’ve seen what I’m like when you’re not here. So. I think you’re doing better than you think.”
Phil snorts, like he’s surprised, and shakes his head back and forth. He raises an arm out next to him, an invitation. Dan sighs loudly and ducks under it.
They haven’t done this in a while. It feels…nice.
“Phil,” he whispers, before he can decide against it. “Phil. Let’s do the thing.”
“The what?”
Dan squeezes his eyes shut. “You know.”
It’s quiet, while Phil thinks, and thinks. Dan knows realization hits when a small gasp escapes his lips.
Phil leans away, slapping excitedly at Dan’s shoulder. “You mean it?” he asks, almost in awe. “You really will?”
I’d do anything with you, anything for you, forever, Dan thinks, but says “Even though I’ll definitely regret it.”
Phil is giving him the smile, the giddy one, with his tongue sticking through his teeth. It always reminds Dan of a much younger Phil.
“It’ll be fun,” Phil says, still shaking Dan’s shoulder. “I promise. I’ll make it fun.”
“Dunno if yapping to a bunch of freaks on your weird app is my idea of a good time,” Dan quips, but he can feel his mouth twisting into a half-smile.
“Oh, but it’ll be with meeee, Dan, and you always have fun with me no matter what we’re doing!”
Phil is grinning stupidly, and Dan’s heart is full for the first time in a while, and he can’t help shoving playfully at Phil’s arm.
“Mister Bigheaded over here,” Dan says, with an exaggerated sigh. “Hey. Phil.”
“Yes, Dan?”
“Let’s call your parents tonight, ‘kay?”
Phil blinks. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. I’ll be on camera and everything.”
Phil laughs a bit, spluttering. “But you never want to be on camera when I video call my parents.”
Dan shrugs. “I’m feeling generous today.”
Phil laughs helplessly. He nudges his knee against Dan’s.
“Thanks,” he says. “Thank you. Really.”
“Whatever,” Dan says. He slowly, tentatively, leans his head on Phil’s shoulder.
Phil leans back, gently, like he’s just received something very precious.
“And Phil,” Dan says. “Next time you need to take a walk, please just fucking text me. I was about to lose the few brain cells I have left.”
Phil giggles next to him. “Sure. Clingy.”
“Bitch.”
“Rat.”
And it’s them, suddenly, after months of being off-color shades of themselves. Dan takes a breath and feels surprisingly light.