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Phil perks up when he hears the main door of the Phouse open, that smooth and familiar sound that he’s come to love so much.
“Hi, rat,” says Dan, wandering into the sitting room.
He looks exceptionally fluffy after a few hours out in the London summer humidity. The silver of his engagement ring glints and sparkles. It probably doesn’t stand out like this to everyone else, random strangers on the Underground, but it’s become one of the many Dan Features that Phil’s eyes are automatically drawn to, magnetized. It’s a symbol. In six months, he’ll be marrying Dan Howell. His Dan. After nearly sixteen years of fighting to keep each other forever, of push and pull, the highest highs and some of the lowest lows. He’s never seen such a massive accomplishment be boiled down into such a tiny little ring of silver.
He doesn’t say any of that. He doesn’t have to. Dan knows.
“Hi, mole. How’s your mum?”
“She’s good. She says hi.”
Dan settles beside Phil, dropping his bag on the arm of the couch and folding his legs up under him. Phil is tending to their Tomodachi Life island. He thinks the Golden Pig might be developing a crush on The Prague Girl.
“She asked me a kind of funny question, actually,” Dan says, with too much nonchalance.
Phil keeps a hold on his controller physically, but mentally, he puts it down. Dan started having monthly lunches with his mum about a year ago. Mostly, she comes to London – he rarely goes to Wokingham – but she says she likes the opportunity to go to the city. She’s been to the house, too, not often but enough. And he knows that she and Dan have been talking, often lighthearted but with some serious, long overdue conversations thrown in there as well. If Dan is coming home and immediately telling Phil what they talked about, it probably falls under the latter category.
“Oh yeah? What about?” he asked, trying to match Dan’s reverse freak, his forced casualness.
“She asked me if you’re going to change your name when we get married.”
“Oh.” Phil feels overwhelmingly neutral, aside from maybe a slight undercurrent of nerves. His mouth is a bit dry. Is that something that Dan wants? They haven’t talked about it. Dan has never given Phil the impression that he cares. “I don’t want to do that,” he says.
Phil is deeply, deeply lucky to have a small but mighty group of people that he would die for. Or, live for, more like. One of them is in this room. Two are in Brighton. And the rest are all named Lester. He knows, he knows that changing his name won’t change anything about his relationship with his family, but he’s still never even considered it as a possibility.
Apparently, neither has Dan. “I know,” he says, lounging back against the arm of the couch. He tangles his ankles with Phil’s. “I wouldn’t consider changing my name if I were you. But I’ve been thinking… for like twenty minutes. And I think I might want to.”
“You might want to…. take my name?” Phil repeats, uneven and uncertain.
Maybe he should have seen this coming. At their family Christmas last year, or when the hotel staff called them Mr. and Mr. Lester to no resistance at all. And now Dan is looking at him from across the couch like he’s expecting Phil to throw his hands up in the air and squeal.
Phil isn’t sure why he wants to sink into the floor instead.
“Okay,” he says, a weak offering.
Dan furrows his brow. “Okay?” he repeats.
“Yeah,” says Phil, nodding, “It’s your name, so it’s your decision. Just… maybe think about it for more than twenty minutes?”
Dan continues looking confused, but he does Dan the courtesy, at least, of a little laugh. “Okay. Will do. We’ll talk about it later, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Phil knows what that means. It means, you’re being weird and I’m not going to let you get away with it. Which, he supposes, is fair enough.
At least for the time being, things go back to normal. Dan watches over Phil’s shoulder as he tries to set Dan’s two nemeses on a date. But Phil’s not really thinking about their anthropomorphized pig son or the girl he kissed at a bar two decades ago.
Instead, he keeps replaying Dan’s words in his head. I wouldn’t consider changing my name if I were you.
Part of the reason Phil feels so attached to his last name is because the people who gave him that name have also given him love and support throughout his entire life. Things are different for Dan, and they always will be.
But there’s more to it than that. Phil isn’t just holding onto his name because he loves his parents and his brother. He’s holding onto it because he, on his own, has created a world in which Phil Lester means something. He’s got the good version of baggage. And so does Dan.
Dan Howell planned comedy shows and tours that sold out theaters. Dan Howell made millions of people feel seen.
Dan Howell is the name that used to light up Phil’s computer screen in his Manchester bedroom, like a blanket draped over his shoulders, a gentle kiss on the cheek.
It’s ironic; Phil thinks that if the circumstances were different, he might just be okay with Dan taking his name. But the thought that Dan might be interested in changing his name as some act of self-destruction… Phil can’t stand it.
It’s a thought that becomes fully formed the next morning. Like molasses out of a bottle, it comes slowly, then all at once.
By the time Phil opens his eyes against the rays of golden sunlight that flows into their bedroom, Dan is already up and dressed. He’s wearing the Sacrificial Lamb baby tee that hugs his hips so perfectly and leaves so little to the imagination.
Phil gives Dan a once-over, more like a thrice-over, humming his appreciation. A baby tee for his baby. He thinks he’s still half-asleep.
When Dan realizes that Phil has rejoined the world of the living, he gives him a lazy little half smile that settles, a patch of warmth in the space between Phil’s ribs.
“Morning, dove,” he murmurs, “I was thinking of making French Toast out of that loaf that’s about to go stale. Sound good?”
Phil doesn’t answer. For some reason, he’s suddenly thinking about how Dan was the shorter one between the two of them when they met.
God. He was deliriously, head over heels in love with the beautiful posh boy who stumbled his way into Phil’s home in 2009. And he’s just as dedicated to the miraculous person that boy has become. It is simultaneously completely unbelievable and the only thing that’s ever made a hint of sense.
“I wouldn’t sacrifice you if you were a lamb,” Phil says out of nowhere, “I would make sure you had a big, green pasture to frolic in, and I would play with you and give you head scratches every single day.”
Although Dan frowns, amusement sparkles through his pretty dark eyes. “I love you, too. You wanna tell me why you’re being so strange?”
Phil climbs out of bed, sighing as he sloppily flattens his hair. He goes to Dan and holds onto him, both hands on his waist. “I don’t want you to change your name.”
“Yeah, I kinda got that,” says Dan with a chuckle. Despite his gentle teasing, Phil can tell that he’s listening with his whole heart.
“Tell me,” Phil starts, “That you’re not doing it because you want to erase a part of yourself. Tell me, Dan, and I’ll believe you.”
Dan sighs. Instead of looking Phil in the eyes, he fixes his gaze somewhere near the corner of his mouth. “I can’t,” he admits quietly, before refocusing to look at Phil properly, brown on blue. “Is that so wrong, really?”
“I think so,” says Phil, “And I think you know it, too. And–” Phil rushes to continue before Dan interrupts him. “I don’t even think it would work.”
Dan hums. “Yeah. It’s not like I would wake up as Dan Lester and just not have daddy issues anymore. I think it would be more symbolic than anything.”
“It’s kind of a sad symbol,” says Phil,
“I’m proud of exactly who you are, Dan.”
“You wouldn’t prefer me without all the baggage?” Dan asks.
There’s a lilt to his voice that tells Phil he already knows the answer, and knows it well, but that doesn’t stop Phil from earnestly blurting out, “No!” He reels himself in. “No, Dan, I wouldn’t. I don’t prefer anything, except what I already have.”
Phil’s not sure that makes sense, the way that he said it, but Dan seems to get it, judging by his lean in, closing the gap between himself and Phil in a familiar burst of warmth.
When they pull apart by centimeters, Phil says, a bit breathlessly, “If you really feel so strongly about it, I think I would feel better about hyphenating. I just… don’t want to swallow you whole.”
Phil tries to backtrack on that, but Dan’s already latched onto it. “Woah! You sure about that, buddy?”
“Oh my god.” Phil tries to hide his blush in the curve of Dan’s shoulder, as Dan continues fucking with him.
“You know, that’s not what I remember you–”
“I am trying to be earnest here, you horny bastard,” Phil scolds. He can’t stop himself from grinning like an idiot.
This pulls a cackle out of Dan. One of Phil’s favorite sounds. “You wanna know the truth, Pipple?”
Phil nods, and when he pulls away from Dan’s shoulder to look at him, he clocks the mischievous Dan smile immediately.
“I thought about it while I was falling asleep last night. And I came to the conclusion that changing my name to yours would be a direct violation of every piece of therapy homework I’ve ever received, and that it wouldn’t really change anything about my life anyway, besides causing a bit of cognitive dissonance and a lot of paperwork. So I’d already decided not to do it.”
Phil pulls away, shoving at Dan’s chest playfully. “And you let me rant anyway?! You bitch!”
“I like it when you rant,” Dan says, a bit whiny, “Self-advocating Phil is one of my favorite Phils!”
“I can’t believe you,” Phil complains.
Dan ignores him, finding his way back to earnestness instead. “I don’t think we should hyphenate, either.”
“Okay,” Phil says, nodding.
“I mean, you said it,” Dan continues, “We’re getting married because our lives are wonderful, not because anything about them needs to be changed.”
“And because we love each other,” says Phil, “We don’t need rings or different names or some London judge to make that true. It just is.”
“It just is,” Dan repeats, almost reverently, “Plus, it’s not as if we need to take each other’s names for people to associate us with each other. You’re mine whether you like it or not, Lester.”
Phil giggles. “Howell.” It feels good to say.
“And that’s without even factoring in the whole patriarchal aspect of it,” Dan continues. Phil identifies the exact moment that he enters yapping mode. “I mean, the whole tradition of taking your spouse’s name started in the olden times, when marriage was a financial agreement that involved some guy basically buying a poor teenage girl from her father. I think it’s safe to say that we’re not—”
“Howell,” Phil interrupts.
“Yeh,” says Dan.
“Are you going to make me French Toast or not?”