Archive of Our Own

Dan sat watching the chat scroll, hidden from the viewers by the animated and looping “Starting Soon” screen. View count was at… 127. He’d give it a few more minutes.

Fuck it, nevermind. Dan switched to his camera in OBS.

“Hey guys, good morning. Happy Tuesday. Hi p00pysusan, hi miso_coded. It’s Wednesday? Whatever, same difference.”

The chat was whirring now; Dan tried to pick out any messages of substance.

“No, lilbugboy, I didn’t watch the game last night. Yeah we’ll start with the Wordle again today howellingwolves, give me a minute though, let’s chat a little first. Erm, no I didn’t see Phil’s Instagram post, picklednp. Why?”

That last one was a lie. He had seen Phil’s instagram post. The motherfucker was just coming back from vacation and had posted a photo dump of beautiful sights and freckled skin and more shirtless photos than Dan could handle (it was just the one).

It was tricky talking about Phil on stream. There was a shockingly large segment of his viewers who were a bit overly invested in their friendship. They wanted to read something into every joke, every laugh, every minute of them two interacting. It was also tricky to not talk about Phil on stream. They played together constantly, their Final Fantasy XIV streams were one of the longest running collaborations Dan had ever had, and one of the most fun too. Phil was fun; to game with, to chat with, and when you develop a friendship in front of that many eyes, of course they are going to start to feel connected to the friendship too.

But the fans only saw his professional relationship with Phil. They watched them six hours a day, six days a week, and they forgot that there was more to real-life-Dan than what was shared on stream. And real-life-Dan wasn’t interested in bringing his personal relationships or personal feelings onto stream.

Especially when he was worried as hell that the personal feelings were going to cross a boundary with Phil.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get it. Everyone’s thirsting after Phil.” Dan gave himself a quick glance to the view finder to make sure he wasn’t blushing and fixed his fringe. He’d seen worse. It was summer, maybe they’d assume it was hot in here. “Why isn’t there this much excitement from you guys when I post to Instagram, huh? Aren’t you supposed to be my chatters?”

The chat quickly devolved into them all roasting him. Perfect, much safer territory than talking about how hot Phil was.

“Alright, I get it, I’m busted, washed, unc. That’s enough. Wordle time, emote only please mods.”

***

An hour later—Wordle, crossword, and chatting all complete—and Dan was practically vibrating in his chair. It had been way too long since he’d been logged into Final Fantasy, and he missed it, missed his little catboy self. And yes, he missed playing with Phil as well. He had tried doing one solo Final Fantasy stream while Phil was on vacation but it just wasn’t as much fun without him. Last night Dan had messaged him to line up the plans for today, and they settled on starting at noon, right after Dan’s hour of just chatting. It was time to get the chat riled up, he knew they wanted this as much as he did.

“Alright guys, what do you think we should get up to next?”

I’m sorry, what? Dan tabbed out to navigate to his Chrome bookmarks and pull up Phil’s stream. The chatter was right, he was playing Apex. What the hell? Dan tabbed to Discord.

Dan hit him with a thumbs up emoji react and tabbed back to the steam.

Well. Grin and bear it.

“That’s right! Back to Silksong!”

***

It was 8 PM and Dan was prone on his back, lying on the couch. He’d been there for two hours and his stomach had been growling at him for the last forty five minutes, but he couldn’t be arsed to open Deliveroo. He was just… tired. Disappointed maybe, disappointed that today was supposed to be a fun day and instead it was just like the five days before, trenching himself deeper into this content rut. Stream had been fine really, viewers amused, he had kept numbers high and pulled in the usual subs, but Dan was starting to get bored. Thank god he hadn’t told chat in advance what they were supposed to do today. He didn’t think he could handle the embarrassment of people knowing he had actually been stood up.

The ba-doop of a Discord notification sounded from the phone resting on his stomach. It was Phil. Dan should have been annoyed at him, but he couldn’t help the stomach flip when he saw the notification.

Dan rang him with an audio call rather than respond. Phil picked up right away.

“Hey, Dan”

“Hey.”

“I’m really sorry about today.”

Dan cleared his throat. “That’s okay. It happens.”

“You got plans for tomorrow?”

“Not yet.”

“Can I be your plans then?” Dan scrunched his forehead and rubbed a hand across his face. God. Did he know how that sounded? He must.

“Yeah, sounds good.” He paused for a moment, should he? “I’d love that.”

The line was quiet for a minute. Fuck. Dan shut his eyes. He said too much.

Phil’s voice was soft when responded, “I missed you, you know.”

Dan snorted. “Yeah I’m sure. All that sunshine and all those cocktails and you were thinking about being stuck in your bedroom roleplaying as a catboy.

“You saw my Instagram post?” He sounded delighted.

“Uh-huh. Showing off for all us poor boys stuck at home.”

“You didn’t like it.” Dan could hear the pout in his voice.

“Oh, sorry I just—” Dan didn’t know how to say he didn’t want to hear the comments from all the people who would inevitably notice it.

“Did you not like it, Danny?” This guy, that put-upon whine was too much.

“No, I liked it,” Dan huffed out a laugh. “I like all your posts. I’ll go like it tonight so you’ve got the evidence, you attention whore.”

“Mmm, good. Thank you.”

It was quiet again. Dan couldn’t think of a thing to say but he desperately didn’t want to hang up.

Phil spoke up first. “You’ll have to go easy on me tomorrow. I think I might have regained some of my hearing while I was away so you have to keep the screeching to a minimum now that I’m at risk of hearing you again.”

Dan laughed. It sounded horribly soft, even to him. “Shut up, you bitch, you know what you signed up for. You want me on a call, you're going to have to put up with my screaming.”

“I swear I’ll lower your noise gate if you can’t behave. No one on my stream will have any idea what you’re saying.”

“Well if you stop fucking up the raids, I won’t need to screech, so let’s start with giving that a try, huh?”

“You loved that last raid. You want to do it more.”

Jesus. What do you say to that? “Alright.”

Phil laughed. “Okay. I should go. Didn’t even unpack yesterday. I’ll see you tomorrow, Danny.”

“See you tomorrow Phil.”

Dan rolled off the couch, smiling. Time for dinner now. Tomorrow was going to be a good day.

***

Stream the next day was good, too fucking good. They were on one from the minute they hopped into the call together.

It was just too easy. They flowed. They flowed and they had fun and the chats loved it. Wasn’t that the whole fucking point? Why should Dan worry himself with overthinking if it worked.

Well, no point in dragging it to the light. Minimizing the chat, Dan focused in on the raid.

***

Phil called him again that night. Five hours on stream, but off stream felt different, more… them. Dan couldn’t tell you a thing they had talked about but they were on the call for two hours and by the time they hung up his cheeks were hurting.

Just at the end Phil had a question. “Can you DM me your address by the way? I need to send you something.”

“The fuck? What is it?”

“Nuh-uh. No spoilers. You’ll see.”

Dan sent it to him right after they hung up and Phil reacted with a heart emoji.

Dan bit his lip, then shook his head. It was confirmation bias, he knew it. He’d latch onto any sign he saw that made him think Phil might feel the same way.

Before bed he went to Twitch to check out his top clips from the day.

fondest phan ever???
danisnotonfire
Clipped by kitsoutfordnp

clutch save in the dungeon
danisnotonfire
Clipped by xprettystabbyx

21 seconds of heart eyes
danisnotonfire
Clipped by heartsfordnp

phil makes dan cry laugh
danisnotonfire
Clipped by punklesters

For good measure he checked Phil’s top clips as well.

silly philly can’t stop laughing at dan
AmazingPhil
Clipped by phrincessphil

another tragic overheal
AmazingPhil
Clipped by bastardbaybay

world’s least subtle flirt
AmazingPhil
Clipped by lia_andari_

catboy biting!! #chomp
AmazingPhil
Clipped by chompilation

Honestly, this was the main reason that Dan was sure there wasn’t actually anything here. There was no way that Phil wouldn’t have noticed the shippers, they were pervasive. Half the usernames, half the messages, most of the clips. Surely if this was going to be something, if this was going somewhere, Phil would have said something right? Use the excuse, drag it to the light, finally address the elephant taking up all the space in the room. Not that Dan had done that either, but he was just trying to respect a boundary. Keeping his friendship with Phil was the most important thing. It might kill him to fuck this up. It would be a nightmare professionally, both the loss of a collaborator and also dealing with the endless speculation from the audience. It would be his worst nightmare personally. Best friends first, always.

***

DISCORD CHAT 3

***

When the package arrived Dan was pretty sure it wasn’t a dildo. It was a lot flatter than any dildo he’d ever seen.

***

Dan couldn’t believe how nervous he was. The package was waiting right next to his mouse pad on the desk and he had been glancing at it every 12 seconds through the whole first hour of stream. It was 12:02 now, Phil was not known for being punctual but Dan was about to piss himself if they didn’t get this done with soon.

“Yeah guys, Phil was supposed to join me for this thing but he’s late. I’ll just go grab him.”

He opened Phil’s stream and hopped in the chat.

“Dan, hi! Oh my god, yeah, sorry. These guys were distracting me. Let me open your stream. Can I call you too?”

Dan muted Phil’s stream but left it open as he accepted the discord call.

“Okay Phil, do you want to explain what’s going on, because I’m not sure I know what’s going on.”

“Chat, I mailed Dan a gift and told him he had to open it on stream. No ollibutanxious it’s not a dildo, but Dan asked me the same thing.”

Dan’s chat was whirring.

Dan flipped the stream to full cam.

“So this is it. I have literally no idea what he’s sent me.”

“Dan, do not dox yourself right now.”

“I’m not stupid, I ripped the label off.”

The video feed on Phil’s stream was about two seconds behind his audio from Discord and Dan could see himself from his stream playing there too, but Dan was watching it anyway. Phil looked nervous too, licking his bottom lip and fidgeting with his fringe.

“There’s a card too, you don’t have to read it out loud.” Phil’s voice was softer than normal, closer to the private call Phil than stream Phil.

Dan found the card.

To my favorite catboy. Thanks for all the streams. Here’s to many more hours of gaming together.
xx Phil

“You nosy bitches.” Dan huffed a laugh. God, he sounded fond; this was going to go platinum on Tumblr. There was also a smaller wrapped rectangle in the box. “Should I unwrap this now?”

“Yeah! You should do that on camera.”

Dan did, watching himself in the viewfinder. It was… a frame. He watched his face pinch in confusion and then turned to examine the picture in person. It was a screenshot from stream, from their Final Fantasy play through. Of both of them, well, the catboy thems. Phil had printed out a photo of them from the game, framed it, and mailed it to Dan.

They were both dead silent. Chat was screaming.

Dan cleared his throat. “Oh it’s uh, a photo of our characters from the game. Our catboys. Thank you, Phil, that’s so nice.” He turned it properly to the camera, holding it close so it filled most of the frame and the viewers could get a good look.

On Phil’s stream he was chewing his lip. “I don’t know if you knew but it’s been 500 hours of us playing together, so. Felt like I should commemorate it. Sorry if it’s silly.”

“No, that’s so nice! I didn’t know.” Dan felt dizzy. 500 hours in game with this man, and he had noticed, kept track. He had wanted to do something special about it, do something for Dan. “That’s so thoughtful. I love it. I’m gonna put it up right behind me so it’s on stream all the time.”

“Alright well, that’s all from me Danny,” Phil boomed, back to his steamer voice. “I’ll let you get back to your stream!”

“Bye Phil, talk with you soon.”

Dan turned back to chat.

“I know right? Your faves could never. Alright, alright. Moving on. Yes, we are finally playing the highly requested Slay the Spire 2 today. Give me a second, let me get it opened up.”

Dan tabbed to Discord.