Work Text:
His therapist, who for privacy reasons will remain unnamed, interrupts him. "Let's pause for a second," they say. "Do you still think working together with Phil again is a good idea?"
Dan's on the balcony of their home, sitting at a table with nothing but his laptop and an empty FIJI water bottle that he held onto from when they were on tour. He's peeling the wrapper off rather aggressively as he thinks, his therapist tracking the movement with their eyes but otherwise silent, waiting.
"It's not…" Dan hesitates. It's not like he’s unhappy he's doing the whole "Dan and Phil" thing again. Considering everything he's been through — attending six full years of therapy, upping his dosage of antidepressants, and arguing with countless YouTube execs just to have them crush him like an unprofitable ant — what's the harm in re-commodifying his favorite pastime of playing video games with Phil? It certainly made everyone else happy.
But of course, two years ago, when he tried to explain this to Phil, during their all-important re-litigation of the "Dan and Phil" branding, Phil had turned to him, looking pissed. And then he went and did something he saved only for very rare occasions.
He had gotten properly angry.
"I'm not going to force you to do something you don't want to," he’d snapped. "If doing Dan and Phil again is you settling for something you think is stupid, you can do something else."
Dan had inner-facepalmed hard. There he'd gone again, over-intellectualizing and running his mouth until he'd accidentally hurt Phil without realizing it.
"No, obviously I want to do it," he’d replied. "I promise I didn't mean for it to come off that way. This," he motioned between them, "Isn't something I'm going to half-ass, ever. I swear."
Phil had still looked unsure. "Right."
"And more importantly,” Dan continued, “ you're right. It is the perfect time for a comeback. I'm saying this entirely separately from any judgment over the quality of the content we have yet to make. No matter what, it'll be…" He'd trailed off, thinking of what to say. "Fun," he eventually landed on. "And even, like, really good for me."
He didn't go as far as to add that in this crazy, doomed, messed-up world they'd suddenly found themselves in, the simplicity that bringing back "Dan and Phil" promised was making his heart almost sing. It wasn't that his book and solo tour didn't go well — great, even, thank-you-very-much. It was just that making videos with Phil was different. Easy. Second nature. It sometimes felt like all he knew how to do. And it never seemed to demand the effort and exacting deliberation that his solo projects did.
But he also remembered the flip side of working with Phil. Of having to watch, helpless and almost outside of himself, as his skyrocketing career took one of the most important relationships in his life away from him. And how the love they had for each other started to belong more to their audience than it did to him. Having to deal with that all again, shoving the two of them like that in the public eye, felt just about as nightmarish as it had seven years ago.
And it had been these two sides, butting heads, that made him feel like his brain was being torn to shreds.
He had tried to convey this conflict by burying his face in his hands and letting out a loud groan. "I'm just worried," he mumbled. "And you know after everything we've been through, I'm right to be a little worried," he said. "What if we want to strangle each other again? What if we fuck it all up? If we fucked it all up, would you want to talk to me again?"
Phil's face had done a weird little somersault, as if he couldn't quite decide if he was still mad, or if he wanted to laugh. Baser instincts eventually won out, and Phil had spluttered, pushing his then-brown hair out of his eyes. "Dan, come on." When Dan didn't move, Phil had scooted closer and used his foot to hook the edge of Dan's computer chair, turning him so he was suddenly eye-to-eye with Phil.
Dan did what he always did best in response, which was instantly and totally surrender to Phil's gaze with a panicked bitch face. Unfortunately, this made him even more pliable to Phil's next words.
"Not only is our fanbase older, but we're older too." Phil had put his hand right above Dan's elbow and gave him a comforting squeeze. "And we have enough knowledge this time to do things the right way." And he then smiled, and Dan would be lying if he said it didn't make him feel better.
And then, maybe in the distant past, Phil would have stroked his thumb against Dan's arm. Maybe Dan even would have leaned into the touch.
But he didn't. As Phil had said, they were older now.
Back in the present, Dan tugs at the water bottle wrapper and laments the weird plastic resistance that prevents him from ripping the "F" off the "IJI."
"It's not what, Dan?" His therapist prompts, but Dan doesn't hear them. "I've asked if you still think working together with Phil is a good idea."
A comeback video, over one hundred new uploads, a hiatus cancellation, and a world tour later, it turns out what doing "Dan and Phil" the right way is that they'll stop doing things like filming out the window, or burning themselves out, or — and this one really bears repeating — pretending to be heterosexual. They'll be open about the right things, the real things: they love to make each other laugh, they want to share how much fun they have together, and that sure, they bought a house together, call each other their soulmates, and have known each other at this point for almost half of Dan's life — but it's not romantic, for real this time. What? They're adults, gay adults at that, and in the twenty-first century, people their age do that kind of stuff.
They've experienced fame together, for God's sake. They can probably afford to be a bit vague when it comes to exact details, such as commenting on the number of bedrooms in their house and whether or not they're together. Romantically. Which they are not.
Plus, other gay adults that Dan knows have weird arrangements all the time. And aren't concepts of what's strictly romantic and what's platonic for the "straights" anyway? Monogamy and marriage are the last vestiges of the heteropatriarchal death cult that have been ruining Dan's life for the last thirty-some-odd years already. If his particular "arrangement" is that he does the "buy-the-house-and-share-the-bed with his ex-boyfriend/best friend/life partner/soulmate" thing but keeps it platonic for simplicity's sake, then who is anyone else to judge? Actually, it's even forward-thinking on Dan's part to have adapted his interpersonal relationships this well to the evolving discourse on romance and companionship.
"Dan?" His therapist says again.
"It's not that big of a deal." He puts the water bottle down. "And maybe I'm just tweaking because we've just come back from tour and I've got no idea what to do with myself."
His therapist looks entirely unconvinced. Dan sighs and throws his hands in the air. "Fine. Fine. I don't know. Nothing's complicated with Phil except everything's complicated with Phil."
"Has the public done anything lately to make you regret your decision?" His therapist asks. "Anything inappropriate that made you feel uncomfortable?"
Only on days that end in Y, Dan doesn't say. But pretty much everyone in his life would cut him out if he fell back on the habit of seeking out that stuff on purpose, and he's been pretty good at keeping his word. One good thing about THE HIATUS was that it allowed the all-consuming internet fame to die down a little, so he's a little less likely to be assaulted by a video analyzing his body language at some hazy party he thought was closed to the public, or his old MySpace and Formspring posts where he was flirting with Phil and saying he's BISEXUAL???, or leaked personal videos. If people are being weird, then Dan has avenues now to make sure he can't see it.
Besides, Dan has realized in the last five years that he even kind of… misses his audience. He misses his fans. He feels defensive of someone else trying to paint them all in this broad brush of boundary-pushing freaks, even if that person is his therapist.
He waves his hand dismissively. "No, no. I don't care about that." His therapist immediately gives him a look, so he tacks on, "Okay, I don't care anymore . The internet will always be…the internet, but that's the life I signed up for." Once again, there's a pause as his therapist waits for him to continue. "Besides," he says finally. "Phil and I are, uh, leaning into it now. As a bit."
"A bit," His therapist echoes, flat.
"Yeah. You know. I told you about this. The 'Terrible Influence Tour,' confronting our past but also pioneering this new era of—" he waves his hands for emphasis,"—Dan and Phil! We're spilling the tea, digging into lore, but in a wink-wink-nudge-nudge kind of way, because now we're two guys who are now gay and have made it out on the other side with our fans. Fans who, by the way, unfortunately decided to become real adults during a time when everything's terrible, different, and nonsensical from the world they grew up in. So us, as figures from their childhood, embracing and celebrating what was once this huge elephant in the room with like love, humor, and acceptance, and leaning into this parasocial, nudge-wink, gay parenthood persona makes this like an incredibly lucrative feedback loop of engagement, youth, and comfort that finds our audience in a difficult time."
His therapist stays completely silent, which Dan immediately knows means he has to try again with fewer words. Articulation instead of hiding his truth with his rambling and over-intellectualizing.
Dan sighs. "When I act gay with Phil, it makes us a lot of money."
His therapist nods. "You've said in past sessions that the monetary and voyeuristic aspects of your work made it hard to stay close when your careers took off. Are you concerned that this commodification might result in distance between you again?"
"No! No," he waves his hands a little harder, getting kind of frustrated. "This is different. Phil and I are doing it right. This isn't like 2009 when we were emotional, hormonal teenagers, or 2015 when we were career-driven, brain-dead zombies. This is 2025. The modern age. We're telling the truth to our audience and therefore being more truthful with each other. For once, our work selves and our uh, not-work selves are completely aligned for once." Dan claps his hands together as a perfect thought strikes him. "You've seen Severance, right? It's like Chaotic Good Severance. Where the two selves live in harmony, instead of, um. What…" He trails off, as there's not a flicker of recognition in his therapist's eyes, which means he might be rapidly careening toward spoiler territory. "What actually ends up happening in that show?"
"I have not seen Severance." His therapist responds. "But I'm glad it sounds like you and Phil have communicated what you both need from each other."
"Well…" Dan sighs. That nebulous period between 2009 and 2015 has also been on his mind as of late, when their careers had moved faster than they could keep up, when he'd flinched and snapped at any attempts at contact Phil would make, convinced that if he didn't go through each of their videos with a fine-toothed comb like a deranged AI robot snipping and sanitizing every aspect of their on-screen dynamic until it passed his exacting vision for what the public needed to see from them, everything would suddenly come crumbling down around him.
Dan thinks about how far he's managed to come from that point when he says what he says next. "I think addressing it head-on has helped us reclaim the narrative around how we're supposed to interact with each other. Like, by actually talking about the elephant in the room, people have to meet us on our own terms." It also helps that Dan doesn't do much of his own editing anymore, these days.
"But," he continues, "with all these extensive conversations with each other this time about 'boundaries' and 'parasocial relationships' and letting that leak into our real-life treatment of each other, I can't help but feel like there's still this other, even bigger elephant that we aren't talking about for some reason. Which is crazy, because we've known each other now for over fifteen years! What elephants could there possibly still be left?!"
"Well." The therapist tilts their head. "Maybe the weirdness you're feeling isn't weirdness. Maybe it's clarity about this new step you're taking and what it means for your relationship with Phil, both on and off-camera. And that's something you've never had before."
Dan thinks on this for a while, and since it's on his mind now, he might as well say it. "I've been thinking about 2009 a lot. Mostly because when we react to our old videos, YouTube puts us on the homepage."
"I'm sure you remember what we discussed, regarding that," His therapist says diplomatically.
Dan shrugs, in a "kind of," and "yet here I am" sort of way. "What were you doing in 2009?" he asks instead.
His therapist is silent for a moment, but answers quickly, to Dan's surprise. "I was getting my PhD. I bought the hair clip I wore with my gown from Claire's."
Well, that's definitely not what Dan did. He worked shit retail jobs to afford three-hour train rides to Manchester instead of studying, faffed about in university, and then dropped out two years later. And he wore women's sweaters over graphic tees.
"Well," he says, coughing, "I'm sure you looked beautiful."
His therapist frowns at this. "I looked like a dork."
"We all did in 2009."
At this, his therapist finally laughs. "I can't argue with you there."
Unfortunately, they immediately lapse back into silence, and Dan’s gaze drifts to the clock. His session is almost up, which means it's the perfect time to say something batshit insane.
"You don't think I screwed it all up, do you?" The view from those long train rides up north fly through his mind. "My chances of having anything real with Phil?"
At this, his therapist's eyebrows shoot up past their hairline. "Oh, Dan," they say. "If we're going to talk about you and Phil in a romantic sense, we're going to need more than five minutes."
"Because it would be a shitshow to even think about it?"
"Dan," His therapist says firmly but not unkindly. "Next session. Same time as usual?"
Dan swallows a weird lump in his throat and tries not to get too weird about how lucky he is. "Yeah, same time. And uh, it was nice to…" he pauses, then settles on, "Thanks. Don't work too hard, okay?" And before he can stop himself, he taps his screen with his fist like he's transmitting some kind of digital fist-bump, or something.
To his relief, his therapist smiles a nice, real smile. "It was nice to see you, too, Dan."
He says goodbye on autopilot, and the video call drops.
He sits there for a while after, staring at his computer. He and Phil, in a romantic sense, is a ship that has sailed so far and so fast that Dan couldn't even catch it if he tried. But a small, dark part of him wonders if he only thinks that because he did, in fact, fuck it all up. By being too closeted, too cagey, too angry, too shameful.
He sits there as long as he needs to for him to realize that he hasn't eaten anything yet, so he shuts his laptop and shimmies his way down to the kitchen.
Where he sees Phil, parked up on the kitchen island, taking selfies.
Dan tries not to roll his eyes. Dorky, emo nerds pushing forty shouldn't be allowed to get chic, platinum-blonde haircuts that suddenly turn them into cheeky Berlin clubhouse-party gays. Dan watches the swiftness with which Phil, almost as if through muscle memory alone, strikes his best angle and snaps a photo. He turns the phone back around and smiles to himself when he sees it came out well. He then bends over his phone and starts furiously tapping away at his screen. Dan knows it’ll be a matter of time before his Instagram notifications get absolutely obliterated.
"Hey," Dan says. He puts his laptop down on the dinner table and walks over to Phil. He lays his head on Phil's shoulder, leaning into his back and letting him support most of his weight. He hasn't posted the selfie yet. Phil's wearing his "Rodent Boy Summer" T-shirt and Nike sleep shorts, and he mostly doesn't pay Dan any mind, just keeps flipping between the same three photos over and over. Dan shifts so he can peek over Phil's shoulder, and he points.
"The second one, the fifth one, and the first one you took, and make it the last one in the reel. But keep the caption."
Phil leans down, eyes still on his phone screen, and jabs him as hard as he can with his elbow.
"Piss off, I know how to use Instagram." He pauses. "Plus, I was going to do that anyway."
Dan smirks. "Yeah, because I'm like an Instagram Jedi."
Phil rolls his eyes. "Baguettes and a loose shirt in Paris doesn't make you an Instagram Jedi." He finally looks away from his phone and gives Dan a quick once-over. "You're in a good mood," he says, matter-of-factly. "How was therapy? Or, uh," he suddenly looks away. "I mean, you don't need to tell me, of course."
Dan debates whether or not it's worth opening this can of worms with Phil at this very moment, and decides in this era of Phlonde Phil, ironic gaybaiting, and radical honesty he’s just going to speak his mind. Not to mention, Phil feels nice underneath Dan's cheek, so Dan feels very susceptible to being honest. "Therapy was fine," he looks up from Phil's shoulder, giving him a bit of a grin. "Talked about you."
"Oh..." Phil pulls his phone back up again. He's quickly moved off Instagram and pulls up TikTok with a well-practiced swipe. "Well, I'm awesome. Who wouldn't want to talk about me?"
Amid loud nonsense noises spewing from Phil's phone, Dan ploughs on. "I told them that I still feel like there's something between us that we aren't addressing, and it's causing this tension between us I can't quite name." Dan doesn't stop looking at Phil, and since Phil's gaze is glued to his phone screen, Dan is left staring holes into the side of Phil's face. "Am I crazy or am I crazy?"
Phil laughs out loud at this. "What are you even on about? The only tension I sense is all this sexual tension!!! Yeeeooow!" And because Dan can feel his blush rocket up to his face, and Phil is actually watching TikToks instead of taking him seriously, Dan really only has one option.
He jerks up and tries to grab Phil's phone.
"Oh my god, stop!" Phil only manages to get his phone just out of Dan's reach before Dan facepalms him, grabbing his face as leverage to finally push and wrench Phil's phone out of his hand. Unfortunately, this does make Phil fall over, which he does with an undignified yelp. But as payback, Phil manages to grab hold of Dan's shirt collar at the last second, and they both tumble to the floor. Careening toward the kitchen marble, Dan suddenly remembers when Phil literally shat blood and lay motionless almost exactly where they’re falling, so he decides to break Phil’s fall at the last second, and smacks his back onto the marble with Phil on top of him.
"Fuck!" Dan shouts. Phil's phone skids a foot away, completely unharmed, as Phil's phone case lets it plink off to the side.
Above him, Phil’s blonde hair is falling into his eyes, and Dan can feel his body shake from giddy laughter. Dan tries to get up, but Phil, who's now in complete roughhousing mode, grabs Dan's wrists and holds him down, crowding further into his space. Dan feels his face turn red, for real this time, but since it's Phil, he doesn't even have it in him to feel self-conscious about it.
"That's what you get for trying to steal my phone." Phil takes one hand off Dan's wrist, so he can flick Dan in between his eyebrows.
"Ow!" Dan says. “What the hell!"
"And that's what you get for overthinking," Phil says, smirking.
Dan rolls his eyes, but even with his one arm free, he doesn't make any immediate moves to throw Phil off him. "Come on, Phil. I was being serious." He looks up into his blue eyes, framed by all that blonde hair. His tone shifts, soft but unsmiling. "Are we good? Is there something you're not telling me?"
Phil's smile drops. He looks off to the side, avoiding eye contact with Dan, contemplative. Then he looks back up.
"Dan," Phil says. "Of course we're good." And then Phil brings his hand up to Dan's cheek, a grounding presence that turns Dan's head a little to meet his eye. "Are you good?"
Dan's a little afraid that Phil's going to do something weird, like stroke his cheek, or maybe even kiss him, though he's not sure if that's just Dan getting his wires crossed. But before he can make his own brain explode, Phil drops his hand from his cheek and stands up. He wordlessly offers Dan a hand up, which he takes, but now Phil just looks concerned, given his lack of a real answer.
"Hey," Phil says. He pauses, and he's frowning. Dan wants to smooth the frown out with his thumb, but doesn't. "You remember what I said, right? That if this sucks, you can stop at any time. I don't want to force you to do anything."
"Forcing me ?" Dan says, just to be annoying. "What about the other way around? Am I not… forcing you to do what I want? Or forcing you to be happy?"
Phil lets out a loud laugh. "One, you can never force me to do what you want, and two—" At this, a smile breaks out across Phil's face that is so genuine, even after fifteen years, Dan just barely avoids looking away. "You for sure are not forcing me to be happy."
This display of overt affection is more than enough for Dan. His heart is pounding up against the inside of his rib cage, almost like it's going to implode with love for Phil or whatever, normal things that Dan experiences every day. "Uh, okay," he says. "But if I’m not forcing you to do anything, and you aren't forcing me to do anything—"
"Then who's flying the plane?" Phil finishes with a grin. Still standing pretty close together, Phil reaches up, takes his thumb, and gives Dan a firm poke on the forehead, gentle, kind, but firm against Dan's brow. And just like that, almost by command, Dan's forehead un-tenses.
"Maybe," Phil says, dropping his hand but not moving any away, face still up close and personal to Dan's, "instead of talking about all the different ways you are obsessed with me, you and your therapist can talk through strategies to get that brain of yours to stop overthinking."
Dan snorts. "An impossible task. It's like telling a zebra not to have stripes."
"Those exist," Phil says immediately. "It's a genetic disorder."
"Okay, well," Dan puts his hands on his hips, and he can't stop himself from smiling. "I guess you'll have to hold out for that one version of me out there who's a complete freak of nature."
Phil smirks and flicks Dan's chin. "The Dan I have now is already a complete freak of nature." And at that, he turns around, Roblox TikToks blaring, and walks back into their bedroom.
***
Dan wonders what Phil talks about in therapy. He knows the headline stuff: health anxiety, social anxiety, everything anxiety, etc. But Phil isn’t a ranter or a chronic navel-gazer the way Dan is. His therapist has even helpfully described Dan as “a bit preoccupied with himself, sometimes.” Which, yeah.
Phil, on other hand, has always played it a little closer to the chest, and because of that, it’s hard not to just assume that Phil has more together than Dan does—or, at least, that he isn’t so personally affected by everything the way Dan always seems to be.
He wonders what Phil says about him in therapy.
"Can I say something horrible?" Dan asks, one week later. He’s back on the balcony, this time without the water bottle.
“What makes you think it’s horrible?” his therapist says.
"I get jealous of Phil's therapist." Dan blurts instead of answering. "Like, here’s this person that Phil’s sharing all his thoughts with, and it's not me. Is that fucked up? Does that make me a bad person?"
Despite Dan’s conviction that he is the scum of the Earth, his therapist barely reacts. “Is this something you’ve been worried about lately?" they ask, "Being a bad person?”
Dan thinks a little bit. “No, it’s less about me and more about me and Phil. Like, if I’m a bad friend for him to have.” He hesitates, and then just goes for it, because he’s the one paying and he should be able to say whatever he wants, goddammit. “Or if I’d be a bad boyfriend.”
"But you're not his boyfriend," his therapist says, totally unaffected. “Unless there’s something you’d like to tell me.”
“I—no. There isn’t.”
“Do you want to be his boyfriend again?”
He goes silent. "I don't know. That feels like a loaded question."
“I recall this might have been something you wanted to discuss last week, too. Do you want to talk about it now?”
“No,” Dan says. “Yes. Ugh.” He throws his hands up in the air. “Can you just tell me if I’m the worst or not?”
“Why don’t you answer a few questions for me first and see if you can decide for yourself, first?”
Dan sinks into his chair. “Fine.”
“Do you ever try to make Phil feel guilty for going to therapy?”
He shoots back up right away. “No, of course not.”
“Do you ever try to discourage him from attending a session?”
“No, that would be horrible. And hypocritical.”
“And have you ever tried to get Phil to tell you things about his sessions that he doesn’t want to?”
“No,” Dan says glumly for the third time. “At least, I don’t think so, not on purpose. But maybe I do do it subconsciously. And so these evil thoughts and my jealousy is still leaking out into our interactions like some kind of poison. And so, even indirectly, I’m a bad person for Phil to be with because…” he trails off, staring at a scratch on his keyboard.
His therapist keeps looking at him through the screen, but Dan stubbornly refuses to elaborate this time. Eventually, they say, “You’ve mentioned that you had similar concerns back when you were officially together. That you felt like a bad boyfriend.”
"The worst," Dan barks out a humorless laugh. "And even when we stopped dating and started doing the whole coworker-roommate thing…" He sighs. "I don't know. I just… I feel like where we are now is the happiest and the healthiest we've ever been for each other. And I don't want to…" he stops again, struggling to commit to it in words.
“Dan,” his therapist prompts gently, “is a romantic relationship something you want with Phil again?"
If his therapist had asked this question even a year ago, Dan would've immediately said no. But now that they’re back making content together again, not as "Dan and Phil" but as Dan and as Phil, an old, dormant twinge of hope that he’d thought had been buried long ago is starting to tap at the lid of its coffin. He thinks about how good it feels to lay his head on Phil—literally wherever—and look up into Phil’s eyes. How Phil still reaches out all the time to put a hand on Dan’s arm, shoulder—literally wherever—knowing exactly how to calm him down.
So, of course, the answer is yes. But…
"I just think it's too late." Dan finds himself saying. "I’ve hurt—" His therapist gives him a look, and he coughs and corrects himself. " We’ve hurt each other. And we've already loved each other before… So what if there’s too much baggage for me to do it right this time? Or what if I've already had my chance, and I've messed it all up by being a shitty person?"
His therapist takes a moment to respond, which kind of validates Dan even though he’d also really like them to hurry up and just agree with him for once. Instead, he can see them leaning back in the gritty video screen.
“Jealousy is completely normal, Dan. And never hurting another person, whether they're a romantic partner or otherwise, isn't possible. It's just part of being human."
"Well," Dan says. "That's comforting."
His therapist continues. "But nobody can tell you whether or not you might be a good partner to Phil in the future, if you do try again. If it's something you want, and you're committed to being good to him, then—" They lean back in. "That's all you two can ask of each other."
Dan digests this. "But—"
His therapist shakes their head. "If this is something you really want, Dan, then the only way you can know for sure how it will go is if you talk to Phil. Theorizing on how he might react to you won’t help you. But finding out will."
***
So, cut to Dan spacing out in bed while Phil lies next to him, swiping through Raya.
"What do you think?" Phil says, shoving his phone into Dan's face. Dan immediately makes eye contact with a very prominent celebrity that, for privacy reasons, will also go unnamed. "Smash or Pass?"
About this situation. So, despite the… everything about him and Phil, i.e., being shirtless in bed together, for all intents and purposes they are "single," so are allowed to do "single" things, like swipe on dating apps, and ask each other for their opinion on the people on said dating apps.
Or, more specifically, in Phil's case, it means he's allowed to suddenly go blonde, suddenly get unfairly hot, and suddenly start flirting with whoever and whatever catches his eye like a shiny toy. In Dan's case, it means getting outrageously depressed and suddenly disappearing for days on end without having to answer to anyone (which used to be a big problem when Phil was his significant other, until they weren't and it wasn't anymore. Also, Dan is trying not to do stuff like that as much anymore. So.)
"Hard pass," Dan scoffs. "Everyone says he's totally full of it." Dan is lying here. What "everyone?" Dan doesn't know anyone except Phil, career opportunists, YouTube execs, producers, and his unnamed therapist these days. But he can just tell by how that guy carries himself in interviews and now in this extremely staged profile that he's a total tool.
Phil frowns, flipping through his profile. "Well that sucks. Arrogant people piss me off," he cuts Dan a side-long glance complete with a sly smile. "Unless they're you." He goes back to staring at the photos for a minute longer before shrugging, "But he's pretty attractive, so…I'm going to say smash." And he swipes right.
Dan rolls his eyes and tries to be a sassy, cool, gay best friend about this instead of a bitter prick, but Dan is never really good at hiding his emotions. A big part of their "healing journey" had been being more okay with discussing gay stuff with each other, instead of what they used to do, which was hook up with each other under the shroud of secrecy and crucify the other person the second they even tried to bring it up in polite conversation. Or, god forbid, hook up with other people. So, when they decided to come out, bury the "Dan and Phil" brand, and focus on restoring their private friendship, a significant effort had to be made at ogling cute guys together without it being weird.
Besides, it's not like any of these guys stay for very long. Or, at least, not for Dan.
"You think every guy is attractive," Dan says, trying very hard to keep the edge out of his voice and failing miserably.
Phil shrugs. "I surround myself with attractive guys." When Dan doesn't laugh, Phil finally turns away from his phone to look at him. "Hey," Phil's eyebrows go up. "Do we need to check in on this?"
"No," Dan lies immediately. "This is great." He points to a random guy that he thinks he's seen before on Instagram, usually with his shirt off. "That guy's hot. Smash."
Phil gives him another look and, just to spite him, wordlessly swipes left. But just as he does that, a few texts come in, with just a man's name and Raya next to it as the contact. And looking over Phil's shoulder, the texts seem to suggest this isn't the first time he and Phil have hooked up.
Fuck it. Dan can't help himself. "Oh, who's this ?"
Phil hesitates, and Dan's stomach twists with sickly victory. "He's a guy I was kind of seeing when we were on tour," he says, and there's a big pause as he weighs Dan's reaction. "He's in London for a few days and wanted to meet up."
"I didn't know you were seeing anyone on tour," Dan says, accusatory.
"What?" Phil says. He has the audacity to look surprised. "I told you about him. The producer, in New York. He had this weird apartment that you said looked like the hotel from The Shining."
"At least in The Shining," Dan snipes, on instinct. Shit, he does in fact remember this now. "it was a hotel and not a four-thousand-dollar one-bedroom apartment." Dan continues rambling so he wouldn't have to re-imagine Phil inside someone else's apartment. "And anyway, I thought it was a one-time thing. I didn't know you were still seeing each other."
"Okay," Phil says, narrowing his eyes. "I didn't—"
"And I didn't know it was so good he'd come all the way to London to see you."
"Hey, I didn't know this was, like, big news that needed to be shared—"
"Plus, I didn't think pseudo-intellectual poser was the type of guy you liked these days."
Phil is opening his mouth to say something, but Dan is now too far into a weird out-of-body experience where he's twisting his fist into the bed sheets as he watches Dan-the-Person refuse to listen to Dan-the-Brain demanding he act normally about this.
Phil has now switched off his phone, which means it's really serious. This is enough to snap Dan back to reality just enough to hear Phil say, plainly, "You're being a dick."
The rest of Dan's pent-up freak-out leaks out of him like a balloon. Phil never made him feel like a tool about his own life; even though he'd struggled embarrassingly hard to find anything serious after Phil, it's not like he was a total nun (slutty ones included). What's wrong with him? All that talk with his therapist about trying to be someone Phil would want in his life romantically, only for him to freak out like a hit dog and interrogate Phil the second he's caught off guard with new information. Maybe all he's capable of is acting on his basest neuroses.
He lets the air out through his teeth before saying, "Sorry."
There's a pause.
"I'm sorry. It's none of my—I shouldn't have said that." He suddenly feels the need to look anywhere but at Phil, who's staring at him totally unblinking, boring a hole into his skull with his eyes.
"It's fine," Phil says eventually. "I was going to tell him I was busy, anyway."
"You don't need to—" Dan says hurriedly.
"Oh, relax, would you?" Phil lies back down and scoots his head so he can rest it against Dan's hip. "I'm not turning him down because of you. I'm not feeling it right now."
Dan stiffens at the contact, but doesn't move away. "Oh. Then—listen, I can go to the couch or whatever, if you do want to be alone tonight—"
"Don't be an idiot," Phil says, and he grabs Dan's midsection, pressing his face further against Dan. "I'm done looking at my phone anyway. Let's go to bed."
Dan mentally takes a deep breath and forces himself to tentatively brush his fingers through Phil's hair. When Phil leans into the touch, he lets out a mental sigh of relief and starts to run his fingers over Phil's scalp, playing a game with himself to see how much of Phil's roots he can reveal. Phil hums, and Dan can feel Phil's small breaths against his hipbone, right where the waistband of his pajama pants starts.
It's so suddenly quiet and peaceful that Dan doesn't dare speak for fear of ruining it.
Phil is asleep in five minutes, which is great for him. Dan is unfortunately wide awake, pure adrenaline turbo-charging his thoughts, so while Phil starts snoring like a buzzsaw, his brain works overtime to tell him he's a piece of shit.
That was bad. Really bad. Thank god it didn't blow up into anything bigger. But if Dan keeps doing stuff like that, he's definitely going to be in trouble. He can't help but freak out any time he even starts to think of Phil and him dating again, but he's definitely going to gouge his eyes out if he has to keep hearing about "music producers" from "Brooklyn" that want a second or third date. So Dan really only has two options: suddenly get really cool with something he finds actually revolting, or put on his big-boy pants and tell Phil the truth.
Letting Phil sow his wild oats and eventually sow his wild oats out of Dan's life is a hard no. So that leaves option two.
But imagine this. Dan confesses to Phil, and they give their relationship the old college try (again). But what if work gets stressful again? What if Dan feels stuck again? What if Phil feels stuck? What if the same thing happens again, where tying their relationship to their work and fame makes it all explode in their faces, but this time it's 10 million times worse because they literally should have learned this lesson already?
Or even worse, what if Phil rejects him? Phil's had a lot to deal with. He's had a tough few years with family stuff, not to mention his own chronic illness, and his own struggle to balance work and anxiety and society and et cetera, et cetera. Why would he want Dan suddenly upending their stable, chill, and reliable relationship just because Dan can't handle the idea of Phil ending up with someone else? And if Phil says no… then that really is the only option—watching Phil date Surfer Sam and Record Label Ryan until one of those complete squares…what? Wins Phil over forever?
Dan stays like that for five motionless hours, doom-spiraling so hard that the sun starts to come up. When the first rays of daylight get strong enough to punch through his eyelids, he gets up. Phil rolled off him at some point in the night, so he managed to leave the bedroom without disturbing him.
Twenty minutes later, he's at the kitchen island answering emails, guzzling black coffee, and getting ready to munch on Biscoff cookies for the next two hours. He makes it to one hour fifty before he gets distracted wondering what else is in the fridge, and realizes they barely have anything left. Probably because Phil could go through even a brick of butter in two days if he was bored enough.
Dan contemplates getting groceries delivered for a solid ten minutes, but decides he could use the walk to clear his head. It's early enough that anyone who would recognize him would probably still be asleep.
He steps out into the muggy spring air and breathes in. Ah, London, never change.
The problem is, Dan has to do something. It would be unfair to Phil to say nothing and expect him to be Dan and Dan's alone without even a conversation. Maybe they can rebuild from whatever mess Dan makes by being honest, but at least he's being honest. If he keeps doing what he did last night, snapping at Phil and acting all possessive and territorial, he's going to lose him, no doubt about it. But if he approaches this situation with his heart barred, and doing his therapist proud by being honest with his needs, Phil would never be the type of person to take that badly. Phil always met authenticity and vulnerability with compassion, and that's what Dan loves about him.
He comes to when a mother of four nearly takes his foot off with a grocery cart. He quickly gets the good butter, probably churned by authentic English milkmaids, and picks up bread on the side that's so fresh, Aladdin would probably try and make a beeline for it. Dan ambles over to the self-checkout, lost in a fantasy of riding on a magic carpet with Aladdin, until he realizes he's left the store and walked four blocks.
He returns home with the bread and butter and lays them out on the counter. Phil's still not up, so he puts everything away and dives back into his inbox.
It's almost noon when Phil finally stumbles into the kitchen, rubbing his eyes.
"You didn't sleep last night," Phil declares, he himself looking barely awake yet.
Instead of replying, Dan shoves a cup of tea over to Phil, cutting him off at the pass before Phil accidentally drinks coffee again and gives himself migraines.
"I feel great," Dan says. His eye bags feel like they have physical weight on his face, but that's neither here nor there. He means to just turn and point at the spoils from the morning, but since he's a little sleep deprived, it seems to come off in a kind of sudden jerking motion that makes Phil jump. "I got breakfast. You ran out of your favorite peasant food."
"Yum!" Phil says, perking up. He shuffles through the kitchen and takes a peek at what Dan bought. "And you got the good stuff!" He does this thing with his eyes, making them big and fluttery in a way that he knows totally works on Dan. "Cut the bread for me, please?"
Dan — half because he feels kind of bad for flipping out at Phil yesterday, and half because Phil told him to — sighs and takes out the bread knife. For extra measure, when he's done hacking away at the loaf, he adds a healthy dollop of butter and shakes the wedge at Phil.
"Need me to feed you too?" he says, smirking a little. It might just be his imagination, but he sees Phil go a little red. However, before Dan can revel in his victory, Phil takes Dan up on his challenge, and in an exaggeratedly sultry motion, slowly lowers himself until he's looking up at Dan, wide eyes searching and pliant when he takes a small bite from Dan's hand. Dan's brain short-circuits when he feels Phil's lips lightly ghost over his fingers, and like a scared deer, he jerks his hand back and drops Phil's breakfast on the kitchen counter.
"Shit. Shit. Sorry." Dan says, and he feels his face heat up. He must be practically scarlet. "I'll get a plate —" He jerks up, yanks the dishwasher open, and grabs the first plate he sees, which happens to be this disgusting plastic Hamtaro monstrosity Phil had from his York University days. Because the Hamtaro plate technically should not be run under a dishwasher — given that it's actually plastic — Hamtaro's face has warped into a permanently smirking and cackling demon that now laughs at Dan as he slams the plate down, picks up the piece of bread he dropped, and shoves the plate back over to Phil.
"There. Breakfast is served." Dan says, except Phil is looking at him with an increasing amount of concern, not dissimilar to the face he made when Dan sprayed himself in the eye with deodorant.
"Dan," Phil says, kind of serious. "Is this about last night? Did I make you uncomfortable?"
"No!" Dan yells. When Phil visibly startles, Dan lowers his voice. "No, no, it's not you. I was the one who made you uncomfortable, and I'm sorry."
"You already apologized," Phil actually looks confused. "And I did say it was okay. Don't beat yourself up about it."
"I just don't want to be that guy anymore," Dan says, in a bit of a panic, absolutely refusing to be absolved. "I want to be someone who's, like, good to you." His face definitely gets even redder, but he plunges on. "And I don't want to be the kind of person that's controlled by their issues, you know?"
"Dan, you are good to me." Phil leans forward on the kitchen counter. "And I don't think you're that controlled by your issues." He bites his lip, thinking for a moment. "I've also thought about it, and honestly, I think I'm going to stop… um... looking around so to speak?"
Dan can actually feel his heart rocket into his throat. That pounding feeling in his ribcage is getting worse. There's some noise—some kind of crooning, sappy 90's Brit Pop romance number he doesn't even know he remembered—blaring in his ears. Can anyone else hear that? He wishes it wasn't so loud, he can barely hear himself talk.
"Uh... wait like... Like what? Huh? What does that mean?" Dan says, and mentally facepalms himself, hard. You total fail.
Phil shrugs. "Maybe you're right. I'm not in a place to be dating around. Or dating anyone for that matter."
"No, wait," Dan insists. "That is absolutely not what I meant. Please don't make any unilateral decisions based on the things I've said."
Phil raises his eyebrows. "Dan, I didn't make this decision with you in mind." At Dan's no doubt totally disbelieving expression, he insists, "No really! I just did some of the old reflecting. You just happened to be right."
"What?" Dan says incredulously. "When would you even have time to 'reflect,' in your sleep?"
Phil makes a duh , expression, and Dan can't even begin to articulate why that makes absolutely no sense. Phil fills the silence with an even more baffling explanation. "Yeah, my dreams are the best place to process emotions. For example, last night, after I killed my maths teacher, who turned out to be a vampire, Sarah Michelle Gellar — not Buffy, I want to be clear — and I went to the old shopping mall behind my old house in Rawtenstall, and we were trying clothes on at the TopShop that closed down five years ago, and we just gabbed the entire situation out. She said there was nothing wrong with just focusing on me, even though I'm the hottest I've ever been, and I told her she was my best friend, and that I love her, and then I woke up."
Dan wants to know exactly what he gabbed about with "Sarah Michelle Gellar," but his being self-centered is what got him in this mess in the first place, so he doesn't ask. "Did you apologize for bringing a cardboard cutout of her to prom?" he deflects instead.
"No, obviously, dream-her thought it was super funny." Phil frowns, then points at Dan threateningly. "We're getting distracted. The point is, I've just got a lot on my plate right now. I don't need all that dating and romance stuff complicating my life."
Dan's heart sinks. He looks down at the counter, focusing on the cold marble underneath his hands.
"I mean," Phil fake-flips his hair. "I just think the amount of attention I've been getting because of my new hair has been very flattering, and I really wanted to chase that bliss. But you know, just because even more men than usual are into me now doesn't mean I have to throw myself out there to whoever. Besides. I just feel like with everything I've been through, I'm okay just being by myself for a while."
Dan still hasn't said anything, not really meeting Phil's eye.
"And Dan," Phil says, gently. "I uh. I don't want to talk about anything you don't want to. But I just… I know you have issues with the entire abandonment thing. And I just really, really want to make sure you know that you don't have anything to worry about in that department. I'm really happy with what the two of us have right now, and I wasn't looking for another person to muck that—"
"So," Dan interjects. "You're just going to have no one else in your life, and you're just going to stay in this house with me and make videos together? No boyfriend, no sex, no romance or anything? You're going to give all that up?"
"Hey." Phil crosses his arms. "Don't flatter yourself. I don't have 'no one'. I have our friends. I have my brother. I have my family." Phil smirks. "Besides. There's nothing wrong with being by myself until I decide the right person has come along. If that ever happens."
The problem with Dan is that he spent so long freaking out, he'd had no time to practice what to actually say. What is he even supposed to do here? He tries to recall romcoms he's loved, and what they said to each other at the big moment. But the problem with him and Phil is they've had so many big moments together, filled with so many declarations of commitment and rearrangement, that Dan struggles to even know where to begin. Like, what is he even supposed to say, something like:
"That's bullshit."
"Hey!" Phil blinks. "You can't say that to a guy who just poured his heart out to you!"
"But all the hard stuff in your life would be easier if you had someone else to share that burden with," Dan points out, infallibly. "No human being is better alone, especially you."
"But I'm not alone," Phil says. "I have you."
"No, Phil—"
Phil's eyes immediately go wide as saucers. The look of pure hurt on his face feels like he's picked up the butter knife and is twisting it into Dan's heart.
"No, not like that," Dan is begging him to understand. "No, of course you've got me." He's been gripping the counter this entire time, and only has the wherewithal to let go when he realizes his knuckles are turning white and his hands are hurting. "But…but…what I'm saying is, you don't need to look for 'the right person' because he's standing right in front of you, and in case it's not extra, extra clear, I want that person to be me!"
Phil still isn't saying anything, just staring up at Dan, as if he's waiting for him to finish. "And," he continues, not even sure if he has more to say but just letting his brain go for it anyway. "I want to try this again. Us, together, but for real this time. No secrets, no pretenses, just you are my boyfriend and I am yours. I know I mucked it up in the past, but this time I know I can do it right—"
"What did it?" Phil interrupts.
"W—huh?" Dan nearly bites his own tongue as he skids to a halt. "Like..?"
"What finally did it?" Phil says again, face unreadable. "What finally made it click?"
"Uh… I…" Phil levels an expectant stare at Dan, and Dan still can't really tell what Phil's thinking, which is such an alien concept that it totally throws him off his game. So his brain decides to course-correct, because he's sleep-deprived and when he's in a socially confusing situation, he finds that sometimes talking nonstop usually intimidates the universe hard enough that it just lets him have his way.
"Um… okay," he feels the ramble building up. "It was 2009, and I'd finally gotten to Manchester Station after enduring a 3-hour train ride where I sat next to a guy who peeled an entire onion and ate it in front of me, and the entire time I spent looking for you in the station I had gotten so excited I almost threw up in a Nando's bin. And when I was in school, I'd built this whole tough outer shell of edginess, and sarcasm, and cruelty, so the shitty boys in my shitty town would leave me alone, and obviously that meant I wouldn't emote that much in public. But when I finally broke through the crowd at the station and saw you for the first time, just waiting for me there—"
Phil laughs, startling Dan out of the wind-up whirlwind of a confessional. But he actually feels himself untensing a bit when he realizes that Phil's face has softened. "No, I don't mean the first time we ever met, I meant now. What made you realize now?"
Dan had come to Phil as a nervous teenager. He was too loud, too awkward, and was jumpy like a hit dog, way too aware of his surroundings. But Phil gave his entire person so Dan could finally feel free enough to be his entire person, too. And because of that, Dan would do whatever he needed to do to keep Phil, because he found Phil, and Phil found him, and the rest is history.
If Phil doesn't feel the same way anymore, and he would rather just be friends, then fine. Dan can learn to live with that. But Phil is the most important person in his life, and no matter their past, Dan will fight with everything he has to make sure Phil stays in his life, in whatever capacity he will allow him.
"It was something I always wanted," Dan says. "But now I'm finally smart enough to do something about it. It's okay if you want to wait a week, a month, years, whatever, until you decide you're ready. But I want to be with you, in the real way, not this…" Dan trails off. "Not whatever it is we're doing now. I'm sorry if that upsets things, and I understand if you would need to take time for yourself. But I need to let you know now before it's too late, because you are the right person for me, Phil, and I don't want anyone else, do you get me? Like this, we, together. This is the end for me."
Phil suddenly gets up, so Dan stops talking. He waits to see if Phil is going to walk right out of the room, and maybe out of his life, but instead Phil keeps walking until he's about two steps away from Dan, crowding in his space. He has one hand on the counter, keeping things just close enough for plausible deniability, that Dan desperately wants to plausibly un-deny.
"Dan," Phil says, plainly. "I'm going to kiss you. You need to tell me now if that's not okay."
Huh? Wuh? Wait, was it that easy?
Phil doesn't back away. Instead, he hooks his pinky finger into Dan's belt loops, so if Dan has any idea of backing away, he would have to drag Phil with him. Phil's eyes are lidded, and his lips are turned up into this challenging smile, his tongue poking out a little at the edge of his mouth.
"I think you greatly, greatly underestimate how badly I've wanted this," Phil says, his breath ghosting over Dan's lips. "So, I'm telling you, I'm going to kiss you right now, and you are going to need to tell me right now, if that's okay with you."
"Muh." Dan fumbles.
"I'm taking that as a yes." Phil decides, and at that he reaches up, tips Dan's chin down with is thumb, and kisses him.
Dan's brain, for all the ways the little bastard has tortured him, at least gets on board with this immediately, not even needing a second to wrap his hand around Phil's waist, tugging him closer so they can deepen their kiss and start properly making out. Dan realizes that Phil is kissing him in such a way that only people who've been holding themselves back from something they've wanted for a long time kiss someone. Which, okay, hot.
Wow. Dan's brain supplies. Phil is like, really, really into you.
They make out on the kitchen counter for who knows how long until one of them or both of them runs out of breath, to which Dan pulls back, mostly for his sanity. Phil looks up at him, expectantly.
"Do we need to talk about this more?" Phil asks because he has to.
"Yes. But later," Dan says, to which Phil smirks.
"That works for me." And then Phil grabs Dan's shirt collar, yanking him until he's just millimeters from his face. "Come back here. I'm not done with you yet."
***
Dan's life is awesome.
***
When Dan had first met his therapist, he was a chronically sleep-deprived 24-year-old who felt like his life had ended.
Why? Well, he, unfortunately, had gone and made himself famous.
Ever since he was a teenager, all Dan wanted was to be well-liked. He never felt like he had permission to be of the world. The only things that taught him how to be were the music he listened to, the movies he watched, and the books he loved. The YouTubers he watched. People liked people who knew how to connect to them, and for Dan, the hope of one day making good art that convinced people he was worth keeping around, it felt like this ultimate saving grace, the final permission to stick around.
"If you lost this permission," his therapist had asked, on their first session. "What would that mean to you then?"
"I mean," Dan had said bluntly. "I did try to kill myself as a teenager. So, you can kind of guess my answer to that question."
"Do you still want to kill yourself?" His therapist had asked, neutral.
"No," Immediate response. "Look, can we be frank here? I know it's a bad thing to say, to say you didn't kill yourself because of someone, because forums I read on the internet say that it's a fucked up thing to do to hinge your entire existence on one person. Well, unfortunately for them, for me, that person is Phil. He actually saved my life, and together with him, I made my dreams come true."
Dan had paused then, fighting back this choking feeling in his throat, a tightness in his chest — a far too common occurrence back then. When his vision had cleared, Dan finally found it in himself to continue. "So you can kind of understand my despair," he'd said. "When I took this one person, that made me feel safe, and I went and made us famous."
Dan never felt more of the world than at nineteen, sitting cross-legged in some shitty Manchester flat, slurping Chinese while going over a sketch with Phil. All his self-hatred, his insecurities, his closetedness had melted away in this world Phil promised him, because none of it mattered.
And then he went, and not only turned a fucking stage light on his small corner of the world — but by becoming famous, Dan had managed to isolate the two of them on a mountain of their notoriety.
"I got everything I wanted, and it's only made everything worse," Dan had said, face buried into his hands. "I can't sleep, I can't move, I can't eat. I feel like someone's always watching me, and I'm paralyzed. It feels too familiar, and I'm freaking out — I can't… I can't go back. I remade my life, why isn't it better?"
"What belongs to you, Dan?" his therapist had asked, instead of responding.
Dan remembered finally bursting into tears that very first session, because he couldn't come up with anything. His bedroom didn't belong to him, his apartment didn't belong to him. Phil didn't belong to him. Maybe his teen self doomed him, because right from the start as a kid, all Dan knew how to do was to cut off parts of himself and desperately offer them to whoever would take them.
"Dan," his therapist had said, "you aren't doomed. Any person is capable of change, and any situation is capable of being changed."
"Not me," Dan had mumbled. "All I know how to do is deliberate over shit decisions, and making said shit decisions anyway."
"You just need help," his therapist had replied, "Phil helped you when you needed it the most. And now I am here, and I'm willing to help you. All you need to do is just accept it."
"What," Dan had laughed, blowing his nose loudly into a fist of Kleenex. "I accept your help, and then what, you belong to me?"
"Yes," his therapist had said, mouth quirking up, "I belong to you."
Dan lies in bed now with Phil, who's drooling onto his chest. Dan has an arm thrown around his shoulders, hugging Phil closer to him, and he stares out into the night sky from the window of the home they own together. He thinks about belonging to the world. He thinks about getting to kiss Phil again tomorrow.
He's going to have a lot to talk about next week.