Archive of Our Own ^beta

2009

Phil kisses Dan first.

It’s Dan’s first time kissing a boy, and afterwards he dimly remembers being surprised by the softness of Phil’s lips against his own. He is eighteen—not quite fully grown into his lanky frame; uncertain of his sexuality and terrified by the gaping chasm that lies before his feet and consists of things like job, university, and future.

They’ve just finished filming ‘Phil Is Not on Fire’ and he knows it’s coming—sort of, anyway. He and Phil have danced around it for months and months as they’ve talked online; exchanging flirty tweets and vaguely R-rated Dailybooth photos and swapping innuendos over Skype for six hours at a time. He supposes it had been implied when he bought his train ticket and actually agreed to travel halfway across the country to meet Phil in person; that the two of them being in the same physical space would lead to some sort of physical activity in between them.

But there had been doubts, too—as Dan had sat on the train, nerves bubbling in his stomach, left knee jiggling incessantly, he had mentally replayed all of his interactions with Phil leading up to that point, wondering, hoping, praying that he hadn’t interpreted things wrong; that Phil was going to be just as sweet and funny in person as he seemed online; that Phil—his favorite YouTuber, his idol—as incredible as it seemed, could actually see something in him and want to meet him.

Dan’s mum—a very shrewd woman—had given him a worried look as she’d hugged him and seen him off to Manchester that morning. She’d always very firmly believed in the idea that if something seemed too good to be true, it probably was. Of course, she didn’t really understand the how internet worked, so her fears were more that he’d be murdered in a basement and have his organs sold on the black market than that Dan and Phil wouldn’t hit it off as compatible friends. Still, her pinched expression as she’d dropped him off at the train station had rattled around his brain the entire ride to Phil’s.

By the time his train had pulled into the station, he’d half-convinced himself that this was all some grand joke; that he was being punk’d, that he’d step off the train and Phil wouldn’t be there waiting for him; that Phil would just be sitting in his house instead and having a laugh at poor, stupid Dan, who’d actually come all the way to Manchester thinking that AmazingPhil would seriously want to hang out with him.

Okay, so he’d been a little dramatic.

Because as soon as he’d stepped off the train, stomach in his shoes, he’d seen Phil standing across the station, holding a sign with Dan’s name and a smiley face on it in bright purple marker (as though there were a possibility that Dan might not have been able to recognize Phil anywhere), a dorky grin on his face as he waved Dan over emphatically.

And then all of a sudden, he and Phil had been embracing hello, and Dan knew that Phil smelled like pine and honey and laundry soap, and that Phil was a really good hugger, and that the two of them were almost the same height.

And then Phil had said “hi” in the most Northern accent and all of a sudden they’d been chattering away about Manchester and the train ride and the fact that Phil’s parents’ house was like something from The Shining, and all Dan’s fears had dissipated as they walked to Starbucks.

And now here they are, one day later, sprawled horizontally on Phil’s bed, limbs tangled together.

“Is this okay?” Phil asks, breaking away from Dan for a minute, his expression endearingly anxious. Half of his hair is standing up straight and his cat whiskers are smudged, and Dan is sure that he looks no better himself.

And there is an instant where Dan pauses; considers the ramifications of what this could mean for their friendship if they continue.

But he is eighteen, and he has never kissed a boy before, so he surges forward and reclaims Phil’s lips against his own, some of the initial shyness melting away.

“I know that we Skyped for ages and exchanged photos and everything, but I’m really glad you didn’t turn out to be a creepy fifty-year-old man in real life,” Phil mumbles, which would be kind of a libido-killer were it not for the fact that Phil’s hands are inching down to the button and zipper on Dan’s jeans.

“So you wouldn’t have minded if I turned out to be a 20-year-old Italian supermodel?” Dan asks. He means it jokingly, but Phil’s expression is serious as he responds, his eyes never leaving Dan’s face.

“No, I would’ve minded. I’m really glad you’re you.” Then Phil leans up and kisses him on the corner of his mouth, and Dan’s heart does a little skip and it’s all so corny but it’s perfect, and he can’t believe the Phil of his dreams is actually even better in reality.

“That’s the sappiest thing—” Dan begins to say with a laugh, but his words cut off into a moan—Phil must have somehow worked Dan’s jeans open without him noticing, because Phil’s hand is suddenly inside his boxers, long fingers wrapping around Dan’s half-hard dick and stroking.

Dan is instantly practically whimpering into Phil’s neck, overwhelmed by the intensity of the sensation. He’s had sex before, but it has never felt this overwhelming so quickly, and especially not over a mere handjob.

He comes embarrassingly quickly, but Phil doesn’t laugh at him. Instead he kisses Dan on the corner of his mouth and gets him a damp washcloth to clean up with.

“Want me to return the favor?” Dan asks. He’s never given a handjob before, but he’s eager to touch Phil; to try and make him fall apart beneath Dan’s hands.

“Have you ever done this before?” Phil asks, as though reading his mind.

“Er—with a guy? No. But I want to learn,” Dan says, embarrassed by the eagerness in his own voice.

Phil considers him for a minute. “Maybe another time,” he says. “I don’t want you to feel obligated to, just because I—”

“Oh, trust me, it wouldn’t be out of obligation,” Dan says. “I want to.” And to prove how much he wants to, he slides one hand down to where Phil’s erection is tenting his jeans. It’s an incredible turn-on to know that he did this; that Phil, who he has idolized for ages, wants him too.

As it turns out, giving handjobs is almost as fun as receiving them, and it’s going to be a very long time before Dan forgets the fucking noises that come out of Phil’s mouth, Jesus Christ. The following days pass in a blur or filming and sex and happiness, and Dan knows that going home is going to be horrible; that he’s going to spend every second of the day wishing he could be back in Manchester.

There is still no mention of what the sex means, or if it had even meant anything at all. Dan isn’t sure what the protocol is—does he just follow Phil’s lead and not mention it? Phil’s older and more experienced at this kind of thing, so he holds his tongue at the risk of seeming overeager.

On Dan’s last day in Manchester, they both sit in Phil’s family room trying to shove as much of Dan’s clean laundry into his suitcase as possible, chatting idly.

“One of my exes actually works at the train station,” Phil mentions casually. “Hopefully you won’t run into him. It didn’t end well, needless to say. He threw a shoe at my head.”

“I just got out of a long-term relationship a few months ago myself,” Dan admits while they’re on the subject. “We were together for three years.”

“That’s a long time,” Phil says absentmindedly, folding a pair of Dan’s socks and tossing them over.

“Yeah, it was never going to last between me and her, but I learned a lot. I think it’ll make me smarter in my next relationship—” he wonders if that’s too blunt and backtracks a little. “I mean, you know, the next time I have a relationship. Not that I’m like, looking for one right now or anything; I'm not ready—” he cuts off his own babbling before he says any other stupid things.

“Anyway, now I don’t have to feel bad about leaving home to go to uni if I want since we’re not together anymore. Hopefully I can come up here near Manchester. I have to sort some things out, though. I’m still figuring it all out,” Dan says, waving a hand nervously. He would love to move to Manchester but, again, doesn’t want to seem creepily overeager. “Oh, shit—my phone charger is upstairs.”

“I’ll wait for you,” Phil says, and he sounds a little nervous. Maybe he’s worried about Dan missing his train. “Til you’re ready. I’d wait. If you want.”

“Great,” Dan says distractedly. “Be right back.” And then he’s dashing up the stairs to grab the five million things that he suddenly remembers he’d forgotten. The trip to the train station is a bit of a haze, worrying if he has everything, if he’d remembered his ticket, if he’s going to be late and miss the train.

The busyness and rush makes it easier to say goodbye to Phil, but it still sucks.

“I’m going to try and figure things out,” he promises. Going to uni in Manchester would be sick, but he’ll have to talk his parents around to the idea.

“Yeah? Let me know when you do. I’ll wait,” Phil promises with a hopeful smile, and Dan takes that as a good sign. He spends the entire train journey imagining living in Manchester and seeing Phil every day.

It still bothers him that they haven’t talked at all about what had transpired between the two of them, but they’ll figure things out. They have plenty of time.

2010

Dan has never had a best friend before.

The timing couldn’t be worse, really.

He goes to university because it’s expected of him. He’s always been a pretty good student, although all his teachers used to sigh and tell his parents “he’d be much better if he just applied himself more.”

But the thing is, if Dan isn’t interested in it, he doesn’t want to learn about it. As soon as he starts university and goes to his first law classes, he already knows that it’s not what he wants to do with his life. But he resolves to stick with it for the time being—to push through the loneliness and the increasing feeling of being trapped into a life that he does not want—to avoid disappointing his parents.

He knows that university is supposed to be the best years of his life, and that he’s supposed to meet the people that will stand up at his wedding and be the godparents of his future children, but he’s been at uni for a month and he hasn’t had much luck on that front.

Sure, he’s made a decent amount of casual friends in his lectures and in the dorm, but he’s not really a part of an actual friend group. Whenever he does something with people at school, he has to be the awkward one to insert himself into their plans—nobody minds having him along, but he usually has to ask to be included.

So there are nights like this one, where he’s alone in his dorm room on a Saturday with nothing to do. He can hear people on his floor getting ready to go out for the night—the sounds of thumping music and raucous laughter carry down the hall where he is sitting alone in his pajamas. He has been away from home for a month and he hasn’t felt truly happy or comfortable in that entire time, and all of a sudden he is overswept by a loneliness so intense that it almost takes his breath away.

There is really only one person who will make him feel better, and his fingers are tapping out a message before he’s even aware of picking up his phone.

22:32 TO: Phil

Hey what are you up to?

Dan could make friends if he wanted to; he knows that—there’s a lot of stuff that he doesn’t like about himself (most aspects of his personality, actually), but he objectively knows that he’s attractive and that he has a pretty good sense of humor. But he’s never been very good at it, to be honest. He’s always been a bit too intense, or maybe too annoying. He’s moody and sarcastic at times, and people just seem to get tired of him easily.

But not Phil.

It’s been a year since he first met Phil at the Manchester train station, and Phil shows no signs of getting bored or walking away. And it’s still mind-boggling to Dan that Phil—popular YouTuber Phil, who has loads of friends from both uni and YouTube, who is so sunny and cheerful and kind—could have a genuine interest in being Dan’s friend.

He’s able to see Phil fairly often since his uni is up in Manchester, but it’s not as often as he’d like. He can’t help but worry that Phil doesn’t feel the same way; that he answers Dan’s texts and facebook messages to humor Dan; that he is going to turn out to be like everyone else Dan has ever been close friends with and eventually stop responding and grow distant.

Or worse, that Phil is going to keep Dan around only for the sake of the casual sex.

Because the thing is, they hook up almost every time they see each other, but they’ve never really talked about it. In the beginning, he’d assumed that maybe Phil was just waiting til they knew each other better and had spent more time together in person before taking steps towards a real relationship. But it’s been a year, and Phil has never once mentioned the word ‘boyfriend.’

As though the universe can read Dan’s thoughts, his phone buzzes.

22:35 FROM: Phil

Hey yourself :)

Just editing a new video—trying to get it all done tonight but it’s a monster :P

What’s up?

Phil doesn’t like labels. This is something that Dan has learned about him over the past year—he prefers not to worry about defining his sexuality and, perhaps by extension, his romantic relationships. Dan wonders if that’s why Phil has never wanted to discuss the parameters of their friendship and sex life. It’s one of the things he admires and respects the most about Phil—his individuality; his refusal to box himself in with definitions; his willingness to embrace the unique parts of himself as special. But it makes things confusing.

22:36 TO: Phil

Not much, just having a quiet night in

He sighs and flops back on his bed, allowing himself to wallow a little bit. He doesn’t want to bother Phil when he’s trying to be productive because he understands how time-consuming and arduous editing videos can be. But sometimes he wishes he could just tell Phil how much he wants to spend time with him without feeling clingy and needy for saying it; how he never gets tired of hanging out with him, even when they just sit quietly together on Skype. How he would happily just sit silently with Phil while he edits, simply content to be in his company.

22:36 FROM: Phil

You okay?

It’s a little alarming how well Phil can read him, even over a simple text message. He gives himself a few minutes to think of a good response, one that’s a bit more upbeat than the honest “no” that’s flashing through his head.

22:39 FROM: Phil

Dan?

The fact that Phil had sat and waited for Dan’s response for three minutes while probably worrying about him unexpectedly makes Dan’s eyes burn a little. Ignoring the sensation, he grabs his phone.

22:39 TO: Phil

Yeah, sorry, no worries. Just feeling a bit lonely and homesick tonight.

Good luck editing :)

He doesn’t get a response, and he tells himself it doesn’t matter—Phil’s probably gone back to work, and he tends to put his phone on the other side of the room when he’s in the zone.

Dan eventually dozes off, phone in his hand so he can feel it vibrate right away if he gets a message. But he reminds himself not to be too hopeful.

Dan is awakened some undetermined amount of time later by persistent knocking at the door of his room.

He is tempted to roll over and go back to sleep, but lying down in skinny jeans isn’t very comfortable and the knocking isn’t going away.

He stumbles across the room and opens the door groggily, still only half-awake.

“Quick, let me in—some guy almost just puked on my shoes in the hallway,” Phil says, ducking inside Dan’s room with a bright smile.

“Phil—what?” Dan exhales in confusion, blinking a few times to make sure he isn’t still dreaming.

“I decided to take a break from editing,” Phil shrugs. “But god, I always forget how awfully freshers live. There was a girl crying in the stairwell when I came up here, and she said ‘go away, old man’ when I asked her if she was okay. Can you believe that?” Phil shucks his jumper and kicks his shoes off by the door.

“That’ll be Andrea,” Dan says knowingly. “She does that at least once a week—the drunk-crying thing, I mean. She’s never insulted me before, though, which is—hey, wait, why are you here?” He says, his brain finally catching up with the situation.

“Clearly because I’m a creepy old man trying to spy on young uni students,” Phil shrugs.

“Yes, 23 whole years old. You want to have a seat on my bed? I’d hate for you to break your hip having to stand for so long.”

“You need to learn to mind your elders,” Phil laughs. “I’m leaving.”

But he steps further inside instead.

“You were lonely,” Phil shrugs, as though it’s a foregone conclusion that it’s his job to be there for Dan when he’s upset. “So here I am.”

Dan is at a bit of a loss for words all of a sudden.

“Are you okay?” Phil continues. “I remember how overwhelming the first few months of uni were.”

Dan shrugs, not wanting to admit how much of a baby he’s being right now. “I think I just need to be distracted from everything for a while. Get my mind off things.”

Phil waggles his eyebrows suggestively. “I can do distracting.”

“I was actually going to suggest Mario Kart,” Dan muses with a laugh. “But I’m pretty open to alternate ideas.”

“Oh, I have something that you can get your mind on,” Phil says with another exaggerated eyebrow waggle.

“Out,” Dan says. “Get out and go cry on the stairs with Andrea. What does that even mean, Philip?” But it’s the first time all week that he’s genuinely laughed at something, and he feels about 100% better when the two of them fall into Dan’s narrow bed together, limbs intertwined.

And Phil does fulfill his promise of being a good distraction. One hour and one amazing blowjob later (“Just call me AmazingBlowjobPhil,” Phil jokes. “Out,” Dan threatens again. “Seriously, you’re sleeping in the stairwell and I don’t care if that guy comes back and really pukes on you.”), it feels much easier to talk about what is bothering him. Of course, it does help that Phil’s legs are slotted against his own and that Phil’s nose is pressed against his neck and that Phil’s thumb is absentmindedly tracing patterns on his hipbone. One of his favorite parts of Phil coming to visit him at the dorm is the fact that they have to share such a small sleeping space. He knows it’s a little selfish and perhaps even a little creepy, but he likes the casual intimacy.

“I don’t think this is what I want to do with my life and I don’t know how to tell my parents,” Dan says in one huge exhale. Phil’s arms tighten around him. Normally Dan prefers to be the big spoon, but there are some moments when he doesn’t mind being taken care of. “Everybody here at uni seems to have all these friends and love their classes, but I don’t. I love making videos and I don’t want a boring desk job, you know?”

“Yeah, I do, actually,” Phil laughs, and Dan remembers that Phil also must have gone through this exact same thing at some point a few years ago. “But if you really don’t want to do uni, I’m sure your parents will understand eventually. It took mine some time when I didn’t graduate and get a proper career, but now they see that I’m doing something that makes me really happy, and that’s all they really want for me.”

“I’ll probably stick it out at least for the rest of the year,” Dan sighs. “Give myself some time to start planting the idea in my parents’ head. They’ve been calling me and asking how it’s going and if I’ve made friends and stuff, and I don’t really know what to tell them.”

“Well, you have me as your best friend,” Phil says, and even though his tone is light, it’s the first time he’s called Dan that, and it means something coming from Phil. Phil, who hates labels, but drops everything to come see Dan when he’s feeling down. Phil, who is the first person to call him ‘best friend’ and who shows no signs of going anywhere.

And Dan’s starting to think that maybe labeling things is overrated.

“You know,” Dan says conversationally, proud of his spontaneous emotional growth. “There’s so much complicated shit going on in my life lately, and it makes me really glad that what we have is so easy. Being best friends is good. Let’s not change, yeah?”

Phil is silent for a long minute. “Yeah, sure, Dan,” he says quietly. “Let’s not change things.” Dan smiles sleepily in the darkness. Phil is quiet as he loosens his grip on Dan and shifts backwards, putting an inch or two of space between the two of them. Dan is too busy drifting off to sleep to really notice or think anything of it.

(A month later, Phil sneaks McDonald’s into the hospital when Dan has to have surgery, and he sits with him when he’s doped up on morphine and makes a minimal amount of fun of him afterwards. He’s there for all the existential crises and panic about what Dan is going to do with the future. 3 months after the hospital, he asks if Dan wants to get a flat with him the next year, and he sits right next to Dan on the couch when Dan makes the call to tell his parents he’s not returning to uni.

If this is what having a best friend is like, then Dan doesn’t know how he went nearly 20 years without it. But they still sleep in separate beds and don’t touch each other in public.

Maybe, Dan thinks, maybe after he sorts out all the mess with leaving uni and figuring out how to make a career out of vlogging, he will be the one to ask Phil out on a proper date.

After all, there’s always next year.)   

2011

2011 is the year things start to change.

Dan is suddenly taller than Phil, for one.

YouTube itself changes.

For the first time since the website’s inception, YouTubers are actually achieving real-life fame. It starts with things like partnerships and paid ads and sponsored videos, and spreads to merchandise and conventions and a whole community of vloggers who have millions of subscribers and Twitter followers. And somehow, absurdly enough, Dan and Phil are a part of them—well, not the million subscribers part, but Dan’s subscriber count jumps up each and every day in 2011.

The first time he gets recognized on the street, he calls his mum. He means for the conversation to be a sort of passive-aggressive ‘haha-see-I-can-make-it-in-the-world’ type of thing, but a minute into the conversation he realizes he sounds almost as excited as he did on Christmas morning at the age of six and she tells him she’s really proud of him and he may or may not get a little emotional. The next person he immediately calls to tell is Phil, even though they live together and he’s walking back to their shared flat from the shop where he saw the two girls who recognized him.

“Two girls at the shop knew who I was!” He says when Phil answers the phone.

“Well, I know Manchester is a big city, Dan, but that’s really not that shocking—”

“Phiiillll,” Dan groans. “You know exactly what I mean. They just came right up and said they’ve each been subscribed to me for about a year now. What are the odds that in a world of 7 billion people, 50,000 of whom are my subscribers, I see two of them in the grocery store in Manchester?”

“Proud of you,” Phil says simply, and Dan can hear the smile in his voice. “Now, the real matter at hand—did you get the sugar like I asked?”

“Shit,” Dan exhales. “Can’t it wait til next time one of us goes shopping?”

“Not if you want me to make celebratory cupcakes for you.”

“Well, since you’re the one volunteering to make the cupcakes, maybe you should go to the shop and get the sugar,” Dan points out, rounding the corner. “And you just want to make sure there’s sugar for your coffee in the morning.”

“Well, you’re the famous one—don’t you want to go back to the store and interact with your adoring public?”

“Shut up, you bastard!” Dan laughs. “I’m already back at the flat, you can get your own damn sugar or drink your coffee black.”

(In the end, they both take a walk back to the shop after dinner that night, and then they make cupcakes together in the kitchen. Phil spills flour everywhere and they eat nearly half the batter before they even bake the cupcakes, and then Phil blows Dan in the shower and it’s good, it’s so good, and the way that they can do absolutely nothing together and have it still be just as fun and exciting as it was two years ago when they first met is all Dan has ever wanted in a relationship.

Too bad they’re just friends.)

A few months later on the day that Dan hits 100,000 subscribers, Phil wakes him up with a trail of kisses to his neck and presents him with the news.

It’s an excellent way to be awakened, but it throws him off balance. They very rarely do morning sex, because there’s something so—premeditated about it. The only time they share a bed is if they were drunk the night before and messing around or if one of them passes out right after sex, and even then, things are usually pretty businesslike by the morning.

But there is something about Phil entering his room when Dan is at his most vulnerable, curling up next to him and kissing him when he is half-awake and heavy-limbed. Morning sex doesn’t fit in with their current arrangement; it’s not the kind of thing that can be dismissed as a casual fuck. Because morning sex isn’t drunk fumbling and obnoxious mattress-creaking and laughing at who can come up with the most ridiculous innuendoes. Morning sex is Phil murmuring softly in his ear as he scissors Dan open with his fingers. It is half-lidded gazes and slow, lazy thrusts.

“Congratulations,” Phil says when they’ve pulled their boxers back on and collapsed against each other in Dan’s bed. “You now have as many people following you as the population of Kiribati.”

“Where’s Kiribati?”

“It’s a Pacific island,” Phil yawns.

“Why the fuck do you know that?” Dan asks.

“Google,” Phil shrugs, turning to nose against Dan’s neck.

Dan still feels oddly vulnerable after such intimate sex, and Phil’s casual affection is confusing and uncomfortable—on one hand, he never wants Phil to stop touching him, and on the other, he feels wrong for feeling this way and not telling Phil. Now’s not the moment to start this conversation, though.

“You want breakfast?” He asks, pushing away to sit up rather abruptly.

It might just be Dan’s imagination, but Phil’s face seems to fall a little. Maybe he’d been hoping for round two— considering that Phil is four years older, his stamina puts Dan to shame. “Sure, yeah. Do you want to do something later to celebrate?”

“Yeah,” Dan says. “Let’s go out to dinner.”

“Should we invite some friends to come along?” Phil asks.

“No,” Dan says a little bit too quickly for it to be entirely casual. To be honest, he selfishly wants Phil all to himself tonight. “We’re seeing everyone this weekend, remember? It’s too much work to try and plan something last minute today.”

Phil nods his indifferent acceptance and yawns, rolling into the empty space where Dan had been laying as Dan stands.

“I’m going to jump in the shower before breakfast,” Dan says, grabbing his towel. “Don’t eat my cereal while I’m gone.”

“No promises!” Phil calls as Dan ducks out of his room and into the hallway. This is one of the many new sides and shades of Phil that he has gotten to see since they moved in together a few months ago—he is a cereal stealer, for one, and a horribly sporadic cleaner (either everything is a hurricane/disaster zone, or he’s suddenly in the midst of power cleaning the whole flat). He gets anxious and annoyed when Dan procrastinates and makes them late to their various destinations, and he can be startlingly defensive when faced with even the most minor of confrontations.

Dan had initially worried when they moved in together that it would change their friendship; that they would grow to resent each other’s constant presence, or that he’d find out that they actually didn’t get along at all when forced to share a living space. But the opposite had happened, which, in retrospect, shouldn’t have surprised him—he hadn’t signed up to live with AmazingPhil, after all; he’d signed up to live with his best friend, who happens to be a cereal thief, plant hoarder, and blanket hog in bed.

As he turns the water on in the shower and waits for it to warm up, he fires off a message in the group chat he has going with his family, letting them know he’d hit 100,000 subscribers. His parents aren’t big texters so he might not get much of a response from them, but it saves him from having to make a phone call to each of them.

Sure enough, when he hops out of the shower fifteen minutes later, there are no messages from his parents. But there is one from his brother that simply says “wild” in response.

And he tries to ignore the way that needles under his skin as he towels off and brushes his teeth. He had been just as sullen and withdrawn from family conversation when he was in his early teens, so that doesn’t really bother him.

What does concern him is the way that his former life and present life seem to be drifting further and further apart. He supposes some of it is just a natural part of growing up, but the last time he’d visited home, he almost hadn’t known what to say to his family. Even though their support for him has grown steadily over the past year, his parents still don’t really understand the YouTube thing. They don’t watch his videos or follow him on social media, where his entire life is contained.

And his brother might watch his videos, but he doesn’t have anything to say about them. He spends all his time out with his friends or holed up in his bedroom, which, again, is normal, but Dan fears that if he doesn’t get to know his little brother now, when he is growing up and finding his identity, he never will; that one day he’ll show up at home and he will find an adult who has absolutely nothing in common with Dan other than genetics.

Just another fun existential crisis for 2011.

His previous good mood has deflated somewhat by the time he returns to his bedroom to get dressed. He almost drops his towel, startled, when he realizes that Phil is still in his bed. Upon closer inspection, he is fast asleep, obviously having drifted off instead of getting up for breakfast.

The sunlight illuminates Phil’s features, soft with sleep, and something clenches deep in Dan’s chest at the sight of Phil in his bed, under his covers, clearly comfortable and at ease in Dan’s space. At least if his family feels far away, he still has Phil.

And, he realizes, as he pulls on a t-shirt and sweats, that this is something he wants in his life for the foreseeable future and beyond. As he pours himself a bowl of cereal and turns on the coffee for Phil so that it’ll be ready when he gets up, his resolve strengthens. It hits him so simply and so easily, the fact that he has the ability to just ask Phil if he wants to do more than whatever it is they've been dancing around for two years. He only wonders why it's taken him this long to work up the courage to ask.

“Dan, are you sure you’re okay?” Phil asks for the third time since they’ve left the flat.

To be fair, since they’ve left the flat, Dan has tripped down the stairs, walked into the door, and turned and started walking the opposite direction of where the restaurant is.

“Yes, I’m fine,” Dan says impatiently. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Well, you’re sweating in November, for one. And then there was the stairs, and then there was the door, and—”

“Okay, I think that’s a clear enough picture!” Dan interjects loudly.

“Are you sure you’re feeling okay?” Phil asks cautiously.

Dan sighs. “Yeah, I’m fine. Maybe I’m coming down with a cold or something.” Or maybe I’m about to try and profess my feelings to you, and I’m freaking out about being shut down and losing my best friend and—

“Jeez, Dan,” Phil says, grabbing his arm as Dan almost meanders into oncoming traffic. “We don’t have to go out tonight if you’re not feeling well, you know. We could eat out any day.”

“No!” Dan says, because he put on a nice shirt and spent extra time on his hair and worked up all his courage, and if they go home he’ll completely lose his nerve. “Uh—there’s something I wanted to talk to you about at dinner.”

“Nothing bad, I hope,” Phil says, linking his arm through Dan’s as they walk. It is presumably just to keep Dan from accidentally killing himself, but Dan likes it nonetheless; likes walking in public while touching Phil; letting random people see them and assume what they want.

“No,” Dan says, swallowing audibly. “Nothing bad.”

They turn down the street and into the bustling, well-lit downtown area where they’ll be eating. Phil unlinks his arm and steps slightly away.

“Don’t want anyone taking pictures of us,” he shrugs, and it’s absolutely insane that that’s a thing they actually have to worry about. But over the past few months, it’s been happening more and more that people who are subscribed to him or Phil (or sometimes both of them) will either approach them to chat (which is generally pretty cool, unless he’s in a hurry or feeling particularly introverted) or they’ll just take creepy pictures from afar and then they’ll eventually show up on his dash on tumblr or in his twitter feed, which is more of a problem.

Dan tries not to feel hurt or take it too seriously that Phil doesn’t want to be seen touching him in public. But it does bring up some troubling questions—if they were to actually get together, would they have to always refrain from touching in public? What if their relationship became more of a focus than the actual content of their videos? He knows that that’s a huge reason why Phil is so private about certain things online—he wants his channel to be about his creativity and his content, not his sexuality or his past.

“You sure you’re okay?” Phil asks as they enter the restaurant. It is a small Italian place that they’ve frequented in the past, cozy and candlelit but still loud and bustling at this point in the evening.

“All good,” Dan lies, biting his lip nervously as Phil talks to the hostess, who leads them to a small table in the back corner.

They order margaritas (because Dan needs a drink, asap), and it’s hard not to relax after a while. They are surrounded by people but nobody seems to be looking at them. The drinks are good and the candlelight is oddly soothing. Phil takes forever perusing the menu (“Seriously, Phil, I’m going to order a cheese platter for you if you don’t decide what you want soon. No matter how much you debate, you get the same thing every time we come here, and I’m hungry,” Dan complains, rolling his eyes when Phil eventually orders the alfredo like he does every single time they’re here.)

By the time the food arrives, Dan feels back to being his usual self. After all, this is Phil. He can tell Phil anything. He can do this.

“So what did you want to talk about?” Phil asks, as though reading Dan’s mind.

“Well,” Dan begins, taking a deep breath.

“Hi! We’re huge fans of you guys, do you think we could get a picture?”

Dan wants to faceplant into his lasagna instead of taking a nice picture with the two interrupting teenage girls.

“Of course,” he says, gritting his teeth slightly.

“Oh, sorry to interrupt,” one of them says, apparently realizing that running up to people who are trying to eat could be a little distracting.

“That’s okay,” Phil says benevolently, because he’s a much better person than Dan. They obligingly pose for the photo and sign a couple of napkins before the girls leave.

“Sorry about that,” Phil says, carefully watching Dan’s face as he sits back down.

“Why? It’s not your fault. It’s not really anyone’s fault, even,” he pauses, trying to articulate his exact opinion. “I like that we have viewers, and I like that we get to interact with them and that they get excited to see us. It’s just…it kind of comes at a price, doesn’t it? This whole internet fame thing?”

And the thing is, they’re not even that famous. 100,000 people is a lot, but there are people out there getting into the millions of subscribers. If the two of them continue to get more and more famous, these kinds of incidents will only increase. It’s not going to stop, not for as long as they’re making videos. On one hand, it’s everything he’s ever wanted creatively and professionally. But what will the cost to his personal life be?

“Yeah,” Phil says. “Yeah, it kind of does. But at least we’re in this together.”

And that’s the other thing. What if they get together but later break up? What would that mean for their YouTube careers? What if the fans got invested in their relationship and then grew angry if they broke up or if they didn’t share enough of their relationship online?

“Dan?” Phil is saying. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Dan says, swallowing thickly. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“What were you saying before they came over here?”

“Oh,” Dan says, fumbling for a topic. “Yeah, I was—I was thinking more about moving to London—like we’d talked about earlier.” It had started out as a middle-of-the-night idea a few weeks ago, but they’ve both been wanting to try and get a job at BBC Radio for ages, and London is the place to do it.

“I’m in if you’re in, Dan,” Phil says earnestly. “I think it’d be good. It’d be a big change, but it would be good.” They’d talked about it in whispers the night they hatched the plan; the fact that London would really be the point of no return; that they’d be dedicating themselves to full-time YouTubing and radio broadcasting.

London means no time or privacy for a relationship.

“Yeah,” Dan says, his chest tight. “Let’s move to London next year.”

As if thing couldn’t get any worse, they run into the girls again as they are leaving the restaurant.

“Sorry,” one of them asks with a giggle. “But I have to ask—are the two of you like—dating?” She and her friend look at each other and giggle some more.

“No,” Phil says smoothly, not even pausing or hesitating for a second. “No, we’re just friends.” He smiles pleasantly at them and tugs Dan, who is frozen in place, in the direction of their flat.

“I know I’ve literally asked you this seventy-three times tonight, but are you okay?” Phil asks. “That was a bit rude of them to ask us that, wasn’t it?”

It hurts to speak around the lump in his throat, so he just nods.

“Okay, you’re being really weird, Dan,” Phil says when they get back to the flat and Dan still hasn’t said a word. “Want me to stay with you tonight?” Periodically they’ll share a bed even when they’re not hooking up, although this is far more under ‘platonic friend’ territory, as it’s something they only do when they’ve just watched a horror movie and are too scared to sleep alone, or on the occasion of one or two really bad existential crises from Dan.

On one hand, it’s a bit torturous to platonically share a bed with Phil, but on the other, he’s a little pathetic and he’ll take what he can get, so he just nods and goes to brush his teeth.

“We’re good, right?” Phil asks as he flicks off the light and they crawl under Dan’s covers together.

“Yeah,” Dan confirms quietly.

“Look, about what those girls said earlier…friends with benefits—that’s us, yeah?” Phil says.

“Sure, yeah,” Dan says casually. “That’s us.”

As he lies awake next to a sleeping Phil that night, he thinks of starry nights on a beach in Jamaica and the trails of post-its scattered around their flat that say things like “don’t forget your umbrella today, bear!” with an illustration of a frowning stick figure holding a newspaper over his head in a downpour, and “don’t worry about editing that new video, I’ve got it xxx”, and “Thai tonight? Text me when you wake up from your nap, lazybones :P”.

He thinks about the fact that he has never known anyone he feels completely comfortable around except for Phil—how he doesn’t feel like he needs to explain his Tumblr browsing habits or downplay his love of fantasy and RPG to Phil; how his permanent compulsion to chameleon into the version of himself that will be found most likable by the person he is with fades away when he is with Phil; how it softens and blurs into something that is easy; something that is just himself; just Dan. How, for all the versions of Dan there is, both online and in real life, the best version of Dan is one who is with Phil.

How, at a point in his life when everyone wants more from him—more information on his personal life, more videos, more tweets—being just Dan has always been enough for Phil.

“Friends with benefits,” he mouths at Phil’s lightly-snoring silhouette next to him in the inky darkness, testing the label. The words taste bitter on his tongue. Even without a light, he could draw a perfect map of the constellations formed by every freckle and mole on Phil’s back.

(Interlude)

2012

The world is supposed to end in 2012, but instead it just keeps on spinning stubbornly on.

Dan almost wishes it wouldn’t, because this is the year when everything feels like too much. There’s too much pressure to succeed with their new radio show, too many fans harassing his younger brother and trying to analyze every single second that he and Phil have ever interacted.

“Phil and I are separate people,” he repeatedly insists, knowing that each time he says it, he is pushing Phil away more and more. Things carry on as usual on-camera, but sometimes when they are sitting together in browsing positions in the lounge of their London flat, he catches Phil giving him long, considering looks from the other end of the couch. Dan has this terrible fear that Phil regrets moving to London with him; that one day he’s going to announce that he’s moving out and going back to Manchester. By some unspoken agreement, they don’t touch each other as much anymore. There are no more drunk kisses and sloppy handjobs exchanged late at night after stumbling home from the pub, laughing into each other’s mouths and snogging in the alleyway behind their flat because they can’t keep their hands off each other.

As their fanbase grows, Dan starts to feel like there are eyes on him wherever he goes—they’ve only lived in London for a few months, but the city seems to be growing smaller and smaller and more and more claustrophobic every single day. With each pair of eyes that watch him and Phil walk through the park; each fan who approaches them to ask for a picture and carefully watches the way he and Phil interact the entire time, the city walls shrink a little bit.

They go to Vegas for Dan’s 21^st birthday and just drink and vlog the entire time. It’s fun, but Dan can’t help the slight itch of discontentment that lies under his skin as he sits by the pool sipping on mixed drinks each day. On the last night they both get way too drunk at dinner, and Phil kisses him for the first time in ages. It happens on the elevator ride up to their hotel room, Phil pressing him up against the cool metallic wall and finding Dan’s lips the same easy way he’s done hundreds of times before.

Dan has missed this; the way Phil tastes, the comforting warmth and weight of Phil’s frame against his own. But when they fumble their way back into their room and Phil tries to deepen the kiss and tug at the hem of Dan’s t-shirt, the only thing Dan can think about is the fact that none of this between them is real; that Phil wouldn’t be doing this if he were sober, that if they have sex tonight they’ll still sleep in separate hotel beds afterward.

“Sorry,” Dan says, stepping away and clearing his throat. “I just think—we have to get up really early for the flight tomorrow, so—”

There is a split second where Phil’s face is frozen in an expression of hurt, and Dan suddenly feels far too sober for having finished an entire bottle of wine by himself at dinner.

“Oh,” Phil says, quickly schooling his features. “Okay. That’s smart thinking.”

“Sorry,” Dan says quietly. The hotel room suddenly feels tiny and stifling.

“Nothing to apologize for,” Phil says lightly. But on the flight back to London, Phil doesn’t sleep with his head on Dan’s shoulder like he normally would. And he doesn’t try to kiss Dan again after that.

It’s as though a wall has been carefully constructed between the two of them overnight, and neither of them wants to be the first to start pulling bricks down to open up the barrier between them.

But he’s unable to stop himself from reacting defensively to the fans, because after all, Phil wants it to be this way; wants them to be separate people. Not Dan-and-Phil, not ‘Phan’, but just Dan and just Phil. Pals. Because what else could Phil have meant when he had said in no uncertain terms that they are just “friends with benefits”?

When they get back from Vegas, Dan checks his subscriber count and realizes that he is definitely going to hit 1 million subscribers sometime in the next year or so. He thinks of all he gave up to get to this point and wonders if it had all been worth it, because there’s no “friends-with-benefits” with Phil in 2012. Sometimes there’s barely even just “friends” with Phil in 2012.

Sometimes he misses the way things were in 2009. But he doesn’t ever want to be that person again. Dan from 2009 was an idiot for believing that things like—like—well…he’s not quite ready to put a label to the painful feeling in his chest that sometimes arises when Phil smiles at him in the kitchen during breakfast, soft-eyed and rumpled with sleep, or when Dan gets back from a weekend away and Phil is waiting up for him with a packet of his favorite biscuits, eager to catch up and welcome him home after a mere 48 hours of separation.

If this was 2009, he might call it love. But he’s older now, and he knows better.

2013

Things get better, though. Britney survived 2007. Dan survives 2012.

It’s hard to pinpoint one thing that leads to his gradual turn-around in attitude in 2013. Mostly he just stops giving a fuck about what the fans think. What goes on between the two of them is really nobody’s business but his and Phil’s, but if the viewers want to speculate and ship the two of them, that doesn’t have to affect him.

Besides, he does love his viewers, and he wouldn’t have this awesome career without them, anyway. There are so many good things going for him in life—the radio show, YouTube success, living in London with his best friend—that he eventually just stops being upset about the little bad things.

So, yeah. If 2012 is defensive tumblr rants, strained silences, and just general all-around shittiness, 2013 is quiet Sunday mornings playing Mario Kart with Phil, late nights brainstorming ridiculous challenge ideas for the radio show, and long days strolling around the city and getting to know London better. It’s as though something deep within Dan’s chest; something that had been building for years and years, has gradually begun relaxing and easing.

Until Katie the Bitch Ass Intern shows up, that is.

To be fair, Katie is really a lovely person. She is everything that Dan is not—petite, blond, upbeat, cute. She is obviously over the moon about getting a summer internship at BBC Radio 1, and she must be pretty fucking qualified, because that’s not an easy opening to get.

Behind the scenes of the Internet Takeover, she’s focused and helpful. But Jesus fuck, does she have to stare at Phil like that?

All the time. She’s just flipping her blond hair and smiling brainlessly at him, every second of the day, as though he personally descended from the heavens on a glittery cloud with a choir of angels singing behind him each day in order to get to work, instead of taking the Tube and walking to the radio station with Dan like his normal, slightly-awkward-but-definitely-human self.

And then she has the gall to look vaguely like Sarah Michelle Gellar and actually be really nice and do things like refill Dan’s coffee during breaks without him even having to ask.

It’s not that Dan is jealous, or anything. It’s just…unprofessional, is all. How is Dan supposed to focus on his work with her constantly staring at Phil like she wants to rip the headphones off his ears and whisper sweet nothings about how nice he is and brilliant his videos are? (Because seriously, she’s really nice and just last week she had complimented Dan on his galaxy-print t-shirt and they’d talked about black holes for like fifteen minutes after the radio show ended.)

Dan reminds himself that she’s only around for the summer, and that he’s mature enough to handle some asshole uni student (except she’s not, really, because they're mutuals on tumblr and she reblogs his posts all the time, and one time—okay, maybe several times—he’d almost reblogged a post from her because she’s really funny, but then he recalled his dignity and clicked out of the browser so fast he almost got a hangnail). It’s just for a few months.

By her last day, however, Dan is ready to throw a goddamn party.

“Er, Dan,” Phil asks cautiously as they leave the flat, Dan fumbling with the house key and whistling with uncharacteristic merriness. “Why are you bringing a cake to work?”

“This isn’t just any cake, Phil,” Dan says cheerily. “This is a ‘goodbye, Katie’ cake. It’s her last day, you know.”

“Oh, yeah,” Phil says, and Dan feels some of his exuberance dissipate—had Phil sounded sad that Katie was leaving? What did that mean? “That’s a shame.”

It’s all he can think about for the rest of the day. As they make their way down to the radio station, Dan has a stern lecture with himself—he and Phil are not in a closed relationship. They are two grown men with an open-ended, mutually beneficial physical arrangement (which, thanks to Dan’s rage-sadness throughout the entirety of 2012, they haven’t actually taken advantage of in over a year). Phil has needs, and Katie is young and pretty and obviously interested. If Phil wants to pursue something with her, then Dan has no right to be upset or jealous.

That doesn’t mean his stomach doesn’t drop sharply, however, when they finish for the day and Katie corners Phil for a goodbye. Dan watches out of one eye, grimly demolishing two slices of the goodbye cake as an outlet for his emotions (“Jesus,” Grimmy says, his eyes wide. “I didn’t know anybody could look so miserable eating cake. If it’s killing you that much, just put the fucking fork down, mate.”), as Katie unmistakably passes Phil a scrap of paper with her phone number on it. Phil pulls out his phone with a smile and programs her number in, and then they hug goodbye.

Dan wants to be sick, but Katie is making her way over to the cake table.

“This cake looks delicious,” Katie comments offhandedly.

“It was Phil’s idea to pick it up for you,” Dan lies, because he is nothing if not a good wingman. His mouth tastes like chalk.

“That was so sweet of him! Anyway, I wanted to thank you for everything this summer, Dan. I’ve had a really great time working here,” Katie beams earnestly.

“Cool,” Dan mumbles, slouching away to sulk in the foyer.

The next evening, his worst fears are realized when Phil ducks his head into Dan’s room and announces that he’s off to meet up with Katie for a coffee.

Dan grins so tightly he feels like he might actually need to see a doctor for lockjaw, and then as soon as Phil leaves the flat he proceeds to raid their alcohol supply and get a strong buzz going.

The worst part is that he can’t even hate Katie—after all, it’s Dan’s own fault that Phil is going out with someone else. He’s the one who has been pushing Phil away for ages; who isn’t brave enough to acknowledge the depth of his own feelings for his best friend.

Phil is back less than two hours later, and he looks bemused as he enters the flat and finds Dan slumped on the couch.

“In case I don’t tell you enough, Phil, you’re really nice and I think your videos are brilliant,” is Dan’s greeting.

Phil opens his mouth and then closes it. “Thanks, Dan.” He kicks off his shoes and joins Dan on the couch, a curious expression on his face. He grabs the bottle of wine that Dan has been steadily drinking and takes a long pull.

“So how was the coffee?” Dan asks darkly, unable to keep the word ‘coffee’ from sounding like a horrible swear word.

“Since when do you talk like coffee murdered your entire family?” Phil asks, half-laughing and taking another swig. “And the coffee was fine, although I should have brought my laptop with. Katie wants to start vlogging, you know, and she was asking me for all these tips, but I couldn’t really show her anything useful without my computer.”

“She wants to start vlogging?” Dan asks slowly, something horribly like hope rising in his stomach.

“Well, yeah, she’s a media and communications student and she’s a huge fan of ours—why do you think she has a radio internship? That’s why she wanted to hang out—she told me she wanted to ask you for help, as well, but she said you always stare at her like you want her head to explode, so she wasn’t sure how it would go over,” Phil explains, as though this is all obvious common knowledge.

“Oh,” Dan says, fortunately not close enough to drunk to allow the hysterical laughter bubbling up in his chest to explode.

“Yeah—hey, you alright?” Phil asks.

“Yeah, no. I’m good,” Dan says, and he might actually mean it. “Katie was just—she was so nice and funny, Phil.”

Phil looks alarmed. “Did you want her number? She was right, you know—you were always looking at her really weirdly, and I couldn’t figure out why, but if it’s because you like her—”

“No,” Dan says. “No.” A long pause. “Phil, I just—” he laughs hollowly. “I just miss you sometimes. Like, we’re best friends and we live together, and I know that I’m the one who fucked up last year—”

“Yeah?” Phil asks, his eyes widening slightly with what Dan thinks might be hope.

And then Dan is surging across the couch and kissing Phil, and Phil is fucking sighing into Dan’s mouth in contentment and holy fuck, how had he lived without this for an entire year?

“Can I—” Phil breathes into his ear, one hand sliding under the hem of Dan’s jumper and splaying across his stomach. Dan feels like every nerve ending in his body is on fire.

“Yeah,” he whispers.

“Missed this,” Phil mutters, kissing down the line of Dan’s throat. “I didn’t want to push you until you were ready, but—god, Dan,” Phil moans as Dan’s hand slides down to cup Phil through his jeans, and then words are pretty much lost between them for a while.

It is different from any other time they have ever done this. Perhaps because it has been more than a year since they have explored each other’s bodies, but they are slower this time around than ever before as they shrug off t-shirts and strip out of skinny jeans. Dan kisses lines up Phil’s calf, re-learning the expanse of pale skin til Phil is squirming and laughing and complaining about growing old waiting for Dan to finish up with whatever strange fixation he has for Phil’s left ankle.

Dan doesn’t know how to say that he has a fixation for every single part of Phil, so he just smiles and licks a stripe up Phil’s inner thigh dangerously close to his already half-hard cock as an attempt at distraction.

Later, after Phil has opened him up with his fingers and then slid inside, they rock against each other more slowly than they ever have in the past. At some point their fingers end up laced together, and Dan buries his face in Phil’s neck when he comes, and there is no thought of Katie the Intern or any single other person in the world at that moment, just Phil and the way he feels against Dan’s skin.

“You alright?” Phil asks, happily placing kisses to the shell of Dan’s right ear when he returns to the bed with a damp washcloth to clean up with after. Phil’s lips automatically find the dimple on Dan’s cheek and press there, feather-light, and for some reason the little gesture makes Dan terribly, unspeakably sad, because he wants this forever, but someday there might be another Katie in Phil’s life—a real Katie—and there’s nothing he can do about it.

“I’m good,” he says with a smile, but his throat is a little tight.

Afterwards, when Phil has almost fallen asleep, one arm thrown casually over Dan’s waist as though it is nothing; as though they curl up together under Phil’s multi-colored duvet on a daily basis, there is a very brief whispered conversation.

“Dan,” Phil hums against Dan’s neck, his voice soft and fond. In spite of how sated and boneless Dan feels, his chest hurts, and he can’t put a finger on why.

“Dan,” Phil slurs again, softer and sweet. “Go to sleep. Can hear you thinking from here.”

“Right,” Dan says quietly to himself a moment later, once Phil’s breathing has evened out. Their legs are tangled together, so that Dan hardly knows where he begins and Phil ends. It has been so long since he has felt unguarded and safe and close to Phil like this. When Dan reaches up to touch his face a minute later, he finds that his cheeks are wet.

“Right,” Dan repeats to the quiet room, breath hitching slightly. Phil just snuffles slightly in his ear and shuffles even closer in the darkness.

2014

The universe is dying.

Dan knows this, because when Phil goes to visit his parents for a long weekend, he nicks Phil’s box set of Cosmos and watches every single episode and then he goes online and reads every scientific article he can get his hands on about space. Phil comes home to find him lying on the floor under the kitchen table, in the throes of a spectacular existential crisis.

“Hi, Dan,” Phil says, casually dropping his weekend bag and shucking his jacket, slipping under the table to join him as though it is the most natural thing in the world, and Dan falls a little more in love with him right at that second.

“Did you know that the universe is fading away?” Dan says, staring at a crack in the wood of the table above them. “Old stars are dying out much faster than new stars are being born. Eventually there won’t be enough cosmic matter for any new stars to be created, and everything is just going to…dissipate into darkness.”

“Mmm,” Phil hums. “Have we mopped this floor recently?”

“I did it a few days ago,” Dan dismisses. “Seriously, Phil. Within 5 billion years the sun is going to die and none of this will matter. Maybe none of it even matters now.” He’s gone through this same crisis a million times before, but it never stops confounding him.

“You matter,” Phil says confidently, and Dan’s chest does something funny.

“Maybe to a handful of people. But in the grand scheme of the universe and billions of years, what’s the point?” Dan asks.

Phil sounds a bit like he wants to laugh. “Is this a Carl Sagan-induced freak-out?”

“Yeah. Cosmos,” Dan admits, looking over at Phil, who is smiling fondly at him—the same smile he frequently sees giffed on Tumblr with captions about ‘heart eyes’.

“Well, you’ve missed the point of the series, then. Don’t you remember the bits where he talked about everybody being made from stardust and stuff? That’s the part you’re supposed to focus on. Not the doom-and-gloom end times part. Now come here.”

Turns out it’s a little awkward for two grown men to hug each other under a kitchen table, but Dan doesn’t mind. In truth, he and Phil don’t hug much—perhaps the fans have made them self-conscious about showing affection towards one another—but Phil is a really good hugger. He smells of the cold and coffee and faintly of his parents’ house, and it’s weird that Dan even recognizes what that smells like.

And all of a sudden Dan doesn’t want to think about the fact that one day he and Phil will no longer exist, and that within fifty years nobody will care about two random British YouTubers or remember them, so he’s finding Phil’s lips with his own, letting himself forget about everything but the way that Phil’s fingers catch and then clench in the fabric of Dan’s jumper.

Dan’s hands eventually slip down to begin fumbling with Phil’s belt buckle, and Phil breaks away from Dan’s mouth with a huffed laugh.

“Not that I’m complaining, but are we really going to do this here?” Phil asks. He looks happy, and Dan realizes that it’s been a long time since he’s been the one to initiate anything physical between the two of them. They’ve been hooking up a lot recently, but part of Dan still holds back a little bit, wary of placing any more of his heart in Phil’s unknowing hands, and he’s pretty sure Phil has noticed.

“The world is ending; I don’t care where we do it,” Dan says, before remembering that Phil has just arrived home from a weekend away. “Unless you’re too tired,” he amends.

“Definitely not too tired for this,” Phil grins, his gaze resting on Dan’s lips, his eyes dark. For all that Phil shares of himself with the internet and the world, Dan is glad that he is the only one who gets to see Phil like this. “I suppose we’ve never really properly christened the flat, besides our bedrooms and the shower.”

And that’s that. It’s a little uncomfortable and awkward, and Phil has to make an awkward naked run through the house to get the lube, and Dan is probably going to have strange bruises tomorrow, and Phil almost gives himself a concussion banging his head on the table at one point, but they laugh and hold each other through it, and afterwards he’s too content and sleepy to worry much about cosmic destruction and the higher purpose of being alive.

“You know,” Phil says conversationally as they lay next to each other on the kitchen floor, Dan struggling to keep his eyes open. “Speaking of finding fulfillment in life and everything…we’ve been talking about going to Japan for ages. Maybe we should actually go sometime in this next year.”

Dan lifts one eyelid and eyes Phil. “Really?”

“’Course. We’re lucky enough to have the money—might as well use it to do some once-in-a-lifetime kind of stuff.”

“You seriously want to do Japan with me?” Dan asks, unable to keep the excitement from his voice.

“Well, to tell the truth, I really wanted to go with the landlord—you know, nothing excites me more than being called ‘Sonny Jim’—but he told me his wife wouldn’t like him traveling to a different continent with a strange man, so I suppose you can—”. Dan cuts off Phil’s sarcastic ramble by punching him on the arm and then surging forward for an enthusiastic but chaste kiss, his mind already racing with travel plans and itineraries. Phil smiles against Dan’s mouth, but starts tugging Dan to his feet.

“Save the planning for tomorrow,” Phil says. “I might not be too old for kitchen floor sex, but I’m definitely too old to sleep on the hardwood.”

It’s a weird thought, the fact that Phil will be 30 in a matter of a few years. Even if they’d grown up in the same town, they probably would never have known one another in school because of the age gap.

He thinks about it as he blearily brushes his teeth and pads down the hallway to his bedroom; the extraordinary set of circumstances and fate that had allowed for Dan and Phil to meet and become friends. If Dan hadn’t tweeted Phil so much; if he’d never seen Phil’s videos in the first place, if Phil had never found his way onto YouTube in 2006, none of this would have ever happened—he might not have gotten into YouTube, and there would be no Radio 1 show, no London flat, no Japan holiday.

He thinks about what Phil had said about stardust; about how time and space and chance had all precisely aligned to create all 6’2” of Phil Lester—his Kim Kardashian hips, his long fingers and soft, pale skin—and then placed him in Dan’s life.

When Dan opens his bedroom door, he is surprised to find Phil in his bed waiting for him.

Phil shrugs. “I didn’t want to leave you to another existential crisis,” he yawns. “I’m about to pass out, but wake me up if you need me, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Dan says softly, crawling into his side of the bed and flicking the lamp off. Sometimes he feels like a supernova exploding and collapsing in on itself, but Phil—Phil is the very fabric of the universe; the best of the stardust.

And sometimes, especially at moments like these, when Phil is snoring next to him; when they’ve just decided to go to Japan together on a dream holiday, he thinks that he should be content with all that he has been given; that it’s selfish to wish for more from his relationship with Phil when he already has so much.

But other times he thinks about the universe ending and time ceasing and his atoms and Phil’s atoms separating from one another and returning to the atmosphere, scattering and drifting away in opposite directions light years away, and he wants to say ‘fuck it’ and tell Phil how he feels, because they’ve been content and stable in both their friendship and their physical relationship for two years now, but things can only continue this way for so long before it all comes to a head.

He wants the little things. The sex between them has always been great, but he always finds himself wanting more—he wants them to sleep in the same bed without having to get each other off first; he wants to kiss Phil when he feels happy and not have to overanalyze it afterwards. He wants the casual touches—an arm around the waist, a kiss to the forehead. He wants to always be the person Phil comes to first when he is happy or sad or excited.

2014 is the feeling of standing on the precipice of something new and dangerous, looming huge and dark at his feet like the night sky and its infinite galaxies.

But the sun has another 5 billion years to live, so for tonight Dan stays silent in the darkness and thinks about Japan instead.

2015

There’s something about Tyler Oakley that makes Dan want to overshare.

For whatever reason, he has a knack for making Dan feel at ease. He comes to the flat in August to film a collab, and Phil graciously leaves to run some errands while they’re filming to give them some peace and quiet.

Not that there is much quiet to be had with Tyler around. After they’ve finished filming, Dan’s sides hurt from laughing, and his hand is still throbbing weirdly from Tyler’s bizarre shock/torture device. He’s overtired from all that he has had going on the past few weeks (and months, and maybe years, honestly)—between Vidcon and SITC and planning the tour and approving final stuff for TABINOF and releasing a freaking app (seriously, how is this his life?), and maybe that’s what makes him answer honestly when Tyler asks him how things are going as they descend to the kitchen for a snack.

“I’ve been sleeping with Phil for years and I’m in love with him,” he blurts out, and god, why had he said that? He is friendswith Tyler and he trusts him implicitly (when you’ve watched whisk porn with someone it’s kind of inevitable), but now that it’s finally been said, he can’t take it back; can’t put the words back inside his mouth and lock them down in his chest anymore, and there is a moment when panic claws at his throat.

(It’s also incredibly liberating to have actually said the words out loud, but the relief won’t come until a little later once the adrenaline has faded).

“Okay,” Tyler says. “You look like you’re freaking out. Are you freaking out? Here, why don’t you sit down—you people like tea, right?”

Dan doesn’t even protest being referred to as “you people” by an American. He allows Tyler (who is literally an entire head and shoulders shorter) to shove him into a kitchen chair and push a cup of extremely tepid tea that Phil hadn’t finished at breakfast in Dan’s direction.

“There, there,” Tyler says, patting him on the shoulder. “Tyler is here.” It’s the kind of thing that would be creepy if anyone else said it, but since it’s Tyler, it’s somehow okay.

“I just—he has a scar on his left knee from when he fell out of a tree at age 7 and he sings Beatles songs in the shower but won’t admit it even though I recorded it once and played it back to him, and he has to sleep with one hand tucked under his pillow, and his eyes are like three different colors—”

“Is the sex good?” Tyler interjects, and again, it’s the kind of question that only he can get away with without it feeling invasive.

“Really, really good,” Dan nods miserably. “Three different colors, Tyler. What the fuck.”

“Wow, this is bad,” Tyler whistles, and this whole conversation reminds Dan of a stereotypical scene from a rom com where the protagonist and her best friend gossip over a pedicure. All they’re missing is a shopping montage set to a Spice Girls song. “It sounds like you need to tell him.”

“But what if I ruin everything—”

“Look, I don’t know Phil that well, to be honest. But I know him well enough to know that probably the only thing you could do to ruin things between the two of you is murder his entire family. Anyone with eyes knows this.” Tyler says this so confidently that it sounds like it is a manifesto that he has written and then passed around for signatures of support.

Dan narrows his eyes. “Do you happen to run a phan sideblog on tumblr?”

“Some things just have to remain secret, Daniel,” Tyler shrugs innocently. When he speaks again, his voice is much more serious.

“No matter what happens, you know you have a whole fandom out there who loves you both and just wants you to be happy, you know. You could lose some viewers, but the ones who matter will stay. And you have all your fellow YouTubers to back you up. Tell him. It’ll be okay.”

And maybe it’s just the magic power of Tyler Oakley, but Dan sort of actually believes him.

Tyler isn’t that magical, though, because Dan still decides to run things by Cat when she comes to the UK for SITC. Cat has been their close friend for years and years, and she is probably Phil’s best friend besides Dan. If anyone else will know how to handle this situation, it will be Cat.

One afternoon when Phil pops out to the shop for some direly-needed groceries, Dan tells Cat he needs to tell her something and then just paces silently in front of her for ten solid minutes plucking up the courage to speak.

“Right, Cat,” Dan says eventually, pausing in his pacing and listening for the forty-seventh time to make sure that he can’t hear Phil’s footsteps anywhere in the flat. “This—this might come as a surprise to you, but I, um. I kind of—have feelings for Phil?”

Cat takes one look at him and chokes on her glass of water, her shoulders shaking. At first he thinks she is just shocked, and he can empathize, because, really, he’s felt this way about Phil for a few years now and it still baffles him sometimes—the man is a mouth-breather, for Christ’s sake, and Dan just wants to buy a dog and a house with him and grow old with that mouth-breathing in the background of his life—but then he realizes she’s laughing at him.

Maybe she sees the hurt on his face because she quickly tries to school her expression. “I’m sorry—was that meant to be a serious announcement?” She asks. “Not to diminish your feelings, Dan, but, like—isn’t this really old news?”

“Really?! You too?” Dan groans in frustration. “That’s basically the exact same thing Tyler said when I accidentally blurted it out to him the other week.”

“Well…I mean, there’s probably a reason for that, Dan,” Cat explains reasonably, tucking a piece of silver hair behind her ear. “You and Phil live together and it’s well-known that you’re best friends who have a sort of ambiguous relationship. There’s a reason most of your fans ship you, you know. It’s because everyone can see the chemistry between the two of you.”

“Chemistry isn’t enough, though, Cat! I’ve felt this way for ages—since Phil and I met, really. And if he doesn’t feel the same way by now, he’s never going to—let’s be real. I just—part of me just wants to tell him…but I don’t want to lose him and—”

Cat cuts off his rambling with a gentle hand on his arm.

“You need to talk to Phil,” she says, and he has rarely seen her look so serious. “I don’t want to betray his trust or put words in his mouth about something this important, but Phil and I talk about this kind of thing a lot, and I don’t think things are as hopeless for you as they seem.”

“What—what’s that supposed to mean?” Dan asks, suddenly a little breathless.

Cat smiles mysteriously, and naturally this is the exact moment that Phil chooses to return to the flat, whistling absentmindedly and crinkling several shopping bags as he tries to juggle them all at once.

“Tell me, Cat!” He hisses.

Cat just laughs.

“Tell him, Dan,” she says, giving his hand a squeeze before heading down to help Phil with the groceries.

Dan sits alone in his room for a long time after that.

In spite of all the amazing, huge things that they have going on in late 2015—TABINOF, TATINOF, the new app, to name a few—it’s a completely mundane Wednesday night in September when it happens.

“I call you ‘Philly’ in my head sometimes,” Dan blurts out as they sit in the lounge watching anime over a late dinner, because the moonlight is illuminating Phil’s hair and making it shine and it’s fucking unfair, because Dan knows too much about Phil to ever move on and there is probably only sadness to be had from this thing in between the two of them, but Dan can keep silent no longer.

Phil blinks at him from across the couch, slow and sleepy, before reaching for the remote to pause the episode. Perhaps he senses where this conversation is going, but Dan doesn’t even know himself what he’s going to say next.

He’s the type of person who prides himself on being articulate—he plans his phone calls before he makes them and spends a lot of his time in the shower pre-formulating answers to interview questions so that he doesn’t sound like an idiot the next time he and Phil get interviewed at Vidcon or SITC.

In an ideal situation, this conversation would be held at a fancy restaurant in a romantic and meaningful setting like Tokyo or the Manchester SkyBar, and Dan would have found an eloquent way to express all the thoughts in his heart. But here they are on their couch—Dan’s hair is unstyled, he has no clue what to say next, and he’d spilled tea on his sweatshirt that afternoon.

But maybe this is who they really are—Phil’s wearing his glasses, his pajama pants are slightly too short, and his t-shirt is one of Dan’s old ones that is so worn it has tiny holes all over the collar.

And he’s beautiful.

Their relationship has always been about the small things—so maybe it’s right that they have this talk here.

“It drives me crazy that you eat my cereal and buy all those house plants and forget to put out candles,” Dan says. “But I’d never want to live with anyone else. I haven’t had sex with anyone but you for six years, and in all that time I’ve never even been interested in anybody different. Whenever I think of the future, like buying a house and getting a dog…it’s always with you in the picture.”

If he were brave, he’d meet Phil’s gaze to tell him all these things. But he’s too afraid of what he’ll see there. “I know I can be intense and annoying, but you’re one of the only people in my life who hasn’t gotten sick of me or pushed me aside, and I don’t want to lose you. You’re my best friend and I know we agreed ages ago that we’d just be friends with benefits, but—” Dan chances a glance up, and Phil is watching him raptly, no particular emotion on his face. He plunges on, trying to keep the pleading tone from his voice, because this isn’t an apology.

“The past six years have been the happiest of my life, but I want more. I swear, I never meant for this to happen, Phil—I spent all of 2012 trying to get over you, but I couldn’t. I don’t think I ever will, to be honest. And I just—I just need you to know.”

There is a long beat of silence.

“I’ll be right back,” Phil says, before abruptly standing and padding out of the lounge.

Everything goes a bit blurry in Dan’s eyeline as he sits there numbly. He could have dealt with outright rejection probably—it would have been awkward and heartcrushing and embarrassing, but it would be better than whatever this is, because he doesn’t know what’s happening, but he’s pretty sure that whatever it is, it isn’t good, because people aren’t supposed to get up and walk away when you profess your love to them.

“Dan? Are you okay?” Phil’s voice sounds a bit far away, and it takes him a minute to realize that Phil is sitting in front of him, touching Dan’s shoulder, his eyes wide with concern.

“I don’t know,” Dan says, and his voice sounds very high-pitched and far away. It’s as though the ground has fallen away beneath his feet.

“What’s the matter with y—oh. Oh,” Phil says slowly. “Dan.” He shakes Dan’s shoulder a little bit as though the make sure that Dan is listening closely. “Um, in retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have left the room unannounced at such a dramatic moment.” He shrugs sheepishly. “I didn’t mean anything by it; I just wasn’t thinking. I had to go get something; here, look.”

He places a book in Dan’s hands. “It’s okay; look.”

“This is our book,” Dan states, still feeling a little slow-witted.

“Yeah, it’s the final copy—remember the other week in that meeting with the publishers when they said they would give us each an advance copy with a specialized dedication page to give to our families if we wanted?”

“No, not really,” Dan says honestly. He has a tendency to zone out in those meetings when the publishers start blabbing on about things like fonts and dedication pages. That’s more Phil’s strength than his.

“Yeah, that’s what I figured. But I remembered, and I asked them to get me a copy with a personalized dedication page that’s different from the standard one we wrote last year. It’s not for my family; it’s for you—well, I hadn’t actually worked up the courage to give it to you yet, but Cat and Louise have been on my case for years about this—”

“I’m sorry, did you just say ‘years’?” Dan interrupts. “What are you talking about?”

“Dan,” Phil laughs, although none of this seems very funny to Dan. “Don’t you remember way back when in 2009 when I promised I’d wait for you til you were ready to have a relationship?”

“No! I definitely would remember if that happened. Like, I 1000% would remember if that had ever happened!”

Phil’s brows quirk. “It was after the first time you visited and you were packing and getting ready to leave, I was hinting at us and you said you’d just gotten out of a relationship and were still trying to figure things out before you had another relationship—”

“I was talking about moving to Manchester for uni, Phil,” Dan groans. “What did you think I meant? Of course I wanted to be in a relationship with you—but you hadn’t mentioned anything and I wasn’t sure if I should bring it up. So I wasn’t going to be like ‘yeah, I’m about to drop everything and move to Manchester for uni just to be by you.’ It was meant to be a subtle hint.”

“Oh," Phil says, sounding startled. "Well, it was a bit too subtle. Anyway, then I said that I’d wait for you until you were ready,” Phil continues, and his calmness is infuriating.

“Phil! For fuck’s sake, I thought you meant you’d wait for me to finish packing before we left for the train station. You need to work on your emotional tone!” He’s shouting a bit, because this is the stupidest thing he’s ever heard, and the two of them are so stupid, and clearly they’re meant for one another if they can both simultaneously be this dense for this many years.

“To be fair, I was young and stupid back then,” Phil says.

“Yeah, well, I was younger and stupider!”

“Well, clearly neither of us is very good at emotional tone,” Phil muses. “This is a very British situation.”

Dan doesn’t understand how Phil can take all of this in so calmly. “Oh my god, Phil. Do you seriously mean to tell me that we wasted 6 years on a stupid misunderstanding?”

Phil shrugs ambivalently. “Did we waste them? We were together the whole time, just not…you know, together. They were the best six years of my life, to be honest. I mean, sure, there were some low points, but look how far we’ve come. And think of how good the future can be.”

And that is Phil, the eternal optimist. Dan is still somewhere between shock and catatonia. “We are actual trash, Phil Lester,” is all he can say.

Phil laughs, and it sounds even brighter and sunnier than usual. “Go on, read the dedication,” he says, tapping the cover of TABINOF. “It’s not much, but it sums it all up.”

Dan opens the cover but pauses before reading anything. “I still cannot believe—”

“Shh,” Phil says. “You can be disapproving of me for the rest of your life and grumpily tell this story to our grandchildren someday, but for now just read.”

“Grandchildren?” Dan says faintly.

“Oh, shit,” Phil exhales, the tips of his ears going red. “Look, that was presumptuous; just—just read it before I say anything even stupider.”

“Oh my god…” Dan breathes. “You love me! You asshole, you’re in love with me!” He punches Phil on the arm.

Phil sighs like he doesn’t know why he puts up with Dan, but he doesn’t deny it. “Read,” he says.

So Dan flips to the dedication page. Phil is right, it’s brief.

                Bear,

                I have loved you since you were no more than a face behind a computer screen, and I think I always will. Thanks for six incredible years—here’s to a hundred more of being at each other’s sides. As long as you’ll have me, I’ll be here.

“You absolute spork,” Dan sputters. “I can’t believe you—this is so—you love me.” His eyes feel a little watery.

“I do,” Phil affirms, and his face is suddenly close. “And you?”

“Since the day we met in person at the Manchester train station,” Dan says and he’s definitely crying a little now and they can joke and argue about this whole mess later, but for right now he needs Phil’s lips against his own or he will simply disintegrate and melt away right where he is sitting.

He’s kissed Phil hundreds if not thousands of times over the past six years, but this has just the slightest hint of something new and exciting to it. The mechanics of it are all the same, and Phil’s lips are comforting in their familiarity and softness, but for the first time ever Dan doesn’t feel a need to hold anything back, and it quickly grows heated.

“Should I make a lube run? Are we doing this here?” Phil asks with a grin.

And Dan thinks about it; thinks about all the times they have had sex already because it was fun and convenient and easy. He wants it to mean more the next time they do it. “Actually, I think I kind of just want us to sleep together tonight—you know, like actual sleeping.” He can’t bring himself to actually say the word ‘cuddle’ out loud, but it’s heavily implied. This is definitely a little spoon kind of night.

“After all,” Dan continues, quirking his eyebrows. “We haven’t even had a proper date yet. I’m not putting out for you.”

“We’ll have to fix that soon,” Phil muses, tangling his fingers with Dan’s and pulling him towards his bedroom.

“That would be nice,” Dan hums, before another thought suddenly strikes him.

“Oh god,” he groans, the bubble bursting. “What are we going to tell the fans? Jesus Christ—”

“No, no, no,” Phil says hurriedly. “No existential crises tonight! This is a happy night. Just sleeping. We’ll deal with all that tomorrow.”

And that is how Dan finds himself in Phil’s bed, his head bent towards Phil’s so that their foreheads are almost touching.

“Tyler and Cat and Louise are all probably on a three-way Skype call right now dying of laughter at how stupid we are,” Dan groans. “Why didn’t anybody tell me?” It must be the 37^th time he’s asked that in the past hour, but his voice is still high-pitched with disbelief.

“How did you not already know?!” Phil laughs. “I mean, it couldn’t have been more obvious, Dan. Nobody thought they needed to tell you. Including me.”

“Stop bullying Dan 2K15,” Dan mutters.

“It’s not bullying if you do it with love,” Phil sing-songs, and it’s pathetic that the stupid, dramatic way he flutters his eyelashes does nothing to detract from the warmth pooling in Dan’s chest. And he knows that it will take a long time for this new development to sink in, and that none of this erases the years he spent quietly pining after Phil. It doesn't change the fact that there are clearly some underlying communication issues in their relationship if it's taken them this many years to figure this all out. There will be fights and doubt and challenges ahead of them, but he feels ready to take on the world right now.

“That’s a bit of a fucked up thing to say if you think about it, Phil,” Dan says, though he can’t hold back his smile even as he sighs and shakes his head. “We are not normal.”

“Well,” Phil says, his eyes soft and fond. “Normalness leads to sadness, Dan.”

And so they are happy.