the calm, the storm // or, a look into the moments immediately following the hard launch, from their perspective
784 words, on ao3
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There's a moment when the page refreshes and Dan sees that the video has been officially uploaded to YouTube that he thinks, wait I want to take it back.
Not because he actually wants to - he doesn't think he does - but because his brain likes doing that sometimes. Suddenly crave an outcome it knows he can't have, because his body has grown used to the Earth-sized gravity of guilt and regret and shame that has plagued him all his life, and this is a surefire way of recreating that familiar condition.
The view counter below the video says "0 views", but he knows even in that instant that it isn't true. Already millions of people around the world are seeing him and Phil drop onto the sewn-together bedsheets and hearing Phil say, "Yes." It takes 8 seconds to get it over with. (Dan knows. He checked the timestamp in the final edit.) It's been more than that already. It's now been even more than more than that - and oh, how visceral and real the arrow of time is. Dan hasn't moved an inch since Phil hit Post, yet he feels like he's on a freight train inexorably punching through the seconds, never to be stopped -
"Right." Phil closes the laptop. Just - one movement and it's done, the page gone and their living room back in focus. "Let's have a coffee."
Dan follows him into the kitchen because this is what they agreed they would do after. Phil goes into the cupboards to get out the beans, and Dan switches on the power outlet feeding the coffee machine. Packet of beans being pressed into his hand now, and Phil circles him to grab mugs from the shelf by the sink. Routine. Thoughtless. Dan moves through the motions without pause; but there's a sour, trembling energy to everything he's doing, and he doesn't realise how significantly he's disassociated from himself until Phil's arm comes around his torso and his head comes to rest on his right shoulder. Not that he says anything at first (what is there to say?). But it's enough that he knows Phil knows. That if he shivers on the outside, there is one person in this world who understands it as the fringe aftershocks of a magnitude 10 earthquake enacting chaos inside him. The relief of not having to say - that in itself settles him a little. But Phil knows him even better than that.
"Nothing has blown up," he murmurs. Dan both hears his voice, smooth and low, in his ear; and feels it, humming soothingly from his throat into Dan's shoulder. "The house hasn't disappeared," he continues, stroking a hand up and down Dan's stomach. "The sun is gonna come up in the morning. You're still gonna have to shit tomorrow."
Dan cracks at this, and Phil giggles as well, hanging onto Dan even as his shaking threatens to dislodge his chin from his shoulder. "Stupid," Dan says, and Phil hums, pleased with himself. The portafilter has been secured into the machine now. Dan pulls up the lever. And in the thirty second window they have of enforced inactivity, Dan turns in Phil's arms. His hands come up around Phil's face, and their foreheads meet. Silence. Phil's skin against his skin. The warmth and reality of him. What they did all of this for. When Dan kisses him with his eyes closed, he can take himself through every era of their life when what they just did today was only a pipe dream. He kisses him in their Manchester apartment, buoyed on the elation and giddiness of newfound love. He kisses him in London, when they'd spend a whole day playing at friends in the BBC offices and then let go like a held breath the moment they got home. He kisses him in a hotel room on tour for Interactive Introverts, when everything was so good and so painful all he could do was marvel at man's capacity for holding such opposing experiences in a single body. He kisses him in their real apartment above the fake one, in the fake one that became real during lockdown, and in this house when they'd just stepped over the threshold for the first time. All of that leading to this. This, for all of that. No matter what happens or is happening around the video they just uploaded, Dan would choose the same every time.
Phil lets Dan pull away when he wants to, and they stay there in each other's bubble long after the coffee has finished dripping into Phil's mug. Finally Dan says, "Rip the plaster off, then?"
Phil nods. "Mhm." And they finish making their coffees and go.
Dan brushes glitter in the inner nook of Phil's eye and feels his stomach do a complicated dance. Like magic, like that, Phil has transformed into something Dan can barely grasp right in front of him, some being that's just teleported in from an alternate dimension to blink expectantly at Dan as if waiting for instruction on how to behave. Dan thinks he needs to be taught how to behave - he isn't sure what to do with his mouth, or his eyes. Actually, no, that's wrong. He knows what to do and is doing it before the thought even consciously occurs to him. Phil's eyes fall closed upon Dan's approach, and his lips are soft with balm against Dan's, moving with sixteen years of practice even as a sound of light confusion rises from his throat. Dan holds his cheeks where he knows he won't smudge any of the delicate handiwork around Phil's eyes and kisses him, kisses him, kisses him. Phil's hands circle his wrists and hang onto him loosely. This is what it's like to kiss a fairy, Dan thinks, and snorts at himself. "What?" Phil asks, softly muffled. Dan shakes his head and pushes him back.
Dan and Phil have been a part of many charity events over the years, so to celebrate Oct 19th we're challenging artists/writers/editors/creatives to pick a prompt from the list below and post your creations on the sacred day
new ficlet on ao3, "life is a flower of which love is the honey" 🌸
originally posted here as inspired by laddersmp3's gorgeous beautiful fanart!!! honestly when i first saw it it did something crazy to my brain chemistry and two fevered writing sessions later i had a completed fic. hope you enjoy, and would greatly appreciate a reblog if you do <3
new ficlet on ao3, "life is a flower of which love is the honey" 🌸
originally posted here as inspired by laddersmp3's gorgeous beautiful fanart!!! honestly when i first saw it it did something crazy to my brain chemistry and two fevered writing sessions later i had a completed fic. hope you enjoy, and would greatly appreciate a reblog if you do <3
@laddersmp3 everything about this — the visuals, the concept, the little sentence said by dan — is so brilliant and lovely and magical it lit my brain up like a christmas tree, and i ended up writing something based on it. if you enjoy phanfic, i really hope you like it <3
🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸
His face is warm from the sun. A light breeze whispers across his cheeks, his arms, the cherry blossoms bursting from slender branches in the periphery of his vision. In a moment of undeniable magic, he sees a cloud of them break away from the rest in an excited airborne dance, spinning against the blue sky over their heads. Dan closes his eyes as they come down on him, a sudden flurry of sensation both sharp and soft on his eyelids, lips, ear. Beside him Phil sputters and laughs and Dan smiles without opening his eyes.
“Got some in my mouth,” Phil explains a moment later. The shower seems to have stopped, so Dan dares to open his eyes again to - yes, there it is - an unmarred stretch of blue above him. Then he looks over.
And looks over. And looks over.
He’s breathless. And still. Like someone has reached out and paused him, a YouTube video. Like the world ceased existing and him with it, leaving only the precise scatter of pink petals in Phil’s white-blonde hair, tumbled into and caught on errant strands and the little knolls where he’s pushed his fingers through. And Phil. Phil. His eyes closed to the sun, a smile of utter contentment on his face. The wind comes again and brushes his fringe over his forehead. Dan’s fingers twitch on his stomach, wanting to do the same.
“What?” This from Phil, whose eyes are still closed. “I can feel you staring at me.”
I love you; you know this because I told you when we met and because it nearly killed me not telling you when the world wanted it for themselves and because I’m here with you now, I’m not 18 anymore, I have a longer list of contacts, and money, and a community that finally knows what I am – but it’s all just the rest to me. A world that has been playing catch-up to you from the beginning. It was you first. And it’s you still. You, and the rest of it.
Dan opens his mouth and his lips shudder. Then they fall into a smile and he lets himself say, “You have cherry blossoms in your hair.”
“Have I?” Phil reaches up to see for himself and Dan intercepts him, pressing one of the papery-thin petals along with a few wayward strands between his thumb and forefinger, briefly enjoying the feel of them against his skin before dropping the petal on Phil’s face. Phil blinks and says, “Oh.” He wants to pick it up, but Dan stops him before he can, interlocking his fingers with Phil’s and drawing his hand down into the grass. Phil looks at him fully. The little piece of their sakura tree balances like a fairy on his cheek, glowing with sunlight.
Dan kisses Phil right over it, and when it falls easily away, he lets it go. It’s only the rest of it. Now he has Phil.
i couldn't sleep so here's a little fic about phil being unable to resist touching dan's fluffy hair
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Phil's defence is that he only does it when he dies in-game, leaving his hands with nothing else to do. Dan's counterargument is that Phil dies so often it basically amounts to him doing it through the entire video.
"And then by the end of it I look like a fucking woolly mammoth. Look - look at this." Dan tilts his head toward the camera, letting Phil glimpse through the monitor the riot he's made of the back of Dan's hair. Phil laughs unapologetically as Dan himself takes in the full scale of the damage, picking at unruly curls. "How - Phil."
"It's so fluffy! I just wanna - " Phil mimes harassing Dan's hair again, " - mess it all up."
"Well, don't." Dan lifts his own hand threateningly, ready to parry if Phil strikes again. "Keep your fucking hands to yourself. Do you know how long I spend every morning getting this shit under control?"
"Maybe you should straighten it again, that would help."
"How dare you." Again with the unapologetic laugh. Dan points at him. "Hands to yourself." Phil gives the camera a naughty look. "Phil."
"Alright, fine."
It is not fine. Dan has turned his eyes back to the screen for one second when he feels a little tickle at the nape of his neck. He throws a hand back over his shoulder to slap Phil away. "Phil!"
Phil falls away giggling and Dan goes after him, pushing him offscreen. Phil despairs, calling after the camera ("Nooooo-"). But Dan doesn't stop until he's been wheeled out of the room. There he leaves Phil, with not a hint of remorse on his grinning face.
-
The video comes back from editing with a supercut of every instance of hair-touching included at the end. Twenty seconds of Dan's concentrated gaming face and Phil's lightly impassive spectating one, each clip showing Phil's hand absently playing with the back of Dan's hair and Dan telling him to stop. Phil does not stop. Phil also leaves the supercut in the final video.
hello!! I'm doing some research on the hiatus era for a potential fic idea, and was wondering if you all could help me with that.
basically I'm trying to get as much info as I can about that era, any info that exists - eg when dan might've brought up the idea of the hiatus, why (I roughly know why, but not in detail), how long dan was actually RADIO silent for and when he came back with WIQY/WAD/etc, what dan was doing during both the silent era and the solo era (eg going to pride, doing gay and not proud, etc), anything phil might have said about any of it or dan, if phil ever mentioned what the hiatus was like for him/how it might've benefited him too.....
basically - if you know of any videos or tweets or interviews or ANYTHING to do with the hiatus era and what it might have been like for them, pls lmk where to find them! i would be eternally grateful 💝💝💝
“They’re used to spending most of their time together, but creative work means they’re also constantly, actively interacting with each other; brainstorming and arguing and making important decisions from day till night. On days like this, having their own space at home can be vital. Interviewers are always asking them how they make it work, being partners in work as well as in life? This is it.”
OR: They've always had two bedrooms.
Words: 1,623 ✮ Rating: T ✮ Slice of Life, Domestic, Fluff
Also on AO3!
“I think I’m gonna go green tonight.”
Phil says this as he’s kicking his shoes off in their entryway, and Dan is gently nudging him aside so he can toss his keyring into the shallow dish sitting on the table next to him.
“Yeah?” Dan says absentmindedly, starting to unwind the scarf from around his neck. “You gonna Shrek it up, are you.”
Phil puts on a breathy voice — “Yeahhh” — which makes Dan laugh through his nose.
“Okay.”
Going green is Phil’s code for sleeping in the green bedroom. Which, given the day they’ve just had, makes complete sense. Working on a new project always does this. They’re used to spending most of their time together, but creative work means they’re also constantly, actively interacting with each other; brainstorming and arguing and making important decisions from day till night. On days like this, having their own space at home can be vital. Interviewers are always asking them how they make it work, being partners in work as well as in life? This is it. (Though they’d never say so, lest the fans deduce from this that the nature of their relationship, in the absence of the work aspect, would not require two bedrooms. C’est la vie.)
“Do you need to get anything from my room?” Dan asks. Phil has been sleeping with him for the past week and a bit, meaning more and more of his things have been migrating to his bedroom.
“I think I’ll just get my towel and shower in the guest bathroom.”
“Alright.”
Phil leads the way. He flips the room lights on by the door, then heads right into the bathroom as Dan heads left, into the walk-in. He needs to get his accessories off. Rings, choker. In the background, the white noise of Phil puttering around the bathroom. Dan looks, and then wanders over to the door of the walk-in as he fiddles with the stopper on his earring.
“Don’t forget your contacts case,” he says.
“Oh yeah,” comes the reply, which Dan takes as a sign that he can safely abandon his post and retreat into the closet again. A few moments later, Phil’s voice comes from by the door. “Night.”
He has his towel — swamp-coloured — slung over one arm and various other toiletries crushed into a claw-like hand. His hair is a little flat from a full day out in the rain. Dan’s chest pulses with a familiar affection.
“Goodnight,” he says, taking two steps forward to give him a kiss on the lips. It’s just a brush and then gone. They’re tired. There’ll always be tomorrow. Phil smiles at him, then disappears out the door.
Dan’s shower is heavenly. He cranks it near-full heat and does nothing but stand in the spray for about ten minutes. Then he speed-cleans himself for the last five and gets as quickly as he can into floor-length pyjama pants (incredible find for a 6’3” man) and a T-shirt.
But his bed, when he sinks into it, is an even greater revelation. A proper ouahhh sound escapes him once he’s horizontal. This is his favourite mattress in the house — just the right amount of fluff and firmness to send him into a baby’s slumber. Phil is agreeable to it, but he prefers the one in the green bedroom, which he got sole voting rights over since Dan wasn’t going to be the one crashing in there when they grew sick of each other.
If I’m gonna get kicked out of your room whenever you like, I’d better get to choose the mattress I want, was what Phil had said. Dan had argued that since his was the default “shared” room between them, it was also the room of compromises — a mattress both he and Phil could agree on, a desk chair that wouldn’t give Phil back pains too, etc — so he was paying the price already.
You love sharing a room with me, Phil had said dismissively, already turning back to the digital drawing board on his laptop.
Dan had made a face at that, but also said nothing.
The Dan of now just smiles at the thought. They’re a long way from Manchester now, when choosing furniture was less a question of preference than absolute necessity. He can hear water running through the pipes in the walls as Phil showers in the guest bathroom. The rest of the house is quiet. Their house, their home.
He sends Phil a message. It’s nothing at all to do with what he’s thinking. Just recalling a random anecdote from this morning, when one of their team members spilled coffee all over his beautifully put-together agenda. Phil won’t see it for another ten minutes yet (60% of the water bill in this establishment is attributable to Phil), so Dan leaves it for him to find and doomscrolls quite comfortably until the pipe noises die down.
Ding!
Dan swipes over to iMessage.
i felt so bad, Phil has replied.
his agenda was so beautiful
it was printed and bound, Dan replies.
thicc
agendussy
They go back and forth. Talking about their project. The government. Whether polar bears are capable of getting hypothermia. (Phil goes quiet for 10 seconds, then sends him a link with a list of reasons they can’t get hypothermia, one of them being their small tails. Dan gets weirdly emotional about that.)
They never really run out of things to say between them — haven’t since 2009 — but Dan can feel the moment when the energy of the conversation starts to flag. The messages start getting blander, the words monosyllabic, and then utterly nonsensical. Communication becomes reduced to animal noises. Phil even sends single letters once or twice.
But Dan isn’t willing to be the one to end it. Funny how he’d just thought they were so far from Manchester, but at times like this he feels like the same young boy who clung onto AmazingPhil’s every word, except before he did it with some measure of incredulity and burning gratitude. Now he does it with a warm insistence in his chest, nothing he won’t die without, but everything he wants for the rest of his life. The best part? He knows Phil wants the same.
When Dan finally sends the snail emoji with gentle effect, and Phil sees it without immediately responding, Dan gives it up.
can i green as well
A moment later, Phil replies with:
🟢
Dan smiles. Then rolls out of his perfectly comfortable bed and flips the lights off on his way out. He could’ve asked Phil to come to his, but it didn’t seem fair, given Phil had been the one to retreat to his own room himself. Dan would go to him. (Wouldn’t he always?)
Once at Phil’s door, he does an unnecessarily fancy knock before pushing it open.
It’s a warm, green haven in here. The overhead lights are off, leaving just the bedside lamp to cast its golden glow and fantastical, stretched-out shadows across the walls. The bamboo paintings Phil’s dad did for them to commemorate their magical trip to Japan hang tranquilly over the bed. Beneath them, Phil is on his phone under the covers. It would all be very serene if there wasn’t the insane sound of someone screeching wildly coming from Phil’s phone.
“What the fuck are you watching?” Dan asks, closing the door behind him.
Phil throws him a glance, mid-laugh. “I’m watching a goose steal someone’s wig.”
Dan makes his way over to the far side of the bed. “Do you mean that in like a, wig snatched—”
“No, I mean a goose actually stole someone’s wig. In a park.”
Phil turns his phone screen towards Dan as he’s pulling the covers back and climbing in next to him. There is, indeed, a goose fully clamping onto some poor woman’s beautiful blonde wig and escaping with it. Dan finds himself laughing stupidly.
“What the fuck,” he snorts. Phil giggles as well, watching him watch the screen. “Absolutely brutal.”
“This is why I don’t feed geese in the park.”
“Because you’re scared they’ll steal your wig from you?”
“Yeah.”
Dan gets comfortable beneath the blankets, and Phil goes back to the never-ending stream of animal content that is his TikTok For You page. Dan watches some with him, shaking his head at the things that make him laugh like a maniac. It’s far from the bedtime atmosphere podcast bros would recommend for optimal sleep, but this is exactly what Dan needs right now. Just Phil being himself. Next to him. He turns his own phone on and browses the news. Like a seesaw, he’ll read some depressing news about the state of the world, and then Phil will shake with the giggles at something he’s watched, and the gloom will be balanced out. This is why they work. This is why they win. 15 years and going strong.
Dan is still reading about some prime minister’s fumble when Phil’s side of the bed goes quiet. Distantly, he registers the sounds of Phil putting his phone on the table beside him, the light clatter of him taking off and folding up his glasses, the clap of its case shutting.
Then Phil’s arm comes to rest over his torso. Dan feels a gentle exhale ruffle the curls by his ear, and smiles. Phil doesn’t say anything — he might already be asleep, honestly. And it doesn’t sound like a half bad idea. After finishing up reading whatever he’d been reading before, Dan switches his own phone off and slides it onto the table by his head. Reaches up to turn off the light.
-
The mattress is really, honestly, subpar. And Phil snores like a feral hog throughout the night.
challenging myself to write phiclets based on a single randomly generated word: pt 1 / ?
word: arrange
tags: wad era, hurt/comfort
lil disclaimer - I write for vibes, not facts. if anything within this fic is factually inaccurate, please treat it as "canon" divergence and simply enjoy the ride ✌🏼🫶🏼
also on ao3 for your reading pleasure
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After two joint tours with Phil, Dan knows how to troubleshoot on the road. Venue cancellation? He's spending the night adjusting his stage blocking to the new venue dimensions based on grainy Google Images. Stomach issues on the bus? No problem, there's a little pharmacy in the back pocket of his duffel waiting to be abused. Problems with ticketing agencies? If there's one thing two tours has taught him, it's that being a Karen is both a learned skill and sometimes absolutely necessary to avoid a total event collapse two hours before a show.
All this to say, he's become adaptable through his significant experience over the years. He can adjust.
But there's one thing he simply would not have been able to suffer going wrong on the We're All Doomed tour.
Missing Phil's birthday.
To be completely honest, he's not ashamed of the not insignificant amount of grief he put his team through trying to make the route from New Zealand to the UK work in time for the 30th. In his defence, he had tried to arrange it all himself, but after a few choice words from a team member who had far superior knowledge about logistics and planning than him, he'd shut up and just allowed a squadron of ten people crank their brains over how to get their solo performer across the world, mid-tour, to spend a few days with his friend before the show went on. ("Friend" never went down well with any of them if discussed at length, which is why they just kind of didn't.)
But they pulled it off, the madlads. They got him the dates, they got him the flight, and Dan was so, so, so ready by the time he performed in New Zealand to be out of there immediately and back in Phil's arms - if only for a few precious days. Not that he didn't love and appreciate the chance to see his fans from everywhere around the world, but you have to understand, by this point he'd spent months away from a man he'd previously only been separated from for 2 and a half weeks, since the day they met. In two thousand and nine.
Dan missed Phil. He missed him with a fierceness. The day before his flight, sitting in a hotel room listening to a news report about the unexpected floods ravaging the area with one ear, and Phil speaking to him in calm tones through the sweat-slick phone pressed to the other, trying to assure him that it would all clear up by the time Dan was due to fly, Dan felt like he could have vibrated out of his own skin. He wanted to be formless (not the first time he's thought that), without a body, just so he could forego the fucking roads and airplane and just materialise next to Phil in his green bedroom in London, right then. After hanging up — following a promise from Phil that he would call back as soon as he'd had his shower — Dan was left to the urgent, roiling feelings in his stomach and chest, and he started thinking about his show. We're All Doomed. The 2-hour-long essay on a stage, essentially, that lamented about and made fun of the world that was seemingly crumbling around them every day. (It was the epitome of If I don't laugh, I'll cry — so let's just laugh.) He thought about pop culture, and consumerism, and politics and war, and the thing he kept coming back to at the ends of each of these tangents was:
If everyone loved, and craved, and missed another person or thing as purposefully — as fundamentally — as I miss Phil right now, there wouldn't be any fucking confusion about the real priorities in the world.
A thought that made him laugh to himself a little, really. So was the solution to the world's problems, in the end, actually, cheesily, ridiculously: love?
Yeah. It really did feel like it.
-
In the end, his plane took off. He sat with all 6'3" of himself folded into a (thankfully) business class seat for nearly 20 hours. He watched a bunch of random shit. He missed Phil, but the relief of knowing he was at least making physical progress towards him now was a good counterbalance to the pain, lowering the pressure in his chest with each passing minute.
By the time he landed in Heathrow, he felt like the most disgusting person on the planet, but he powered through immigration, baggage claim, and security like they didn't exist. He had an Uber booked the moment he had a clear path to the exits, and he fucking power-walked to that bitch. (Phil wasn't picking him up at the airport because - well, it was Phil. He'd said something about them both ending up back in the house anyway, so why bother making the trip to and from the airport. He could just "get the house ready for Dan to crash in" instead. Whatever that meant.) (Probably hiding all the houseplants he'd murdered in Dan's absence.)
And by the time Dan made it to their front door, he could hardly even believe it. Was he standing here? Was he shuffling through the keys on his keyring for the one he hadn't touched in months, the one that would let him into their home? It felt familiar in his muscles, and like a totally new experience in his brain.
He unlocked the door and pushed, just as at that same moment it was pulled in, and he nearly fell over from the unexpected lack of resistance as the door gave out from beneath his fingers - though even if he'd fallen he wouldn't have fallen to the floor. Just into a painfully real, painfully sweet and familiar body standing just across the threshold. Dan looked up and spontaneously laughed, just a small laugh, quiet and airy from lack of breath. Opposite him - so close to him, so there - Phil smiled in similarly elated, disbelieving fashion. And Dan let himself fall where he'd caught himself before. His forehead found Phil's bony shoulder, his hands interlocked simply - was it all so ridiculously simple? - over the small of Phil's back. Phil's arms took him and brought him closer still.
Dan let himself disappear into it. Formless, body-less. Just the feeling of being in love.
summary: the orange heart reply was a cultural moment; this is my vision of what might have led up to dan posting it.
a/n: i posted this on AO3 a couple days ago, but had to wait till tumblr verified i wasn't a robot to crosspost here. from now on all my fics will be available in both places!
ALSO ON AO3
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Dan knew what the response to We're All Doomed (now uploaded onto Youtube, forever) was going to be, even before he started scrolling through the comments and the tweets. He'd been doing the show long enough. Yet still, knowing it didn't prepare him for it emotionally. The kindness of people was overwhelming; the gratitude even more so.
He flits between social media platforms on his phone, reading the reviews and battling unsuccessfully against the growing lump in his throat, even as a recorded version of his voice says, "Anyone here planning on becoming a polyamorous lesbian grandma?" from the TV. Phil put the special on earlier — very proudly accessing it from the YouTube TV app, which made Dan smile — and they're letting it play in the background as they sit with their respective phones, having seen the show too many times already to totally invest in it again. But it's nice. Comforting.
Raucous cheers erupt from the sea of future polyamorous lesbian grandmas in the audience, and Dan glances up at the TV with a smile. He loves this part. He loved that audience, both nights—and the wider group of people that they represented. "Nice," he says onscreen, which elicits some laughter.
A bright little ding! drags his attention back to his phone.
New tweet from Phil Lester.
It's natural for him to glance over to the man himself, curled up just an arm's length away from him. Phil is fiddling serenely with his phone, but looks up when he feels Dan staring. When Dan raises an eyebrow, Phil only responds with a shrug, smiling.
Dan obediently opens the tweet to see for himself.
every time i see this it makes me laugh and cry at the same time until i'm a shaking mess on the floor. great show thanks danny!!
Phil has quoted Dan's original announcement tweet, so the endorsement sits on top of Dan's name, glowing with pride. A few things happen at once in Dan then. First, there's the impulse to snort at the nickname danny, which is Phil being silly (and succeeding at it, as he always does). Then there's the warmth that suffuses his entire chest from Phil Lester openly expressing his emotions for Dan's sake on a public platform, an occurrence so rare it still shocks (and essentially assaults) Dan whenever it happens. Then, from that warmth, comes the immediate, overwhelming, not so inexplicable urge to sob his lungs out.
"Fuck," he whispers, so quietly it's only a breath, and quickly smothers it in the sleeve of his jumper, turning away from Phil's side of the sofa.
Because it's all so familiar. Because he's been here before—so many times. Reeling from the adrenaline of releasing a project he poured his heart and soul—or at the very least, a lot of his time—into. Anxious about and then overjoyed by the response to it. But no matter what it was, whether Basically I'm Gay, or Why I Quit YouTube, or fuck, even Hello Internet—
Phil has been there.
Phil is always there. Always here—he thinks, looking over at him finally—next to him. In his life. (Hadn't he said that to everyone on the internet before? Hadn't he thought it was so cheesy back then, and yet regretted nothing, because there hadn't been a single lie in what he'd said?) Phil sits in ignorant bliss on the other end of the sofa, tucked up against the armrest, tapping at something on his phone. His hair is turning more ginger by the day. His face has faint lines in it that Dan has seen appear, firsthand and little by little, over the past decade and a half. His emoji pyjama pants are a hate crime on fashion.
He's everything. He's there.
"Dan."
Dan comes back to himself, and he realises Phil is looking at him now, questions displayed openly on his face. Dan can't really read any of them, though—the fucking oceans of saltwater that have built up in his eyes are doing a brilliant job of preventing that. He shakes his head, and Phil's face sinks further into concern rather than confusion, and Dan shakes his head again to tell him no, it's not bad. It can never be bad when it's you.
Instead all he manages to say, now half nodding and shaking his head—it's a mess—is, "I love you."
He's never meant it more. He's always meant it just as much as now. He thinks he'll never really know, even in himself, what that word really means or where the limits lie—if there are any. What he does know is that he's going to spend the rest of his life growing to fit every bit of it he can. Phil takes his hand where it rests on the sofa between them, and Dan knows there was never any two ways about it.
"Yeah," Phil says. He's so solid. (So there. Always.) He looks Dan in the eyes, shakes his hand back and forth. "I love you."
The first spill of tears warms Dan's cheeks. He nods, looking down at their hands, then back up at Phil. He knows his mouth is doing something funny, squeezed up tight like he's just bit into a lemon, and there are tears already seeping in through the corners, and by the time he barely breathes out a, "Thank you," he's already diving into Phil, grabbing him up into a messy, breath-robbing hug. He can hear it in Phil's little gasp. But there's not a moment of hesitation between that and the feeling of Phil's arms wrapping around him, tight as ever. Assuring as ever.
"Thank you," Dan says again. And he hopes Phil knows he means for everything. For seeing him in the replies of his tweets in 2009, and for responding. For urging him to post the worst video Dan would ever make, which would confusingly also be his best one, because it would be the one that started it all. For having so much fun with him and helping him build a career out of it. For supporting him (15 years' worth of "great show thanks danny!" variations). For believing in him. For loving him, really, most of all.
Phil pushes his cheek into the top of Dan's head, and smooths his hand over Dan's hair again and again, and says, "Always."
Yeah, he understood.
-
By the time Dan has collected himself, enough time has passed that it would be embarrassing if he had even a shred of embarrassment left to show around Phil Lester, but he thinks that died somewhere around the decade mark.
They're still all caught up in each other, more one human than two, a blanket monster that's made its home against the tiniest corner of a perfectly sizeable sofa. We're All Doomed is well into its final quarter on the TV now, and they're sort of staring past it into the wall and the world and the future beyond. Phil's fingers are still in Dan's hair; which is just the way he wants to keep it.
Except that's when Dan remembers the thing that started his descent into incomprehension in the first place, and he briefly—with enough warning to Phil—sits up to get his phone from his previous spot on the sofa. He settles back into Phil with it in hand, so Phil has a clear view of the screen over his shoulder, and pulls up the tweet again. He scrolls down and taps on the waiting reply line, then stops.
How to say everything he just said to Phil, verbally and otherwise? (Mostly otherwise, let's be honest.) The task seems insurmountable. There aren't enough words in the dictionary, or hours in the day to use them. He can feel Phil's quiet expectance over his shoulder, steady but not applying any pressure. He'll wait for Dan as long as he needs him too.
But it doesn't take long. Because hey, Dan may be a self-professed yapper extraordinaire, but even he knows when the game is up. In this case there's just no use.
He pulls up the list of emojis, and taps on one.
Just one.
Then he waits, holding the phone just there, letting Phil see it and understand that that's it. All he wants to say. (Maybe all he's ever trying to say, to Phil.)
It's a heart.
(Orange, of course, because it's still about WAD.)
But just a heart.
Dan twists his head against Phil's shoulder to look up at him. "What d'you think?"
Phil is still looking ahead at the screen, and Dan watches the microscopic changes in expression on his face, from the softening of his wide eyes to the way his mouth gently relaxes into a smile. He looks down at Dan—Dan thinks, beautiful, mine—and says, "Yeah." Dan feels Phil's arm squeeze him around his stomach. "Do it."
ough i love ur fics so uhh drabble prompt: fetus phan and dan is talking about how his parents reacted to him saying he wanted to go visit a stranger four years older than him that he met on the internet because the concept of dan trying to convince his parents to let him see phil has always made me giggle
