seven days (i’ll find you in any world)
day seven
summary: dan is stuck in the wrong timeline. one day, he kisses phil goodnight. the next morning, he’s completely alone. he doesn’t even recognize where he wakes up, and little details in the world around him have changed. he has no clue what’s happening or where to go next in an effort to fix it; all he knows is that he has to find phil.
genre: sci-fi, a lil bit of angst, happy ending
warnings: just some swearing!
fic word count: 19.0k chapter word count: 3.0k
a/n: i can’t believe i’ve finally finished this fic!! huge thanks to any of you who have stuck around all the way through this mess--i love you all sm <333
written for the @phandomreversebang ! inspired by the awesome moodboard/edits by @maybeformepersonally ! beta’d (beginning to end) by @i-might-just-leave-soon ! HUGE thank you to eilidh for being such an amazing beta for this entire fic <333
much to his surprise, phil pulled him in closer, and he closed his eyes again, allowing himself to feel the kiss. he could sense the world tearing itself apart around him, but all that mattered to him in that moment was that he was back kissing phil, and he was completely confident--that was his phil.
read it on ao3
Dan blinked his eyes open with no sense of urgency, rolling over to snooze the alarm beside his bed. It read 7:00, and he wasn’t sure why he was getting up that early, but he wasn’t pleased. He stared at his boring, beige wall for a moment, contemplating whether or not he should get up, when he came to the realization that there was something in his mouth.
“Bleh,” he spat, disgusted by the spit covering the bag. He looked at the bag for a moment, and a wave of chills came over him as memories came rushing back to him. “Fucking damnit,” he whispered, looking around his childhood bedroom. He’d woken up so at peace there that he’d completely forgotten that he wasn’t eighteen anymore. Blissful ignorance was preferred to this bullshit.
He picked up his old phone from the nightstand and saw a text from Phil. “That was easy,” he muttered, and then furrowed his brow. Dan couldn’t remember it completely, but that seemed identical to the text he’d received from Phil ten years earlier on the day that they meant. He glanced up at the date on the top of the notification screen--October 19, 2009.
Dan’s eyes widened as he scrambled to access Phil’s twitter, and his suspicions were confirmed--everything was identical. “Okay, calm down,” he said to himself, already on his feet and nervously pacing the room. “There’s billions of parallel universes out there! There must be one tiny difference in this universe and mine, right?”
He banged his head on the wall, struggling to search his memory for anything that anyone had told him throughout the week that could explain this universe--this final universe that Dan would have a chance to travel through before all would collapse.
“I’m living in tropes,” his own voice echoed in his head.
“Follow them, and you will find your way home,” a Phil from days ago responded.
Dan picked his head up from where it was resting on the wall and looked into his mirror. “Follow the trope.” Realization after realization hit him, each of them like another dodgeball in his personal secondary school hell. 2009!Phan was one of the most popular phanfiction tropes; he knew that. Every other trope was in an alternate universe, but this one took place in theirs. And it took place at that very moment. He was in his own timeline; he had to be.
He looked to his side and found the suitcase that a younger him had packed the night before, his train ticket to Manchester sitting on top. The clothes he’d worn all those years ago when he’d met Phil were laying on a chair beside it. Dan took a deep breath, looking back into the mirror. He had a train to catch.
Everything from there until Manchester went off without a hitch. Dan had no problems getting on the train, and the ride itself was pleasant enough--it was when he was approaching Manchester that everything began to go wrong.
He was in his own timeline, and he’d tried thus far to recreate everything he’d done when he traveled ten years earlier, but he couldn’t do that forever. How would he react when he met Phil? How would Phil help him get back to 2019? And worst of all, would his actions now change his future with Phil?
As Dan stepped onto the platform in Manchester, he began to feel as if he was being torn in half. Half of him was being pulled, almost against his will, towards Phil, his future and his trope. The other half was petrified with fear and wanted to turn right back around and get back on the train in fear that if he interacted with Phil he wouldn’t even have a future to go back to.
“Follow the trope,” he repeated to himself, putting a wide smile on his face. He ran towards Phil without even thinking; he already knew exactly where Phil would be. A wave of sadness fell over him; the memory of the joy he’d felt the first time he’d done this made him feel even worse about the situation he was now stuck in.
As he neared Phil, he saw the bright smile that had been engraved in his brain for the last ten years. Dan’s smile became a bit more genuine as he buried himself in Phil’s arms, a familiar warmth enveloping them. Much had changed in ten years, but the feeling of home that Phil gave him, even though Dan had no way of knowing if it was even real, would never leave him.
“I can’t wait to show you around Manchester!” Phil exclaimed, almost giddier than Dan remembered.
“I can’t wait to see it!” That was a lie. He knew everything about Manchester. He knew everything about Phil, too; the two of them had lived there for years. But Phil didn’t know that.
“Let’s go grab some Starbucks,” he said, and Dan nodded, his body jerking a bit afterwards. Was that what he had done the first time? Was Starbucks their first stop, or did they go to the Apple Store first? What if he’d already changed their future with just a simple nod?
Dan knew he’d screwed up when Phil remained completely silent all the way to the Starbucks a couple of blocks away. It was as if they were both actors, and they were just waiting until they had more lines to speak.
They reached the Starbucks and ordered caramel macchiatos, and Dan couldn’t help but crack a smile. It was odd for him to relive moments that had become iconic to thousands of people, but it was almost therapeutic. If the entire universe was going to explode at the end of the day, it might as well be the best day of his life.
Dan allowed himself to fall into the experience, and his anxiety lifted ever so slightly. He and Phil talked and laughed, and they felt natural for the first time. Dan felt real for the first time.
“You can’t tell me Muse’s latest album was their best. I mean, come on!” Dan exclaimed, smiling at Phil with the softest possible form of anger.
“I’m not saying that! I’m just not saying it’s the worst. The worst was clearly Simu-Symmetry. Origin of Symmetry.”
Dan furrowed his brow. “Phil, you love Origin of Symmetry. We both do.” Dan replayed Phil’s phrasing in his head. It sounded almost like he was beginning to say simulation, the first word in the title of Muse’s 2018 album.
“I’m just messing with you,” Phil said, appearing a bit uneasy. “Symmetry is the best.”
Dan chuckled nervously. “Yeah.”
Dan couldn’t help but notice more things that seemed off throughout the day. It seemed almost as if he and Phil both were simply going through the motions--as if things that they’d had to discuss and decide on ten years ago they simply did.
It wasn’t long before they found themselves taking their first picture together in the Apple Store. “Picture?” Phil asked after charging directly towards the spot Dan remembered the picture being taken in. He might have been losing his mind, but he could have sworn they meandered the store until they found themselves there. It was as if they were just checking boxes.
They took the picture, both of them struggling in attempts to recreate the exact picture--Dan could only remember because they’d done it in PINOF 10 only a year earlier. They did it, though, as far as Dan could tell, and Phil posted it on Dailybooth.
And then they were there. The Manchester Eye. The place the two of them had first kissed.
Dan wasn’t ready for this stop. The moment he’d first kissed Phil there years ago had been the most magical moment of his life, and still to date it was the memory he pulled whenever he was asked to think of something happy. He wasn’t sure if he could handle tainting it with this fake do-over. It was like he was back in the VCR days, and he was about to tape over his happiest memory.
As the two of them went up in the wheel, Dan’s head was spinning so fast that he couldn’t keep track of his thoughts. The only thing he could cling onto was the same mantra he’d been repeating in his head for the entire day: follow the trope.
All he could seem to do was follow the trope. He was confident now that it was pulling him, guiding him to do things he wasn’t completely sure he wanted to do. He felt helpless, as if he was back in high school theatre class and had to kiss a girl onstage. He wasn’t even himself anymore--he was an actor, a character in a story that was no longer his own. Follow the trope, his brain said. But his heart told him to stop it all, to break character.
Breaking character, though, could have serious consequences. What if he’d done the one thing he’d truly feared all day and destroyed the future he had with Phil? What if he lost his only chance to repair the timeline?
But then again, what if the real Phil, his Phil, his 2019 Phil was sitting across from him, and he wouldn’t know until he broke character? What if the Phil across from him was the character, and his Phil was the actor?
Follow the trope. Break character.
They stopped at the top of the wheel.
Follow the trope. Break character.
Phil smiled nervously at him. He was out of time.
Follow the trope. Break character.
“Dan, I can’t do this.”
Dan blinked himself into reality and his eyes widened. “What?” was the only thing he could muster out. This was certainly different.
“I’m not who I say I am. Well, I am, but I’m not.”
Dan took a deep breath, calmer than he’d been since awakening that morning. “You’re a time traveler.”
Dan needed the comic relief that came when Phil’s eyes popped out of his head.
“I’m from 2019, and you are too, aren’t you?” Phil barely managed to nod his head. “Phil, I think we’re from the same universe. I think you’re really my Phil,” he said, taking Phil’s hands.
“How-how do you know?” Dan could feel Phil shaking.
“We’re meant to be here together. Right now. Again. We’ve done all this before, and we have to follow this trope back home.”
“Dan, what the hell are you talking about?”
“You did live this ten years ago, didn’t you?”
“Yes, of course I did!”
“Then trust me.”
Dan pulled the bag from the night before out of his pocket and looked up at Phil, who was suddenly holding a device with a large, red button in the middle.
“What’s that?” they each asked each other at the same time.
“This can take me back to 2019 in my timeline,” Phil said, answering before Dan had a chance. “I came back here for Dan--for you, maybe. I don’t know. But I do know that if I take the wrong Dan back, we’ll both be torn apart on the way back, along with every timeline in existence.”
“Yeah, well I know that if we don’t get the timelines back to normal by the end of the night, they’ll split beyond repair anyway,” Dan replied, more serious than he could ever recall being.
Phil bit his lip. “I don’t know.”
Dan ignored Phil’s panic and opened the bag. “Here,” Dan said firmly, handing Phil the paper. “The Phil I met in the timeline I was in yesterday said this is the key to fixing everything.”
Phil took the paper, his hands shaking as he read it. “Bring the anomalies together?” Phil shouted. “No shit!”
“Is that all it says?” Dan asked, panic beginning to set over him as well.
“That’s it!” Phil shouted, starting to rock the cart they were sitting in. “This is fucking useless!”
“I guess he didn’t know how much you’d know!” Dan exclaimed, anger creeping into him as well. All the hours they spent the previous night, just for nothing?
“Dan, I don’t know what to do!” Phil exclaimed, fear setting into his eyes. Dan looked at him, and he could tell Phil was relying on him. Dan was the only one who could fix this, and he only had one idea.
“Follow the trope,” Dan said, his voice suddenly quiet.
“What?” Phil replied, equally quiet. An eerie, tense silence fell over their cart.
“You have to kiss me.”
“What?!” Phil exclaimed, his voice loud once again.
“I’m supposed to follow the trope. I’ve been in a world where you’re famous and I’m not, a world where we meet in a coffee shop, a world where we’re both parents, and a whole pile more, but the point is that those are all fanfiction tropes. And the two of us, here, right now, are a trope too. 2009.”
“You’re trying to tell me that the way for us to get home is for us to make out?”
“No, Phil! We just have to complete the timeline with everything that happened tonight!”
“You’re fucking insane, you know that?” he shouted, spit flinging from the corners of his mouth.
“Do you have any better ideas?” The silence fell again, and Phil looked at Dan with desperation in his eyes. “Do you know of any other ways to find out if we’re really the Dan and Phil that have been in love with each other for the last ten years?”
Phil’s expression softened a bit, and Dan could feel his own follow. Their faces still showed desperation, but they now had a sense of understanding, a sense of love. And for the first time since a week ago when Phil had kissed him goodnight, Dan finally felt as if he was truly back with his Phil.
Dan reached out and took Phil’s hand. “Are you ready?” Phil nodded, and Dan leaned in, pressing their lips together for the first time in what felt like ages. Before Dan could even begin to feel the numerous emotions that the kiss instilled in him, a wind began picking up around them. Dan wanted to pull back to mention that they were inside a cart and there was no way wind could have gotten inside, but he found his lips stuck to Phil’s. “Mmm!” he hummed, his eyes wide open in fear.
Much to his surprise, Phil pulled him in closer, and he closed his eyes again, allowing himself to feel the kiss. He could sense the world tearing itself apart around him, but all that mattered to him in that moment was that he was back kissing Phil, and he was completely confident--that was his Phil.
Suddenly they were thrust away from each other, and Dan felt himself land on a hard floor. He sat up, rubbing his head, and looked around the room. They were in their lounge in their 2019 flat, and Phil was lying on the floor across the room. “Phil?” He sat up immediately, beaming from ear to ear.
“We did it,” he laughed, lunging across the room to tackle Dan into another kiss. Their first kiss may have been literal magic, but this second one felt like magic to Dan. They were safe, and they were together, and he’d never been happier to have Phil in his arms.
“We did it,” Dan repeated, tears filling his eyes as he gazed into Phil’s. He pulled back slightly, refusing to leave Phil’s grasp, but needing to make a point. “Is the timeline alright? Is everything really back to normal?”
“As far as I can tell, yeah,” Phil said, standing up and helping Dan to stand beside him.
Dan brushed off his clothes and looked to Phil. He was his 2019 self, but he was still wearing his 2009 clothes, and Dan couldn’t help but chuckle internally at the sight. “How the hell did we get back?”
“I’m assuming some other Dan and Phil in a parallel universe didn’t follow the trope and just pushed the button to go home,” Phil replied, waving the device he had kept in his pocket over his head.
“Fair,” Dan replied, “but I prefer the magic kiss theory.”
Phil laughed openly, the extreme relief they shared showing through. “I suppose that works too.”
Phil took Dan’s hand in his and the two walked to their bedroom to get ready to sleep; it wasn’t all that late, but they were exhausted from their journeys.
“Phil?” Dan blurted out as Phil was cutting the light off and they were climbing into bed.
“Mmm?”
“Why did you never tell me about your science?”
Phil shrugged, turning towards Dan in bed. “I never wanted you to get dragged into it, like some other Phil clearly let happen. I’m sorry I wasn’t completely transparent, though; that’ll change.” Dan opened his mouth to speak, but Phil took notice and cut him off. “We can talk about it in the morning. I’m fucking beat.”
“Wait, one more thing,” Dan said, a smile growing across his face. “You really traveled through space and time after me?”
“I’ll find you in any world,” Phil said, grinning so widely that Dan wanted to smack the smile right off of his face.
“Stupid fucking tropes,” he said, leaning in to give Phil a kiss. “Goodnight, Phil,” he said, moving his lips to Phil’s forehead to give him their traditional goodnight forehead kiss.
Phil smiled much wider than he usually did, allowing his eyes to close as he calmed himself for sleep. “Goodnight, Dan.”
Dan rolled over, smiling to himself. Those were the last words he’d heard from Phil a full week ago before they were separated, so he would have thought they would have stung a bit to hear again. At the very least, Dan thought hearing Phil wish him goodnight would have incited fear, that something like this could happen again. But Dan felt the contrary--as he heard Phil’s goodnight, he felt safe and at peace. After everything they’d been through, they were still together, and Dan truly felt as if they’d be together forever. After all, Phil’s stupid cliche was right: they’d find each other in any world.