Chapter Text
“Please, Dan,”
“No.”
“I can’t believe I have to beg you to hang out with the dude whose videos you watch every day!”
Dan huffs, rolling his eyes at his friend, even though PJ can’t see him.
“Don’t think you can just roll your eyes at me because we’re on the phone and I can’t see you!”
“Look, Peej, you just… you don’t understand.”
Dan has been trying to convince him for the past ten minutes that he just doesn’t understand.
“What is there to understand?” PJ was clearly trying to keep his patience but it doesn’t last forever. “You’ve had a huge crush on Phil for nearly a year and now he’s here and he wants to be your friend. What could be wrong with that?”
“There’s so many things, PJ!”
What if Phil is secretly an asshole who likes to take advantage of his fans? What if he’s just trying to save face and make sure Dan doesn’t stop watching his videos? Or worse, what if he’s actually as nice as he seems? What if Phil is just taking pity on him because he can tell Dan is pathetic? What if everything works out at first but then something goes wrong and they have a falling out then Dan loses one of the few things that makes him happy?
“Dan? Dan! Calm down!” PJ’s voice sounds distant in Dan’s ear, “Dude, I can hear your breathing! Stop freaking out. Do you need me to come over?”
“No!” Dan answers too quickly, trying to regulate his heart rate again. “Just -- no. I’m fine. I’ll be fine.”
“If you say so…”
“Trust me.”
“Fine, just. Please just think about it, okay? Just, Phil just moved here from Manchester and he doesn’t know anyone but me and he said he thinks you seem cool. It doesn’t have to be anything too intense. He just wants to be your friend. I’m sorry for assuming you’d be all for it.”
“Ugh,” Dan rubbed a hand roughly over his face, “it’s not your fault, Peej. You’re just looking out for me, and I appreciate it. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
PJ laughs lightly, “Yeah, I don’t know what you’d do either.”
“Look, I promise I’ll think about it, okay?”
“If that’s as good as I’m gonna get.”
“It is.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow?”
“I guess,”
“Cool, bye,”
Dan looks at his phone and waits for PJ to hang up first, before chucking the device so that it lands on his bed. He’s not about to break his phone just because he’s feeling a little moody. Sometimes Dan wishes PJ could just see the world through his eyes. Then he remembers how he sees the world and he’s grateful that PJ doesn’t have to suffer through that.
Eager for something to take his mind off the situation at hand, Dan opens up a notebook to study for an upcoming test that he wishes he gave a shit about.
He flips through it for a bit when he gets distracted by the lyrics he wrote in the margins and meant to transfer over to his songwriting notebook and never did.
“Where we're from there's no sun
Where we're from we're no one
Our hometown's in the dark”
“I wanted to be a better brother better son
Wanted to be a better adversary to the evil I have done
I have none to show to the one I love but denial”
“You don't know my brain the way you know my name
You don't know my heart the way you know my face”
Dan grimaces at some of them, not really remembering where his head was at when he wrote them. His notes aren’t even dated, if you could even call them notes. He really needs to start paying attention in class. Especially if these fake deep lyrics are the only thing he can pull out of his ass.
One couplet is surrounded by stars that were clearly traced over and over again. Dan trying to remind himself that’s very important that these lyrics get transferred to the correct notebook. To no avail apparently, it must have been a bad day.
“I was told when I get older all my fears would shrink
But now I'm insecure and I care what people think”
He kind of likes that though. He tries to remember the tune that he had put them to whenever he wrote it. But all he can think of is a drum beat.
So much for not thinking about Phil.
Dan’s memory starts to piece together. It was just a couple weeks after Dan started getting into rap and Phil’s drumming video that day really inspired him to try out a more hip hop sound. Needless to say, he gave up on it pretty quickly.
But he feels somewhat better about it now. Dan was weaker then, but he’s getting better. The bits and pieces of lyrics he wrote for that song were solid.
He grabs his songwriting notebook off his desk and opens it delicately. He’s had it for a while now, it’s nearly full and falling apart. He’ll need a new one soon, but that’s not what’s important right now. He flips to some earlier pages, but not too early. Dan doesn’t need to revisit the first half of his songwriting notebook. There’s a reason why he’s getting better now.
“We would build a rocket ship and then we'd fly it far away
Used to dream of outer space but now they're laughing at our face”
"Wake up you need to make money!!"
“Out of student loans and treehouse homes we all would take the latter”
He grabs a pen and writes down the couplet he found in his other notebook, then grabs his laptop. Dan sighs when he signs in and the only tab open is Phil’s YouTube page. It’s even worse because that’s where he’s going anyway.
He clicks on the playlist tab and then on Phil’s “Drum Videos!” playlist. He scrolls through, trying to remember which one contains the beat he’s thinking of.
Then he finds “Stressed Out” and he can’t help but roll his eyes at himself. Looks like Phil provided a lot more inspiration than just the beat.
Dan clicks it and finds that it is in fact the beat for his song. He sighs once more as he writes “Stressed Out” across the top of the page of his notebook.
He takes a second to look at Phil drumming on his screen. His black fringe is falling messily into his eyes, but he doesn’t seem to mind. There’s a mixture of concentration and just pure joy on his pale face. It makes Dan smile. Phil always makes Dan smile.
Then Dan remembers how Phil is an actual real human in his life now. Maybe a permanent feature, seeing as he and PJ seem to be close. It makes Dan’s heart clench in a weird way, butterflies filling his tummy and making him feel so much younger than he is.
Dan’s never considered that Phil would ever be in his life without a computer screen between them and he doesn’t know how to process it. He doesn’t think he could handle it if Phil were to reject him, so it’s ultimately better to just stay away from him… right?
The drumming coming from Dan’s laptop speakers stops. Dan looks up to watch as Phil pushes his sweaty fringe back against his head, only for it to attempt to flop back in place, making him look fully disheveled. Then he grins widely and gives the camera a thumbs up right before the screen cuts to black.
“Shit,” Dan mumbles to himself, putting his head in his hands. “shitshitshit…”