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Before Phil, Dan was alone. Dan had friends of course, he had family, he had food and a roof over his head but his life just passed. Dan thought that there was no worse feeling than feeling completely and utterly alone even when surrounded by people, because even though he should be ‘having a good time’ or ‘being social’ he always felt alone and so trapped. Dan had friends in school, he wasn’t bullied or beaten up but he never had a best friend either, his friends just always had someone that they liked more than him, and he accepted that because he didn’t know anything different. Meeting Phil was the most indescribable phenomenon of Dan’s life. Dan had been living his whole life in darkness and Phil was the sun. There wasn’t an all of a sudden moment where Phil magically lit up his life, it was a little at a time. The first time they skyped, Dan smiled for days because Phil actually wanted to talk to him. The first time they flirted and Dan realized… he was okay with that. Dan got so caught up in all of these moments, that one day he looked around and realized that he was happy. Dan had never felt like he wasn’t alone, and little by little he realized he had Phil. It was in the little things Phil did, like bringing him his coffee the way he liked it accompanied with cuddles when Dan was editing a new video. When Dan would be laying on his bed staring at the ceiling and Phil would appear with junk food and anime sensing that Dan was having an existential crisis, even though Dan hadn’t quite realized it himself. Phil was always there, he was there when Dan needed a hand to hold in uncomfortable situation, he was there to hold him and cuddle him when he was tired and had a bad day, he was there to remind Dan that being alive was worth it on days when Dan couldn’t see that. Phil was the sun in Dan’s life and he had never felt so happy and whole, and because of Phil, Dan wanted to live.
It had been months since Dan had started talking to Phil, months since Dan’s world had started to revolve around Phil. Around whether Phil would text him, around how much he loved Phil, but it had also started to revolve around his fear of losing Phil. He didn’t know if this came from human nature of not wanting to lose the things we love, or from his anxiety. You know that moment when you’re about to miss a step on the stairs and you catch yourself at the last second, and your heart is beating out of your chest, Dan felt like that all the time, he was living in constant fear that he would lose Phil. Anythign could happen, Phil could be diagnosed with a terminal illness, or get hit by a bus, but the worst would be if Phil just got sick of him. Dan thought that his fear was warranted, people just got sick of him. He always cared more for people, than they did for him. He would do anything for people, he would be there when they were crying, when they were upset, when they were happy, and they wouldn’t be there for him.
Dan was trying not to get excited before he met Phil in real life, Phil had seemed to like Dan over a webcam but what if he wasn’t enough? What if Phil expected more than plain boring Dan from Wokingham? It was so much easier to be brave over a webcam, he could say things and always have the option of a disconnect button if things went terribly wrong, he’d never resorted to that option but it gave him a bit of courage nonetheless. Dan stepped off the train onto the platform and looked around for a black fringe, not expecting the unique hair to be that hard to spot. After walking for a few moments as not to hold up the crowd of people exiting the train, the two boys spotted each other at the same moment. Dan picked up the pace to get to where Phil was standing a few yards away. When they reached each other they stood for a moment both smiling so contently you’d think that they’d died and gone to heaven. Dan couldn’t believe AmazingPhil was real, seeing him in real life was so peculiar that Dan had to do a double take. Phil was truly beautiful, there was no other word to describe him. He was much taller than people would expect him to be, taller than Dan in fact. His black fringe hung perfectly, not like Dan’s that constantly had pieces of hair rebelling against the rest. Phil’s skinny jeans hugged his legs in a way that made Dan’s breath catch for a moment. His eyes were the most stunning though. A video camera could only capture a fraction of Phil’s eyes, they were stunning. They were a mix of ocean and sky blue almost seeming to change the longer you looked, they were so clear though, like crystals. “Hi...” Dan spoke at last, quietly as to not break the moment, Phil sighed out, “Hi” he replied. At that moment Phil wrapped him in the most amazing hug Dan had ever experienced (pun intended) Dan wrapped his arms around Phil’s neck so that Phil was lifting him up on his toes in the slightest. Dan normally pulled out of hugs because he found them awkward but Dan wanted to spend the rest of eternity in this particular hug. They stayed there wrapped together in a hug for quite a while, people might’ve stared but for once… Dan couldn’t bring himself to care. Phil’s hugs weren’t like other people’s, it was like Phil was trying to convey so much emotion and so much happiness in a hug that suddenly it wasn’t a hug anymore, it was him saying “I love you”
Dan had a panic attack the first week he ever spent with Phil. He had never felt so ashamed, and then he felt ashamed that he felt ashamed! It’s not like he chose to have a panic attack in front of Phil, and it’s not like he could control it. Of course Phil had handled it better than anyone and now was the only person that could calm Dan down after a panic attack but when it had happened Dan had felt so embarrassed. They had been at the store getting stuff to make pancakes, on Dan’s insistence of course. They had been in line for the cashier when it happened, he doesn’t know what triggered it. Maybe it was the loud, claustrophobic atmosphere or maybe just the sheer force of reality that he was at the store getting ingredients for pancakes with the one and only AmazingPhil. He doesn’t know but suddenly it’s happening and he can’t breathe and he can’t think and all he knows is that he’s shaking and sweating and everything seems to be going by too slow or too fast. He shoved past the line and waited outside the supermarket sitting slumped against the wall trying to control his breathing. He felt a hand on his shoulder and flinched back like he’d been burned. He looked up to see Phil looking extremely terrified and worried, “Dan, what’s wrong?! Are you sick?! Did I say something?!” Dan couldn’t actually breathe yet so it was quite a struggle to get out “Its”...wheeze… “It’s my”…wheeze... ”anxiety” Dan was starting to feel light headed but his heart rate was slowly decreasing. After he had calmed down enough to rationally think and breathe properly, Dan looked over at Phil who looked like his puppy died or something. “Phil??... um are you alright?” Phil looked even more upset at this, “Dan I should be asking you that! Why didn’t I know about this, I could’ve helped, I could’ve gone out to the store myself or something! I feel so horrible and you just had a freaking panic attack and you must be exhausted and yet you’re so calm and you’re asking me if anything is wrong?!” Dan smiled a bit and held out his arms for Phil, which Phil gladly accepted. “Phil, you couldn’t have known because I didn’t tell you and that’s my fault not yours. Even if you did know there’s nothing you could’ve done, I don’t know what triggered it. Sometimes panic attacks are just random for people with anxiety and I’m not going to stop living my life because of it. Okay?” Phil smiled a bit at him “Okay.” They made some pretty fantastic pancakes when they got home… right after Dan took a very long exhausted nap.
Phil was a nerd about space and Dan thought it was the cutest thing ever. Phil could talk for hours about space and the stars and random facts like “Isn’t is so cool how they found water on one of Jupiter’s moons?!” The sheer number of galaxies and stars made Phil feel so much less alone. He thought about how beautiful the stars were, and how something so beautiful be so far away. That was exactly how Dan felt about Phil, Phil was his entire universe, and Phil shined brighter than the sun to Dan. Before Phil, Dan had never seen light like that… his world had been a black hole. Light wasn’t let in, and it wasn’t let out either… but when he’d only ever known the darkness… he hadn’t known that he was missing light. Phil was a super-nova and he didn’t even know it. He exploded Dan’s life with light and stars. Phil was beautiful like the stars too, Dan didn’t know how someone could be that beautiful… He was a perfect oddity, his features were so contrasting that your eyes never wanted to look away. His hair didn’t always fall perfectly but Dan liked it more when it didn’t, he hated his glasses when he had to wear them but Dan thought they were perfect for him, he wasn’t a supermodel, he didn’t have a six pack, he didn’t have a cutting jawline or muscular arms but to Dan he was so much more than any of that. Phil was the definition of perfect to Dan because of his smile and his cute laugh where his tongue stuck out a little, and his hugs, and the way he said Dan’s name, the way he said “I love you”, because of his innocence when he accidentally made innuendos, because of his amazing hot chocolate and his ability to always come up with a new creative video idea. Dan simply loved Phil because he was him.
If Dan was being perfectly honest, the sex was pretty fucking amazing, pun intended. Now Dan was no stranger to phanfiction. In fact he followed many of the best writers on his secret blog (hey no judging here) and had read quite a few smut fics. Dan loved them because he thought it was hilarious that teenage girls were writing about him and Phil having sex, but one thing that they always got wrong was the fact that they very often wrote about him and Phil having crazy rough sex where he or Phil was completely different from their rather shy personalities. There were a few occasions where Phil had fucked him hard against a wall and Dan wasn’t gonna lie, it was pretty god damn hot but… it just wasn’t them. It wasn’t any secret that Dan was insecure about his body, where others saw perfection or attributes they found beautiful, he saw excess fat and dull un-unique features. Dan had come so far since 2009 when he met Phil, being with Phil had helped him more than he could ever say and it was because Phil was the type of person that simply thought everyone was beautiful. Maybe it was in a naïve way, but it was endearing. He would never not have a compliment to give someone, but it especially helped Dan because Phil never seemed to see his flaws, Phil loved what Dan thought were imperfections. Even though he’d come far, there was still some deep-rooted insecurities. So when they had sex it was slow and careful and loving. Dan didn’t know how he’d ever be able to do da butt secks with anybody else. Somehow as soon as Dan would start to feel insecure Phil would just know and come to the rescue like a superhero with an emo fringe. He and Phil just worked perfectly.
One of Dan’s science teachers in school had described the effect of gravity as “A bowling ball set in the middle of a trampoline. If you drop a marble on the trampoline it will have no choice but to be pulled into the space occupied by the larger mass.” That was how Dan thought of his and Phil’s relationship, Phil had come into Dan’s life so suddenly, and so brightly, that Dan never had a choice. Phil’s existence influenced everyone’s around him. Not in a bad way, but rather in a great way. Phil’s personality lit up the world so brightly that everyone was drawn to him, he just made the universe a little brighter, he certainly made Dan’s universe change. Dan’s thought’s orbited around Phil a lot, everything seemed to remind him of Phil and that made him smile quite a lot. He’d walk by a shop and see an abnormally scented bubble bath and think of how much Phil would laugh at that, he’d think about Phil when the radio came on, or when certain songs came on. Dan doesn’t know when his universe started to revolve around Phil but he was glad that it did. The amount of pure sheer joy Dan got every day from being around Phil made his life a million times better than it could ever be without Phil. People probably got sick of him when he wasn’t with Phil, someone would ask him a question having nothing to do with Phil and Dan would just go on and on about something Phil said or something he and Phil had done together, he didn’t mean to, but when you love someone and they’re your soulmate it’s hard not to want to talk about them all the time. Phil was just the center of his universe…and yet he didn’t mind at all.
When Dan went home after the first week he had spent with Phil, he felt like something should be different, but nothing was. His entire world had changed so much in such a short time; but he forgot that he was the only one who had changed. His everyday life went on in black and white, dragging on normally and then he went to go see Phil and for a little while… everything was in color. It didn’t matter how many times he saw Phil, or for how long, the magic was always as breath-taking as the first time. He didn’t know how to describe it besides… waking up and realizing that there was light, and life, and magic. Most of all he realized that maybe… just maybe, life was worth living, and from then on, it was.