Chapter Text
When Dan leaves, it’s not unexpected. Phil saw it coming from miles and miles away. It still hits him like a dagger to the heart, with the kind of pain he doesn’t think he could’ve ever prepared for, not when the last couple months have been slow and painful deaths, dragging out the pain until he was sort of numb to it, numb to everything.
But this, this is sharp and jolted and vicious. This is the kind of pain that twists the knife every so often to remind you that you can still feel it.
This is Dan, sitting in front of him, the usually so warm eyes expressionless, carefully curated to not give away a single feeling, as he tells him what Phil already knows. That he is leaving – that he has left a long time ago.
Phil’s heart sinks without a parachute, straight into free-fall, nothing to catch it. Sometimes, when something horrific happens, there is a silver lining, something to cling to, something to turn that horrible sinking feeling into something bearable.
Phil has nothing.
His silver lining, for as long as he can remember, has always been “at least I’ve got Dan by my side”. He has no idea what a silver lining without Dan would even look like.
Phil can’t say anything. He opens his mouth to try to and out comes a broken, half-aborted sob.
Something flickers over Dan’s face, then disappears, leaving him with that same cold, numb stare.
“Sorry,” he mumbles.
They haven’t talked, not properly, nothing more than what they absolutely had to. Dan’s gone on a break – that’s what they called it – so there’s not even filming to discuss. It’s just Dan, existing next to him without really being there, and Phil, feeling like something was stolen from him, something he can’t live without, and the person guilty is the person who’s already gone.
“Don’t,” says Phil, but his voice is wavering because he already knows he can’t change Dan’s mind. “Please. Whatever– we can– just– don’t.”
“Listen,” says Dan. “I don’t want to. But I kind of have to. I have to figure out who I am without you– this isn’t– I–” He cuts himself off, shakes his head, and closes his eyes, just for a moment. Phil can see it now much better, for some reason. Pain etched all over that face he knows better than his own.
When Dan opens his eyes again, that numbed look on his face is back, but Phil can see through it a little better, like Dan has given him the codes. He wonders who he thinks he’s making it easier for, hiding all of it away – himself, or Phil. If it’s Phil, then he’s missing by miles.
“I need to do this,” Dan says after collecting himself. “I can’t keep going like this. It’s killing me, Phil. You know this.”
It’s not fair to play him like that, Phil thinks. Of course he knows Dan’s not doing well. He doesn’t think he’s the reason. He can’t tell him that, though, because then he’s unsupportive. Then he’s the bad guy, not wanting Dan to do what’s best for him.
But this. This cannot be what’s best for him.
“Dan–” he says.
“No,” Dan cuts him off. “Stop it, okay? You can’t fix this – I wish you’d stop trying. You’re always here, trying to fix things, and I never asked you for it even once.”
“You don’t have to.” Phil heard himself yelling and tried to scale it back, but he couldn’t. It wasn’t anger, it was pure desperation and he couldn’t reel that in with a breath and a count to ten, not when his hands were trembling, clammy, and his entire heart frozen in free-fall. “We can’t just give up! After everything–”
“After everything you deserve to be happy, Phil.” Dan’s voice is quiet. “And I just– I need to do this. I wish you understood.” He stands up and Phil stays sitting, looking up to him, tears swimming in his eyes.
“Dan,” he says quietly. “How the hell am I supposed to be happy like this?”
Dan’s smile is bitter.
“No more closets. No more sneaking around. No more lies. No more breakdowns. No more fights. No more strangers digging into every private aspect of your life.”
Phil shakes his head but Dan is already on his way out.
None of that is worth anything. None of that is worth anything if it means “no more Dan”, but he can’t get the words out.
When Dan leaves, with his last box in his arms, Phil barely sees. His vision is blurry, and he’s still staring at the spot where Dan had sat opposite him, his carefully restrained voice tearing apart his life. Their life.
He hears him though.
“Just… be happy, okay?”
That’s the last thing Dan says before he gently lets the door fall into its lock behind him, the soft clicking more resounding, more final than any slam could’ve been.
Phil can handle a loud fight – Dan always comes back after those.
He’s not sure how to handle this soft goodbye into the night.
Phil feels like a raw wound.
The realisation of how much of his identity and happiness always relied on Dan is an uncomfortable one, but one he’d still gladly accept if Dan was still here.
As things are, he just… doesn’t know how to move on.
He answers the phone when it rings, almost mechanically, and the part inside of him that hopes it’s Dan dies over and over and over again. He answers the door, but it’s just someone bringing the mail. The mailman doesn’t notice that Phil is hollowed out from the inside, and Phil manages not to tell him.
He wants to sit down and film videos, just talk about his day like he used to, for his solo channel, the way he started, but he can’t. There’s nothing worth talking about without Dan, and honestly, every minute of it reminds Phil of him.
It’s not fair. He was a YouTuber first – he was having fun with it, he was doing his silly little art projects, his vlogs, but that’s how he met Dan, that’s how Dan found him, that’s what they’ve done for the last decade, and now it’s no longer Phil’s – Dan took it with him, like everything else.
He sits on the sofa and tries to distract himself, puts on a TV show, and hears Dan’s snarky comments in his ears. He pours himself cereal and is reminded of Dan. He checks his phone and there’s people talking about Dan all over his social media pages. There’s Dan everywhere, in every aspect of his life, intertwined. How do you untangle yourself from someone you’ve spent your entire adult life with? Everything Phil owns was once Dan’s. Everything he’s done, they shared.
Months later, Phil tries dating, but it’s just ridiculous. He’s spent over a decade with someone he considered his soulmate, has learned him inside and out, knows every single thing about him, every quirk, every weak moment, every secret there is to know, and has shared all of that with Dan in return, and now he’s supposed to go out and find love with someone who will never be that? Who will never know him like that? Who will make a joke that’s not Dan’s, and look at him differently, love him differently?
He can’t. He genuinely can’t. He deletes his dating apps, then deletes all other social media apps, throws his phone on the bed and then himself.
Dan has asked him to be happy, but Phil has no idea how. He can’t. It’s not fair – he hasn’t broken up with Dan. There is no good reason for this to be happening, because Dan just left. Phil wasn’t done with this relationship. Phil hasn’t given up on this love, he’s just had it ripped from him, and now he has to live with this hole in his heart, and in his bed, and by his side, somehow trying to replace something he didn’t want gone in the first place, and Phil doesn’t know how.
And most of all, he has no idea how Dan is doing and it’s killing him.
“So… six months of single-life… how are we feeling?”
Dan looks at his therapist but he doesn’t hear her – it happens more and more often. He blinks and straightens himself in his seat, and then smiles at her apologetically.
“Sorry, what?”
She crooks her head at him, and regards him with that look on her face that lets him know she is quietly evaluating his actions, coming up with some kind of judgement he might never be privy to.
Probably for the best.
“How are you doing…” she asks, and he is relieved that it’s a harmless question, he can answer this one, already has his mouth opened, when she adds, “without Phil?”
Ah.
Dan lets his mouth snap shut again, swallowing hard.
“Uhm,” he finally manages to get out. “Yeah, you know, it’s– uh. It’s hard. But I needed to do it and I feel like I’m– making progress.”
“Do you?” she asks.
Does he? No. Obviously not. It’s a stupid-ass question asked by someone who already knows he’s lying.
“Well, yes,” he says, regardless, because any other answer would be a fatal blow to his system, would mean that everything he’s put himself and Phil through was for nothing. “I’m finally finding out who I am without him, you know?”
Miserable. Lonely. Half of a person. Bitter. A traitor. Someone who threw away everything good in his life.
Yeah, he’s done a lot of finding out from his fucking around.
His therapist nods, humming softly. She’s not saying what she thinks, professional as ever, but Dan knows she thinks he’s full of shit regardless. She’s not special, really – he does too.
“Do you feel an improvement in your moods, then?” she asks.
“In comparison to…?” Dan asks just to buy himself some time.
“When you were with Phil,” she replies patiently and he swears he can see the way her smile freezes, like she’s keeping it upright fueled by nothing but sheer stubbornness that she already expects to be needing.
It really takes a special kind of person to handle the mess of a life that Dan Howell has created for himself.
“Uhm, sure,” he says.
She’s still smiling.
“I mean – I haven’t been consistently tracking. But uhm…”
She’s blinking a perfectly normal amount, her smile not wavering for a single second.
“It’s looking up, you know. I mean, obviously it’s still– I mean, I miss him. But on the days that I don’t, the mood is much better.”
It’s just that there hasn’t been a day. Where he doesn’t miss Phil. Quite yet.
His therapist nods, her smile still firmly in place. He wonders if they give out staplers with her degree.
“So you’d say, overall, you made the right decision for yourself?”
She emphasises “for yourself” because that’s what Dan has told her, when he first told her about breaking up with Phil, and she had asked him if he did that because he thinks it’s best for him, for both of them, or just for Phil.
Dan can’t remember a single time she’s let him get away with a lie – it’s how he knows she’s good, even if it’s sort of ruining his life.
… okay, he does that pretty well himself.
“Oh, yes, for sure. Uhm…”
He wants to give her examples. Of the ways things have improved. But there are none. He’s tried filming videos, and finds himself scaring away from it. He’s tried working on scripts, but not a single word will flow. Right now, he’s trying everything in his power to make it through his nights, but in the mornings, he feels wrecked, and desperate, and alone.
Because he is.
She’s a patient woman. She keeps smiling at him, waiting, letting him speak.
Dan opens his mouth, closes his eyes, cuts the crap and says,
“I think I made a really big mistake.”
When he dares to look at her again, he’s got tears in his eyes, but she’s finally stopped smiling and is holding out a box with tissues to him.
“I know,” she says.
“Acceptance is the first step to recovery.” Dan has heard this said a million times. Hell, he’s used it as a quip a million times. Never in his wildest dreams has he really given it some serious thought but now, today, he’s sitting on his bedroom floor in his shitty Phil-less one-bedroom apartment, and he finally gets it.
Because if you can’t admit that you’ve fucked up, then how the hell are you ever going to fix it?
He knows he can’t just crawl back to Phil. Their issues– alright, Dan’s issues, haven’t just disappeared. They’re not evaporated into thin air. He can’t risk ever hurting Phil like this again. If he even– if he even–
He has to stop himself. There are some things he can’t face even now, and never having Phil back is one of them. It feels like an almost physical pain to just think about it – Phil, with someone else. Phil forever gone. Phil not forgiving him, sending him away. What would he ever even–
No. No.
He has to focus on fixing things.
Because that thought? That is making him feel the most okay he’s felt since he left. This is giving him a drive, this is giving him purpose. This is something else than spending his days sobbing in bed and then wondering why things aren’t looking up.
And maybe there was some truth to it – maybe Dan needed the break from Phil, because now, without him, everything that haunted him for a decade seems so clear, so easy.
Here and now, on his bedroom floor, with his back hunched over, typing aggressively into his laptop, papers strewn around him with notes, and ideas, and concepts and scribbled drawings, Dan knows: He’d rather tear himself wide open for the entire world to see, than lose Phil forever.
He plans and he conceptualises, and he begs PJ and Sophie in the middle of the night to help him, and he plans some more. And then he grabs his camera, fresh clothes, does his hair properly for the first time in months, and does exactly that – he tears himself wide open.
No one has heard from Dan or Phil in months.
People spam their inboxes with worried inquiries, but Phil only checks his phone to see if Dan has called, and then ignores everything else. All the apps he hasn’t re-installed are still gone, all the apps he accidentally kept installed he doesn’t open.
He spends most of his days curled up in a sofa or a bed and emptily watches TV.
If you asked him what he’s watching, he couldn’t tell you.
When he hears, he hears from Martyn. He calls him one evening, sounding elated. Happy.
Phil feels a weak surge of something akin to envy and swallows it down tiredly.
“Hey, congratulations,” Martyn says and for a moment, Phil’s mind goes blank. Congratulations? For losing Dan? Is he being sarcastic? Doesn’t he like Dan? Is this how he learns? He’s not ready to learn that, not right now. It’s been… it’s been seven months and he’s not remotely over it. Should he be? Did Martyn expect him to be, is that what this is? He’s not. Is seven months inappropriately long to take to heal? Probably.
But then again, nothing about them has ever been normal.
Then Phil remembers that Martyn has no way of knowing that Dan left, unless Dan himself told him. He probably hasn’t.
Or has he? Has he talked to Phil’s family but not to Phil? He wouldn’t do that… right? Right? Can Martyn tell him how he is doing? Can Martyn–
“I really do think that it’ll make a lot of things easier for you in the long run. Hell, you can finally be open about things now!”
“Huh?” asks Phil.
He doesn’t understand.
“Honestly, I mean, no offense but all of us kind of– I mean, you brought him over, back when, and you were clearly– Okay, I know you’re not supposed to say ‘we knew’ but. We knew. Is all I’m saying. So mum says if you want to bring him over sometimes– like for Christmas–”
Phil sits up from his fetus position on the bed, legs crossed, staring at the wall in confusion. This is about Dan, he just doesn’t understand in what way, and it’s the first time in a long time he feels a spark of life, a spark of curiosity stir within him, but it’s also terrifying him to realise that people know something about Dan he doesn’t.
“Martyn,” he says. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Dan’s video?” Martyn says, clearly stunned. “The one he posted today?”
Phil has grabbed his laptop before Martyn even finished speaking, tearing it open and repeatedly pressing the start button to get it out of stand-by.
“I haven’t– I haven’t seen it yet,” he says, panicked. “Is it something bad?”
“Bad? No, I–” Martyn pauses. “Is everything okay between you two?”
But Phil sees it then, on his YouTube start page, the title, the thumbnail, Dan’s face, somber and beautiful, and hangs up without another word.
Holy shit.
“Basically I’m gay.”
It’s a good video. A fantastic video, really. Phil knows the details, of course, he knows the whole story, but there’s something about how Dan tells it. Funny, witty as always, but so open about it all, so vulnerable and confident in ways he’s never been before.
He tells the whole story – there’s very little he leaves out. He even talks about his suicide attempt. Hell – Phil is in this video. He watches Dan talk about him, calling him his soulmate, his safe place, something he “needed at the time”, with voice and eyes so soft, Phil starts weeping in front of his laptop.
He types “come home” into the comment field, then deletes it before hitting send.
He types “I’m so proud of you” then deletes it.
He types “please come ba-” and deletes it before he even finished writing.
He doesn’t know what to do.
Dan’s hair is softer now, curly, he lets it grow out, lets it be natural. He’s seen it like this before, and he’s run his hands through it before. They’re twitching with the urge right now. Just reach out, feel Dan at his fingertips. His to hold, his to comfort, his to share every little secret and decision with.
In another life, Phil would have been the first one to know about this video. His brother sure thought he was.
Today, Phil is one of the first seven hundred thousand.
Dan uses past tense. Dan speaks about him in the video, using past tense.
He grabs his phone and opens his old chat with Dan. He’s read through the texts a million times since he left – he forces himself not to look at that right now.
Phil looks down at the text field instead and sees Dan is already typing. There’s three dots showing up, then disappearing again, no message ever coming. He waits another minute or so, then closes the chat.
For years, he has imagined Dan making a video like this. He has always known some day he would. Has always believed he would heal and open up and make his way through life on his own terms.
Phil is proud of him.
He shouldn’t feel like this, he shouldn’t be egoistic about it, but he can’t help it.
The nagging, horrifying sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, because in every single scenario Phil pictured, he’s been the one helping Dan through it. Being there for him in the background. Standing by him. Helping him heal.
It turns out, Phil is just another chapter of his past to discuss in the long story of Dan Howell’s sexuality.
It turns out, Dan didn’t need him for this at all.
It turns out, all that Dan needed was to be away from him all this time.
Dan doesn’t stop writing.
It’s like a dam has broken open, like someone opened a window and for the first time, light spills into his room, and he can breathe, can see, can work through stuff in writing in ways no other medium has ever allowed him.
Dan writes a book.
He writes a book and then he sits down and looks at it, and it’s crazy – because it’s all so clear now, spilled on the pages. All the ugly truths he didn’t want to look at before, they’re all out there for the world to read about. All the things he couldn’t face, he’s facing them.
Spilled in ink (currently purely metaphorical ink, as it’s existing nowhere but on his laptop yet, but it sure paints a pretty picture), there’s the whole truth – that some things, Dan had to work through, had to work on, had to actively bring up the courage to work with to heal. He’s hidden away with Phil for so long, unloaded all of his mess on him and waited for the magic solution to just come to him, brought by the power of love and companionship.
He thinks of his therapist, who for so long has tried to steer him into this direction – to change things, to fix things, to allow himself room to heal outside of a closet that has literally no light and no space to rest his weary, weary limbs. He had a choice there, at some point, to listen to her or to follow his own stupid mind in spiralling circles down the drain, and then Dan, in a mental breakdown he regretted since but hasn’t been able to take back, had changed the only good thing in his life instead, had cut himself off from his lifeline and hoped it would teach him how to breathe on his own.
“It’s self-destructive behavior,” she told him. “You have a pattern of doing this. Sometimes, you get into this headspace where you feel you should punish yourself. A lot of people do this – but it’s not always reversible. That’s the only way it feels impactful enough.”
It makes sense. It makes way too much sense. And in the process, Dan has not just hurt himself, he’s hurt Phil too, the one person he should never, ever hurt.
“So what do I do?” he asked her, and he hadn’t wanted her to hear him cry, hated how whiny and needy his voice sounded, trembling under the weight of the words.
She shrugged. Honest to God shrugged.
“You make amends – if that is something you want to do. And if you’re lucky, he’ll forgive you – I have no way of knowing that. I can’t tell you the future, Dan. You’ll just have to bring up the courage to try.”
The courage to try.
That’s what this is all about, in the end.
Dan can’t imagine himself crawling back home and telling Phil he has changed nothing, telling him that he needs him, and expecting to just be taken back in, like a dog that bit him and then found out the streets are a cold, wet place.
He wants to fix this. He wants to grow as a person. He wants to go back to Phil feeling like he’s someone he can stand seeing in the mirror. He wants to tell him he’s never going to hurt him like this again and mean it.
So.
Dan writes. He writes this book, and in every page that doesn’t mention Phil, his love and warmth is still weaved into every word, every letter, every sentence, because that is what made Dan who he is, that’s what brought him this far, that’s what’s going to bring him back home.
When he’s done with the book, he sends it to every expert who will read it, tries to verify his sources, tries to make this something worth reading.
And while he waits, he writes a script.
It feels like a love letter, though it never explicitly mentions Phil either. He wonders if he’ll know. He hopes he’ll know.
It takes a long time. Just a little bit longer than Dan would like. A tour will mean it’ll take even longer, still, until he can go home.
So as Dan writes all of this, he knows, he has to have faith. In what they have, what they build for themselves, what they are for each other. There’s a chance that he’ll come home and Phil has found someone else. Phil sends him away. He has that right, Dan knows that.
But not having enough faith in their love is what brought him here in the first place – so he’s not going to repeat that mistake, he’s going to take that chance, because that’s who he is now. A man who risks something to get something good out of it. A man with courage.
“You know I was your friend first. So if there’s anything–”
“PJ,” Phil sighs. “Come on. I don’t care about that.”
“I’m just saying, if you don’t want me to – any discomfort at all, Phil–”
Phil almost laughs. He almost manages it. But it turns into a tired smile halfway out.
“If he needs your help, help him,” he says softly. “Please.”
PJ shrugs and gives him one of his blinding grins.
“I figured you’d say that, so I already did.”
Phil looks at him, quickly looks down at his food, takes a bite from his box of fried noodles, and then glances at PJ again, knowing full well he’s acting shifty.
“Just ask already,” PJ says with a roll of his eyes.
Phil bites his lower lip but only for the shortest of moments, too eager for the words to finally come out.
“Did you talk to him, then? How is he doing? Is he– is he doing alright?”
He’s not sure what answer he wants. No, he is. He wants Dan to be okay, he really does. More than maybe anything in this world.
And yet… an ugly, horrible part of Phil needs him to be just as miserable and lonely as he is.
PJ shrugs.
“Honestly, hard to say, he seemed a little – well, we mostly talked about his projects. He has big plans, that’s for sure.”
“Good, that’s– good,” Phil says and the food suddenly seems bland, tasteless in his mouth, turning into ashes.
How good for Dan, to have big plans without Phil.
PJ is watching him carefully.
“He’s uhm– he seems lonely. Like he’s driving himself a little mad by himself, but not– you know. Like he’s really in trouble.”
Phil knows he’s looking for a tactful way to explain that Dan’s depression isn’t currently making him a danger to himself. He’ll take it.
“Okay,” he says, putting down his chopsticks.
“Phil.” PJ’s voice is impossibly soft now. “If you need me to– to give him a message from you or something.”
“No,” Phil says, wringing his hands. “No, if I wanted to give him a message, I’d just text him. He hasn’t– I’m not blocked or anything, I just… haven’t. I mean, what do I even say?”
PJ opens his mouth as if to say anything, but Phil cuts him off.
“I try, sometimes, but every time I try I just– I end up begging him to come back and then delete everything. And I can’t do that. I can’t do that because he might do it and then what? Then I’ll have ruined his ‘big plans’. His big journey of self-discovery. Or worse, he’s not gonna do it at all, but he’ll feel guilty. Or worse, he won’t– he won’t care at all and then–” Phil bites the inside of his cheek to cut himself off. “Every option sucks,” he finally says. “There’s just no good outcome.”
“Or,” PJ suggests softly, “there’s an option you haven’t thought about, like one where Dan sits at home, wanting to text you, and being just as scared of making things worse. How is he ever supposed to come home if he doesn’t know you want him to, Phil?”
Phil doesn’t reply anything to that. What is there to say? He begged Dan not to leave – Between the two of them, Dan is the one with all the balls in his court.
Christmas is Phil’s favorite time of the year.
This year, Phil only notices he’s missed it when he hears fireworks go off at New Year’s.
He vaguely remembers his parents inviting him. He should probably call them.
He doesn’t call them.
He answers his phone on his birthday, the mean, unrelenting voice inside of him making him check in case it’s Dan. It’s not Dan, it’s his parents. They haven’t heard from him in a long time – his mother’s voice is tentative when she wishes him a happy birthday.
Phil stares at the wall when he thanks her.
Dan announces his book and Phil pre-orders it.
There was really never a question about it – Though it does make him feel somewhat bitter. He’s bitter so often these days, that sometimes Phil really doesn’t like himself a lot anymore, but how else is he supposed to feel? Dan went from struggling and fighting for his life by his side to someone who writes a book about healing and coping and accepting himself, and Phil just has to watch from afar and wonder if all these years, he really was the only thing holding Dan back.
It’s a cruel, painful feeling he’s not sure how else to handle.
He tells his brother about their break-up, who already knows – his reaction to Dan’s coming out video kind of gave it away, he says.
Still. It’s the first time Phil has told anyone himself, and it feels like he’s getting the tiniest shred of agency back. He hasn’t been allowed to make a single decision here, has just been stranded in their home, left and then left behind on Dan’s ever sky-rocketing journey of self-discovery, to learn to deal with it by himself.
So this is oddly nice. Martyn invites him over, and he goes. His parents invite him over shortly after, and Phil goes. Almost a year has passed and he’s only now slowly starting to feel like a person again.
Well. Half of a person.
Because it never once faded, even now – the feeling that a part of him has just been ripped away.
Dan announces his tour. Phil isn’t sure what to do. He’s read through the book three times since, and he feels like he’s cried on every page of it. There’s tear stains. There’s painful memories trapped in there.
He doesn’t want to see him, except it’s the only thing he wants. He doesn’t want to go and ruin things for Dan, or for himself and the shaky, clumsy healing he’s only just begun, but PJ has already asked Dan for a ticket for himself and then given it to Phil.
Phil stares at it now, and hears a weird echo in his mind of PJ’s words months ago, of him telling him that Dan couldn’t know that Phil would want him to come home.
It’s ridiculous – he has to know, right? He’s the one who walked out on them! But the thought occurs to Phil then and there, with this ticket in his hands, that Dan is a bit of an idiot, and that Dan is so insecure, and that Dan hates himself so much sometimes and that all this healing he’s talking about is still a process, that he’s still learning to do that for himself and that maybe – just maybe – he might be too scared to come home.
And who is Phil, really, to sit here, over a year later, still aching deep to his bones from how much he misses Dan, and just assume that Dan’s done with him, that he’s over it, that he’s moved on to being some solo mental health ambassador without him?
Does he really think that’s all he meant to Dan? Does he think that’s all they were?
He pins the ticket to their– to his– to their fridge and looks at it some more. In September, he’ll go to Dan’s London show. He’ll ask him to come home.
Until then, maybe he just had to have a tiny little bit of faith in him.
Progress is a process, and setbacks happen. Sometimes.
On Dan’s birthday, Phil discovers he should not be left alone, and especially not with dye.
He doesn’t leave a message, he doesn’t call, he doesn’t text or even comment. He just sits down on the bathroom floor with his hair freshly bleached and his lap full of blotchy green towels and wonders if he made a mistake.
And then Phil looks in a mirror and feels his mouth curve into a smile that looks almost genuine.
Holy shit, hold on – he might be onto something here.
Phil is haunting the narrative.
That’s what it feels like every night on stage. Dan loves it a little – there’s a full room of people with him every night, listening to him talk every night, and every night Phil is the large ghost in the room they’re all trying desperately not to mention.
It’s like Dan’s script leaves a large hole, so defined by all the things he leaves out cautiously, that it’s entirely Phil-shaped. They can all see him between the lines. He likes it that way.
Because in the end, that’s what all this is – what he said he’d do. Go out, find out who he is without Phil. And the answer is clear on paper in a book, or on the stage weaved into his every word. He’s half a man, having to intentionally edit out the majority of his life and feelings, because they’re all so heavily graffitied by Phil, the only way not to show the whole world is by leaving them out completely – and in turn they all see him anyway, clear and bright as the sun, as if he’s on stage with Dan.
He might as well be.
Every night that he’s on stage, it’s the least lonely he’s felt since he left Phil.
Because all these people know Phil. They know him to be a part of Dan. All these people hang on Dan’s lips for a mention of him. All these people chant his name the moment Dan starts the little conspiracy game and asks them to name a YouTuber – he’s done that knowing full well what it would bring, thank you very much.
He wants to chant it with them, but he doesn’t. He allows himself a small, genuine smile and says, “oh, you think Phil’s the most annoying YouTuber out there? Phil Lester? Alright then–” and then lets the show continue.
Phil is unlikely to ever know about it, and if he does, Dan likes to think he’ll appreciate it.
No way to know, of course.
He hasn’t heard from him once. Not after coming out. Not after his book release. Not for his birthday. Not for the start of his tour.
And Dan would be scared, but he doesn’t have the time to – he has a program to finish, a tour to finish, a plan. He keeps himself so busy, his faith can’t waver, can’t shake, because it’s simply not getting a chance to.
Instead, here he stands, on his stage, and tries to convince a band of loving and loveable weirdos he’s categorically broken down in the first hour of his show, that life is worth living, and tries not to mention Phil.
They know it. Dan knows it.
And he’ll make sure Phil knows it too, after this tour is over, make sure even if it leads to nothing, even if it’s too late.
He owes him that much.
Dan feels like he’s glowing at the end of his show. The people are clapping and cheering and chanting and then they give him a standing ovation and he’s just standing there, watching them, feeling like he could cry – and then he does because why the fuck not. You don’t tear yourself open for the world to see to then be afraid to show them a few tears. Hell, he’s worked so hard for this, hinges his entire future on this. He’s written it, he’s learned it until he could perform it in his sleep, and now he just has to follow the road he’s laid out for himself until it – hopefully – leads him back home.
Before he knows it, Dan is outside at the stage door, posing with fans, and they’re crying too and they’re telling him they’re proud and what a great show he’s created, and how much it touches them and he smiles and he laughs and he cries, and the only person he really wants to hear it from is Phil.
And maybe that’s what healing is, because for so long, the only person he’s ever heard these things from was Phil, while the rest of the world was being drowned out by a few negative voices, by the hateful voices in his own head, even. For so long, all Dan wanted was the approval of the world, so much so, that none of it was ever enough.
It’s enough now. He can hear them. He can see it on their faces.
And he just wants Phil.
The next girl in line slides in beside him. Dan poses for a photo the way he’s done like a million times by now. He fake smiles at the camera, then smiles genuinely at her while she talks. She’s on a rushed tangent about her own coming out and he wishes, genuinely wishes, there was enough time in the world to give these people all the heartfelt responses they deserve.
In hindsight, Dan is pretty sure he never gave her any response at all, because the next thing she says she says in a low whisper, low enough for no one but Dan to hear, and it’s, “I’d hurry if I were you, I’m not sure how long he has the balls to stand there and wait”.
Dan blinks at her, confused, and then follows her little nod to the side with his eyes, easily looking over the heads of the crowd surrounding him, because he’s a fucking giant, and spots… someone standing off the side from the crowd, head lowered, hood on his head, blond locks of hair peeking out. Their entire stance seems dejected, hands in the pockets of a green hoodie, thin, angled arms bracing them against the wind and – holy shit.
It’s Phil.
Dan doesn’t care – his mind turns into a tunnel, and he’s not sure he has the mental capacity to give a single flying fuck about anything but Phil right now. Every cell of his body is screaming for urgency as he breaks through the crowd, pushing aside confused people until he’s through, doesn’t even remember they’re there the next second, even while every single one of their gazes follows him, and sprints, stumbles towards Phil, his heart pounding in his chest.
Phil hears him coming and holy shit – what the fuck. What the fuck.
Dan raises his hands, watching those blue eyes widen and he can’t even focus on how much he missed that gaze on him, because the next thing he knows, he’s pulled down Phil’s hood, staring at short, bleached hair, mouth hanging open in a silent laugh.
“Oh my God,” he brings out. “You’re blond!”
Phil huffs out a laugh – it’s weak but it’s there and Dan would be lying if he said his heart didn’t jump in his chest.
“I uhhh – had a little breakdown?” he says. “Do you hate it?”
Does he hate it? Fuck. The image of a blond Phil, just a couple days ago, would’ve been impossible to picture but–
“No, it looks scaringly good,” he says, eyes still on Phil’s hair, missing the complicated sequence of emotion running over his pale face before it finally settles on a happy little smile.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Dan says and he’s nervous now, the capacity to think slowly returning to his impulse-driven mind. He lets his hands twitch up again, fixing the hood around Phil’s neck that he’d thoughtlessly torn down, just to have something to do, just to avoid his eyes a little longer.
When he finally does look at him, Phil is already watching him with those attentive wide eyes that have already done Dan in the first time they’ve met. His breath catches. Fuck, he’s missed him so much.
It feels surreal, but it’s not. Phil is here, tangible, in front of him, and he looks hurt and sad, and soft, but not angry.
“I didn’t– I didn’t know you’d come,” he manages to say. “I would’ve gotten you– you could’ve had better seats. Or–”
“I haven’t… uhm… PJ got me– the tickets.”
“Oh,” says Dan, remembering PJ asking for one, and insisting not to be put on the guestlist instead. Made sense now. Maybe Dan should’ve known. Maybe Dan had. “Gotcha.”
They stare at each other, neither knowing what to say. There’s questions burning on Dan’s tongue, each one more important than the next, and all of them are so so scary to ask. He’s not ready. This was not how he had planned– he’s so entirely unprepared.
“The show was great,” Phil finally says and Dan almost flinches.
“I– thank you. I… yes. Well. I was hoping you’d like it, I mean I–”
Suddenly it feels impossible to explain the entire weight of how every second of that show is about Phil to Phil himself. Like he doesn’t have the words at all. In fact, Dan is not sure if he ever found the right words to begin with. Dan can’t speak, he just looks at Phil and hopes for a miracle.
“No, yeah, it’s really good, I– I’m really proud of you.” Phil’s voice has turned low, almost whispering, and Dan just – breaks open. He wants to thank him, but the words get lost on the way and turn into a sob.
“Oh no, don’t cry,” Phil calls out, slightly panicked, hands flying out to Dan to grab him by his upper arms, squeezing reassuringly. “That’s a good thing!” He frowns at Dan, who feels tears make their sticky paths down his cheeks. “I– I think.”
“I love you,” Dan chokes out, making sure to be really clear, leave not a single mumbled syllable, because he needs Phil to know this, actually. It doesn’t matter anymore, whether he’s ready or not. He needs him to know more than he needs his next breath.
Phil’s gaze softens impossibly, and now he’s crying too.
“I love you too.”
And then he’s in his arms and it’s the closest Dan’s managed to coming home in over a year. Phil holds him tightly, and Dan holds him back just as tightly, and he smells like Phil’s stupid watermelon shampoo, and he feels just like Phil. Dan buries his face in his shoulder and sobs until his body stops shaking.
“Listen,” says Phil after half an eternity that was far, far too short still, and unwraps from him slowly. Dan feels himself grinning through his tears at the familiarity of his tone and antics, “Dan.”
Dan nods.
Whatever Phil will say next, he’s got no choice but to accept and take it. All of this, Dan knows, it’s his fault. It doesn’t matter now, how prepared he is, how many shows there’s left, what plans he might have had, all of it is now in Phil’s hand. It makes him feel weirdly relieved.
“I’ve thought about it a lot in the last year and I figured – I mean, maybe it’s stupid. Maybe you don’t even want to. But on the off-chance that you do – and really, without PJ, I probably wouldn’t even have – forget it, what I was saying. Uhm… Here’s… here’s the thing…” But there’s no thing coming – Phil is rambling. He’s nervous. Dan sees his cheeks pinken and his eyes pleading with him, and he can’t take away Phil’s decision, and he can’t take away his pain, but he can do this.
Ill-adviced as it is, Dan steps into Phil’s space, pulls him in by his jacket – hold on, why was this sweater green, he could’ve sworn Phil had one of these in pastell-pink? – and kisses him.
He’s missed kissing Phil. He’s missed the way he melts against him, movements growing impatient and pleading the longer the kiss goes on, the way his hands seem to never rest, wander over Dan’s body with a desperate urge to touch whatever he’d let him, missed the taste of him, the safety of him, and right now, as he gets all of that and more, he feels his heart in his chest doing painful twists of hope.
Phil pulls him in by his hips and doesn’t let go, the grip of his hands turning uncharacteristically tight, and when they break apart, he still doesn’t let go.
“Here’s the thing,” Phil says again and he really does sound more confident now, smiling softly at Dan. “I never said it, and I think I should’ve, so I’m saying it now – if you want– if you want to come back home, you can.”
Just like that, Dan’s world shifts right again, as if it’d been hanging askew the entire time and he’s gotten so used to it, he could barely even tell anymore, and now the picture rights itself and he feels his entire body tangibly relax, a year of guilt and shame and anxiety falling off him.
“Oh, Phil,” Dan sighs and he’s probably crying again, but he can’t tell. He just hugs him again, just because he can, because he’s here and real and standing in front of him, offering forgiveness for things Dan was too scared to even ask for.
When he lets go again, reluctantly and only to look at him some more, Phil reaches out to rub his cheek – he thinks it’s a sweet gesture at first, before Phil grimaces almost apologetically and points at his cheek with his other hand. “You’ve got a little uhhh– green dye, there.”
Dan raises his own hand swiftly, swiping over his skin and sure enough – it comes back slightly green.
He looks at Phil with the force of a thousand question marks in his gaze.
“Uhm,” says Phil, and he giggles and the sound is sewing together knife wounds Dan didn’t even know were wide, wide open, carved in there by his own blade. “So I kind of – I dyed it green. Sometimes, when it gets wet, it sort of… emits green dye.”
“Oh my God, this is the pink one, I knew it!” Dan calls out and then frowns. “Why did you– this was a perfectly good jacket.”
He looks up at Phil, who still looks sheepish, his blue eyes gleaming now and Dan closes his eyes, just for a second, because as glad as he is to see Phil, he’s also a theater kid at heart, he lives for the drama.
“Phil – just how many things did you dye, other than your hair and this jacket?”
“Uhhhm,” Phil says and his grin is giving him away before his words do. “Some?”
“Some?” asks Dan.
“Plentyful,” Phil replies, nodding excitedly.
“If I– When I do return home,” Dan says and he catches the way Phil catches his little correction, his entire face lighting up in a way in which Dan hopes he gets to be the cause of a thousand other times, “how much of our belongings will be green and ‘emitting green dye’ in the washing machine, Phil?”
“So, I only dyed like– a couple towels. And a carpet. And some clothes. And that boring beige blanket we had. But then, whenever I would wash them, the water would turn green, so now everything I own has a light– uhm– green tint?” His voice is getting thinner, trailing off but even beneath his clearly overplayed guilt, Dan can see a badly suppressed giggle.
He wants to kiss him until he passes out. He wants to drag him somewhere no one else can see them and have his way with him. He wants to– holy shit, there’s people watching them.
Dan whips his head around, and sure enough. There they all stand, staring at them, the entire group of people that had crowded Dan in front of the stage door, looking at him like frozen deers in headlights, which, Dan was reasonably sure, he was also looking at them like.
Phil glances at Dan. “Is that– bad? They probably haven’t recognised me, it’s dark and I’m blond.”
Dan doesn’t mention the fact that they’ve kissed, that clearly they’d know if Dan was kissing anyone right now, or ever, it’d be Phil.
Because it’s like a shadow on that sunny, beautiful face, that crippling insecurity Dan’s put him through for so long now. He hates that this, too, is a familiar look on Phil. He’s so fucking done with this.
“It’s okay,” he says firmly. “Listen. I’ve got to–” He gestures towards all the people still staring at them, suspiciously quiet. “But don’t– don’t go away. Please.”
“Okay,” Phil nods. “I’ll just sit over there, give you guys some space.” He points at a bench on the other side of the street, getting his phone out.
“Okay. Right.”
Dan turns towards the crowd. He hates being apart from Phil, but he can see him cross the street, and when he tries real hard, he can still see him sit there, between the cars passing between them. Dan looks up after every fan, tries to pay attention, but it’s hard, it’s so hard when he just wants to be with his fucking soulmate.
His fucking soulmate, who has come here to tell him that he can come home.
“Is he doing okay?” one of them asks Dan when it’s her turn, uses her precious time with him to ask about Phil and Dan is weak, so weak, he just perks up at the chance to talk about him. “We haven’t really heard from him at all.”
“He’s okay,” he says and looks over, to where Phil is still perched on his bench and he swears Phil is looking over to him too. “Way too good for this world. But okay, I think.”
One by one, his fans return home, happy and excruciatingly thoughtful. No one asks him to bring Phil over for their photos, no one wants to keep him when they all know where he really wants to be. It’s nice, really, to know that they’ve all grown up with Dan. He pulls his own jacket tighter and rushes towards Phil, who puts his phone away the second he sees him heading towards him, smiling softly.
Dan lets himself sink down next to him on the bench.
“You never said…,” Phil starts and Dan rolls his eyes, his feet nudging against Phil’s.
“Don’t be an idiot,” he says softly. “Of course I want to come home. Hell, I’d come home right now, but–” He looks up to the sky and hates himself a little, curses the plans he’d made over the summer to get back to Phil, because of course Phil would ruin his plans with a plan of his own, and of course Dan would let him.
Phil looks at him, smiling sadly. “The tour.”
“The tour,” sighs Dan.
Dan lives nearby, so they go to his place.
It’s better this way, probably. He’s not sure he could leave again if they went home right now.
Instead, they step into Dan’s trist, desolate shitty London apartment, and Phil fills it up with sunshine and for the first time since Dan moved in, it doesn’t seem half as bad. Turns out the only thing it’s really been missing was Phil.
He’d like to say they didn’t fall straight into bed, but Dan is not that strong of a person. In reality, he’s not sure he’s ever needed anything more than feeling Phil’s bare skin on his, warm and comforting and familiar. It’s been so fucking long since he’s had sex and Phil– Phil–
Dan freezes on top of him, lips stopping their mindless caress of the tender skin on Phil’s jaw momentarily, and he has no right to ask, but he suddenly feels that he needs to know desperately.
“Have you had– with anyone–” he asks and Phil laughs beneath him. Dan can actually feel him laugh, his entire body shaking from it, and the sound wrapping around him like a warm blanket. Like the thought is absurd. It probably is.
“No. Stop stopping,” he says and Dan has to laugh into the crook of his neck.
Fuck, he’s missed him so much.
It’s so easy to fall back into rhythm with Phil – at the end, except for the painful aching yearning that’s only slowly starting to ease, it’s like they’ve never been apart. Dan fucks him like he’s trying to crawl inside of him, wants nothing more than to be as close as humanly possible to Phil, wants to never let him go again and Phil in turn, as soon as they’re lying in the sheets, breathing evenly again, wraps himself around Dan, every single long limb angled for maximum Dan-holding efficiency.
“I missed you so much,” one of them says, and Dan isn’t even sure which one it was. It doesn’t matter, he feels it in the air almost physically – he’s done this to both of them.
“I’m sorry.” Dan’s voice cracks when he says it, but Phil just pulls him in and holds him.
“I know,” he mumbled in his ear, kisses his temple. “I know. It’s okay. I understand. Just– come home. Please come home.”
“I will. I will. I just have to– urgh.”
Phil is still peppering the side of his face with little kisses. It’s distracting and so comforting Dan feels like he might cry for what feels like the tenth time today.
“Promise me.”
Dan promises it. Dan promises it a million times and Phil still doesn’t look like he can believe him, not fully, not with his poor battered heart and Dan understands that too. He’ll show him. It’s all he can do.
They both try to stay up, make the best of the short night Dan has before he needs to travel to the next city, but they fall asleep like that eventually. Long limbs intertwined, faces smooched together, sweaty and sticky, both of them entirely unwilling to let go. It’s the most peaceful sleep Dan remembers having in a long, long time.
Phil wakes up hot. Like, physically probably melting. He’s reasonably sure he’s lying in a puddle of his own sweat.
He doesn’t move a single muscle. This is the most beautiful, self-made misery and please, do not save him under any circumstances – he’s right where he wants to be.
Because Dan is snoring right into his ear, hot breath tickling it inside, and Dan is folded up against him, legs wrapped around one of Phil’s like a vice, his entire upper body resting on Phil’s chest.
It’s heaven, is what it is. He’s died and gone to heaven. Not for a single, solitary moment can he even pretend to think to have dreamed it all, that’s how fucking uncomfortable it is.
Phil lays as still as humanly possible, trying not to disturb Dan’s sleep, scared that he’ll roll off him the moment he remembers where he is, like a cat that falls asleep on top of you.
He’s missed him.
Phil would take a year of waking up like this over a day of no Dan at all.
He can only have it the other way around right now, but that’s okay. That’s okay. He’ll get him back. And if he reminds himself of this again and again and again, then eventually Phil’s nervous system is going to believe it, right?
Usually Dan is the one waking up first, but hey – the guy’s wrecked, he’s done a whole really long stage show, he’s fucked Phil into the mattress until they both saw stars, he deserves some rest.
Phil, as carefully as possible, reaches for his phone on Dan’s nightstand and manages to reach it with his fingertips, drawing it close. He looks up Dan’s tour dates and it’s– it’s a lot of them. He looks at the dates, sees them grow further and further into the future, and lets the phone drop again with a heavy sigh.
He’s not sure he’ll be able to fully believe it until he has Dan in their house, in their bed, safe and sound and home and maybe dyed a little green, just to mark his territory.
When he looks down at Dan, he finds him already looking up to him, brown eyes sleepy, but his lips curled into a warm smile that makes his dimples show. Phil wonders if Dan can feel his heart speed up beneath him – maybe.
“I’m not off the face of the planet,” he promises him, without even having to ask what Phil was looking at. “We can facetime and stuff. And there’s breaks. I can– I’m free around December.”
Phil nods, because he doesn’t trust his voice to sound quite as optimistic. He nods and he kisses Dan and he gets lost in him for another hour and two, every single touch slowly healing what’s been broken, and he doesn’t say it but he hates it. He hates every stray thought about Dan having to leave again.
“I just think if you let a little light in… and maybe actually put some pictures on the walls. They look very blank, is all.”
“Phil,” Dan says, watching him with an odd expression on his face, as Phil walks around, finally taking a moment to inspect the apartment he’s lived in for the last year or so.
“And maybe some colour – everything’s so bland.”
“Should I dye it green?” Dan asks, smiling easily and Phil shoots him a grin in return. It still feels exhilarating, joking around with him again.
But there’s still that complicated look on Dan’s face, like he wants to say something that Phil isn’t sure he wants to hear.
“Phil–”
“And that sofa looks a little lost, it’s too small for the room. You need something a bit bigger, maybe from–”
“Phil, I’m not– I’m going to be on the road tomorrow and when I’m not on the road, I’m coming home.”
Phil shuts up promptly, just staring at Dan.
“As in – our home. Where we both live. And apparently everything is green now. I’m not– I’m not really coming back here, I don’t need furnishing advice.”
“Right,” Phil replies.
“Will you please just believe me?” Dan asks, pleads really. “I hate that you don’t.”
“I do believe you,” Phil sighs. “It’s just… for some part of me it doesn’t feel real. I’ve missed you for so long now.”
“I know. I know.” And Dan looks like– well, he looks guilty. He’s looked at Phil like that last night too, and Phil hates it. He’s hated the thought of it all year long, that Dan is sitting somewhere bland and unhomely and cold, and feels guilty.
Phil takes both his hands in his and drags him to Dan’s (bland and lost) sofa, sitting both of them down.
“Listen,” he says. “I understood why you left – I always did. I hated that you did and I hated how you did it, but I know you’ve been… going through a lot and I’ve forgiven you a long, long time ago. But you’ve got to forgive yourself here, okay?”
Dan opens his mouth and closes it again, then sighs.
“Yeah. Turns out I’m not– I’m not that big of a person.”
Phil snorts out a laugh.
“Hey, it’s helped you. I could tell. Hell, you’ve come out – that’s – that’s great. If being away from me helped you be comfortable with that, then–”
“Philly, no,” Dan says and he’s actually grimacing, his voice sounding like he’s in pain. “That’s not what– That’s not how that went, okay? I did not move out and said to myself ‘finally now that Phil is gone, I can grow as a person’. I spent months moping around, too scared to come back. Hell, I wanted to come back the moment I left, I just–” Dan looks at him and falls silent, tears in his eyes, but Phil needs to hear this, he thinks, so he stays quiet, gives him his time to collect himself. “Essentially,” Dan says. “I was fucking breaking down until I realised the only way to get through this is if I try to become a person you’d take back.”
“I’d have always–”
“Shush.” Dan puts a finger on his lips, smiling slightly. “I know. But I hurt you. And I didn’t want to be a person who’d hurt you. So I got my shit together. You’re all over these things I made, you know? The coming out video, the book, the show – I couldn’t have done anything without you. Even when I don’t mention you, it’s like– you’re in there. I can’t explain it.”
But Phil already knows. It’s funny, because all the bitterness he’s carried around seems to just melt away at Dan acknowledging that Phil was a part of his journey, rather than a chapter closed.
He leans in, lays his head on Dan’s shoulder, and smiles.
“Okay, well. One way or another, if it helped you feel better, I’m still glad.”
“Mh,” Dan is playing with his hair, still looking at it struck every couple minutes. “Hey, when I’m back do you– should we tell people?”
Phil pulls back, blinking at him. Surely he can’t mean–
“You know, about us?”
Or maybe he does.
“Are you… sure?” he asks cautiously.
Dan nods, then shrugs.
“Yeah, I mean – I also kissed you in front of all the people yesterday, so I’m pretty sure it’s currently leaking online as we speak, but it’d be nice to officially tell people. Get some control over the narrative. We don’t have to tell them we’ve broken up, though… I mean, if you want, I’ll–”
“No,” says Phil. “What’s the point, we’re here now.”
“Right,” says Dan.
“Less of a break up, more of a self-discovery journey, if you think about it.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I mean, I didn’t see anyone else. You didn’t– you didn’t, right?”
“Sure as hell didn’t,” Dan assures him.
“So. We were still together, just– apart.”
“Because that makes super sense.”
“I don’t want to have a new anniversary. We have all these dates that mean something – I mean, that’s fucking stupid.”
“Okay,” says Dan.
“It’s eleven years. Not ten years and then a break and more years, I mean, I was still – I never did not think about you and–”
“Phil.” Dan is climbing onto his lap, kissing the corner of his mouth with a smirk on his face. “You stupid bitch. If you want to gift me that damn year, I’ll take it. We’ve been together for eleven years. And one of those, we were really far apart. And it sucked. And now it’s gonna suck a little while longer. And then I’m coming home.”
Phil would gift him the world. Phil would gift him the universe. If all Dan wants is Phil, then who is he to say he hasn’t been his, that past year? He can’t imagine a world in which he isn’t, nor a universe. So that’s just how it is. And that’s how it’s going to stay.
Leaving sucks. They drag it out until the last possible moment, but Dan has to be on the road, and Phil has to go home.
“You’ve got plants to look after,” Dan reminds him gently between kisses and Phil squints at him guiltily.
Dan sighs.
“Phil, did you kill our plants?”
“I had… other things on my mind?”
“Okay, you told me to forgive myself, so I’m limiting the validity of that excuse.” But Dan kisses him again, and then leans into another hug. It feels final this time, mostly because they are standing outside of his door, wrapped in their coats and ready to leave.
A car parks in front of them. It’s probably Dan’s Uber. Phil tries to draw back, but Dan isn’t letting him. He takes his face between both hands and gives him one last, lingering kiss.
Phil continues to be amazed by the ease of him just doing that now. In front of whoever is watching, on a busy street, unbothered.
“I’ll come home,” he promises him and this time, something settles inside of Phil, warm and reassuring.
“I know,” he says. He feels his fingers close around the cool metal in his jacket pocket and pulls it out, holding it out to Dan with his palm facing upwards. Dan looks down at it, complicated emotions running over his face as he reaches for it.
It’s their house key, the one Dan had given Phil the day he left.
“Just– hurry.”
And that is not, technically, how a tour works, but Dan doesn’t point it out and just nods, and that’s, weirdly, the biggest proof that he misses Phil just as much as he misses him.
He watches Dan drive away. It feels horrible, but not as horrible as it felt a year ago. This time he knows for sure that he’ll be back.