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i.
It doesn’t really get to him until he’s laying in bed on his computer. It doesn’t really get to him until after he’s outlined a sketch for his Youtube Channel. It doesn’t get to him until Phil’s mother comes to visit. It doesn’t get to him until they go to Phil’s parents house. It doesn’t get to him until he goes back home for a quick visit. It doesn’t really get to him. It doesn’t really get to him the fact that he wants to stop everything he’s doing.
It happens though, in the middle of Tesco. He’s picking up a few things for dinner, normally he comes in with his headphones out, gets what he needs and heads back home. Tonight is different because it’s like he’s avoiding home, and avoiding thinking too much about the things that are definitely not getting to him.
There are three girl roommates he suspects, a bit older than him, probably in their last year, and they’re laughing about the fact that they can’t wait to be done with university. They already know how it’s going to end, they can’t wait to flash that degree to the people that told them they wouldn’t ever make it. They’re so loud about it as they pick up their milk and the rest of the vegetables for the soup they’re going to make. They’re just normal girls, with jobs on the side, but they’re going to finish with a degree, they’re going to have an actual job that they’ll either like at first and hate later. They’re going to go somewhere with their job and make a lot of money and be successful.
He clenches his fist as he grabs the rest of his things, pays and heads back to the apartment. He’s quiet when he gets back, Phil looks like he just finished filming something. The TV is on, there’s camera equipment everywhere and goddamnit, does Dan wish Phil cleaned up more. He wishes that Phil just cleaned up every once in awhile. It’s not that hard to do. The more rational part of Dan knows that he’s being a little over the top, he’ll pick it up later. Dan just wants to be angry at something other than himself for a while. Taking it out on Phil and camera equipment is the first thing his anger can leech on.
ii.
When Dan is making dinner he’s drinking a big glass of red wine which goes straight to his head, he hopes that it’ll take some of the edge off but really it’s just making him more emotional about everything. The girls. The fucking girls. He can’t stop thinking about it.
“Dan?” Phil looks at him, but Dan swears that he’s looking past him. He doesn’t feel real. “Are you okay?” Dan thinks he asks.
He can’t hear anything past the ringing in his ears, and the shaking that’s more noticeable in his hands and his heart. He’s like a tree in a hurricane. No, I’m not okay Phil. Can’t you tell that I’m not okay? If there was something that Dan, without a doubt, was god at, it was anger. He had mastered the art of anger, but he could hide it better, though, today he just felt like falling apart. He just wanted to quit. He couldn’t even make dinner properly without freaking out.
Phil wants to think that this behaviour was new, because when it’s new you’re not accustomed to it, you’re not used to it. You feel as if you don’t have to worry about the behaviour. In reality though, Phil has gotten quite used to the moodiness, the quick flashes of panic, the constant pacing and mumbling. Dan sleeps in his own bed sometimes, and Dan takes walks by himself and doesn’t tell Phil when he’s coming back. They’re not so reliant on each other that they need to know where the other is twenty-four seven, but a text message would be nice, acknowledgment that Phil did something for Dan would be great.
“I’ve just decided that I’m not hungry anymore,” Dan is playing the passive aggressive angle tonight, from what Phil can pick up. He’s too tired to deal with Dan’s mood. They don’t fight much, in fact they’re pretty good at communication, but lately Dan’s been pretty goddamn irritable, and when he’s not going out for long walks he’s in bed and sleeping. There was a time when he didn’t the house for a week. `And then it became two weeks. It was like there was a fear that neither Dan or Phil could detect, they just knew that it was there.
“What is wrong with you?” Phil says this softly, in the most softest way that he can, because he knows that this is something so much bigger than just losing his appetite. When Phil tries to reach out and touch the side of his face Dan pulls away like he’s been slapped or he’s disgusted, and it hurts Phil.
Dan wants to say stop, but the pit of anxiety is boiling over slowly, he’s been holding everything in for too long.
Help me. He wants to scream it.
“It was the three girls,” he says, no context. Just the three girls. It confuses Phil more than anything.
“Okay, what about them?” Instead of questioning about what the hell he was on about, Phil breaks it down to slowly get the information out of him.
Dan’s hands were balled in tiny fists until they couldn’t hold it, when his fingers go limp there’s a slight ache and he wants to drop to the floor instead he just darts his eyes left and right, like he’s trying to figure out what to do or what to say next.
He doesn’t want to bring up the conversation that he and Phil always bring up and they always end up fighting about this particular conversation, because Dan is too stubborn to believe him and Phil can’t see Dan’s point of view that well because he’s not living it. He tries to understand it, he just can’t. He would like to try and help Dan as much as he can -- it was just so hard to do because even though he felt the way Dan did he pressed on, and it wasn’t easy, in fact it was hard.
School. Graduating. Degree. Job.
“I want to quit,” Dan’s voice is hoarse like he’s been crying, there’s no tears, there’s nothing remote of emotion, his voice is a monotone, and given up.
“They came into the Tesco’s talking about what they were going to do with their degree when they got them. They already had jobs, but they were getting their degrees,” Dan is talking fast and Phil internally cringes because he knows what’s going to happen. He wants to say, not this again, because it never ends well.
“Phil, I’m fucking tired of this. I can’t take it anymore. I can’t take this shit anymore. I don’t know what I want to do. Because if I quit school I won’t get the degree, I won’t become a lawyer, my parents will be disappointment, my grandparents won’t act disappointed but I know that they’ll be thinking it.
And what about Youtube? Everything I’ve been uploading is shit. I love doing it -- I really fucking do, but I can’t completely commit to it, because I have so much school shit clogging up my brain I can’t focus on anything else.
I don’t want to do anything anymore. Nothing is fun anymore. Getting out of bad is such a fucking hassle. My whole body hurts and I’m constantly in pain and getting sick and I don’t know why.
What’s the point of doing any of this anymore, Phil? Why do we need degrees? We’re all going to die anyways. It’s just what happens. We go through all this shit to eventually die in the end. No one will be here to recognize all that we’ve done. All the shit we built and created, it’ll all be gone someday and for what?
A degree is just a piece of paper. You know, I bet that I can go online right now and find a degree template and make myself a degree, sign it and people would believe that I actually accomplished something and not failed at it.” Dan stops to take a deep breath and Phil places a hand on Dan’s shoulder and looks him in the eyes.
“Just breathe,” he says, in the same soft and quiet tone. “Take a deep breath,” it may or may not help, he watches Dan do just that but the moment is gone.
“I want to do something important with my life. I feel like I’m just wasting it by writing pointless notes and going to stupid classes that no one gives a shit about. The teachers don’t care if you fail or pass, no one cares about anything. Where’s the humanity in that?
I’m tired of doing the same thing over and over again, I feel like I’m not going anywhere. I want to get out of here but i don’t know where to go. I feel like I’m being trapped constantly.” The thing was -- Dan loved doing Youtube more than he loved a lot of things. But he was constantly at war between school and Youtube. Would Youtube get him anywhere? Was his content even good enough? What was the point of putting all his time and energy into Youtube if it wouldn’t get him anymore?
Maybe it was the wine or the pure exhaustion that he felt from boiling all of that up, but he could feel the prickle of tears in his eyes, his shoulders slumped and he sighed slowly, letting it rack every inch of his body.
“I don’t want to be a disappointment,”
It was a sentence that broke Phil’s heart, because he knew that it was in a constant loop in Dan’s mind. He knew his best friend like the back of his hand. He knew that Dan was the kind of guy to take everything to heart, and wear it like a patch. He saw the way that Dan acted around his parents and how he skirted around the school questions, he didn’t talk about Youtube with anyone other than Phil and Phil’s mother when she asked how his channel was doing. Dan was in a constant state of crippling anxiety because he didn’t want to hurt anyone or disappoint anyone. Things just weren’t working out for him, anymore.
School wasn’t for everyone- that’s what Dan was trying to rationalize. That didn’t mean you weren’t smart, he could hear Phil thinking, because of course he would say that. But Phil had already finished and had his degrees, and they were quite impressive. It’s easy for someone to say that it’s not you that’s the problem, it’s okay. Because they were already secure in that area. Dan wasn’t.
“You’re not a disappointment, Dan,” Phil tries to reach out for him again, touching his fingertips, and then he laces them together. He won’t look Phil in the face but he appreciates that he’s there.
Dan was a lot of things. And there were reasons behind all of the things that he was: Easily jealous because of the lack of friendships he had, easily jealous in the fact that people were always going to be smarter than you, why can’t he be like that? Dan was controlling because of the lack of control when he was a kid- his parents always doing something, and switching to a new school right when he was getting used to his last one. If he couldn’t control the things around him then he’d find a way. Dan was incredibly insecure and hated a lot of things about himself because of bullies, the people on the internet, or because of his part time lover and full time best friend who had impressive degrees and a great youtube channel.
Then again, Dan was also creative, and funny, and genuinely kind once you got to know him. He was self deprecating because it was part of his coping mechanism but he was good. At least that’s what Phil thought.
“I think you need to do what’s going to make you happy. Maybe…. I don’t know- maybe school isn’t the best thing for you. Maybe Youtube is. Regardless, Dan, even if you feel like you disappointed a lot of people, you never disappointment me. I believe in you. And maybe Youtube won’t work out, but maybe it will.” Phil wants to say, take a leap of faith. But he wasn’t religious, neither of them were, but it seemed fitting, and sometimes faith -- even if it was in yourself or people or things like Youtube, wasn’t completely stupid.
Dan hears it and takes it to heart, but he’s too tired to really try and figure it all out right now, he just wants to go back to playing the video games he enjoys, eating all the food that he wishes to eat, pulling pranks and making jokes with his boyfriend. He wraps his arms around Phil, even though they smell the same there’s a certain comfort and warmth that is just… Phil, and for those small brief moments of comfort, Dan thinks that eventually, maybe, things can be okay.
The future was something that Dan was scared about, because he didn’t know where he was going in life or what he wanted to do, or if he was ever going to make a difference in anyone’s life. Yet, right here in this moment, parts of those doubts and anxiety seemed to lift the veil of fog just ever so slightly. When Dan and Phil pull away Phil leads them to the couch, completely forgetting about dinner, because they’ll have that later. Now, they just needed to sit and they needed to watch something, because Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither was Dan. He just needed time.