Archive of Our Own

If asked, Dan will deny it until he runs out of air and his lips turn blue and fall off, but the truth is: he’s the clingy one in their relationship.

It’s not that, after so many years, either of them is really worried about the other one leaving. There’s not a single speed-bump they haven’t met and then over-come with open communication and problem-solving strategies and diplomacy (that, almost always, had come from Phil, while Dan had dramatically flailed and shut himself off).

But sometimes, Dan cannot help but feel like inside his chest lives a black hole, hungry, greedy, sucking everything in that means a lot to him, until he ends up having given too much and being left with nothing. And Phil, he’s like gentle sunlight. Soothes the ache, fills the hole (not like that, jeez), until Dan feels okay.

And that’s really what it comes down to.

He’s clingy because as long as he’s around Phil, he feels okay. Like he’s himself. Free, unburdened by everything he fought his way out of. Safe. So he clings to Phil, and they’ve become a weird symbiotic, co-dependent duo, and he loves it that way, and Phil does too, even if sometimes, inevitably, they are at each other’s throats.

But.

But!

In those last couple days. Well–

“Phil. I’ve just gone to have a piss.”

“Yeah. Don’t do that again.” Phil had spread out in Dan’s lap, head resting on his thighs, looking up with a wide grin.

Dan looks into those familiar eyes and sighs.

“Do you need weird parallel universe therapy? Have you developed PTSD? Parallel, temporal shift disorder?”

“Technically, I don’t think it was a temporal shift, just–”

“Phil. I made that up on the spot, stop ruining it with logic.”

“Oh yeah, fair, good joke.”

“Fuck you,” Dan says, but there’s no real heat behind his words. “So, are you okay?”

Phil nods.

“It’s not me. It’s just–”

“Ah, the much lesser known ‘it’s not me, it’s you’.”

“Well.” Phil presses his lips together to a tight line, indicating that Dan had hit a little too close to home. “Yes, actually.”

“Yes?” he asks, baffled. “Hey, I’m okay. There was nothing different here. I went to bed, woke up the next morning, and had you clinging to me like a koala and sobbing like a mad man. You’re the one who lived through months without me.”

Phil shrugs.

“Not you you. Other Dan, though…–” He bites his lips, looking up at Dan.

“What?” he asks. “Just say it already.”

“You were so sad. I’m not– I’m not trying to be cocky or anything. I’m not saying you can’t be happy without me or something–”

“Well, I am,” Dan says.

“Yeah, I know, you’re happy without me plenty–”

“No, I am saying that–”

“I just mean… he’s not. This particular version of you– he was so sad and I wanted to help, but I was also kinda pre-occupied with coming home and I just– I just hope he’s alright, is all.”

Dan can’t stand him sometimes. He rolls his eyes, leans forward, and presses a kiss to Phil’s lips. It has got to be exhausting, to love him this much, but Phil somehow never shows any signs of wanting to stop. How sickening.

“There’s no version of me who’s going to be happy without you,” he finally says. “Sorry to break it to you. I was miserable before I found you – my work, thank you very much universe – and I would’ve continued to be miserable without you. You gave him other Phil – or the universe did or whatever. He’ll be fine.”

Phil is smiling. It’s never not addictive, even after all these years.

“Phil is happy you chose him,” he says and Dan cackles out loud, nudging him playfully with his knee, still trapped underneath him, and it seems to do the trick. Phil is relaxing a little.

And Dan tries not to think about it too much. A reality where he never met Phil – the thought does make him a little curious, sometimes. Phil got to experience it, but Dan wonders.

Because eighteen year old Dan had lived shoved so deeply inside that closet, sometimes he himself had believed he was straight. And the only reason he had gone after Phil anyway, had had the courage to try and pursue something he was so terrified of, was that he’d found that Phil was the one thing he wanted more than the safety of adapting to the status quo.

And his Phil, he’d been so patient, and loving and understanding and had cheerfully dragged him out of that closet by never actually dragging, by just living authentically by his side and letting him be himself until he felt safe enough to come out.

He just…

Wonders.

“Do you think he will be alright?” he asks Phil when they go to bed that night. Phil turns his head, eyes tired but his expression full of surprise.

“Huh?”

“The other Phil?”

“Why wouldn’t he be?”

And it’s that genuine confusion on Phil's face that does it. He’s looking at Dan like he cannot imagine an outcome in which any version of Phil could be unhappy with Dan.

Dan shakes his head softly, and cuddles a little closer to him than he normally would, smiling into the crook of Phil’s neck.

“Nevermind.”

Call him cynical (okay, he is cynical), but Dan doesn’t believe in the supernatural.

If he did, where would it ever stop? If ghosts were real, does he also have to acknowledge the existence of demons? But the concept of demons is so intertwined in religion and God, that he then would have to believe in that crap too, and he’s really not inclined to give it to the Christians. Or any of the other religions that had a God, for that matter.

The idea of God being real feels like a cruel joke. If there was a God, why was Dan put through hell as a teen? If God was as infallible as people suggested, why make him gay just to then throw him to the wolves? Religious fanatics claiming that who he loves is a sin… No. No thanks.

There is no higher power, nothing more sinister going on than people being people. They can be cruel, and most of the time they are, and that’s all there is to it.

Except, when Dan looks at Phil, Phil looks at him differently.

He asks him about it once, two, three times, and each time Phil doesn’t seem to quite be able to explain.

And Phil’s words from before they met, during one of their many phone calls, are still ringing in his head, haunting him for all intents and purposes.

“Would you believe me if I told you that I’ve known you in another life?”

And Dan wanted to say no at the time but… There was just something about Phil. In all these calls, it shone through like a beacon. A weird sense of familiarity that Dan can’t quite shake, even now.

And arguably, he knows Phil now.

Phil, who is sitting on his sofa with his legs crossed beneath him, stealing bites from his omelette after finishing his own breakfast.

He needs to ask. He needs to know.

“Hey, can I ask you something?”

Phil looks at him.

It’s the eyes that are really doing him in – The phone calls were sweet. A little unhinged, certainly odd, but they always managed to brighten up Dan’s day. Phil was funny, and he was thoughtful, and he was a weirdo, and fortunately for him, Dan was into all of these things.

But the eyes, man. He looks at Dan with such child-like wonder. The intensity of the blue was already bad enough but the expression?

“What’s up?” Phil asks, lips already pulling into a smirk. Everything with Phil is always so light-hearted. It’s never been easier for Dan to just forget to be a sad, cynical bitch sometimes.

It’s contagious. Like all he wants to do, all day long, is make Phil smile like this by smiling along.

“Why’d you call me? That first time?”

Phil raises an eyebrow.

“I needed legal advice.”

“No,” Dan says softly. “You didn’t. Why did you call me? How did you even– find me? What was your exact thought process before you picked up the phone and made that first call?”

Phil is staring at him, but Dan isn’t willing to let this go. He’s not going to back down on it. Because if Phil will come into his life in the most whimsical way imaginable with no explanations and start challenging his entire belief system, he’s going to drag him down with him.

“I didn’t– I mean….” There’s a complex mix of emotions showing on Phil’s face, none of which Dan can decipher, but he thinks he gets the gist of it.

“You have no clue, do you?” he asks him.

“It’s weird. Because I remember doing it,” Phil says. “And then I just…. stop thinking about it. But now that you ask me– I– I’m not sure. All I remember is feeling like I had to.”

“Like… something made you?” Dan asks curiously.

“No, more like… if I don’t do it, something would be missing from my life. Something huge.”

Dan raises both eyebrows, and despite feeling like he was watching the plot of a thriller movie unfold, he feels…. amused.

“Me?”

Phil opens his mouth. Closes it again. Breathes out heavily. And then shrugs.

“... Yes? It’s– it doesn’t make sense. We met days ago. I just know that I knew– I needed you in my life. Is that weird?”

“Super weird.” Dan has his nose wrinkled and nods enthusiastically and both of them laugh. But Dan doesn’t leave, or tells Phil to leave, and Phil just leans back and grins, like he knows what Dan knows too.

It’s not a dealbreaker. It’s not even close to one. In fact, it might be a little bit of a deal-maker.

“Do you believe in supernatural shit?” Dan asks, even though he feels like he knows the answer already.

“Like… ghosts and stuff?” Phil asks.

“Like…” Dan hesitates to use the word ‘soulmates’. Entirely too early– right? “Uh. Fate?” Is that better? More subtle? Probably not.

Daniel Howell. King of subtle.

But Phil just crooks his head at him, that unblinking stare never leaving Dan, but never turning anything but soft and curious either.

Something inside of Dan relaxes, something he hadn’t even known was tense. It feels like tons of debris and walls put up around his heart have just gotten the tiniest of cracks.

Like he is genuinely safe enough here to show the tiniest speck of weakness.

“Yeah, I could see that,” Phil finally says. “Is that what you think, that the universe made me call you?”

What is Dan supposed to say? “I think Phil from another universe called me and then switched places with you once he got us sorted out”? He felt safe with Phil, but not that safe. He does not need to be institutionalised by the guy he’s kinda sorta falling for.

Or whatever.

“No, that’s stupid,” he says instead. “There’s no such thing as the universe putting people in your path. You’re just some creepy stalker.” But he’s smirking at Phil, taking the edge off his words and it seems to work, because Phil’s eyes are gleaming when he grins back at him.

Dan supposes it doesn’t really matter how Phil got here. What matters is that he‘s here. He’s here, and he inexplicably likes Dan, and he sleeps in a bed with him without trying to get something out of it, without making any move, and then stays until the morning, and if Dan asks him to, and he does, he stays until the evening, too.

And it’s a novel thought, a thought he’s never had the courage to ever even let occur before in his life, but now, around Phil, it sneaks up on him on tiny, feathered, light-hearted steps – that if he asked him, really asked him, Phil might actually stay forever.

Phil stays.

He introduces Dan to his friends. Dan isn’t ready to come out in any capacity, even though Phil told him they’re also gay, so he just lets himself be introduced as a new friend.

It’s alright, for the moment. They haven’t really defined what they are. They kiss sometimes, and that’s nice, but things haven’t gone further.

But this is exactly what broke him up with Toby. This is exactly the thing that had poisoned every relationship he had managed to build, until his life had turned into the desolate, barren place it was today – Because how can he expect Phil to lie to all of his friends, how can he expect him to go back into the closet, pretend he’s a single straight guy for the rest of his life?

And they’re so fun, too. All of them – they’re so unapologetically fun and themselves, joking about their sexuality like it had never hurt them, like it wasn’t a sharp blade dangling over their heads, threatening to fall and maim at any given time.

Dan doesn’t know if he’ll ever get there. It’s been so many years, and while the denial, the lying to himself, the attempts to be with women, had slowly faded, and left him with the begrudging realisation and acceptance that yes, he was very clearly gay, the knowledge had never served to free him, just to trap him in the same, never-ending circles of shame.

So he hangs out with Phil and his friends. And he laughs at their jokes, but he also pays attention to never sit too close to Phil. He drinks, but not enough to forget to be careful. He eats, but when Phil offers him a bite from his own fork, he pulls away, wrinkles his nose and shakes his head and then finds the food in his mouth turns into ashes when he sees Phil’s hurt expression.

And it’s true – he’s entirely too old for this. He’s not a kid anymore, for fuck’s sake. He needs to get over it before he drags Phil down with him. Before he crushes this – this something that they have, like he crushed anything else good in his life.

But fuck. Dan just has no fucking idea how.

“You know,” Phil tells him quietly a few days later. “The world has changed since we were kids.”

They’re in the middle of a Doctor Who marathon in Phil’s apartment in Manchester,, and Dan was actually kind of busy trying to analyse the whole parallel universe storyline for obvious reasons, so the comment takes him completely by surprise.

“Huh?”

“I just— Look at this show, for example,” he points at the TV and Dan is still trying to catch up, trying to make sense of Phil calling it “this show” as if he doesn’t have a model TARDIS on his nightstand. “It’s pretty openly queer.”

Dan glances at the TV, then back to Phil.

“Yeah?” he says. “Gender-swapping TIme Lords have it easy. No one is expecting them to adhere to the rules of human society.”

“Sure, but I don’t mean in the show, I mean–” Phil laughs a little, and the grin is still caught on his lips when he pulls back a little to think. He does that, sometimes. Freezes his face in whatever expression it was currently doing while he thinks. Dan uses his absent-mindedness to stare, openly. At the lines on his face, the crinkles in the corner of his eyes, the way he looks like a man who has laughed a lot in his life.

Is it weird that he wishes he had been there for more of that?

“I mean our world – it changed a lot. We have queer people in TV shows now. We have queer people outside, building communities, being seen. Being fought for. It’s not as scary anymore – Okay, it’s still scary in certain…– Politics are awful, at the moment, but in our little bubble? I don’t think you have to be so scared of judgement, is what I mean.”

“Is this the ‘come out of the closet’ pep talk, then?” Dan asks, and he tries not to feel disappointment sink down to his stomach, tries not to recognise this as the breaking point it is, but it’s hard not to, when it’s a repeated pattern, something his other boyfriends have done, and then slowly given up on before Phil. “Because I can tell you right now–”

“I don’t want you to do anything you’re not comfortable with, Dan. I don’t.” Phil raises both hands. He’s always talking with his hands, this one. It’s so damn endearing. “I’m just trying to take away your fear. You don’t have to live in fear. If anyone finds out, it’s not the end of the world. Because I’ll be there, and many people are out there, who are on your side. We’re on your side.”

Dan isn’t sure what to say. He’s heard variations of this speech a lot, but it was always because people wanted something out of it – his okay to be out in front of someone, usually.

Phil just looked at him like he wanted to give him something. And Dan is just finding out that he has no idea how to handle his kindness.

“Why are you telling me this?”

Phil shrugs.

“You never had anyone on your side, as a kid. You’ve got me now.”

Dan is blinking at him, trying his hardest not to cry.

“How do you know that? I never told you that.”

Now Phil is the one who looks confused.

“Yes, you did.”

“When?”

Phil opens his mouth, hesitates, then closes it again. He frowns.

“Huh,” he says.

“Yeah,” Dan confirms.

“Why did I call you?” Phil asks him that night, in bed.

They share a bed together often and Dan is almost getting used to it. The feeling of gentle hands around him. It’s the first time in his life that he can remember being the one who’s being held, instead of the other way around. It’s dangerous. He doesn’t know why it still feels like something dangerous to get used to, but it does.

“You never told me,” he says instead of answering Phil’s question. “If you believe in fate.”

“I feel like I could,” Phil shrugs. “I don’t know. I don’t think it’s an impossibility.”

He pauses.

“Something’s weird, isn’t it?”

“You know that episode we watched today? Parallel universes? Do you believe in that?”

Phil’s breath is warm against the side of his face. Dan usually hates when someone breathes on his skin, but he weirdly finds it reassuring with Phil. He’s the exception to a lot of rules he didn’t know he had.

It’s dangerous. Terrifying. Why?

Phil is safe. He’s safe.

“Like… billions of tiny alternate timelines where a single decision led to a different outcome? I don’t know. There would have to be so many out there – every single thing. Where would we even have the space for all these realities?”

Dan snorts.

“That’s what you’re worried about?”

“It just seems very unlikely. I feel like the whole web of it would be so intricate and overcrowded, it’d simply explode.”

“I think maybe there was another Phil,” Dan says because if he doesn’t get it out now, he might never. “One who already knew me. From another reality or something. And he made you meet me.”

For a long, long moment, there is nothing but silence. In the darkness, Dan finds the courage not to hide away, and Phil isn’t letting go of him like he thinks he’s poisonous yet, so that’s probably a good sign.

Or maybe he is just thinking on how to let him down gently.

“Oh,” Phil finally says.

And Dan doesn’t want to ask, because he’s really scared of the answer, but he thinks maybe not knowing is worse.

“What do you think about that?”

He feels Phil shift against him, and then pull him a little closer. As if he’s scared Dan will just disappear on him if he lets go.

“I don’t like it.”

They fall asleep like this, both lost in their own thoughts. It hasn’t occurred to Dan, that this could be a bad thing, but now that he’s thinking about it, he finally figures out what has him so terrified.

If another Phil led this Phil here just because he already knew Dan, then who’s to say that Phil is here because he wants to be. It’s not his choice – He didn’t choose Dan.  He’s just doing what the universe expects him to do.

Dan pulls away. 

He’s done it with Toby, but way too late, when it had already stung like shit. Dan thinks if he does it now, before they become too attached, it’ll hurt less. For him and Phil. He can’t afford more false hope, he can’t afford to watch it all fall apart again. This time it might actually kill him.

Phil, that’s… worse in ways he can’t explain. Worse than Toby, worse than anything that came before. Because Dan has never actually felt this way around anyone else in his life.

It’s a sad thought. Without the universe meddling, they would’ve never met, he knows that. But without the universe meddling, he might have actually felt safe around Phil. It would’ve taken a while to fully let his walls down but… he genuinely thinks they could’ve had a chance. That Phil’s gentle patience and quirky nature could’ve given them a chance.

Too bad.

Dan thinks, if it comes down to it, if he has the choice between never having met Phil, and having Phil dangled in front of his face, like a mocking caricature of everything he almost could’ve had, he probably would’ve preferred to never have met him at all.

It’s really just further proof that everything he touches is doomed to fall apart.

If even the universe throwing a soulmate his way is somehow not working, then what ever will? How is he ever going to find anyone?

There’s simply no one out there for him.

Dan’s bed feels empty. He’s used to sleeping alone. He and Toby had slept in different beds for a while now.

He’d been fine with sleeping alone.

It doesn’t feel fine anymore. It feels like he can still feel the dip of the mattress where Phil had laid.

It feels like if he just reaches out his arm, he could still reach him.

But he can’t.

Phil will find someone.

“If you’re looking to sue, I can tell you right now, it probably won’t work in your favor. All I can offer you is sending them a vague yet threatening letter in hopes that it intimidates them into stopping.”

His client is smirking at Dan, amused.

“I was hoping you’d say that.”

He’s pretty, but not like Phil. He’s pretty in a sharp way, all edges and claws. One of the ones Dan only hooks up with if he really wants to hurt himself.

This is scorching hot fire, Phil is a warm spring day.

He wonders what Phil’s type is – when he has the choice, rather than Dan put upon him like an exceptionally invasive curse.

if he’s into the dangerous ones. Or if he likes them safe and sweet, like he is.

He’d ask, and God, Dan really wants to ask, just to hear Phil’s voice, just to learn something about him, just to talk to him again, but he can’t. He can’t do it to Phil. A clean break. For Dan, it’s all going to stay the same – there’s nothing out there for him.

But Phil, he has a chance. He can have so much better.

Phil tries to call him several times. Dan considers blocking his number, but he can’t make himself do it. Every time he tries, his thumb hovers over the button until his hand trembles so badly, he has to put down the phone.

Ghosting him isn’t better, he knows that. Not really a clean break, more of a cruel dragging-it-out. But some part of him, screaming deep in his soul, can’t slam that door shut. Is viscerally upset at the notion.

So Dan watches something boring, something he hasn’t seen in some form or shape as merchandise represented in Phil’s home, and tries not to think about him, while his phone rings, and rings and rings.

(Okay, it doesn’t actually ring. He’s not a Boomer. His phone is in fucking eternal silence mode, as everyone’s phone should be!)

It’s easy to let the emptiness back in. Easier than he thought it would be.

Phil is going to forget about him soon.

And then everything is going to go back to normal.

And then Phil plays the one card Dan had foolishly been so sure he would never, ever play.

He calls Dan’s law firm.

A-fucking-gain.

When Alice puts him through, she sounds amused, and he doesn’t understand why until there’s Phil’s achingly familiar voice at the other end of the line, sounding ridiculously unbothered.

“Hello, I’m looking for legal advice. You see, there’s this–”

Dan hangs up on him.

It’s not his proudest moment, but he panics and he’s come so far without letting himself feel and he can’t undo all the progress by talking to Phil. So he slams his phone back down, rolls away from his desk, and buries his head in his hands.

It’s already a little too late, maybe.

Because tears are definitely not the sign of someone not feeling anything.

Phil calls again the next day.

“Hi,” he says. “I think there were some problems with the line yesterday. I am looking for some legal advice to–”

Dan hangs up again. He’s tired, he’s moody, and he doesn’t want to yell at Phil, when all he does is try, but he makes it so damn hard. Doesn’t he understand what he’s doing to Dan? Doesn’t he understand that it hurts to have to let him go over and over and over again?

Apparently he doesn’t. Phil calls again the next day.

“Hello, I am looking for a lawyer to–”

“Find someone else!” Dan yells into the phone and he doesn’t mean ‘find another lawyer’, but he also doesn’t stop for long enough to tell him.

He hangs up again, rolls away from his desk and goes out to the reception.

“Alice, I need you to stop putting him through.”

“Who?” she asked, tone and expression a little too innocent to be believable.

“Phil!” he growls.

“Oh, him,” she nods. “Yeah. No.”

Dan stares at her.

“What am I even paying you for, if you’re not even going to listen to me?”

“Oh please,” she smiles, still a little too innocently. “I’ve not done that from day one.”

So when Phil calls again the next day, Alice puts him through. She sounds so gleeful about it, in fact, that Dan already knows what’s coming, even as he presses the button to accept the call regardless.

“I need you to stop,” he says, before Phil can even start getting his spiel out. “It’s getting excessive. I can’t be with you, Phil. I’m sorry, I can’t. It doesn’t work, okay? I can’t be– I can’t be openly gay. I can barely even admit to myself that I’m gay. I can’t make you go through that. It’s just going to be me, and the closet, and the universe can fuck off.”

“Language!” a voice said that is very distinctively not Phil’s. First of all, because it’s female, and second of all, because it’s his mum’s.

Holy fucking fuck. No. No! What had he–

“Now, honey, who exactly is this ‘Phil’, hm?”

His mum doesn’t yell at him.

She doesn’t tell him it’s just a phase. She doesn’t tell him he’s going to hell. Fuck, she doesn’t even tell him to go to church and repent or that Jesus will love him or some crap.

She tells him that she wants him to be happy. And that a mother can sense these things – that she knew he wasn’t.

And that she didn’t want him to feel like he had to hide from her.

And that she’s sorry she had to find out this way.

… And that he really should call Phil.

And Dan is crying, downright sobbing, by the time she hangs up. He’s being dramatic on purpose, and he also doesn’t care, as he slides down to the floor underneath his table, hand buried in his hands, and sobs.

He’s been afraid of this conversation all his life.

He’s let the fear of this conversation ruin every single good thing he has ever let himself have. And it wasn’t even bad. It wasn’t even anything but loving.

He’s let it ruin his life for nothing.

Something cracks. And that’s how Dan finds out that that other crack, the one Phil had given him a while ago, wasn’t even properly fixed up yet, because something breaks open and he has no fucking clue how to seal it up again.

Dan has no idea how long he’s been hiding underneath his own desk when the door opens. He can see worn out, familiar sneakers enter, and wishes the ground would open up and swallow him whole.

Shit.

“Okay, so I’m serious when I tell you I need– Dan?”

“I’m not here!” he calls out from under the desk.

He can basically hear Phil’s frown when the sneakers – and oh God, half a sole is coming off, that guy needs new shoes – step towards him hastily. Next thing Dan knows, there’s a smiling face popping up in his new living space, a curtain of bleached hair falling down around it as Phil hangs his head sideways into his hiding spot.

“Urgh,” makes Dan.

“Not exactly the best place to hide from a home invasion, or an earthquake, if you want my professional opinion.”

“Your professional opinion as a porn editor?” Dan quips back, unable to help himself. He doesn’t know what age-old basic instinct it is in him, that he cannot let a bant go unanswered.

“That, and a plant serial killer,” Phil nods in mock-seriousness. “Do you want to come up?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Okay.” Phil looks and sounds completely unruffled as he lets himself fall down on his ass and crawls under the table to sit with Dan, crosslegged and ridiculously endearing.

He looks at Dan with those cursed blue eyes, attentive and worried. He also looks like he’ll have a crick in the neck the next time he’d straighten it out.

“You’re crying.”

“Thanks Sherlock.”

“You know, I’ve been told I look like Benedict Cumberbatch once.”

“You don’t, you’re prettier,” grumbles Dan. “It’s obnoxious.”

Phil is simply beaming at him.

That’s obnoxious too.

“Stop it.”

“No.”

“You need to–”

“No, you need to stop. Stop pushing me away. It’s not going to work.”

Dan looks at him, stunned.

“But–”

“No.”

“Listen, you–”

“Nope.”

“I’m too–”

“Nah.”

Dan forgets all about the crying thing, his arms now crossed in front of his chest as he glares at Phil, who cheerfully (and now a little bit spitefully) smiles back.

“You don’t even want me,” he finally says.

“Clearly I want you – I’m ruining my back by sitting under a desk with you. Some of us aren’t 34 anymore, you know?”

“Some other Phil decided to call me, not you. You’re not even – that’s not you. You didn’t pick me, the universe picked me for you. That’s not–”

“Who cares?” Phil laughs. “Is that what you’re hung up on?”

Dan isn’t sulking. You can ask anyone. Dan Howell doesn’t sulk. He sometimes does a thing where he presses his lips together tightly, that might make it look like he sulks, but that’s just. Not what it is.

Phil doesn’t stop laughing, which would make his sulk worse, if he was sulking, which he isn’t.

“Dan, who cares how we met? That’s like– that’s like saying the guy at the checkout in the supermarket was put there by capitalism and hence his love for Karen from marketing isn’t real.”

He has to hand it to Phil. The convoluted metaphor makes Dan snort out a laugh, whether he wants to or not.

“What on Earth are you talking about?”

“So, some other guy like– possessed my body and called you. Cool. And I’ll forever be grateful to him. Because now I met you, and you’re really amazing, and I want to get to know you. Me. I want to get to know this you, and all the things some other version of me might or might not already know. All the differences. All the things that are the same. I’ll find out about you a little differently than I normally would, but what does it matter?”

“There’s not a whole lot– I’m not that– I can’t even… I can’t be what you want.”

“You’re an idiot. Stop telling me what I want.”

“But–”

“Dan!” Phil takes his face between both of his hands, shaking him ever so softly. “It’ll be okay! I know you’ve gone through some traumatic shit, okay? I’ll be happy to wait for you, I’ll be happy to give you all the time and space to figure things out. I won’t leave you. I won’t resent you. I know what I’m getting into here. Just please – let me be there for you.”

“I don’t know how!”

Phil just shrugs. Like it doesn’t matter. Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe Dan is too inside his own head. Maybe he should just be more like Phil, just shrug at things and take them as they come.

He doesn’t know how to do that either, though.

“You could start by not hanging up every time I call and take it from there,” he grins.

“Most people would’ve gotten the hint, you know,” Dan says darkly.

“Most people would’ve let you get away with it, you mean,” Phil retorts. “Well, tough luck. I’m not letting you get away.” He winks at him and it’s a little ridiculous but it’s also making something inside Dan’s stomach flutter.

Maybe…

Aw fuck. Fuck Phil Lester and all this fucking hope he has brought into Dan’s life. It’s not fair. He’s not a hopeful person. He should not be trusted with hope. He has an uncanny talent to murder hope like Phil murders potted plants.

But.

Maybe.

“Are you sure you’re going to be okay with this?” Dan asks, voice unusually quiet. “I mean – not… not just now. In the long run.”

Because fuck it. Fuck all the lying to himself and the shutting himself away and the walls he’d built. He wants there to be a long run.

Phil nods enthusiastically. It’s cute. He’s cute. Dan wants to die, and he wants to kiss him, and he wants there. To be. A long run.

“Yeah. I’m not sure you will be, though. So, you know. Can you do one thing for me?”

Dan thinks he’s already doing quite a lot for him. Quite a lot he should know better about but somehow doesn’t. But looking into these eyes makes it a little hard to say no.

“What?” he asks instead.

“So much therapy.”

Dan can’t help it. He cackles out a laugh.

“Yeah, whatever, fuck it. Not the first therapist I’d have driven into a drinking problem.”

“No, this time we’re double-teaming you. It’ll work. You just wait.”

Dan should know better, but he doesn’t, and he doesn’t have the energy to care, right now. He simply believes Phil. Chooses to believe Phil.

For once, he lets go of the onslaught of self-doubt, hate, shame and guilt he feels, and instead let his head fall against Phil’s shoulders, keeping it there until Phil slings his arms around him, pulling him tight, closes his eyes, and feels relief crash through his body.

It’s silly. Childish. But he thinks as long as he has Phil to hide underneath a table with and be held, that maybe, he can be okay.

“Hey Phil,” he whispers and Phil hums to signal that he heard him, lips brushing against Dan’s temples. “I came out to my mum today.”

And as Phil squeezes him a little tighter, Dan can feel his smile against his skin, like something to be kept, like something he etched in there, like something that is his.

“So proud of you, Dannyboy.”

“Never call me that again.”

Phil laughs in a way that tells Dan he’s going to be hearing a lot of that name. He doesn’t mind.

“Can I have my legal advice now?” Phil asks and Dan immediately squeezes his eyes shut in absolute resignation.

“Oh my God, what is it this time? I swear, if this is about some puppy whose tail you’ve stepped on…”

Phil gasps in shock. “I would never!”

“Phil–”

“No, actually, I was hoping for your advice about selling and buying an apartment. You see, I like Manchester just fine, but I figured– maybe something in London–”

Dan surges up and kisses him.

He hasn’t considered all the beautiful possibilities that come with being allowed to kiss Phil, the most important being on the forefront of his mind right now.

It shut the idiot up.

Phil does not buy an apartment in London.

Dan has never felt more insane in his life than when he helps Phil carry up box after box into his apartment. It’s too fast. It’s so risky.

They’re going to do it anyway. And quite frankly, neither of them gives a shit. Dan is already risking everything just by letting Phil in. If Phil leaves, he’s already losing so much more than he ever lost before. What difference does moving in make?

Phil makes his home in the very crack in the wall around Dan’s heart. He brings pillows and blankets and his entire Buffy DVD collection. He leaves Ribena bottles lying around everywhere. And whenever the crack widens, he slips in deeper.

It’s easy. It’s easier than it has any right to be, being Phil Lester’s soulmate. Dan might just keep doing it for the rest of his life.

Dan is having a particularly insane dream about having the shits on some weird picnic platform in the middle of the ocean, when all of a sudden, dream-Phil turns to him and looks at him differently.

“Oh,” he says. “Hi.”

“Hi?” says Dan.

Dream Phil, who’s now other Phil, looks around, wrinkling his nose.

“If you want my advice, don’t do this. Or at least don’t eat the sandwiches before–”

He catches Dan’s gaze.

“Nevermind,” he mutters. “Probably not what we should be– are you doing okay, then?”

“Are you–” Dan looks at him with his eyes narrowed in suspicion, and Phil laughs.

“We’ve met. For a bit. Are you with my other self, then?”

Dan nods.

“Good!” Phil seems relieved at that. “Okay! You two doing okay?”

Dan nods again, then he hesitates.

“Hey, are you…– I mean. You have another Dan over there, right? And you know him very well?”

Phil beams at him.

“Yeah! We’ve been together for 17 years. It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster.” But he doesn’t sound stressed, just proud.

Dan wants that, some day. He really hopes he gets it.

“Was he like me, at some point? You know…?” Broken. “A bit repressed?”

Phil snorts out a laugh.

“Is this you asking if things are gonna be okay? They’ll be okay. My Dan, he went through a lot too, yeah.” What a charming way of saying “yes” and taking all the insult out of it in the process. Dan loves him a little, even though he knows what he’s doing. “And he came out of it as the most inspiring person I’ve ever met. And it’s not just me who thinks so – there’s like – thousands. You’ll be okay. I promise.”

“Thousands?” Dan asks. “What?”

Phil just grins at him.

“Yeah, we have a YouTube channel. It’s– hard to explain.”

Dan would like to talk more about that, extensively so, but he can feel the dream unravel around him. Something inside of him tells him that he won’t meet this Phil again, after this.

It’s a gift from the universe. He should use it wisely instead of using up all his time on the fact that in another reality, he’s apparently famous on motherfucking YouTube. Are they doing reaction videos? He really hopes they’re not doing reaction videos. Lowest form of “artistic” content, really.

There’s other things he needs to know. Just does.

“Did you choose him?” he asks, and he hates the desperate tone in his voice but fuck, it’s important. “Did you choose him because you wanted to or did the universe make you?”

“The universe?” Phil shakes his head, and his eyes crinkle from the affectionate smile on his face. “Now, don’t discredit all his hard work. He stalked me on the internet until we met up. The universe had to keep up, whether it wanted to or not.”

Dan stares at him and Phil simply lifts his hands and shrugs.

“You’re one stubborn, determined force of nature, Dan Howell. Don’t let the universe fool you into thinking anything else.”

Dan can’t help himself, he grins at Phil, who’s still grinning back. Around him, the ocean is fading into black. There’s only a tiny spot of island left, the last bastion until the dream dissolves.

“Thank you,” he tells Phil. He wants to explain, but something tells him he doesn’t have to.

“Are you kidding? Thank you.” Everything around Dan turns black, but he still hears Phil’s voice echo through his mind. “... for all the great legal advice.” And just like that, he’s disappeared, taking Dan’s last laugh with him, and then Dan is awake again, but it’s okay.

Because his Phil is right there, snoring into his ear.

(They had Rosé last night.)

“For the record,” Phil tells Dan while they’re cleaning up the studio after an exceptionally messy calendar shooting. “There’s probably a lot of universes out there in which I didn’t meet you at eighteen – it’s inevitable. But I don’t think there’s a single – and I’m saying it, hold on – fucking universe out there, in which we met and I wasn’t happy with you.”

Dan, who’s currently busy trying to put a pink princess dress on a hanger, just stares at him.

“Where… is that coming from?” he finally manages to ask.

Phil looks a little stubborn.

“You asked.”

“I didn’t– what?”

“You asked if I would be okay. Well I– him. Other Phil.”

“I just meant– Jesus, okay, you’ve been carrying that one around.”

Phil lets a finger flip against Dan’s forehead. “I will until you get it into your pretty little head.”

“Oh, it’s pretty, is it.”

“Gets prettier every day.”

“I know you’re okay,” Dan says. “I know we are. But you’re equipped to deal with– you know, the mess that is me. Other Phil–”

“Hey now,” Phil chirps. “I’m equipped to deal with it because I learned how to. Don’t you go around discrediting my hard work.”

Dan rolls his eyes, but he still leans in to kiss him with a smirk.

“Fair enough.” He glances at Phil. “They’re okay, then.”

“Oh, they’re okay. They’ve got each other.”

“Think they’ve got a mess like this to clean up, too?”

Phil grins. “Nope. Too busy editing gay porn or whatever.”

Cackling, Dan turned back to one of the other costumes strewn about. “Maybe we should make that our next calendar theme. Much less clothes to clean up afterwards.”

Phil just smiles at him proudly.

Yup.

His Dan had come a long, long way.