#Making A Coffin For Dan And Phil

[reunitedinterlude]

dnp & fuji (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

[goldenpinof]

favourite behind-the-scenes moments (WE'RE SO BACK, BABY)

[pinof]

Making A Coffin For Dan And Phil

[sleepyslag]

pj and sophie are pheople of the decade ✊ like they have to deal with dnp irl and that alone deserves a trophy

No fr!! Like how many unhinged texts do you think they get from dnp on the daily :/ build us a goat demon build us a sims coffin build us. Dollhouses that we can make our dolls fuck in live on stage. I can't wait to see the making of video for that one I HAVE to know what the pitch was. AND they had to sit in traffic ALL FUCKING DAY to deliver them and then Dan and Phil didn't even let them stay at the phouse. That story haunts me fr it's my nightmare they should have won for that alone.

[amoontoyou]

shout out to dan and phil for making the conscious decision to not use the "i spent the majority of 2016 with another person" clip at the end of a 30 minute video full of them complimenting each other on their looks cuz that would have been the nail on the coffin

[niamhthefae]

short thing i wrote to celebrate 15 years and what could have been if they decided to put many people in the hospital via hard launching:

(p.s. if you want more of my phanfiction, check out @niamh-writes-things )

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15 years.

15 years since dan first fell in love with phil, since he got on a train to meet a stranger and spent the weekend entertwined with him. 15 years of sharpie fumes and phil’s plaid shirts and videos and games and waking up with their legs tangled together and morning coffee while they talked.

When dan had been 18, he was just starting uni. He never really thought that anyone would like him, he never expected to have any light in his future. The last 14 or so years he had spent in school had mostly consisted of being pushed around and sworn at while everyone else looked on. It was hard to remember a time when everything was so grey. He felt a bit like dorothy from the wizard of oz; he had spent 18 years in black and white, and then this tornado of a man wearing mismatched socks showed up and made everything technicolour.

15 years. god, how had it taken him that long to do something? Now the world new what he had once spent every night sick with anxiety about, everything was so fantastic. He could be a little bit more himself and put away the metaphorical (and physical) straighteners in the closet and shut the door. He could parade around on halloween in a slutty nun costume or pose wearing only a sweater and thigh highs or make 'phil's a bottom' jokes on the gaming channel.

Most importantly, he could spend every day next to the man whose love saved his life.

1 year and a few days. Things were going well, and one night phil had turned to him and asked if he wanted to give it one more try. A year or so ago they had walked into a church to film a video and phil had said fuck on camera. And he watched PJ and Sophie lug in a literal coffin while trying to not bang their feet or trip, which was rather surreal. One year of filming videos and laughing and making sure they said so little yet so much.

15 years all for one moment. Love,Tears,heartache and a thousand crisises and hospital visits all leading upto one post.

“It’s not too late to stop. We can post the gerard cutout picture or post a funny tweet about them not letting us in” him and phil were sat on the couch in the tour bus, staring at dan’s phone,lay on the table displaying a picture of them holding a flag. If dan thought hard, we could almost still feel the polyester in one hand, the side of phil’s face in another and a pair of lips pressed to his own. Only he didn’t need to imagine, because he had the real thing next to him. He leaned over and grabbed phils face, giving him a short kiss that was slow and light and filled with trust. Afterward he lay their foreheads together “i’m scared phil, i really am. But i also don’t want to have to hide forever. In all honesty, i think if it werent for all that repression and bullying i would have been screaming from the rooftops a long time ago. I really love you Phil lester.”

By now dan had already memorized the multicoloured speckles of phil’s eyes, yet every so often he looked into them and there was something deeper. You could go swimming in those eyes

“I really love you too�� phil reached down and entertwined their hands, then pulled away so he could pick up the phone “we face it together,” he said “no matter what happens” “Together” dan repeated.

And together they hit post.

[annesoftheisland]

Anne of the Island - Chapter XXV

Enter Prince Charming

"I'm contrasting the claims of indoors and out," said Anne, looking from the window of Patty's Place to the distant pines of the park.

"I've an afternoon to spend in sweet doing nothing, Aunt Jimsie. Shall I spend it here where there is a cosy fire, a plateful of delicious russets, three purring and harmonious cats, and two impeccable china dogs with green noses? Or shall I go to the park, where there is the lure of gray woods and of gray water lapping on the harbor rocks?"

"If I was as young as you, I'd decide in favor of the park," said Aunt Jamesina, tickling Joseph's yellow ear with a knitting needle.

"I thought that you claimed to be as young as any of us, Aunty," teased Anne.

"Yes, in my soul. But I'll admit my legs aren't as young as yours. You go and get some fresh air, Anne. You look pale lately."

"I think I'll go to the park," said Anne restlessly. "I don't feel like tame domestic joys today. I want to feel alone and free and wild. The park will be empty, for every one will be at the football match."

"Why didn't you go to it?"

"`Nobody axed me, sir, she said' -- at least, nobody but that horrid little Dan Ranger. I wouldn't go anywhere with him; but rather than hurt his poor little tender feelings I said I wasn't going to the game at all. I don't mind. I'm not in the mood for football today somehow."

"You go and get some fresh air," repeated Aunt Jamesina, "but take your umbrella, for I believe it's going to rain. I've rheumatism in my leg."

"Only old people should have rheumatism, Aunty."

"Anybody is liable to rheumatism in her legs, Anne. It's only old people who should have rheumatism in their souls, though. Thank goodness, I never have. When you get rheumatism in your soul you might as well go and pick out your coffin."

It was November -- the month of crimson sunsets, parting birds, deep, sad hymns of the sea, passionate wind-songs in the pines. Anne roamed through the pineland alleys in the park and, as she said, let that great sweeping wind blow the fogs out of her soul. Anne was not wont to be troubled with soul fog. But, somehow, since her return to Redmond for this third year, life had not mirrored her spirit back to her with its old, perfect, sparkling clearness.

Outwardly, existence at Patty's Place was the same pleasant round of work and study and recreation that it had always been. On Friday evenings the big, fire-lighted livingroom was crowded by callers and echoed to endless jest and laughter, while Aunt Jamesina smiled beamingly on them all. The "Jonas" of Phil's letter came often, running up from St. Columbia on the early train and departing on the late. He was a general favorite at Patty's Place, though Aunt Jamesina shook her head and opined that divinity students were not what they used to be.

"He's VERY nice, my dear," she told Phil, "but ministers ought to be graver and more dignified."

"Can't a man laugh and laugh and be a Christian still?" demanded Phil.

"Oh, MEN -- yes. But I was speaking of MINISTERS, my dear," said Aunt Jamesina rebukingly." And you shouldn't flirt so with Mr. Blake -- you really shouldn't."

"I'm not flirting with him," protested Phil.

Nobody believed her, except Anne. The others thought she was amusing herself as usual, and told her roundly that she was behaving very badly.

"Mr. Blake isn't of the Alec-and-Alonzo type, Phil," said Stella severely. "He takes things seriously. You may break his heart."

"Do you really think I could?" asked Phil. "I'd love to think so."

"Philippa Gordon! I never thought you were utterly unfeeling. The idea of you saying you'd love to break a man's heart!"

"I didn't say so, honey. Quote me correctly. I said I'd like to think I COULD break it. I would like to know I had the POWER to do it."

"I don't understand you, Phil. You are leading that man on deliberately -- and you know you don't mean anything by it."

"I mean to make him ask me to marry him if I can," said Phil calmly.

"I give you up," said Stella hopelessly.

Gilbert came occasionally on Friday evenings. He seemed always in good spirits, and held his own in the jests and repartee that flew about. He neither sought nor avoided Anne. When circumstances brought them in contact he talked to her pleasantly and courteously, as to any newly-made acquaintance. The old camaraderie was gone entirely. Anne felt it keenly; but she told herself she was very glad and thankful that Gilbert had got so completely over his disappointment in regard to her. She had really been afraid, that April evening in the orchard, that she had hurt him terribly and that the wound would be long in healing. Now she saw that she need not have worried. Men have died and the worms have eaten them but not for love. Gilbert evidently was in no danger of immediate dissolution. He was enjoying life, and he was full of ambition and zest. For him there was to be no wasting in despair because a woman was fair and cold. Anne, as she listened to the ceaseless badinage that went on between him and Phil, wondered if she had only imagined that look in his eyes when she had told him she could never care for him.

There were not lacking those who would gladly have stepped into Gilbert's vacant place. But Anne snubbed them without fear and without reproach. If the real Prince Charming was never to come she would have none of a substitute. So she sternly told herself that gray day in the windy park.

Suddenly the rain of Aunt Jamesina's prophecy came with a swish and rush. Anne put up her umbrella and hurried down the slope. As she turned out on the harbor road a savage gust of wind tore along it. Instantly her umbrella turned wrong side out. Anne clutched at it in despair. And then -- there came a voice close to her.

"Pardon me -- may I offer you the shelter of my umbrella?"

Anne looked up. Tall and handsome and distinguished-looking -- dark, melancholy, inscrutable eyes -- melting, musical, sympathetic voice -- yes, the very hero of her dreams stood before her in the flesh. He could not have more closely resembled her ideal if he had been made to order.

"Thank you," she said confusedly.

"We'd better hurry over to that little pavillion on the point," suggested the unknown. "We can wait there until this shower is over. It is not likely to rain so heavily very long."

The words were very commonplace, but oh, the tone! And the smile which accompanied them! Anne felt her heart beating strangely.

Together they scurried to the pavilion and sat breathlessly down under its friendly roof. Anne laughingly held up her false umbrella.

"It is when my umbrella turns inside out that I am convinced of the total depravity of inanimate things," she said gaily.

The raindrops sparkled on her shining hair; its loosened rings curled around her neck and forehead. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes big and starry. Her companion looked down at her admiringly. She felt herself blushing under his gaze. Who could he be? Why, there was a bit of the Redmond white and scarlet pinned to his coat lapel. Yet she had thought she knew, by sight at least, all the Redmond students except the Freshmen. And this courtly youth surely was no Freshman.

"We are schoolmates, I see," he said, smiling at Anne's colors. "That ought to be sufficient introduction. My name is Royal Gardner. And you are the Miss Shirley who read the Tennyson paper at the Philomathic the other evening, aren't you?"

"Yes; but I cannot place you at all," said Anne, frankly. "Please, where DO you belong?"

"I feel as if I didn't belong anywhere yet. I put in my Freshman and Sophomore years at Redmond two years ago. I've been in Europe ever since. Now I've come back to finish my Arts course."

"This is my Junior year, too," said Anne.

"So we are classmates as well as collegemates. I am reconciled to the loss of the years that the locust has eaten," said her companion, with a world of meaning in those wonderful eyes of his.

The rain came steadily down for the best part of an hour. But the time seemed really very short. When the clouds parted and a burst of pale November sunshine fell athwart the harbor and the pines Anne and her companion walked home together. By the time they had reached the gate of Patty's Place he had asked permission to call, and had received it. Anne went in with cheeks of flame and her heart beating to her fingertips. Rusty, who climbed into her lap and tried to kiss her, found a very absent welcome. Anne, with her soul full of romantic thrills, had no attention to spare just then for a crop-eared pussy cat.

That evening a parcel was left at Patty's Place for Miss Shirley. It was a box containing a dozen magnificent roses. Phil pounced impertinently on the card that fell from it, read the name and the poetical quotation written on the back.

"Royal Gardner!" she exclaimed. "Why, Anne, I didn't know you were acquainted with Roy Gardner!"

"I met him in the park this afternoon in the rain," explained Anne hurriedly. "My umbrella turned inside out and he came to my rescue with his."

"Oh!" Phil peered curiously at Anne." And is that exceedingly commonplace incident any reason why he should send us longstemmed roses by the dozen, with a very sentimental rhyme? Or why we should blush divinest rosy-red when we look at his card? Anne, thy face betrayeth thee."

"Don't talk nonsense, Phil. Do you know Mr. Gardner?"

"I've met his two sisters, and I know of him. So does everybody worthwhile in Kingsport. The Gardners are among the richest, bluest, of Bluenoses. Roy is adorably handsome and clever. Two years ago his mother's health failed and he had to leave college and go abroad with her -- his father is dead. He must have been greatly disappointed to have to give up his class, but they say he was perfectly sweet about it. Fee -- fi -- fo -- fum, Anne. I smell romance. Almost do I envy you, but not quite. After all, Roy Gardner isn't Jonas."

"You goose!" said Anne loftily. But she lay long awake that night, nor did she wish for sleep. Her waking fancies were more alluring than any vision of dreamland. Had the real Prince come at last? Recalling those glorious dark eyes which had gazed so deeply into her own, Anne was very strongly inclined to think he had.

[d3athwish]

alright that’s it pals, i’m caving. i’m making a dnp sideblog. stay tuned!

[feelingofcontent]

DNP Rewatch: Easter Baking - EXTREME TRIPLE CHOCOLATE NESTS

Date video was published: 04/04/2015 (X)

DNP Main Channel Rewatch: 265

The first Easter baking video!

0:10 - that bunny costume is kind of terrifying. They had it from a merch calendar they made. Phil also posted a slightly disturbing picture wearing it.

0:11 - but Phil just thinks it’s funny enough to do the tongue-thing. He’s trying so hard to be able to make eye contact with Dan.

0:25 - Phil with the brief up-and-down look and then the casual grooming/fixing of his hair. And a fanfic reference. The start of this video is something else. “Pruning each other like monkeys” indeed.

0:38 - much less disturbing than the bunny head. Phil has so many “excuses” to just look at the start of this video.

0:45 - love that Dan did the decorating again, just like in the Halloween baking video. Yeah, they don’t have that many decorations...so apparently a lei and piranha plant flowers are “Eastery” enough, lol

0:57 - wtf Phil. And then Dan’s fond “you’re such a strange person” 🥺 Same energy as “nice to know after all these years, he’s still fucking weird.”

1:27 - Dan hyping it up. There is no reference to Delia Smith in this baking video, for the first time.

1:29 - WHY did they hang the bunny-head upside down in the background?! 😳

1:32 - I don’t know about the look in Dan’s eyes as Phil says “preparation” 

1:38 - Dan’s like...where is this going. Then the fond little giggle and Phil is so proud of himself.

1:51 - “not Japan” ...where they will be going later in the month. Dan with the subtle foreshadowing.

1:56 - this is not nearly as bad as the hanging bunny head, Phil...

2:05 - they had the silicone discussion in the Halloween baking video too...why are they so impressed with that. why Dan.

2:30 - I’m impressed that Phil actually managed to catch all of those.

2:58 - of course they’re open. It’s a running theme at this point that Phil has to pick at least one ingredient to eat ahead of time.

3:06 - lol at Phil in the back silently increasing the count 😂

3:13 - they’re better off when they don’t actually have to put things in the oven, usually

3:20 - jesus christ. It wouldn’t even be that bad, except Phil has such a strong reaction, lol.

3:23 - and then we have a jump cut and Phil’s top shirt button is undone. umm.

3:32 - every time they say “microwave” I think of PINOF 2

3:45 - Phil’s shirt is buttoned fully again. Smart to heat the water in the kettle first!

4:02 - “mate....s” nice save there Phil

4:31 - Dan finds everything Phil says amusing. And then is ready to play-off of it too.

4:50 - “never go full northern” I love it 😂

4:56 - Phil can do a very convincing deadpan when he wants to

5:15 - “just let it drip out” did not need to be said in that tone...

5:50 - Attack of Titan theme singing, of course. Also, so much Phil arm and freckles in this video!

6:01 - just over there giggling to themselves and leaving it in the video

6:10 - they did not balance that spoon well

6:19 - it is more that theme than Easter, lol

6:46 - the origins of the naked-man apron! I love Dan’s reaction when he first sees it. Phil is so pleased with himself.

6:54 - love the growth from not showing any further down here to Phil completely not giving a shit years later

7:00 - they’ve switched burners for some reason. Now Dan keeps calling it “extreme” too, lol

7:07 - Phil’s top button is undone again. What are they doing.

7:23 - love the choice to zoom in on Dan for his little “yeah”

7:32 - they love to have little songs for everything. Phil’s “yeah” was infinitely more disturbing.

7:50 - Phil’s fond teasing like ‘we have more bowls you idiot’

8:13 - I can’t believe they didn’t dump it completely at least once with the amount of issues they seem to be having

8:26 - “into my coffin” what is Phil’s brain.

8:35 - his voice isn’t that bad here, but it turned out he did have laryngitis 

8:37 - “husky sensual voice” thanks for sharing there, Dan

8:39 - well it’s far to late to worry about that; personal space does not exist in this video, lol.

9:05 - this is by far the least-complicated decorating they do in a baking video

9:12 - well neither of them are wrong...

9:29 - I live for Phil’s eyerolls

9:43 - not sure that zoom-in was necessary. The creepy bunny eyes in the background do not help.

9:52 - that’s an even better Phil eyeroll 😂

9:56 - I want to know what’s in the little white containers in the fridge door. It almost looks like extra of the melted chocolate, but I wonder what they were doing with it

10:06 - Dan looks so caught out, lol. This is quite a screenshot...

10:16 - no thank you 😨

10:24 - Dan does not like it either, hahaha

10:26 - and after the break, Phil’s shirt is fully buttoned again and he’s stolen the flower crown

10:35 - the “display unnecessarily” annotation is great

10:39 - Dan’s got the crown back

11:01 - and Phil with the crown again. Are we missing a crown-fight during the jump cuts, or did they just film things out of order?

11:04 - why does it vaguely looks like Dan is holding a baby

11:15 - Phil really does just say whatever comes to mind sometimes

11:21 - Phil is opening his mouth so wide, lol. Dan starts to go ahead, and then he paused and realized he needed to say something about it, probably.

11:31 - clearly Dan is not that concerned about sharing germs with a maybe-sick Phil

11:37 - “I’m a genius” Phil is so proud of himself.

11:55 - Dan immediately amused by trying to figure out what that means

12:08 - Phil with the instructions while trying not to laugh

12:15 - Phil arms 👀

12:32 - Phil’s not even on camera for the draw-Phil-naked intro here

12:41 - all the TABINOF/TATINOF promo had been on Dan’s channel and social media so far!

I love this baking video. Although I love pretty much every baking video. When it’s a simpler bake like this it’s less chaotic though, lol.

Also have to mention that this was the year of the first DanAndPhilCRAFTS April Fools Day videos (1, 2, 3) a few days before this.

[dramaphan]

Dramaphan weekly recap - June 14-20

Paying artists and captioners. Charging and paying for sending anons.

Baby anons discover Drama was a 'phanti' once.

When dnp find out how to limit replies to tweets and twitter phannies blame and cancel each other for this.

Some kid is trying to argue with Drama using the 'go pay your bills' argument.

Dnp grandfather and grandson.

Queer prince rats. Ultra slur.

Elton John will be one of the hosts of the youtube thing, lets also get Eminem.

Drama reviews dnp's videos.

Fun game pad or tampon. Dan tampon, Phil pad. Tyler Oakley diva cup. John Green period pants.

Weenie hill.

Dnp circumcised?

2022. We can't let Chris win.

If Adrian has a kid. "Beef and freja would be best friends partners in crime would do anything to convince their parents to let them have a sleepover. Then they’d go visit uncle Adrian and beef would cry because Cousin Broccoli just wants to ride bikes and eat hummus" "Beef would have lunch at cousin broccolis house and he’d be all “I don’t like kale” and Adrian would go “yeah that’s why you’re depressed, here drink this smoothie” "

Dan and Phil men and women coded.

Dan is woman coded (takes baths) and Phil is mentally ill (dating his stalker)

Dan is woman coded (drinks wine) and Phil is man coded (lies)

Phil is woman coded (likes men) and mentally ill (capitalist)

Dan is woman coded (buys expensive clothes) and mentally ill (likes hyperpop)

Dan is woman coded (yells at everything) Phil is man coded (tells him to shut up)

Phil is woman coded (makes excuses for his man and also teaches his man how to do basic tasks)

Dan is woman coded (tries to be vegan) Phil is man coded (eats that meat)

Phil is man coded (gaslights) Dan is woman coded (gatekeeps)

Dan is woman coded (decorates) Phil is man coded (owns drill)

Dan and Phil are woman coded (i’m in love with them)

Dan is woman coded (has beef with grandma) Phil is man coded (insecure about hair)

Phil is woman coded (big ass) Dan is man coded (flat ass)

Phil is man coded (leaves socks everywhere) Dan is woman coded (complains about it)

Dan is woman coded (big soft lips) and Phil is man coded (big soft lips but overall looks like a bird of prey)

Dan is lesbian coded (hardcore phillie) and mentally ill (lowkey a stalker)

Dan is lesbian coded (tall)

Phil is in fact Kyle.

Destiel goes canon in Russia which leads us to conclusion that "the problem isn't that there are alternate timelines with BIG, people just got different dubs. Phan canon in Spanish but only friends in Italy?? Open relationship in German but married in Portuguese."

Anon predicted discourse but for the wrong fandom (x).

Parallel Universe where Dan left Phil for Nick Jonas.

Dan screams every time Phil tries to say he loves him and Phil slaps Dan every time Dan's nice to him.

AU where Drama is a Larry drama blog.

Joint headstone again. Joint coffin? Joint urn.

Discourse if whichever one that didn't die first is moving to fast and conspiracy theory that Phil killed Dan for the life insurance.

"Dan turns into a tree and phil does the thing where they launch his body into space so he can float up there." "Dan gets turned into a cherry blossom and phannies can’t stop making cherry jokes".

New idea: penis shaped headstone. Their names are engraved on each ball.

We hope they pay their maid good money.

Hot potato relationship.

Dnp brothers.

Tops only dramablog. Not a bottom friendly space.

Drama got put in jail.

Who did the first shit in forever home? (Phil because milkshake).

AU where Dan never started youtube and we don't know who is that guy in Phil's video's background.

SamAndPhilSwims and samisnotonfire.

Who had the last shit in the apartment?

"Every time I see a picture of Dan pre-2014 I think about that Avril lavigne conspiracy theory "

Drama has been a phannie lowkey the entire week.

Now Drama can schedule asks.

having all of the x-coded asks in a list like that really gave me a chuckle

[succubusphan]

My Power, My Pleasure, My Pain

Summary: It is Phil and Daniel’s anniversary and Phil has a special present for him.

Part of the Kiss from a Rose series: Main fic | Timestamp (Smut.)

Rating: E

Tags: Vampire au, can be read as a stand alone but #spon, Smut with a dash of plot, present day timeline, based on a tumblr post.

Word Count:  1.2k

A/n: Written for the Im-PROMPT-u phandom creator challenge hosted by the @phandomreversebang​ Day 26: Vampire + blood, blood everywhere.

Read on ao3

Phil could hear Dan playing the piano in his study, he smiled mischievously; this would be the perfect opportunity to set the gift in their bedroom and test the theory. 

He carried the box as silently as he could and set it against the wall, running a cutter carefully around all the edges. He pulled the layers of cardboard and bubble wrap from around the frame, being careful enough to avert his eyes from it. 

Phil took a moment to get a hold of himself, closed his eyes and shakily stood in front of it. He was curious to know if this would finally work and, more importantly, If Daniel would like it. With a calming but unnecessary deep breath, he opened his eyes and saw his own reflection for the first time in centuries. He looked at every single inch of his skin on his face, his hair and his eyes with a sense of familiarity mixed with a completely foreign feeling. He looked just as he remembered - save for the black hair - but felt nothing like the human he had once been. He smiled as he spotted the bite marks on his neck. Yes, Daniel had gifted him with eternal life, one of love and companionship. This is what he really was, a vampire and Daniel’s mate.

He was startled when he noticed that the music had stopped. Picking up all the cardboard, bubble wrap and other packing materials, he made his way to the kitchen and disposed of them. 

“What did you order?” Daniel whispered against the back of his neck making him shiver. 

Phil turned around and rested his elbows on Daniel’s shoulders with a smile. “It’s your anniversary gift.”

“Oh, Is it big? Let me see it!” Daniel grinned. 

“Why is it always about size with you, my love?” Phil laughed. 

“It is not! I was just wondering about the amount of packaging you are disposing of… Is it a coffin?”

“Do you want a coffin?” Phil laughed, letting his tongue poke between his teeth.

“No, but I wouldn’t put it past you.” 

“I take offence! You will be sleeping on the sofa for the next ten years.”

“You wouldn’t!” Daniel said, pulling him closer and kissing his neck, letting one of his fangs caress the skin there. “You would miss me too much.”

“True,” Phil finally conceded. “Do you want to see it?”

“Always,” Daniel winked.

“Behave!” Phil slapped his shoulder. “I’ll take you to it but you’ll have to close your eyes and let me guide you.”

“Fine, fine.”

Once they had gotten to the bedroom door, Phil checked that Daniel had his eyes still closed and led him to stand directly in front of the mirror. He started to open his partner’s shirt slowly, button by button until it laid completely open. 

Phil stood behind Daniel and looked at their reflection as he traced his fingers down the other’s chest. “So hot,” he whispered.

“I want to see,” Daniel said. “May I look?”

“Yes, my love. Look at us.”

Daniel opened his eyes and gasped. He stared at himself much like Phil had and then saw Phil’s eyes roaming his chest. His eyes widened and a smirk appeared on his lips. Daniel grabbed Phil’s hands, guiding one to his nipple and the other to his jeans. “Touch me,” he pleaded. 

Phil smiled and complied with the request, tweaking Daniel’s nipple as he popped the buttons on his jeans with the other and sank his pants inside his pants, letting his fingers wrap around the base of his hardening cock and pumping treacherously slow. 

“Phil,” Daniel moaned, his hips chasing after Phil’s soft touch. “More, more.” 

Phil looked into his eyes through the mirror and whispered into his ear. “What do you want?”

“Fuck me.” He let out a choked moan as Phil twisted his wrist on the upstroke. “I want to see myself getting fucked by you.”

Phil smiled but his only reply was a few more strokes before his hands disappeared. “Press your hands on the wall on each side of the mirror and close your eyes.”

Daniel nodded sharply and complied. He heard the rustling of Phil’s clothes before he felt him pulling his jeans down along with his underwear, leaving him completely naked. 

“May I -”

“Not yet,” Phil said. “Keep them closed until I tell you. Spread your legs for me - a little more. There.”

Daniel nodded and moaned as he felt a lubed finger tracing around his hole. “Fuck!” He let his head hang forward. 

“Shh, soon. Be good for me, we’re almost there.” 

As promised, only a few minutes later, Phil finally pushed inside him until they were flushed together. A lubed hand wrapped around Daniel’s cock but remained still. “Look.” Phil started to thrust into slowly.

Daniel’s mouth hung open at the sight in front of him. They looked, for the lack of a better word, perfect - made for each other. “Beautiful.”

“You are,” Phil smirked, looking at him through the mirror, grabbing him by the hip with his available hand while the other worked on his cock as his thrusts gained momentum. “Look at you, taking me so well, always so hungry for my cock, for my touch…” He ran his thumb around the head of cock and pressed down slightly onto the slit, the sound of flesh slapping on flesh with each brutal thrust filled the room. “Love how you twitch in my hand, baby.”

“Phil, ah, ah, ah. I’m-” Daniel let his head fall back onto Phil’s shoulder and shook violently as Phil bit his neck. He came all over the mirror with a choked moan, feeling Phil’s cock pressing firmly onto his prostate and spurting into him. He shivering in his arms with the overstimulation.

When he finally came too, they were laying on the bed and Phil was smiling at him like a loon. “Happy 500th anniversary. Did you like your present?” 

Daniel pulled his boyfriend closer and kissed him over and over again. “Happy anniversary, My love! I loved it. What is it made of?”

“Aluminum. I’ve been researching why vampires don’t have a reflection and basically nobody agreed, but there was a theory going around that it was related to the silver in older mirrors. So they said it would probably be solved by the fact that modern mirrors are made from aluminium and I was unsure but I tried it anyway and it worked.”

“Interesting. So we could get more?”

“Do you want more mirrors?” Phil smiled amusedly.

Daniel smirked and pinned Phil to the bed. “Yes, I want them on the ceiling, on the walls, everywhere in this bedroom.” He leaned down for a kiss and then mumbled against Phil’s lips: “And now It’s my turn.” 

[goldenpinof]

he is busting

[pinof]

Making A Coffin For Dan And Phil

[johnfkennedyjunior]

Citizen Kennedy On the run from the press all his life, John F Kennedy Jr. joins the media pack. (September, 1995)

It is an overcast, chilly Friday, but the crowd in the ballroom of Detroit’s Westin Hotel is feverish. In the Adcraft Club’s ninety-year history, only Lee Iacocca has drawn more people to a speech. But today’s guest has set pulses revving faster than even Iacocca ever could.

Sighs (“I made eye contact with him!”) and whispers (“His jawline is perfect!”) and four burly guards accompany John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr. as he circles the room to the blue-swagged dais. Women creep forward, their cameras flash-framing to capture that famous, evocative face.

After lunch, Phil Guarascio, the sleek advertising master of General Motors, takes the podium and ticks off the handsome young speaker’s accomplishments: his education at Brown University and NYU Law School; stints with the United Nations in India, with economic-development outfits in New York, and with the U. S. Attorney General’s Honor Program; his role in founding a group that helps educate health-care workers; and, most notably, his four years as an assistant district attorney in the office of New York City crimebuster Robert Morgenthau.

But it’s not his resume that’s brought this mob out to hear the thirty-four-year-old son of the country’s thirty-fifth president and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, the eternal icon. It’s not even their moist interest in his celebrated romances with Daryl Hannah and other beauties. Nor is it to stare at the buffed pecs and thighs, often captured in Central Park grab shots by New York’s tabloids but today hidden under a dark, conservative suit. No, this crowd has come to learn about the future of the man they still think of as John John.

“I’m well aware of the expectation that sooner or later I would be giving a speech about politics,” he says. “So here I am, I’m delighted to say, fulfilling that expectation.” He speaks a bit more about his career, his prospects, his hope that he’ll do the right thing. Finally, the excitement building, he tells the crowd what it wants to hear.

“I hope eventually to end up as president,” says John F. Kennedy Jr. Three beats. “Of a very successful publishing venture.”

The nineteen hundred car and ad people explode into laughter and applause. They know that this charmer has come to their city to flack the riskiest venture of a pampered life indelibly marked by tragedy: a magazine he’ll launch in September about the family business-politics. More than a few of them will buy ad pages in the publication curiously named George (for George Washington), gambling that Kennedy’s sizzle will attract readers to a subject that Americans love to hate and have never much wanted to read about.

What they don’t fully realize is that they are present at the creation of the latest and most dramatic chapter of the Kennedy saga: a rite of passage of the family’s-if not America’s-crown prince. For much of his life, John F. Kennedy Jr. has been what he seemed-a dilettante, unable to commit to a woman or a career. Now he thinks he has found a way to fulfill his daunting genetic destiny-one that shows his sure grasp of what being a Kennedy is really all about. In his grandfather’s day, money was power. In his father’s day, politics was power. In his own day, media is power. By charging boldly into its realm, John Jr. may prove to be the most genuine Kennedy of his generation.

* * *

“DON’T LET THEM STEAL your soul,” Jackie Onassis would warn her children. John has seemingly spent the last dozen years trying to distance himself from the family legend. Until his full name turned into an advertising draw, he preferred to style himself simply John Kennedy, like at least a half dozen other New Yorkers.

For most people, the montage of images,, triggered by mention of this John Kennedy begins with the picture of a little boy saluting his father’s coffin on a gray November day barely within his memory’s reach. Ever since, he’s held himself a little apart. At the fashionable parties he frequents, he’s had a way of inching his back around to fend off the approach of strangers. That practiced self-protective instinct, the flip side of the intense attention he pays when he does decide to engage someone, has usually served to wall him off from unwanted overtures.

That wall was constructed, solidly and with great difficulty, by his mother. From the moment of her son’s birth by cesarean section on November 25, 1960, two and a half weeks after his father was elected president, the new First Lady tried to shield him and his older sister, Caroline. But President Kennedy didn’t play that way. He plainly understood how the image of a happy family could protect him, as it had his own father, from the consequences of his own philandering. So when Jackie was out of town, he’d contrive to sneak photo opportunities with the kids in the Oval Office.

President Kennedy was assassinated three days before his son’s third birthday. Within a year, Jacqueline Kennedy had created a new life for herself and her offspring in New York, where she later enrolled John and Caroline in private schools. The children became independently wealthy in 1968 when their mother married the squat Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis. By the terms of President Kennedy’s will, a trust fund he’d inherited from his father passed to his children upon his widow’s remarriage. John H. Davis, a Bouvier cousin, believes that trust fund doubled in value during the sixties, leaving John and Caroline with about $10 million each.

Onassis helped shield the Kennedys from prying eyes and provided them with the money to support a lifestyle even more lavish than the one they’d experienced in the White House. But the billionaire degraded Jackie by blatantly continuing his longtime affair with diva Maria Callas. And when he died in 1975, he showed his contempt for her by leaving her, John, and Caroline a pittance in his will. An ugly legal battle with Onassis’s daughter, Christina, ended with a settlement that gave Jackie more than $20 million. Maurice Tempelsman, the diamond merchant who became Jackie’s consort in later life, helped her invest that money and plump her estate to somewhere around $100 million, Davis estimates.

The money didn’t free John Jr. from his family’s past and expectations-at New York’s Collegiate School, he was shadowed by Secret Service agents and regularly saw a psychiatrist-but his whispery lioness of a mother raised him to sidestep the family’s darker edge. His cousins might act like a pack of druggy Keystone Kennedys, Uncle Ted might screw and screw up, and Aunt Lee could wind up a fashion flack, but John and Caroline kept their heads down and emerged as decent, intelligent, modest, and good-natured young people.

* * *

POLITICS BECKONED early; public service had a strong plan on John. “He has a tremendous sense of duty and responsibility” his cousin Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said a few years ago. “Whenever any of the cousins need help on one of their projects-whether it’s the Special Olympics or the RFK Human Rights or journalism awards or the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation awards John participates.” He helped his cousins Joseph and Patrick Kennedy win House seats and pitched in on cousin Kathleen Kennedy Towns end’s successful bid for lieutenant governor in Maryland. He showed up in court for his cousin Willie Smith’s trial on rape charges. “He’s got a very strong sense of responsibility, but he’s not overwhelmed by it,” said Bobby Jr. “He’s very comfortable with it.”

Comfortable, perhaps, but strangely without passion. When Kennedy went to law school, he was following his sister and six cousins who had studied or were studying to become attorneys. Even his mid-1989 decision to become an assistant district attorney in New York tracked the family record: His uncle Ted had prepped for his first Massachusetts Senate race by serving as an assistant DA in Suffolk County. “John said his heart was never really in it,” says someone who served in the DA’s office with him. “He was doing it for his mother.”

While he waited for the verdict on his New York State bar exam, which Caroline had passed on her first try a few months earlier, John started work as a $30,000-a-year prosecutor. Although this was a competitive position, Bob Morgenthau’s office was also a hiring hall for famous sons. Andrew Cuomo, Cyrus Vance Jr., and Dan Rather Jr. have worked there, as have the sons of Rhode Island senator John Chafee, labor leader Victor Gotbaum, and New York City Council speaker Peter Vallone. So had John’s cousin Bobby Jr., before his resignation amid charges of drug abuse.

John was assigned to the Special Prosecutions Bureau, which handles low-level crimes ranging from corruption, fraud, con games, and check bouncing to arson and car theft. Kennedy was placed thereat first because “we clearly didn’t want him in the trial division,” says Mike Cherkasky, then chief of the DA’s investigative division. “We didn’t want the attention to distract him.”

That fall, John learned he’d failed the bar exam. “John didn’t take the test seriously,” says a fellow assistant DA. He learned he’d flunked a second time (by 11 points out of a needed 660 at the end of April. Although more than half of the other twenty-five hundred aspirants failed as well, only Kennedy was ridiculed on the front pages of the New York tabloids, all three of which used variations of “Hunk Flunks.”

Even so, John kept his cool. “I’m clearly not a major legal genius,” he said.

“He held up under unbelievable pressure,” says Owen Carragher Jr., his officemate at the time. John even kept smiling when a maitre d’ with wobbly English accosted him while he was having a consolation beer, and said, “I heard news you failed! I’m glad!”

Kennedy played his part in the public perception that he was a lightweight. He made his first courtroom appearance as a witness in a case against an immigration officer who’d been charged with making illegal raids and pocketing confiscated money only to have to admit that he didn’t know the title of the landmark Supreme Court case that made the Miranda rights part of every cop’s lexicon. Even after Kennedy laid out $1,000 for a six-week bar-review course, it wasn’t clear that he cared about the exam, especially after he was photographed “studying” poolside at a Los Angeles hotel. But he did pass, earning a $1,000 raise and the right to try cases in court. In his first solo prosecution, he went up against a burglar who was caught asleep in his victim’s bed, his pockets stuffed with her jewelry. He eventually graduated to bigger cases involving Mafia families, labor racketeering at a big newspaper, and construction fraud, but one state-supreme-court judge before whom he’d appeared said, “I don’t think he had the potential to be a great trial lawyer. His passion lies elsewhere.”

Eventually, he won a share of respect from bosses and coworkers. “There’s a premium on certain intellectual as opposed to advocacy skills in investigations,” says Cherkasky. ` John fit that.” Working on what’s called “intake” once a month, interviewing complainants off the street, he proved a natural at getting people to open up and at judging when they were telling the truth.

After two and a half years in the DA’s office, Kennedy transferred to a trial bureau. “He wanted something quicker,” says Carragher. “He wanted the action. He wanted to do a trial where the defendant wasn’t asleep.”

In his first case in the trial bureau, he prosecuted two men who’d run a chicken stand in Harlem that burned down just after they took out fire insurance. An accelerant had been lit with a match in the store, but the evidence against the owners was circumstantial, and the only witness was a felon who didn’t want to testify. Kennedy extracted the testimony he needed during a complex, three-week trial. “It was a loser and John won it,” says Carragher.

That, and others. In four years as an assistant DA-a year longer than the normal term of service-Kennedy had a perfect 6-0 conviction record. A political career now seemed logical. When Kennedy had introduced Uncle Teddy at the 1988 Democratic National Convention, he’d electrified the delegates by invoking his father’s name. “So many of you came into public service because of him,” Kennedy said in a prime-time speech. “In a very real sense, because of you, he is with us still.” The two-minute ovation that followed seemed a fitting kickoff to his first campaign.

During John’s law-school years, he and several friends had convened weekly “issues meetings,” sessions that Bobby Kennedy Jr. characterized as “just a private thing that he does.” Might they lead to elected office? “It’s something that, you know, you never say never and it’s obviously a source of interest, but I’ll just see,” John equivocated shortly before quitting the DAs office. “I don’t really know.”

* * *

JOHN MAY HAVE OWED at least some of his indecision to a more pressing interest in the Kennedys’ other familial pursuit: sexual conquest. A glorious mosaic of women threw themselves at John Jr. At the district attorney’s, a cleaning woman who’d squabbled with Carragher and stopped cleaning his office began spending hours a day in it once John moved in. “She dusted the underside of the desk,” Carragher says. “She just wouldn’t leave.” Paralegals had to screen deliveries and open John’s mail, which often contained unsolicited pictures of women. Once, an admirer sent a cappuccino machine.

Kennedy is a gentleman. “He doesn’t pick up girls and screw them and dump them out of the car,” says a woman who has known him a long time. “He’s pretty tame for a guy who’s that good-looking.” But at the same time, he’s no innocent. Womanizing-and pride in it-is, as historian Garry Wills has pointed out, “a very important and conscious part of the male Kennedy mystique.” John, blessed with looks almost as stirring as his name, was an early enthusiast. A prep-school classmate, when asked what he thought young Kennedy would be doing in ten years, answered plainly: “Dating.”

As an old friend puts it, “He got around a lot. He didn’t capitalize on it. Things just came his way.”

John’s one foray into filmmaking, a 1990 coming-of-age movie written by, produced by and starring college friends and called A Matter of Degrees, played on the young man’s studly proclivities. Identified in the credits as a “guitar-playing Romeo,” he had a tiny role as a fellow consumed with coupling. In one scene, he strums his instrument and tunelessly proclaims to an adoring paramour, “Oh, baby, I can’t live without your love.” Moments later, he is shown quarreling with the woman.

“What does it matter what we do when we’re not together?” he pleads with her.

“Because when we’re not together,” she answers, “you’re fucking Alison,” referring to another of his love interests.

Like his grandfather, who used to keep Gloria Swanson around even while his wife, Rose, was on hand, and his father, who pursued Marilyn Monroe, Angie Dickinson, and Gene Tierney. John Kennedy Jr. has long favored actresses. His longest and most notable liaison was with Daryl Hannah, herself rich and social. They first met as youngsters on vacation with their families on St. Martin. They met again after John’s aunt Lee Radziwill married Herb Ross, who had directed Hannah in the film Steel Magnolias.

That this affair-and numerous others-was carried on in public showed John to be more like his mother than his father. Just like Jackie O., her son can be a furtive exhibitionist. When he strips off his shirt to play Frisbee in the park, when he smooches girls on street corners or coaxes them into shorts at sea, he’s cruising for the cameras, just as his mother was when she unknowingly “posed” for her famous topless photos on Ari Onassis’s island, Skorpios.

Kennedy has kept his voice out of the public record except in carefully crafted snippets, but he puts himself on view with insouciance. He can afford the privacy and luxury of limousines, yet he propels himself around town on Rollerblades and a bicycle. “Aristocrats are dangerously uninhibited men,” writes Nelson W Aldrich Jr., a chronicler of the American upper class. “Like David the King and [Fitzgerald's] Tom Buchanan, they are sensual, ruthless, and intemperate.”

The story is told that John used to walk around the campus of Brown in gym shorts so brief they emphasized an endowment almost as impressive as the university’s. In New York, he has continued to flaunt himself. When he lived on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, even after he was declared the sexiest man alive, he used to sprawl at an outdoor table at the Jackson Hole hamburger joint, shirt off. One neighborhood woman says Kennedy would stop her to ask for the time. “My sense was that he was dying for attention, dying for people to look at him,” she says.

* * *

JOHN KENNEDY DEVELOPED a public image as a dilettante and nourished it as he grew. As early as 1983, he was dubbed “the least competitive Kennedy” in a book about the family. Once, asked whom he had admired as a child, he said, “I guess I have to answer that honestly. My role models were Mick Jagger and Muhammad Ali, actually.” Even as he spent his days prosecuting petty thieves and swindlers, he seemed to pour his heart mostly into partying and exercising; at one point, he belonged to three Manhattan health clubs at once. “If I had to pick a defect on him, I’d be hard put to find one,” Bobby Kennedy Jr. once said, “except that he pays more attention to his clothes than the rest of us.”

The effect wasn’t always salutary. He showed up at his thirtieth-birthday party in a custom-made maroon zoot suit and leopard wing tips.

His one consistent interest apart from women-acting-heightened the impression that he was unserious. By many accounts, he was a natural and precocious actor. “He’s got an incredible ear for mimicry, and he used to tell us all stories in an Irish brogue or in Russian character or Scottish,” his cousin Bobby once recounted. “This is starting when he was nine or ten years old, and he’d have all the grandchildren listening to him … A lot of us were a lot older than him, and he could keep us entertained.”

It didn’t take long for Kennedy’s hobby to bloom into a potential career path. He was only eighteen when the film producer Robert Stigwood offered him a role playing his father as a young man. That. didn’t happen, but other professional parts did.

Jackie Kennedy soon showed the world how iron her will could be when it came to her son’s future. “Jackie was a loving but extremely demanding mother,” says her cousin John Davis. “John wanted to be an actor, and she dissuaded him. She didn’t think it was a dignified profession. She didn’t like Hollywood at all.”

But Jackie’s friend Rudolf Nureyev criticized John for giving up the stage. “Show some balls!” the ballet star told him, according to author Diana DuBois. “Do what you want!”

One of John’s closest friends heatedly denies that his mother’s influence steered him from his own chosen path. “John has a compass,” he says. “He’s usually pointed in the right direction. Did Jackie guide him? Probably. But he went to law school because he likes to learn and law was a natural thing for him to do.”

Whatever the reason, John abandoned acting for membership on the board of Naked Angels, a society-oriented company that produces plays in Manhattan and benefit galas in the Hamptons.

With an acting career out of the question, John left the district attorney’s office in mid-1993 and seemed to plunge ever deeper into triviality. A very public manwithout-anything-special-to-do, he grew a goatee, showed up at parties for rock groups, and appeared at the opening of a technology installation created by his brother-in-law, Ed Schlossberg, that was held in the lobby of an office building.

He glided around the city like a tomcat. He moved from the Upper West Side to an apartment he shared with Daryl Hannah, then bought a loft in TriBeCa. It looked as if he was finally going to marry the big blond starlet: She was spotted buying an antique wedding dress at a flea market, and the couple went on a scuba trip to the South Pacific and Asia. “Daryl really liked him,” says Chicago gal-about-town and novelist Sugar Rautbord. “She was desperate to marry him.” But John couldn’t, or wouldn’t, commit. Only two months after tabloid reporters descended on Cape Cod, expecting a Kennedy-Hannah wedding, John was seen kissing Carolyn Bessette, a PR woman for Calvin Klein, near the finish line of the New York City Marathon.

* * *

FOR ALL HIS LESS THAN ZERO gadabouting, John was still struggling with the driving Kennedy will to succeed. “You don’t want to be a passenger on the liner,” he’d told Carragher when he quit as an assistant DA. Would he enroll at Harvard’s John Fitzgerald Kennedy School of Government, or join the Clinton administration, or perhaps even run for Congress? Nothing came of any of it. (He turned down a House race, says Carragher, because “any semblance of privacy John has ever had, he’s had to fight for. The only claim he has to keep it is to remain a private citizen.”)

But the dynastic imperative can overwhelm an American aristocrat. “If society as a whole is to gain by mobility and openness of structure,” a former Harvard president, Charles W Eliot, once said of his class, “those who rise must stay up in successive generations, that the higher level of society may be constantly enlarged.” As Aldrich puts it, this craving for success follows a set pattern. For the founding generation, it’s all about money, ruthlessly acquired (by, say, bootlegging. For the next generation, public service (serving as senator, attorney general, president, for example becomes the vehicle, because nothing better highlights the freedom money conveys than selflessly boosting the commonweal.

The third generation, though, is often swept away by the liberties unsheathed by trust funds. They “exert a terrific centrifugal force on the spirits of their inheritors,” writes Aldrich, “constantly threatening to shoot them out into trackless space.”

Young John Kennedy has certainly seemed more trackless than most. But he was actually trying to keep his end of what Garry Wills calls the “Kennedy contract,” a compact whose components are “power, money, fame.” John Jr. had the latter as a birthright. He had enough of the second to keep him comfortable. All he lacked was the first.

* * *

JACQUELINE KENNEDY ONASSIS died of lymphatic cancer at 10:15 P.M. on May 19, 1994, in her Fifth Avenue apartment, with John, Caroline, and Maurice Tempelsman at her bedside. “John was at his desk at 8:30 A.M. the day after the burial,” a friend says. “He did exactly what Jackie would have done. He went back to work.”

What he was working on was a magazine. It was the first real risk of his professional life.

The idea had come to him a year and a half earlier, on a night shortly after Bill Clinton was elected president. Over dinner, John and a pal, Michael Berman, started talking about how the way people looked at politics had changed. “Politicians have taken their cue from the entertainment industry” is how John puts it. “Al Gore on David Letterman was that show’s number-one-rated show for that year.” He pauses and shakes his head in wonder. `Al Gore.”

Was there something in this for them? No one is sure who said it first, but the question was asked that fall night: “What about a magazine?”

The idea was intriguing. Existing political magazines, Kennedy believes, haven’t “caught up with the moment.” Then there were the other, larger issues a publication could capture-”power and personality, triumph and loss, the pursuit and price of ambition for its own sake and for something larger,” all subjects with which John has more than a nodding acquaintance. Despite the irony inherent in running precisely the sort of venture he’d been running away from all his life, he and Berman decided to give it a try.

They’d been friends for years. The son of a real estate developer from Princeton, New Jersey, Berman had prepped at Lawrenceville, earned a degree in history from Lafayette College, and then gone. into public relations. He met Kennedy through mutual friends on the city’s party scene in the early 1980s.

When John entered law school in 1986, he stayed in touch with Berman, and in 1988, they first went into business together. Kennedy had gone kayaking and come home raving about some handmade boats he called “the Rolls Royces of kayaks.” John wanted to buy out the small company in Maine that made them, manufacture kits, distribute them nationally, and teach others to make the kayaks. Nothing came of the plan, but the two men never abandoned the corporate entity they’d established to do the deal. It was called Random Ventures, which for the next six years seemed an apt description of John’s approach to life.

After Kennedy became an assistant DA, Berman evolved into John’s Sancho Panza. “The press became an issue,” says a close friend. So whenever a media problem came up, John suggested that the DA’s overworked press office hand it off to Berman. “At first, it was once every three months,” John’s friend says. “Then it was every three days.” After John failed the bar exam for the second time, the calls started coming every couple of hours.

Meanwhile, Berman was building his own PR business, representing clients like Cointreau, Pfizer pharmaceuticals, DuraSoft, and the Mexican tourist board. Although he was and remains a Democrat, he also helped run the annual White House Easter-egg roll throughout George Bush’s presidency. But by mid-1993, Berman was as eager to move out of PR work as John was to find a direction, so when the men came up with the idea for a magazine, they threw themselves into it with equal fervor.

Working first at a desk at Kennedy Enterprises and later from space in Berman’s office in New York’s Flatiron district, John used his name to secure meetings with potential backers, including Edgar Bronfman Jr., who, like young Kennedy, traced his money to the liquor business but wanted to make his own mark in the world. “Every door was open to them,” says a friend of John’s. “But that was good news and bad news. Did these people believe, or did they just want to meet John?” Berman and Kennedy would joke about charging a million dollars for a first meeting with potential investors, because that was really all many of them wanted.

Kennedy’s mother set up a meeting between John and her friend Joe Armstrong, who’d worked in magazine publishing for twenty years. “John was determined not to do what people expected,” Armstrong says. Soon, he, Kennedy, and Berman were meeting regularly.

The impulse behind the magazine, at least at first, was high-minded. Berman and Kennedy wanted it to be populist, nonpartisan, and centered on process instead of personalities or party politics. They thought that would appeal to people aged twenty to forty who felt disenfranchised by politics but still wanted access to the circles of power. The magazine would have a small circulation based more on subscriptions than newsstand sales. “Publishing,” says Armstrong, recounting his meetings with Kennedy, “looked like a way to approach public service and keep a balance in his life.”

Unfortunately, few of the people they talked to were interested in helping young Kennedy work it all out. When Jann Wenner, a longtime Kennedy-family friend, heard of the project after reading about it in a media newsletter, he was irate. “What’s this about?” he allegedly asked John. “You better see me immediately. Politics doesn’t sell. It’s not commercial.”

Using some of the family’s media contacts, Kennedy and Berman wended their way through the tight inner circles of the New York-based magazine industry, a gossipy enclave whose nervous denizens simultaneously pray for new publications that might employ them and denigrate any new idea that isn’t their own. In connect-the-dots fashion, they talked to several former editors at 7 Days, an upscale New York weekly that flamed and then flopped in the early 1990s. “It was very much amateur hour,” says one of the many people whose brains were picked.

* * *

BY FALL 1994, BERMAN AND KENNEDY were getting dispirited. “People didn’t get it,” a friend of John’s says. “It wasn’t an easy sell.” They’d won the promise of about s3 million in funding, but their advisers warned that it wasn’t enough. Finally, to scare up more interest, they leaked the venture to the gossip columns.

Some were surprised that Kennedy was joining the very craft that had hounded him so mercilessly throughout his life, forgetting that his grandfather had palled around with journalists-had even chased skirts with New York Times Washington columnist Arthur Krock-decades before. His mother, too, had built a sweet career in patrician publishing, editing celebrity and art books at Doubleday, and President Kennedy, so his son was told, had hoped to run a newspaper after leaving the White House. “I think the idea was somewhat inevitable,” John says of the magazine he’d started calling George. “Both my parents not only loved words but spent a good part of at least their professional lives in the word business.”

Undeterred by the naysayers, Berman and Kennedy decided in late 1994 to test their idea by mailing solicitations for the nonexistent George to 150,000 people whose names were drawn from other magazines’ subscription lists. The offer, for a twenty-four-dollar-a-year charter subscription, was aimed mostly at media junkies; the copy said less about George than about other magazines. “George is to politics what Rolling Stone is to music. Forbes is to business. Allure is to beauty Premiere is to films,” read the piece. It was a “soft” offer that didn’t require a check, but the response was encouraging. Mailings that didn’t mention Kennedy’s name got a solid 5 percent response; those that did attracted even more, 5.7 percent.

Sensing, finally, that something might happen with their project, Kennedy and Berman also began changing. The high-mindedness with which they’d originally approached the venture began slowly giving way to a desire to succeed, whatever changes in tone, look, or content that required.

George Lois found this out shortly after he got involved with George.

The rumpled veteran adman, whose Esquire covers in the 1960s set the pace for international magazine design, was one of the many approached by the duo for input. “I’m the kind of schmuck, I got excited,” he says. “And suddenly I was designing his magazine.” Lois designed a logo-a truncated version of George Washington’s signature, pared down to his almost unreadable initials. Beneath it, Lois put the words WE CANNOT TELL A LIE.

Using his own money, Lois also produced a series of outrageous covers. Richard Nixon had just died, so he got Alger Hiss to pose for one, over a headline derived from a classic Esquire line about Nixon: WHY IS THIS MAN SMILING? A photograph of a torso in a pinstripe suit was captioned, TOTALLY NEW ADVICE TO FUTURE CANDIDATES: KEEP IT ZIPPED! A photograph of Barbra Streisand with a smudge on her nose ran with the line BROWN-NOSING: HOLLYWOOD DOES WASHINGTON, WASHINGTON DOES HOLLYWOOD.

Kennedy and Berman loved the covers-at first. “A week later, they’d tell me, `Everybody says you can’t do that,”‘ said Lois. After a few more meetings, he gave up. “If you want a safe magazine,” he told them, “you’ve got the wrong guy.”

Eventually, the notion of using George to stimulate involvement in politics joined irreverence on the sidelines as John and Berman started talking about politics as theater and their magazine as a glossy journal for the not entirely engaged.

“The basic concept,” says Roger Black, the design director of Esquire, who was consulted by the pair at that point, was “to be a half-fan, half-insider magazine, not a New Republic or a political-science journal. They felt people were ready for a magazine treating politics like entertainment.”

“Michael positioned it as a Vanity Fair-ish product,” says one of their consultants. “That wasn’t necessarily John’s first instinct.” But Kennedy quickly got with the program. “They wanted Herb Ritts, Annie Leibovitz, Bruce Weber, nonpolitical writers,” says John’s close friend.

They edged even closer to glitz after Hachette Filipacchi Magazines got involved. The American arm of a giant French media company, Hachette is the nation’s fourth-largest magazine company, with twenty-two titles and $750 million in revenues. The company, which owns Elle and the successful but unglamorous Car and Driver and Road & Track, has expanded mainly via high-profile acquisitions. Here was an opportunity to get credit for starting something hot and turn America’s crown prince into a corporate hood ornament.

Hachette CEO David Pecker had been pursuing Kennedy and Berman ever since he’d heard about George at a benefit dinner in June 1994. After several months of unrequited messages and letters, John finally called him back. “I just want you to know we have a lot of interest, and not just in having lunch with John Kennedy” Pecker told him.

They finally met in December. Pecker subsequently studied the George projections and called some key potential advertisers, concentrating on the Detroit automobile manufacturers he’d dealt with in his fifteen years as a publisher of car magazines. Other meetings were arranged, with Jean-Louis Ginibre, Hachette’s editorial director, and then, over lunch at Le Bernardin, with Daniel Filipacchi, its chairman.

A fifty-fifty agreement was signed in mid-February between Hachette and the duo’s company, Random Ventures. Their venture wasn’t random anymore. Berman, now George’s executive publisher, sold his PR business and, with editor-in-chief Kennedy, moved into a conference room on the Hachette floor where Elle is produced. Not long afterward, they moved to a floor they share with, among others, the staffs of Elle Decor, Family Life, and Metropolitan Home.

Hachette, a company with a strong newsstand emphasis, isn’t interested in an earnest subscription-based magazine about issues and ideas. “Suddenly, the struggle over the direction of the magazine is very serious,” says someone who’s been inside George. “There are different conceptions. John is smart, but he lacks an edge. He’s one of the least assertive people you’ll ever meet; he’s never had to assert himself-he’s John Kennedy! Now, suddenly, he’s in a huge corporation. He wants a magazine of ideas with a sugar coating. They want a political People.”

Early on, Ginibre suggested renaming the magazine Criss-Cross, after the lines of power, money, and culture that circumscribe the fluid boundaries of its beat. Then, when some of the initial designs seemed to resemble Elle Decor and one of the editors expressed’ his doubts, the art director assigned to the project supposedly snapped, “I was hired by Hachette-I work for Hachette!”

“They got off to a bad start,” John’s friend admits. It was worse for Berman than for Kennedy. Walls had to be torn down to make the executive publisher’s office comparable to the editor in chief’s, although Kennedy’s still has the better view of New Jersey Central Park, and all of northern Manhattan. Pecker won’t discuss the reports of internal discord, but he seems to refer to them in one pointed comment: “Normally in business, the person who puts up the money has the last say.”

Pecker is a happy guy these days, and not just because he has America’s prince in his pocket. George has booked 160 pages in ads for its first issue. “We’ve already sold ads for eight issues,” Pecker crows. “We know where we’re going to be.” It’s said that Ginibre has suggested in a memo that the magazine must go all soft and gooey toward the powerful people it hopes to feature in its pages in order to gain their cooperation, and that John must be as public as Tina Brown. How he’ll cope with that expectation is yet to be seen, but he’s already been reported to have interviewed George Wallace and to have requested a chat with everyone’s favorite undeclared presidential candidate, Colin Powell.

* * *

SO IT IS THAT THESE DAYS, John Kennedy has finally abandoned his directionless life, all but vanished from the club scene, and joined the working class. He gets up early every morning and exercises, then bikes from TriBeCa to his midtown office, carrying his front wheel upstairs in elevators where JFK Jr. sightings have ceased to incite hormonal frenzies. In an office decorated with images of the magazine’s namesake (including a blown-up dollar bill on Kennedy’s door, he meets writers, makes ad calls, and often works late. He’s even issued a memo instructing his staff that he expects them there when he arrives at 8:30 in the morning.

Off-hours, he still sees Bessette, but there are others. “We’re talking about John Kennedy!” his friend guffaws. Finally, he has bigger things on his mind than whom he’ll be with at night; he’s made his bed in a much different place than the one he and Berman first imagined that night after Bill Clinton’s election.

Initially Hachette promised only to produce and distribute two issues of George. But soon, the company upped its commitment, pledging to go bimonthly early in 1996 and monthly in September ’96, two months before the next presidential election, at a total investment it puts, vaguely, between $5 million and $20 Million. “I pushed them to do a magazine that connects with a lot of people,” says Ginibre. From Kennedy and Berman’s original idea of a small journal that encouraged participation in politics, George has grown into a magazine its publishers hope will sell three hundred thousand to four hundred thousand copies on newsstands each month-or about what vanity Fair, with its Hollywood covers, manages to sell.

If George does, the magazine will connect not through the language of politics or journalism but through the new voice of success in America: entertainment. John has made this clear in the way he has described George to potential advertisers. It will showcase “politics as miniseries, suspense thriller, comedy, sometimes even great drama,” he’s said.

Examples? George has commissioned an article on Newt Gingrich’s lesbian half sister, a piece by Roseanne titled “If I Were President,” and a review by James Carville of the new A1 Pacino film, City Hall, which a source says will actually be ghostwritten by a George staffer, and it has considered a story by a New York gossip columnist on fundraising benefits. But the biggest tip-off is George’s covers. The first issue will likely feature Cindy Crawford, shot by Herb Ritts and posed like Washington. Anthony Hopkins, made up for his role as the star of Oliver Stone’s Nixon, is in the running for cover number two.

“They don’t even feel the need to pretend to serious intentions,” says rival Martin Peretz, the editor in chief and owner of The New Republic, a magazine that became indispensable for a time when President Kennedy made it a favorite read (right up there with Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels). “A magazine like this will reflect the interest of the public but cannot stimulate it,” Peretz sniffs.

Samir Husni, the acting chairman of the journalism department at the University of Mississippi, has made a ten-year study of consumer magazines. “So far, George has had a great reception in the advertising community because of JFK’s name,” he says. “The danger, of course, is that when you have this high expectation, everyone is going to judge it with a sharp razor edge.”

The big question, concludes Husni, is this: “Is there a magazine behind the hype?”

Even some of the people who worked on the prototype of George are leery about its intentions and prospects. “Glitz is a tightrope walk,” says one. “Run enough stories on Hillary’s dressmaker and Tabitha Soren, and serious people won’t return your phone calls.”

But perhaps they will anyway-showing that John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr. may know more about the power of politics and the politics of power than anyone suspects.

By: Michael Gross for Esquire Magazine

[quiffsandflowercrowns]

Paint

Summary: Dan and Phil are in the same art class, at the same table. Dan is brilliant at art and Phil’s artistic ability is nonexistent. Their teacher puts them together to help Phil pass his exam. More than a casual friendship might occur if given time....

Words: 7055

A/N: This is actually my first tumblr fic so comments are appreciated!

Read it on AO3

For some stupid reason, it was mandatory for every pupil to take Maths, English, science, a language and an art. All the other subjects they could choose from a list. Phil was extremely excited for the subjects he had chosen, he loved science and maths- he even didn’t mind English that much, it was easy enough. There was something about getting to structure essays that made him happy. Even PE wasn’t too bad for him. Of course, school could never be fun and he was forced to take art, which, unfortunately for him was the subject he sucked at most. His problem wasn’t that he had no creativity -he had plenty but he just couldn’t put those ideas on paper. Every time he tried it turned out wonky and pretty much the opposite of what he was going for. On his very first art lesson (before he knew he was crap at it) he had drawn a self-portrait which he was rather proud of only to have the teacher come over and ask him if it was a fruit bowl. Phil didn’t like to correct his teachers so he just nodded and stayed silent. The teacher had just given him a strained smile, instantly knowing he was definitely not a gifted artist and his relationship with her had only gone downhill. To be honest she scared him a little.

The only redeemable part of the 6 hours a week of nightmarish lessons was the company Phil had during the time. He had a friend Lily sat next to him and across from him sat a boy who had only just joined the school that year and was obviously way too cool to ever speak to Phil. He had brown curly hair that Phil wanted to run his hands through so much that it would have concerned anyone he told. He also had lovely brown eyes that made Phil blush and look away any time they made eye contact. He was very grateful that he didn’t have to sit alone at the table with the new kid otherwise he might just implode, forcing him to curl inwards into a void of shame.

Lily wouldn’t stop teasing him about liking the new boy after she had come back from the toilet during class and Phil was just staring at him with a blank expression as the boy worked away, not paying any attention to Phil. Phil had used the excuse of being tired. It was of the occasions he had had art in the morning. The excuse didn’t work, she had just laughed harder and e remembered the new boy had looked up at them and smiled. Phil had nearly exploded from blushing so hard.

“Phiiilll,” Lily nudged him, bringing Phil back to the present and out of his thoughts. He had been staring down at his work for several minutes without moving or blinking. “You’ve blacked out on me again” She laughed. Lily was one of the class favourites, even though she wasn’t the best at art. Phil could definitely understand though, Lily was unbelievably fun. She was the kind of person to make insane references at random moments and burst into songs at inappropriate moments. He had decided when they first met that she could talk more than enough for both of them. Phil was glad that he had her as a friend, even if she was the only one. He thought he should maybe stop reflecting on things he was glad for, as he might end up being eternally stuck in a thanksgiving loop, muttering to himself. He had always had questions about Thanksgiving, it being something not celebrated in England. Like why? When? He wondered if it was like Christmas. He hoped it was. That would be nice.

“When’s thanksgiving?” Phil asked suddenly. Lily looked up at him from her work then narrowed her eyes. He was surprised she was still amazed by his weirdness.

“Why would I know you weirdo.” She laughed at him again and went back to her drawing. She was drawing a charcoal portrait of Phil posing in a box. He remembered the photoshoot before she started the drawing. The box was weird and wooden, slightly more like a coffin than a box. He had scratched himself on one of the loose nails in the inside of the box and had a mini panic attack (to the amusement of Lily) about getting tetanus. Her drawing seemed to be going very well, it was really realistic and made Phil feel just a little bit jealous of her talent. He looked down at his own. He was trying to draw a teapot and cup that he had found in a cupboard in the classroom. He admired how pretty they were. They were a light iridescent pink with elegant gold trim and Phil definitely wasn’t doing them any justice. Somehow, he had made them look like deformed hot pink elephant creatures. He sighed and decided that he would have to start again. He got up and walked over to the drawer where he could find some more paper, only for him to open it and find that there was no paper left. Mrs. Michaels was busy with another student and he was too awkward to go up and ask her to find more. He reluctantly went back to his seat and sighed, glaring at his rubbish piece of art, willing it to be better without him having to do any of the work. In his peripheral vision he saw the boy across the table from him look up and take out one of his earphones.

“Do you need some paper?” He asked “I hoard it cause this place always runs out.” He pulled a piece of paper out of his folder and handed it to Phil. Phil blinked and took it. He smiled gently, too afraid to look directly at him.

“Thanks.” He mumbled. The boy grinned at him, forcing Phil to look up at him. Saying that Phil was taken aback by how stunning he was would be a severe understatement. It felt as though all of the air had been pushed out of him and Phil looked down, tying to force the blush out of his cheeks. He looked over at Lily who was sitting oblivious with her headphones on.

“Also, it’s the fourth Thursday in November.” The boy said to him. Phil frowned, slightly confused.

“Thanksgiving,” He clarified, “It’s always on the fourth Thursday in November. I don’t know why. They should just make it like Christmas. Just choose one day, jeez.” Phil was a little taken aback that the mysterious boy across from him- who hung out with the crowd that liked to terrorise him- was chatting to him like they’d known each other for ages. Phil laughed.

“Thanksgiving needs to get itself together” Phil joked back. The boy smiled along with him and then looked back down at his work. Like Lily, the boy was also one of the teacher’s favourites (trust him to get stuck at the table full of talent) and Phil was as jealous of his work as he was Lilys’s although he couldn’t entirely figure out what it was from his upside-down position. The boy put his other headphone back in and Phil felt a little sad that that was the end of their conversation.

An hour of torture later and he thought he had improved his work ever so slightly and by that he meant that he was praying that his watercolour skills would be better when his “painting” was dry (it wouldn’t be). The bell rang and Phil had to resist jumping up from his seat with joy. It was break so he had 20 minutes to relax until he had to go to his next class. He stuffed all of his possessions into his backpack and laid his paintings up to dry before waiting on Lily so they could leave. The boy had already left before Phil got back to the table.

“What was that between you and him huh? Is there something new I should know about?” Lily wiggled her eyebrows at Phil. She knew about his not-so-small crush on the boy. He had come out to her a little over 3 months ago and she had taken up the role of trying to set him up with every guy she knew. It made a nice change from her trying to set him up with every single girl she knew. He pondered over why she was so obsessed with his love life. Not that it was a bad thing, he quite enjoyed having someone to giggle with when one of their crushes walked past them in the hallways. He also enjoyed being allowed to stay over at Lily’s now that their parents could be fairly certain that they weren’t going to be doing anything weird. Phil had asked once before he came out and boy was that a conversation he wished he’d never had.

They left the classroom together and walked towards the library where they had their hangout spot where they gathered at break and lunch. There was a small alcove in the back of a library where a display stand used to be. It was wide and deep enough for two people to sit in face to face. It was far away from all of the tables so they could speak about whatever they wanted, without being overheard and judged. Phil loved sitting there and was happy about spending most of his time there. They strolled through the front grounds and were forced to walk past the group of popular kids, none of whom particularly liked Lily or Phil. They heard footsteps running up to them and a group of the popular guys ran past them. Phil felt someone push him and he whipped around to frown at them when he saw who it was. It was the boy from art. He stopped running and looked at phil. The boy was slightly taller than him so Phil had to look up at him a little. His made a little mental note to himself to remember that for the future.

“Oh, sorry Phil! Didn’t mean to run into you!” He smiled at Phil as one of the other boys yelled

“Come on Dan!” The boy- who Phil now knew was named Dan ran off and re-joined the other guys, waving back at Phil as he went. Lily pulled him away and they walked towards the library.

“Well, we know his name now,” She nudged him and laughed ““Dan and Phil” has a nice ring to it doesn’t it.” She said a little too loudly for Phil’s liking. He elbowed her gently in the ribs and told her to shut up. He and Lily had just entered the library when he stopped and grabbed Lily’s arm, forcing her to stop and turn around to look at him.

“How did Dan know my name?” Phil questioned, “I didn’t know his.” Lily just looked at him and raised her eyebrows.

“Maybe he’s just more observant than you,” she answered shrugging, “not that that’s hard” she added grinning at him. Phil wasn’t stupid, he knew he wasn’t, he was just very oblivious to the things that were going on around him. He struggled to read people and sometimes the way people acted straight up confused him. He shrugged trying to let it go whist they walked into the library. He promised himself he’d be less oblivious to people and vowed that tomorrow he would start trying to make more effort to talk to Dan.

The rest of the day passed by in a bring blur and Phil had made it home just before half four, excited to sit on the sofa with a bowl of cereal and a good TV show. Later that night, Phil couldn’t sleep. He was weirdly excited to talk to Dan in art tomorrow. He had it first thing and he knew that he gains some confidence when he’s tired so he was determined to stay awake as long as possible. He had watched a total of two horror movies on the small TV in his bedroom and was way too terrified to sleep. He climbed out of bed and looked int the full-length mirror on the inside of his closet. Now is the perfect time to practice some conversation starters.

“How’s it going?” He said into the mirror, nodding his head a little. Ew, he thought, no. That was just weird. He would not be using that as his opener to talk to Dan tomorrow.

“Good morning! How are you?” Nope that one was weird and formal. Phil didn’t need to seem like a creepy person. Maybe if he ran up to Dan and just started kissing him things would go better. Wait no, Phil thought that’s extremely creepy and he would probably end up getting suspended for attacking someone. Plus, he didn’t really want to end up pushing Dan away, not when he had the confidence to talk to him now.

“Hiya!” He said enthusiastically. Nope that was over the top. He didn’t want to be seen as too keen. Phil was about to say another one of his sentence starters (it began with “Did you know” but the rest of the sentence was uninteresting) when his bedroom door opened. His brother Martyn came in, his hair in sticking up every direction and a scary frown on his face.

“What the hell are you doing? Shut up.” He frowned at Phil then turned and left. Phil sighed and crawled back into his bed. He considered just making his opening line up on the spot, but he was fairly sure that he would regret it. He fell asleep smiling and for once was excited for art.

The next morning, Phil woke up to the sound of him getting a bunch of texts. All of them were from Lily. Apparently, she was ill and it had nothing at all to do with the fact tat they had an English quiz today, which he had totally forgotten about. She was telling him to ask her teachers if there was any homework for her to do whilst she was off. He considered asking her why she couldn’t just email the teachers but he prided himself on being a good Samaritan so he decided he would just do it for her. He was also going to try and sneak a photo of the English quiz so when she came back she would know what the questions were, because he was just that nice.

He always walked to school with his older brother but today he was so eager to get to that first class that he abandoned him and strode off ahead (which was impressive for Phil as he was significantly shorter than Martyn). He really hoped that Martyn wouldn’t question him as he was a really awful liar and if he was asked he’d probably blurt out the truth and then he’d never hear the end of it. Luckily enough for him, his brother just assumed he was being his weird self and didn’t bother to ask. Martyn knew the answer would be stupid anyway.

Phil made it to school way earlier than he ever had before. The library wasn’t even open yet so he had to stand outside in the cold until the librarian arrived. He knew her very well and they had become close to friends in the few years Phil had been in the school. It wasn’t surprising, Phil and Lily had sat in the library everyday and sometimes when Phil had free time he eve volunteered to help the librarian put the books back. Even though she technically wasn’t a teacher, she was Phil’s favourite. She was young, only about 25 and she always wore colourful glasses and dresses with dizzying patterns. Phil admired her.

“What are you doing here so early? What mischief are you up to?” Miss Macfarlene narrowed her eyes jokingly, and Phil chuckled.

“Just wanted to get to my class early. Got to be prepared” Phil said hoping she wouldn’t ask any further questions. Of course, knowing him, he couldn’t have two bouts of luck in one day. She tilted her head to one side.

“Oooh. What class?” She asked him, unlocking the doors to the library and walking over to her desk to put her bags down. Phil followed her in.

“Um…art” He said quietly. Miss Macfarlene tilted her head. He had told her before of his hatred of the subject and so she knew that he wouldn’t normally be rushing to get to a subject he hated.

“I thought you hated art” She smiled. Phil smiled back at her weakly. He was dreading having to continue this conversation.

“I’ve got…an um…new friend…there” Miss Macfarlene grinned at him. She was proud that he was making new friends as he’d only ever had Lily and she supposed that he might be lonely sometimes when she wasn’t there. She racked her brain for who the new friend might be. She knew most of the pupils in that class, they always came to get more paper for their art (she could never figure out why the art department didn’t just order more paper). A lot of them, she couldn’t see Phil being friends with. Phil was quiet and sweet, only opening up if you get to know him, a lot of the kids in that class were loud and a little rude. They were the kind of people Phil would not associate himself with. She shrugged to herself and sat down at her desk. She felt like she knew who he was talking about but she decided not to torture him about it. Phil smiled at her again and walked to the alcove and sat down. He always felt a little lonely when Lily was off school and he had no one to talk to. He pulled out his phone and texted Lily to ask if she was alright. The reply was almost instantaneous and Lily confirmed that she was fine she was just ‘Very tired’. Phil always admired the fact that Lily’s parents were always so worried about her that she could just say that she was tired and they’d let her stay off school. Phil hadn’t had a day off from school in years. It was always ‘Go to school and see how you feel.’ Chances are, when he got to school he would feel exactly the same, if not worse but he didn’t want to disturb his mum when she was at work so he would just stick it out. He sat down in their spot and pulled out his English textbook, hoping to get some revision in before the quiz later. He knew he was going to be fine but he always felt a little bit nervous before he had to do anything like that. Phil thought he should probably talk to someone about being anxious all the time but it made little sense to him that he would have to talk to someone about not being able to talk to people. He was pondering the infinite loop of staying silent when he realised the library was now full of people, hanging out before school and talking to their friends (blatantly ignoring the keep quiet signs) and doing last minute homework. The bell rang and Phil stood up, putting his phone back in his blazer pocket, and walked swiftly out of the library towards his class.

Phil was the first one to the class so for a couple of seconds it was only him and Mrs. Michaels. She didn’t acknowledge him but waited until the majority of the class had filed in and then informed them they would continue their work on their folio pieces (it was 85% of their grade and Phil would be lucky to get 8.5%). Dan wasn’t there. Phil was sat alone at his desk, sad that he had worried himself so much and it didn’t seem to matter anyway. Phil reluctantly took his pieces of paper out of his folder and stared at it blankly. He had no idea what he was doing. He’d learnt several weeks ago that the key to getting through his art lessons was to pretend like he was hard at work and knew exactly what he was doing. He grabbed some watercolour paints from the cupboard along with a bowl of water and a palette and sat back down at his desk. He looked at the teacups again, feeling strangely motivated for one of the first times every. Maybe dan not being there was a good thing. Maybe he had been distracting him all this time. Or, Phil thought, it could just be his sleepy state making him think he was going to turn into some kind of amazing artist within a day. It was probably the latter. Phil mixed a little of the red and the white to create a lovely light pink colour. He picked up some of it with his brush and placed it gently on his page. Good start, he thought to himself, it wasn’t going absolutely horribly. The second time he went back to pick up paint he pushed it a little bit into the black and changed his lovely pink into a weird sludge brown. Phil grunted and wiped the paint off of his palette and tried to remake the pink. It didn’t work, he had made a darker shade that left weird lines in the colour next to it when added to the painting. Phil was getting tired of having to figure out what he was going to do with the nonsense over and over again and rested his head down on the table. He heard the door to the art classroom open and Mrs. Michaels said something which he didn’t hear.

“You look like your having a bit of difficulty,” someone next to Phil said. He lifted his head up and saw Dan, who had wandered into class late and was unpacking all of his things. Phil felt as though all of the air had been kicked out of him but nonetheless he smiled gently at him. Phil was really glad that he wasn’t the one who had to start the conversation as he didn’t think any of the openers he had practiced the previous night would be appropriate for a quiet art classroom.

“Yeah, it’s not going great,” Phil laughed weakly “I’m kind of artistically challenged” Great start, Phil thought, it’s going well so far.

“What’s your painting based on?” Dan asked coming and standing next to him. He looked from Phil’s painting to the teacups. Phil blushed, Dan was standing very close to him, almost leaning on Phil as he looked at the picture.

“It’s really not good it is?” Phil asked trying to hide his shame. Dan looked down at him and smiled

“Nah it’s not bad, it’s just that you don’t really seem into it. Why didn’t you paint something you liked” Dan said gently and walked back round to his side of the desk. He picked up his sketch and turned it round so Phil could see it. It was a black and white charcoal drawing of a man sitting at a piano. There was so much detail in it that Phil could even see the lines of the fingers of the man’s hands. He could practically hear the soft music that was being played.

“See,” Dan said even more gently “I love playing the piano so I chose that as my topic. That and it’s an easy thing to write an essay about for the analysis, because pianos have a lot of history for me to bullshit about.” Phil laughed. He thought about what he liked.

“I like video games I guess,” Phil paused trying to think about what else he liked. It was really hard being put in the spot like that and suddenly felt as though he had never felt joy in his life.

“And…food?” Phil narrowed his eyes hoping that his main two interests being video games and food wouldn’t make him seem too weird. Of course it would, he thought to himself, those aren’t exactly interesting hobbies. Dan smiled at him again.

“It’s great you have some things you like. Why not try doing something contemporary with them?” Phil really appreciated his help and actually considered asking him for more help but he felt as though that would be crossing some kind of line and he didn’t think he could handle having to talk to Dan all the time without completely falling in love.

“So, what’s your favourite thing to eat?” Dan asked him. Phil sat there and thought for a moment. If he could only eat one thing for the rest of his life what would it be? He smiled as he found his answer.

“I really like Haribo’s,” Phil said with a laugh. Dan grinned at him.

“You could draw gummy bears?” Dan suggested. Phil really liked that idea. He loved colours and it surely couldn’t be that hard to draw some gummy bears, right? Phil nodded and took his laptop out of his bag. He searched for a picture of some gummy bears that he could use as his inspiration. He found one and moved the laptop so Dan could see. Dan continued grinning at him.

“That one would be perfect!” Dan said enthusiastically, Phil hoped that he would be able to get a higher mark with this than he would with those stupid teacups. Phil suddenly realised he didn’t know I he was allowed to change topics after he’d already started painting the cups. Maybe Mrs. Michaels would yell at him for trying to give up so easily. Maybe this was a bad idea after all, he thought to himself. He didn’t want to start from the beginning again but he also didn’t want to get a zero on his folio piece because then he would definitely fail. It was nearly the end of November and the folio pieces had to be handed in at the beginning of January to be marked. Mrs Michaels saw Dan leaning over Phil’s work from across the room and approached their desk at a speed that was impressive for a woman who was not even five feet tall.

“What’s this gathering about?” She asked, her tone icy. Phil froze. He really didn’t want to be yelled at and he was in such a good mood this morning that this threatening to ruin it made him slightly angry. He looked up at Dan who had stayed pressed closely to him, now instead of looking at Phil’s laptop he was smiling sweetly at the teacher.

“Phil was struggling a little bit and seemed to not be enjoying what he was painting so I was helping him come up with a new idea that he might like better. Is that alright?” Dan was really good at manipulating teachers, Phil realised. Mrs. Michaels no longer looked like she was going to yell at them but she was looking softly at Dan.

“That was nice of you,” She turned to Phil and moved Dan out of the way so that she could see the screen. She smiled and nodded at Phil. “I suppose that would be nice to do. What are you thinking of using?” She asked him. Phil paused, thinking about it. He didn’t want to use more watercolours as it was the bane of his existence and it was making him physically angry. An early death was not something he was aiming for.

“I was just thinking of using coloured pencil. Its probably better than using the watercolours” He said quietly looking down at his new blank piece of paper.

“Okay but Dan I don’t really want you to help him too much, it’s meant to be a solo project. Only if you have to.” She looked suspiciously between them. Then she smiled at them and walked away at her ridiculous speed. Dan looked at Phil.

“Sorry I can’t help you more,” he said looking at Phil and biting his lip. Phil tried not to stare at his mouth for too long so as to not seem creepy but he felt as though it wasn’t entirely working. Phil shrugged and got up. For once he was excited to start drawing something.

On December 10th Phil realised that he had very little time left to finish his folio piece and, much to his disappointment, it still wasn’t going well. The entire time he wanted to ask Dan for help but he knew he had his own work to do and Phil didn’t want to disturb him. Phil was enjoying his art classes though, and him and Dan would talk every single lesson. Sometimes Dan would come and sit in the library with them, although many of his friends weren’t too happy with him hanging out with ‘losers’. It was eight days before the end of term for the Christmas holidays, and the mid-year report cards had been handed out. Phil hadn’t had the heart to open it with all the others. He knew that his brother Martyn had been given his too so there was no pretending to his parents that he didn’t have it. He had never failed a subject before and although his other results were brilliant he couldn’t shake the feeling that most of the attention would be on the harsh F in art. It was hard to compete with his older brother who was an amazing all-rounder, brilliant at sport and academics. Martyn tried to calm Phil down on the way home, after all of his friends had gone their separate ways and he was forced to talk to Phil.

“It can’t be that bad,” he said “you never normally fail things. You haven’t opened it how do you know?” Phil supposed he was right but the feeling of dread stayed. He knew in the rational part of his brain that his parents wouldn’t be angry with him but he felt ashamed that he had done so badly in a subject. Phil sniffed, he felt too old to cry over something that would probably not affect his life in the future. 16 is too old for crying he thought, but he didn’t stop. Martyn was walking slightly ahead of him and hadn’t noticed Phil sniffling to himself. Phil’s mum was out in the garden shoving a bin bag into the bin when she saw them arrive. Instantly she saw Phil’s face and frowned with concern

“Phil? What happened? Martyn, why is Phil crying?” their mum questioned them. Martyn turned around only now realising that Phil was upset. Martyn shrugged and walked inside. Phil was grateful that he let Phil tell their mum himself and that he wasn’t going to involve himself. Phil’s mum stood there, concerned and waiting for an answer. Phil didn’t answer but he opened his bag and pulled out his report card, handing it over and avoiding eye contact. His mum took it but didn’t open it.

“let’s go inside and we can open it together. Is this what you’re upset about?” His mum asked. He was glad to have a parent like her.

“Yeah,” he mumbled under his breath “please don’t be mad at me.” He followed his mum inside ad she put the kettle on and sat down across from him, still holding the unopened the report card.

“Phil I’m not going to get angry at you. If you’ve failed things then we’ll sort it out. I can speak to the teacher, we could get you a tutor if you want. Don’t worry about it” His mum was trying to be kind but he knew she would be disappointed and that was what was destroying him most. His mum opened the envelope and looked at the piece of paper. She frowned and looked from the paper to phil.  

“Phil. These are really good. What were you worried about? You’ve only got one D in art which isn’t the end of the world” His mum smiled at him. He breathed a sigh of relief. His grade wasn’t terrible. He wasn’t going to be kicked out of his house or shunned forever (it was only his brain that was telling him these things).

“I got a D? I thought I had failed completely. What are the rest like?” He grabbed the piece of paper from her and looked at it. All the others were As. He smiled.

“Phil, I’m not a hundred percent happy with you nearly failing a subject. Do you have art tomorrow? You could ask your teacher what you need to do to improve and if you could get some extra help?” His mum stood up and started rustling around the kitchen, clearly finding something to prepare for dinner. Phil nodded. Though the thought of having to approach a teacher in front of the class and ask for help made him want to die a little bit on the inside, he knew that he couldn’t keep doing the subject without any help.

Phil ate his dinner, decided his homework could survive until tomorrow and sat playing crash bandicoot until he felt exhausted.

The entirety of the morning Phil was dreading having to speak to his teacher. Mrs. Michaels was a kind of mean lady who was about 50 years old and had clear favourites in class. Phil was not one of those favourites. He didn’t have art until after lunch which gave him way too much time to overthink about what might happen when he approached the teacher. The pupils in the class might whisper and think he was an idiot. Mrs. Michaels might say that the only solution would to be to drop the subject before he’s even sat the exam, which would give him the reputation of someone who has to drop out. He’d probably start crying if she yells at him.

After lunch, Phil made sure to try and get to art before anyone else so that there would be less people to embarrass himself in front of. It was just his luck though, that Mrs. Michaels was held up chatting to someone in the corridor making her the last person to arrive to class. Brilliant. She shushed the class and told them to continue working on the work they had been doing last lesson. Phil stood up and walked over to her desk, the boy across from him at his desk- who Phil had been to awkward to learn the name of -looked up for a second then looked straight back at his own work. Before Phil reached her desk Mrs. Michaels gestured for him to come over to her desk.

“Phillip, your mother phoned me this morning as she didn’t know if you would actually come and talk to me. She said you would like some help in improving your grade.” She smiled at him. Phil felt a little mortified that his mother had phoned but was grateful that she had as he didn’t have to explain to the teacher that she needed help. Phil nodded.

“Yeah. I don’t know what I can do, it’s a little last minute but I’d like to try” Phil hoped that she would come up with some magical solution that would solve all of his issues and he would pass with flying colours and little extra effort. She stood up.

“Daniel, come here please.” She shouted across the room. The other pupils in the class turned and looked from the teacher’s desk, at Phil and then over to Dan.

“I know I didn’t want you two to work together cause it’s meant to be done by yourself but I think that in order for you to pass, you need some help.” The teacher smiled at Dan as he approached. He already looked as though he knew why she has called him over. Phil was mortified. How could she have disclosed that Phil was failing to a fellow pupil? Phil scrunched up his face, feeling like he wanted to cry again.

“Yeah?” Dan asked Mrs. Michaels once he had reached the desk. He was smiling. It was such a nice smile Phil thought, he wished he could bottle it up and keep it forever. That would probably be creepy though.

“I spoke to you earlier about maybe helping Phil with his work? It’s nearly the holidays so you don’t have much time but I can get one of the janitors to let you in over the break.” She looked between them. Dan was nodding and turned to Phil.

“I’ve finished mine now anyway so I’ve plenty of spare time for you.” Dan grinned at him some more. Phil smiled weakly trying to join in on his happiness but it wasn’t quite working. They both nodded and Mrs. Michaels waved them away from her desk and went back to marking some essays that they’d probably end up never getting back. Dan put his hand on Phil’s shoulder stopping him before they got back to their desk.

“Are you okay?” Dan looked down at Phil concerned. Phil nodded, trying to smile at him but Dan saw straight through Phil’s terrible facade. Phil loved how he had to look up at Dan. He just felt safer, as unreasonable as that was. Dan raised his eyebrows at Phil, seeming to figure out why Phil was upset.

“You to have to be embarrassed of being bad at something y’know. You should see me in maths!” Dan laughed and Phil quietly joined in. He was amazed that the person who he only spoke to a few times a week could figure him out so easily. That worried him a little as he must already know that Phil has a crush on him. He had never thought about Dan being bad at something. It made him think that he might view everything through warped rose-tinted glasses, putting people with flaws and struggles up on pedestals and making them seem like they were more than he was. He grinned at Dan, properly this time, not trying to hide anything.

“Alright if you help me with art, I can help you with your maths.” Phil said, holding out his hand so Dan could shake it and it would be an official deal. Dan laughed at him and shook his hand. Sparks flew up Phil’s arm and he never wanted to let go. He wanted to just wander around holding hands with Dan forever. He let go before it became weird (it might have been a little too late for that). For a split second he thought Dan had looked sad at the loss of contact as well but he decided he was just being an idiot and moved on.

“Deal,” Dan joked “But you really have your work cut out with me. I literally can’t do any of it” Phil laughed. He loved the way Dan said “literally,” it made him sound posher than he was. Phil was tempted to joke back at him but they were standing in the middle of the classroom and he was fairly sure that the teacher was about to shout at them for dithering about.

Ten minutes later, Phil was showing Dan his awful artwork and Dan was making appreciative noises and trying to reassure him that they weren’t that bad and that there was only a few things Phil could do to improve them. Phil felt like he enjoyed being lied to in order to be comforted but in this situation, it was entirely unhelpful. Phil chuckled and swivelled on his char to face Dan who was leaning over him. Their faces were almost too close for Phil’s liking.

“Just a few things? This whole thing is a mess,” Phil gestured wildly at the array of coloured paper on his desk, all lying in disorganised places. Dan frowned and moved things around.

“See the technique on that one is nice, it’s more modern. I think you’re better at something like that,” Dan pointed to one of Phil’s most recent drawings. That one in particular was an accident, Lily had been gesturing too much during a conversation they were having and nocked a bunch of paint onto his canvas. Now that he looked at it, it didn’t seem bad at all just a little bit weird. For all the folio markers knew it was completely on purpose. Phil didn’t want to pretend to Dan that it was on purpose, he might go thinking that Phil actually had some artistic talent and this would be an easier job than previously thought.

“Yeah, but that one was an accident. Blame Lily” Phil pointed at Lily and she raised her hands in surrender then went back to drawing after she had thrown Phil a quick eyebrow raise at how close he and Dan were. Dan laughed, he threw his head back and scrunched his face up and Phil just wanted to stare at him forever.

“No such things as accidents when you’re an artist” He laughed. Phil was probably the furthest thing from an artist that you could possibly get but the sentiment meant a lot to him. Phil tried to laugh along with him. He bit his lip and frowned down at the painting. He didn’t see how it could be made better, He looked up at dan quizzically and opened his mouth to ask when the bell rang indicating that they had to go to their next period class. Dan looked at him somewhat apologetically as they hadn’t really achieved much during their time. Everyone got up to leave and Dan purposefully waited behind on Phil. He stopped him as he was leaving the classroom.

“Can I get your phone number?” Dan asked. He laughed a little at himself and continued “Just so I can contact you about your art piece”

Phil blushed. They stood there for a second then laughed again at their awkwardness.

“Ye-yeah of course,” Phil said a little too quickly. Dan took his phone out of his pocket and handed it to Phil. He put his number in quickly and smiled up at Dan before making a speedy exit to avoid anymore eye contact.  

[iiarchive]

Auckland Aug 29th

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Please click ‘read more’ to view the details from the show! It WILL contain spoilers from the show!

‘Props’/Opening of the Show

Starts with what they are not going to do

Mentions ‘erotic role play’

Dan as a criminal, Phil as a policeman, voiceover of implied smut

Dan and Phil ‘strip’

Truth Bombs

Dan: whats hidden in their browsing history?

A: Furry propaganda (winner), DIY your own coffin, Phil Lester smiling pics

Phil: what job would they have if youtube didn't exist?

A: A terrible weatherman (winner), an annoying receptionist, a ray of sunshine

D&P: how will they die?

A: Not enough sunlight (winner), filming PINOF 76, pecked to death by kiwis

Ball & Mystery Box

Phil threw a ball into the audience to guess what was ‘inside’ the mystery box

A poster of Gerard Way, cereal, a family of rats

Dan VS Phil

Psychic Connections - New Zealand things (Dan said Kiwis, Phil said Hobbits)

Phantastic Phacts

For Dan: What was Phil’s first ever Instagram post?

A: A sign in Florida (Dan got it wrong, he said Christmas tree)

For Phil: What annoys Dan the most in the world?

A: When Phil leaves the kitchen cupboards open (Phil got it wrong, he said when a moth flies into your screen)

Dan, Phil, or a Rat?

Picture: Dan’s winnie the pooh onesie selfie (Phil got it wrong, he said rat)

Picture: Dan in the bath with the duck (Dan got it wrong he said rat)

D&P Dilemma

For Phil: Dan is going to be trampled by a horse and to save him Phil has to make out with the horse (Phil would let Dan be trampled)

For Dan: Phil is falling off the sky tower and to save him Dan can never use the internet again (Dan said he would save Phil).

Friendship Test loser -  Phil ( 38- 36, Dan is in the lead)

Wheel of Doom

Dan was sacrificed.  

Phil shot Dan in the neck. 

Good VS Evil

Dan - 60 million bees, movie spoilers, kicking a child

Phil - The perfect sandwich, free wifi, unlimited chocolate

Getting Deep

Q: The tour is nearly over, what it your favorite thing about being on tour?

A: Dan said the meeting the audience irl and Phil said traveling

Q: I just moved to the North Island and I have no friends

A: They kinda just talked about how you can have friends on the internet who have the same interests. They also said that Interactive Introverts was a great place to meet people who had the same interests.  

Q: I have a crush but I don’t think I’m cool enough for him, will I be a lonely nerd forever?

A: Phil said ‘if they don’t love you for who you are they don’t deserve you!’ They also said ‘just find someone who you can watch Yuri!!! on Ice with at 4:30AM and then you know you've found the one.

Golden II Awards

They wore glitter suits

Give fandom awards to the audience

Phil’s Diss Track

Lyrics to Phil’s Diss Track (fan cited/not official)

Dan on Piano

Dan plays a song on the piano

Has to do with him and Phil’s origin story

Phil interrupts by returning to his diss track momentarily

Lyrics to this part of the show (fan cited/not official)

Interactive Introverts Duet

Dan and Phil sing a duet with Dan playing the piano

About how they’re ‘Interactive Introverts’

Lyrics to this part of the show (fan cited/not official)

*Bonus*

Audience was named Susan.

One of the deep talk questions was from a person named ‘Kiki’ and Phil said ‘this one’s from Kiki’ and Dan said ‘Do you love me’, in reference to the Drake song ‘In My Feelings’

Phil struggled with the balls from the ‘what’s in Dan’s box’ section when the audience returned them to him. 

They included a lot of jokes about New Zealand 

Phil said that Dan’s mom is a kiwi

Dan said he almost wrote a hobbit fanfic

*Current pre-show/intermission playlist*

Thank you to Sarah (she/her), Lucia (she/her), Mary (she/her), Ophelia Sykes, (she/her) (@/opheliasykes52), and Vic (they/them) for your submission!