#i actually should stop binge watching buffy and study for my exams

[lndigo-star]

Wearing a cross necklace not in a religious way, not in a gothic way, but in a 'im watching buffy the vampire slayer rn' way

[huphilpuffs]

between the lines

summary: Dan’s failing his English class, so Phil is enlisted to tutor him. University AU. word count: 3350 rating: g warnings: none a/n: Written for @phanfictionhoe for @phandomficfests holiday exchange! I hope you like it! And big thanks to @insectbah for beta’ing.

ao3 link

“Hey Dan?”

He looks up, hands hovering halfway to his backpack. The only good part about English class so far is that he doesn’t have a textbook to carry around with him.

“Yes, sir?”

His tutor smiles, kind.

All the staff here seem too kind. Dan kind of wishes they were scary. That would make it easier to hate them.

“Do you have a class now?”

Dan swallows. “No, sir.”

“Can we talk for a moment, then?”

He lifts his hands from his bag. Walking into his tutorial today had already been dreadful. The heavy feeling he’d been carrying in his chest since a few days ago comes back. He settles back into his seat, listening to every other student leave the room with rustling papers and loud footsteps.

The doors at the uni are too heavy. They always fall closed with a loud thud.

His tutor comes towards him only after the last student’s left. Nathan, he told them to call him during the first tutorial. Calling people with actual PhDs by their first name still feels foreign on Dan’s tongue, though.

He sits down across from Dan, still smiling.

“I’m sure you saw your grade on the first essay,” he says.

Dan swallows. The pressure in his chest is worse. “Uh, yeah.”

Nathan nods. “As you know, a 36% is a failing grade.”

“I know,” says Dan. “Am I–”

He cuts himself off. Asking if he’s in trouble sounds stupid. He’s supposed to be an adult now.

Supposedly.

Nathan shakes his head. “No, you’re okay. There’ll be opportunities to bring your grade up,” he says. “Actually, the professor is working with the university to help students who are struggling. We’re trying to match students up with student tutors. Are you interested?”

He isn’t, not really. But Dan nods anyway.

Nathan smiles, again. “Okay. I’ll email you once I know the details, okay?”

Dan just nods dumbly, slumped back in his seat.

“You’re free to go,” says Nathan.

“Oh,” says Dan. He stumbles to his feet, slings his backpack over his shoulder, and rushes out the door.

He has almost an hour left before his metaphysics lecture.

And he really needs coffee.

---

He gets the email with the details on a Tuesday.

A few hours later, he gets another email from a guy called Phil that’s a little less formal, a little more nerdy. It’s almost enough to put Dan at ease.

He reads it sitting in his ethics tutorial, waiting for the class to start.

Hello,

My name’s Phil and I’m going to be your tutor for ENGL10021. I’m a third year student doing English Language and Linguistics, by the way. I’ll be on campus tonight if you want to meet up. Let me know!

Phil ^.^

---

His brain feels numb when he leaves the tutorial.

Ethics is confusing. His brain is all muddled. There’s an essay coming up and the thought of it has his breaths coming quicker, tighter, a little too desperate. Dan clutches the straps of his bag and rushes down the stairs, almost stumbling over his own feet.

He needs more coffee.

Not that it fixes anything.

Dan ends up at Starbucks, one near campus that’s always too full. Someone pulls the door open. Dan rushes in before it falls closed. He feels jittery. His heart’s beating too fast.

He takes two steps into the store before realizing he’s not paying attention.

“Fucking shit. ”

Dan blinks. He’s standing still, suddenly, and there’s a boy standing in front of him, staring with wide eyes. His shirt is stained, wet and sticking to his skin.

It takes Dan a moment to realize he’s drenched in the shit, too.

“Fuck,” he repeats. “Watch where you’re fucking going, why don’t you?”

“I–” says the boy. He looks almost defensive, but it fades into something softer. “Sorry, I will. You should, too, though.”

Bitterness flares, angry, in Dan’s chest, but he doesn’t argue. The boy lingers there for a moment. He has black hair, cutting across his forehead in a fringe that mirrors Dan’s, and his eyes are still just a little too wide.

“I, uh, have a lecture,” the boy blurts. His coffee — iced, thankfully — is half empty, the plastic lid hanging off the straw, but he doesn’t bother to fix it before leaving.

Dan leaves without getting coffee.

---

His leg is bouncing when he sits down at the library.

The floor, Green 2 because it’s the only social one in the main library, is full of people chatting with their friends and Dan feels stupid, sitting at a table by himself. He didn’t even have time to go back to his room to pick up his English books.

He should have gotten coffee before coming, he thinks. It’s the only thing keeping him going by this point.

“Dan?”

He jumps, swivels in his chair and–

“Fuck, please don’t say you’re Phil.”

The boy standing there offers half a smile. “Sorry to disappoint?”

Dan’s leg starts bouncing again. His chest feels too tight. He tries to remember the topics for his ethics essay to distract himself, but all that does is make his breaths come faster, his mind go a little more hazy around the edges. He doesn’t want to think about philosophy.

Uni’s making him not want to think about anything.

“Hey, you okay?” says Phil.

He forces his eyes open. Phil’s sitting across from him now, his bag on the table. There’s a coffee-coloured stain on his shirt.

Dan helped put it there.

“I can’t fail this fucking class,” he says. “You can’t let me fail.”

Phil frowns. “Why would I let you fail?”

Dan shrugs, motioning vaguely towards Phil’s chest. He’s still not breathing properly.

“Oh, this?” Phil’s smile quirks wider, happier, a little more crooked. “It’s nothing. I’ll get my mum to wash it tonight and it’ll be fine.”

He sounds so genuine that Dan manages to stop jittering for a moment.

“Now, tell me about yourself?” says Phil. “What are you studying?”

Dan manages half a smile back. “Philosophy,” he says. “Since English clearly isn’t my strong suit.”

Phil laughs, and the tightness in Dan’s chest starts to fade.

---

“Did you get a chance to meet your tutor?” asks Nathan after the next tutorial.

Dan’s hand is hovering on the doorknob. Everyone else has already left, and part of him wonders why he didn’t rush out of his seat to avoid this conversation. He turns around, smiling.

“Yes,” he says. “Thank you for arranging it.”

“Of course,” says Nathan. “Do you think he’ll be able to help you?”

His smile grows a little more genuine, then. He tries not to think of Phil telling him about the time he forgot to study for his first exam because he was too busy binge-watching Buffy for the too-manieth time. Dan had told him, in turn, about the time he forgot to study for A-levels because of Mortal Kombat.

“Yeah, I think so.”

Nathan just nods, and doesn’t say another word as Dan slips out the door.

---

“So I looked at your essay,” says Phil as he sits down at their next meeting.

He booked a room in the English department this time, one with big windows open into the hallway that make Dan want to squirm in his seat every time someone walks by. Not that it matters what the English profs think of him. He’s probably never going to come back after he’s done this course.

“And?”

Phil smiles. He drops Dan’s essay, annotated in red ink, onto the table between them and his backpack onto the floor. There’s a little Yoshi plushie hanging off the handle.

Seeing it eases just a bit of Dan’s anxiety.

“I think you overanalyze.”

“That’s what Nathan said, too,” says Dan. “I, uh, don’t really know what it means.”

Phil chuckles, but it doesn’t seem mocking. “It is kinda vague, huh?”

Dan nods. He reaches forward, grabbing the essay to read some of the notes Phil made, written in messier handwriting around Nathan’s.

“You’re a philosophy major, right?” says Phil.

He hums. “Yup.”

“That could explain it.”

“Oy!” Dan looks up. Phil’s leaning forward in his seat, grinning. “Is that a jab at my major?”

Phil lifts his hands, hitting himself in the forehead as he does, swiping his fringe away from his eyes. He laughs, and his tongue pokes out between his teeth, and something goes tight in Dan’s chest.

He tries not to think about it too much.

“Not at all,” says Phil. “Or maybe a little. I don’t know. You just seem like someone prone to overthinking things. But that’s not a bad thing.”

He seems sincere. Dan can’t bring himself to be upset about it.

His finger drifts along the edge of his essay as he looks back down.

“Fine, then tell me about this overanalyzing thing.”

---

By their fifth session, Dan knows more about Phil.

He knows about his schedule, which leaves his Tuesday afternoons free at the same time as Dan’s are and usually has them booking their meetings then. He knows he plays Mario games, like Dan does, and grew up playing something called Bubble Bobble that had Dan teasing him about being old.

Phil’s favourite type of book is horror, Dan had learned last week, after wondering if it was the type of story they were analyzing that made the class so hard.

“I couldn’t have done lit,” Phil had said. “All the character-driven plots would have driven me insane.”

Dan had bit at his lip, offered a grin. “I like them,” he’d said. “Even if I over-analyze them.”

Phil had nudged their feet together under the table, back at the library that time. “That’s why philosophy’s perfect for you,” he’d said, smiling.

He’s smiling again today, over the edge of his syntax textbook, as Dan highlights passages in a short story called The Yellow Wallpaper they were asked to read. Dan has to force himself to stare at the text instead of the way Phil’s eyes seem to shine in the too-bright light of the English Department.

Dan drops the highlighter when he’s finished reading. Phil’s textbook is already closed and resting on his lap when he looks up.

“You did well,” he says.

“You haven’t even looked over my work,” says Dan.

“I saw what you were doing.” There’s a hint of laughter in Phil’s eyes as he says it. He leans over the table, closer to Dan, and tugs the text towards him. “What’d you think of the ending?”

Dan groans, letting his body collapse onto the table. “Now you’re just asking me to overanalyze.”

Phil laughs, warm and happy, and knocks their knees together under the table. They’re sitting closer today.

That’s another thing that’s changed over the past few weeks.

“Unless you come up with a true conspiracy theory,” he says, “I really don’t think you can overanalyze this ending. It’s pretty abstract.”

“Pretty? It doesn’t even make sense.”

He glares at the story, groans, and presses his head into his elbow to ignore it, just for a moment.

Then Phil’s hand is settling on his shoulder, squeezing gently.

“You don’t have to write an essay on this one, remember?” he says. “You just have to understand it enough for a quiz.”

Dan smiles even though Phil can’t see it.

Phil’s hand stays on his shoulder until Dan lifts his head and gets back to work.

---

Their sixth meeting is back in the library.

Phil shows up with his backpack on his shoulders and two cups of coffee in his hands. He sets one, the one with Dan’s name scribbled across the side, in front of Dan, grinning.

“Do you like caramel macchiatos?”

Dan reaches for it. The cup is warm against his palm, the drink too hot when he takes a sip, but Dan smiles at the sweetness anyway. Of his drink, and, he realizes a moment after the feeling settles in his chest, of Phil, too.

“Yeah,” he says. “I like them.”

Phil’s smile only widens.

He takes the seat next to Dan, humming around a sip of his own drink as their knees brush together under the table.

“Good,” he says. “It’s getting chilly outside, you have to take care of yourself.”

Dan nods, presses his leg back against Phil’s. “You didn’t have to.”

“I wanted to,” says Phil. “Besides, I have, uh, YouTube money to spend.”

His cheeks go a little pink, and Dan knows he should be taking out his essay outline to have Phil help him look it over, but he doesn’t want to. Not when Phil’s scratching at the black ink scribbled on the side of his cup with the tip of his fingernail, staring at the tabletop. Not when his leg is still pressed against Dan’s.

“You do YouTube?”

Phil’s chuckle is quiet, almost embarrassed. “Just a bit. It doesn’t actually make me enough money for Starbucks, but it’s fun,” he says.

“I do too,” says Dan, and Phil looks up, eyes wide. “Not enough to make any money, but it’s, uh fun. Yeah.”

“That’s awesome.” Phil’s smile has spread across his whole face again. “What kind of videos do you make? Would I like them?”

“Um, how do you feel about self deprecating humour and attempts at self-analysis?”

His gaze flits over Dan’s fringe, over his hoodie. “Let me guess, you went through an emo phase, too?”

“I’m not sure if I resent or appreciate your use of the past tense,” says Dan.

Phil laughs so much his tongue sticks out between his teeth and his shoulder presses against Dan’s.

Dan has to try very hard not to let warmth bubble up in his chest again, without coffee to blame this time.

---

They meet up at Starbucks the eighth time.

Dan has another caramel macchiato in his hands, his final essay laid out across the table between them. Phil has a croissant that has his fingers a little buttery, so he smudges oil on the paper whenever he points out an error. He picks it apart and pops bites into his mouth, grinning around them as Dan marks the recommendations in red pen.

“There’s not much to correct this time,” says Phil.

He still has a little bit of food in his mouth. Dan thinks he should probably be more disgusted than he is.

“I already corrected most of it,” he says, smiling to hide the warmth he feels in his cheeks.

Phil shrugs. “Still, you’re learning how to write for English instead of Philosophy,” he says. “It’s getting easier, isn’t it?”

The corner of his mouth is quirked up, his smile crooked. Dan doesn’t realize he’s drawn a slash of red ink across the page until Phil’s eyes crinkle with a quiet giggle.

“End of the semester getting to you?”

His foot nudges Dan’s. He blames how small the two-person Starbucks tables are, wedged into a corner like this with their long legs. It doesn’t keep his chest from going warm, though. He’s grown used to that, when Phil says something nice and he feels his whole body react to it.

“A bit,” says Dan. “It’s not even done yet. We’re just getting a break then it continues.”

“With exams,” says Phil. His nose crinkles, and Dan’s stomach goes tight. “It’s pretty much a study break.”

“I’m just gonna procrastinate studying until the last day, I already know it.”

Phil’s smile softens then. He takes another bite of his croissant, swallowing it with a sip of coffee, letting the silence linger. Dan takes a sip of his drink to fill it, to ignore the way his heart is suddenly pounding for no reason whatsoever.

“Maybe I could remind you to study?” says Phil. His cheeks have gone pink. He’s fidgeting over the table so much Dan’s fairly certain he’s going to tear his bread to shreds. “You know, if you give me your number.”

Dan wants to quip that they’d probably get too distracted talking to actually study, but his throat goes tight before he can. He hands over his phone, and tries not to let Phil see his smile.

Tries not to admit he’ll miss this, once his English class is over.

Phil texts him, and grins when Dan’s phone vibrates on the tabletop. He doesn’t go to grab it at first, but Phil keeps staring at him, all wide eyes and expectation.

Dan can’t help but smile when he reads the messages.

Hi it’s Phil ^.^ I was thinking we should meet up after your exam

if you want I mean

no pressure

He grins as he types back: ill text u when i get out

Phil clicks his tongue. “Grammar, Dan. You’ll never get your grade up like this.”

Dan’s laugh rumbles as they both set their phones down to finish their drinks, to look over the rest of Dan’s paper.

Their legs are still brushing under the table.

---

They text over winter break.

There’s a conversation on the train about whether all the snow is melting as he gets further south. And another where Phil asks about his childhood bedroom, for whatever reason. Dan sends him a picture of Bangy just so he can sit down on the sofa and imagine the way Phil’s eyes gleam when he’s happy.

He gets a message on Christmas morning that comes with a picture of Phil in his pyjamas, hugging a gift box to his chest.

Dan smiles so wide his mum asks who he’s texting in the lilted voice that makes his cheeks burn red. He hopes Phil can’t tell in the photo he sends back.

They do talk about schoolwork, sometimes, in timed study sessions. Dan’s pretty sure he’s too distracted to remember anything about Parfit or Kant or Plato, but he can’t bring himself to care. Not when he needs to catch up on studying, alone late at night, and not when Phil admits studying together is a little distracting, too.

One time, Phil makes a comment about how they’ll need to play their new games together sometime.

Another, Dan insinuates that Phil will see his room back at uni, and Phil doesn’t protest.

And there’s a text on New Years, at midnight, that makes Dan’s whole body go warm and giddy, just a little bit of alcohol in his stomach and a lot of thoughts he probably shouldn’t have in his head.

He’s dreading finals when break ends, but he smiles the whole train ride home.

---

They meet up outside Starbucks after the final.

Or, well, between Starbucks and the lecture hall when Dan wrote the test, because Phil’s walking towards him, bag slung over one shoulders, bobble hat on his head.

Dan’s steps are bouncy. His shoulders feel light, his bag filled with only his wallet and pencil case, a whole semester of work falling away. He doesn’t mean to when he reaches out, wraps an arm around Phil’s shoulders, but Phil’s arm curls at his waist and he’s pretty sure it’s okay.

Phil’s grinning. His cheeks are rosy, the tip of his nose red with winter cold. Dan smoothes a bare hand across his cheek. His heart is racing with the knowledge that he can, that Phil isn’t flinching away.

And he kisses him, soft and warm and grateful.

Phil kisses back.

His whole body feels warm when he pulls away, even as the wind sweeps under his jacket. His cheeks, he knows, are bright red. So are Phil’s, though.

“Shit,” says Dan.

“What?”

“Didn’t mean to do that.”

The corner of Phil’s mouth quirks, eyes falling to the ground between them. His blush blooms up his cheeks, pinkening the tips of his ears more than the cold already had. Dan’s not sure if it’s intentional or caused by nerves when Phil squeezes his hip.

“I’m glad you did,” says Phil. His voice is shaky. He draws away slowly, tucking his hands into his pockets and tilting his head so the bobble on his hat flops to the side. “Still want coffee?”

“As long as you’re not going to tutor me again.”

Phil laughs and leads the way to Starbucks.

[ezilo]

Title: Nous sommes davantage dans le temps

Summary: Dan’s milestones are somehow linked with youtube videos and Phil, and sometimes both.

Rating: T

Read on ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16507325

Author’s note: So. This has been sitting in my laptop for literal months now and I just worked up the courage to post it.  Huge thanks to @auroraphilealis   for betaing (seriously if this is any good it’s thanks to her) and inspiring this and generally being wonderful. This is kind of dedicated to her, and to everything her writing has done for me, and a lot of people I think. This is based on a list of the most popular type of videos on youtube, my philosophy exam and a conversation with elizajane. I also know practically nothing about philosophy so don't  judge me on that. Oh and the title is from something my philosophy teacher said last year: "Nous sommes davantage dans le temps que le temps est en nous" which translates to "We are more in time than time is in us". It was the starting point of this fic, actually.

As always, english isn't my first language so if there are any mistakes, feel free to tell me!

Back to School tutorial

Here’s the thing. Knowing something inside and out, diving into it, knowing every corner of it, apparently doesn’t make you accept it.

 Dan knows time. He knows universe. He knows what Pascal, Leibniz, Einstein, and others have said about it. Descartes is no stranger to him, even in the original language, thanks to the Canadian boy he spent a few weeks with (or was it months?) who used to read him the Discours de la Méthode with so much passion Dan just had to kiss him.

 Dan knows about the universe. He knows how others explain it.

 But that doesn’t mean he’s satisfied with the answers he gets.

 He knows that the present cannot be grasped, not truly, has swallowed quotes about this his entire study life, but he’s still longing for something that will help him anchor himself to the present. He’s had the feeling of belonging, finally, at the banged up kitchen table in Workingham, one hand buried in Collin’s fur, curls freed and smiling wide. He’s had the swelling, wool like grasping at his heart of falling in love with eyes and lips and thoughts and giggles.

 But still.

 Present doesn’t hold him, or he doesn’t hold the present, or he doesn’t understand what present is, or he should stop drinking coffee at eleven pm.

 Dan can’t sleep, but maybe that’s because he keeps asking questions that even philosophy cannot answer when he should just ask to sleep. He’s never been good at asking one thing. It’s easier to think his brain is aching because of the sense of time and the universe than because his first class is tomorrow.

 He ends up losing himself in back to school youtube videos, and trying not to remember that he’s over thirty.

 Funny animals compilation

Dan’s fidgeting with the marker, popping the cap off, pushing it back down nervously, twirling it between his fingers. He’s early, for the first time in his life, which means there’s one less reason he can prove himself to be an absolute fail.

 The timetable on the door says that at eight thirty there’s an “Introduction to the philosophy of space and time” by Professor D. Howell.

 Professor. For a minute he thought there was someone else named D Howell, because surely that couldn’t be him, right?

 He sinks into the chair, head falling between his hands, and he can feel them trembling, where they bury in his hair. He ignores the hollow noise echoing around him that he thinks is most likely his head being annoying, but thus far his head has never said ‘hello?’ in a man’s voice, so he looks up.

 “Yes?” he says to the tall man whose hand is still poised on the door.

 “Hi! I’m so sorry to bother you, but I’m looking for the seminar room 205 but I got lost, and then I was on the right track and then I got lost again. So do you know where that is?”

 Dan’s momentarily baffled by the amount of things the man said so quickly, and the chipper tone of his voice, like all of the words are lifted up in the last syllable.

 “Uhm, yeah,” he clears his throat nervously, fist tightening around the marker in his right hand. “It’s right down the hall, then turn left. Third door on the right.”

 “Oh, I had no idea it was this close. I’m really sorry to bother you again.” And that doesn’t really make any sense, it’s the first time he’s bothered him, but Dan recognizes the nervous rush of words, he’s felt this flustered himself in a lot of situations.

 There’s a pause where Dan is about to say that it’s completely fine if he ever remembers how to use actual words, but the man speaks up again. “And good luck for your class!”

 That makes Dan let out some kind of half chuckle, and some words miraculously tumble out of his mouth. “Thanks, it’s my first day,” he says, which is too much information. The man will probably just nod politely and leave immediately.

 “I’m sure it’ll go great! Are you nervous?”

 “Definitely yeah.” Which is, again, too much information, and too honest.

 “You don’t need to be. You know your stuff, right?”

 Dan nods, gets a smile in response.

 “And the students will love you.”

 “Thanks.”

 If the man’s offended by Dan’s short answer, he doesn’t say, and it doesn’t show. Dan really wishes he could say something more, he really does, but he’s unsure of what; how do you deal with a stranger’s kindness? This is why he doesn’t go outside.

 “I’ll get out of your hair. Think of happy things to relax yourself! Bye!”

 And he’s gone. It’s the kind of encounter that starts a movie about a friendly quirky ghost, not the kind of thing that actually happens to people.

 Dan shakes his head, but he can’t deny it’s taken his mind off of the class. Think of happy things! The words echo, spoken in a deep voice somehow laced with a sparkly lightness. Dan realizes he still has about 15 minutes left before his class when he glances, up at the clock ticking loudly. He opens up youtube, and gets lost in sloth videos for a while.

Dan’s class goes relatively well. It could have gone better, definitely, but Dan hadn’t said anything too strange, or too random in his panic. He’s been able to answer student’s questions, and even got a few smiles that didn’t seem pitiful.

 Once his students are all gone, Dan sits down and feels a smile etch itself onto his face.

 And maybe that’s another way to cling himself to the present.

 When he pulls up his phone, he finds baby sloths bathing immediately open, and that smile widens a bit.

 Dan’s riding high on the adrenaline of having his first class, of it going well, and stands up abruptly. He shoulders his backpack and heads down the hall, turns left, and slows down in front of the third door, lingering outside, as the class is apparently not over yet.

 There are thoughts infiltrating his brain now - of this being insanely creepy, of being inappropriate. Paranoia buzzes under his skin, threatens to eradicate the giddiness. But then the door opens, students pour out, and Dan looks on dazedly, drowned in panic.

 “Oh hi!”

 He looks up instantly and meets crinkly eyes.

 “Hi.”

 There’s an awkward silence where they look at each other, grumpy students passing them, shoulders bumping while they hold eye contact.

 “So how did your class go?” the smile in  the man’s voice is palpable.

 “Good, actually, better than I thought it would. I, uh, took your advice about the happy things. Watched animal videos.”

 “I love animal videos!” The man’s voice booms on love, his eyes snapping to Dan’s, all wide and oh.

 Blue.

 “Me too.”

 How Buffy should have ended

That blue seeps into his life now, through the first exchange of names and numbers in that hallway and then through endless hours at starbucks. The blue is the first thing Dan notices about Phil, but things add up through with every over enthusiastic text, every all caps comment only Phil would think about, every caring smile or giddy giggle. Dan learns things about Phil the way he’s always learned things: obsessively cataloguing facts, and waiting to get sick of Phil like he gets sick of everything after a while.

 He doesn’t want to, though.

 Turns out Phil isn’t a professor, or a student, though. He just came in to listen to one of his friends, to support him, because Phil just does that. Turns out Phil is a youtuber, because yes that’s a job a thirty-five year old is allowed to have. Not that Dan let his surprise show (much). He wanted Phil to like him and think he’s accepting and open-minded and all that shit.

 Three weeks later, when he discovers Phil doesn’t like cheese, he mutters that he hates him, and knows what Phil thinks of him is just right.

 The first time they hang out outside of starbucks, it’s at Phil’s, which is blinding and overwhelming, like eating too many ice creams in the summer, desperate for cold, with sugar lingering on your tongue.

 Dan likes it though.

 They start an anime together, and it’s comforting to know that Phil realizes that that’s a big deal too. They end up in a heated debate over which character’s will end up together, and who shouldn’t, during which they both hint multiple times at their attraction to pretty anime boys.

 They’re not subtle and Dan loves it. Dan would be ashamed of his laugh, of his twisted humor, but, well. Phil’s tongue sticks out when he laughs, his sense of humor is surprisingly just as twisted as Dan’s and his smile is accepting.

 They talk, too. About Phil’s YouTube channel, about Dan’s existential crises, all laced with sarcasm and humor, but that’s enough for now.

 Dan ends up making Phil cave and they watch some of his videos, which makes a delicate pink blush bloom on Phil’s pale skin. They get closer and closer with every video they click on, wandering into parody videos, Phil’s arm secure around Dan’s shoulders, and it doesn’t feel foreign at all.

 Phil gets overly worked up about How Buffy should have ended, promptly ends their friendship upon learning Dan hasn’t watched it, and starts up a “vital binge watch”.

 Just as Buffy’s cheerleading team gets cursed, Phil’s lips end up on his.

 Compilation of saddest love scenes 2

Everything mostly stays the same.

 The changes that do occur, in the gaps of their already crackling friendship, are wonderful. Phil gets to shut Dan up with a kiss when he’s being obnoxious about winning Mario kart, the bed is warm, Dan gets understanding and laughter and also a naked Phil on his couch playing fortnite, which is an at first surprising but not displeasing sight. They fall asleep on each other with the computer still on, and Phil drags Dan to the bedroom when the pain in his neck becomes too much.

 There’s one night though, where everything feels wrong. The world is subdued and grayed out, and Dan wants to stay in bed all day.

 He knows what this is. He’s worked through recognizing his depression in his twenties, but no one warned him that it doesn’t stop with that. Existential crises linger on even if your life is safe and figured out. They don’t stop when you settle down.

 But Phil was going to come over tonight, so Dan pulls at the muscles in his distant body and orders some pizza.

 But he can’t really pretend for Phil.

 He can’t feel bad for not pretending either.

 He just can’t, period, and Phil notices.

 Phil asks, Dan grunts, eyebrows furrowed. He ends up frustrating Phil, a lot.

 Phil’s sighing and cursing under his breath and leaving.

 Of course.

 Dan will feel that in the morning, but for now he just feels even more choked by sadness than before, even though he didn’t think he could..

 He falls into bed, stomach empty, doesn’t feel it. The dark hours of the night are spent watching sad compilations, listening to melancholic songs, and trying to just feel, please.

 He’s a bit better by morning. Or worse, given that he feels the pain of Phil having left now.

 But, well. He comes back.

 At eleven am, the doorbell rings. Dan is wrapped up in his duvet, should be drinking water, but he opens the door anyway.

 There stands Phil, feet shuffling, eyes rimmed in glasses, carrying a plastic bag.

 “Hey.”

 “Uhm, hey.”

 “So I wanted to apologize for being a dick last night. I shouldn’t have snapped at you when you were feeling down. I brought you some pancakes as an apology. And if you don’t want to see me anymore, then, well. Enjoy the pancakes.”

 Dan just stares.

 He wants to say he will explain, he wants to say they’ll figure it out, they’ll communicate, they’ll make up systems, they’ll do this because Phil, well Phil you make me want to talk about the pit I fall into to someone that’s not Dr. Linda, Phil you make me want to be better than this, Phil you make me want to stay up all night just to stare into your eyes instead of staring into the dull London sky wondering why I exist.

 “Thank you, Phil.” He says for now.

 He’ll say the rest later.

 They share a plate of pancakes and pick up where they left off on Buffy, because Dan likes seeing Phil mouth the witty retorts the heroin gives the Mayor.  Phil always loves Buffy. Rain or shine, stress or bliss, or both. Dan wishes he had that, but slowly, he starts feeling the warmth of Phil, starts laughing, starts feeling pained when Angel leaves through the mist.

 Eventually, he says “I hate you” to Phil after he rambled about why Angel isn’t as good as Buffy, and gets a knowing smile in return.

  Let’s play! Sims 34: Our Sim gets abducted by aliens???

They’re tangled up on the couch, laptop on their thighs, after one of Phil’s low days. Their bones are digging against each other and knocking, too warm on the leather, when Dan asks Phil to move in with him.

 Phil’s mesmerized by the new episode of their favorite “Let’s play!”, and just hums distractedly when he hears the question.

 Dan promptly punches him, gets an indignant high pitched Hey! in response.

 He repeats it, “D’ya wanna move in with me?”.

 Phil turns to him then, eyes wide and taking on a slightly neon shade of blue caused by the glow of the laptop screen.

 “Yeah.” he says, simple as that.

 And his head whips back to the sim being transported into an alien shuttle. And, well. There’s not much more to that decision than a domestically tinged obviousness.

 Easy red velvet cupcakes!

Dan is a mess. He’d barely gotten any sleep the night before, drowning in a despair to find meaning to all of it. Why he’s here, why does he teach when he cannot understand.

 Phil tries to help, but they have systems now, and Phil knows he has to leave Dan alone and go back to sleep. The regular snoring is enough to reassure Dan, sometimes.

 Dan’s halfway through an attempt at red velvet cupcakes, and it’s not going great.

 They are not red, first of all, because Dan mistook the green coloring for the red one, and it’s all just a general ongoing mess. Phil is, of course, not here to reassure Dan,or make fun of him, or press him against the counter and make out with him while the cupcakes bake. Phil picking up his mom from the station.

 Which is a thing.

 Dan’s meeting Phil’s mom.

 He’s not really nervous about her. She must be lovely and quirky. But Dan’s scared of not impressing her, of not being enough for her wondrously creative son, stuck in a philosophy position he’s had for a year and a half now. And what kind of functioning adult has only been working for a year and a half? Dan doesn’t want to have to explain losing three years doing law, or not being brave enough to take the leap and study philosophy, instead dabbling in cosmology for a while, eating up existentialism because it fit him, and adding up degrees through years of procrastination and pulling all nighters writing papers he should have written over the past couple of weeks and months.

 He’s a grown man, but he’s still insecure, scared, and a bit ashamed of his past.

 Phil works on that too, untying knots of self-hatred in the night with smooth fingertips, so Dan remembers Phil saying, “She’ll love you, Dan, who wouldn’t?”, and fusses over the decorating of his cupcakes, lamenting their lack of aesthetic.

 “Dan, we’re home!”

 He pauses the cupcake tutorial, cursing the girl with perfectly curled hair and cherry red pastries, places his cupcakes on a porcelain plate, and walks out, greeting Mrs. Lester as she drags him into her arms.

 He and Phil munch on the leftover swamp green cupcakes that night and, well, he’s got a new family member now, who seems to like him, contemplations of death and failed baking and all.

 How to live your truth

Phil doesn’t come out, but Dan peeks through his channel, through his subscribers comments, through the content and the videos and the theories his fans create.

 There’s the sound of cooking during a live show that triggers obsessive all caps and question marks. There’s an unmade double bed in the background of a video that leads to furious googling and careful expressions of happiness for Phil. There’s another hand in a pic of a healthy cherry blossom, zoomed in on and examined. There’s less and less selfies because now Phil has someone to take pictures of him, while he smiles and grins more naturally. And finally, there’s the first joint live shows, with their careful dodging of the actual status of their relationship, and interactions played over and over again in beautifully edited videos reblogged on tumblr.

 All of it is a commitment by Phil’s fans to Dan, like Phil commits to Dan every day, to the place Dan has in Phil’s life, undefined but solid.

 Dan holds the sky in his eyes at night, and wonders what the sense of it is.

 Pascal said that Humans don’t hold the present. And Dan admires Pascal, but his present is rhythmed by Phil’s breathing, their rituals and systems, and the constant disappearance of sugar Phil causes.

 Dan likes transparency and honesty about what he feels, and what he wants right now.

 But he doesn’t know who he is, not really, dipping into his thirties, and maybe that’s okay. His present is ever changing and slips between his fingers, but Phil is the background of it, holds Dan in it.

 And Dan gets up to teach Pascal, and to not believe him every day, because of Phil.