#the longer I spent drawing this the unfunnier it became but at the very least you can look at shiny duo braiding

[tubbytarchia]

In my head this was funny ok

[dvp95]

don’t complicate it

pairing: dan howell/phil lester

rating: t

warnings: none

tags: magical realism, canon compliant (not anymore! it was canon compliant in 2017), psychic abilities, phil is a psychic and dan is an embarrassment

word count: 11,289

summary: A magical realism au where everything is the same except sometimes, Phil's dreams come true. Featuring YouTuber cameos, existential crises, and a love story. (Or: It's 2017 and Dan Howell's entire universe has been flipped upside down.)

NOTE: this is not a new story! this is my first dnp fic and i’m just transferring it here to have all my shit in one place, basically. i wrote this two years ago and if i were to write it today, i’d change some stuff, but. i’m generally still pretty pleased with it! so i hope y’all get a kick out of old daye’s bad pacing and shaky dialogue 

read on ao3 or here!

If there's one thing Dan knows for sure about his housemate, it's that Phil Lester is weird. He's always been weird - weird to film with, weird to listen to, even weird to look at since he's usually pulling a face for no reason or turning his hand backwards to fit in his pocket - but living with him has made Dan eternally grateful that he is so fond of Phil's weirdness, because otherwise this friendship thing just wouldn't work.

In addition to the general weirdness, Phil has more superstitions than Dan's entire family. Dan has been yelled at for putting a box of new shoes on the table, yanked away from ladders rather violently, and asked if he's angry if he leaves his cutlery crossed on his plate. It would probably be annoying, if Dan ever got seriously annoyed by the things Phil does.

It's funny instead of annoying, like most things about Phil, but Dan has to draw the line somewhere.

"What do you mean, I can't use my laptop today?" he asks Phil slowly, trying very hard not to freak out. "What have you done to it?"

"Nothing!" Phil insists. He holds up his hands like it somehow proves his innocence.

"I don't believe you," says Dan, "and I'm not going to stay off my laptop for an entire day, you absolute donkey. Give it back."

"I can't give it back to you." Phil sounds exasperated, which is the exact wrong emotion for him to be feeling after hiding Dan's laptop at ten in the morning. "If you use your laptop today, it's going to break. We can't afford another iProduct."

Dan narrows his eyes. First of all, he has his own bank account with his own money, and there is no 'we' about buying Dan a new laptop. Secondly - "My baby is perfectly fine, assuming you haven't done something to it and you're planning on replacing it before I notice."

"That would be stupid of me, of course you'd notice."

"Phil."

"Can't you just trust me?"

If it was anything else, Dan would probably let the argument drop and let Phil be weird about this, too. His laptop, though? That's off-limits.

"No, I can't," Dan says, holding out his hand. "Give me back my laptop. Right now."

Phil sighs heavily and leaves the lounge, returning after a few minutes with Dan's laptop in his hands. He hesitates when Dan reaches for it, but passes it over reluctantly.

"Just... don't click anything Felix sends you," says Phil. Dan rolls his eyes and agrees in order to placate his friend, but he has a bad habit of forgetting things Phil has told him - and can he be blamed? He has eight years' worth of Phil-specific information to retain, it can't all stay at the forefront of his mind.

That's his reasoning for clicking the link Felix emails him, despite explicitly being told not to. He inhales sharply when his screen immediately goes black.

Phil turns to look at him from the other end of the sofa, expression already resigned. "I told you not to click it, Dan!"

"What happened?" Dan asks, panicking as he tries every keyboard shortcut he knows.

"I don't know," Phil huffs and pulls out his phone. "I'll ask Felix, I suppose."

It turns out that Felix's email got hacked, because of course it did, and everyone on his contact list got an attachment full of scary computer viruses. Felix gives everyone a heads-up on Twitter, but the damage to Dan's laptop is already done.

When Dan gets back from the Apple store with bad news and a shiny new laptop, he stops in Phil's doorway and frowns. "How did you know Felix got hacked?"

"I didn't," Phil says without looking up from his own laptop. "I just had a feeling you'd break your laptop today."

"No, you told me this morning not to click on anything Felix sent me. That's more than 'a feeling', Phil." Dan struggles not to look or sound sheepish. He isn't the one who needs to explain himself, here.

"I don't know what you want me to say, Dan," says Phil.

"I want you to tell me how you knew about this," Dan insists, pointing at his shopping bag even though Phil isn't looking at him. "Did you and Felix plan this?"

That makes Phil look up. "Of course not!"

Phil is the worst liar Dan has ever met, and the hurt in his voice at being accused of murdering Dan's laptop on purpose is real enough. Dan bites his lip so that he doesn't apologise reflexively. Even if Phil had nothing to do with the death of his laptop, the fact that he knew about it beforehand is suspicious enough to withhold apologies.

"Okay, so tell me the truth," Dan says instead of apologising like his mouth wants to.

"The truth," Phil repeats, looking back down at his laptop to close the lid. "I mean, okay, but you won't believe me."

"Try me," Dan challenges.

"I had a dream about it," says Phil, making careful eye contact with Dan. "That's it, that's all that happened. I dreamed that your laptop died because of an email from Felix, and then it happened, because my dreams come true sometimes."

This is not the first time Phil has made such a claim, but it's definitely the first time he wasn't at least half joking. Dan's scoff dies in his throat at how genuine Phil is acting.

"You're not psychic, Phil," Dan says slowly.

"Of course I'm not." Phil rolls his eyes, and Dan has a moment of relief before Phil adds, "I'm clairvoyant."

"Those are the same thing!"

"They actually aren't, interestingly enough. See -"

"Please stop," Dan groans, holding up a hand. "Stop right there. I don't believe in any of this nonsense, and you know that. I'd sooner believe you became a master hacker overnight and sent me that virus yourself as an expensive and unfunny prank."

Hurt flashes across Phil's face before annoyance takes over, and he shrugs. "Believe whatever you want, Dan. You asked for the truth and I told you."

"Your 'truth'," says Dan, air quotes difficult with a shopping bag but necessary, "is scientifically impossible."

"Fine, I won't tell you about my dreams anymore," Phil huffs, standing up to pointedly start getting ready for bed.

"Well, good," Dan says after a long pause. Phil doesn't deign to reply to his cutting wit, so Dan goes to his own bedroom and starts setting up his new baby. The first thing he does once he can start using it is type in the word 'clairvoyant'.

Google doesn't tell him anything he doesn't already know, so that's a non-starter. He ends up in a Reddit thread about premonitions during sleep, and even though the stories are interesting, they can't be true. That isn't how the universe works.

There's a lot about the universe that Dan doesn't understand. He knows that better than anyone, and it's the cause of many a crisis in his life.

Magic, though? Fortune telling? That's just factually wrong.

Dan decides, when he hears birds start to sing and realises he's spent all night in a Google vortex again, that what Phil experienced was nothing more than a coincidence.

It has to be a coincidence, or a joke, or else Dan is going to lay facedown on the floor for an entire week.

--

Phil is acting weirder than usual.

They're recording for a danisnotonfire video that Dan isn't sure yet if he actually wants to upload, and Phil keeps looking over his shoulder and reacting to every small noise outside their building. After ten minutes of this, Dan tells him to stop the camera for his own sanity.

"I can't use any of that," he says like he wasn't second-guessing the idea already. "You're so jumpy! Did you play spooky games without me?"

"No," says Phil.

He doesn't elaborate, which forces Dan to respond with a slow, "Okay, so why are you acting like a small rodent?"

Phil opens his mouth, probably to bicker about exactly what he's doing, but he's interrupted by the sound of someone banging on their front door. As if this is what he's been expecting, Phil leaps to his feet and bolts out of Dan's bedroom.

"That was weird," Dan tells the camera. It's no longer recording, but he has no one else to commiserate the weirdness of Phil Lester with.

While he waits for Phil to get back, he wonders who's at the door. It's not like they have many friends in the city, and the ones they have tend to text or call before showing up. Louise always says it's so she doesn't 'interrupt anything', which Dan tries not to read too deeply into.

Dan gets bored and follows Phil down the stairs, where he hears a loud and familiar voice drifting up from the entrance.

"- and I'm only trying to get to Dublin, right, but Heathrow decided I was suspicious somehow and I make inappropriate jokes when I'm uncomfortable - stop laughing - so they detained me and I missed my flight!"

"And we're the only people you know in London?" Dan hears Phil ask, and he sounds amused but not at all surprised. Which is weird, because Markiplier being in London without warning is pretty surprising stuff.

"I don't know anyone else's address," Mark admits, sounding good-natured despite an apparently difficult airport adventure. "Yours is in my phone, but I don't remember putting it there."

"Pretty sure I added it at VidCon this year," Phil says, starting to climb the stairs. "I had a feeling you'd need our sofa at some point."

That's a sufficient enough explanation for Mark, who has moved onto asking what they have in the way of coffee and food, but Dan hurries back up to his room to have a minor mental breakdown. He checks Mark's twitter and Facebook, but there's no mention of a trip, and it wouldn't make sense for Phil and Mark to have planned this to trick Dan, with the way they were talking downstairs.

So how did Phil know that Mark was coming? Why did he have a feeling, months ago, that Mark would need to know the address of someone in London at some point?

It doesn't make any logical sense. This isn't a joke or a coincidence, it's just really fucking weird.

Dan eyes his floor, considering lying down on it, but they have a guest. Existential crises are not proper host etiquette. Still, he waits for Phil to shout his name before getting out of bed and confronting this very strange turn of events.

Maybe the universe doesn't work scientifically at all. Maybe scientists are just people who make shit up and act like it's the truth, because Dan is starting to think that Phil might not have been lying at all.

He doesn't get a chance to say anything to Phil, between getting shot down for an impromptu collab - "No offence, boys, but I'm on vacation, maybe on my way back!" - introducing Mark to their current favourite anime - "Fuck you, I'm not crying." - and setting Mark up on the sofabed in their gaming room - "It's too small for either of us, but you're about a foot shorter, aren't you?" - until they're walking downstairs together in comfortable silence, arms brushing.

"You knew Mark was coming," Dan says, not bothering to make it a question.

"Yeah," says Phil.

Dan appreciates that Phil doesn't try to lie, but it only adds to the paranoia that's been building all day. "And like, you already knew about that? At VidCon?"

"You were listening?" Phil asks with a surprised grin as they reach their main landing.

"Irrelevant," Dan sniffs, crossing his arms.

Phil laughs at him, but it's not mean. Sometimes Dan thinks that Phil doesn't have a mean bone in his entire body.

"Yeah, I had this dream at VidCon," Phil leans against his bedroom doorframe, "and Mark was wandering around London without a travel plan on his phone, trying to find a hotel he could afford. I just thought it would be easier and more fun for him to come here."

"And you had the same dream last night," guesses Dan.

"No, last night I dreamed he ate all my cereal, which only makes sense if he's in our apartment."

"Good, you deserve to have your cereal eaten," Dan says automatically, because that's something he understands. The universe might get turned on its head if Phil is actually magic, but at least Dan can find comfort in the fact that he's still a cereal thief.

"Shut up," Phil laughs and reaches out to push Dan's chest lightly.

His hand lingers, but Dan is far more concerned about the fact that Phil might be psychic.

"I want to hear about your dreams." Dan knows as he says it that this is a mistake, that if magic exists and it isn't being used to his advantage, the world will be a scarier place than it already was.

"All of them?" Phil asks, still smiling. "Or just the clairvoyant ones?"

"You can tell the difference?"

"Sure. I mean, if it's realistic or boring, it's probably going to come true. My regular dreams are frickin' cool."

Dan can feel a grin tugging at his lips. "I suppose if they're so 'frickin' cool', I want to hear about those dreams too."

"Cool," Phil giggles a little and steps away from his doorframe, looking more relaxed than he has in days around Dan. "I'll keep a detailed dream journal just for you."

"You'd better," Dan says faux-sternly.

This entire situation is one of the most unsettling things Dan has ever experienced, but the bright smile on Phil's face when he says goodnight is worth every panic attack Dan is going to have about the makeup of the known universe. He seems so happy to be believed that Dan wonders if Phil has ever told anyone about this in so much detail.

Probably. Phil is basically an open book, after all.

If it makes Dan feel better to pretend as he's falling asleep that Phil has confided something in him that he's never divulged before, nobody has to know.

--

Dan wakes up before noon on his own, for once, and he startles when he sees someone in his kitchen before remembering that they have a guest. Yawning, he opens the kitchen door and greets Mark with a distorted, "Morning."

"Hey," Mark grins, leaning against the counter with a bowl of Phil's cereal. "You think Phil's gonna mind if I finish this?"

"Course not," says Dan, "you're the guest."

They both maintain a straight face for a couple seconds before Mark breaks and causes Dan to start laughing too. It's always comfortable to hang out with Mark, but Dan would be lying if he said he liked having guests spend the night. He doesn't like the feeling of someone being in his apartment while he's asleep.

It's nice, then, to be reminded that Mark is funny, and warm, and leaving in a couple of hours.

"So, you're going to see Jack?" Dan asks, because Phil had elbowed him every time he tried to ask the night before. "Shit, I mean, Sean."

"I fuck that up constantly," Mark admits, rinsing his bowl in the sink. "Yeah, I'm spending the weekend at his place. We're trying not to make a big deal of it, because - well, you know."

"I do?" Dan raises his eyebrows and starts making coffee for three.

"Obviously." Mark points at the mug that Dan pulled out for Phil, the one with Daddy emblazoned across it.

"That's a joke," Dan says automatically.

Mark starts laughing again, far too loud for the subject matter and time of day. "Bro, I know it's a joke. I meant you obviously know why we're keeping it on the down-low because you also have crazy shipper fans who think you guys are going to get married and die in each other's arms."

"I prefer to think of them as 'dedicated'," Dan says, turning away from Mark until the heat in his cheeks settles down. "But yeah, I get it."

"Didn't mean to make it weird, dude," Mark says apologetically. Apparently Dan didn't hide his face fast enough. "I figured you were, like, comfortable joking about it."

"I am." Dan glances at the kitchen door, paranoid that Phil is listening and getting the wrong impression. "For a second I just thought you were saying that you and Jack are together, and then I felt stupid when I realised you just meant the fan speculation."

The ensuing quiet is strange, considering his conversation partner, but Dan doesn't look up from the mugs.

"Wait," Mark touches Dan's shoulder to get his attention. "Wait, hang on, are you saying that you and Phil are in a relationship?"

"No, but I guess we're closer to it than not," Dan half-jokes. "So sometimes I forget we aren't."

It's the truth, but it seems to shock Mark into silence.

The fact of the matter is that Dan knows who he's going to spend the rest of his life with. He knows, despite everything, that Phil is the most important person in his life and probably always will be. Nothing about them has ever been on the down-low, because they have nothing to hide, but there are times when it slips Dan's mind that the fans aren't onto something.

After coffee is poured and Dan has drank half of his own for something to do with his hands, Mark finally speaks. "I don't think Sean and I are thaaaat close, so I get why the joke was weird coming from me. Also, I'm pretty sure you should tell Phil that you want to be with him."

Dan nearly spits coffee onto the floor.

"What?"

"I know it's not my business," Mark says with a shrug, "but it sure seems like you're pining."

"I am not pining," says Dan, affronted.

"You totally are."

"Am not."

"Are too."

"Am not."

"Are - look, I'm not getting into this with you." Mark looks like he's trying very hard not to laugh, and Dan glares at him. "I'm just saying that I'm never going to just randomly forget that Sean and I aren't in a relationship. and it's weird that you do."

"Phil being my platonic life partner is the least weird thing in my life," Dan says dismissively. Mark rolls his eyes.

"Whatever you say, dude," says Mark.

To Dan's relief, he lets the topic drop for the next few hours. They play Mario Kart until their shouting wakes Phil, and then they take turns kicking Phil's ass. Phil is pretty good-natured about the whole thing.

As fun as Mark is to be around, Dan is relieved to see him to the door. He doesn't need any more of the pointed looks Mark keeps sending his way whenever he grabs Phil's arm in excitement or leans in close to psych him out.

"You should come round again sometime," Phil is suggesting as they gather awkwardly in the small bottom landing.

"On purpose next time," Mark agrees, giving each of them a one-armed hug. It's nice - Mark is a champion hugger, even while holding a duffel bag.

"It was good seeing you," Dan says truthfully. "Next time, maybe a heads up?"

"Nah, I think I'll be spontaneous again."

"What if we're not home?"

"That's a good one, Dan."

"You'll miss your flight if you keep bickering," Phil interrupts with a laugh. He squeezes Mark's shoulder and cryptically adds, "Don't eat the sandwiches on the flight. It'll make you sick."

"Okay," Mark says easily, hefting his bag onto his shoulder. "I'll see you boys around."

The ensuing quiet in Mark's wake is welcome, but all Dan can think about is how close together he and Phil have to stand in order to fit on this landing. Thanks to the proximity, he can see uncharacteristic bags under Phil's eyes.

Dan reaches out to press the pads of his fingers gently against Phil's skin there and hums, "Mark being sick kept you up?"

"No," Phil says with an indulgent smile.

"You promised to tell me about your dreams," Dan reminds him when Phil shows no sign of continuing. He's probably been touching Phil's face for too long, so he lets his hand awkwardly drop to his side.

Still smiling, Phil shrugs. "It wasn't that interesting, Dan. Just hard to figure out."

"I can help," says Dan.

He wants Phil to confide in him, even about the weird things. As much as this situation freaks him out, and it's a lot, Dan doesn't like Phil keeping anything from him.

"I just remember being anxious, and I couldn't figure out why," Phil admits at long last, sitting down on the steps. "I wasn't at home or anywhere familiar, which just made it worse."

"Were we travelling?" Dan asks, leaning back against their front door instead of sitting beside Phil on the narrow steps, like he wants to.

Phil grins and shakes his head. "You just assume you were there, huh?"

"Of course I was there," says Dan.

"You were." Phil's grin widens as he looks down at his hands. "Obviously you were there. You kept telling me to calm down, but I couldn't, and then you left the room."

"I left?" Dan asks in disbelief. "I literally left?"

Just another piece of evidence supporting the fact that Phil does not have psychic dreams - Dan wouldn't leave Phil alone when he was in the middle of freaking out, that would never happen. When Phil is freaking out, the only thing that calms him is having someone talk him through the situation.

"Yeah, that's what confused me," Phil hums. "You don't usually leave."

"I never leave," Dan corrects him.

Phil looks up at him with an expression that Dan can only categorize as, well, fond. It's the expression that somehow means 'you're an idiot' and 'I'm glad we're doing this together' at the same time. The internet has probably labelled it as something else, since there's a good chance the expression has been caught on film, but Dan doesn't think anything will describe it quite as well as fond.

The moment is stretching into something harder to laugh off, and Dan has to clear his throat before the quiet becomes suffocating.

"Alright, did you figure out why dream-me left you alone?"

"No, but I'm sure you have a good reason," says Phil in a soft voice. He stands and stretches, purposefully breaking eye contact with Dan. "You fancy a tea?"

Dan shakes his head and watches Phil climb their narrow stairs, wondering if there's something Phil isn't telling him.

--

Phil's smile disappears as soon as Dan turns the camera off, which isn't unusual when their filming takes a long time, but Dan gets worried when Phil sighs and puts his head down on the desk.

"You okay?" Dan asks, resting his fingertips on Phil's shoulder.

"I'm tired," says Phil into the wooden surface, "and I keep having bad dreams whenever I try to rest."

This isn't news to Dan, as Phil has been keeping him in the dream loop for the past couple weeks, but Dan didn't realize it was getting so bad. He feels guilt settle in his stomach for not noticing before Phil faceplanted into their desk.

"Is there anything that usually helps? Like, stops you from dreaming altogether? I think we still have that vanilla vodka from New Year's, that usually conks me out."

Phil tilts his head on the desk to give Dan an indulgent smile. "No, getting drunk doesn't help."

"That's a shame," says Dan.

"I don't know, nothing really stops me from dreaming," Phil says when it's obvious that Dan isn't changing the subject. "Like, I guess there are things that help make the dreams blurry and more fun to be in, but I've never woken up and thought, 'wow, I didn't have a single dream last night'."

"That sounds... exhausting," Dan admits. He has more dreamless nights than not; he thinks that if he had dreams every night and also, some of them might come true, he'd go mad.

Phil doesn't bother to respond to that, because obviously it's exhausting, but he sighs again and closes his eyes.

"You can't sleep here, c'mon," Dan murmurs, squeezing Phil's shoulder before standing up. "I'm sure your bed will be more comfortable than wood."

"Your mum is more comfortable than wood," Phil says, nonsensically.

With a bit more prodding and cajoling, Dan gets Phil to his feet and guides him down the stairs so he doesn't wipe out. Phil wrinkles his nose when he looks at his bedroom, so Dan finds himself saying, "Will it help to sleep in my bed? It's not like I'm using it right now."

"Why would that help?" Phil asks, which isn't a no.

"Change of scenery," Dan suggests, opening his door and gesturing for Phil to go in. "Make yourself at home - within reason, like."

"I'm going to snoop through everything," Phil threatens weakly. Dan rolls his eyes and gives Phil a gentle shove into his room. "Okay, okay. Thanks."

Dan stands in the doorway long enough to make sure that Phil gets to the bed without colliding with anything before turning to leave. He normally stays in his room for a good portion of the day, but he doesn't mind taking up the browsing position in their lounge so Phil can get some actual sleep.

Before he can walk away, though, Phil mumbles something that makes him pause.

"What's that?" Dan asks without turning around - just in case Phil hadn't said anything at all.

"Will you stay?" Phil repeats. His voice is quiet and muffled by Dan's comforter, but the request is unmistakable.

Dan isn't sure how this will help, but he smiles over his shoulder and says, "Sure. Let me grab my laptop from the kitchen, I'll be right back."

Considering the exhaustion, he expects Phil to be asleep by the time he gets back with his baby, but Phil's half-closed eyes watch Dan hesitate and look between the desk and bed uncertainly. He doesn't say anything to guide Dan, which is annoying, and Dan ends up making a frustrated noise before flopping onto the far side of his bed and opening Tumblr.

Phil makes a contented noise and curls around Dan, close enough that Dan can feel his body heat but not quite touching. Dan isn't sure if he should feel relieved or disappointed.

It's easy to get lost in the void of Tumblr, and it isn't until Dan gets a text that he realises actual hours have passed. He doesn't want to disturb Phil, but he thinks it might be worse if Phil's sleeping schedule gets all out of whack, so he shakes Phil awake before checking his phone.

"Huh?" Phil bleats, startling awake and blinking a lot.

He has a half-quiff and his eyes are redder than usual. Maybe he should have taken his contacts out before napping, but Dan refuses to feel guilty about that because Phil is a grown man and has been able to take his contacts out without reminders in the past.

"Your nap was becoming a coma," Dan says, picking up his phone before he forgets to check the text.

"Oh," Phil says around a yawn, curling further into Dan so his head is sort of resting on Dan's tummy. "I'm sorry for taking over your bed."

"It's fine, you doofus," says Dan. He's paying more attention to the fact that his mum actually texted him than this conversation, and that's his excuse for carding his fingers through Phil's weird sleep quiff.

Phil doesn't seem to mind or even find it weird. It would probably be weirder to stop doing it now that he's started, so Dan just keeps absently petting Phil as he reads through the strangely long text from his mother.

"What're you looking at?" Phil asks into Dan's shirt.

"Mum texted."

It's such an unusual occurrence that Phil rearranges his entire body in order to stare at Dan whilst keeping his head on Dan's stomach.

"Your mum or my mum?"

"My mum," says Dan, and when did the word 'mum' turn into something that needed clarification in his life?

This is what he'd meant, when he told Mark that sometimes he and Phil are more like a couple than not. He can't picture any of his other friends in this situation, can't even fathom having his hand in someone's hair and talking about their shared mums in bed if there wasn't a romantic element.

With Phil, though, this is just what their friendship is like. Dan honestly isn't sure if things would be easier with said added romantic element, because things are already so easy.

"Dan?" Phil is saying, his voice slightly raised, and Dan guesses that Phil's been trying to get his attention for a while.

"Sorry, what?"

"I said what does she want?"

"Um," Dan looks back down at his phone, trying to collect his thoughts and hide his flushing face, "my family's going on holiday, so she wanted to let me know."

Phil plucks the phone out of Dan's hand and ignores the squawking protests to sigh, "Dan, she also asked you to water her plants."

"So?"

"So, you have a job in London," Phil says, his lips pursing unhappily. "She always thinks you have free time."

Cheeks burning, Dan snatches his phone back and pushes both Phil and his laptop off of him. He doesn't need to be told that his family doesn't take his job seriously, he knows that already.

"Will you come to Reading with me or not?" Dan asks, swinging his legs out of bed and stretching to avoid looking at Phil's apologetic face.

"Course I will," says Phil. "Are we going for a day or the whole time they're gone?"

The idea of spending an entire week in his childhood home is unappealing to Dan, so he responds that he'd prefer only staying over for one night. With any luck, he won't run into anyone he knows while he's there.

Phil doesn't push the topic. He knows when to stop, when all he'll get from Dan is sullen glances and 'I don't want to talk about it, Phil' if he says one more time that Dan might be happier if he tried building stronger relationships in his family.

It's no wonder that Phil doesn't get it, since the Lesters have basically adopted Dan as one of their own.

That's not who the Howells are, though; they aren't sunny and jokey, they don't watch his videos and text him thumbs up emojis, they don't invite Phil over without prompting.

Dan loves them all the same. Of course he loves them, they're his family.

It's just that - when Dan gets homesick, it isn't for Reading. It isn't for Manchester or this crappy London flat either, really. Sure, he misses his sofa crease and the cracks in his bedroom ceiling when they're on the road, but only until the next moment that Phil catches his eye and grins brighter than the sun.

Dan doesn't get homesick often.

--

"I can't even read your writing." Dan tries very hard to sound exasperated when all he wants to do is laugh.

"My writing is so much better than yours!" Phil says defensively, making grabby hands at his dream journal. "A dramatic reading of my dreams was not included in this deal."

"It should be, that sounds hilarious."

Dan doesn't give the journal back, because he's just winding Phil up. He flips open to the last page, ignoring Phil's annoyed squawk of a noise that he's only capable of making before his morning coffee, and starts reading.

Lots of the dream descriptions are straight-up impossible; Dan notices that there are stars marking the most realistic entries and a fair few with just a giant question mark. He also can't help but notice that there are places where pages have clearly been torn out. Judging by the dates on some of the earlier entries, Phil has had this journal for months longer than Dan expected, and Dan wonders what Phil wanted to keep to himself.

To be fair, he's had plenty of dreams that he would rather Phil never heard about, but he also would have never written them down in the first place.

Phil leaves the lounge to make coffee at one point, returning quietly with two mugs just when Dan thinks he's had enough of reading older dreams that have already come true. He closes the journal and accepts his coffee before mumbling, "Thanks. Did you make some of these up?"

"No," says Phil, rolling his eyes.

"These ones have happened," Dan says unnecessarily. "You should really keep better track of which dreams have passed."

Before Phil can say anything, Dan fishes for a pen between their sofa cushions and puts a checkmark beside a dream about Dil becoming a nightmarish crafts project.

"Oi, don't mark up my journal," Phil says, but he makes no effort to take the journal or pen from Dan.

Dan ignores him to ask, "How do you not live in constant fear?"

"I dunno." Phil is shrugging when Dan looks up with an expression of disbelief. "I mean, I don't usually dream about anything bad, so it's not like I have death and devastation hanging over my head all the time - unlike you. Don't hit me, I have coffee!"

--

The train to Reading isn't long, especially compared to some of the treks Dan has had to do with a caffeinated Phil at his side, but he still hates every second of it.

It makes him feel younger, and he isn't sure if he likes that feeling. Young Dan was embarrassing and judgemental and so, so terrified that he wouldn't be liked by anyone that he made a lot of choices to make other people happy.

Plus, he can't move the whole journey, since Phil has decided to fall asleep on his shoulder.

Phil's steady breaths are normally quite calming, but he keeps mumbling things that Dan can't quite catch, and it’s driving him crazy.

He never used to care this much about dreams, even his own, but he thinks that the paranoia is justified here.

This whole clairvoyance thing has made Dan incredibly anxious. He can't help but wonder what other things in this universe he doesn't understand, if a form of magic is real. Part of him hopes that this is all an elaborate prank - he'd be mad at first, but it would be better for his mental health all around.

When the train finally starts slowing down, Dan gently shakes Phil's shoulder.

"Dan?" Phil mumbles, not sounding fully awake.

"Yeah, 's me."

Something about the moment that Phil blinks up at Dan without moving from his shoulder causes the breath in Dan's throat to catch.

"I had such a weird dream," Phil confides. "Like, an actually weird dream. Tyler Oakley was doing a collab with Leatherface."

"Sounds harrowing," says Dan.

"It was, a bit," Phil says on a yawn, sitting up properly and blinking at the train window. "Oh, I didn't mean to sleep the whole trip! You must have been so bored. I'm really sorry, Dan."

"The quiet was a nice change," Dan says instead of admitting that he was in fact very bored without Phil's chatter, "and you needed the sleep."

"I did," Phil agrees, before pulling out his phone to check his fringe in the camera app.

"Shut up, you look fine."

"Wow, Reading puts you in a bad mood. We haven't even got off the train yet and you're a grumpleton."

Dan doesn't grace that comment with a response, as Phil is right anyway - Reading does put him in a bad mood. He just stands up and nudges a still-sleepy Phil to do the same when the train is stopped completely.

They take a cab to Dan's family home and Phil talks the entire time about absolutely nothing. Dan appreciates it; the chatter helps him tune out his surroundings so he isn't thinking about the time he threw up on that bench over there or when he got caught shoplifting at the nearest corner store.

Walking into his parents' house is always so weird, because Dan half expects it to have stayed the same since the last holiday he visited. Obviously, it never does.

Part of Dan can't help but think of their books, proudly displayed on the Lesters' coffee table, while looking at the cringey graduation photo on the wall of his own parents' lounge.

Somebody else is growing up here now, is the thing. The photos of Dan on the wall have been the same for five years, but Adrian is still going through the motions of becoming a person, and it's weird for Dan to see that happen in chunks.

"He's getting so old, it's weird," Phil voices, looking at the new photos next to Dan's awful ones.

"Tell me about it," says Dan. "We are all dying."

Phil laughs, because that's what he does when Dan makes a joke about death, and carries his bag upstairs. Since he's feeling listless and like a stranger in his own family home, Dan follows.

--

Dan was upset with me? is the latest thing written in the dream journal that Dan sneaks out of Phil's bag when he can't sleep. It doesn't help.

--

When Dan wakes up in his old bed, the afternoon sun filtering through the blinds in an all-too-familiar way, he has a moment of absolute panic that he's gone back in time - honestly, it wouldn't be the weirdest thing in his life right now - but he’s too long for his bed and he can hear Phil singing in the kitchen.

Dan only has a couple of hours before their train leaves, so he pushes himself out of bed and doesn't bother with getting dressed to water his mum's plants. On his way downstairs he calls out, "Good morning."

"Afternoon!" Phil's voice comes back, bright and loud and not suited for Dan's old house at all.

"Can you get me some water?" Dan asks as he ambles into the kitchen.

"For you or the houseplants?"

"Both, I guess."

"I already fed the houseplants," Phil says with a smile, opening wrong cupboards until he finds a cup. "You want lunch?"

Swallowing around the sudden, inexplicable lump in his throat, Dan murmurs an affirmative. There's something about Phil making himself so at home in a place he hasn't been overly welcomed that is making Dan feel some kind of way that he isn't prepared to deal with at this time of day.

His parents like Phil well enough, but they don't really understand him; they don't understand the person he helped Dan become, either.

Even if Phil is feeling weird here, he's going out of his way to make Dan feel comfortable.

"Why was I upset with you?" asks Dan. His voice is almost too quiet, and he watches as Phil's fingers slip on the loaf of bread he's slicing. "In your dream, I mean. I couldn't sleep so I - yeah."

"I'm not mad you looked," Phil says over his shoulder, "since I made it for you and all."

Dan knows that isn't true from the dates and level of detail in the journal, but he isn't about to call Phil out.

"Well, that's good. So?"

With a heavy sigh, Phil starts to spread peanut butter on bread for Dan - the exact amount that Dan prefers, not that he notices.

"I'm really not sure," Phil says slowly, not looking at Dan. "Remember when I had that dream about me freaking out and you leaving? It was like, the exact same, except you were really upset that I was freaking out instead of trying to calm me down."

"That doesn't sound like me," says Dan.

Phil shrugs and holds out Dan's finished sandwich in response. Dan has to stop himself from squeezing Phil's hip in thanks like he usually does, because Dan is half naked and they're in his old house and he thinks it might be weirder here and now. Then he thinks maybe it's weirder if he doesn't do it, but Phil has started moving towards the lounge before he decides.

Around a mouthful of peanut butter, Dan asks, "How many times have you had this dream?"

"A few," Phil says as he flops his whole body onto the sofa. He leaves enough room for Dan to sit near his feet, which is considerate of him.

"Have you considered that it might just be... a dream?"

"I have done," says Phil, "but it just feels so real, you know? And it's been the same weird room, not on like Jupiter or something."

"I'm not sure what we'd have to argue about on Jupiter," Dan muses out loud. If Dan is honest with himself, he can't think of anything in the entire universe that would make him angry at Phil during what sounds like a panic attack.

"Maybe I stole your space cereal," Phil jokes, poking Dan's thigh with his toes.

Dan wants to say that he wouldn't be legitimately angry over cereal, that he's never been more than irritated by it, that he plays his reaction up for his own entertainment, that almost anything he buys is for Phil too, but all that seems too serious for the moment.

Instead, he cracks a joke and changes the subject so he can make Phil smile for a little while longer.

--

It happens so slowly that Dan doesn't even notice until it's already out of hand.

They've been back from Reading for a week, and Phil has been acting weirder than usual the entire time. Dan didn't see this as a reason for concern, because sometimes Phil is weird for no reason, but when he catches Phil eating his cereal and the first thing out of Phil's mouth is a frantic "sorry!" instead of his usual squawk of "don't look at me!", Dan gets concerned.

"Phil," he says slowly, running a hand through his bedhead and trying to act more awake than he is, "I don't actually give a fuck if you eat my cereal."

"You don't?" Phil immediately puts his hand back into the box, the little shit.

"I mean, it's annoying, but you looked like a startled deer just now," Dan says around a yawn. "I'm not going to yell at you."

An emotion passes over Phil's face too fast for Dan's tired brain to categorize it. Phil shrugs a shoulder and looks back at the box of Crunchy Nut like he's deciding whether or not he wants to eat more.

He's been like this all week, careful and anxious and avoidant, and Dan doesn't know what to do. If he confronts Phil about it, Phil will just deny everything and try too hard to be normal - Dan remembers 2012 vividly - but he doesn't want to encourage this behaviour either.

"Are you alright?" he asks, hoping the simple question won't spook Phil.

"What d'you mean?"

"I mean... you're being weird."

"I'm always weird, Dan."

Dan decides to drop it for the time being. The last thing he wants to do is push Phil further into this weirdness by interrogating him.

"How did you sleep?" he asks instead, noticing the way Phil's shoulders relax when he changes the subject.

"Pretty good, thanks," says Phil, "my dreams were boring but, like, peaceful."

It only takes a bit of prompting from Dan before Phil gives him a play-by-play of his dreams, and since they're as boring as advertised, Dan lets himself zone out and worry about Phil on his own time.

Phil doesn't get any less weird after that, but he tries harder to cover it. Since Dan is a good friend, he pretends like he doesn't know that Phil is still jumpy and anxious underneath the bad jokes.

Honestly, it sucks. Dan wishes that Phil would just open up and say what's on his mind so they can both move on.

That is, until Phil freaks the fuck out.

See, they've been looking at bigger places to live for a few months now, but they have time until their lease is up so they're in no rush.

Dan gets a notification for an available duplex a few weeks after he tried getting an answer out of Phil, and it looks confusingly laid out but otherwise a good fit. It's exciting, but he hesitates before texting Phil about it - does he really want to play the 'everything is normal' game while meeting a potential landlord? For all he knows, Phil is going to come across as a serial killer.

Instead, he texts Louise. She responds with more emojis than characters, but agrees to check the place out with Dan.

The duplex has so much room that Dan has a startled moment of bewilderment. Does he own enough furniture to fill this place? Before he can voice the concern, Louise waves him off with an easy, "Stop worrying, you dingleberry."

"I'm not worried," Dan lies.

Louise rolls her eyes and starts snooping in the closets. "Oh, blimey, can I keep some of my things here?"

"No," says Dan, although he's sure that at least one of his closets will be taken over by Darcy's old toys and Louise's heels. "Me and Phil need the storage for all our miscellaneous shit."

"You could always, I don't know, get rid of some," Louise suggests.

"Maybe during the move we will," Dan allows, gently guiding her out of the closet before the landlord gets concerned.

Aside from a few awkward moments - inevitable, with Louise at his side - Dan thinks that the tour goes really well. He likes the space, the road is blissfully free of loud noises, and the landlord doesn't immediately think he's in adult films when he mentions where lights could go.

Dan likes it so much that he's reluctant to leave, but Louise reminds him that he isn't the only person whose opinion on the house matters.

"You know Phil has to live here too, right?" she says with a laugh when Dan starts asking pointed questions about when the place will be empty. Dan makes an exaggerated huff of a noise.

"He'll take what I bring home and he'll like it."

The landlord gives them an indulgent smile. "We can arrange another day for you to bring your boyfriend by, see if he likes it here?"

"Sure," Dan says automatically, trying to ignore his heart beating faster and Louise staring a hole into the side of his head. He knows that a Talk is coming. "I'll talk to him about it tonight. Thanks for, y'know, having us."

Dan hopes that ignoring Louise on the way to the tube will delay the Talk, but Louise is not easily deterred.

"Boyfriend, eh?" she asks in a lilting voice, elbowing Dan in the side.

"Shut up, it was easier than explaining."

"I actually think that it wouldn't be hard to say 'Phil's my friend and roommate'." Louise, he thinks, sounds far too amused by this situation. "Now if you get the place, your landlord will think you're a couple the whole time!"

"Would that be so weird?" Dan asks. "I mean. It's what people already think when they meet us, and sometimes I forget that we aren't."

Months ago, Dan had said the same thing to Mark; he doesn't expect Louise to react much differently.

"Well, duh," Louise says matter-of-factly, "because you love him."

Dan almost walks into a telephone pole. "Excuse me?"

"Don't be daft, you light up every time he comes in the room," says Louise. "Plus, I can feel your heart rate speed up."

"You can... feel that?"

Wrinkling her nose, Louise shakes her head. "Maybe sense is a better word, but your emotions are so much louder when Phil's around. It's given me migraines in the past, you know."

"Exactly how many of my friends have magic powers and why don't I?" Dan exclaims. He resists throwing his arms in the air dramatically, but only just.

"Ooh, who else?"

"That isn't the point! What the ever-living fuck, Louise? You can sense emotions?"

"Only really strong ones," Louise says with a shrug, like that isn't a big fucking deal. "That's how I know when you do something awkward that makes you want to die - honestly, I thought I already told you this!"

"If you did tell me," says Dan, "I would have assumed you were joking."

Louise rolls her eyes and pulls out her phone as if Dan is boring her. "That sounds like a you problem, then."

She changes the subject when they get to busier streets, chattering about her new boyfriend while Dan, once again, re-evaluates his entire worldview.

--

So, Phil freaking the fuck out.

It takes Dan by surprise, because Phil seems excited by the prospect of more storage and less drilling, but he tenses up as soon as they walk inside the duplex. The landlord doesn't notice, busy repeating the same things that Dan has already heard and gesturing at all the closet space.

Dan doesn't want to draw attention to Phil's weird stiffness, so he makes idle conversation until the landlord leaves to take a phone call.

"Are you okay?" he asks, reaching for Phil's arm.

It's one of the most bewildering moments Dan has ever experienced - and that includes recent magical discoveries - when Phil jerks away from his hand like he's going to be burned.

"I don't - I don't -" Phil stammers, his eyes wide as saucers, "- I mean, it's that - I know this place."

Dan feels useless with his hands at his sides. "Did you see it online?"

"No, I - in my dreams, I -"

It clicks.

"Phil, are you panicking because you had dreams about panicking here?" Dan asks slowly. He doesn't want to laugh or show any irritation in case it makes Phil's hands start to tremble even more, but this is a little funny and a lot annoying. "You know that's such a catch-22, right?"

The look of absolute distress that Phil gives him says that yes, he knows that very well, but he doesn't seem to be able to stop hyperventilating.

Dan sighs and runs a hand through his own hair, letting his fringe do whatever it wants when he does.

"Okay, mate? I'm going to tell the landlord that you aren't feeling well and that we're leaving so that you can have a panic attack in peace. I'm not in any way leaving you alone because I'm mad or because I hate you, alright?"

Phil gives him a shaky thumbs up before covering his face with both hands and making audible attempts to breathe deeply.

The last thing Dan wants to do is leave Phil alone like this, but he does. He doesn't want a potential landlord thinking that they're batshit, after all, so he relays the not-feeling-well lie and comes back to lead Phil outside by the elbow. Instant relief washes over Dan when Phil allows the physical contact.

"You're so weird," says Dan.

He means it to come out as exasperated yet still fond, keeping grip on Phil's elbow for his own peace of mind, but something about Phil struggling to breathe evenly has Dan sounding unexpectedly soft.

To his surprise, Phil huffs a breathy laugh. "Thanks, I think? And thanks for, um, not leaving me alone for long."

"I told you that didn't sound like me," Dan says, squeezing Phil's arm, "you've been trying to avoid a fight that was never going to happen, you absolute knob."

Phil laughs again, loud and genuine. He's starting to sound more like his regular self, so Dan lets go of him to hail down a taxi. It would be silly to put his hand back immediately, Dan thinks, because if Phil's panic attack is over, he has no real excuse to continue touching him. He opens the taxi door for Phil and clamps down on every instinct that wants to help him in - Phil is thirty years old and capable of getting into a car on his own, thanks ever so - and folds his own hands on his lap once they're both buckled in.

"I quite liked that place, actually," Phil admits. He's twiddling his thumbs, and Dan is proud of himself for not putting his hand atop both of Phil's to make him stop. "Do you think they'll let us come back?"

"They seemed to like me," Dan says, because making a good first impression is a point of pride.

"Maybe they'll only rent to you, then," Phil says in the cadence of a joke.

Even though Phil is finally himself again, Dan can hear the uncertain edge to his words. After all, neither of them need a roommate anymore.

Dan looks out the taxi window so it doesn't feel like an admission when he says, "No, we're a package deal. The landlord knows. Honestly, I'm pretty sure everyone knows."

There's an eerie silence from Phil beside him, but Dan focuses completely on the scenery changing to more familiar buildings. The cabbie isn't paying attention, thank the lord, so Dan isn't completely mortified by having this conversation in front of a stranger.

He's still slightly mortified.

It feels like an honest-to-God jumpscare when Phil puts his hand on Dan's knee and squeezes - Dan is pretty sure the noise that startles out of him isn't human.

Phil laughs, not unkindly, and leaves his hand there. "Yeah, I suppose we are."

--

"You're not acting weird anymore," Dan observes later that week as they wait for a Sims lot to load.

"No, you were right about that dream," Phil says with a sheepish smile. "You didn't get mad like I kept expecting you to, but be honest - you were definitely annoyed."

"Of course I was annoyed, you made yourself panic," Dan says with a fond roll of his eyes. He hates when the fantastic is logical, but the evolution of Phil's dream makes a lot of sense; at first, Dream-Dan was worried, and then got angrier as Real-Dan learned about the dream.

Phil elbows him in the side. "Shut up."

The game loads, then, so they stop discussing it and lose themselves in Dil's world for a while. It isn't until Dil becomes 'VERY ANGRY' that Dan remembers he wanted to share some information with Phil.

"Right, you've been acting so weird that I completely forgot to tell you," Dan says, pausing the game. "Did you know that you aren't the only person with weird powers?"

"It would be pretty egotistical for me to think I'm the only one, Dan."

"Shut up," says Dan, "Louise can feel other people's emotions."

The look on Phil's face is totally worth springing this on him. He goes through a whole face journey, starting on pure shock and ending in something that looks strangely nervous.

He looks away before Dan can analyze the expression further, pointing at the computer scene. "Like - like, she can see when people are focused or inspired, like we’re all Sims? Dan. Dan, that's terrifying."

"She said it only worked with strong emotions," Dan laughs, batting Phil's hand away from his monitor so he doesn't leave finger smudges.

"Do you believe her?" asks Phil.

Do you believe me now?

Dan gives a noncommittal shrug, his first instinct to being asked an opinion, and adds, "Yeah. You've both made a pretty compelling case for magic being, like, a thing."

"What did she feel off of you?" Phil asks curiously, and Dan accidentally-on-purpose presses the pause shortcut so their attention can be consumed by their odd little virtual family again.

--

Dan assumes that if Phil asks Louise anything personal, Louise will keep her mouth shut. He has a lot of blackmail material on her, after all, and friends don't tell people that a friend is feeling Things without consulting that friend.

As the month comes to a close, though, Phil starts pretending he can't find his dream journal and gives Dan looks when he thinks Dan isn't paying attention. It's nerve-wracking.

Luckily, Phil is his regular self aside from that. Dan lets himself revel in how good it feels to have his best friend in top form and cracking decent bants again.

He wants to ask Louise if she's spilled the beans on what are certainly misunderstood feelings, but he's a little scared of the answer. If he doesn't ask either of them, Dan can pretend that everything is back to normal and that he isn't hyperaware of his own body every time Phil touches him.

To make a joke of it all, Dan texts Markiplier without context that he finally understands how Schrödinger felt, because Mark and Louise are the only ones who have an inkling about this situation.

From Mark: Dude, it's 5am here. Shut the fuck up and tell Phil how you feel.

To Mark: that's not what i'm talking about

From Mark: Ohhh, so you ACTUALLY have a maybe-dead cat in your apartment? That's so weird. Maybe you should call someone for that.

To Mark: you're enjoying this too much

Mark, the twat, leaves Dan on read - presumably to go to sleep - and Dan hovers over Louise's contact photo before groaning and opening Tumblr instead.

It's best if he doesn't know. He's pretty sure a cat inside a box is eventually going to die.

--

I should examine this, probably, Dan thinks as another casual brush of Phil's fingers causes his heart to jump into his throat. He doesn't particularly want to end up facedown on the floor, so he decides he'd rather play Mario Kart.

--

Unlike their brief attempt to buy a house, which went sideways in the worst way, signing a lease at the new flat is deceptively easy.

Phil is talking the landlord's ear off while Dan reads the paperwork over and tries to look like he knows what he's doing. He has uni flashbacks at the legal buzzwords, but he tries to focus instead of interjecting in all of Phil's stories and questions. It's working relatively well until Phil has to ask, "Are we allowed a dog?"

"No," Dan answers before the landlord can, tapping a line in the lease. "Sorry, Phil, a dog will have to be got when a house is bought."

He notices that Phil looks a little disappointed but not surprised, and he wonders if that's because Phil anticipated this downside of renting or if he had a dream involving their lack of pets.

"Fair enough," Phil acquiesces, squeezing the back of Dan's neck casually.

Their new landlord smiles at them and Dan is feeling quite good about this whole situation until they ask, "So, how long have the two of you been together?"

"Excuse me?"

Phil doesn't sound offended or even bewildered, just curious. It makes sense; they get mistaken for a couple quite a lot. For his part, Dan is trying to become invisible by melting into the sofa, because he knows that their landlord's assumption isn't coming from nowhere.

"Sorry to pry," they say politely, "Daniel mentioned that the two of you have lived together a while, and I do enjoy a good love story."

Dan hopes that the floor is going to open up and swallow him whole. He feels Phil's gaze but refuses to meet it, face burning.

After a couple of seconds - during which Dan contemplates death or, at the very least, running away to Tokyo - Phil returns his hand to Dan's neck and easily says, "Eight years."

With a mortified noise, Dan hides his face in his hands and tries to ignore the heavy thumping of his heart. Their landlord is saying something else, probably asking what the fuck is wrong with Phil's boyfriend, but all Dan can pay attention to is the weight of Phil's hand and the sound of his genuine laugh in response to whatever question he's asked.

"He's just embarrassed because he hates telling people how we met," Phil stage-whispers. "He basically stalked me online until I noticed him."

"Oh my God, I hate you," Dan groans into his palms.

"No, you don't," says Phil cheerfully.

New landlord chuckles before a phone rings and they have to leave the flat to take the call, murmuring an "excuse me". The silence left in their wake is horrible, and Dan thinks that he's never going to come out of the safety of his hands again.

It takes a few minutes for Phil to move his hand from Dan's neck; honestly, Dan is expecting him to laugh or ask questions that Dan doesn't have answers to, but Phil just takes Dan's hands in both of his and gently pulls them away from Dan's face.

"Did you tell our landlord that we're a couple?" Phil asks, his voice lilting strangely on the last word.

Dan nods, biting his lip. He can feel the heat of an ugly blush radiating off his face, and he has genuinely no idea how he's going to explain this away.

"Why?"

It's a simple question, and certainly a fair one - anyone would want to know the answer - but it stumps Dan. He'd done it because the landlord had assumed, but seeing as most of the people they meet have the same assumption, the logic doesn't really hold up. He could say he'd done it ironically, which he thinks that Phil might accept as an answer, or a joke, which he thinks Phil would disapprove of.

He could say a lot of things, but they all feel like lies. Dan looks down at where Phil is holding his wrists between them on the sofa so he doesn't have to make eye contact when he answers, "Sometimes it feels more like the truth than saying we aren't."

"I guess I can see that," says Phil. To Dan's absolute bewilderment, his voice is calm and his hands aren't shaking. Dan's are. "Tell me something else, then? What do you want to be the truth?"

That... is a less simple question.

"Dunno," Dan shrugs, because he can feel Phil watching him and he doesn't want to take too long to answer. "I never really thought it would be a relevant question."

"Well, do you still want to live with me?" asks Phil. The question is filled with such genuine concern that it startles Dan into looking up to shoot Phil an incredulous expression. He's not prepared for how close Phil is, even though personal space has long been a myth between them.

"Of course I do, you fucking buffoon."

A corner of Phil's mouth curves upwards and Dan tries not to show how nervous he is, because Phil is still weirdly calm.

"Okay, okay," says Phil, squeezing Dan's wrists before letting go, "we should sign, then."

Dan had completely forgotten what they were doing before Phil asked if he wanted to be in a relationship, so he's grateful for the reminder. He skims the rest of the lease as thoroughly as he can with Phil watching him.

There aren't any surprises in the paperwork, which Dan is grateful for - he isn't sure he'd be able to debate with the landlord in his current state. He signs quickly and hands the pen to Phil as their new landlord walks in, pocketing a phone.

"You're all set?" the landlord asks with a smile.

"We are," Phil answers for them both. He stands up and shakes the landlord's hand, making small talk while Dan forcibly drags his gaze away from Phil.

He doesn't know what he wants. It should be easy, sorting through his feelings and deciding yeah, that's how I want things to be, but there are serious downsides to any decision Dan makes right now.

Ruining their friendship would be unacceptable, but honestly, Dan doesn't think anything he says will make Phil stop being his best friend. It would just be awkward if Dan wanted something Phil doesn't - and why didn't Phil say what he wants, so Dan isn't freaking the fuck out and wondering? - it wouldn't be the end of the world.

Dan thinks it would be pretty damn close to the end of the world if they tried, failed, and had to dance around each other as awkward exes. That's the darkest timeline, right there.

Or maybe it's not.

Phil is gesturing for Dan to leave with him, smiling widely, and Dan considers what would happen if nothing changed between them. It's certainly the path of least resistance, but as Dan stands up and Phil leans into his space out of sheer instinct, Dan has to admit that not addressing the way his heart reacts to Phil is the worst option on the table.

The landlord says things and Phil says things back, but Dan isn't listening. He's too busy forcing himself to imagine Phil moving out, Phil getting a dog without him, Phil finding someone else to share his life with, because that's what best friends do.

By the time they hail a cab to their terrible current flat, all Dan can say for sure is that he really, really doesn't want to do nothing.

Phil is quiet for once, looking out the taxi window and letting Dan have space to think, and Dan is so fond and so sure, at this moment, that he reaches out and puts his hand over Phil's.

It only takes a moment before Phil registers what he's doing. He grins so damn brightly that Dan hates himself for not considering his options before this.

"Is this your final answer?" Phil asks, affecting a silly announcer voice to lighten the moment.

Dan snorts and says, "Yeah, alright."

It's all he can manage out loud right now, but Phil beams at him and turns his hand over so they can wind their fingers together properly. It's not the first time they've held hands, but it's the first time it's meant something so important.

Things could still go so wrong. This might not work, and things will be awkward, possibly forever.

Dan, well. He chooses to hope for the best here.

--

"Did you dream about this?" Dan thinks to ask during a commercial break. Phil is curled into his side, lanky giraffe legs thrown over Dan’s lap. It should be weird, since they've never cuddled quite like this before, but Dan feels warm to the core. "Us, I mean. Is that why you hid your journal?"

"I didn't hide it," Phil lies, "I lost it."

Dan huffs his disbelief and pinches Phil’s thigh. "You can tell me. In case you didn't notice, I'm not going to mind."

The grin Phil shoots him is almost shy, which tugs at Dan's heartstrings. He smiles back and runs his fingers through Phil's hair, because he can.

"Does it really matter what I dreamed?" Phil hums, leaning into Dan's hand like a cat. "I've had dreams about us for years, to be honest, but I could never figure out if they were premonitions or just, like, wishful thinking."

"You weirdo."

"Your weirdo," counters Phil. The words are a bit stilted, like he isn't sure if Dan wants to hear them, and Dan can't help himself - he presses his lips to Phil's, quick and chaste and easy as breathing. He'd worried that maybe it would take a while for them to be comfortable with kissing, but honestly, it feels like the natural progression of their relationship.

Phil grins and chases Dan's mouth as he leans back, pressing light kisses all over the bottom half of Dan's face until Dan is laughing breathlessly.

"Okay, fine, you're my weirdo," Dan says as Phil smooches the tip of his nose. "Now shhh, the show is back on."