Four, five years of empty success - Dan's nearing thirty. Life should be good, but he's been on his own just long enough to realize what a good thing they had before.phamnotof wrote:*sets the scene*
Europe tour. Late 2016. The just finished their show in Prague. Suddenly, there's an announcement saying that they have a final speech to give, and that it's going to be broadcasted directly onto YouTube.
This is the End of Dan and Phil. They've put out the bible that is TABINOF, they've traveled everywhere they could so that people had the chance to see them together, and so is naturally marked an end of an era.
"This was the most fun we've ever had," they conclude, and leave the stage.
They move out of the flat the next month. Knick-knacks are devided, furniture is taken apart. Phil buys a house not far away from his parents, starts a hamster/snail farm, and his YT series about a hamster that befriends a snail, falls in love with him and then loses him to an unexplained falling oit is the biggest hit YT has seen since people learned to scream at videogames.
Dan tries to keep his channel up, he does. But without Phil, his heart's just not in it. He uploads his "Goodbye Internet" video on the last day of 2016 and goes on to sign the biggest YT names out there under DHLimited, scoring deals other networks can't even dream of and becoming the fiercest business man in England, eventually completing his law degree at Oxford.
you know i only joke about this because i cannot imagine a thing more riduculous than them going their separate ways right? okay. good.
Phil's tried to move on, but nothing ever quite stuck. He spends a lot of time with his friends and their kids, trying to ignore the gnawing loneliness. He thinks about picking up the phone once in a while but all he sees of Dan is the outward success and he always ends up telling himself Dan's better off.
Then the phone rings one day and it's a number he doesn't recognize but a voice he could never in a million years forget. Dan misses him. Tries to be casual about it, asks if Phil will be in London any time soon.
Phil says yes. Doesn't mention that the only real reason would be to see Dan. They have their coffee, shy and stilted for maybe ten minutes before they fall into old habits and it shouldn't be that easy, right? But it is. A coffee turns into lunch that turns into a walk down the street until their feet hurt but neither want to say goodbye and then someone suggests dinner and by the time the restaurant is going dark Dan insists Phil should just come back to his and there's a moment back in Dan's flat where it hurts to see Dan's life without him but the look on Dan's face is all he needs.
They start out slow, together, again but it's always been zero to sixty for them and they are both so famous now that they can't hide it for long - and they decide not to hide it at all. They're Dan and Phil again, older and wiser and newly made without anything to hide, and it's an inevitable slide back into a re-merging of their professional selves as well.
#phanmarried









