alllll the fics

butterfly kisses and dandelion chains

Description: "Me? You can't love me, Dan, we're not family. That's not how it works."

Warnings: Literally none. It's just like, 7 year old Dan and Phil talking about what love means.

"Phil? Do you know what love is?"

Phil looked up from where his hands were locked into the grass, ripping it up and tossing it onto the boy beside him. Phil untangled his hands from the blades and sat back on his heels. "I don't know. Maybe."

"You can't know maybe, Philip, love doesn't work that way." Phil scrunched his nose up, always hating when Dan called him by his full name. "Well then, what do you know?" Dan shrugged. "I know some stuff." Phil picked up one leaf and twirled it through his fingers. "I know that I love my mum, my dad, and my rabbit." Dan nodded. "Yeah, but what is that? Like, what does it mean?" Phil shook his head, turning it to look up. After a long while of silence, Phil answered. "I dunno."

"Well," Dan said, tilting his head and lacing a piece of grass around his tiny finger, "I love my dog and my brother and my gran." He looked down from the sky. "And you."

"Me? You can't love me, Dan, we're not family. That's not how it works." Dan crossed his arms over his chest. "Can, too. My dog's not family either and I love him." Phil went back to picking at the grass quietly, not having a response for that. After a while, he plucked up a half-opened yellow flower and twisted it around his finger, looking back up to Dan. "How come you're wondering this anyways?" Dan shook his head. "Mum was talking about it, and I started wondering. And how come you're so against me loving you?" Phil quieted down again, picking another flower and tying the stem to the other. Finally, he answered, mumbling, "S'weird, that's all."

"It doesn't have to be weird, Phil, we're best friends. Friends love each other." Phil just kept tying stems together, eyes flickering back and forth between his hands. "Besides, you are my family. You're like my brother." Phil looked up again, squinting at Dan. "You have a brother." Dan rolled his eyes. "Phil, c'mon. Just let me finish." Phil's eyes went back to his hands, and he kept picking and tying the tiny flowers. "Anyways. Phil, I do love you, and I wanted to say that I hope we're best friends. Forever." Phil tied the last two stems together, completing the circle he was making. He smiled down at his hands, lifting the chain up and onto the top of Dan's curl-covered head. "Mum said forever's an awful long time, Daniel." Dan smiled back at him as Phil straightened the chain out on his head. "Doesn't matter. I'm ready to do that."