my happy little pill | phan

2: We're Just Platonic Friends

Phil's POV

The first thing I notice about the world when I wake up is that it smells strongly of Gucci perfume and hairspray. It's a nice smell; a familiar smell. I feel relaxed and sleepy in my bed, despite it being morning time and I should probably get up soon.

I must have rolled the duvet up into a tight coil because there is something warm wrapped beneath my right arm. I snuggle into it and breathe in it's strong scent of hairspray. I must have sprayed a lot of the stuff on my duvet cover accidentally yesterday.

As I lean into the warm collected duvet held under my arm, something tickles my nose. I jerk my head back on the pillow and slowly open my eyes to see what it is.

At first, the world is too blurry to actually decipher anything. Then I see a mop of darkness on my cushion. I squint.

A mop of dark hair.

"Oh, my God," I whisper. I push myself up onto my elbows, careful not to move my right arm which is caught in his shirt. Dan is asleep with his half-moon eyelids sewn shut and his face void of expression. The room is deathly quiet. I stare.

What is he doing in my bed? And why is my arm wrapped around his waist...?

What. Happened.

S-l-o-w-l-y, I remove my arm from Dan's waist, untangling my fingers from his dark shirt. I place my cold hand on his neck, which I know will wake him up. He hates his neck being touched.

"Mhm," I hear Dan's muffled voice and he shuffles. "Stop touching my neck."

I don't take away my hand yet. "Dan, why are you in my bed? What...?"

He rolls over so that he's facing me and a smile is plastered to his face, lighting up his brown eyes. He laughs. And laughs. I notice the way his eyes crinkle when he laughs, and I smile too even though I'm still confused.

"Good morning, baby," Dan whispers in a mock-seductive voice. I smack his arm. Hard. He rubs it sorely.

"If this is revenge for me spooking you in the hall..." I say.

Dan keeps laughing and I find a small smile tugging at my lips. My head falls back onto the pillowcase and I rest it there. I'm too lazy to prop myself up at this hour - 10:33am according to my phone - in the morning. Dan closes his eyes with his head half on my pillow.

"Of course it's bloody revenge," he says, his eyes still shut and his mouth holding a grin. "You know I hate the freaking dark. What you did was horrible, you sadist."

My lungs ache with early morning laughter. "And you call waking up to find your flatmate in your bed revenge?"

Dan kicks my shin lightly under the duvet. "I confused you. Momentarily. Didn't I?"

"Yeah, I thought I had somehow been teleported back to 2010," I say.

Dan gives me a dark look. It's something that we joke about sometimes, but we never discuss it very much. Back in 2010, we briefly had a relationship...sort of. It was kind of a friends with benefits thing, so whenever a Phan shipper asked us if we were dating we would always deny it. Because we have never dated, or slept together for that matter. Not really.
It takes a bit of effort to annoy Dan so much that he'll stop talking to me for a long while, but whenever someone brings up "Phan" he can get really cagey. It's our secret, and it's a secret that we'll keep locked away and hidden forever.

Forever sounds like such a long time.

"What, did you really?" Dan smirks a little. He doesn't have much of a problem talking about it with me however. Generally speaking.

"Dan, holy crap, will you get out of my bed," I roll my eyes. "I'd like Cheerios and black coffee for breakfast, thankyouverymuch."

He looks at me. "Fuck off, if you think I'm making breakfast. What did your last slave die of?"

"Heart...disease," I comment.

"Really?" he laughs and turns away a small bit so that he's looking at my ceiling. "That's a shame."

I creep my cold hands onto his stomach silently, sliding them under his tee shirt. He gasps and screams when he feels their iciness, and smacks my hands away. He kicks out his legs and our feet war against each other, writhing under the covers. I dig my legs under his and flip him on top of me, giggling hysterically.

"Dan, you're losing," I remark.

"I didn't realise this was a competition, Phil," he replies.

He suddenly collapses on top of me with his face on my chest, and he lies completely still for a while. I rope my arms around him and join my hands so he can't move far.

"Thank you," he says quietly, and I barely hear it. I don't think he expected me to.

"For what?" I say. Dan relaxes against me, with his entire body on top of mine and his legs locked around my legs.

His fingers snake around my shoulder and dig in softly. I can feel his breathing. "For saving me, Phil. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for you. And if you didn't exist..."

"Dan, it's okay," I whisper. "Don't make me cry, the day hasn't even begun yet."

He laughs and I do too. But what scares me is the fact that if I had never met Dan, would he be okay? Who would he be lying on top of at 10:33am on a morning like this? Okay, that sounded wrong. Dan jokes about his "existential crisis", but there was one very dark period of our time living together where he became depressed and I was scared of what he might do to himself if no one helped him.

And a world without Dan Howell is not a world I ever want to see.