Dan was in the living room, setting up his camera to film his Truth or Dare 5 video, after asking his viewers for suggestions, he was sure he’d have plenty truths and dares to do.
He sat down on his and Phil’s sofa and started the camera. “Hello internet, my name is Dan and I have an annual tradition here on YouTube where I totally destroy my reputation for the entertainment of people I don’t even know.” he paused a second to catch his breath, “I have put my life in yours hands, so everything that is about to happen is totally your fault.” He stared blankly at the camera for a few seconds, hoping that it would let his words sink in.
The brown haired man scrolled through his tumblr inbox looking for an interesting dare to do first until he found one, “Do parkour.” He read, “This won’t end well…” then moved the position of the camera to film his attempt at the sport.
First he climbed on the edge of the sofa, then tried to do a forward roll, but failed miserably, so he ended up falling off of the seat with a loud bang “Ow, my g-butt,” he wined, stumbling over his words, “I think I broke my butt.” Before climbing back into the shot of the camera and saying “At least now I can say I tried exercise and it didn’t work out.”
The next thing Dan decided to do was a truth, after scrolling through the mass of questions he settled with, “How big is your D?” knowing he could make a sarcastic joke out of it, he let the words flow out of his mouth, “Well, just between you and me ehy,” he smirked, “it’s pretty huge.” Awkwardly chuckling, the man carried on, “Y’know what I’m saying?” pausing then carrying on once more, “Oh wait, you- you wanna see it?” he reached down to the floor where the giant D that Phil had made him lay, after showing it off to the camera and making a few jokes about it, so he could decide if he wanted to edit them out later, Dan carried on with the video.
After that, he picked a dare, this one read, “’Pretend you’re a presenter on a wilderness show and show us the ‘Phil’ habitat.’ Well okay, I’m sure he won’t mind too much” Dan chuckled to himself at his joke.
Dan decided to put a random white hat, with a rim around it on and went over to his drawers to grab his ‘secret’ eyeliner that he used every so often, he decided not to use his philisnotonfire sharpie, because that was the very one he had used the first time he and Phil made a video together, and he didn’t want to waste it. He decided to use the eyeliner to draw a moustache and a beard upon his face, just so he looked more like a wilderness explorer.
Then grabbing his camera he walked out of his room and up to Phil’s open door, being pretty sure Phil was in the shower, the brown haired man clicked record on his camera. Pointing it at Phil’s open door then back to him he spoke, “We are about to enter the Phil-lion habitat, where you will find Phil’s and lion’s roaming freely, we are going to have to be careful.”
As he entered the room, the camera still recording, “Look, we have a lion already,” he crouched down, as if to stay out of eyesight of the –stuffed- beast.
Phil’s bedroom was pretty tidy, there were only a few socks laying about that Dan called ‘wild fish’.
“Ahh! Looks like we have found a cave folks,” Dan said, getting into the role he was playing. The ‘cave’ was in fact underneath Phil’s bed, “Let’s see what we can find.”
Reaching into the ‘cave’, he pulled out various ‘wild fish’, a few ‘leaves’ (random pieces of paper) and what seemed like an A4 notebook. Losing his character completely, and turning back into Dan again, the man studied the cover of the book. It had the letter’s ‘P, H, I and L’ spelling out ‘Phil’ stuck on, that were drawn carefully and fancily.
As Dan sat on Phil’s bed, he carefully opened the book, as if it was a fragile ornament, the first page was blank, so he turned to the next. On the second page of the book there was a drawing of what looked like a cityscape at night, but with an explosion of different colours coming off each building, Dan recognised that view, it was the view out of their old apartment’s window back in Manchester.
Turning over the next few pages, the man saw many beautiful drawings, each one looked as it was drawn with such precision, you could see the single pencil stroke that outlined each shape, giving it its own character.
About half way through the sketchbook, Dan saw a drawing of a house. But it wasn’t just any house. It was their house. Phil had got the proportions exactly right, making it look amazingly realistic, almost like a photograph. There were cute, little touches added, like how he’d drawn inside their living room, with the Muse poster on the wall and various little ornaments on the window sill, all what you could see from the outside if you looked closely. This drawing must have taken days to complete as each individual brick was drawn, shaded and had a splash of water colour on, giving the small area of the page its own breath of life.
As Dan was running his fingers gently over the precisely drawn shapes, his flatmate walked into the room unannounced, well he shouldn’t have to have announced himself as it was his bedroom Dan was in, with just a towel wrapped around his waist.
When it clicked in Phil’s mind what his friend was looking at he leaped towards him, shouting “Shit, Dan! No don’t look at that! Give it to me!” The man looked up to Phil, who had a worried glance on his face, “Can I have it back now please?” he asked shyly, holding out his hand and looking down at his feet.
Instead of handing the book over to the raven haired man, he took his hands and pulled him down to sit on the bed next to him. “How come you never told me that you did things like this?” Dan asked softly, keeping hold off Phil’s hands with one of his slightly tanned hands and gesturing towards his sketchbook with the other.
“I don’t know…” he muttered, looking down at his hands, not making eye contact with his friend, “I just don’t like people knowing… It- it just makes me think that everyone will think I’m some kind of pansy, or something…”
“Phil! They wouldn’t think that just because you like art!” Dan exclaimed, “You could probably make money on these if you were to sell them, I’m sure so many people would buy them. They’re fucking amazing!”
Phil looked up from his hands and into Dan’s dark brown eyes, “You really think that?” he almost squeaked, as tears started dripping down his pale face.
Pulling the crying man into a hug, squeezing him tightly, and whispering in his ear, “Of course I do, I think they’re perfect.” And pulled out of the hug, pressing a short, sweet kiss to the other’s lips, then pressing their heads together, “And you’re perfect too.”
The two kissed again, but slightly more passionately, before locking themselves into another embrace, completely forgetting that Dan’s camera was still filming his ‘documentary’ and forgetting that Phil was only wearing a towel loosely around waist.
But it didn’t matter…
