I'll Leave You With The Outtakes // Phan

Part 20

It's not until two weeks later when he is sitting cold and alone in bed scrolling through Dan's laptop that he finds it.  It's a file folder that's been made a shortcut on the home page of the laptop, and Phil's hands seem to freeze over the keys.

IMPORTANT

The title's in all caps, and when Phil sees what is in it, a part of him seems to shrivel and die. His head tilting towards the ceiling, breathing shallow, for the first time since Dan died he feels something. Not a good something, but something nonetheless.

His hands are shaking so badly. He's scared to even look at it, scared because this is the last piece of Dan he has. That's untrue, really, because he has all Dan's clothes and pictures and his phone and his everything. Not to mention the amount of Danisnotonfire things that are everywhere, all of the videos and the merch and the pictures and art. Yet, somehow this feels like it, the very last thing.

Phil's dry expression makes way for a choking sob as his eyes land on the thumbnail and title of the video file – it's a picture from the first PhilIsNotOnFire, and the words beneath it: For Phil. 

PINOF, the video that Dan resented for so long, now something he went back and pulled footage from apparently. Phil doesn't know whether to laugh or cry harder. This is what Dan was working on maybe, why he kept it all hidden from Phil. So it could be something for After.

His heart is going a million miles a minute and he's scared that any second now it's going to just stop. Part of him, doesn't want to see it. The other part needs to see it.

With shaking fingers, he clicks.

Dan's sitting in his room, typical video style. And from what Phil can tell it's from months ago, before Dan got bad. Whenever he was filming—it must've been this. The Dan on the screen smiles, it's soft and almost sad.

"Hello Internet, oh wait...wrong type of video. Hi, Phil. You're in your room right now, probably listening to me talking and wondering what insane video idea has gripped me this time. Well, it's not the toilet tag, I can tell you that."

Dan pauses, brushing his hair nervously to the side,"So, I had this all scripted out, but I think I'm just going to go with it, and it'll be a giant fucking waffle. Complete with the soppy inspirational life lesson at the end, maybe. We'll see I guess."

"If you're watching this, either you stole my laptop and decided to snoop through my files, which in that case I might have to kill you...or I'm gone. And it's really scary to think about, I'm really really scared of dying. But—that's not what I'm supposed to be talking about so..."

"The point of all of this is, I'm more than just scared of dying, I'm scared of leaving you behind. Because I love you. Fuck, I love you much. And—I've loved you from the very first moment I watched one of your videos, and I'll still be loving you whenever I draw my very last breath. And you know—if there's an after life or whatever. I'll be loving you even when I'm during the yoga challenge with Jesus. Hell—even if this very short blip of a life we have on earth is all that there is, and at the end we're all just nothing. I'll still be loving you."

"We've recorded our entire lives on video it seems like. Or the better versions of our lives that we wanted the world to see. Danisnotonfire and AmazingPhil the dynamic duo, the heterosexual life partners. I'd like to think that on and off camera we could still be Dan and Phil, or that some part of us was reflected in the videos that were our lives."

"Or maybe we cut that out. I—I don't know. But I just wanted to thank you. Because we went on this really big long journey together. And we recorded a lot of it. But—I think what's more important are the parts we didn't upload. So...I want to leave you with the outtakes."