Those Who Love | Phan

Twenty - Those Who Expose

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Expose: reveal the true objectionable nature of someone or something.
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It had been a week since Dan stood up to the bullies and honestly he was terrified, mostly because they hadn't done anything.

He was glad though in a way that they hadn't done anything yet and that gave him more time to spend with Phil, but he was so worried because he knew that they wouldn't settle down. They were planning something, and he had no idea when they would strike. He just had to wait, and waiting was the worst.

Phil noticed that he'd not been himself, and quite a few times thought he had done something wrong. Dan had never been this nervy before, it was quite strange to him.

Dan just hoped that after all of this, Phil wouldn't be as hurt as he worried he would be.

-

It was a Saturday night and Dan was sat in bed on his laptop, scrolling through the Internet aimlessly. Eleanor was in bed even though it was only nine in the afternoon and all was quiet and well...until his phone buzzed with a tweet he was tagged in.

A video of him, well, not him. Prince him. Posted by the one of the boys who he didn't even know the name of, yet who he threatened. He signed, this was it. He plugged in his headphones and pressed play.

The video started off with Dan in his home country making a speech. You could clearly tell it was him, and he even introduced himself. The screen turned to black, and all of the boys who had threatened him showed up on the screen.

"This is Dan Howell, the new kid. Did anybody know he was a prince? Nope, because he's a liar," A slideshow of photos of Dan started to appear. "This is who he was before he came over to our school, a snotty, know it all prince, who thinks he can have whatever he wants because he's royalty in a place nobody has even heard of. He doesn't deserve our love, but then again, there's someone else who doesn't either."

His heart could've stopped. Please don't bring Phil into this, he thought.

Unfortunately, photos of Phil started to appear on the slideshow. And then came a photo-shopped photo of Phil, wearing "peasant" clothes, Dan wiped his face with the back of his hand once he realised he was crying.

"Little Phil Lester," The slideshow contuined with photos of Phil and Dan. "Or as we should call him, little peasant boy who lives in a poor, old house with his poor family. How sad?" The boys paused to laugh. "It was quite obvious Dan only felt pity for him, and I guess we should too. I mean, have you seen what Dan did to the peasant?"

And that's when Dan lost it.

A video of Dan paying the guys to stop bullying Phil showed up, he didn't even know the guys were filming him. Once that video was over, they carried on throwing insults at them both.

"That's all for this week, and to sum it up, Dan is a snotty prince and only felt sorry for the peasant boy. We all should too." And with one final laugh, the video cut out.

He immediately went off Twitter, trying to ignore all the horrible comments aimed at Phil. What made this whole situation worse was nobody was commenting insults about him, they were all about Phil. He quickly texted him.

Dan
Please don't believe the video, none of it is true.

Phil replied almost straight away.

Phil
It looked pretty convincing to me.

Phil
Why did you lie? I would have loved you either way.

Dan
Phil please believe me. Absolutely everything on that video isn't real.

Dan pressed send before he could think. He was so used to lying that he did it kind of on accident. He regretted it immediately.

Dan
Phil?

Phil
I'm turning off my phone, don't try and speak to me ever again.

Dan
I'm sorry.

Phil
Yeah. And I'm sorry I ever believed you.

Sobs racked through Dan's body as he bought his knees to his chest. He felt so stupid for lying to everybody.

His only dream in life was to be normal. To come here and live a normal life, with normal friends, and normal people. He knew he couldn't have normal even if he payed for it with the stacks of money he had.

Why couldn't he had just told Phil the truth in the first place? He could have avoided this all, it all could have been okay. He could still have Phil. Not anymore...

He had to fix this. One way or another.

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