24 Hours - Phan

11:30am

"Phil? Is that you? What are you doing upstairs so early? It's only 11:30" Dan's disembodied voice floats up the stairs.

"Just working," Phil yells back as he scrambles to right the mess he made while flailing about. Is it really 11:30 already? he thought. That means he's been pondering life in front of the computer for 2 hours. He also realizes he hasn't even started editing the first video yet. How is he going to explain that?

Phil can hear bare feet padding up the stairs and Dan soon appears in the doorway.

"Working??" Dan squawks in a high pitched voice. "How long have you been awake?" he says in disbelief.

Phil looks up and tries hard to suppress a smile. He never gets tired of seeing Dan right after he wakes up. Dan is standing indignity in the doorway with one hand on his hip and the other holding an overly full bowl of cereal. His black sweatpants and t-shirt, now soaking up splashes of milk that have sloshed out of the bowl, are rumpled from sleep. Ever since he had made the decision to embrace his naturally wavy hair instead of painstakingly straightening it every day, it now sticks out in bizarre angles and tufts when he gets out of bed.

"Only about 20 minutes. I haven't even had a chance to get started yet." He feels bad for the lie, and he blushes slightly thinking about his two hours of marathon daydreaming. He glances at the computer and the folders filled with hours and hours of unedited videos waiting for him.

"Phil, why are there pens all over the place?" he asks curiously as he steps further into the room.

"Oh...I'm not sure...." He struggles for a plausible reason why there are now a dozen or so pens scattered around when they were clearly not like that last night when they were up here filming.

As he stammers and stalls, Dan walks over and plops himself down in the other chair, spilling more cereal in the process. He spins the chair around to face Phil and props his feet up on the edge of Phil's chair, almost in his lap.

"What else are you doing today?" Dan asks through mouthfuls of cereal, as he leans in closer to the computer and grabs the mouse.

"Oh..ummm....the market maybe," Phil answers, suddenly aware of Dan's close proximity. "A live stream tonight. You?"

Giving a noncommittal shrug, Dan idly opens and closes some files and moves some things around on the desktop. "Do you know what's going to be ready to upload today?" he asks, nodding at the computer.

"Probably the last Sims and My Horse Prince," Phil answers. I hope.

Dan puts his cereal bowl down and laughs with his hands covering his face. "I don't know what more we can do with Horse Prince and not have it get any more disturbing."

"It's all about context," answers Phil. "Compared to the rest of the internet it's not so bad."

"She's in love with a horse, Phil!"

"But he has a human head!" Phil answers.

"That isn't helping your case," he says with a wink.

Dan pulls his feet down and stands, heading towards the stairs. "Let me know when you're finished," he yells over his shoulder. "I have new anime if you want to watch it together."

Phil startles when he realizes that while they were talking, he had automatically laid his hand down on Dan's leg without even thinking about it. He flops back into his chair with a sigh.