Phan One-Shots

Tri-ceratops

A/n: Get it?? It's 'tri' because there's three of them now, a happy little family :)) jk this is angst u sad fucks get wrekt (the Sequel to "Stegosaurus")

Genre: Fluffy Angst?

Wordcount: 18,935

Summary: Opening yourself up to a new relationship after a disastrous break-up can be hard, but throw in the responsibility of being a single parent and it all goes to shit. Will Dan be able to embrace his emotions before they end up sabotaging things between him and Phil? Will his son Joey ever stop being obsessed with dinosaurs?!

Warnings: general trust issues, fear of commitment, non-graphic mentions of a bad relationship in the past, car crashes (minor injuries, dont worry im not satan)

Dan's life had developed a routine over the course of the past year since leaving his husband to start anew, as shocking as that revelation had seemed when he first realized. He wasn't a routine person, he'd struggled his entire life to get his shit together and plan things ahead, when suddenly every week had started to take the same course all on its own. It wasn't an intentional thing, he hardly even noticed it was happening until it was too late.

Maybe it was the pressure put on him now that he was the only adult in the household for the first time in his life, maybe there was some belated dad-mojo kicking in much later than anticipated, but dare he say it... he felt responsible. And for once, that concept didn't terrify him.

He'd started to revel in it, beaming proudly whenever he was accused of being too early or "the mom friend" of the group. He balanced everything expertly, aside from the minor hiccup of questioning his entire career path and deciding to quit in hopes of making a living from home. Even then, he'd made the right decision for himself even though it hadn't been the easy one.

The routine had adapted easily enough. Dan doesn't go to work anymore, he stays at home and drags himself to sit down in front of a shiny new camera he splurged a chunk of his personal savings on. It hadn't been his idea originally, but rather his closest friend had suckered him into trying it out by featuring him on her channel first. Louise was the one that had been there for him through every last struggle he'd faced during the stressful adopting process, he had no reason to doubt her motherly expertise now.

She was right. Of course she was right. He'd taken to the idea like a moth to a flame, had started listing off a slew of ideas for videos before they'd even finished filming that first collab together. He'd been featured on her channel many times since then, especially after he broke the news to her that he was considering giving up on the draining shithole that was a job in law to focus on creating things full-time.

Joey loved it. That was probably the most important part. Screw the routine, screw the amount of effort it'd take to make a name for himself, he could even justify screwing how he felt on the matter... what mattered most was that Joey was happy. Of course he was, in hindsight it was stupid to worry that he'd have a problem with seeing more of Dan and less of the teenage girl that had to babysit him late into the evenings whenever Dan was working on a case.

Not only did Joey love seeing more of his father, he loved the idea of filming videos nearly as much as Dan did. At first this had seemed like a hinderance more than anything, having to carefully set up the camera whenever his son wanted to use it to film nonsense, because hell if he was going to trust a seven year old with a thousand pound piece of technology on his own. It quickly proved to be a blessing in disguise though, when they realized that people found Joey's natural childlike sarcastic charm even more appealing than Dan's sarcastic existential rants.