are you in love with a notion //phan

(5) 14th February 2017

Dan's least favourite day of the year: Valentines Day. He hated it in high school and sixth form, loved it for about three years after that, but had now come full circle and he despised more than ever before.

His inbox would get flooded with messages from the awfully obnoxious type of shippers pestering him about Phil. They all knew he'd had a girlfriend for four and a half years, but that didn't stop them making both him and Phil uncomfortable with their speculating. Hell, he'd even read a (completely genuine) theory stating Annie was just a cover-up to hide 'Phan', which, whilst being slightly offensive to her and Phil, was also utterly ridiculous.

One specific video would get posted online at least twice on the fourteenth of the second month, he remembered Phil having to fill in copyright form after copyright form around 2012, and Dan could have done nothing but watched him get more and more annoyed with every signature. He hated to think that Phil would be stuck doing the same thing each year, except with someone who wasn't affiliated with the video whatsoever, which just made it worse. Not to mention the contents of the video being about someone Phil no longer loved. Annie didn't deserve it, having her Valentines Day ruined every year by the damn thing.

There would still be crazed fans who still couldn't grasp the fact they wouldn't know anything about his private life. Or that his private life was any of their business in the first place. Dan had learnt it was best if avoided his Tumblr tag and only checked his Twitter a couple of times per day because of them. It was also best for Dan to remove himself from any situation that had the power to make him think about Phil (or lash out at a fan or two, something he'd been close to doing in the past).

Turning his phone off was the easy part, he had no reason to really be using it; the difficult part was distracting himself for the duration of the day. He hadn't spoken to the majority of his 'friends' for about six months to a year, the ones he did talk to lived overseas or had partners they'd want to spend their Valentines Day with. So he was alone.

That usually meant Dan would spend his day on a gaming console with a bottle of some sort. But he felt determined to put a stop to the latter. Dan was at least trying to listen to Louise, he'd even gone as far as to book an appointment with his GP (he was still debating whether to cancel it) - their judgement would be better than Louise's.

He'd had nothing for about two days and he could already feel his thumb tremor slightly against his thigh. Dan tried to stop the movement but his attempts ended up being futile, eventually, he gave up and waited for his thumb to stop on its own accord. It calmed after a while but didn't stop entirely. Playing video games was borderline impossible because of it.

The animated face of Yoshi on the television screen looked upset that he'd come in ninth place. Dan turned on the replay of the race since he couldn't really play anymore. He watched as the car flinched or collided with the walls of the track every thirty seconds or so.

After that, he gave up on games entirely.

Dan promised himself he wouldn't go on social media, but he had nothing else to do - he would have filmed a video if it weren't for the fans who'd pick up on his thumb running haywire, there'd be too many questions that he didn't want to answer. The usual flood of notifications came in from his Twitter when he pressed the blue icon on his phone, more than usual, likely because of Valentine's day. There was a reason he only got notifications from people he followed, he'd even turned them off so he wouldn't use the app. Obviously, that plan had failed.

The majority of his inbox mentioned Phil, but not in the way Dan expected.

forgottenlemons: Phil followed Dan and it's Valentines Day ;)))) y'all know what that means
Soccermathdemon: @forgottenlemons it
means ur a demon lmfaoo