Get Out Your Damn Umbrellas

Chapter 17

It was incredible to see the outpouring of love that came from their audience once the video was posted. Even before that, plenty of people were making and sharing art and gifs for Dan's birthday, but within an hour of Phil uploading that short, slightly awkward baking video, they were already trending on Tumblr and Twitter.

With Dan's permission, Phil logged onto his account and liked some of the art on his behalf. Now and then Phil picked out a few of the cute, happy drawings and heartfelt messages and showed them to Dan in hopes that would cheer him up. However, he avoided letting Dan see comments from people talking about how frail and sickly he looked, or from people taking Dan's comment about lung capacity and speculating about what kind of lung disease he must have, or from people scolding everyone for speculating, or from some who seemed rather annoyed that Dan and Phil still hadn't told them what was going on. None of that was really out of the ordinary, though, and as usual, the good far outweighed the bad.

Dan got a lovely text from his grandma a few days later once she'd gotten around to watching the video. Of course, she also expressed concern for how thin he was and that she hoped that Phil would "feed him up" properly. In his response, Dan assured her that he and Phil had finished all of the cupcakes, which was half true. He'd actually just eaten the strawberry buttercream frosting off of most of them with a spoon.

As for Phil's mum, she took Dan and Phil's return to YouTube as her cue that it was time to drop by for a visit. Thankfully, she called Phil ahead of time to let him know when she was coming over. Dan still became incredibly anxious from hearing an unexpected knock at the door.

Even though during their phone call Phil had asked his mum not to mention anything about cancer during her visit, the first thing Mrs. Lester said to Dan after fawning over him a bit was, "I brought you lads some more homemade soup and fresh baked bread that I thought would be good for dipping. I know it can be a bit of a challenge to get your appetite back after... well, you know."

Dan just nodded politely and thanked her for going to the trouble while Phil muttered something about making tea and ran off to the kitchen.

Watching him go, Kath turned to Dan and said, "Nigel's sorry that he wasn't able to come by today, but we've both kept you in our thoughts these past few months." Lowering her voice, she asked, "How's Phil been handling everything?"

"He's, um, doing alright, I guess," Dan muttered, "but I think he could use a bit of mothering at the moment. Whenever I'm not eating enough, he doesn't eat much either, and I'm not really in a position right now where I can badger him into taking better care of himself, even though sometimes I wish I could."

Kath gave him a gentle smile with a hint of sadness in her eyes. "You're such a sweet boy. We're glad Phil picked you to be a part of our family."

Dan smiled back at her, though it was a struggle to keep the swirling vortex of painful emotions inside him bottled up. Some of it was guilt for keeping secrets about what he was really going through and essentially lying to this dear woman who treated him like a son. Also it hurt quite a lot being reminded that he hadn't spoken to his own mother since Christmas, and she still had no idea that anything was wrong.

There was another knock at the door, and Dan just about jumped out of his skin. Kath laid a hand on his arm and said, "Goodness, dear, don't give yourself a heart attack. That's probably Martyn. He mentioned that he might stop by for a bit."

Taking a few calming breaths, Dan closed his eyes briefly and listened to his surroundings. From the sound of it, Phil was still fiddling with the tea kettle in the kitchen. Leaving Kath's side, Dan said loud enough for Phil to hear, "I'll get it."

Martyn seemed rather surprised when Dan answered the door.

"Hey," Dan murmured quietly.

"Um, hey," Martyn responded, hesitantly studying Dan's appearance. "I'm... glad to see you're... feeling better."