#phic stuff

Dan blinked his eyes open with no sense of urgency, rolling over to snooze the alarm beside his bed. It read 7:00, and he wasn’t sure why he was getting up that early, but he wasn’t pleased. He stared at his boring, beige wall for a moment, contemplating whether or not he should get up, when he came to the realization that there was something in his mouth. 

“Bleh,” he spat, disgusted by the spit covering the bag. He looked at the bag for a moment, and a wave of chills came over him as memories came rushing back to him. “Fucking damnit,” he whispered, looking around his childhood bedroom. He’d woken up so at peace there that he’d completely forgotten that he wasn’t eighteen anymore. Blissful ignorance was preferred to this bullshit. 

He picked up his old phone from the nightstand and saw a text from Phil. “That was easy,” he muttered, and then furrowed his brow. Dan couldn’t remember it completely, but that seemed identical to the text he’d received from Phil ten years earlier on the day that they meant. He glanced up at the date on the top of the notification screen--October 19, 2009.

Dan’s eyes widened as he scrambled to access Phil’s twitter, and his suspicions were confirmed--everything was identical. “Okay, calm down,” he said to himself, already on his feet and nervously pacing the room. “There’s billions of parallel universes out there! There must be one tiny difference in this universe and mine, right?” 

He banged his head on the wall, struggling to search his memory for anything that anyone had told him throughout the week that could explain this universe--this final universe that Dan would have a chance to travel through before all would collapse. 

“I’m living in tropes,” his own voice echoed in his head. 

“Follow them, and you will find your way home,” a Phil from days ago responded. 

Dan picked his head up from where it was resting on the wall and looked into his mirror. “Follow the trope.” Realization after realization hit him, each of them like another dodgeball in his personal secondary school hell. 2009!Phan was one of the most popular phanfiction tropes; he knew that. Every other trope was in an alternate universe, but this one took place in theirs. And it took place at that very moment. He was in his own timeline; he had to be. 

He looked to his side and found the suitcase that a younger him had packed the night before, his train ticket to Manchester sitting on top. The clothes he’d worn all those years ago when he’d met Phil were laying on a chair beside it. Dan took a deep breath, looking back into the mirror. He had a train to catch. 

Everything from there until Manchester went off without a hitch. Dan had no problems getting on the train, and the ride itself was pleasant enough--it was when he was approaching Manchester that everything began to go wrong. 

He was in his own timeline, and he’d tried thus far to recreate everything he’d done when he traveled ten years earlier, but he couldn’t do that forever. How would he react when he met Phil? How would Phil help him get back to 2019? And worst of all, would his actions now change his future with Phil? 

As Dan stepped onto the platform in Manchester, he began to feel as if he was being torn in half. Half of him was being pulled, almost against his will, towards Phil, his future and his trope. The other half was petrified with fear and wanted to turn right back around and get back on the train in fear that if he interacted with Phil he wouldn’t even have a future to go back to. 

“Follow the trope,” he repeated to himself, putting a wide smile on his face. He ran towards Phil without even thinking; he already knew exactly where Phil would be. A wave of sadness fell over him; the memory of the joy he’d felt the first time he’d done this made him feel even worse about the situation he was now stuck in. 

As he neared Phil, he saw the bright smile that had been engraved in his brain for the last ten years. Dan’s smile became a bit more genuine as he buried himself in Phil’s arms, a familiar warmth enveloping them. Much had changed in ten years, but the feeling of home that Phil gave him, even though Dan had no way of knowing if it was even real, would never leave him. 

“I can’t wait to show you around Manchester!” Phil exclaimed, almost giddier than Dan remembered. 

“I can’t wait to see it!” That was a lie. He knew everything about Manchester. He knew everything about Phil, too; the two of them had lived there for years. But Phil didn’t know that. 

“Let’s go grab some Starbucks,” he said, and Dan nodded, his body jerking a bit afterwards. Was that what he had done the first time? Was Starbucks their first stop, or did they go to the Apple Store first? What if he’d already changed their future with just a simple nod? 

Dan knew he’d screwed up when Phil remained completely silent all the way to the Starbucks a couple of blocks away. It was as if they were both actors, and they were just waiting until they had more lines to speak. 

They reached the Starbucks and ordered caramel macchiatos, and Dan couldn’t help but crack a smile. It was odd for him to relive moments that had become iconic to thousands of people, but it was almost therapeutic. If the entire universe was going to explode at the end of the day, it might as well be the best day of his life. 

Dan allowed himself to fall into the experience, and his anxiety lifted ever so slightly. He and Phil talked and laughed, and they felt natural for the first time. Dan felt real for the first time. 

“You can’t tell me Muse’s latest album was their best. I mean, come on!” Dan exclaimed, smiling at Phil with the softest possible form of anger. 

“I’m not saying that! I’m just not saying it’s the worst. The worst was clearly Simu-Symmetry. Origin of Symmetry.” 

Dan furrowed his brow. “Phil, you love Origin of Symmetry. We both do.” Dan replayed Phil’s phrasing in his head. It sounded almost like he was beginning to say simulation, the first word in the title of Muse’s 2018 album. 

“I’m just messing with you,” Phil said, appearing a bit uneasy. “Symmetry is the best.” 

Dan chuckled nervously. “Yeah.” 

Dan couldn’t help but notice more things that seemed off throughout the day. It seemed almost as if he and Phil both were simply going through the motions--as if things that they’d had to discuss and decide on ten years ago they simply did. 

It wasn’t long before they found themselves taking their first picture together in the Apple Store. “Picture?” Phil asked after charging directly towards the spot Dan remembered the picture being taken in. He might have been losing his mind, but he could have sworn they meandered the store until they found themselves there. It was as if they were just checking boxes. 

They took the picture, both of them struggling in attempts to recreate the exact picture--Dan could only remember because they’d done it in PINOF 10 only a year earlier. They did it, though, as far as Dan could tell, and Phil posted it on Dailybooth. 

And then they were there. The Manchester Eye. The place the two of them had first kissed. 

Dan wasn’t ready for this stop. The moment he’d first kissed Phil there years ago had been the most magical moment of his life, and still to date it was the memory he pulled whenever he was asked to think of something happy. He wasn’t sure if he could handle tainting it with this fake do-over. It was like he was back in the VCR days, and he was about to tape over his happiest memory. 

As the two of them went up in the wheel, Dan’s head was spinning so fast that he couldn’t keep track of his thoughts. The only thing he could cling onto was the same mantra he’d been repeating in his head for the entire day: follow the trope. 

All he could seem to do was follow the trope. He was confident now that it was pulling him, guiding him to do things he wasn’t completely sure he wanted to do. He felt helpless, as if he was back in high school theatre class and had to kiss a girl onstage. He wasn’t even himself anymore--he was an actor, a character in a story that was no longer his own. Follow the trope, his brain said. But his heart told him to stop it all, to break character. 

Breaking character, though, could have serious consequences. What if he’d done the one thing he’d truly feared all day and destroyed the future he had with Phil? What if he lost his only chance to repair the timeline? 

But then again, what if the real Phil, his Phil, his 2019 Phil was sitting across from him, and he wouldn’t know until he broke character? What if the Phil across from him was the character, and his Phil was the actor? 

Follow the trope. Break character. 

They stopped at the top of the wheel. 

Follow the trope. Break character. 

Phil smiled nervously at him. He was out of time. 

Follow the trope. Break character. 

“Dan, I can’t do this.” 

Dan blinked himself into reality and his eyes widened. “What?” was the only thing he could muster out. This was certainly different. 

“I’m not who I say I am. Well, I am, but I’m not.” 

Dan took a deep breath, calmer than he’d been since awakening that morning. “You’re a time traveler.” 

Dan needed the comic relief that came when Phil’s eyes popped out of his head.

“I’m from 2019, and you are too, aren’t you?” Phil barely managed to nod his head. “Phil, I think we’re from the same universe. I think you’re really my Phil,” he said, taking Phil’s hands. 

“How-how do you know?” Dan could feel Phil shaking. 

“We’re meant to be here together. Right now. Again. We’ve done all this before, and we have to follow this trope back home.” 

“Dan, what the hell are you talking about?” 

“You did live this ten years ago, didn’t you?”

“Yes, of course I did!” 

“Then trust me.” 

Dan pulled the bag from the night before out of his pocket and looked up at Phil, who was suddenly holding a device with a large, red button in the middle. 

“What’s that?” they each asked each other at the same time. 

“This can take me back to 2019 in my timeline,” Phil said, answering before Dan had a chance. “I came back here for Dan--for you, maybe. I don’t know. But I do know that if I take the wrong Dan back, we’ll both be torn apart on the way back, along with every timeline in existence.” 

“Yeah, well I know that if we don’t get the timelines back to normal by the end of the night, they’ll split beyond repair anyway,” Dan replied, more serious than he could ever recall being.

Phil bit his lip. “I don’t know.” 

Dan ignored Phil’s panic and opened the bag. “Here,” Dan said firmly, handing Phil the paper. “The Phil I met in the timeline I was in yesterday said this is the key to fixing everything.” 

Phil took the paper, his hands shaking as he read it. “Bring the anomalies together?” Phil shouted. “No shit!” 

“Is that all it says?” Dan asked, panic beginning to set over him as well. 

“That’s it!” Phil shouted, starting to rock the cart they were sitting in. “This is fucking useless!” 

“I guess he didn’t know how much you’d know!” Dan exclaimed, anger creeping into him as well. All the hours they spent the previous night, just for nothing? 

“Dan, I don’t know what to do!” Phil exclaimed, fear setting into his eyes. Dan looked at him, and he could tell Phil was relying on him. Dan was the only one who could fix this, and he only had one idea. 

“Follow the trope,” Dan said, his voice suddenly quiet. 

“What?” Phil replied, equally quiet. An eerie, tense silence fell over their cart.

“You have to kiss me.” 

“What?!” Phil exclaimed, his voice loud once again. 

“I’m supposed to follow the trope. I’ve been in a world where you’re famous and I’m not, a world where we meet in a coffee shop, a world where we’re both parents, and a whole pile more, but the point is that those are all fanfiction tropes. And the two of us, here, right now, are a trope too. 2009.” 

“You’re trying to tell me that the way for us to get home is for us to make out?” 

“No, Phil! We just have to complete the timeline with everything that happened tonight!” 

“You’re fucking insane, you know that?” he shouted, spit flinging from the corners of his mouth. 

“Do you have any better ideas?” The silence fell again, and Phil looked at Dan with desperation in his eyes. “Do you know of any other ways to find out if we’re really the Dan and Phil that have been in love with each other for the last ten years?” 

Phil’s expression softened a bit, and Dan could feel his own follow. Their faces still showed desperation, but they now had a sense of understanding, a sense of love. And for the first time since a week ago when Phil had kissed him goodnight, Dan finally felt as if he was truly back with his Phil. 

Dan reached out and took Phil’s hand. “Are you ready?” Phil nodded, and Dan leaned in, pressing their lips together for the first time in what felt like ages. Before Dan could even begin to feel the numerous emotions that the kiss instilled in him, a wind began picking up around them. Dan wanted to pull back to mention that they were inside a cart and there was no way wind could have gotten inside, but he found his lips stuck to Phil’s. “Mmm!” he hummed, his eyes wide open in fear.

Much to his surprise, Phil pulled him in closer, and he closed his eyes again, allowing himself to feel the kiss. He could sense the world tearing itself apart around him, but all that mattered to him in that moment was that he was back kissing Phil, and he was completely confident--that was his Phil. 

Suddenly they were thrust away from each other, and Dan felt himself land on a hard floor. He sat up, rubbing his head, and looked around the room. They were in their lounge in their 2019 flat, and Phil was lying on the floor across the room. “Phil?” He sat up immediately, beaming from ear to ear. 

“We did it,” he laughed, lunging across the room to tackle Dan into another kiss. Their first kiss may have been literal magic, but this second one felt like magic to Dan. They were safe, and they were together, and he’d never been happier to have Phil in his arms. 

“We did it,” Dan repeated, tears filling his eyes as he gazed into Phil’s. He pulled back slightly, refusing to leave Phil’s grasp, but needing to make a point. “Is the timeline alright? Is everything really back to normal?” 

“As far as I can tell, yeah,” Phil said, standing up and helping Dan to stand beside him. 

Dan brushed off his clothes and looked to Phil. He was his 2019 self, but he was still wearing his 2009 clothes, and Dan couldn’t help but chuckle internally at the sight. “How the hell did we get back?” 

“I’m assuming some other Dan and Phil in a parallel universe didn’t follow the trope and just pushed the button to go home,” Phil replied, waving the device he had kept in his pocket over his head. 

“Fair,” Dan replied, “but I prefer the magic kiss theory.” 

Phil laughed openly, the extreme relief they shared showing through. “I suppose that works too.” 

Phil took Dan’s hand in his and the two walked to their bedroom to get ready to sleep; it wasn’t all that late, but they were exhausted from their journeys. 

“Phil?” Dan blurted out as Phil was cutting the light off and they were climbing into bed.

“Mmm?”

“Why did you never tell me about your science?” 

Phil shrugged, turning towards Dan in bed. “I never wanted you to get dragged into it, like some other Phil clearly let happen. I’m sorry I wasn’t completely transparent, though; that’ll change.” Dan opened his mouth to speak, but Phil took notice and cut him off. “We can talk about it in the morning. I’m fucking beat.” 

“Wait, one more thing,” Dan said, a smile growing across his face. “You really traveled through space and time after me?” 

“I’ll find you in any world,” Phil said, grinning so widely that Dan wanted to smack the smile right off of his face. 

“Stupid fucking tropes,” he said, leaning in to give Phil a kiss. “Goodnight, Phil,” he said, moving his lips to Phil’s forehead to give him their traditional goodnight forehead kiss. 

Phil smiled much wider than he usually did, allowing his eyes to close as he calmed himself for sleep. “Goodnight, Dan.” 

That was the last thing Dan remembered. Of course, Dan remembered everything about Phil, but that was the last of it. He fell asleep beside Phil, the love of his life, and he woke up somewhere he couldn’t identify. At first, he simply panicked, concerned that he had been YouTuber-napped. Then he looked around the room and found pictures of himself. There were pictures of him with his family, pictures with his dog, Colin, and pictures with people he’d never seen before. The immediate fear dissipated into pure confusion; he didn’t remember taking any of those photos. 

Dan peeled himself out of bed and picked up his phone. He tried to look at it, but it was blurry, even though it was right in front of his face. He blinked a few times, but he could tell this wasn’t the blur of sleep. Eventually, he noticed a pair of glasses sitting on the bedside table. He glanced around for a moment before cautiously picking up the glasses and putting them on. With them, he could see the phone perfectly. That was odd, he thought. He had never been farsighted before.

His phone looked strange as well. The screen was smaller, and his background was of a man he didn’t recognize. When he unlocked it, he found most of the same apps he had the night before, but when he went to Twitter, his verification was gone, and he found that he had only 934 followers. Dan was no longer a YouTuber. 

Immediately Dan began to question what exactly he was, but at that point he had no care for such a thing. He threw himself into motion, throwing on a shirt he didn’t own and shorts he wouldn’t usually choose to buy. As he whirled through “his” apartment, Dan only cared about one thing: finding Phil. 

He tore out of the building, not stopping to think. None of his movements made even a bit of sense; he jerked his head left and right, attempting desperately to figure out where he was and ignoring the map on his phone. His mind was so clouded by his confusion and fear that he had no logic left. 

Dan took off aimlessly running down the street, a feat that was already uncommon for him, searching for anything familiar amidst the chaos. After a few minutes, he slumped into a bench and put his head in his hands. 

“What in the absolute fuck is going on?” Dan whispered to himself. He threw his head back and ran his hands through his hair, which he suddenly realized was straight. That was impossible; he would never be able to wake up with straight hair. 

After getting struck across the face with even more confusion, Dan finally managed to attempt to think about his situation. He looked himself up and down; the clothes he had picked up were all pastel pink. “What the hell? Is this some Opposite Day bullshit?” Dan swore again, unsure if he had the restraint at that point to utter a sentence without cursing. 

A cab approached, and Dan decided to wave it over. He climbed in and told the driver to take him to his old address; maybe Phil would be there. 

On the ride over, he pulled the small phone out of his back pocket and reopened Twitter. The account he opened up to appeared to be an aesthetic account devoted to the color pink. It had his name on it, but it certainly wasn’t his. 

He switched to the search function and searched ‘phil lester.’ A full page of accounts popped up, but, on first glance, none of them appeared to be Phil. He looked through them each, to no avail. Social media didn’t appear to be helpful in this situation. 

Before long, they were at his flat; they were much closer than Dan had anticipated. He paid the driver with money he found in the case of the phone, clambered out of the cab, and made his way up the stairs and to his door. He was sweating a bit after the walking; finally, he felt at home. As he knocked on the door, anxiety welled up in his stomach. Suddenly the door opened, and he found himself face to face with a very tall, very slightly dressed woman. “What do you want?” she said, a harsh tone to her voice. She clearly had yet to have her morning cup of coffee; it reminded him a bit of Phil. 

“Hi, I’m so sorry to bother you, but have you seen Phil Lester?”

“Nope,” she said, slamming the door in his face before he even had a chance to apologize again. 

“Well, that was fun,” he said into the void. He backtracked down the stairs and realized that he’d sent the cab away. He took a deep breath, far more annoyed than the word annoyed could convey, and waited for another. Luckily, it came quickly, but the ride to their first London flat, which was his last guess as to where he’d find Phil, was a bit longer, so he still had to wait. He decided to take advantage of the time and explore the phone that had basically been dropped into his lap. As any normal Internet dweller would, he first searched through the camera roll. The majority of the camera roll appeared to be pictures for the pink Twitter account, but he’d find the occasional meme or selfie of him in all pastel clothes. He didn’t particularly enjoy it, but he supposed he could see why the fanfic writers seemed to take such a liking to it. 

Suddenly, his mind shifted to the life he’d built with Phil as he realized everything was gone. Not only was his relationship with Phil gone, but the fanbase they’d built was gone too. He was certain all the people that made it up still existed, but it occurred to him for the first time that he no longer had any fans. There were no longer blogs, Instagram accounts, or group chats dedicated to him. It felt freeing, almost, but also deeply saddening. All the lives he’d impacted were suddenly the same as they’d have been had he chosen to never upload Hello Internet in the first place. His heart swelled with determination to find Phil and return to a universe where the two of them had built their own universe. Thinking back to all the people who had told him on tour that he and Phil had saved their lives, he knew he had no choice but to find Phil. 

The taxi pulled up to their first London flat, and he couldn’t help but crack a smile looking at the building. He and Phil had grown so much in that apartment, and he still felt a bit as if it was his home. This time, being more realistic, he told the driver to wait before he made his way over to the apartment complex. He climbed another set of stairs that he was all too familiar with, and his body almost seemed to transport back four years as he relived his memories of that flat. 

This time, he was a bit more optimistic as he knocked on the door. He took a deep breath and stood there for a moment, a combination of hope and fear filling his lungs as time passed. Finally, he realized nobody was going to answer the door, and put his head down as he made his way back down to the taxi. 

Dan sighed and pulled up Maps to direct the driver back to the apartment he’d woken up in. Luckily, whatever stranger he had taken over the life of bothered to put “Home” into the app, because Dan hadn’t a clue how to get back to the building he’d ran from. He sat hopelessly, thinking of nothing at all until he arrived back at the apartment. He paid yet another driver with money that wasn’t even his and climbed even more stairs, only managing to find “his” flat because he’d left the door open in his frenzy. 

He slammed the door closed and flopped onto the bed he’d rolled out of. He had only one more idea. He did a quick Google search and pulled up the only resource he had left: a London phone book. He found nearly as many ‘Phil Lester’s as he did on Twitter, but none of them had Phil’s phone number. Still, too suspicious to give up, he called each number. Some of them didn’t answer, but it was clear that none of the ones that did were Phil. Well, at least they weren’t his Phil. 

Tears pooled in his eyes as he jerked forward. “Fuck, DAMNIT!” he shouted, throwing a punch into the mattress and then curling the sheets into his hand. “I don’t know what to do,” he said to no one at all. 

The truth was that there was no one there to hear him, and it was the first time in Dan’s adult life that he’d been truly alone. Sure, Phil had left for a few days, but he always knew his life companion would return. Now, he had no clue if Phil even existed at all. He was completely alone, with no one to talk to and no one to direct him. He was like a lost child, but he was a fully functional adult in a timeline he didn’t recognize. 

Really, this was just the existential crisis to end all existential crises waiting to happen. As if life, death, and time weren’t already scary enough, now he’s being thrown around like a rag doll with no significance from one timeline into another? There was so much to contemplate that he couldn’t even begin. He rolled over onto his stomach and made himself comfortable; it was going to be a long day. 

Dan did, in fact, spend most of the day contemplating his existence, but he eventually laid eyes on a laptop that luckily had Netflix downloaded. It turned out that a new timeline had plenty of new shows. In this universe, Queer Eye contained five British lesbians. He couldn’t pass that up, could he? 

After his third episode and plenty of tears, something in the credits caught Dan’s eye. “Wait,” he breathed out, fumbling to hit the “J” key and go back. He watched again, this time much closer, and slammed the space button to pause the show. On the screen in blaring letters was a header reading “Production Manager” and underneath it: “Phil Lester”. 

Dan spasmed forward, nearly knocking the laptop off of the bed. “Holy shit!” he shouted. Sure, it was possible that he could simply be a different Phil Lester--it wasn’t like there weren’t way too many of them already--but Dan could feel it: this was his Phil. 

Dan’s mind began racing; how could he use this information? He panickedly typed “phil lester uqeer eye” into Google, not caring about his own typos, and began scrolling. He found multiple websites that credited Phil for his work on the show, but not a single website told him any of Phil’s contact information. As he searched, time ticked late into the night. Dan usually stayed up long past midnight, but after a few hours straight of existential crisis, he was exhausted. Scrolling through multiple pages of Google searches can be quite boring, so Dan nodded off shortly before the night officially ended. 

Sadly, however, there were a few things Dan didn’t know as he dozed off that evening. He didn’t know about the reminder on the phone he’d neglected all day making sure he, or the him that used to live in this timeline, didn’t forget about his first day on the production of Queer Eye. And he surely didn’t know that while he slept, as the clock struck midnight, the world began to change around him. It was like he slept in a protective bubble, holding him in place as the timeline disassembled and reassembled around his body. At 12:01, his entire universe had changed once again. Dan slept through that night in bliss ignorance until he was woken up and his world turned upside down once again. 

Dan’s eyes snapped open as air streamed into his lungs. He exhaled, pushing himself up on the sofa he’d woken up on. “Where the fuck am I?” By now he’d learned--his first order of business in the morning was to search for a phone. “You’ve got to be bloody kidding me.” On the nightstand was a flip phone that had to be ten years old. “I’ve got followers younger than this thing.” Dan stared at it for a moment, the events of the previous day coming back to him. “Oh, SHIT!” he shouted, flipping the phone open. Sure enough, the date read October 16, 2009. He groaned, throwing himself back against the side of the couch. “Stupid fucking time machine.” 

Dan took a deep breath and sat up. The clock on the phone read about noon; that was probably about the time he transported back nearly ten years. He had finally gotten at least a few answers; he now had twelve hours to not only convince the Phil of this timeline to listen to him but also to figure out a way to get home, since the last Phil clearly was of no help. Before any of that, though, he had to find Phil. But how? 

As a start, Dan spent a moment taking in his surroundings. He seemed to be in a dingy apartment. It was dark and green tinted; it almost reminded him of the True Lab from Undertale. There was a pang in his chest--what he wouldn’t give to go back to his life with Phil and play RPGs all night. 

He found a pile of clothes that appeared to be relatively clean and put on a t-shirt and jeans. The clothes were much too small for him and were clearly meant for an emo 18-year-old, but clearly that was who was living there. It was 2009, after all. Dan couldn’t help but feel bad for the poor My Chemical Romance fan who just got transported to 2019 in his place.

After he was dressed and looking almost decent despite being completely terrified by the sight of his 28-year-old body in his 18-year-old clothes, he began scourging the flat for a laptop; social media was his only chance of finding Phil, even if it did involve MySpace. 

Ten minutes later, the apartment was somehow more of a mess, he’d found a box of cereal that he was already devouring, and the search for any sort of computer was an absolute bust. Surprisingly, though, he wasn’t discouraged; he’d found Phil in every timeline thus far, so there must have been some way to find him here too. He finished off the cereal straight from the box in joking hope that acting like Phil would help him find Phil, and he was off. 

The apartment door opened straight to a flight of stairs with another door at the bottom. Dan was astonished by what he saw when he opened it. “What the…” The entire room Dan entered into was full of flowers. They were absolutely beautiful, and there were so many of them that Dan could barely find his way through them. Finally, though, he caught sight of a glass door with words written facing away from him. To its right was a counter with a cash register. 

Dan was in a flower shop. 

“What kind of 18-year-old runs a flower shop?” Dan commented into the void before his eye locked onto an ink-coated napkin that seemed to have been slipped under the door. He carefully maneuvered his way to the door, picked up the napkin, and read the words to himself.

“Florist dude,

I don’t know why you’re not open, but I REALLY need some flowers for my boyfriend; it’s our one year anniversary and I wanna do something nice for him. I know peonies are his favorite for some reason, so a bucket--I’m gonna assume they meant bouquet--of those would be great. I hope you see this soon. I’ll be here til five.

-Tattoo artist nextdoor.” 

Dan looked around the room and then back at the note before shrugging. It wasn’t like he had any better ideas. 

He flipped the sign on the door to ‘open’ and went to work arranging a bouquet of peonies. He was lucky there were labels on all the flowers; without them or the Internet, there was no way he could even manage to discern a peony from a carnation. 

Dan found another back room of the flower shop, this one filled with greenery and ribbon rather than living amenities. He didn’t know a thing about organizing flowers, but he did know what was pleasing to the eye. He worked for a few moments to pair colors that looked nice together and add some background green to all the right places before finally tying it all off in a neat, black bow. These were for the partner of a 2009 tattoo artist; he had to assume they liked it a little bit dark. 

He stood back and admired his work; somehow, the arrangement had turned out quite well. “I guess I know what to do if I end up stuck in one of these stupid alternate universes,” he muttered, making his way back to the front of the store. He chuckled for a moment. “I’m literally living in an AU.”

He made his way out to the street and looked left and right before locating the tattoo parlor he was supposed to take the flowers to. “Not just any AU either--I’ve seen all those florist and tattoo artist AUs. What’s the chance of-” He stopped in his tracks as he approached the parlor; on the other side of the glass was a heavily tattooed Phil. He was much younger, but Dan obviously recognized him considering he looked exactly the same as when they met except for the ink covering most of his arms and neck. 

Dan threw himself against the brick wall of the parlor, his breathing heavy. “I’m a florist... and he’s a tattoo artist.”

There was something far too specific about this. It was too obvious, too...familiar. Dan took in a huge breath, and his eyes widened; it was as if he breathed in pure knowledge. “Your timelines are familiar to each other and to you,” he said, repeating what Phil, or, at least, a Phil, had told him the day before. 

“The first day I only had pastel clothes… pastel/punk. The second day I was famous and he was a fan. Yesterday we were both parents. Today…this. Fucking hell, I’m living in tropes.” He scrunched his eyes closed and threw his head against the wall, something he tended to do when under stress. 

After a moment, he straightened his neck out, took a deep breath, opened his eyes, and remembered another phrase Phil had said to him. “If you follow them right, you will find your way home.” 

“Hmm?” Dan blinked his eyes open, and before he had time to rub the sleep out of them, he spasmed into an upright position, hitting his head on the back of the bed frame. 

He found himself in a hotel room with a man in overly done makeup standing over him. Everything from the day before rushed back to him, and it took all he had not to shout out, “Who the hell are you?” 

“You need to start getting ready for VidCon! Your meetup is today!” the man shouted at him. His voice was loud and shrill, and Dan would have given money to not have to hear it. 

“Okay, okay, give me some space!” he moaned, pushing the man back a little bit. 

“Alright, just be ready in an hour,” the man said, leaving through a door into a conjoined room. 

“An hour? Who needs an hour to get ready?” he asked himself, wandering into the bathroom. “Oh, FUCK!” Dan shouted, taking one good look at his face in the mirror. It was caked in makeup, but it had clearly been a bit smudged by sleep. “Oh, no,” he breathed, fear entering his confused mind. He rushed to find a phone back by the bed and ended up seeing an iPhone XR. “Shit, that’s gotta be expensive,” he said, opening it immediately with facial recognition. Immediately he found and opened YouTube and went to his own channel, something he was more than used to doing in his normal life. What he found was exactly what he feared: he was this timeline’s James Charles. 

Dan groaned, rearing his head back to the ceiling. “I don’t know how to do makeup!” he muttered, dragging himself back into the bathroom. On the sink was a collection of at least 15 different types of makeup. “That explains the one-hour wakeup call.” 

His eyes darted back and forth from blush to mascara to eyeliner to foundation as if looking at them each enough would show him what to do with them. Finally, an idea struck him. Unless YouTube was a completely different beast in this timeline, “Daniel Howell makeup tutorial” would be a fruitful search. It only took him a few seconds to find someone to teach him how to do his own makeup routine, and he was on his way. 

It took Dan about half an hour to do the makeup, and he was quite thankful that the Dan whose body he’d woken up in was wearing makeup already because if he hadn’t it would have taken him twice as long or more. He threw on some actually mildly tasteful clothes and grabbed his VidCon badge; at least he knew how to live this person’s life. 

Ready to go with twenty minutes left, Dan sank back into “his” bed and put his head in his hands. “Why the hell am I in another timeline?” he said, stressing a word every now and then just to exasperate his anger. “I’m never gonna find Phil at this rate.” 

He closed his eyes, attempting to hold back tears. He was sure a rich makeup YouTuber would have waterproof makeup, but he wasn’t willing to take that risk. Thousands of separate thoughts were running through his head, each of them desperate, but one stood out over them all: Dan did not want to go to VidCon. 

VidCon was one of his favorite places; it legitimized all his life choices and made him feel as if he was truly valued by the world. However, he’d never been to a VidCon without Phil in his life, and he didn’t particularly want to. He had fantasies about this VidCon--doing a meetup with Phil with both of them out and proud, hugging their fans tight and supporting them the way they supported the two of them--but now that was all gone, and he was left with a pound of makeup on his face and a bunch of people who didn’t even know him for who he truly was. 

His “friend” and apparently manager, whose name he eventually learned was, ironically, James, retrieved him and led him to the venue. He was lucky for that; he obviously hadn’t been told ahead of time where the meet and greet was, and between his height, his makeup, and his assumed fame, he had a feeling it wouldn’t be wise to mingle with the fans to find directions. 

“Aight, you’ve got a few minutes until the meetup; you can hang out here,” said James, leaving him in a sort of a green room. There was a wall in between them, and he could still hear the screaming fans. He’d never met fans alone before, and he was honestly a bit scared, especially without knowing what sort of fanbase the him of this timeline appealed to. He spent an immeasurable amount of time in his own head, searching aimlessly for something to calm his nerves. If only Phil were there with him…

Suddenly, a thought hit Dan. Maybe Phil was there with him. He’d yet to research the Phil of this timeline, so there was nothing telling him that he wasn’t still a YouTuber or that he wasn’t just halfway across the convention center. Dan whipped out the phone in his pocket and searched “Phil Lester” on Twitter for a second tie, and deja vu struck as he once again came up empty handed. 

“Damnit!” he cried out, but he had no time to mourn, for James had just thrown open the door and informed him that it was time for the meetup. Dan, taken by surprise, threw his phone down and jumped up. “Cool, let’s go!” he responded awkwardly. James furrowed his brow for a moment before eventually deciding to ignore Dan’s odd behavior and simply turning on his heel and leaving. Dan took a deep breath and followed, leaving in the opposite direction in which he came in, and he found himself behind a classic meetup photo background. This, at least, was something he was comfortable with. He put on his performer’s smile and stepped out from behind the curtain. 

Dan had certainly endured screaming teenage girls before; after all, he’d done two tours full of them. But this was a completely different animal entirely. It took all of his strength to smile and wave rather than double over with his hands over his ears. At this point, Dan was losing hope that his otherworldly counterpart wasn’t involved in some ridiculous controversy. 

At that moment, it dawned on the theatre kid still dwelling inside him that he probably should have researched his role before stepping out onstage. He was meant to put on a face and pretend to be someone else, and he hadn’t even a clue who he was to be. 

Before he even had enough time to think, the first fans were stepping up to meet him. Now, Dan had done over a hundred meetups, and even on his worst days, he’d always been attentive to each fan and been careful to make each one’s time the best thirty seconds to a minute they’d ever had. This time, however, was a bit different. 

Sure, he tried his best to act normal, but he quite simply wasn’t. He felt as if he was a fraud, given that technically he sort of was. No matter how much effort he put forth, these people were getting cheated out of meeting their idol. Well, hopefully they’d never know the difference. 

As a general rule of thumb, Dan had decided to go through the meetup emotionless. This was a bit difficult, as he and Phil had planned to, in their VidCon meetup, connect more emotionally to their fans, especially their LGBT+ fans, than ever before. But these people weren’t really his fans, and it was difficult for him to emotionally invest himself in speaking to people who didn’t really love HIS videos. Besides, he needed to keep his eyes on the prize: get through this meetup, then go back to looking for Phil. 

As the queue moved closer, he noticed one black-haired head sticking out above the others. His eyes widened, and his eyes focused on the back of a head facing someone else in the line. “Hi!” someone shouted, and his attention was forced back to the fans meeting him at that particular moment. Suddenly it became even more difficult for him to focus on the fans; he had to see the tall, Phil-like man’s face, but every time he looked up the man was facing the other direction. He felt as if the world refused to let them near each other, even though the chances that it was actually Phil were little to none.

Finally, he reached the front of the line, and the girl he’d been engrossed with conversation in poked him. “It’s your turn!” she whisper-screamed, and he jumped. 

“Oh!” he exclaimed, absentmindedly turning forward, and Dan’s heart skipped a beat. Sure enough, the face looking back at him was the face he’d fallen asleep beside every night for nearly nine years. The only difference: the man on the other side was none the wiser. 

“Oh my goodness, hi!” he squealed through a broad smile. Dan was almost taken aback by it; the Phil he knew wasn’t exactly a squealer, and he definitely didn’t have an American accent. He was quite the different Phil, but he certainly was Phil; there was no doubting it. Phil started speaking again, his words slurring together with nerves. “Iknow it’s sorta odd for youta meet afan who’sactually older thanyou but I hope you don’t find me tooweird…” he trailed off, clearly absolutely terrified to be speaking to Dan.

At this point, time seemed to completely stop. Dan had seen Phil like this, sure, but never for something as simple as a meetup. It completely blew his mind to watch Phil absolutely lose it over the chance to meet him. Phil, the man who he’d known for ten years. Phil, the man who he’d kissed countless times. Phil, who was supposed to be standing beside him on the other side of the meetup, was instead sweating through his clothes because he loved Dan so much. Inside his head, Dan chuckled. He had no idea. 

And Dan had no idea how to respond. There was no response to the person you love more than anyone or anything else in the world completely forgetting you. He wasn’t really sure what to do except for what he always did. 

“Hey, hey, it’s okay, I promise,” he said, wrapping his arms around Phil. This wasn’t abnormal, as he’d done it for every fan thus far, but this time, it lingered a little longer, and it started much sooner than it should have. Still, he kept Phil close for more reasons than he could even begin to identify. Just having Phil there comforted his woes from the last day and a half, filled him with the love he’d always felt from Phil, and encited pure fear in him that he’d never see Phil again, all at one time. Finally, after what felt like only a millisecond but was clearly too long to be appropriate for a creator meeting a fan, Dan released Phil, and he was relieved to find that he was smiling. 

“Thanks,” Phil said, taking a deep breath. “I’m Phil, by the way.” It wasn’t until then that Dan really took Phil in; he was wearing his glasses, which brought a grin to Dan’s face; every universe’s Phil should wear his glasses constantly. It’s what everyone who encounters him deserves. He wore an outfit that reminded Dan of something he’d wear to their own meetup. It was interesting, Dan thought, how some fundamental things about Phil refused to change, even in an alternate universe. 

“Do you have something you’d like me to sign?” he asked. Phil nodded and handed over a pride flag. A burst of relief shot through Dan; Phil was still the same Phil. “I-I’d like to give you this, too,” he said, shakily handing over what appeared to be a drawing. As soon as Dan finished signing the flag, he snatched the drawing as if it were the Holy Grail and examined it; it was a picture of Dan, with every intricate detail drawn out. His dimples were deep, and every curl on his head was intentionally placed. He wore science-themed makeup, and Dan wasn’t even exaggerating when he said it was the best fanart he’d ever seen. “I’m a scientist, so…” 

It was like he was falling in love all over again. “Wow, Phil...This is amazing. Absolutely amazing. I had no idea you could draw like this!” 

“Well…” he stammered, “I don’t think you really know me at all.” 

“Oh, yeah, right,” Dan let out, disappointment evident in his voice. At this point, even Phil’s radiating awkwardness had dissipated into pure confusion. Dan had to think fast, and, through some miracle, he did. “Did you post this online? I’d love to show it some love.”

“Oh, yeah!” Phil said, confusion immediately being replaced by excitement. He was clearly still a bit nervous, but he seemed much more comfortable around Dan. That was a start. “I’m on Twitter @AmazingPhil.” Dan almost winced. How dumb could he be? He made a mental note: next time, search the name AND the handle.

“I’ll definitely check that out,” Dan said, beaming. “Thank you for this.” 

“You’re welcome,” Phil said, and the VidCon employees were ushering him on. Dan wanted to yell at them, to keep him there forever, but there was only so much he could do. 

Dan put his head in his hands. He’d been refreshing Phil’s Twitter for nearly half an hour, and he’d yet to post anything about meeting Dan. Was he not as big of a fan as he let on at the meetup? Would he even respond if Dan messaged him? How would Dan even start that conversation? 

The only way he figured was to use the art as a conversation-starter. He did find that post, and he liked and retweeted it, but he couldn’t seem to message Phil. Something he couldn’t quite identify was holding him back; it was like there was an invisible forcefield blocking his thumbs from typing Phil’s handle into his DMs. 

“Dan!” James called from the other room. “Are you ready to go? It’s time to leave for your panel!” 

No one had even bloody told him he had a panel that day. He decided to count himself lucky that he’d been too down to change out of his meetup clothes and stood up to head to the door. Before he moved, though, he stopped, looking back down at the phone. By then, it was already about 2:00; he didn’t have all that much time left. 

hi there! i really like the art you gave me at the meetup; would you mind if i used it in a video? thanks so much x 

He typed it and sent it without even thinking, and he was gone.

Checking the phone nonstop up until the panel did no good for Dan; Phil had yet to respond. He was probably sitting in the audience chattering with someone, Dan thought. Finally, when he was ushered out onto the stage, he was met with deafening shrieks. At least something was normal. 

Dan spent the next few minutes scanning the crowd for any sign of Phil but to no avail. Furthermore, not only did his plan fail, but it also managed to distract him from a panel he already knew absolutely nothing about. He didn’t even figure out the topic of the panel until five minutes in, and that only made it worse: he was sitting in a row of makeup YouTubers. 

Dan didn’t know a single thing about makeup, so every answer he gave, he lied straight through his teeth. It didn’t take long for him to notice creators up and down the panel giving him odd looks, and he started sweating through his jumper. He could tell he was crashing and burning, but there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. He was like an astrophysicist giving a lecture on Shakespeare.  

Every time the moderator asked him a question, Dan answered as confidently as he could, but he knew that everything coming out of his mouth was dead wrong. Only fifteen minutes into the panel, shouts were radiating from the audience. 

“Dan’s a fraud!” one critic shouted. 

“That’s not Daniel! He’s an imposter!” someone yelled over the murmurs of the croud. 

Suddenly a chant broke out: “IMPOSTER! IMPOSTER! IMPOSTER!” 

Dan sunk down into his seat as if that would hide him from the audience. Up and down the panel, the looks from his fellow creators had changed from confused to angry. He bowed his head, stood, admitting defeat, and took a walk of shame off the stage. 

“Dan!” someone shouted, and his heart jumped out of his chest. There was currently a crowd of people angry at him; his name coming from the other end of a hallway immediately spiked fear in his core. He gave a deep exhale as he turned to find James running towards him, but his eyes quickly widened as he realized the situation he was in: he had just bombed, and “his” manager was making a beeline straight for him. “What the hell just happened?” he said, anger and concern about even in his tone. 

“I’m sorry, I just….” he trailed off, panic setting in. “I’m not well right now. I think I need to go back to my room for the rest of the day and just lie down.” James raised an eyebrow. 

“Damnit, Howell, if I didn’t know your face well enough I’d say you were an imposter.” He sighed and turned on his heel, finally leaving Dan completely alone. 

It was a miracle, really, that Dan made it back to the hotel. Between his general lack of direction and the fact that angry makeup experts were probably out to get him, he was quite paranoid through the entire walk, but he somehow managed to make it. 

After he was safely locked up in his hotel room, he pulled out the phone, and it was already flooded with texts, half of them asking if he was okay and the other half making very rude yet technically true allegations. 

All the notifications stressed him too much for him to be bothered to look through them, so he simply opened his phone and went straight to Twitter. Or at least he attempted to. Before he could even reach the top row folder the Twitter app was hiding in, he found himself tapping the notification to another concerned text. 

At this point, a mix of stress and anger began to pool in his stomach, and he finally snapped, frantically searching for the settings app (and hitting a couple more notifications along the way). He began shutting off notifications for each app, one by one, and when he reached the bottom, he discovered that Twitter notifications had already been off. At least the YouTuber he personified had a little bit of sense. 

However, he suddenly realized that this meant Phil could have messaged him back hours ago, and he wouldn’t have known. He rushed back to the Twitter app, this time uninterrupted, and found a DM sent only a few minutes early. 

Depends. Are you who you say you are? 

He’d been at the panel. Dan sighed and began to think. Could he continue to lie to Phil? What would happen if he told the truth? Would Phil stop talking to him? He anxiously typed out a message, refusing to even look at the screen as he went. 

sorta. i know this is weird, but i am daniel howell. just not the one you know. i look identical, and by all legalities we’re the same person, but i’m not… from here. again, i know it’s really weird, but i need you to trust me. i need to talk to you. 

He threw his phone down on the bed as if it were suddenly burning. He knew the only way he’d be able to tell if he got a response was if he checked, but he was terrified to do so. It was like 2009 all over again. 

Finally, a few minutes later, he opened Twitter to find what he considered the worst case scenario; Phil had read his messages, but there was no answer. He went to Phil’s account, and, even worse, the most recent tweet was a screenshot of their conversation captioned “Creepy texts from @/danielhowell ???” 

Dan blinked his eyes open and found himself sprawled across a king size bed. He jumped for just a moment, but then he remembered the situation he’d somehow found himself in. At that realization, he barely felt like moving at all. Dan had had enough depression days in his life to identify a day that was a complete lost cause, and this was one. He settled into the bed, closing his eyes again. He’d have plenty of different universes to try and find Phil in; he didn’t need this one. 

“Dan, honey, get up! You’re going to be late!” came a call from across the room. He furrowed his brow and looked up; there was a WOMAN standing in front of him. “The kids are almost ready; you have to drive them today,” she said, passing him by and going into the bathroom. 

“Kids?” he whispered to himself. He poked his head out from under the bedsheets and looked around the room. There were pictures of him scattered about, each showing him with this woman and two kids - one curly-haired boy and one blonde girl. Oh, HELL no. 

“I don’t feel well today,” he said, disappearing again. If he wasn’t already adverse to this day, he certainly was after discovering “his” family. 

“Oh, Dan, I’m sorry,” the woman who he assumed was “his” wife said, re-emerging from the bathroom to show him an empathetic look. “I really can’t drive them today, though. I’ve got an important meeting, and you know I’m already on thin ice at work. Do you think you can just take them to school? Then you can call in and come home.” He took a quick look at her before disappearing back beneath the sheets; she was quite conventionally attractive; she had short, dirty blonde hair, green eyes, and a sweet smile. Good for straight Dan, he supposed. 

Under the duvet, Dan exhaled. He really couldn’t ruin the life of a random woman someone who happened to look exactly like him was in love with, although he really didn’t see the appeal. 

He physically rolled out of bed, barely standing himself up before hitting the floor. He had to stand there and blink for a moment; it had been quite a while since he’d had such a bad depression day, and much longer since he’d tried to pull himself out of one. He knew fully that it was a horrible idea, but he could hope that he’d be able to handle just a few minutes of going before he crashed again. The Dan he’d embodied had gone to bed in just boxers, so he had to go to the closet to find something to throw on. When he opened the door, he found suit after suit after suit. “Damnit,” he whispered, “I’m a lawyer.” 

Sure, there were other reasons he could have had the suits, but he could tell. This was an alternate universe in which he had continued university and met a girl. He still failed to comprehend it in any capacity but that, but he supposed it was the truth that some versions of him were attracted to women. 

He found a trashy t-shirt and some shorts and threw them on before rushing out, herding the two kids into the car in the driveway and taking off. It was at this point that Dan realized he didn’t REALLY know how to drive, but he had two small children in the back seat, so there really wasn’t much to be done at that point. 

“Daddy, why is it so jerky?” the little girl, who couldn’t have been older than eight, asked.

“Yeah, Dad, why does your driving suck?” The boy was clearly more like eleven or twelve. 

“Don’t say that!” Dan quipped back, assuming that was the correct parental answer. “Uh- the pedals are acting weird.” He slammed on the brakes for a red light. “Like that.” 

The kids seemed suspicious but chose to ignore it in favor of teasing each other. Dan was unbothered; he was quickly running out of energy. 

“Daddy, you missed the turn!” Dan squeezed his eyes closed in regretful realization before remembering he probably should have been looking at the road. He had no idea where the kids’ school was. He looped around at the next street and took off down the street the girl pointed out, and he soon managed to find a primary school. He pulled up at what he assumed was the dropoff circle, and, thankfully, the kids got out of the car. He was ready to pull away from the school when his eye caught the car parked in front of him. 

There was a tall, ginger man opening the door and helping a small child out of the backseat; the girl seemed to have a broken leg, and they were moving quickly so as to not annoy Dan waiting behind them. Dan, however, was the opposite of annoyed. When the girl was on her way, the man turned back to wave at him as a gesture of gratitude for waiting, and his suspicions were confirmed; it was Phil.

Suddenly, his body seemed to refill with energy. It was inexplicable, as if seeing Phil even from a distance suddenly made him feel human again. Usually, his battle with his depression was mostly clinical. He just HAD it. This time, though, it felt different; it felt as if this bout was situational, and just seeing Phil standing in front of him was helping to resolve it. 

He had to do something to preserve this feeling, so when Phil pulled out of the dropoff circle, he followed him. He followed him for fifteen minutes to a suburb on the outskirts of London. Finally, Phil pulled into his driveway, and it hit Dan that he had to find somewhere to be. He didn’t doubt that Phil was smart enough to be getting suspicious, so he simply kept driving. He hadn’t a clue where he was driving to, but he drove. After a moment of awkward acceleration, he parked the car around the corner and tried to sneak down the sidewalk towards the house Phil pulled into. 

“Hey, you!” he heard Phil shout. Dan never had been good at being sneaky. “What the hell are you doing here?” 

Naturally, he panicked. “PTO! I’m trying to get on the ballot for president, and I meant to catch you at school, but you drove off too quickly.” 

“Howell, I wouldn’t vote for you if you were the only person on the ballot.” 

Dan’s eyes widened. “I’m sorry if I did something to offend you-” 

“OFFEND me?” Phil shouted. “You hit my daughter with your fucking car!” 

Uh oh. “I’ve told you so many times that I’m so sorry for that-”

“No, you haven’t! You have yet to apologize even once!” 

Dan stood there in shock for a moment. What kind of jackass lawyer was he? “Okay, listen. I’m going to be honest with you. This isn’t me. None of this is me. I’m confused, I don’t know what’s happening, and I just need to talk to you.” 

“No, you need mental help,” Phil said, disappearing into the side door in his garage. Dan charged up to the door almost on instinct. He was so close; he couldn’t give up now. He started knocking on the door and peering through its window, but before he could get a good look inside, Phil came back up to the door. “Hey, get away from here! This is private!” 

With the door open, Dan could see more inside the garage. “What is all this?” 

Phil sighed and stepped aside, allowing Dan to come inside. “This is my science lab. I work here every day.” 

Dan took a step forward in awe. “This is amazing!” 

“Be careful!” Phil yelped, pulling Dan back away from his equipment. Dan’s heart fluttered for a moment at Phil’s touch. “This stuff can be dangerous.”

Dan looked around for another moment, and something hit him: the day before, in their meetup, Phil had expressed that he was a scientist. “Hey, Phil,” he said almost distractedly, turning to the other man. Phil’s expression had softened by this point, although he could tell Phil still wasn’t exactly his best friend. “What kind of science do you do here?” 

“I-don’t wanna talk about it,” Phil stuttered. At this, he seemed to remember the fact that this universe’s Dan nearly committed vehicular manslaughter to his own daughter. “You shouldn’t be here anyway. Go, get out.” He started shooing Dan towards the door, and panic set back in. 

“No, please, wait! It’s important!” 

“Yeah, and so was the money for my daughter’s medical bills that you fought in court. Out!” 

“Yikes,” Dan said out loud, ignoring the fact that Phil thought that was really him. “Listen, I’m not the Dan you know.” 

“Clearly,” he said, looking him up and down. It occurred to him that Phil knew him as a hardened, rude lawyer, and he’d shown up on his doorstep begging in a t-shirt and shorts. 

“I’m from another timeline. Every night, when I fall asleep, I wake up in a different timeline. This is the third day. First I was in a flat in London with a completely different life, then I was a makeup YouTuber at Vidcon, and now I’m here. I need you-your help,” he stuttered out, realizing he couldn’t reveal his true intentions to Phil. In this timeline, he was married, and he assumed Phil was too. He wasn’t even sure if this Phil liked men. He had to keep his plea purely scientific if he wanted to have any chance of getting home. 

“A timeline change?” his eyes lit up with a mixture of fear and excitement, and he ushered Dan back into the garage. “Sit down.” 

Dan took a seat on what appeared to be a bucket, and Phil plopped down in a rolling chair and rolled over to him. “You say this happened three days ago?” Dan nodded. “Three days ago was my first attempt at any sort of time travel. I sent back a simple apple, but that would be enough to mess with the timeline. However, I don’t know how that could have brought you into it.” Dan listened attentively; there wasn’t much else he could do. Phil sat for a moment, seeming to be deep in thought. “Maybe it was one of the other Phils!” he exclaimed, moving frantically as if he was looking for something that didn’t seem to exist. 

“I know we don’t know each other very well,” Phil said, and Dan gulped, “but I think the you of another timeline is very close to the Phil of another timeline. I know very little about the other Phils, but I know we’re all scientists. 

“All? Even m-my friend Phil?” Dan spit out, trying to save himself. 

Phil chuckled. “No, just the Phils that share my DNA. Every version of me specifically is a scientist, and we’re all working towards time travel. We’ve discovered that we’re all scientists for that reason, but that’s something I’m not going to get into.” 

Dan was in awe. He and Phil had been together for nearly ten years, and he’d never even mentioned anything scientific. How could Phil keep that big of a secret from him. 

“Dan, you with me?” he asked, snapping Dan out of his state of confusion and near despair. “We were all working towards time travel, and I think we were all around the same place in our research. However, I think each of us may have made some different decisions. Where I sent an apple, another Phil sent, well… you.” 

“What?!” Dan exclaimed. “I certainly don’t remember time traveling.” 

“Well, that’s because YOU didn’t. Another timeline’s version of you did. That action affected every version of you throughout all the timelines.” 

“Well, now what?” 

“Well,” Phil said, “I don’t exactly know. I don’t know what timeline you came from, and I don’t know how to get you back to it. I do know, though, that every timeline you go through is not without purpose. The entire time travel journey is planned, and everything that happens is according to that plan. We don’t know the plan, but we can feel it, and I can feel that you’re a part of it.” 

Dan blinked hard. “What the hell does that mean?” 

“Your timelines are familiar to each other and to you. They make sense, in some way. If you follow them right, you will find your way home.” 

Dan looked over at the contraption to his left. It looked like a portal, and it was large enough for him to walk through. “Or you could just send me through that and see what happens.” 

Phil looked at the portal and back at him. “That, somehow, is a valid option. But you need to understand that there’s risks to this. I don’t know if my portal is exactly the same as the one that the first Dan went through, so you might end up a bit ill, or, um-dead.”

“Just hit the switch, Lester,” he said, climbing into the portal. 

Before Dan could even think, he was inside the tattoo parlor. “Hello, I bro-” 

“Yeah, you got the flowers. You’re too late; buzz off,” Phil said, the harsh tone in his voice catching Dan off guard. 

“Are you okay?” he asked, immediately jumping into protective boyfriend mode. He could tell Phil was seriously upset, and it was almost instinctual for him to step in. “What happened?” he added, stepping up to the counter and resisting the urge to reach out and touch Phil. 

“Oh, nothing, just my boyfriend forgot our anniversary. So I don’t need your stupid flowers.” He grabbed them from Dan’s hand anyway, but he immediately threw them on the ground and stomped on them. 

“Oh…” Dan whispered. “Alright then.” He perked up, showing Phil a cautious smile. “I’m sure he didn’t really forget! He’s probably planning a surprise for you later.” 

“Nah, he forgot,” Phil grumbled. “I can always tell with him.” He rolled his eyes and walked around the counter to stand beside Dan. He planted his elbow on the counter and looked up at Dan. “That was a cute thought, though.” 

Dan raised an eyebrow at this; he’d known Phil long enough to know when Phil was flirting with him, and Phil was definitely flirting with him. “Um, thanks,” he said. Obviously he missed Phil, but this was the Phil he knew ten years ago; it was simply… odd. 

“How old are you?” Phil asked, inching a bit closer to Dan. 

“Twenty-eight,” Dan replied, scooting back a bit. He and Phil had a considerable age gap, but four years and six years were a different ballpark, especially when it came to hitting on the man you’re in love with but ten years younger. There was no definitive word to describe it other than uncomfortable. 

“That’s not too old,” Phil replied, and Dan didn’t know how to react. On one hand, he was generally creeped out; this clearly wasn’t the Phil he knew. On the other hand, he wanted Phil back so badly he was almost willing to take any Phil he could get. Besides, the trope was drawing him in, and he couldn’t help but feel as if he was supposed to let it. 

“D-don’t you have a boyfriend?” Dan stammered out, still wary of the concept of becoming involved with this morally skewed version of Phil. 

“Dumped him for bein a twat,” he said, standing up from the counter and matching up to Dan so that they were only a few inches from each other. “What’re you, straight?” 

Dan instinctively laughed. “No-” 

Before he could even finish his vowel, Phil pressed his lips up against Dan’s, and it felt as if every emotion known to man rushed through his head at once. There was the familiar relief; all logic and reason drained from him and was replaced by the love he felt every time he kissed Phil. It was love he hadn’t felt in days, and even that was far too long. There was also some fear and discomfort. Even though he technically was still kissing Phil, he still felt almost as if he was being unfaithful to the Phil he knew. Plus, this Phil was a different Phil even in his intimacy; when he kissed his Phil, it was deep and full of love. This Phil, being much younger, kissed with lust and revenge. He was sure they weren’t unlike him in their youth, but he’d matured since then, and in the moment it was really a bit gross. 

“I can’t do this!” he shouted, and it was as if he could feel everything crumbling around him. He was living in a simulation, a cheesy, fetishizing fanfiction written by some 12-year-old who didn’t know better, and he couldn’t bear to go along with it, even if he was “meant to.” He didn’t give a shit if he was “supposed” to take Phil out to dinner and fall in love; he was already in love, and he wasn’t going to sit through some horrendously predictable plot when he could just as easily explain himself to Phil and hopefully Phil would help him find a way home. This young, angry boy was apparently a scientist, after all. 

But at the same time, he felt as if pulling away gave him some sort of a game over screen. He set himself up for the bad ending by doing something good. He could feel the trope crack in half in his very heart; it was like he was nothing more than a character, and he’d just broken the fourth wall. He was Wreck It Ralph, and suddenly, because he stuck up for himself, the game wasn’t quite right anymore. 

“What do you bloody mean you can’t?” Phil replied, hostility back in his voice like when they’d first met. 

“I love you,” Dan blurted. He couldn’t think of anything else. 

Phil stood in silence for a moment before leaning forward a bit and blinking a few times, clearly unable to even process what Dan was telling him. “Alright, now I know you’ve gone mad. Get out.”

“Wait, liste-”

“Out! You’re a bloody crazy man; get out!” At this point, Phil approached him again, but rather than making a move, he simply turned him around and started pushing him towards the door.

“You’re trying to time travel!” Dan shouted out of desperation. Suddenly Phil stopped in his tracks and backed away from Dan. 

“Who told you?” he said, taking calculated steps back as if he was scared of Dan. 

“I came from the year 2019,” Dan said, and it took all his effort not to laugh because of how ridiculous it sounded; he was speaking like he’d walked straight out of a movie. “I actually am in love with you, or, well, another timeline’s version of you. I keep getting transported to different timelines, and you’re the only one who can help me get back.” 

Phil backed himself up to a door at the other side of the room. “I can’t help you do shit. It’s too early in the timelines for me to develop time travel. I’m only beginning to look into it.” 

Dan’s eyes widened in terror. “So there’s no one in this timeline who can help me get back to 2019? I’m stuck reliving the last ten years?”

“Not necessarily,” Phil replied cautiously. He still looked scared to his core, although Dan couldn’t quite identify why. “Maybe some Phil’s done it.” 

“Don’t you know these things?” Dan asked, beginning to get angry. “I thought you all had some weird sixth sense bullshit.” 

“Nope!” Phil said, all too cheery. “So sorry, but I must be going!” he said in a voice far too posh for him before turning the knob and swiftly slipping into the room behind him. Before Dan could even respond, he was gone. 

“Phil!” Dan shouted. “Phil, you little shit, what are you hiding from me?” He banged on the door with all his force, but it wouldn’t open. Finally he realized that he was taking his anger out on a piece of wood, and he gave up, sliding to his knees and softly beginning to sob. He was never going to get home. 

Dan heard a heavy sigh from the other side of the door and raised his head to see the door creaking open just a bit. “If you can find another Phil from your year, he should be able to get you home,” Phil said. “We don’t have the technology yet, but he will.” 

“Where the hell am I supposed to find a 2019 Phil in 2009?” Dan growled. He must have looked absolutely pathetic; his cheeks were coated with tears, and he could barely see Phil. It was a miracle Phil was willing to talk to him. 

“If you’re here, the Phils of the future probably are testing on various things, and a version of you was one of them. I don’t doubt that one Phil tried stepping through a portal himself.” 

“But how can I find him?” 

Phil rolled his eyes. “I don’t know, but not here. Just get out of here and go do your thing.”