#platonicity

Dan doesn’t believe in ghosts. 

He doesn’t believe in monsters, ghouls, Slenderman, zombies, or demons either, but that doesn’t mean that as soon as the lights are out, he’s not terrified all of them are lurking in the shadows of his bedroom. 

He has a totally irrational fear of the supernatural, and he’s more than aware that being scared of something doesn’t mean that there is any logic to it, or that it actually exists. But brains don’t listen to logic every time, so Dan has to surrender himself to his paranoia. 

Normally it’s fine. He can ignore it, or at least stave it off by doing silly things like running out of a room after switching the light off, or keeping his feet tucked securely under the covers at night. 

But something has changed since he and Phil moved to this new place. Dan wishes he didn’t feel it, but he does. At first, he chalked up the general unease he felt while wandering the maze of this ‘duplex’ to a general unfamiliarity, along with his negative attitude towards change. 

But the weeks passed, and the feeling didn’t dissipate. 

Dan followed Phil around from room to room, becoming a shadow of the older man, probably annoying the shit out of him. When Phil questioned this strange behaviour, Dan just muttered some vague excuse about not realising he was doing it. He couldn’t bring himself to admit that he couldn’t stand sitting in the big, bare, whitewashed rooms of this place by himself. 

Eyes pricked at his skin - he could feel them watching. Little taps and skitters sounded from the underside of the wooden floorboards. The television flicked on by itself at random times. 

Dan simply jumps off the sofa and leaves the room when this happens, nope-ing the hell out of the situation before Samara herself crawls through the screen. 

It starts to keep Dan awake. He can’t shake the sense that something is staring at him as he lays in bed at night. Dan’s cruel brain whispers to him in the wee hours that the monsters will emerge from their hiding places if he dares to shut his eyes.

Phil begins to notice, of course. 

“Is that your third coffee of the morning?” 

“How come you fell asleep in the meeting earlier? You’re lucky I noticed and woke you up before anyone saw.” 

“I heard you pacing around your room at 3am last night. What time did you actually go to sleep?”

“I don’t wanna sound mean, Dan, but maybe you should dab some concealer on your dark circles before we film. The fans might think you’re sick or something. You can borrow mine if you want.”

Dan just remains carefully evasive, not wanting to worry Phil too much, but also not wanting to tell him about the ridiculous fear he has that their new place is haunted. 

Eventually though, it comes out regardless. 

They’re filming for a video, and Dan is doing a skit. His back is to a glass screen door leading to the next room, across which a curtain is pulled. He senses the curtain twitch before Phil even says anything, and jumps in his seat, heart hammering. 

“Woah, that was weird,” Phil says, frowning. “The curtain moved. Did you see that?”

Dan titters nervously, facing away from the door. “Weird.” He says. Then, because it seems like a perfect opportunity to bring this up without sounding crazy, Dan says: “Maybe we’ve got a ghost.”

Phil laughs, and the hope drains from Dan’s exhausted body. He doesn’t know what he expected from Phil’s reaction. A genuine consideration of haunting, perhaps? Or maybe for Phil to admit he too has been feeling something spooky since they moved in?

Dan sighs heavily, waiting for Phil to begin filming again so that they can get this over with.

Instead, Phil is frowning at the camera viewfinder, looking through some footage. 

“It’s actually really creepy,” Phil says, squinting at whatever he’s watching. “Come have a look.” 

Reluctantly, Dan gets up and moves to look at the video of the curtain moving, letting Phil play it a few times over. He tries to act surprised, but honestly - this isn’t the first curtain he’s seen twitching since they got here. 

“Maybe we actually do have a ghost.” Phil says with a smile, and Dan swallows, hating him for it a bit. “That’ll get us some more views, at least.” 

“Don’t,” Dan says, the irritation he feels at Phil’s blazé attitude towards this bubbling over. 

He walks back to his seat, wanting to forget the whole thing for now. 

When he looks up at Phil, waiting expectantly for him to continue with the scene, Phil is staring at him curiously. 

“Wait...” Phil says, cocking his head to one side. “You don’t... do you actually think there’s a ghost?”

If it weren’t for the traitorous natural reflexes of Dan’s masochistic body, he might’ve been able to lie to Phil. As it happens, the blush in his cheeks answers for him. 

“Just drop it, okay?”

Phil laughs, covering his mouth with one hand. “Is that why you’ve been acting so weird and jumpy?” 

Dan rolls his eyes, getting up from his position. “Fuck this, we’ve done the take three times already. We don’t need to do it again.”

He storms past Phil, bumping into his shoulder as he goes. “Wait, but we might get more footage of the ghost!” 

“Shut up!” Dan calls, heading into his room and slamming the door. 

Immediately, that same uncanny sensation of being watched itches at him, and he sighs, wondering if this will ever end. 

* 

It doesn’t end. In fact, it gets worse. 

Phil still finds the whole thing endlessly amusing, which, despite being annoying, actually does help to distract Dan a little from his brain’s ‘worst-conclusion’ thoughts. 

One morning, Dan clambers out of the shower to find a faint handprint pressed into the condensation of the mirror. He scrubs it away, heart thudding in alarm, and tells himself that he must have leant his hand there without realising.

Two days later, Dan is doing a liveshow when his door pushes itself open seemingly of its own volition. He pauses mid-ramble, trying not to appear freaked out on camera, and calls out: “...Phil?” hoping that the cheery face of his best friend will poke around the door as an explanation. He doesn’t.

Dan’s covers are tugged from his body in the night. He screws his eyes shut and clings to them with all his strength. 

One of his favourite shirts has a mysterious rip slashed down the back; he doesn’t even realise until Phil points it out to him.

Mugs smash with nobody touching them. Lights flicker. A potted plant throws itself across the room right in front of Dan’s eyes. 

One night, Dan is curled into a ball in the middle of his bed, trying with all his might to think of anything except the ghostly goings on, when a high pitched scream splits the silence, and Dan jumps up, petrified.

He grabs a cushion, hugging it to his chest, and bolts across the hall into Phil’s room. He climbs under the covers without a word, making Phil yelp in surprise. 

A light flicks on, and Dan almost jumps out of his skin, but realises belatedly that Phil has switched on his bedside lamp.

“Dan? What the-” Phil rubs his eyes blearily. “Why’re you in my bed? Why do you have a cushion?”

“I’m not sleeping alone tonight,” Dan says firmly, rolling onto his side, his head on one of Phil’s pillows, as though cementing this statement. “I know you think I’m crazy, but there’s something... weird about this house. I don’t fucking believe in this stuff either but how else do you explain all the creepy shit that’s been happening. I mean for fuck’s sake, we caught the damn thing on camera-”

Dan breaks off when he realises he can hear Phil laughing. He rolls over, white hot with indignant fury. He lifts the pillow he’s holding out of the covers and begins whacking Phil with it, unamused. 

“Ow! Ow, Dan-”

Phil keeps laughing, so Dan keeps whacking. 

“This,” whack, “is not,” whack, “fucking,” whack, “funny!”

Phil catches hold of the pillow, yanking Dan towards him by his shoulders until they’re face to face. Dan reddens, not used to being this close in proximity to someone in a damn bed unless the situation is very different. 

His eyes fall to Phil’s mouth. Out of instinct, obviously. Nothing else. 

“Dan,” Phil says, eyes shining with mischief. “I couldn’t help it. I’m sorry.” 

Immediately, Dan’s hackles go up, and he narrows his eyes. “What?”

Phil sighs, patting him on the shoulder. “I didn’t think you’d get this scared. I think I took it too far.” 

It takes a moment for the gears to click, but then Dan’s mouth falls open. 

“Oh, you little shit.”

He wrestles the cushion from Phil, proceeding to whack him with it again, harder this time. 

“Ow! Dan, wait-”

“This was you?!” Dan cries, furious. “You’re the reason I haven’t slept in a fucking month?”

“It was gonna be for a video!” Phil cries, hands held in front of him in defence. “I was gonna do a big reveal of the prank and-”

“I hate you.” Dan spits, the anger coursing through him. “All this time you let me believe it was a fucking ghost! All the flickering lights and the telly switching itself on and the plants hurling themselves across the room! Do you seriously have nothing better to do than elaborately torture your very paranoid best friend with mind games and drive him slowly insane?”

Dan pauses, partly because he wants to hear Phil explain himself and grovel, but mostly because Phil is frowning like he doesn’t understand. 

“I didn’t... hurl a plant across a room.” Phil says slowly, like he’s trying to work out an alternate meaning to the statement. 

Dan’s heart skips a beat. The pillow falls from his hands. “The telly switching on?”

Phil smirks. “Bought an extra TV remote. Works from the next room.”

Dan narrows his eyes at him, trying to suppress the urge to continue hitting him with the pillow. 

“The doors opening and closing?”

“Pretty easy to discreetly push a door shut now and again.” 

“...The screaming just now?” 

“I downloaded a scary alarm app on your phone.” Phil giggles. 

Dan glares at him. 

“The rip in my shirt?”

“I’ll buy you a new one.”

“You’d fucking better, you asshole.” Dan thinks, trying to remember everything. Suddenly, he reddens. “Hey, what about the hand on the mirror?! Did you creep in the bathroom while I was showering, you perv?”

Phil blushes, chuckling a little. “I didn’t see anything.” He pauses, and to Dan’s surprise, winks cheekily. “Much.”

"That’s an invasion of my privacy.” 

“You’re just upset I didn’t take the opportunity to climb in with you.” Phil says, which makes Dan balk a little. Hearing Phil flirt jokily is far different when they’re both semi-dressed in his bed. “If you’re worried I saw too much, don’t be.” Phil says, then smirks again. “Plenty of people have micropenises, Dan. It’s nothing to be ashamed- OW!”

Dan throws the pillow to the side, rolling his eyes. “Dick.” 

“Seriously, Dan, you don’t need to worry.” Phil tells him, shrugging. “I mean, I’ve seen you naked plenty of times anyway. Your body is definitely one of the best I’ve seen.”

“Oh my God, can we stop talking about this please?” Dan asks, feeling the tips of his ears heating up. There’s a warm, proud feeling blooming in his stomach, but he ignores it. “I don’t wanna know how you’ve seen me naked ‘plenty of times’ but it doesn’t matter right now. The point is, you’re a psychopathic asshole who pretended this place was fucking haunted so that I-”

“Wait, but what about the plant?” Phil interrupts, frowning again. “I never threw a plant. I love my plants, they’re like my babies.”

“Babies that you starve until they all die.” Dan mutters, rolling his eyes. 

He thinks back to the plant incident, trying to remember details. In truth, it does seem like Phil couldn’t have done that, because the plant in question was atop their dining table, right in Dan’s eyeline. And it just lifted itself up and flung into the far wall. It had been fast and terrifying. If Phil had done it, Dan would definitely have seen him. 

“Okay but... if you didn’t do it, then...” Dan trails off, not knowing how to end this sentence. 

“Hey, and what about the curtain?” Phil pipes up, eyes alight. 

Dan frowns. “You mean when we were filming?” 

“Yeah!” Phil sits up, reaching for his glasses and sliding them on. “That’s when I started doing all this stuff.”

Dan feels the blood drain from his face, and he just about resists the urge to scream. 

“You mean... you only started pranking me after that thing with the curtain moving?” 

“Yeah,” Phil confirms, looking at him strangely. “Why?”

Dan throws himself forwards, curling into a ball against Phil’s chest. He doesn’t care that it’s weird, or that Phil might not understand why. Dan absolutely, under no circumstances can be alone and uncomforted right now, so Phil is just going to need to suck it up. 

“Phil?” Dan says after a minute, his words spoken against the fabric of Phil’s pyjama top. 

He can feel Phil’s hand resting tentatively on his back, and all he wants is to pull it round him properly, to secure himself in the barricade of Phil’s arms. 

“Yes?”