#tfbtf

If three o’clock in the morning were a drug, the side effects would include: self-hatred, brought on by the ever present loom of death, thoughts of how the universe doesn’t care, paralyzing loneliness, and of course, not sleeping as a result of such thoughts and emotions. Dan knows three o’clock in the morning quite well. Too damn well, in his opinion.  He knows self-hatred, loneliness, and too many trips down the existential crisis rabbit hole. And three in the morning is the perfect breeding ground for all of the best self-loathing woes anyone would want to endure.

Except Dan doesn’t want to be lonely, self-hating, or any other type of teenage angst shit tonight. He just wants to sleep. If he sleeps, he’ll be able to forget about the last five months even if it is for five hours.

He wants to stop thinking about the ‘ifs’ and the ‘should haves’. The ‘we didn’t have enough time’ and ‘this is not fair’.

But sleep isn’t coming easy these days. Dan’s mind has been, for the lack of a better term, a madhouse lately. He keeps forgetting trivial things (such as his keys last week that led to him sitting on the stair way for 3 hours with a dead phone until his neighbor got home) and thinking about pointless details for hours on end. He’s dropped into a black hole, and there’s not getting out. There’s not light at the end of this tunnel.

It has turned into one of those nights when he needs his best friend. Maybe so he can talk, maybe so he can get some reassurance that everything is perfectly fine. But he can’t. There has been one too many times that he’s had to call Phil in to rescue him from himself in the wee hours of the morning and now he can’t even ask.

It has also become one those nights where Dan’s head is killing him, and he can’t tell if it’s because his head has been overdrive for the last three weeks or looking at a bright screens for hours on end.

And these nights where the loneliness, and the headaches, blurs into his days and he’s drifting, he’s always drifting. Going through the motions with shitty unkempt hair, dark circles underneath his eyes. These are the things that compromise his want to be himself again.

Perhaps this is just a side effect of the three am drug.

At five am Dan falls into an uneasy sleep.

=

Dan dreams of bright lights and an insistent beep. He dreams of blue eyes and giggles. How that grin was on his face till the very end.

Dan startles himself awake at half past eight am. He groans and pulls himself out of bed.

=

Dan has never lived alone in his life. Aside from when he was in university dorms for a year, but that hardly counts as he was with Phil most of the time anyway. Consequently, he doesn’t know how to human in constant silence.

He had grown accustomed to waking up to random bangs and squeaks from Phil, now it was always eerily quiet. He wished there was someone banging around in the apartment. But he only wants one person banging and squeaking around the apartment.

=

Dan regained a bit of a routine six weeks after the funeral. He made an official video announcing what had had happened and that he would be taking a hiatus from YouTube and the BBC for a little while.

He logged out of Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Google; everything and hadn’t been on the internet for three and a half months. And for Dan’s standards, that was unheard of. He had been in front of a computer however. He decided to write, he decided TABinoF was a hoax, a sham, that wasn’t the real world of Dan and Phil, it was a watered down version. It was full of white lies, grey area, and a black text font.

So Dan was writing their story, their real story. From May of 2009 when Phil first tweeted him to Manchester Piccadilly Station. Stories from Portugal and Jamaica that weren’t included in The Amazing Book is not on Fire. Moving to Manchester for Uni, moving in with Phil, his quarter life crisis, the Valentine’s Day Video. Their relationship: the good, the bad, the ugly and the uglier. London, the radio show, Japan. All of it. Dan wrote for hours on end, it was the only way he could bring some structure back into his life.

Also the diagnosis. Phil had been diagnosed with stage three osteosarcoma in his left knee. A routine trip down the stairs ended up with a dislocated knee and a lot of screaming on Phil’s end. After countless scans and a biopsy, Dan and Phil’s worlds came crashing down around them.

The chemo, the radiation, how Phil laughed so hard he cried when Dan shaved his head as his hair was already thinning. How Phil’s annoyingly optimistic attitude stayed after his leg from above the knee had been amputated. And how it stayed around after more tumors had been discovered in his hips.

After that though, they both knew it was a waiting game.

Dan also wrote about the home they built together, forget that world idea, they had a home. An apartment with strange architecture, loud tenants and louder police, yet it was warm and welcoming and it was theirs.

The stickers on nearly every surface that Phil could get his hands on, including Dan’s piano were all still around. The dents in the wall from camera equipment never ceased to remind Dan where it all began for the both of them.

The cracks in the tiles were just little memories of the domesticity that happened every morning, noon, and night. Everything reminded Dan of things he never thought too hard about when Phil roamed around in the home with him.

Of fucking course their subscribers thought they were together, when Dan actually gave it some thought he realized they might as well been fucking married. And they would have been had they had more time.

=

Dan wrote in a panicked frenzy most of the time out of fear he would forget everything. He wanted to give their story justice and if it took two tries to get it right, he’d be damned if he made Phil Lester out to be nothing more than an internet personality with an ambiguous relationship with his best friend.

Because Phil was so much more than Dan and Phil. He was incredibly smart, and sweet, and way too forgiving in this unforgiving world. He was more than those encounters with strange people. He was more than his clumsiness, more than his fringe, or his mismatched socks. Phil Lester was an incredible man who didn’t get angry often but when he did, all hell broke loose. He didn’t love often either, yet he loved hard. He gave all his attention to Dan when Dan needed it. He hated people fussing over him. He hated mushrooms and raw cheese. He hated uncalled for rudeness. He hated unfairness.

When Dan couldn’t sleep at three am pre-cancer, Phil would just lie next to him and tell Dan stories about his strange childhood, and his day, or sometimes he would spout weird facts about animals. Anything to get Dan out of his own head, that’s the type of person Phil was, he would sacrifice his own sleep to make sure that Dan would be okay. Neither of them were all that useful the next day, but Dan wished he never took those three am story time extravaganzas for granted. He wished he had one more.

=

Dan didn’t know he was finished with whatever he was writing till he realized that he didn’t have anything left to say. He sat back in his chair and breathed, before he started sobbing. He didn’t think he would finish. He didn’t think this would officially have an end. He sure as fuck didn’t think it would come this soon.

=

Dan contacted Random House with the book proposal. The editor for TABinoF immediately agreed to the job. Dan decided that promotion for this book wouldn’t be as crazy as it was with TABinoF. He came out of his eight month internet hibernation with a video announcing what he had been doing during his time away.

“I wrote a book,” he breathed out, finding it hard to look at the camera, “That’s what I’ve been doing for the last eight or so months, while I am immensely proud of The Amazing Book is not on Fire, you only read the world of AmazingPhil and danisnotonfire.”

He looked down at the prototype of the new book, Three Feet by Three Feet.

“Now you’re going to get the whole story, the home we created,” Dan grinned as held up the book, “You got AmazingPhil’s and danisnotonfire’s story, but not Phil Lester’s and Dan Howell’s story, to me, those are very different things,” Dan clears his throat, “and a video explaining all these things wouldn’t give insight of what kind of man Phil  was, because he truly was amazing,” Dan laughed at his lame joke, almost expecting Phil to be sitting next to him, laughing too, “or the experiences we shared, I didn’t leave anything out—” he gave an eyebrow quirk to the camera.

“Three Feet by Three Feet, will be released on what would’ve been Phil’s thirtieth birthday,” Dan sighs, “half the proceeds of this book will be donated to osteosarcoma research,” that was something Dan thought of right after he his proposal was approved, he wouldn’t be able to sleep at night knowing he was capitalizing on this book, “it is probably what Phil would’ve done.”

“I’m not leaving YouTube, not completely anyway, but I know from here on out, everything is going to be different,” Dan begins, “YouTube is where it all started for the both of us, and Phil would probably haunt me in my dreams if I abandoned the internet completely,” Dan looks up, “even in death you’re still nagging at me to make a new video,” Dan laughs, and looks back to the camera, “ok too soon, I’ll see you guys soon, bye internet,” he gives the camera a two fingered salute and feels somewhat a peace.

-

Three am is a time of morning that shouldn’t exist, and for the first time in nearly a year, it doesn’t for Dan Howell. He’s comfortably asleep in the bed he used to share with Phil. He’s dreaming of blue eyes and plaid button ups.

=

Dan Howell is slowly coming back into who he really is. But there’s always going to be a piece missing, but he’s learning that he can still be complete without Phil. A lesson he is learning very slowly.