A List of Available Smiles - part four
A List of Available Smiles
Part Four
Nothing really changes after that. Phil was right - they were already together in all the ways that counted. All that seems to change is that they’re now free to kiss and have sex, and even that doesn’t happen often - Dan’s sex drive hasn’t disappeared, but it has taken a nosedive. It’s almost always Phil who initiates anything, and he seems to feel like he’s being too demanding. But when it’s Dan who reaches out, Phil’s joy is just so palpable that Dan sort of feels guilty that he doesn’t share it. Not that he doesn’t enjoy sex with Phil, but it’s not a great big emotional thing, for him. It can’t be, because nothing is.
At times like these, Dan’s seriously grateful for the fact that Phil doesn’t expect him to suddenly get better just because they’re together. It might work like that in fairy tales or whatever, but real life sucks rather more than books.
He might be getting a bit better, though. He’s not sure. It’s just little things occasionally that make him wonder, like the time he notices how beautiful the evening sun makes the fountains look as they walk out into town one night. He hasn’t really noticed the play of light since... The last time he can think of it is the time he went out in the snow and started thinking about solipsism. That was years ago.
But then the rest of the evening is spent with friends, pretending everything’s fine, and on the way back Dan fails entirely to notice the starlight. Back to square one.
On Dan’s mum’s birthday, they go down to spend the day with Dan’s extended family, an event which ends up doubling as the introduction of Phil as Dan’s boyfriend. His parents have met Phil, of course, but communications home have been less than detailed for the past few months, and somehow Dan’s failed to mention that he and Phil are now going out.
“They’ll be alright with it, won’t they?” Phil asks.
Dan shrugs. “They know I’m bi. And they like you.”
But apparently knowing and seeing are two different things. Even his parents, who should have come to terms with the possibility of this long ago, do a double take when Dan quietly has a word with them, and although they’re unfailingly happy for him, they’re just a little bit too polite to Phil all day. Phil probably doesn’t notice - he doesn’t know Dan’s family all that well - but Dan sees it in the smile that his mum automatically turns on whenever Phil says something, and the way that his dad awkwardly tries to bond with Phil until it becomes clear that they have absolutely nothing in common besides Dan. If Phil were just his friend, that wouldn’t have happened. And amongst all of this, Dan is trying to strike a balance between appearing fine and not lying too much, because he knows that Phil will call him out on deceiving his family, and then his aunt asks him loudly and tactlessly about his exam results, and then it turns out he’s managed to buy his mum a book that’s been out for months and which she read weeks ago...
In short, it’s absolutely horrible, and to make matters worse, they’re staying overnight, and Dan’s mum suddenly gets flustered about not having the guest room ready.
“I didn’t know you were coming,” she says, apologetically, to Phil.
“It’s fine,” Phil assures her.
And then, because Dan has to say something, has to validate their relationship in his parents’ eyes: “It’s not like we haven’t shared a bed before.”
The worst thing about that isn’t even the awkwardness that ensues as his dad chokes on his drink. The worst thing is that Dan seriously needs some time to himself, some space to recuperate from the constant battering of the day, and there’s no way he can get that now without appearing to push Phil away.
In his old bedroom, the brown walls seem to close in and make everything darker. “I’ll be there in a minute,” he tells Phil. “I just-”
To his credit, Phil just nods and goes to brush his teeth. Dan sits on the floor in front of the window. It’s a new moon, and he’s almost grateful for that as he stares at the dark sky. A stray thought catches him: he wants to go outside and lie on the grass, looking up. He wants freedom from expectations and worried glances. He wants to lie in the shadows, unseen. If there’s no one else there to whom he can be compared, then he becomes normal by default.
He stays there by the window even as Phil gets into bed and goes slowly to sleep. Most of the time, being pressed close to Phil is a comfort, but not tonight. Even the fact that Phil is watching him bugs slightly, which just makes him feel worse, because Phil has done absolutely nothing wrong. He doesn’t deserve this from Dan. But they’ve been pushed together all day, even Dan’s been pushing them together all day to prove a point; today their relationship became dangerously close to becoming part of the game of appearances and lies. If they could only go back to their flat, it would be easy to remove themselves from it. As it is, the guilt and the uneasiness lingers.
They leave as early as possible the next morning. Dan was awake all night, so he ends up sleeping against Phil on the train, hoping against hope that none of their subscribers end up on the same journey. For the next week, Dan ignores calls from home and doesn’t leave the flat.
That doesn’t feel like progress.
And anyway, if he were getting better, shouldn’t it be more obvious? Shouldn’t there be some reliable indicator of his mental health, like a battery meter or something? It’s seriously annoying, because there’s no way to really measure it, no real symptoms to watch disappear. It’s just... it’s just that sometimes he kisses Phil just because, or plans a video he can get really quite enthusiastic about...
He buys some fairy lights for his room on a whim, and together with the amber lamp on his bedside table, they make his bedroom looks seriously cool at night, a beautiful glow offset against the darkness. When Phil’s sitting at the desk editing a video, Dan often finds himself just sitting on his bed, watching. He’s backlit by the computer screen, and if it weren’t for the lamps he’d just be a silhouette; instead, the light glints off his hair and he’s lit in two-tone, white from the Mac and gold from the amber lamp, and he’s beautiful. At times like these, it’s very difficult to see their relationship as anything other than what it is: the two of them, just being together. There’s nothing more to it, and he hates it when other people try to make it into something else.
He hates it when his mother asks pseudo-casually on the phone, “How’s Phil?” as if hoping that they might have broken up or got engaged - he’s not sure which. He hates it when the shippers overanalyse everything in their videos, coming up with ideas of unrequited love or even the perfect relationship, because that’s not reality, that’s just a one-dimensional story in someone else’s mind. Reality is just them: coloured in a spectrum, not just black and white. They are complex and real; they’re not just an idea to exist in someone else’s head, except of course they are. They are the centre of their own story, but tangential at best to everyone else.
But sometimes it doesn’t matter. Sometimes, when they’re lost in each other, lost in each other’s bodies and lost in each other’s minds, Dan can accept that they might be a tiny cameo in everyone else’s lives, because they are absolutely central to each other.
And with that realisation, others start to follow. Yes, life is a game of polite lies, but he can always tell the truth to Phil. No, they might never fully understand each other, but they can spend the rest of their lives trying, and they can get pretty damn close. All his pessimistic thoughts - he was never wrong, but he perhaps wasn’t in a place to consider all the factors.
And yet coming up with these new thoughts doesn’t really solve anything. It doesn’t stop him feeling down about these - these compromises, because that’s all they are. And he still worries that he’s far too dependent on Phil. If and when they break up...
He still can’t think about it. And then he has his resit.
***
For the past two months, Dan has been aware that his retake has been coming up. The date is saved in his phone and on his computer, and Phil wrote it up on the whiteboard in the kitchen at some point, so the little Lego Dan is sitting on top of “exam!” Real Dan wishes he were so on top of it, because the reality is that he hasn’t touched his folders since the end of term. A large part of him thinks he’s got a pretty good excuse, but there’s another part saying no, you haven’t - you’ve always been so determined that you haven’t got clinical depression, you’re not that bad, and anyway, you’ve kept uploading videos all summer, so clearly you can work.
But whether or not he should have done more, the end result is that it’s midnight, his exam is in nine hours, and it is abundantly clear that if he turns up to the exam, he will fail. Again.
These are the facts which are cycling in Dan’s head as he stares at his patchy lecture notes. It makes it rather difficult to concentrate on what’s actually printed on the page.
He’s sitting in his room in an effort to remove himself from distraction, or at least from Phil, who is currently playing Spyro, if Dan’s video game music/foley recognition skills are up to par - Gateway to Glimmer, he thinks - but it’s really not working. Even if he were in a sensory deprivation tank with only his revision notes to distract him, he’d probably end up counting the iterations of the letter j on the page rather than focusing on the wider issue of property law. Shit, what’s he going to do?
He’s in a blind place of panic. There is no way out from this. There is literally nothing he can do.
So do nothing.
Can he drop out of uni? He recoils from the idea. How much of a failure does that make him? Manchester has a drop out rate of less than five percent, a statistic that was bandied about proudly when he was applying. And what a waste - all that money, all that time down the drain as if he’d put his life on a really expensive pause.
But he could possibly take a year out. Take the exam next August, go back next September. He’d have a whole year to... well, to do everything. Build up his YouTube channel, try to find openings in more traditional media.
Recover.
He’s not an idiot - he knows that if he takes a year out, the chances of him going back at all reduce drastically. But maybe if he takes a year out, he won’t actually need to go back. Anyway, it doesn’t matter what the downsides are. There is literally no other choice.
But god, it’s so frustrating. How much of a failure is he? In a fit of despair, he picks up his folder and chucks it at the wall. The rings click open, and all of his work escapes in a blizzard of unread handouts.
“Fuck!”
“Dan? Are you alright?”
Of course Phil would appear at his first sign of distress. Dan rounds on him.
“No, I’m not fucking alright! I’m gonna fail this fucking exam if I do it, so I’m gonna have to take a whole fucking year out, and I feel like such a fucking idiot!”
“Dan-”
“Just fuck off, Phil!” He turns away.
“No, I won’t!”
Dan’s momentarily shocked into silence - Phil rarely argues back. But there he is, slamming on the lights, storming into the room. “Tell me what’s going on!”
And just like that, Dan’s ire is back: “I’m dropping out of uni for a year, alright? I’m skipping my exam and doing it next year, because I’m such a fucking idiot and I didn’t fucking revise!”
He kicks the pile of paper.
“Dan, you can’t just not turn up-”
“Yes I fucking well can! No one can make me go!”
“Would you stop swearing?”
Such a Phil thing to care about. “What the fuck does it matter?”
He collapses onto the bed and buries his head in his hands; he feels more than sees Phil’s tentative approach.
“Tell me what’s going on?”
Dan doesn’t look up. “I’m not going to my exam. I’ll just fail if I do. I’ll have to take a year out, do it again next year.”
“Right. And... do you have to let them know?”
“No, I can just not turn up. Of course I’ve got to let them know. I guess... It’s too late to email them now. I’ll just have to go in.”
As if reassured by the sarcasm, Phil sits down next to Dan. “I couldn’t come with you, could I?”
Dan finally looks up. “Nah, I’ve got to be a big boy and do this myself.”
“Yeah.” Phil leans against Dan. “I love you, you know.”
“Yeah, love you too. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. Wanna come and defeat Ripto for me?”
And so they end up back on the sofa, Phil trying to curl up next to Dan without getting in his way as he defeats the boss. It’s not difficult - even Phil could have done it eventually - but it is a fairly long and repetitive process, and they end up leaving Spyro to his fate in favour of making out on the sofa. They’re giggling, teasing each other about their video gaming prowess, just having fun, but as soon as they fall in to kissing properly, the mood softens and saddens.
“I’m sorry,” Dan says, his hands tracing Phil’s ribs. “I’m so crap to you sometimes.”
“You’re upset,” Phil murmurs, punctuating the statement with a kiss to the sensitive skin in front of his ear. “It’s alright.”
“No, but... I feel so shit, and you’re so good-”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“You are.”
Something catches in Dan’s throat, and he realises that for the first time in months, in years, he is crying.
He’s not sad. Well, he is, but it’s not that. He’s sad, and he’s angry, and he’s awed, and he’s so in love. It’s just overwhelming, a sudden surge of emotion like a floodlight in a darkened room. He’s overflowing with it, on fire with it, completely suffused with it.
He cannot remember feeling like this before.
And he’s crying, he’s crying so hard. There are hot tears running down his face and probably dripping onto Phil’s shirt, and his breath keeps catching in his throat, like he’s struggling towards something, be that proper respiration or his own death by asphyxiation - it doesn’t much matter, because it’s release either way. He’s clinging onto Phil, his fingernails probably digging into Phil’s forearms, and Phil’s telling him shhh, it’s okay, it’s okay, but it’s not, and perhaps that’s the point: for months, he’s never gone above okay, he’s never felt anything more than okay - he’s felt worse, less, but never better or more - but now... Oh, this is so much more than okay. This is devastation and ecstasy, all wrapped into one. This is... this is being set free. This is...
It won’t last. But this is feeling alive.
“Phil. Phil.”
“Shh, Dan.”
But he can’t calm down, and he can’t explain, so he just kisses him. He presses Phil into the sofa, almost lying on top of him, and he knows Phil’s not sure what’s going on, because he can practically feel his confusion. He can equally feel that he’s definitely willing to go along with this for now.
“I love you,” Dan whispers against his lips. “I love you.”
Tomorrow, he’ll have to go into university and convince his tutors that this is the right path for him. He’ll have to talk them into believing that he’s had severe mental health issues without any evidence from a GP, and he’ll have to face their disappointment and their disdain, and maybe their disbelief. He’ll have to tell his parents that he’s essentially dropping out, and he’ll have to tell the internet, eventually, because people will notice that he’s not going back.
Tomorrow, he’ll be depressed. But he’ll know that it’s not forever. He’ll know there are moments like this one, that there will be more moments like this one. They never last, but they always come back.
He’s still crying, but he’s smiling too. A real smile. A smile he’s never smiled before. This is real, and this is truth, and this is light.
***
“Haven’t sent you a private video in ages, so I thought I’d be all sappy and romantic and send you this one because this time last year, you were inviting me to move in with you. D’you remember that? I found a screenshot on my computer the other day, flashing up now. You’re such a derp. Sometimes I wonder why I’m going out with you.
“Anyway. Just thought I’d say I miss you. Though I bet you’re a nightmare on Christmas, waking up too early, insisting presents happen before coffee. Still. Wish we could have Christmas together.
“And I wanted to say... thank you. For everything you’ve done for me. For being you. For being... just so brilliant. I really don’t know if - well, let’s be honest, I don’t know if I’d be here without you. But more than that, you’re just... Even when you’re making an utter mess in the kitchen or hogging the duvet or waking up at stupid o’clock in the morning, you’re just so... Oh, I don’t know. I can hardly say ‘amazing’, can I?
“Love you. Can’t wait to get home. And I’ll see you soon.”
Dan is just uploading the video when his mother calls.
“Coming!” he yells.
He chucks the laptop onto his bed, causing a single key to depress, and the highlighted option shifts up, unseen. The upload ticks away.
***
It’s in the middle of Christmas lunch that the phone rings. Dan’s mum and dad exchange glances.
“Your parents have already phoned, haven’t they?”
“Yes. It’s not your sister, then?”
“She’s on Australian time - she’ll be asleep by now. Who else...”
“Just let it go to answerphone,” says Dan.
Conversation ceases entirely as they wait, the silence interrupted only by the ringing of the phone and the scrape of cutlery on plates. Finally, the answerphone kicks in:
Hello, this is the Howell residence. We’re not available at the moment, so please leave a message. BEEP.
“Dan, if you’re there, you really need to pick up-”
But Dan’s already scrambling to the phone. “Phil? What’s wrong?”
“Your video - you set it to public, you idiot!”
“Shit! How many views-”
“Stuck on 301 as always. Who’s on YouTube at Christmas?”
“Us, apparently. Shit, I’ll go and change it now-”
He’s already out of the dining room and through to the lounge before he hears:
“Well-”
Dan pauses. “What?” And when Phil speaks, his blush is practically audible:
“It’s as good a way as any to go public.”
“Literally.” He can’t contain a laugh. It’s so ridiculous. “D’you wanna do this, then?”
“Yeah, I kind of do. Do you?”
He takes a deep breath. “Yeah. Okay.” And he smiles - a shaky smile, a nervous smile, but a smile nonetheless. “Scary, isn’t it?”
“We’ve got through worse,” Phil points out.
“True. Love you.”
“Love you, too. See you the other side of the internet melting.”
Dan ends the call and just stands there for a moment, looking at the family Christmas tree. The lights twinkle at him, multi-coloured ancient things from the eighties clinging to a plastic tree that isn’t much younger. Even as he watches, one of the bulbs stutters and dies, leaving a gap in between green and red where gold should shine. But that’s okay. That’s just part of the tree’s charm. It’s not brand new and sparkling. It’s suffered through the years, and it’s still going, and still a happy fixture.
Bit like me, Dan thinks.
As he turns away to return to Christmas dinner, he doesn’t notice the golden bulb flicker back to life.
A letter from ficster28 to the reader.