Chapter Text
1.) The Mistake
The only thing going on in his head right now is how badly he’s straining to be invisible. That’s not like Dan. He’s the guy who’s always desperate for attention—ask anybody. He’ll make you laugh or more often he’ll make you roll your eyes; not half as funny as he thinks he is, so he’ll just keep trying and pushing it until everyone’s worn down to the bone with being sick of him and he’ll still be there, ready to play any game you want that still means being himself, whatever himself is.
Now here he is sat in a crowd of people and hoping he’ll just evaporate, like air, like marijuana smoke, post directly to anywhere but fucking here.
I’m not here, he thinks, prays, begs, No one can see me. Invisible like always.
“Where’s Dan?” Someone calls again and his heart stops. “Dan? Where you at, mate?”
The really awful part is that if his jaw hadn’t just welded itself shut, he might try to answer. It’s someone else who volunteers him. He looks up. He’s met with a smile.
“You’ll give it a go too, yeah?”
And his head goes, maybe it’ll work, maybe I’ll feel better.
And his head goes, “try new things!” everyone always says that; be confident and be daring—
And yeah, he already knows that this isn’t what anyone meant with that generic, pointless advice, but his head goes, if you already know that, it’ll be fine, nothing is going to happen, Christ, look around, these people are your friends.
He wants to cry.
“Yeah, man,” he says—like a fucking robot—and sticks out a hand like get it over with, doctor’s office inoculation and he’s fine.
He’s fine. He’s fine. He’s fine. He doesn’t feel sick at all.
2.) The Life
The years move faster the older you get. That’s just science, or whatever.
Time just drifts by and nah, man; you don’t ever get to find out where it goes, or if it’s all added up in any significant way. Dan just paces it by the glow of the computer screen and his brain’s attempts to self-destruct at a dead-end service industry job and how long he can avoid the next phone call from his mum and all her inevitable disappointment.
His friends aren’t his friends anymore, and Dan has kind of figured out you don’t need a lot of friends after high school. He doesn’t need the camouflage anymore. Doesn’t need much of anything. Sometimes he’s sad about that, but most of the time he doesn’t feel much one way or another, just lets the hours spill by until one of two things happen: something corners him where he can’t get away and he has to face it, or he gets himself happy.
It’s being older too, that makes it so he can’t get happy the way he used to. Time flows by quicker and quicker, until it’s outright sprinting and he’s just going to open up his eyes one morning and be a million years old and dying. In the same way, Dan’s avenues of self-indulgence narrow. But even when he’s that million year old geezer, he’ll still know how to get himself happy even if there’s no more music and acting is kind of just for poofs anyway and books are just a lot of trouble when he’s got to feed himself.
He’ll always know how to get happy. Fuck everyone else. They don’t get to take this away from him.
H.A.P.P.Y.
It’s the prize he gets for clinging to functional when there’s clearly something too wrong with him to contemplate, when he shouldn’t have ever been born.
And he loves it.
3.) The Missed Opportunity
The internet’s not so bad, though, between doses (he’s not stupid, he knows he’s supposed to be miserable at least 90% of the time if he doesn’t want to wind up dead. He’s already seen that happen to people he knows and he’s not doing that to his mum after everything else). It makes the hours flow by quicker and it’s three am before he even realizes it. He’s too tired to go to sleep. Is that a thing? Yeah, it’s a thing. The world reels behind his closed eyelids, makes him seasick.
Sometimes he feels like he’s on the very cusp of happiness, the kind that people mean when they talk about being happy, some semi-permanent conscious state that tallies up accomplishments and laughter and maybe people who could like him some, not just say they love him, maybe that could be a thing. Like it’s still there, and he hasn’t outgrown his own potential; if he just reaches for it—
But he’s always going to get sick right after he thinks that, always so tired, and the only reason he’ll close his eyes is because the electric blue of the computer screen starts to burn too much and he’ll pass out before his nausea can prod them back open. He has to go to work anyway, so it’s for the best. He resents it.
That’s life.
4.) Dan Howell
He asks himself in the mirror what the fuck he’s doing, just for kicks. The look on his reflection’s face says he doesn’t know either.
He knows it’s supposed to be better, though, because it’s obvious, because that’s what everyone says.
There’s something so wrong with him, that he can’t feel that.
5.) The Paces
And he’s sat at work when it happens, debating on whether to just abandon the register since Katie never came back from break and he’s going to eat his own hand if he doesn’t get some lunch soon. It’s actually a debate for Dan, you see, because he’s enough of a bloody idiot that he doesn’t just skiv off. He should. Nobody gives a bloody shit about what the employees do as long as it doesn’t break federal laws. There’s just apparently some idiot part of Dan that likes the fact that he’s sat uselessly in an empty store because it’s his job, when he could be getting food.
It’s not integrity. It’s masochism.
God, he hates it here.
He’s reached the point where he’s trying to pick out the most violent insinuations of murder the pockmarks in the ceiling can provide, because he loves to give himself nightmares to deal with in his crappy single flat, when the bell on the front entrance dings. He dips his head so he can offer Katie the full impact of his scathing glare.
It’s not Katie. It’s a group of three blokes who Dan instantly pegs for gay because they all have ridiculous levels of fringe and one of them is wearing the brightest neon shirt he’s ever seen. Mainly, though, they’ve got to be gay because the one with the obviously bottled black hair has just got a socially unacceptable level of excited about the sweets display by the door.
Dan muffles his scowl behind a hand, observing the wild homosexual in its natural habitat. It involves a lot of flailing gesticulation and grinning, also black-hair nearly upends the sweets display by smacking a hand into it, much to the head shaking of his companions.
Dan thinks uncharitable things about what they’ll probably be up to with each other this evening. It’ll make a good story for whoever Dan stumbles into conversation with. Get this, saw the biggest poofters in shop today, I bet as soon as they get home…
Curly-hair and his shorter sidekick trundle back towards the drinks. Black-hair is already coming to the register. Dan sighs prematurely in expectation of actual interaction, but straightens anyway, not forgetting to take a moment to resent Katie. He’s meant to be on break. Sod everything.
“Can I have this one?” Black-hair asks, with excitement due from a small child that has secured his mum’s permission. He has selected:
a peanut lion bar.
Dan feels this overwhelming urge to sigh at the world. He recites the pricing, and acts like the robot he is: accept money, relocate appropriately, count out change, return to buyer. Beep-boop, thank you for your patronage. When he hands over the coins, though, black-hair’s smile has dimmed a bit. Dan’s shoulders automatically rise.
He can’t do a lecture on his customer service today. Not from the guy who smiles at the fucking lion bars. He knows his attitude is shit, but if grandma didn’t sort him out, black-hair has no chance and Dan doesn’t want to listen to it.
“You alright?” Black-hair asks. Dan blinks.
That almost sounds like genuine concern.
“…Fine.”
“You’re looking pale,” says black-hair, and Dan lets his eyes drag purposefully down what—aside from the hair—really should qualify for albinism. He’s being grinned at when he looks back up. “Yeah! If you compare to me, you know you’ve got to look really rubbish, right?”
Dan looks eternally rubbish, but he appreciates it being pointed out to him. He’s not entirely sure this isn’t black-hair trying to hit on him either.
Right, he doesn’t know why anyone would do that either, but the weirdest fucking things take place behind this cash register. You’d never imagine. Dan has had someone try to sell him a juvenile rhinoceros before, and he really wishes he was kidding.
“Fine,” he stresses, in the interest of not having complaints filed against him. “Just a bit hungry.”
“Oh no!”
Dan is pretty sure that statement doesn’t merit an oh no. He glares at black-hair, trying to figure out his angle. “I can buy you something,” black-hair is going eagerly, “What would you like?”
Dan’s glare darkens. Why on earth would he want any of the crap sold here? He’s surrounded by it all day long. If he wanted some, oh yes, the checkout is entirely too high and precarious for him to escape and have some crisps. That logic is sound.
“Terrorizing someone again, are you?” Drawls the curly-haired poof, rejoining them with a handful of drinks that he spreads on the checkout. His friend tosses a few crisp bags on there too and Dan turns away to ring it up, relieved to have something else to do. “Don’t mind Phil. He’s had a long day and we forbade animal facts two towns over.”
“Phil, no,” the shorter one sighs, “You’re not still on about the platypuses, are you?”
Oh dear god, Dan thinks, rapidly counting out change. Of course it’s when he’s alone in the store that the crazy poofs come in. He’s probably going to get stabbed.
“I did not even slightly bring up trivia,” black-hair protests, wide-eyed as Dan turns around to hand over the change. He darts his gaze towards Dan pleadingly, which Dan ignores, and in return nearly gets poked in the eye by one flailing albino hand. “He’s just not looking well, is all, what, am I not allowed to be concerned?”
“Maybe the grown-ass gentleman can figure that one for himself?” Curly-hair points out wisely—
Thank you, Dan thinks irritably. Can they not just haul off from the store?
“But you are looking a bit peaky there, mate,” the shorter one says, earning a glare from Dan.
Can you fucking not?
“Just saying.” And then the bell dings again—Dan looks up, and of course it’s Katie, now, open-mouthed as she takes in the men surrounding the checkout. Katie. This is all Katie’s fault. Phil is asking him,
“You don’t want to pass out, do you?”
And Dan, well, he just loses it.
“Well, thank my lucky stars!” He exclaims, flinging his hands into the air, “My coworker has arrived and it’s only twenty minutes into my scheduled lunch break; I can at last address the very pressing concern of my malnutrition and stop offending the planet’s most medically gifted albinos, yeah?” Because he does not want to be fired, he does not actually chuck his nametag at Katie, who’s got her mouth still hanging open, probably because that is the most words Dan has ever said to her. “I am having a bloody sandwich,” Dan announces, to anyone who cares as he fumbles his way out of checkout, “And Katie, yeah, she loves platypus trivia. Loves it.”
At this point he is aware that he is being laughed at.
Being older has also helped Dan accept that he’s not particularly funny, and he’s not trying to be now, but he still throws a glance behind him for half a second. He sees Phil, leaned against the checkout and giggling, mouth hidden behind his hand and eyes all scrunched up with mirth.
This great oversized manchild—and there’s this bitter little thought that if he’d maybe had someone who’d laugh at his jokes like that, maybe Dan wouldn’t have grown up into such a mess. Of course that’s all rubbish. Dan being a fuckup was basically destiny.
And he’s much too enthralled with the notion of a sandwich to stick around any longer, so he storms out the door and that’s that.
----
Not often he lets himself get happy twice in one day when it’s not the weekend, but he needs to calm his nerves. He’s all ruffled. He never lets himself lose his temper like that. So fucking inappropriate. The manager is going to give him a talking to.
Time turns to sludge and Dan can’t be bothered to worry about it anymore—
—and then he runs into Phil at Starbucks.
Dan recognizes the guy by how much hair he’s got, and then at once dismisses him as irrelevant to the incoming caffeine fix. It is not as though Dan himself will be remembered.
Unfortunately, Dan doesn’t get the luxury of being invisible when he lost his temper in such a spectacular fashion the day before. Phil actually shouts when they make eye contact. Dan jumps so hard he sloshes coffee down his front.
Ten minutes later and Dan is still being barraged with apologies. He’s got a raging headache, a new cup of coffee, and a stack of napkins in front of him to help blot up the wet patch on his shirt. He already hates his day. He’s pretty sure he also hates Phil, it’s just not as homicidal as it was when he was dripping coffee on his shoes. Now he just really hates the amount of words Phil is capable of producing in a span of time.
He should just go home. Today is a bust, and it’s not like he goes to work for reasons outside of being shouted at anyway. He’s easily replaceable. Anyone on shift can cover him.
Effort is being exerted to ignore the apology-strewn disaster coming out of Phil’s mouth, but Dan isn’t doing as good a job as he’d like, because he knows three new facts about marsupials.
He hates this guy. Phil tried to give Dan his coffee order too, and Dan refused it on principle, because there’s absolutely nothing about this guy not worth despising, especially not his taste in coffee, but then Phil insisted on buying him another of Dan’s order, and just had to remark, “oh, you’re having the same.”
Dan prays in vain for Phil’s gay companions to come rescue him. This doesn’t happen.
No, Phil treats him to breakfast.
----
“You’re still looking out of sorts, though,” he says, as Dan—having surrendered to the insanity of this morning and gotten some beans on toast—chews. Dan scowls at him. Today Phil is wearing a neon jumper with animal print all over it. His hair is a flawless, straightened object of intense envy. His skin could be seen from space. Dan has successfully noticed the color of his eyes, which defies description.
“I always look like this,” Dan posits, figuring that will shut Phil up.
“No, that can’t be,” Phil mutters. “It just doesn’t look right. You’re meant to be a bit more…” He gestures, incomprehensibly. Dan still has a headache. “Though I have no idea why I’d think that. Maybe we knew each other in a past life or something. We could have gone to uni together in an alternate dimension!”
“Not likely,” Dan mutters, having made it through about three months of uni himself. He doubts any other incarnations of himself did a better job.
Phil startles him by laughing, and Dan tenses slightly, squinting up. He’s being smiled at.
“No, just—“ Phil tries to swallow the smile down, but it crops back up, making behemoths of his cheekbones that have Dan questioning, for the umpteenth time, why he is having breakfast with this man. “Sorry, I thought you were trying to be funny. With the, you know, the eyebrow thing.” He looks a little bit sheepish as Dan scowls at him. And then, tempting fate, “You are right funny, though!”
Dan sets his fork down. “There are eligible gay men in this town,” he says flatly. “Better luck next time.”
Phil does this thing where he flails his hands and also seems to choke a bit—laughs again, and yeah, sure, coming from the guy who got all excited about the lion bar, maybe you’d expect a laugh like that.
Breathless and genuine, like a little burst of warmth between Dan’s ribs.
“Oh my gosh, no! I’m not—“ He laughs again, helplessly. “Oh man. No, okay, you’re right, I do sort of want something from you, but nothing like that.”
Dan feels a little shiver of alarm. He doesn’t know Phil, and it’s not like town’s that big even if Dan does keep to himself. There’s a handful of reasons strangers might come looking for him, especially ones that look like city guys. Granted, he’s never seen any pushers quite as eccentric as this one, but that doesn’t mean—
“I’d like you to be in a documentary I’m doing,” Phil says. He wrinkles his nose up. “Well, me, Chris, and Peej are doing. It’s about young British culture—super legit—“ he waves a hand wildly to assure Dan of this “—and I just thought you’d be really entertaining when we met the other day. And then we ran into each other again here, out of all the possible Starbucks. Seriously. Must be fate, don’t you think?”
“Come again,” says Dan, flatly, because he’s still stuck on the notion the word ‘documentary.’
----
As it turns out, the three poofs—alright, Northerners; the appeal of calling them poofs wears off the more legitimate they are—are doing this for some little alternative network hoping to capitalize on the teenage audience by celebrating the fuck ups that they all are. Well, Phil makes it sound better than that, but that’s the gist; a salute to mediocrity and reckless behavior that Dan turns down at once.
“I have an absolutely packed social life,” he deadpans, and Phil makes this exaggerated sad face at him before breaking into more snickering.
“Well, if you change your mind,” he says, and that is how Dan ends up with his phone number.
----
Two days later he’s in the shop—and no, Dan didn’t call him, are you thick?—and not for Dan. He’s here to interview Katie. She’s over the moon about it. All done up and blushing as they head into the back room. If Phil weren’t so flaming, Dan might suspect something was up.
As they leave, Phil gives her some kind of ridiculous pocket-sized pink cat toy. It is somehow just as charming as it is awkward. He throws Dan a wink on his way out the door.
Definitely gay, Dan decides.
----
He’s preoccupied with whatever—there must be something, yeah? It’s just not worth remembering. The only real relevance is that Dan doesn’t notice that he’s running out of his shit—bad end to a bad week. So Dan is getting clean for the weekend, whether he likes it or not.
Seriously. He can snarl “fuck” into the constriction of his fingers as much as he likes; what else is he to do? His dealer is the nine to five sort, and… maybe Dan knows where to go when Randall isn’t there, but Randall is the nice one, everyone agrees, and the weekend crowd isn’t anything he’d like to tangle with.
He hangs in until about 8 pm and that cinches it—absolutely can’t go after dark, because that would just be asking for trouble.
But he’s already putting on his coat.
Time has ground to a halt and each second is itching, painful, frantic—he just wants to calm down—
And there’s this moment where Dan is absolutely furious, at himself for being so fucking pathetic and at the drug for being able to do this to him and at the whole world for making a Dan Howell when obviously that wasn’t supposed to be a thing.
A few seconds later that anger propels him out the door. He deserves what’s coming to him. Doesn’t even fight it. It’ll be better if he gets his throat fucking slit.
All paths lead to the same outcome, and he pinches the bridge of his nose as he walks, fighting back the burn in his eyes. Stupid that he even waited so long. Now he’s emotional. Should have gotten his fix way before now, stupid, stupid, stupid.
----
He doesn’t actually get his throat slit.
----
Someone from the crowd clogging up the alleyway actually recognizes him instead, gets friendly with him, drawing him close with an arm around his neck and parading him to the group like they’re best mates. Dan smiles queasily and plays along. They laugh at his shakes. “About gagging for it, aren’t you? Here you go, love, get your fix.”
And he does.
Everybody is laughing and smiling, happy right along with him, and then Dan is laughing too and the world spins.
He loves the way it’s so simple, a tidy list of ordered facts.
These are his friends. This is him happy. That is all he needs.
“Want another?” Someone asks, knowing just what he needs and of course Dan wants another, fuck yeah, man, and they don’t stop, so he doesn’t stop either, and that must be why his week was such shit. It’s all relative. It’s so this can be the best night of his life.