Dan Howell is fourteen years old when he realizes he wouldn't actually mind if he were to die. The thought scares him at first but he eventually adjusts to it, and fantasizes about runaway carts and speeding cars and rogue bullets. He thinks about what would happen to his family and for the life of him (ironically) he can't find a single way they would miss him. He is annoying anyway - a hermit in his own right, staying in his room all day and moody when he was forced to leave it. He left the curtains closed and the lights off.
He remembers a time when the dark scared him. Not now, never again. It was too comforting. The calm surrounding of black kept him relaxed and as close to happy as he felt he could ever be. Every once in a while, Dan would turn on a light but soon turn it back off when it felt too unnatural. A boy like himself didn't belong in the light. He wasn't comfortable with it. He belonged in the darkness where no one could see him, and where he couldn't see himself.
Sometimes Dan sleeps, and sometimes he doesn't. He normally won't get more than a few hours a night even if he's lucky. He tosses and turns. He contemplates life. He feels crushed by an overwhelming sense of loneliness, which is odd seeing as he preferred being alone to any other alternative.
Dan doesn't achieve much at school. He arrives with dark circles and pale skin, and leaves with a feeling of failure. At this point, all of the teachers have given up on him. When they ask him to do his work, he says nothing in response, bowing his head sometimes to acknowledge the request. He can't remember the last time he spoke to someone who wasn't his mother. He doesn't know much about growing up, but he's sure it's not supposed to feel like this.
Three weeks pass after his fifteenth birthday until he brings a blade to his wrist for the very first time. He had dismantled a pencil sharpener to avoid doing his coursework and stared blankly at the thin piece of metal in his palm for a moment before examining it. Biting his lip nervously, Dan swallows his fear and places it against his pale skin. He doesn't realize what he's doing until it's done and he's bleeding on his papers. He throws away the pieces of paper but keeps hold of the blade before dabbing at the wound with tissues. He can feel the throbbing through his arm, and he can feel the sting of the cut.
It makes him feel alive and it makes him feel powerful. Dan likes it.
He makes a few more lines across the underside of his arm when he hears his mother calling out for dinner. Dan presses more tissue to his arm, framing it with the tape at his desk. He covers his arm with a hoodie and pockets the blade, slinking out of his room and to the dining room table.
Dan Howell stops eating regularly on New Year's Eve, when he decides that his resolution is to stop looking so pudgy and terrible. He realizes that he's gained weight from all of those hours just sitting around and scrolling through various pages on the internet. He documents everything he eats, from one bite of an apple to a piece of popcorn and tallies up the calories at the end of the day, every day.
After a week, he breaks his diet of 500 calories per day, and more red lines appear on his ivory skin.
He won't let it happen again.
By the time Dan Howell turns sixteen, he weighs a whopping forty-nine kilograms. At six feet, he thinks he could still stand to be skinner. He finds that the hunger in the pit of his stomach helps him through the day, and he uses it to his advantage. He wears long sleeves no matter the weather, and he still dreams of dying as if it were the best possible solution.
No one is home the first time he tries to kill himself.
Dan finds a bottle of sleeping pills in his dad's cabinet and honestly only means to take a few so he can finally sleep after days of insomnia. When he gets his hand around the giant bottle, he dumps more than half into his hand and is taking them before he has a chance to think about it.
He wakes up to a white walled room with bright lights and squints, discovering that his head hurts worse than it has in a long time. To his right is his mother, tears in her eyes and her hand on his.
"Daniel," she sobs, hugging him tightly.
He stares out at the hospital parking lot numbly while his mom cries.
They make him see a therapist for the first month after he recovers from his failed attempt. The scars on his arm are visible, but he makes the transition to his hips so that he can hide them. The therapist honestly pisses him the ever-loving fuck off, and Dan wants to punch his stupid mole-looking face in at every visit. He stares at Dan with pity and asks him questions that will never be answered. Dan refuses to speak to him, and eventually begins skipping his appointments. He emails the secretary saying that he simply isn't able to come anymore, as it's interfering with his coursework.
Dan Howell turns into a liar and a sneak, but he is past the point of caring.
At school, he sits in the back of the classroom, as usual, and zones out of lectures. The teachers have learned not to call on him. They've learned not to try to connect to him. Dan doesn't connect to anyone, and that's the way he wants it to be. The less people he is close to, the less damage he causes when he finally succeeds in his mission to leave this hell of a life.
Dan drops out of school when he turns seventeen. He makes his decision easily and his parents cry. He can't find it in himself to care. He wishes he knew why he's the way he is, but he doesn't. He takes to staying in his dark room all day, staring at the blood falling down his leg with more concentration than he's put into anything else over the last few years.
Sometimes, Dan can't sleep and he decides to walk around outside. Most of the time it's nearly three or four in the morning. He likes the silence, and he likes being able to roll up his sleeves. He likes the feeling of not-so-lonely aloneness
It becomes his routine to leave the house in the early hours of the morning and walk a few blocks before he gets too exhausted to keep going.
He is walking around in mid-April, only a bit before he's to turn eighteen when he sees it. A new coffee shop, opened right on the corner of his route. Dan is intrigued when he finds that it's open all night. He pulls his sleeves over his hands and ruffles his hair, unsure of why he feels so drawn to the place. What could it hurt?
Dan steps into the small coffee shop with flickering lights, and chews at his lip when he sees the only person working behind the counter. It's possibly the most beautiful boy he's ever laid eyes on, if he's being honest. He hasn't noticed that Dan's there yet, and he takes a moment to take in the sight in front of him. The boy - man, really - is taller than Dan by only a couple of inches. He has black hair along with a fringe to match Dan's. His skin is pale, but a healthy type of pale. He has perfect features and a small smirk on his lips despite the fact that he has to work at four in the morning.
The beautiful boy - Phil, his nametag says - looks startled when he realizes that there's actually a customer this late (or early, Dan supposes).
"Hey!" Phil greets much too excitedly for the time of night. "What can I get you?"
Dan walks up to the counter apprehensively, unsure of the boy. He likes his voice, he thinks, and decides that he'd like to hear it again.
He bites on a nail that's too short already and feels the sharp jab of pain in it, but doesn't show any emotion. He points to a small black coffee on the menu, shaking his head when Phil asks him about cream and sugar. Dan has read up on coffee, and he hasn't eaten anything in two days. He remembers that plain coffee is supposed to have calories in the single digits, and decides to allow himself this one small luxury.
Pulling a crumpled five out of his pocket, Dan pays for his drink and waves his hand at the server to keep the change. When he receives the coffee, he sits at a couch on the far side of the shop, drinking it slowly. It hurts his throat and he likes the burn.
Phil watches him carefully, not knowing what to think. With a small grin he looks to Dan again. "What brings you here so late?"
Dan shrugs, but makes eye contact with the boy. He notices the vibrant blue-green color, and he notices how lively Phil looks. He knows the server must not see the same life in his.
Phil narrows his eyes, like he's trying to decide if Dan is worth figuring out. Dan thinks that the other boy shouldn't waste his time.
"You don't talk much, do you?" he asks, interrupting the other boy's thoughts.
Dan shakes his head, taking another drink of the coffee. It's bitter, he likes it that way.
Phil glances around the otherwise empty shop and then back to the mysterious boy in front of him. It's nearly summer, and he's wearing jeans and a black hoodie. He looks dangerously pale and completely exhausted, not to mention unhealthily thin.
"Do you mind if I sit with you?"
Dan looks confused at that, and Phil lets out a small chuckle at the emotion finally showing on the other boy's face. Dan nods anyway, and the server comes to sit next to him, crossing his arms comfortably over his stomach. He keeps his eyes on Dan.
"I think you're the first teenager to order regular coffee," he comments, making conversation easily. "Then again, you may not be a teenager. You could be an alien. Or a forty year old man with really good plastic surgery."
Dan looks curiously at him and shakes his head.
Phil continues on, "I'm nineteen, what about you?"
Without thinking, Dan responds in a small and scratchy tone. "Seventeen."
Phil's face lights up. "He speaks!"
The younger averts his eyes to the floor, and takes another drink of his coffee.
"You don't have to if you don't want to," Phil assured in a soft voice. "I just thought you seemed lonely."
Dan flinches at the use of the word "lonely", and he shakes his head once again.
"It's okay, I can keep this conversation going," he smiles at him. "I'm Phil, like my nametag says. I've seen you walking around outside before, always around this time. I was wondering if you would ever stop by."
Eventually, the fragile boy relaxes as Phil's voice steadily rambles in his ear. It's nice to have someone understand that he just doesn't like speaking.
Dan gets up to leave when it's nearing half past five, nodding his thanks to the kind person who had sat with him for almost an hour while he slowly drank his coffee.
Phil waves goodbye to Dan, and secretly hopes he'll see him again.
Dan Howell is a liar and a sneak, but he's also lonely. So he decides to visit the coffee shop again in two days, when the darkness begins to seep into his mind. It's already five by the time he arrives, shaky and exhausted from the walk. He has fresh cuts stinging against his jeans but revels in it. He pushes through the doorway to find Phil standing there once again. The aforementioned boy's face brightens when he sees Dan. Without even asking, Phil hands the small black coffee to the small boy and tells him not to worry about paying for it.
He nods his thanks and shakily makes his way back to the couch that he sat at the last time. He can feel someone watching him, but he can't see the concern in those blue eyes, can't see how confused he is that someone so beautiful could be so weak by their own volition.
Phil comes to sit with him a few moments after he settles on the seat, and he tells Dan about all of the customers he served that day, including a lady with a dog.
"Can you believe that? A woman bought coffee for her dog!" Phil excitedly told with a laugh.
Dan smiled at him, the most he could muster, that is. A small upturn of the corner of his mouth. He drank the coffee and he listened to Phil tell stories, and soon he was on his way back home.
He doesn't know how it happened, but Dan ends up looking forward to seeing Phil every other night when he ventures out. He's pretty sure it's the first thing he's looked forward to in years.
One night, Dan speaks to him again, and the happy look on Phil's face is almost enough to make him want to talk forever. Almost.
"You said you were seventeen, right?"
"Eighteen now," he speaks in a hoarse voice.
"No way! When was your birthday? We have to celebrate!"
Dan smiles at him and shakes his head, but there was something about the light in Phil's eyes that made him come close to feeling something.
"You know, we've been spending all this time together, and I still don't know your name," Phil pointed out one morning. Dan ignores the flutter in his stomach when he realizes that the elder wants to learn more about him.
"Dan," he says softly. "Dan Howell."
Phil grins at him. "You should speak more. One-sided conversations are fun and all, but I'd like to know something about you that's not your age."
Dan sets down his empty mug and crosses his arms.
"Maybe someday," Dan tells him before waving goodbye and leaving the shop.
Phil watches him go, an unreadable expression flickering in his eyes.
Dan is lying in a hospital bed once again, this time with big bandages wrapped around his wrists. He stares at the clock when it's nearing his usual time with Phil and feels an odd sort of melancholy for missing the other boy.
It takes a week for Dan to leave his house after he returns from hospital, and he goes straight for the coffee shop. Phil looks up hopefully when he hears footsteps entering and smiles brighter than he ever had before when he sees that it's really who he was hoping for.
"Dan!" he calls happily, rushing to get him his coffee. Dan sits down on the couch and waits.
"I was beginning to think you'd had enough of me," Phil says when he joins Dan, handing him the drink.
Dan shakes his head and brings the mug up to his lips, ignoring the pain in his wrists when he did so.
"You don't have to say anything back, but I missed you, um, I mean, your company."
The younger boy frowned at that. "Phil," he said, his voice sounding more weak than it had before. "Don't say things like that."
There was a silence before Phil decided to move on, and began filling Dan in on the week of customer news he had missed.
When Dan stood up to leave for the night, it was nearing six in the morning. "Let me walk you home," Phil offered. "I mean, my shift's over. I'm leaving anyway."
Any other circumstance and Dan would have resisted.
"Okay," he nodded, shoving his hands into his pockets.
The walk to his house was only a few blocks, about a ten to twenty minute walk for someone healthy. This was of course not the case with Dan. It normally took him at least forty-five to make it home, as he needed frequent rest stops for dizziness and the shaking he fought off. Phil made small talk the entire way, chatting about his landlord. Dan made it for about eight minutes before he needed to stop. Everything out of the corner of his eyes blurred and everything in front of him faded in and out. He was used to the sensation.
Dan leaned against a tree for support, resting his head in the palm of his hand and closing his eyes.
"Dan?" Phil asked immediately. "Dan, are you okay?"
He nodded, breathing deeply until the spell went away.
They continued on their walk after that, Phil eyeing Dan with worry written on his features. After walking a little more, Dan was weaving on the sidewalk, unable to balance. He was used to this as well.
Phil softly pressed a hand against the small of the other boy's back, leading him to a bench easily. The sun was beginning to rise, and he could feel the jutting out of bones when he guided Dan to sit.
"Sorry," Dan sighed. "I'm...I'm sorry."
"It's okay," Phil nodded with encouragement. "Take as long as you need. Can you tell me what's wrong, though?"
Dan shook his head, closing his eyes and subconsciously leaning into Phil.
After Dan had rested for a while, he looked up and pointed at his house down the street. "It's just over there. I can make it, I think. You've wasted enough of your time."
Phil scoffed. "It's not wasted time. Besides, I said I would walk you home. I don't break my word."
The youngest nodded and gave his half-smile to him.
When they finally made it to Dan's home, Phil smiled. The sun was almost fully risen now, and seeing the way it caught the smaller boy's eyes made him happy.
"Dan, I was just wondering...I mean, I know we only really hang out at the shop, but...would you mind if I asked for your number?"
Dan looked confused but gave it to Phil anyway, typing it into the older boy's phone carefully and checking it twice.
"Thanks," Phil grinned. "Next time you disappear for a week, at least I won't miss you too much if I can still talk to you somehow."
Dan received his first text from Phil two days later.
I won't be coming into work for a few days, I'm on holiday with my family. Just in case you were wondering. Not that you were. Wait, sorry. I mean...okay well text me if you want to. -PL
He was lying in bed and tracing the raised lines on his hip with his fingertips.
Yeah, no, thanks for telling me. It would have sucked to walk all that way and not see you. -DH
You're much more conversational over text. -PL
Sorry. -DH
No, it's a good thing! Promise. -PL
Dan let a small smile come though at the most recent message.
Oh, okay. If you say so. -DH
Dan Howell is holding a blade against his skin the next time he gets a message from Phil.
I know you don't go out much, but would you like to get coffee sometime? When it's not at an ungodly hour in the morning, I mean. ^.^ -PL
He puts down the cool metal to respond.
Yeah, sounds like fun. When did you have in mind? -DH
Eventually, he gets so wrapped up in the conversation that he forgets to cut.
Dan meets up with Phil at the regular coffee shop the next day, at three in the afternoon instead of morning. It's a cool day but it's nice, so they decide to sit outside. When Dan finally makes it there, he finds that Phil has gotten Dan's coffee and was sitting with a smile on his face.
"Hey," he greeted, handing him the mug. "I never asked, why do you only drink black coffee?"
Dan shrugged and changed the subject simply. He realized later that Phil was the only person he'd held a conversation with in almost four years.
"You're nineteen, do you go to school?"
"I take a few classes at Manchester University once or twice a week," Phil nods. "What about you?"
Dan shakes his head. "I dropped out of school last year, right after I turned seventeen."
"That's okay, it's not for everybody," Phil nods. "Why'd you drop out?"
Dan shrugs. "It doesn't matter."
Phil is silent for a moment before adding in a soft tone, "I think everything you have to say matters."
The younger is stunned into silence.
They continued like that for a few months, meeting every couple of days for coffee. Conversation flowed easily between them, and Phil always walks Dan home when they decide it's time to go. Dan wonders if there's a way to describe the ache in his chest when all he wants to do is be with Phil.
Are you having a good day, Dan? -PL
No. -DH
Why not? -PL
I don't have good days. -DH
Can I help? -PL
You kind of do, honestly. -DH
Dan tries to kill himself again when he overhears his parents concerned whispers about him. He decides it would be better for them if they didn't have to worry about him, and he searches out more pills. They'd been locked away and hidden from Dan ever since his first attempt, but his determination helps him seek them out. He finds two bottles of painkillers and takes all of them.
When he wakes up in the familiar white-washed room, he feels a sense of failure. Just another thing he couldn't do right.
He leaves the hospital almost an entire week later, when he's convinced them that he honestly won't try again. Dan gets home and goes straight to his bedroom, closing the door soundly behind him.
Haven't seen you in a while. Are you okay? -PL
Yeah, I'm fine. -DH
Okay, yeah, good. I think I would go insane if I didn't get to have our four in the morning conversations anymore. -PL
Dan brightens up at that.
They get back into their routine, and all is normal - or, as normal as it can be. Phil talks to Dan for an hour or two and walks him home. Sometimes they meet up during the day. They text constantly. It's nice, Dan thinks, to have someone you don't have to pretend to be okay with.
Phil gets it, of course. He sees the long sleeves and the jutting out bones. The dark circles and pale skin. He knows what Dan's doing to himself and he wishes he could help more. But he also knows that he doesn't want to push too much, doesn't want to drive Dan away.
Every time he walks Dan home, he always says goodbye with a "don't hesitate to get in touch with me if you need me", and the way Dan shifts when he says it tells him that he understands what the taller boy is really offering.
"What do you like to do?" Phil asks him one morning on the walk home.
"I don't really do anything," Dan shrugs. He's taken to speaking when he's around Phil, now.
"Well, what are you good at?"
Lying. Sneaking. Pretending.
"Nothing."
Phil gives him an offhanded look. "You're good at plenty of things, I'm sure."
Dan shakes his head.
"You're good at acting like you enjoy disgusting coffee," he laughs.
"I do," he defends in a wavering tone, a small smile peeking through. "It's the only coffee I can drink."
Phil tilts his head, catches Dan's eye, and understands. He doesn't bring up coffee again after that, just switches the subject to family.
He finds out that Dan has a little brother names Adrian, and he really cares about him. Phil thinks it's nice.
"I like music," Dan begins simply when Phil joins him on their couch for a daytime coffee.
Phil's face lights up and they talk about music for almost the entire time they're together.
The fourth time Dan comes close to killing himself isn't really an attempt so much as an improvement. He's not home alone (his parents won't leave him alone), his brother is there, but he's sitting in his room with headphones in.
Dan stares at the walls for a long time, that familiar feeling of loneliness coming back. He slides his belt off without thinking, pulling it just so and tying it to the small hook he kept drilled into his ceiling "just in case". Dan slides a chair underneath it and begins planning his goodbyes. He has letters written to his family from when the thoughts began all those years ago, so he doesn't fret about them. Just Phil. He can't leave without giving Phil a proper goodbye.
Phil.
He begins the message.
I'm sorry it ended like this but I really have loved spending time with you. I think you're the first person I've spoken to outside of my mum in a long time. Thanks for all the coffee. xx -DH
He erases all of it, and before he knows it, he's sent a completely different one.
Come over. -DH
Dan throws his phone down in horror. He didn't want help. He wanted to die, peacefully, simply. Why had he done that? Phil would come over now, he would help just like he always said he would.
He was angry, so, so angry at himself. He picked up his always-hiding blade and made some slashes across his wrist. Not deep enough to be fatal, but still deeper than usual. In a mess of tears and insults against his idiocy, Dan slid down the wall and curled in on himself.
I'm on my way. -PL
Dan is vaguely aware of frantic knocking at his door about five minutes later, and he slowly gets up to answer, not caring what he looks like. He knows it has to be Phil, and he's dreading the disappointment that's sure to happen when the older boy realizes what a fuck-up Dan Howell is.
More knocking. "Dan!" he calls.
Dan opens the door, blood running onto his hands and his eyes red.
Phil looks terrified, but calms down as soon as he sees Dan. "Are you okay? Please tell me you're okay," he panics, stepping closer and wrapping his arms around the smaller boy. Dan apprehensively hugs back, but he's shaking too much to really hold him like he wishes he could.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to bother you, I didn't even know what I was typing until I sent it," he rambles to Phil.
"You're not a bother," he says immediately. When they pull apart, Phil keeps his hands on Dan's bony shoulders, looking him up and down. When he sees the blood, he inhales sharply. "Can I...?"
Dan nods, looking at the floor.
Phil pulls up Dan's sleeves and his breath catches in his throat. Of course, he assumed that the boy was hiding scars under his sleeves, but seeing them was something else entirely.
The blood. Oh God, there was so much blood. Phil quickly pulled the string out of his own University hoodie and wrapped it around Dan's wrist to stop the blood. He wiped at it with his sleeve, close to tears that someone so beautiful would do this to themselves.
Dan started crying again, and it was the most emotion Phil had ever seen him express. It broke his heart.
"Shh," he said softly, taking Dan into his arms and lowering himself and the other boy to the floor. "It's okay. It's all going to be okay."
Dan weakly gripped at Phil, crying into his hoodie.
"It's going to be okay," he repeated as many times as he could.
When Dan was able to stand up again, Phil half-carried him to the bedroom and bandaged the wounds on his arm. He did it with so much care and so gently that Dan wanted to cry all over again. He didn't deserve to have someone like Phil care about him. He didn't deserve to have anyone care about him.
Phil spends the night in Dan's room. He pales when he sees the belt, and the chair, and the hook - but says nothing. He just pushes the chair to another corner and brings the belt to the floor while Dan is cleaning himself up. Phil sheds his bloodstained hoodie and relaxed in just his blue tee-shirt, waiting for Dan. He was hopelessly in love with this boy, Phil realizes, and he would do whatever he had to in order make sure Dan was okay.
Dan ended up telling Phil everything. All of it, from school, to the blades, to the other suicide attempts. When the elder found out where Dan had really been those weeks he "disappeared", he felt sick. Dan even opened up about having not eaten most days and that certainly explained how weak he was, although Phil had figured that much out on his own.
Phil's chest clenched when Dan was telling him all of this, and he thought that he would actually cry if not for his determination to stay strong for the younger.
When it was all explained, Dan curled in on himself and awaited Phil's reaction nervously.
"Dan, I care about you so much, you have no idea. I'm going to help you get through this, okay? I want you to be okay. All that matters to me right now is that we get you to be okay."
He nodded, hugging Phil with everything he had in him.
They fell asleep that night with their arms wrapped around each other, soaking up all of the comfort each was willing to provide.
Dan Howell is a liar and sneak, but he is in love with the most beautiful boy in the entire world. His parents are fine with Phil spending every hour with Dan because he's really the first friend he's had in a long time.
A few weeks pass of Phil by his side. Dan still cuts every once in a while, but it's lessened. Phil makes sure that Dan eats something every single day, sometimes he sits with him while he takes an hour to eat a banana, but it's okay because it's progress.
Phil has taken to kissing every inch of scar tissue on Dan's arms before they fall asleep together at night. Dan hasn't yet shown him the horror that is his hip, but they're taking baby steps.
Dan tells Phil that he loves him one night while the eldest is pressing his lips to the battle scars.
"Phil?"
"Hm?"
"I love you."
Phil had looked up at him, a light in his eyes that Dan loved to see. "I love you too, Dan."
The next morning after that, Dan put on one of Phil's tee-shirts (it was big on him, despite having gained back almost five pounds) and fell back next to a still sleeping Phil.
He pressed a kiss to the side of his face softly, and then buried his head underneath Phil's chin, wrapping his arms around him tightly.
He was sleeping more, as well. Dan found it was easier for him to sleep when he had someone he loved right next to him, someone who would kiss him when he got too thoughtful and the bad things came into his brain. Phil would simply lean up, kiss Dan sweetly, and lay back down, entwining his hand with the other boy's.
Dan is turning twenty today, and he's moving in with Phil today. It's been a month since he last hurt himself and he now tries to eat at least two square meals a day.
Dan Howell is no longer a liar, and he is no longer a sneak. He is a completely different person than he had been when he met the love of his life.
Phil never stops being amazed by the younger boy, always looking at him like he hung the fucking moon, and it makes Dan feel special and loved, which is all he ever really needed.
Whenever Dan has his moments, all it takes is a kind word from Phil and a kiss, and he can breathe again.
They go back to the old coffee shop for their first official anniversary, and when Phil goes to order a regular black coffee for Dan, the now smiling boy cuts in and orders for himself.
"A medium caramel macchiato, please."