A/N: My profuse thanks to my lovely friend, Littlemissthunderbird (go check their fics out!), without whom this would be gathering dust at the back of my laptop. This one's for you, bro.

My lovely, beloved, darling,

Once, if you remember, we dreamed that would be us. Of course, that was a very long time ago, but I suppose the hearts of the young are innocent and naive in most matters. Still, to this day, I see boys with your glasses and your stupid hairstyle and your ridiculous faces and all I see is a shadow of you. Your laugh, your eyes, your fingers clutched in mine furtively in the dark.

I'm not quite sure what I'm doing writing this, even now. It's been years since I saw your eyes linger and sparkle in that way I always took for granted until it was gone. Every now and then, a flash, something similar, but I blink and it's gone. I guess I wanted you to know how much I used to love you. How much I used to look into the eyes of strangers and think about you, used to watch them walk by and think of your awkward slump and your overeager step. I used to love that, adored it- you.

Of course, sweetheart and honey and lovely were never meant for us- but there's a secret I'll never tell you, and it's that I think I could have given it all up for that sparkle and bear and your silly puns. You never do call me Bear anymore.

So, I used to love you. Used to adore you, every inch, and whether I hide this away or burn it, I wanted to write down even once that I still do.

Yours,

Dan.

Dan straightened up, eyes old and dark, and stared somewhat blankly at the sheer black and white of the paper and the biro etched into it. A bitter, wry twist of lips tempted his mouth, but his face remained still, and the night remained dark, and the fairy lights cast shadows that made this somehow okay, somehow more illicit.

Phil was one room over, Dan knew this much, could hear the soft huffing noises and the rustle of blankets. He knew that if he walked in there, he would see Phil rumpled and buried in his mess of a duvet, and if he woke him, those eyes would be blue before they went grey and gold and smiled at him. He knew this, and knew it well, because you don't simply live with your best friend and never see them in their pyjamas and just waking up.

But it was dark and Dan was lonely and he could admit, even only to his 3am self, that perhaps he looked at that silly, soft quirk of a smile in the mornings for longer than he should, let his face warm and his dimple dip. It was only at times like these when he let himself think about it at all. Let himself ruminate, not over how he could die any time in a car accident and that bloody gas leak what about Phil what about us I haven't kissed him in years—

Instead, he let himself blush and his mind wander- though he kept it on a strict leash- and thought back to the days before 2012, before the fight, where they were deliriously infatuated and so, so young.

At this, a half smile escaped, nostalgic and bittersweet, and he folded the paper in half and half again and slipped it under his mattress with its kin.

He flopped on the bed and fell asleep to the amber cast of his lamp and the glow of Phil's cheeky giggles.

The night closed in, and again he was alone.

The thing was, Dan mused over breakfast, they were better than they had ever been. A mouthful of crunchy nut and a thought drifted in that he could just… tell everyone. About him. And no one would particularly care.

Well, no, he amended with a wry grin. The fandom would shit themselves, and promptly speculate about him and Phil, but they did that anyway. So maybe they would care, but it wasn't 2012 anymore. Troye had made it big, Tyler ruled youtube with a smile and dyed hair, shipping had become mainstream and marriage—

He swallowed with a tight throat. For the first time since the very early hours of 2015 he considered it. He knew why he hadn't, then: too much to handle, what with the book and the tour and the lingering, yet to be accepted feelings for Phil. Now, though… now.

He took another bite and threw a quick thanks to whatever was out there, if anything was, that Phil wasn't here to see him stood awkwardly at the kitchen bench looking as if a meteor had hit him.

He considered it, and as he made his way to rewatch a little anime until Phil woke up, he shoved it aside, listened to it tick over in the background.

This year, he thought softly. Perhaps this year…

The real estate agent was a lovely woman. Her advice was professional and helpful, and her brisk demeanour provided a welcome distraction from Phil's excited murmuring and the glitter in his eyes. Every now and then Dan would look over and see the excited face of Phil from years ago, could see the shadows of a mane of a fringe, could see the flirty eyes he cast at his audience from under it. But, far more often, Dan would look over and see Phil with a look of- almost anticipation. Something more grown up than he was used to with Phil, a quiet form of readiness. He would see the new angles of his face and he would see the neater fringe and the adult that had grown up over the years. He would see a Phil that was rare, and he couldn't look, but couldn't look away. It was like squinting at the sun.

The houses they looked at were bigger, somehow, than Dan had imagined them. Nostalgia sent him tripping to that Manchester apartment, its bland walls but its warm heart, the jail it was near, the ferris wheel—

He pulled his mind back, gave Phil a quick smile and darted his eyes away from Phil's too discerning gaze, missing the lingering glance Phil sent him, the smile tucked away in the corner of his mouth.

Sometimes he couldn't believe it was happening, couldn't believe it was happening with Phil, and somewhere inside him, even as he listened to the real estate's assured tone, he could hear the shadows of his 2009 self rear its head. Could hear the whispery awe that swept through him, to share his life with AmazingPhil.

With Phil Lester, Dan corrected absently, because at this point AmazingPhil didn't even begin to cover the silly habits and quirks and the bad moods and the smiles that made up Phil.

Phil had known, for years and years, ever since that week spent at his house, he thought, that Dan was it for him. He knew it from the very beginning, from the days of shy doe eyes and sweet smiles followed by cutting cynicism. He had known it ever since he had held that enigma in his arms, feeling the vulnerability covered by sharp cutting angles and found himself enraptured, enchanted.

He had bought a ring, and decided to wait until Dan was older, until life was a little more stable, until four years seemed infinitesimal. That ring gathered dust at the back of his cupboard after 2012, after the months of closed doors and silence and the fight and Dan's cutting words and there it remained.

But Phil had known, for years, that it was Dan, that it would always be Dan, and so every now and then, he would pull it out of the little cranny that it always fell into and admire the shimmer and the glint and the promise of the metal. It was an old ring now, a little worn, a little worse for wear. Like them, he thought, and grinned a little.

He could buy a better one now, he knew. It was a little strange, having all this money and just a few to spend it on. Most of it sat gathering dust. Internet dust, because it was online banking, but dust all the same. He could get Dan a black ring, he thought, and allowed his grin to stretch into a giggle. Aesthetic and branding.

And yet, and yet. He had known how this would go for years, and this ring was a promise to himself, that he would one day give it to Dan, for better or for worse. It was like… like 'Hello Internet', like the first 'Phil is not on fire', it was a part of their history. For Phil, at least. A tiny ghost, a metallic reminder that they had existed, once.

It was this ring Phil found himself staring at, early one morning, when Dan was out like a light one room over. They were getting a house. They had shared bank accounts. They shared awards, shared their jobs, their friends, their everything, and Phil still held that marriage was just a piece of paper, because how could he not? They were partners in almost everything, except that.

This year, he thought, turning it over in his hands, watching it shine. This year would be the year Phil Lester grew a spine and told Dan- and if he hadn't been reading the videos wrong, the soft looks and the touches and the fond look he knew so well from so long ago, he was fairly sure that this would be the year Dan said yes.

And then he turned it over again, and saw his own face in the little nicks, saw the strangely pale skin and the funny turn of his nose and let it fall back into the closet, pulling out a hoodie instead. He felt his face fall. 2012 was a long time ago. To go back to that was… unthinkable. They were happy now. They were friends- just friends. Best friends. The friendliest of friends. Friends forever, that was the plan. What was the point of taking a chance on ancient history?

He closed the door, pulled a bright smile on his face, tried to let it seep into his eyes. Of course Dan was it for him, but that didn't mean he was it for Dan.

The Janice thing was funny as hell. Dan had stumbled on that storm just as it was breaking its way across tumblr, spent an evening laughing himself silly over it. Phil had checked in to see what all the fuss was about, of course, but he ended up laughing too. Fancy Phil having a secret wife, a kid, a life without Dan, without their apartment, without silly little songs and evenings spent lounging about.

Strange, Dan thought, how something that might have once instilled so much fear, so much uncertainty, now only made him giggle. Perhaps he was growing up, he thought. He looked at Phil, his hair meticulously dyed but never combed, and felt his breath catch. Maybe they both were.

It was a little odd, Dan thought, to recommit to posting so much content across their channels. The tour had consumed their lives for a while, but scrolling through the youtuber tag on tumblr and seeing the odd post bemoaning the lack of any Troye Sivan content (hppyltlpill: remember when troye used to update his youtube channel? neither do i), he couldn't help but be a little proud. Two books, a world tour, a song of their very own and three channels between them, and they still updated.

"What are you grinning at so early in the morning?" a soft, rumbling voice interrupted.

Turning to face Phil, Dan just said, "Thinking about everything we've done. The books, the tour…"

"I know," Phil shook his head. "It seems like yesterday that it was 2014 and you had an idea."

"I had an idea? You had the idea, you spoon. Hardly as if I'm going to up and say, Hey Philly, we should go outside for several months with shoddy wifi and pull off three careers at once, is it?"

Phil flopped on the sofa next to Dan. There were so many things he could say, you know that's not why we did it, or we decided this together, or even but you don't regret it, do you? But there was something to be said for spending seven years beside someone else, so instead, Phil just tucked his mismatched feet under Dan's thigh and said so I was thinking, and watched Dan's face light up.

In retrospect, Dan thought, the 2017 branding wasn't a particularly good idea. In many ways, of course, it was one of the best. Carefully not caring, letting the curls come back and the smiles come freely and watching with soft eyes as Phil tossed out the most ridiculous innuendo with that face of his like he didn't know what he was saying. Bullshit, Dan thought. As if he didn't.

But it meant that the excuses he had held tight to his chest were fast fading away. You can't tell them, think of the drama became why not tell them, and when he was confronted about gender roles and heteronormativity in the live show after Phil's pastel edits video, he could hardly stay silent.

It was a special kind of torture, though, feeling his cheeks burn and the itch of that ridiculous wig on his head, feeling self conscious with every 'your gay' and 'u look girly' thrown his way, typos and all. Not caring was a hard road, after the years and years he had spent doing just that.

He wrote Phil another letter that night, loathe to risk Phil stumbling onto it if he pulled up word.

…do you know, I don't think I could ever regret you. Not for one moment. Not even a little. I used to think it'd be the worst thing, if someone found out. I think the worst thing now would be if you left…

Every now and then, not too often, Dan would find a reason to raid Phil's bedroom. Props for videos, spare chapstick, hoodies lost to the depths of the wardrobe that were Dan's in the first place. The last was, perhaps, rather specific, because that was what Dan was hunting down whilst Phil was out getting milk.

It was one of his favourites, otherwise he'd just wait for it to turn up in his closet a month or two later. Dan figured this one must've gotten into Phil's suitcase on their way back from the Isle of Man or something, but the flat was cold and he wanted it back.

He had done this before, of course, because when you're living with your best friend and you're of a similar height, you tend to mix up some clothes in the wash. It didn't have to mean anything, however much Dan sometimes thought that it could. This time wasn't any different, except for how it was, because in the corner of the closet Dan saw something glinting.

He closed the closet door.

He sat down, slightly too hard, on the carpet of Phil's floor.

It was quiet for a bit.

He opened it again.

A ring, gathering dust. A ring.

He closed the door.

Outside it started to rain.

The thing was, Dan never expected to get married. Not really. When all the boys at school were joking about the girls they pulled, and the girls all fluttered about the boys that smiled at them, he had sat on the edge of a bench, earphones in and volume up.

The years ticked by, and his hair grew and shrunk and he could hear his mum's voice at Christmas telling him that if he didn't put himself out there he'd run out of time. He didn't care much for that warning, retreated first to Phil's arms and the Manchester flat, then the safety of his duvet in London.

He just wasn't a marriage kind of guy. Phil was, and that was fine. But he couldn't quite figure out who to, and there was something green and ugly gnawing at his gut and he thought he would have noticed Phil texting someone. He thought Phil would've told him.

So the ring in the back of the closet was filed away in the back of his mind, with a growing ball of heaviness in the pit of his stomach a little like dread with every day that Phil smiled at him and said everything, and nothing.

There was a quiet in the house that was nothing like 2012. It was not angry. It was not cold. It was not biting.

It was just… too quiet. And Phil had a feeling that something was not- wrong, per se, but not quite right, either.

So he made some tea. Put the water in the kettle, flicked the little switch, watched the light go blue, waited for it to bubble. He could recall his mum doing much the same when she and dad had been a little out of whack. He could remember her pressing the cup into his hands and shooing him off and up the stairs, or out to the garden to play, whilst she and dad had a little chat.

It made him smile, a little, to think of using the same tactics on Dan. It still felt a little unreal sometimes.

He pulled out the daddy mug, and the hello kitty mug, just to be obnoxious, because he knew it'd make Dan smile, and popped in the teabags. Careful and cautious was his mantra when he made tea, all too aware of the burns he had sustained over the years from boiled water. He still spilt a little, though, and hoped that Dan hadn't heard his yelp from the other end of the house where he was gaming.

The hall and the stairs he took slowly, nudged the door with his hip. Placed the tea on Dan's left with the ease of practice. He sat on the sofa, for a while, and watched as Dan clacked away on his PC.

The thank you was quiet, a little smile tucked away in the corner of Dan's mouth, a minute shift of his shoulders, diminished tension. It was all Phil needed. He stayed long after his tea was gone.

The thing was, Dan was an excellent compartmentaliser. He had to be, to have been in love with Phil Lester for years, and keep his hands to himself, his mouth shut, his eyes not too bright. The letters under his mattress stayed there, as far as he was concerned, crinkled and ageing and none ever reread.

There were hours at night, hours where he thought of pointlessness and emptiness and unhappiness, and in the morning found it banished in the wake of the sun and Phil's smile. There were thoughts, the kind that said he wasn't good enough, that he kept bound and well hidden and hardly ever thought on.

So, no, he said nothing about the ring. The hour between one and two in the morning, however, was a gaping mess of heaving uncertainty and doubt and he thought he'd gotten over those bloody insecurities, and he never quite remembered it all in the morning.

It was fine. Everything was fine.

They were moving in May.

The house they had found was as close to perfect as they could get, spacey and light and all theirs and it was this that Dan had held close to his chest for those early morning crashes and the high he got off Phil's it'll be an adventure, Danny, look, we can get a dog!

He was a good compartmentaliser, and a good rationaliser, so he drew up the facts late one night and figured that there was no girl, no guy, no one, because there was a house now that was theirs and a we in the same breath as dog. He put it out of his mind, the tarnished little ring, reasoned it away and never, not once, dared think it could belong to him.

(because that was the thing about compartmentalisers, sometimes they got a little too good, and sometimes they forgot things they shouldn't until the hour between one and two, like the way dan admired phil's hair, or how he used to worry endlessly over holding phil's hand, or how much he loved him)

The animals outside were making angry sex noises again and the neighbour wouldn't stop drilling (it was dark out, what was he even doing?), but Phil couldn't help but think he'd miss this place, just like he missed their little hole in the wall in Manchester. Boxes upon boxes were heaped up, more still already gone, and all that was left of their home of five years was their beds, the wifi router, and the One Direction poster they'd forgotten to take down.

It was always strange, seeing a home so bare of its personality. Phil knew that this must have been what it was like when they first moved in, knew that it would be different again but better, perhaps, for the change. It was hard to recall though, hard to remember that anything so familiar could have been a stranger, would be again.

The next day dawned bright and early, the last of their possessions to be packed away and put in a van, themselves to lock the flat one last time and trek across London to their new home.

(the thing was, dan was a very good compartmentaliser, and sometimes good compartmentalisers forgot things they shouldn't, like the way Phil's endless curiosity got him into trouble, or the years of letters stashed under the mattress)

"What's this?" said Phil, and reached for a bit of yellowed paper.

Dan had a list, a mental tally, of little things that he would never want Phil to find. Phil, of course, eventually found out most of them. The silly things that Dan had kept safe for years, like the original PINOF questions sheet, had come with a bashful smile and too loud sarcasm and never underestimate the power of a fangirl, Phil, now can we just put it in the book already? The embarrassing little snorts he does when he sleeps. His secret tumblr (it's to keep an eye on the phans, Philly, that's the beauty of the internet—). The letters he wrote, from when he first watched Phil's video's to the present day.

The latter, he knew, couldn't last. But there was always some crazed hope in his mind that if Phil did find them he wouldn't just… stare, like he was doing now.

Should he talk? Should he stay silent, pretend nothing happened? Laugh it off, run away? He felt frozen, a deer in the headlights.

"I- are these for me?" Phil's voice came quietly.

Dan nodded mutely.

"I- oh. Oh."

And Dan felt his stomach drop. The words came in a sudden tumble.

"No, it's okay, of course you don't have to- I mean, I was just- it was just like a bit of a diary, or maybe not a diary but you were never meant to- we can just forget this ever happened? Please? Are you- oh, god, why are you shaking?"

And Phil's frame was shuddering, not quite like crying, more like- laughter? Phil looked up and sure enough, his face was pulled in that ridiculous expression of his. Something like a bolt of hurt shot through Dan, then, and he felt his face do something, his hands spasm, and Phil must have noticed, because his laughter died off as quickly as it had come.

"Dan—"

"Don't, don't pity me or anything, it doesn't have to change anything."

And as he spoke, Phil's eyes were softening, lingering, and as he finished, Phil patted the ground next to him.

"Come have a chat, Danny."

Dan felt his legs give way, an ungainly collapsing of limbs. He curled himself up, tucked his hands around his shins, and felt smaller than he had in years.

And there was quiet, for a while, and then Phil reached into his pocket, producing something shiny and oddly familiar.

"This is yours, if you want," Phil stated quietly, reaching out to press the ring into Dan's shaky palm. "Has been for years."

"I- what?"

"I got it when we were on that holiday to Jamaica, do you remember? There was a market set up there, and you'd gone off to find a gift for your mum-"

"I remember," Dan murmured.

"And there was a ring stand there, and I just- couldn't walk by. I knew then, Dan, I knew that you were it for me, and I kept it safe and waited for the right time."

"And it never came?" Dan asked bitterly.

"And I never worked up the nerve when it did before it was too late."

"What are you saying, Phil?"

Phil hesitated.

"I'm saying I'm yours, if you want me. If you'll have me."

As it turned out, there were more important things to be heard than what was said. It had been that way for years, that a few words could mean paragraphs, and a mere look could mean an entire universe. So it was in this moment, that Dan could do nothing but close his fingers around the battered old ring and curl his free hand into the hair at the back of Phil's neck as he kissed him.

It was nothing so awe inspiring as fireworks, but the give of Phil's lips, the way that they broke apart after a few moments because they were smiling too hard…

It was worth more, somehow, than all the heartfelt declarations and moments of passion in the world. It was fingers twisted into the hem of the other's shirt, it was the hazy memory that drifted into clarity of how Dan liked his kisses just so, of how Phil used to whisper endearments as he nipped at Dan's ear.

It felt like coming home.