A/N so this story takes place in October 2014. Phil is visiting his family up north so Dan has to edit the FNAF video all by himself and he's scared out of his mind. No Phan, they are 'just' best friends. Sorry for reposting, I discovered way too late that it was illegible. Please r&r, because reviews are love and I'm trying to improve my writing.
It was a cold dark October night in London, the kind of night that makes you want to do nothing but cocoon yourself in your blanket as you drink hot chocolate and watch a film. It was as quiet as it would ever get in the city, it wasn't as loud as during the day but you could still hear a few ambulances and police cars coming past, sirens sounding as they made their way to whatever was happening.
Dan Howell sat in his sofa crease in the living room, knowing he should be asleep as it was past 2AM. He knew his sleep schedule was already fucked up enough as it was, he really shouldn't stay up until the early hours of the morning binge watching YouTube videos.
But then again, he knew he wouldn't be able to sleep. He was all alone in the house, trying to edit spooky gaming videos by himself because Phil was visiting his family up north. Usually they would edit really spooky videos together, but even when they didn't, at least there was someone else emthere/em. Dan was really afraid of the dark, so just knowing he wasn't alone really helped him. If he needed to venture to the toilet, he could just send Phil before him to check for monsters. Now there was no-one.
Dan was seriously regretting his decision to stay up late for these Halloween videos. He was just scaring himself and they didn't have to be up for a few more days at least. Dan decided to stop for the day and continue in morning, when it was light. Dan saved the video and shut his laptop. He needed to calm his tits.
Whenever Dan got really scared or stressed, he would usually talk to Phil. Dan and Phil had been best friends for almost exactly 5 years now, Dan knew he could talk to Phil about everything, which he did. But because he wasn't here right now, that wasn't an option. He could call him, but Phil would most definitely be asleep right now. And to wake Phil up is not something he wanted to do.
But there was another way he could see Phil. Sort of.
Dan opened up his laptop again and went to Phil's YouTube channel. He started watching Phil's most recent video, the 'Tour of My Brain'. Dan instantly felt much better, just hearing Phil's voice.
As soon as the video had finished, Dan clicked on the next video, until he looked and the clock. It was 3:48AM. He should really go to bed now. But one more little video can't hurt...
He clicked on the next video. It was called Robot Death Machine. This was one of Fetus Phil's videos, dating all the way back to February 2009, before Dan had met him. He didn't remember this video at all, which was weird, considering this was posted in the time that Dan was the hugest fan of Phil.
The video started and the face he loved so much popped up on his screen.
"Why are you wearing a coat inside Phil?"
Dan smiled as Fetus Phil told the stories of his electric heater/death machine, him auditioning for Big Brother, him being in Faintheart, people recognising him from the advert he did... His life had been so strangely interesting, even back then. His personality was pretty much unchanged too, he acted exactly the same in his videos then as he does now. This made Dan really happy, to know he had been the same person all along.
Towards the end of the video, Fetus Phil pulled out some Tarot Cards. Apparently his grandma was psychic and had passed the gift on to him. Fetus Phil started with the past.
"Before this month, I was vain, complacent, oversentimental and careless, and I neglected my partner."
Dan couldn't help but laugh at this statement. Phil may be careless, but he is the least vain person on this planet, and if he would have had a partner at the time, which he didn't, he wouldn't have neglected them at all. If Phil liked something or someone, he gave it his full attention, 100% of the time.
Fetus Phil continued with the present.
"Currently I am entering into a dangerous three-way relationship, where heartache is inevitable for one participant, or all. Minor surgery is possible."
The description was so extremely vague, worded in a particular way so that it would apply to as many people as possible. This was the main reason that Dan thought this kind of thing was just bullshit. It was made to apply to everyone, which made it even more shitty if it didn't.
Now came the time for Fetus Phil to predict the future. Dan wondered if this would actually be accurate in any way. It probably was, because of the vagueness.
"So some guy is going to have a big impact, an energetic warrior. He has a hasty personality and he is very quick to love or hate. Hmm... Interesting!"
An energetic warrior, really? Sounds like the basic description of every guy ever to walk the earth. This had probably happened to some extent, but Dan didn't think that he had met a guy really soon after this who had changed his life in unimaginable ways.
Dan paused the video and looked at the comments to see if anything had actually been accurate, the Phans were always the first to point out even the tiniest bit of accuracy. The Phandom had the gift of psychoanalysing everything, down to every last word and even the way Dan and Phil looked at each other.
The first few comments were just about people having a 'Fetus Phil-athon' and how weird he looked back then. Dan read these comments impatiently and scrolled until he saw a comment that really caught his eye:
Imagine Dan watching this and not yet knowing the person that Phil predicted was him.
Dan had to read this comment a few times, not knowing what it meant. His eyes widened in shock as he realised what it meant.
The Tarot Cards had predicted Dan.
They had predicted Dan coming into Phil's life. As he thought about it, it became so obvious. He guessed he had had a big impact on Phil's life, they were best friends, they lived together, they were probably the most shipped couple of all time...
Maybe this wasn't bullshit after all.
Dan realised why he didn't remember ever watching this video. When he'd first watched it, he had hoped, dreamed even, that he would be the one. He got so obsessed with the idea that when he realised that it would never happened, he started to repress the memories of ever watching this video, so as to knock his hopes back to the ground, where they were supposed to be.
But he had been the one.
Dan scrolled back up to the video to watch the last few seconds, because to not finish watching Phil's video would be rude.
"I'm gonna go... eat some crisps? That's the first thing that came into my head! No, I'm gonna go change the world, in ways you could not believe. Bye!"
It was at this point that Dan burst into tears. This video was posted only 5 years ago, before Dan and Phil had even started talking, all the way back when Dan was Phil's biggest fan in the world and Phil didn't even know that he existed. In 5 years, they had come so far. They had millions of subscribers, a radio show, they were working on a book, but most importantly, they had each other.
Dan was just one of the many, many people who watched Phil's videos, but Dan had been the one, the person who'd changed Phil's life forever.
But Phil had changed Dan's world too.
Changes like these were irreversible, things could and would never go back to the way they were before. They weren't supposed to.
This was forever.