Hello so this is a little one shot plot bunny that I had to write down and I might as well share it. Its based in an AU in which Youtube never existed , Dan and Phil never met and they lived ordinary lives. Here you goo!
London Zoo was loud and bursting with families one cheerful Sunday afternoon in July. Dan entwined his fingers with his wife's as they strolled contently. Dan's two kids had run off to join the hordes of children at the lion enclosure, leaving him a moment to share with his wife. Dan had met her at law university 17 years ago and loved her to this day, they had two beautiful children and successful careers and a nice house. Everything about their lives was 'nice.' Dan was happy but occasionally he had a sinking feeling he had forgotten something or someone.
They were nearing the lion enclosure now and the laughing voice of the head zookeeper wasbooming into the sunshine. The man was a couple years older than Dan with fading black hair and smile lines circling his vibrant blue eyes. Dan's stomach flipped with an ominous feeling. Why did this stranger look so familiar to him? Dan stifled the urge to giggle uncontrollably and his wife fondly cocked a eyebrow at him. The lionkeeper's nametag read "Phil", it felt familiar on Dan's tongue, like the name of a forgotten childhood friend or a character in a tv show that was discontinued.
Phil looked up from explaining to the children about lion prides to scan how large the crowd was becoming. His blue eyes locked with Dan's. He gasped.
A dream he had had in the January he was twenty one came rushing forward into his memory like a tsunami of emotions. The dream had been a fast flash of Dan leaning into a microphone saying "Its Dan and Phil on BBC Radio 1" whilst an explosion sound effect played. He looked over to his best friend who stood beside him and gave a thumbs up, it was returned with an excited grin that lit up blue eyes like sparkling orbs.
It had stopped then, Dan had woken with tear tracks on his cheeks and an empty feeling. It was unexplainable as to why a little dream was making him upset. Dan hugged his knees to his chest and sucked in raggedy breathes. It was so real and so happy, in the dream he felt like all his life was worthwhile in that moment standing next to his best friend on national radio. Dan couldn't sleep again that night, he went to classes that day halfheartedly, his head stuck in a daydream of the idyll his brain had conjured up.
Dan crashed back to the present at the Zoo. The eye contact had lasted longer than comfortable. Dans wife brushed his elbow lightly "Do you know him, hunny?" "No" Dan shook his head, "but i feel like i do."
Phil was remembering a similar dream he had when he was 26 and he too was feeling a familiar connection with the tall man with brown eyes that in his dream had danced with laughter.
Neither of them would ever know what could have been.