A week. Admittedly, it hadn't seen that long when Phil first told him he was going to visit his family for a week. The first day of Phil being gone wasn't that bad. He stayed on the computer and texted him at a sort of normal rate, even for him. Kind of like they used to back in '09.

They had a Skype call right after dinner at Phil's parent's house and talked until early in the morning hours - just like old times.

The second day was a bit worse. It was weird for Dan to wake up and not see Phil eating his cereal for the hundred millionth time, despite him always telling him not to. Dan found himself going out to the shop for something to do, for a bit of contact that he suddenly felt he was lacking and then coming back feeling even more alone than he had before he went. Phil's texts were pretty normal throughout the day, and around lunch they Skyped because Phil had something he wanted to show Dan.

"Wow, Phil, your room looks...almost exactly like it did when I first met you." Dan remarked after a moment of just sitting there staring as Phil showed Dan his old bedroom.

"I know! It's awesome, all sorts of great memories happened here! We filmed the first Phil Is Not On Fire here!"

Phil's happiness made Dan smile. This is completely worth the week alone, Dan thought as Phil continued talking about everything that came to mind, Dan replying when he could.

Day three was the hardest for Dan. He woke up to a Skype call from Phil.

"Dan!" Phil's voice was way too chipper for this early in the morning and he almost forgot it was just a Skype call.

Dan smiled faintly, covering his head to hide his hobbit-esque hair from his best friend.

Phil just stared at him for a moment before speaking. "You're seriously still in bed?!"

"That's generally the idea, yeah." Dan replied with a cheeky grin.

Of course, with the early morning call, it just made Dan wish Phil was home to have a banter with instead of having to rely on Skype and texting.

He went through his day pretty normally after that, even though he couldn't look in the direction of Phil's room anymore without remembering he wasn't in there working on a video like he was used to.

The fourth day, Dan didn't even bother to get off the couch to go to bed. He felt like it just wasn't worth the effort. He acted normally while he was talking to Phil, had edited a video he'd made the previous day and posted it, and then had refused to move for anything.

The day that Phil came back, that was exactly how he found Dan - curled up on on the couch with a blanket and his laptop, blankly staring ahead of him.

"Dan?"

Dan blinked, glancing at the computer screen absently to make sure he hadn't missed anything there before sighing and going back to staring blankly.

Phil stood in the doorway, just watching his best friend before he sighed and moved to sit next to Dan. "Dan, seriously. I was gone for four days."

This jarred Dan just enough for him to look at Phil and grin, shooting up to hug him and effectively knocking his laptop off the couch. "Phil!"

The soft laughter was all Dan needed to hear to know that it was really him.

"I thought you wouldn't come back..." Dan mumbled.

Phil leaned back to stare at Dan before he grinned. "Silly. Of course I'd come back. Why would I want to abandon my best friend?" he replied.

Dan shrugged, looking down, slightly ashamed of himself for believing that Phil would really abandon him.

"Now, how about you go get cleaned up and we go find food?" Phil asked. "I'm starving, so you must be."

Dan laughed, but nodded and got up.

Once Dan had disappeared, Phil shook his head, picking the laptop up and glancing at it. Skype was open, their conversation log staring back at him. He smiled faintly, knowing that Dan wasn't used to being alone like this anymore. He scrolled through, grinning when he found their older Skype logs.

"It was just like back then. Except now I knew what it was like to live with you so it was worse," Dan said from behind him a few minutes into going through them.

Phil looked back at him and grinned. "Hopefully without all those tweets this time." he teased, making Dan give him a fake glare.

"Let's just go so we can be socially weird, get our food and come back, okay?"

This got a nod of agreement and Phil closed the laptop before they left the flat together, laughing and joking around like normal.

So...yeah...there's that...