First meeting - Fem!Phan

There's a little girl who lives in a small cottage down the road. She's quite a small frail girl really. Brown hair with curls at the tips which match her chocolaty brown eyes. They're not just chocolaty in colour, but in their appearance too. If you stare into them for long enough you can see the little swirls of brown. The small swirls that make a pattern which looks just like melted chocolate. Although, to be fair you can't really ever properly look at her eyes because she's always scrunching them up when she smiles. And believe me, she's always smiling.

She's a shy girl which no one really knows, yet everyone does know her. It's hard to explain. No one really knows who she is yet they all see her everyday. She's known as the shy kid who stares into space, daydreaming about whatever adventures she has going on inside that head of hers. She's the girl who always wears long sleeved shirts, way too long to actually fit. She likes to have her sleeves too long because she gets to clutch onto them, almost like it's some sort of comforting item to her.

Her name is Dan. Danielle Howell, to be exact. The brown eyed girl who sits in the corner with that dopey smile on her face everyday. She just smiles if you talk to her. People actually wondered if all she could do was smile. There were several rumours going around about why Dan was silent, only smiling when you would catch her eye. Of course most people giggled and pointed at her, making her smile disappear.

You never truly appreciate something until it's gone. With Dan's smile, that was very true.

She was quiet at first. The girl who never talked to anyone no matter how hard they tried. They'd try to ask her to join in games but she'd just smile and shake her head politely. She was a charming little girl and for some reason that made people dislike her even more. They tried to be nice at first but as she simply ignored them and wouldn't join in with their games. They turned nasty after that, referring to her as the freak instead of the quiet girl like they once used to.

By the age of nine she was a complete outcast and no one could save her from this title. Some tried but always gave up as even that bright smile of hers darkened and disappeared eventually.

Girls laughed and pointed and they gossiped about Dan. Boys pushed and jostled around her as their harsh shrieks of laughter pierced her poor ears. She was a lost cause and everyone knew it. She was just the little freak who didn't speak or even smile anymore. People hated her because of how she was.

But somehow, from not even speaking a single word she'd attracted the attention of a little girl who went by the name of Phil.

Phil was a girl with blue eyes that sparkled wildly in the sunlight. She had every boy in her year (and admittedly some of the girls) after her. She never wanted to be popular. When she started school at age four she'd told her mummy that she didn't want to make friends. That she was happy at home with her mum but of course the law is the law.

Her mum had sent Phil on her way, pressing a little kiss to her forehead as she dropped her off in the classroom. Phil's teacher had tried to explain that making friends and learning would be fun, but Phil wasn't having any of it.

She tried to run away many times in her first year, hating the fact that she had to be around people for six whole hours a day. She preferred to be alone, yet her behaviour is what had made her acquire her following. People looked up to Phil because she was known as the bad girl who would hide in the toilets during maths or try to sneak home at break time. People seemed to think it was because she was a rebel. Someone who wanted to break all the rules and for some reason that attracted a lot of people. But in reality, she just wanted to go home and be with her mummy.

Of course she'd settled down at school by the age of nine but people still liked her and wanted to be her friend for some reason. She talked as much as he could before her head started to hurt and she needed some time alone. This time alone consisted of Phil looking herself away in the toilets and staring at the cubicle wall for about twenty minutes. Some times she even cried and felt incredibly foolish for doing so.

She just wanted to be normal. A normal kid who could be around people and not feel suffocated by their presence. For once in her life she wanted to be able to get excited about going to school and seeing all those people whom called themselves her friends. But she couldn't and she just didn't understand why.

Maybe that's why she'd been drawn to Dan, the quiet girl who never talked. Being around someone who never talked seemed like Phil's idea of heaven. She dreamed about the days she could sit at home in silence and feel so at peace with herself and the world around her. But even though she was only young she knew that wasn't going to happen for a long time.

She watched them bully Dan everyday. She wanted to say something, she felt that she really did but he couldn't. After all, Phil didn't want to draw their attention onto her. When they were having a go at Dan was the only time she was left alone with himself. Her own mind was much better company than any of them could ever be.

Now, you'd think Phil was being mean by even having that single thought. It's not that they weren't nice people -a lot of them were actually very nice- It was simply that Phil preferred her own company rather than anyone else's. Her mind was her best friend and she liked it that way.

And so she'd watch them everyday. The girls that laughed and the boys who pushed poor Dan over. Phil would sit on her quiet little spot on the small wall across the playground and bask in the quietness around her, only when she was alone in these times she felt happy. Phil realised she was incredibly weird for liking being alone with only her thoughts, but that was just the way she was. She'd asked her mum before why she wasn't like all the other boys and girls in her class and her mum had just looked at Phil, not quite sure how to tell her nine year old daughter that she was different in bad way. Being different to anyone else at any age can be hard and she honestly didn't want to be the one to tell Phil something that could make her unhappy.

Phil was at a loss of what to do as the guilt slowly began to eat at her as she watched Dan's smile slowly start to disappear day by day until it was completely gone. The now peaceful girl flinched when people walked past her. She Didn't smile anymore, just cowered away from everything and everyone. Phil wanted to help, she really did but she didn't know how.

So she stared out slowly, making sure to smile as brightly as she could if she ever caught the brown haired girl's eye. Dan always seemed a little confused when she would see Phil smiling at her but sometimes she'd smile back. Her smile wasn't as big or as beautiful as it used to be, but it was still there hidden beneath all that sadness. Phil was glad about that.

A few weeks went by with them exchanging smiles when they saw each other before they actually spoke for the first time. Phil was hiding in one of her newest hiding places after having a particularly long conversation with a group of about ten girls. She was absolutely exhausted and knew if she didn't get away she was going to cry in front of them all right there. It's not that she was worried about ruining her reputation of being the badass girl who didn't care by crying, it was just that crying in front of anyone was embarrassing.

So she'd snuck away and had her little cry by herself, sobbing with her face screwed up as she tried to block the world out with her hands. She hated feeling like this, hated it so so much, yet there just seemed to be no cure to make her normal like everyone else. She shook as sobs wracked her body and she wanted to scream with the frustration that she'd never be like everyone else.

"Are you, um, are you okay?"

Phil's head snapped up at the voice, her eyes wide with fear that someone had found her crying in such an ugly way. But there in front of her still not fully through he small hole in the bushes that led to her hiding place was no one other than Dan Howell.

Phil quickly wiped her eyes, trying to smile as she remembered she was supposed to try smile at Dan whenever she could, although the fact her eyes were puffy from crying and the smile definitely looked 100% fake, didn't help her at all. Dan just looked at her, finally moving so she was fully in the small area surrounded by tall rose bushes, she didn't say a word, just simply made her way over to Phil and sat a little away from her.

Phil looked between Dan and the exit, not sure whether to run away and save herself a little humiliation or stay and actually try to talk to the girl she'd been trying to work up to courage to talk to all these years. She was about to open her mouth to apologize for crying, when Dan held out a tissue to her.

"Papa says you should always use a tissue to help your eyes get better when water comes from them" Dan started softly, gently placing the tissue onto Phil's lap before turning back to her bag and pulling out a small soft looking teddy bear "Lola helps me feel better too, you've just got to hug her like this, see?"

Phil watched in silence as Dan lifted the bear to her chest and hugged it tightly, scrunching her eyes closed and breathing slowly. When Dan's eyes opened again they met Phil's, and Phil was yet again taken aback by how wonderfully beautiful Dan's eyes were.

She flinched slightly as Dan took the tissue she'd given Phil and began to wipe the dark haired girl's eyes. Phil closed her eyes tightly, suddenly fighting the urge to cry again. This time it wasn't out of frustration or fear, but something else entirely she didn't understand.

"You're like me Phil" Dan mumbled, pushing the tissue aside and watching Phil's eyes open at her words "You want to run and hide instead of stay" She placed her bear in Phil's lap, smiling slightly as Phil's hands immediately gripped the soft toy "You Don't like people do you hide, I don't like people so I smile. See, we're the same"

Phil felt a bit bad as the first tear fell down her cheek and landed on Lola the bear, but that was soon forgotten about as she saw that wonderful smile she'd missed for so long appear back on Dan's face. They were the same. Finally Phil understood there wasn't anything wrong with her. The same difference she liked in Dan she hated within herself, and knowing they were somehow the same brought on a whole new wave of tears. But the tears were no longer filled with sadness, they were filled with relief and most importantly happiness.

She felt arms gently wrap around her as she was engulfed in a hug by Dan. She sobbed loudly once again as her arms wrapped tightly around Dan, now clinging to the slightly shorter girl like she'd wanted to do to anyone for years. She wanted to be strong, never seen as weak so she always cried alone. Even her own mum who she loved with all her heart had never seen her cry like this.

"Papa also says you're supposed to hug someone when they cry" Dan mumbled, backing away slightly once she realised Phil wasn't crying quite so hard. She was surprised when Phil smiled back at her, after all, it was the first genuine smile she'd ever seen the blue eyed girl give her.

"Thank you" Phil said simply, using the same tissue Dan had used to dry her tears earlier. She had a feeling that maybe her dreams of being friends with the quiet girl who never seemed to talk may not only be a dream after all.