shercock-holmes: Does anyone know Dan and Phil's address?
danisnotonfire: okay no offense but your stalking skills could do with a little more finesse
seen on tumblr
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It starts when Dan grabs the mail and finds a fan letter. They get them, sometimes, from overzealous people who somehow find their address.
Dan opens this envelope, more bored than anything, and reads the printed [aper. HI DAN, like that, in all caps, Times New Roman font, I AM REALLY IMPRESSED BY YOUR VIDEOS BUT I NOTICE THAT YOU SWEAR A LOT WHICH OFFENDS PEOPLE LIKE ME. I JUST WANTED YOU TO KNOW THAT YOU'RE VERY BEAUTIFUL & YOU HAVE A BEAUTIFUL BODY. I JUST WISH YOU'D STOP SWEARING AS IT MAKES ME LIKE YOU A LOT LESS.
He reads the letter through, and then shows it to Phil, who's quiet for a long time, reading it once, twice, three times, Dan standing by, shifting from foot to foot. "I dunno why it seems so creepy," Dan muses when Phil's silent for too long, "I mean, obviously we've both gotten way worse online, but..."
"It's creepy because it was in our mailbox," Phil smooths out a bent corner of the letter, re-reading, "Holy crap," he says, finally, handing the letter back to Dan.
"What do I do?" Dan looks at the envelope, which just has three letters printed on it D-A-N in enormous block-letter handwriting that doesn't even give anything away.
"I guess," Phil says, sighing, "I guess there's nothing we can do. We'll just have to wait."
For the rest of the night, Dan tries to pinpoint what it was about Phil's sentiment that makes him feel so much better, as if the older man once again solved his problems. And then he realizes, as he was about to fall asleep, it's because Phil acted as if they're in this together. Nothing we can do, he'd said. We. And Dan falls asleep surprisingly easily, knowing somebody else was on the case.
A week later over cereal Phil asks if he received another letter. And Dan doesn't want to tell him that there were five more, all stuffed in his desk drawer. HI DAN, they all begin, and got progressively worse. I WARNED YOU ABOUT SWEARING...I NOTICE YOU ALMOST NEVER GO OUTSIDE WITHOUT PHIL BUT SOMETIMES PHIL GOES OUTSIDE WITHOUT YOU...I WARNED YOU BEFORE ABOUT DOING THIS...YOU'RE TOO SEXY TO SWEAR I LOVE YOU.
Dan really does't plan on telling Phil, because he's scared and he doesn't want Phil to be scared, but over cereal Phil gets up and goes to his room and came back with an envelope with just four letters printed in enormous block letters P-H-I-L.
"How the fuck are they mad at you?" Dan says, his voice getting louder as he snatched the letter out of Phil's hands. "You never even swear!"
"Apparently," Phil's shifting uncomfortably, "Well. You can read it."
And so Dan does.
PHIL YOU ARE SO FUCKING GAY WHO ARE YOU EVEN KIDDING I DON'T KNOW HOW YOU CAN PRETEND TO BE A ROLE MODEL WHEN YOU'RE OBVIOUSLY IN LOVE WITH DAN WHO CAN NEVER LOVE YOU YOU SACK OF SHIT YOU DISGUST ME GO KILL YOURSELF.
"Phil," Dan says, quietly. Phil won't look at him, just looks at the couch and the anime paused on the tv. Dan nods, folds the envelope, pats Phil on the shoulder.
It feels like something shifts between them, and this situation is fucked up, Dan thinks, but somehow he and Phil are pulled even closer because of it. They go to the police, who are exceptionally uninterested. "They're not exactly directly threatening you," the police officer says, flipping through the letters. He gets to the one addressed to Phil and looks at Phil for too long, mouth pressing into a thin line at the sight of Phil's arm touching Dan's as they sweat in the chairs in the too-hot station, and Dan wants to scream. The officer invites them to write up a report. To call him if it escalates.
"If it escalates," Dan mutters as they walk home, "we could already be dead."
They don't go out as often. They promise each other to stop reading the letters, and when they can't, when they have to open them and stare at line after line of rambling, they go into each other's rooms and find the other person in the lounge or the study and let someone else in on how afraid they are. They decide not to tell their friends, and to definitely tell not their parents or the BBC. They wrap their fears around each other and hold on tight.
The first time it interferes with their lives is when they're doing another post-TATINOF interview. The guy asks to speak to them one-on-one, Dan alone with a stranger in a closed room, Phil far off down the hall, and Dan's breathing speeds up at the thought. He thinks, this is why people have people, why there's always teams that come in and say don't talk about this. In that moment he decides that he needs people, to send in ahead of time and say that they work as a team, Dan and Phil.
"Actually," Phil says, his voice the right amount of firm and chagrined, "I think it should be the both of us. We're funnier together, I swear."
And the guy shrugs, flips open his notepad right there, and when Phil looks at Dan with that questioning look, that small smile did I do it right? is this okay? Dan nods and bumps their shoulders together, which is kind of becoming their thank you.
And then.
Dan hasn't gotten a letter in days and is smiling, actually feels good enough to record a video. He digs through Phil's box of props. "I thought we had a top hat somewhere?" he calls to Phil down the hall, moving aside boas and and a bowtie and masks of the Queen and Harry Styles.
"We do have the top hat," Phil says, voice exasperated and coming closer. He sticks his head in the room just as Dan pulls out the letters.
There's three of them, all addressed to D-A-N, and when Dan looks up he sees Phil flushing deeply.
"I"m sorry," Phil says without prompting, "I'm - they were freaking you out so much so I've just been going down and getting them in the morning. And I've been reading them, you know, to make sure it's not escalating or anything."
"And your letters?"
"They're in there, too," Phil admits.
"Jesus fucking Christ, Phil," Dan spits, and the way it comes out, all bent around the edges, harsh, makes the older man wince. "You're going behind my back? You think I need protecting from the big bad stalker?
"Yes!" Phil yells back.
The quiet in the room is so heavy that Dan can taste it. Phil's face is already contorting into an apology, and explanation, but Dan barrels over him. "Why can't you let me protect you for once?" he says, and makes an effort to lower his voice. "You're always doing the grown-up stuff around here. Let me take my fair share."
He expects Phil to relent, but instead Phil draws himself up so he's towering over Dan, looking fierce as a warrior. "No," he says. "You don't have to read the stupid letters. They're killing you. So let me take this bit."
"It's not a bit, Phil. It is scary. We have a scary-ass stalker and the police are waiting until they murder us in our beds to do anything about it!"
"This is why I take them," Phil says, almost pleading, brushing a hand over his eyes as he sits in front of Dan, knees drawn up to chest. "They don't scare me. The idea of a stalker doesn't scare me. You scare me."
Dan reels back as if slapped and feels like he's being crushed by the silence, like there's books being stacked inside of him, one heavy volume after another, and oh god, it's killing him.
A hand on his shoulder, and Phil's eyes, so sad, but with the spark of recognition. He's won this argument. He puts a hand on Dan's shoulder. "Breathe."
"Fuck off," Dan hisses, jerking away. He always gets like this, an angry viper curling in on himself, a dog snapping over an injured paw. Tightly wound and animalistic.
But Phil stays, his hand rubbing soothing circles on Dan's shoulder. They're not touchy kinds of guys, and Dan's more likely to reach out than Phil, but there's a long-standing protocol for this, if they can remember it. Phil doesn't bother to keep telling Dan to breathe, a tactic that's more likely to get him worked up. He just says, quietly, "you've been so happy. Since before we started the book. I didn't know if I remembered how to help. And you were getting so worked up over the letters. And they really don't bother me."
Dan dropped his head until his mouth was below his heart, so frustrated that he couldn't speak that he was nearly crying. Phil's hand moved until it rested between his shoulder blades. They must look a sight, Dan red-faced and gasping, Phil pale and worried, surrounded by neckties and crazy shirts and masks and a rubber chicken, as if this were a comedy.
It takes him a little while to get enough air to breathe, which is probably a good thing because he can't say the first five things that come to mind. He can't say he wishes Phil was more worried, because then Dan would be a little less alone. He can't say that he wants Phil to be more bothered, because it bothers Dan to see someone take shots at his older friend and get away with it. So instead when he can finally speak he says, "I'm still going to worry about you."
"I would hope so," Phil says, smiling just a little. It didn't reach his eyes.
"You need to let me see the letters."
Phil looks like he wants to protest, but ends up nodding. Dan reaches for one addressed to Phil first, and the older man winces. "You read mine, I read yours," Dan points out, taking out the letter. Times New Roman. All caps.
YOU NEED TO MOVE OUT PHIL DAN IS MINE AND YOU'VE BEEN HOGGING HIM FOR YEARS YOU'RE DISGUSTING IF YOU DON'T LEAVE I'LL KILL YOU I'LL STAB YOU I'LL RIP YOUR THROAT OUT.
His hand's shaking when he opens the next one. EVERYONE KNOWS YOU JUST LIVE WITH DAN TO LEECH OFF HIS SUBSCRIBERS YOU COULD NEVER BE AS POPULAR AS DAN YOU UGLY WHORE IF YOU DON'T KILL YOURSELF I'LL DO IT FOR YOU.
"Fuck," Dan says. "Fuck. We have to tell someone about this."
"Because that helped so much last time." Phil picked at Dan's letters. "You wanna read these ones?"
Dan does. The language is so different in these. Still creepy, but it's: YOU'VE GOT SUCH A BEAUTIFUL BODY YOU SHOULD TAKE OFF YOUR SHIRT MORE...I STILL DON'T LIKE THAT YOU CURSE BUT I LOVE YOU ANYWAY...and sprinkled throughout the same YOU SHOULD LEAVE PHIL...HE'S HOLDING YOU BACK...YOU CAN DO BETTER.
"Fuck," Dan says again.
Phil nods to one letter that he hadn't opened. "I was thinking about taking that to the police. See if they can dust for prints."
"You've been watching too much Criminal Minds," Dan says, and his voice is imbued with so much fondness it breaks in the middle. And he needs to add, as Phil picks himself up off the floor, "you know I need you here with me."
"Don't worry about it," Phil says. "You need help with your video?"
"Just this one shot - okay, four shots. But we can do it later."
"Let's do it now," Phil says, reaching down a hand to help Dan up. "I'll order pizza. Aren't you starving?"
Here's a fact that Dan finds, taking out his phone while Phil orders two large pizzas. One in forty-five men are stalked in their lifetimes, which is the scariest thing Dan's ever heard. Until he scrolls down just a little and sees that one in twelve women are stalked in their their lifetimes. And that makes Dan freeze, because he probably couldn't name forty-five guys he really cares about but he can sure as hell name twelve girls. He also sees that men are four times more likely than women to be stalkers, which makes sense, Dan thinks, since women are also four times more likely to be stalked.
And he's looking at this website while he gets the actual top hat he was looking for and starts to work out what kind of shot he wants, and he just loses track of time, and loses track of Phil, and when he looks up the place has that stale, still feeling of no one around.
"Phil?" he calls. "Phil! Need you help here!"
Had he heard the bell ring? Maybe. And had Phil gone down to grab the food? Maybe. First Dan explored the rest of the apartment, calling for Phil, thinking first that this was a prank, that their day was going so well that Phil decided to play on Dan's fears and hide. And then...it was just fear.
He ran down the stairs, leaving the apartment door wide open, barefoot, calling ahead of him "Phil?" "Phil!"
And out onto the street where he saw the pizza delivery car but no pizza delivery driver, and no pizza, and no Phil, and all Dan could think was no no no no no. He knew he must look crazy, screaming and barefoot and wearing this strange t-shirt that Phil somehow had and he thought would be hilarious for the video. He ran one way down the street. Then the other.
Later he'd tell Cat about turning the corner and seeing the pizza guy, still wearing his hat and red polo, standing over Phil with a knife. And later, when PJ stared at him, incredulous and teary-eyed, and said he could have killed you, too, Dan would only respond that he had to try, and so of course he ran into the alley and pushed the attacker/stalker away. He'd tell Martyn - not about the Phil gasped Dan's name, blood gushing out of his mouth, staining his teeth, running down his chin, not that, no brother needed to know that - but how the stalker/attacker had been a guy younger than Dan, face dotted with zits, and how he'd fucking smiled. And later he'd tell Louise, who stayed with him after the funeral, stayed with him for days and days because he couldn't bear the empty apartment, how the pizza delivery guy told Dan that he loved him, that he was doing Dan a favor, that Phil was just in the way. And he'd say how he heard Phil sob, and cough on the blood. And how the pizza guy had run right into the arms of the police, who had been called by a neighbor who heard the screams, but how that didn't matter, none of it mattered.
Because Dan couldn't tell anybody about how he pressed down on Phil's belly, squeezing between his fingers the slippery hot intestines, trying to force them back inside, and in that moment Phil was crying, and Dan was crying, of course, crying and screaming for help, please, help, and Phil had lifted one arm and placed his hand on Dan's cheek, smearing blood.
They weren't touchy-feely guys, but Phil couldn't talk anymore, and later, when Dan was alone in the too-big apartment, when Dan finally moved out, when Dan got married and settled down, he never forgot about the warmth of Phil's hand, the blood smeared like a red reminder, and they weren't touchy-feely guys, but for the rest of his life Dan liked to think that Phil's last action really meant Thank you. I love you. Goodbye.
.
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please don't stalk people irl. and if you feel like you're being stalked, or you feel unsafe, you probably are. call 9-1-1. police are generally more helpful than this fics make it out to be, we promise.
also: massive thank yous to everyone who reviewed. seriously, we got more reviews on the last chapter than the previous five chapters combined, and it means a lot to us. we spend way too long on this fic.
peace,
us