The days continue to pass, and Phil becomes increasingly more comfortable with the school. Every day he recognizes more people in the halls (though it was a fairly small school, to be fair), and he continues to form relationships with other people while strengthening his current ones. Contrary to what he first believed, Andrew was becoming one of Phil's closest friends - on the team, at least, along with two other members of his team, Ryan and Erik. But by far, Dan was becoming his best friend. Every day they learned more about each other, and they kept talking to each other late into the nights on Snapchat. It was like they had known each other for years. Phil couldn't explain it. It was like they just.. clicked, however cliche it was. However, Phil didn't mention this new friendship with the rest of his friends due to Dan's supposed unpopularity with the team, which he had touched on the first day of school, and Phil assumed the team didn't know. How very wrong he was.

Right before 7th period starts one day, Dan and Phil meet up in the hallway and began walking to World History together. "So, I've been meaning to ask you: how come you're late to lunch every day?" Dan asks. "Oh, well, it's kind of a long story.. well, not really - it's actually kind of stupid - ok, well Andrew is in my 3rd period class, Lit, and then he has us go meet up with Jack and Erik and Luke, then we all walk together to their 4th period classes - well, we drop them off along the way - then me and Andrew and Jack go to lunch," Phil explains quickly. "Ok, I didn't get any of that," Dan laughs. Phil grins, then tries to explain again, but even more confusingly. It takes their entire walk to World History for Dan to finally understand. "Ok, so you and Andrew go meet up with Jack, Erik, and Luke. Then you go to each of your lockers, drop off Erik and Luke at their 4th period class, and the three of you come to lunch," Dan confirms. "Exactly!" "Don't pride yourself on that explanation, it was my master decoding skills that figured out whatever the fuck you were trying to say," Dan laughs again as they walk into the classroom.

"So you basically just hang out with people from football?" "Well, I hang out with you. And this girl Peyton from Chemistry, did I tell you about her? And this guy from my health class. And I talk to these twins from from gym. And-" "Ok, I get it! You have a lot of friends." Dan rolls his eyes but smiles as Phil blushes. "But yeah, football is basically my life. What about you?" Phil asks. "I'm in a group of friends, there's like five of us. I'm sure you've seen us all together at lunch. I could introduce you to them one day," Dan says as they slide into their usual seats. "Yeah, I'd like that!" Phil agrees as he settles into his chair next to Dan.

"Anyway, I also wanted to ask what you do for fun," Phil says. Dan opens his mouth, but Phil interrupts him: "And don't give me the speech about how you live on the internet." Phil rolls his eyes. "What else do you like to do?" "Well, I play piano. I'm actually in a band with my friends. Well, I play keyboard, but I like classical piano better." Oh god, I sound like a total nerd, Dan thinks, his cheeks burning up. However Phil responds, "Oh, that's really cool! I wish I could play an instrument," he says. "Well, I could teach you. I've been giving lessons to Nathan's brother," Dan suggests. "Really? That would be so cool!" "Yeah, I guess so," Dan agrees with a bashful smile. "Do you want to swing by my house this weekend?" Phil nods with a grin, and he starts to say something about texting him the address, but the shrill ring of the bell covers Phil's speech. Mr. Thompson strides into the room and class starts.

After class, as Phil is walking alone to his 8th period math class, a guy Phil vaguely recognizes stops him. "Hey, Phil, right?" He asks. "Um, yeah, and you're..?" "Ethan," the boy kindly supplies. "I'm in your Chemistry class. Anyway, you've been hanging around with that Dan kid, right?" Ethan says awkwardly. "Yeah, what about it?" Phil says warily. "Well, you're on the football team, right?" Phil gestures to his jacket, slightly annoyed at this point. "Just letting you know, the football team and Dan.. don't mix," Ethan says vaguely. "They might not want you being all.. buddy-buddy with him." "What is that supposed to mean?" "I.. I don't know, I gotta go." And, with the same look Dobby must've had after telling Harry something he probably shouldn't have, Ethan rushes off.

Several days later, the bell rings and Phil walks out of his 3rd period class with Andrew by his side. "I can't believe she already assigned us an essay. It's still the first week of school!" Andrew exclaims. "Relax, it's not due for another couple weeks. Honestly though, 4 pages? I see your point," Phil complains about his already piling up homework load. They continue to chat and find their way to Erik's locker, where he and Luke are already talking. "Hey, guys. Where's Jack?" Phil asks as they approach. Erik grabs a final textbook and closes his locker as he turns to meet the duo. "He had something to talk to Mr. Stuart about, but I would be cherishing these moments cause he said he had to talk to you next," Erik responds with a serious expression. "Shit, really?" Jack was the quarterback on the football team. He was a nice enough guy, but you really didn't want to get on his bad side. "What exactly did he say?" Phil asks. "I believe his exact words were, 'I gotta go book weight room time with Stu-pac, but when you see Phil tell him I need to talk to him,'" Luke replies. "Stu-pac?" "That's what he calls Stuart." Mr. Stuart was one of the gym teachers, and their football coach.

By this point, all four were walking towards Erik and Luke's next class. "Ok, well did he sound mean, like he was mad at me?" "Yeah," Erik said apologetically. "Good luck with that!" Luke calls as he and Erik turn into their 4th period classroom. "Damn, alright then," Andrew says to Phil as they walk to the lunchroom. The bell sounds and about a minute later they're walking through the cafeteria doors. The monitor wasn't at the entrance waiting to hear their excuse for being late (the same one they gave every day), but they don't notice her absence and continue walking.

Phil heads down the main aisle and weaves his way around the circular tables, Andrew following close behind. As he approaches their table in the middle of the room, he sees Jack already perched on the bench, everyone paying attention to him. When Andrew and Phil near the table, Jack looks up and stops talking about practice after school. He shushes everyone else, and Andrew sits down, but instead of making room for Phil, the other football players spread out to take up every free space. "Phil," Jack says bluntly, narrowing his eyes. "Hey, Jack. Erik said you wanted to talk to me?" "Yeah. So, how come I hear you've been hanging out with Homo Howell lately?"

The full meaning of the nickname doesn't register in Phil's mind yet. "Howell?" Phil whispers confusedly, the name running through his mind, trying to match the faces with the names and figure out who Jack was talking about. Then he remembers the first day of school. I'm Dan by the way. Dan Howell. "Dan?" Phil asks in surprise. "Heh, I've been calling him Homo Howell so long I forgot he had a real name," Aaron chimes in, laughing with his teammates. Then the full significance of the name takes hold. "Wait, Homo Howell?!" Phil exclaims. "Why do you call him that?!" He asks, even though he's pretty sure he knows the answer. "Cause he's gay, obviously," someone else at the table responds.

Phil gets over the news Dan is also gay and anger sets in. "What is wrong with you guys?! When he told me you guys.. essentially bullied him last year, I didn't know it was because of that! Why in God's name would you make fun of him for that?!" He shouts. "Woah, dude, relax. Why are you getting so worked up?" Jack says defensively. "Because I'm gay!" Phil explodes. "I know what he's gone through. And you're all a bunch of assholes for making fun of him for something he can't change about himself!"

"That's enough, Mr. Lester!" The lunch monitor's sharp voice pierces the air as she marches over to the table. Suddenly Phil snaps back to reality, and he remembers the situation he's in. The cafeteria. The football players. The other students surrounding him on all sides. And... Dan. Phil whirls around and sees Dan, his shocked expression evident on his face even across the entire lunchroom. "God, I leave for five minutes to go to the bathroom.." The monitor mumbles disapprovingly to herself. "Let's go, Lester."

Phil silently follows the woman, staring at the ground as he feels everyone in the room's eyes boring into him. But most of all, he swears he can feel Dan's eyes following him like lasers as he walks out of the cafeteria, leaving everyone behind.

They walk silently through the halls to the main entrance, where the front office is. The monitor enters a large room and Phil follows her into what looks like the main administration office. There are several doors on the walls, labeled with things like 'Dean of Students', 'Security Office', and 'Principal'. She walks up to the front desk and says, "I need to speak with the Dean," motioning towards Phil. "Sure," the secretary responds, and buzzes the intercom on her desk. She speaks with a low voice into the speaker and says something along the lines of "Mrs. Jones needs to speak with you, she has a student with her," and a muffled voice responds. Somehow, the secretary understood that, and she directs Mrs. Jones to the Dean's office. "Wait here," she says sharply to Phil, then turns and crosses the room to the door labeled 'Dean of Students'.

Phil looks around and sits down in a chair along one of the walls. Hardly anyone else is in there with him, only the secretary, a few other administrative personnel, and a soccer mom-esque woman a few chairs down typing furiously on her phone. He waits there for only a few moments before the Dean's office door opens and an authoritative man beckons him inside. Phil reluctantly rises, leaving his backpack on the floor, and crosses the room inside the office. The man gestures for him to sit down, and says "Mrs. Jones tells me you were being disruptive in the lunchroom." When Phil says nothing, he continues: "Yelling at your teammates, swearing.." he trails off and looks expectantly at Phil. When Phil still says nothing, the man sighs and turns to the lunch monitor. "Thank you, Mrs. Jones, that will be all." She turns on her heel with a hmph! and strides out of the office.

"Now, Phillip-" "Phil." He interrupts the Dean. "Yes, fine, Phil. You seem like a nice kid. Mr. Stuart tells me you're a great football player, and you seemed to get on well with the rest of your team. Well, today can contradict that," he mutters. "So why all the commotion in the cafeteria?" Phil shrugs, and decides against telling him about the true reason for his outburst. "They were being assholes," he says simply. The Dean gives a disapproving glare, but sighs and says, "Fair enough. I remember what high school is like. I'll let you off with a warning, but I don't want to hear anything else about you being disruptive again. And cut out the swearing, alright? One more incident and I'll give you a detention." Phil nods, and stands, wanting to get out of the office as fast as possible. "Thanks, Mr.." he looks at the nametag on the desk. "McLain." Mr. McLain just nods curtly, and says "Now, go eat your lunch in the library, I don't want anything else starting again." Phil nods, then leaves the office, grabs his backpack, and rushes out the door.

He makes his way through the silent halls to the library, where he crosses to an empty table in the back corner of the room, surrounded by bookshelves. Phil pulls out his lunch from his backpack - a sandwich, banana, and other assorted snacks - and eats in silence, absently scrolling through social media on his phone. Finally the bell rings, Phil packs up his things, and exits to his 5th period class.

They watch Phil follow the lunch monitor out of the cafeteria in silence. "Did that just happen?" Nathan asks in disbelief. Dan forces his mouth to close and shakes his head a bit to gather himself. "Um, yeah," he says incredulously. "Why would he do that for you? He's a football player, right?" Emmett asks. "Ok, first, his name is Phil, and he's new this year. And second he's.. kind of my friend," Dan says awkwardly. "Friend.. or boyfriend?" Lucas says mischievously, poking Dan in the side. "Hey! Cut it out!" Dan slaps Lucas' hand and his cheeks burn bright red.

"C'mon, he did say he was gay.." Lucas continues. "Yell is more like it," Emmett remarks to Ben. "Guys, I'm serious, stop," Dan says, flashing a glare at each of them around the table. "Alright, just saying - might be something to think about," Lucas says with a smirk before chomping down on a carrot. "Anyway, let me tell you what this guy did in math.." The conversation turns to whatever Lucas is complaining about, but Dan can't help but think about Phil and what he did just minutes before.

Around halfway through Phil's 6th period class, he realizes he'll have to see Dan after class. What am I going to say to him? Shit, what's he going to say to me?! Phil tries to focus on the dull lesson his health teacher is giving them (yeah, drugs are bad for you, I get it) but as each minute passes he becomes more aware of the sense of dread growing in his stomach. The second the bell rings, Phil speeds out of the classroom, determined to push off his and Dan's inevitable meetup as long as possible. He takes the long way around to the World History classroom until finally entering it. There Dan is sitting like usual, digging through his backpack to find something. Phil momentarily decides to choose a different seat for the day, but Dan looks up right then and their eyes meet. Dan looks at him in surprise, then gives Phil a tentative smile, however Phil is still zoned out debating on whether or not to take his normal seat his brain forgets to tell his body to smile back. Upon seeing Phil just staring at him like a deer in the headlights, Dan quickly drops his gaze and looks down at his desk, setting down the notebook he had gotten from rummaging around in his backpack.

Phil's brain finally catches up with what happened and he realizes how rude he must've seemed to Dan. He winces, then walks over to Dan and slides into his normal seat. "Uh, hey, Dan," Phil says, cringing inwardly at how awkward he sounded. "Hi, Phil," Dan says, and Phil's relieved to hear Dan sounds as awkward as he did. "I didn't see you in the hallway. Figured you got an in-school detention or something." "Yeah, no, just got held up after class.." Phil gives a lame excuse, and both boys fidget slightly, neither meeting the other's eyes. A couple uncomfortable seconds pass, until Dan finally breaks the silence. "Ok, can we just talk about what happened at lunch? It doesn't have to be this awkward." "Ok, yes, thank you!" Phil laughs a little. "Good, ok, so what happened after the lunch monitor pulled you out?" Dan asks. "Well, I went into the Dean's office, and he yelled at me a little for being 'disruptive in the lunchroom' and swearing, but he let me off with a warning. Something about how Stuart said I was a good kid?" He waves a hand flippantly. "I was surprised at how nice he was about the whole thing." "Yeah, Mr. McLain's a pretty cool guy. I've only talked to him a couple times, but he seems nice. Like he knows what we're going through. He can be pretty strict, though," Dan says.

"Anyway, I also wanted to talk about something else.." Phil starts, but Dan interrupts. "Ok, can we not do this? We're both gay, yes, but we don't need to swap life stories or whatever about how hard our lives are, yeah?" "Oh, I fully agree," Phil says wholeheartedly. "But that's not what I was gonna say. It's just.. I'm sorry if I made things worse. I wasn't really thinking about how this would affect you." "Oh. No, you didn't," Dan reassures him. "So they didn't go give you a hard time or anything?" "No, actually they've been mostly avoiding me. Jack still glared at me every time he saw me, although I'm pretty sure that's for another reason," Dan remarks bitterly, "but Andrew actually waved at me in the hallway." "Hold on, wait, what's the 'other reason' Jack would be glaring at you?" However, the bell rings before Dan can answer Phil's question. Later, Dan mouths, and class begins.

A/N: Hey guys! Shoot, sorry it's been over a month since I updated. Been really busy with hw, and I had an ice skating competition last weekend. But I got sick a couple days ago, so I was able to finish this chapter when I was home from school (yay?). sidenote, god this chapter was long! hope you enjoyed lol. second sidenote, happy thanksgiving! I'm thankful for all of you guys :). oh wait, isn't thanksgiving only an american holiday? oh well, sorry if you don't live in the us. well, i'm not sorry, cause like trump and stuff. Anyway, couple things. First, sorry I'm throwing a lot of oc's at you. I'm just assigning names to specific people so it's not like: 'Phil, a football player, and another football player meet up. Phil says 'Hi'. the first football player says 'hey'. the second football player says 'what's up?'" ok, that was really bad, but you know what I mean. Also, I'm realizing dnp are kinda ooc in this fic. I mean, it's a hs au so they've got that teen angst going on, and Phil is kinda a rebel ig, idk how that happened but that's how I wrote him. and he swears, cause most hs students do. Lastly, I published a fic a couple weeks ago, and I would really appreciate if you would check it out. it's a phanfic, but I made it a web shows and grey's anatomy x-over only so I could borrow a couple characters and setting from that fandom. you can still read it even if you don't watch grey's, it's really primarily a phanfic. Anyway, thanks for reading this! I hope you enjoyed this update, please favorite if you did, maybe give it a follow if you want to read what happens next, and leave a review telling me what you think! ~lily