The next Monday at school, to Dan's relief, Phil doesn't bring up what Dan said to Phil after the football game. Dan even begins to hope Phil forgot about it. But Phil definitely remembers. In fact, it comes to mind every time Phil catches Dan staring at him from the corners of his eyes the rest of the week. But of course, Phil does his fair share of staring at Dan, too (how could he not?). Alas, the week passes normally, or at least as normal as it could.
It seems the football team has a new.. respect, almost, for Phil. His winning touchdown has broken down barriers, and more and more guys on the team start becoming friends with Phil. Of course, Jack never really talks to him. But his glares have simmered down to just stares, and Jack would, on rare occasion, give him an approving nod or smile during practice. Phil couldn't help wonder if Jack's coldness towards him was just because Phil was gay, or if it had something to do with Dan and whatever happened between him and Jack last year.
In any case, the weekend after the game Phil pulls into Dan's driveway and turns off his car, then walks up the driveway to Dan's front door for his piano lesson. On the way there, faint music drifts through the air as he walks, and it gets louder until Phil can hear beautiful piano music being played as he stands outside the door. Dan must be practicing on the grand piano just inside the house near the front hall. Phil listens for a moment more, unwilling to knock on the door and disturb the melodic notes. Acting on impulse, Phil tries the door very gently - it was open. He steps inside quietly, desperate to hear Dan play more now that the front door isn't muffling the music.
So Phil softly closes the door, and quiet as a mouse makes his way inside the piano room doorway. There Dan was perched on the bench in front of the sleek piano, music set in front of him, playing his heart out. Phil watches Dan intently, amazed at how effortlessly his fingers dance across the keys and pull the melody from the strings. Dan's hands smoothly and lightly float over the black and white bars; the rest of his body moves and sways with the music. Suddenly, everything stops. Dan picks up a pencil on the music rack and begins to jot down something on the sheet music.
"Oh my god, Dan, that was amazing." No sooner do the words come out of Phil's mouth that Dan jumps in shock and drops the pencil.
"Jesus Christ, Phil! Are you trying to give me a heart attack?!" Dan exclaims as he turns to Phil.
"Oh god, sorry," Phil says sheepishly. "It's just, I've never heard you play like that, and I didn't want to interrupt you. What song was that?" As if just remembering something very important, Dan jumps and quickly turns back around and grabs the music off the rack.
"It was nothing," he says quickly. "Just something stupid I wrote."
Phil looks at him in disbelief. "Something stupid you wrote? Dan, that was so amazing! And you wrote it? Can I see?" Phil holds out a hand to take the music, but Dan pulls it closer to him.
"Sorry, no, you can't," he says defensively. He nervously runs a hand through his hair and his eyes dart around the room. "Just forget about it. I'm gonna go get your piano books." And Dan practically runs out of the room, taking the music with him.
Phil stares after Dan, very much taken aback by his strong reaction, but he just steps further into the room and waits for Dan to come back.
"Alright, you ready for our lesson?" Dan says as he walks in the room with an armful of books.
"Yep." Phil smiles innocently and slips into the bench, Dan follows, and they begin their lesson. A while later, Dan remarks, "Alright, it's been about an hour. Want to call it a day?"
"Yeah, alright."
Dan stands and gathers the rest of the books while Phil closes the piano book they had been working from. He starts to hand it to Dan, but their fingers brush together when Dan takes the book. His heart stops. Everything stills for a moment, Dan's fingers lingering over Phil's, still grasping the book. Phil looks up through his eyelashes at Dan, barely breathing. Then time resumes with a whoosh; Dan clears his throat, adjusts his fingers, and pulls the book from Phil's grip, placing it on top of his pile. He begins to walk out of the room, but then turns back to Phil, who had also begun to stand. "Hey, um, if you're not busy, would you maybe want to hang out for a bit? We could play video games or something in my room," Dan suggests.
Phil raises his eyebrows in surprise. "Oh, yeah, of course!" He agrees.
Oh god. Dan had invited Phil up to his bedroom. His heart begins to flutter. Jesus Christ, Phil, what do you think is going to happen?! He just wants to play video games, Phil scolds himself as he follows Dan out of the room. He's barely listening to Dan babble about not judging his messy room because he's trying to calm his pounding heart. They walk up the stairs and down the hallway until Dan stops outside a door. "Well, er, here we are." Dan opens it and Phil follows him inside.
Well, he wasn't kidding. Dan's large room is very messy, but not in a bad way. Posters upon posters of TV shows, animes, bands, and movies are taped haphazardly to the light gray walls. Homework and textbooks lay on his desk next to the door, along with a thin laptop with several cords and a sleek mouse hooked up to it. The large bookshelf in the corner is filled with novels and comic books, movies, video games, a few old-school CD's, and an entire shelf dedicated to piano books, and Dan's dresser is strewn with souvenirs and pictures. Phil tries not to look at Dan's disheveled bed (and the bottle of lotion on the nightstand next to it), and instead focuses on the keyboard next to the bookshelf, where Dan is replacing the piano books.
Then Phil notices the sheet music poking out from behind a piano book set up on the keyboard's music rack. Phil really doesn't want to upset Dan further, but his curiosity gets the better of him. "Hey, is this what you were playing earlier?" Phil says as he carefully pulls the sheet music out.
"Yes, but please don't look at it," Dan says anxiously, and he quickly but gently takes the music back out of Phil's hands. "Really, please just forget about it." And then, to Phil's shock, Dan crumples up the music and tosses it in the trash can beneath his desk.
"Alright, sorry." An awkward pause falls over the two for a moment, and Phil hurriedly tries to think of something to say next.
"I love your room," He says, genuinely.
"Oh, thanks!" The tension suddenly releases at the change in topic. "And I know it's really messy right now," Dan continues, "so don't mention it, my mom does enough," he says with a roll of his eyes as he turns away from the bookshelf, surveying his bedroom with a hint of pride now that Phil had complimented it. Then Dan's eyes fall on the lotion next to his bed, and his cheeks begin to burn a violent shade of red. "So, do you want to play some video games?" He asks quickly, turning back around to look through his selection.
"Sure, what do you have?"
A minute later, the two boys are sitting on Dan's bed, playing a game on the TV across from Dan's bed. Both are hyper-aware of the other sitting just inches from themselves, wondering if the other feels the electrified air between them. However, they sit in silence, only talking to comment on what was happening in the game. A while later, it suddenly pauses and Phil looks to Dan for an explanation. "I have to go to the bathroom, be back in a few minutes." Phil just nods, and Dan leaves the room to go to the bathroom down the hall.
Instead of just waiting for Dan to come back by spending time on his phone, Phil decides to take this opportunity to look at Dan's room further. Phil stands and walks over to the bookshelf, seeing what kind of things Dan owned. As he moves on to studying Dan's desk, he notices the trash can underneath. It's empty except for the one crumpled sheet of paper. Phil really knows at this point he really shouldn't, but he fishes the crumpled sheet music out of the trash can anyway. He carefully unfolds it and smooths out the paper on the desk, glancing over the sheet.
The title simply reads 'Him'. There are small hearts doodled all around the word. Scanning down the sheet, Phil is able to pick out various chords from what Dan had taught him, but the rest was intricate note patterns much more advanced than Phil could ever decipher. There are lyrics written all around the page here and there, but Dan's writing is so messy and small Phil can barely read one line. Then Phil hears Dan's footsteps coming down the hallway, so he quickly but carefully shoves the sheet music into his sweatshirt pocket and sits back down on the bed.
And not a moment too soon, because Dan walks in right as Phil sits down. "Alright, I'm back." He takes a seat next to Phil. "You ready?"
It isn't until much later Phil gets a text from his mom, and he sees it's been several hours since Phil had left his house. "Oh! Hey, I didn't realize I've been here for a while. My mom wants me home soon, so I should probably go."
"Oh, yeah, sure," Dan says. "Do you want me to show you out?"
"No, I can find my way. Thanks for having me over." Phil smiles and stands.
"Yeah, of course. See you." And it isn't until Phil leaves the room that Dan notices the empty trash can and the bulge in Phi's coat pocket.
Phil drives home in his pickup truck with one hand on the steering wheel and one hand on the sheet music in his pocket for the entire drive. The second Phil gets home, he says a quick hello to his mom then rushes upstairs and into his bedroom, shutting the door and sitting at his desk. Then, carefully, he pulls out the music and smoothes it out on the desk. He carefully, meticulously, runs his hand over every crinkle in the paper in a fruitless attempt to restore the music to its original state before Dan had crumpled and thrown it away. After a few minutes of this, Phil decides that's as good as it's going to get, and he begins to pore over the actual music.
Again, Phil was able to construct the basic melody and pick out the chords, but the notes were much more advanced than his skill level. After all, he had only been playing piano for a few weeks, and Dan had been playing for many years. The small part of the piece Phil had heard Dan play just isn't enough; he wants to hear the whole thing, every note Dan had scrawled on the page, every rhythm, every chord. More than anything he wants to hear Dan play it. But after his reaction to Phil listening to him play, Phil knows that's not going to happen. And another plan starts to form in his mind. So Phil quickly gathers the papers and heads back out into his pickup truck, driving into town.
Phil's brother Martyn is two years older than Phil, and he's taking a gap year before going to college, so he moved with Phil and the rest of the family to Dan's town. Martyn found work in town at the local Starbucks and had begun to make friends with many people because of it. One guy he had met, Kyle, is the assistant manager in the music store a few buildings down from the Starbucks, even though he's pretty young. He and Martyn became friends quickly after Kyle regularly stopped by to grab coffee on his breaks. Consequently, Phil had become friends with Kyle over the summer as well.
Soon, Phil pulls into a parking lot, stops his car, and walks into the empty music store. The little bell on the door tinkles softly, and Phil hears a voice call "Hello! I'll be right with you!" from the back room. A few moments later, Kyle comes out of the room, guitar in hand, with a smile plastered on his face and his welcome speech ready. "Good morning, welcome to- oh, hey, Phil!" A genuine smile replaces his fake one as Kyle recognizes the boy who just walked in. "What's up?"
Phil offers him the sheet music. Kyle sets the guitar on a nearby stand to free up his hands and take the music, and he asks, "What's this?"
"A song someone, uh, wrote for me," Phil makes up. "I don't know much about music though, so I wondered if you could tell me more about it and maybe play it?"
"Yeah, of course." The 19 year old crosses the store to a cluster of keyboards along a wall, and he swings a stool in front of one and sits down, still holding the sheet music. "Why is it all wrinkly?" Kyle asks.
"Well, uh, er - never mind that," Phil dodges the question. "Can you tell me anything about it?"
"Well, this looks like a love song to me. The melody looks very pretty, though I haven't played it yet, and the title with the heart kind of gives it away," Kyle says with a smirk. "Who wrote this for you? Your girlfriend?"
"Boyfriend, actually," Phil corrects before realizing what exactly he was correcting Kyle to.
"Oh. Uh, okay, mind if I ask who?" Kyle asks, slightly taken aback.
"Dan Howell?" It comes out as a question, as Phil is still trying to process what he just said and why - good lord, why? - he said it, but Kyle assumes the question was because Phil was asking if he knew Dan.
"Oh, yeah, of course I know him! He comes in here all the time, looking for new piano books and other music stuff for his band," Kyle says with a little nod and smile.
"Alright, cool. Anyway, do you think you could play it?" Phil changes the subject, gesturing to the sheet music in Kyle's hands.
"Oh, yeah, right," Kyle gives a lopsided grin and puts the papers on the keyboard's music rack. His hands hesitate for a moment over the keys. And then they're off.
Phil looks on in awe as Kyle's hands flow across the keys, bringing out the beautiful melody Dan had written. It isn't even close to the sound Dan had pulled from the music, what with his expensive piano, skill, and passion for what he had been playing (also cause he wrote the damn thing). Nonetheless, Kyle plays the piece beautifully as well, albeit slower and riddled with minor mistakes, but Phil recognizes the melody from what Dan had played earlier. Too soon, Kyle abruptly stops playing. "Is that it?" Phil says in disappointment.
"Yeah. It doesn't really sound finished. Well, it's not my song, so who am I to judge? Anyway, you should have Dan play it for you, I'm sure he can play it better than me," Kyle laughs as he hands over the music.
"Haha, yeah, thanks though!"
"Sure, anytime."
"Alright, see you!"
The two boys wave goodbye as Phil walks out of the empty music store and into his truck. He climbs into the drivers seat and sets the sheet music on the passenger side, looking at it for a moment longer. He's still trying to process everything that has happened: Dan wrote a song. A love song, according to Kyle. Who now thought they were dating. Which made sense - the love song thing, because Dan hadn't wanted Phil to see it, the hearts, the melody, the lyrics... Taking all of this together, Phil finally lets himself realize Dan had feelings for him, too. Especially considering everything that had happened lately, which both had just ignored in fear of being wrong about their feelings. And finally, finally, something happens the next week that they both couldn't ignore any longer.
A/N: follow, fav, review. you know the drill.