Author's Note: This is actually a prequel to the Creeper series, so it falls chronologically before the first Creeper chapter. Sorry if that's confusing. I've been writing additional fics in this series sort of spontaneously on Tumblr (where I am "adorkablephil"), so they haven't always been posted in order. I'm trying to make the order as clear as possible. This "chapter" (it was written as an individual fic that could be read separately from the series, though it was imagined as part of the same "universe") is set entirely before Dan and Phil met in October 2009.

The Trouble with Labels

If the username hadn't been so simultaneously catchy and stupid, Phil wouldn't even have noticed right away. But it was memorable enough for him to notice that the same person had started commenting on all of his videos, sometimes even commenting more than once on the same video. And they'd been going back and commenting on all his old ones, too. All of them.

He was no stranger to obsessive fans. Weird as it seemed to him, some people just apparently had nothing better to do with their lives than fixate on nerdy weirdos who put videos up on the internet. He knew it was just part of putting himself out in public like that, but he would never understand why some people got so obsessed with him, of all people! With someone like PJ, it made sense—half his subscribers probably watched his videos with the sound off, just to get to see someone so beautiful. But Phil wasn't anything special, and he knew he was weird, but he was completely 100% comfortable with that about himself. It just surprised him that so many people apparently found it obsession-worthy.

So when this name "danisnotonfire" started popping up in all his comment notifications, he just shrugged to himself. It was actually pretty flattering when somebody went back to watch and comment on old videos when they first discovered his channel, so he didn't mind that, but … leaving multiple comments on a single video was edging a bit into creeper territory.

And then the same username showed up on Twitter, commenting on his tweets. As in, all of his tweets. Every single one. And, again, sometimes more than one comment on a single tweet.

Definite creeper, he thought to himself. Probably one of those people who send me hair through the post.

But then some of the comments were actually kind of clever, kind of funny, and he found himself sort of watching for them. And when he actually responded to one of danisnotonfire's responses to one of his tweets, it started a sort of conversation that he hadn't intended, a conversation that extended across multiple tweets, and he started to actually kind of like this guy. Because it was apparently a guy, if the user icon was anything to go by. A fairly cute guy, actually. And Phil didn't even try to lie to himself about the role that fact played in his increasing encouragement of their interaction.

The day he decided to actually look at danisnotonfire's Twitter page, he was a bit horrified to discover that he'd apparently been lightly flirting, and if he was honest with himself becoming a bit infatuated, with a 17-year-old kid. Now he was the one who felt like a creeper, chatting up innocent children on the internet, taking advantage of a young person's obsession with him to reel them into a closer relationship.

He resolved to cool off his interactions with Dan, because that was apparently the kid's real name. But that lasted about a day. Then Dan tweeted something interesting, and Phil hadn't stopped following him, so he saw it, and he wanted to comment. He held off for about an hour, then decided that there was nothing wrong with tweeting. He could be friendly with this Dan kid on Twitter and it didn't have to be anything more sinister than that. He enjoyed being friends with him. Where was the harm?

Then Dan got a Dailybooth account and started posting photos.

Well, hell.

The kid was gorgeous. And now when Phil saw his tweets, he couldn't help attaching an angelic face to the words he was reading. And though Phil had resolved to stop flirting, it was obvious that he had created a monster with his earlier encouragement, because Dan baited him constantly. And Phil couldn't help taking the bait. So they flirted. A lot.

That wasn't so bad, right? It was just Twitter. It didn't mean anything. He wasn't corrupting the innocent youth of England. He wasn't that type of person.

But Dan was just so … interesting! And smart! And funny!

And those Dailybooth photos…

When he hit 100 followers on Dailybooth, Dan posted two photos of himself apparently naked, surrounded by several stuffed animals, some of which were strategically placed to preserve his modesty.

Phil looked at those photos a lot. And not just for the obvious reason. Sure, Dan was beautiful, and he was showing a lot of skin, and his facial expression said he was just begging to be ravished. But what really made Phil fall hopelessly in love with this adorable kid was the fact that he apparently owned that many stuffed animals.

Maybe that should have made him see Dan as more childish, but instead it made him feel like they had even more in common than he'd realized before, because the way Dan was using the stuffed animals showed a combination of innocence and cheeky sense of humor that Phil couldn't help but love.

The day Dan sent him a DM asking if he wanted to Skype sometime, Phil hesitated. Was this edging into creeper territory? Skyping with a teenage kid? At least Dan had turned 18 by now, so it didn't seem quite as bad, but Phil still wasn't sure if he should be encouraging this relationship to become even more intimate.

Who was he kidding? He was lost.

The first time they Skyped to each other, Phil was struck by how mature Dan was for his age. He didn't just talk about school and video games and his friends and his girlfriend. (Phil was shocked by that last one, but figured that it was even better evidence that this wasn't creepy—Dan couldn't be interested in Phil like that if he had a girlfriend, right? He told himself he wasn't disappointed, but knew it was a total lie.) Dan also talked about creative ideas he'd been contemplating, and they were good ideas. Phil told him he should definitely pursue them. Dan wanted to make videos, but didn't think he was talented enough; Phil told him his ideas were worth working on, and that he'd help if Dan had any questions.

And Dan talked about deeper issues, too … about questioning his place in the world and what he wanted for the future, not just for himself but for society. He talked about important issues, the kind of philosophical things Phil didn't tend to think about much but which kept him listening raptly to every word that came out of Dan's incredibly kissable mouth.

He did not think that. Dan's mouth wasn't kissable. Well, yes, of course it was kissable. He had a girlfriend, and she probably kissed it all the time. And why did that thought put a knot in his stomach?

Dan was flirty on Skype, too, and Phil let himself flirt back because it was obviously completely innocent if Dan had a girlfriend. They were just joking around. They weren't doing anything wrong. Phil wasn't doing anything wrong. Right?

They started Skyping frequently, and Phil looked forward to it more than he should. It seemed ironic now that he'd started out feeling like a creeper taking advantage of a young fan who had obsessively misplaced feelings for him, because now he was pretty sure he was the one with the unrequited feelings. Dan must flirt like this with everyone, right? It didn't mean anything to him, not when he was already in a relationship. And was possibly straight, since his only real relationship had been with a girl.

Dan's Dailybooth photos became increasingly provocative as he became more confident. He posed and preened and lowered his eyelids to half-mast, obviously relishing the enthusiastic response he got to these kinds of pics.

Surely Dan knew … everybody knew … Dailybooth wasn't used purely for innocent purposes. Especially when Dan had posted some pictures of himself fully naked with only one particularly intriguing body part actually hidden.

So since Dan obviously knew that … there wasn't anything wrong with what Phil did, right? He knew that he and Dan were just friends, that their flirting was completely innocent and all in jest. There wasn't anything wrong with … well … masturbating … to pictures of your friend … right? If your friend happened to be phenomenally hot and had a girlfriend and you weren't going to actually try to have sex with him or anything. Just … there's nothing wrong with fantasies, right? And using publicly posted photos to aid in those fantasies?

Yeah, Phil couldn't really convince himself, either.

And so he felt guilty every time he did it. He was definitely the creeper now, and it started to make him feel gross and perverted every time he talked with Dan. He'd look at that beautiful, innocent, smiling face, with those almond-shaped eyes and those adorable dimples and those soft lips, and he'd remember what he'd done and feel ashamed. But it never stopped him from doing it again. He couldn't help it.

To be honest, he didn't want to stop. It was too good.

He just hoped Dan never found out. Of course, there was no way he ever could find out. What Phil did in the privacy of his own bedroom in front of his own computer was no one else's business. And no one else needed to know about it. Ever. But he harbored an intense, irrational fear that someday Dan would find out. And then their friendship, with all its joking flirtatious banter, would be over.

And then came the night Dan DM'd him with a desperate request to Skype. And the minute Phil saw his face on the screen he knew something terrible had happened, because he'd never seen Dan cry before, but he was seeing it now, and he wished he wasn't. It broke his heart.

"Dan! What's wrong?" he asked immediately, pressing a hand to his laptop screen as if he could somehow reach out to Dan physically despite the hundreds of miles between them.

Dan wiped at his eyes and tried to smile, but it looked sickly. "We broke up," he said.

And that's when Phil hit his all-time low as a person, that's when he really showed his true colors, because he was happy. Dan was crying and heartbroken, and Phil was selfishly happy that his girlfriend had broken up with him. It was unimaginable how anyone could break up with Dan, but the unimaginable had apparently happened. It didn't mean Dan would ever be interested in Phil, in anything more than their casually amusing online flirtation, but it still made Phil happy. And that made him disgusted with himself. The combination of emotions made him a little queasy.

"What happened?" he asked, trying to be a good friend, trying to hide his own roiling emotions and just be supportive when someone he cared about was suffering. Now was not the time to be thinking about himself.

Dan looked at him with those dark, limpid eyes, and said simply, "I couldn't keep dating her when I'm more interested in someone else."

Phil froze. What were they talking about here? He'd accepted a long time ago that Dan wasn't honestly interested in him. Maybe Dan was talking about someone else? Someone IRL? Another girl?

Phil cleared his throat. Then he nervously adjusted his fringe. Then he asked, "Who are you interested in?"

Dan laughed through his tears. "Seriously?"

Phil nodded, shrugging awkwardly, but couldn't make any more words come out of his mouth. He felt scared suddenly. This couldn't be what it sounded like. He didn't want to make a fool of himself and maybe destroy a friendship that had become pretty important to him.

Dan rubbed at his eyes, then stared hard at Phil from the computer screen. "You, Phil. I'm interested in you." He looked away from the computer and said in a quiet voice, "I thought you were interested in me, too." And now the boy on the screen looked small and hurt and lost, and Phil hated himself even more.

Phil just gaped for a moment, then caught sight of himself in the corner of the screen and realized he looked utterly ridiculous, like a gasping fish or something, and closed his mouth with a snap. "I … I thought you were just … joking," he stammered.

Dan's eyes filled with tears again. "So you aren't actually interested in me that way?"

"No!" Phil exclaimed, and Dan obviously misunderstood, because he started nodding dejectedly. "I mean yes!" Phil shouted. His parents were going to complain about him making so much noise in the middle of the night, but he didn't care right now. "Yes," he said more quietly, but his voice was firm and he tried to keep it steady. "I am! Interested. In you. That way."

"Really?" Dan asked, a tentative smile starting to curve his lips, very much at odds with his red and swollen eyes.

"Really," Phil affirmed, and he could feel a smile starting to spread on his own face as well.

"Oh," Dan said, and ducked his head shyly. It was the cutest thing Phil had ever seen.

"Yeah," Phil said, trying to contain the shock and joy and confusion that were spreading through him like wildfire. Trying to sound like a sane person who was maybe on the verge of starting a new relationship with somebody he really really liked.

"What do we do now?" Dan asked, and he sounded vulnerable, and all Phil wanted to do was hold him and protect him and take care of him forever.

"Be happy?" Phil suggested, and it made them both laugh. But Phil thought it sounded like the best plan ever.