Brilliant, Phil smiled to himself, Dan had said the last chapter was brilliant. He had excused himself from breakfast shortly after that. He couldn't let Dan see how proud he was. How glad he was that Dan loved his fanfic. Of course, it's not like Dan knows it's his fanfic, or like he would ever want Dan to know it's his fanfic. Although, Phil has to give credit to his beta who is just absolutely amazing, sometimes nerd4Lyfe23 seems to know what Dan would say better than Phil would. It helped Phil feel confident about HOS. He never felt sure about writing fanfiction, but if it was good enough for nerd4Lyfe23 it seemed to be good enough for the whole phandom. Before he'd scored himself the best beta in the business people always said his fanfics lacked conviction. It wasn't that people hadn't liked his fics—he never would have gotten n4L to be his beta if he wasn't popular and at least a decent writer—it was just that he had always been holding back. When he and Dan had first started reading HOS, which was totally Dan's idea Phil would have never suggested that, Dan had liked it so much he went to check out some other fics by the same author and he hated nearly all of them. HOS was Phil's best fic and he knew it but he knew it was mostly because of n4L.
"Phil?" Dan's voice came through Phil's bedroom door, "do you want to film a new Dil video?" Phil was startled from his revelry and quickly clicked away from the reads counter on AO3.
"Sure, be right there!" he bounced excitedly into the living room, Dil videos were his favorite of the games videos and that totally wasn't because he couldn't lose to Dan. "Where were we?" Phil asked sitting down next to his best friend and grinning like a two year old in a candy store, pretty much just like a normal Phil grin. Dan let out a slight giggle at the sight of the supposedly older boy's excitement and flipped on the camera. "Hello Dan and Phil Games' Marshmallows!"
"Marshmallows? Why marshmallows? God Phil this has got to stop, it's just too much pressure on you" Dan stared at Phil like he had just said he was a martian.
"Because they're enjoying our sweet hot chocolate videos" Dan burst out laughing, that laugh that always happens in the videos he shares with Phil, full throated and uncontrollable.
"Alright Phil," Dan rolls his eyes, "anyway let's jump back into the world of Dil everybody" Dan starts up the game and the two men stare at their crazy owl slide house and their sim in his crappy bed sleeping in that bizarre clown costume they chose for him. "Alright so Dil's asleep and it's 2 PM, he is literally becoming us. So I think today we should capitalize on our romantic mojo and take a steamy shower before our date with Tabitha. Wait, is it Tabitha?"
"No I think it's E Summer" Phil deadpans at Dan. Dan hits him playfully on the shoulder. 'That would make a great start to a fluffy fic' phil thinks before he can stop himself. Oh god, he is not going to start confusing fanfiction with reality, that's a really dangerous rabbit hole to go down. Ooh rabbits! Phil smiles to himself and then laughs as Dil breaks another plate. "Why did we make his primary trait clumsy again? He is going to kill himself one of these days and then it will all be over."
"We would never let that happen to our child! You have so little faith in us Phil Lester" Dan jokes back as he checks his fringe in the camera. "The blinkin' radio broke again Phil!"
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Dan glances at Phil as he turns off the camera after their Dil video. He knows if he leaves this in when he edits the video he'll get all sorts of 'heart eyes Howell' comments and GIFs but he doesn't really mind. He always finds the heart eyes Howell montages kind of adorable and they remind him of all the best video moments with Phil. His favorite is when Phil tackles him in Philisnotonfire 1. He isn't completely sure why he loves it so much, maybe because it just seems like everything he loves about his friendship with Phil. As for the montages in general, well, he thinks it's just sweet that the world can see love everywhere. He does love Phil of course, he's Dan and Phil is Phil, but just as his absolute best friend in the world. Dan knows Phil is attractive, the thousands of twelve year old girls obsessed with him is proof enough of that, but Phil is like a baby brother to Dan. Maybe Phil is four years older than him but he always seems a little like he needs to be taken care of, like he really needs Dan to be there for him.
Even though he betaed the fanfiction sometimes Dan wished he and Phil weren't so fucking cute. Some of the things people wrote made things awkward between them, made them both feel the need to stare down at the floor rather than meet each other's eyes after reading. It wasn't that either of them had feelings for the other it was just that they were forced to think about the situation. Sometimes they just got scared, what if one of them felt something and it broke up their friendship like in the fics? Or what about the fact that one day they would be too old to have a roommate and still be considered successful adults. Right now though he was sitting in his room editing the video to surprise the fans and he had found a much rarer phenomenon, love eyes Lester. It was right when Phil made that stupid joke about his E. Summer mishap in the last video and Dan punched him. Dan hadn't noticed that Phil was staring at him, he usually didn't until he was doing the editing.
Dan had really needed to film the Dil video today, it made him feel better about the HOS chapter. He had been so sure that it was amazing but Phil had seemed to think it was kind of boring. There was always that glimmer in Phil's eyes when he got excited about something, and Dan had seen a little bit of that today but normally Phil was happy to share his excitement. Dan couldn't help but wonder if something weird was going on with his best friend. With the Dil videos on the other hand the boys always had crazy amounts of fun with each other. Neither of them had completely mastered the mechanics of the game so there was always that moment when one of them realized something the other hadn't yet and they cracked each other up over it. Plus it made Dan feel like a successful adult to even be able to keep the damn sim alive.
There were also the comments, the same reason he loved his fanfiction was part of why Dan loved making videos. Sure there are negative comments all over the internet but it was the nice ones the "you made my day" or "you guys are literally the cutest people ever" that he lives for. The idea that there were people all over the world who cared enough about him to watch 20 minutes of him and his best friend failing to play sims 4 was incredible and something he would have never dreamed of back when he made that first youtube video. With fanfiction there was a this amazing feedback about his life. Sure it wasn't like any of it was real life, but it was still about him. The whole world cared about him enough to care about his relationship with Phil, be it platonic or romantic. Ok, so maybe not the whole world, but everyone who mattered. He was on the same level as like Sherlock or something, it was crazy.
He remembers the first time he wrote phanfiction, the hits started to tick up and he got so excited the way he used to when he first started youtube. The numbers started kind of slow, only about 50 people looked at it the first day. He had gone to bed with a faint disappointment. The next morning when he logged in to check if he had managed to get just a few more visits. He looked at the number on his story and suddenly sat up straight and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. He counted the digits just to make sure. Holy shit, 12000 hits overnight. After that Dan had begun to realize the only part of the writing he really liked was checking to make sure it felt real, so he shifted into betaing more than writing. The excitement was still the same with every fic and he had more fun than when he had been writing them. So it began, Dan was hooked and he's still hooked, hoping that Phil never walks in on him checking up on his fics. Hoping Phil never finds out his dirty little secret.