AUTHOR'S NOTE: This chapter contains fairly detailed descriptions of parts of the TATINOF stage show, and so contains spoilers for readers who have not seen the film or the show. If you don't want to encounter these spoilers, skip this chapter, and I will do my best to summarize the important bits briefly at the beginning of the next chapter so you don't miss anything too important.
Chapter 4
Fake-Not-Fake
Dan had learned from the best. This was true in many ways and about many things, but in this particular case it was something that was coming in very handy: the Fake-Not-Fake Smile. Phil was an expert at it, and Dan had eventually mastered it as well, though he didn't feel the need to use it perhaps as often as Phil did, since he tended to foster a rather curmudgeonly persona in his videos, unlike Phil's perpetually cheerful demeanor.
But on the European leg of TATINOF, it was invaluable.
The Fake-Not-Fake smile was something he'd seen Phil use extensively in the years they'd known each other. Phil used it when necessary if he was upset, or in pain, or angry, or otherwise not feeling like Phil-the-Literal-Ray-of-Sunshine. He didn't like to let his viewers see him in a bad mood, because he wanted to always be a cheering presence in people's lives.
It was a form of fraud, in a way, but as the name implied, it was not entirely fake. It was the Fake-Not-Fake Smile because Phil could always reach inside himself and find something good, something happy, something that could put an honest smile on his face, even if only for the length of filming a video or even just for the moment to greet and hug an excited subscriber who surprised him on the street.
On this final portion of the TATINOF tour, Dan was becoming more proficient at the Fake-Not-Fake Smile. He'd already had a lot of practice—posing for cheeky selfies with fans in the airport after spraying deodorant in his eye, for example—but on the tour he was coming to appreciate how very hard it must be sometimes for Phil, and how selfless it was. It wasn't really lying, not really being a fraud—it was finding that little kernel inside yourself that appreciated the love your fans felt, the way they looked up to you and wanted to emulate you, and then using that tiny kernel of your own love for those people to put a smile on your face.
But the tour was painful. Every day, every minute.
Phil had clearly made some requests of their staff, because all three venues gave them separate dressing rooms this time, which they hadn't bothered with in the UK, North America, or Australia. They still had to spend a lot of pre-show time together, discussing details and preparing, but they each had a private place to go to get away from the other, something they really hadn't felt a need for during those earlier months of the tour.
Dan was glad to have the privacy, because playing his role as merely half of the brand that was "Dan and Phil" had become exhausting and depressing. He found ways to locate that Fake-Not-Fake smile for all the meet-and-greets and the publicity events and the show itself, but inside he just wanted to crawl back under his black-and-white duvet and make it all stop again.
Phil, on the other hand, was being so … Phil-like about the whole thing that Dan felt like the most ungrateful wretch in the universe. There'd been no more yelling, no more anger or recriminations. No blame. Phil smiled at him when they were in the same room, and sometimes it even looked like his real, genuine smile and not just the Fake-Not-Fake version. Phil was just being so … nice. It made Dan want to hit himself across the head with a saucepan for being such an asshole. But it also made him all the more determined to follow through on his decision, because if Phil could try to be there for him now, after everything they'd said to each other, after everything Dan had said, then Dan knew he certainly didn't deserve a friend like that, and Phil didn't deserve to have to put up with someone like him.
In one of his live shows before the tour, Phil had mentioned wanting to check out the Christmas markets in Germany, and so Dan had hesitantly approached Phil's dressing room after the evening show in Berlin to make a friendly overture, a sort of peace offering to show that he didn't hate Phil or even want to dissolve their friendship. He just wanted to dissolve the joint branding and have his own independent career. So, high on adrenaline after the show, feeling more optimistic and positive than usual, he went to knock on Phil's door to see if he'd like to visit some of the Christmas markets together the next day.
But before he could even raise his hand to knock on the door, he realized that he could hear weeping on the other side. He could hear Phil crying, and not quietly, either. Sobs loud enough to be heard through the door. And Dan thought of all those smiles Phil had been giving him on the tour and felt like a complete dick. If he suggested going to the markets together, Phil would certainly say yes, because he was too nice that way, but then Dan would be putting him through hours of Fake-Not-Fake Smiles, and he decided he didn't want to subject Phil to that. He still cared about him enough to not want to make this any more painful than it already was. So he turned and walked slowly back to his own dressing room, his post-show hyperactivity doused as if by a bucket of ice water. And he left Phil to his privacy and his unobserved tears.
The shows themselves were painful. Dan had to pretend enthusiasm for the joint branding, and after so many performances he now knew the script well enough that his mind could wander a bit even while he spoke his lines in the right places, and his mind often wandered to dark places, thinking about how hypocritical this all was, how he was dredging up the true darkness inside of him purely for laughs, how his whole point was that he wanted to start being more authentically himself and here he was doing the exact opposite.
During Phil's "Weird Kid" segment, Dan didn't open his laptop anymore. Instead, he drank from a bottle of water while he watched Phil on the stage—listening to that familiarly bright, happy voice—and just let himself remember their good times. He wasn't on stage, wasn't being watched, didn't have to play any kind of role, didn't have to be part of the "brand"—he could just be Dan, watching Phil being Phil, which was how this whole thing started, and they felt like the only truly genuine moments of the tour for him.
The PINOF segment was particularly painful, since Dan didn't think there were likely to be any more PINOFs in actuality, and so the whole thing felt like the biggest lie of the entire show. And every time Phil asked him the scripted question, "What is your favorite memory?" and Dan replied, "From my whole life?" … Dan followed the script by rote—he knew it well enough for that—but in the quiet of his own mind, he let himself remember that first warm hug in a train station so many years ago. And when Phil asked, "And what is your worst memory?" Dan answered out loud as he was supposed to, according to the script, but the image in his mind was of that awful argument in their lounge, and the hurt on Phil's face when Dan said he was moving out.
The most excruciating part of the show, though, was the "Existential Crisis" segment. Even in the hours and days between the shows, Dan could hear the familiar lines from the script running through his mind: "To think that we'll be doing exactly the same thing for another 68 years? I mean, okay, okay, I guess that isn't a BAD thing, but does that mean that nothing else happens? We're just stuck repeating the same old things? What if we never break the mould, Phil? What if we never find the courage to attempt something new and exciting that we've never tried before?" It felt so ironic that these were the lines that preceded Dan's mock crisis in the show, since they were so similar to the thoughts that had led to a real crisis and his decision to change things in his real life and career. Onstage, Phil sat down and talked him through it, something that had happened so many times in reality, but this time the real world crisis wasn't something Phil could just talk him out of, and so Phil's gentle line in the show—"But … we can't lose you now, Dan"—broke his heart a little every time he heard it, especially with the new bleakness in Phil's voice that probably no one but Dan would notice.
Every time they ended the show with "The Internet Is Here," the entire audience was singing along, which was markedly different from the first legs of the tour, but not necessarily in a bad way. It felt like he and Phil were performing the musical number with their community, instead of just for them. It felt, to Dan, like a fitting bookend for the way he was planning to change things moving forward. And the amount of eye contact he and Phil made during the song had only increased, strangely enough. Dan would have expected Phil to be shying away from meeting his gaze, but Phil looked at him frequently throughout the song each time they sang it, and he smiled in a way that looked completely genuine, definitely not Fake-Not-Fake, and during their prolonged eye contact during "Without the Internet, we never would have met," Phil seemed to be looking at him with pride and admiration, and it made Dan blush every time. It made him wonder if maybe Phil actually understood why he was making these changes, and maybe Phil could actually be proud of his decision to take his future into his own hands. Maybe he was just projecting some of that, maybe it was just wishful thinking, but he definitely wasn't imagining the warmth of Phil's eyes and smile, and that was something he clung to.
And then the final show in Stockholm had ended, and the tour was over. Just like that. It was time to head home. Time to start building his new independent "brand," start filming some videos that were more focused on the real-world moral and ethical issues that really mattered to him. He was considering waiting until after Christmas, especially as—now that the tour was finished—he would finally have time to start looking for a new flat, and moving would take time and effort. After the final show, Dan sat in his lonely dressing room and thought about everything he had ahead of him, and it was simultaneously daunting and exciting. Time to grow up, Danny boy, he thought to himself.
On the plane home from Sweden, he and Phil somehow ended up with seats that weren't together, which was an absolute first. Phil was several rows behind him, leaving Dan sitting beside a businesswoman who thankfully spent the entire flight on her laptop, leaving Dan free to watch the anime he'd queued up in advance without having to deflect any inane small talk.
But Dan found himself wondering why they were seated so far apart for the first time ever, and came to the painful conclusion that Phil had probably requested it without telling him. He felt rejected and sad, but he also felt like he deserved the snub.
He'd been the one to decide to move out. He didn't deserve Phil's friendship anymore. All he deserved was Phil's Fake-Not-Fake Smile that hid what he was truly feeling, just like Phil would give to any stranger on the street.