AUTHOR'S NOTE: The previous chapter was full of spoilers for the TATINOF show, so some of you may have chosen to skip it. The only real plot progress that occurred was that Dan and Phil performed their five TATINOF Europe shows, and the act of touring and performing the shows was emotionally difficult for Dan for various reasons. He continued to feel like a fraud, and he felt guilty that Phil was being kind to him throughout. Phil kept smiling at him, and it often seemed entirely genuine, and it made Dan feel like a terrible friend who didn't deserve Phil's friendship. That's about it.

This chapter is mostly just Phil reflecting on the past and wondering about the future—not a lot of plot. Dan's rebranding and new videos will start in the next chapter!

Chapter 5
Brighton

The tour had been excruciating.

Phil had spoken to the staff in advance to make sure that he and Dan had separate dressing rooms and separate hotel rooms at every location. None of those hotel rooms with twin beds like they'd had so often in America, or even rooms with connecting doors. He wanted to make sure that Dan could feel as independent as possible while he still felt forced to behave publicly as if he was an enthusiastic part of the "Dan and Phil" branding.

Phil hated that Dan was having to do this, but it had been too late to back out by the time Dan had spoken to him about his feelings, and they'd been trying for a year to obtain venues in Europe, so it would have seemed churlish to turn their backs on them when they had finally procured some. And he knew their European fans would be happy, which was the main thing.

But he wished there was some way the fans could be happy, and Dan could be happy, all at the same time. Right now that seemed impossible.

And when the fans realized that Dan was moving out of the flat, there was going to be a shitstorm of epic proportions. So Phil had decided that he would move out as well, to make it look like a joint decision instead of an abandonment.

The flat was too full of memories, anyway. He didn't want to stay there.

So when they finished the tour and got off the plane at Heathrow, he pulled Dan aside at the baggage claim. "I'll be moving out of the flat, too," he said quietly, not wanting anyone else to overhear. "I'll put my stuff in storage until I find a place, and I'll find somewhere else to stay until then, so you can come by to get your things anytime that's convenient. I won't … I won't be there, so you won't have to worry about that.'

Dan looked stricken for a moment, and his mouth opened and closed a few times before he got any words out. "You don't have to … It's not like I'm trying to …"

But Phil just smiled a little and shook his head. "It's fine, Dan. Don't worry so much. If I move out at the same time, we can just make it look like something we decided together, and the fans won't be as upset."

Dan looked down at the floor, and his eyes looked a bit shiny in the glaring airport lights, as if he were trying not to cry. Phil awkwardly patted his arm. "It'll be okay." He tried another smile. He wasn't sure how successful it was, but he'd been trying this whole tour to make this experience as painless as possible for Dan. He'd seen the misery on his face, the desperate attempts to smile warmly for fans, and he knew this had been hard. Knowing it was hard on Dan made it hard on Phil, too. Getting back to London and figuring out how to move forward … without Dan … would almost be a relief. At least they could stop pretending every minute of the day.

In the end, he ended up asking Felix and Marzia if he could stay with them in Brighton for a few weeks until it was time to go visit his family for the Christmas holidays. Usually, this was his favorite time of year, but as he boxed up his belongings at the flat and tried to divide his own things from Dan's—a nearly impossible task, as they'd bought and received so many things together, so Phil had erred on the side of caution and left almost all jointly-owned things in the flat for Dan when he came to pack up—he wasn't much in the mood for mulled wine or Christmas trees.

He'd have gone home directly to just stay with his family, but Felix and Marzia's home in Brighton was near enough to London that he could conduct his flat search while staying with them and make trips in to town when necessary to look at the more likely prospects. He had an agent helping him look, and she just phoned him to tell him about places she'd found, and he took the train to London a couple times when she described places that sounded acceptable. On the second trip, he decided that the place was okay and signed a lease to take possession January 1. It was a relief to have that settled, anyway.

Felix and Marzia had immediately picked up on his mood when he arrived, and so they didn't ask too many questions or try to smother him with attention. They just hung out with him when he felt like it, watching horror movies under comfy afghans and sharing pizza and … other home-type things he used to do with Dan.

And they let him go for long solitary walks along the seaside, where he remembered going to Jamaica with Dan so many years ago, and how Dan had hobbit hair almost the whole time but for once didn't seem to mind, because he enjoyed swimming in the sea so much that it was apparently worth the sacrifice to his dignity. Phil had always liked seeing Dan's hair all curly, because it was like seeing the real Dan, a Dan who wasn't so carefully prepared and presented and aware of public scrutiny, a Dan who was just laughing and smiling and being unapologetically himself.

He'd been more like that, those first couple years of their friendship. He'd seemed unafraid to throw an arm around Phil's shoulders or waist, to make spontaneous gestures of affection and comradeship, to talk about the things he wanted in life and listen to Phil's encouragements that he try to get them.

Somewhere along the way, somewhere around 2012, he'd become more reserved. Phil knew that all the fan shipping had gotten to him, prompting him to distance himself from Phil to some extent, and that had hurt, but it had been okay, because they still lived together and made it work. He'd thought they'd made it work, anyway, but apparently Dan had stopped talking to him about his dreams and aspirations, because he'd caught Phil totally by surprise with his decision to move out.

Phil sat on a rock overlooking the grey ocean and just breathed in the salt air to calm his racing heart. That had been the worst moment of his life, realizing that Dan had been silently wanting to escape their partnership without even telling Phil, and Phil had no idea how long Dan had been feeling that way before he'd finally snapped and spoken about it. Had it been only since the end of the U.S. tour? Had it been weeks? Months? God forbid … years? Had it been since 2012? Had Dan just been pretending all those happy moments together, all those hours playing video games and watching anime and making baking videos and laughing and smiling at him and nudging his shoulder and sitting beside him on the couch? How much of that had been just Phil seeing what he wanted to see?

Dan had been so young when they'd first met, had doubted himself so intensely, and Phil had done his best to give the boy confidence. He'd known how miserable Dan was at uni, how mired in the belief that he had to do what was expected of him, what his parents wanted—and when Dan had seemed so excited to leave uni and give the YouTube thing a serious try, for them to get a flat together in Manchester, Phil had found his youthful excitement contagious. It had seemed like a grand adventure, even more so when they decided to take a big chance on moving to London, which had turned out wonderfully for their careers, allowing them to take on the weekly radio show at the BBC and appear at numerous red carpet events and make a real name for themselves.

And therein lay the rub. They'd made A name for themselves. A single name: "Dan-and-Phil," best single blogger at the Teen Choice awards. And they'd started the process when Dan was too young to realize how it might snowball, what it might mean for him in the long run. Dan had been so young and vulnerable, so impressionable and desperate for validation. Phil was older—he should have realized. He should have given Dan more of a chance to make a separate name for himself. Maybe when BBC Radio1 had offered him the radio show, he shouldn't have asked for Dan to join him. Would it have been better if Phil had done the radio show alone, giving Dan the time to pursue his own projects? At the time, Phil had thought it would be good, that it would give Dan more exposure, but mostly just that it would be more fun with Dan by his side.

Now he wondered how much he'd impeded Dan's personal growth as a young man by doing everything he could to keep his friend close. He'd been selfish, there was no doubt about that.

He gazed out at the sea, feeling morose and guilty, doubting that any amount of friendship would remain between them after all this.

He didn't want to walk back to Felix and Marzia's house, because it was festooned with Christmas decorations, and it only reminded him of all the times he and Dan had decorated together. Dan loved Christmas. They both had. But this year, Phil felt numb to all the cheery celebrations. He just wanted to be alone.

He was going to be alone a lot in the future.

Felix and Marzia—Marzia especially—had been doing everything they could to comfort him without pressing for details, but he knew they wondered what was going on. He'd told them only that he and Dan had decided to move out of the flat, and that they were still friends, of course they were still friends—of course!—but they'd decided it would be best to get their own places now. Flats in London were just too small, and they didn't have enough storage, and of course they would see each other all the time, but they just needed their own spaces.

In reality, Phil doubted they'd see each other much. Maybe at YouTube events. Maybe Summer in the City and Vidcon and the YouTube Rewind. He really hoped the organizers wouldn't pressure them to appear together and would allow Dan to do his independent thing.

To be honest, he was very curious to see what kind of videos Dan was planning to make. Maybe he could get to know the "real" Dan of today—no longer that hobbit-haired waif in Jamaica—by watching his videos with the rest of the world. Maybe Dan would share more with him on YouTube than he had been for the past few years living in the same flat.

The thought was depressing, but Phil felt vaguely hopeful at the same time. He wanted Dan to succeed, even if it was without Phil, and he wanted to see what that would look like … what a strong, independent, adult Dan would look like. He thought briefly that he would like to take some credit for helping Dan get to this point, that his encouraging Dan to follow his dreams had given him the strength and courage to make this eventual decision to leave Phil behind and venture forth on his own, but really he knew that the strength and courage had been inside Dan all along, and he would have gotten here eventually even without Phil's help.

It was freezing on the beach in December, but Phil could barely feel it. He hugged his knees to his chest and closed his eyes, picturing Dan smiling at him in the stage show while they were singing "The Internet Is Here." In those moments it had sometimes been easy to just let himself forget that it was all a sham now, let himself just believe that Dan meant those smiles, that those bright and shining eyes were meant for him and not just an act for the crowd.

He rested his head on his knees, sighing and feeling tears welling up again. He'd cried more these past few weeks than at any other time in his life he could remember. He lifted his head and pressed his hands to his eyes, determined to stop wallowing in misery.

Dan was going to have an independent career, create his own independent brand, and Phil would need to do the same thing. They'd put the radio show on hiatus while touring, but tomorrow Phil would call their producer at the BBC and ask about that initial proposal they'd made for him to do a radio show of his own. He knew it wouldn't be as popular as the joint show he and Dan had done, but the BBC might be willing to do it when the other was no longer an option.

And maybe he could make a Christmassy video here in Brighton. He hadn't posted anything in a while, and his subscribers were probably wondering what was going on. He wouldn't tell them anything about Dan, or about leaving the flat, but perhaps he could make some sort of humorously festive video with Felix and Marzia and the pugs. Yes, that sounded like a good idea. It would help get him out of this funk, and it would reassure not only his subscribers but also Felix and Marzia, who he knew were worried about all his moping.

He had a flat to move to after Christmas. He had a notebook of video ideas for his own channel that didn't need to involve Dan at all. He had a plan to talk to their producer at Radio1. He was going to do this. On his own. If Dan could do it, so could Phil.

In Rawtenstall on Christmas Day, he stepped aside from his family for a moment to send Dan a single text, their first contact since leaving the airport in separate cabs after the end of the tour:

Happy Christmas

And Dan replied a few moments later, but only typed:

same

Disappointed, Phil put his phone away and didn't text again.

When he went to collect his things at the beginning of January, he had the removers take them from the storage unit to the new flat, but he wished he could make one last stop at the old flat as well. Unfortunately, they'd terminated their lease at the end of December.

Phil wondered if Dan had taken all the mutual possessions he'd left behind for him. He imagined Dan packing up his things and leaving the onesies hanging in the closet, the old plushies sitting deserted on an empty floor in an empty bedroom. He imagined the landlord coming in to clear out any remaining rubbish and throwing these once-cherished belongings into the bin before having the flat cleaned and repainted for the new tenants.

He didn't cry. He was done with crying. It was time for him to move on, too.

AUTHOR'S END NOTE: Keep the faith. Things will eventually get better for the boys! It's just going to be a bit painful getting there.