Dan awoke to an incessant buzzing. It was far too early, too early for him to form proper thoughts, too early for him even to open his eyes, but the buzzing sound quickly grew louder and perhaps even more insistent, as it continued to demand his attention, irrelevant of whether he was in much of a state to give it or not.

It took him a full minute before he'd properly forced his eyes open, wincing as bright morning light flooded his eyes; it was just far too bright and far too early. He rolled over in bed, cursing the world and everything in it as he came to discover the source of the buzzing that had awoken him. The culprit was of course his phone, lying almost too innocently on his bedside table as it continued to buzz, its screen lighting up in intervals aligned with the buzzing.

As much as Dan had very much decided that it was pretty much just the last thing he wanted to do, he reached for his phone, forcing his eyes to focus on the screen and the messages he'd received. It really was far too early, and Dan was anything but in the mood for it, but from the sheer amount of messages he'd been sent, he had to assume that something at least moderately important had happened - the kind of thing he'd need to pay attention to, regards of whether it was just past half seven in the morning or not.

What shocked him the most however, was simply the fact that messages had been sent by Chris. The moment he realised it, he felt a horrible sinking feeling burst out of the pit of his stomach and consume his entire body whole. He just knew that he wasn't at all ready to deal with whatever Chris had to say to him anymore, because the thing was that sixteen messages just looked a whole lot too long to be an apology.

Dan really did want to ignore him. To put his phone on silent, or even turn it off entirely, put it back down and turn over in bed, close his eyes and go back to sleep, to think about literally anything besides the whole Chris ordeal for a few more hours, and then maybe attempt to fathom the situation when it was significantly closer to midday. Half seven in the morning just wasn't cutting it for Dan, not at all. In fact, he struggled to imagine just what was going on in Chris' brain that had him up so early. But of course, Dan had also struggled to imagine just what it was that had gone on in Chris' brain for him to assume that Dan had been playing some sick joke on him.

The part of Dan's brain that simply couldn't leave the mess as it was suddenly sparked up as he dragged himself back to the day before, to the mess that his and Chris' friendship had disintegrated away into. It was sad really. The pathetic kind of sad, because oddly enough, throughout the course of the whole day, Dan was yet to possibly cry. Instead he'd felt much more outraged than anything else, and if he knew anything, it was that outrage, seven thirty in the morning, and texts to your sort of ex-best friend weren't a good combination. Regardless of that, Dan unlocked his phone.

He would have liked to imagine that he could at least have listened to his own advice, but today had already made it apparent that it just wasn't going to be his day. Perhaps Dan would have been okay with that, perhaps he would have even accepted it, well, if it had been any other day, any other day where he wasn't dragged up at half seven in the morning to deal with a whole shitshow involving someone he'd happily called his best friend less than twenty four hours ago, but now felt like he didn't know at all.

Dan did very much know it was a bad idea as he opened his conversation with Chris. He made no point of lying to himself about it; it was far too early for all of that anyway. The thing was however, that the truth definitely didn't seem to have it within its power to stop him, and by the time he'd read the first of the sixteen messages, the damage had already been done.

'Hey look I know its early but I need to talk to you'

'Are you awake?'

'Whatever. Doesn't matter. Yesterday was fucked up though'

'You know that dont you? That was fucked up. Like properly'

'I guess its not as bad as i thought it was though but still you were being a massive dickhead'

'Massive dickhead. Emphasis on the massive dickhead. Massive dickhead'

'But youre still my best friend i guess. I think that counts for a lot and I mean i did some thinking and i guess things arent as bad as i thought'

'Can you please wake up? I need to talk to you'

'For fucks sake'

'Anyway cut the crap i was in a state yesterday like a proper mess. I think you figured that'

'So anyway im not bi. I just sort of threw that at you because i was in such a mess that i couldn't think straight... literally'

'So if im not bi i dont need to be that offended about your stupid fucking joke so i would accept your friendship again if we can just leave this whole mess alone and not talk about it again'

'I mean you are my best friend and i do miss you but you were such a fucking dickhead'

'It doesnt matter that im straight but joking about sexuality is fucking sick'

'At least you'll be glad to hear that you can stop pretending to bi for me'

'Fucking wake up dan this is important'

Dan swallowed hard as he finished the end of Chris' mess of texts, struggling to comprehend just what situation they were currently in, and then stopping to think for a moment if he even wanted anything to do with it anymore. The fact that Chris had been his best friend, however, that was inescapable, and Dan really did reckon that he just didn't want to lose him over this. He just wished that he could make him understand, he wished that Chris could stop fucking around with his sexuality, he wished that Chris could accept not only Dan, but himself too. That had to come with time though; things couldn't be like this forever, and Dan was counting on that fact.

He'd drifted off up into his own head, wrapping himself securely up in his own thoughts when his phone screen light up again, vibrating into his hands with enough force to give him a minor heart attack. His eyes glanced back down at the screen to see another message from Chris: the seventeenth message.

'Ha i know youre awake. I do know when youve seen something'

Dan let out a groan, coming to quickly accept that this had suddenly become a situation that he'd very directly have to deal with in that moment. He just wished he had even the slightest clue just how he was supposed to deal with it, or deal with anything like it, for that matter. He knew that he couldn't run away from all of his problems forever, but it was sure a hell of alot easier than it was facing up to them the moment they occurred.

'Im awake'

Dan sent a text in admittance, in confirmation of what Chris already knew, for the sake of just wasting away time, filling in his side of the conversation, as he awaited what Chris could possibly spring on him in response.

As he had expected, Chris' response arrived in all of fifteen seconds. The thing was however, that expecting it just hadn't made it any easier to deal with.

'So youve read all my other messages? Do you want to move on from this and like apologise and everything and like obsessing over my sexuality and like stop forcing a sexuality onto me or something?'

Dan's eyes widened, struggling to take in just what Chris was telling him. He had desperately tried not to turn this into an argument, but all hopes of that very quickly came to fade away the very moment Dan had sent his reply.

'How the fuck am I forcing a sexuality onto you?'

He really wished he could have been polite at least, but there were just some things that he absolutely couldn't deal with, and this situation had very quickly secured its place at the top of that list.

Chris' response held just the same bitterly spiteful tone that Dan's had, and all in all, it was a sure sign that this conversation was going just where Dan had feared that it might.

'By going on about how I'm obviously gay for PJ all the fucking time. It's fucking annoying because I'm not. I'm straight and I can't even be sure of that because you won't leave me alone'

Dan wasn't even sure how Chris' brain could possibly work this shit out. As much as it frustrated him, he had to accept that it was likely all a side effect of him repressing his sexuality as much as he could, and that he couldn't blame him for that at all. Dan, after all, knew a lot about struggling with sexuality, whether or not Chris actually cared enough to believe him.

'Look Chris I don't care what sexuality you are as long as youre comfortable with yourself but I really do think theres somehting between you and PJ. The thing im trying to get across is that you shouldnt be ashamed of that or feel the need to hide it or erase it because it's okay. It's okay if theres something there'

Chris' response was much more hesitant than they had been before, taking almost a full minute before Dan had received it. Dan could only imagine the kinds of thoughts that had clouded his head moments before sending it, but of course, they definitely seemed to be the kind of thoughts that Chris was far too intimidated by to ever properly face up to.

'But is it okay if there's not something there?'

Dan let out a defeated kind of breathy sigh, having hoped that his words might have inspired Chris to come to accept himself a little more, but really, they were just words, and he couldn't even begin to imagine what kind of mess was currently throwing itself around Chris' mind. Therefore, all there was that Dan could do was just try and be the best friend to Chris he could be, even if that meant accepting him as straight, despite the fact that the whole world knew he was anything but that.

He did let himself consider the possibility that Chris was right in all of this, just for a second. Perhaps just for the sake of wondering what could come of Chris being actually heterosexual. The thing was however, that Dan had seen how his best friend had looked at PJ, how he'd obsessed over him, how much he valued him, and Dan, as a certified homosexual himself, could definitely relate that to some slightly less than straight feelings that he'd experienced for himself.

'Yes'

Dan responded, deciding that perhaps it had just reached the point where it was better to leave it, regardless of his better judgement.

'So are you going to apologise?'

Dan couldn't help but grimace at the idea; he knew that Chris was upset with him, and this would make things better, but realistically, he'd hardly done anything at all, and he just wished more than anything that Chris might actually come to accept that one day. Not now, maybe not soon, but one day eventually.

'I'm sorry for everything. I hope we're still best friends'

Dan watched his phone eagerly for a response, knowing that despite the mess he had gotten himself into, he valued Chris' friendship more than anything else in the world.

'Of course we are. Apology accepted'

Dan couldn't help but let a grin slip his face as he read Chris' response over for the tenth time.

'Good. Can I go back to sleep now?'

There was no avoiding the fact that it really was just far too early, and this had been all too much for Dan to deal with.

'Well im not going to stop you'

Chris' response came quickly and followed by a string of nonsensical emojis. As much as it did make Dan cringe all over, he knew that it was a sure sign that everything was alright again, and therefore found himself lying in bed, finding an odd kind of comfort in the aubergine emoji of all things.

As he put his phone back down on his bedside table, Dan couldn't help but focus on the worst of the situation, which of course was the fact that Chris still thought he'd lied about his sexuality, and that there'd be no easy way to get him to understand, at least not for quite a while now. Dan had to admit that it bothered him significantly more than he wanted it to, because more than anything he wanted Chris to understand.

He wondered if he'd have to get a boyfriend and properly snog him right in front of Chris before the message sunk in. Of course, Dan would actually have to get a boyfriend for that, and considering how much of a mess he was, it really didn't look likely at all.

Dan rolled over in bed and closed his eyes, trying to get back to sleep, and even more than that, trying not to let himself think about Phil at all. Especially not in such close correlation with the word 'boyfriend'. That definitely made the list of things it was too early to deal with, but at the very least, this was something he could properly avoid by rolling over and going back to sleep.

-

By one that afternoon Dan had done just as much as to move to the living room, sprawling out across the sofa, covered in blankets, with his laptop burning into his chest. It made a change from being in very much the same position in his bed at least. In fact, this meant that he'd properly gotten out of bed, which was really not something he tended to have the motivation to do.

He reckoned that by doing as much as to get out of bed, he had done enough to warrant spending as much of the day as possible mindlessly scrolling through social media - that was, of course, one of Dan's favourite pastimes. If he was being entire honest with himself, however, the main reason he felt the need to excuse spending the whole day doing basically nothing at all was that he just needed to get himself away from it all - the thoughts of Phil, of Chris, of the mess that had been made.

Somehow Dan found that Chris' insistence that everything was now fine didn't seem to mean very much to him. He still found himself with numbing kind of discomfort locked up inside of chest, steadily gnawing away at his heart. If Dan knew what was best for him, he would have talked to someone, hours ago, even just about the simplest of his emotions, even just about how he thought Chris was an idiot and he thought Phil was cute, nothing more than that, none of the details, none of the mess. But the thing was that Dan definitely know what was best for him. Well, perhaps he did, but he just didn't believe it enough to care.

Still, it remained as a constant nagging at the back of his head, playing out the kinds of conversations he should have been having in his head. Dan did do his best to ignore it, to block everything out and have the slightest hope that he just might be able to relax, to forget everything for a while. That didn't last very long however, and really a part of Dan hadn't even bothered to expect it to: knowing all too well that the world had seemed to decide that things just could never possibly go in his favour.

It was when it all finally got too much that he set his laptop down on the floor and sat up, stretching for a moment before sliding his feet from the sofa to touch the cold wooden floor of his living room. He took a moment to himself, rubbing his eyes and swallowing hard, then another just to breathe, before pulling himself to his feet, regretting the action almost instantly as all the blood in his body seemed to rush right to his feet and his head began to ache.

He stepped further into the middle of the living room, stretching his arms upwards and yawning slightly, basking in the glory of an empty house, of a day to himself, and hating how it hadn't been able to mean nearly as much to him as he wanted it to. Dan took another moment for himself, wasting it away, with vacant eyes towards the walls, taking around his surroundings as if it was the first time he was seeing them, before he forced himself out of the trance his mind desperately wanted to fall into. He urged his feet forward, struggling almost as if he'd somewhat forgotten how to walk. It was odd, unexplainable, but Dan put it down to the fact that his body really was just all over the place that day.

In the end, he made it to the kitchen and did his best not to think about anything at all as he made himself a glass of water and sat down at the table to drink it. He didn't let himself focus on anything until he the glass lay empty before him. He slammed it down on the table with more force than he had intended and took a second to take in the thud. He took a breath, leaning back in his chair and then coming to force himself to think, but to think properly, to think about the right things, to think in a way that made sense, or at least in way that might get him somewhere.

It didn't take him very long to figure that the mess of that morning wasn't going to fade away by itself, and that unfortunately he'd have to do something more about it than just ignore everything. Dan didn't very much like the idea, especially when it became clear that his best option was to talk to someone about it all, but he sat there for a while longer and eventually came to accept that it was something he'd have to force himself to do.

Clinging desperately to the hope that his head might shut up for once, Dan pulled his phone out of his pocket and slid it onto the table before him. He found himself just staring at it blankly for a good while, as if it might do all the talking for him, but that was something Dan could only dream of.

He let out a groan, forcing his body to cooperate with his mind, and leant forward, unlocking his phone and scrolling through his depressingly short list of contacts. The one positive about the situation was perhaps simply the fact that at least he didn't have to spend very long deciding who to talk to about everything, considering the fact that he definitely had more fingers than he had friends... probably even just on one hand too.

Dan decided that was a horribly depressing, albeit horribly true, thought, and did his best to brush it away, doing all he could to rid himself of it, to rid himself of it all, which was of course to finally press the 'call' button.

The dial tones were unbearable: weighing down on him with what felt to be a physical pressure, and seconds seemed to last for hours as he waited. Dan had never been good with phone calls or facing up to things, and found that a combination of the two was only working wonders for the part of his head that loved nothing more than to worry and obsess over everything possible.

"Hey Dan." Cat's voice came as a relief: calm and positive, perhaps the polar opposite of Dan at that moment, or perhaps even in general. It was all that he needed. He really did hope that she hadn't had plans other than helping her pathetic mess of a friend make sense of his head - it was a Saturday, after all.

"Hey Cat..." He choked a little, making it immediately obvious that he was nowhere as calm as she was. As much as he hoped that she wouldn't pick up on it, he prayed like hell that she would. He just couldn't let go of the part of him that still desperately wanted to run away from everything and hide away up inside his head forever.

"What's wrong?" She asked, concern evident in her voice, having easily recognised the mess behind Dan's. He took a moment to remind himself that she was entirely the kind of friend he just didn't deserve; he just hoped she would never properly catch wind of that.

"Kind of a lot." Dan admitted, letting out a sigh, stretching his legs out under the kitchen table and thinking for a moment. He found that he was very much unsure as to where it was that he should start, or how he could even start, or even just how he could begin to detail this mess at all.

She let out a laugh: warm, bubbly, and oddly hopeful. Dan couldn't quite figure out what it was, but he desperately appreciated it. Perhaps he just appreciated her: the simple fact that she was there, and she was listening, and that perhaps things might make sense of themselves after all.

"Start from the beginning." She offered, taking the liberty of breaking apart the silence, making it just that little bit easier for him.

"There's this guy." Dan began, his heart beginning to flutter almost absurdly as he brought his mind back to his first encounter with Phil. "His name's Phil. And he's... he's... the most wonderful guy I've ever met. He's the most wonderful person. He's beautiful. Properly beautiful: inside and out."

"Sounds an awful lot like you're in love with him." Cat let out a laugh, despite the fact that her tone seemed awfully serious. Dan might have perhaps considered minding if she wasn't just impossibly right.

"Yeah... I..." Dan found himself choking on his words. "I sort of am. Not exactly in love but he's... I don't know... he's... just... beautiful. And that's all lovely, because I mean, that's not even the issue here, because it's just... the fact that I'm like incredibly homosexual." Dan stopped for a moment after the words left his lips. "Incredibly homosexual." He repeated, perhaps just because he could; there was something empowering in it somehow. "And... Chris... he's like... he's very much not straight either, and look, I thought I'd finally gotten somewhere. I thought he'd finally accepted himself but there's this whole fucking mess and it's just- I can't deal with it."

"How does Chris' sexuality link to yours?" She asked, unable to quite connect the two as of yet.

"Well, it's when he came out as bi in the school toilets, looking as if he was never going to stop crying, because he was so scared of what everyone would think, what I would think. I wanted to let him know that it was okay, that I could never judge him for his sexuality, especially since I'm gay myself, so I told him. I didn't really think it through, I sort of just spat it out. I didn't even think at all. And then he fucking... he... thought I was lying, that I was playing some sort of sick joke and I just-"

"What?" Cat exclaimed, sharing the very same disbelief that Dan still couldn't quite manage to rid himself of.

"He thought I was joking. He didn't believe me, even now. Even now everything's 'fine' because we've apologised, and he's clarified that he's actually realised that he's straight and I don't have to worry that he knows I'm really straight too. I can't deal with it, and it doesn't help that it all makes me think about Phil and how I feel about him, and it's all such a fucking mess and it even seems like I'd have to fucking kiss a guy in front of Chris for him to even begin to think about believing me."

"And you want to do that." Cat finished for him, not giving Dan the time to argue otherwise. "You want to do that. I can tell. You want to kiss Phil and you want to prove Chris wrong. You maybe even want to do it for the look on his face, that would be if you weren't so head over heels for Phil though."

"I... uhh..." Dan stammered, unsure of just what he could say.

"Leave things with Chris for a while, let him think you're straight, let him think that he's straight, let him think that you think that too. Focus on Phil, talk to him about things, be honest, and I'm sure everything will pretty easily fix itself." Cat seemed to just have a knack for advice that Dan couldn't help but be eternally grateful for.

"I'm a bit worried about Chris though." Dan admitted, biting down on his bottom lip for a moment, as if he had to hold the words back for a while. "Repressing his sexuality like that is going to fuck him up, and it's not fair for PJ to deal with-"

"Dan." Cat interrupted him, her voice louder, but still holding the same kind of calming tone. "PJ tells me a lot about what him and Chris get up to, and the thing is that Chris is absolutely fine with himself when it's just with PJ, he just can't deal with admitting it to anyone else. That's going to change though, of course it will. He'll get the confidence eventually. Just leave him to it, leave him to deal with his own mess, and you deal with yours: don't worry about him, alright? Trust me, things are all going to work out okay."

"Are they?" Dan sounded doubtful, but wanted more than anything to be able to believe her.

"They are." Cat assured him. "They always do in the end. You just have to wait long enough."

"I'm not a very patient person." Dan admitted, grimacing at the idea of just how long it might take for this all to come around.

"Yeah, don't worry, I think that this time you won't have to wait awfully long. Trust me." There was a certain kind of assurance in her voice that left Dan inclined to believe her, and as much as his common sense urged otherwise, he left himself to become confident in each and every syllable she'd uttered. At the very least, things didn't look half as depressing that way.

-

Phil didn't find that he ended up waiting very long. He had expected to spend at least a good ten minutes stood at the start of the path that trailed off away from the roads and into the woods, waiting there with Susan, with as much patience as he could manage to muster. In reality, however, he found that he'd stood there for little more than two minutes before he caught sight of Dan, making his way down the road towards him.

There was no way around the fact that Phil had very much noticed Dan's sudden change of tone, even if it had only been conveyed so far via text messages, it was very much unavoidable. Over the span of a couple of days - not even a full weekend, Phil had found that Dan had changed to such an extent that sometimes he just couldn't see the same Dan he'd seen before, even in the very same conversation. There was no avoiding the fact that this worried him, perhaps more than he'd like it too, but Dan did happen to mean an awful lot to him after all.

Phil waited until Dan had properly reached his side until he chose to strike up a conversation: it was a combination of not wanting to yell at him awkwardly through the street, and also the fact that he very suddenly found that he wasn't quite sure what to say. He did want to dismiss it all: the weird messages, the sudden change in demeanour, which might all just be a bad mood, or a bad few days, but Phil just couldn't shake the worry that it was just a little bit deeper than that.

"Hey." Phil addressed him rather plainly, dragging his eyes up to meet Dan's and tossing him a gentle smile. Dan only did as much as nod to him in return, before dropping his gaze down to Phil's feet, to Susan, sniffing at the ground between them: so blissfully oblivious to everything that lay between the two boys.

"You weren't late at all." Phil continued to fill in the silence, as Dan had neglected to do so, instead focusing his attention on Susan entirely, as he leaned down to run his fingers through her fur. "I barely just got here." Phil coupled with his words with a spout of cheery laughter, hoping it might do something to get some form of actual conversation out of Dan.

"Sorry." Dan blushed: his voice low, almost unnervingly so. He pulled away from Susan and stood to face Phil, meeting him with an almost weary smile. "I don't know. I thought... I don't know what I thought... I just... things are a bit weird lately."

"Mmm..." Phil gave a nod in response, and gave Susan's lead a tug towards the path, before the three of them began to make their way down it, the masses of vegetation stretching out all around them. "With Chris and everything?" He continued to ask, noting that Dan wasn't perhaps in the most conversational of moods that day.

"Yeah." Dan gave a sigh, pulling his eyes away from Phil and instead towards the trees around them, and the few golden brown leaves upon their branches. It was the beautiful kind of autumn, where everything was yet to fully fall apart, before the trees were bare, and the leaves rotted away amidst the dirt beneath your feet. Despite everything else going on up inside his head, he reckoned he ought to appreciate it.

"Still, it's good to get out, isn't it? Like, away from all that, because it's just you, me, and Susan now, we're sort of away from everybody else, away from the rest of the world. That's why I like going to the woods, you feel like you're somewhere else entirely, somewhere you don't have to think about all that stuff." He followed Dan's gaze out towards the trees, the three of them coming to a stop before an enormous oak tree, with thick, textured branches that seemed to span almost triple the width of the trees that surrounded it.

"That tree must be ancient." Phil commented, stepping forward to reach out and run his fingers over the nearest branch: feeling the cracks and dimples in the bark, and taking a moment to wonder how it must have grown over so many years.

"Yeah. A hundred years old at least." Dan continued, seeming to find it considerably easier to engage in conversation that centered around nature, rather than himself, and really, the things he reckoned that he should be talking about, especially with Phil.

"A hundred?" Phil turned back to Dan, his face contorting in disbelief. "Can you imagine that? The world a hundred whole years ago, like when this tree was planted, it was almost like the world was an entirely different place. That's really weird to think about it."

"I think it's kind of beautiful." Dan admitted as he stepped forward and placed his palm flat down against the trunk. He lifted his hand a moment later, pressing only his fingertips into the indented bark. "Like... it's sort of a symbol that life can withstand whatever, like this tree's probably lived through wars and such colossal changes in life and history. The whole world changed so much around it, but it's still here, and it's still growing strong."

Phil met him with a smile. "That really is beautiful." There was however, something in his eyes that seemed to hint that he wasn't talking entirely about the tree. After all, he couldn't help but find himself captivated in the way Dan spoke, and the way he seemed to have so much thought and care for the oddest things sometimes.

"Mmm..." Dan nodded, turning back as he felt Susan scurrying up to his heels, resting her body against his feet. His face fell into a grin as he drew his gaze down to follow her movements. "Susan seems pretty happy to see me." Dan noted, unable to stop himself from grinning as she reached her tiny little ferret hands up onto his leg.

"She's not the only one." The words left Phil's lips before he could really even think about stopping himself. Thankfully, however, Dan really didn't seem to mind. Instead, the two shared a smile: a smile that said all too much and all too little at the very same time, while Susan finally moved away from Dan's feet.

"Or maybe she's just bored with us, bored with this tree. I think she wants to explore." Dan suggested, watching the way Susan wandered as far as her lead would let her, sniffing the ground with a definite sense of intrigue.

"Yeah." Phil nodded, moving away from the tree, and allowing Susan to scurry back to the path. "I wish I could let her off her lead but we know what happened when I last did that. When she almost killed you."

"She didn't kill me." Dan stressed, perhaps more for the sake of his own dignity by anything else, as after all, being trampled by a ferret really wasn't the most heroic of ways to go. "Not even close. Susan wouldn't do that." He insisted, smiling across at Phil.

"She can get vicious sometimes." Phil warned him, very much light-heartedly, and the three of them continued down the path, letting the quiet settle back in around them, as they were accompanied by little more than the sounds of crunching leaves underfoot.

"Me and Chris are alright again." It was a good three minutes until Dan broke into conversation, very much unexpected by the both of them. Phil had come close to wandering off on some irrelevant tangent himself, perhaps entirely just for the sake of passing the time.

"That's good?" Phil added, somewhat uncertain, as Dan's whole demeanour seemed to so very much contradict the whole idea that everything might been fine again. He just couldn't help but suspect that there was more to it.

"Yeah... I guess." Dan muttered, his words barely audible, perhaps as if he hadn't even intended them to be. "I just... it's Chris that says everything's alright again, and I..." Dan trailed off, seeming to lose any idea of what to say entirely.

"You don't think everything's alright." Phil finished for him, finding that his suspicions had definitely been right. Dan gave him a quick nod in confirmation. "I guessed something was up. You've been off recently. It's been worrying me."

Dan groaned, his cheeks filling out to an irritatingly vibrant shade of red. "Why are you worried? Don't worry about me. Please don't ever worry about me. I'm fine, really. I'm... everything's fine."

"You just said it wasn't." Phil told him, a little sterner than usual, and the two came to a stop in the middle of the path, holding eye contact for longer than they had in an awfully long while. Dan found that the whole situation was made perhaps even unfairly more difficult by the fact that he couldn't help the horrible aching sensation in the middle of his chest when he began to lose himself in Phil's eyes.

"Yeah." Dan finally came to admit, focusing more upon Phil's eyes than anything else, paying little attention to the world beyond the abyss of blues and sea greens that seemed to swirl and flow as if he was looking into two bubbling whirlpools, as opposed to a pair of eyes. Really, Dan just couldn't help being pathetically head over heels for Phil; he really just was the most beautiful person - there was no denying that.

"So really..." Phil continued, moving almost subconsciously closer to Dan. "I do have a right to be worried about you." He couldn't help but finish his words with an oddly satisfied smirk. It, of course, wasn't that he was happy that Dan was in such a state he ought to worry about him, he was just instead rather happy to prove him wrong.

"Fine." Dan let out a sigh, letting his gaze fall to the floor, focusing instead on Susan, and trying his best to drag his mind away from the uncomfortable kind of thoughts he just found it downright impossible to avoid when he found himself this close to Phil. "I guess you do."

"So..." Phil began tentatively, nervous that Dan might shrink away from him in response to what followed. "Do you want to talk about it? Maybe explain why Chris is wrong about everything being okay."

Dan's nod was slow and so very uncertain; the tone of his voice was almost identical. "Not yet." He bit his lip. "There are... some things I really do have to talk about with you... I just... not yet."

"Not yet." Phil echoed, nodding in agreement. "Don't worry about it. Those are things you should pretend don't even exist, you know just for a little while."

"I wish I knew how." Dan admitted, watching as Phil finally began to make his way a little further down the path, as Susan had quickly grown bored and impatient, and was tugging insistently at her lead.

"Trust me." Phil told him. "It's really not that hard. Try not to even think about doing it. It'll come naturally. Just think about the trees, the beauty of nature, and me and Susan, think about it like all you can see around you is the entire world."

"I reckon things might be a lot more peaceful that way." Dan let out a sigh, following Phil down the path.

"I really think they would." Phil agreed, before the two fell back into silence again. This time around, however, it came as much more of a peaceful thing: something they both found themselves content with, at least for a while.

-

A way down the path, the woods opened up, letting a little more of the sky and the outside world in as they took a detour off into a seemingly unrealistically green field. The three of them had chosen to explore it, finding a certain kind of wonder in it, and how it seemed as if not a single person had set foot in it before. Of course, they knew that couldn't be the case, but it definitely didn't dampen the wonder it seemed to radiate.

They found themselves a peaceful spot quite a way away from the tree line, finding that the field seemed to be entirely enveloped by the forest, although it really didn't seem to fit quite enough to warrant it being a clearing. However, both Dan and Phil mutually decided that perhaps the exact specifications of their current surroundings wasn't exactly the most pressing of matters.

The two boys sat down on the grass, legs having grown tired from walking, as admittedly, neither of them were exactly at the peak of physical fitness. Phil set Susan's lead down beside them, giving her a little more leeway to explore and amuse herself as they talked, or at least began to approach conversation.

Dan had decided that this was it: this was when he'd do it, when he'd finally be honest, both with Phil and himself. It had been eating away at him for far too long, and as much as he perhaps didn't quite want to admit it, Cat very much seemed to be right about things.

"So... I think... I should talk to you about something." Dan was the first to break the silence that had curled back up around them, broke only slightly by the sounds of Susan scuttling around them, sniffing at the ground with a simple, blissful kind of curiosity.

"Mmm?" Phil gave a nod, watching Dan with a sudden intrigue. "Is this... what you mentioned earlier?" He asked, leaving Dan to deal with his sudden fear of answering any question Phil might pose to him.

"Yeah..." He began, voice quieter than he wanted it to be. "Part of it, sort of. You know. Yeah... it's... sort of like that." He met Phil's eyes, and found himself immediately regretting it, because it was just all too much to handle at all.

"Okay. I'm listening." Phil told him, stretching back out across the grass, and Dan really did try not to focus too much on the way the veins in his neck seemed to bulge as he stretched out backwards, but really, Dan wasn't very successful.

He swallowed hard, quickly pulling his eyes away and wondering how he might even begin to start, how he could possibly relay this to Phil with the hope that it might make some sense when it didn't even make sense to him at all. Really, this had all sounded so much easier when Cat had explained it all to him than it did in practice. More than anything, Dan wanted just to move on, to get up and get away from here, from the field, from the conversation, but he'd already started, and from the way Phil was looking at him, Dan reckoned that he wasn't about to let this go.

"I... kind of... I'm scared." He admitted, flashing desperate pleading eyes up at Phil, hoping at least for the slightest bit of sympathy, that somehow might do anything to help him grow enough courage to continue.

"Why?" Phil sat up again, moving closer to him, having hoped that his presence might comfort Dan and not in fact make everything just that great deal more complicated for him. "What are you scared of?"

"That I'll fuck things up." Dan admitted, finding it much easier to talk about his possible failures than what he actually wanted to become of all of this. "With us. That you'll hate me. That you won't ever want to see me again. I just... don't think I can deal with that."

"Dan, what could you possibly say to me that would make me hate you?" Phil even did as much as to laugh it all off. Dan reckoned that ought to have been something that made things a little easier for him, but it really wasn't the case; he still failed to shake the weight of everything, forever bearing down on him.

"I don't know. Probably this." Dan finished his words with a round of self-deprecating laughter. It wasn't something that Phil shared. Instead, Phil looked at him oddly, taking in his appearance for a full minute before he continued.

"It's not Dan. I could never hate you. I mean that. I promise you that. You mean so much to me. Dan, you mean the world. I would never not want you in my life, and look whatever it is, whatever you've done, this is not going to change that." Phil insisted, his tone sterner than usual, in a way that usually would have made Dan uncomfortable, but on this occasion it did seem to finally get the message across, and Dan finally let himself believe it.

"Alright... I just... it's... it's... this thing. I've not done anything. It's just this thing. Feelings. I fucking hate feelings." Dan continued to laugh it off as he pulled his gaze away from Phil, allowing himself to fixate on nothing more than the few strands of grass directly in front of him.

"What is it that you feel then?" Phil asked, perhaps a little more tentative than he had been before, although Dan couldn't quite tell if that was just his imagination.

"A fucking hell of a lot. It's complicated and I can't explain it and if I'm honest I'm a bit scared of it and I really don't want to talk about it, but Cat said I should and she's right because it's fucking killing me. It probably isn't much longer until keeping it inside begins to feel worse than whatever could happen if I do say it, because after all, you promised that you won't hate me." Dan met him with an awkward, hopeful smile. "And I'm holding you to that."

"It's going to be fine." Phil added, moving closer to Dan, which again didn't help matters at all. "I promise."

"So..." Dan opened his mouth, taking a moment to regret every moment in his life that could have possibly lead him up to that point, before pulling his gaze away once more, focusing instead on individuals blades of grass, and the treeline a little way ahead.

"I get these feelings. It's a mix of everything, but there's one specific feeling in particular. They're feelings about you." He faltered, his words turning to dust in his mouth, right before they could pass his lips. "I... just... fuck- feelings... I... fucking feelings, god, Phil, I just-" Dan pulled his gaze back up to meet Phil, finding something entirely unexpected in his eyes.

"Dan... I... what kind of feelings?" His voice was lower than usually, perhaps even sharing the same nervous tone than Dan's did. As much as Dan was caught up in the mess exploding inside his own head, he really couldn't miss that.

"Uhh..." Dan dragged out a sigh, struggling to continue, and wanting more than anything to look away, back down at the grass or anything really, but there was something in Phil's eyes that made it impossible for him to look away. He thought for a moment if perhaps he just didn't really want to. There was a part of him that wanted this, after all, for things to go well, even as unlikely as it seemed to him. He focused on that part and hoped for the best, hoping that Phil might keep his promise.

"Like... fuck... like... stomach butterflies, like... you mean the world, like you're my favourite person, like-... like... I have this stupid, absolutely fucking stupid kind of crush on you." Dan found that he finished his sentence before he could even really think about it. Fuck. He really was fucked now. There was no avoiding that. "I'm sorry." He stammered, doing his best to finally look away, to avoid everything, to let it all fade back into the most awkward silence and forever curse himself for thinking that something better might just come of everything.

That didn't happen however. Much to Dan's surprise, the thing that did was Phil extending an arm out to him, resting his palm against Dan's cheek and pulling him closer, moving so quickly that Dan could hardly think until the very moment he'd leaned in, and then Phil Lester's lips were suddenly pressed so very close to his.

And in that moment, despite the mess and chaos of everything else, the rest of the world really did seem to melt away entirely, as the two of them sat there, connected in an unexplainable way. It was more than just a physicality, it was more than just touch, more than just fingers intertwined and and lips pressed together, they were connected, like just one person there together, sharing every emotion and movement, as they were, even if just for that moment, truly symbiotic.

-

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