Work Text:
8 years.
8 years they had been together. Years filled with the good times such as the radio show, the fans, the book and the tour. Yet also filled with the bad times, 2012 as a whole being the main example.
Dan and Phil had been together for 8 years not just as best friends, business partners and roommates but also as boyfriends, fiancees and eventually even husbands.
In all the time that they had been together as their popularity and fanbase grew and grew still very few people actually knew the truth of their relationship. Their love was a closely guarded secret despite many of their fans already believing it to be real. Very few people were actually in the know about the two.
However, what nobody but Dan and Phil themselves were aware of was that neither of them actually wanted it to be a secret.
It started all the way back in 2009, when their relationship was brand new and they were unaware of how popular that they would become. After they first met and a few months into their relationship they made a video talking about their relationship as they didn't want it to be hidden. Unfortunately before the video was uploaded the camera they filmed it on was packed away in a box and lost when a new one was bought so the video was never posted as neither had the time to remake it or find it.
As neither of them wanted to flaunt their relationship, all their videos appeared to be completely platonic and so no one had any proof that they were anything more than best friends.
They filmed another video about their relationship a few years later at the beginning of 2012. The video was filmed edited and about to be uploaded when Dan began to be effected by the online comments and so pretended that he accidentally deleted the video so it was never uploaded but instead his it away so Phil would not find it again.
Once more their attempt at coming out was prevented.
After that, they did not try to make the video again for a while, they were going through a rough spot and Dan no longer felt comfortable with telling anyone about their relationship and Phil was willing to keep it secret if that was what Dan wanted.
Eventually, in 2014 they tried to make they video once more but after filming they had very little time to edit it as they began to write their book and when the idea for a tour came along the video was put aside completely in favour of preventing any negative impact effecting the tour.
The two also decided that rather than coming out when they were only fiancees that they would wait until they were married so they could get through the wedding in privacy.
Finally, 2017 came along and they decided that they needed to come out, they didn't want it to be a secret anymore they never truly had wanted to hide it.
So they made a new video, they found the old camera from 2009, Dan dug out the video from 2012 and they opened up the video from 2014 and they edited them all together to show them coming out through the years. A showreel of their relationship from when it first began on 2009, before everything went wrong in 2012, when they were newly engaged in 2014 and then they showed pictures from their wedding in Japan and then new pictures of their new house and their new dog and then the video ended.
They didn't explain because it didn't need explanation. It was a video of their life together and it was out for all the world to see.
They were happy.