Hate This and I'll Love You // Epilogue
t h r e e y e a r s l a t e r
"You were great today, sweetheart," Dan said as he smiled at Phil, tugging him in for a tight hug. "That movie's gonna be great."
"Why thank you." Phil smiled and placed his lips on Dan's, only for a few seconds. "God, I'm so glad I could take you with me this time."
"Hm, me too," Dan smiled and pecked on Phil's lips again.
When Phil looked at Dan, he had a weird smirk on his lips that made Dan furrow his eyebrows.
"Why are you smiling like that?"
"Well... You wanna go for some sightseeing today?"
Dan's eyes widened a bit in surprise before he smiled. "You got time for that today?"
"Actually not, but I talked to Johnny earlier and they delayed some of the filming for three hours. So... are you ready to experience some German culture with me?"
Dan squeaked a bit and he smiled, wrapping his arms around Phil. "Ahh, thank you so much."
Phil chuckled at Dan's excitement. "How about we take a look at that museum you wanted to go to first so we can walk around the city for a bit afterwards? Maybe we can have dinner together somewhere."
Dan nodded enthusiastically, still smiling. "Will we go on our own, though?" he asked and looked behind him, seeing PJ stand there. He didn't look at them but Dan still felt kinda weird. But hey, at least he was a friend of Phil's. He'd rather have him as his bodyguard than some complete stranger.
"I'll try my best. Maybe it'll be enough if I tell him that I'll call him in case it's necessary."
Dan smiled once again, his arms wrapped around Phil's body. "I love you," he whispered and kissed his lips gently. "I love you, too," Phil then whispered after a few seconds. "By the way, your hair looks good today."
"Does it?"
"Yeah, it's all fluffy and... velvety."
Dan rolled his eyes. "Velvety? You're such a spork."
"But I'm your spork."
"And I wouldn't want it any other way, sweetheart."
Phil chuckled lightly and took Dan's hand. He looked him in the eyes for a few seconds, admiring the warm brown eyes not for the first time that day. "So, you ready to go now?"
➳
Well, what can I tell you?
After that audition that took place three years ago, Phil got the lead role in a big successful movie which finally made him able to get somewhere with his career.
Dan and Phil both live in London up to this day, even moved in together with a little puppy somewhere in one of the little bit more expensive areas of the city.
However, Dan still kept his boutique. He doesn't work there that often anymore due to several paparazzi-incidents which took place in the past, but well, Pauline and his other employees took good care of it when he couldn't. After some time, he even managed to open up other shops in London, but also Manchester, Brighton and Birmingham. And sometimes, he even got to work together with well-known brands to create exclusive fashion lines for his shops.
However, Dan could never sell the little shop it had all started in.
Maybe it was the nostalgia. Knowing that Dan and Phil met there, and knowing that both their lives changed drastically that day, and all for the better.
I mean, Dan had never really wanted that kind of life. The kind of life where people recognised him on the street and people asked him intrusive questions about his relationship. The kind of life where people said bad things about him without even knowing him, the kind of life where people said he only used Phil for the fame so he could get somewhere with his boutique business.
Obviously, that wasn't true. But that's what some people said about him. So even though he told Phil all the time that he didn't care what the media says... Phil knew how sensitive Dan could be. So he tried to keep Dan away from everything, although that was basically impossible. He just wanted to protect him, but well, that didn't work out all of the times.
After years of being together, they've more or less learnt how to deal with it, though.
What they still didn't really know, was how to deal with all the time they couldn't spend together. Sure, Dan was happy for Phil and all, but he missed him. A lot. Sometimes he never seemed to be home anymore, and it... it hurt Dan. So, sometimes, Dan wished for the old times to be back. And he always felt bad when he did that because he just wanted Phil to be happy and of course he was happy for Phil, but well, life isn't always that easy, I guess.
Dan also had the secret theory that this was the reason Phil came home with a dog one day. You know, so Dan had someone that he could cuddle when he came back from work in the evening. And even though Dan obviously loved that dog to pieces, thinking about it made him feel like a little kid that needed to be taken care of.
But when they were together, God, were they happy.
And honestly, it wasn't like Phil was the only one working a lot, it was Dan, too. And sometimes, when Phil was done filming and it was that weird time in between the post-production and the marketing tours, he came back home while Dan couldn't.
But then there were times where they even had to work in the same places, and then the nights were spent together in hotel bars with a whole lot of cocktails and laughter because yes, even after all these years, they would still come back to the other, and Dan would tell Phil stories about weird customers and Phil would tell Dan stories about rude casting directors, just because maybe, things weren't that different after all.
So when Dan and Phil walked down the Hohenzollern-Bridge in Cologne, fingers intertwined and admiring the love padlocks all over the fence between the footpath and the railway lines, Dan couldn't help but smile. Because even though so many things had changed in their lives, it was still just them, it was still just Dan and Phil.
They had gone through so much together, Dan was sure nothing could break them apart.
And when Phil did the most cliché thing and pulled a padlock with their names engraved on them out of his coat's pocket, he just smiled at the cheesiness.
"Hate this and I'll love you, forever," Phil whispered then, and Dan giggled and nodded. "Oh, I do, this is so cheesy. But it's incredibly cute, too."
Phil then smiled and kissed Dan's lips lightly before smiling again. "So, you wanna do it?" Phil asked and Dan nodded, giggling quietly when he watched Phil place the padlock on the fence and lock it.
"Should we throw it away together?" he asked and pointed at the key. Dan nodded.
"How do we do this? Just..." Dan laughed when they both tried to take the key. "God, we're such a mess." Phil nodded in agreement and smiled.
Eventually, they figured out a way to hold the key in both their hands, well, kind of, at least, and after counting down to three, they threw it. They threw it down into the river, and an almost childlike excitement overcame them when they watched it fall down.
"You know, usually, I would actually hate this. Love padlocks, I always thought they had something possessive over them. But now... I just see it as the start of something new. Like that lock is a metaphor for our old lives, and this is gonna be a whole new part of it. And I'll be more than happy to spend that part of my life, and maybe even all the ones after that, with you, my dear Mr Lester."
Phil chuckled at Dan's posh tone. He shook his head a bit and wrapped his arms around Dan's waist. "I adore you so much, do you even realise that?" Phil then whispered and Dan chuckled lightly when he heard those words. He kissed Phil's lips for a few short seconds, the noise of a train passing by surrounding them.
So now, like every story, this has to come to an end. This story of how two lost souls found each other and managed to build the other up, this story of crushed dreams and dreams coming true, this story of love and friendship, it has to come to an end. Because you know what they say; quit while you're still having fun.
So yes, even though maybe, Dan and Phil had their problems and issues in life, those were nothing compared to how they felt about the other. Because like Christian in Moulin Rouge already said, all you need is love, and maybe, just maybe, they'd now realised how true those words actually were.
After all, Phil still was the guy who managed to immediately catch Dan's eye the first second he walked in, and Dan was still the man with the prettiest eyes and the cutest smile Phil had ever laid his eyes on.
Love is a many splendored thing. Love lifts us up where we belong. All you need is love.
// t h e e n d //