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ticklishhpickle · 6 years

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The Fault in Our Education System

Summary:

In which Dan pines over the two things he can’t have- contentment with his grades and Phil Lester- before he realises that both might not be as unattainable as they seem.

Something you need to read if you can’t stop defining yourself by grades (like me).

Length: 3k

Ao3 link

Dan walked out of the exam room, plonked himself on the nearest bench and promptly burst into tears.

He’d screwed up. He’d screwed it all up - why did Chemistry have to be so hard? He’d studied so hard for the exam as well, and now… now what did it matter? He’d felt so prepared going into the exam, too. Dan recalled the countless number of hours he’d spent revising, crouched over his desk with nothing but his textbook and pencil case keeping him company. This just wasn’t fair.

Now he wasn’t going to get a good mark on the exam, and his GPA would go down, and - and then he wouldn’t get into a good uni. And then all the money his parents had spent on his education would be for nothing.

Dan started crying even harder at this.

His classmates walked out of the exam, most not noticing him and the few who did giving him pitying glances. Dan tried his best to ignore them. He didn’t need pity - he just needed good grades.

He curled in on himself, hugging his knees to his chest. He let seconds, minutes pass him by as he sat on the bench ruminating for nothing. He couldn’t change it now.

Dan tried to steer his mind to better things, to brownies and video games and the cute freckles that dotted the nose of his crush.

Ah, Phil Lester.

You know what a good GPA and Phil Lester have in common? I can’t have either of them, Dan thought bitterly.

And wanna know what was even better than having a crush on a straight boy? Having a crush on a straight boy who was also your best friend. Phil was in Dan’s chemistry class. And English class. And history class. Dan and Phil had been going to the same school since prep, and Dan had been smitten with Phil for approximately the same amount of time. But Phil was too out of reach - Dan doubted he even noticed Dan, let alone considered him someone he would date. Why did all the cute guys have to be straight?

Phil had dated quite a few girls at their school - Tracy Robinson in the the fourth grade, Greta Harris in the seventh, and most recently Katie Tao in the 10th. They’d broken up last summer holidays, much to Dan’s relief. Every time Phil was dating someone, Dan was dying inside. Thank god he was a good actor, or his pathetic little crush would have been revealed years ago by his jealous streak.

Spending so much time with his crush and stressing over his grades so much, Dan’s poor heart was in a perpetual state of palpitation. It wasn’t fun.

Last year, just before a history test Phil had accidentally brushed his hand over Dan’s, causing his heart to nearly jump out of his chest.

“You okay?” Phil had said, kind blue eyes looking down at him with concern.

“Y-yep!” Dan had squeaked back, his soul basically descending out of his own body. The anxiety from a test and from direct contact with his crush combined were too much for his lanky body to handle.

Phil was kind, smart, funny and had the most beautiful eyes Dan had ever seen. If only Phil felt the same. It was quite sad, really, how Phil’s touch had the ability to send Dan’s heart racing even after all these years.

This long-winded train of thoughts about his unrequited pining over his best friend had done nothing to cheer Dan up, and soon tears were pouring out of his eyes at an alarming fast rate once again. The boy was aggressively blowing his nose into a handkerchief when he was interrupted by a voice,

“Grades don’t define you, you know?”

Dan looked up from his blowing, and felt his face flush when he saw who it was. Phil. He quickly wiped his nose and threw the tissue in the bin next to the bench, praying to every deity he didn’t believe in that the most perfect man on earth wasn’t too disgusted by him right now.

Dan was at a loss for words, and only managed to flick his eyes up at Phil’s gorgeous face before falling back into his pathetic sobs. Oh god, why was he such a mess? He buried his head into his chest, accepting that Phil wouldn’t judge him- he’d seen Dan like this far too many times to count.

“I mean it, Dan.” Phil continued, tentatively sitting down next to the sobbing boy.

“And chemistry’s a little bitch anyway, yeah? Everyone found the exam horrible. I’m sure you did better than you think.”

Dan slowly lifted his head up, using all of his courage to look at Phil.

“B-but I especially fucked up. I’m never going to get in to a good uni now.” Dan choked out, hiccuping with sobs.

“You will, Dan. You would have done fine, you studied so hard for this, I know you did. And the rest of your subjects would have been good too.”

Dan’s cries came to an abrupt stop when he felt a long arm wrap around him, pulling him closer to the body beside him.

This was too much contact for him to handle. Dan had always made sure to keep Phil at an arm’s length, literally. Phil was under the false impression that Dan disliked physical contact - well, it wasn’t entirely false. He did dislike physical contact - but only the kind that was Phil, and only because of how giddy it made him.

“I don’t like school.” Dan mumbled into the other boy’s chest. Phil laughed, and Dan felt something warm spread inside of him. He loved that sound.

“No one does. But it’s over now.”

“It is?”

“That’s our last exam, isn’t it? Now we just have our graduation ceremony, and we’re free.” Phil said, grinning.

“I guess so.” Dan replied blandly, suddenly aware of the puffiness under his eyes. Crying in public was such a hoot, wasn’t it?

He squirmed uncomfortably as silence settled in between them. Phil’s arm had long vanished from Dan’s back, now he was playing with his long pale fingers. In fact, he looked a little nervous.

“Wanna get out of here?”

Dan nodded eagerly, ready to leave the premises of his tragic academic defeat.

“Where?”

“Nowhere in particular,” was the vague reply Dan got. Phil’s eyes were dancing mischievously.

Dan looked at Phil’s soft hand, dissatisfied with Phil’s vague answer to his question. He took it anyway.

“Okay, open your eyes.” Phil had forced Dan to keep his eyes closed for the entire 15 minute walk to wherever the hell Phil had taken him. The whole walk over, Dan still struggled to shake the feelings of inadequacy clogging his brain. Phil had served to distract him a little back at the school, but with nothing but the sound of his own feet crunching against twigs, Dan’s brain had resorted back to its terrible rumination patterns.

His parents had paid their hard-earned money to send him to such a good school. He needed to be a lawyer. But he couldn’t be a lawyer. Not with a GPA of negative 2. Okay, maybe his GPA wouldn’t become negative 2 just because of the exam, but right now it felt like it.

Dan recalled the utter feeling of dread that had flooded his body when the examiner declared that time was up. It felt as if a stone had been thrown down his chest, squashing any feelings of hope he’d had to do well on this exam.

If that wasn’t enough, Phil for some reason had decided that the best way to keep Dan from seeing where they were going was to cover his eyes with his hands!!! Was he trying to kill Dan? His whole face had turned bright red from the contact- he hoped Phil hadn’t noticed.

“Dan, are you crying again?” Phil asked. Phil’s hands were tightly covering Dan’s eyes, but he was sure Phil was frowning.

“N-no.” Dan replied, fully aware that Phil would see through the lie.

“Then why can I feel your tears on my hands?”

“It’s sweat.”

“Yes. Sweat from your eyes. Aka tears.” Phil took his hands off Dan’s eyes and wiped away the stray tears that had fallen.

“You are more than your grades, Dan.”

“It doesn’t feel like it.” Dan sniffed, keeping his eyes shut tight to hide from Phil the next wave of tears threatening to fall.

“Open your eyes.”

Dan gasped at the sight before him. Monkey bars he’d spent hours upon hours, climbing, falling off stood tall and proud. The slide he’d burnt his ass on multiple times was there, its presence reminding him of better days. And best of all, the merry-go-round he’d first met Phil at was there, where it had always been.

“Are we even allowed to be here?”

“Probably not. But school’s out, there are no kids here. We won’t be arrested, I promise.

Follow me!” Phil grinned his award winning smile, and who was Dan to say no to that?

Dan followed Phil to the merry go round, and nearly fell over when Phil abruptly began spinning it. “Now Mr. Daniel. Tell me why you think your grades define you.”

Dan rolled his eyes. They’d had this conversation a thousand times. Nothing productive ever came from it - Dan would always continue to be a perfectionist about his grades.

“Because- I’m not good at anything else. They’re all I have.” “Well that’s just not true. For one thing, you’re hilarious.”

“Really?” “Anyone who talks to you would know that, Dan.”

Dan blushed red at this, his stomach flipping upside down. God, he needed to get a grip. And over his best friend. And better grades.

Phil frowned at Dan’s lack of response, but remained silent and jumped onto the merry go round. It was now in full swing.

Dan willed his brain not to think about the damned chemistry exam anymore, choosing instead to focus on the boy he’d pined over for years.

Sure, Phil considered Dan his best friend, but he knew that was the extent of his feelings towards Dan. They’d grown up together and survived high school together as well (barely) - Phil probably thought of Dan as a brother! It didn’t mean anything that Phil always offered to take him out for ice cream after school, or that he was always walking to classes with him- that was purely out of friendship, as much as he wished it meant something more. Phil was straight.

After a few minutes of spinning, Dan started feeling a little nauseous, and clearly Phil felt the same because he stuck his foot out onto the ground, bringing the merry go round to an abrupt stop.

“Well I don’t know about you, but I think I’ve had enough of that for one day.” Phil groaned, clutching his stomach a little.

“Tell me about it, I feel so sick.” Dan stared woefully at his feet, head spinning with thoughts about his GPA once again.

“What do you want to do after high school?” Phil asked suddenly, turning his head towards Dan.

“Law. You know this.” He answered quickly, sighing a little.

“I think you misheard me, Dan.”

“I don’t think I did?”

“You told me what your parents want you to do after high school, not what you want to do. You say ‘law’ every time we talk about this and I haven’t pushed it, but I want to know.”

“It’s embarrassing.”

Phil gave him a look as if to say ‘I’m your best friend, you goof, nothing is embarrassing between us anymore.’

He sighed.

“Fine. Something artsy. I love theatre and writing. But it doesn’t matter. I need to do law - which is why it matters that I fucked the exam so bad. I’m hopeless.”

“No you’re not, Dan. I know it seems like it now, because we’re in the midst of all these crappy assessments and such, but there’s a life beyond this.” Dan just shook his head.

“Okay. As morbid as it sounds, imagine you’re on your deathbed.”

“What?”

“Hear me out. You’re on the brink of death, and your whole life is flashing before your eyes. You’re thinking about your first kiss, your first best friend- me, the smile on your dad’s face and the happy tears in your mum’s eyes when you move out…”

“I don’t know where you’re going with this.”

“But you know what you��re not thinking about? Your grades. It doesn’t matter in the end what marks we get, or how much money we make, because we are humans and we can’t be defined by numbers. People don’t remember numbers. They remember how you made them feel.”

Phil looked at Dan to check he was still listening, took a deep breath and continued.

“And when it’s your time to go, you’re going to remember all these special moments in your life, and you’re going to regret beating yourself up so much just for losing a couple of marks.”

Phil’s words hit him like a ton of bricks. Why was Dan letting numbers define him? The past couple of years he’d just been stressing over his grades, crying when he’d lose one mark out of 25 on a test. What a waste of time.

Dan was brought back to grade school, where he’d cried over the A he’d gotten on his maths test. He’d wanted an A+. Phil had made Dan brownies and assured Dan that their maths teacher, Mrs Oak was a big ‘stinky poo’ for giving Dan an A when he obviously deserved an A+.

He remembered year 7 when Dan felt like the work was really getting serious, but Phil had forced him to play video games with him when he found out Dan had spent an entire week cooped up in his room, studying. He’d let Dan sleep over and made him his favourite foods, telling him how he was going to be just fine, joking that ‘year 7 was such a meme anyway, it would eventually go stale and the work wouldn’t even matter anymore’.

Dan smiled fondly at the memories, even though his chest was tight with two profound realisations- 1. He had to stop defining himself by grades for his own sanity, and 2. He’d probably never be able to fall out of love with Phil Lester. He was doomed.

“You know, school’s practically over. We’ll be free and I won’t have to see any of my exes anymore.” Phil mused, snapping Dan out of his thoughts.

He was right… how had Dan not realised- he was finishing high school! He’d never have to see any of the assholes from his school again.

“Ugh, I can’t wait.” Dan said, smiling at his friend.

“Yeah, I think I might regret some things, though.” Phil said quietly, sitting back down next to Dan. When Phil extended his arms out as he sat, for a brief moment Dan thought he was going to put his arm around him again but no, he was just stretching. He tried not to be too disappointed.

“Really? Like what?” Dan replied, intrigued.

Now it was Phil’s turn to blush, pale cheeks very obviously reddening.

“Well, I- erm. This is embarrassing.”

Dan gave him the same look Phil had given him only minutes ago, the one that said ‘I’m your best friend, you goof, nothing is embarrassing between us anymore.’

“Okay fine. I’ve had a crush on someone for years and I’ve never told them.”

“Oh my gosh, who? And wait - years? But you’ve had girlfriends during that time!” Dan asked, desperately trying to mask the jealousy in his voice. Whoever this person was who Phil liked was damn lucky.

“Yeah, about that. I kind of just, fake-dated all of them to make my crush jealous. Didn’t really work. He didn’t even seem to care.”

He? Dan’s eyes widened.

“He’s really cute, you know. He’s got these soft brown eyes that are the colour of a caramel mocha latte. And his hair looks so damn fluffy, it’s brown, just like his eyes and I’ve always wanted to touch it. I’ve just been too scared to ask.”

Phil’s voice was barely audible now, lighter than a feather. He sounded small and fragile and like the most vulnerable boy in the world. Dan just wanted to hold him and comfort him, but instead he remained silent. He was too stunned by his friend’s words to form a proper response.

“And he’s really funny, too. Not everyone notices, but he makes the funniest comments under his breath. He always has something clever to say- even if not everyone is clever enough to listen.” Dan searched Phil’s face for any signs of humour, but all he found was the vulnerability of a wounded deer.

His breath hitched. Was this really happening? Was it possible that Phil Lester, seemingly straightest boy in the world, liked Dan back? This is what he’d only dreamt about for literal years- how was this even real life?

Brown eyes met blue and fuck, Dan was falling even harder for the boy in front of him if that was possible. Without thinking, Dan leant over and pecked Phil’s cheek, causing a blush to erupt on both boys’ faces.

Wait. Fuck. Dan quickly pulled back.

“Were you talking about me or have I just made this really awkward?”

Phil smiled the most beautiful smile Dan had ever seen, his eyes shining with a mix of adoration and relief. He held a hand out to Dan and stood up,

“Both, if possible.”

He breathed a sigh of relief, before taking Phil’s hand in his own. He laced their fingers together contentedly, just letting himself enjoy the moment that would shape the rest of his life.

For once, he wasn’t thinking about grades, or universities, or disappointing his parents. He was just content where he was, and ecstatic about who he was with. And little did Dan know, but this would come to be one of those ‘special moments’ Phil was talking about. It would be known as the day he no longer defined himself by numbers, and even more importantly - the day his best friend became something more.

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A/N: I screwed up a final assessment today and am feeling super angsty and need to get this off my chest and gosh I hope this helps other people who have issues with perfectionism and grades LMAO I HATE MY LIFE. I hope this helps people, because school honestly sucks and we do need to look at the bigger picture as hard as it is sometimes.

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