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“Okay,” Dan says, tapping his finger against his chin. “Kissing under a cherry blossom tree?”
“I know for a fact that’s not what it says,” Phil smirks and snatches the notebook away, ignoring Dan’s protests. “See, I wrote kiss under a cherry blossom tree, you scribbled it out and put that I propose to you under one.”
Dan pretends to be distracted by his phone, betrayed entirely by his reddening cheeks. “Oh yeah, must’ve missed that.”
“Thirsty from actual day one,” Phil laughs and tosses the notebook back in Dan’s direction. The soft thud on the bed causes it to close, the front page covered in Dan’s scrawl from 2009 - Things We’ll Do Before We Die or Break Up, Whichever Comes First.
“Can you blame me? I knew i’d be getting that YouTube coin one way or the other, whether it be yours or mine.” Dan takes the notebook back and continues flipping through it.
“True as that definitely still is,” Phil says pointedly, “Might be a bit of a mood killer to have Bryony’s to-do list only allocating twenty minutes max for each activity.”
Dan purses his lips and meets his gaze for a moment, then shrugs. “True.” He flips the page.
“Competition with who can take more pictures with Pokémon?” Dan reads, and Phil smiles.
“If there’s no Piplup merch or figures i’m causing a riot.”
“Depends how long they dwell on remakes, will the basic duck with a hat starter do?”
Phil sighs dramatically. “It’ll have to.”
Dan flips the page. “Kiss Mario? Fucking hell I really was thirsty.”
“You’re telling me,” Phil sighs wistfully. “You’re telling me.”
Dan flips him off and promptly closes the notebook. “I’m done with this for now because i’m quite frankly scared about what I would’ve written.”
“We could always, you know, improvise and steer away from a fourteen-year old to-do list.”
Dan sighs. “But you’d be turning your back on our blood oath to complete this!” He wiggles the notebook in Phil’s face.
“Definitely not a blood oath,” Phil sniggers. “More like another bodily fluid.”
A pillow promptly hits Phil square in the head.
—
“Done,” Dan ticks next to one of the items on their list, “Big tick,” Another crossed off. “Done…” Dan looks over to Phil and smiles. “Three times.”
Phil rolls his eyes. “Classy as ever.”
“You wrote that one!” Dan argues.
“You circled it,” Phil replies in a singsong voice.
Dan mumbles something under his breath, which causes Phil to smile as he continues to scroll through various social media.
“I wish we found this the first time we went to Japan,” Dan sighs as he flicks through the pages again. “I feel like we could’ve done like a third of everything in this book by now.”
Phil looks over to him and raises an eyebrow. “You’re the one that packed it under various sports equipment you haven’t touched since the first apartment, that’s all on you.”
Another pillow makes its way to hit Phil in the forehead. He simply reaches to put it behind him and rest his head against it.
“Be the best gay grandads on the block?” Dan reads from one of the back pages of the notebook. “What the fuck were you on?”
Phil shrugs. “The gay grandads market has been steadily growing, i’ll have you know. We will be at the top of the list if it kills me, or if I have to pimp you out or something.”
“Oh thank you,” Dan rolls his eyes. “But this is coming from the man that tenses up if I fawn over a fictional character a bit too much, you know you can’t share this.” He runs a hand down his curves and winks.
“If that was true I would’ve had a meltdown on every street we’ve walked down on this trip, the way you ogle every hot guy on a billboard we see.” Phil nudges Dan in the side.
Dan opens his mouth to argue for a second or two, then silently admits defeat and nods.
“We do owe it to them, though,” Dan says as he looks over to the now discarded notebook sitting atop their suitcase. “The closeted little gays of yore.”
“The most transparent fucking closet of all closets,” Phil mumbles. “But I guess you’re right in a weird paradox kind of way, it’s like a time capsule.”
“That, and I mean it’s basically a legal document.” He reaches over and flicks to the final page, where they both, in their biggest handwriting, signed the book.
“I don’t think me signing as ‘Phil Mister Big Lester’ would hold up in court, somehow.”
“Probably about as well as,” Dan squints and looks closer. “Dan ‘Slender Fingers’ Howell, oh for the love of god.” He places his hand over his eyes and laughs. “I bet that was your idea.”
“If I remember rightly, we chose for each other,” Phil shrugs.
“Yeah that seems about right.” Dan says, holding his hand out in front of himself. “My fingers were more slender and piano-ready at that time.”
“Yeah that’s what I meant,” Phil fixes him with an ‘are you serious’ stare.
A few minutes of pleasant silence follow, making themselves comfortable as they can’t go anywhere until Bryony is done napping (lest they incur the wrath of the ‘how dare you go without me after a million years of friendship’ card).
“Oh fuck we missed one,” Dan gasps softly, and reaches for the notebook.
“We haven’t done most of them, you only found it a couple of months ago, we’ll get through it.” Phil replies, still scrolling on his phone.
“No this one is really important!” Dan insists, and slaps the notebook onto Phil’s chest. “Look!”
Phil lifts the book and is immediately drawn to the fluorescent pink post-it note hanging off the front page, in Dan’s slightly more legible handwriting of present day.
“Kiss in a Japanese hotel room,” Phil reads, and looks over at Dan who is grinning. “You’re ridiculous.”
“Not me, it’s the book!” Dan holds his hands up. “But it is one more we can tick off…”
Phil really wants to roll his eyes at the situation, but all he can do is laugh - laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation, laugh at Dan’s pout, laugh at how a stupid fourteen-year old notebook they wrote in is causing him to relive everything, years and years in an instant.
He used to laugh at Dan’s incessant documenting of their history, but now he kind of gets it - not that he’ll ever tell him.
—