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“Hey Dan,” Phil said suddenly, gripping his mug as he holds it under the coffee machine, his face lighting up in the way it does when he’s finally gotten the take on a video. “What if,” he says slowly, savouring the words in his mouth. “We pretended, just for one day, that we had no idea who the other person is?”
Dan looks up from his place on the couch, cornflakes slowly melting inside the milk in his bowl. “Phil, literally what the fuck.”
Phil takes his mug out from under the steaming, whirring machine. He blows across it, the heat fogging up his glasses. He sets both the glasses and the coffee on the countertop. His eyes squinted in his sudden blindness as he waited for it to cool enough to grip it properly in his hands. “Like,” he said. “If we forgot everything about each other just for a day. And just tried to interact.”
Dan sighed. He doesn’t know when i-hate-everyone-before-noon Phil transitioned into the i-would-pour-milk-into-the-cereal-box-for-fun Phil, but it’s happened a lot earlier than usual and he doesn’t know if he’s developed enough brain cells yet to deal with it.
“What would you honestly achieve,” he responds, not looking up and scrolling through his tumblr-navy abyss. A vine auto-loads, and the dog snuffling in the snow reminds him of Phil. He snickers.
“A better understanding of each other?” Phil says.
Dan looks up at him. “In precisely two minutes, you’re going to spill something on the counter, hunt for a sock that hasn’t been seen in three years, and watch 15 minutes of an episode before you’ve realised that you’ve already seen it,” he says. “What else do you need to know?”
Phil frowns. “It could be fun.”
Dan takes a bite of soggy cornflakes. It’s gross. “Not doing it could also be fun.”
Phil riffles around in the kitchen drawers for a spoon, and dips it into his coffee. “No it won’t,” he said stubbornly.
Dan sighs. Again. “Even if I tried doing it,” he said. “It’s literally embedded into my brain. I’ll probably fail before five minutes.”
Phil allows himself a tiny smile. He knew that, but it’s not like it hurt to hear.
“It’s only one day. Never give up,” he says, faux grandly. “Build your strength, Danny.”
Dan groans. “You sound like a gym commercial. It’s not really convincing, Phil.”
Phil shakes his head. “No Phil,” he says. “You just found a random stranger in your apartment making coffee. What’re you gonna do. I’m going to steal everything you hold precious. Stop me before it’s too late.”
Dan rolls his eyes, but he starts to smile anyway, because Phil was ridiculous. “Phil, are you really-”
Phil made a pterodactyl-like caw of disapproval. Dan laughs.
And then he thinks fuck it. Most conversations with Phil usually ended with fuck it.
“Oh no,” he drawls, sarcastically. “A raven haired ghost man is in my apartment. How will I ever get him out.”
Phil narrows his eyes over his mug in what he hopes to be a very calculating and disapproving look, but he giggles. “I live here,” he announces. “Who are you, scrolling hermit?”
Dan snorts. “Your worst nightmare, obviously.”
Phil laughs behind his coffee. “Do nightmares have names?”
“This one does,” Dan said. “Do ghostly ravenboys have names?”
“Zack,” Phil holds the warm mug with both hands because he’s fairly sure it’s in a very dangerous position as his shoulders shake with supressed giggles. “You get to call me Zack.”
Get out, Dan thinks. “Yeah, and I’m Cody,” he says. “Ever met a Dan Howell?”
Phil’s face flickers with amusement at the familiar syllables. “Nope,” he says. “Weird name.”
Dan just looks at him. Phil smothers his smile in the rim of his mug. “Don’t worry,” he said cheerfully. “My uber cool name is actually my middle one. I’m really Phil.”
“No way,” Dan says dryly, and Phil cracks up, putting the cup of coffee down again as his laughter rings across the living room. He turns to respond to him, and yelps as the burning hot liquid splashes out of the precarious mug, Phil automatically reaching for the dramatically ever-thinning roll of paper towel.
Dan glanced at the clock at the top of his screen. Two minutes. He sighed.
It was going to be a long day.
–
Apparently as soon as Phil found a stranger chilling in his apartment, it meant he could bombard him with interrogation questions. Dan felt like he’d just committed a murder and the officer who was asking him questions hadn’t dated anyone in half a decade and was thirsting for information on another human being.
Phil was always a terrible liar. To Dan, anyway. He was about as transparent as his complexion. This didn’t exempt his acting skills.
“What’s your favourite flavour of ice cream?” he asked earnestly. Dan had answered enough of the same kind of ‘Phil, you already KNOW this’ questions to figure out that the last painless way to go through the next ten hours was to just answer them with as less detail as possible and watch Phil nod thoughtfully and mentally scrawl it into a notepad.
Somewhere around ‘Bolognese or Mac n Cheese?’ he had actually gone off and found physical pen and paper to jot down Dan’s Five Hundred and Sixty-Three Fun Facts About Himself.
“Chocolate chip cookie dough,” he says. Not that you haven’t been constantly stocking it in our fridge for every time that I get sick and you find it necessary that a week of losing all nasal functions needs to be repented by clogging my tastebuds all over again with ice cream.“Yours?”
The only reason Dan asked is because Phil obviously looked excessively pleased, and despite himself, Dan found the expression to be the only thing genuine about the entire day.
“Same,” Phil informs him, beaming. Somewhere along the line, Dan had ditched his laptop and was sitting with his legs over the edge of the sofa. He swung them gently. I know, he thought. You always only get one spoon because you can’t be bothered washing two.
“Next question,” Dan says. “How many did you have again?”
Phil shrugs, looking down at his notebook. “Gotta make sure my impromptu roommate won’t murder me in my sleep.”
“With chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream,” Dan asks. “Did you write this down? Have you been planning for today?”
Phil shakes his head and adopts an incredulous tone that is so bad it makes Dan want to play along just so Phil can learn how to be subtle. “How could I? I didn’t know you before this morning, idiot.”
Dan fights the urge to just slide off the couch altogether. “Whatever you say, Philip.”
Phil wrinkles his nose. “Who’s Philip? Also, waffles or pancakes?”
Dan glared at him. “You can’t just ask me that. You’re setting me up for failure in mutual understanding.”
Phil blinks at him, his innocence almost believable this time.
“I know yours is pancakes,” he says accusingly. And mine is waffles. And you’ve never ever forgiven me for it.
“No you don’t,” he says. “But it is. Who doesn’t like pancakes over waffles?”
His eyes hold a challenging glint. Dan stares him down.
“I do,” he declared shamelessly. Phil squawks.
“How dare,” he said. “Disowned.”
Dan laughs. “You had no ownership over me, Zacko.”
Phil all but pouts and remains silent. Dan nudges him with his foot. “Oi.”
Phil ignores him.
Dan sighs. “C’mon, next question?”
Silence.
“Phil?”
Not a breath of response.
Dan rolls his eyes. “Okay. Blue eyes or brown eyes, then.” he said resignedly, tilting his head off the couch and reading off his discarded notebook.
Phil turns back to him, just slightly. “I can’t believe you don’t like pancakes.”
Dan sat up. “I do like pancakes.”
“But you like waffles better,”
“Yeah, because their little squares actually catch all the melted ice cream instead of dripping it onto your only pair of clean skinny jeans.”
Phil angles his head back further and regards him with narrowed eyes, as if contemplating his point but not having it in him to tell Dan he was probably right.
“I’ll make you pancakes and confess my love to them in front of you if you want.”
Phil quirks up a tiny smile. “Brown,” he tells him instead.
He stretches himself on the couch languidly in triumph. “But your favourite colour’s blue.”
Phil looks pointedly at him. “But your eyes are brown.”
“And I like blue eyes better.”
“See,” Phil said, as if that proved everything. And then he laughed. “See? Because eyes see?”
Dan looked at him like he wishes his eyes didn’t need to see Phil. Vaguely, a strand of thought wraps its way around the tendrils of his memory.
“Your eyes aren’t ugly, Dan”
He rolled them. Phil caught at his sleeve just as he tried to walk away and forget the conversation.
“Really. They’re good eyes. I like your eyes.”
Dan didn’t look back at him.
“Do you like your eyes?” he said, just off the whim of the thought, eyes fixed on the ceiling.
Phil’s eyebrows furrowed. “Kinda, I guess.”
“Would you rather have brown eyes?”
Phil snorted. “Can you imagine a Phil with brown eyes?”
“Someone’s definitely done it on Photoshop.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’d look weird, probably.”
“You could suit them.”
“Maybe I’ll try it one day,”
“Maybe we could swap.”
“No,” Phil said. “Your eyes are good as they are.”
Dan raised an eyebrow at the ceiling. “You think so?”
Phil cleared his throat. “Yeah. Anime or Manga?”
Dan smiled. “Anime,” he said.
–
“What do you want for lunch?” Phil asked, clambering up and almost immediately slipping back down again as the numbness shot up his leg. He put it down gingerly. Dan’s eyes were closed.
“Are we cooking?” he asked.
Phil made a face. “Eugh.”
Dan grinned, eyes still closed. “Thought so.”
“No you didn’t,” Phil reminded him. “You don’t think anything because you don’t know me.”
“I know enough, Zack.”
Phil frowned. “You know it doesn’t sound half as cool when you say it.”
“That’s because you can’t pull it off.”
Phil threw a chinese takeaway menu in his face.
“Choose something,” he said. Dan scrabbled to get the slightly greasy brochure off his face.
“I literally get the same thing every single time.”
“Except I don’t know that, do I?”
Dan sighed. “I guess not. He leaned over to get a sharpie off their coffee table, and drew a thick, black circle around one of the pictures, and then gives it back to Phil. “Here you go.”
He debated getting up, and then debated just lying there. In the end, Dan stood up, stretching, and yawns. “Can you call them?”
“Don’t I always?” he said. Dan wriggles in his pants, bouncing to try and get them up to his hips.
“I wouldn’t know.” He flashes him a smile.
Phil ignores him, and fishes out his phone.
“Call them,” Dan said to him, wriggling around on Phil’s bed to find a crease that didn’t dig into his side uncomfortably.
Phil tossed the phone to Dan. “No, you do it.”
Dan jumped away from where it landed. “No.”
“I can’t be the one to call every time.”
“Yeah you can,” Dan laughs. “I hereby appoint you the official takeaway caller.” He jammed a random furry hat onto Phil’s head. “See? You have a crown.”
Phil looks at him wiltingly, but Dan’s expression is bright enough for Phil to hmph and take the phone back. “You’re doing it next time.”
“No I’m not,” Dan says. And he’s right.
“Your address please?” the slightly accented voice says on the other line. Phil tells them the familiar combination of numbers and names, and then murmurs a thank you as he hangs up.
Dan’s migrated to the kitchen, and is gulping down a glass of water.
“What now?” Phil asks, wandering towards him and opening the fridge door.
Dan bumps against him as he peers over his shoulder into it. “We wait, duh.”
“Yeah but,” he said. “What do we do.”
“Can’t we pause this, Phil?”
“No,” Phil said defiantly. “One day. You promised.”
“I did?”
“Yes. You did.”
“I don’t remember I did.”
“Well I do so you better stick with it. Plus, we have, what, five hours left? Six?”
“More like ten if I go to sleep the same time I always do.”
Phil snorts. “I’m not gonna keep it up until 2am, don’t worry.”
“I was worrying,” Dan mutters to himself. “I’m gonna go watch some baking shows because I’m not sure I could cope with you asking all my favourite tv shows in the world,” he said. “Just think of it as an honorary national trait for all British to love baking shows.”
Phil was only happy to oblige, sinking down next to Dan on their sofa once their food arrived. The salt in his noodles tasted weird while he was constantly watching sugared roses being piped by floury hands.
“Do you think they wanted to do this as kids?” Phil asked. “Rolling out fondant every day?”
“That’s kind of the point, isn’t it?” Dan says around his mouthful of vegetables. “All hail the Great Muffin Man, once known as the Muffin Child. Watch his dreams come alive on the Grand New Season of Extreme Muffins!”
Phil laughed. “The Muffin Child doesn’t sound like a bad childhood nickname.”
“It’s better than Zack,” Dan snipes. Phil steals his chopsticks.
–
“Is the rest of the day really just going to be an extremely elongated version of twenty questions?”
Phil smiled sheepishly. “Maybe.”
“You’re not going to at least ask me something deep and use your advantageous virgin Dan-innocence to put me into an existential coma?”
“I wouldn’t do that,” Phil said. “Also, don’t say virgin Dan-innocence.”
“I would,” Dan said
“That’s because you’re a terrible person.”
“You’re not allowed to make judgements based off 5 hour impressions,” Dan says, indignant.
“Actually, I kind of am.”
“Shut up, Phil. Step up your question game.”
“Fine. How do you think the universe was created?”
“Phil.”
“You asked for it.”
“I didn’t ask for the explicit recipe for existential dread. I meant like, I don’t know, if I was an animal what would I be, or what colour do I see my own soul as, or who I could’ve been in a past life – I don’t know, something like -”
“Boys or Girls?”
“Phil,” Dan laughs. An ugly, painfully hot wire wraps its way around his digestive system. “You can’t just ask that.”
“Yes I can,” Phil says. His tone isn’t playful anymore, layered over by a thin sheet of steel. The wire around Dan’s stomach glows brighter.
“No you can’t,” Dan murmurs. “Because they’re both unique in their own way, and they’re both good at different things, and I shouldn’t be calling it a both because not everyone falls into ‘boy or girl’.”
“But do you like all of them?”
“I wouldn’t say I liked everyone, Phil.”
Phil regarded him, his hands resting in his crossed legs, sitting directly opposite Dan on the couch. “Like, like.”
Dan rolls his eyes, but his throat feels dry with nerves. “Are you 11?”
“More like 7,” Phil said.
Dan was quiet, and he looked down to his hands. “You know the answer to that question.”
“I don’t really think so.”
He looks at him sharply, an abrupt jerk of his chin upwards. He searches Phil’s face for the telltale sparkle of ‘I’m joking, Dan,’ but he doesn’t see it. In fact, his face looks open, more than Dan has seen for a long time, really. He swipes his thumb over his knuckles, the skin over the bones turning paler than he already was.
“You’ve never kissed a boy,” Phil said incredulously. “You’ve dropped out of law school, and you’ve lived in a dorm, but you’ve never kissed a boy. You’ve been drunk in a dorm, and you still. You’ve still never kissed a boy.”
Dan avoids Phil’s eyes. “And you have?”
“Sure.”
“Did you like it?”
“Well, it wasn’t exactly bad.”
“Would you do it again?”
“Maybe.”
“Phil-” Dan starts.
“What?”
“I don’t… you don’t…”
“It’s not like I’m dating anyone now, so it doesn’t really matter, does it?”
Dan shut his mouth. “I kiss girls, Phil.”
“Yeah, and so do I,” he said. “It’s not that different.”
“You still haven’t kissed a boy, have you?”
“I haven’t been kissing anyone. And how would you know if I have or hadn’t?”
“Would you want to?”
Dan scoffed. “Who would I kiss?”
He says it like a joke, but even as he does, his eyes dart nervously towards Phil. Just a flicker, but he notices it anyway. He catches himself before he manages to completely fall into the line of his gaze. He clears his throats. “No one would kiss me.”
Phil rolled his eyes. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”
“You shouldn’t be.”
“There isn’t any reason why someone wouldn’t, Dan.”
“You couldn’t,” Dan blurts.
Phil almost looks offended. “Why not?”
“Because,” Dan stumbles. “Because you… you’re my, you’re…”
“Because you have a best friend who you wouldn’t want to lose over something as exceedingly stupid as an experimental kiss?”
Dan’s eyes flit over to him again, and the tiny brush of eye contact make his cheeks burn.
“He’s not here, Dan,” Phil reminds him gently. “Remember? I’m a stranger you found this morning.”
“No you’re not.”
“Yes I am. And I kiss well. I think. I don’t know. I haven’t kissed anyone in years. But I’m very male.”
Dan ignores the red still coming up the back of his neck. “Oh.”
Phil leans towards him, and Dan doesn’t flinch backwards, even though it takes a lot of self-restraint not to bolt.
Dan’s fingers tap on his thigh, and he jerks back, just slightly. Phil pauses.
“No,” Dan said. “This isn’t… this doesn’t go in a game.”
“I won’t hurt you,” Phil says. “And your Phil won’t either.”
Dan watched his lips move. “How do you know that?”
“He’s better than that, Dan.”
“This is a terrible idea,” Dan whispers. “I do know you, Phil Lester.”
“Pretend. Pretend you don’t, then.” Phil edges closer. His legs are still crossed.
“I can’t.”
“Too bad.” Their foreheads are almost touching. “I can.”
Phil leans forward by the barest centimetre. His breath falls over Dan’s. “For the record,” he said softly. “Strangers, yeah?” Dan catches the last glimpse of Phil’s eyes, wide and clear, before they shutter closed and he presses his lips gently against his.
It’s as if his mind breaks apart into tiny little windowed segments that all begin to shut down one by one. Phil’s presence a bowling ball, and every pin of Dan’s thoughts clanging downwards. Best friend. Roommate. Dan. Phil. Dan and Phil. 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, every year he’s spent existing next to Phil, crumpling in a tiny moment, until only one of them is left, and it’s the fact that he’s kissing a boy. Just any boy. A boy with eyes he can’t remember the colour of, and whose mouth tastes like a blank-faced someone’s favourite cereal. His hand floats up his chest, the basic instinct of wanting to push him away, but he balls it up into a fist at his collar, just under where the shirt ends under his throat, and holds him there as his lips move against him.
Somehow, he finds a way to fold his arm around them, and Dan feels the tickle of his fingers on the back of his neck, and it takes almost more than he has not to squirm at the feathery lightness of it. No, the whispers of his fallen thoughts say. No, Dan. Not right.
But they have no say over him now, because his squeezed-shut eyes are beginning to loosen and the tense muscles in his shoulder, his back, his chest – they’re all disintegrating and flowing towards this boy, all straining to be mushed into him.
He smells so warm.
Phil’s arms are wrapped around Dan, and Dan all but nestles under him and struggles not to cry. He squeezes impossibly tighter, and Phil either doesn’t realise or doesn’t care.
“Hey,” he whispers in his ear. “Hi.”
Dan just inhales him, the fabric of his jacket soft against his skin. His face burrows into his shoulder and he refuses to lift his face, because he’s certain that it’s probably red with the effort of holding it in place, and also because he doesn’t want to look up and realise he’s still in his bedroom back in Wokingham after all.
“Alright,” Phil says. “I got you.”
Dan definitely feels the squeeze that Phil gives him.
Phil pulls back a little bit, but Dan follows him, eyes still shut, lips landing randomly, on the edge of Phil’s jaw, and then under his eye, and on the side of his nose. Phil lets him, his kisses drifting down Dan’s cheek and floating over the top of his neck. Dan’s eyes scrunch up more and he lets out a little moan at that one, the hand still bunched up in Phil’s shirt tightening.
Phil feels a small shudder travel down his own neck, and then he really does pull away. Dan’s eyes blow open, and he just stares at him with glossy irises, biting at the corner of his bottom lip. He looks lost, like he doesn’t know how he got there. Some part of Phil thinks he probably honestly doesn’t. He swallows, and his mouth opens slightly.
Phil edges back. “Day over,” he says. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
And then Phil walks away. He never walked away from Dan.
But then again, Phil thought. I don’t know him.
He shuts the door to his bedroom with as quiet a click as he can manage.
They were lying on the floor, legs entwined – though never in a million years would Phil have called it that. Dan’s hands were folded on top of his stomach, and his elbow jutted into Phil’s arm. One of Phil’s hands was lying over his.
“You know,” Phil said, amused. “We’re lying next to a bed here.”
Dan shushes him, the only sound that he’s made in a couple of minutes. “Just let me bask in post-pinof glow on your mangy carpet,” he whispers.
“Is that what we call it now?” Phil asked. “Pinof?”
“Why not?” Dan asked, and Phil didn’t answer because he didn’t have one.
“We could still do this on my bed though,” he said.
“Nah,” Dan said softly. “It’s off limits.”
“And this isn’t?”
This time, Dan’s the one who doesn’t answer.
–
Dan grinds the heel of his palm into his eyes and refused to think.
Of course, his brain whirred anyway.
–
Phil woke up groggy, the sweat from yesterday’s clothes clinging stiffly to his skin. He hadn’t dared to venture outside of his bedroom again to shower, so he’d pretty much stripped and collapsed into bed without getting up again.
But now, he really did feel really gross.
Plus, he thinks, Dan’s probably not awake.
He runs a hand through the strands of his hair, trying to shake the guilt at the automatic attempt of avoidance.
“No,” he muttered. I’m going to go out there, and if he’s there, I’ll smile, and I’m going to be his best friend.
Still, as he tugged on a pair of pants and threw a shirt over his shoulder, nagging little bits of thought still floated around his head, and fresh waves of guilt crush over him as every new excuse falls over each other. He was probably up thinking until three.
Phil scrubs his face under the cold water, numbing his cheeks.
By the time he emerges from the shower, towel around his waist, the steam from the scalding water has left his entire body wrapped in a fog that spills out into the hallway through the opened door. His hair was probably a mess, and the carpet in front of him fuzzed into a grey blur. He inhaled the warm air from inside, and scampered until he reached the door of his room, the cool outside air biting at his bare arms.
Phil didn’t bother with straightening his hair, letting it sit in a wet fluff on top of his head. He threw on a shirt – still slightly damp from the shower air, and then a hoodie after that, just for good measure. He went out into the kitchen, clanging around a little. He banged his hip against the counter edge, and winced, trying not to yelp. His head hurt.
The whirring of the coffee machine hums therapeutically in the too-early morning. He yawns, and places his hands near the steaming glass pot for warmth. The microwave blinks 0900, but still, Phil doubts that Dan will be up before noon.
He’s surprised – and then guilty for feeling surprised – and then disappointed in his guilt at his own surprise, when Dan waltzes into the kitchen. Not so much waltz as trudge, though. And not so much Dan as why-am-I-here wet haired oversized half-sloth.
He froze up. For half a second, he felt himself stiffen, despite his – he checks the clock – 27 minutes of preparation. And then he refused to be the person that froze the two of them, so he opened his mouth. Phil doesn’t know what he’s going to say yet, but. But.
“Hey,” he said. “You’re early.”
Dan slides his eyes up to his slowly. “I feel like a zombie.”
Phil laughs. He’s glad it doesn’t feel forced. “You kinda look like one. You know, if zombies could have hobbit hair.”
Dan mutters something insulting unintelligibly under his breath, and shuffles past him. Phil feels the smile soften on his face, and he turns to the cupboards for sugar to hide it. He hears a faint sniff, and then the crinkling of cereal packaging.
Phil finds a bowl somewhere in the cupboards, and holds it out to Dan just as he’s pouring the shreddies. Dan glares at him, but lets the flow of cereal transfer to his bowl. Phil gives him a cheery grin, and reaches behind him for the spoons, one of which he plops down in Dan’s bowl. He plucks a piece of cereal from his bowl and nibbles on it as he holds his chin over his coffee, the steam warming the bottom of his face. Dan reaches around Phil for the milk, and brushes against the very edge of his sleeve. Phil pulls it out of the way, pretending to take a sip of the coffee. He didn’t. It was still fully black and fairly disgusting.
This is ok, Phil thinks. We’ll live.
Dan unscrewed the lid of the milk, and then stopped. He twisted it back again.
He turned around to face Phil.
“Phil,” he said. “Phil?”
“Yeah,” Phil said.
“You are my Phil, right?”
Phil tilts his mouth up in a smile. His facial muscles seized up. “I guess so.”
“Okay,” Dan said. “Okay.”
He took a step towards him, completely turning towards him and ignoring the cereal. Phil wished he could say he didn’t realise, but he did. He realised the sudden lack of careful distance. He clutched the handle of his mug.
“I’m just,” Dan muttered. “I’m just going to do something.”
Phil pretends he can’t feel his pulse thumping in his veins. “Sure.”
Dan trailed his hands on one of Phil’s hoodie strings. “You’ll let me?”
Phil sets the cup down gently. “Yeah.”
Dan followed his fingers up the string, into the curve of his throat, and his head followed. He was taller than Phil, but he slouched. He slouched, so his face followed into the line of his jaw instead of hovering over his forehead like he should’ve. Dan let his lips wander over him, and Phil keeps his mouth firmly shut. Not the time for words. Not the time for me at all.
The first touch is at the corner of his lips, a butterfly-soft thing that was as subtle as his bare arm brushing against the fabric of his hoodie. Phil didn’t even dare inhale, and he isn’t sure if the pressure building inside him is to do with lack of oxygen or just the close proximity of Dan’s hair under his nose – damp and still smelling like raspberries.
The second one drifted higher, and it was along the top of his cheekbone. It was gentle, still unsure, but like Dan was mapping something out now. Phil might’ve giggled. I have a roommate who kisses my face and completely ignores my lips, he thought derisively. Dan glided over Phil’s eyelids, pressed a tiny kiss to the bridge of his nose, and then gave him a peck on his chin.
He drew back a little, enough to open his eyes and to look at Phil. Not enough, he thought. More.
He glanced down, and not really knowing why, picked up Phil’s hand and slotted his fingers in between loosely.
Dan’s eyes flicked back to Phil, who had both eyes opened and was now looking right back at him.
“If I kiss you,” Dan murmured. “If I kiss you, right now, I’ll be kissing you as my Phil, okay?”
Phil wanted to fit Dan’s hand closer to his. He wanted to do a lot of things at the moment, but it wasn’t his call.
“Yeah,” Phil manages to get out. “Alright.”
Dan leans forward, and the fingers twined with Phil’s wrap tighter, holding their hands securely in place.
“When you said you could forget that you knew me yesterday,” Dan says quietly. “Did you mean it?”
“Yes,” Phil said, barely a whisper. “Thought you wouldn’t want the conscience.”
“But we’re both conscious now?”
“If you want,” Phil said.
“I do want.”
“Then okay.”
Dan reached forward, and after the longest two seconds of hesitation, connected their lips together. They’re soft, he thinks. Nice. Really nice. They fell open, and Dan caught his bottom lip in between his teeth, pulling at it gently and hearing Phil’s little whine with satisfaction before moving his mouth to concentrate on other parts, like the warm breaths that were puffing out from between Phil’s lips as his tongue slid through to Dan’s mouth. His free hand came up to comb through the back of Phil’s hair, and trickled back down to the counter’s surface. Phil pushed up against him, and felt the warmth blossom through his centre, thick and golden.
“If it was your last day on this planet, what would you do?” Phil asked. “If you had nothing else to lose.”
“I’d come back here, obviously,” Dan said. “There’s too much that I like about this place.”
Phil laughed. “No there isn’t,” he said. “Manchester’s not that special.”
“Yeah there is,” Dan said, looking over at him. His head was pillowed on his arm, and his eyes seemed a lot less dull in the moonlight. “Manchester has a Phil.”
“Still okay?” Dan asked, uncertain when he pulled away, adrenalin rushing through both his arms, burning out from his heart. He clung onto Phil’s hand.
“Dan,” Phil said, and he’s so full of the golden emotion that everything feels too heavy. “There’s something about you that I… I…”
“Mmm?”
Phil never finished his sentence. “Does this mean no more pretend?”
Dan stroked a thumb over their hands. “I think so.”
“Good,” Phil said. “Because it was getting too much.”
Dan laughed, and waits for Phil to kiss him.
He only had to wait two fluttering beats of his heart.
-fin-