Chapter Text
Dan isn’t sure why he gets it in his head to propose over a video. But once it’s in there, he can’t quite shake it.
It takes a while for Dan to feel sure he even wants to do a proposal at all.
And anyway... it’s not a proposal proposal. That is, it’s not the sort of proposal one does in the fireworks at Disneyworld or during a family reunion while everyone’s wearing their Sunday best. Public and with a spotlight and impersonal while being performative. It’s not the sort of proposal that takes the person being proposed to completely by surprise. Those are, well. They’re messy. They’re not the best way to begin a life journey with someone.
But Dan isn’t proposing that he and Phil begin a life journey anyway— they’re on that journey already, they started it ages ago and have chosen every single day to keep it up. This is just about another element. A permanent, legal element. A celebratory we’re-out-and-open-and-look-how-in-love-we-are element. For themselves, for their friends and family. For the tax break. This is about a wedding they can afford to be gaudy with; this is about a marriage they’re ready to start. And Dan knows it because they talk to each other. They talk to each other about what’s going on in their heads and their hearts and what their future looks like. They talk to each other about everything.
In the very beginning, years and years ago now, they talked about why the idea of marriage didn’t appeal to them much. Dan, because of the shit example his parents’ marriage set. Phil because of a keen understanding from age twelve that he didn’t want the only sort of marriage being offered legally. And things are different now. Dan has seen many marriages that don’t reflect that of his parents. The UK has changed its laws. What they were once afraid to let themselves want, they realise might actually be something their future holds.
So Dan proposing isn’t so much a caving to heteronormative traditions— a man proposing to another man wouldn't ever be that anyway, he tells himself— but just another bullet point in the long long conversation of what they’re doing in this life together.
And he gets it in his head to do it in a video for a few reasons, a few small reasons that add up enough to convince him to do it. One, the cheesiness. Proposals really ought to have an element of cheesiness, right?
Two, he’s less likely to get tongue-tied considering he can do as many takes as he needs. He can make sure he says everything he wants to.
Three, he wants to beat Phil to the punch. They talk enough about the future to know proposing has been on Phil’s mind; if Dan takes as long to make this video as he does any of his others, he’ll be the proposee instead of the proposer. Which is fine, but he anticipates 50+ years of banter along the lines of “You should’ve never asked me to marry you,” when one of them wins a game, or “It’s what you agreed to when I proposed,” when they quibble about who has to take out the bins. He just wants to determine which jokes he’ll be making.
Dan seizes the opportunity of Phil spending a weekend with his parents. Dan stayed behind for a meeting with the BBC but has nothing else planned for the time alone. Nothing except working on a proposal video.
He borrows Phil’s filming setup, the chair and white wall and bookshelf he helped assemble that’s covered in various trinkets. He borrows it partially because he doesn’t want to bother deciding on a background of his own. And partly because there’s something symbolic there, about sliding into Phil’s space the way he did when they met. He doesn’t write a script. This, he thinks, has to feel more natural.
The plan is to film and edit what should genuinely be a short and to-the-point video, and ask Phil to take a look at it once he’s back home. Ask for some of those famous editing tips or whatever, and sit beside him while he watches. He’s not going to have a ring or anything, he likes the idea of them going to pick out their rings together. He’s not going to get down on one knee or ask Nigel for permission.
He’s basically saying screw all traditions that aren’t Dan and Phil approved. Videos are approved. Being simultaneously low key and dramatic is approved.
There are forty solid minutes stood before his wardrobe which Dan spends contemplating what shirt to wear. He decides on the red and white hoodie which Phil spent an entire evening watching YouTube tutorials on fancy bows for so he could make up for the fact that he untied it. It’s still not exactly the same, but Dan could hardly stay annoyed with him for long.
His curls are as good as they’re going to be considering he keeps fiddling with them in unnecessary nerves. He can see his rosy patch in the viewfinder, very rosy.
Dan spends what feels like ages simply sitting in Phil’s chair and staring straight into the lens. He hadn’t wanted to feel stiff or confined to a script, and now he’s stuck unsure of just how to start. “Hello, Internet” isn’t applicable— this isn’t a normal video, this isn’t for the internet. This is for Phil. And “Hello, Phil” feels like the beginning of a villain monologue or something for reasons he can’t fully justify.
He has a thought. A somewhat wicked little thought. A thought he isn’t fully convinced he’ll leave in the final video; it’s just as likely he’ll edit it out, but hell he just needs something to get him started. Then he can go on about how much Phil means to him and how much light he brings to his life, about how proud he is of the man Phil has become and how much he owes the person he’s grown into to the years they’ve spent together, how he drives him mad and how he hopes he never stops, how Phil’s mind amazes him, how Phil’s ass amazes him, how they’ve been through absolute shit together and come out clean and how he wants to do that again and again and again for all their days… all that very true stuff that feels like too much to actually say, but fuck he’ll find some way to do it.
Maybe all he’ll need to say is, “I love you, Phil. Let’s get married.”
But first, he needs to start.
He clears his throat, takes a deep breath. He looks into the lens, laughs at how dumb this opening is, and says, “Awrf, hi Phil!”