Archive of Our Own ^beta

He glances up when the door opens.

Phil looks anguished, face all crumpled, shoulders pulled in tight.

“Wazzit?” Dan says.

He figures it’s the usual. I woke up and you weren’t there, or I can’t sleep, or I’m hungry and there’s no snacks, or I woke up and you weren’t there and I couldn’t find my glasses and I’m dizzy but I need to eat a marshmallow right now. The type of thing that seems enormous to half-asleep Phil, but is easily solved once Dan gets a few words out of him.

Dan’s already starting to stand, popping his hip to the side so he can shut down his laptop while also looking like he’s ready to take action.

“I have a penis,” Phil mumbles.

Dan pauses. Scuffs a hand over his eyes, like seeing better will help.

“Sure,” he says. “Yeah?”

“Well,” Phil says, and then falls silent, pursing his lips.

“Like it’s – you want – kind of late, huh?”

Phil scowls back.

Dan studies him for a beat. He rolls his eyes, takes a few steps across the small room to get to him.

“Could use your own hand,” he murmurs as he pulls Phil in closer, letting the laugh creep in around the edges. He guides him up against the wall, feels him tense in anticipation before Dan gets a hand over his pants. Might as well annoy him a bit, if he’s going to come in demanding a wank at all hours of the night when he bloody well knows that Dan’s trying to finish a draft.

He presses up, a bit, cupping everything in his palm at once.

There’s a moment of – confusion. Phil’s soft, but he sucks in a hard breath when Dan touches him, body pulling taut like a board, twisting his head to the side so his neck is in Dan’s face. He makes a pained little noise.

Dan goes still, uncertain.

“Um,” he says, eloquent. “Hey?”

“No.”

Dan steps back, dropping his hands all at once.

Phil’s staring at him, wild eyed for the hour.

Dan tries to parse everything, but nothing surfaces. Phil’s sucked his lower lip between his teeth, chewing at it harshly. Dan just – wants that to stop. Doesn’t know how to get between where they are and what would make Phil stop hurting. Isn’t sure how he took such a wrong turn.

“Words?” he tries, after a minute.

“It’s like – there.”

He gestures down, indignant.

Oh.

Oh.

“It is,” Dan says, for lack of other ideas. Phil’s eyes search his face with that same wounded look that just makes Dan want to fill the gaps in any way he can.

(They’ve had I’m too tall, or I don’t look right, or I don’t know how to do this. He’s always mumbled it in bits and pieces.

Mostly he drops it, after a while. Dan tells him he’s still good, still loved regardless, and Phil huffs and whines and then decides that he’s having some sort of one-man self acceptance journey and won’t talk about it any longer).

“Other side of the seesaw?” he says, when Phil’s still quiet. It doesn’t seem like a talking night, as much as Dan wants it to be.

“It’s hot man circus,” Phil mumbles.

Dan tries his best not to react to that. He doesn’t actually think it works, but – he does try.

“What?” he manages, after an awkward beat.

Phil purses his lips again for a moment, then takes a few quick steps towards Dan’s laptop, turning it back on. His thumbs patter nervously at the desk while it dings and whirs quietly. He frowns at it while he gets to Youtube, but he seems more focused than upset for a moment.

“Here,” he says, finally, like Dan isn’t already leaning to peer over his shoulder.

“Hot seesaw circus clowns” the search says, which alone just about sends Dan to another dimension. The video is titled something similar. Phil skips ahead a few minutes impatiently, then lets it spin, making a vague gesture at it like Dan should pay attention now.

It’s just – two mostly naked, very shiny gymnasts, each one landing on one side of a seesaw and catapulting the other into the air, sometimes doing a flip before landing and catapulting the other in turn.

“How did you even – find this,” he says, a little awed. “Should I take the internet away from you?”

Phil makes a face at him like he’s seriously considering biting Dan’s thumbs off.

“PJ,” he says. “It’s clowns.”

“PJ sends you circus clown soft porn?”

Phil still looks deeply disgruntled, but – there’s a difference. A difference between being mad at himself or at the universe he’s found himself in or whatever it is, versus just – being mad at Dan. Being mad at Dan is focusable. It’s like a cat chasing a laser beam.

“Nevermind,” Phil says, moving to close the tab.

Dan swats his hand away. “No, hey. Okay. Yeah.” He stares at it for a minute, lets the gears whir in his brain. “I’m gonna describe the connection between your dick and clown porn,” he says. “Alright?”

He doesn’t think he’s imagining the smirk that yanks at Phil’s lips, darting in suddenly and then disappearing just as fast.

Dan can’t help pulling him into his side. He wants to feel Phil’s weird rabbit heart beat against his arm, wants the way he vibrates gently even at this stupid hour.

He doesn’t know if Phil wants that – and half the time he doesn’t, just squirms and mutters that his feelings are too big for his skin or that Dan touching him makes him feel like biting things. Especially nights like this, it doesn’t always go over well.

There’s a beat of doubt, but Phil swallows, bonks his big skull against Dan’s in acknowledgement. Dan doesn’t think it’ll last, but – that’s fine.

“Okay,” he says, studying the screen again. “It’s like – you try one thing, but it’s weird, so you over-correct, yeah? But – um – your dick is like –” one of the clown-gymnasts does some sort of flip where he’s straight as a board, abs flexing as he whips around. Dan has to take a beat to stop himself from blurting out your dick is hard like that man’s six pack, that’s the connection. “– like – yeah, mate, I’m stuck on this one.”

“Doing a 180 degree flip,” Phil mumbles.

Dan glances at him, and he’s got his lip between his teeth again, eyes wide and glittering. Which is just about the reflection from pixels into his eyes, and has nothing to do with – anything. Whatever.

“If it did a 180 degree flip it would land on its head,” Dan says. “And that man would die. Of clown gymnastics. It’s 360.” He has to pat himself on the back for how he’s learned to tell Phil new facts in a gentle way, instead of a condescending way, when he doesn’t seem like he’s up for Dan’s sniping about how Earth works.

Phil turns to him with a frown, anyways. Maybe he’s not that good. “I’ll make your mum die of clown gymnastics.”

“She would like that,” Dan counters. Phil’s frown gets deeper for a moment, but then he shrugs and pulls a face that Dan takes to mean that’s probably true.

The accursed video finally ends. Youtube helpfully suggests a pile of other hot clown videos.

Phil squirms, but he doesn’t try to escape. His arm ends up around Dan’s waist for a minute, thumb brushing at the thin skin under his old t-shirt.

“You invented the seesaw thing,” Phil says, after a beat. “Not my fault.”

“Okay,” Dan agrees.

He had done that, at some point, when he was trying to explain something or other about all this. He’s never totally understood why that was the one thing that stuck with Phil. He’s not even entirely sure why he was the one explaining anything to Phil.

“There’s a rock on one side,” Phil says. He’s back to looking a little wounded, eyes unfocused while he stares at the empty screen, like he’s lost interest in the laser beam of focus that Dan had from him a second ago.

“So it doesn’t wobble?” Dan blurts. “You showed me clown porn to say it’s the opposite of clown porn?”

He knows it’s a step back as soon as he says it.

Phil sighs, quiet and frustrated, bitten back between his teeth like he’s trying not to let Dan hear it.

“Sorry,” Dan says.

Phil huffs, untangling himself and shuffling off to the sofa they’ve tucked in the corner. Dan misses him like he’s his left foot.

“Sorry,” he says again, trying not to be petulant.

Phil curls up on his side, sleepy and loose. He tugs at a pillow until he can pull it into his chest. “S’fine,” he says. He looks exhausted, now that he’s facing Dan again.

Dan wants to bundle him up and drag him to bed more than anything, but he knows Phil well enough to know it wouldn’t work. He sits, instead, going crosslegged first and then pulling his heels up onto his thighs.

“Noodle legs,” Phil says.

“Sorry,” Dan says, automatic. “Again.”

“S’fine. Again.”

“You want to keep talking?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

They’re both quiet for a minute, but Phil keeps twitching like he’s about to say something. Dan’s trapped, he thinks. He doesn’t think they’ll talk about this again, if he leaves now.

“It’s –” Phil says, and then pauses almost as soon as he starts. “Like, landing with a thunk? Like, if it were even I could – do flips, I guess, I don’t know, but – no. It just crashes down on the other side, because that – weighs more. D’you know what I mean?”

Dan’s never really sure that he does know, and he’s even less sure now, but – he thinks he might.

“It’s like, uneven, because of that?”

Phil nods, sudden and emphatic. Dan bites back a sigh of relief.

Sometimes it feels like wading into the ocean, getting hit in the chest with a wave right when he thinks they’ve made progress. Every time Phil nods it’s like they’ve managed to dive over one, has Dan’s heart thudding with adrenaline like he’s dodged something that’s real and hunting for him.

“Sorry,” Phil says.

“Uh?” Dan blinks at him.

His lips pinch together, folding all funny for a moment like he’s rehearsing again. “I’m not good at this,” he finally mutters.

“You’re fine,” Dan says, automatic.

“I want to be better at it.”

Dan studies his face for a while. He’s said that before, Dan thinks. He’s said it about this, even, if Dan digs around in the dark crevices of their relationship, pulls out the moments he hasn’t thought about in nearly a decade.

“There’s things you can do,” he says, eventually. “About it. If you want to.” He’s not actually all that sure what Phil would want to do, exactly, but nevermind. It feels like he’s meant to start that conversation, if Phil won’t.

Phil shakes his head, quick, before Dan can really think any more about it.

“You don’t have to be stubborn,” Dan blurts. “Like, if you don’t want to. You don’t – have to stay like this just because it’s been this way? Or – I mean, we’d all still like you. I’d still like you.”

The whole thing feels – a little stilted, he decides. Like he’s just trying to check the checkboxes from some list that he barely remembers. He might as well be trying to repeat a speaking exercise from the French classes he took in school, mentally checking off that he’s spoken about girls and about boys, said the word for hurricane correctly and told his conversation partner where the library is. I like you no matter what, it’s fine, we can get you new clothes. Trans rights. We can buy another flag.

He means it, is the thing. It just leaves him off-kilter. It feels like it’s been years since they’ve had to go back to basics like this.

“That’s nice,” Phil says, flat.

Dan snorts. He knows what it sounds like when Phil’s had enough of him. It probably sounds fucking stilted to him, too.

“Fine,” he says. Phil gives him a guarded little smile, the kind that pushes its way onto his face even though he doesn’t want it there. “You want me to keep talking?”

Phil shrugs. He’s never exactly excited about these conversations. Dan figures a shrug is enough.

“Do you not want to because it wouldn’t fix it? Or – I dunno?”

Phil holds up one finger with a little frown.

“What would fix it?”

“Do I look like a knowing-things type person?” Phil says, instead of an answer.

“Yeah. That’s how you trick people.”

“What people?”

Dan decides to play dumb even though he has a feeling that Phil’s lost interest in everything else and is only trying to get him to say I fall for your shit every morning. “I don’t know. People. General people, Phil.”

“You fall for it,” Phil tells him, suddenly smug. Dan vaguely wishes that Phil knew him a little less well. “Otherwise why would you ask me all these questions?”

Dan rolls his eyes. “Alright, yeah. You’re the smartest person on Earth, actually. I was gonna tell you how hot you are, too, if you’d give me a minute,” he says. “Or is it just going to make your ego worse?”

Phil falls quiet. He pulls a sort of sheepish face, for a moment, picking at a thread on the pillow. “Tell me in bed,” he says, and abruptly tumbles off the sofa onto his face. Dan watches, bewildered, while he scrambles to his feet and disappears out the door.

—

He tries telling Phil, when he gets there, but he’s already shoved the covers over his head by the time Dan wanders in a minute later.

Dan turns around as soon as he sees it, pads back out to the kitchen. He gets a half-eaten bag of marshmallows and leaves it on Phil’s bedside table like some weird offering before he can sleep.

—

“What’s that?” Dan says, pointing at Phil’s screen. He watches it flick out of view as soon as he opens his mouth. Phil turns to him, eyes wide for a second before he schools his face into a normal expression.

“What’s what?” he says, innocent.

He thinks that maybe he should ask, but – he knows Phil.

“Burgers for dinner?” he says, instead, finding a spot on the sofa that’s a careful distance away.

—

It’s little things. He keeps waking up to a cold bed, to Phil already wide awake and busy, staring at him over coffee with a scrubbed-raw face and those careful eyes. There’s mumbled explanations that mostly don’t make sense. Something about birds, and worms, and birds getting snatched out of bushes. It’s always too early when Phil tries to explain it to him.

It’s fine, he decides. They don’t need to do every single thing together.

—

“There’s plastic on fire,” he says. He’s been staring at the ceiling fan for a minute, since he woke up, willing his blurry surroundings to coalesce into something that explains why there’s a horrid chemical smell in their bedroom.

“You’re not on fire,” Phil's voice replies.

“Phil,” he starts, flopping onto his side in the vague direction of it, “find out why –”

Phil blinks up at him from the floor. He’s sat in the corner, holding a bottle of nail polish, which is interesting, and apparently he’s just painted his toenails over the carpet, which is interesting in a completely different direction.

“Phil,” he yelps.

“What?”

“I – the carpet – you bought the carpet, why – Jesus?”

Phil continues gaping at him. “Why is Jesus?” he repeats. “Carpet – Jesus?”

“It’s so early,” Dan whines, flopping back into bed in the style of a dying fish. He doesn’t hear Phil get up or make any corrections to his life choices, but that’s all too much to deal with.

—

“They’re nice,” Phil informs him, when Dan finally straggles into the kitchen hours later. He points at his own feet.

“The carpet was nice,” Dan says, gloomy. “Past tense.”

—

“Can I help you?”

Phil keeps scowling at whatever he’s found in the closet. “I want – clothes,” he says. He flicks a few more things on coat hangers out of the way.

“At seven in the morning?”

Phil shoots him a look. “Supposed to be secret,” he says, like Dan should’ve divined that already.

Dan will never entirely figure out what Phil’s idea of a secret is. He’s pretty sure that pawing through someone’s clothes to see what you want to steal while they’re sleeping in the same room doesn’t exactly qualify.

“C’mere,” Dan says, for lack of anything better to say. Phil’s retreated back to that wounded look that he’s had for what feels like months now, but he drops the clothes he’s pawing through and pads over anyways. He flops headfirst into bed, yanks the covers out of the way and plasters himself insistently against Dan’s side.

“What’s happening with you?” Dan murmurs, once he’s finally settled.

“Everything’s wrong,” Phil says.

“Everything?”

He hears Phil hesitate, taking a little breath and then letting it out. “Don’t make me do therapy again,” he huffs. “Just – like – you know. Woke up mad.”

Dan presses his smile into the pillow he’s cradling, so Phil can’t see. He’s definitely made him list good things one too many times. “Can you tell me more?” he asks, doing his best professional voice, even though it’s a bit muffled.

Phil huffs again. Dan feels it as much as he hears it, the way his ribs expand and the little puff of wind ghosts across the back of his neck. “No. I hate you,” he starts. He’s quiet again, but Dan can feel him getting antsy, his whole body squirming against his bare skin. “I don’t want anyone to look at me. Like this. I don’t want to look at me.”

“So you want to steal my clothes and look different.”

“No. I don’t know. Yeah? But no. Your clothes are stupid.”

“Phil,” he whines. He pokes his big toe against Phil’s calf until he squirms.

“People just talk about liking things,” he finally says, when he’s done trying to kick Dan back. He’s muffled and quiet from the way his face is squashed into the crease between Dan’s skin and the blankets. “And I don’t like things. Like, any of it. Some stuff. But it’s all – I don’t want people looking at me.”

“Oh.”

“Oh,” Phil repeats, sulky. “Why d’you have it easy?”

“Easy?”

“Like,” he starts. “That’s mean,” he decides. Dan thinks he hears the click of his teeth snapping closed.

“Tell me. Make me cry.”

“Not like that. Not-hot mean.” He skirts his hand over Dan’s side. His voice comes out sounding like he’s genuinely betrayed by his own thoughts.

Dan wriggles until he’s on his back, ignoring the way Phil fights it, clamping his arm down around Dan’s middle and squashing his face against his ribs as soon as Dan stops moving. “Hey,” he says, softly. He pushes Phil’s t-shirt up, tracing his fingertips over his spine in little circles until Phil sighs.

“Not easy,” Phil says, quiet. “Sorry.”

“S’okay.” Dan’s not sure what he’s getting at, if he’s honest, but – he knows Phil. Knows he’s not exactly good with words, especially with this. Knows he means well, at the end of the day.

“Why’re you faster than me?” Phil finally says, so quiet that it takes Dan a beat to decide if he’s heard it right. “I don’t – I don’t get it.”

His heart twists.

He knows Phil’s had luck on his side, sometimes. Hasn’t ended up on the far side of the universe, hasn’t gone searching for the ragged edge just to see how close it is. He knows Phil knows that, too.

He also knows – they’ve had this conversation in reverse, before.

Dan spent so many years wondering why Phil could do things he couldn’t, why he was always chasing an idea that was right beside him and so far away at the same time, staring at him over cereal every morning and then racing ahead the moment he thought he might be catching up.

There were explanations and there weren’t, too.

He pulls Phil closer on instinct, yanking at him like he wants to shove him under his skin. Phil burrows in, when he does, apparently unbothered by how Dan’s feelings surface as wanting to make them into one big terrifying lump of a creature.

Dan’s brain flashes through the little secrets, the way Phil’s been ducking into quiet corners where Dan wouldn’t see and getting up early to potter around with it. He still isn’t really sure if he understands the depth of it all.

He remembers that, too, wanting so fucking desperately to do something impressive, and then getting frustrated with how small his sandcastle was when he looked at the rest of the sand.

Phil’s fingers tap impatiently over his rib cage. Dan pulls him even closer, not satisfied even though he’s gone breathless from the way Phil’s weight is crushing his chest into the mattress.

“I don’t know,” Dan says, finally. “Wish I did.”

—

“It doesn’t have to be just visual,” Dan blurts. “I think I said that, but, uh, in case you need to hear it again.”

Phil turns from where he’s trying to communicate spiritually with a flamingo. “What?”

“Uh. The gender thing?”

Phil scowls. It’s not exactly the reaction Dan was hoping for. “You tricked me,” he says, suddenly indignant.

“No I didn’t.” He did a little bit, maybe, but – not on purpose. It’s just been spinning through his head, whirring into a little ball of anxiety that’s been sitting in his throat all morning.

“You always take me to the zoo so I’m trapped and I have to talk to you,” Phil whines. “I can’t even run away here.”

“You’re literally trapped in my house 24 hours a day? And the exit gate isn’t locked, here. I mean, it’s not at home, either. Not that our house has an exit gate, but, you know. Also, um, the tortoises – made me think about it. So. You can’t argue with that.”

Phil pulls a face that Dan decides means you win again with your impeccable logic and turns back to trying to talk to the birds.

—

“What’d you mean,” Phil says. He’s swaying into Dan’s space in a way that’s sort of sweet but also kind of threatening, considering how precarious his ice cream situation is. Dan tries to focus on how they’re out now, and it’s cute that he wants to be close, and it’s a Wednesday morning in the middle of January, and no one’s around, and also sometimes melted dairy touches you and you as a rational adult do not run screaming from it.

It takes him a moment to figure out what Phil might be asking about. Sometimes his brain is just – a little occupied.

“About trains?” he says.

“What?”

“We were talking about trains.”

“You were talking about trains,” Phil corrects.

Dan pulls a grouchy face. “About what, then.”

“The, uh, it’s not visual thing?”

Dan whirs his brain backwards for a beat.

“Oh,” he says. “I mean, it like – it can be? If you like the visuals. Or – if you don’t, I guess. If you hate the visuals, but it’s – you know.”

Phil gestures vaguely at him to continue, swiping his tongue over the ice cream in a way that Dan pointedly does not care about.

“But, like, there’s… you know. There’s pronouns? And there’s names. And, uh. Other stuff,” he finishes, a bit lamely. Fucking weird how he can have a whole coherent talk with a whole load of people with a bit of practice, but can’t finish a sentence past about fourty-three percent when it’s just Phil.

Phil eyes him for a second, tongue still working over the ice cream. Dan considers throttling him. It’s probably bad timing for that.

“Can you stop fucking that ice cream,” he blurts. Phil just raises his eyebrows, smirking. He takes his sweet fucking time, and Dan can’t tell if he’s genuinely procrastinating or just being a pain in the ass.

“It’s not like that,” Phil finally says, sticking his tongue out to try to clean his entire face off like he’s genuinely turned into a giraffe on a physical level.

“Not like what?”

“Wouldn’t change anything,” he says, quieter.

Dan frowns. “No?”

“I mean, you know me. It wouldn’t change anything with us.”

“Yeah, but – there’s all the other –” He stops when Phil shrugs, crunching the paper wrapper between his long fingers. He’s staring at his own hands intently. “Or. Do you want it to? With us?”

“No,” Phil says, with a quick shake of the head. His hair’s been drooping in the light rain, flopping weakly when he shakes it. “We’re good. You’re – you get it. I think.”

“And you don’t want it to change with everyone else,” Dan says, slow and uncertain. “Except, like, kind of.”

Phil’s quiet for a minute, lips twitching every once in a while like he’s practicing a conversation.

“Not faster than it changes for me,” he says, eventually, echoing a conversation Dan knows they’ve already had.

“Got it,” he says, quietly.

Phil glances up at him, mouth quirking into a half hearted smile. “No more tricking me with the zoo. Starting to get llama trauma.”

—

“Good?” Dan says.

Phil looks up from his phone, turning towards where Dan’s leaning against the door frame. “Uh – yeah.”

“How’s being a demonic clown going?”

Phil makes a face.

“For Peej, not you,” Dan corrects. Usually he thinks Phil would connect the dots, but – whatever.

“Talked to Sophie,” Phil says, instead of an answer.

“Oh. Everything’s okay?”

“Yeah,” he says, quick. “Yeah, just, um. Wanted to talk with her.”

“Like – about PJ?”

“No. About her? I guess. And me.”

Phil’s giving him that look, again, absently picking at a thread on his jumper.

Dan doesn’t really – know that much about the situation with Sophie. Hasn’t really considered it, beyond PJ’s vague she’s good. It didn’t seem like something he could ask about. Somehow Phil’s managed it.

“Did it help?”

Phil’s quiet for a beat, like he’s trying to decide what to say. “Yeah,” he says. “She gets it.”

—

Dan knows the process, by now.

Phil orders his little things. They arrive and he tries them on as fast as he can, asks if Dan likes it, then immediately puts it in the Time Out Corner where the t-shirt or whatever it is has to think about what it’s done until Phil can accept it into his actual closet. Sometimes there’s another time out where it can be seen around the house but can’t go anywhere outside of that. That’s how it’s always been.

“That’s new,” Dan says, when they’re finally standing outside Martyn’s flat.

He’d shooed Dan out of the door just before the taxi arrived, ducked into the car a minute later wearing an outfit that they both know hasn’t been through the usual waiting period. It’s not that different from the things he’s already been wearing, and maybe that’s the point, but – he’d caught Dan’s eye like it was a challenge, as he’d settled against the door. Like he wanted to know Dan saw it.

Phil swivels to look at him, now, face pulled into an expression that’s somewhere between surprise and worry.

“I – yeah,” he mumbles. His fingers tap at his thighs.

“It looks nice on you.”

Phil nods, tugging at the sleeve a little.

—

“It’s pretty, right?”

He’s giving Dan that expectant look like he already knows what the answer is.

Dan hesitates. Not because it isn’t, but –

“Thought you didn’t like that word,” he says.

Phil’s face flickers with something. Dan can’t help but feel like he’s ruined the moment, a bit, being uncooperative like he is and asking questions that Phil probably doesn’t particularly want to answer.

“Felt like you knew too much,” Phil says, though, with a little shrug. He flashes Dan a sheepish little smile. “Now can you say it, please.”

Dan laughs, tugging him into a kiss. He laughs more when he pulls back and Phil looks all indignant at the delay.

“It looks pretty,” he says, pressing another kiss to his cheek.

—

“We could tell people,” Dan says, a few weeks later. He’s not actually sure why it’s a we event, other than – everything is, with them.

“No,” Phil says, immediately. He rolls his eyes.

“Don’t roll your eyes.”

“Don’t roll your mum’s eyes,” he replies, completely nonsensical. His lip pulls up into a snarky little sneer when Dan just stares at him. “There’s nothing to say.”

“I mean. Agender, or like, nonbinary, or you could try pronouns, or – you could just talk about it, like, describe it yourself, with human words, or –”

He breaks off, interrupted by Phil straddling his lap, staring at him intently. He balances with his elbows against the back of the couch, trapping Dan.

“Can you blink?”

“Nope.”

Dan huffs. They can have a staring contest, if Phil wants.

He just – worries, if he’s honest. Worries that Phil’s holding back, letting everyone jab at him just because it’s easier than having to talk. Worries that the this guy he let slip earlier on camera was too much, worries that he’s trampling over some line that Phil won’t tell him about, won’t tell anyone about. He itches with wanting to solve the problem.

“You’re being impatient,” Phil says. He’s careful when he says it, the way he is when he wants to make sure that Dan gets something.

“Teach me not to be,” Dan says, petulant.

Phil flicks his cheek, smirking a little. “That can be arranged.”

—

“Beautiful,” he breathes, when Phil’s finally spread out underneath him.

He’d spent an age fucking with Dan, wiggling into a little lacy top and shorts thing that Dan’s never seen before, mumbling something smug about visuals when Dan had failed to play it cool. He’s put on some sticky mess of lip gloss that Dan couldn’t help licking at every time Phil deigned to kiss him. He’d kept teasing Dan about how he was covered in it, little pink shiny splotches all over his thighs and chest, clinging to his lips after Phil had abandoned him again to go put more on. Patience, he’d said with a smirk, when Dan had whined at him.

They’re here, now, though. Phil’s out of the shorts. Dan had left the top on, after he’d realized that he could squeeze the little bit of padding and tell Phil that his tits looked good. Phil’s most of the way to incoherent, keening every time Dan talks or touches him. His makeup’s already mussed from the way he’s squirming, dragging Dan in close when he wants and shoving his face roughly into a pillow when it gets to be too much.

“You’re so pretty like this,” Dan says, resting his chin on his thigh, pretending he can’t tell that Phil’s desperately trying to get his dick in his mouth. He crooks his fingers a little, and smiles when Phil jerks into it and moans, squeezing his eyes shut against the dim lights.

—

“That felt – better,” Phil says, quiet. He’s sat on the floor of the shower, letting Dan carefully scrub his mangled makeup off with a washcloth.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Good,” Dan says. “That’s good.”

—

They curl together, afterwards. Phil ends up with his head on Dan’s stomach, flicking through videos of some guy making what seems like endless soups. Their blankets are bundled around the two of them, pulled tight in spots to try to cover two comically tall bodies. Dan cards his fingers through Phil’s hair, carefully tugging at the little tangles.

“This man’s stew is stupid,” Phil decides, reaching up to shove Dan’s phone out of his face and replace it with the soup man. “There’s croutons.”

“Stew-pid,” Dan offers.

Phil keeps insistently shoving the screen at him until Dan drops his phone and takes Phil’s instead. Phil yawns when he does, curling onto his side. “You’re stew-pid,” he mumbles.

“That would be soggy,” Dan agrees. “Disgusting wet bread man.”

Phil nods very seriously, reaching to take his phone back.

Dan studies him, for a moment, his pale face bathed in the dim blue light of his screen. He doesn’t look any different, really. His pajamas are still insanely tacky and well-loved. The glasses he puts on at night are the same ones that he’s had on his bedside table for ages, all bent up and patched together.

He’s just – relaxed, is all. Not that the conversations aren’t awkward, or that they’ve really moved that far from where they were a few months ago, but – Dan thinks they can talk, sort of. Phil can drop his flippant bratty little comments about how Dan has to call him pretty, and it’s not a whole ordeal. God knows he does that all the time, now.

“Stop thinking,” Phil says, breaking into Dan’s head. He doesn’t even look up from the newest soup video.

“I’m not,” he says, automatic. He laughs when Phil immediately pokes his stomach, catches his hand and wrestles him until he’s bundled up in Dan’s arms.