Chapter Text
Rossendale is like a snow town. Dan immediately loves it.
Phil drives them there, and Dan envisions the next day’s headlines about a tragic car crash that killed both him and Phil because the latter consistently forgot to use his blinkers and went over the speed limit where he wasn’t supposed to at all.
“Do you always drive like you’re in a car chase in a movie?” Dan asks when they finally stop in front of a house.
“That’s mean. I’m not driving you back.”
“Good.”
“Hey!” He shoves Dan lightly as they lug their bags out of the trunk and walk to Phil’s parents’ house. It’s big, two-storeyed and very old-looking. The door has a huge knocker on it under which is a wreath, and Dan inhales the sweet smell of pine. Phil knocks once, twice and they step back a little. There’s some scuffling sounds from inside. Now that Dan focuses, he can hear faint music playing too. Probably Christmas songs. A small smile creeps up on his face.
The door opens and Phil’s mum is grinning at them. She's a whole head shorter than Phil and her laugh lines are really prominent but the resemblance is uncanny. They have the same bird-beak-like nose and twinkle in their eyes.
“Child!” She exclaims, coming out of the house to embrace her son. “Glad you remembered where we live, it's been so long.”
Phil groans. “Mum, we literally saw each other a month ago.”
“Exactly! It's been too long.”
“You're silly.” Phil rolls his eyes at Dan, who shakes his head in mock disappointment.
Mrs. Lester now looks at Dan and her smile falters. He gulps, but manages to say, “Hi, you have a lovely home,” to her, rushed and punctuates it with a laugh, on the verge of nervous but hopefully in a good way.
“You haven’t seen it yet, silly,” Mrs. Lester says, finding her smile again and it makes the heat rush to Dan’s cheeks. It’s occurring to him that he doesn’t know how to do this. His other relationships, real or otherwise, never got to this stage. He’s never met the parents. Nothing has gotten to this stage. He finds himself straightening his posture.
They follow her inside, leaving their shoes on the rack and Dan feels Phil immediately grab his hand. He looks at their intertwined fingers and then at Phil, questioningly.
“You look scared,” Phil explains quietly, so that his mother doesn't hear. “You shouldn't be. I'm here.” He smiles at Dan warmly and he feels it right down to his toes, making them curl.
Phil’s parents are – well, they’re nice and it’s not like Dan didn’t expect that, considering what Phil is like. But he’d never met people who looked and acted so much like a family. And they weren’t pretending. The sun hasn’t even set and Kath has fed them mince pies, and given them milk with cookies (this is when Dan finds out Phil is lactose intolerant and also very... opinionated about non-dairy alternatives. Apparently nothing beats almond milk and soy milk is the drink of the devil. Dan is endeared, to say the least).
He sits in between Phil and his mum on the squishiest sofa ever as she brings out the photo albums.
“Oh, this will be good,” he says, grinning mischievously at Phil, who groans.
“Just remember that all your childhood pictures are online and I can easily use them as blackmail.”
“Did it not occur to you that either most of those pictures were put online with my permission or have been on the internet for so long, I’m immune to the embarrassment that comes with it?”
He smirks as Phil rolls his eyes and opens his mouth in a defeated ‘o’.
It’s a fun time, looking at Phil’s childhood - it seems like they documented a lot of it. He learns that there’s also home videos of him speaking his first word, and taking his first steps, eating his first piece of solid food and Dan’s heart breaks a little as the camera follows a tiny, chubby Phil waddling into someone’s arms with his own fists in the air, squeaking, “eddymaaaan!!” at them.
“I don’t know either,” Phil whispers when Dan looks at him confused.
Hot chocolate and the sound of the whole family’s chatter and laughter warms him up right down to his socked toes.
^
It’s not like Dan and Phil hadn’t shared a bed a couple of times. But it’s different because this is Phil’s childhood bed. And it’s almost the right size for two six-feet tall men in their twenties.
“I can take the guest room,” Dan says, eyeing the bed.
Phil shakes his head. “No, I actually suggested that to Mum. Not because I don’t want you to sleep here,” he adds hastily, “you know. Boundaries. But she got all squinty-eyed, and I knew she was going to give me unwarranted advice just in case we were fighting, which we’re not so I…” He doesn’t know how to finish that sentence. He let his mum think they were a-okay? A happy couple with zero problems? Maybe they should’ve pretended to be fighting so they could sleep separately. “I just went with it.”
But the thing is, and Phil would never admit this aloud, but he likes sleeping with Dan next to him. He likes the feeling of him being close by, he likes how peaceful he looks when he’s not awake and worrying about a million different things and when he’s memorising lines so much because he wants to give Peej the vision he deserves to see onscreen (his words, not Phil’s) (although Phil is pretty much the same).
Just then, someone claps Phil on the back.
“Ah!” Martyn says loudly and Phil internally groans. He didn’t realise his brother was coming home on the same day as them. “I see you’re showing Dan Howell where the magic happens. Or, happened.” He turns to Dan now, holding out a hand to shake. Dan takes it and looks at Phil behind Martyn’s back, eyebrow cocked. “I’m Martyn, his older brother, spent most of Philip’s school years lying for him because he was never good at sneaking people out of the house.”
“Most of his school years?”
“That’s not true!” Phil protests.
“Which part?”
Phil grimaces, but doesn’t answer, and Dan grins.
His room is...well, it’s been modified into a guest room, which is slightly disappointing. But Phil thinks he does a well good job of explaining what it used to look like it.
“There were movie posters plastered everywhere, like not just the walls, but on the ceiling. Tom Cruise watched me sleep at night. And I thought it would be quirky to bring down some old toys from my childhood and keep them in the background of my videos, you know, to add a bit of personality, let the internet know what kind of person I was. And you can still see on this patch of carpet where I’d left my straighteners on accidentally and it’s burnt, yeah, Mum’s put a vase there to conceal it but I’ll always know…” He looks at Dan as he walks around and touches things and picks up picture frames with more young Phil and Martyn pictures. He smiles at them. Phil feels a little self-conscious. This room had never seen anyone explore it with the same eye that Dan was. Usually it was straight to the bed or to a wall (to the window?) and sometimes after they’d fooled around the person would look around and laugh at Phil’s silly possessions, or point out props from old videos but they wouldn’t stay.
No one has ever stayed.
“I’m going to take a shower before bed,” Dan says, jerking his thumb towards the door and leaves, towel and his toiletries bag in hand. Phil mouths an ‘oh’ and falls back on his bed, bounding once, and groans, hands covering his face.
It’s going to be such a long night.
^
Dan falls in love like this:
He’s at the supermarket with Phil and his brother, following from behind a trolley, a quiet observer. He chuckles at their bickering over everything they buy – the size of the jam jar, how many apples are too many apples, “you can get shaving cream in London!” “not before I have a full-on Wolverine mane!” (Dan secretly wants to see that and contemplates hiding the shaving cream now in the trolley)
It’s when they’re in the car, him in the passenger seat, and his hand goes to hold Phil’s over the gear lever automatically, and Phil doesn’t react, but there’s a small smile on his face as he tries not to run someone over as he backs out of the parking and get on the road. Dan feels heat rise up to his cheeks, warming him up more than the car’s heater could. Martyn talks for the whole ride home, asks Dan about behind the scene stories on his previous sets and it’s so easy to slip into this, to think that this is the first of many trips they’ll be making, that he’s starting to see the Lesters as family.
There are more moments where he catches himself looking at Phil for a second too long, his gaze lingering as he watches him in his natural state, around his parents. He smiles at Phil's accent changing significantly around them, voice deeper, words slurring slightly.
-
Dan goes back to Reading on Christmas Eve. Phil drives him to the station, avoids getting them killed but only after almost running a red.
“Mum told me to give you this.” Phil says, pulling out a tupperware, which definitely has cakes that Dan would kill for. “For the ride, or your brother, or whatever.”
They're stood on the platform and the train leaves in thirty minutes. They hadn't spoken much on the drive there and still aren't, which isn't unusual for them. Dan's started to love the comfortable silence between them along with the noise they create talking over each other and when Phil excitedly tells him stories from his childhood about filming in abandoned hospitals and first kisses behind trees.
“Thank her for me,” Dan replies. “Oh, I actually have your present.” It was something he'd found at a store when Phil had left him alone in a store and it screamed Phil's entire personality to him. He pulls it out of his pocket and hands it to a shocked Phil.
“Wh–I didn't get you anything though, I didn't even know —”
“It's fine,” Dan interrupts, but his cheeks are aflame. How embarrassing.
Phil holds up the plastic thing – it's a walrus in the shape of a milk carton, the size of Phil's palm.
“You put it in your fridge,” Dan explains. “I didn't know they sell these here. I have a golden pig I got in Japan.”
“ Aw ,” Phil says, grinning cheekily making Dan even more flustered. “So we're kind of matching, huh?”
“Uh.” There's an announcement about his train's departure from the station and Dan thanks every holy deity in existence for the timing. “Oh, I have to…”
Phil's expression changes and it's the same one that's so hard to read. He coughs, nods, and steps back a bit. “Yeah, yeah, you have to...Go on then. I'll make sure to tweet something emo as fuck about missing you.”
Dan laughs but that makes his heartstrings pull a little. It’s like with that one sentence Phil burst the bubble they’d been in for those few days.
He watches from the large window when he’s inside, waves at Phil, but Phil doesn’t look at him. He’s looking at the fridge walrus like it’s treasure that he’s found on a deserted island.
Dan looks away and stares at the empty seat opposite him, not at all looking forward to spending Christmas without Phil.