Chapter Text
2020
So maybe temporary is relative. Maybe when Phil is in his eighties he’ll look back on the last three years and figure they didn’t take all that long after all.
But in his defense, a lot had been crammed into those three years— a world tour, coming out, an ongoing global health crisis. Some really lovely holidays in between there: the Australian jungle, a road trip from LA to Las Vegas, a second trip to Japan that was so unbearably perfect that he and Dan still gush about it.
He’s thinking of all those wide spaces. Room to stretch. No cardboard boxes in sight.
Now that’s all that is in sight. Cardboard box after cardboard box.
This, too, is only supposed to be temporary. Going from two flats with distinct purposes down to one with seemingly no purpose but to hold them until their actual home is ready. Until he’s done pending, done buffering.
He feels like so much of his life has been buffering, and not just the hundreds of YouTube videos he’s made and thousands he’s watched. But also all the buffering time to get to uni and feel like he could be himself, all the buffering time to meet Dan and know what it’s like to be so loved, all the buffering time to feel like they weren’t constantly on the edge of professional collapse, all the buffering time to come out. Makes the three years they’ve been working on the house seem like a lightning fast upload time.
Fast as the new internet connection they’ll have once they move.
If they ever move!
Being crammed into the filming flat— the gaming channel room full from top to bottom with boxes and he and Dan recycling the same four outfits because all the rest are packed— should be a sign that they really are going to move soon. And yet the last time they went to see the place it still had holes in the walls and wires hanging loose.
“You gonna try for a kilt again this year?” Dan asks, laying long on the sofa with one leg hanging off the armrest and the other bent to rest his foot on one of the cardboard boxes they’ve been treating as a side table.
Phil knows Dan is trying to cheer him up. Trying to get Phil to think about Christmas and laugh, instead of thinking about Christmas and feeling worse because he still hasn’t seen his parents since his birthday in January and still hasn’t met his niece and still hasn’t done so many things that he misses doing. It’s not the ideal way to spend their first Christmas Day together as they will be this year. So Dan is trying to make Phil laugh.
It almost always works. After all these years with Phil’s laughter as his goal, Dan tends to make it happen.
It’s not happening this time.
Because Phil is looking around the lounge and there’s no real room for a big tree like they had last year. Plus there’s no point in getting a tree here if they could end up moving before the holiday. Plus plus having a stranger come to deliver a tree, whether he’s wearing a kilt or not, is a risk this year he doesn’t want to be taking.
Maybe if the tree was dropped off like takeaway. But then he’s faced with the prospect of moving it inside himself, and that would only be a disaster.
“No,” he says through a sigh. “We’re moving.”
“Are we?” Dan snorts. He lifts the foot on the cardboard box and drops it with a dull thoonk sound. “Could’ve fooled me.”
That, thankfully, does make Phil laugh.
2020
“It’s going,” Dan shakes his head, “I’m yeeting it!”
“You can’t!” Phil says, gripping the golden pig tight.
“Phil… it’s ugly.”
“It’s unique!”
“It’s creepy.”
“It’s interesting!”
“It’s tacky.”
“It’s… it’s… vibrant!”
“This is really the hill you’re gonna die on?”
“Danny boy, if you yeet the golden pig, I’m sending your butt chair to hell.”
Dan barks out a laugh. “You’d just be punishing yourself! You know you like having something to look at while I try to get some work done.”
“I mean it!” Phil says, but his laugh says otherwise.
Dan furrows his brow and Phil knows this is an argument he won before they even started. They’re both so relieved to be moving — actually moving! For real this time! For real real — that no actual argument could be mustered anyways. This will be the final move for a long, long time. Maybe forever; it’s in the name Forever Home after all.
“You promise it’ll stay in your filming area?”
Phil holds out his pinky and Dan wraps his own around it.
“Fine,” he says. “Into the keep box. What’s next?”
Dan grabs something from the bin that Phil doesn’t see for a moment because he’s so preoccupied with his victory and with placing the golden pig in the right box carefully. He barely hears Dan say, “Well trash, obviously,” before turning around and seeing a little piece of bright green sea glass in Dan’s big hand.
“No,” he pouts. “Not that,” he makes a grabby hand for it, but Dan moves out of the way.
“We need to yeet more things, bub! We have way too much shit.”
“This is so small, Dan, seriously it’s not going to be the thing that immediately clutters your minimalist dreamscape.
“What even is it?” Dan asks, turning over the bright green glass in his palm.
“It’s like, just a little piece of home. That I got from very far from home.”
Dan lifts an eyebrow.
“I picked it out of the sand in Florida, I was I dunno maybe twelve.”
“So it’s beach trash?” Dan asks.
“I found it in the day I, er… realized I was gay,” Phil shrugs. Dan’s fist closes over the long-smoothed trinket. “You know, I saw this hot surfer dude, thought Gee, I’d like to kiss him, so I panicked, looked down and started burying my hands in the sand hoping no one would stare at me, and dug it up. And well, I’ve just,” he sighs, “I dunno… I brought it home, and then I’ve taken it to every new home with me.”
Dan opens his hand again and Phil picks up the glass. Dan licks his lips and smiles and says, “So, it’s sentimental beach trash?”
“I hate you,” Phil laughs. Dan already has his arms around him.
Later the bright green sea glass is tossed into one of the keep boxes right next to the rescued golden pig. Hopefully it will be a really fucking long time before he has to pack it up again.