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Phil loves his parents. He knows he is lucky to have the sort of parents that have always been easy to love, not necessarily all of the time but always by the end of the day. The problems they have had have been short-lived or inevitable and most of them have settled out like sand at the bottom of a pond- important but rarely brought to the surface.
Phil knows he is lucky, but his parents were not perfect.
Nor is anyone, he supposes. Everyone has problems. He refrains from talking about his parental problems with Dan because he knows Dan has different holes in his chest that sting when his parents are brought up.
But sometimes it hurts. The hurt comes in memories that Phil has tried to repress. The hurt stirs the bottom of the pond and brings that sand, those problems, bubbling and churning back to the surface like cream poured slowly into coffee and fuck, fuck it hurts.
Fuck. It hurts.
Maybe Phil shouldn’t have said anything during the video about fixing the plug- it was hardly relevant. Hardly relevant, the way his dad made him do it. Phil hadn’t been out at the time, but it was obvious.
He was small; he had floppy hair and tight jeans. Phil knew his dad thought he was gay, which he isn’t even by the way, and he thought he could stop it. Stop Phil from- from being gay. Or whatever.
“You know I’m bi, right?” Phil says suddenly, snapped out of his reverie.
Dan looks up blankly from his laptop at the table and pulls out a headphone. “What?”
“You know I’m not- I’m not gay, right? Just bi,” Phil licks over his bottom lip, feeling ridiculous. He’s had girlfriends, Dan knows this. It just suddenly seems so important to him to clarify that-
“Yes, Phil,” Dan squints, “everything okay?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Phil presses his lips together and nods, trying to shake the memories.
When he gets up five minutes later Dan doesn’t so much as look up, which sends trills of irritation down his chest. He knows Dan isn’t a mind reader, he can’t know that Phil is upset because he asked his boyfriend of eight years if he knew his sexuality.
God, he’s an idiot. He tosses himself onto his bed and buries his head into his arms.
He wonders briefly if he even has the tool kit still, the saw, the cordless hammer drill, or the stud finder his dad put in his Christmas stocking when he was nine or ten. His mind flickers back to what he and Dan got up to last night after a bottle of wine split after dinner and he wants to laugh- wants to, but does not.
He wants to go back in time and scream that it doesn’t work, that he’s not comfortable settling into what his father thinks he is supposed to be, that he’s going to fall in love with a man and it’s okay. He appreciates the gift but it doesn’t- it doesn’t work.
His dad didn’t mind Dan in the beginning. He was glad Phil had a friend- even one a few years younger who looked twice as queer. Queer. Phil hated the word for so long- he didn’t want to be attracted to men.
He’d had a couple boyfriends before, if you could call them that. Flickers in the night, more like. People who had great ideas of how the world could be and carved their names into Phil’s chest but they never quite fit against the curves of him.
Then there was Dan, and Phil scared himself shitless by falling head over heels.
And then Phil’s dad bought him a signed baseball like Phil had ever cared about sports, ever cared about a stupid ball with a stupid name on it. He never asked how Dan was doing, never asked Phil if he was dating anyone, but he bought that stupid baseball.
Phil lets out a little sob into his arms and fights the feeling of hot tears burning behind his eyes. He rarely cries- he was taught growing up that men aren’t really supposed to cry. Or wear dresses, or dye their hair. Definitely not supposed to date men.
The worst thing was that they didn’t really mind that much. No, they just didn’t acknowledge it fondly. Imagine telling someone about the best thing that’s ever happened to you and they nod and go back to making dinner. His mum said to not tell his dad when he first confessed about Dan- back in 2010. They were the first words out of his mouth.
He never told his dad, but his dad walked in on the two of them shirtless and littered in hickeys from the night before, his lips attached to Dan’s collarbone. He had shoved Dan off the bed in a moment of panic and Dan had yelped, taken aback before colliding with the floor.
His father had stared for a minute and then shook his head and left, saying something about going to the shops that Phil couldn’t hear over the roar of blood in his ears. Dan had a bruise on his arm for a week and a half and Phil had the memory of his father’s face bruised into his memory for the last seven years.
“Hey,” Dan says from somewhere in the present, forcing Phil’s face from the crevice of his arm. Dan climbs onto the bed beside him and turns Phil’s shoulders until Phil is on his back. Phil lets Dan manhandle him, uncaring.
“Hi,” Phil’s voice cracks.
Dan smiles softly, worry creased in his eyebrows. “Hey, talk to me.”
“I- I don’t. I don’t know,” Phil scrubs a hand over his face and laughs humourlessly.
“Something upset you, tell me. Tell me,” Dan continues, kissing Phil’s forehead, and then his cheek. “Tell me,” He says once more before kissing Phil on the lips.
“I’ve been thinking about the- the plug thing, that I said earlier. My dad made me fix the plug because he thought learning some man skills might change who I was, who I am,” Phil says sheepishly, like even after all this time he still isn’t entirely comfortable with his identity.
“They never wanted you to use your uni degree to do YouTube either,” Dan helpfully supplies.
Phil swallows hard and averts his eyes as tears escape with a breathy sob. “Thanks for reminding me.”
“No, that’s-“ Dan runs a thumb under Phil’s eyes, “that’s not what I meant. I meant that it doesn’t matter what perfect idea they had for their kids. I doubt Martyn is any better. They love you regardless.”
Phil steadies his breathing before continuing, saying, “Some parents are horrible, your parents didn’t give a shit, some parents are supportive. Mine were in the weird middle ground of making me feel incredibly guilty and sneaky for loving someone. Like it was- like something was wrong with me that could be fixed. Like I was broken.” His composure breaks again and he pushes himself up into a sitting position so he doesn’t suffocate from tears.
“Hey, shh,” Dan grabs a few tissues off Phil’s nightstand and wipes away Phil’s tears, only for Phil to steal the tissues and blow his nose nosily.
“I’m sorry, this is ridiculous. I’m thirty, I have you- I don’t know why this still bothers me,”
“Stop,” Dan frowns, “you’re allowed to be upset by things. You’re always allowed to tell me these things, I love you. I wish there was something I could do to help you, but the past is kind of hard to reach.”
Phil sniffs and leans into Dan. “Can you just promise me something?”
“Anything,” Dan cards his fingers through Phil’s hair.
“Our kids- can we make sure to listen to them? No matter what the issue is, I don’t want to expect our kids to be some perfect people and then get disappointed.”
“Oh, of course,” Dan nods and Phil only feels it from where he’s made a home in Dan’s chest. “but…”
“Yeah?”
“But we can’t expect to be perfect. There isn’t a soul on this Earth who has no problems with how they were raised. I reckon our kids will resent us regardless. The best we can hope is that they resent us fondly,” Dan finishes softly, but in a resolved sort of way that makes Phil smile against the soft t-shirt Dan’s wearing.
“You’re working through that, aren’t you?” Phil murmurs, “You’re forgiving them.”
“Yeah,” Dan smiles because sometimes he just can’t help it. He presses a kiss to Phil’s hair. “Not to brag, but I’m kind of an expert at this point. So if you need any help, I’m here.”
“Oh, how lucky I am to have you, an expert, as my own,” Phil pulls back to look Dan in the eyes. They’re both smiling, Phil with watery eyes.
“Hey, let’s stop being sad. We should go get milkshakes,” Dan wiggles his eyebrows.
“As if,” Phil counters-
“Hey, the nineties called, it wants its slang back,” Dan jabs at Phil’s ribs.
Phil sticks out his tongue and says, “Every time we get milkshakes you convince me to get one and my lactose intolerance decides to kill me.”
“You suck, fuck you,” Dan pouts, rolling his eyes.
“I mean, that is an option,” Phil smirks, the words lost in the way he wipes away the last of the tears from his face.
“I’m a bit sore from yesterday. Let’s get starbucks and you can get something with coconut milk. My treat,” Dan steals a quick kiss and Phil wonders what he did to deserve someone like Dan.
Maybe one day he could sit down with his father and have the conversation he’s wanted to for over a decade. Until then, however, he would continue loving his parents the same way they have always loved him-
flaws and all.