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It’s not an argument, per se, because they don’t fight about it. It’s a disagreement. A difference of opinion. It’s fundamental , Dan used to insist. But Dan also used to think relationships were all-or-nothing, sharing every thought that entered his mind and letting go of interests or passions that weren’t mutual. It took a lot of growing to realize that honesty and open communication didn’t mean he had to express every niggling, irrational bit of negativity, that in fact their relationship could flourish if he kept some of the doom and gloom to himself. And it was okay that watching Buffy through twice was enough, and he was free to watch F1 by himself. Free to have his own interests and opinions and be his own person.
But they get caught up on this, every so often. On terminology and what it means and to whom and how do they navigate these waters together when they’re in different boats?
I identify , Phil always says, But it’s not my identity.
“I’m not saying it’s the only part of me that matters,” Dan says, now, wrapping dishes in bubble wrap and stacking them neatly in a box. Phil has been relegated to non-breakables because he can’t stop himself from pinching and popping the little circles of air. “It’s just… a really big part of me. I would be a completely different person if I were straight.”
“I wouldn’t,” Phil says with a shrug, and Dan wants to argue that point but Phil doesn’t give him the chance. “I would be a completely different person if I didn’t have you, though,” he says, eyes big and round and so blue even from across the kitchen in their bright, bright new flat that they’re leaving behind for a home of their own.
Dan doesn’t know what to say to that. He stopped being saccharine around the same time he stopped forcing himself to only like what Phil liked. He gives Phil a square of bubble wrap instead, trying not to look too pleased, but Dan loves to be told sweet things and Phil, snagging the plastic, knows this better than anyone. And he isn’t above using it to end a non-argument.
***
Dan doesn’t stop thinking about it, though. About Phil, a straight Phil, just the same and just as wonderful but completely incapable of loving Dan. That alone has to change him, Dan thinks, selfish and conceited but with no shame about it. There’s no universe where Phil would be the same without Dan’s love. No world in which he could be the way he is now without kissing Dan.
But his mind does what his mind does and he lies awake that night, staring at the ceiling, picturing all the ways it would have been different. The ways it would have gone wrong.
Not having the courage to lean across the gap between them, fifty meters into the clouds, and steal a kiss from a straight boy. Things already felt dangerous, shaky and unsettled and too high up at the top of the Wheel of Manchester. He wouldn’t risk it, couldn’t risk it, putting his queer heart in the hands of someone who had pictures of pretty blond women papering his walls. Putting his peach-bruisey body at risk of heterosexual wrath.
Would he have even made it to Manchester? Would brave, bold, helplessly smitten Dan have felt that same burst of courage, of desperate longing, and in the harsh glow of computer screen lighting peeled his too-tight t-shirt over a body he only sometimes liked, gangly and still growing and with a layer of babyfat that wasn’t helped by his steady diet of crisps and ribena. Would Phil have looked away, repulsed? Looked away, embarrassed for Dan? Looked away, fury painting the sharp angles of his face, crushing Dan’s heart beneath the slamming lid of his laptop?
It’s going on four when the worst thought strikes: that Phil, strange and quirky and sometimes lonely, maybe never would have looked twice at Dan. The tweets, the comments, the borderline stalking. Phil would have seen a fan embarrassing themselves for his attention. Which is what it was, Dan will admit. But he had a pretty face and knew how to make people want him and in this alternate universe, with a Phil that can’t want him , Dan may never have gotten a reply to begin with.
Phil rolls towards him like a thunderclap, disrupting his thoughts. Throws an arm over Dan’s waist and thunks his head, hard, into Dan’s shoulder. “Ow,” he says. “Go to sleep,” he says.
“I’m asleep.”
“Daaaan. I’m too tired to sort through that mess of a head.”
“Oi!”
“Beautiful head. What a beautiful head you have,” Phil mumbles. Dan can feel his lips moving across the bare skin of his bicep, leaving behind a quickly cooling wetness where Dan is soft and fleshy. “Don’t you want me to have my beauty rest?” Phil asks, quiet between them. “You don’t want me to be ugly, do you?”
“That’s blackmail,” Dan accuses. He knows he isn’t fooling Phil, that his voice rings out clear, wide awake.
“No,” Phil says, scooting in closer, impossibly closer, draping his warm body over Dan who is already over-heated, soaked from anxiety and the night sweat side effect of the medication that’s supposed to be keeping it in check. Phil curls over him like he doesn’t mind it, the damp sheets or the drips down Dan’s temple. “Not blackmail,” he reiterates as he makes himself at home in the sticky, salty crook of Dan’s neck. “Blackmail is if I promise to eat you out in the morning if you go to sleep.”
That’s mean , Dan almost says, but keeps his mouth shut. He can’t just turn off his mind. Phil’s always had the incredible ability to filter out the things that upset him, negative thoughts coming to conscious only long enough to recognize that they’re negative, never long enough to dwell on or even identify. He can skim and ignore the inside of his head in a way that’s sometimes worrying but mostly just induces a terrible jealousy in Dan.
“Alright,” Phil says, pulling away. He disappears and Dan feels a brief coolness where his body was. It should be a blessing, a saving grace in the swamp of his night body, but he feels sick with emptiness for the mere seconds Phil’s gone.
There’s a metallic click, and the bedside lamp casts judgement over him.
Phil sits up, props himself at the head of the bed and pats his lap in invitation.
“I’m really gross right now,” Dan protests, already halfway to the pretzel of Phil’s legs. Phil pulls him flush, lets the space between them get muggy and damp and rubs a hand up and down Dan’s back.
“Is this about earlier?” Phil asks. It’s hardly perceptive. Dan was having a good day, otherwise.
“No.” Lies.
“Dan—”
“What if we never met?”
Phil sighs. “We did.”
“But what if we hadn’t?”
“It doesn’t matter, because we did.”
“But can you just imagine for a second if—”
“No, I can’t, because it sounds awful and it’s not possible anyway.”
It is possible , Dan wants to say. If you were straight, it’s entirely possible.
But he’s being stupid. Being dramatic. Being dumb and needy and taking things too far like he always does. Phil never said he’d rather be straight. He’s never wished away the part of him that lets his eyes linger on a pair of broad shoulders. This is all Dan, his weirdness and his issues and his unfounded fears.
“Do you want to put on a movie?” Phil asks after a few minutes of rubbing circles into Dan’s back, shoulder to sacrum to shoulder.
“Aright,” Dan says. He’s not going to get any sleep. Phil knows this. Phil sacrifices a good night’s sleep too often for Dan to feel anything but guilty about it. But his guilt doesn’t eclipse his selfishness, and it certainly doesn’t hold a candle to stark and powerful way he needs Phil on nights like these.
“Make popcorn,” Phil commands on his way out to the lounge. “I’m picking the movie.” Phil’s wearing their duvet around his shoulders like a cape. But he’s always been Dan’s hero.
***
Dungeons and Dragons is a kind of nerdy that Dan’s new to. His youth was filled with console games and time spent alone in his room. He never really had enough friends for tabletops.
It’s easy to get lost in the story, in the fantasy that Wirrow is spinning for them. Phil clearly agrees, drooling over the description of a Half-Orc Barbarian that’s attacked their party.
“How much are his muscles bulging again?” Phil asks. Dan sends him a look. “What?! It’s not me, it’s my character! He needs to know this for, uh, succeeding in battle and whatnot.” Ah, yes, Phil’s Halfling Mage named Shazeem, with a missing eye, a fear of beaks, and, apparently, Phil’s predilection towards men who can carry him around.
Wirrow makes Phil roll for disadvantage against all the Barbarian’s (who they have lovingly started referring to as Horc the Hunky Orc) attacks that come his way. “It hits! Shazeem, too distracted by the sheen of sweat on Horc’s curling bicep, failed to realize that that bicep was curling to take action. Against him.”
“Can I roll to seduce?” Phil asks, looking frantically at his character sheet. “Is that charisma?”
Dan feels stupid all over again, wasting sleep over something as impossible as Phil being straight. Phil can’t even keep his cheeks from pinking over the thought of an imaginary buff orc. Dan finds him incredibly embarrassing. And he feels incredibly lucky.
He also feels like he isn’t about to be upstaged by a fucking orc , so his Elven Rogue kills him with a well-placed dagger.
“Horc!” Phil cries. And it’s definitely Phil because Shazeem has the world’s most atrocious Welsh accent.
“He was attacking us,” Bryony says, rolling her eyes. “Phil please don’t get attached to every side character.”
“There are a lot,” Wirrow agrees, peering from behind his DM screen. “Save yourself the emotional turmoil.”
“I also accept congratulations,” Dan says, butting in. “In the form of someone else refilling my drink please.”
“How about the traitor gets it?” Bryony suggests, grinning at Phil.
“We could have talked him onto our side!”
“Not with Shazeem’s charisma you couldn’t,” Wirrow laughs.
“Daaaan,” Phil whines. “They’re being mean to me.”
Dan just pushes his empty cup towards Phil. “You brought this upon yourself, orc fucker.”
“Harsh, Dan,” Byrony says, laughing as Phil begrudgingly heads to the kitchen. “He’s a half-orc fucker. Get it right.”
Phil comes back with Dan’s filled cup, an extra snack, and a look in his eyes that says I know you’re jealous of a fictional beasty hunk. He gives Dan both the drink and the snack, and a quick knee squeeze under the table. Because Phil loves him. Because Phil loves boys. And it doesn’t matter what’s going on in any alternate universe because he has Phil in this one, loving and weird and immediately hitting on the barbarian they come across in a tavern.