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Phil looks up during on of their Skype calls in the early days, when they were still getting used to that kind of interaction but had clocked enough hours for them to be comfortable in the silence, and doesn't really recognise the look on Dan's face for what it is.
Dan isn't looking at the camera, obviously, he's looking down at his screen, but there's something soft and unfurled about his expression.
The corners of his mouth are tugged back, a half-smile playing on his lips, his eyes lidded and unguarded.
Phil's attention hadn't been on the call, but on the game he was playing, and he'd thought the same for Dan. Last time he looked up Dan had been frowning at a web page he had open in another window, and they'd been satisfied with the susserant sound of each other's breathing, rather than feeling the need for chatter.
But he looks up, and Dan's expression is caught in that strange kind of fondness. He doesn't recognise it at first, he can't really place what it means, and Dan is quick to school himself back into something wider and exaggerated when Phil catches him.
But later, he realises.
He sees it again some months after that.
This time they're in Starbucks, only an arm's length away across a small table, and Phil is caught up in talking about something. He's not entirely sure what, but it's a sure bet that the part of the sentence he's currently at is far removed from where it started. He's been tripping from topic to topic for most of the day, filling the silences Dan leaves for him, shunted along by a riot of nerves.
It's the first time he's seen Dan in real life, the first time he's been this close. He's allowed to be nervous.
He comes back to himself to find Dan looking at him with that same expression from the Skype call.
"What?" he says, interrupting himself.
"Huh?" Dan's expression slides away from the one Phil is pondering and twists into something startled.
"You were looking at me like... I don't know."
Dan bites down on his bottom lip, and Phil finds that too is familiar. A whole host of things about Dan are familiar now. He's just not used to seeing any of them in real life.
"I'm not," Dan says.
Phil lets it go, because if Dan wants to look at him with such a fond expression, Phil is going to let him. He's also going to let him get away with denying it.
It pops up from time to time over the next few years. Phil is well acquainted with the fond way that Dan looks at him sometimes, but also with the way that Dan doesn't want to share that with anyone else.
"Edit that out," Dan says. Over and Over.
"It's fine," Phil might get away with, on the days that Dan isn't overly touchy about it.
He leaves in more of those looks than he edits out, but he mourns the loss of the ones that do fall on the cutting room floor.
It isn't because he wants to share it. That expression on Dan's face belongs to him, and no one else. It isn't something he wants on the internet. The last thing he wants is to share yet another example of a facial expression the ever-present masses have given an alliterative nickname to and appropriated as theirs.
But cutting it makes him sad anyway. Mostly because he thinks that perhaps Dan wishes that he didn't look like that sometimes. That Dan would stop it if he could.
It takes Phil a while to be comfortable with accepting it when it comes and not missing it too much when Dan hides it away.
But the rarity of it makes it more special, and he holds it close.
It takes a couple more years, but the look slowly stops being something Dan makes himself ashamed of.
In the privacy of their own home, their room, their bed, Dan will look at him with such unabashed affection that Phil swears it could seep down into his very bones and gnaw him open from the inside.
It feels like a responsibility sometimes, to be loved with that much intensity, but Phil likes to think that he deals with that responsibility just about as well as he can. He treats it like the precious thing that it is, and tries not to take it for granted, even when the days blend together.
Laying next to each other, skin slick and sticky, panting and naked, Dan looks over at him with the same brazen look of fond and Phil feels it like a hot lance to his chest, warm and beautiful.
"Do you know you do that?" Dan says, before Phil can say anything.
"Do what?" Phil stretches, pointing his toes and raising his arms over his head. His spine pops in a few places and his whole body relaxes. He feels a good ache, satisfied and sleepy.
"Look at me like…"
Phil knows exactly how he's looking at Dan, because Dan is looking back at him in much the same way.
"You do too," Phil says.
"Yeah."
"It's quite telling," Phil teases, "I think you like me a bit."
Dan rolls his eyes and shifts, putting a bit of space between them like he's annoyed, but he doesn't push Phil away when he chases him across the mattress and presses his head down onto Dan's shoulder. Dan's fingers track a light path down Phil's spine and he knows his posturing is all just for effect, just Dan's way. Phil is used to it.
"Maybe," Dan says, with no malice at all.
"No, you do," Phil insists, "look at you with your sappy lovesick expression. You love me, don't deny it."
Phil sounds a bit delirious but Dan makes him like this sometimes, giddy and happy. All of the time, actually, he always has.
"Yeah well, I'll have to do a better job at keeping my cool," Dan says.
"Not with me" Phil says, "you don't have to hide anything from me."
Dan turns his head, his hair swishing against the pillow. Phil is too close to his face to see him very clearly, but he'd recognise the expression anywhere now. He's intimately familiar with it, and he wouldn't have it any other way.
"Of course not," Dan says, pressing a soft kiss to the top of Phil's head and running his hand up from Phil's spine to the hair at the base of his skull. "You've got an all access pass."
Just as quickly as it was a problem, it isn't anymore.
"What?" Dan says, reaching across Phil's lap and pushing his fingers away from the mouse, "Why are you editing out that bit? You were being funny."
"Oh," Phil says, thinking that he might have missed the moment when the rules changed. "I thought-- never mind."
Dan takes over the editing and Phil sits back in his desk chair, content to watch Dan make the decisions.
He's happy to find out that maybe his all access pass isn't as exclusive as it had been.
"You don't edit out the look anymore," Phil says later, when it isn't so immediately pressing, and when Dan is relaxed enough for this conversation not to sound like an accusation.
"What look?" Dan says.
Dan is on their couch, like he is most evenings. He's slumped down way too far, but Phil's feet are across his lap and Dan has rested his laptop over Phil's shins. He's in a too-big t-shirt, joggers, and his slippers. He looks comfortable, relaxed and happy.
This is how Phil likes likes him best.
"Oh," Dan says, with a flicker of his eyebrow. "That one."
"Huh?"
"The one you're doing now," Dan says. "Where you look like you like me a bit."
Phil grins and Dan doesn't roll his eyes or move away or anything.
"Yeah, that one."
Dan shrugs and drops his hand to curl around Phil's foot. He runs the pad of his thumb over the bump in Phil's ankle absentmindedly, chewing on his bottom lip with light teeth as if thinking.
"I guess I hadn't noticed it," Dan says.
"But… you do it all the time."
"Yeah I know. I just meant I hadn't-- Like, I used to notice it all the time. I used to be so aware of when I was doing it, and so petrified that people would… see."
"And you're not anymore?" Phil asks.
"I guess not. It wasn't a decision that I made or anything. I just… it doesn't seem important. I'm not bothered."
Phil nods, and puts his PlayStation controller back into his hands where he's starting a new Battle Royale.
"Are you?" Dan says, his eyes on his laptop, not on Phil, but clearly not paying attention to what he finds there.
"Nah," Phil says He picks nonchalance not because it isn't important, but because he knows it's the right fit for Dan's mood. "I don't care."
Dan's thumb swipes over Phil's ankle one last time before he goes back to whatever he was doing, a small puff of air escaping his mouth in what sounds like relief.
"Okay," Dan says, "Good."
Phil goes back to his game. Some time later, when his character has died several times over and he's littered the air with far too many swear words, he looks up to find that open, fond expression on Dan's face and Phil matches it with one of his own.