Work Text:
Dan is almost done with his exam when the oven at the front of the room starts beeping.
“Fuck,” the boy next to him says. He’s standing up, like it’s a fire alarm, but Dan is too busy. Dan will finish this paragraph.
Someone hits the oven, and it stops beeping.
There’s a ghost on his left side, but it’s fine. The ghost is just keeping him company.
“Dan,” the ghost says. The air around his desk gets very cold for a moment, and then it’s putting its ghost hand on his shoulder. It’s fine, though. The ghost is just here for moral support.
“Dan,” it says again. It sounds like it’s trying to get his attention, but Dan is so busy, so focused right now. He does not have time for ghost drama. Maybe after this paragraph. Maybe not ever.
His hand hurts from holding the pencil.
“D’you want a coffee or not,” it asks him. He does, of course he does. Of course he would love a coffee right now, but that’s so illegal and the exam police would so get him. He doesn’t really know how to communicate the delicate rules of school exams to a ghost.
“No,” he tries, even though it sounds odd to his ears.
“Daniel,” Phil says, too loud, breathing a puff of warm air on his face. In a classroom? That can’t be right.
He squeezes his eyes shut.
When he opens them, he’s horizontal. He’s got his left hand clamped tight around a bit of pillowcase, and for a minute he wonders where the pencil went. Phil is sat next to him, but he’s quite naked for someone in a classroom environment.
“Sorry,” Phil says, quieter, nudging his glasses up to scrub a knuckle over his half-closed eyes, “I’ll get the coffee.”
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“We have that thing,” Phil says, scooting Dan’s mug over.
“That thing?”
“Yeah. That thing you didn’t want to do.”
Dan takes a long gulp of coffee, even though it’s too hot and too strong to go down easily. He likes to dawdle over it, usually, but Phil hates to even consider that they might be late, so alright.
“So we’re up at seven for a thing neither of us wants to do?”
Phil doesn’t say anything, but he makes a face. He doesn’t comment on Dan’s extrapolation.
“For how much money?”
“Um,” is all Phil says. “A bit?”
“So it’s just,” he trails off. He puts on a voice, something vaguely like their manager’s, “for exposure, then.”
“Yeah.”
Dan looks away, not wanting to see the look on Phil’s face or show Phil too much of the look on his own.
For all Phil claims to be lazy, he has apparently unlimited energy when it comes to signing them up for things. It’s - good, probably. Good for their career, people are saying. People at their studio congratulate them for working so much. For getting so much work. Dan should be grateful.
He’s just - exhausted, is all.
It’s been like this for weeks. Dan wakes up tired. He whines about it, and then Phil harasses him about how he hasn’t bothered to eat more than scraps in days, of course he’s tired, and then they fight, and then he’s even more tired and even less hungry than he was before. And then - Phil is annoyed. Phil is almost always annoyed. He hides it well enough; he’s still nice, but there’s - something behind it that’s not right. He doesn’t want to think about that too closely, but that half-formed fact has settled into his bones right next to the exhaustion. Sometimes he stares those twin truths in the face and they envelop him like they’re welcoming him home.
He’s tired, and Phil is mad at him. They can say anything they want to each other about it, but Dan can’t find it in himself to make it any less true.
Phil deals with it by working. They’ve - talked about it, but. He’s the one that tries to find a way out of the cave when Dan won’t. He types and reads and researches and plans and types more and emails people and rarely comes up for a breath. Some days he only surfaces just long enough to whisper okay, I got it all done as he climbs into bed and curls around Dan’s drowsy, cotton-muddled body. When Dan wakes he’s gone again, just a clattering sound in the kitchen or a soft rhythmic tapping on the couch.
He’s so - steady. So kind, and so reliable, even in his quirks. He shoulders so much. He works so hard. Even when he’s mad at Dan, like he always is, he’s gentle with him. He’s so many things that Dan reaches for; so many things he’s desperate to immerse himself in until they sweep him into their comforting rhythm.
They just feel like opposites, sometimes. Like they’re headed in different directions. On good days, it feels like Dan’s being dragged around by the hand while Phil pursues this insatiable need for more. On bad days - on a lot of days - he thinks maybe Phil is moving a normal speed, and maybe he’s the one pulling backwards, dragging his feet and clawing at branches to save himself from a current that’s just taking them where they want to be. He can’t believe in destiny - but Phil is so sure and so determined, sometimes, it starts to seem like he must understand something that Dan -
“Hey,” Phil murmurs right in his ear, “come back here.”
A warm weight has settled around his shoulders; arms looping around, trapping his own and dragging him back to earth. Phil presses a clumsy kiss to his cheek, even though he has to reach a bit.
“Sorry. I’m fine.”
Phil laughs a bit at that, puffing out a little breeze.
“Bit hard to hide it when you talk to yourself.”
Dan twists to look at him, expecting to see something awful, but Phil just looks fine, mostly. More than a little tired, and that’s probably Dan’s fault, but he doesn’t look like - like he’s disappointed, or anything.
“We’ll have next Monday off, if you want,” Phil says, quiet, “I checked the calendar and we just have to do the laundry.”
We need to talk about this, Dan wants to say, but it’s so early, and his coffee is halfway cold, and he should’ve been dressed ages ago, and Phil hates talking this early in the morning, and - if he breathes - if he breathes, Phil is still warm against him, still warm and still good and still with him. It can wait a bit longer.