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The train ride to Manchester from York doesn’t always feel this long. But Phil is rarely so eager to be in his family home, in his childhood bedroom, surrounded by his fluorescent green carpet and saturated blue pinstriped walls. His Buffy cardboard cutout, his Uma Thurman poster. Holly, the house rabbit. Things that are familiar, safe, and which don’t care that his entire universe just imploded around him.
He’s sitting hunched in his seat, wanting to press his forehead against the window and knowing it would rattle his brain round his skull, so he doesn’t. He’s tired. He barely slept at all last night. He thinks he’s going to cry. And he hardly ever cries. Which means his eyes are stinging and his head is hurting and his stomach feels both hollow and heavy.
Twenty minutes to go. Then a bus ride.
Not bad. He can hold back tears that long, he thinks. Especially if he has the safety of his own quiet home in which to do it, when he’s finally able. He can pull his facial muscles tight, clench his jaw, dig his nails into his palm.
He can wait.
It’s raining by the time he makes his way from the bus stop in Rawtenstall. That shouldn’t surprise him, it’s England after all, but it’s just another thing on the long, long list of things that makes today feel rotten. His shoes are soaked through and his fringe is a mess and he just wants to get home and change into cozy pajamas and find whatever it was he came home to find… healing, comfort.
Just to be alone.
Though uni can be viscerally lonely, his crowded student housing rarely allows him to actually be alone. And though he’d usually go home with the intention of seeing his family, he knows they’re on holiday in Florida right now. So the house will be empty, and he’ll be able to exist without all the eyes he currently feels on him because of a stupid mistake and a friend who didn’t mean to hurt him but very much did.
Holly will be there of course, but pets are a welcome deviation from being alone. He loves his oddity of a house rabbit. And he’s sure she feels lonely with his parents away, so they’ll both have a treat this weekend keeping each other company.
*
Later, Phil will wonder why the lights being on didn’t tip him off. But they don’t. Maybe somewhere in the back of his mind he thought old Ms. Gibson who came by the house twice a day to feed Holly just left them on. Maybe he didn’t think about anything but getting his wet socks off his feet. Either way, when Phil got into his house, he was fully expecting it to be empty save the figurative ghosts of his childhood and the literal ghosts that most definitely haunt it, and Holly.
But it wasn’t.
There’s a clattering from the kitchen when Phil plops his backpack by the front door. A clattering and a something that sounded like a voice letting out, “Fuck!”
Phil freezes, standing with a stiff spine and wide frightened eyes like a meerkat. He can’t move. His heartbeat is in his throat.
The first thing he sees out of the doorway to the kitchen is the glint of his mum’s favourite chefs knife. He damn near passes out. The next thing he sees is the person holding the knife— a young-ish looking guy, like somewhere around his age, looking just as fucking terrified.
Then the guy catches sight of Phil, looks him over once, twice, and breathes out a great big exhale.
“Oh,” he says, “you’re him.” He points with the tip of the knife towards a framed family photo on the wall where Phil stands smiling and, evidently, recognizable.
Phil still can’t speak. He also doesn’t fully have the brain power at the moment to wonder why the heck this random person recognizes him from a picture of the wall. He nods instead.
“I’m Dan,” the guy says, setting the knife down on the table. Phil feels a lot better about that. “Sorry,” he says, “I just wasn’t expecting anyone. Kinda freaked me out.”
It feels like Phil’s blood has begun to circulate again. Just barely, just enough. He clears his throat. “Why… are you in my house?”
The guy breathes out a laugh. “Wouldn’t get paid otherwise,” he shrugs. “I’m housesitting. And rabbit-sitting.”
Phil shakes his head. “Ms. Gibson next door feeds Holly when my parents are away.”
The guy shrugs again. “Guess she couldn’t this time. Your parents posted on the student gig Facebook, I needed the money, here we are.
“Oh,” Phil says. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for coming to your own home?” He smiles. It’s a wide smile. Phil counts two dimples.
“Sorry for… scaring you?” He still feels sluggish, the comedown from the adrenaline leaving him confused.
“Reckon we scared each other. I’m jumpy as hell.”
“Me too, and home invasion is like, my number one fear.”
“Well, I thought you were the one doing the invading,” Dan laughs.
Phil nods. He really needs to sit down. His legs don’t feel like they’re made of legs. He makes it to the table and nudges the knife a little further away from him, just for comfort’s sake. Dan sits down next to him.
“So, you’re Dan,” Phil says, his head slowly clearing. Dan nods. “I’m Phil.”
“Your parents said you were away at uni.”
“Fancied a weekend at home.”
“And I’m spoiling that for you,” Dan frowns. Phil thinks it might be a theatrical sort of frown, but he doesn’t know enough about Dan and the different shapes his face can make to be sure.
“No, no you’re not,” he says. “I mean… I thought I’d be alone. But it’s just nice to be home at all.”
Something catches his eye, the movement of Holly entering the room. She bounces over and sits back on her legs like she’s expecting snack. It’s the greeting Phil should’ve known he’d be getting. He stands on still-wobbly legs and mutters something about slipping into the kitchen to get her some food.
*
Phil only leaves the kitchen once he’s feeling more like himself again. He never did get that cry but somehow the full-body fear reset everything and he’s feeling more human. And thinking that possibly being alone, despite the fact it was all he wanted when he headed home, would only make him feel worse. Maybe he couldn’t be around his friends or housemates, but being alone with his own thoughts? The train ride had enough of that, thank you very much. Maybe this unexpected stranger can be a welcome surprise. He makes two ribenas because somehow or another he thinks he’s playing the role of host this weekend; it’s his house after all.
He finds Dan sitting in the lounge, on his phone and so distracted that he’s startled when he notices Phil walk in. “Sorry,” he says, “I told you I was jumpy.”
“No worries,” Phil says.
“Do you want me to go? Is it weird if I’m here when like, clearly you can take care of your own pet?” Dan asks. He looks nervous to have asked, like he didn’t want to.
“Umm, no I don’t... I don’t mind, if you stay,” he says, shrugging, trying not to make it sound like no please stay, I’ve suddenly realized how desperately I do not want to be alone.
Dan says, “Cool,” and looks relieved.
Phil lifts his hands and holds both glasses out, and when Dan hesitates he realises how murdery the whole situation feels. “Here,” he says, and quickly takes a sip from each glass.
Dan smiles. “How do I know you haven’t spent the last few years building up an immunity to iocane powder?”
That makes Phil laugh. “Guess you don’t.”
Dan takes the left glass. Phil sits down on the sofa beside him. He knows he’s gotta say something, but small talk feels utterly impossible right now. It’s not just his usual social anxiety. It’s the everything he’s still carrying from uni, and the oddness of the whole situation, and the twist he’d gotten in his stomach when Dan smiled. A good twist. A twist he sure as hell hadn’t been expecting to feel.
“So you’re also a student?” he tries.
Dan nods. “First year law, University of Manchester. Skipped out on my gap year as I just really needed to get out of my hometown. But also I could’ve been working during that gap year and maybe I wouldn’t be so skint,” he shrugs. “So I do odd jobs like this.”
“I’m a few months shy of my Masters,” Phil says. He’s said it before like he was bragging, but he doesn’t right now. He says it a little ashamed. “Video post-production, and no, I don’t know what I’m doing with it. Or afterwards. Or right now.” He takes a sip of his ribena. “Or ever.”
Dan grins that dimpled grin Phil already likes seeing so much, raises his glass and says, “Cheers to that, mate.”
They clink; they drink; Holly hops into the room and plops on the rug contented.
“I’ve dogsat before, but she’s my first rabbit,” Dan says. “She’s hilarious.”
“I wanted a dog so badly growing up, but my parents weren’t having it. And she’s pretty close.”
“I have a dog,” Dan shuffles, folds his long legs beneath him, kinda turns his body a little more towards Phil while he speaks. “He’s pretty much the same age as me, my parents got him right around the same time, and we’ve had him all my life. He’s so old, sometimes I think he’ll just live forever.”
“Hopefully he will! Get on that, science.”
“Top priority, surely.”
Their banter falls into a silence that should be awkward. It isn’t. They watch Holly do her little rabbit things like she’s a television show and make dumb jokes and have each other laughing. It’s nice. Nicer than Phil could’ve imagined this weekend turning out.
When they’ve finished their drinks, Dan clears his throat and says, “I brought some, er, libations. Sitting in some random stranger’s house isn’t so boring if you get pissed, I’ve learned. We could have another round of ribenas but spiked if you’re down.”
Phil’s not uninterested. It’s just that none of this exactly feels real. “What’d you bring?”
“Malibu. Cheap, sweet, strong. My niche.”
Phil nods. They make them with heavy pours. They end up back on the sofa drinking deeply and asking questions that somehow don’t matter at all and also matter very much, like about music and video games and films. Phil’s definitely buzzed when he asks something that’s been hanging in his head since Dan said it. Something he mightn’t have asked if every social grace either of them have ever known hadn’t already been shattered that night.
“Why’d you wanna get out of your hometown so badly?” It just struck him. He loves his hometown so fucking much. Most of it. Parts of it. Okay, he loves his home so fucking much. And it had been hard to leave.
Dan takes another deep drink. Since he takes a little while to answer, Phil starts to apologize, starts to say Dan doesn’t have to answer if he doesn’t want to, but then Dan clears his throat.
“It was just kinda shit, growing up there. Not the most… tolerant place.”
His emphasis seems significant. Phil thinks maybe the lingering glances he keeps catching from Dan aren’t just in his head. Maybe he’s gotten lucky enough to bump into someone who understands. Someone like him.
Or he could be wrong. Completely wrong. Maybe Dan doesn’t understand at all and if Phil says too much he’ll be exposed and stripped bare just like he was at York and he’ll feel just as raw and rotten as he had on the train.
So he only nods. He knows there’s more to Dan’s story, he can tell, and he’s not gonna push it. “Things less shit here?” he asks.
Dan laughs. “At uni, or here on your couch?”
“Either,” Phil says. “Both.”
“Much better,” Dan nods.
*
They spend some time talking about lighter fare— Phil goes on a rant about Buffy and Dan goes on a rant about Kanye and there’s a general air both times that the other is humouring them but there’s no complaints on either side. They raid the kitchen for snacks twice and fill up their drinks both times.
Eventually Dan asks what Phil would be doing right now if he wasn’t here. “I mean, you planned to have the house to yourself.” There’s something in his grin when he says that which is almost cheeky, but Phil isn’t sure enough to lean into it.
Phil answers without thinking, too drunk to be anything but too honest. “Crying, probably,” he says.
Dan frowns, but doesn’t seem to know what to say. Phil looks at the crease in his brow and wants to reach out to smooth it, smooth as the rest of Dan’s face save the dimples and the crinkles by his eyes when he smiles. “Oh?” Dan says.
“I kinda… maybe was running away from uni for the weekend. And just wanted to be alone. And probably would’ve ended up crying.”
Dan nods. Maybe he does understand, Phil thinks. It’s just that Dan ran away to uni whereas Phil ran away from it. Based on hints Dan has let drop as they talked, he doesn’t think he’s got the wrong idea. It’s just scary, the tentativeness.
“I was, er, outed yesterday,” he says, gulping down what’s left in his glass, deciding to just lay everything out on the table. “By a friend who found me on a dating site, and screenshotted it and sent it round.”
“Shit, Phil,” Dan says, the frown deeper.
“And he didn’t mean it like maliciously, but also… awful. So I wanted to get away for a bit, til it blows over.”
“I mean, I’ve been there,” Dan shrugs. “Shouldn’t have plastered alternative sexualities all over my public MySpace, but I did anyways for all the local bullies and homophobes to see. At least a dating site implied some kind of discretion.”
Dan had said that with a bitter sort of laugh that Phil took as him sympathizing, but not wanting to elaborate. Maybe not yet. “It was stupid,” Phil says, a tightness in his throat that hasn’t committed to being laughter or a sob. “I shouldn’t have even signed up in the first place and none of this would’ve happened.”
“Well, why did you?”
“I just wanted to go on a date. An actual proper date with a boy like I never got to do growing up. Is that so pathetic?”
Dan is watching him carefully now. Phil’s blush is in full force, he can feel it. He’s hoping he was right and that Dan understands, even if he’s a stranger and has no reason to understand. Even if he’s a stranger and Phil loses nothing if he doesn’t understand.
Dan shakes his head. “Not pathetic.” He lets out a slow, intentional sort of breath, then slaps his thighs and stands up on wobbly legs. “C’mon,” he says.
“What?” Phil looks at him confused.
“C’mon,” Dan smiles, “you know Manchester better than I do. I’ve only been here a few months. Let’s go on a date.”
Phil’s confusion slowly melts into a smile of his own, but his heart is beating so crazy fast he doesn’t think he should risk standing up just yet. Instead, he thinks he should make sure he’s following exactly what’s going on here. “I… didn’t ask you on a date,” he says with a quirk of his brow.
“Ouch, mate, I asked you,” Dan smiles wider. The dimple is too tempting. Phil can’t resist.
*
It’s not all that late when they leave the house, even if Phil’s homebody tendencies and the fact that they’d already drank quite a bit makes him feel like they should just stick to Rawtenstall. But this is his chance, a date, he wants to splash out. Give Dan the Manchester night they both really fucking deserve.
The walk to the bus stop in the brisk night air does a fair amount to sober them up anyways. And it’s stopped raining, and they sit closely together in their seats. It’s all just surreal and very, very good.
The bus is warm, and Dan smells like warm, and Phil still thinks he just might cry, but it feels so different now.
He wracks his brain for potential date spots. A few good ones occur to him. The skybar, the big wheel. He knows Dan technically asked him on the date, but Dan also admitted he doesn’t know the city well and those spots seem like necessary stops.
But he’s also starving, so once they’re in Manchester proper they leap off the bus and into a kebab shop.
They keep talking all the while and pause to chew. The silences are never stilted. As utterly terrifying as Phil’s first moments with Dan had been, every moment since has simply felt right. Like he was meant to know this guy all along.
After they’ve eaten, their drunkenness has cooled to a buzz so determinedly that Phil insists on the skybar next. Dan’s wide eyes at the view is everything Phil could’ve hoped for had he been planning this date for months. They order cheap, strong drinks despite it being so swanky a place and watch the city lights below.
On the elevator ride back down, Phil reaches over and holds Dan’s hand. He lets go when the door opens, but the pocketful of seconds made him just as drunk as the night’s liquor had.
He tells Dan there’s one more must-see stop for their date, and though he doesn’t say what, it’s pretty obvious as they approach the Manchester Eye.
“You really are a cheesy fucker,” Dan says, his smile wide and his tone not unkind.
“I really, really wanted a date,” Phil says. “It’s supposed to be cheesy.”
*
They’re halfway to the top of the big wheel when Dan turns to him with a nervous glint in his eye. “Can I say something dumb?”
“Please,” Phil smiles, “only say dumb things from now on.”
“When I got to your house and like, looked around at the pictures and stuff… I legit had the thought ‘woah, their son is really hot’ when I saw you.” A rosy patch by Dan’s jaw erupts into a blush as he wrings his hands. He huffs out a nervous laugh. “I was like, ‘who is this sexy emo?’ I think that’s why I was so surprised when you actually walked in. I mean like, more than just regular surprise.”
Phil’s pretty damn sure he’s dreaming. In what universe does this happen to him? He’s gotta get this nervous energy out somehow.
And he isn’t exactly sure who moves first, all he knows is he and Dan are kissing on the Manchester Eye and it feels like none of the disappointing, messy kisses he’s had before.
It feels like a culmination, and like a prelude.
*
They catch the last bus home. Phil can’t believe it’s only been a handful of hours since he took this same route. How nothing at all has changed; how everything has changed.
It’s so late that there’s only the driver, one old lady with her many, many bags, and them. They curl up in their seats, with their knees pressed against the back of the seat in front of them and their spines bent. They’re mostly hidden, in their own little world where their fringes block out everything else. Phil sees the freckles dusting Dan’s face. Dan looks down at his lips and moves closer.
They hop off the bus and hold hands and practically run to Phil’s house. Holly wants to be greeted with a snack but Phil’s too busy pressing Dan up against the closed front door and kissing him until they’re both breathless.
He’s never felt like this.
He can’t believe he’s feeling this way when he barely knows this guy, has only just met him, was feeling so rotten only a few hours before.
It’s not that he’s never hooked up before. It’s that this feels… different.
No, it’s that he wants it to be different.
He pulls back and presses his forehead against Dan’s as he tries to keep any tether on reality. The dazed smile on Dan’s face is making the palms of Phil’s hands tingle. He surges forward to kiss him again and Phil just can’t believe Dan’s as into this as he is. Dan gets his hands in Phil’s hair and he truly thinks this is some bizarre, wonderful dream.
He moves to Dan’s right ear, both of which are pierced and the black earrings are too tempting not to bite at. Dan seems to appreciate it too.
Phil moves to Dan’s jaw, to Dan’s neck where he’s blessed with a sound falling from Dan’s kiss-bitten lips that could only be called a whimper. Their hips are grinding together and yes there’s no lack of physical proof Dan’s enjoying himself.
Holly is getting tired of being so ignored, and knocks over an umbrella that had been leaning against the wall.
They jump, look over, and laugh. The startle has broken the urgent crackle in the air enough for them to catch their breath. They head to the kitchen and sit at the table to feed her from their hands.
“Thanks for the date,” Phil says, feeling the blush that must be all over his face.
Dan shrugs, but he’s grinning. “Best date I ever had.”
“We should… do it again sometime?” He doesn’t mean it to be a question, but it came out like one anyway. He’s not sure what’s going to happen later tonight, or later this weekend, or the next time he’s home for a visit. He just knows he definitely wants it to include Dan. And that he certainly wouldn’t mind if it resembled what they were getting up to at the door. There’s some redness already at Dan’s neck that he figures will darken later into a bruise and there’s a very satisfied warmth in Phil’s chest at the sight of it.
“Gimme your phone,” Dan holds out his hand.
Phil does. Dan puts his number in. Holly rolls over onto her back at their feet.