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Phil’s inbox is blessedly absent of notifications. He clicks through the last one, a message from British Airways trying to sell him on a spring trip to Greece, with bold text framed by a picture of a hillside at sunset, the smooth white buildings glowing pink in the dusk. He clicks back into an inbox, stuffed with several thousands of emails but not one of them unread. He blinks his eyes a few times, adjusting his glasses over the edge of his nose and glances at dismay at the small cartoon image of the fox and the raccoon sitting in the top of their teahouse, golden lamp making the night scene glow red. The fox and the raccoon, both adorned in small pointed hats, were part of a Gmail theme he’d clicked on sometime in 2009, and hasn’t changed since. They mill about their day, changing positions every hour or so, and the fact that he’s awake to witness their hangout in the top of the tea tower is a bad sign.
The clock up on the corner of his screen reads 2:56. He’s too old to do this anymore, to spend his early-morning hours peering at an inbox screen (it’s also proven by the point that he now considers 3am early-morning rather than late-night), especially when its not like he was doing anything important. He wasn’t even editing a video, his newest is tucked into a neat folder on his chaotic desktop, already fully edited two weeks before its Christmas release.
There’s a gentle creak in the floor behind him, and Phil feels Dan’s arms wrap forward around his shoulders. Of course, no matter how late he stays up clicking through spam emails, Dan is always a step ahead, floating around the house like a particularly insomniac ghost.
“Greece?” Dan says, pressing his cheek onto the top of Phil’s head, “Looks nice. Looks warm.”
“Probably,” Phil says, leaning back in his chair, wrapping his arms up around Dan’s and letting his eyes half-close.
Dan lets his head slide down toward Phil’s ear, speaking in a half-joking mutter, breath fluttering against Phil’s earlobe.
“We could do it, yknow? Just a couple clicks, couple numbers punched in and we could spend Christmas riding donkeys up loads of stairs or whatever it is tourists do there.”
“Too tall for donkeys,” Phil says, closing his eyes fully now, leaning back onto Dan’s warm shoulder. “Our feet’ll scrape the ground and you’ll get scuffs on all your fancy shoes.”
“Or we could just like, rent a beach and lie in the sun and drink, like, Grecian cocktails all day.”
“Very festive,” Phil mutters back, and then, pre-interrupting what was sure to be Dan’s third Greece-based Christmas suggestion, says “please stop trying to dodge Christmas as we’ve already said yes.”
Dan exhales slowly and slumps forward, and the wheels of Phil’s desk chair creak a little.
“Bed?” He asks.
Phil nods and, with great effort, opens his eyes and lets Dan pull him by the hand down the hallway.
The seat of the train jostles as Phil stretches his back and then re-sinks into the plush covering. His ears are full of a podcast droning about the move industry in Hollywood, which he puts on sometimes so that he can zone out and maybe absorb some screenwriting pointers via osmosis. He flexes his feet, tops of his knees bumping against the table and brushing against Dan’s leg. Dan glances up from his phone, large headphones adorning his ears like earmuffs and gives Phil a quick smile.
The train speakers crackle for a moment, and the robotic lady announcer tells the passengers that this next stop is the last transfer for London Heathrow. Phil’s phone buzzes in his jacket pocket. There's a text from Dan flashing across the home screen, that says last chance! and then an emoji of a plane and an emoji of the Greek flag.
Phil grins and bumps his ankle against Dan's under the table.
The rest of the train ride passes quickly. Phil sets a new high score on Crossy Road and then doesn’t get past twenty for his next ten tries. He looks up at some point, stomach rumbling, to see a blueberry muffin in a plastic wrapper already sitting in front of him, and quick, sleepy smile from Dan. He eats slowly, spilling far too many crumbs into his lap for someone over the age of thirty, and by the time he’s crumbling the wrapper into the side coat of his pocket the train is slowing to a stop.
On the train platform Phil stares out over the sea of hat-covered heads, loses Dan and then finds him again as Dan abruptly grabs the sleeve of his sweater from behind.
“You’re always running off in train stations,” Dan says, quietly out of the side of his mouth, Phil following along out the doors.
“I didn’t move, you’re the one that runs.”
Dan doesn’t say anything to this, just sets his jaw and nods, looking down at his phone to call an Uber. Phil bumps against his shoulder.
“You okay?”
Dan exhales for a moment, fog spilling out of his mouth. Phil glances towards either side of them, a nervous but not entirely irrational habit, but sees no more than an older couple on their phones about thirty feet away.
“It’s not – “ Dan stops, then shrugs his shoulders. “It’s not going to be like how you’re used to.”
“How’d you reckon?”
Phil steps closer to Dan, peering over his shoulder at the black and white app. Six minutes, it reads, and Phil watches the miniature white car trace the careful line of the road while he waits for Dan to collect his thoughts.
“Not – not like Isle of Mann. No little island walks and being on the same couch in the sitting room and your mum leaving a little bouquet of flowers on the windowsill of our room or being able to just – just say anything we want, you know?”
Phil steps closer to Dan, twining an arm around Dan’s waist, squeezing him through the layers of both their heavy jackets. Dan stiffens a little, then relaxes. Somewhere above the station a gull begins to squawk.
“I don’t think it’ll be like that now,” Phil says, into Dan’s shoulder. “It’s been a while since I’ve been round, and I think they all knew last time, too.”
“I just really –“ Dan says, and then purses his lips together. “I just really want it to be right, for us to, you know, fit, the way we do at your mum’s but I know that we won’t and it’ll just be weird and cold and we’ll just like, look at each other across the table when someone inevitably says some off-color joke and you’ll be like, sleeping on the pullout and I’ll have to sneak downstairs like a fucking teenager again and –“
“Dan,” Phil says, straightening up and pulling Dan’s shoulders so they face each other.
Dan’s face is red and blotchy and he blinks several times, looking somewhere off to the left of Phil’s face.
“Can you look at me?”
Dan takes a moment to do so, and when he meets Phil’s eyes there’s a guilt in them that sends a pang through Phil’s heart.
“Dan, we are both adults. We have been together for a decade, and everyone who is going to be at your house knows that. Your mum would
not invite me to come for Christmas just to make me sleep on a pullout couch. I know this is hard for you, alright? But you are not a teenager, you’re not alone, and you have a family that has invited you and me for Christmas because they know that we’re both part of it. Right?”
Dan nods, a tear spilling from his right eye. He catches it with a gloved hand and quickly turns away.
“Sorry for being so dramatic,” he says thickly.
“You don’t have to apologize for anything,” Phil says. “Except for nearly abandoning me in the station just now.”
Dan chuckles, and sniffs, and turns back to his phone. The car creeps closer to the pickup line in front of the station.
“And just so you know, if for some reason your mum tries to make me sleep on a pullout couch and like, invites a bunch of homophobes over we can crawl out the window in the middle of the night and fly to Greece as a plan B.”
Dan reaches over and links his arm in Phil’s, squeezing tight as the Uber slows to a stop in front of them, then lets go and starts folding up the handle of their suitcase.
The car ride is surprisingly short, and Phil spends it with his hand clasped in Dan’s, stroking his thumb gently over Dan’s knuckles and reassuring him a few times that his eyes aren’t noticeably red. Carol of the Bells beings playing over the radio, and Phil watches as the grey, blocky houses whiz by, and thinks a little sadly of the cliffside walks that Mum and Dad and the rest were surely taking now. They’d understood, of course, that the invitation from Dan’s mum was a significant step in the right direction. And privately, of course, Phil was a little unsure himself of how it would go.
The last time the two had stayed at Dan’s for more than a day there had been much creeping up and down the stairs and sideways glances through much too long hair, but that was so long ago it might as well have been another world.
Phil glances over at Dan, who’s staring out his side of the window, and swallows a lump in his throat for the boy who’d held his hand in the warm darkness of the sitting room, who’d wrapped his arms around Phil only when the lock of the door clicked into place and who’d spent his first Isle of Mann Christmas pulling his hand away from Phil on reflex when Kathryn entered the room so many times that she had pulled Phil away from Christmas dinner to ask in a concerned whisper if Dan didn’t like her.
And here he is now, older and slightly taller, but still with that reflex inside him, so ready to hide and bolt at a moment’s notice. Phil hopes with everything inside him and more that this invitation is the start of something good, something stable, and that they both can look back on this trip as a kind of turning point.
And if not? Well, Phil is not a nervous twenty-something anymore, and he’s not going to let Dan be stepped over, no matter who is doing the stepping.
Dan’s house looks more or less like how Phil remembers it. He cracks open the car door and waits for the driver to pop the boot. Dan is chewing his lip, and looks up once to meet Phil’s eyes. Phil gives him a little nod, and as they lift their suitcases out of the back of the car Phil sees the door open.
Dan’s mum steps out of the door and waves, one arm wrapped around her waist. She pulls Dan into a hug as he approaches up the walk, and then steps around him to Phil.
“I’m so glad you could make it,” she says, and then reaches up and hugs him too.
“Now get inside, before we all catch our death out here.”
Phil follows them inside, pulling his suitcase up the steps and is greeted by a warm waft of air.
“Nan and granddad should be over in an hour or so, and Adrian’s in his room if you want to pop your head in,” she says, shrugging off her shoes as Dan and Phil do the same. In front of the window there's a small tree decorated in twinkling lights.
There’s a sudden patter of nails on tile and Colin comes scrambling in from the kitchen and launches himself at Phil’s face, nearly knocking him backwards as he unlaces his shoes.
“Colin! Down!” Karen says, to no avail, and then grins. “He’s picking favorites already, I see.”
“He’s got a good eye,” Dan says, shrugging his long, black coat off his shoulders.
“Why don’t you two drop your things in Dan’s room, and I’ll make us a cup of tea, does that sound good?”
“That sounds great, thank you,” Phil says, and grabs the handle of his bag to follow Dan up the stairs.
One of the doors on the first floor landing creaks open, and Adrian steps out, sock-footed with blue and black headphones over his ears. He looks up when Dan reaches the top step, then breaks into a grin, sliding his headphones off onto his shoulders.
“Hey Dan, Merry Christmas.” He gives Dan a short and slightly awkward one-armed hug, then steps down the stairs toward Phil, holding out his hand.
“Good to see you too, Phil, how’s London?”
“Lots of pigeons,” Phil says, because shaking the hand of your now adult sort of brother-in-law who was fourteen and terrible the last time they’d met has caused what little small-talk skills he has to fly out the window.
Adrian laughs in a slightly confused sort of way and continues down the stairs. Phil looks up at Dan, who looks sort of bemused, but not displeased.
“Pigeons?” he says.
“I panicked!” Phil says, “he’s so tall now.”
Dan smiles and lugs his bag the rest of the way up the staircase, and pushes open the door. He stands for a moment in the entranceway, looking in.
“Something wrong?” Phil asks.
He steps up behind Dan to look inside. He remembers Dan’s room fairly well, though he never had much time to take in the décor when he stayed here before. But it's enough to see how it’s changed.
There’s a double bed in the center of the room, replacing Dan’s old single, with a soft white comforter spread over it. There’s a new lamp on the beside table, and actual curtains over the windows. There’s still bits of Dan, though, like the MCR poster on the wall over the desk and the guitar hero controllers sticking out from the side of the closet.
Phil dumps his suitcase unceremoniously in the middle of the bed. Dan grabs it immediately and places it on the floor. Phil reaches his hand towards Dan, and they interlock their fingers. Phil pulls Dan back out onto the landing, and down the steps. The teakettle whistles from the kitchen as Dan and Phil step into the room, together.
Dan’s hand is squeezed in his, and Phil can feel his own heart racing in his chest. Karen and Adrian are seated at the scrubbed wooden table, Adrian fiddling with his phone and Karen buttering a slice of toast. They look up when Dan and Phil approach, and Phil sees their eyes sweep over their interlocked hands. And then Adrian scoots a chair out for Phil with his foot, and Karen pushes mugs in front of them with a smile, and Phil takes a seat as a cup of hot tea is poured for him.
They talk about the train and the weather, about snow and heat and London and running and the differences between oat milk and soy milk and when the doorbell rings Colin sprints so fast that he skitters across the kitchen floor like it’s an ice rink. Dan’s grandparents join them around the table and his nan is laden with mince pies that beat any on the codex and then they talk about the election and youtube and Dan tries to explain the difference between Instagram and Snapchat to his grandad for five whole minutes and through it all their hands remain clasped, not between the chairs or under the counter but up, on the table where everyone can see.
And that night, after three cups of hot chocolate and a viewing of A Christmas Carol with considerable commentary from both Dan and Adrian, Phil leans against Dan’s shoulder on the couch and blinks his eyes against the soft haze of Christmas lights.
“Don’t fall asleep,” Dan says, “I asked you a question, are you even listening?”
“Always listening,” Phil says, without opening his eyes.
“Of course,” Dan says, and leans his head back against Phil’s.
“We really can’t sleep here, though.”
“We could,” Phil says.
“I thought we were avoiding the pull-out,” Dan says quietly.
“Mmm,” Phil replies, snuggling deeper into Dan’s shoulder. They’re silent for a few moments, until Phil reaches up and clumsily pats Dan’s cheek.
“Do I need to get the donkey?”
“What?”
“Greece. Do we need to go ride a donkey?”
“You are asleep,” Dan says, smiling. “You’re asleep and you’re sleep-talking to me about animals.”
“Y’know what I mean.”
“Yeah” Dan says, and then turns his head, kissing the side of Phil’s hair at first, then leaning around to kiss him on the nose, then finally the mouth. Phil smiles under his touch, but keeps his eyes closed, drifting further and further towards dreaming. Dan breaths softly, and the last thing he hears before falling asleep is in a voice so quiet it might be a thought made alive.
“I think we’re good here.”