Archive of Our Own

The streetlights have just switched on, illuminating patches of the pavement in a warm orange glow and glinting off the snowflakes just beginning to fall. They’re small and stark against the darkening sky, like a million little pinprick stars close enough for Dan to reach out and touch.

And he wants to punch every last one of them.

It’s dark at fucking 4:30, it’s colder than a witch’s tit—whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean—and he’s got a throbbing headache from the three lectures he’d suffered through today because Tuesdays are the worst. He doesn’t know why he even bothers anymore honestly. And now it’s snowing. Why did he move north again?

Oh right, because Manchester had been the first uni he’d heard back from and he’d been too easily seduced by the ego stroke of people congratulating him on getting into such a good school, such a good program. At the time, law had seemed steady and impressive and like something he could grow into, probably, despite a slightly disastrous gap year work experience. So far he hadn’t done much growing, though. More like withering. And failing. A lot of failing.

Thus the three classes in one day, and actually having to attend his lectures this year. His dad had threatened to cut him off if he didn’t get his act together. It’s not like they’re giving him that much anyway, almost everything is being paid for with loans, but it had felt easier, more peaceful to nod along repentantly. He didn’t feel the need to reenact their gap year arguments. The problem with going to classes, of course, was that it forced Dan to face just how much he hates law, which had been why he’d stopped going to lectures in the first place. But having another crisis didn’t fit into his schedule for this semester, so he spent a lot of time decisively not thinking about it. And he’d moved into a flat off campus.

Having space from uni had felt good at first, but by December the realities of it had started to wear on him, especially the extra money he’d taken own to pay rent. Around about minute 35 of his daily 45 minute commute every day like clockwork he wonders for the billionth time if it was worth it. Being so far from campus sucks, even if rent was about half as much as all of the closer options he’d looked at. Especially the bus. Dan hates the bus and all of the coughing, sniffling, huffing bodies crammed in next to him, pressing against him every time the bus starts or stops.

There are still some positive things he reminds himself of, like a mantra for the forced walking mediation he does every time he misses his second bus, which is more often than not on Tuesdays. It’s cheaper to cook for himself, but mostly because he can’t cook for himself, so he mainly lives of cereal and pizza. After the pasta incident he hadn’t felt up to trying anything more complicated. And the flat is pretty shit, but it’s marginally less shit than the halls and he only has one flatmate. In theory.

Dan had met Phil, a self described perpetual grad student nearly as tall as him and at least half as awkward, the day he’d moved in and seen him very rarely after that. He’d found the posting about a room for rent in a “quiet and nerdy” flat four days before classes started and had barely been able to believe his luck finding any place at all with any of the little strips of paper with the phone number still attached, much less a flat that actually sounded pretty perfect after his very loud, very awful year in the halls. He’d texted the number immediately to see if the room was still available, and wound up arranging when he could move in without even talking to Phil on the phone. They’d called back and forth a couple times, but had always missed each others’ calls.

This pattern had persisted when Dan moved in, with the two of them seeming to be on entirely different schedules, occasionally passing each other when Dan rolled out of bed at 1:30 pm to grab a quick breakfast–slash–lunch and Phil was coming in from—somewhere. The things was, Dan didn’t really know much about Phil. He knew he was studying film and had moved back to Manchester to be closer to his family while he finished his thesis, but that he actually went to York.

That and the fact that he had a penchant for sugary cereals, and especially sugary cereals that actually belonged to Dan was pretty much all Dan knew about him. He wore odd socks, usually brightly colored and adorned with animals. He had a massive DVD collection that overlapped quite a bit with Dan’s own tastes. He was on the reclusive side, or otherwise hated Dan. The latter didn’t seem too likely given the cheerful greetings Dan got whenever they did bump into each other, but those times were few and far between and Dan couldn’t help but feel like Phil was avoiding him.

Sam, Dan’s one friend he’s managed to make so far at uni through his first year lit class—which they’d loathed equally and bonded over—cheerfully points out every time Dan voices this particular concern that it isn’t like Dan’s gone out of his way to be friendly with Phil either. Sighing, Dan drags his attention back to his immediate surroundings, trying to unwind the tension in his neck with a few rolls of his head.

The snow has just barely started accumulating on the grass and Dan drags his toe through the edge of someone’s front garden, collecting a small pile on the toe of his trainers. He holds it up for a minute, pausing to consider it, before tapping his foot on the pavement to knock it off. Stupid snow. Now his toes are cold.

When he reaches his block he starts to hear the faint noise of music being played too loudly, a sure sign that he’s almost home thanks to some particularly enthusiastic neighbors. It wouldn’t be so bad if it was good music, but they mostly favor the worst of the top 40s hits. Phil, on the other hand, at least has good taste when he plays his music too loudly. It’s usually either Muse or some nice floaty instrumentals that sometimes help lull Dan to sleep through their paper thin walls.

This, though, is not good music. In fact, it’s arguably not even music at all. Anything that can only be played one month of the year doesn’t fall into the music category for him. It seems his neighbors don’t agree with him. He takes his phone out of his pocket to check the date, wincing as the cold air meets his bare fingers, and it is in fact November 30th still. They could at least have the decency to wait until tomorrow.

The music continues to get louder as Dan gets closer until he can make out the melody of All I Want for Christmas Is You, because of course it is. The real dread doesn’t start to sink in until he passes the neighbors house and walks up the stairs to their house and the music only continues to get louder. But maybe it’s just a weird echo.

Dan’s still telling himself that maybe it’s just the walls, they really are very thin, as he opens the door and makes his way down the long, dark hallway that leads into the rest of the flat. He has to give up this fantasy, though, when he finally gets to the end of the hall and encounters Phil, clad in the most absurd neon cartoon pajama bottoms he’s ever seen, surrounded by a mess of lights and garlands and various other green and red colored things, singing along very enthusiastically and very poorly to Mariah Carey. And wiggling his brightly colored bum along to the beat.

All Dan can do is stare at the state of their lounge, at the state of his previously hermit leaning roommate, at the wildly uncoordinated dance he’s doing. He doesn’t consider how creepy it is to just be standing silently in the doorway until Phil does a dramatic little shimmy and turn, sees Dan, and promptly shrieks and drops his stapler-cum-mic.

“Are you stapling the lights to the wall? There goes our security deposit I guess,” Dan says moodily, as if there weren’t the first words spoken between them in nearly three weeks, after Dan had jump scared him no less.

“We don’t have any tape,” Phil says with a shrug, as if this is a perfectly reasonable place to pick up a conversation, and as if they own any joint property, even as small as a roll of tape. “And you didn’t pay any of the security deposit.”

They’re both yelling a bit to be heard over the song, and Dan makes a vague gesture in the air, as if to point this out, as well as the disaster zone that used to be—well at least a little bit less of a disaster zone.

“I’m decorating for Christmas.”

“Yeah, I can see that.”

“I love Christmas,” Phil offers, as if it weren’t abundantly evident.

“Fantastic. It’s just, uh, a bit loud. I have some revising to do.”

The song finally settles into a drawn out conclusion, and Dan feels like he can breath for a moment. Until the chiming auto tuned bells begin all over again.

“Oh God, it’s on repeat.”

“It’s my favorite Christmas song,” Phil says in a tone that almost sounds like an apology, or at least holds a grain of uncertainty uncertain, but he makes no move to turn it off. He does put the string of lights down.

“Yeah, it’s, er, festive. I’ve just got a bit of a headache and was hoping to get some work done and turn in early.” Turning in early for Dan would have meant going to bed at the reasonable hour of 1 am, but Phil doesn’t need to know that.

“Oh, alright. I’ve got some paracetamol if you want it.”

“I’m fine, just need to lie down for a bit.”

“Okay. If you’re feeling better later I thought—you could help me decorate if you want.”

Dan tries to ignore the shiver of hope in Phil’s voice when he says this. It’s nice, is what it is really. Perfectly reasonable and nice. Only Dan’s had a long, shit day, and he hates Christmas music and hanging decorations and just generally Christmas and he’s not feeling very reasonable and nice right now. Phil only wants to spend time with him because they haven’t spent any time together yet. He hasn’t learned any better.

“Isn’t it a little early for all of this?” Dan asks in his best approximation of the judgemental accusation of some of his more… opinionated secondary school peers.

“But it’s December Eve.”

“That’s not a thing.”

“Why not?” Phil asks, sticking out his bottom lip a bit and sliding a certain wheedling tone into the question.

This is not good. Not only is Dan’s first conversation with the guy since September an argument, but he’s about to cave pathetically just because of a little pout.

“Because—it’s just not! None of the other months have got Eves, have they? Do you celebrate January Eve?”

“Well, I don’t know if you’ve heard of this thing called New Year—”

“Shut up, that was a bad example. My point is…” Dan trails off, frantically scrambling for some sort of point. “It’s all just capitalistic nonsense, isn’t it? It’s big corporations tricking us all into spending more money that we should, being crap we don’t need that we’ll just throw out in a couple of months, further polluting the environment and doing our bit to keep sweatshops running.”

Phil stares at him quietly for a moment, and Dan thinks at first he’s going to actually respond to Dan’s accusations, or potentially just walk away. Instead, he says, “So you don’t like Christmas then?”

“What was your first clue?”

“And you don’t want me to put up the decorations?”

“No—I mean you can do whatever you want, it’s your flat. Just don’t expect me to get involved.”

“It’s our flat,” Phil says softly, and Dan’s heard that calm, kind tone before. Placating. Great, now Phil thinks he’s lost it.

“Right, whatever. I just meant—decorate if you want, I don’t care. If you could just turn the music down a bit, that would be great.”

“Yeah, sure. I can—”

Dan doesn’t stick around to hear what Phil can do. He looks visibly stressed at this point, the goofy grin he’d had plastered on his face as he danced around the lounge replaced with a concerned frown, and Dan thinks it would be better both of them if he just got the fuck out of his way.

He slams his bedroom door and flops down dramatically on his bed. Phil had in fact turned the music down, but the walls are thin enough and their flat shit enough that Dan can still just make out the soft warbling of Mariah Carey’s riffs. He drags his pillow over his head.

The 1st of December starts off blessedly quiet and calm, with no Phil or Christmas anywhere in sight. He must have relocated the decorations back into his room, or wherever they had come from, and Dan feels guilty for a moment, then he decides he can’t be arsed. It’s not like he wanted to look at those stupid decorations all month anyway.

Guilt stays crouched close by, nagging at his attention, but he shoves it down with a big gulp of too hot coffee, then tells himself the burnt tongue is punishment enough. He grabs a bowl and his box of bran flakes—which tastes a bit like cardboard but has the benefit of not getting stolen by a certain sugar gremlin—but stops as he reaches for the handle of the fridge. There’s a new piece of paper stuck overtop the numerous take out menus both of them hoarded obsessively and used frequently.

Squinting, Dan leans forward to read the column and row headers of what appears to be a very shakily drawn spreadsheet. The sheet claims proudly to be the ‘2011 Mince Pie Codex’, written in large, alternating red and green colored bubble letters at the top of the sheet. Beneath that are a row of words like ‘pastry flakiness,’ and ‘filling flavor,’ with two columns under each category labeled with little smudged ‘d’ and ‘p’s. All of the p columns for the first row—Tesco—are filled out already, seemingly on a scale of 1 to 5. Or perhaps 1 to 10 if Tesco mince pies are shit. The rows are each labeled with the name of a supermarket, and there’s at least and there’s at least 11 of them.

What in the ever loving fuck—

“Oh Dan, good. You found the codex,” comes Phil’s voice from behind him.

Dan spins around to find Phil still wearing the absurd pj bottoms from last night and holding a stack of what appear to be pictures of various animals wearing Santa hats printed on A4 paper.

“Er, yeah, what…” Dan trails off, watching incredulously as Phil starts to tape the pictures to essentially every flat surface in the kitchen, primarily along the cabinets.

“Is the water still hot?” he asks when he’s finished, turning to Dan with a perfectly natural looking smile. Did Dan dream the fight last night?

“The water—yeah, it should be. I just boiled it.”

“Great!” Phil says cheerfully, opening one of the newly decorated cupboards to get a mug and failing to close it. Dan reaches out reflexively to close it after him, and almost says something incredibly stupid about being honored to finally witness the cupboard opening in action. He’s banged his head on the sharp corner of the open doors more often than he’d like to recall, but he keeps his mouth shut.

“Have you tried your pie yet?”

“My pie?”

“Yeah, I got you one too of course. It’s more scientific that way.” Phil winks, possibly, or maybe has just gotten a flake of crust in his eyes.

“Right,” Dan mutters, receiving the little pie Phil places in his hand without further question. Almost. “Isn’t it a little early for dessert?”

“Dan,” Phil says, voice grave as he twirls around with his coffee—spilling some onto the floor in the process—and Dan thinks Phil’s finally going snap. His gaze is intense, frown stretched wide across his face, and Dan thinks for a wild moment that he’s never seen Phil look this upset, before realizing that he’s barely seen Phil at all. Still, it’s an unsettling—

“It is never too early for dessert.”

“Oh my fucking god, I thought you were actually mad, you absolute spoon!”

“Spork,” Phil fires back from behind his coffee mug.

“Fork.”

“I forked your mum last night.”

In the silence that follows Dan quite enjoys watching the transformation of the easy grin on Phil’s face into a look of complete horror. He watches Dan, frozen in place, and Dan thinks for just a split second of dragging it out just a bit, just for payback, but then he can’t take the look on Phil’s face anymore and he dissolves into his most obnoxious, barking laugh, bent over as he tries to stay upright.

Phil doesn’t do more than chuckle a bit, but when Dan finally regains control and rights himself, he finds Phil watching him with a loose grin. To avoid having to say anything else he pops the pie, now a bit worse for wear, into his mouth whole, humming loudly as he chews.

“What do you think?” Phil asks.

“You’ll just have to consult the codex, won’t you?”

Phil’s gone as far as to tape a pen tied to a silvery string to the fridge, so Dan scoops it up, adding his ratings in the columns next to Phil’s. When he turns back around he catches Phil shoving a pie of his own into his mouth.

“Where did that come from?”

“I got a back up,” Phil says sheepishly, sending a spray of pastry into the air. Dan wrinkles his nose.

“Don’t those come in packs of six, actually?”

“No,” Phil protests, and Dan’s suddenly laughing again at Phil’s shifty expression and his guilty look shot towards the bin.

“It’s fine mate, eat all the pies you want. It’s not like I eat anything aside from cereal and takeaway.”

Phil twitches again when Dan says cereal, and Dan just rolls his eyes.

“I’m pretty sure you’re wildly undercharging me for rent, so I accept the occasional cereal tax.”

This earns him another bright grin, and Dan’s mind starts to wander down dangerous paths of other jokes he could make to win more grins like that. He takes a bracing swig of his now lukewarm coffee, grimacing at the taste.

“I don’t know how you drink this instant shit.”

“With a bunch of sugar. It just tastes better than regular coffee to me. Except festive drinks of course. I love a good gingerbread latte. Ooh, or an eggnog latte. What’s your favorite?”

“Never had one.”

“You’ve never had one?” Phil demands, sounding legitimately horrified.

“No? I don’t actually drink that much coffee—”

“But they’re so much more than coffee, Dan! They’re part of the holiday experience.”

“Yeah, well,” Dan just shrugs, feeling the mood dropping rapidly.

“Oh, right,” Phil says solemnly, looking back down at his mug. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s not like—it’s not like a thing, I’m just not really into it.” He fiddles with the pen, gently tugging at it to see how much pressure it can take before starting to come away from the fridge. “I’m sorry about last night.”

“No, I should have checked if you were okay with me decorating the house. I get a little carried away with the festive spirit.” Phil’s tone is light and he sounds sincere, but he has no reason to let Dan off so easily when they barely know each other, so Dan presses.

“But I still—”

“Listen, don’t worry about it. You can make it up to me by tasting my pies, alright?”

“That’s what she said,” Dan says reflexively, and it’s his turn to freeze and wait for a reaction, but Phil just smiles and sticks out his tongue before getting up and making his way over to the door.

“You should be so lucky,” he calls back over his shoulder once he makes it to the hall, and Dan nearly drops his coffee.

The pies continue through the weekend and over the beginning of the next week. They’re not there quite every day, but most mornings Dan’s greeted with a little pie, usually paired with festively themed drink. Most of them are achingly sweet and a bit much for Dan, but he drinks them all as he eats his pie and marks down his ratings. Phil, when Dan sees him, asks what he thinks of each drink and Dan tries to be diplomatically honest, insisting each time that Phil really doesn’t have to buy him any more drinks.

Phil just waves his words away, claiming he’d be buying his own anyway, so he might as well. Dan knows how expensive the drinks are and doesn’t think Phil would be buying two of them otherwise, but after the first three drinks he’s learned pressing doesn’t get him anywhere. They are kind of nice, in their own vile way.

Can you get Stockholm Syndrome from coffee?

Well, probably, if Phil’s love of instant coffee is anything to go by.

Dan chuckles to himself over his joke and makes a mental note to tell it to Phil the next time he sees him. They run into each other marginally more now, but that’s hardly saying much. Dan sees him once every two or three days, and they mainly chat about mince pies and lattes for a couple of minutes. Dan’s not complaining, exactly. He’s usually shit at small talk, so at least this gives them a go to conversation, and this is surely better than wondering idly about Phil as a mysterious figure who haunts their flat at odd hours, leaving cupboard doors open and sprinkling socks about like they’re the latest trend in home decoration.

Still, Dan finds himself filing away little jokes like this that he thinks Phil would like, or references he thinks Phil might get, and that can’t be good. Phil’s shown no indication of interest in spending any more time with Dan than they already do, and Dan is quite familiar with the signs of a one-sided interest. Not crush. Definitely not a crush. He hasn’t let it escalate that much. He’s still got some respect. Marginally.

He has allowed the blight of red and green and silver items spread to throughout the house, from lights and garlands hung maddeningly asymmetrically in the lounge to those paper chains you make in primary school taped to the walls of the hallways, to a collection of menacingly grinning Santas arranged on all available surfaces in the bathroom. He even let Phil hang a very ugly stocking on his door, his name hastily scrawled across the top in sharpie.

What Phil’s decorations lack in traditional senses like taste or charm, they make up in enthusiasm and variety. At least that’s what Dan tells himself every morning when he knocks one Santa at a minimum off its perch while brushing his teeth.

This is fine. It’s fine. They’re already nearly halfway to Christmas, and he won’t have to endure this forever. They’re only decorations and they’re making Phil happy. Not that Dan cares all that much about how happy Phil is, but it’s good for your flatmate to be happy, really, because then they pester you less. Never mind that Phil has been pestering Dan more since this all began.

And, Dan begins reflecting by the time they reach the 8th of December—he always knows the date now because Phil’s also bought them little advent calendars with chocolates for each of the days leading up to Christmas—maybe it’s not all so bad. The decorations are a bit ugly, sure, but they do brighten up their frankly drab flat.

Not knowing why exactly, Dan falls into his new routine, waking up each morning slightly earlier than normal to eat a new pie with his morning coffee, scoring the pie, popping one of the cheap little chocolates before bed, making sure to brush his teeth extra carefully, and falling asleep each night trying to quash down a new and startling excitement to wake up the next morning.

Though he doesn’t know the true extent quite yet, it all starts to fall apart on Friday. He’d only had one class that day, but it had been early and dull, and his shift at the local DIY store had been positively horrific. They surely hadn’t called his reference on his application or he wouldn’t have been hired in the first place, and he spends most of the hours of his shifts wishing he hadn’t been. Especially this month.

A rant about horrible customers and the unequally distributed sense of Christmas cheer and peace already spewing out of his mouth as he opens the outer door to their flat, Dan is met instead with a wall of green.

“What the fuck?”

“Oh good,” says a very irritated voice from the other side of the tree, “you’re here. You scheduled your delivery for ten minutes ago.”

“I think you must be mistaken. I didn’t order a forest for my flat.”

“Phil Lester, right? Sign here.” A clipboard materializes from around the edge of the tree, wiggling impatiently at him.

“Oh, no, I’m not Phil.”

“Does Phil not live here?”

“He does, but—”

“Fine, you can sign for it then, I’m running late because of you.”

Dan wants to point out that absolutely none of this is his fault, but there’s something far more pressing he needs to address. “But I don’t want this—”

“Take that up with your boyfriend.”

“Flatmate,” Dan corrects sharply, more shocked at the rare direction of that assumption than anything.

“Whatever. Sign, please. I’ve got eight other deliveries to do today before I can get back to the city.”

“Um, what city is that?” Dan asks delicately, taking the clipboard to sign mostly to stop its frantic waving.

“London.”

“We’re in Manchester,” Dan says dumbly.

“Yeah, I’m aware. Why anyone would order a tree from so far away is beyond me, I’m sure you have perfectly nice trees here, but that’s the holidays for you.”

“Tell me about it,” Dan mutters, thinking that this guy would probably appreciate his rant more than Phil actually. He hands the clipboard back.

“Great,” I’ll be on my way then, the man says, finally appearing as he shimmies along the wall, shaking himself free from a shower of needles once he’s emerged.

He’s quite cute, Dan notes, and presumably gay, and also seems very done with the whole Christmas thing. He entertains a brief fantasy of running away with this man to some island somewhere that is very warm and very deserted and very not–Christmassy. But then his words sink in. Dan moves to stand in front of the door.

“No, wait, you have to help me bring this in.” Dan had previously been trying to prevent the tree from going inside, but it seems worse to leave in the entryway, blocking the front door and keeping Dan out in the cold. And he's certain he can’t carry it by himself.

“I’m running late because of you,” the man repeats, his charm dulling quickly.

“Please? If you don’t, I’m afraid I’m going to have to live out here.”

The man finally relents, and with a great deal of cursing and scraping of walls they manage to get it through the inner door and into the flat. As soon as he’s got his end inside, the delivery man drops it and stands by the door, staring expectantly at Dan.

“Thank you?” Dan attempts, but it only gets him a huff. The man’s hand twitches towards his pocket and Dan finally processes that he expects a tip, but he doesn’t have any cash on him, and he’s not all that inclined to give any to the man even if he did have it, to be honest. “Thank you,” he repeats more decisively, throwing in a, “and happy holidays,” just to drive the point home.

Phil arrives home some undetermined amount of time later to find Dan still standing in the hallway staring at the tree. He’s panting, standing in the doorway clutching the door frame for support, so Dan gives him half a minute to catch his breath.

“Did I miss it?” Phil asks finally, still holding his side.

Dan stares at him incredulously for a moment, sweeping his eyes significantly between Phil and the tree a few times. “I should bloody well think not.”

“But the delivery man left already?”

“What,” he says, ignoring what he thinks is a very obvious question and gesturing violently at the tree instead, “the fuck is this?”

“Our Christmas tree,” Phil says, voice pitched up as if he too is mystified as to the precise nature of the large green thing currently taking up half of their very long hallway.

“No, this is Hagrid’s Christmas tree.”

“It is a bit bigger than I was expecting—”

“A bit?” Dan shouts, and his voice has gone all pitchy, but he doesn’t even care because what the absolute fuck was Phil thinking?

“Well I got it online, so I guess I didn’t really consider how big it would actually look in the space.”

“No kidding.”

“It smells good, though.”

“It’s from London,” Dan says, ignoring Phil’s attempts at diverting him. “Why is it from London? Do they not sell monstrously large trees in Manchester.”

“Did he just leave?”

“Who?”

“The delivery man. From London.”

“Like five, minutes ago. Why do you care? He was quite rude, and mad that you’d stood him up. Is he a friend of yours or something?”

“No, no. I just—was he, um, wearing anything?”

“You’re asking me if the delivery man was wearing anything?” Dan asks, voice sweeping back up to incredible heights, “Did you order this from a nudist tree company?”

“No! Not like that, I just meant—he wasn’t wearing anything festive?”

“No, I think you managed to hire the only Christmas tree delivery man who hates Christmas more than I do.”

“Shit.”

Dan does a double take. He’s never heard Phil swear before, and he cannot for the life of him think why he’d be so upset over missing a delivery man.

“Is he your ex or something?” Dan asks, thinking of the man’s assumption that Dan was Phil’s boyfriend.

“What? No, I don’t know him. I just—you’re going to make fun of me.”

“We are way past that point, mate.”

“I just—my brother told me about this Christmas tree company that delivers a real tree to your house, and the delivery men are supposed to wear kilts, and I just thought it sounded very festive—”

“So you’re upset,” Dan interrupts, trying and failing to hide his glee, “because you didn’t get to ogle a buff man in a skirt.”

“Kilt.”

“Whatever. Is that why you’re mad?”

“I just think that if a company promises something, and charges a premium—”

“How much did you pay for your knight in woven plaid?” Dan might have to start considering the possibility that Phil is secretly a millionaire. Or that he edits porn, or something.

“It’s just a little deceptive—”

“Shut up and help me get this into the lounge, you spork. If it’ll even fit.”

It takes them much longer than it should to wrestle the tree down the hall and into the lounge, and they’re both panting again by the time they’ve got it propped up in the corner. It’s more than a foot taller than either of them, and Dan points smugly at the bent top branch pressed to the side by the ceiling, but Phil has collapsed on the floor and doesn’t see.

Feeling very defeated and overly fond, Dan plops himself down onto the sofa, his feet hanging over the edge by a good bit.

“We need a bigger couch,” Phil says from the floor.

“We need a smaller tree. Maybe it’s just making it look small in comparison.”

“I really didn’t think it would be this big,” Phil whines, and Dan jumps up from the couch, desperate to outrun the urge to cheer him up.

“I’m going to make some hot chocolate. And I’m not touching this tree ever again.”

“Coffee please!”

“It’s 5pm, you’ll never sleep.”

“Never sleep anyway. And you’re one to talk, unless it’s someone else I hear pacing around at 3 am.”

Dan blushes and busies himself with making the drinks, accidentally making two coffees in his haste. Phil’s right though, he never sleeps anyway. Grimacing, he adds a scoop of hot chocolate mix to both.

“You’re a terrible influence on me,” Dan grumbles as he goes back into the lounge, handing a now standing Phil his mug. “I never used to drink this many sugary beverages.”

“That sounds like a fantastic influence,” Phil responds, placing his mug on the table to stoop back under the tree, which he had somehow gotten into the stand on his own without killing himself. A true Christmas miracle.

“Hang on, it’s not straight.”

Dan sets his own mug down and moves over to the tree, hoping Phil won’t call him out on his earlier promise to not touch the tree again as he grabs the trunk and tilts it back a bit so that it’s standing upright in the stand. Phil waits a moment, then begins twisting the bolts in again.

“That makes two of us.”

Dan’s not 100% sure he heard Phil correctly, and even if he did, he’s not sure what to say. Hiring a man in a kilt to deliver your tree and being upset that you didn’t get to see it doesn’t exactly scream heterosexual, and Dan had wondered even before that, but it had felt more like an idle hope. Now he’s sitting in his own lounge, setting up a Christmas tree, being told probably queer jokes by his flatmate and—maybe friend?

Dan’s never told a gay joke to anyone but Sam, never said anything about his sexuality at all to anyone aside from her. And she’d ranted about the inherent homoeroticism in Moby Dick on their first day of class, so it hadn’t exactly been a mystery how she would react. He had still worried, of course, because that seems inevitable, and stumbled his way through a very awkward coming out, but she’d hugged him and suggested a cute boy in her hall she could introduce him to, and that had been that.

Dan’s still learning how to let himself be like that in front of anyone else. Even with Phil, with whom falling into friendly banter has felt so disarmingly natural, he can’t imagine how to make that leap. It feels like a lot of himself to show.

“I’m done Dan, you can let go of the tree,” Phil says gently, bringing him back to reality with a hand on his arm. Phil’s stood next to him, holding a mug out for Dan to take.

“Right, thanks. Spaced out.”

“I’m going to get some water for the tree,” Phil says, watching Dan carefully.

Did he see Dan’s reaction? Does he know? In a way it feels easier, a weight off Dan’s shoulders, but at the same time Dan kind of wants to snatch it back, hold it in his hands again and give it back willingly this time. Purposefully.

“I didn’t mean to weird you out,” Phil says, coming back into the room and making Dan jump. “I just—I’m gay. I guess I never said.”

“Oh, yeah. I mean no, you didn’t. But yes. Right. Okay.”

“If you’ve got a problem with it—”

“No! No, I haven’t. Uh, I’m just—you know. It’s cool.”

“Right,” Phil says, skepticism heavy in his voice. He turns his back to Dan, surveying the tree and Dan wants to spin Phil back around and say he’s just an idiot, and gay. A gay idiot who doesn’t know how to talk to other gay people, and please don’t think he’s anything but elated—

“I needed a new roommate so late in August because my old one found out and got weird and moved out about two weeks after he moved in. He said his girlfriend asked him to move in with him, but—just give me a little more warning if you’re planning on moving in with your girlfriend, alright?”

“I don’t have a girlfriend,” Dan says with a feeble laugh that Phil doesn’t join in on. “I’m not going anywhere. What other roommate could I find to feed me daily pastries?”

Phil cracks a little smile at that. “We should decorate the tree.”

“Where are your ornaments?”

“My—oh. Shoot.”

“You bought an eight foot tree and forgot to think about ornaments?” Dan groans, falling comfortably back into their bickering.

“This is the first time I’ve had a tree of my own. We always just had ornaments at home. Hang on.”

He wanders off and Dan settles back into the sofa, sipping at his DIY mocha and staring at the tree. It is rather grand looking.

Phil flits in and out of the room, depositing onto the coffee table what seems to be every small trinket he believes he’ll be able to balance on a branch. Dan watches from his spot on the sofa, eying the makeshift ornaments with increasing skepticism. Phil finally deposits a stack of construction paper, tape, string and scissors on the table with a thump and looks at Dan expectantly, as if he’s going to be praised for his haul.

They’re all of the trinkets that are normally scattered around that flat that had originally made Dan feel instantly comfortable in the odd little house. Figurines from cartoons and anime, movie paraphanalia, and pretty much any sort of object you could dream of shaped like an animal. It had been nerdy and unguarded and enthusiastic, all of the things Dan hadn’t let himself be for years, and he’d wanted to slide right into the house and become a part of it.

Now, gathered all together with the intent of being put on the tree, they look silly. And, now that he’s gotten the chance to know him a little better, painfully Phil.

“You should do the lights first.”

Phil grimaces and leaves again. After a series of bangs and a yelp, he returns from his room with a string of lights that he arranges chaotically among the branches. He realizes about halfway through that they’re not going to reach to the top and tries to yank them up, nearly toppling the tree. Dan stays where he is, using some of the construction paper to make snowflakes like his grandma had taught him to when he was young.

At some point, Phil had switched on some soft instrumental Christmas music and turned off the main light so the room is illuminated by the fairy lights on the tree and along the ceiling. He fashions hooks rather impressively out of ribbon and unwound paper clips, and soon the tree becomes just as cluttered and colorful and clamorous as the rest of the flat, and Dan can’t help but smile just a bit whenever he looks at the desperately ugly thing. Phil takes each of Dan’s snowflakes, praises every one, and places it carefully on the tree, taking a moment to pause and consider the best place for it.

When the last snowflake is hung, Phil collapses onto the floor again, rolling over with a dramatic groan, his head flopping to rest under the tree. Dan watches as he flips over to his back, hands coming to rest clasped over his stomach.

“Get lost down there?”

“This is actually very nice.”

“Are you delirious? Should I take you to A&E?”

Phil just pats the floor next to him, and, feeling equally delirious, Dan gets up and crawls over to the tree, awkwardly maneuvering his long limbs to settle on the floor next to Phil. He sticks his head under the branches last, trepidatious for reasons he can’t quite name.

Instantly, he feels like he’s been transported to another world. All he can see are needles and branches, a hint of the trunk stretching steadily up behind him, and little pinpricks of warm buttery light. The smell of pine is all encompassing, and he can hear faintly the plink-plonking of the orchestral music from somewhere very far off. He’s aware of Phil’s presence, can see him if he turns his eyes all the way up and to the left, but feels utterly alone at the same time, wrapped snugly in this world of green soft light and sharp scents, and he thinks if this is what everyone thinks Christmas is, maybe he can see some of the appeal.

“Phil?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m gay too. Or queer. Or something.”

“Oh, alright.”

That’s all Phil says, and when Dan turns his head to look at him he’s just smiling softly up at the branches. Dan waits. When he’d come out to Sam she’d wanted to talk about it, share her coming out story and hear his. She’d wheedled the stories of his years of bullying out of him, and it had felt good to tell someone who knew how to react, what not to say. But it had also felt a little like a performance, a competition of who’d had it worse, and Dan’s not keen on competing again.

“So definitely not moving in with your girlfriend, then?” Phil asks finally.

Dan’s laughter bursts out of him like a release, blunt and forceful. It’s not quite right, maybe, doesn’t quite get at the heart of what Dan is, who he likes, but then again Dan doesn’t really get that either, and anyway it’s easy and familiar and intended to unwind some of the tension pulling up at Dan’s shoulders, so he lets it do its job.

Until Phil breaks the silence again.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure,” Dan says, hoping his voice isn’t trembling too obviously. Here it comes. He should have known he couldn’t avoid the conversation.

“Why do you hate Christmas?”

Dan blows a surprised huff of hair out of his nose, knocking a few needles loose and showering them down on his face. When he opens his eyes again, the sea of green stretches out still, steady and unending as ever.

“I don’t hate Christmas.”

“But—”

“When I was little, maybe five or six, my father thought it would be a great idea to surprise me by covering my room in fake snow. He did special effects for movies and he knew I’d always wanted a white Christmas, which we never get down in the south. Only when I went up to my room and found it covered in snow I freaked out, apparently, and started trying to clean it all up. I was afraid my parents would see the mess and think I made it and get mad. They came up expecting to find an excited, happy little boy and found me sobbing on the floor instead, desperately trying to shove the snow under my bed. They never tried anything like that again.”

He can hear Phil’s confusion in the ensuing silence and he knows it’s not an answer. Not really. It’s a piece of one, a glimpse into the complicated dynamics of his family and holidays and expectations and reality and not measuring up. It’s an offering, a request for patience, to wait until there’s a better answer to give.

He closes his eyes, feeling suddenly overwhelmed by the press of branches above him.

“Christmas is just… hard. It’s hard to make everyone happy in the right way, and Christmas just makes it worse.”

Phil doesn’t press anymore, just lays with Dan a while longer under the canopy of branches.

Saturday morning Phil leaves for his parents house as usual. Dan promises to water the tree, then promptly abandons the flat for a sleepover with Sam. The hall beds are comically narrow and uncomfortable, but Dan’s found he prefers them to having the entire house to himself at night. He doesn’t go over to Sam’s every weekend, but more often than not if Phil’s gone for the night, so is he.

She receives him without question even though he hadn’t warned her she was coming, throwing him a controller and switching to a multiplayer game as he collapses into one of her beanbags. It’s the one with the hemorrhage, and he frowns at her, but she just sticks out her tongue.

They chat idly as they play, and eventually the conversation turns—as Sam claims it always does—to Phil.

“He just keeps shoving mince pies at me every time I see him. Which is like every day now, by the way. Sometimes multiple times a day.” He says it like it’s an annoyance, but he knows Sam doesn’t believe him.

“That’s how flatmates work, mate. You inhabit the same space. Occasionally see each other. Sometimes even talk about the weather.”

“I saw him maybe six times in three months before this week, but suddenly he’s Mr. Homebody. Or Mr. Common Living Spaces, anyway. I think he spent most of his time in his room before.”

“Doing what?” Sam asks with a dramatic eyebrow waggle.

“Editing, I think.”

“Editing what?” she presses in the same tone.

“Editing his thesis, perv. At least I assume so. It’s not like we ever talked. And he goes home most weekends. His family lives nearby and I think he’s a bit of a mummy’s boy, if I’m being honest.”

“You seem to know a lot about this flatmate you never talk to,” Sam says, dodging out of the way of the crip he throws at her.

“Not really. Just those things. And that he’s obsessed with pastries, I guess. Well, most sweet things. He steals my cereal sometimes.”

She just stares at him with a raised eyebrow and he can feel his face heating so he waves his arms a bit and raises his voice, hoping to pass it off as anger.

“It’s just weird, isn’t it? He’s even got a spreadsheet. Drew it himself and taped it on the fridge. I’m supposed to rate them. Says it’s useful.”

“Well. What’s been the best so far?”

“M&S extra special,” he answers promptly.

“That is useful. I’ll keep that in mind.”

“You hate mince.”

“Your mum doesn’t, she told me so last night.”

Dan boos her.

“Maybe all the pies will do you good. You’ve been looking a bit peaky, you know.” Her voice is carefully nonchalant, but Dan knows her well enough by now to hear the concern.

“I hardly think some pastry is going to give me the vitamins I need.”

“Well. There’s fruit in them, isn’t there?”

“That’s what Phil says.”

“I like this Phil. I think I should meet him.”

“He’s gay,” Dan blurts out suddenly, then winces. He doesn’t know if Phil would want him telling other people, and he definitely doesn’t want to be telling Sam.

“Okaaaay. Is that meant to be a selling point or a deterrent? No matter how many pies he offers me, I promise I won’t make a move.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“What did you mean?”

“Just… that’s something else I know. He told me after the tree got delivered. Did I tell you about the tree?”

“Yes, you told me about the enormous tree.”

“Oh. Well. It’s just another thing I know about him, I guess.”

“That’s good,” Sam says, accelerating past him on the screen and chucking a banana behind her. Dan doesn’t dodge out of the way in time and Sam turns to look at him.

“I came out to him.”

“That’s kind of big, huh?” she asks, grabbing the controller from his hands.

“Not really,” he says, tugging it back and setting his car back on course. “He thought I was freaked out by him coming out because I was being, you know, homophobic or whatever. So I figured I’d set him straight.”

“Har har,” Sam deadpans, leaning to the side as her character rounds a curve.

“Maybe you can come over next week and see the tree,” Dan offers, trying to keep his voice steady.

Sam turns fully from the screen now, eyebrows disappearing under her fringe. “You’re inviting me over to your flat?”

She’s never been in the four months Dan’s lived there. At first he’d made excuses about needing to set up his things, not wanting her to see that he’d lived out of boxes for nearly a month because he was too lazy to unpack. He’d shifted into reminders of how far from campus it was and how crappy and cramped it was, how messy he and Phil kept it. None of these were lies, but they didn’t get at the real reasons Dan never invited her over, and he’s fairly sure she knows that.

He’s never felt comfortable inviting other people into what had always felt like Phil’s space, for one, despite the fact that he pays for half of it. Or almost half of it. And then, with Sam, there was the danger that she might pick up on the bumbling, self-conscious way he acts around Phil and leap to unfounded conclusions.

“Yeah, why not?”

“Why not? Why not, he says!” she says, turning back to the screen as if to complain to Peach. “Did you say that just to distract me?” she screeches when she realizes she’s fallen into 6th place. She spends the rest of the race desperately hunched over, as if trying to physically will her car into going faster. Dan wins the race and the cup and the next three rounds, and then gamely agrees to switch to another game.

Sam eyes him skeptically, never having known him to willing switch from Mario Kart to a game he’s less likely to win.

What can he say? He’s just in a good mood.

Today is the 15th. Dan knows this because when he goes out to the kitchen to make himself a cup of coffee—something he hadn’t started doing regularly until Phil had gotten him hooked on Starbucks—he glances at one of the two advent calendars and the little cardboard door for the 15th is already open on Phil’s. How he eats the incredibly sweet chocolate this early in the morning Dan doesn’t know, but then there are a lot of things Dan doesn’t understand about Phil.

Once the kettle has boiled and his instant coffee has been stirred, Dan turns to leave the tiny kitchen, toes already tingling from the chilly tiles, when something on the table catches his eye. At first he thinks it’s another mince pie and he’s ready to storm into Phil’s room and tell him that he simply cannot eat another mince pie, and if he tries he’s sure he will transform into a currant.

He moves closer to the table warily, rubbing at his eyes to try to clear some of the early morning blurriness and is confronted instead with a… well he’s not really sure what it is to be honest. The brown circle he had taken for a particularly well done pasty is in fact the shell of a plush turtle. Or perhaps a duck. It has the head of a duck, and the body of a turtle, sitting innocently on the kitchen table as if that is a very normal place for it to be, and a very normal thing for it to be. Dan spends a few moments considering the nagging familiarity of the thing before he remembers the turtle ducks from Avatar.

One mystery solved but still no closer to understanding what it’s doing here, Dan picks it up, unsettling a little piece of paper propped up on its side. Through the thin red construction paper Dan can see a backwards two printed. Huh.

Yesterday Phil’s mum’s mince pie and been places next to a little number one, written elaborately if a bit shakily onto a piece of green construction paper. At the time, Dan had assumed Phil had been declaring his mum’s mince pies the winner of the bracket, and Dan certainly wasn’t going to argue. Technically, he thought M&S might win out over Mrs. Lester’s ever so slightly in dough flakiness, but the homemade ones we very good—leagues better than anything his mum had ever made for him—and had the advantage of charm and nostalgia, anyway. Dan’s not 100% convinced he can taste the “love baked in” that Phil insisted was the secret ingredient, but they were really very good.

Now, though, the numbers are beginning to feel a bit more ominous. Two what? Two of two? Two animals? That seems like the wrong answer, but it’s about all his pre–coffee brain is coming up with, staring down at the turtle duck—

Oh.

Stomach plummeting, or perhaps rising up into his throat, but doing some sort of fluttering thing whichever direction it’s going in, Dan grabs his advent calendar and starts counting backwards from Christmas. Eleven days from now, when he’d been gifted a turtle duck. Twelve from yesterday, when the pies had been placed out on the table with a note saying it was for him, and a number one on it. The pies with, if he remembers correctly, little bird and pear shaped pieces of dough decorating the tops of them. To be fair he’d thought they were apples and just a generic bird yesterday, which had seemed a bit odd, but it hardly seemed a leap to think the rest of Phil’s family might be just as weird as him.

Dan opens the Tupperware holding the pies, noting that there are several fewer than there were when he snuck one last night before bed, and sighs. They do indeed look—approximately—like partridges and pears. Well, Dan doesn’t actually know what a partridge looks like, but as close as a 5 centimeter piece of dough can get, anyway.

Okay. Okay, so—okay. Phil is—and it must be Phil right? Unless someone else is breaking into their flat to leave Dan gifts. Dan considers Sam for a brief moment, then laughs out loud at the idea of her putting this much effort into anything, much less a very kind and over the top gesture. Not to mention how weird it would be if she’d someone gotten a hold of Mrs. Lester’s mince pies.

So no, it’s Phil doing this. Giving Dan, as far as he can guess, 12 presents on the 12 days leading up to Christmas. Presumably as the second wave of his campaign against Dan’s distaste for Christmas. And… for no other reason. Right?

He’s doing this because he is kind and thoughtful and he likes to make other people happy. Not because of any ulterior motives. Nothing for Dan to get excited about.

He looks down at the plushie in his hands, giving the shell a little squeeze. It’s cute and nerdy and very Phil, but also very indicative of the attention Phil apparently pays to what he says. Dan had told him as they’d chatted idly while setting up the tree that Sam had forced him to watch Avatar with her and how he’d fallen in love with the show. He hadn’t believed that Phil had never seen it, said he’d love it, especially all of the weird animal mashups in the world. The conversation hadn’t lasted more than a couple of minutes, but apparently Phil had filed that information away and used it to find the second gift.

Dan finishes his coffee, pops another mince pie, then sets about getting ready for his exam later that morning. He goes back into the kitchen to retrieve the plushie, feeling weird leaving it where he found it, and flips over the little piece of paper next to it to find Phil had written ‘good luck on your test!’ above the loopy two.

Well, he’s well and truly fucked, isn’t he?

He slips the piece of paper carefully into his wallet and tucks the plushie into a V of branches at the top of the tree before heading out for the day.

“Those are nice,” Sam says as soon as she sits down next to Dan on the couch, gesturing at Dan’s feet propped up on the coffee table. Or presumably the socks. “Not black, though. Or filled with holes.”

“No, um. Thanks. Phil gave them to me.”

Sam had accepted his offer to come over this weekend and ‘babysit him,’ as she’d put it, while Phil is away again, and Dan is starting to regret it as much as he always thought he would. She’d brought a stack of terrible Christmas movies to make fun of, and he takes a minute to fiddle with the DVD she’d handed to him as she sat down before looking up to face her carefully neutral expression and patient silence.

“I didn’t realize you two had advanced to sock gifting.”

“He just—”

Dan’s got a half-baked lie about Phil accidentally buying too many bird socks—probably not a possibility in the mind of Phil, considering what Dan’s seen of Phil’s sock collection—but he just can’t. He’s already a little overwhelmed with the whole situation, and while the thought of telling Sam yesterday had seemed terrible and humiliating, the thought of not telling her now sets a jittery sort of anxiety rattling through him.

He sets the DVD down on the table and turns his body to fully look at her. She adopts a dramatic stony expression with just a hint of a smile poking through and places her hands on his knees. This is how she likes to tell him she’s listening.

“I think he’s doing the 12 days of Christmas. I’ve gotten four gifts so far, and they haven’t stopped, so I’m assuming that means I’m getting 8 more. Or—oh god, hopefully not… whatever 12 times 12 is. Or—what is it? That thing where the 12 is excited?”

“One hundred and forty four. And what the hell are you talking about?”

“You know, the thing with the exclamation point.”

“Oh, factorial. No, that’d be 12 times 11 times 10, and so on. This would be and addition sort of scenario. Only you get new partridges each day right? So it’s really more of a palindromic equation where you’d have 12 partridges and 12 of whatever the last day is, then 2 times 11 for both the ducks and whatever 11 human beings you get gifted near the end of the song, presumably against their will—”

“Oh my God, shut up! Why are you like this?” Dan breaks in, throwing his head back dramatically and draping an arm over his eyes. “No one cares. No one likes math. This is why people hate math majors.”

“Says the law student.”

“Shut it, swot. No one likes either of us.”

“Oh, cheers to that,” she says, lifting her drink to knock against his and taking a swig. Then she narrows her eyes and locks her gaze on him in a way he knows means trouble. “Wait, so you mean he’s doing like… ‘on the first day of Christmas my true love,” she emphasizes these words with an odd sort of wiggling thrust of her hands, “gave to me’ kind of 12 days of Christmas?”

“No. No. Definitely not. No.”

“So...no?”

“No.”

Sam doubles over laughing on her side of the couch and Dan stands restlessly. Pretending it was his intention all along, he goes over to the DVD player to insert the disc. It’s one of those awful corporate automaton goes back to their hometown to save some baby sheep and meet a street sweeper with a heart of gold and learn the true meaning of love and Christmas things, and Dan would rather watch it than endure another second of this conversation. Phil would probably love it.

The first trailer begins playing, advertising another absolutely absurd Christmas movie, and Dan goes back to sit on the couch. He should have known better than to think this would shut her up though.

“That just seems like a lot of effort to put in if you don’t want to sleep with someone.”

“It feels like a lot of effort if you do want to sleep with someone. It’s a lot of effort period. Just… weird effort.”

“Well, you did say he’s kinda weird right? I mean pot, kettle and all that, but—”

“Oi!” Dan says, reaching blindly behind him to grab a pillow to whack her with. She retaliates and they have a brief, halfhearted pillow fight until Dan shouts mercy and Sam scootches back to her end of the couch.

“What else has he gotten you?” She asks, hugging her pillow to her chest and panting a bit.

“Uhh, the socks. Two pairs with birds on them, for four calling birds. A Calcifer ornament yesterday, which has no connection I can discern to three french hens. But I did tell him that Howl’s Moving Castle is on of my favorite Miyazaki movies. That turtle duck plushie from avatar at the top of the tree,” he points to the plushie and she squeals and jumps up to examine it, “for two turtle doves. And then the first day, which I’d thought was just the end of the mince pie codex, but I later realized were decorated with partridges and pear trees. Approximately.”

Sam stands beside the tree, turtle duck cradled in her arms, watching Dan. “That’s a lot of birds.”

“I know.”

“Aren’t there more birds?”

“Yeah, something about geese and swans.”

“You haven’t looked the song up?”

“What for?”

“To try to get an idea of what he might get you next.”

Dan spends the rest of the movie trying to block out Sam’s increasingly absurd suggestions of how Phil’s presents will adhere to the theme.

Sam wakes him up at the ungodly hour of 9 am, clambering over him and muttering something about something having died in her throat and needing a glass of water.

“Kitchen,” he mumbles.

“Jeez, thanks, I never would have guessed.”

He’s just about fallen back asleep when he hears two shouts. He’s out of bed like a shot and running into the kitchen before his brain can catch up with him. It is in this state, woefully brainless, that he is stuck trying to process the image of Sam standing in his kitchen, clad only in her pants and a big shirt, facing Phil, still wearing his coat and his backpack and looking well and truly mortified, eyes glued firmly to the ceiling.

“Hi,” Dan says, voice tight.

“Hi,” Phil responds, glancing briefly down to look at Dan, then back up to the molding.

“Hi,” Dan says, this time to Sam, pivoting to look at her and still trying to process the situation. He’s aware suddenly that he’s very cold and he looks down and realizes he’s in absolutely nothing but his pants. The conflicting urges to bolt from the kitchen and to never move again war within him. Sam gives him an amused look.

“Okay, yes, hellos all around. I’m Sam, Dan’s friend. You must be Phil. I’ve heard so much about you.” She holds out her hand and sort of jabs it at Phil’s chest when he doesn’t respond, and he fumbles to shake it while still not making eye contact.

“Nice to finally meet you Sam. Dan’s told me about you too.”

“Only horrible things, I’m sure.”

“Oh, no, he—”

“I’m sorry,” Dan interrupts, “I didn’t think you’d be home this early. I wouldn’t have—”

“No it’s fine, I’m usually not. I just brought something back I thought you might—but I can give the two of you privacy if you—”

“Oh my God, I cannot deal with this, I’m sorry. Phil, I’m Sam, Dan’s very lesbian friend.”

“Lesbian?” Phil repeats softly, gaze finally falling back down to hover nervously just over their heads.

“Extremely. Exclusively. Enthusiastically.”

“Yes, we get it I think,” Dan says.

“I’m just saying. Nothing untoward went on in here last night. We left plenty of room for Jesus. He likes to be the middle spoon, you know.”

Phil is nodding dazedly and Dan hopes with a sudden intensity that Phil isn’t secretly very religious.

“What did you bring me?” He blurts, desperate to change the subject.

“Oh, uh—”

“Okay, I’m going to head out. Dan, it was lovely to finally see your house. Phil, it was lovely to meet you. I’d love to stay to witness however this goes down, but I’ve got places to be, lesbians to see—”

“Sam!”

“Only joking, I know tragically few lesbians. If find any, give a shout. Or really any women who are interested in—okay!” she squeaks when Dan leans over to pinch the back of her arm. “I’m off now. Have a lovely Sunday.”

She seems to take all of the noise out of the kitchen with her when she leaves, leaving Dan and Phil in a vacuum. Dan hums a bit, just to prove to himself that he can hear it.

“She seems, uh, very nice.”

“Yeah, she’s… energetic.”

“And definitely gay?”

“Oh, yes, definitely—” he cuts himself when he hears Phil’s laughter.

“I was just joking. Sorry, I’m not very good with unexpected strangers. Especially when they’re stood in my kitchen not wearing trousers.”

“I’m really sorry—”

“It’s fine, really, stop apologizing. This is your flat too, you can have anyone over you want, in any state of dress or undress you like. And they like. Because consent—”

“So what did you get me?” Dan asks again, trying to suppress his protests that he doesn’t really feel the need to bring anyone into their home, especially not undressed. Aside from Sam. But try getting Sam to keep her jeans on for more than four hours. It’s just not going to happen.

“Oh, right!” Phil brightens considerably and bends to reach into the bag at his feet, pulling out a PS3. “It’s not for you, exactly, it’s just a loaner at the moment, but I figured we could play some games together. If you want, I mean. I brought back Sonic, and a couple of others. But a lot of them are single player, so you can just play them by yourself if you’d prefer. I can just put it in the lounge and you can use it whenever—”

“Phil, shut up for a second, Christ. Playing some games sounds nice.” He hadn’t meant for it to come out sounding so sincere, or feeling so disarmingly vulnerable, and he suddenly gets Phil’s urge to fill the space with endless chatter. Telling Phil that he does want to place some video games with him after Phil had suggested it isn’t a fucking love confession. If he—

Dan looks up at the sound of Phil chuckling, shooting him a questioning look.

“I was just waiting to see how long your inner monologue would run. I’ll go set it up, if you want to start now?”

“Sounds good.”

“Are you, um, cold at all?”

“What—oh fuck. Yeah, sorry, I’ll got put a shirt on.” He bolts out of the kitchen, ears playing cruel tricks on him and telling him that Phil mutters, “don’t feel like you have to on my account,” as he’s leaving.

He catches Sam in the hall, fully dressed now and with her bag slung over her shoulder.

“You don’t actually have to leave,” Dan tells her, leaning against the wall and hoping desperately that it’s not too obvious how much he doesn’t mean it. She just rolls her eyes and leans against the opposite wall with a knowing grin.

“What did he bring you?”

“It’s not for me. But he brought his PS3 from home so we could play Sonic.”

“Five golden rings?”

Dan just nods.

“He’s cute. You’re cute,” she yells, loud enough that Phil probably hears from the kitchen.

“I hate you.”

“Oh yes Dan, you’re so welcome for taking two busses out here to keep your scared of the dark arse company and then swiftly and subtly leaving so as not to be a cock block. It was absolutely my pleasure, as always.”

“Thank you.”

“Have fun on your date,” she said to him before raising her voice again. “Bye Phil.”

“Bye! Nice to meet you! You’re welcome back anytime.”

“He’s very polite,” she says with a hand to his cheek and a significant look. “And fit. If you’re into that sort of thing. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“You’re a lesbian!” Dan hisses at her retreating back, and she turns around to wink at him.

“I thought you didn’t like him!”

Dan locks the door behind her, thumping his head against the solid wood of the door. He hopes Phil didn’t hear that. He kind of hopes all of this has been a particularly vivid nightmare. He really hopes Phil is still in the kitchen with his PS3 and nothing to do today but play video games with Dan.

He’s not in the lounge, in fact, but had returned to the kitchen to pour them both bowls of cereal and mugs of hot, sweet coffee. Phil still adds a bit too much sugar to Dan’s whenever he makes it, and Dan suspects he doesn’t make Phil’s quite sweet enough, but neither of them have said anything.

They take their breakfast to the lounge and reminisce over their favorite games from their childhood as they eat. After Phil’s gotten his third bowl of cereal they set their dishes aside and load the game. It’s something Dan’s done countless times throughout his life, but something in the moment makes it feel new and thrilling. Maybe it’s the tree and the lights and the glittering garlands and the festively scented candle and the quiet Christmas music Dan is beginning to suspect Phil leaves playing all the time. Maybe it’s the man seated next to him, closer than most of his mates from secondary school would have ever sat, chatting easily.

It’s easy, which is maybe what unnerves him the most. Nothing has ever been easy like this for Dan. Things are meant to be hard for him. He’s meant to be gloomy and off-putting and too loud and too much for people. He shouts and he swears and he shoves Phil when either of them die in a particularly stupid way, but Phil just keeps passing him the controller, keeps grinning and sticking his tongue out between his teeth when he laughs at Dan’s screeched rants.

They beat level after level, the room brightening and then dimming again as the sun moves across the sky without either of them mentioning the possibility of leaving. Phil goes out to the kitchen several times to collect them mince pies and crisps and glasses of ribena. They switch games when they get restless, rather than stopping, then switch again. They play Mortal Kombat and Dan wins every time, except two times that Phil’s terrible smack talk sends Dan into fits of laughter he can’t recover from in time to defend himself. They play Donkey Kong and scream the entire time—well mostly Dan—but they do surprisingly well working together, picking up a shorthand language with ease.

They don’t fight over the pizza toppings when Phil orders them dinner. They do fight over who has to go get the pizza when the bell rings, settling it with a game of rock–paper–scissors. They fall easily back into playing games when they’re done with their food, settling just as simply back into the easy conversation they’ve kept up all day topics switching from heavy to light without awkward pauses. Dan feels like he’s entered another bubble, and he’s just as reluctant to leave this one as he was to crawl back out from under the tree.

Phil passes out first, controller falling from his hands and clattering to the floor, startling him back awake. It’s only 11, early by both of their standards, but they had gotten an early start to the day, and strained their eyes spectacularly for the rest of it. His mother would be horrified.

He pushes Phil gently off to bed, countering all of his sleepy protests, then returns to the lounge to shut the TV off and clean up some of their mess before retiring to his own room. He means to scroll through the internet for a while, but winds up falling asleep almost immediately, the Sonic soundtrack playing softly in his head.

He’s awoken by a sudden clatter, unsure of the time or day. Heart pounding, he grabs the closest object to him and clutches it to his chest and sits stock still in his bed, listening. He hears some more clangs, softer but definitely coming from the kitchen.

It’s probably just Phil. He’s like 90% sure it’s just Phil and not some baking enthusiast thief stealing all of their baking sheets. Phil gets midnight snacks all the time. He thinks Dan doesn’t know, but Dan knows. And they had eaten pretty early tonight—last night?—because they’d never had lunch really. So it’s fine.

He lays back down, but his heart’s still pounding and a little voice is nagging that what if it isn’t Phil and he’s just laying here, waiting to get attacked. Well, he retorts, going to find the murder would hardly help the situation. Still, he’s not able to quiet his mind and he finally climbs out of bed, shoe—what he’d grabbed when he’d first woken up—still clutched tightly in his hand. He’s just going to go check, and then he can catch Phil in the act and mock him for it for the rest of time. On second though he doubles back to grab his phone to get photographic evidence.

He creeps his way down the hallway and peeks his head around the door. Sure enough, Phil is stood at the counter, surrounded by bowls and bags. It looks like he’s lightly dusted every nearby surface, including himself, with a layer of flour, resembling the indoor snow crisis of Dan’s youth a little bit.

“Phil,” he says sharply, stepping into the room and smirking when Phil and shrieks at the unexpected noise, “why are you banging around the kitchen and covered in flour at 2:30 in the morning?”

“Nothing! It’s fine, I’m sorry. I’ll try to be more quiet.”

“I wasn’t asleep yet,” Dan lies, trying to look alert, “I just wanted to make sure you hadn’t chopped off anything vital.”

“Nope, no chopping at all. Just go back to bed. Why do you have a shoe in your hands?”

“I thought you were a burglar, didn’t I? I had to defend myself.”

“A burglar making cookies?”

“Aha!”

“No aha. Ignore me, I’m delirious. In fact, I think I’m sleepwalking.”

“Are these the next day of Christmas gifts?”

There’s a brief flash of panic on Phil’s face before he smooths it over with a wide, dopey smile. “Has someone been leaving you Christmas gifts? That’s so nice. Is it, do you think,” theatrical whisper, “Santa?’

“Your mum’s Santa.”

“That’s not what she said last night.”

“Mate, what?”

“I don’t know. It’s late. Go back to bed. I’ve got it covered.”

“In flour, yes, I see. Do you want help?” Dan asks, surprising himself.

He seems to catch Phil off guard too, and he takes a moment to look at Dan. “Do you want to help?”

“I want to make sure you don’t burn the flat down.”

“You’re the one that lit spaghetti on fire!”

“I shouldn’t have told you that,” Dan grumbles, pushing his sleeves up and stepping up next to Phil. “But yes, I do. Want to help.”

Dan expects a teasing response, but Phil just nods and hands him his phone, asking him to read off the ingredients and instructions.

They work well in tandem, if sloppily and inexpertly. Phil spills more flour everywhere and nearly knocks the bowl over twice. Dan completely shatters the first egg and they have to fish tiny pieces of eggshell out until they're middlingly confident they’ve gotten them all. Creaming the butter and sugar takes way longer than seems humane, and Phil snaps at Dan to stop giggling every time he says cream.

They finally get to something generally resembling cookie dough. The recipe says to chill it for at least half an hour, but Phil says those are directions for people making the cookies before midnight, and nighttime baking has different rules. They roll the dough out and have to scrape their first attempt off the counter with a knife and apply a much more generous sprinkling of flour.

After staring at the finally rolled out dough for a moment, Dan turns to Phil. “Where are the cookie cutters?”

“I don’t, uh, have any. I was just going to use this.” He whips a huge knife out of seemingly nowhere and Dan screams.

“You’re such a weirdo,” he chides, gently removing the knife from Phil’s hands and replacing it with a much smaller, duller one.

“You can go to bed now, I think I’ve got it from here.”

“Nuh-uh. I’m in it for the long haul. I want to see how our babies turn out.”

“Fine, just—” Phil reaches into the drawer next to him and pulls out a slightly more reasonable knife. He cuts the rectangle of dough in half. “You can do those ones and I’ll do these ones. No peeking.”

“Mate, the mystery’s a bit ruined by now, I don’t think—”

“No peeking!”

Dan just nods and slides his portion of dough down the counter, staring at it for at least a minute trying to figure out what to make before Phil tells him he’s almost done and he realizes he has to do something. He casts about the room and winds up cutting out several of the Santa hat clad animals decorating the walls and cabinets.

He shushes and nudges Phil out of the way when he tries to get a look at what Dan’s doing once he’s finished his own, repeating Phil’s command of no peeking. Phil huffs, but backs off and contents himself with lining the trays and transferring the cookies onto them. From the abundance of grumbling, Dan assumes it does not go well.

Once he’s done he deposits his cookies on the second tray and holds them out proudly to Phil, who coos over the misshapen animals.

“Alright, let’s see yours then.”

“Fine,” Phil relents, holding out his tray.

Dan stares, nonplussed. “Well I have good news—the surprise is not ruined. What the hell are these?”

“Well, that was supposed to be a goose—”

“It looks like a giraffe.”

“And that’s an egg.”

“Six geese a-laying?”

“If you want to call it that.”

“Your egg is quite square. Looks a bit painful to lay.”

“You’re a bit painful to—no, never mind,” Phil says, turning bright red. “Just go back to bed. This has all been a dream.”

Phil has to take the tray from Dan because he’s laughing so hard he nearly drops it. He puts them in the over and sets the timer, then begins making the frosting. Dan recovers himself in time to help Phil portion it out into several cups and dye it. They bicker over color choices and compromise with black, grey, red, and orange for Dan, and green, blue, purple, and yellow for Phil, which Dan points out is just the entire rainbow.

“What would your perfect Christmas be?” Phil asks once the frosting’s finally done and they’ve been sitting on the floor in silence for a few moments, covered in flour and batter.

“I don’t think there’s such a thing. That’s the problem with Christmas. Everyone has all of these expectations about it, and it can never live up to the hype. And once you pass a certain age, it’s not really about you anymore. It’s about passing on the illusion to someone else, and you only end up driving yourself mad in the process.”

“I think it’s fun to give other people a good Christmas.”

“Of course you do.”

“I just—I’ve been really lucky, I think. It took me a while to realize it, but my childhood was very happy and my family’s still really close. I love the holidays because I get to spend time with them and be cozy and feel like a kid again. Not exactly, but still… I guess I didn’t realize for a while that not everyone had that impression of Christmas.”

Dan doesn’t know whether to be annoyed at this very naive confession, or to be glad that Phil, at least, has that. He can’t imagine Phil any other way really, thinks Phil is a result of that happy childhood, passing on his generous cheer and optimism. But then, Dan thinks, he can’t imagine he’d be as optimistic as Phil even if he had been raised in a family like that. It’s not like his family is awful. Dan’s just like this.

“My parents were really young when they had me, and they didn’t have much money. They worked a lot. I always looked forward to Christmas because I got to spend more time with them. I’d go to church with my grandma, then we’d go over to her house for dinner and then presents in the morning. I didn’t get as many presents as some of my friends, but I never minded that much, because I liked spending time with everyone.

“When my younger brother came along, though, it was like—it felt like my parents were finally ready to actually be parents. We had more money and they worked less and paid more attention to him, and gave him more gifts than I’d ever gotten. And by the time he was a little older I was a moody teenager anyway, getting—well with other shit going on, and it felt safer to just say I hated Christmas than to get my hopes up.”

They sit in silence again, Dan leaned against the oven and Phil leaned ever so slightly against his side. Dan thinks Phil doesn’t know what to say, and he’s perfectly okay with that if he just stays put. But then the timer buzzes and Phil jumps up and waves Dan out of the way, pulling their cookies out with a flourish that almost sends them flying to the floor.

They’re only a little over baked, but they’ve kept their shape better than either of them expected. Phil picks one up immediately and Dan slaps it out of his hand, then slaps the icing out of his other hand and reminds Phil that they have to cool. They take a quick Sonic break, that turns into an hour before either of them realize, and it’s 4 am now and Dan has class in six hours, but when Phil tugs him into the kitchen to ice the cookies with him he goes easily.

The cookies are a disaster. Dan decorates one of the ‘eggs’ with squiggles of red and yellow and orange and giggles uncontrollably at the face Phil makes when Dan tells him it’s placenta. Phil’s are covered in shaky lines and accidental blobs from his useless hands, but when Dan looks at the group as a whole, he thinks they have a certain kind of charm.

Phil finally sends Dan off to bed successfully at 4:45. He promised he’s going to bed too, but Dan can hear the running water and soft rattle of dishes as he snuggles under the cover.

The next morning the cookies are set out on the table with only three missing. Phil is making coffee when Dan comes into the kitchen and he grabs another mug when he sees Dan. He looks a bit like death, but he smiles when he catches Dan looking at the cookies. Dan bites off the head of one of Phil’s ‘geese’ just as Phil sets a coffee down in front of him.

“Thanks. You know, these look a lot like the cookies we made last night. Strange, considering you said Santa was leaving my gifts every morning.”

“I was making the cookies for Santa, actually, to thank him—”

“Thoughtful of you.”

“You must have done such a bad job decorating them that he decided to leave the cookies and take your present.”

“Oi, it’s your geese that looks like Satan’s spawn, I wouldn’t be throwing stones in glass houses.”

“Says the person that made a placenta cookie.”

“And yet I don’t see it on the plate this morning.”

Phil swipes the rest of the swan cookie from Dan’s hand. “I’m going to take a nap. Wake me tomorrow if I haven’t emerged.”

Dan watches Phil walk back to his room, not bothering to mention that he’s never actually been in Phil’s room and he doesn’t think he could work up the nerve.

The next two mornings Dan wakes to an empty, cold kitchen, warmed slightly by the sight of his present on the table. He still feels a little pang of guilt, but it’s mostly been replaced with excitement at seeing what Phil had gotten him. On Monday it’s a hat knit by his aunty, as Phil explains later that evening. It’s all black, except for the faintest hints of silver woven in thin threads that catch the light, with a big bobble at the top. It’s not really something Dan would normally wear, but he jams it on his head immediately.

The next day he finds a variety pack of fancy hot chocolate and rips one open to try. It’s cloyingly sweet, though, so Dan gathers any of the others with cutesy names that sound too sweet for him to stand and brings them to Phil’s door, along with the mug of already made cocoa. It takes nearly a full minute of banging on his door for Phil to come and open it. He’s got on nothing but his terrible Christmas pajama bottoms and his hair is an absurd bird’s nest, and Dan wants to run to his room and scream into his pillow.

Instead he holds out the cocoa in offering and Phil opens the door further, beckoning him in. Dan only hesitates for a moment before going in.

Phil’s room doesn’t look that different from the rest of the flat, except maybe a little more Phil. It’s cluttered and colorful and a bit messy and Dan counts at least 11 socks before Phil catches his eye and pats the bed next to where he’s curled up under the duvet, now wearing a hoodie with the hood drawn up over his head and, unfortunately, his incredible hairdo.

“Any reason I’m getting hot chocolate in bed this morning?”

“Someone bought me a bunch of incredibly sweet cocoa mixes, perhaps strategically.”

Phil takes a loud, slurping sip of his drink and sighs contentedly and the stern look Dan had been trying to maintain melts away instantly.

“Are you saying Santa thought I was a better boy this year so he brought you a present I could benefit from too? I don’t see the harm in that.”

“Strange that Santa’s doing so much traveling pre-Christmas Eve this year. Doesn’t he normally deliver all of the presents in one night?

“Population growth, you know. It’s getting harder to do it all in one night. He’s trying to spread it out.”

“Close are you?”

“Oh yeah. You know that new Santa Baby that Michael Bublé sings? The no homo one?”

Dan shakes his head and Phil looks at him aghast, immediately pulling out his phone and bringing up the video on YouTube. They giggle through the buddies and the pallies and by the end of the song Phil’s head is resting on Dan’s shoulder so he can press his laughter into the fabric of Dan’s shirt.

“Anyway, that’s definitely us. Best of totally platonic, definitely entirely heterosexual buds.”

Dan’s heart skips a beat before he remembers the us Phil’s referring to doesn’t actually include him.

“Are you implying you’ve fucked Santa Clause?”

“I mean there’s a reason the French call him Daddy Christmas, isn’t there?”

“Phil!” Dan shrieks, laying on the mock outrage thick and shoving him off his shoulder. “Change dot org stop Phil Lester immediately.”

Phil, meanwhile, is grumbling about the hot chocolate he’d spilled on the duvet when Dan pushed him. He’d drunk most of it already so there isn’t much, but Dan retreats to the bathroom to get a damp cloth feeling like he’d broken something.

He hands the towel to Phil and watches from the doorway as Phil mops up the mess.

“You know you don’t have to do this, right?” He says suddenly, feeling the weight of the words against his tongue until he his jaw had felt sore. “I mean it’s really nice of you, but it’s okay. I feel like I’ve been thoroughly Christmassed now. Christ–ified. Christened?”

“But I want to.” Phil looks up at Dan, cloth forgotten on the duvet, probably just getting it wetter. Dan wants to tell him to pick it up, but he also wants to hear what Phil has to say now that he’s finally dropped the whole Santa act. “I want you to have a good Christmas.”

“You must be spending a lot of money.”

Phil blushes, and Dan knows he’s blushing too, but he doesn’t look away.

“I mean, a bit. But not too much. Most of the things I’ve been getting are stupid and small. And I have a bit of money still from the job I did last year, and I’ve done some odd editing jobs this year that pay pretty well. Plus my parents help me with rent. So it’s fine. It’s okay. I want to. I get that this is probably more fun for me than it is for you—”

Before he’s processed what he’s doing, Dan’s walked back into the room and stooped over the bed, wrapping Phil up in a quick, awkward hug. Before Phil can react he grabs the towel and makes a hasty retreat.

“Thank you,” he says to the hallway once he’s gotten back out of the room.

For the first time in 21 days, Dan comes into the kitchen in the morning to find the table completely empty. He does a double take, then sinks into one of the chairs, feeling a little adrift. He has no right to feel like this, of course. He’s been spoiled rotten over the course of the month, however reluctant he was to participate in the beginning, and he’s eventually going to have to get used to hauling himself out of bed without the promise of a treat waiting for him when Christmas is over. Still, he lets himself have a little pout over the empty table.

Footsteps alert him to Phil’s approach, and he tries to perk up a bit, leaning back into the chair and pulling out his phone.

“Morning,” Phil greets him cheerfully. “You’re up early.” It’s 9:30.

“So are you.”

“I do have a present for you, but my printer ran out of ink, and I didn’t think the barcodes would scan properly. I was going to go to the library, but they don’t open until 10.”

“Phil you don’t have to explain anything, it’s not like I expect them—I mean I do, you know,” Dan corrects himself at seeing the look of disappointment on Phil’s face, “I do look forward to them. But not in a way that I’m mad or upset if they’re not there, you know. You’re allowed a day off.”

“It’s not a day off, just a morning off. Which actually—you’re not working tonight right?”

“No. Why?” Dan’s already guessed that it’s tickets Phil needs to print, and it’s taking all of his self control not to demand Phil just tell him right now.

“This one’s kind of another selfish one. My friends invited me out tonight and I was hoping you might want to come along. It’s not—well it’s not something I’ve ever done before and I’m a little nervous about it, but it seems like something you might be into. Maybe,” Phil hedges further, clicking the kettle on and off again absentmindedly.

“Phil, I have literally no idea where you’re going with this unless you’re trying to take me to some sort of BDSM room or something—”

“Oh my God, Dan. No. That’s not—it’s just a drag show. Nine ladies dancing,” he concludes weakly, waving his hand about in a dispirited take on spirit hands.

Oh. Interesting.

“I’ve never been either. Have your friends gone before?”

“Some of them. They said it’s a lot of fun.”

“Are they gay?” Dan asks, trying not to sound too excited, or too nervous, voice coming out oddly flat.

“Mostly, yeah.”

“Do they know—”

“I’ve told them you’re my flatmate, and a little about you, but I didn’t tell them anything like that.”

“Cool,” Dan says, voice annoyingly breathy, wondering suddenly if Phil just means Dan’s sexuality, or if he’s referring to anything else with his vague promise. Not that there’s exactly been anything else to refer to, aside from a head on Dan’s shoulder and a day spent playing video games in fairly close proximity.

God, he’s pathetic.

“So do you want to go?”

“Sure, why not? I get off of work at 7.”

“Great. The show starts at 9, but we were going to meet at 7:30 to get drinks. Do you want to just meet us there? I can bring your ticket.”

They make arrangements for Dan to text Phil when he gets there, then part ways so Dan can get ready for work and Phil can go to the library. The day passes slower than any other Dan’s had the displeasure of living in recent memory. His coworkers all notice and start teasing him that he has a hot date tonight, and he doesn’t even bother correcting them, which does have the benefit of throwing them off for a while.

When Dan’s shift is finally over he goes into the staff bathroom to change into the clothes he’d picked out this morning, checking them out three times in the mirror before he’s satisfied that they look at least alright. Not that he can do anything about it at this point anyway, but he leaves the store thinking he looks moderately attractive. Phil had said he looks nice in red, at least.

The bus is late and it’s doing a weird sort of misting hailing mixture thing, so Dan arrives late and with slightly curly hair that he’d spent the entire bus ride tugging at, only managing to make it frizzy as well as curly.

Minimal confidence shattered, Dan texts Phil when he gets off the bus. He spends the entire four minutes of his walk from the bus stop to the bar wondering if Phil will get his text and if he’ll come out to meet him, or if he’ll have forgotten about him surrounded by all of his other friends and having a good time without him.

As the bar comes into view, Dan sees him immediately, washing away all of his anxiety in a wave of slight guilt. Of course Phil came out to get him. Phil wraps him in a tentative hug when Dan gets close enough, and Dan can smell his raspberry shampoo and not a little alcohol and he laughs softly in Phil’s ear.

“Seems like I’m going to have to do some work to catch up with you.”

“Dan,” is Phil’s simple, happy response, letters a bit mushy in his mouth.

“How drunk are you?”

“‘M a lightweight. But just tipsy. I’ve only had two drinks.” He holds out two fingers to show Dan and Dan just laughs and grabs Phil’s hand in a moment of boldness, leading them both up to the door.

Phil’s friends are—a lot. They’re friendly and loud and a bit pushy, and they clearly know each other very well. Every once in awhile someone leans over to explain something to Dan, most often Phil, but mostly Dan just lets the current of the conversation carry him along in a pleasant haze, leaning into the slight rock of the room as he chugs a couple of drinks to catch up with everyone else as he leans into Phil’s warm, soft side.

They get a few pointed looks, and a couple pointed comments too, but Phil seems to be floating too high to let them pierce his bubble. He just laughs them off, tugging Dan closer to him with every one. Every once in a while Phil turns to look at Dan, eyes searching Dan’s face, but Dan must smiles back at the presumed question. He’s not complaining.

The show is also a lot, much like the rest of the evening. It’s exhilarating and invigorating and a little terrifying and more than Dan could have dreamed about experiencing just a couple of years ago. It’s celebratory and defiant and irreverent in the most freeing way Dan’s ever experienced, and Dan can barely focus because Phil keeps turning into Dan’s shoulder to laugh. Several times Dan has to squirm away when he gets too close to Dan’s neck, and by the third or fourth time Phil shoots Dan a significant look each time it happens.

Two hours later the stumble out of the bar, getting heckled good-naturedly by Phil’s friends as they part ways. Phil’s arm is looped around Dan’s, and Dan’s new hat is tucked carefully over his ears. Phil had smiled brilliantly when Dan pulled it out of his bag and put it on, and Dan had nearly collapsed on the spot.

They finally make it to the bus stop and Dan doesn’t care how late the bus is for once because Phil is huddling close to him for warmth and he still smells like raspberries and alcohol and he maybe accidentally says this out loud and maybe Phil responds that Dan smells like warm, and Dan thinks he could probably cry, if he weren’t so overwhelmingly, stubbornly happy.

The bus ride home is sobering, in the bright light and the jostle and the persistent existence of other human beings and they disembark at their stop a little less stooped and a little farther apart.

But only a little.

Dan opens the door when Phil fumbles with the keys too long and they both make noises about falling into bed immediately, but find themselves sitting down at the table without really knowing how they’d gotten there. They sit in their dark kitchen for a moment, catching their breaths.

“We should drink water,” Dan mumbles, desperate to do something, anything, for Phil. For once. He hauls himself up and fills two glasses with cold water, setting one down next to Phil. He just stares at the glass though, making no move to pick it up.

“I leave tomorrow.”

“Oh. Right.”

Phil had definitely told him that, it’s more that Dan had lost track of the passage of time, of everything that wasn’t the two of them in this room, or the two of them on their couch, or just the two of them.

“You have to promise you won’t open your presents early. I’m going to leave them out, but you have to open them on the right day.”

“Phil, you finished your advent calendar two days ago.”

“Promise,” Phil insists, voice thick and strange and Dan goes back to wanting to do everything for him.

“Yes, okay. I won’t.”

“I’ll miss you,” Phil says to his glass. He takes a gulp from it, grimacing down at it when he’s done.

“It’s only a week,” Dan responds, instead of ‘me too’. Instead of ‘don’t go’ or ‘take me with you’ or ‘I’m terrified I’m falling in love with you and I don’t know how to do it right.’ Instead of the truth.

“I’ve got an early morning,” Phil says in response, and Dan wonders what sort of truths it was spoken over top of. He gets up and sets the glass in the sink before leaving Dan alone in the dark kitchen.

Phil is gone by the time Dan gets up the next morning. As promised, he’s left three wrapped gifts on the table, each with a number and the last with an envelope propped up against it. Dan takes a moment to chug a glass of water along with a couple pain pills before he opens today’s gift. He stares at it for a moment, wondering if it’s a dig at his current hungover state before realizing that Phil must have bought this before last night.

Then he remembers telling Phil on their marathon game day how much he loves margaritas and that he’d even—briefly—had a tumblr dedicated to reviewing them. When he’d told Phil he’d only gotten around to making four posts, Phil had responded that they’d just have to make sure to try some more margaritas for Dan to review.

He reaches for his phone, then puts it back down on the table, grabbing the book of margarita recipes and flipping through it instead. It’s too early to text Phil. He won’t be up anyway.

Dan marks a few that he thinks Phil would like with ripped bits of the number 23 sign. That takes him about three minutes. He gets up to make himself some coffee, changing his mind halfway through scooping the grounds into his mug and dumping them into the sink to make himself the last packet of the dark chocolate cocoa, which had been the only kind he could stomach from Phil’s gift pack.

Drink prepared, he sits back down at the table, picking his phone up again. Three more minutes have passed. With a huff he throws his phone back on the table and grabs the bag of margarita flavored popcorn that had accompanied the books. He sniffs it cautiously, then pulls out a single kernel to try. It tastes… very much like something Phil would buy.

Dan grabs his phone again, finally unable to resist the urge to text him.

this popcorn is vile, just so u know =P

but thank u he adds after a minute of staring at his screen waiting for a response, worried he’s offended Phil. He thinks they’ve settled into a comfortable back and forth by now, and that Phil knows when Dan’s teasing, but he had gotten Dan 12 gifts, and it does feel a little more skewed to the forth than back sometimes.

more popcorn for me then XD Phil response before Dan can talk himself into a third back–to–back text.

how do you even know if you like it?

definitely not because i tested it for poison before wrapping it

u thieving popcorn glutton!!!!

well u can have the rest of the imposter when u get back while i sip my delicious REAL margaritas

ty :)

you’ll just have to make me some drinks so i can know what i’ve been missing out on ;)

Dan never response because he has to put his phone down and take some laps around the house. It’s fine. It’s fine. Phil is just friendly—very friendly—and likes a nice fruity drink and Dan definitely doesn’t have a crush on him. And if he did, he knows dating his flatmate is a terrible idea. And even if that wasn’t enough to dissuade him he knows Phil is four and a half years older than him and almost done his Masters program—probably—and just leagues more together and interesting and funny and nice than Dan will ever be and why would he want him anyway?

Phil’s voice plays in his head, telling him he hasn’t got any idea what he’s doing with his life either, that he feels lost and scared and overwhelmed all the time, that most of his friends have moved out, moved on, moved in with their significant others. At the time, after Dan confessed his dissatisfaction with his program and his general aimlessness in life while trying to guide Sonic through a new level, Dan had heard Phil’s response and feared it meant Phil was settling. That he was lonely and bored and filled with anxious energy that needed a project, and Dan had been the most convenient one. Now, played back in his memory, he thinks maybe Phil had just been trying to placate him, make him feel a little less pathetic by exaggerating his own issues to make Dan feel less alone. That it had all been lies. Kind lies, but lies nonetheless.

It’s fine.

On his third lap through the kitchen, the remaining two packages sitting on the table catch his eye. He had really meant to wait. He had. He’d promised Phil, and besides he’d quite liked the thought of having two little pieces of Phil to keep him company over the next two days, as pathetic as that sounded. Home was… daunting, the silence of empty flat deafening, and the level to which Dan already missed Phil highly concerning. He’d liked the idea of having those last two surprises to pretend Phil was with him for two more days.

Now, though, he’s possessed with a need to know. What had Phil gotten him for the final two presents? Were they as silly and bizarre and disarmingly observant as most of the others had been? What was in the ominously sealed envelope? None of the others had come with anything more than a few words scribbled on a scrap of paper.

His phone buzzes again—it had buzzed twice during his brisk walk but he hadn’t found the courage to look at it—and he stops in his tracks, slamming it down on the table. He’s got to know.

He sits down slowly, reaching out to draw the first package to him, the one with the 11 taped to it. He slips a finger under the tape, taking care to not rip the already wrinkled and torn paper. Phil has not improved his wrapping technique in any discernible way since Dan teased him about it, but it still feels important not to disturb it.

Though, Dan has to admit once he’s freed his second to last gift from the paper, it’s not a shape that lends itself to neat wrapping. It’s surprisingly heavy in his hands and the smooth surface of the wood feels cool and nice against his palms, so he just sits there staring at it for a moment, unsure what else to do. What does one do with a wooden moose?

Phil would know, Dan assumes. Because he got it, and because Phil seems to have ideas of what to do with everything. Everything has a purpose in Phil’s mind, no matter how nonsensical or seemingly insignificant. Dan likes living in that world. He didn’t leave behind any clues as to his reasoning though, as Dan shakes the paper and searches around the table to try to find another note, and it’s not a world Dan’s learned to navigate without a map yet.

Admitting defeat he sets the moose back on the table and picks up the final gift. It gives under the pressure of his fingers a bit, paper crinkling. Dan opens it quickly, ripping at the paper until a little plush Tonberry falls into his lap.

He hugs it to his chest immediately, reaching over to open the letter.

Dear Dan,

Surprise! It’s been me giving you these presents this whole time!

No, I know you knew you never bought the Santa thing. Thanks for playing along though. I hope you like your last presents! I had a really hard time picking what to give you last, cause it seemed so much more important than the other presents somehow. But then I found this little guy and he just seemed right somehow. I remember you telling me about how much you loved Final Fantasy when you were younger and how soothing you still find the soundtracks when you’re stressed, and I though maybe Gerald could keep you company while I’m out of town. That’s his name, by the way. I’m not telling you what to do, but he told me his name is Gerald and I think you should respect his wishes.

I hope you have a really good Christmas, Dan. I’ve done my best to give you little bits and pieces of all of the Chistmases I’ve had over the years, but I know that can’t really do anything to fix—well anything. I wasn’t ever trying to fix anything. I just wanted to build a good something that you could look forward to everyday for a little while. Everyone deserves that, but you especially, I think.

Hopefully it wasn’t too much. I know I can come on a little strong and you were worried about how much money I spent and how invested I’d gotten in it. I just really like you Dan. I’m glad my old flatmate was a homophobic idiot because it gave me the chance to meet you and get to know you a little better these past few weeks. You’re so smart and funny and you say what you’re thinking and you never seem bothered by my weirdness and I know you won’t want to believe any of this, but I’m so glad you hate Christmas because I don’t know if I would have worked up the nerve to talk to you otherwise.

Maybe we can keep getting to know each other when I get back? I can find other holidays to convince you of the merits of. Valentine’s Day will be coming up.

Yours,

Phil

P.S. Oh! I should probably explain the reindeer! He’s an announcement reindeer, and if you blow in the little hole in his butt he makes a noise. I thought if you ever need me or want to hang out or anything you could use the reindeer, because I know you hate getting out of bed. And asking for things. But I’m here, you know?

Dan sits back in his chair, watching the rise and fall of the Tonberry as he takes several deep breaths. Then he leans forward again and reads the letter twice more.

Right, okay. Phil wants to spend more time with Dan. Phil wants Dan to feel more comfortable asking to spend time with him. Phil wants him to blow in a reindeer’s ass.

Phil wants to celebrate Valentine's Day with him, if Dan wants. Dan’s self-deprecation may run deep, but even he can’t wave that off. Well he could, he’s sure, if given enough time, but that’s not what he wants to be doing right now.

He scrolls through his contacts and jabs violently at the number when he finds it, pressing the phone to his ear and waiting through eight excruciating rings before Sam picks up.

“Do you know what time it is?” she growls into the receiver, voice gravelly with sleep. He doesn’t have time to respond to that.

“Do you have a kilt?”

“Dan. Hello. Good morning. No. You know I don’t have a kilt.”

“Why would I know that!” Dan shouts. He started pacing around the house again and he’s wound up in his room, shoving random clothes into a bag. He stops a moment to consider what he’s doing.

“Why would I have a kilt?”

“Why wouldn’t you have a kilt? You’re half Scottish.”

“I’m ignoring that. This is my Christmas gift to you. Why the fuck do you need a kilt?”

“It’s—none of your business.”

“I’m sorry but if you call me at nine fucking thirty am on the day before Christmas Eve demanding a kilt, you have made this my business.”

“What does Christmas have to do with any of this?”

“I don’t know, why don’t you tell me? This wouldn’t happen to have anything to do with a certain secret Santa with a known soft spot for men in kilts, would it?”

“He’s not very secret,” Dan grumbles, casting his eyes about the room as if he’s got a kilt hidden somewhere that he didn’t know about. Or a plaid sheet he could tie into a kilt. “Do you have any plaid sheets then?”

“Dan! Are you making a romantic Christmas-time kilted gesture? What Lifetime Christmas movie plot did you steal this idea from?”

“I will do this without you, I swear to God, and I won’t tell you anything—”

“Give me thirty minutes and I will be at your door with a kilt and a coffee, ready for a road trip.”

It’s actually an hour and she barges into Dan’s flat demanding coffee rather than offering it, but she does, somehow, have a kilt. He could kiss her.

When he tells her this, she says the coffee will suffice, really. Dan makes a hurried cup of coffee, pouring it into a travel mug and all but shoving her out the door, afraid that if his brain catches up to him at any point he will realize how absurd this is.

They’re buckled and settled with music and heat, when Sam turns to him, look of panic on her face. “Wait do you have his gift?”

“What gift?”

“Dan, you’re telling me Phil got you twelve gifts, not to mention an endless supply of pies and coffee, and you didn’t think to get him a single thing in return?”

“Fuck. Shit.”

They’re just sitting in the car and his brain is starting to catch up and Sam is pointing out that he’s a selfish buffoon who hadn’t thought to get Phil even just a shitty scented candle or something, and how could he ever expect to take him seriously when he obviously has no capacity to think about other people—

“Hey, okay, it’s alright,” Sam says in a soothing tone, hand firmly wrapped around his elbow. “No gift, we can work with this. You are his gift. I mean a bit of a shit gift if I’m being honest, but to each their own.”

“Do you think this is helping?”

“A gesture! Your gift is a gesture. You’re wearing a kilt, for reasons I’m not allowed to ask about, and—oh! Which of the days is it? What is your true love giving you. Or you him, as it were.”

“I don’t love—”

“Daniel now is not the time! You’ve had a crush on him the moment you saw his DVD collection, and you fell in love when you saw his matching emo haircut. This whole 12 day nonsense has only accelerated the natural progression. The two of you could not have U-hauled faster if you were a pair of lesbians, frankly, so I don’t want to hear it.”

Dan heaves a dramatic sigh. “Lords a leaping.”

“Right, right,” she mutters, tapping her chin at a terrifying pace. “Could you do a dance routine?”

“Are you choreographing it for me?”

“No alright, stupid question. What are the next two then?”

Dan has to google in because he’s not sure he can even remember his own name at this point. “Pipers piping, drummers drumming.”

“Perfect!”

“Is it?”

“You come to him as your own little marching band. You can even leap a bit if you like.”

“I don’t have a drum. Or a pipe.”

“But you do have a Rock Band drum set.”

“And a reindeer!”

“What?”

“Hang on.” He unbuckles his seatbelt and rushes back into the house, unearthing his drum kit from a pile of dirty laundry and grabbing the reindeer on his way back through the kitchen, doubling back to grab the Tonberry as well. Struggling not to drop anything, he makes his way back out to the car, shoving the drums in the back seat.

“If we don’t leave now I’m definitely going to realize what a bad idea this is.”

Sam, bless her, takes this thread very seriously and spends the entire thirty minute drive, and Dan lets himself be dragged along with it. He still hasn’t checked the texts Phil sent since the winky face, and he’s certain if he does he’ll lose his nerve. He’s certain if he does just about anything he’ll lose his nerve, so he just hugs Gerald to him and supplies one word answers to Sam whenever her stories require reactions or responses.

They finally pull up to Phil’s family home and Dan stares at it, mind consumed with a looping shout of, ‘he’s in there, he’s in that house.’ Sam jostles him loose with a shake to his shoulder, leaning forward to open his door and reaching into the back seat to retrieve the plastic drum.

“You’re gonna do great, knock ‘em dead. I’ll circle the block a few times just in case, okay? So call or text me if you need anything, or you want me to come get you.”

These words send a wave of nausea through him. They’re offered in case it doesn’t go well, in case Phil looks at Dan with his wooden reindeer and his Rock Band drum kit standing on his front lawn and doesn’t fall immediately into his arms.

Oh God.

“Oh God,” he says to Sam, but she’s pulled away already. Right then.

He somehow makes it up the walk and to the door without collapsing. He presses the bell in a haze, realizing belatedly that it would have probably been a better idea to call or text Phil so the rest of his family don’t realize he’s—

The door swings open to reveal Phil’s brother.

“Can I help you?” He asks, peering out curiously at Dan.

“Uh, yes. Is Phil here? Please?” Dan winces at the raw fear in his voice.

“Yeah, why don’t you come in? I think he’s up in his room.”

“If you could just get him, that’s fine. I don’t need to come in. It’s just a quick, uh, thing. That I have to tell him.”

“Sure, I can go get him.” He doesn’t move though, still regarding Dan with a curious look. “You look familiar, have we met?”

“Yeah, you were there when I moved in. I’m Phil’s flatmate.”

“Oh Dan! Are you sure you don’t want to come in? It’s cold out.”

“No, I’m fine. If you could just get Phil—”

“Sure, of course.”

He leaves the door open and disappears back into the house, leaving Dan alone with his panic. He backs up a bit until he’s back on the path, propping the drums against his hip and tucking Gerald under his arm. He feels a bit more settled out here farther from the house, at least until Phil comes into view.

“Dan?” he calls, moving out to stand on the front step but not coming any closer. “Are you wearing a skirt?”

He’d forgotten, somehow, about the kilt and the full ridiculousness of this gesture barrels straight into him. He should have waited or just texted back or gotten Phil some sort of actually thoughtful gift or done anything other than stand in front of his house like the saddest one man band in the world.

“It’s a kilt, actually.”

“Oh,” Phil says softly, walking down the steps.

He’s barefoot and Dan wants to tell him to go inside and put on some shoes, but his mouth isn’t doing a good job of making words work like he wants them to.

“Is that a Rock Band drum set?”

“Yeah. I’ve only got the one drummer drumming—”

“Dan—”

“And one piper piping.” He pauses to blow in the reindeer’s ass, and as soon as he’s done it he feels like an even bigger idiot, but Phil’s only about a meter away now and Dan can see his smile in the light cast from his house behind him.

“Did you come all the way out here just to tell me you wanted to hang out? Because you could have just texted me.”

“I’m not leaping though” Dan continues, ignoring Phil. Maybe he should have practiced a speech. Do people practice speeches? He doesn’t think he could remember it now even if he had prepared one.

“No leaping, got it. What about a twirl though? Show off your legs a bit. They look nice.”

“You’re a such a perv,” Dan says, and when Phil laughs he can feel the warm puff of air against his face.

“Maybe.” He’s still smiling and he’s got the cuff of Dan’s jacket between his fingers, but he looks a little more unsure now. “If you don’t want me to—”

Fuck that, Dan thinks suddenly. Fuck this stupid drum kit and this kilt and the reindeer and the cold air creeping up his thighs, and most of all fuck the distance still between them.

He comes crashing forward, pressing into Phil, pressing himself up against and around and, finally, pressing his lips to Phil’s.

Phil might gasp softly, or maybe it’s Dan. It’s definitely Phil’s arms wrapping their way firmly around Dan’s back, snaking a shiver inducing path down along the outside of his thighs, to play with the hem of the kilt.

“You didn’t have to wear a kilt for me you know,” Phil says when they pause for a breath, running his now ice cold fingers under the edge and along the skin just above the back of Dan’s knee.

Dan shivers, jostling Phil’s body along with his own. “I’m taking it off the minute I get inside.”

“Is that a promise?”

Twenty minutes later, curled up in Phil’s bed next to him watching a movie, Dan realizes he’d forgotten something.

“Oh shit I forgot to text Sam.”

Dan pushes Phil’s arms to the side to fish his phone out of his pocket, texting

His phone dings a couple minutes later and Dan ignores Phil’s grumbling to check it.

it’s fine, i got home 25 minutes ago. i never even circled the block. merry xmas dork =*