Work Text:
Dan is woken up by the buzz of a text message. There’s a split second of old reflexive excitement because it used to mean a text from Phil back when good morning texts from across the country was the best that they could do, but Phil is asleep beside him. Which means the excitement is quickly replaced by the annoyance of being woken up at all.
He blinks open his eyes, difficult with the morning sun flooding Phil’s tiny room in his tiny flat from the one tiny window which doesn’t even have curtains on it.
More difficult is looking at his too bright phone screen, where he sees the text is from his mum. “Can we expect you down south Friday, bear?”
He drops the phone somewhere among the sheets. He’s just been down to Wokingham for Christmas and Boxing Day like a month ago. Does he really have an obligation to go back already? His tired brain is too fuzzy to remember. “Phil,” he says, poking the bare shoulder blade in front of him. “Phil, what’s this Friday?”
Phil grunts, hardly awake. He shoves his face further into the pillow. “What?”
“What’s happening this Friday?”
Phil yawns. “It’s your mum’s birthday, yeah?” He turns onto his side and faces Dan, eyes closed, halfway back to sleep already.
He’s right of course; Dan remembers as soon as he says it. He blames the early hour for having forgotten in the first place. His mum had asked when he was home for the holidays if he’d be down for her birthday and he’d said he needs to see what exams look like, an excuse his parents accepted readily enough, but then he forgot to ever tell them either way.
He just hates being back in that house, even though he knows it would make his mum really happy to have both her sons at home on her day.
And there’s the failsafe of needing to be back in Manchester by Monday for uni, so worst case scenario he’s looking at three days, two nights spent in his childhood bedroom. The one he’s only just escaped from a few months ago. The one that was only ever bearable when Skyping with Phil or when Phil would be visiting.
He looks again at Phil’s sleeping face. He reaches forward and runs a finger along Phil’s bird nose. “Babe,” he says.
Phil grunts like he did the first time Dan woke him.
“Come to Wokingham with me?” he asks.
Phil opens one eye. “Yeah? That okay?”
Dan nods. “I want you there.”
Phil smiles. “I’ll go. Now let me sleep, you monster.” He closes his eyes again.
Dan leans forward and kisses him sleepily, curling up closely. He texts his mum back before falling asleep. “i’ll be there, will text times when i buy tickets. dragging phil along too”
*
A few hours later, when they wake up for real, he reads the text back and his mum’s response of, “Lovely,” and feels a wave of dread. Why the hell does he make these stupid decisions half-awake.
He’s really going to be bringing his boyfriend across the country to visit his childhood home for his mum’s birthday, while in the fucking closet to everyone that’s gonna be there.
It’s not that Phil hasn’t visited Wokingham plenty of times before. But that was all before Dan had started uni. And it was all to visit him, not to attend a family event! His grandparents are going to be there, and his brother is fourteen which means he’s gonna be a little shit, and people that knew his old girlfriend will be there too and are gonna teasingly ask him how he’s pulling up in Manchester. It’s going to be a disaster.
They’re gonna stare at him and Phil, at their matching fringes and skinny jeans.
They will know.
And even if they don’t know, they’ll suspect. And if they don’t suspect, they’ll say something casually homophobic and Dan will feel sixteen years old again and it’s so fucking selfish of him to drag Phil along for that just because he doesn’t want to spend the three days down south without him.
He brings it up once Phil is halfway through his morning coffee. “You don’t actually have to go down to Wokingham, y’know.”
Phil’s face is frustratingly neutral. “Do you want me to go?”
Dan frowns. Despite his spiraling, he knows the answer. “Yeah… it’s definitely gonna suck. But it’ll suck less with you there.”
“We’ll see about that,” Phil says, trying and failing to wink. Dan shoves Phil’s shoulder and the coffee almost spills, but doesn’t. “I’ll go,” he says, as easily as he had that morning when mostly asleep, “It’ll be fine.”
*
Dan manages to keep any further spirals at bay the few days until he and Phil are on the train headed south. Then one comes almost as fast as the train itself, a visceral sort of anxiety that makes his vision blurry and his hands sweat and his breath short. Phil helps him through it, hands him a bottle of water Dan didn’t even know he’d packed, rubs between Dan’s shoulder blades until his breathing evens out.
The whole ordeal eats up the first chunk of their three and a half hour journey.
Dan thinks he hears Phil speaking through the haze that still fills his brain. He asks Phil to repeat himself.
“You don’t have to do this. We can get off at the next stop and buy a ticket back to Manchester. Or just I can, whatever you want.” Phil has stopped rubbing Dan’s back now that the worst of his panic has passed. Still, Phil’s words have the same soothing touch. For half a moment Dan lets himself imagine them doing just that, the two of them, turning round and being in Phil’s tiny flat in time to order takeaway for lunch.
But Dan shakes his head. He’s said he would be there. If he ruined his mum’s birthday by skipping it now, his family would literally never stop bringing it up. “I have to go,” he says.
“You don’t have to go,” Phil frowns. “Look how freaked out you are, you really don’t have to go.”
“It’ll make my mum happy.” Dan doesn’t have the sort of relationship Phil has with his mum, but he knows this will still convince him. It’s the root of it, anyways. He’s going because it’s her birthday. He’s going because it’ll make her happy. He has no other reason to go.
“Are you sure you want me there?” Phil asks. “Will that make it worse? I don’t want to make things worse.”
They’re sat in the furthest seats back of their compartment. It’s a pretty empty train as they’d chosen a shitty, early time to leave because the price was better. So even though doing so makes Dan’s throat tighten as it had a little bit ago when his anxiety had taken over, he reaches between them to thread his fingers between Phil’s. “I want you there,” he says firmly. “It will be worse, in some ways. A little bit. But I want you there with me, please.”
Phil squeezes his hand round Dan’s. He smiles and looks at Dan’s lips and Dan thinks about how if they weren’t on a train right now he’d be getting one of those Phil kisses that says of course.
“Tell me what to expect from a Howell family gathering,” Phil says instead.
“Too much cheap champagne,” Dan laughs. Phil laughs too. “Loads of food,” Dan continues, “The old stories I’ve heard a million times, but you haven’t yet so you might like a few of them.”
“Sounds par for the course.”
“Guess so,” Dan shrugs.
They move their hands apart as someone comes walking towards the back of the compartment and past their seats. Dan’s been spending so much time at Phil’s flat, where they have the freedom to be as casually touchy as they please, that these old ingrained habits of existing in public feel a little out of practice. They’re just habitual, muscle memory, autopilot.
The next few days will be full of that. Full of careful distance and watching their words. But it’s still better than the length of the country between them. It’s still better than the only words they share being either texted or whispered over Skype before they fall asleep.
He’s glad Phil is coming with him. And once it’s all over, he’ll be glad he went home for his mum’s birthday.
For now he just needs to enjoy what’s left of the train journey, and let Phil remind him that it’s going to be okay.