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“That’s what people do, don’t they? Leave a note.”
“Leave a note when?”
“Goodbye, Phil.”
“No... don’t- Dan!”
The phone’s thrown away. Dan’s on the ledge, his body a charcoal smudge against the bleak vastness of the London skyline. His head is bowed as if in silent prayer, palms facing upwards. It’s an invitation, a plea to whoever or whatever is up there to forgive him for what he’s about to do. All he gets in reply is the faint ticking of his watch, a reminder that one man’s life is nothing more than another insignificant ripple in the fabric of time.
At that moment, Phil wishes he could be more than himself. He wishes he could fly up to the top of that building and bundle Dan up in his arms and never let any harm come his way. He wishes he could move heaven and earth, summon the elements to his fingertips. He wishes he could be a god, or a titan, or a king, anything other than a simple human whose world is slowly caving in on itself.
Maybe then he’d be able to save him.
Before Phil can force another scream out, Dan spreads his arms like a bird about to take flight. But he won’t fly. He’ll fall forwards and come hurtling down to the cold, unforgiving earth, to concrete that will shatter his bones and rip his skin to shreds.
It’s too much to watch, too much to even fathom, but he can’t bear to look away. He just watches as Dan’s body falls, down and down…
That’s when someone knocks into him and his world spins into darkness.
Black marble. Pristine condition. It protrudes from the earth, all squeaky clean, new, unnatural. It doesn’t belong. It shouldn’t be there.
He shouldn’t be there either. But it’s not like Phil can do anything about it now.
A few choice words are engraved in fancy lettering, words that fill up space more than anything. Some of them are obscured by the obscene amount of flowers laid in front. They’re fresh and sweet-smelling and at any other time, he’d be inclined to think they’re beautiful. It’s been harder to see the beauty in things recently.
There are words that need to be said, words that would otherwise sink to the core of his being, but his throat is constricting more and more with every breath and he doesn’t think he can do it. He’s already checked three times to see if Mrs Hudson is out of earshot, that anything he says will get carried away with the wind. He checks a fourth time - she’s gone.
It’s time, isn’t it?
No second chances, no repeats, no miracles. You only get to say goodbye to the ones you love once.
“You…”
He pauses, clears his throat. The words are bubbling up so quickly he has to stop himself from spewing them out. His stomach is sick, so sick he can hardly see straight. He’s full to the point of bursting, but are you really full if you’re full of emptiness? Full of empty space waiting for the chance to feel something again?
“You told me once that you weren’t a hero. There - there were times where I thought you weren’t even human,” he smiles wryly, “but let me tell you this: you were the best man, the most human… human being that I’ve ever known. And no one will ever convince me that you told a lie, so there.”
The more he speaks, the harder it gets. He steps forward, pats the gravestone just so his hands have something to do. He lets his touch linger.
“I was so alone and I owe you so much.”
He’s walking away when he realises he hasn’t quite finished.
“But, please, there’s just one more thing. One more thing, one more miracle, Dan, for me. Don’t… don’t be dead.”
Dead. He still hasn’t quite wrapped his head around the word yet. His voice falters suddenly, visions beginning to rise to the surface, visions of Dan’s hair matted with red, Dan’s glassy, unblinking eyes, Dan’s skin drained of colour.
“Just for me. Just stop it. Stop this.”
Finally, after so many hours of trying to hold it all in, trying to stop the tide from crashing against the shore, everything bursts out in a great, shuddering gasp.
Maybe if he cries it’ll mean something.
Time passes.
Slowly but surely, Phil’s beginning to try to piece himself together. Days become weeks and months before it’s suddenly been a whole year.
He never goes back to Dan’s grave. He couldn’t.
He seals off the door to Dan’s room in his flat and leaves the rest of it how it was. One day, when the time comes, he’ll let go of the flat, let someone else clear out the heaps of dust and memories that would threaten to split open all of his wounds again. As of right now, though, he’ll hold onto it.
He’s grown some facial hair, a light dusting on his jaw and a full moustache that now clings to his upper lip. If he’s never going to be the person he was before, he figured he might as well change his look to reflect that.
In that same vein, he’s also decided to finally use his medical training and work part time at his friend Mary’s surgery. Since he’s the only male doctor, however, his patients all fall under the same category of person. But he’s not one to complain. He figures there are probably worse ways of paying bills than examining male genitalia for a living.
His love life is also somewhat stable. He’s had a boyfriend for just over a month. Their attraction is mainly physical, he’s well aware of that, but anything to make the nights less lonely is worth it at this point.
The more he drowns himself in other people, the less he remembers about Dan. One day he can’t even picture his face properly anymore.
There’s a mustard stain on his jeans.
He’s only noticed it because he can’t bring himself to look up at his boyfriend Noah, a man who he’d otherwise love to look at, and because the words coming out of that man’s mouth are words that don’t seem to fit together.
(They’d fallen into a sort of tradition of eating hot dogs on Fridays - Frankfurter Fridays, they called them, since Noah insisted on ‘maintaining his German heritage’. And now Noah had gone and ruined it by saying it too much. Phil feels his stomach turning.)
“Phil.”
He wrenches his gaze up and refocuses it on a painting by the window. Dan never had much time for art. With him, the world was found in the harshness of black and white, not ‘the subtleties of the in between’ as he’d like to call it.
He wonders whether he’d been so focused on finding someone who was Dan’s polar opposite that he hadn’t taken the time to realise if they were right for each other after all.
“Phil, please,” he says. “Look at me.”
“I can’t.”
“Just this once. I need to know you’re listening.”
He looks over at him. The light from the lampshade is soft, so impossibly soft that he can barely make out any of Noah’s features. In a way, he’s glad he doesn’t get to see someone else’s world crumbling around him while knowing it’s his fault.
“Phil, you don’t love me,” Noah says. “And you’ll never be able to say you will.”
One year since. The control he once had over his emotions has now spiralled; the slightest hint of Dan is enough to make him break down a million times over again. He feels himself breaking down now, feels the tears slipping from his eyes and the sharp, jagged breaths puncturing his lungs.
“You would have loved him too,” he whispers. “If you’d known him.”
All Noah can do is wrap an arm around Phil’s shoulders and silently beg for the shaking to stop.
“I know.”
He takes the long way home from Noah’s house that evening and thinks. He thinks longer and harder than he’s let himself do for a long time. He looks up at the sky and lets his thoughts drift backwards and forwards, to past and present and future simultaneously, until he’s so wrapped up and swept away by all of it that he struggles to put one foot in front of the other.
There’s a bench nearby. He stumbles to it and sits down, scrubs his hands over his face as if to remind himself he’s still alive.
The fundamentals of human existence . It was a phrase Dan used all the time. In his eyes, it was the only reason he could go to sleep at night and wake up in the morning with the same calm confidence he always possessed.
“Some things in life are fixed,” he’d said to Phil one time over morning coffee. “One plus one will always equal two. The sun will always rise every morning and set every evening. Humans will always blink and breathe and feel and want. It’s just how it is.”
“How it is?” Phil had quipped.
“How it is,” Dan had repeated. “They’re the fundamentals of human existence.”
And Phil had looked up from his mug at Dan’s pensive expression and realised everything he’d ever wanted was right in front of him.
Upon reflection, Dan was wrong. But that was a conversation for another time.
“Mr Greeves.”
Phil half-smiles at Mary, the receptionist, before welcoming Mr Greeves into the room and inviting him to sit down. It’s now just past 4 o’clock, the time of day where the end is almost in sight but not quite there yet. He’s too tired to say any actual words to her before she spins on her heels and makes her way back to her desk.
He likes to think they’ve reached a stage of friendship where they can communicate wordlessly, but he has a tendency to jump into things without thinking, or assuming everyone is as friendly as he is.
(She’s probably a little bit scared of him. He wouldn’t blame her if that were the case. It’s been a long, gruelling two years, two lifetimes in a way, and he’s no closer to recovering than the day it happened.)
While he considers the possibility of Mary hating his guts, he pulls up Mr Greeves’ records and peers at them on the screen. Apparently his wife had sent a letter. Lovely. She noticed some ‘concerning signs of potential epididymitis’ (she 100% Googled that) and booked him an appointment here. When he turns around in his chair, the man sitting opposite him looks delightfully uncomfortable.
“Hi, there. How are you?” he begins, trying to put him at ease. He’s going to have to examine this guy’s privates in a minute or two and it’s nice to make sure if he’ll be alright.
“Can we just get this over with?” Mr Greeves spits out through gritted teeth.
“Right,” he says. “Of course. If you’d just like to sit on the bed over there so I can ascertain the extent of the problem. Yes, it’ll be quick, I promise. Over before you know it!”
“You should get out more,” Mary says matter-of-factly one day at lunch. “It’d be good for you.”
“Why do you think I don’t?” Phil replies.
Mary sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose. “We’ve been over this.”
“You sugarcoat it.”
“Like bloody hell I sugarcoat it! You just refuse to listen to what I have to say.”
Phil sets his sandwich down and looks at her, properly looks at her for the first time in a while. Her hair is neatly pinned back off of her face, not a strand out of place. Professional. Maybe a perfectionist. Her nails have been painted with a fresh coat of red. Had them done. Is something special coming up? Just a couple of days ago they were jagged, bitten stumps. Anxiety disorder. Definitely a perfectionist. Her makeup is minimal as usual, but today she’s taken the liberty of applying some eyeliner. Right side is wonky. Left-handed. Something special is coming up.
“Stop staring at me.”
Phil blanches, blinks a couple of times to gain his composure. “Wasn’t staring.”
“Were too.”
He pauses. “I…”
I was doing what I used to do with him. I was doing what I still do with him even though he isn’t here. I was doing what I’ll continue to do with him until the day I finally get to join him but - oh God. I wish he was here right now.
“Listen. Whatever. Every time I invite you to do something you always turn me down anyway. It’s been like that for the past two years and it’ll stay like that unless you bloody well open up to someone and move on.”
She storms out of the room, the sound of her heels following her as she goes. Phil’s left with a stomach too full of food and a head too full of thoughts.
He’s too full. It’s too much. Wouldn’t it be nice to feel weightless for a while?
Groaning, he stands up, eats the rest of Mary’s sandwich in a single bite and goes to find her. She’s sat at her desk, angrily scrolling through some BuzzFeed quiz without answering any of the questions.
“Mary.”
“What?” she snaps in reply.
“You have something planned for this evening. Take me with you.”
From where he’s stood, Phil can see her fighting back a grin.
“Dinner tonight. Meet me at 7.”
He’s early. So early, in fact, he has to bide his time at the bar getting progressively drunker, which is probably a bad move considering how this place is dripping with wealth. He wonders whether Mary planned on bringing someone else here, but either way, it’s a nice change from his old flat on Baker Street.
(Mrs Hudson was so worried about him keeping the same flat he used to share with Dan that she even offered to live with him. Although he politely declined the offer, it made his world shine brighter if only for a moment.)
On second thought, getting intoxicated is a very good idea. As it turns out, you never stop saying goodbye. You end up saying it so many times over and over again that your head becomes a mess of fog and the only way of parting the clouds is when the first rush of venom touches your lips.
When he’s just polished off his third daiquiri, he feels a hand on his shoulder.
“You came,” Mary says, a smile in her voice.
“You asked me to,” he replies. “Is our table ready?”
“The posh waiter man said it was,” she says, scanning him up and down before looking at the empty glasses littering the bar in front of him. “Those cocktails will cost you a small fortune. We can share some wine. Come on.”
Phil’s already feeling the effects as he walks to his table and slumps into a chair. Blinking, he scans the menu for anything that looks vaguely edible.
“Fancy sharing a Camembert?” Mary asks.
“No way,” he says, wrinkling his nose. “Cheese is the stuff of nightmares. I’ll get the prawns, I think.”
“Suit yourself.”
A man comes whistling over to them. His glasses, quite frankly, don’t suit his face shape at all (and Phil’s gay and legally blind, he should know these things,) and he’s sporting a moustache that’s so bushy it covers his top lip.
None of what the man says registers in his ears.
He looks like…
Don’t say it.
Don’t say a fucking thing when this whole time you’ve been doing so well to just get by. Don’t go and screw everything up like you always do by overthinking and wishing for things that will never come true.
He’s gone, Phil. He’s gone and he’s never coming back.
“Phil. Phil?” Mary says, frowning.
“Coming ba- sorry, what?”
“The waiter just asked us if we have a preference.”
“Oh, um, no. No we don’t,” he says. “Surprise us.”
“Very well,” the man says, his accent so thick and French that Phil does well to understand those two words.
When the waiter’s out of earshot, Mary drops the fake smile from her face and whips around to glare at Phil.
“What the hell just happened?” she says, more of a statement than a question. She huffs out a laugh, but her eyes tell a different story.
“I don’t know,” he murmurs in reply. He runs his finger along the edge of the tablecloth repeatedly just to give him something to do.
This is madness, he thinks to himself. Madness is doing the same thing over and over again in the hopes that something might change. Madness is clinging to the last shred of optimism you have left, as if life can sense it’s been unkind to you and is trying to right its wrongs.
Madness is seeing your dead friend’s face metres away from you and expecting it to actually be him.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks softly.
He blinks back tears, shaking his head.
“Mary, listen, I… these last couple of years haven’t been easy for me, and I know we haven’t known each other for that long or anything...”
“Go on,” she encourages him.
“I will.” He attempts a smile. “But meeting you is the best thing that could have possibly happened to me.”
“I agree.”
“You-?”
“Sorry,” she says, frowning. “Shouldn’t have said that.”
“No, it’s fine, um… basically, what I’m trying to say is, I think you’re, um…”
“Yes?”
“My…”
The words don’t properly leave his mouth before he’s being interrupted by the waiter with some hideously overpriced bottle of wine.
“Sir, I think you’ll find this vintage exceptionally to your liking!”
Well. He hadn’t been missed. Mary angles her face away from him and bites her lip to try to contain her laughter.
“It has all the qualities of the old with some of the colour of the new-” the waiter continues.
“No, sorry, not now please,” he butts in. Waiter man doesn’t get the memo.
“Like a gaze from a crowd of strangers, suddenly one is aware of staring into the face of an… old friend.”
“Look, seriously, could you just…”
He looks up. The waiter now no longer has any ill-fitting glasses or moustache on his face. There’s nothing to hide anymore.
He looks up, and finds Dan looking back.
“Interesting thing, a tuxedo,” Dan says. “Lends distinction to friends and anonymity to waiters.”
This can’t be happening. He won’t let it happen. He squeezes his eyes shut and forces himself to sober up.
It’s the alcohol. It has to be.
Dan isn’t here. Dan is miles away from here. Dan might not even be on this planet for all he knows about death.
He stands up. The table shakes. People start to stare.
“Phil…” Mary whispers. “Phil, what is it?”
Whenever he’d thought about this moment happening, he’d always imagined himself to be happy. He’d thought he’d give Dan a massive hug and say, “I was right. I knew you’d come back.”
On the flip side, he’d also considered the possibility of him being quite emotional. Two years without your best friend by your side is a long time, longer than most would like to admit to. He’d have questions that Dan would spend the rest of time answering, hurt that Dan couldn’t have taken him with him.
One thing he’d never factored into the equation was him being angry .
“Well, the short version,” Dan says. “Not dead.”
As soon as it boils up inside of him, the anger seems to dissipate. He looks up at Dan, at his stupid curls and stupidly brown eyes and realises how much he’s missed him.
Mary’s eyes widen. She’s beginning to understand what’s happening.
“Bit mean, springing it on you like that, I know,” Dan adds, his tone surprisingly remorseful for someone so unaccustomed to showing emotion. “Could have given you a heart attack. Probably still will. But in my defence, it was very funny.”
Phil clenches his jaw. Only Dan could fake his own death and then have the audacity to find it funny.
“Okay, it’s not a great defence,” he admits.
“Oh no, you’re…” Mary says, wordless.
“Oh yes.”
Phil’s gaze alone could burn a hole through his head.
“Oh my god.”
“Not quite,” Dan says, meeting Phil’s glare.
“You died!” Mary reminds him, as if Dan could ever forget. “You jumped off a roof!”
“No.”
“You’re dead!”
“No,” Dan corrects her. “I’m quite sure, I checked.”
Phil doesn’t dare to move. Mary’s beginning to panic, he can sense it.
“Oh my god, oh my god! Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” she shrieks, her breathing beginning to speed up.
“Okay,” Dan relents. “Phil, I’m suddenly realising I owe you some sort of an apology.”
Phil slams his fist against the table, his knuckles strained white from how hard he’s clenching. A knife clatters onto the floor. Someone gasps.
“Alright, Phil,” Mary says, probably trying to sound reassuring instead of pleading with him to calm down. “Just keep…”
“Two years,” he breathes, his head bowed. “Two years, hm ? I thought…”
His voice breaks.
“I thought you were dead.”
Dan doesn’t say a word.
“You let me grieve,” Phil continues, suddenly riled up. “How could you do that? How ?”
“Right, before you do anything you might regret,” Dan stutters, his tongue tripping over itself, “I just have one question.”
Phil looks at him. Dan's stroking his upper lip, his head tilted slightly.
“Are you really going to keep that?”
Phil doesn’t see Dan again for a while.
After attacking him in multiple restaurants out of some hideous combination of alcohol and delirium, Mary decided it would be for the best if they stayed apart. She wasn’t wrong. Ever since that moment, Phil’s been wondering if the entire thing was a fever dream or not.
He goes back to doing everything he did before, the only real difference being his living situation (he’s with Mary for a bit until he feels comfortable enough living with Dan again. It could be in a week’s time, could be a year. Luckily for him, she isn’t particularly fussed.)
He lets himself think about Dan, because he was bound to either way. He’s discovered that the more he forces himself to not think about something, the more it finds a way of creeping back into his subconscious anyway. He thinks about Dan walking back to Baker Street alone that night, his lip bloody and hands empty. He thinks about Dan living his life with a new sidekick, someone else to help him solve whatever he came back from the dead for.
He wonders if the new sidekick is anything like he was with Dan. He hopes not. Either way, it’s not like there’s much he can do about it.
Yes, Dan’s back. That doesn’t mean Phil has to be a part of his life like he was before.
And so life goes on. He eats and works and sleeps and thinks like most humans do. He blinks and breathes and feels his heart at the base of his throat and watches his fingers flex when he uses his hands. It’s odd, knowing that Dan can do all of this too, knowing that he did it the whole time without Phil having a single clue.
When Mary asks how he is after work one day, he confesses this to her. She tells him it might be worth paying a visit.
“Can you-”
“No, Phil,” she sighs. “You’re on your own for this one.”
He grumbles something indistinct, grabs his coat and starts the walk. It’s shorter than he would have liked it to be, but sometimes being thrown into the deep end of his emotions is the only way he ever gets around to processing them.
A few words in a few different combinations swirl around in his mind. He won’t say any of them to Dan, obviously, because saying what he thinks is a sign of weakness and Dan doesn’t need to know the impact he had on Phil.
In some way, if a bit cathartic, it’s nice to see his home again. The sun is slowly being pulled down into the horizon, leaving London stranded in an hour of stillness where everything is tinged with blue.
Dan’s favourite time of day, he remembers. That part wasn’t planned.
He’s just about to go and knock on the door when someone bashes into his shoulder rather abruptly.
He scoffs. “Excuse you!”
The figure turns around slightly as they walk away. Male. Dark clothing. Baseball cap. Suspicious.
Before he can dwell on it further, something sharp is being pressed into his neck and his vision spirals into nothingness.
It’s dark and then it isn’t. Spots of light get tangled, trapped momentarily, then set free again.
Where am I?
His head is spinning. An unnatural throbbing works its way across his scalp until he realises he’s probably bleeding.
He tries to move his arms. Nothing. Same with his legs. His soul feels disconnected from his body, like he’s nothing more than a corpse. Maybe that’s how Dan felt, too.
The ground is soft, at least. Wet and fresh-smelling and grassy.
What’s going on?
There’s the faint sound of people talking, drums being played. One of the voices gets closer.
“No, it’s not going to work. Bit damp. I’ll get something to help it along, yeah?”
When he shifts his body slightly, pain sears hot and cold up his sides. He cries out. The pain is too much. It’s all too much. His brain is just starting to catch up, the severity of the situation just starting to hit him.
He can’t move. A few stray drops of liquid splash onto his face. He gasps, spitting it out of his mouth.
It’s petrol.
Remember, remember…
The flames creep up slowly, carefully, before pouncing.
This is it. This is how it ends. This is how I die.
“Help!” he screams.
Nothing.
Then-
“Phil!” a voice says. Female. Mary? No. Am I dreaming?
“PHIL!” another voice shouts. Deeper. Dan?
“Get up, Phil!” maybe-Mary says.
“Phil! Phil!” maybe-Dan repeats.
“Help!” he yells again.
There are hands pulling at his ankles and feet, tugging incessantly. His lungs are thick with the smell of smoke, his eyes stinging with it. The heat rolls through him in waves, until it seems to dissipate.
It’s colder now. He feels himself being rolled over until there’s nothing between his eyes and the vastness of the night sky.
A gloved hand cradles his cheek.
“Phil!” someone calls. It’s Dan’s voice. Dan’s hand, too. No one else he knows wears leather gloves.
“Phil?” someone else asks. Mary. He tries to smile, but his face doesn’t move.
They just saved my life. I’m alive.
I’m alive and Dan is, too. I’m alive and Dan is, too.
He can rest now.
When he wakes up, he’s back in the restaurant where he saw Dan again for the first time.
(At least, he thinks he is. The surroundings are how he remembers them being, except for the fact that everything is drained of colour and somehow slightly blurry, like the world is a canvas and someone decided to smear it with water.)
He looks down at himself and frowns. Why is he wearing a suit? He wasn’t wearing a suit that day; he distinctly remembers feeling underdressed. But for some reason, he doesn’t seem to mind. He’d wear suits more often if he thought he suited them. It just so happens that this one is perfectly tailored and spotless.
Some subconscious part of him registers that none of this is happening, too syrupy and hazy to be real. Again, he doesn’t mind, too swept away in the excitement. His nerves are buzzing like he’s having a sugar rush.
“Phil?” a voice says. He looks up to find Dan looking down at him.
He’s never seen Dan like this. He’s beautiful, devastatingly so, his hair falling in soft curls and his eyes pools of dark honey.
Then he notices the blood.
In the soft, colourless light, the crimson stain seeping through Dan’s shirt is more blinding than ever. Dan brings a hand to it and winces.
Phil floats over to him. Suddenly they’re nose to nose.
“Dan, it’s okay,” he whispers. “I’m here.”
Dan cradles Phil’s cheek with his bloodied hand. Phil places his hand on top of Dan’s, tethering them together, two lost souls in a sea of black and white.
Phil lets his eyes drift closed and soaks in the moment. He thinks about how iron is formed in the heart of decaying stars and how humans all carry stardust in their veins. He thinks about how humans die like stars do, spilling iron and growing weaker with each passing moment.
Dan is a star, too bright and too impossible to be near. Dan has guarded him while he’s slept every night these past two years, every night he’s spent numb with shock or breathless and sweaty.
Maybe Dan never really left.
Daylight spills through Mary’s curtains and onto Phil’s cheek. As soon as he’s aware of it, he throws the blanket off and sits bolt upright. That’s how he knows he’s actually awake - he’d never be able to feel such palpable warmth while dreaming.
In dreams, emotions are overwhelming. In dreams, all Phil can do is sit back, eyes and ears open, and let whatever’s about to happen play out in front of him. But this isn’t a dream anymore; this is real life, and in real life he’s made one or two realisations that he needs to act on.
He’s lost Dan once. He can’t lose him again.
Mary’s clock tells him it’s late morning. Perfect. Dan will be at home right now.
Home . The thought of it makes him ache. He’s about to go there, now - to a home that became his home overnight.
Once he’s vaguely presentable, he finds a scrap of paper and a pen from Mary’s office and writes her a small note.
Mary,
You’re my best friend in the world. Thank you for everything you’ve done for me.
I’ll be back soon.
He can’t get to Baker Street soon enough. When he shows up, Dan’s in the middle of a conversation with two elderly clients.
“Phil,” Dan says.
“Sorry, you’re busy,” he stutters. There’s too much nervous energy inside of him begging to be released.
“No, no, no, they were just leaving.”
“Oh, were we?” the woman asks.
“Yes,” Dan replies, helping the couple out of their seats and shoving them rather ungracefully towards the door.
“No, if you’ve got a case-” Phil starts.
“Not a case,” Dan interrupts. He turns to the pair. “Go.”
“Well, we’re here until Saturday, remember!” the woman reminds him.
“Yes, great, wonderful,” he says. “Get out.”
“Give us a ring!”
Phil steps further into the room and tries to tune out the hushed whispers he can hear between Dan and the woman. He looks down at the chair he used to sit in when he lived here. It hasn’t moved a fraction.
Something stirs and flutters inside of him. This is a moment he never thought he’d get to have, and he wants to make sure he does this right. Dan’s never been one to get in touch with his emotions, despite his rare moments of tenderness.
Once he’s said what he wants to say, Dan won’t look at him the same way ever again. As of right now, he can’t decide if that’s a good or bad thing.
Dan closes the door and sighs. “Sorry about that.”
“No, it’s fine,” he replies. “Clients?”
“Just my parents,” Dan murmurs.
“Your parents?”
“In town for a few days.”
“Those were your parents?” he asks again, his brain not quite computing what his ears are hearing.
“Yes,” Dan says.
Phil laughs despite himself. He hopes Dan can’t tell he’s anxious. “Well… that’s not what I…”
“What?”
“Well,” he explains, “they’re just so… ordinary.”
“It’s a cross I have to bear,” Dan mutters in reply. Phil lets out a more genuine giggle at that one.
“Did they know, too?” he finds himself asking. Most of the hurt has subsided, but some of it’s still there, lingering under the surface, waiting for the opportunity to bubble up.
“Hm?”
“That you’ve spent the last two years playing hide and seek?”
Dan pauses. “Maybe.”
“So that’s why they weren’t at the funeral!”
Neither of them speak for a moment.
“Sorry,” Dan whispers, his voice uncharacteristically soft.
Phil can hardly dare to speak, to look at him. He paces around the room and exhales, his stomach wringing itself into knots.
“How are you feeling?” Dan asks, his gaze half-focused on the bruises crowding Phil’s temple.
“Not bad,” he replies. “Bit smoked. How are you feeling?”
“Humans don’t always have to feel something,” he counters. “Isn’t it enough to just exist?”
He huffs out a laugh.
“You’re wrong.”
“Wrong?” Dan echoes, confused.
Phil nods.
“Enlighten me,” Dan says.
“Once upon a time you told me about your, um, fundamentals of human existence. You said that humans will always feel, and that’s just how it is.”
Dan stops in his tracks. “I did say that.”
Phil turns to face him, his heart threatening to beat out of his chest. “That moment’s always stuck with me. It wasn’t until recently that I… realised why.”
The room is so still, so perfect, that Phil doesn’t want to shatter it with his words. But he has to. He has to take something beautiful and tear it apart and mould it back together again. He’s spent too long being afraid of overstepping boundaries, of saying and doing and being too much. He’s had enough. It’s not enough to simply exist, to go through each day with the bare minimum to stay functional and healthy. He wants to live.
“You said something else, Dan,” he continues. “You said one plus one will always equal two. That’s wrong, too. Because your life and my life were on two completely different tracks before we met and then they sort of just… merged together. And I never realised what it all meant until you were lying there and I couldn’t do anything. It was like, I don’t know, the rug got swept from underneath my feet or something. I realised that one plus one can equal one. I realised that yeah, in mathematical terms it’s impossible, but I thought you coming back from the dead was impossible and you still did it.”
At some point, tears must have started to spill from his eyes. He lets them flow. He can’t even properly look at Dan, but his silence must mean that he’s affected by this too.
“You don’t believe in fate,” he murmurs. “Of course you wouldn’t. You don’t believe in soulmates or sayings or anything that isn’t scientific or logical. But there’s a saying; ‘if you love someone, let them go. If they come back, it was meant to be.’ And I let you go and you… you came back, Dan. You came back.”
Before he can say anything else, Dan’s closing the distance between them and crashing their lips together.
It doesn’t properly register at first. When it does, Phil’s helpless to stop it. Dan is the moon, pulling him in and pushing him away. It’s intoxicating, magnetic, more electrifying than anything he can properly describe.
Neither of them have to say the words. They’ve known it this whole time, because love is more than what either of them are able to articulate.
Love is acceptance. Love is giving someone the wings to fly, even if those wings carry them somewhere far away from where you are. Love is pulling yourself apart piece by piece for someone and knowing they’d do the same for you in a heartbeat.
Dan isn’t a big believer in what can’t be proven. But Phil doesn’t mind spending every day of the rest of his life proving how he feels.