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Phil doesn’t regret not hiring anyone to help them with the moving in process, because it means it’s their thing entirely. He gets to walk past the brand new walls that were stark white and walk along the deep walnut hardwood flooring with the love of his life and no one else is here to interrupt them.
Of course, Martyn and Cornelia offered to help, stating that moving into their forever home is a lot of effort and they may need a pair of helping hands. And Phil doesn’t disagree with them, it is a lot of effort but he cannot imagine doing it with anyone other than Dan. He loves the idea of allowing someone else do the work, allowing them to place boxes upon boxes on the floor of the respective rooms and sort it out for them whilst Dan and Phil both lounge around waiting for it to finish. But that’s not what they wanted from moving into their forever home, they wanted themselves and that means absolutely everything will be completed by them.
Okay, maybe not everything because if Dan is going to let Phil mess with the electricals of the house then he’d be stupid, Phil knows that all too well, but moving in and creating a new home from scratch was something they wanted a moment to themselves for.
Because this is a big deal to them, a huge deal in fact. They’ve been through a lot to get to here and if they deserve anything, is to bask in the glory of finally achieving it. He wants to hold Dan’s hand whilst they walk through the front door for the first time, even though Phil offered to carry him over the threshold but Dan bit back with a comment about how that enforces heteronormative behaviours and he doesn’t want to fuck with that, so holding Dan’s hand was a compromise Phil was willing to make.
He wants to put the sofa in its rightful place based on where they both want it, not where his brother puts it quickly in an attempt to get everything in quickly, or worse where the moving men put it. He knows they’ll argue about it, Dan wanting everything to be perfect and Phil not really understanding much about the feng shui of living spaces, but that’s part and parcel of moving into their forever home together.
Phil sets the final box down, not meaning to create such a loud noise that it did but feeling an odd sense of achievement when he hears it. He feels even more proud when Dan turns around from where he’s sitting on the kitchen island in shock before smiling widely at him – the kitchen counter that he and Dan chose together, in a kitchen they designed together which is part of the home they designed together from scratch.
Phil adores every single room in their forever home, but the kitchen is perhaps one of his favourites. Dan allowed him to have most of the creative control over the kitchen, because Dan got that for most of the rooms in the house and it was only fair, so Phil absolutely adored it. The walls were the same in the rest of the house, a sleek white matte paint with a dark walnut dado rail that matches the flooring throughout the house (but not in their bedrooms because Phil would be damned if he allowed hardwood flooring in bedrooms and had to deal with having cold feet every morning).
Phil added an island in the kitchen, big enough to put every single kitchen they’ve had together to shame, because he needed some sense of familiarity. In their first apartment, he would find himself spending minutes at a time just watching Dan work away on the breakfast bar and once they moved out of the Manchester apartment, he never got to see that again. He missed it, so that was the first thing he asked for when designing the kitchen.
He comes back to Earth and allows his reaction to Dan’s smile and his thoughts appear on his face, a flood of warm syrup over his face sporting a matching smile as he pats the top of the final box.
“Is that the last one coming in?”
“Yeah, I think so,” Phil runs his hand through his now droopy quiff in the attempt to get it out of his face. It doesn’t work because it just falls back in his face again. After all, the gel and hairspray he put in his hair this morning are long gone. He ignores it this time to instead survey the room with his eyes.
Everything they have owned together for the last ten years packed into tiny boxes in the lounge of their new home – the new home being what they hope will be their forever home. A forever home where they will bring their children home for the first time and watch them grow up here, hopefully with a dog or two in the process to help them wreak havoc in the garden they now have. Where they will grow old together.
Phil watches as Dan takes the few remaining plates and dishes from the box he’s working on and places them on the kitchen counter, before getting up off the seat he’s on and starting to put them in their rightful places.
“You don’t have to put them away right now, you know that right?” Phil watches as Dan reaches up, not really stretching much to reach the top shelf of the cupboard, but enough so his striped shirt rises to reveal a thin line of skin just above the band of his shorts.
“I may as well whilst I’m in the productive mindset,” Dan says as he stops stretching, and grabs another set of plates to put them in the same place.
When he’s done, he turns around and offers a smile to Phil. He watches Dan’s eyes trail to the other boxes that are untouched and unopened, and he watches as the frown on Dan’s face deepens for a second before disappearing completely. He knows that Dan has an issue with leaving things unfinished and Phil knows that Dan is almost definitely thinking about staying up until the early hours of the morning to put absolutely everything away.
“I think we’ve done enough for tonight,” Phil offers, decreasing the distance between them to wrap his arms around Dan’s waist, placing a delicate kiss on his boyfriend’s forehead and feeling the warmth radiate from it. Phil has never met anyone as warm as Dan. He doesn’t just mean in the sense that he’s warm to the touch, which he is. Dan is warm in all kind of ways.
“I guess,” Dan whispers, leaning into Phil’s touch a little bit. “Is everything in the house?”
Feeling Dan try to wriggle out of Phil’s death grip shouldn’t surprise him at all, knowing Dan’s desire to complete things there and then.
“Yes,” Phil replies, rolling his eyes a little as he tightens his grip on Dan’s waist so he can’t move and begin working again.
“And Norman?” Dan bites his lip.
“He’s fine, we set up his new tank a few days before coming here so it was prepared. He’s fine.”
“Okay, I just worry about him. “
“I know you do.”
“I still think we can get a fair chunk of this done tonight?”
“I suppose, but it’s not like we’ll need anything of this tonight or tomorrow. We have the bed sorted, I made sure I did that first, so we don’t really need anything else.”
“But it’s a mess,” Dan whines, throwing his head back for extra pettiness.
“I’d enjoy our new home regardless of what state it’s in anyway because you’re here.”
“You sap,” Dan throws his hand in the direction of Phil before sitting back on his seat. He sees Dan smile anyway, so he knows he won. Phil leans in for good measure to press his lips to Dans, using his hand to move some of Dan’s curls away from his face.
When the kiss breaks, Phil doesn’t move his hand from Dan’s cheek, deciding instead to rub his thumb across it.
“This is really ours, Phil,” Dan says, meeting Phil’s eyes with the award-winning smile Phil absolutely adores, dimples and all.
“Ours,” Phil repeats.
~~~~~
It takes them a little longer to get back into bed because Dan has the obsessive need to clear through just one more box, but Phil eventually pries his hands away in just enough time to prevent him from opening a new box and drag him up the stairs and into their new bedroom.
He walks past their joint office as he does so and walks past a spare room or two that they know they won't touch for a few more years until they decide to grow their little family. He hates that they’ll be storage rooms for a few years whilst in the back of his head, knowing someone will be living there and showing their personality in that room at some point in the very near future but that’s nothing to stress about now.
He does like to wonder what type of person their children will be who will live in those rooms. Will they be edgy emo teens like their parents were? Will they be nice people? Phil is sure they will be with a father like Dan helping them grow up. It’s impossible for anyone around Dan to be a bad person.
Their new bedroom is smaller than their old one, in the old flat. But they sacrificed a little amount of room they didn’t necessarily need, because they never really spend much time in their bedroom anyway, for a bigger joint office that they will probably spend more time in. It’s perfect that way.
Whilst they haven’t unpacked much to do with their room, with it being mostly bare and the floor is covered with boxes upon boxes of their clothes Dan’s clothes, it’s still enough for them to sleep in tonight. Phil made sure he made the bed as soon as he arrived at their new place, because he knew they wouldn’t have the energy after Dan forced them to clear boxes for hours and hours.
Phil opens one of the boxes labelled pyjamas and pulls out an oversized tee that he used to wear a few years ago as fashion but Dan decided against him wearing that outside after 2016, it turned into pyjamas. He doesn’t mess around before pulling his daytime shirt over his head and unbuckling his jeans, and walking into the bathroom to brush his teeth.
He stands next to Dan, who’s already in the bathroom after taking his clothes off just standing in boxers, and grabs his toothbrush before starting to brush his teeth.
They’ve had many moments like this over the years, looking in their mirror brushing their teeth next to each other like they are part of some romantic sitcom. They knock into each other with their elbows a few times and there's a bunch of giggles here and there before they finish and get into bed with each other.
Dan climbing into the right side of the bed, the side that’s always been his side, whilst Phil joins him in the left, they wrap themselves into the duvet together.
Phil tightens the duvet around himself and watches the frown appear on Dan’s face before he rolls his eyes, chuckles and shuffles closer to Phil.
“How are you feeling?” Phil whispers, feeling the hushed tones are more appropriate for this intimate moment. He knows Dan sometimes gets overwhelmed with change, this being a pretty big change for them, so he wants to know how his boyfriend feels.
It’s almost instinct for Phil to snake his one arm underneath Dan’s body to wrap it around his back, and it’s even worse that the other one climbs into Dan’s hair to play with the loose curls. He knows it isn’t all in vain though, because Dan places a light kiss on Phil’s chest.
“Okay, stressed. Just want everything to be done,” Dan mumbles under his breath as he shoves his face into Phil’s side for comfort. Over the years, Dan’s explained that simply smelling Phil’s scent calms him down a lot and Phil assumes that’s what he’s doing now.
“Everything will be in a few days.”
“But I want it done now,” Dan whines into Phil’s chest which makes him chuckle.
“Soon, my love.”
Dan groans before somehow squishing himself further into Phil’s torso, and Phil wraps his arm around Dan even tighter before closing his eyes.
One of the first things that Phil learnt about Dan when they started to date is that Dan is a cuddler. The second Phil sits or lays down, Dan fills up any available space next to him and the two are completely intertwined before Phil can so much as say a word. It’s not like he minds, of course, he doesn’t. Holding Dan is often the highlight of his day.
It started slowly, with Dan sitting as close as possible with his thighs pressing as close to Phil’s on the sofa whilst watching a movie in the dark all those years ago. Dan may have occasionally leant his head up against Phil’s shoulder and sighed when Phil leans his own on Dan’s.
It started there and now ten years later; Dan’s obsessive need for cuddling has only grown. Dan wraps himself around Phil when they fall asleep at night, using Phil has his own human backpack. Phil always wakes up first the next morning and allows Dan to wake up basking in the cuddle, before turning around to kiss Phil gently on wherever is accessible to him before getting out of bed and starting the day.
Phil doesn’t hate it.
His hand falls out of Dan’s hair and his fingers lightly dance across Dan’s exposed skin before finding his hand, intertwining their fingers almost instantly.
“Maybe we can call Martyn and Corn to get them to help?”
“I thought we wanted to do this ourselves, the whole point of them not being here right now is because we wanted this to be our thing,” Phil reminds Dan of the statement Dan said when they found out they were accepted in buying this house, and every single time moving in was brought up.
“I know, but it’s kind of stressing me out that it could take days, weeks even,”
“We will get it done,” Phil offers again, because he’s at a loss of what else to say. He’s always been in the mindset of it’ll be finished when it’s finished but he knows Dan is the complete opposite with that, so it’s tough.
There are a few beats of silence, where Phil is sure Dan has fallen asleep, but he gets proven wrong when Dan mutters something about the mess downstairs again. Phil instead decides to ignore, understanding sometimes there’s no point causing an argument with Dan’s obsessive cleanliness and instead allows his eyes to wander across Dan’s body.
He knows he’s lucky, so incredibly lucky, to have this man in his life but it always hits him whenever he studies Dan for long periods of time. Dan can be messily eating cereal in the lounge, in a hurry because they have to leave the house ten minutes ago for a meeting in central London and Phil will feel overwhelmed with love and adoration for the person he can call the love of his life.
Dan can be just coming out of the shower, hair a mess, and Phil will realise just how much he loves Dan.
It’s weird how when you love someone, you don’t get what they act or look like anymore because you are just happy to be with them regardless, and Phil knows that’s exactly how he feels about Dan. He thinks Dan feels the exact same way.
“It’s still weird seeing that,” Phil says, an in-head moment that accidentally came out once Phil’s mouth opened, looking down at their intertwined hands to the almost blinding shimmer coming from Dan’s ring finger.
“You’re the one who put it there,” Dan laughs before lifting his hand up, and because of the circumstance Phil’s hand too, and shoves it in Phil’s face as if Phil needed to get a better look of a ring that he spent months looking at in a random desk drawer in his office.
“And I never said I regretted it.”
“Touché,” Dan hums as he removes his hand from Phil’s face to put it back down on the bed. “Are we going to tell them?”
“Them?” Phil feels himself frowning, because everyone in their life already knows about the forever home situation, Phil never shuts up about it and how lucky he got.
“Viewers. The audience?”
Phil stops to think about it before giving Dan an answer, his opinion on whether to tell their audience or not. He knows they need to; they never really keep anything this huge from them for too long because of the level of trust they’ve built with one another. However, Phil is incredibly selfish.
“Let this be ours for a little while longer,” Phil says, squeezing Dan a little closer to him and closing his eyes for a final time. He hears the faint hum of Dan’s agreement before deciding to shut off completely.
They can afford to keep this their little secret for a few days, weeks even, because it’s a big step. He doesn’t think anyone can blame them for wanting to keep their forever home a thing just for themselves for a few days.