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Saturday
“Good morning,” Dan says, yawning, as he walks into the lounge. He’d slept deeply the night before and was surprised to see the time on the clock when he woke up.
Phil is on the couch looking at his laptop, but he closes it when Dan walks in and sets it aside. “Morning,” he says, standing up. Dan recognizes the adamant intensity on his face and groans internally. This means Phil’s brain is deep into an idea, already traveling on a high-speed train that Dan didn’t buy a ticket for but that he will probably board anyway.
“Give me a hug,” Phil says, walking toward Dan and stopping in front of him.
“What?” Dan says, looking at Phil’s bright, expectant eyes.
“It’s something I was just reading about that I want to try,” Phil says. “Come on, give me a hug.”
Dan rolls his eyes. “Alright,” he says, shuffling closer. They both move at the same time to put their arms around each other, wrists and forearms and elbows colliding until they sort out their limbs, and then Dan has both arms over Phil’s shoulders and Phil’s are looped around Dan’s waist.
“Now what?” Dan says, tipping his head against Phil’s and looking at the blank wall in front of him.
“Ok, so I read an article this morning about how couples should start each day with a proper greeting; like, the first time we enter into each other’s space every day we give each other a hug,” Phil says, and Dan can feel the enjoyable buzz from Phil’s voice vibrate across his scalp and down through his chest. Phil tightens his grip, pressing their bodies closer. “Not a half-assed hug, but a wholehearted one. And we hold it for a while and just pay attention to each other before we get going with our days.”
Dan concentrates on not releasing a sigh that would signal his skepticism. It feels strange just to be standing here embracing. Phil has already showered and dressed for the day, and — pressed against Phil’s crisp button-up and clean soap smell — Dan feels sloppy and groggy in his pajamas and T-shirt.
“Can we try it for a week?” Phil asks. “The article said hugging increases trust and closeness and also reduces stress.”
“Is there something wrong?” Dan asks. “Like, are you feeling sad or worried or did I do something to make you upset?”
“I just like this idea,” Phil responds. “I just feel like we don’t have enough rituals in our life, you know? Something we do even when we don’t feel like doing it, like all the things we do for Christmas that make that season special even if we aren’t always in a Christmas mood.”
“A week?” Dan says, figuring he can tolerate it for that long. He brings a hand up against the nape of Phil’s neck. “How long has this been? A minute? Do we have to time it?”
“No,” Phil says, chuckling, and Phil’s body relaxes further against his. In the hush that follows, Dan is aware of their chests rising and falling against each other. “I like this,” Phil says. He pulls his head back so he can look at Dan. “It’s soothing. Do you think this is what our fans feel like when we hug them?”
“God no,” Dan says. “That’s a completely different kind of hug.” He bites at the inside of his cheek. “So are we done? Can we let go?”
“Yeah,” Phil says, stepping out of the embrace. They stare at each other for a moment, and Dan feels awkward and marginally perplexed.
Finally, he shakes his head at Phil. “What’s for breakfast?” he asks.
Sunday
Phil is drafting an email in his head and is rinsing out his toothbrush when Dan walks into the bathroom.
“Let’s do this!” Dan says, opening his arms wide.
Phil freezes and stares at him, knowing he’s forgotten something. Dan quirks an eyebrow, arms still outflung.
“Oh!” Phil says, remembering, and he steps into Dan’s embrace so quickly that he knocks Dan backward and they slip across the tile floor, stepping on each other’s bare feet until they find their balance, laughing into each other’s shoulders.
The acoustics of the room tamp their laughter into an echoey memory. In the lull that follows, Phil stares at the toothbrush that he still holds in one hand, thinking that the diffuse amber light filtering in from the transom window gilds even the most mundane of objects with a temporary charm.
Phil runs his free hand down the wings of Dan’s shoulder blades and down to his waist. Though Dan isn’t as lean as when they first met, he’s always loved how he can fully wrap his arms around him and how solid the planes of his body feel. Holding Dan is sometimes like holding the past and the present at the same time.
“I really like your back, Dan,” he says, “especially this bit here right.” Phil rubs a circle against the small of Dan’s back and then drags a knuckle along his spine.
“Hmm, that feels good,” Dan murmurs. “You do give a good hug.”
“Does my body feel the same to you, even after all these years?” Phil asks, instantly wanting to retract the question even as it leaves his mouth.
“You don’t feel as delicate to me as you used to,” Dan says. “You’ve put on some muscle, and I swear your shoulders got broader. But you smell the same, and you always smell good to me. You always look good to me. You know that.”
“Yeah, but it’s nice to hear you say it sometimes,” Phil says, feeling a pleased blush flood his cheeks. They step apart and Phil puts his toothbrush back onto the counter. “Coffee or tea?”
“Tea please,” Dan responds.
Monday
Dan is at the kitchen sink rinsing last night’s dishes and humming the piano score he’s been learning — a piece that’s both spare and lush, like a silk robe skimming across skin — when he feels Phil’s arms wind around him from behind.
“Hi,” Phil says. “Thanks for washing up.”
“Are we doing the hug thing right now?” Dan asks. “We woke up at the same time this morning and had sex. Doesn’t that count?”
“Nope,” Phil says. “That’s definitely not a hug and I make the rules.”
Dan shuts off the faucet and dries his hands on the tea towel that’s folded on the counter. He slips around in Phil’s embrace and starts to sway slightly, resuming the hum of the melody. After a moment Phil follows the movement and matches it.
Dan feels a fluidity in his joints this morning, a specific combination of sensuality and general charity with the world that he knows will probably result in him turning up some music later and dancing somewhere in the flat.
“Yesterday I felt more masculine,” he says, feeling absurdly like he’s making some sort of announcement. “But today I feel more feminine.”
“How so?” Phil says from where his head rests against Dan’s shoulder.
“I hate using such binary words, but today I feel, I don’t know, expansive,” he says. A memory unfurls in his mind’s eye. “Remember that night last year when we took a walk along the beach at your parent’s place? The air smelled so fresh and — remember? — I made us face the ocean and lift our arms and shout into the wind. It’s like that.”
“So you feel like wind and water and moonlight today?” Phil asks. “That sounds better than gender.”
Dan smiles, thinking not for the first time that Phil’s sideways approach to words can be unexpectedly reassuring. “What do you think?” Dan says.
Phil doesn’t answer right away. “Whenever you talk about gender I just start to worry if I’m too gay or not gay enough,” he says. “It’s different now that we’ve come out. Like, some days I want people to clock me and other days I don’t, and then sometimes I feel like I’m performing gayness — like I don’t always know what people expect from me now that I’m publicly out. I guess I don’t think about gender a lot, but I do catch myself anxious about being too gay or not gay enough, whatever that means.”
“It means you made me feel good this morning,” Dan says, shimmying his hips against Phil’s.
Tuesday
Phil wraps his arms around Dan in the hallway and wonders why he started this. He woke up with the foreshadow of a headache, thinking of the unresolved bout of mutual irritation they’d had last night, which hadn’t quite simmered into an argument but had certainly featured some well-phrased snipes from Dan and a few rude attempts by Phil to get Dan to just go away; the last thing he wants to do right now is hug Dan when he doesn’t even want to talk. And if he lingers any longer he’ll be late for a meeting across town.
He shifts within the embrace, which has the lackluster enthusiasm of two acquaintances bumping into each other at an airport. He sighs, knowing this was his idea, so he’d better at least try. He pushes his hands inside the waistband of Dan’s joggers just to feel some skin.
“Look, sometimes I just want you to take care of me without having to ask,” he begins, freefalling off a verbal cliff. “Last night I was feeling so overwhelmed by all the things I need to do this week, and you were just wanting to be outraged about politics, and I know you were annoyed that I wasn’t listening, and I was mad at you for not knowing that I was feeling so stressed, and I just wanted you to make me feel better and you weren’t, you fucking weren’t.”
“You wanted me to guess all that?” Dan asks, and he sounds more curious than anything. “I didn’t know any of that.”
“I know!” Phil says, cringing a bit at his tone of barely repressed frustration. He’s surprised by how quickly he drops into last night’s resentful, turbulent mood.
“I’m embarrassed that I want that,” he says. “Sometimes I just want to feel the way I felt when I was kid, and mum and dad would say all the right things and take care of everything in the background so I could just run around and live my life as a kid and meals would just show up and I could just go to school or doctor’s appointments with all the details already sorted and all the bills were paid and I could go on vacation and not know anything about how the flights were scheduled or the hotel rooms were booked or how much it cost. Some days that’s what I want from you. I want to stop for one second and just not think.”
“Phil,” Dan says. “I can’t do that for you. That’s not fair. I mean, we are adults now — and I love being in charge of my own life — I don’t really want anyone to take care of me on that level. It’s never going to be like that for either of us ever again.”
“It’s just a lot of work,” Phil sighs, feeling tears come to his eyes. “All of it is.”
“Ok,” Dan says, lifting his head to look at Phil. His eyes widen, and Phil works against glancing away. He knows his distress is evident in his face.
“You’ll be late if you don’t go now,” Dan says. “But can we talk when you get back? Maybe I can help.”
Phil closes his eyes and nods. “Yeah, that would be good,” he says.
Wednesday
Dan listens to the sounds of mid-morning traffic as he holds Phil on their balcony. Dan had woken up with a spiky sadness tap-dancing inside him. He lay in bed trying to trace the origin of the emotion, and he finally decided it might be loneliness, which he’s always baffled to feel when he lives with someone. But the feeling had galvanized him out of bed in search of Phil.
He’d found him watering plants, and Dan had taken the watering can out of Phil’s grasp and set it down before pulling him into his body. Phil’s hands had been briefly trapped between them, his fingers splayed against Dan’s collarbones, before Phil ran his hands down to bracket Dan’s waist.
“I don’t know if your fern is going to make it,” Phil murmurs into Dan’s neck.
“Yeah, it seems kinda high maintenance,” Dan says. “Like father, like son, right?” he adds.
“Do you really think that?” Phil asks, dismay coloring his voice.
“I mean, yeah. I’m loud, I’m horny, I’m emotional, I’m needy,” Dan shrugs. An old sense of insecurity, or maybe transgression, slinks into his stomach. “That’s just objective reality.”
Phil’s hands wander across Dan’s back in an imperceptible pattern.
“That’s not how I see it,” Phil says slowly. “ I think our relationship takes maintenance, for sure, but I don’t think of you as being particularly demanding.”
Phil lightly raps his fist against the back of Dan’s head. “Don’t you think our culture puts too much on romantic relationships?” he says. “Like, not only do we have to be best friends, but also lovers and also sappy romantics and also each other’s therapists. I know I can’t be all those things to you all the time, and I don’t feel like you ask that of me, thank god.”
Dan presses his forehead into Phil’s shoulder, arching his back where Phil has found a knot and is rubbing his fingers into it. “I do want that romance story sometimes, even though I also think it’s a mostly heterosexual story,” Dan says. He hesitates. “Sometimes my needs just feel so big, so voracious, like I want to eat the world.”
“Well, I want you,” Phil says. “And I don’t think you’re too much. You’re just right.”
“Thanks, Goldilocks,” Dan says.
Thursday
The hug starts as a twirl, with Phil taking Dan’s hand and guiding him under his arm in a graceless turn, then stepping forward to pull the wireless headphones off Dan’s head. Phil wraps his arms around Dan’s middle and lifts him off the floor a few inches.
Dan laughs when he sets him back down. “Good morning to you too,” Dan says.
Though Phil is holding the headphones at Dan’s waist, he can still hear the song spilling out of the speakers. He and Dan don’t always share the same taste, but he knows how meaningful music is to Dan, so he asks, “What are you listening to?”
“Perfume Genius,” Dan replies. “Actually this is a good song for your hug experiment. Listen to these lyrics.”
He hums a bit to sync up with the song coming from the headphones and then sings:
Give me your weight
I'm solid
Hold me up
I'm fallin' down now babe
Your body changes everything
You are anchoring
Until you fit beneath me
And you're breaking like a wave
“I think it’s about balance,” Dan says. “Some days one of us is the anchor, other days the one who falls apart.”
“Yaarr,” Phil says, in his best pirate imitation. “And the relationship as a whole is . . . a ship?”
“Shut up,” Dans says, swatting at Phil’s ass.
“You seem to be in a good mood,” Phil says. “Not just right now, but in the last few months.”
“Yeah,” Dan says. “I just am energized by these new projects. I feel like I’m learning a lot, all the time.”
Phil presses a spontaneous kiss to Dan’s temple, pulling away with an exaggerated smack. Dan’s mood is irresistible, and for that Phil feels a rush of gratitude. He says, “Do you know that you’re sexy when you have a project? Like, the last few months, watching you work and listening to your ideas, I’ve just been so interested in knowing what is going on in your brain.”
Dan laughs and asks, “Are you hitting on me?”
Phil opens his mouth to flirt back, but the footsteps of his thoughts are already darting down a different path. “Maybe sexy isn’t the right word. I think erotic is actually the word I’m looking for.”
“Woah,” Dan says. “Tell me more, with your fancy words.”
“It’s more than just physical attraction,” Phil says. “I am just so curious about you right now. When you are being creative, when you are making something, it sparks my imagination too. I was sad when we stopped collaborating on videos, but I never expected that all these months later I would feel so invigorated by both of us working on completely separate and new things.”
“We make a good team, even when we aren’t one,” Dan says.
“Yeah, we do,” Phil says, moving away and handing Dan the headphones. “Hey, did you remember to put in the grocery order?”
Friday
Dan looks past Phil’s head and out the glass door that opens onto the balcony, watching a summer breeze dip in to kiss the tips of the potted plants’ leaves. They’ve both been quiet since this hug started, but Dan doesn’t feel like letting go yet, savoring the sensation of being held and of Phil’s long legs and hard chest pressed against him.
Dan leans more into Phil and they silently negotiate a different balance until Phil is supporting more of Dan’s weight.
“So what’s on your agenda today?” Phil asks. “I need to sort through some paperwork for the accountant.”
“Hmm,” Dan says. “Some writing, probably. I’m stuck on trying to describe this post-coming out world. I have so many words, but none of them seem right so far.”
“Let me know if you want me to read over it,” Phil offers. “I know being out isn’t alike for us, but I’m just still surprised by how giddy about it I am. It’s like I’m a carbonated drink that got opened but hasn’t lost the bubbles yet.”
“I guess I underestimated how different I would feel day-to-day,” Dan says, “how much my experience of reality would change. I don’t think I even realized how often I walked around with this sense of detachment, like I was floating above myself. It’s not until now, when I feel utterly here — all the time, just one whole person, like that other second person merged back into me — that I understand how before there was this part of me always on pause, always split off. It was like being out of focus.”
“That makes me so sad and so happy at the same time,” Phil says. “You always are so vivid to me, but I guess it doesn’t matter how I see you; it’s how you see yourself.”
“It’s such a good feeling,” Dan says, “existing from moment to moment.” He tightens his arms until Phil yelps and pushes Dan away, laughing.
“So are we going to keep doing this?” Phil asks. “Thumbs up or thumbs down?”
“Let’s see how tomorrow goes,” Dan says. “I’d rank some of your other ideas higher than this, but it’s definitely one of your better ones.”
“Look, I’m a relationship guru, and you know it,” Phil says. “Now go find me your terribly organized box of business receipts.”