Work Text:
Dan feels like a failed millennial by the time his internet has been out for four hours and nothing he has tried seems to be working. He’d unplugged it then plugged it back in. He’d sifted through almost decade-old forum pages on his phone where people were having the same trouble he was, and an answer seemed promising only for nothing to come of it. He’d skimmed about seven YouTube tutorials.
And still nothing— no internet.
He has a paper due at midnight and no fucking flash drives after he accidentally stepped on the last one with his giant goddamn feet. It’s pouring like the end of the world outside his windows and he wishes his roommate hadn’t gone home for the weekend or he’d pester him to do something. To think of something Dan isn’t thinking of. Greg’s smart like that. He keeps thinking even once Dan has spiralled well past the point of helpfulness.
He lays down on the floor. There’s nothing else to do, he feels, but let gravity pull him as close as he can get. He sees a tiny white phone number for an information line printed on the side of his modem and decides to give it a try. At least it’s something.
The tired-sounding lady on the other end of the call tells Dan they’ll have to send out a technician.
“Can you have one here today?” he asks, not daring to hold his breath.
“No, I’m sorry, our earliest available appointment is Thursday next.”
Dan groans. But it took him ten minutes of hitting the right buttons and fighting with the automated phone tree to get the woman on the line. He doesn’t want to bother with that again later. “Okay, that’s fine,” he says. She tells him the time slot to expect someone and sounds cheery only when she’s hanging up.
He sits up. He runs his fingers through his mussed-up fringe and stands with popping knees. He tucks his laptop into his waistband and zips his coat up over it all the way to his chin, prepared to brave the rain the six blocks to the Starbucks where he’ll mooch off the WiFi long enough to turn in a paper he actually bothered to write for once.
*
By the time Dan’s appointment comes, he has forgotten about it entirely.
Greg has been back for well over a week, and the first thing he did when Dan said the internet was out was unplugging then plugging it back in. Though Dan told him frustratedly that he had done that himself, countless times, it suddenly worked.
“Are you some kind of tech whisperer?” Dan groaned, shoving Greg’s shoulder as they both laughed.
Then Thursday rolls around and, since Greg is at one of his lectures, Dan stands to answer the door when a knock sounds.
He opens the door to a face that meets his eye-line. That almost never happens. The face is pale and beautiful and Dan spends a little too long staring at the guy’s hair. It’s pretty much the exact hair Dan has been trying the hairdresser to give him for years, but it never ever looks so good on him. It looks perfect on this guy, black against his pale, with bright blue eyes staring at Dan.
Staring confused, because of course all Dan’s doing is ogling him, and he needs to get a fucking grip. Dan’s gaze glances down to the logo printed on the guy’s shirt— the logo for his internet service, and it all comes flooding back.
“Hi,” Dan says with a voice groggy from disuse. There hadn’t been a reason to use it yet today.
“I’m looking for Dan,” the guy smiles. It’s a customer service sort of smile. Dan is increasingly aware that this tech would rather be almost anywhere else right now, and Dan can hardly blame him.
“That’s me,” he says. “Uhhh, for the internet, right? We kinda fixed the problem already.” He can feel himself hunching his shoulders and scrunching his spine. He can feel himself grow smaller. “Sorry.”
The man’s smile shifts, and looks a little more genuine somehow. “Well that makes my job a lot easier,” he laughs. “And you’re my last stop of the day, so you’ve just given me an early afternoon.”
“Happy to help,” Dan smiles. He hopes his smile matches the man’s.
“Well,” he says while reaching into his back pocket, “I do have a quick survey about the visit, if you don’t mind filling it out.”
“No problem,” Dan says. He looks over the form. The questions are hyperbolic and generic, asking essentially on a scale of 1-5 how Dan ranks the likelihood that this visit alone achieved world peace. He circles all fives; he knows anything less than perfection means that this poor guy will get an earful at the next team huddle thanks to his previous employment at Asda. Dan hands the paper back to him but forgets he’s holding a borrowed pen.
“Thanks,” the tech smiles again. “I’m Phil, by the way, if the problems pop up again and you have to give us a call.”
He waves and heads down the hall towards the lift. Dan closes the door and tries to push all the embarrassing things he said or did in this very brief exchange with a stranger away from his mind.
*
Dan’s laying in the middle of the hallway outside his bedroom with the borrowed/stolen pen resting on his sternum. He’s thinking about making some sort of flashcards because exams are coming up but he’s not all that sure he gives a shit. Probably will just cram all the revising in the last few days as per usual and pull out a just-passing grade. Then he can bask in the self-fulfilling prophecy of laziness and procrastination and mediocracy.
It’s miserable, but at least it’s a misery of his own making. Unlike so many other miseries he knows.
He hears the front door open and shut. He hears Greg’s heavy pre-med textbooks thump on the dining room table. He hears Greg’s footsteps come closer.
“Tell me this isn’t where you’ve been since I left,” he says, standing over Dan.
“Not the whole time.”
“What else did you do?”
“Ate an apple. Scrolled through Twitter. Answered the door for the internet guy I forgot was coming over. Ate some Pringles.”
“A full day,” Greg rolls his eyes. He sinks down to sit crosslegged beside Dan. “And what was the best part?”
Dan thinks Greg probably expects him to say one of the foods. Or the wank he’d had shortly after waking up which he hadn’t mentioned, but which would be a common enough joke for either of them. But he surprises even himself by saying, “The internet guy, I guess. He wasn’t here long, but he was prettier than anything in this goddamn flat.”
“Hey, don’t disparage my succulents like that!” Greg pushes and laughs. Dan pushes him back, and matches the laughter. “Why wasn’t he here long?”
“Because you already fixed the internet, remember?”
“Oh yeah…” Greg stands up. “How pretty did you say he was?”
Dan frowns. “Why?”
Greg shrugs. “Well, you never have any fun.”
“Rude,” Dan lays his head back down. His neck hurts when he leans up to look at Greg. He hears him walk away, but instead of the TV turning on or the fridge opening, Dan hears a crash like something falling to the floor.
He jerks himself up and feels a little dizzy from how quickly he’s stood, but runs into the lounge expecting to see a passed out Greg or something awful. Instead, he just sees Greg with a self-satisfied smirk.
“Uh oh,” he says, smiling wider. “I think you’d better call that internet guy again, Danny. One of my textbooks fucked up the box.”
*
Greg’s plan was short sighted in that when Dan called, he was told the soonest appointment was five whole days away. Those five days dragged on as both of them began to question how civilization had possibly been doing this for thousands of years— exist without the ability to google what weird bird is flying past the window or fill out a grocery order to avoid going in person.
Sure, they could do those things from their phones. But the month is drawing to a close and data is precious.
Eventually, though, Phil the internet tech was back and knocking on Dan’s front door. Dan tries not to stare this time. He thinks he mostly succeeds.
“Actually got some work for me today?” Phil laughs.
“ Yeah, sorry about that,” Dan says, leading the way to the lounge, “my flatmate’s a clutz.”
“I have no room to judge,” Phil laughs. And then, almost as though to prove his point, he stumbles over his own feet and almost falls to the floor.
“You alright, mate,” Dan asks, reaching out for Phil’s arm even though the almost-fall had already passed.
Phil’s colorless face has turned bright red. “Thanks,” he smiles. “Not the first flat I’ve fallen in.”
When Dan shows him the modem, Phil looks at the button on the side which has been so mashed in that it’s permanently pressed. “What did your friend do to the poor thing?” He asks.
“Dropped a brick of a textbook on it,” Dan said.
Phil looks at the cubby in the shelving unit where the modem had been. The corner of his mouth twitches in a disguised smile. Dan sees what Phil has noticed: the modem is covered by another shelf, perfectly protected. It’s now pretty obvious that some intentional tampering happened here.
*
Phil fixes the button with a little tool. It’ll work for now, he says, but the best thing to do would be to have the company send in a replacement. “I’d be happy to come over and install it for you,” Phil offers by the door.
“Thanks,” Dan nods. He isn’t sure if this is a come on or a sales pitch, but with those blue eyes he honestly doesn’t give a fuck either way.
Before leaving, Phil asks if Dan could fill out another survey. That reminds Dan about the stolen pen and he bolts for his bedroom to grab it from his bedside table. “Forgot this last time,” he says, sure that his face is as red as Phil’s had been earlier.
“Oh,” Phil smiles. “Thanks,” he says as he tucks the pen in the pocket of his work shirt. He’s smiling amused, and Dan thinks he looks like an idiot now because surely Phil had already forgotten about the dumb pen.
*
Phil’s back at the flat three days later with the new modem. Greg is actually home this time, but Dan had banished him to his bedroom. “You’re always teasing me for not having fun,” he’d said. “Let me have a little fun, okay.”
He offers Phil a ribena while he works. Phil nods and thanks him, and when he takes a sip Dan’s eyes are glued to Phil’s throat as he leans back and gulps.
When the new modem is expertly hooked up and the old one packed into Phil’s company-branded satchel bag, Dan decides it's time to shoot his shot.
“Hey, er, if you don’t have any other appointments after me, maybe you’d like to stick around for another drink?” He buries his hands as deep as they’ll go in his pockets. “We could even spike the ribena this time,” he smiles.
Phil’s eyes widen, and Dan hopes that it is with pleasant surprise. “Oh,” he says. He lifts a hand to tug at the satchel strap. “I’d like to… gotta drop this off before my shift ends though.”
“Of course,” Dan nods, already panickedly regretting the whole damn thing. “No problem.”
“Maybe I can come back though? Afterwards, like in an hour?”
Dan feels the anxious clouds departing. An hour he can work with— in an hour he can kick Greg out of the flat entirely to some friend’s house, and order takeout so his own self doubt won’t be able to tell him this isn’t actually a date, and change his shirt as he has nervously sweat through the one he’s got on. “Sounds great,” he smiles.