Work Text:
Phil’s drink is so sweet that he drinks it too quickly. He doesn’t realise this mistake until it’s too late. But his housemates aren’t paying attention or one of them might’ve reminded him to slow down.
He just doesn’t have a lot of impulse control right now.
Exams are over and he’ll be back home on break in a few days and it’s one of those nights where he’s so fucking happy to be here— even if here is a sweaty too-loud club filled with uni students all feeling the same free euphoria he is.
He usually hates this, hates being stuffed into a hot room filled to the brim with strangers and spending his little money on overpriced drinks. But Shannon grabs his glass which would be empty if it weren’t for the mostly melted ice, and replaces it with a full one. A thank you for helping her revise, like she’d promised him after knocking on his bedroom door in the middle of a meltdown and sure she was going to fail linguistics because what the fuck is a glottal stop anyway?
Phil takes a sip of the drink, and it’s sweet like she is.
“You got someone making a beeline,” she says, looking behind him.
“Huh?” Phil turns.
There is someone walking straight towards him; Shannon was right. But he can’t imagine why. This someone is hot. Like, way hot. Like… way too hot to be walking up to Phil. He’s sure of it.
But no, the guy stops in front of him and smiles a wide, dimpled smile, and speaks so loudly that he can be heard even over the thumping music. “Babe! There you are!”
Phil is sure his face was already a little red from the heat of the room and his sugary cocktail, but he can feel his cheeks go hot and is sure he’s even redder. He leans forward and asks, much quieter than this stranger had, “I’m sorry, do I know you?”
“Do me a favour, mate, and play along,” he hisses in Phil’s ear before wrapping his arm around Phil’s shoulder. Phil’s own arm makes its way around the guy’s waist. Phil isn’t sure how it moved there, but he thinks he might have his drunk brain to blame for that. Or to thank for it. He hasn’t decided yet.
It’s hard to get a very good look at this stranger in the dim club lighting, but he is close enough for Phil to pick up on the slight curl seeming to escape from an emo fringe that must’ve been as carefully straightened as Phil’s. Although Phil’s is black and this guy’s is as brown as his smile-crinkled eyes. The guy is turning towards a pretty but unhappy looking girl making her way over.
“Found him,” the guy waves at her. “Knew he was around here somewhere!”
Then he turns and kisses Phil. Not a shy kiss. A kiss that is strangely familiar, if only because of the amount of eagerness thrown in there. Phil doesn’t know what to do other than to match it. The guy asked for a favour, after all.
Phil hears Shannon wolf whistle. He barely hears it over the thumping bass and the roar of blood in his ear rushing at how good and unexpected this is. He’s made out with strangers at house parties before— sometimes all it takes is a couple of shots for uni students to revert to games of Truth or Dare. But no one has ever been as, well, convincing as this guy. He seems to really be into kissing Phil. And more often than not unfortunately that just hasn’t been the case.
The stranger pulls away and glances back to where the girl had been. She’s gone. He smiles another crooked smile that makes Phil empty his lungs and slaps Phil on the shoulder. “Thanks. I owe you.”
“No problem,” Phil says, voice cracking halfway.
The guy steps just slightly back, the normal amount apart that people stand but Phil’s confused and endorphin-soaked brain is whining that it’s too far. “I’m Dan,” he says. Then he points at the drink in Phil’s hand. “I’ll buy your next one.”
“Just got this,” Phil looks at his very full glass. “Might be a while.”
“I’ll stick around,” Dan says. His smile hasn’t left. “Might help in case she comes back.”
“Who is she?”
Dan shrugs. “I think she’s in one of my lectures, and she was putting the moves on pretty hard. I panicked and said my boyfriend was round.”
“That’s me,” Phil points at himself.
“Hope that’s okay.” Dan’s brow furrows. He looks like he’s dropping some confident performance which he’d relied on since walking towards Phil. “You, uhh… you were the bloke in my immediate eyesight who seemed the least likely to kick my ass.”
“Hey,” Phil mocks offence. “I’ll have you know I broke my hand during a piggyback race once and the doctor said that was a classic fighting wound! I look like a fighter.” He balls up a fist and shows what passes for a bicep under his plaid button-up.
Dan laughs. Phil can mostly hear it over the music— it’s a hearty sort of cackle. He likes it. He wants to hear it again; wants to be the reason Dan laughs some more.
Phil sucks his second drink down as quickly as the first and walks with Dan to replace it. Dan gets a drink of his own, and because the club gets impossibly louder they take them out to the patio area. It’s freezing, but feels nice after breathing the same air as way too many people for so long. The music still carries over from the open doors and from the other people talking, and sure everything smells like the million cigarettes being smoked around them, but at least Phil is getting an even better look at Dan in the streetlamp’s light.
They talk about majors and hometowns and how they both ended up in York. At one point Dan catches sight of the girl from earlier and grabs at Phil’s hand. Phil laces their fingers together. “Gotta sell it,” he says in Dan’s ear.
After a while the coast seems clear. But Dan keeps holding onto Phil’s frozen fingers. Phil isn’t complaining. Dan is so much warmer, somehow.
“Weird how some people don’t take I’m gay as a no,” Phil says, thinking of how many guys would relentlessly still hit on Shannon even after she told them she’s a lesbian.
Dan’s jaw tightens a little then. Tightens a lot actually. “I didn’t tell her that.”
“Oh,” Phil says. He immediately feels like an idiot for forgetting about queer people or bi people or that not everyone is so into the exact type of guy standing next to him as he is. “My bad.”
“No, it’s just…” Dan shakes his head. “I’m not great with that word. Yet. I dunno.”
“No worries,” Phil says. He squeezes Dan’s hand then let’s it go, a sign for support and space which he hopes Dan understands. He’ll be whichever Dan wants from him; he’s just drunk and smitten enough to offer it all. “Hey, you chose to kiss me, that’s all I need to know,” he laughs.
Dan grabs Phil’s hand again, insistently. Phil leans forward to kiss him and tastes the sweet cocktail they’ve both been sipping. Dan kisses with as much enthusiasm as he did the first time. It just must be something he does, Phil thinks, not all about the show he had been putting on.
He hears the opening synth of “Mr. Brightside” playing in the club and knows that means the night is about to end.
Phil doesn’t want to say goodbye.
He barely pulls back and asks into Dan’s mouth, “You live in the halls?”
Dan nods and offers another quick kiss.
“Want company walking back?” Phil smiles. It’s out of his way and the night is growing colder, but his lack of impulse control is thrilled when Dan nods again.