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October doesn’t feel like October yet. When the wind blows the clouds out of the sky for long enough, it still feels a little like summertime. Phil doesn’t exactly mind, he likes summer. But he wants it to feel like October so that he can be sure it’s October and therefore sure that Dan will be here soon.
Ten days. He can make it ten days.
Especially as he’s a little terrified of what will actually happen once Dan makes his way up north. Maybe the best part about all of this is the anticipating. The wanting. The wanting to be wanted.
Maybe Phil’s just been feeling so fucking lonely since he left uni that any attention at all has him recategorizing the ache. Bad ache into good ache. Hollow into suspense.
He doesn’t think that’s what this is. He’s more than a little afraid that’s exactly what this is for Dan.
The screen of his phone lights up with a text alert and Phil is sprawled on his bed without the energy to check it. He’s building his nerve. Ian asked him to hang out tonight, some party that Phil wasn’t thrilled about but couldn’t think of a good excuse not to in time.
It lights up a second time. Phil turns his face and tries hitting the right buttons with his nose. It’s no use, he’s hitting all the wrong things.
He sits up and reads the messages properly. One from Ian saying, be there in 20 :P and a longer one from Dan about Lost. Phil wastes all twenty minutes before Ian honks in his driveway texting back and forth with Dan about what they think might happen in the next episode and what they definitely think won't happen and then laughing about how they can use these texts later to prove how very off they were.
He goes down in the same clothes he’s had all day and not even bother to check for splinge, despite Ian telling him they’ll be some people they don’t know at the party. “Maybe even cute people,” he’d nudged.
Phil just ran out of time. Clearly. It’s not that he’s lazy, and definitely not that he’s only thinking of impressing one very specific person who tragically will not be at the party on account of living hundreds of miles away.
His phone buzzes in Phil’s pocket as they’re pulling up into Ian’s friend of a friend’s friend’s parent’s house. sypke in a few? :3 Dan sends.
Phil immediately knows which of the two choices before him he’d rather take. But Ian is already taking off his seatbelt and climbing out of the car.
Can’t D: @ a party :/ Phil sends back.
Dan answers almost immediately. mr social :)
Phil is brooding over what to respond with, Ian tapping on the glass of Phil’s window, and his heartbeat increasing in speed, when Dan sends another. have fun! i’ll just be here playing halo alone lol in my pants lol jk (^_^;)
Phil types back a quick I’m getting you back for that Howell >:] then finally steps out of the car before Ian has to resort to the jaws of life.
The party isn’t bad. Not as fun as sitting on Skype for ungodly amounts of hours laughing with Dan, but not awful. There's enough booze to feel warm and enough people he remembers from school but who don’t remember him well enough to still call him Highlighter Head. There’s plenty of people he doesn’t know and that makes him anxious until he remembers that when someone doesn’t know you, you get to be anyone. You get to be Phil Striker for all they know.
Someone appears at his elbow, despite the fact that Phil has changed talking circles a few times. They keep showing up. Phil looks them over and decides that’s not the worst thing in the world, if they stick around. It’s a guy right around his age, with an emo fringe Phil’s rather jealous of because there are some bleached spots that actually manage to look cool. He’s even got a lip ring. Phil can’t stop staring at it while the guy talks. And he definitely notices.
“Kyle,” the guy says, holding out his plastic cup half filled with soda and cheap vodka.
Fuck, he even has a cool guy name. Phil can’t compete with this. “I’m Phil,” he says, tapping his own plastic cup against the guy’s.
“You from around here?” he asks.
Phil nods. “Grew up here, just finished uni.”
“Nice,” he nods. “You need another?” he points to Phil’s glass. It’s much emptier than the one in Kyle’s hand.
“Sure,” Phil says. They walk together in the kitchen.
Eventually they end up in the garden, on a little stone wall wide enough to sit on. Kyle starts using more words and Phil pretends to be Phil Striker so it isn’t as tortured as flirting sometimes feels. And this is definitely flirting, Phil knows that. He keeps looking at Kyle’s lip ring and Kyle’s tongue keeps darting out to play with it. Kyle’s hand is on Phil’s thigh and Phil's arm is pressed all along the side of Kyle’s body. He smells nice. Musky, like the men deodorants Phil knows he’s supposed to like wearing.
Phil knows where this could go. He knows what it could look like.
He just doesn’t want it.
It’s not that this feels bad or wrong, because he would be doing nothing wrong by leaning in to kiss Kyle or by guiding that hand on his thigh over to his crotch. He’s a single 22-year-old stuck in his parents’ house and there’s nothing wrong with wanting some endorphin’s boost to take the edge off.
It’s just… he doesn’t want to. Doesn’t feel interested. Doesn’t give a fuck about this guy.
His phone buzzes in his pocket, the one pressed against Kyle’s thigh so Phil knows he feels it too. Phil’s pretty sure it’s a text from someone he very much gives a fuck about.
The thing is, he and Dan aren’t anything. Not really. And they’re also everything. They’re friends, best friends, but they’re nothing that would mean if Phil kissed a stranger he has to feel ashamed or be branded a cheater or would be doing anything wrong.
He hates the twist in his gut he gets when he thinks about how the same is true for Dan.
Phil hasn’t tasted this flavour of jealousy before. It’s not the same jealousy as seeing some couple locking lips when he himself is in a dry spell. It’s not the same as wanting attention. Which is why he thinks this thing with Dan might run a little deeper in his veins than a little infatuation. Even if they keep being everything and nothing forever.
“I’m gonna take this,” Phil says, pulling his phone out.
“Cool,” Kyle says, not looking miffed because he too had zero stakes in what was happening here. “Catch me inside if you like,” he adds, standing and walking towards the sliding glass door.
Phil walks to the far side of the garden, as far away from the noise of the house as possible. Dan’s text was about Bangy doing something cute, but he doesn’t bother responding to that. Instead he calls Dan.
“Hey,” Dan answers after almost half a ring. “Didn’t expect a call from the party animal.” He doesn’t sound angry, but there is a weird little edge to the words.
Phil laughs. “Been a while since my Dan dose,” he says. “ And since we weren’t gonna Skype tonight I wanted to say hey.”
“Oh,” Dan says. He sounds surprised. “Well… hey then.”
“Hey,” Phil laughs.
“Sucks you have to go have a life sometimes,” Dan laughs.
“Yeah,” Phil says. “I’m sorry for not telling you.”
“Don’t be, idiot,” Dan snorts. “I don’t need your date calendar.”
“It’s just a blank sheet of paper,” Phil jokes.
“Oh, well in that case…” Dan’s voice goes quiet, the way Phil knows it does when someone else is walking around upstairs in Dan’s house. “Could be handy to have something like that laying around.”
Phil wants to say a lot that’s straight to the point. He wants to say, “This party isn’t fun. Being at home and talking to you is so much more fun. It’s not even a loneliness thing. It’s not even a I can’t find someone to hook up with thing. It’s a… you thing, Dan.”
Because he’s been thinking this for a while.
But he hasn’t said anything like it.
He’s way too afraid to. What if Dan just has a crush. What if Dan just wants to be talking to any guy, and Phil happens to be there. That’s what Phil thought he was doing— he thought he was lonely and he thought Dan happened to be a safe place to store some longing.
And now he gets that it’s a lot more than that.
Which scares the hell out of him.
So all he says instead is, “I think I could convince Ian I’ve done enough partying in an hour or so. Badger him to take me back home.”
Phil thinks he can hear the smile in Dan’s voice when he answers, “Cool. Hope so. I’ll be awake.”
“Of course you will, the sun’s down!” Phil teases.
“You can’t be the only one hoarding vampire powers,” Dan says.
Phil looks back to the house and sees so many people filling the lit windows. He knows he’s gonna have to go joining that fray and that he’ll keep feeling lonely until he’s back home, logged into Skype, and talking to Dan. But until then, one more mixed drink and standing awkwardly next to Ian talking to a group of people like it isn’t aggravating won’t be the worst way to pass an hour.
Dan laughs a soft laugh that sounds like a hum over the phone. “Chop chop, Lester. You’re down to 55 minutes.”