Chapter Text
2005
This is actually the scariest thing Phil has ever done in his life. And he’s stolen a cat before, he’s kissed a boy during a sweaty game of spin the bottle, he’s sat his parents down and had them watch a horror film he and his friends made by running around the neighborhood with a camcorder and a bottle of ketchup for fake blood. Those were all scary things.
Getting ready to move to uni easily has them beat.
He doesn’t know how Martyn was so calm when he left home. Actually, Phil figures that isn’t even accurate. Martyn wasn’t calm, he was excited! Phil on the other hand is feeling the urge to climb into his childhood bed and bury himself under the covers get stronger with every bag he stuffs with unfolded clothes.
He knows under the nerves there is some excitement there. He’s excited to see all there is to see of York, excited to do all the things university movies promise he will— the making out and going to parties and finding himself kind of things, not the being murdered by a serial killer because he accidentally saw a sideboob kind of things. He’s excited to know what Phil outside of Rossendale looks like. Phil who isn’t just the weird kid. Maybe a Phil who knows what to do with his hands or how to get people outside of his family to enjoy playing board games with him, not just tolerate it.
Plus he’ll be there to learn and on a quest for knowledge and blah blah blah, uni stuff.
So he doesn’t hide under his duvet. He keeps packing random clothes and essential CDs like Muse and essential DVDs like Buffy. He packs his electronics and all the wires he’ll need for them. He has one backpack that is uncategorized essentials. It’s full of photobooth pics and pages he’s torn out of magazines and will probably blu tack onto his walls, a brimmed beanie and a pair of fingerless gloves, his Lord of the Rings pez dispensers, and a piece of bright green sea glass he picked up on holiday in Florida.
The different suitcases and boxes and bags piled by his door look ridiculous. He’ll be back home for Christmas. He’ll probably be back home for some weekends before then.
But they still say to him this is real. He’s moving.
2009
Phil doesn't quite understand how his childhood bedroom is simultaneously bigger than any room he had over the four years he attended York, and also feels strangely small now that he’s back in it for good.
Well, not for good. But until he figures out what he’s supposed to do with his life now that he’s a fresh graduate sporting an English Language and Linguistics degree, and on top of that a Masters in Video Post Production. His parents seem to think —hope?— that will take a matter of days. Phil really isn’t so sure.
He managed not to let his anxiety get the better of him as he packed up his bedroom back at uni. He managed to hold himself together all the way back home.
It’s here in a bedroom he hadn’t realised he outgrew that everything seems to hit.
The walls are a little too close together, and moving closer. Why the hell did he choose such a green green for them? The slanty part of the ceiling is too low. He’s too tall now. He was probably just as tall when he left for uni, but still. He’s gonna forget about it and get a concussion when he stands to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. It’s not even like he hasn’t been in this room loads of times over the last four years but, it just… it isn’t his room anymore. It doesn’t fit. He shouldn’t be here.
And yet he is. He is here.
He’s stuck here.
He’s stuck here unwanted and burdensome on his parents who expected better and has nothing to do but plop down on the garish carpet and grab the nearest box and get unpacking.
He gets distracted by the pile of hats, trying them all on and hating each one but not feeling like he can justify throwing them away. The distraction helps. He takes his lava lamp and his piece of bright green sea grass and his little lego Neville Longbottom out of the box and sets them on his dresser.
As the room slowly becomes less a shrine to his past self and a little more like a place he can comfortably get his bearings while figuring out what’s next, Phil thinks maybe he hasn’t outgrown the room entirely. Maybe he still fits.
On his bed his phone lights up with a text from Dan, asking if they’re going to Skype tonight.
2010
He honestly hadn’t thought he would be bringing that much more stuff to Manchester than he had to uni. It’s not like the city is even that far from home— his parents’ home! This is home now. Or will feel more like it, once he’s unpacked and filmed a few videos and eaten a few meals.
Once Dan moves as well, and won’t just be visiting anymore for long weekends and hours spent on the train. He’ll be at uni in the same goddamn city, they’ll be able to see each other every day…
That still scares him, maybe a little bit.
In a good way.
Like, it scares him that he’s so excited to see someone every day. It scares him that he wants someone around like that, and that Dan wants to be around like that too.
His potential spiral is interrupted by the sound of his father stepping off the lift with another handful of boxes. Dan gets off the lift as well. They’re laughing at a joke Phil didn’t catch, standing at his still empty kitchen cabinets next to his Mum who is making sure none of the dishes or mugs got chipped on the way over even if Phil’s packing methods were suspect.
It’s nice to hear his father and Dan laughing together. Sounds a little like when he and Dan laugh together.
“That’s the last of it,” Nigel says, setting the boxes in his arms down on the coffee table next to the one Dan had carried. It makes a clinking sound like breakables bumping into each other, and Nigel tries to cough over the sound but Phil can see his Mum ready to tease him.
“Thanks for helping,” Phil says. Of course they would help him, he shouldn’t act like it’s surprising. They know Phil has noodle arms and only committed to four trips up and down the lift before he began the all important task of sorting the soon-to-be-unpacked things. And they are over the moon that Phil actually did it; he got the stupid artsy degree and he hasn’t gotten a proper job, but he got himself a flat.
It’s not quite a lateral move to go from living in your parents’ house to a flat your parents pay for. Even if it feels like it if Phil thinks about it too long.
“Happy to,” Kath says, pulling him into a hug. His father hugs him too, but it’s over the coffee table and they end up laughing about the weird archy-bendy stance they’ve both taken.
Dan doesn’t hug him because Dan’s not going anywhere. Not for at least three days, until he has to go back down south for the last time. When he comes back up, it will be for good.
Kath tries to remind him about the cash she left on the counter for them to get some pizza, but the doors of the lift cut her off. And then that’s it: he’s moved in.
Except everything is still in boxes and the walls are still bare and he doesn’t know where any of the outlets are or which messenger bag he stuffed his laptop into. But yeah, moved in.
The flat isn’t big at all, which means Phil can see Dan starfished on the bare mattress which is taking up most of the floor of what will be the bedroom, even though he’s at the front door and checking the deadbolt. He’s in the big city now, he doesn’t want to just welcome home invaders in.
“Let’s take a break,” Dan says, lifting an arm and tugging at the collar of his sweaty shirt.
Phil doesn’t take much convincing to ignore the many boxes, but he still gives Dan a hard time. “The place is a mess,” he says.
Dan laughs. “It’s literally never going to be neater than this. At least all your shit is still contained!”
Phil tries, and probably fails, to keep a smile from forming. Dan has a point. “There aren’t even sheets on there,” he points to the mattress.
Dan laughs again, pulling his shirt off this time. “You are such a diva. I’m not asking you to pamper me, Phil, I’m asking to break in your new place with a sweaty floor-mattress fuck.”
And that’s all it takes for Phil to stop pretending it wasn’t what he wanted the whole damn time.