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He keeps telling himself he’ll sleep on the plane—when he wakes up the morning of the flight feeling like death incarnate, when he’s scarfing down a pastry and a coffee on the way to the airport, when he’s awkwardly trying to tug his shoes back on at security because of course all the stupid benches are taken and it feels like everyone is staring at him wondering what the fuck is wrong with him—needless to say, he does not, in fact, get a wink of sleep by the time the plane touches down in London.
It’s an overnight flight, but that doesn’t help. He tugs his headphones out of his carry-on, scrolls through the selection of in-flight movies, and passes the time with his red-rimmed eyes glued to the tiny too-bright screen.
Occasionally, he gets distracted and scrolls on his phone for half an hour, maybe an hour—time feels unreal, like he’s floating in that same liminal void he’s always on about. He briefly considers messaging Phil, mostly to fill him in on the movies he’s finally been able to knock off his to-watch list, but he figures he’ll be home soon enough.
Home.
Until he left, the house was still in the seemingly endless process of becoming a home. As exciting as the idea had been, designing an entire house had turned out to be way less stressful in the Sims. They’d had plenty of time to settle in, of course, but it still hadn’t managed to feel like home to him.
Dan’s therapist would probably tell him his good ol’ fear of commitment was to blame for that. The decision to buy the house had been a logical one from the beginning, but the more real it became, the more anxiety had gripped him and left him struggling for breath.
He and Phil, they’d—they’d made this house for them. They’d meticulously planned every detail, every square foot, squabbled over every decoration and color choice. This wasn’t a set of bland flats in a sea of indistinguishable apartments. Dan couldn’t just up and leave if something happened, if he decided he’d rather live somewhere else. With someone else.
For all intents and purposes, this wasn’t just a house. It was a forever home. This was their way of—of settling down, almost. Their fucking white picket fence moment.
And Dan didn’t know—he couldn’t just—and then The Opportunity came up, the show, the world tour, and nothing else would get himself out of his stupid fucking head—and so he flew himself right back out the door.
His therapist would be wrong, though. It wasn’t like that. Obviously. He wouldn’t have bought an entire bloody house with Phil, wouldn’t have gone through the maddening process of trying to get it all finished during a global pandemic, if he hadn’t wanted to actually live in it.
But out on the road, in the States…he’d suddenly been able to breathe easier. Living on a bus had its downsides (as Phil had ever so helpfully pointed out to him), but it brought with it a sense of freedom Dan hadn’t realized he’d been yearning for. Not freedom from Phil, or the house, or even London—just from the inside of his own head.
Maybe it hadn’t been a great idea to watch Everything, Everywhere, All at Once on the plane, but as the credits roll and Dan pretends his eyes are still only red from sleep (it’s dark, he reminds himself, nobody can even see, and so fucking what if they can?), he realizes it had all worked. He doesn’t feel like the daughter in the movie, desperate to just get out , to be anybody else; he feels like Michelle Yeoh’s character. The overwhelmed, possibly-almost-functional adult with no fucking clue how taxes work, and a partner who would rather stick googly eyes on the fridge than help with said taxes.
The tour, all of it, had worked. All he wants now is to be in a bed that he can call his own. To go to sleep at an ungodly hour and wake up to the smell of Phil’s favorite instant coffee wafting up the stairs from the kitchen. To spend lazy days on the couch playing video games and yelling dramatically that they were all rigged whenever he loses anything. To only have one set of eyes on him again, the ones that have already seen every single piece of him there is to see and would still never think of judging any of them. Would still stay.
Fine. Fuck. He misses Phil, okay? He does. So what? Nobody besides him needs to know that.
They’d already admitted to the whole Internet that this would be the longest period of time they’d ever spent apart. Obviously he was going to miss his best friend, the person he’d lived with for fucking ages. Even if he never admits it, everyone will know anyway.
Still, there are particular things he misses that only Phil will have the privilege of knowing.
By the time the pilot scares the shit out of him by loudly announcing their descent over the speakers, Dan’s more than ready for the journey to be over. He moves through the airplane and the airport terminal like a zombie, feet on autopilot, and when he comes back to himself he’s in the backseat of a taxi.
Phil had offered to meet him at the airport, but Dan had rejected it immediately. If Phil had been trusted to get himself to Arrivals on time…
They’d actually been texting less than usual in the week or so leading up to Dan’s return. It felt…anticipatory, almost. He wonders if Phil feels the same, or if he’ll get home to find Phil still in bed instead of at the door to meet him.
Too soon, the car comes to a stop, and he steels himself before he opens the door and climbs out into the early morning light. The driver hands him the rest of his things, and then Dan is alone again, standing on the edge of the driveway.
He takes another steadying breath and trudges up to the front door. Exhaustion seeps through his body with every step he takes, and by the time he arrives he feels like nothing but a sack of bones tenuously held together by a black hoodie.
Before he can summon the energy to knock, or text Phil, or whatever he’d been meaning to do, the door opens.
“Hey.” He stands in the doorway in one of his more ridiculous pairs of pajama bottoms, and a hoodie that Dan is 99% sure is one of his. It isn’t black, though, hence the one percent doubt.
“Hey,” Dan breathes, offering a weak smile. God, he just wants to sleep. He needs Phil to offer to bring him tea and then bring some anyway even after Dan insisted he didn’t want any. He needs to turn the shower all the way up and stay in there for half an hour, he needs—
“D’you…need help with your things?”
Dan looks down, distantly, at the suitcases by his feet.
“No,” he says.
“Alright,” Phil says.
Dan doesn’t move.
Phil leans forward and picks them up, and Dan follows him wordlessly inside. He locks the door behind them, kicks off his shoes, and watches Phil put his suitcases down by the stairs. Phil seems…quieter than Dan had expected. He supposes it’s earlier in the morning than Phil would ever usually be awake, but still. This is unexpected.
He takes a step forward, and then another. Phil turns around, opening his mouth as if he’s about to offer to do something else, but Dan shakes his head before he can. He steps forward again, socks silent on the floor, and drops his head onto Phil’s shoulder.
Phil’s arms are around him immediately, and belatedly Dan remembers to do the same. He feels Phil sigh beneath him, and it seems to poke through whatever silent tension had sprouted between them when Phil had opened the front door.
“Hi,” Phil says, one hand on Dan’s back and the other reaching up to the hair at the nape of his neck. Dan shivers.
“Hi,” he replies, voice muffled from Phil’s (his?) hoodie. A beat of silence.
“Welcome home.”
Home.
Dan squeezes his eyes shut and leans further into Phil’s familiar warmth, breathing in the smell of his soap and their laundry detergent. It sticks in his throat; he feels like he’s about to start crying, and he’s not even entirely sure why.
“Yeah,” he manages. “You too.”