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Phil brushed his hand down the knobs of Dan’s bare spine, his fingers digging into the dips and gliding over the rises. In the darkness of his room Dans freckles reminded Phil of the arrangement of stars in space. Logically Phil knew that if anyone was to be compared to space it should be him, with his store bought ink smudge hair that stretched across his scalp like the universe had laid a piece itself gently down over his head. His eyes were the same as the graceful swirling colours that wound themselves into galaxies the same way thread did tapestries.
But no; Dan was space and Phil was the one looking at him in awe, nothing but admiration for the brown eyes that were as deep and searching as the void that stretched over and around and enveloped the earth. Phil could brush his long spidery fingers over the flesh of Dan’s back, he could suck small marks into his skin that contained droplets of the galaxy within. Phil could feel the steady beat of Dan’s heart underneath the taut flesh of his back and the ivory of his ribs. A steady thump thump thump, a constant reminder to Phil that the man asleep next to him was just as real as he was, as human as he was, even if the dim light and grogginess in Phil’s bespectacled eyes created a foggy aura around Dan’s outline making him look more like an eternal cosmic being, or the heavenly form of a ghost long dead. Phil huffed gently as he heard Dan snuffle softly against the blankets.
Dan rolled over, his arm trying to get comfortable in sleep before it found its way over Phil’s bare midriff.
Phil stroked his fingers down Dan's pale arm, his fingertips tickling as they brushed against the short hairs on Dan’s forearm. Dan looked peaceful in sleep, his face slackened and his hair mussed up in a way he would never allow in the waking world. Dan was curled as best he could into the smaller man's frame. Phil pushed Dan’s unruly hair away from his forehead, causing the hair to fall in such a way that Dan would complain about it when he woke up.
To Dan, Phil was as powerful as a storm that brewed over the heads of sailors. Phil was like the trees and earth and the grass and the sea. He was an ever moving, forever changing solid presence in Dans life. Dan ran his hands over Phils hair, admiring it, he compared the colour to ironbark as the soft tendrils ran through his fingers. Dan closed his eyes and pictured Phils. They were the colour of spring, the blue bloom of the flowers, as yellow as the suns soft rays and as green as the fresh new life that sprung up around them. He could compare Phils breath to the heat of summer. Phils porcelain skin to mountain tops, the virgin snow fresh and cool to touch.
In reality, away from the bias that only could come with love, they weren’t separate entities, not really. Neither was certainly the earth or the night sky. The completed each other the way the sky completed the earth. Dan had earth in his hair and eyes, space in his skin and his bones. Phil had galaxies trapped in his eyes, an entire blanket of space over his head. He had the soft waves of the sea streaming up and down his veins. They could both complete each other and, unlike the earth and sky, survive independently away from the other.