Work Text:
In any experiment, there has to be a constant variable.
Most of 2012 feels like that for Dan: an experiment with too many unknowns, a sea of shifting variables, a conclusion he isn't exactly sure he wants to come to. He muddles through it. He fucks up once, twice, and loses count. He does his best.
Phil is squinting at his laptop screen, and Dan waits for him to look up.
"You sound extremely angry here," he tells Dan when he finally does. "Just saying."
"I'm not angry, just disappointed," Dan says. "Ha. Ha. Also angry, but that was three hours ago. I'm fine now, but I'm not deleting it."
"I wasn't going to ask you to," Phil says calmly. Dan watches him exit the tab and go back to the London real estate site he was browsing.
"Okay," Dan says. He looks back at his own screen, too. A beat passes.
"I just don't understand-" Dan says, and Phil looks up, as if expecting it. He probably was. "Why they have to be so. I mean, we asked nicely. Is it too much to request a little fucking privacy?"
"No," Phil says, "no, it isn't."
"If it'd been their own shit leaked online for everyone to see, if they had to deal with everyone bloody well assuming all kinds of shit about their lives, maybe-" Dan's voice is rising again, he knows this, but really, "-maybe they'd be a little more considerate. Maybe they'd think a little."
"I know," Phil says, and he does. Dan knows that. Dan doesn't know why he's ranting at Phil, because Phil does know this. Phil doesn't really deserve Dan going off on tangents about this every other day. Dan sighs.
"D'you want pizza for dinner?"
"Yeah," Phil agrees. He pauses for a moment, then: "Dan, they're just, it's the mystery of it, us lying to them, the whole are-they-aren't-they deal. They're just kids, most of them. They think us being together is cute or something. They'll get tired of it when they can't find anything else."
Dan hates people assuming they know anything about his life. Dan doesn't even know much about his own life. He's growing up. He's figuring things out. He knows what Phil's saying, knows he should probably just ignore it all from now on - they've done the most they can do - but it grates on him. He kind of needs them to let him grow up and figure his own shit out first before they decide it all for him.
But Phil knows all this, so Dan asks, instead: "Are we okay?"
"Of course we're okay," Phil tells him instantly, like Dan's said something silly. Something inside Dan unclenches, breathes. "We're okay. We're always going to be fine, Dan." He reaches over and tugs at Dan's ear.
"Okay," Dan says, and he breathes. "Hawaiian?"
"Yeah," Phil says, and they're okay. And they continue to be okay throughout the year and the next, even when it really, really feels like it's not. And then when things start to go right and Dan genuinely starts figuring out his own shit and feels much better about it all and still hates people making assumptions about him, they're still okay.
There has to be one constant variable in any experiment. Something to hold onto, something to depend on. Dan's found his, squinting at a laptop in glasses and an oversized sweater.
So Dan fucks up, and he figures it out, and with Phil by his side, he breathes through it.