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“Did you see the people by the door?” Phil asks, sort of pensively, yet it’s a tone Dan knows all too well.
Dan is deep in his artisanal breakfast bowl and the door to the restaurant is off to his side, so he would have to turn to see it. Instead he looks up at Phil. “No. Spotted? Or clock?”
“Hmm,” Phil says, which tells Dan absolutely nothing. “They looked like maybe they recognised me.”
“Did you see a phone?” He can feel his spine tensing to straighten, the back of his neck prickling. It’s not uncomfortable, exactly, just a readying to get through an encounter.
Phil shakes his head. He’s staring stiffly into the middle distance, his best effort at not looking directly at whoever he’s keeping an eye on. It’s a dangerous game because sometimes just the mere act of looking like you know they’ve seen you will lure them in.
Dan tries to remind himself it’s hardly the end of the world. They’ve had a really good run so far, slipping through both airports without a blip, and they’ve been here almost a full week without being stopped. It’s honestly more than they could hope for, but still there’s a tinge of regret that it might be coming to an end. The noises of the restaurant seem to pick up just a little, the scraping of chairs against the Portuguese tile floors and the ringing of cutlery being thrown in the drawer by the hostess station just that little bit sharper. He finds himself wishing they’d grabbed that other table behind the oversize olive tree in the barrel pot, but it’s too late now.
“They’ve left. Should we just…” Phil doesn’t finish the sentence because he doesn’t have to. He waves his phone around instead.
Dan shrugs. “You might.”
They’ve found that it’s usually better to get ahead of these things, especially when they’re out of the country. It’s a balance because it’s also really nice to have things to themselves sometimes — trips, friends, places — that aren’t part of the “D&P Canon”.
Phil sees right through Dan’s attempt to leave it up to him. He makes a little moue of discontent and starts flipping through the photos on his phone. There aren’t many. Dan knows this because they’ve both been surprisingly lax about photos on this trip.
It’s like they’ve needed to just be and not think about any kinds of cameras. The whole trip has been extra needed on the tail end of bringing back the gaming channel and filming Spooky Week. Dan said it himself after they turned off the camera after the baking video; “If I have to be in front of a camera for another second I will scream.” It was hyperbole, of course, and Phil knew as much. But as if by some silent agreement they’ve mostly left their phones in the room or in their pockets for most of this vacation. They’ve been to Portugal before, and there’s nothing special about this trip anyway; it’s literally just a chance to get away from the house and the builders and the cameras. (The camera crawling up their stairs and into their kitchen and living space the way they swore they were done with once they moved. Not that Dan resents it. The baking was fun, and the camera is back in the room with the Murphy bed where it belongs. He made sure of that before they left, unable to think of anything worse than coming home to it still standing there pointed right at the coffee maker. No harm, no foul.)
“I have nothing,” Phil says. “Just tweet it?”
“You could,” Dan agrees noncommittally and steals a blueberry off Phil’s forgotten pancakes.
“Good bowl?” Phil sounds distracted as he is composing his hit tweet, but he still nods at Dan’s chia-and-nuts combo as if he is in any way interested.
“It’s alright. Wanna taste?” Dan replies, just to watch Phil’s distracted face go from politely interested to twisting into a brief grimace. It makes him laugh a little, despite being so predictable. He steals another blueberry just to see if Phil will swat at him, but he’s too preoccupied by composing his tweet.
Eventually the masterpiece is done and ready for inspection, so Phil hands his phone over and tucks back into his pancakes. Dan reads and re-reads, evaluates tone and content, thinking about bad faith readings and stalkers’ readings, lets it sit for another second and then says, “Yeah, it’s fine.”
Phil takes the phone back and reads the tweet again. He puts his phone down without posting, saving to drafts instead like always, giving them both another minute to turn it over. Does it feel right? Did they miss anything obvious? It’s not fail proof, but it’s the best they’ve got.
“Maybe we should get some pictures, though,” Dan says.
There’s a small bit of surprise on Phil’s face. “Yeah? You’re not allergic anymore?”
Dan hadn’t realised Phil had been acting considerate, and for a split second he almost feels offended. “I wasn’t allergic.”
“Right, no. Of course not.”
Phil doesn’t mean it like that, but the devil in Dan still feels like making a thing of it. “Hasn’t it been nice not to run around documenting every little thing?”
“It has,” Phil says easily, not rising to the ire in Dan’s voice at all, and it’s all it takes to deflate his itch for a little vacation argument. “Did you mean, like, the Kodak or…” He waggles his phone around again, and the implication is obvious — us or them.
Dan squirms a bit, because he did actually mean Them, and now he feels a bit bad that he’s thinking about work before their own private memories. But Phil doesn’t care, of course. “Maybe we can bring both, see what happens.”
“Sure,” Phil agrees easily. He picks his phone back up, makes eye contact to let Dan know it is happening and then posts his tweet.
*
It’s how they end up on a nature trail looking for chameleons, Dan lugging the large camera around that they managed to pack and not bring once so far. It feels good, if only for the fact that now packing it wasn’t a complete waste.
They film a bit, chatting and enjoying the warm but not hot weather, and he finds that he’s able to not worry about it. Just the presence of the camera and their iPhones alone isn’t enough to put him immediately back on high alert. It’s mediocre stuff, not funny or very well framed, probably nothing they’ll want their followers to see. It’s a relief in some way. Proof that he’s able to just be Dan, some guy on vacation, and not “Dan” the Influencer, Entertainer, YouTuber. Not that he’s filing any of this away for therapy, because that would just be counterproductive.
They walk the entire trail without actually seeing any chameleons, which is either down to the time of year, or the weather, or Phil trampling through the terrain like a great big heffalump. They disagree, all in good fun.
“We can go by the beach back,” Dan says, somewhere between a question and a request, bumping Phil gently off the trail towards the sand.
Phil bumps back, their hands tangle, and suddenly they’re walking along the water’s edge, fingers loosely hooked together, and Dan feels… a great many things. There’s a lump in his throat, a new type of sweat blooming on his neck and back and under his arms. The ocean is beautiful, their hotel is visible in the distance up ahead. The soft inside of Phil’s arm brushes his at the same time as a breeze stirs his hair, and it shouldn’t be such a big deal but it is. It still is. It’s not that they never touch, never hold hands in public. There have been treks up the cliffs on Isle of Man, maybe even a moment or two on other vacations where it felt private enough. But never like this, out in the open in the middle of the beach, in plain view for anyone to see. At least that’s how it feels, even though the beach is mostly deserted, except for some seagulls, and a few people braving the beach chairs by the hotel despite the less than stellar weather.
“Are you having an aneurysm?” Phil is laughing at him, but it’s quiet and knowing, and there’s an edge to it.
“Shut up,” Dan says and sets their hands into a swinging motion, high arc back and forth. “It’s new.”
“It is,” Phil agrees, and all traces of humor are gone from his voice.
“I still want to work on it,” Dan says and stops walking.
Phil looks at him, then at a spot over his shoulder. “Yeah. We’re doing it. No rush.”
There’s never any rush with Phil, and it’s one of those things that will never fail to make Dan crazy for him. Always urgency and passion, but never any rush.
“I definitely get that feeling like I’m being watched,” Phil goes on. He looks a bit sad now, annoyed with himself. There’s a drawn look to his mouth, maybe an extra bit of tension around his eyes.
Dan squeezes his hand and just says, “Yeah.”
“Like, this is fine. But I still don’t think I’d enjoy it on the pavement.”
“That’s okay,” Dan says. He thinks maybe some part of him would enjoy a stroll on the pavement like this, showing people what they are — linked; a physical manifestation to the invisible string that always exists between them anyway. And then fifteen minutes later he would freak out and feel like he made an irrevocable mistake, because that’s just how his mind works. At least when Phil makes a decision, he’s usually pretty sure about it. It’s one of the main reasons Dan trusts him to take the lead.
He feels elation and fear in equal measure right now, and it flashes him back to the feeling he had when they were filming the first few minutes of the new Heartthrob video. There’s a wildness to being in it, in a place or an action that they had discussed and hashed out together. They’d gone back and forth on boundaries for a while, sometimes positing silly scenarios for the other, but also giving a lot of serious examples: Touching is fine if it happens, leaning is fine, we’re not going to care about how close together we sit, you can say XYZ but not ABD. And then somehow they’re filming and it all feels like it’s gone out the window behind them. A wild ride, to be edited and disentangled later.
“Maybe it’s time,” he says, thought once again forming as he speaks.
“What?” Phil laughs a little, but he also sounds nervous.
“Maybe the exact right moment won’t ever present itself.” Dan can feel himself hurtling towards some cosmic revelation as they stand here on a sandy beach in Portugal, the ocean bringing out the blue in Phil’s eyes. “Maybe we have to just… do it. And know that we’ll be fine after.”
He rotates the camera so the strap is under his arm and out of the way, pulling his phone out of his pocket. “Come here,” he says and drapes his arm around Phil.
Some part of him is surprised when Phil actually goes. He tucks himself under Dan’s arm easily, smiles at him, smiles at the camera, as Dan takes photo after photo after photo. Dan turns his head to look at him and feels the top of his skull almost blasted clean off by the amount of love he feels for him in that moment. He almost forgets to press the button. He looks back at the lens for another smile and then is shocked again at the feeling of Phil’s lips pressing into his cheek. His heart skips a beat, and he laughs, then smiles his silly exaggerated eyes-closed smile for the camera. Smug as fuck, but who can blame him.
He knows they take an obscene amount of photos, but it’s as if once the floodgates have opened they can’t stop. The idea that these are public-facing pictures is like a haze over everything he does, adding an edge that would never be there in totally similar photos they’ve taken before, which have always been on the understanding that they’re just for them. They laugh once they eventually stop. Dan’s arm is aching from the tension, which is saying a lot, and they pass almost the entire rest of the walk up the beach joking about it, until they slowly fall into a companionable silence. His phone is burning a hole in his pocket. He is itching to review every single shot together, but Phil keeps stealing his attention. He’s smiling softly, another kind of pensive look on his face, another slight sadness that looks like second thoughts already. It’s fine. Dan has no particular hope that this will be the day or the week or the year, outside of being caught up in the moment minutes ago. He walks next to Phil, unlinked once again, like normal, and concentrates on letting the happiness he felt linger for as long as possible.
*
Back inside their hotel suite, they curl up on the couch in silent agreement. Dan pulls out his phone and looks at the evidence of their photo session with a rush of excitement.
“You look fucking amazing,” he mumbles. Phil looks just a little sun burnt, hair a natural, effort-less, sea-sprayed mess. Phil giggles and rests his head on Dan’s shoulders and watches in silent fascination as Dan swipes and swipes through picture after picture.
The truth is they both look good, and Dan can see it. He’s having a good hair day, the light is diffused perfectly by clouds, the blue ocean and beige sand a beautiful but neutral background to the power of them together. They look like what they are: a couple, in love, safe and happy and fourteen years down the line from where they started, almost to the day.
It puts another lump in his throat, makes his eyes a bit misty, and he has to take a moment to just sort of hide his face in Phil’s neck and ear and hair and just breathe. The pictures themselves shouldn’t be that moving, but it’s still that implication floating over this whole entire afternoon; that this could be the moment they’ve been bracing for, the next logical step that they’ve discussed wanting to take when the time is right and they have something to share. Maybe this is all it is, all the moment they need to share: we are happy. We are in love.
They scroll carefully, first one way, then the other way, then back once more. They take turns pausing, zooming in, tapping the heart, comparing back and forth. There’s no explicit discussion beyond what photos are objectively best until they are left with a handful of top choices. It’s a familiar process, their usual way of whittling a shoot down to a post or a tweet or a calendar page, which is maybe why it feels so automatic and not really stressful.
It even feels automatic to thumb open Instagram, but that’s as far as he goes. He looks at Phil, really pauses and looks. There are still no words spoken, but his entire face and body is asking, “Are we really doing this?”
Phil shrugs. His eyes cut sideways, away from their eye contact. “Might as well see,” he says.
Dan looks back at his phone. It all feels unreal. It shouldn’t even be a big deal, but it is. Of course it is. This is huge. He puts the photo of just them with their arms around each other first, smiling at the camera. It could be a bro kind of pose. If you squint. The second photo is the one of Phil kissing his cheek, and it still feels like a gut punch to look at it. That’s the incriminating evidence. That’s the one you can’t explain away. He softens it up with some goofier ones; Phil with his tongue out, himself looking like god-even-knows-what. Cute.
“Beach rats in Portugal,” he captions it, as if that will somehow negate the impact of those photos.
Then he just sits there, holding his phone. They both stare at it like it’s a ticking bomb, and suddenly he has to lock it and put it down, an irrational fear that he's going to somehow post it accidentally. He jumps up and throws the phone on the coffee table, pacing before he even knows he’s doing it.
“Okay,” he says. “Okay.” But his mind is an uproar, nothing in there but noise and alarm bells going off. He paces some more.
“We don’t have to post it,” Phil says. He sounds quite calm, but in that preternatural way he gets where it’s really because he’s too frazzled to move. “We don’t have to post all of it. We don’t have to post it like that.” He’s going down the list of options.
Dan is nodding. “We could take the kiss out. We could take the arms around each other out.” He stops. “It’s fine.”
“It’s fine,” Phil agrees.
Dan starts pacing again.
“But what if we didn’t,” Phil says, voicing the exact thought inside Dan’s head. “What if we just… did it. Right now. And that was it.”
Dan stares at him. “There’s no… reason against it,” he says carefully, trying to think if this is true. “We don’t have any commitments or plans or contracts that…” He shrugs. “We’re ready. We’ve been ready.”
Phil nods. “We’ve been ready for a while now.”
“Is this it!?” Dan knows his question is explosive but he can’t control all the restless energy he’s feeling.
“No.”
Phil says it so decisively that Dan feels it almost like a physical cutting down, like Phil grabbed all the strings holding him up and sliced right through all of them. He looks grimly determined, so much so that Dan actually deflates, crumbling down where he stands to sit on the cold tile floor.
“No?”
“Sleep on it,” Phil says, making eye contact, letting their gazes bore into each other like he’s trying to communicate telepathically.
Relief washes through Dan. Of course. He almost got entirely too swept up in the moment, but of course they need to sleep on it. Of course they need to feel it out and make sure they’re both comfortable with it. He needs to think about his popsy seeing those particular images — his dad, even if they still aren’t speaking. They need to discuss whether they’re willing to take press calls. God, they probably need to warn their managers and restate their boundaries. The relief is slowly curdling, turning into fear and preemptive regret. Maybe it would be easier to just not do it. They can go on, letting things not change, or change more slowly. Not giving anyone (outside the bubble of people paying too much attention and who already know) any fodder to go by.
“Come here,” Phil says, and now it’s his turn to hold out his arms for Dan.
He gets up without a second thought, climbs into Phil’s arms and hangs on tight. “Love you,” he mumbles.
“Love you. Silly boy,” Phil says into his hair.
*
They cuddle for a good long while. Dan can’t say there are any particular thoughts in his mind, just a swirling mess of emotions and doubt and second guesses. But it feels good to know that the decision is parked for now. He can worry about it all he wants, but he won’t have to act on it or even make a decision about what to do.
They order room service, because by communal admission the restaurant seems a little less alluring now after Phil’s scare that morning. After noodling on their phones a bit, they go to bed early.
Dan thinks they’re both happy to be distracted by touch. They cuddle more, snooze a little, drifting in and out of meaningless conversation. It’s the kind of slow intimacy that can be hard to find in the day-to-day life of endless reddit posts and late-night raids and whatever phone game Phil is obsessed with lately. It’s exactly why they came here, and Dan feels his head and chest swell with it.
By the time Phil kisses him like he finally means business, Dan is loopy with it. They go slow still, staying close, hands barely moving, breaths intermingling, Phil sliding almost seamlessly from orgasm into sleep, leaving Dan to mop up and stare into the dark for a while longer. Things could change, but things also wouldn’t change at all.
*
In the end they leave it until they’re back home. The pictures stay on Dan’s phone, the post stays in his drafts, and the decision stays hovering somewhere in the back of their minds.
(“Not that I think there’s gonna be an immediate uptick in stalkers,” Phil says, “but I’d just rather be home.” And Dan agrees.)
They haven’t been gone long enough for the house to feel foreign, but it still seems bigger than he remembers it. He makes sure to point out how nice it is that the recycling is all taken care of and that the camera is where it should be. “It’s nice to come home to a tidy house,” he says and Phil rolls his eyes and goes to do… something… somewhere… like Dan wasn’t just pointing it out for his own benefit but picking a fight.
It’s evening by the time they reconvene in the lounge. Phil kisses him hello like all talk of recycling is forgotten, and it feels like they’re due a decision. Phil agrees.
“The thing is, I can’t think of a reason not to do it,” Phil says. “Other than being scared, but that’s just…” He flaps his hand.
Dan feels his stomach churning, but there’s a strange elation to it. “So then it’s just… do we want to? Do we feel like it? Would it be fun?”
Phil hums. He’s taking this incredibly seriously, which is nice. It’s not just in Dan’s head. “It’s like you said,” he says softly. “We’re already locked down. And it’s not the first couple-y photos, and it’s not actually an announcement.”
“Yeah…” Dan chews his lip, hunched over with his elbows on his knees, worrying at it until it twinges and he has to stop. “Yeah.” He locks eyes with Phil. “Yeah?”
Phil widens his eyes, meerkat wide, his nostrils flaring. “Yeah?”
“No, Phil, I’m asking you for real now. Yeah?”
Phil stares at him for what feels like an eternity. “Yeah,” he says, an explosion of breath, and flops back on the sofa.
Dan takes his phone.
“No, wait!” Phil shouts and Dan almost jumps out of his skin. He hasn’t even opened Instagram yet. Phil has sat back up like a jack-in-the-box. He puts a hand over Dan’s. “I’m still,” Phil’s eyes flicker, his mouth gets that determined draw to it. “I’m still in it. With you. And we are a couple, and this is an announcement, but I still don’t want to say that to them. But they can see.”
“Yeah?” Dan giggles. He leans to kiss him. “You’re so stupid. You better get your agent on the phone.”
He posts. His phone explodes. But it’s not actually that different from any other time he posts. They do the usual new post stories, and then they breathe.
His next order of business is to text his mum and grandma. He sends them a link to his post, and nana writes back almost instantly,
Such a handsome couple with a heart emoji.
He screenshots the text message and makes it his next story, and then just slumps back on the sofa, grinning and feeling his face blazing.
Phil snaps a photo of him like that. The guy in the picture is dead ugly, greasy airplane hair pushed off his forehead, a mysterious stain on his jeans from Phil tipping his tray of airplane food over, sweaty hairline, rosy patch glowing, dimple showing. Phil leans in to kiss him again, holding his phone away as if he is afraid Dan will steal it and delete the evidence.
“Mine,” he says against Dan’s lips, and Dan thinks in this instance he’s probably referring to the photo.
“Take one of both of us,” Dan says, not bothering to try to sit up right or do anything about his disaster hair or look at anything except Phil.
“Another one for the blackmail pile,” Phil agrees cheerfully and snaps away as Dan snorts at his bad joke.