Archive of Our Own

Foulmate

Soul mating is a funny affair. Sometimes you find the right one, sometimes you don’t.

A soulmate is someone who clicks, someone who fits in the bits that you aren’t, someone who falls into place, like jigsaw puzzle pieces that don’t need smoothening out to match up.

Dan Howell thinks he knows about soulmates. Everyone has one, not everyone grows up lucky enough to know theirs. Dan is one of them.

He finds himself staring longingly at his wrist for extended periods of time, waiting for the engraving to appear miraculously, like invisible ink put under ultraviolet light, splattering over his wrists like elegant calligraphy.

It never comes and Dan never knows why.

The first time it almost appears, it’s faint. Dan had just walked out of the shower and there was a trace of a set of words, just the quiet outline of someone’s writing. It’s not as cursive and pretty as he thought it would be.

Dan realises it’s his own penmanship, the name he’s written onto his notebook one too many times.

Olivia McDonald.

He shivers when the name appears and he forgets the fact that he’s been waiting for this moment for so many years. It sends his heart clenching and it is the worst when you know this person is destined to be your soulmate and you keep waiting, anticipating something good, something helpful.

Anticipation kills. Dan goes to school the next day and he stares intently at the girl dressed up in luxury brands from head to toe, the way she flips her hair makes the guys in his class hiss.

His heart lurches when she spins around to flirt with the guy sitting behind him, hoping she’ll notice him behind his long brown fringe that veils half his face, but she never does.

He scribbles her name, sometimes Olivia, sometimes Olivia McDonald, sometimes when he’s bold, Olivia Howell.

She is beautiful and irreplaceable in his mind. He wonders which came first—his infatuation or the confirmation that she would soon become a crucial part of his life. But that is the question of whether the egg or the chicken came first, and Dan is not a philosopher.

It had been a particularly humid day and Dan had been resting his head on the desk, willing for the day to go past quicker.

“Hey, you.”

Dan jolts up and his heart is in his throat. “H-hey.” Olivia. His Olivia.

“Mind lending me a pencil?” she asks, her voice is soft and it makes his heart race. His cheeks turn red and she stares at him like he’s alien.

“If you’re not comfortable with that it’s—”

“No, no, of course not, please, have it.” Dan digs for the piece of stationery from his pencil box, ignoring the way the edge of a ruler had bit into the flesh under the nail of his index finger. He needs to find it now, before she gets annoyed and asks someone else, but if he gives it to her then he wouldn’t be able to speak to her any longer.

“Here you go,” he places the pencil carefully in her palm and notes how much smaller her hand is, having a sudden urge to grab at it and profess his undying love.

“Thanks,” she says, twirling the pencil with her fingers, winking at him as he clutches at his poor heart, willing her to ask more, take more.

And that’s exactly what she does. She doesn’t return the pencil, she doesn’t return an eraser, she doesn’t return the five pounds she had borrowed from him for lunch, she doesn’t return a single favour, and Dan doesn’t mind.

He thinks that’s what love is,—as if he’s so familiar with the notion—giving without asking for reciprocation.

Ah, the ferocity of young love and the almost insane need to fall head first into a relationship, willing the other person to sweep us off our feet.

On his fifteenth birthday, she doesn’t return his virginity and he doesn’t mind it.

“Hey Dan,” she says, smoking a cigarette on the bed after they’ve done it for the third time, the adolescent boy taking a quick look at her and wondering what has gone wrong all these years. Finally he has an inkling of things turning awry and that she isn’t the same Olivia. His Olivia.

“Yeah?” he answers, turning on the bedside lamp and he is momentarily entranced by the way the light falls onto the bed, his sheets, the ground.

“You think you have two hundred quid to spare?” she asks and he is silent. He’s just started work at the convenience store and he’s yet to get his first pay check. He still owes his mother money the last time he lent her some.

“What’s it for?” he questions, sounding more accusatory than Olivia would like and of course she flips.

“Why’re you suddenly so nosy? If you don’t want to lend it then just say it.” She is furious, like someone lit her up like how she did with the tip of her cigarette, but Dan keeps his cool.

“I think we should stop seeing each other for a while.”

Dan doesn’t know what has come over him; her name still burns into his flesh, cutting into his skin and reminding him that despite everything, she is going to be the one.

Olivia looks horrified, snatching her clothes from the floor and wearing them haphazardly, never letting go of the cigarette lodged between her thin lips. “Yeah? Is that what you’re doing, after treating me like a quick fuck?”

Dan winces. He doesn’t know if this sentiment is love anymore, but her words don’t hurt less.

“You know I would never—”

“I don’t know, Daniel James Howell. And I don’t want to. You want me to be as brutally honest as I can be? Here it is: you aren’t my soulmate, Dan. Your name isn’t the one printed; I went to the trouble to spray paint your name on. Why, you ask? Because just like what I am to you, Dan, you’re just an easy fuck.

And an auto-fucking-mated teller machine. Is that answer good enough for you?”

As she says that she leaves the room in fury and Dan cowers in shock, curling into a foetal position on the bed that looks a little too wide now. His shoulders trembles from the sheer impact of the truth, knocking all the wind out of his system and he cannot breathe.

It was a farce? It was all fake?

Soulmates—all bullshit?

He feels tears welling up in his eyes, but he doesn’t know why he’s crying. Dan knows the way soulmates work—not everyone has the luck to be with the one they’re destined to be with and it isn’t a sappy movie where two people who have their fates intertwined see past their differences, meet again, fall in love, happily ever after.

Things don’t work this way and Dan knows that better than anyone else. What if it’s just Olivia all along? What if for the next few decades he’ll go from person to person, never being with the right one because he had sent her away?

Horrifying thoughts consume him and he cries his pain away.

He falls into slumber, strange bright dreams of large grins, blue eyes, pretty shoulders, infectious laughter.

He wakes up and he realises her name is gone, and his wrist is void of any kind of cacography, like what it was three years ago before meeting Olivia. He runs a search and realises, apparently, that name-disappearing is a rather common phenomenon. He supposes the people around him have always been contented with their first soulmates and things just stayed like that for them to not have experiences of that kind.

He ponders and considers if the next name is worth the wait.

Dan cherishes his new start and learns that some things in life, you can hope hard enough and they might happen, but they might not always turn out right.

False Alarm

Chad Bradley is the second name, this time in an elegant script, one that is definitely not of his own work because Daniel is eighteen and still doesn’t know how to hold a pen properly.

The name comes as a shock because it is a male name and Dan has never even heard of this guy before. Who is this person? Is he some person he’ll meet in university? Maybe he’ll walk past him at a zebra crossing and the name will fade as suddenly as it appeared.

The ink seems to have seeped in deeper, unlike Olivia’s script on his wrist. The letters of her name leave crevices, carving deep into Dan’s flesh, but more of a throbbing pain that washes itself up on its accord. It’s easier to let go when you realise you have other options.

Chad Bradley is Dan’s ‘other option’. It terrifies him, the multitude of possibilities of who this person is, where he’ll get to meet him, what he’s like. So Dan—the guy who locks himself up in his room half the time staring at his computer screen—emerges, the social butterfly that has burst out of its cocoon.

Dan is a good-looking boy and he quickly becomes friends with the popular guys, even if he doesn’t fit in at all. He makes it a point to wear sweaters with sleeves that extend to the middle of his palms even if the weather is sweltering hot. He wants the moment to be special, the revelation of Chad’s identity to be as close to magical as possible.

It’s not. It happens when he’s perched by a table at an acquaintance’s party—he can barely even remember what the host looks like, but university is more frequently a stumble of alcohol intoxication and never remembering names or faces, laughing at stale jokes that bring down the average intelligence of humankind.

“Hey,” someone slides in beside him and Dan notes that it’s Chuck or Chunk, or whatever his fellow jocks liked to call him. “You alright there, Howell?”

The chandelier is swinging and he can barely focus on a single spot, but he just mutters a ‘yeah, I’m okay, mate, thanks’, at which Chuck just laughs.

“You’re freaking tabled, man. Quit drinking already.” He pinches the shot glass from Dan’s fingers and the brunette just slurs, grip slackening and all his muscles relax. Chuck grabs him before he falls, a steady arm around his waist as he tugs impatiently at his woollen shirt.

“It is like a damn incinerator in here, man. Why are you wearing that sweater? Let me help you take that off.”

“Don’t do that.”

“You’re going to die of suffocation.”

“Leave me alone,” Dan shoves the gold-hearted teen away and topples over on his way to the bathroom. He falls into a heap by the toilet and starts to churn out whatever was left of his dinner and he had barely even noticed that Chuckhad tagged along.

“This is gross. Go away.”

“Then I’ll be a gross human being.”

Dan rolls his eyes and feels like he might just roll them to the back of his head and fall over, never to wake up again. There is a cloud of confusion over his senses—everything still looks and feel the same, but like it’s held down by a layer of cotton, numbing and veiling his perception.

“This is stupid,” Dan suddenly says and he realises he’s squatted beside a toilet in the house of someone he doesn’t remember the face of, retching alcohol from his system night after night. What for? For a futile dream, for a desperate desire to meet the guy whose name is dug deep into his skin?

Bile rises to his throat and the alcohol doesn’t agree with it. Dan chokes and tears well up in his eyes and he coughs violently into the faucet now as Chuck pats his back quietly. He doesn’t realise how much he appreciates the presence of company, somebody to give him silent comfort without wanting something in return, somebody that isn’t just a figure of his pining.

“You okay? Did you want to take that sweater out now?” Chuck asks, worry crossing his face, creases in his forehead. Dan suddenly remembers Chuck being the designated driver and he’s suddenly both thankful and relieved that he’s not going to drink himself senseless and get himself killed.

“You’re a great guy you know that, Chuck?” Dan mumbles as he struggles out of his knitted sweater, a dear gift from his Nan and he’s especially careful with the loose thread. Chuck raises a brow but moves forward to help him out of his clothing.

“Who told you to call me that?” he says, half-amused. Dan looks confused. “All your hockey team friends call you that.”

“It’s just a joke. I didn’t really expect you to call me that.”

Dan is almost offended, then he remembers he’s particularly ruffled when he cannot trust in his senses to do their job for him. “Then what did you want me to call you?”

Chuck smiles, a bright glistening one that shows off his entire set of pearly white teeth. “Chad. That’s my name. Chad Bradley.”

Dan is mid-strip and he stuns. The entire world seems to come to a standstill and contrary to the magic and romance, he and Divined Lover are beside a faucet, his vomit, him looking stoned and face contorted from trying to pull a sweater off his torso.

No, no, no, this wasn’t what he signed up for.

Chad takes his momentary pause as drunken stupor and drags the knitted outerwear from him. Before Dan manages to tug it back on, Chad is already running his fingers along the yarn. “This person who knitted your sweater must have put in a lot of—Howell?”

Dan is just downright staring by now, and Chad frowns, until he realises the way Dan is shuffling around uncomfortably, attempting to hide his right arm. “What’s there?”

Dan cannot control his reflexes or his limbs properly, like they’ve gone ahead to heed the command of everything opposite of what he wants them to do. The more he tries to lodge his arm behind his back, the more his elbow juts out.

Chad frowns, again, and demands to look at it. Dan refuses, but his adamant reply comes more in the form of a series of incoherent slurs, a lazy ‘no, please’ and limbs that do not put up a fight against the bulky hockey player.

He grabs him by the wrist and reads the lettering. Dan reads his expression carefully, not daring to utter a single sound, but of course the alcohol screams at him and he burps softly. “Sorry, I’m so—burp.”

“This is my name,” Chad says with incredulity, eyes wide. Dan is distracted and notes the way he has faint lines streaked across his cheek when he pulls his muscles. It’s oddly charming, in a way that he has never considered it before.

He is starting to think that this soulmate business is heavily tinting his judgement and life choices. Was it charming because he was his soulmate or was he his soulmate because he was destined to come off as charming to Dan?

Once again, chicken or egg first, but Dan is too focussed on observing how realisation sinks into Chad’s cheeks, eyes, muscles, nerves, how they seem to be strung up simultaneously and then relaxing in the next split second.

“My name?” Chad repeats, sounding more like an enquiry than a statement now. Dan shrugs to the best of his ability without falling over, but Chad’s voice is hollow and echoed like in an empty hallway.

Intoxication is both a blessing and a hinder in such times, because Dan’s cheeks are rosy and Chad looks like a blur. Easier to fall straight in and leave the consequences for tomorrow right?

“You know, if ever you wanted to—”

“I don’t think this is what you think it is, Howell.”

Dan narrows his eyes. The world is spinning. He wish Chad would stop speaking in riddles.

“What?”

Chad’s expression is solemn and Dan is nervous all of a sudden, whatever left of his consciousness is pulled thin and he braces himself for what’s coming.

“I’m not gay.”

And then Dan feels his world fall apart from the sides and he doesn’t really know what he has been expecting but this certainly feels like someone offering him a sweet only to say he can’t have it and taking it back.

“Howell? Howell? You okay?”

This isn’t a melodrama, but Dan is tired of being conscious and making an effort to keep his vomit down. Maybe if he falls asleep right here, right now, he won’t have to deal with the sombre atmosphere, the sinking sensation that would undoubtedly cripple his senses, sadness washing through him, rejection pulling over and over again like an overworn sweater frayed at the sides, one he had learnt to put on with the help of Olivia.

So after an entire round of throwing up, Dan is slumped against the wall of the washroom, knocked out cold, leaving a panicking Chad and dashed hope.

*****

“You’re up.” The voice is unfamiliar, strange, even, and Dan is hyperaware of his surroundings, jolting out of bed with whatever stunted reflexes he possesses.

He takes a long look at the boy on the armchair, exchanging somewhat knowing glances with him and Dan can tell he’s as nervous as Dan is. The faintest memory of last night’s events traces lines in his mind and he subconsciously raises his wrist up and the name is still there.

Chad Bradley.

“Ah, so you haven’t really puked your entire memory out. That’s good to know.”

He’s snide and sarcastic and Dan really doesn’t know him well enough to be receiving such treatment.

“Who stepped on your tail?” Dan hikes up an eyebrow because sassing this man before him is more important than jotting his memory on his correspondence with Chad—his soulmate. Crap. He’s Chad.

Somehow this important piece of information has fallen through the filters of his memory. Chad is impatient and his breathing picks up pace, like he’s willing himself to not hurl verbal abuse at Dan. How has he fucked up this time?

“You kind of projectile vomited over me yesterday, Howell. And then I was forced to drag your sorry ass back to my place,” he gestures rather plainly to the space around them, “because you were completely unresponsive and I couldn’t just leave you on the streets.”

Obviously Dan has no recollection whatsoever about this and he isn’t proud of it. This is Chad, the guy he’s been looking for by throwing himself into one party from another.

“You should have left me on the streets,” he mutters, cheeks turning a scarlet red. There is the acute awareness that Chad is his soulmate and the fact that he has managed to dump puke onto him in less than twenty-hours of this revelation makes him want to find a hole in the ground and bury himself in it.

“Yeah, well, I didn’t. How much of yesterday do you remember?” Now Chad looks concerned, worried, even, and Dan frowns. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I shared a bit of information with you and you seemed to not have taken it very well. I just… I just wanted to know if I needed to clarify matters again.”

Dan’s brows furrow in frustration and Chad is like a god damn maze, taking you for ride in his confusion, happily whirling along as he messes with your head.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I don’t want to repeat myself because it might hurt you again, so if you remember what I talked about that would be nice?”

The gears in Dan’s head screech in protest, refusing to function even when Dan scrunches his face up and fuels it with sobriety. “I need a wake-up coffee and I’ll try to remember what I can.”

“Puke on me, sleep on my bed, drink my coffee. I don’t even know you that well,” Chad is muttering under his breath but Dan knows his heart is made of gold and for a moment that sends a fuzzy sensation through his chest.

It’s nice to know that people are kind to him, but even nicer to know just how far people will go to be kind.

A large mug of coffee and commenting on the polychromatic scheme of Chad’s wallpaper, he notes the lingering gaze of the shorter boy.

“What?” He asks, sipping onto his drink, making a face at the bitterness that bites on the sides of his mouth.

“So… yesterday night?”

Dan breathes and vaguely remembers blurred images of woollen sweaters, angry tears and sweat, puking over a white shirt that isn’t his own, heavy breathing. It reels back a little more to before he had lost all sense of reality and there is Chad’s face, slight distortion in his lips and the way he does that teeth-showing grin.

It’s twisted, words are spilling from his lips, his forehead is creased with worry and confusion, much like the look he’s showing right now.

“…my name. This is my name…”

Dan blinks.

“Take that sweater out…”

Dan sweats. He blinks the sweat out of his eyes and holds his breath.

“Not what you think, Howell…”

Trembling fingers. He knows. He knows I have his name written over my wrist.

“I’m not gay.”

Dan’s face falls and Chad’s expression follows, partially glad for the fact that Dan has no excuse to slip into unconsciousness and also that he doesn’t need to see sadness wash through the poor boy’s eyes.

“Oh,” Dan says plainly, placing the coffee mug onto the counter and he tries to breathe normally. He must have learnt by now, hasn’t he? He must understand that they don’t always turn out right for the first time. Or the second. Maybe forever?

No, he shan’t delve into such morbid thoughts. Even if he didn’t manage to get with a soulmate it didn’t make a relationship less valid. Maybe he can still aspire to have the most beautiful relationship without them being destined partners. Fate is in one’s own hands, right?

Maybe Fate is like everything else in the world—easily controlled, manipulated and nurtured. Who knows?

“Look, I’m sorry, but—”

Dan chuckles, sounding almost genuine. “Why are you sorry for being straight? There’s nothing wrong with it.”

“It’s just that… you looked so hopeful for a moment there when I knew and I just… I just thought whatever I said wasn’t done at an appropriate timing.”

Dan shrugs and the ends of his lips pull up into an ugly smile, one that Chad dismisses as normal. “There isn’t ever an appropriate timing for this, though, is there? It’s good, you know, telling me before stringing me along and… yeah.”

“I’m sorry, Howell.”

“Hey, don’t worry about it. And just call me Dan.”

“Okay, Dan.” Chad smiles, teeth-showing grin and all, faint lines streaking his face as his muscles pull tightly. Dan feels his heart constrict painfully because for a split second Chad looks perfect, like he could have spun him around and swept him off his feet, like he could do a knee slap and pretend that everything he said a while ago was a lie.

He hates being hopeful about nothing but this. He hates being a downright sucker for amorous ardour, always wanting things to be special, beautiful, moving, touching, romantic. He knows real life is cruel, but he cannot help placing all his eggs in this basket, almost like it’s his last attempt at believing in humanity.

*****

Dan moves in with Chad because he realises he and Chad manage to fall into a pattern of sorts. Chad is the kind of guy who’ll pick a fight with Dan because of the coffee powder he’s bought on the day Dan needs someone to pick a fight with.

He thinks it’s mostly coincidence, but Chad is a good person, exemplified by his constantly putting up with Dan and leaving him to his own devices.

The first night it happened it was like a thunderstorm ripping through their apartment. There is a shrilling voice dotted with hiccups received by equally ecstatic bellows. Dan had been afraid. He hadn’t dared to come close to other girls after Olivia had happened and what Chad is doing is a low kick in his gut.

He doesn’t want to go out and find out what they’re doing, but the curiosity in him can never be quenched and he will never fall asleep, so he peeks out from behind his door, creeps to the kitchen, as if he’s just grabbing a glass of water.

There is rummaging on the couch and Dan tries to evade his attention, pretending like he’s the kindest and most subtle roommate to exist, but of course he struggles with the light switch in the kitchen and a few pieces of cutlery fall and the girl scrambles to sit up straight in an utter state of unkempt.

“Oh, wow, I’m really sorry,” Dan mutters under his breath and he can almost feel the way Chad’s eyes are biting into him like daggers digging into his flesh, willing him to disappear at this very moment. Dan can see the girl in just her panties on the couch and he averts his gaze.

“Once again, immensely sorry. Please pretend I don’t exist.”

And Dan wishes he really didn’t when he returns to his room, hugging his knees to his chest as echoed muffled moans come from Chad’s bedroom beside his own.

If there was even a tiny spark of hope Dan held close to his heart, it was dashed. Dan knows it isn’t an easy path, but he cannot help but wonder if he’ll never end up finding the correct one and how pathetic that would be.

*****

“So, Jules and I are getting engaged.”

“Holy crap. Congratulations.”

“Thanks,” Chad is a million smiles brighter and the usual streaks across his face seem to etch deeper into his skin, a brilliance shining through him. Dan pinches his cheek playfully.

“You still smile like a boy even though we’re all grown up.”

“And you still act like one.”

Dan kicks him under the table and Chad guffaws. They clank beer bottles and down every last drop, hardly reminiscing that their first encounter had been nothing less of groggy alcohol intoxication and a broken heart.

*****

When Chad and Jules throw their engagement party, Dan finds himself beaming. He had half expected himself to be in a corner alone, sulking, whining, being unhappy, or even worse, drinking too much and behaving like a complete prat, ruining the party for Chad.

He does none of those. He stands beside Chad when their high school friends congratulate him, surprised to see the brown-haired introvert claiming himself to be his best man proudly. Dan is literally glowing with pride and one might even mistake him for the groom.

It suddenly dawned upon him that his life has become so closely intersected with Chad’s that Chad’s happiness is his own. As his eyes go back to the soft engraving on his wrist, Dan knows what it means.

It doesn’t have to be amorous or romantic—whatever soulmates are. They are merely people whose lives intertwine so tightly with yours it feels like a chunk of whatever they are becomes a piece of you, and while you cannot claim to have walked away unscathed, they change you and the person you are, hopefully to a better one.

So Chad is his soulmate, and so is Olivia, both in their special ways, both in ways that make him go for the coffee powder he buys today, or the kind of things he says when he sees something incredible. Their every action hurts his insides, wringing them up. They hack into his soul and take it as theirs, as he has done with them as well.

They are matched parts of jigsaw pieces that ultimately fell away because the picture wasn’t right.

Charm

Chad is married and the apartment Dan has let up rather suavely, something that Jules thanks him repeatedly for. Dan waves a nonchalant arm, saying that he’s all grown up and should learn how to deal with his own life, anyway.

Inside, Dan is scared to death. The idea of a new environment, new-anybody-that-isn’t-Chad who wouldn’t pick on his coffee powder choices terrifies him.

He has the tendency to rely on someone completely once they let him do so, and often times he has to see Chad crumble beneath the pressure of holding Dan’s weight, but he cannot help it.

He is made this way, falling onto and into people, making them deal with his issues when they clearly have their own.

Chad expresses worry but Dan waves the same nonchalant arm, rolling his eyes when Chad asks him how he’s going to do the grocery now without someone looking out for his calorie intake as he walks down the confectionery section.

“You treat me like I’m five, Bradley.”

“That’s because you behave like you are, Howell. If you’d taken better care of yourself over the years, maybe I wouldn’t have needed to worry about you going out into the dark dangerous world like a mother hen.”

“Yes, Mother.” Dan snorts, giving Chad a light pat on the shoulder. “It’s okay. Your son here has seen enough of the world to know of its vices.”

Chad chuckles in response but Dan knows his uneasiness because it settles more deeply within Dan than it does in Chad. How could he not? This was a disruption in their pattern, their routine thrown into the garbage completely, steps turning into leaps. Dan is afraid and he tries to not wear it on his sleeve.

“I’m okay, really,” he says shakily, not sure if he’s trying to persuade Chad or himself.

But once Dan’s mind is made up, despite the challenges and fear, he remains unfazed and presses on.

*****

“Um, Philip Lester. Hi.”

“Dan Howell. Nice to meet you.”

The other man is lanky and as tall as he is—which is something extremely uncommon considering how Dan is obnoxiously large and the kind of person who hits his head when he forgets to duck entering the tube. He shuffles uneasily in his own space, in his own skin even, it seems.

“You okay there?” Dan asks, because Philip looks unnerved about something, possibly even unsettled because of Dan’s presence.

“Ye-yeah, sure. Come on in.”

Dan views the doorway positively, seeing as how he doesn’t need to duck entering the apartment. Philip walks up steadily, something in his movement languid and lazy, reminding Dan of a recent Facebook video of a panda rolling around to get to the other end without actually crawling.

When he’s done imagining his new potential flatmate as a large bear, he realises Philip is standing awkwardly at the top of the flight of stairs.

“Uh, this is the lounge. It has a sofa, telly and the likes. It’s a bit bare now but you can furnish it however you like. I’m not really good at interior design so if you want you have all this space to express your decorative flair.”

Dan realises Philip has a very deep voice and he suddenly wonders if he sings. He would make a good baritone.

“Oh, that’ll be nice. I have a lot of random crap. I could use the room.”

“It’ll be nice and cosy if you bring friends over to visit you and stuff.”

Dan laughs, like Philip just cracked a bitter joke with a punchline that only Dan understands.

“None of that stuff. Maybe just one, or two, at most.” He remembers Chad and Jules and the sudden realisation that his entire life’s relationships have been summarised by two failed soulmates and the actual real soulmate of one of them.

“If you’d let me know in advance if any of them are coming over that’ll be very much appreciated.”

“Most definitely.”

“If you’ll just follow me now…” Philip’s voice trails as he starts out, walking with the pads of his feet dragging along the carpeted ground.

“Washroom here. Hygiene is a thing, but you don’t look like the kind to make a mess.” Philip eyes him from top to toe and realises that it’s impolite, so he apologises. Dan just laughs it off and says it’s okay. In an instant the atmosphere relaxes a tightly wound-up muscle and Philip finally allows himself a breathy, nervous chortle.

“S-sorry, it’s just… I’m not very good with new people.”

Dan lets Philip in on a secret—he’s equally bad, so that’s the two of them. A sort of secretive alliance is formed between the both of them and he realises Philip is now closing in the distance between them as he shows him around.

“This will be your room.”

“Wow. This looks good.”

“I know. I fell in love with this place almost immediately. I need an office of sorts so I considered one of those studios, but their rooms were so small. This place was perfect, but I needed someone to carry the burden of rent with me.”

Dan laughs, gesturing to himself. “Here is your someone.”

Philip relaxes himself by another notch and is silently grateful that despite claiming himself to be bad with people, Dan is quite the entertainer and charmer. He has no trouble warming up to the tall, brown-haired boy who has now taken an interest in Philip’s room.

“This your room, Philip?”

“Just call me Phil. And yeah.”

“This is nic—is that a Muse poster?”

“Um, yeah.”

“Oh my goodness. I love Muse too.”

Phil blinks, like he’s trying to process what’s going on and then he realises Dan has similar music taste as himself and he beams. They exchange exclamations on Muse, praising them to the skies and gushing about their favourite tracks.

“—and Citizen Erased, I mean, it’s just… this is the office?”

“Yeah. I use it. I don’t know if you need one, but the lounge is available and—”

“Oh, don’t worry about me. My job doesn’t really one.”

“What do you do?”

Dan almost blushes at this but he’s learnt that it’s nothing worth feeling embarrassed about. “I make YouTube videos for a living.”

A wave of revelation washes through Phil and Dan is taken aback—for the first time someone hasn’t given him a look of confusion, probing him to tell him what it’s all about.

“That’s really cool. Maybe that’s why I remember seeing your face on the Internet somewhere.”

Dan chuckles and decides that Phil’s officially cool.

“And you?”

“Video editing. I make collages of wedding pictures and videos and sometimes help my friends with their short films and stuff.”

“So you’re not an artsy person—just the tech guy.”

“Guess you could say so,” Phil shrugs—he had paid money for a Masters in it, he might as well use it at some point of time.

“Hey, you think you could share some of your editing skills for my videos?”

Another heavy weight between them raised, the mood lightens and Phil feels like he could almost be his friend. It certainly feels like they’ve been friends for a painfully long amount of time even if he had really just met him fifteen minutes ago.

“Sure, why not?”

“That’ll be good. I love the place, by the way. We can go ahead signing the contract. Did you have a roommate test of sorts for me to see if I’m eligible to stay with you?”

It’s Phil’s turn to laugh for the first time of the day and Dan thinks he looks adorable when he does, the way his tongue curls up playfully and he tosses his head back. “I’m not a snob, Dan. You seem like a nice person to get along with. I’m good. There are some rules to be laid down about sharing things but that’s nitty gritty for later. There’s nothing much.”

“Well, I do.”

Phil raises an eyebrow. “Do I have to fill in a quiz or something?”

Dan shakes his head. “What coffee powder do you buy?”

“Wha—”

“Just answer the question.”

“Nescafe Classic.”

“Okay. You can be my flatmate.”

 “Wha—what’s yours?”

“Nescafe Blend 43.”

Phil makes a face. “Tastes like sewage water.”

“Exactly,” Dan says as a large grin stretches across his face before he stalks away, leaving a dumbfounded Phil stranded on the spot.

Ah, yes, finally another self-righteous coffee powder buyer to argue with, just like Chad, Dan thinks.

What a weirdo, Phil thinks as he presses quietly on his right sleeve, the name searing into his flesh and his mind as he stares into the back of the owner of the name: Daniel James Howell.

*****

“I told you, that’s just not for human consumption.”

“Then maybe you should try some, seeing that it’s meant for you.”

It’s all friendly banter once in a while, then Dan goes ahead and finishes his Blend 43 and buys a new can, condescension and contempt shot in his direction from Phil. It’s like a damn World War III, Phil setting off rifles of disdain, Dan bringing up the shields and hoping they’ll ricochet their way back to hit Phil in the gut.

He enjoys the conflict. He’s the kind of guy who’s contented with peacefully living quiet and uneventful days, but from time to time he revels in the showdown he has with Phil, similar to that with Chad, where they pick fights for the smallest things. It feels close, a domestic argument, like they’re closer to each other’s hearts than they let on.

Phil rolls his eyes. He doesn’t understand Dan’s enthusiasm for domestic conflict but he sails along because Dan is a good flatmate and if a pre-requisite for his company is a childish argument from time to time, Phil can accede to it.

*****

The memory is a faint one. It surfaces sometimes, bobbing like a lifebuoy on the recesses of his mind, washing up slowly. Onshore, offshore, onshore, offshore. And then as suddenly as it comes, it disappears.

It’s bright, flashing with iridescence, hollers of his name, baby blue like the spread of an illuminating sky, screams of coffee powder and long arms wrapped around for a warm and cosy embrace.

He is unsure whether or not it is a memory or an illusion. There is a thin line between the two and sometimes it feels too surreal to be a memory, other times too realistic to be an illusion. Dan is certain it’s a soulmate thing.

“Hey dude, you alright?” He’s out for lunch with Chad who is finally able to take time out from work and from being all sickly sweet in his honeymoon phase with his new wife.

“Huh? Yeah, yeah, I’m okay.” Dan replies absentmindedly, the sudden wave of images crippling his senses and his ability to think, a phenomenon that happens way too frequently to be convenient.

“You know you can tell me anything right?”

Dan is apprehensive as he chews on his bottom lip. He loves Chad, but this seems to be business way too intimate for normal conversation. He wanted to leave soulmating the most special thing in his life. He had imagined the entire process—fireworks going off, spluttering in excitement at his discovery, congratulating him with deafening claps and bursts in his mind.

It’s been so many times since he’s brought his hopes up—Dan really should learn a thing or two about being disappointed and expecting too much.

“It’s nothing, really.”

Chad reads him like a book, but takes the cue to leave him alone.

*****

Dan wakes up one morning to realise his wrist is bare from Chad’s name, again, like it’s been trying to make up its mind lately, flickering from one day to the other.

Chad’s his soulmate in more ways than one, but he’s already devoted a good portion of his own to Jules. It must be difficult for Fate to decide what path a measly human should take. It’s ironic—if even the stars knew not to lead them along, what were humans supposed to do with their destinies?

Phil is intrusive, obstructive, a lot better with new people than he leads on. Today Phil is perched strangely by the window, taking long looks at their new neighbour moving furniture into the apartment building. Dan is the kind of person who doesn’t like to meddle in other people’s affairs; Phil’s the kind to poke his nose into everything he can.

“Hey, Dan, look at this. They’ve just brought in this humongous bed that I bet won’t go through the doorway.”

Dan rolls his eyes. He’s used to Phil’s eccentric ways by now, expecting the black-haired man to stay by the window for an extended period of time, just observing the labourers carrying furniture as if they were worker ants heaving large pieces of food back home to their Queen.

“That software you told me about that day, Phil. Do you still have the .exe?”

“Mm? Yeah. Right there, desktop, folder named ‘blah’,” Phil is distracted, still looking intently at the men as he reaches for his mug that’s balanced precariously on the windowsill.

“Do you really name your work ‘blah’?”

“Yeah. That’s what it is—‘blah’.”

Dan lets out a laugh because that’s how ridiculous a person Phil is, the kind of person that dots his monochromatic lifestyle with speckles of colour and a burst of light, forcing him to get his ass off the couch and to go out and live life.

If living is a necessity for all of us, it seems Phil is doing a much better job at it than he is.

This is intimate, Dan notes all of a sudden, with how far he and Phil have come along—six months ago they were signing a contract to live with each other and today they’re so much more than that. Phil has even started to stop chiding Dan for his coffee powder choices, and while Dan thought that would’ve been difficult to stomach, considering how it’s a drop out of their—his and Phil’s or his and Chad’s, he doesn’t remember— routine, he’s surprisingly okay with it.

Now they argue about Phil eating his cereal, Phil deliberately staying in bed when a parcel comes for him, Phil leaving three towels in the bathroom, Dan and his completely infuriating need for everything to stand symmetrical to everything else.

They’re so starkly different, but perhaps that’s why they fall into a pattern and into the spaces the other person isn’t. It reminds him, remotely, of his relationships with Olivia and Chad. It isn’t toxic or heartbreaking, not filled with dashed hope and angry self-loathing tears. It works the same way with how Phil’s personality eats into his own and they drop into well-made boxes like Tetris blocks biting into each other.

And while his wrist is bare, for a moment he thinks it might be a good idea to find someone who he isn’t destined to be with, just for a while, just forever, because humans get to find the people who click for them on their own, don’t they?

He can deal with Phil being his secret soulmate, the kind of name that doesn’t get scribbled over his skin but etched over his damaged soul, perhaps.

Dan keeps a lookout on Chad’s flickering name on his wrist day after day, hoping for the signs of a ‘P’ appearing for the first time, almost like he needs the justification for his adoration for Phil.

*****

It’s a late night and Phil has just trudged home from work, apparently an on-site work task has drained every last bit of energy in him. Dan is just seated lazily on the couch after having filmed a video and leaving editing for tomorrow.

Phil drags his feet as he enters the lounge and he’s all dressed up,—Dan hadn’t managed to catch a greeting with Phil when he left early in the morning—a look that looks very corporate, one that Dan approves of.

“Hey,” Phil drawls out as he slumps onto the couch without another word, his entire frame collapsing onto Dan, tuff of black hair appearing below Dan’s chin as he rest his head on Dan’s chest.

“Oi, you’re squashing me, Phil.”

Physical intimacy is something they share, perhaps something Dan has slight issues with because his embarrassment is written on his face. Every time Phil comes too close, like when he’s stretched over Dan’s head to grab something from the cupboard on top, he feels his cheeks flush and burn and he dodges quickly, scuttling away before Phil can ask him what’s wrong.

Dan is a quirky character so Phil doesn’t read too much into his constant uneasiness, but Dan knows if he’d seen his face, it would have betrayed every last emotion he owned.

“Shut up; I’ve been up for twenty hours, running around and dealing with everyone and their tech problems. Let me live.”

Dan feels a tight feeling in his chest when he sees how quickly Phil falls asleep—poor guy must have been completely beaten—the way his lips tremble and are parted just slightly, warm breath seeping through Dan’s sweater and onto his skin, light snores like a tune driving into Dan’s ears.

He takes another good five minutes just staring at Phil, noting his tall nose that curves into a hook at the end, his cheeks glowing with a radiant pink, his eyelids balmy and shining, a good sweep of fringe splattered over half his face.

Dan brings up a hand that swings hesitantly above Phil’s face, but Phil seems to be caught too deep in his slumber to even feel the way Dan’s heart is palpitating restlessly. He pushes the black fringe away quietly and it’s like he can see the flashes of baby blue in his eyes even if they are closed.

He takes another minute to dab the beads of perspiration off Phil’s forehead, pausing when the older man shifts only to dive himself deeper into the sturdiness of Dan’s chest, completely oblivious to the way Dan freezes and the only sound he hears is the thumping of his heartbeat in his ears.

Because while names have been written over Dan’s wrist, Phil is written over Dan’s heart, controlling and looking over his every emotion. Like an xoxo promise signed off at the end of a letter, Phil’s promise is inscribed on Dan’s heart, pumping the most amount of affection and love he could ever imagine to muster.

“You asshole,” he mumbles fondly. Phil has traces of an impression of soft lips on his cheek, bidding him goodnight as he wakes up alone on the couch the next morning.

*****

“Hey, what’s goi—” Phil hears the ruckus in Dan’s room and he’s scurrying over without missing or pausing a beat.

Dan is in a corner, shards of broken mug lying beside him and he looks scathed, eyes wide and still in shock. Phil rushes over, avoiding the pieces of ceramic from puncturing his flesh.

“What’s wrong?” Phil asks, voice soothing, like he’s hushing a baby to sleep, Dan’s fits of sobbing buried as he puts his face behind his hands.

“I’m horrible, I’m horrible.”

“No you’re not. Tell me what’s going on.”

“I fucked things up with Chad, I told him something about Jules he didn’t need to know and he’s angry now and I don’t know what there is to do and—”

“Hush now. What did Chad say?”

Dan’s eyes are wet and he almost has to stop himself from breaking into another round of cries. “Nasty things.”

“Are you sure you didn’t just catch him on a bad day?”

“No, I was just—”

“Didn’t you say Chad lost his job just yesterday?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, maybe he’s just running on a short fuse and then you just said something accidentally. It isn’t your fault. Chad isn’t normally one to be so angry about small things, is he?”

“No, he isn’t, that’s why I said I must have fucked up good because he was being so harsh and I—”

He’s starting to hiccup now and Phil runs along to fetch another glass of water, this time in a plastic cup instead and feeds it to Dan. The younger man looks hurt, dejected, like all the negative emotions he’s been trying to lodge securely under his blankets of pride have all risen to the top and taken him away with a sneer again.

“You’re okay, Daniel. It’s alright. It isn’t always your fault, you know? And if people can’t deal with what you did or what you are, then they aren’t worth it.”

“B-but he was my soulmate. I thought… I thought that means something.”

“It meant something. But for now, leave Chad to his devices for a while and he’ll calm down by tomorrow and I’m sure he’ll apologise then. For now I’ll clear this up for you and you can go sit down in the lounge. I’ll grab some chocolate and we’ll watch Totoro, okay?”

Dan sniffles and Phil’s heart constricts painfully. “Okay. Okay, Phil.”

“Good. Now go.”

That night Phil writes a long email to Chad, chiding him for his childishness, his wilfulness, his unabashed anger that had hurt Dan and the next morning Chad apologises to Dan in a morning call and everything is resolved.

*****

“Hey, Phil?”

“Yeah?” They’re over the stove, making dinner and after that Phil’s going to show Dan how to play around on Photoshop.

“Have you ever had a name written on your wrist?”

Phil almost spills the sauce onto the stove at the question and Dan gives him a knowing look, not bothering to muffle his laughter.

“Way to make it subtle with your answer, man.”

Phil breathes tightly, like the air in the kitchen has just been compromised and he’s running low on oxygen, but somehow Dan is still guffawing and doesn’t appear to have much trouble with breathing at all.

“Yeah, yeah. They haven’t all been wonderful.”

As a matter of fact, Daniel James Howell is Phil’s first and current name, but he isn’t about to share that kind of information any time soon. If he found out he’d let him know, but he won’t confess any of that. It’s way too embarrassing to tell him that his heart had leapt when Dan set out a request for a flatmate on that website with his full name and he seized the opportunity to see him.

Carpe diem, they said, so rather suddenly and with a fiery curiosity for the other man, Phil had messaged to tell him that he owned an apartment and was looking for someone to share the rent with.

As Dan took his time looking at the pictures Phil had sent over, he couldn’t help but flip the name over and over in his mind, asking questions that were deemed worthless the minute Dan replied to say he liked what he saw so far and would love to take a tour.

It was unnerving, to say the least, when he had spent a good long hour in front of the mirror before Dan’s arrival. Was he to dress up primly for the occasion or should it play it cool by appearing in his PJs? Would he think him a slob if he appeared with his glasses and a slightly unshaven chin?

Was he going to be all smiles as he appeared? Or is he the kind of guy with sad eyes that don’t seem to light up no matter how much he tries to pull the ends of his lips up? Perhaps a stoic man with hard features that carve themselves deeper into his face than they would in stone? Or even a slobby vagabond-like man with long flowy hair in a messy bun coupled with unshaved sides?

What about his personality? Or his preferences? What if he wasn’t interested in Phil? Did soulmates work perhaps as friends instead of romantic interests? Was he a fun person to be with, a social butterfly that had no lack of companions, or an introvert like Phil? Maybe one that warmed up to people easily, or perhaps one that had fortresses and walls built up, reaction running cold like ice.

Did he like coffee more than tea? Alcohol or carbonated drinks? Mints or chocolate? Sweet or salty food? Was he more like Phil or the complete opposite? Was he a lot shorter than Phil, considering how scarily tall Phil is? Would he tower over him like a skyscraper? If they had to kiss, how much more did he have to tiptoe?

His thoughts had been disrupted rudely by the buzz of the doorbell and Phil is dressed in his loungewear, glasses perched on his tall nose and he trips over his feet before answering the door. There’s no time, he realises, but he’d rather turn up in his normal home outfit than be late at welcoming his visitor.

He breathes and the doorbell buzzes again—Phil notes he’s slightly impatient, maybe it’s a good thing considering how Phil seems to always have time for the world to spin around him and let it surpass him—so he settles with flipping his fringe aside, trying his most nonchalant but radiant look before he takes the door.

“Hi. I’m—”

“Hi, you must be Daniel, here to see the apartment.”

The brown-haired man standing before him breaks into an exulting smile, a dimple surfacing from his cheek and Phil chews on the insides of his mouth and maybe it's the grin that blinds him, the searing pain from his wrist eating into his insides.

“Yeah, yeah, that’s me.”

He has a brown mop of hair, lazily and coincidentally styled to look like Phil’s, brown eyes that held a spark of playfulness, matching with his small smile. He’s dressed up nice but casual, a black shirt with a black leather jacket and black jeans and Phil can already begin to tell his favourite colour.

There is something in his slouch of a posture and Phil realises he’s as tall as—if not taller than— Phil, the kind of guy who needs to duck to not hit his head against the doorway. His smile is brighter than Phil’s own and for a moment the black-haired man cowers at the sheer happiness he emits.

Phil’s nerves have to be accounted by the name on his wrist, he reckons, because he’s normally pretty good with new people and making them comfortable.

“Um, Philip Lester. Hi.”

“Dan Howell. Nice to meet you.”

Phil swallows as Dan stirs the sauce in the pot, hoping Dan won’t try to pry about the names he’s had or has and almost like someone above has read his prayer, Dan just hums softly in response.

He chuckles, a small bitter one. “They don’t always turn out right, huh?” he asks, and Phil is looking at his side profile, the way his features are accented by the light hitting on the right angles.

“Yeah, they don’t always, but hopefully they will, someday, right?” Phil questions and Dan is slightly surprised because it isn’t like Phil to spout philosophical waffle like himself. Maybe Phil really has some heart-wrenching stories with the names on his wrist.

He doesn’t bear to ask any more, the sheer fear of learning about Phil’s previous engagements, previous lovers, how they’ve managed to spend good times with Phil and then twist his heart and insides into nothingness, like how Olivia had managed to do with his.

Perhaps it was because the idea of poor Phil squatting in a dark empty corner crying the tears he’s never witnessed before, the concept of Phil being weak and broken from someone who could have given him all the affection he deserves but hadn’t done so.

From the simple belief that these people had the world and were ready to lose it, while Dan can only stand waiting to own the world but never having wide enough arms to embrace it.

Phil doesn’t know if the prayer he’d just sent was something he would’ve liked delivered, but it’s been heard and it’s too late to take it back. He wished Dan would probe more—do you have a name now? What are they like, this person on your arm? Are they nice? Kind? Do you like them?

Yes. They’re a ray of sunshine, a burst of energy on days I feel like keeling over. Very, very nice. Very, very kind. Yes, I like them very much.

*****

It is rather sudden the moment Dan finds out he’s the name on Phil’s arm. He’s never been on anybody’s arm before, so the feeling had been nothing less than surreal. He feels complimented, like for the first time it isn’t just him falling crazily and illogically into love, pining over someone he can never have.

He doesn’t know Phil’s feelings, of course. He could be Phil’s soulmate and Phil could still think of him as just a flatmate, but what about those lightly intoxicated nights of sleeping beside each other on the couch? Intense Mario Kart sessions that has Dan falling into Phil’s arms as they wrestle it out like five year-olds? The quiet kisses on Phil’s cheek that he never misses, Dan imagining that the older male was too tired to remember, Phil pretending so he can gain a few more tender pecks.

It is full-on flirting, at least the way Dan remembers flirting to be like, how Phil always comes unnecessary close when he has to pick up something in Dan’s personal bubble, how he grins impishly when Dan’s face is tinted pink.

Phil had been sprawled over bed like a star and Dan wanted to take a look at the progress of his video uploading on Phil’s computer, so he creeps into his dark room and finds the older man all spread out and he tries to not laugh. He’s ridiculous in an adorable way.

Seizing his chance to plop another kiss on Phil’s cheek, Dan walks over stealthily, and that’s when he sees it. On Phil’s wrist with what he recognises is Dan’s own handwriting, is his own name: Daniel James Howell, like ink blobs on paper because Dan and legible penmanship are still strangers at this point of time.

He tries to muffle the small shriek of surprise that escapes his throat by cupping his hands over his mouth, but the start of a startled gasp has awakened Phil and the older man is rousing groggily.

“Dan?”

The younger man doesn’t say anything, just standing awkwardly by Phil’s bed and pointing at Phil’s now bare wrist. The name is glowering at him, like it’s mocking his carelessness, pitying the circumstances under which something so magical had to be revealed.

“Oh. Crap.” Phil’s eyes widen and then he shoves his hand under his duvets, but of course he’s two minutes too late because the image is already snapped and saved in Dan’s memory. “Crap, crap, crap.” Now he’s taken to burying his entire face in duvets and averting his gaze.

“How long?” Dan’s voice is a whisper.

“Two years ago.”

Dan’s eyes are the size of saucers. “One entire year before we even met?”

Phil chuckles sadly, his voice muffled under the fabric. “I’m not the most social person I know with a knack for investigation. I always just thought I would let Fate play along, what will come will come, maybe tomorrow the name will change to something else?”

“Jesus, Phil, you could have shut up about it forever if I didn’t find out today,” Dan says in disbelief, astounded as to why Phil would keep it a secret when he would be more than eager to show off his entangled and destined relationship to his soulmates.

“I didn’t want to pressurise you into… you know, thinking since you were my soulmate you had to like me or anything.”

“I’m not pressurised. Everything I’ve done so far to or with you is unknowing of the fact that I was your—” The word is suddenly difficult to utter and Dan feels his breath choking in his throat. He was someone else’s soulmate, no longer the one that has names written and erased conveniently like he were a blackboard. He was important to someone else too; it wasn’t all about other people in his life.

“Soulmate,” Phil continues his sentence for him and suddenly he’s gotten out of his hiding place, large blue eyes appearing as he looks into Dan’s eyes, the rest of his face still beneath the sheets.

“Yeah,” Dan smiles, letting out a fortunate sigh, “soulmate.”

*****

The revelation feels almost like a reassurance of sorts because Phil seems to be taking their relationship up by another notch. It’s a silent agreement between them—Dan or Phil have never openly stated their admiration for each other, but the fact that Dan’s name is written on Phil’s arm proves a certain sort of transcendental force neither of them can deny.

They’re openly flirting now, Phil making smart remarks about Dan’s ass when he walks past, pink cheeks ensue and Phil just laughs heartily at the reaction and Dan can’t help but smile along despite the embarrassment.

Dan falls into Phil when they’re done with pizza and are watching the new episode of The Great British Bake-off, making snide comments about meringue and unnecessary tears from the contestants, feeling the way Phil’s chest shakes when he laughs.

Phil snuggles closer to Dan when they’re watching a horror movie on Blu-ray, blaming it on the cold but Dan doesn’t expose him and his fear for grinning clowns, holding him closer and as they both scream at the jumpscare on the screen they fall into piles of laughter and Phil wants to hug Dan all of a sudden, so he does.

Phil has taken to ruffling Dan’s hair even if he knows he dislikes it, knowing that Dan secretly feels at ease when Phil does that, a silent reassurance that Phil will always be there and therefore everything will be alright.

Dan’s goodnight kisses are less subtle now, sometimes even daring to do so when Phil’s merely thirty seconds into closing his eyes and he knows Phil isn’t fully asleep yet, but if Phil knows about it, he’s not letting Dan find out. Night after night Dan leaves small kisses on his cheek and forehead and says goodnight in the quietest voice, setting Phil into peacefulness and slumber takes over him too quickly, dreaming of one day sleeping in Dan’s arms.

*****

It is nothing like fireworks and crackers exploding his ear drums. Maybe it’s because he’s used to the way his heart lurches forward as Phil smiles, feel a grin surfacing on his own face when Phil’s lips pull up coyly, wanting to hold Phil in his arms when he presses his lips together in an expression that reads ‘something happened just now it was not good and I need some company’.

It is an awkward mutual exchange of ‘oh’s when he realises that his arm reads Phil’s name in scrawly handwriting. He knows him on a level that makes everything they do together comfortable, and if Dan can be honest, he’s surprised the name hasn’t turned up sooner.

Maybe it is his love for Phil that has made the name appear, or was it the fact that it was going to be this name appearing that he loves Phil, but Dan is not a philosopher, and Phil is breathtakingly wonderful.

“Do you think it’s just a phase?” Phil’s voice is small and almost comes off as breathing, but Dan presses his lips together, suppressing the widest grin Phil would ever have to witness.

“I’m afraid you’re stuck with me forever.”

Phil chortles. “I can deal with that.”