Work Text:
what time do u get out of work?
The text pops up out of nowhere, and Phil’s glad that he's on his break to answer it. He and Dan have been texting almost constantly since Louise introduced them to each other at one of the many, many holiday parties being thrown around campus. That was three weeks ago, and Phil’s maybe sort of smitten.
Dan's just… He's sort of weird, and he’s smart and he's funny and he has a tendency to send Phil long rambly messages about whatever book he’s reading at four in the morning. He drinks coffee with too much sugar and he talks about ancient literature like anyone else would talk about the weather and Phil gets on better with him than he has with anyone else he's met so far in his year and a half at uni.
like an hour, Phil texts back. The dots signifying Dan typing a reply appear immediately, followed by a string of skull emojis.
i just finished my LAST ESSAY due in before hols, lets celebrate, Dan adds. hang out after u get off? Phil sends four confetti emojis and a dancing lady. He knows Dan will know it means yes.
“Phil?” says his coworker Caden, poking his head into the break room. “Hey, sorry, we just got really busy? Would you be able to help?”
He nods, taps out a quick gtg followed by a string of sad face emojis, and locks his phone before standing up and following Caden back out to the floor.
The forty-three minutes between the end of Phil’s break and the end of his shift absolutely crawl. The store is packed with people buying last-minute Christmas gifts. One woman knocks over a display of chocolate oranges and then yells at Phil about it, like it’s his fault she doesn't know how to steer a trolley. By the time he clocks out he can't decide if he wants a nap or a beer more. He figures he’ll be able to enjoy both once he gets to Dan’s, which is apparently the plan according to the string of texts Dan’s sent detailing how exactly to find his apartment building.
He’s only been to Dan’s flat once, very briefly, when he was hanging out with their mutual friend Louise and they stopped in to get her copy of The Lion King, which Dan apparently hadn't seen until Louise loaned him the dvd. It’s small, and tidy from what Phil’s seen, with a lot of very full bookshelves and art on the walls and a tv with three different game consoles attached. He shares the flat with someone in Phil’s post-production course, a curly-haired guy called PJ who doodles all over his notes and makes faces at Phil whenever someone says something particularly stupid.
Phil clocks out at 4:00 exactly, pulling on his coat and hurrying out the door before anyone can ask him to stay longer. With Christmas just a week away it's the worst of the holiday rush. Afternoon shifts are always more hectic than mornings and it's been packed since he clocked in at eight, so he knows the rest of the day is only going to get busier.
just left work, he texts Dan, after reading over the directions Dan’s sent to him. I’ll be there in like 15 probably. He finishes it off with the ghost emoji, just because he likes how happy it looks, then pockets his phone and pushes open the door.
Cold air hits Phil like a train and he grimaces, slouching his shoulders and ducking his head into the hood of his coat. The sun has already set and the sky is dark, spitting icy rain. Phil’s breath is puffing out in front of his mouth. He shoves his hands into his coat pockets and sighs when he feels his phone vibrate. It's too wet and cold to text Dan back - his fingers would go stiff too fast.
He walks quickly back towards home. Dan apparently lives three streets closer to Phil’s job than Phil does, which is slightly aggravating somehow. Like, why couldn't Dan be working there too, and that way Phil could see him more, or something. It’s weird. Phil is weird. He's weird and he's awkward and he's going to Dan’s house, for only the second time ever.
“Oh my god,” he mumbles. His nose is going to be red and his fringe is going to do that gappy thing it does when it gets damp and Dan is going to be warm and sweet and funny and gorgeous like he always is, and he’ll never want to talk to Phil again.
His phone buzzes again, a reminder that he hasn't opened Dan’s message, and he hesitates, then pulls it out to read the text that’s glowing on the screen.
yay can't wait! Dan has said, followed by the emoji that's smiling with its eyes closed. Phil grins down at his phone and tucks it back into his pocket. He's not going to make Dan uncomfortable, he never has before. He's being irrational. This is going to be fine.
He turns onto Dan’s street and shudders as a gust of wind whips up underneath his jacket. Fortunately, Dan’s building is right at the top of the street so Phil ducks inside, his teeth chattering.
Here, he types quickly. A few seconds pass and then the door buzzes as it unlocks.
Dan’s building is fairly typical, with rust-red carpeting and bland art on the beige walls. Phil takes the lift up to the fourth floor, then checks his phone to make sure he's got the right flat before he raps on the door to number seven.
Almost immediately the door opens, Dan peering out from behind it with bright eyes.
“Hi!” he says, pulling the door open wider and allowing Phil to enter the flat. “How was work?”
“Mind numbing,” Phil tells him. He toes off his shoes and glances around. The entranceway to the flat is even smaller than he remembers it being, but it's cozy, all lit up with the golden glow of fairy lights.
“Well, you're with me now,” Dan says, and the crinkles at the corners of his eyes are making Phil want to do something stupid like kiss him. “Let me grab my coat and we can go.”
Phil’s not sure where they're going but he nods anyway. Dan ducks out of the foyer for a few seconds, then rejoins Phil with a black coat pulled on and only half-zipped. He leans against the wall to tie his Vans, then grabs his keys out of the bowl next to the door.
“Right,” he says, exhaling hard and shooting Phil a bright grin. “To the outdoors.”
They stay quiet on the lift back down to the lobby. Phil keeps catching Dan looking at him, his dark eyes flicking away too late, and Phil knows his face has gone pink. His stomach is churning with an almost-pleasant nervousness and he keeps smiling at his shoes.
“It’s cold,” Phil warns once they get off the lift and make their way to the exit of the building. Dan puts his hood up before he pushes open the door. A wet rush of wind pummels them and Dan’s shoulders curl in protectively.
“Jesus fuck,” he says loudly.
“Dan!”
“What.” Dan’s voice is flat but the corners of his mouth twitch when Phil fixes him with a mock glare. “Come on, my car’s just over here.”
It's a crappy little silver Vauxhall Corsa and it makes a weird growling noise when Dan starts it, but once they're on the road it seems fine. Dan reaches over and turns on the radio.
“Are you a Christmas music person?” Dan asks. Phil nods and Dan grins. “Of course you are, dunno why I even asked.” He presses the cd button and Michael Bublé starts playing softly.
“Bublé’s a bit mainstream for someone like you,” Phil laughs. The heater is finally warming up properly, a stream of hot air pouring out of the vent and making him feel sleepy and content. He watches Dan’s hands as they rest confidently on the wheel, streetlights casting long shadows across the dash.
“What's that supposed to mean!” Dan cries, all mock indignation and delighted eyebrows. Phil looks out the window and pretends to not feel weak in his joints from how Dan’s dimple has popped.
“You're a bit hipstery,” Phil tells him, trying for serious. Dan snorts.
“Yeah, that's me, I play Guild Wars religiously and listen to Kanye West, I’m very hipster.”
"Only hipsters say they're not hipsters, Dan," Phil points out. His face almost hurts from how hard he's grinning.
"Piss off," Dan laughs. "God."
Michael Bublé is still crooning about how it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas and Dan’s fingers are drumming against the steering wheel to the steady waltz-like beat. Phil entertains the thought - briefly - of spinning him across a dance floor like a Disney princess. It's a terribly self-indulgent thing to imagine and Phil shuts it down almost immediately.
“Where are we going?” he asks as they turn onto High Street and head out towards the posh part of town.
“Thought we might go see the Christmas lights,” Dan says. His smile is soft and he keeps his eyes on the road as he reaches out and bumps the knuckles of his left hand across Phil’s mid-thigh. Phil swallows.
“That's - that sounds great,” he stutters. Dan flashes him a bright grin and a cheeky little wink before turning onto a quiet road lined with big expensive houses, most of which are strung with fairy lights.
“Does your family decorate for Christmas?” Phil asks as they cruise slowly down the lane. He should be looking at the lights, that's why they're here, but his eyes keep flicking back to Dan’s profile, his gorgeous eyelashes and his strong cheekbones and the tiny bit of softness under his jaw.
“Er, yeah,” Dan replies. He fidgets with the heat settings for a moment, turns it down so it isn't blasting into their faces quite as hard. “A bit. Typical, like, fairy lights on the hedge and a Santa stops here! sign. Wreath on the door or whatever.” He turns onto the next road, which is less lit up, and speeds up a little. “You?”
“Oh yeah, American style,” Phil tells him. “Blow up snowman in the front garden and everything.” Dan laughs, bright and loud, like it’s been surprised out of him. Phil thinks that might be his favourite of Dan’s many laughs. There's something so thrilling about being the reason for such a tangible burst of joy.
The road they're driving down has shifted from a suburban street to more of a country lane, the houses gaining space between them as they drive out of town.
“Where are we going now?” Phil asks. Dan shrugs.
“Dunno,” he says. “Lights were a bit anticlimactic, but I don't want you to go home yet, so I'm just sort of driving.” His fingers shift on the wheel like he's nervous. Phil wants to kiss him. He wants to kiss him and hold his hand and call this weird little evening a date, because that's sort of what it's starting to feel like.
“Are you hungry?” Phil asks. He's not, but he doesn't want to go home yet either. Dan does a weird little half-shrug.
“Could eat. Anywhere you want to go?”
They decide to stop in at Starbucks, because neither of them are terribly hungry and because a hot coffee is sounding more appealing by the minute. It's not too busy, just a few students lingering on the cushy couches in the corner and two girls who look like they're on a date holding hands at a table by the window.
“Want to stay here?” Dan asks as they approach the till. Frank Sinatra is crooning away about how he’ll be home for Christmas over the PA system. Phil’s heard this song about fourteen times already today. “Or we can go back to mine, I'm not bothered.”
“To be honest, I’m a bit sick of retail Christmas music,” Phil replies. Dan snorts.
“Mine it is,” he says, then smiles at the girl working the till. “Hi, can I get a grande toffee and almond hot chocolate and -” He pauses and turns to Phil. “What do you want?”
“What?” Phil asks, thrown off. “No, I can order mine, you don't have to -”
“What are you getting?” Dan presses, his eyebrows raised and a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. Phil is so done for.
“I, er, I dunno.” He glances at the menu and says the first thing that catches his eye. “Peppermint mocha?”
“What size?” the girl behind the till drawls. She looks painfully bored. Phil shrugs.
“Grande as well,” Dan says. “We’ll pay together.”
“What?” Phil yelps. Dan makes a face at him. The girl at the till is probably about two seconds away from rolling her eyes.
“That’ll be £5.45,” the girl tells them. Dan hands her a tenner. “And your drinks will be ready in just a minute.”
“Thank you so much,” Dan says as she hands him his change. He drops all of it into the tip jar next to the till and the girl’s pasted-on smile goes a little warmer.
“Happy Christmas,” she says, flicking her fringe out of her eyes. And then, to the next person in the queue- “Hi, how can I help you?”
Their drinks are ready within a few minutes and Phil scoops them up before Dan has a chance to grab them.
“I could have carried them!” Dan protests, and Phil shakes his head. He can't stop grinning.
“You paid, it's only fair, and you have to drive,” he points out. Dan rolls his eyes dramatically at him as he unlocks his car.
The sleet turns to snow as they drive back to Dan's flat. It's not been cold long enough that the snow will stick but it looks lovely tumbling through the air, thousands of tiny flecks in the beam of the lights.
“I’m… dreamin’...,” Dan starts, in an exaggerated Elvis voice, and he glances at Phil as he laughs at himself. “Of a white…. Christmas….” The Elvis voice stops abruptly. “I’ve actually never had a white Christmas. Have you?”
“Yeah,” Phil tells him as they turn onto Dan’s street. “A few. Not every year.”
Dan parks on the side of his road and turns the key in the ignition, shutting it off and shooting a quick grin Phil’s way.
“The advantages of being raised in the north,” he says. Phil snorts and nods as they get out of the car. Snow is still tumbling fast and heavy out of the sky, obscuring the wind screens of cars and getting caught in Dan’s hair.
“Come on come on come on,” Dan chants, hopping from one foot to the other in an attempt to stay warm. They hurry into Dan’s apartment building and catch the lift up to his floor.
“You've got, um.” Dan reaches over and brushes his gloved hands across Phil’s shoulders, then down his chest. “Like, sorry, snow? It would have melted I guess but then, like, you would have gotten wet, so.” All his smoothness has disappeared and his cheeks have gone pink. Phil can't tell if it's from the cold or from how they're standing nearly on top of each other in the tiny lift.
“Thanks,” he says. His voice is slightly raspy and his body feels very warm where Dan touched him. The lift door opens and they pile out. Dan nods, smiling just enough that his dimple pops as he fumbles in his pocket for his key. He shoves it into the keyhole and rattles the doorknob until it twists and the door falls open.
“Welcome,” he says, gesturing his way into the flat dramatically, “to my humble abode.”
The front door of the flat opens into a tiny foyer, which leads to a large room that's half kitchen and half lounge. A giant window makes up most of the wall across from the door. Everything’s decked out in fairy lights and there's a plastic tinsel-covered Christmas tree on the end table next to Dan’s ancient-looking couch.
“Festive,” Phil says. Dan grins as he pulls off his jacket and hangs it on a hook near the door. He tugs his gloves off and tucks them into his jacket pocket.
“Oh yeah, we finally decorated last night. D’you like candles? PJ’s aunt gave him a variety box of like twelve different holiday scents.”
Phil nods so Dan lights one and the scent of cinnamon and cloves starts to waft up almost immediately. It adds to the already-festive air of the room.
“Want a drink?” Dan asks, going over to the kitchen and grabbing a mug out of one of the cupboards. “I can do tea, coffee, hot chocolate, get really posh and have a bit of mulled wine…” He trails off, looking at Phil questioningly with a mug dangling off his finger.
“Anything,” Phil tells him. "Tea's good." He's standing sort of awkwardly next to the wall, still wearing his coat. Dan glances back over his shoulder and snorts.
“Phil, mate, you can sit down,” he says, a fond laugh leaking through his words. Phil flushes.
“Right, yeah, sorry," he mumbles. He shrugs off his coat and slings it over his arm. It's just as weird and uncomfortable. Phil feels hopelessly awkward.
"Sit," Dan repeats, a broad smile stretching across his face. He opens the cupboard and takes down another mug, then puts his kettle on to boil. Phil sits down gingerly on Dan's couch. "Relax, this'll be done in two minutes and then we can watch a film or something.
“When do you go home for hols?” Dan asks as he joins Phil on the couch, handing him a steaming mug of tea. Phil blows on it carefully, then takes a sip. It’s just slightly too hot, scalding the tip of his tongue but pleasant once it settles in his stomach.
“Tomorrow,” Phil tells him. “In the afternoon. Train’s like an hour and a half.”
“That's not horrible,” Dan says. He kicks his feet up onto the coffee table and takes a drink of his tea. “Mine’s nearly four, and three changes.” Phil grimaces sympathetically.
“You're from near London, right?” he asks. Dan shrugs.
“Wokingham,” he replies, taking another gulp of his tea and shifting his feet so his ankles are crossed. “‘S by Reading, so near enough.” Phil nods. "And you're from Manchester area?"
"Yeah," Phil says. "Rawtenstall."
They talk for a while, light easy chatter about nothing in particular. Dan mentions hoping to get a Pokemon game for his DS for Christmas and they geek out about Pokemon for a while, and then anime, and then music. They like a lot of the same bands and films and books, but there are just enough differences between them that their conversation never gets dull. Their tea is long gone by the time Dan suggests watching a film. Phil agrees so Dan goes over to one of the bookshelves and starts looking through his dvds.
"I have Rudolph?" he says. "That's pretty much it."
"Rudolph is fine!" Phil assures him. He's realising, once again, just how date-like this whole evening has felt. They got coffee and Dan paid, and they drove to look at lights together, and now it's the evening and they're watching a film. He hopes, quietly, that they'll end up maybe doing something else instead.
Dan gets his tv set up, then joins Phil on the couch. He sits down much closer then he was sitting before, the back of his hand skidding across the side of Phil's thigh as he gets comfortable.
"D'you mind leaning over and turning that light off?" he asks. Phil shakes his head and stretches up to switch off the lamp that Dan's pointing at.
The flat plunges into darkness, lit up only by the television and the fairy lights on the window. Dan presses play and the film starts.
Phil's watched Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer so many times in his life that he has it memorised, but even if that weren't the case he knows he wouldn't be focused on the film. Dan is sitting so close to Phil that Phil can feel him breathing. He smells like cologne and cinnamon and something Phil can only describe as warmth, and his hair has gone slightly wavy from snow melting into it.
Make a move, idiot, he tells himself. He goes for it before he can talk himself out of anything, fake-yawning and stretching his arms up over his head. At the end of his pretend yawn he settles back down, placing his right arm pseudo-casually on the back of the couch behind Dan's shoulders. Dan snorts slightly, but a pleased little smile quirks at the corner of his mouth. He shifts so he's leaning fully against Phil's side. Phil hopes Dan can't feel how hard his heart is thudding.
Onscreen, the little girl deer is telling Rudolph that she thinks he's cute. Rudolph launches into the air with a howl of "she said I'm cuuuuuuuuuute!"
"That's me whenever I find out someone fancies me," Dan murmurs. Phil has to lean in slightly to hear him.
"Yeah?" he breathes. Dan turns his face toward him. Their lips are just inches apart.
"On the inside," Dan tells him. His eyes are shining in the dark. "On the outside I generally just do this."
His hand comes up to cup the back of Phil's neck and his eyes flutter closed. Phil barely has time to realise what's happening before Dan's leaning in and their mouths press together, soft and slow and sweet. Dan's lips are chapped and his fingertips are closed but Phil closes his eyes anyway, and kisses back hard. When Dan exhales shakily through his nose a thrill sparks through Phil's blood.
Rudolph is being mercilessly bullied onscreen, so Dan pulls away slightly and mutes the tv, then rests his hand on Phil's knee and looks at him with big eyes. Phil's heart is racing in his chest.
"Hi," he says, rather stupidly. Dan's face melts into a fond grin.
"Hello," he replies.
"Hi."
"How are you?"
Phil opens his mouth to respond, then lets out a laugh instead and pulls Dan back in.