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There’s a gap between the counter top and the tiling, Phil’s considering posting a crisp through it—for the mice.
“We don’t have mice,” Dan tells him, but he sounds unsure. “And we need better builders.”
Phil shrugs, smashes a crisp through the gap and dodges the slap Dan’s trying to deliver to the back of his head.
He thinks he should stop drinking, because they’d started out as mocktails but now there’s half a bottle of gin missing from the shelf. Also a crisp in the wall—fuck, maybe a fork will dig it out.
“No!” Dan screeches, right down his ear hole like Phil wouldn’t have heard him otherwise—stupid, basically sat on top of each other. Always too close, or too far, never the perfect amount of distance apart. Because right now the body heat Dan’s radiating is making Phil want to take his hoodie off, but if he moved even a centimetre away Phil thinks he’d miss him.
“Why?” Phil asks, deciding that their position is fine as long as there’s no more shouting. He’d rather too close, he’s been preferring that since his green bedroom. “We might get mice if I don’t get it.”
“Thought we already had them.”
Phil hums, tries to use another, larger crisp to dig out the previous one. Dan doesn’t shout but he pinches.
“I’m taking your drink away.”
Phil doesn’t argue, but he does follow him to the sink because— too close over too far.
“I like the house,” Phil says, even if there are holes and maybe mice and some spots are a bit ugly. “Do we have any money left?”
Dan snorts, a noise Phil thinks is funny but he’s not allowed to say that out loud because Dan will get him.
“Like five pound,” Dan is swishing the drink around the sink because it’s sort of staining the metal. Purple and boba and glitter and every ingredient to ever exist should be poured directly down the drain—cleaning can wait till tomorrow. “But we need to spend that on getting the locks changed when you lose your key.”
“I will not,” Phil doesn’t think be huffs like a toddler, but the look on Dan’s face says otherwise. He’s so pretty, even when he’s berating Phil with his eyebrows.
They leave the sink, end up somewhere else without drink which is sad. Phil says as much and Dan leaves which—even sadder.
He’s on the sofa in a room that’s too big without someone else in it. This whole place was designed on the basis that it was always for the two of them—together. But Dan has wandered off and taken all his larger than life room filling energy with him.
Phil’s gonna shout at him.
He doesn’t, he lunges instead when Dan makes his triumphant return.
“Fucking hell, Phil !” Dan is loud and Phil still wants him to stay even though he thinks he might have a headache. “Careful. Got a drink here.”
He actually has an entire tray because he’s extravagant and a show off even when it’s just the two of them— especially when it’s just the two of them.
“Because we’re grown ups and this is our house,” Dan explains, like he has to sell this idea to Phil.
“Stupid,” Phil says. “Shutup. Give.”
“Grabby.”
“I’ll grab you.”
“Promises, promises,” Dan laughs, in that stupid way that turns Phil on even though it shouldn’t.
He doesn’t think they’re going to sleep tonight.
He settles back down, a nicer drink in hand. He thinks it’s rum, which he didn’t even know they owned. Are they pirates? He giggles at his own vision, but then he decides he actually wants a parrot.
“No birds,” Dan is at his side, saying mean words that Phil is going to ignore.
“I said that out loud?”
Dan shakes his head, then it lands heavily on Phil’s shoulder. “No just saw the whole rum pirate connection going on in your brain.”
“Get out of there,” Phil says, even though he doesn’t want that at all. It’s so much easier to have a conversation that doesn’t require any words. They’ve mastered that, even if they’ve mastered nothing else.
“Evict me then,” Dan challenges, taking a too big gulp of drink for someone who had said he didn’t want to get drunk tonight. “Give me a notice, I’ll fight it. Take you to court.”
“Good luck getting a lawyer with that five pounds.” Phil slumps, clinks their glasses together. “How do we have a house? Like an actual house without gas and stuff.”
“We have gas,” Dan points out, because he has to be right and has to be cocky even when he knows what Phil meant. “Just not the sort that is trying to actively murder us.”
And if Phil thinks about it too long he gets a bit dizzy, thinking of all the houses and all the issues and all the—just everything. Everything that led to here, to sitting on a couch that costs more than he wants to remember right now.
They made this house through words, through three am conversations about paint colours. Through typed out messages on Skype about windows back when they didn’t really understand love.
“I lost my key already,” Phil admits instead of saying any of that out loud. “I’ve been using the spare.”