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“It’s a fucking black convertible.” Dan stares, open mouthed. The bags that he’d been previously lugging have been unceremoniously dropped on the curb of the hotel’s front drive-up. Phil’s cheeks flush pink.
“The black wasn’t for you, specifically.” He says sheepishly, taking a few steps forward to rest a hand flat on the back of the car. “I wanted a convertible, just because they’re really cool, and it just so happened that the only one the rental place had left was in black. I didn’t think you’d have any problems with that.”
Dan mouths the word problem to himself incredulously, walking forward and running a hand down the shiny exterior of the paint. The car is beautiful, sleek and shiny with an old world charm to it. The retractable canvas cover is an off white, the interior colored to match, and maybe Dan isn’t always a car guy but this thing is absolutely gorgeous.
“How did you even do this?” Dan’s surprised he managed to get even that much out coherently, still stunned.
“A lot of planning, and a lot of higher up convincing.” Phil responds honestly. “But you said a really long time ago that you’d never been on a road trip, and the one I went on with my friends in Uni was one of the most fun times I’ve ever had. I wanted to share something like that with you. Figured the tour was a perfect excuse. We’ve got this car to ourselves for the entire duration of the tour.”
Dan is still overwhelmed. His mouth opens and closes a few times before he collects his next thought. “We’re in America.” He says slowly. “Are you even allowed to drive here?”
Phil grins while nodding. “You can get a six month temporary license. American DMVs are crazy, you know. Long lines everywhere. Took forever and a half.”
“When did you even do all of this?” Dan asks incredulously. “And without me noticing? We’ve been here for like, two days!” Phil crosses his arms, smiling smugly.
“I've always said I'm a good secret keeper.” Phil says, shrugging happily. “I like planning surprises, and I'm good at them. Especially for you.”
Dan looks at Phil with wide eyes, his hand still on the car. His chest feels like when the pasta his mom would make for him as a kid would boil over and hiss, and the whole room would be loud and bubbling and feeling comfortably like home. “You’re an idiot.” He finally says, swallowing back a lump in his throat. He means thank you.
Phil smiles and pulls him in for a brief kiss. “I know.” Dan knows he means you’re welcome. “So how about we take her for a spin, eh?”
Dan cocks an eyebrow. “Her?” Phil nods, looking at the car very seriously.
“I named her Violet.” Dan blinks, brows furrowing slightly.
“She’s not even purple, Phil.”
“Like Violet Baudolier, from those Lemony Snicket books!” Phil responds earnestly, like it makes the most sense in the world. Dan rolls his eyes, a smile playing at the corner of his mouth.
“You’re so strange, sometimes.” Phil tilts his head back with his eyes closed, beaming.
“You signed up for this.”
--------
Dan reaches forward and picks up Phil’s phone, blinking at the album art displaying on the media player. “You’re kidding me, right?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You started this playlist with Life is a Highway? And oh, Phil, it’s not even the original, it’s the Cars version.”
Phil shrugs, nonplussed. “I like this version better. It’s more melodic, the original is boring.”
“Not even the point. You’re a walking cliche.”
“Your mum is a walking cliche”
“Phil.”
“Just enjoy it, Dan. You know you want to.”
---
They hit the regular kind of bumps along the way- Phil allows their gas tank to stoop dangerously low on a long stretch of highway, Dan forgets at least two coffees on the trunk of the car, and the sound of Phil muttering quietly back at the GPS is only mildly irritating for the first half hour, fading simply into background noise after that.
Their next city is two hundred miles away, only a little over a three hour drive. Phil’s gotten comfortable at the wheel of this car over the first day or so of driving, and now the road underneath them feels like second nature. He’s the better driver of the two of them, and seeing as it was his idea, he’s taken the brunt of the driving, leaving Dan to just enjoy the ride.
Dan’s always liked being in cars. Driving is a different case entirely, but he’s always enjoyed just existing in cars and riding in them. They took a lot of long car trips to visit his extended family as a kid, and as much as the whole principle of the trip was less than fun for Dan, the drive itself was always enjoyable. Depending on where they were going, they drove through either beautiful, hilly country sides, or along highways that were close enough to wave hello to the city skylines, tall and impressive and proud.
He was also one of the lucky kids born with the ability to read in the car and not feel any motion sickness. He owned as many cheap book lights as his mother would buy him, he knew intimately the struggle of trying to read by the passing flashes of streetlights on the highway. The shelter of the car became one of his favorite childhood places where he could just be, and the love of long car rides has persisted long into his adult life.
He’s re-reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream as they hit the second hour on their third day of driving. He’d found it tucked away in the single bookshelf in the hotel gift shop. He’s not sure why they had it, but it jumped out at him on their last look around the shop before heading out to the car, and he figures it’s been too long since he’s read any Shakespeare. He doesn’t get a whole lot of time to read for pleasure now a days, and without any theatre opportunities presenting themselves, he’s fallen a little bit off his Shakespeare game.
He starts reading when they get in the car at eight in the morning, and by the time he looks up from act III, the sun has properly risen above the car, and he’s nearly done. Phil’s put his sunglasses on, and the arm of the glasses forces his hair up in a funny angle. Dan folds down the corner of the page he’s on before putting the book down in his lap and reaching over to fix it for him. Phil jumps a tiny bit at the unexpected touch, but his face settles into a small, comfortable smile as Dan tugs gently at the hairs that are out of place until they lay flat. Phil doesn’t say a word, just smiles and keeps humming gently along to whatever Coldplay song has made its way onto their radio.
This is probably one of his favorite underappreciated things about him and Phil. The ability to sit in close quarters but in complete silence and still be comfortable with each other. Dan’s been reading for the better part of the last two hours, and Phil hasn’t minded at all. When Dan sneaks peeks at him between scene changes or page turns, he’s smiling and humming along to whatever song’s playing out the speakers, watching the road ahead of him with a friendly gaze.
“Are you sure you don’t mind driving the whole time? I do have my license, I can pitch in every now and again” Dan offers as they turn the curve off of highway I-90 and merge through a toll onto I-87N, whatever that means. He’s lost track of where they are, by now. He knows they have two shows in New York City in the next two days, but he has no clue which direction they’re coming in, only guessing where they’re near when he passes a city sign that he recognizes.
“I love driving.” Phil shrugs. “I didn’t own a car all through University, and I missed driving loads.”
“Maybe I just don’t like it because I was always shit at it.” Dan muses, and when he notices Phil’s poorly concealed face of amusement, he reaches out and smacks him on the arm. “Okay, come off it, I wasn’t that bad.”
“I’ve driven with you a total of five times,” Phil chuckles. “And nearly every time has ended in some sort of inevitable near-death experience.” Dan wants to argue it, has his mouth open and ready to fight, but realizes the truth of Phil’s statement the second his tongue hits the roof of his mouth (even if the time in Leeds with the charter bus wasn't really his fault).
“Shut up.” He murmurs through Phil’s laughter. “You’ll be the one to get us killed if you’re not paying attention.”
To illustrate their point, a sixteen wheel truck lays on its horn as it passes next to them on the right, and Phil waves amicably in its direction, ignoring the driver’s middle finger standing angrily at attention.
“I should probably move over.” Phil suggests sheepishly, and Dan bursts out laughing.
“There really should be some kind of test for this, shouldn’t there be.” Dan muses as Phil switches lanes, waving apologetically at the truck as it blazes forward.
“Let’s just count our blessings that there isn’t one.” Phil counters, and Dan grins. Phil takes the moment to reach over the center console and thumb at the cover of Dan’s book. “Haven’t you read this before?”
Dan nods, automatically flipping the book open to where he’d zoned out. “Ages ago, but the hotel gift shop had it, so I figured why not give it another read. It’s short enough and funny enough.”
“I haven’t ever read it, but I saw a production of it on the West End my last year in Uni, for my theatrics class.” Phil offers, and Dan smiles.
“I’ve read it a few times in class, but not since I was at least in secondary school.” His eyes drop down to the page, skimming over a few words. “It’s got a fun flow to it, makes it fun to read. Probably just as fun to see, I’d imagine.”
Phil nods emphatically. “I loved it, even way back then.” He falters for a moment. It’s nothing huge or jarring, but Dan knows him so well that he’s able to recognize the slightest abnormality in Phil’s speaking. It’s a hidden talent. “If you want,” Phil says, just a little too casually. “You can read out loud.”
“Pardon?” Dan asks, just to be sure he’s heard him correctly. Phil’s cheeks flush. He reaches a hand forward and lowers the volume on the radio, his fingers lingering there.
“I like when you read things out loud. So if you wanted to, you could read that out loud.” He twists the nob down two more notches. “Besides, we have an two hours to go before we’re anywhere near where we have to be. We have some time to kill.”
Dan meets his hand halfway and pushes the volume control button in, turning the radio off. He smiles softly at Phil. “Yeah, I can read out loud. But no laughing, I’m totally rusty.”
Phil shakes his head. “You know I’d hardly notice anyways.” Dan rolls his eyes, pretending the reason that Phil wouldn’t notice any errors is because he’s uneducated on the works, not because he gets distracted watching Dan. The thought still sends a flurry of butterflies through his stomach, even after all these years.
“Alright,” Dan says, almost as a filler. “Alright.” He fingers through where he’d had his hand as a placeholder. He finds the lead-up to the third act and settles into the first block of text he sees. “Content with Hermia? No, I do repent the tedious minutes I with her have spent. Not Hermia, but Helena I love.” He looks up long enough to shoot a wink in Phil’s direction, who chuckles. “Who will not change a raven for a dove?”
“You’re not out of practice at all.” Phil accuses. “You sound like you’d just come from acting in the production I saw.” Now it’s Dan’s turn to blush as he lifts the book, trying to cover his face.
“The will of man is by his reason swayed, and reason says you are the worthier maid. Things growing are not ripe until their season, so I, behin young, till now ripe not to reason.” Dan trips a little bit over his tongue on the last few words and shakes his head. "Told you, definitely out of practice."
“You know not everyone talked like this.” Phil says, ignoring his comment, and Dan looks up from the book, curious. “A lot of linguists agreed that older writings tended to be more formal sounding retellings of things, written for entertainment or academic purposes that would’ve only made sense for educated or higher up royalty to indulge in. People talked much more casually, but we never had a way to properly convey it.”
“We do now,” Dan counters, as he sits back in his seat. He loves when he gets Phil talking on the certain things he has a breadth of knowledge about. Dan forgets that Phil has his masters in a degree in words until he gets Phil talking about it, and then wonders how he could ever have forgotten in the first place. “Why do we convey it more naturally now, but we didn’t then?”
“It gets more and more similar every year, how we speak versus how we write. That’s why texting and internet lingo is so neat, because it’s the next step in bridging that gap.”
Dan doesn’t say anything right away, just watches as Phil keeps talking, his eyes still bright in the way they get when he’s talking about something that excites him. For someone who’s such a good listener, Phil has a way with words that Dan’s never understood, where he can captivate him with the most insignificant things and strangest stories. “Amazing.” Dan finally settles on, his smile matching Phil’s. “Absolutely amazing.”
---
It takes him a week of driving to realize he’s fallen absolutely in love with the car.
It’s five in the morning and it’s raining, so the top is up. Phil’s glasses are still speckled with raindrops that made their way under the hood of his raincoat. Dan’s hoodie is uncomfortably damp, soaked from the run from the hotel door to the passenger seat.
“Coffee” is the only thing Phil mumbles before reaching to flick the seat warmers on, and then poking at the GPS on the dashboard to direct him to the nearest starbucks.
“Please,” Dan croaks out as he feels a pleasant warmth spread from his seat. He has never been more grateful for Phil than in this moment (which he knows isn’t true, but certainly feels it) and blearily rubs a circle on his hip with his thumb, arm stretched over the center console. Phil smiles sleepily at him as he turns the key.
Despite the fact that it’s the crack of dawn and he’s severely decaffeinated, Dan doesn’t actually find himself wanting to go back to sleep once he leans his temple against the window, feet tucked up on the dashboard in front of him. He wants to just stay in this comfortable state of contented being, and he wishes it weren’t raining, because he’d very much like to see the sunrise.
They don’t speak until Phil rolls up to the Starbucks and Dan lets out a hallelujah that it’s a drive-thru and they don’t need to actually leave the bubble of the car. Phil smiles as he ruffles his hair, curled at the ends from the rain, and Dan sits back and lets Phil place their orders through the speakers.
After he’s had enough coffee to feel able to make sentences, he clears his throat and stretches slightly in his seat to reach for the auxiliary cord. Phil’s roadtrip playlist has cycled through itself in the last few drives, so they’ve been taking turns acting as DJ. He scrolls through the premade spotify playlists before finding one supposedly made for thunderstorms. He’s pleasantly surprised when the first song to come on is a Snow Patrol song that isn’t Chasing Cars, so he leaves it to drone on in the background.
Technically, they’re supposed to stay behind the tour van at all times, but Phil’s decided to wage a personal war against the driver and has sped ahead of him nearly every day they’ve been driving. Dan has no idea how Phil gets away with these things, but every time they arrive at the hotel a full half hour before the van, Phil apologizes with wide eyes and says he has no idea how he let the van get so far out of their sight, and really, he’s really sorry. Dan is consistently impressed and baffled when Phil inevitably gets no more than a slap on the wrist and an affectionate scolding from their tour assistant.
The first week of the tour had gone well, nothing too horrific going wrong. He’d fallen once and Phil had smacked his head on one of the prop pieces mid-show, but aside from that Dan’s really having a blast. He hadn’t realized how much he missed being on a stage until the opportunity presented itself again, and even if he has to be Danisnotonfire on stage, as least it’s an easy role to slip into.
He’s grateful, at the very least, that he has Phil by his side through the whole thing. Performing in front of arenas full of thousands of people is terrifying, but less so when Dan knows that at any given moment Phil is probably no more than twelve feet away, ready to offer a smile or silent love you when he needs it, which has been becoming more and more often lately.
It isn’t that he doesn’t love his job. He’s self aware enough to realize that comparatively, he’s living the dream. They’re well off, they do what they love, and they have each other. But it can be a bit much, and the first week of the tour is proving to have taken a little bit more of a toll on him than he expected, leaving his bones aching at the end of each night, even if he gets to fall asleep with the echoes of cheers and laughter still ringing in his ears. It’s amazing, but it’s still wearing him a little thin, and it’s only the first week.
The rain is mostly stopped by the time they arrive to the next hotel a few hours later, late-morning sunlight poking through the clouds, giving everything a subdued golden tint to it. When Phil drives around the side of the building to park the car, Dan hesitates in unbuckling his seatbelt. Phil notices (because of course Phil notices) and quirks an eyebrow at him.
“I kind of don’t want to leave the car.” Dan admits sheepishly. “I kind of don’t want to go in at all, honestly. To the hotel. The tour. To any of it.” Phil’s brows furrow together empathetically, and he offers his hand, which Dan takes without thinking twice. “Don’t get me wrong. I love it. I love it all and I wouldn’t do it any differently. You know that. But it’s just-” He trails off, unsure of how to explain the sort of overwhelmed he feels sometimes.
“It’s a lot.” Phil finishes for him. “It can be a lot, and we’re human. It’s okay.” He puts his hand on Dan’s knee, his fingertips curling around the crease in his jeans. “It’s alright to need a little break. Want me to see if we can skip out on whatever we have planned for the afternoon? Then we’ll get an early night in tonight?”
Dan pulls his phone out and taps twice to get to the calendar app, squinting at the reminders he has linked to the current date. “We only have a rehearsal at two, the signings start tomorrow.”
“Perfect.” Phil decides, taking Dan’s phone from his hand and flipping through his contacts. “I’ll call and tell Mary that we’re both a little busted out, and to see if we can push rehearsal back a half hour. We never really need to be there for the first bits anyway.” Dan blinks at him, a little stupidly in awe of him, before a thought shakes him out of his daze.
“Could we keep driving?” He realizes it sounds dumb the second it comes out of his mouth, and hurries to explain. “Not like, too far, obviously. Maybe just to find food that isn’t heated up in a hotel kitchen? Or a pretty view. Or anything, really.”
Phil looks at him for a moment, bottom lip caught between his teeth, before his expression melts into sheer fondness. “Of course, Dan.” He says, before leaning in and pressing a kiss to his temple. “Lemme just call Mary now, okay?”
A cloud of relief washes over Dan, and he settles back into the carseat while he listens to Phil work his magic on the phone with their tour assistant, who (bless her heart) is more than susceptible to Phil’s charm.
He eyes the hotel awning with chagrin while he lets the sound of Phil’s voice fill the car. Hotels lost their appeal to him one too many VidCons ago, one too many swarm of fans and endless book signing ago. Hotels stopped being fun for him, unless it was just him and Phil somewhere alone, which was just impossible with the crew they have for their show. It’s cramped and crowded and even if they go through the effort to push the two double beds together, most times they go without, squished up together in one bed much smaller than their own at home.
Being in this car is different, though. He’s still begrudgingly refused to call it Violet, like Phil’s taken to doing in casual conversation with people who definitely don’t know that he’s referring to a car. But even if he doesn’t call it by “name”, the car takes on a persona in and of itself. In the last few weeks he feels like he’s gotten to know this car better even than he knew any of the family cars they’d had when he was a kid. It doesn’t feel like a rental, it feels like theirs. It feels like an unofficial witness to the ridiculousness of their life together. He almost doesn’t want to give it back.
Dan tunes back into his own thoughts just in time to hear Phil thank Mary for the hundredth time, and then take his phone away from his ear to end the call. “Told her we caught a bit of traffic,” He says, turning the car back on and plugging the auxiliary cord back into his headphone jack. “And that we were going to find food and meet them at the hotel in time for rehearsal.” He slips the car into reverse and checks the mirrors before pulling out of their parking spot and away from the hotel. “Sound like a plan?”
Positively beaming, Dan nods. “Sounds like a plan.”
---
Driving to and from arena to arena becomes Dan’s favorite part of the tour. It’s not even strictly the car itself, not just the privacy it provides. He loves the intimate time with Phil that he gets from it more than anything, but the freedom of the travel is really what does it for him. In the car, he doesn’t feel like Dan and Phil, like he’s a performer with a handler and a net worth, being shuttled around place to place. In the car, with Phil driving and Dan co-piloting, he feels like he’s in control. Maybe their tour is pre-planned for them, but the places they stop and the memories they make along the way are all selfishly, beautifully his.
They stop at a diner about fifty miles into their stretch of the highway, just far enough away that the tip of the hotel they’re meant to be arriving at next is visible over the hill they roll over along the way. They’re somewhere near Columbus, Dan thinks. They have their first stadium show tomorrow evening, and the rehearsal itself is going to take hours. Clouds are hanging low and heavy in the sky, threatening spatters of rain. The entire ride had been quiet, appreciating the calm before the storm, the only thing breaking the silence being Phil’s stomach growling sheepishly in the hour leading up to their stop for food.
The diner they find looks like it was plopped down in the middle of a rest stop, even if it’s more likely that the rest stop cropped up and developed around the diner. It’s an old looking place; small, with a brick exterior and wide windows all along the front. It isn’t classic fifties style like Dan thinks of when he thinks of an American diner, but it’s still nice. The neon sign that reads “Rusty’s 24 Hour Eat-In” is the only thing that stands out at him as quirky, or cliche. Other than that, the building is homey and unassuming, and Dan is grateful for the older looking clientele that present no immediate worries of subscriber interactions.
Inside, they’re seated by a window in the front of the diner, overlooking the parking lot and the highway. The menus are large, laminated, and seemingly endless. Dan has to squint to read the small print under each category. Phil jokingly offers him his glasses before realizing he’ll definitely need them for himself. Their waitress is nice, and if she knows who they are, she doesn't mention it. It's a breath of fresh air that Dan is eternally grateful for as she brings him and Phil their respective black coffee and milkshake.
Phil is murmuring to himself when Dan emerges from his coffee, trying to decide between the BBQ burger (with no cheese and pickles on the side) and the fried chicken platter (“We’re in America, after all!)”. Dan rolls his eyes, reminding Phil that he doesn’t actually ever enjoy fried chicken all that much, but it’s pleasant. They don’t get to do this very often, just sit in a restaurant without one or two people noticing them at least. It’s nice.
“You ever want to do this more?” Dan asks while he decides between the cuban panini and the mysteriously named Buckeye Burrito. Phil looks up from behind his menu, glasses perched precariously on the tip of his nose. “Just, sit in a restaurant and not be twitchy and worried about subscribers?”
“I think that’s less a question of want and more a question of opportunity.” Phil answers. It’s a fair point. Dan knows Phil wants to do things like this, too, but he’s right. It’s not about wanting to, it’s about being able to- or in their case, not being able to.
“Fair enough.” Dan says, shrugging. The menu still sits open in front of him, but he has a little bit of trouble focusing on it. He gets lost in a world where he and Phil can wake up and not have a hundred and four places to be in one day, where they can go out to the bakery down the road on Sundays without having to worry about stopping for a photo op.
Phil’s foot nudging his leg startles him out of his daydream. The waitress has appeared at the edge of their table, and both she and Phil are looking at Dan expectantly.
“Oh.” He stutters, flipping over the menu. The back of his head berates him for not being ready, but he shakes his head slightly to clear it and it subsides. “I’ll, uh. Fuck it, I’ll have the Buckeye Burrito.” His face is a little red by the time he hands her the menu, but she chuckles good naturedly at him and Phil before leaving to put their orders in.
Phil looks at him like he can read his mind, and Dan wonders for the umpteenth time if maybe he can. “One day.” Phil says quietly, and under the table he finds Dan’s ankle and links it with his, an extension of holding hands for when they’re in public. Dan slips his other foot next to Phil’s, the touch warm and comforting.
“I know.” Dan says, and he smiles a little bit. “I shouldn’t be rushing anything. We’ve got it so good.”
“It’s not a crime to dream.” Phil reminds him, and Dan is grateful. “We do have it good right now, but someday we’ll have it a different kind of good. Doesn’t mean this wasn’t good, too.”
“Say ‘good’ one more time.” Dan teases, and Phil smiles with his tongue poking out. “But you’re right-”
“I’m always right.” Phil cuts him off. It’s hard to kick him under the table, what with their legs being intertwined, but Dan gets his point across anyway.
“I hate you.” He rolls his eyes, and Phil laughs.
“Love you, too.” Dan feels his shoulders tense, but he catches himself before he automatically looks around to see if anyone heard. There’s no one here he needs to worry about.
Phil notices anyway, because he always does. “One day.” He repeats softly, before reaching out to take a hold of his coffee mug. Impulsively, Dan reaches out and links their pinkies together. Phil’s eyebrows shoot up before he smiles. “Pinkie promise?”
“I was just trying to be sweet,” Dan admits. “But I guess that could work. Pinky promise? One day?”
Phil barely lets him finish the sentence before he nods, raising their linked pinkies slightly in the air, his eyes blue and bright and determined. “One day. Promise.”
---
Dan curls into the seat, the leather warm against his back, but the breeze cool against his forehead, blowing his fringe back and all over the place. He’s gotten used to it over the last few weeks, and the desire to pull over and chop it all off has since subsided.
Phil’s hair is doing the same thing from the driver’s side, and he’s taken to tucking loose ends behind his ear in an incredibly endearing fashion. They round a corner and one particularly annoying strand flies out, and Dan extends a hand to tuck it back into place without thinking.
They’re driving through some long, winding highway, and Dan can see little pop ups of suburbs in the distance, past the muted greens and bright siennas of the landscape.
“Tell me again,” He says, leaning his head back against the headrest and closing his eyes against the comfortable warmth of the sun. “how you managed to convince our manager to let us do this- more specifically to let you do this.”
“Felatio is a very convincing argument.” Phil says without skipping a beat. Dan’s eyes slightly open for a moment, less out of shock and more out of the desire to see the playful glint in Phil’s eyes when he looks over at him. Dan feels himself smile against his will.
“Is that so?” Phil nods, moving his neck slightly to check the rear view mirror before switching lanes.
“For the price of our love, Dan.” He says very seriously. “This road trip was destiny. We needed this road trip. I wasn’t going to let a few blowjobs get in the way of that.”
“Why do all of our subscribers think you’re so innocent?” Dan mumbles. “And wait, hang on- excuse me, what do you mean a few?”
Dan can’t help but break character and grin as he watches Phil throw his head back and laugh, a light laugh that comes right from his chest, just north of his heart. He’s captivated watching as Phil runs a hand loosely through his hair, fighting pointlessly against the wind, and Dan catches it in his own hand on its way back to the wheel. He laces his fingers with Phil’s and squeezes gently, still grinning.
Phil glances over at him before returning his gaze to the road and squeezing gently in return. “Alright?”
Dan nods, and suddenly he has a strange feeling, a huge feeling, like he’s the star in a coming-of-age movie. The blue sky fading to just the slightest hints of evening orange, the clouds hanging low and wispy over the small suburban towns they pass, Phil’s hand in his as they drive along the countryside, a well of pure happiness settled and still at the base of his chest- it feels just like a movie, and something in Dan’s throat catches for a moment. He remembers the times when he’d have never thought he’d have made it this far, nowhere near it.
“Thank you.” He blurts, out of context and making no sense, but he needs to say it. He needs to extend some kind of gratitude to Phil for bringing so much wonderful like this into his life, and words won’t do it enough justice, but they’re the most efficient for the moment, so Dan will have to do.
“For sucking off our manager?” Phil jokes. “Sure, anytime-”
“You twat.” Dan slips his hand out of Phil’s, only to playfully swat at his upper arm, before reaching back for his hand like a magnet. “No, for this. This whole thing.”
Phil ducks his head for a moment, eyes still looking up at the road. “I just wanted to spend this kind of time with you.” He says, and his voice is gentle. “I know we spent every waking moment with each other, but sometimes I miss the normal adventures, if that makes any sense? Like the crazy YouTube things are obviously the best ever, but sometimes the little things matter more to me.”
Dan feels like he has koi pond in his throat, jumping and splashing around excitedly. He feels his emotions physically, and his overwhelming fondness for Phil is threatening to leap from his lungs and to his tongue. He loves this man. Absolutely loves him.
He doesn't say any of this. Not now, it isn't urgent. Dan feels this way regularly and constantly. He doesn't need to say it every time he feels it. Instead, he swallows thickly and kicks his feet up on the dashboard, taking the hand that’s holding Phil’s and moves it to run his fingers through Phil’s messy black fringe. Phil leans into the touch.
“It makes a lot of sense.” Dan finally answers, nodding. “But I'll be honest, no adventures feel normal with you. They all feel sort of,” he stumbles around for the right word. “Extraordinary, I guess. In the best way.”
Phil beams. “You make things extraordinary for me.”
Phil says things like this all the time, and Dan typically brushes them off, dismissing them and even arguing them on the days where he has the energy to. But today he doesn't fight it, because maybe it's the rush of being on a roadtrip with Phil, or the peak of the bell curve of his anxiety, the high before the inevitable low that'll come in about a week’s time- it could be anything, but he doesn't care. Whatever it is, he doesn't care. He does feel extraordinary. He feels extraordinary with Phil by his side, because they are. They have the entire world in front of them, at their fingertips, and maybe he isn't ready to grab it but he's ready to try so long as they're together.
“That's convenient,” Dan finally settles on. His voice is carefully controlled, just a hint of amusement, but his eyes are smiling, warm and melted amber. “It means you've got to keep me around.”
Phil groans. “The ‘keep me around’ jokes stopped being applicable sometime after our sixth anniversary, I think.” That's not true. They probably stopped being applicable the moment they began consciously creating a brand together, but Dan overlooks the technicality in exchange for unbuckling his seat belt, leaning over the center console, and kissing Phil softly on the cheek.
Phil looks surprised, and it almost dulls Dan’s mood that he does. His shows of affection, especially in any kind of public setting, are few and far between. But once Phil’s surprise switches swiftly into happiness, Dan decides to choose his inner battles wisely and save that particular brand of self loathing for another day. It's really amazing that he can choose that line of thinking at all. He's come so far.
“I love you.” He settles on saying, settling back into the seat, turning his head back toward the window, smiling at the ray of sun that warms his cheek. When he glances over, Phil is stealing a look at him as well, and his eyes are a piercing, bright blue in the reflection of the sun from the mirror. “What?”
“Nothing.” Phil replies. He sounds content. “I just love you, too.”