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It was innocuous. Maybe Dan should have been paying closer attention. One second, Phil was running back out in his shiny blue bathrobe for the conclusion of the boxing bit, the next, he was tripping and falling off the stage.
The tremor that ran through the crowd turned to silence once the audience realized that it wasn’t a bit. Dan may or may not have screamed. He couldn’t quite remember. A group of lesbians in impressive eyeliner caught Phil and stopped him from completely eating shit, but not before he scraped his shin on the side of the stage.
Panting, gasping, Phil hauled himself back up to the stage. Dan reached for him, offering him a hand to steady him on his ascent. Phil put on a brave face, but Dan could see the strain behind his eyes, could feel the way that he gripped onto his hand just a bit too tightly in that way that only became necessary when Phil was hurt or scared.
“Phil,” said Dan.
“Whoo,” said Phil. His voice sounded thin. “One step closer to becoming Olivia Rodrigo.”
“ Phil,” Dan repeated. He wasn’t sure if the audience could see the injury from twenty feet away from the stage. People in the front row did look vaguely concerned, and how could they not? Blood was running down the front of his calf.
“I’m fine, I’m fine. And I’m still going to kick your ass.” The audience shrieked.
Phil, who was simultaneously god’s strongest soldier and a starving Victorian orphan, finished the first act with a grin on his face. They left the audience on the edge of their seats, waiting for the boxing match of the century.
As soon as they were backstage, Dan wrapped his arm around Phil’s torso, supporting him like he was trying to walk on a broken leg. And maybe he was. Dan didn’t know. “What the hell happened?!” he asked, in a tone that came out much more accusatory than he’d intended.
“Got dizzy.” Now that he was offstage, Phil was letting himself wilt a little bit. He looked almost sickly, and somehow paler than usual.
Dan made an effort on every tour to be on friendly terms, at least, with the stage crew and production assistants, partly because he was a decent human and partly because he was terrified of having anyone dislike him for any reason. In that moment, though, it all went out the window.
“Got dizzy,” he repeated to himself in a whisper. Then, he turned and shouted to no one in particular, “I need water, food, and a first aid kit!”
After it was all over, he would apologize to the stage crew for snapping at them, and in turn, they would assure him that they didn’t feel disrespected, and that they understood his panic over Phil’s wellbeing. In the moment, though, he focused on maneuvering Phil to the couch backstage.
“Dan, it’s really not–”
“Lie down.” Dan left no room for argument.
Phil glanced at the clock over their vanity mirror. “How long do we have left in intermission?”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Dan, “They can wait.” The wonderful thing about their fanbase was that they would wait. But also, they had a decent twenty minutes left in intermission, and as much as he’d panicked, the cut on Phil’s leg didn’t seem that deep. His skin had peeled away, but the bleeding wasn’t getting worse, and Dan couldn’t see bone. Not that seeing bone from a surface level scrape was ever plausible, but still. Dan’s mind had a way of jumping to the worst places.
When their camera man, dressed in all black, approached with the first aid kit, water, M&Ms and a small serving of chicken wings, Dan’s panic had dissipated enough for him to mutter a quiet, “thank you.” He handed the food and water to Phil and got started on the first aid kit, gently cradling Phil’s ankle with one hand while he assessed the damage.
“It’s not too bad,” he said out loud. It was more to calm himself than to calm Phil. In all honesty, Phil was snacking to his heart’s content and looked perfectly calm already. The color was returning to his face. Still, Dan had to admit that as much as he liked to joke, ever since Phil’s string of medical emergencies, he’d become somewhat fixated on comforting Phil wherever and whenever he could. It was all he could do to stave off the feeling of helplessness, which had come back in full force when he watched Phil fall.
“It’s not too bad.” Again. “Just a scrape, really.” He gathered his bearings and put on his steady voice. Above where he was kneeling on the floor, he heard the distinct crunch of peanut M&Ms. “Okay. I’m going to disinfect the cut with an alcohol swab, which is going to sting a bit, but I think I can do it with one hand, so you can hold the other one if you want to. Then I’m going to put some gauze and a bandage on it, and you… you should be good as new.” Dan stuttered. Dan never stuttered, except when he was afraid.
“Jesus, Dan,” said Phil, “It’s just a scrape, you said it yourself. You don’t need to act like the dowager queen of DanandPhilGAMES.”
It should have put Dan at ease to have Phil joking with his sense of humor fully intact. But it didn’t make him feel better at all, really. The phrase dowager queen only summoned images of Phil in a hospital bed, Phil in an ambulance, Phil lying on the floor of a waiting room unconscious, in a pool of his own blood…
“Hey.” Phil’s voice was incomprehensibly gentle all of the sudden, and it was only when he wiped a thumb over Dan’s cheek that Dan realized he’d let a few tears escape. “I’m sorry, Dan, that was a bad choice of words.”
Dan shook his head miserably. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m being so dramatic…”
“You’re scared, Dan. It’s okay.” Phil reached down to card his fingers through Dan’s curls, and in the process, he moved Dan’s head up just the tiniest bit so that they were looking one another in the eye. “But you have to know that I’m okay. I’m not going anywhere, Dan.
“But I don’t know that!” Dan shouted. This was rapidly becoming one of those almost nothings that became catastrophic in context; realistically, Dan knew that he was being ridiculous. Accidents happened. But why did they happen so much? Why did they always happen to the person that Dan loved most in this world? And why could he never stop them from happening?
Phil, who could possibly read Dan’s thoughts, gathered him up and close to his chest, where Dan inhaled breath mints, chocolate, and the slightest hint of sweat from the exertion of the show. “Shhh,” he soothed, “It’s okay, Dan. I’m okay. You’re okay. And in ten minutes, we’re going to go back on that stage, and I won’t fall again, and people are going to scream so loudly that you won’t be able to hear yourself think.”
Dan sighed. How lucky was he to have someone who knew him well enough to know that his ideal social situation was one where he didn’t have to deal with his own thoughts? He leaned into Phil’s chest even further, as if melding into one person was what he had to do to keep Phil here forever.
“Are you sure you can do the rest of the show?” he asked Phil, his voice muffled and tiny.
“Yes,” said Phil, “Are you sure that you can do the rest of the show?”
Dan took a moment to think, then took a deep breath in and let it out, like he learned in therapy. “Yes,” he said finally, “Yes, I can.”
“Good,” said Phil, carefully stroking the spot between Dan’s hair and his neck, “I’m proud of you.”
Dan shook slightly, as if he could stave off his anxiety with a simple physical gesture. “Could I…” He trailed off.
“What is it, Dan?” Phil prompted him.
Dan cleared the knot out of his throat. “Could I bandage you up before we get back out there? It’s stopped bleeding now… but I still think it would make me feel better to take care of you a little bit.”
Phil smiled and kissed Dan on the forehead. “Of course, Dan. Whatever you need.”