Work Text:
It was the evening, but Dan looked at Phil as though he were sunlit. No, he looked through Phil. His soul was sunlit. Not that Dan believed in souls and things of the sort, but maybe just this once he could. If anyone were to have a soul, it would be his Phil. His Phil who was beautiful and clumsy; his Phil with a sweet tooth and a creative mind. Phil was totally oblivious to the gears turning in Dan's brain. His attention was currently pointed at some weird gadget he bought off TikTok shop.
“It’s not working!” Phil exclaimed with a huff. He pouted, half kidding in his tone of exasperation. For the last 30 minutes, he had been trying to make this thing work. “What does it even do? Or- sorry, what's it supposed to do?” Dan was being mildly sarcastic. He didn't really care what it was meant to do, he just wanted to hear Phil explain it. “It's supposed to make soothing rain sounds, but there's like? A billion steps before it will work.”
Dan tilted his head to rest on his hand, “We literally have a sponsorship-app-thing, whatever, that does the same thing. Why not just use that?” Phil set down the small machine with a sigh. “It was cute… the ads were enticing me.” Dan takes a moment to rip his gaze away from Phil and afix it on the object. It was light blue and cat shaped, with a speaker on the belly of the cat. It had buttons on the head, but Dan couldn't quite read what they said from where he sat. “Does it need batteries?” he asked. “I've got batteries in it. I think I might've been sent a faulty one.” Phil frowned, and Dan felt torn. He hated to see Phil sad, but something about the downturn of his lips just made him want to kiss Phil. He slid himself closer to Phil on the couch, taking the cat-speaker from Phil's hands with a gentle, prompting motion. “Maybe I can get it to work.”
Dan spent a moment tinkering with it. He glanced at the instructions, something Phil was mildly allergic to doing, and followed them closely. After pressing all the buttons in a specific, confusing sequence, the noise machine turned on. Phil squeaked out of pure joy. “Ah-What! How did you do that??” Dan attempted to hide his grin as he handed the gadget to Phil. “Danny's just got the magic touch” he touted; playfully smug as ever. Phil leaned onto Dan as he flipped through a few of the different noise settings. Apparently, it wasn't just limited to rain sounds.
Phil's excitement over this speaker sent a wave of warm fondness over Dan. If there were ever a soul you could hold, that you could feel it move, it would be Phil's. Soft lips pressed into Dan's temple. Phil didn't need to say thank you, being himself was enough. In this moment, Dan was sure of it; Phil had a soul. The only one to ever exist.