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Time ceased to be a real concept about ten hours ago. Ten hours ago might’ve been yesterday. It might be today. Actually, Dan’s not even entirely sure when “today” is since he used up most of his remaining conscious thought to navigate through all the airports and finally make it to their destination.
As it turns out, as lovely and popular as it is to visit the Philippines, there are no direct flights from London. It’s a nearly twenty-hour ordeal with a couple of hours to wait for a transfer in the middle - and that’s just to get to Manila. The Philippines is a lovely place with beautiful beaches, but there are a lot of islands, and those islands mean another couple of hours waiting in Manila for the small plane to take them out to the smaller island where they’ll be staying for the rest of their trip. Of course, they’re not staying right next to the airport, it’s a secluded resort town after all, so there’s another drive across the island before finally the car drops them off just down the road from the nice place they’ve booked.
It’s hot and humid, and their suitcases feel like they each weigh a ton under the sticky atmosphere. They only packed the bare essentials - a couple of T-shirts, some shorts, swimsuits - but at each subsequent destination the bags seemed to grow heavier. A two-hour nap on the second leg of their flight helped shake off some of the fatigue, but not enough. Phil looks pale and disheveled hauling his suitcase down the cobblestone path next to him, and Dan knows he probably looks just as run-down sweating through his T-shirt with his hair plastered to his forehead. They both desperately need a shower, a snack, and a good night’s rest.
When he finally gets the keycode right and the door unlocks, the air-conditioned room feels like absolute heaven.
Phil abandons his suitcase and heads straight for the sofa. Dan desperately wishes he could, but for every anxious quirk Phil has about the water when they’re touring, Dan has one to match about the cleanliness of the hotels and houses they book. “Wait, don’t sit down yet,” he says right as Phil’s about to collapse on the sofa. “I need to check everything first.”
Phil groans, but backs away from the couch and stays standing with a frown as Dan makes his inspection. No suspicious looking sheets, no bedbugs, no other bugs - those are the key points. Anything else is an issue for tomorrow.
The living room looks fine so he heads for the bedroom just off the main area. It’s a nice room, well lit with large windows and a king-sized bed with fresh white sheets. There are a couple of frames on the wall and some lamps on the nightstand, nothing overdone. He fluffs the bedding out, grabs the pillow and flips it. Nothing obviously crawls out, so he peels the top sheet off as a precaution and leaves it at that.
The ensuite bathroom is also carefully set up, and he’s glad to see that the towels have no strange marks on them and there are no lizards waiting to jump him in the shower. He hasn’t encountered any large insects or reptiles in the shower on any previous trips, but just like how he checks that the sheets are clean, surely the one time he doesn’t check will be the time he gets bitten in the ass by a snake.
He finishes his rounds by inspecting the small kitchen, opening the cupboards and the fridge to see them all perfectly empty and bug-free. He’ll still wash his hands after touching everything, but they’re not facing any immediate issues in the house itself.
The kitchen has another door that leads outside to the back of the property and Dan peers through the glass to get a better look. There’s a vine-covered fence on one side to give privacy from the neighbors and a waterfront view straight through the deep green trees out the back. The place advertised a pool, he remembers, and sure enough he can see a table with an umbrella and some lounge chairs around a large, square pool. Not only that, but it’s not in-ground and made of concrete like he expected, but what appears to be an infinity pool with a glass edge on the far side overlooking the sea.
“Can I sit down now?”
Phil’s voice from the other room startles him out of his tired daze and he turns around to see him still standing in the living room waiting.
“Yeah, looks fine,” Dan tells him. “Did you see there’s a pool out there?”
Phil flops down on the couch and cranes his neck up to look at Dan. “There is?”
“Yeah, it’s got a view of the water. There’s a whole outdoor setup with chairs and stuff.”
Phil hums an acknowledgement and turns back around to curl up for a nap.
Sleep would be really good right about now, but it’s only mid-afternoon according to the clock on the wall. Normally that wouldn’t faze him; their sleep schedules have never been regular between touring and late-night editing. This week, though, they have actual planned activities to go scuba diving and sea kayaking that require waking up at a certain time, and if he goes to sleep at two in the afternoon it will probably result in waking up to the jarring sound of his phone’s alarm every day and not a relaxing morning in with the gentle sunlight and chirping birds that he originally envisioned.
Fighting every instinct, he drags his suitcase into the bedroom from where he abandoned it in the entryway and starts unpacking.
“What are you doing?” Phil mumbles from the other room.
“Trying out the pool.” Dan strips out of his clothes covered in airplane grime and pulls on the black and white star-patterned swim trunks he packed. He hopes the water temperature will be comfortable; cold water would probably give him a heart attack and he’s not sure he can handle anything warm right now either.
Phil stares up at him from the sofa as he comes back into the main room. “What are you doing that for?”
“It’s two in the afternoon. We’ll wake up at like, three a.m. if we go to bed now.”
“Ugh, why do you have to be good about it? Can’t we just sleep?”
Dan heads toward the door, trying to fight the drowsiness off with the appeal of the pool. He desperately wants to agree, but he’s been halfway sleep deprived most of his life anyway and he doesn’t want to waste the day.
“You can sleep if you want, but you’ll probably hurt yourself sleeping on the couch like that,” he tells Phil. Jet lag and time zones aside, they’ve both fucked up their shoulders a few too many times accidentally falling asleep crunched up on too-small furniture.
He’s hit with a solid wall of hot air the moment he steps outside. He knows from past trips to tropical places that he’ll get used to it in a day or two, but right now it’s downright suffocating. He tiptoes toward the water, careful for anything underfoot until he reaches the edge. There are stairs underneath and it’s not too deep, so he takes a cautious step in. It’s warm from the sun, but definitely comfortable and better than the air. Once his toes hit the bottom in chest-deep water, he takes a deep breath and plunges below the surface. He instantly feels less sweaty and the water gives him a little more energy to try and make it through the next few hours.
When he pops back up a few seconds later he hears the creak of the door over the sound of the bird calls and wipes the water out of his eyes. Phil’s standing by the edge of the water watching him with weary eyes, still in his rumpled clothes from the flight. Dan smiles at him as he lazily swims back to the edge. “I thought you were tired. You should get some rest.”
“I am. But I can be tired out here,” he says.
“Be careful you don’t get sunburnt.” Dan should’ve put sunblock on too, now that he thinks of it, but he doesn’t burn quite as easily as Phil does.
Instead of answering, Phil just drags a chair underneath the umbrella.
Dan takes a few laps around the pool - not deep enough to fully swim, but sort of half-float around the edge. The view is incredible, even through the trees. He’s a bit surprised there aren’t a bunch more random leaves floating around in the water, but someone probably cleaned it before they arrived.
When he reaches Phil again, he notices he’s got his phone out. “Found the WiFi password?” Dan teases. They try their best to unplug and get offline when they go on holiday, but it’s a tough habit to kick.
“No.”
Taking pictures then, probably. Dan doesn’t have it in him to care how he looks; at least the dip in the water fixed his hair out a bit. It’s always nice getting a chance to swim a bit in a place where it’s actually warm enough to make going in the water appealing. He could find a gym to swim laps in back home in London but it wouldn’t be the same. He looks back over at the sea again, marveling at the view. The pool is clear, but the sea beyond it is so perfectly blue that it barely looks real. The sky has a couple of puffy clouds but is just as blue as the water and he can see the dotting of mountains and other islands along the horizon.
“What time is it?” He turns around to ask Phil, but he sees him curled up on the lounge chair asleep with his phone next to his leg. Neither of them are the type to take naps, but it’s a sweet image that he even tried to stay awake to be with Dan out here even though there will be plenty more moments in the days to come.
He’s not sure how long it’s been and whether he’s succeeded in killing any time at all. He could keep swimming and let Phil sleep. Or go inside and properly unpack. He still needs to make sure everything’s all there and see if they need to make a trip to the store.
Everything feels sticky again the moment he fully climbs out of the pool, and he’s reminded of how tired he still is. He’s got a towel packed somewhere in that suitcase and an air-conditioned bedroom.
Time zones are made up anyway, he decides.
He gently taps Phil on the shoulder and he wakes up with a start. “Hm?”
“We should get some actual sleep inside,” Dan says. “I’m exhausted and you’re still in your airplane clothes.”
“I thought you were staying awake,” Phil says with a yawn.
He grabs Phil’s hand and pulls him up, trying not to drip too much water on him. “I changed my mind.”