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For the first eighteen years of Derek’s existence, he sees very little of Dan’s world. Holidays (birthdays, mostly), cute dogs, sunny days, trips overseas, the occasional tail end of a joke, faces that don’t linger long enough to remember. These moments of Dan’s happiness are few and far between, scattered as if on principle. But when Dan starts secondary school, the scant glimpses of the outside world disappear entirely.
There’s this thing, this metal contraption with a screen and a thick northern accent pouring from it, and a boy—Dan calls him by name—Phil, he says, Phil, you’re insane.
The boy is giggling, his hands covering his mouth, but Derek can make out the faint traces of lipstick between his fingers, the hint of tongue peeking out between crooked teeth, the ruddy red of his cheeks contrasted with long black hair tied up in messy pigtails. He’s telling Dan something about a video, a character he’s created. Derek doesn’t understand, but he’s not fading back into Dan’s face like usual.
He stays.
For hours he stays and listens to the boy’s—to Phil’s voice. Derek hears about things he has no basis of knowledge for—music or television or books—he can’t be sure. All he knows is that when he does retreat later (when the sun starts carding gentle fingers through blue-black sky), when Derek sinks back into the warmth of Dan’s cheek, he feels a delicious ache in his sides.
A smaller screen this time, with words Derek can scarcely comprehend they’re so misspelled and improperly formatted. But a strange symbol and the number three are tacked onto the end of the message.
Dan stares so long he has to tap the center button twice to wake the screen.
Phil is back, decidedly less done up this time.
He’s beautiful—at least Dan thinks so. (Though Dan thought Phil was beautiful before, when he was just a voice to fall asleep to.)
Now, the notes of Phil’s laughter ring out staticky and clipped through dull laptop speakers, but Dan doesn’t outwardly seem to mind. The only hints of tension present are in his jaw, his teeth (clenched to keep the longing from spilling from his lips).
It’s then that Derek spots something through the pixelated screen. Only a flash at first, a ripple of movement across marble-carved skin. It could have been a lag in video quality (whatever that means), but it looked— it happens again.
Derek stares, straining the muscles of Dan’s face—he doesn’t seem to notice—not with Phil’s attention, unassuming and pure, splayed out like sunlight for Dan to bask in. Phil laughs at something Dan says, and Derek gets just that bit more sight as he’s push-pulled up. And it’s just a whisper, just the smallest hint of movement, but Derek notices; Derek sees them. A set of uneven lines beside bright blue eyes.
And all at once everything seems to slot into place with the kind of certainty that’s evaded Derek and his host for the entirety of their combined existence.
It should be terrifying. (It is.) But it also makes a strange sort of sense. That Dan, perceived existential, cynical, openly distrusting, yet closeted romantic Dan, would fall for Phil. For this specific boy. It only seems logical to conclude that the visible sign of Dan’s joy would fall in love with its cause. But it’s more than that.
Because they’re beautiful—Phil’s lines. If Derek knew more words, if he’d been able to construct them, put together a sentence, a sonnet, or a script, he would. But he digs and digs only to come up with tired, known lines that aren’t enough.
But Derek digs all the same, digs and digs until he comes back with something true, something honest. It’s Dan’s to share, Derek knows, but he wants to get it out first, thinking that if he can just say it, can get it out, it might not feel like so much at once.
He loses his nerve when he sees them, though. Jagged and creased and the most beautiful thing Derek has ever seen. Which is twofold because Derek has seen so little of the world that he may be a terrible judge of character, but he also only sees the most beautiful parts of Dan’s life. (And despite what he may think, Dan has such a beautiful life.)
Those lines are looking at him now, Derek, twinkling in the low light of Phil’s bedroom. They look comfortable, slotted perfectly, purposefully beside Phil’s eyes. Derek always worried he stood out too much, took up too much room on flawless, easily-tanned skin. Phil’s lines look like they were designed with him in mind. Derek wants to ask, to reach out and say something, anything to keep them around. But the lines are gone almost as soon as they appear.
Derek waits, impatiently, but he waits, watches the edges of Phil’s eyes so intently that Dan rubs his cheek at one point to ease the strain.
They don’t make a reappearance, not that night. But he does.
Too late in the morning to be considered early, Dan thinks about running his fingers across the bridge of Phil’s nose, and Derek sees a pillow.
Derek is flush against something cool and hard. Metal, if he had to guess.
He only catches snippets of words this time. Soon and Excited and Crazy.
Crowds of people flash by. Some in a hurry, some… decidedly not.
Dan must fall into the latter category because he isn’t moving; he isn’t doing much of anything but standing. Until Derek catches sight of an arm unwrapping from around the back of Dan’s neck and… Phil. In the flesh, standing, standing right there. Derek aches at the sight of him, of them, because they’re back. Phil’s lines—crow’s feet—he remembers belatedly. There, wrinkled and imperfectly aligned and beaming at him.
They’re Phil’s as much as he is Dan’s, so it would stand to reason that they might take on similar characteristics of their respective hosts. But it’s different for them. While Dan and Phil can talk, Derek and Phil’s lines can only look. They can’t touch, delicate like the first time Dan and Phil meet in person, or rough like they sometimes get after too much time apart.
The closest they get is Phil laving kisses across Dan’s face. Making him squeal and giggle and protest. (Derek notices that he never tries to get away.)
In those moments, where the space between Dan's dimple and Phil’s crow’s feet are breaths away—when Phil kisses them—Derek feels it in his core. In the space he’s carved on Dan's face, he feels himself come alive.
It’s enough.
When Dan and Phil move in together and then keep moving, across the country, across previously stated boundaries and worries and time zones, Derek stays. Even if it isn’t always, even if it isn’t perfect, it’s good. It’s enough.
More than, because as the years pass, there are more lines, more parts of Phil that Derek falls hopelessly in love with. (There are new marks on Dan as well. Sunspots and freckles and laugh lines—love looks good on him. Suits him. Like color and happiness and summertime.)
But Derek always comes back to them. His first and truest love. He thinks about them in the times when he rests. And when he isn’t resting… there they are. Creased and wrinkled and fuller now, and lovely, so, so lovely that it doesn’t matter the time they’ve been apart because they aren’t anymore.
And when they’re resting, Derek makes friends with the moles on Phil’s face. He tells them about his love. Dan’s too, if he’s feeling particularly sappy. (He usually is.) He assumes they talk, all the parts of Phil’s face. He assumes his love is known, but he tells Phil’s crow’s feet anyway. Regales them with tales of Dan and his adventures before, but stresses that nothing made sense until them. Until Phil.
He doesn’t know if Dan hears the conversations. He must know, on some level; he must. But he writes it off as reading body language or catching hints or knowing Phil.
Phil does the same in turn. On the days when Dan locks himself in his own mind, Phil gives him space. (He used to hover, but he knows better now. Learned, after the screaming angry tears that weren’t really angry.)
Phil lets Dan process and work through. And Phil pulls Dan up with gentle hands when he falls asleep on the couch. He doesn’t make a joke about how heavy Dan is or how he’s getting too old to do this. He pulls Dan down the hall to his bedroom and undresses him to his briefs with telegraphed touches. He pulls the blankets up to Dan’s chin. He kisses Dan's head and says something sweet. Not those three words—those words aren’t meant to be uttered as a balm on a wound. No, Phil says Dan needs his rest so his big beautiful brain can keep functioning. If Dan is still conscious, he’ll respond, maybe pull Phil under the suffocating covers with him.
Sometimes he won’t.
Phil doesn’t begrudge him that. Never has. He’s said so.
“I’ll see you in the morning,” he says. Or the afternoon or the evening. I’ll see you. I’ll do this all again. Every day forever.
Those nights, Derek tastes salt on Dan's skin.
But in the morning, or afternoon, or evening of the next day, when Dan rouses, Phil kisses him—Derek. (And if he tastes salt on his lips, he doesn’t say.)
Phil kisses Derek and all the other unnamed marks that make up a decade of joy until two sets of lovers meet again.