Chapter Text
Chapter 1
Dan didn’t like wearing bracelets, rings, or really anything around his wrists and hands; he said it made him feel trapped and slightly claustrophobic. He’d tried, when he was younger and trying to fit in, to wear all of the festival bands and cheap Jesus bracelets, but since admitting that wasn’t the person that he wanted to be, he’d stopped wearing the irritating scraps of fabric. Necklaces too, were not something he felt comfortable wearing often, the touch of the metal against his neck refusing to fade into the background, leaving him feeling like he couldn’t take a full deep breath. He might make jokes about being choked and tied up on a weekly basis, and whilst that could be fun for the couple on occasion, truthfully he didn’t like the feel of anything constraining him.
Phil was the same, so he completely understood how Dan felt about it. There was one problem, though; he had a question that he wanted to ask Dan, and it was typically accompanied by a piece of jewellery that he knew his boyfriend would have no interest in wearing. Whilst they weren’t short of money by any means, he didn't want to waste an absurd amount of it on something that would just be chucked in a drawer after a short attempt at wearing it out of obligation. He knew the ring wasn’t the important part of the proposal, and after all of these years and several serious conversations about their future, he was finally certain that Dan’s answer would be yes regardless, but Phil still wanted to be able to give Dan something to symbolise the special moment.
Phil went back and forth for months on what to give Dan in place of a ring. It was the only reason he hadn’t popped the question yet. A watch? That was no more likely to be worn than a ring. Cufflinks or a tie pin? They didn’t go anywhere to frequently warrant the fancy wear. For a while he played with the idea of something to do with music, perhaps having a piece composed for Dan, since he loved playing the piano so much, but honestly that felt disingenuous when Phil didn’t have the talent to compose the piece himself, and like it would be more of a gift for himself, getting to hear Dan playing it after however many weeks or months of hard work it’d take him to learn it. He tried googling, spent hours on Pinterest, TikTok (not that that was anything new) and anywhere else he could think of that might be able to give him some sort of idea of what to do.
He was close to giving up and just asking one day without anything to present to Dan. So many times he’d had to stop the question from slipping out of his mouth, when he felt his love for the man overflowing from his chest. In the kitchen, when they were lightly swaying together to one of Dan’s playlists, he had to lean in to kiss him to stop the words from tumbling from his lips. In the afterglow, wrapped around each other, he had to quickly attempt to gather enough brain power to redirect his sentence into a request for Dan to pass him his glass of water, after the words “Will you,” snuck out without his brain processing them. In the living room, when he looked up to find Dan gazing at him lovingly, not caring when Phil caught him in the act, the words were right on the tip of his tongue. It felt like his automatic response to anything Dan did, or said, had become the words ‘marry me’ trying to escape into the air between them.
Luckily though, one day it came to him, and it was so simple and obvious, he didn’t know how he hadn’t thought of it all along. With the idea finally in mind, he was able to shop for the item to propose with, and wasted no time in finding the perfect one.