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“I don't know, Dan.”
Phil’s more nervous about this than he thought he'd be. He's not, like, opposed to weed, he smoked a few times in uni himself, but it's been a long time since then. He's all old and boring now. He can't even drink much without having a hangover that lingers spitefully into the late afternoon of the next day. And yet here Dan is, sitting in front of him holding a small baggie and a packet of rolling papers, his eyes sparkling and his mouth twisting into a self-satisfied grin.
“It'll be fun, come on, we have hours before we have to do anything,” he wheedles. He’d gone outside earlier, walked to a Starbucks in the early morning sunshine, and a few more freckles have bloomed across his cheeks. He looks soft and sun-gold and properly happy. Phil can feel himself giving in. It can't hurt, right? Especially if they stay in the bus. Although that might not be the best idea either, now that Phil’s thinking about it.
“Wait, are we -” Phil cuts himself off and leans forward, lowering his voice. “Are we smoking in here?”
Dan blinks like he didn't expect Phil to go along with it. Then his grin stretches wider, Cheshire-cat smug.
“Why not? We’re literally completely alone, we can open the windows, close our doors, enjoy our morning off. It's California, Phil.” Phil bites his lip. “I mean, I want to. You don't have to, obviously, but I am going to, like, we have it already so we’ve got to get rid of it before we go home.”
That… is a good point, actually, Phil admits. They can hardly take it on the plane.
“Yeah, okay,” he says. Dan’s eyes nearly close with how big he's smiling. It feels good to make Dan smile like that. “I've no clue what I'm doing though, you're gonna have to be the guide.”
“I am your pot guru,” Dan replies, his eyes wide now like he's trying to be serious. Phil snorts at him and Dan hops off the bed, handing the baggie and papers to Phil before closing the door to their room. He sticks a tshirt under the crack of the door, then opens the window next to their bed and grins at Phil again. “I need a flat surface.”
Phil, still holding the weed gingerly in his hands, looks around the room. There's pretty much nothing that they can risk getting drugs on. Except -
“Dan, no,” Phil says, but Dan is already laughing delightedly and grabbing the copy of their book that he's kept next to his bed since they got it in the mail last year. He brought it along with them because despite presenting himself as edgy and cool Dan is basically just a pile of nostalgia and sentimentality. “Dan, we worked so hard on that!”
“And this is our reward! This is what artists do, Phil,” Dan replies, still laughing as he sets the book on the mattress in front of him and opens up the baggie. A wave of an unfamiliar but distinctive smell washes over Phil, making him inhale sharply and wrinkle his nose. It's not bad, really, just strong. Dan works quickly, his fingers moving like it’s muscle memory as he breaks up the weed and rolls it into a joint. It might be, Phil remembers. Dan was sort of a bad kid at school.
“Low level disrupter,” Dan says with a wink, like he was listening to Phil’s thoughts. “Lucky you.” He licks the joint closed, then frowns. “Fuck. Have you got a lighter?”
“Why would I have a lighter,” Phil says flatly. Dan groans.
“For candles? I don't know. There must be one somewhere, hold this,” he demands, his legs flailing as he scrambles off the bed. Phil rescues the joint from Dan’s precarious grip and watches as Dan tears through his backpack. It takes maybe thirty seconds before Dan lets out a triumphant shout and crawls back onto the bed, a black lighter tucked into his hand. He plucks the spliff from Phil’s fingers and places it between his lips, then flicks the lighter on and holds it to the end of the joint until it ignites. The flame throws strange shadows across Dan’s face for a second and he looks up at Phil from beneath his eyelashes, making Phil’s heart twist happily in his chest. Then Dan inhales, the flame traveling up the paper to the pot, the sharp earthy smell getting a little heavier as smoke furls gently into the air.
“Here,” Dan says in a tight voice, handing the joint over to Phil carefully before leaning over to grab a glass of water sitting on the windowsill.
It's a little worse than Phil remembers, but not as bad as he thought it would be. It tickles his throat, and it tastes burnt more than anything else, sort of like the way toast smells when he leaves it in too long so it bypasses golden brown and goes straight to crumbling and black. He holds the smoke in his lungs for as long as he can, till his brain spins a little, then lets it out in wisps between his teeth.
Dan takes the joint and hits it again. His eyes are sort of unfocused, like he's feeling it already. Phil watches him inhaling, the end of the joint burning ember-red. He coughs a little as he hands the joint over to Phil, chesty and deep, smoke leaving his mouth in puffs.
"I'm like... wow," he says once he exhales, a slow lazy smile growing in the corners of his lips. Phil sucks down on the joint and tries to get used to the heat inside his mouth. His head feels exactly the same and he wants water.
"I'm not feeling anything," he admits. Dan frowns. Then his eyes light up and he wiggles his fingers at the joint. Phil hands it over, raising his eyebrows.
"We're gonna shotgun," Dan explains, bringing the spliff to his lips. "I'm gonna inhale and then I'm gonna blow it into your mouth and you're gonna inhale, it'll be easy." Phil nods. Dan takes a hit off the joint for himself, holding it in for a long time. The sunlight coming through the window catches weirdly in the thin haze of smoke hovering in the room, bluey-grey and moving slow.
"Ready?" Dan asks, letting out his hit in a constant stream of smoke through his mouth and nose.
"You look like a dragon," Phil tells him. Dan bares his teeth in a snarl that turns into a wide smile and a laugh. "Okay. Ready."
Dan hits the joint again, sucking in what looks like kind of a lot of smoke, then sets it down carefully in their makeshift ashtray and gestures at Phil to come closer. Phil leans in, tipping his head one way while Dan tips his head in the other, and this, at least, is familiar. He's kissed Dan a million times.
Dan's mouth nudges clumsily against Phil's and their lips part. As Dan exhales smoke into Phil's throat, all Phil can think is that this is really nothing like kissing at all.
His head spins, though, as he holds the smoke in, and because Dan was a buffer it isn't so hot that it burns in his lungs this time, and this - the slow warm pulsing lightness that's beginning to work its way into Phil's body - is actually kind of nice.
"I feel really good," Dan decides after he hits the joint again and ashes it into the Solo cup. He leans back against the wall and tilts his face towards the sunshine coming through the window. Phil takes the spliff from Dan's fingers and hits it carefully himself. He inhales correctly this time, he thinks, feeling the smoke curling through his lungs until he breathes it all out towards the window, and the warm lightness in his stomach and fingers is spreading through his whole body. His brain feels like it's being cradled by fluffy clouds.
“Me too,” Phil agrees. Dan dimples at him, pleased, and takes the joint. It's burnt halfway down now, the embers at the end glowing cherry-red. He takes a long hit and hands it back to Phil, who pinches the end of it between his fingertips and then grimaces and hands it back.
“D’you not like it?” Dan asks. He sounds genuinely distressed at the thought. His eyes are wide and red, bloodshot and dopey from smoking and not enough sleep.
“No, I do,” Phil’s quick to say. His tongue feels fat in his mouth, clumsy and hilarious. “Just liked shotgunning better.”
Dan winks exaggeratedly, then grins and hits the joint hard. He beckons Phil closer, presses their mouths together, exhales smoke into Phil’s lungs.
The joint lasts so long that Phil thinks there's no possible way he could get any higher once they get to the end of it. He feels - he doesn't even know how he feels. He feels good, mostly. Heavy and weightless at the same time, the sun soaking into his skin as he sprawls across the bed and stares at the ceiling. Dan’s playing music on his phone, something weird that he's been into lately, a lot of high-pitched garbled singing and electronic background noise that somehow melds into something cohesive and almost good, and he's sucking on the last of the spliff, his cheeks hollowed as he takes one final hit.
“‘S out,” he says, his voice tight as he holds in the smoke, and Phil nods lazily. Dan drops the end of the joint into their makeshift ashtray, then sets the Solo cup on the windowsill and lays down, stretching his spine so his foot kicks up into Phil’s lap.
“Too hot,” Phil mumbles, lifting a land lazily to swat at Dan’s toes. “Get off me.”
“I can't believe this,” Dan says, but he moves so he's lying parallel to Phil instead of perpendicular.
“Phan divorced,” Phil agrees. Dan snorts.
“Shut up, I hate you,” he says, but he's laughing. He goes still and soft next to Phil then, and Phil feels him shift his hand so their pinkies brush and then link up. The song playing on Dan’s phone ends and a new one begins, something slow and wordless and much easier to listen to. Phil rocks his foot back and forth to the beat and lets himself sink into the oozy swim of his head. He's very aware of the smoothness of the cotton bedsheets beneath his fingertips, of the slow drag of Dan’s breath, of the heavy tired goodness settling in his bones.
“I'm so sleepy,” he announces. Dan hums and rolls onto his side so he's facing Phil, his hair sticking up against the pillow beneath his head. “Also -” He thinks about it for a minute and decides that since he's not full, he’s got to be hungry. That's how it works, right? And now that he's thought about being hungry he's thinking about food, about how it would taste and feel in his mouth, between his teeth, pasta and curry and chocolate biscuits and watermelon and Doritos and ice cream and -
“I could literally eat a fucking house,” Dan, in a timely and excellent case of best friend telepathy, says when Phil doesn't finish his sentence. “Dunno about you, but like pizza? I would die for pizza.”
“Yeah,” Phil agrees. He nods and then stops abruptly when the motion makes the room swirl. Dan yawns. “I don't think we can order takeaway to a bus though.”
“Carry-out!” Dan corrects him, his American accent sudden and nasally in Phil’s ears. Phil makes a face. Even after two months here he's still not used to the way Americans talk, too flat and too fast, like their words are in a hurry to get somewhere.
“Takeaway,” he says. He sprawls out his legs and hums at the pleasant stretch in his cramped thighs. Dan reaches out and fiddles with Phil’s fringe, fixing it and pushing it out of his face.
“Think I saw a 7-11 on the corner if you actually do want food, though,” he offers. Phil thinks about it. The idea of food, sweets and crisps and fizzy drinks, is incredibly tempting, but it also requires moving and right now Phil is more comfortable than he's ever been in his life, probably.
"I just don't want to move," he admits. Dan laughs and flops forward so his head is resting against Phil's chest. The weight of his skull is a bit too warm but it's a comforting weight, slightly heavy and as familiar to Phil as anything on his own body. Maybe even more so. It's been so long that Phil doesn't think it's that surprising.
"You are useless," Dan says, but he says it kindly, all the fondness in the world in his shirt-muffled voice. Then he groans and pushes himself up off of Phil, all the way off the bed, stretching his arms up crooked at the elbows so he doesn't smack the ceiling. Phil watches through half-shut puffy eyes as Dan works his way through another yawn. Then he steps out of his gym shorts and tugs on a pair of jeans, the denim gliding on easily over his thighs. The stress and schedule of tour have carved off a lot of his softer edges, leaving his hips a little sharper and his collarbones standing out against the smooth skin of his chest. He looks good but then again, Phil has always thought that. Even in the square-hair era, which he is now able to see was a terrible mistake.
"What are you doing?" Phil asks, propping himself up on his elbows and scooting back slightly so the sun isn't shining directly into his eyes. Dan grabs his phone and checks the time, then glances out the window in the direction of the 7-11.
"We are going to go get snacks, because I want Doritos, and I know you will never pass up an opportunity to try some sort of hideous American sweet, so let's fucking go, we'll eat a fuck tonne of food and watch a film on my laptop when we get back, come on, Phil, mobilise!"
"Mobilise?" Phil says incredulously. "Mobilise. What do you mean, mobilise, you call me weird, Jesus."
Dan's laughing, loud and furling right out of his chest, his body tipped back against the wall and his eyes nearly closed from the force of his smile and he's so beautiful that Phil could cry, probably, if he did that much, but he doesn't so he settles for scrambling off the bed and tucking his fingertips into his pocket.
"Claw," Dan points out, his laughter slowing down a little so he can breathe.
It takes them nearly twenty minutes but they do end up at the 7-11, grateful for the aircon despite having barely spent any time outside at all. It gets hot in California, and it's only June. Phil doesn't understand how anyone could live here all year round.
"I know right?" Dan says, grabbing a tube of Pringle crisps off of a beige shelf and staring with narrowed puffy eyes at the ingredients. He wrinkles his nose. "This is a lot of ingredients. Isn't California supposed to be like all about the kale?"
He's sort of shouting. Phil's used to that, with Dan. but it's still pretty hilarious. The girl at the register has blue hair and a hoop in her nose and doesn't seem to care - she actually looks so bored she might cry. Every so often she glances over at them and then looks down at what is very obviously her phone beneath the counter. Phil hopes she knows that neither of them mind.
"Not here," Phil tells him, poking at a packet of gummy peach rings covered in sugar. He sort of wants to try them just to see how much they make his teeth hurt.
"Well, obviously," Dan sighs. He grabs a packet of salted cashew nuts and tosses them into their basket, followed by Hot Tamales, a box of spearmint gum, and a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos. Phil adds a pack of Twizzlers, much to Dan's disgust.
"They taste like wax!" he says as they go up to the till. Phil rolls his eyes.
"I like them." He starts to unload the contents of their basket onto the counter in front of the blue-haired girl. She barely smiles at him. Phil supposes if he worked somewhere like this he'd feel the same way.
"Twenty-two forty-nine," the girl says once she's scanned all of their stuff. Dan pulls two bills out of his back pocket and slides them over to her, smiling with his teeth the way he's only really started doing for strangers in the past year. "Thanks. Two fifty-one is your change, have a great day."
They leave the 7-11 laden down with two plastic bags and more junk food than Phil expected to buy. Everything had just looked good, was the problem, and Dan'd had plenty of money. And now they have snacks. And it's hot out but it's not sticky, and they have a fan in the bus, and cold drinks in one of the plastic bags Dan is holding, and they're high in California and life is good.
"I love you," Dan says once they're in the bus. The matter of fact way he says it will never stop making Phil's heart flip. "Thank you for doing this with me."
Phil's head is still heavy and his hair is hot from the sun and he nearly melts into Dan's body when Dan sets down his bags of snacks and moves forward to pull Phil into a fumbly sort of hug. The two of them stand in the middle of the bus with their arms looped together for a few minutes. Dan smells like the soap and shampoo that they've both been using lately, an American brand that seemed similar to what Phil uses at home.
"Could roll another joint," Dan mumbles into Phil's shoulder. "'F y'want." He's slurring, his words rolling together the way they do when his guard is down. Phil's had years of practise so he can understand him now, but when they first met he used to have to ask Dan to repeat himself all the time.
"Another?" Phil asks. Dan nods. Phil almost laughs. He's never been this high in his life. He can't imagine being higher. "If you want. I want those Doritos."
"Those are mine!" Dan says sternly, pushing away from Phil and grabbing the bags of food off the floor. He grins rather wickedly. Phil wants to kiss him forever and ever and ever. That's not particularly practical right now though, so he follows Dan into their little bedroom instead - and god, Phil is glad they have the bedroom, he didn't realise how dependent he was on peace and quiet and privacy until he didn't have any of it anymore - and closes the door behind him.
Dan is already on the bed, his shoes abandoned next to it, rolling another joint on the book that they wrote together (Phil loves calling it that) and bobbing his head slightly to the song playing on his phone. Phil has no idea how he moved so quickly. He feels like his joints are made of lead.
Ha. Joints. He's funny.
"What the fuck are you on about," Dan asks, fondly exasperated as he licks the spliff closed, and Phil blinks. He hadn't thought he'd been saying any of that out loud. When he doesn't respond Dan flaps his hand, doesn't matter, and props the joint between his lips to light it.
Phil makes Dan shotgun him for most of his hits. He just can't be bothered actually smoking it himself. Plus the way Dan's mouth lingers as the smoke dissipates makes Phil's head spin from more than just the weed, Dan's lips bumping his own. At one point it turns into full-on snogging, open-mouthed and breathless, but Dan pulls away with a gasp when a flake of hot ash falls off the end of the joint onto his hand.
"Are you okay?" Phil asks, a flash of irrational terror rising up in his throat and behind his eyes. He grabs at Dan's unopened can of Arizona tea and rushes to press the cold side of it to the place that's presumably been terribly burned. When Dan starts laughing the reality of the situation clicks in his brain. "What? Stop laughing, I thought you were hurt." He pouts so heavily, his lower lip stuck out, that Dan stifles his laughter and pulls Phil in for another quick kiss.
"You," he says seriously, his face so close to Phil's that Phil has to cross his eyes a little to look at him properly, "are a hero." He sits up straight and hits the joint, then plants his mouth back onto Phil's and breathes the smoke right into his lungs.
Dan is passed out an hour later, curled up with a bit of Twizzler still resting in his loosely-curled fist. The day has only gotten warmer and his shirt is pushed up so his back is bare. Phil drags his fingertips across the expanse of it, gentle and slow the way he knows Dan likes, and feels the soft skin and tiny peach fuzz of hair there, the delicate bones beneath. Human bodies are amazing, really, complex and stunning and soft and hard and strong. Phil loves bodies. He loves people. He loves Dan.
It becomes suddenly and vitally important that Dan knows exactly how Phil feels about him. Phil moves his hand from Dan's back to his shoulder and shakes gently, a quick rock back and forth that used to work like a charm at home. Dan doesn't stir, although they've been sleeping on a moving bus for the last two months so Phil supposes that makes sense. He shakes Dan a little harder.
"Fuck, we late?" Dan mumbles blearily, pushing himself up onto his elbows and rubbing at his puffy eyes. He has an imprint of the wrinkles of his sleeve on his cheek from sleeping all curled up. He's alarmingly sweet and Phil wishes he could take pictures with his eyes because he wants to capture every moment of this day in exactly the way he's seeing it.
"No," he says, and tension visibly leaves Dan's body as he flops forward onto the mattress with a relieved sigh. "No, I - I just wanted to tell you I love you."
Dan rolls onto his back so he can look at Phil. His eyes are dark and soft and Phil's so comfortable here. He's so glad he has someone in his life who understands him the way Dan does.
"Do you really," Dan says. He's grinning. "I didn't know." Phil rolls his eyes and Dan's grin gets even wider. Softer, too, until it's the special smile he only ever does for Phil.
It's an ego boost, being with Dan. Dan, who chooses so few out of a pool of so many. Dan, who protects himself and his heart like a dragon would its hoard. Dan, who wanted him first.
"Yeah, you did," Phil replies. Their hands link up above the abandoned Twizzler. Phil's head still feels heavy and warm and cradled by clouds and he thinks he wouldn't mind sleeping soon. Dan brings Phil's right hand up to his mouth and kisses each of his knuckles, close-mouthed and lingering. The contact makes Phil's blood fizz pleasantly.
"Yeah I did," Dan agrees, putting their intertwined hands back down on the blanket and tipping his head back as he yawns. He lays down, pulling Phil with him, and Phil follows easily. "Sleep now. I've set an alarm."
"Hero," Phil sighs, tucking himself up against Dan's chest. It's too warm for cuddles, really, but Phil can't make himself care. The fan's blowing right on them anyway. They'll be alright.