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On a Good Lab Partner scale of one to ten, Dan Howell is probably a four. He's easily distracted and constantly taps the end of his pencil against his desk. He never does his homework before the day it's due. He’s terrible at remembering even the most basic equations and he talks to everybody and if Phil didn't have a stupid desperate crush on him he probably wouldn't be able to stand sitting at the same lab table.
As it is, though, Phil puts up with it, because he fancies Dan rather a lot, to the point where he’s starting to think Dan’s tipped-back chair and sporadic humming is cute. Embarrassing for everyone involved, really.
It doesn't help at all that Phil is absolutely rubbish at science. All of it evades him. He does his homework and reads everything twice and researches it all outside of school and he still can't remember anything beyond mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell, which he isn't sure is exactly true and probably only remembers because it was a meme. Meanwhile Dan sits next to him and scribbles lyrics on the top of their lab table and does his homework five minutes before class starts and he’s still getting top marks. It's frustrating. Phil’s jealous. There's also a little part of him that keeps suggesting he ask Dan for help after school, wink wink nudge nudge, but he's trying to ignore that. He's not Dan’s type. He's not sure what Dan’s type is, exactly, but he knows it's not him.
Dan hangs out with the kids who are cool because they aren't. His friends are the loners in dark coats and the girls in upper sixth with hair dyed fluorescent pink and the boys who sneak weed into music festivals. He drinks in the woods at the weekend and he has years’ worth of Reading Fest bracelets strung around his skinny right wrist. Phil is nothing like that. The most rebellious thing he's ever done is lie to his teachers about having a broken toe to get out of sports. Which is fine, like, he doesn't need to drink or do drugs or smoke cigarettes or whatever to have a nice time, but he understands that Dan doesn't hang out with people like him. Dan wouldn't even know who he was if they didn't sit at the same table for Chemistry.
Phil isn't unpopular, but he definitely isn't popular either. He has friends, and people in his classes that he likes, and people that like him, but mostly he sails under the radar. That's how he prefers it, honestly. When he started at his old school, back when his family still lived up near Manchester, he’d had to go in on the first day with hair that he and his friend Anja had accidentally dyed a terrible vivid orangey blonde. That's the only time he's ever had the attention of even a fraction of a school on him and it was horrific. He’s glad he only had to sit through a year of relentless bullying before his family moved.
He and Dan just aren't in intersecting circles. They're lab partners for this unit and when Mr Gabriel changes their seats they'll never talk again and that's fine. Phil’s going to university in a year anyway. There's not much point making new friends when everyone is leaving and no one wants to come back.
When the bell goes Phil lingers by the calendar near the door checking due dates for longer than he needs to and tries not to be too obvious about it. Out of the corner of his eye he watches Dan text someone sneakily behind his textbook, then tuck his phone back into his blazer pocket and slide his book into his bag.
Someone shouts Dan’s name in the corridor and he looks up, past Phil out at whoever wanted his attention.
“Wait a minute, christ!” Dan shouts back, glancing back over his shoulder at Mr Gabriel with a guilty giggle.
“Language, Mr Howell,” Mr Gabriel reminds him. He sounds very bored. Dan grins.
“Yes, sir,” he says cheekily, swinging his bag onto his shoulder and charging for the door. He nearly knocks Phil over in his rush and stumbles sideways at the impact for a second before pausing and giving Phil a once-over that makes Phil’s stomach flip nervously. “Sorry, mate.” He smiles then, awkward but genuine, a dimple popping slightly in his cheek. “You alright?” Phil nods too many times. “Cool. See you tomorrow, then.”
And then he's gone. Phil blinks at the empty doorway, watches as Dan slips around the corner of the corridor with his friend. That was a lot of words that had nothing to do with Chemistry.
PJ asks, later, his voice a hushed whisper in the middle of English when Phil is staring into the middle distance thinking about how this has got to be the turning point in his miserable pathetic loveless life, “you good, mate? You haven't written anything down all lesson.”
“Fine,” Phil whispers. Tony Pierce turns and glares at them both from the desk in front of Phil. “Sorry! Tell you later, Peej.”
PJ nods and flashes Phil a thumbs up. Phil takes a deep breath and tries to focus on whatever it is that Mrs Astor is talking about, but The Canterbury Tales is hard to dive into with no context. He ends up fuzzing out again, thinking about Dan instead, about the warm solid weight of his body colliding with Phil’s, about his big hands sprawling across his desk, about the low rumble of his suppressed laughter during class.
He wonders what he'd have to do to make Dan laugh like that. Then he wonders what he wouldn't do.
Life goes on. September turns to October and Mr Gabriel changes everyone’s lab partners after the unit exam. Phil sits next to a boy called Matt now, and he's nice enough but he's not Dan, which is stupid because Dan didn't ever really even give Phil the time of day.
But Matt’s nice, and he does his homework, and he plays golf and has a picture of a shaggy sheepdog as the lock screen of his phone so he's alright in Phil’s books. For a lab partner he'll never speak to outside of school.
Phil doesn't look forward to Chemistry much anymore. Looking at Dan’s profile from four rows over is tragic once you've got used to seeing his smile half a metre from your face.
Halfway through October they start a new chapter of their textbook in Spanish. Their teacher, a cross, perpetually-tired giant of a man called Mr Harris, pulls names out of a hat and assigns them new seats, and in a random twist of luck Phil ends up in the back of the classroom next to Dan.
"We sat together in Chemistry," Dan whispers, and Phil says, "yep," and that's how it starts.
Dan shows up several minutes before class begins instead of lingering in the halls now. Every time he slumps into his chair with five minutes left til the bell goes, the warm gooey feeling sitting in Phil's stomach gets a little harder to ignore. It's near impossible to focus on Spanish now.
Somehow, Phil can't make himself care. He never liked Spanish much anyway.
On Halloween Allie Jenkins throws a party, and against all odds Phil is invited. Everybody who’s anybody goes. Phil dresses up like some sort of subdued vampire, just a collared white shirt and a black blazer borrowed from Martyn along with a stiff fabric rose in his buttonhole and some plastic fangs from Poundland tucked between his teeth.
He goes with PJ because he refuses to go alone. PJ’s in some kind of weird white get-up, with goggles and a scarf and a strange grave voice.
"Colour bandit!" he says gruffly when Phil gives him a weird look on the threshold of the Liguoris' house. "That comic I'm making."
"Oh, cool," Phil enthuses. PJ grins. He's got chalk or something in his hair to make it white. Every time he moves his curls bounce and powder puffs up into the air.
"Yeah, cheers, no one's gonna know what it is but there's a secret to it that'll make it really cool." He smiles sneakily and Phil grins back, a bounce in his step as they make their way down PJ's road. He loves Halloween.
Dan is at the party, of course, in a toga of all things, and Phil reiterates to himself that he loves Halloween. He loves Halloween. He's so glad that it's warm tonight.
"Phil!" Dan shouts. He's drunk already, his smile loose and his eyes bright but glazed. "I'm so glad you're here!" He stumbles his way around two girls in matching hats and pushes himself into Phil's space, loud and close. "When did you get here? Do you want a drink? This isn't my house but I've basically been, er - " He seems to lose his train of thought for a moment, scanning the crowd like he's looking for someone. Phil can't stop looking at him. "It's Katie's house but she wanted me to help since I'm so," a slow rolling grin and a full-body shimmy that has Phil leaning backwards rather desperately in an attempt to stop himself from pushing Dan up against the wall, "friendly or whatever the fuck."
Phil's never been around Dan drunk. He didn't know what to expect. He could have been any kind of drunk - somehow Phil never even thought of this. Of Dan being flirty. Of Dan all touchy and tactile.
Halloween is the best. It's the worst but it's the best and it's very possible that there'll be another ghost floating around southern England before the night is over. Phil reckons he's likely to look at Dan slightly too hard and just explode.
"You are friendly," he says at last, his voice only a little bit strangled, and Dan kind of looks at him for a few seconds before grinning and nodding.
"I know, right? Anyway, drink? What do you like? Can I surprise you? I have come a long way since my Smirnoff days."
He says it with a self-deprecating smirk like it's an inside joke that Phil is meant to know. Instead of feeling left out Phil just resolves to learn it, to dig up the story and why it's funny, to get to know Dan as much as possible. To find the source of the spark inside Dan's eyes and the flicker of his laugh and to make himself warm like that, too.
November brings rain, day in and day out, for so long that Phil thinks he'll never see the sun again. His damp shoes squeak when he walks and he decides, shaking water out of his hair for the third time that day, that once he finishes school he's moving to California and never looking back. He hates rain.
There are a few perks though. Dan with his hair curling up at the ends, Dan slinking into class even earlier to avoid ruining his blazer entirely, Dan offering Phil a ride home.
Dan somehow slipping through the cracks in the walls that Phil has built to crouch behind, Dan having Phil's mobile number and texting him screenshots from reddit and tumblr at two in the afternoon. Dan quickly and effortlessly becoming someone who Phil can consider a friend.
The bell to signal the beginning of class rang several minutes ago but their teacher isn't even standing up to speak yet and everyone else in the room are talking to each other so Phil is leaning over his unfinished grammar homework, clutching a pencil so frantically that the tips of his fingers have gone white. Dan is texting someone and Phil wishes he weren't so aware of the movement of Dan's thumbs as he types because that's a whole new level of creepy and weird that Phil never thought he'd reach.
"I don't know any of this," he groans finally, dropping his pencil and shoving the paper away from himself before slumping over and resting his forehead against his desk. "I give up."
"Don't do that," Dan replies, his voice vague. He reaches over without looking up from his phone and gives Phil's head two kind pats. "It's easy."
"You do it then, clever clogs."
“I’m not doing your bloody homework,” Dan laughs, his mouth pulled up into an utterly disarming smile and his voice soft and low. Phil sighs at him dramatically as he sits back up.
“I hope you are eaten by a toad,” he says quietly, very solemn. Dan rolls his eyes but it's fond. He goes still for a second, his eyes flicking up to the front of the classroom, then abruptly picks up his chair and moves it several centimetres closer. Phil jumps, but only slightly. He's so glad they sit in the back.
“Here,” Dan murmurs, “it's easy,” and then he's leaning across Phil’s desk and scribbling something almost illegible onto Phil’s paper about subjunctive verbs. Somehow he ends up with an answer that looks like it might be correct. Their bodies are so close, Phil can hear the fabric of Dan's button down rustling. “See?”
“No,” Phil whispers bluntly. Dan snorts.
“That's okay.” He smiles. The dimple in his cheek dips deep. “Are you doing anything tonight?”
Phil does have plans tonight, actually, with his parents and Martyn, to have dinner and play a game of Cluedo, but Dan’s eyes are shiny and he’s right there and Phil’s wavering. He can miss it just this once. His parents won't mind. They’ll probably be ecstatic that he's doing something in the evening other than coursework or video games.
“No?” he says, then again, more sure, “no, I'm not.”
Dan’s smile doesn't shrink, it just… gets a little different. A little softer, maybe. The skin next to his eyes is crinkling up. Phil's never seen him smile like that before. He wants to make it happen again.
“Come over to mine after school,” Dan whispers, tapping Phil’s assignment like we’ll study. At the front of the room their teacher clears his throat but Phil can't look away. Dan winks and turns his head down to his notes. Phil nods.
“Yeah, okay,” he says, just a bit too loud, and their teacher sighs.
“Mr Lester, what do you have to say that could possibly be more important than what I have to say at this particular moment, considering you are in my classroom during my lecture hour?”
Phil’s whole body feels like it's made of pins and needles as he stands, his legs locking so he doesn't fall. He glances down at Dan, who’s staring up at him with wide, alarmed eyes. Dan mouths something. Phil looks up at Mr Harris, whose mutton chops are doing a poor job of disguising the wobbly red jowls beneath them, then back down at Dan.
He's starting to stand up. Phil’s eyes go wide and he moves without thinking, presses his fingertips to Dan’s shoulderblade, hidden behind the head of the football player who sits in front of them. Dan freezes. Phil pushes down just slightly and although he resists for a moment, Dan seems to get the message. He sits down. Phil exhales. There's no need to get them both in trouble. No need for Mr Harris to move them to different seats.
“Sorry, sir,” Phil says, several seconds too late, and he moves his hand from Dan’s shoulder just in time for everyone in the room to turn around and look at him.
It's horrible. He's aware, suddenly, completely, that his uniform doesn't fit him properly, that there's a spot forming at the base of his crooked nose, that his teeth need braces but his parents don't believe in them unless there's a medical reason. His arms and legs stick out of his blazer and trousers from the absurd amount of growing he's done since the start of the year. He looks stupid and he's in trouble and anxiety bursts, sudden and writhing and hideous, right into his stomach.
“How about you tell the whole class what you so desperately had to tell your friend, Mr Lester?” Mr Harris says. He’s so mean. Phil doesn't understand why mean people become teachers.
“It was just about the homework,” he says. It's not a lie, technically. Mr Harris raises his unkempt eyebrows.
“And have you got the homework, Mr Lester?” he asks. Phil’s heart sinks. His palms are clammy and he can feel a headache blooming between his left temple and his eyes. In his peripheral he can see Dan staring at him, eyes huge and mouth open just slightly.
“Er, I didn't quite understand-” Phil starts, but Mr Harris shakes his head.
“Talking in class, no homework, that's two demerits, Lester.” He stalks over to his massive old box of a desk computer and clicks around for a few seconds. The entire class keeps alternating between looking at him and looking at Phil. There's not a single second that Phil doesn't have a pair of eyes trained on him. The back of his neck burns. “And along with a tardy demerit three weeks ago, you've got three demerits, and we all know what that means. Detention, Lippy!”
It's a horrible nickname. Phil never told anyone they could use it, has spoken loudly against it actually, but Mr Harris thinks he's funny and says it anyway.
“One hour, today, after school,” Mr Harris says slowly as he fills out the detention slip. Phil’s stomach is churning. He stays very very still, his fingertips stuck into his pockets nervously.
“Sorry,” Phil offers again, weakly. Mr Harris slaps the detention slip onto his desk and stares at Phil hard. Phil swallows. He really, really does not want to go up there, up to the front with everyone watching him, a treacherous 7 metre walk up an aisle strewn with rubbish and bags and lanky lounging legs over which he is absolutely certain to trip.
But somehow he makes it. Somehow he gets from his desk to the front of the room and back without anything happening, without any trips or stumbles or broken bones, and as he sinks back into his seat with his entire face glowing red like a beacon, Dan slides a note across Phil’s desk. His handwriting is appalling but Phil can still read the scrawling script - an im sorry and a sloping sad face.
that's okay, Phil scribbles, then slides the paper back to Dan and tries to focus on Mr Harris’ droning voice as he continues his lesson on subjunctive versus indicative verbs.
Detention is shit. Phil sits through it slouched low over his desk, the back of his neck burning with embarrassment. He's never been here before. He’s never been bad enough.
He wonders if Dan still wants him to come over. He's got no idea where Dan’s house is and his phone has been dead for two hours, so Phil has to assume no. It makes his heart sink. He hadn't realised how much he was looking forward to hanging out with Dan until now.
The clock has been at 3:37 for two hours. Phil’s sure of it. He's about to put his hand up to suggest that someone check it when the minute hand shakes its way up to the 8. Phil is simultaneously disappointed and relieved.
He makes it, somehow, to the end of the hour, and slinks quietly out as soon as he can, and stumbles to the back entrance where he always sees Dan lurking (just in case, he thinks, just in case he’s here) and -
A typical scene. A pack of beefy, laddy type guys, strolling over-confidently round the corner towards a pub. A long lanky curled-up figure slumped against a bench on the pavement. Phil’s heart drops into his feet and he's running before he realises it, his bag thudding into his shoulderblades with every step.
“Fuck,” he hears the kid say, and it's definitely Dan, and Phil wants to kill whoever did this because Dan looks really rough.
“Why are you here?” Phil asks, dropping into a crouch next to Dan and wringing his hands nervously. He wants to help but he doesn't know if he can touch. Dan is busy adjusting his hair instead of tending to the blood dripping from his mouth, so he doesn't answer. He’s mystifying. He's annoying.
“You waited for me,” Phil says when Dan still doesn't say anything. His knees hurt from crouching like this but he doesn't move. Dan finally wipes blood away from his split lip, wincing as his fingertips gingerly probe the wound.
“Yeah,” he agrees. Phil wishes he had kitchen roll or something to offer so Dan could clean himself up. How do you even treat a split lip? “Course I did. You, I mean, you saved my arse in there, that would've been my fifth detention and I don't fancy an intervention meeting with the headmaster and my parents.” He grimaces, more blood oozing shiny and dark out of his lip, and Phil blames that specifically for the nerves that are on a low simmer in the bottom of his stomach.
“What happened?” he asks. His voice is calmer than he feels as he stands up. He offers a hand to Dan, who takes it and pulls himself up from the pavement. There's a raw angry scrape on his left cheekbone and dark bruises forming on his jaw, but at least his eyes look alright. He's favouring his left leg. Someone left several shoe marks on his side. “Jesus, Dan. What the hell?”
“I've never heard you swear before,” Dan mumbles. He looks a lot more out of it standing up - his eyes are glazed and he's swaying slightly, like he can't quite get his balance right. “I listen to you so much and you - never, you never -”
He stumbles, trips, flails forwards. Phil leaps at him and catches him without thinking about it, his arms wrapping around Dan’s waists for a few seconds before he moves one of his hands up to drape around Dan’s shoulder. He maneuvers them until they're standing side by side, steering Dan carefully with his arm.
“We’re going to go to my house,” Phil says, glancing around nervously. He didn't see any bullies in detention and he doesn't see any now but that doesn't mean they're not around. “As it’s closer. To the school. Actually I dunno where your house is. And we’re going to call my mum cos she's a nurse and we're going to go to A&E because I think you have a concussion.” Dan keeps walking but he doesn't reply. It makes Phil nervous. “Can you say something please, I really don't know what else to do.”
“My head feels like fucking shit,” Dan mutters. Phil looks over at him. He's squinting against the grey afternoon light like it burns. “Your house is fine. Mine’s like twenty minutes. Oh, God. I want to die. Headaches are the fucking worst, bloody mother fucking hell.”
“I know,” Phil says. He keeps his voice gentle and low. “I get migraines. When we get to my house we can make my - a room dark and you can wait in there until we go to A&E, so the light doesn't hurt your head more.”
It takes Dan a few seconds to agree. Panic is fluttering in Phil’s esophagus and he wishes he could move faster without jostling Dan. He wishes he could Apparate. He wishes he could fly.
Phil lives just a few streets away, his house neat and square and tucked in between two houses that are identical to his own. He manages to unlock the front door, pushing Dan gently into the foyer.
“Lovely house,” Dan says vaguely, leaning against the wall and watching as Phil closes the front door and kicks off his shoes.
“You haven't even seen it. Take your shoes off? Oh, Dan, you really don't look good.”
“Thanks,” Dan replies, leveling Phil with a flat look. His lip seems to have stopped bleeding but the bruise on his jaw has gotten darker since they left school, inky purple-black wrapping across his cheek. Phil watches while he slowly toes off his shoes and presses his fingertips to the abrasion on his face with a wince. “Have you got, like, ice?”
Once Dan’s settled in on the sitting room sofawith a bag of frozen peas pressed to his jaw, Phil goes into the kitchen and rings his mum. He's not quite sure what to say to her. Hey, mum, the boy I’ve fancied since year six waited for me while I was in detention so he got beat up and now he’s in our sitting room with a bag of peas on his head, can we take him to A&E and then ask him to stay for dinner?
“Hello?” his mum says on the third ring. Relief swells through the panic in Phil’s chest - he's not going to have to solve this on his own.
“Hi, Mum,” he says, and then he takes a deep breath and explains.
At the end of it - a surprisingly short story, even with how often Phil stutters and stops - his mum is quiet for a few seconds. Then she sighs.
“You had detention?” she asks. Phil rolls his eyes and glances back at the door that leads to the sitting room. “Phil, we -”
“Dan might be concussed, Mum,” Phil interjects, suddenly frustrated. His hand is sweaty round the phone. “I can't drive, I don't know what to do. Please can you help, and after you can shout at me? I’m really worried about him.”
She's home in twenty minutes, introducing herself to Dan in her warm comforting way, having him answer easy questions and follow the path of her finger with his eyes. Phil watches nervously, his hands deep in his pockets.
“Doesn't look like a concussion,” she says at last, brushing her hands off on her uniform trousers and smiling kindly. “Just be careful, keep an eye on your symptoms, make sure you don't hit your head again. If your headaches get worse or your vision starts getting blurry have your mum take you to your GP. Now, if you don't mind, I have to tell Phil off for landing himself in detention in the first place.”
“Mum,” Phil groans. Dan grins stiffly, the fresh scab on his lip pulling and threatening to split.
“Yeah, Phil's a terrible influence on me,” he says. Phil makes an offended noise and when Dan laughs in response his chest floods with warmth. Then Dan’s face goes solemn. “No, but Mrs Lester, it was my fault Phil had detention anyway. I asked him about the homework and our teacher only looked when Phil was answering my question. He wasn't - he didn't act out or anything, he doesn't - he - you shouldn't punish him. He didn't do anything wrong.”
Dan defending him makes something glow hot in Phil’s chest, purring and pleased. He looks down at his hands instead of at Dan or his mum, tries to keep himself from smiling.
“Is that true, Phil?” his mum asks. Phil meets Dan’s eyes briefly, then nods. His mum looks appraisingly at him for a few seconds, her eyebrows arched and her arms folded over her chest. Then she nods too. “Alright. I'm going to trust you on this, don't take advantage of it.”
She's playing up the mum thing because Dan is over. On the rare occasion that Phil gets in trouble she usually just takes his DS for a week. He looks at her and the corner of her mouth quirks and he thinks she probably knows, somehow. Mums always know. He's mentioned Dan enough in the last few weeks, anyways.
“I won't, Mum,” he says solemnly, and his mum nods at him before turning back to Dan.
“Have plenty of water, tell your mum what happened, don't go playing football or owt, you’ll be better in no time.” She smiles at him, then collects her things back up and levels Phil with a stern look. He doesn't dare look away. “We are going to talk soon, alright, Phil? Got a lot to talk about.”
“Right, yeah,” Phil says, his voice going short and choppy as his heart leaps into his throat again. His mum smiles gently, warm and soft-eyed, and goes up on her tip toes to kiss his forehead.
“Naught to worry about, love. Have a good day, do your coursework.”
“Yes, Mum.”
“Tell Dan it was lovely to meet him, and I look forward to seeing him again under nicer circumstances. I’ll see you later darling.”
She's gone as soon as she arrived, leaving the kitchen just slightly neater than before. Phil has no idea how she does it. He puts the kettle on and pours two glasses of water, then goes back into the sitting room.
Dan’s huddled in one corner of the couch, his long legs folded carefully so he takes up as little space as possible. He's still holding the frozen peas to his jaw.
“Think the cold’s helping,” he says with a lopsided smile as Phil sits down on the couch. “My jaw’s all numb. So’s my hand, though.”
Phil’s moving before he thinks about it, his hand coming up to cup Dan’s over the bag of peas. He'd only wanted to help, to give Dan’s arm a break, but now they're staring at each other and Phil can't seem to stop. Dan’s eyes are huge.
“Um,” Dan says finally, and Phil says, “right,” but it takes a few more seconds for either of them to let go.
They start revising together after school, on days when Dan doesn't have drama practise. The library is where they start, but they're too loud (“I wasn't,” Phil protests, “you got us kicked out, Dan”) so they end up at Dan’s house. It's farther from the school but there's a shortcut through the botanical gardens that Phil likes to take home.
“I'm actually shit at Chemistry,” Dan confesses one afternoon. Phil raises his eyebrows.
“You got top marks on the last test,” he says skeptically. Dan blinks, then grins.
“Yeah, cos balancing equations is just finding patterns and making it symmetrical,” he tells Phil, leaning in like it's a secret. His eyes are glimmering in the lamplight. Phil wonders if Dan’s parents have their heat on - it's so warm in this room. He leans away from Dan to get some fresh air and Dan’s face drops a little, his smile sliding off as he leans back too. “When it comes to labs and everything I'm rubbish.”
“So am I,” Phil offers. His voice creaks but neither of them say anything. “I liked biology better.”
“Ugh, no,” Dan says, and he does a dramatic full-bodied shudder that makes Phil snort unattractively through his nose. “Dissecting that poor frog. The frog never asked for that! The frog just wanted to go on fucking -” he waves his hand around vaguely and Phil has work hard to resist the urge to reach out and grab it and twine Dan's fingers together with his own - “catching some juicy flies or whatever the fuck frogs do. Hopping around. Not being dissected by sixteen year olds.”
“Dunno if frogs understand time like that,” Phil replies. Dan stares at him for several long seconds. Phil stares back. “What, they don't. They live for like, five years or something, they wouldn't be able to understand something being alive for sixteen.”
“Why do you know that?” Dan asks after another long pause in which he seems to be rather dumbstruck. “You are the weirdest person I've ever met,” and when Phil starts to shrink away (words hurt as much as sticks and stones do, and weird hurts more than most, barbed and cruel in his head even if Dan didn't mean it that way) Dan’s eyes go wide and he leans forward. Phil freezes and watches with bated breath. “Phil, I like weird. Weird is fine. Weird is good. I’m fucking weird, have you talked to me? Can't go a single conversation without a poorly timed wink.” Phil can't even remember what they were talking about. Dan’s mouth is so - it's literally inches away. Phil could lean forward and he'd be there. His head is spinning. There's still the sickly yellow shadow of a bruise on Dan’s jaw.
Dan calls him one night a week into winter holiday and says everyone's in Wales but he opted to stay home, asks him over, invites Phil into his room and challenges him to a MarioKart tournament that turns into hours and hours of competition that never feels too tense. It's right at the border of too much and perfect and Phil feels wide awake despite it being nearly three am. It's raining again, hard enough that it makes the windows rattle, loud enough that Phil could do something mad and life-changing like kiss Dan without anyone being able to overhear. Knowing that they wouldn't get caught makes the thought take shape in Phil's head, bright and vivid and glowing with how much he wants it, but then Dan speeds past him on Frappe Snowland and Phil is distracted by the need to win.
They're too tired, at the end of it, to finish inflating the air mattress Dan found after several minutes' rummaging through a hall closet, but it's blown up enough for Phil to clamber onto it and starfish out the way he always does, his arms and legs akimbo and his cheek pressed to the mattress, and the last thing he registers is Dan saying something that might be "goodnight."
Phil isn't an early riser by any means. He prefers nighttime and he enjoys a lie-in more than most things. But when he sleeps at other people's houses he almost always wakes up far too early, hours and hours before anyone else stirs. There's a specific sort of awkward silence in those hours that Phil is always afraid to break.
He wakes up on the half-deflated air mattress on Dan’s floor at 9:32. Rain is drumming steadily against the windows and Phil’s bladder is heavy with the need for a wee, so he puts on his glasses and wobbles to his feet and creeps out of Dan’s bedroom, careful to close the door behind him.
The house is quiet. The rain has finally stopped. Colin, the Howells’ dog, is sprawled at the end of the hallway, his snout resting comfortably on his paws.
“Hi,” Phil whispers at Colin as he walks past him to get to the bathroom. He doesn't know why he's whispering. No one else is home. Colin lifts his head and blinks at Phil twice, then makes a snuffling sound and puts his nose back on his paws.
The bathroom is all pale shades of blue and Phil sort of looks like a ghost in the spotty-sided mirror. He avoids looking at the circles under his eyes and has a wee instead, then washes his hands and yawns at the bottom of his reflection. Calm mid-morning quiet presses on his ears as he wipes his damp hands on his trackies and creeps back to Dan’s bedroom.
“Oh my god,” Dan says when he wakes up. He sounds horrified. Phil looks up from his phone. “How long have you been awake.”
“Er, like an hour?” Phil almost asks, like he's not sure it's the right answer. Dan groans. His hair is a mess, sticking up in the back and curling slightly in the front, and he keeps patting at it, trying to make it stay down.
“I’m so sorry,” he says. Phil shakes his head.
“I didn't mind.”
It's true. He likes mornings, if he wakes up for them without an alarm and with nowhere to go. They're quiet and contemplative. He doesn't have to focus on anything. He spent the last hour and a bit listening to the rain and the cars on the road and the gentle shuffle of Dan’s blankets and breathing, and now Dan’s awake, and it's a perfect shift from night to day.
“Right,” Dan says, and they stare at each other for a few seconds, morning-soft with barriers still down, and the air between them feels hot with static. “Okay.”
He hops out of bed - flushes red when he remembers he's topless - gropes across his floor for a shirt without success for a few seconds - bolts out of the door. Phil stares after him with his jaw hanging wide. He doesn't mean to stare but Dan’s all -
“Wow,” Phil breathes. His head’s a kaleidoscope of Dan’s long torso and the angles of his arms and the gentle protrusion of his ribs, and Phil’s heart is thudding loud in his ears. Dan is pretty.
He comes back with a scrubbed-pink face (the bruise is nearly gone, only visible if you know what to look for, and Phil is so glad) and a cloud of minty-scented breath. Phil wishes he were brave enough to kiss him, wishes he were a girl so maybe Dan would kiss him first. Being - being not straight is so weird.
Weird is good, Dan from last night whispers in his head, and Dan from right now is just standing in the doorway and looking at him, and Phil has had enough.
“God,” he says, and Dan takes another step into his room and shuts the door and then they're both right there, so close but still not touching, and Phil’s body is made of static and white noise and prickling warmth. “Dan, look, I didn't - I don't -”
“I fancy you.”
Dan blurts it out like paint from a tube. Phil doesn't remember how to think.
“Actually?” is all he can think to say, so he says it, and Dan’s stricken expression relaxes and curls into a sudden smile.
“Er, yeah,” he says, shrugging a little. “I wasn't ever that subtle, really.”
“Oh.” Phil pauses and frowns. “Really? I never - I really didn't think you liked me.”
Dan’s face contorts its way through about seven different emotions before it lands on bemused. He steps forward, away from the door and closer to Phil, and Phil’s throat dries up. This cannot be happening. There's no way. What the hell.
“You never think anyone likes you,” Dan says, a statement instead of an accusation. “You're wrong, Phil, loads of people like you. You're the nicest person I've ever met.”
“Shut up,” Phil whispers. Compliments make his stomach squirm. Dan’s eyes are glimmering.
“Okay,” he breathes, and Phil doesn't know who moves first but one moment they're staring at each other and the next their mouths are pressed together in a smushed semblance of a kiss. Phil doesn't even know what to do - too much is happening, his hands are dangling awkwardly at his sides, he sort of can't breathe - and then Dan takes mercy on him and pulls away.
“Not good,” he says critically. Phil grimaces. “It was my fault, sorry, I was too full on. Try again?”
Phil pushes his hair out of his eyes and settles his hands on Dan’s waist. His hips are narrow beneath Phil’s palms and this is all he’s ever wanted, to hold a boy like this, to kiss a boy like his friends talk about kissing girls. He wants this.
“Yeah,” he agrees, nodding, and they're both leaning forward and in. “Yeah, of course.” They're chest to chest. As their chins bump together Phil lets out one more stuttering sigh.
Dan kisses with his whole mouth and then some this time, smooth and slow, peeling Phil’s breath from his lungs like it’s nothing. It makes Phil feel like he's afloat, like he's only tethered down at the points where he and Dan touch.
“You're brilliant,” Dan whispers, pressing a final quick kiss to Phil’s lower lip before pulling away. He presses his back to the door and Phil steps back a few paces too, both of them breathing a little too fast.
“Er,” Phil says, and Dan grins and looks down at his feet, his hair flopping down over his face.
“Hi,” he replies. His voice is low and Phil’s lungs clench with a nervous sort of excitement.
“Hi,” Phil echoes. He sits down on Dan’s bed. “Uh.”
“Can we do that again?” Dan asks, and despite his enthusiasm Phil was still sort of expecting Dan to turn round and change his mind, so for a few seconds he just stares, his mouth just slightly open. “God, I just - you're so -”
What he is so, Phil doesn't find out, because Dan crawls them both onto the bed and they kiss for a long time, so long that Phil is genuinely a bit disoriented when they finally pull apart. Then they sit in silence for a long while. It's raining again. Phil can't believe he ever used to hate rain.
The quiet is comforting. It reminds Phil of being a little kid again, hiding under his duvet cover and pretending he was some kind of dragon or a prince under a spell. Only this is better, because Dan’s here with him and Phil can't think of a single fairytale that's ever ended like that.
“I want to kiss you all the time,” he says, his voice stripped down to nothing but raw honesty. Dan’s eyes are so, so warm. Phil wants to hold his hand and if they can stick their tongues down each other’s throats then holding hands is definitely within the realm of possibility. He nudges his fingertips down the duvet until they bump into Dan's knuckles. There's a brief heart-stopping moment in which Dan doesn't reciprocate but then he shifts his hand slightly and their fingers slot together, gentle and natural and easy like this is how they were meant to be.
“All the time?” Dan asks, “really?” and Phil doesn't understand how Dan can be so insecure when he looks and sounds the way he does. When he’s the best and prettiest and most interesting person Phil’s ever known.
“Yeah, I mean.” Phil shrugs. He sweeps his thumb carefully across the side of Dan’s hand. “If that’s okay.”
“That’s completely okay,” Dan tells him, detaching their hands and cupping Phil’s face to kiss him again, his fingers pushing gently at the bottom of Phil’s chin. He’s too good at this. Phil has a lot of learning to do.
“Cool,” he whispers as they lean in, twin gravitational pulls, and just before their mouths meet again Dan whispers back, almost a sigh, “Yeah."