Archive of Our Own ^beta

What Phil doesn’t understand, what Dan knew Phil wouldn’t understand and expected him not to, is that Dan wouldn’t be doing it for him.

But Dan was getting ahead of himself. 

Twenty hours ahead, in fact, since that was the exact amount of time that had passed, to the minute, since the two of them parted ways. That may seem like a dramatic way of describing what was otherwise a perfectly normal evening, with Phil at his brother’s and Dan at a concert that he didn’t really want to go to, but it was dramatic, even though it wasn’t meant to be.

Dan knew that something was wrong the minute he got home to find the lights off. He’d gotten a text right as the concert had drawn to its overdue close. His phone lit up with Phil’s first and last name, which even Phil’s family had started to make fun of him for. 

Dan was in Phil’s phone as dan with a little purple heart next to his name. What very few people got was that when Dan saw Phil Lester, the heart was implied. Plus, fuck him for being practical. So not the point.

Phil texted him, sickly. Then, victorian boy. take me out to sea. Dan immediately responded with a series of water droplets, followed by the simple question: migraine? A minute passed, then ten, then thirty, without Dan getting a response. Dan was always in the mood to go straight home after an evening away from Phil, or away in general, but that night, he came just short of running.

When he got home, finally, finally, he knelt on the floor beside the couch that Phil had claimed as his own, smoothing his blond fringe away from his forehead. He was warm, bordering on blazing and Dan’s hand came back clammy from sweat.

“Phil,” he murmured, “Phil, it’s me.” 

Phil groaned. “Dan.” 

“What happened? D’you start feeling sick just suddenly?” 

He asked because usually, Phil’s migraines didn’t come on just like that. There was usually tension in the morning or a poor night of sleep, something to tip them off that it was coming so that Phil at least had the choice to stay home. It was an out that Phil almost never took, no matter how persuasive Dan was or how much he bribed him, but still. Phil’s migraines were almost never a surprise.

And Phil didn’t answer him. He just muttered, “‘S too bright.” 

Dan answered, his voice quiet and soft. “The lights are off, baby, I can’t make it any darker than it already is.” 

Phil groaned again, and Dan felt his heart tremble. Briefly, he wondered if it would be possible to turn off the moon. As insane as it was, he would try, if it would make Phil feel better. But there were other, more practical ways of helping Phil. 

“I’ll be right back, okay?” he said, “I’m going to get you a cold compress and some water.” 

Phil complained again as Dan padded away, having pulled off his heavy boots to minimize noise, but Dan kept moving to the kitchen. He knew that Phil complained when he was sick, and wasn’t incredibly put off by it. He didn’t think that Phil was actually protesting against the prospect of getting water, until he came back with the full cool glass. 

“Here,” said Dan, “Drink this, it’ll make you feel better.” 

Phil didn’t react. He didn’t even let out his usual sigh of relief when Dan pressed the washcloth to his forehead. The breaking point came when Dan brought the glass of water to Phil’s lips. He didn’t move to take a sip, so Dan tilted his head back slightly and let a bit of water trickle into his mouth.

The reaction was instantaneous. Phil let out a hissing noise, but it wasn’t a human kind of hiss. It sounded like the noise that a hot pan makes when you pour cold water over it. Some of the water did make it past his lips, and a few seconds later, he started to wretch. 

Dan barely had the time to say, “Oh, Phil,” before he threw up his guts on the floor. For a second, there was nothing. Neither of them said a word. Then, Dan said, “Okay. That’s it. I’m calling… someone. The doctor. 999. Just… someone.” 

He got up off the floor, not even noticing or caring if his knees were stained, and headed for the kitchen, where he’d left his phone. He hadn’t even taken two steps when he felt Phil’s hand around his wrist. 

His skin was ice cold, cold not like the usual touch of his boyfriend with circulation issues but cold like the dead. And his grip was unbreakable, a vice around Dan keeping him rooted to the spot. Phil had never been that strong, not when… when… 

“Don’t,” Phil said. His voice had taken on a new commanding quality. “Don’t call anyone, Dan, I…”

Dan had thought that Phil’s eyes were breathtaking ever since the day they met, but now, he gazed into a piercing blue so bright they nearly shimmered and he realized that until this moment, he had had no idea of what breathtaking truly meant. 

“Phil,” he sighed. He felt like he was on the verge of swooning. 

Phil took a deep breath and let it out. Dan watched him attentively, and he could tell that the action no longer came naturally to him. He fumbled through it like a newborn kitten opening its eyes for the first time, and finished, lamely, “You don’t have to call anyone. I’m okay, I promise.” 

Dan fought hard against the urge to make a My Chemical Romance reference.

“Phil,” he said slowly, hoping that he sounded more measured than he felt, “I’m going to ask you again. What happened while you were with Martyn?” 

Phil gets this look in his glimmering eyes, the one that tells Dan that he wants to argue, but then, he sighs. “It didn’t happen while I was with Martyn. I was on my way back to the Underground when… I don’t even know what happened, to be honest with you. Someone just attacked me. I don’t know who it was or how they decided… decided on me. Well, it was a man, I can tell you that much. He was fast, strong. Dressed a little bit like an 18th century nobleman in this heavy fur coat, but I didn’t get a good look at his face. It was dark, and like I said, he was fast.” 

Phil spoke quickly, as if he was desperate for Dan to believe him. Dan just shook. Whether it was from fear or from rage, he wasn’t sure, though he could safely blame his trembling on a combination of the two. He tried to get himself under control. He couldn’t hold onto all this rage with nowhere to put it. All it would do was consume him and make him unavailable to Phil. 

He lowered himself slowly back down to the couch so that he was facing Phil and took both of Phil’s hands in his. “Shhh,” he soothed, “It’s okay. You’re safe now. You don’t have to tell me what happened next. I think I can guess.” 

“He bit me,” Phil continued anyway, “Right on the neck, like it was easy. And I…. after a second, I… enjoyed it.” He avoided eye contact. Dan didn’t force it. “When he had me drink from his wrist, I didn’t even have to think. I think it was instinct already, by that point.” 

The heavy silence fell over them again. Dan squeezed Phil’s hand. It was colder than it used to be, yes, but it was shaped the same, and the weight of it was familiar. Later, when Phil drifted off with the daylight, Dan would be brought to his knees by shock and fear. Fear of change, fear of what exactly this meant. But for the moment, all he could think was that this was his Phil, shaped the same with the same voice and almost the same pretty eyes. The main way that he could tell, really, is that he felt safe around him. Safe and comfortable and right at home. And Phil was scared. So, Dan did what he always did when Phil was sick and afraid. He maneuvered the two of them, not without difficulty, so that Dan was the one lying on his back on the couch, with Phil in his arms, one ear pressed to his chest. It felt a bit like holding onto a stone pillar, a feeling that Dan immediately decides he could get used to. Hell, if he found an actual stone pillar that contained the soul of Phil Lester, he would be in love with that, too. All things considered, this was much less complicated.

“I can hear your heartbeat,” Phil murmured like a prayer. Dan knew that if it were the other way around, Phil’s chest would be quiet. Not empty, though. Never empty. 

“You said that you didn’t get a good look at his face?” Dan asked. 

“I didn’t get any look at his face,” said Phil, “He attacked me out of nowhere and then ran right away. Or. Flew, I guess.” 

Dan listed off the stages of grief in his head, until he got to stage three: bargaining. It had never done him any favors before. Somehow, he knew, in the dark pit of his stomach, that there was no getting out of this. Phil was a vampire now. 

Phil was a vampire now. Phil was a vampire now. He repeated it to himself every which way until none of the words involved even sounded real anymore. In the end, the only word that stuck in his head was Phil. 

“What do you need?” he asked suddenly, “I’ll get you anything. A dark place to sleep, maybe? We could film videos and the podcast at night, that wouldn’t even have to change. If you needed—”
Dan cut himself off. He looked down at Phil and found him looking back up. 

He had never quite gotten used to the way that Phil looked at him. It was quite something, for someone who until very recently had no idea where he was going, to be gazed at as if they were the North Star itself. But that wasn’t how Phil looked now. The way that Phil was looking at him now was something both desperate and confident, maybe comparable to lust but noticeably less wholesome. Dan swallowed, and as his throat bobbed, Phil watched the movement. 

“Are you hungry?” Dan asked, already knowing the answer. 

Phil’s eyes were so blown out that they looked like pits, rimmed with two silver rings. Dan was glad that he could still look like that. Phil always looked so precious when his eyes were dilated, when he wanted something, and as always, the knowledge that the thing he wanted was Dan filled the other man with a dense sort of satisfaction. 

He felt dizzy. He wanted to feel dizzier. 

But Phil flinched away, shrinking as far back as their position on the couch would allow. “I don’t think I should be around you right now,” he said, “I don’t think I should be around anyone, but especially not you.” 

“Actually,” said Dan, “I think I’m the perfect person for you to be around right now.” 

Without elaborating, he wrapped a hand around the back of Phil’s head and brought him in closer. Phil squirmed. 

“Dan,” he said. 

“Phil,” Dan said, “It’s okay. I trust you.” When Phil looked up at him, the terrified look in his stare not getting in the way of its newfound ferocity, Dan said, “You can’t hurt me, Phil. Even if you wanted to, I don’t think it’s biologically possible.”

Phil didn’t move. “That’s a lot of trust to put in a person,” he said. 

“I know, right?” Dan teased, “It’s a good thing you’ve earned it.” 

Then, the most miraculous thing happened. Phil laughed. For the first time since he’d gotten home from his brother’s house, his worried little frown split into that grin, familiar and so loved, and it was like… well. Dan wanted to say that it was like the sun was coming out, but he supposed that wasn’t a very good metaphor to use anymore. 

Phil leaned up and pressed his lips to Dan’s, and they were soft. The feeling of Phil’s lips against Dan’s was carved into his subconscious, just as it was automatic to them to roll over and give each other a kiss before waking up each morning. Dan melted into it, exhaling through the kiss. As he pulled away, he nicked his lip on something sharp, which he realized was a fang. Phil’s fang.
He brought his hand up to his lips, and his fingertip came away stained with blood. Dan gasped, but not in fear. The slow trickle danced down his index finger and came to pool in the space between it and the next. What Dan did next didn’t take much thought. He’d done it a hundred times before. He brought two fingers up to Phil’s lips and held them there as Phil licked them clean.

He could feel his heart hammering in his chest, echoing the footsteps of a rabbit in the cage of a snake but no matter what his nervous system was doing, Dan had no urge to run away. 

Phil was no longer looking Dan in the eyes. Instead, he followed the drop of blood dancing from Dan’s lip to the bottom of his chin. “Go on,” said Dan, “Take it.”

“I haven’t….” Phil started, “I came straight home, I didn’t…”
“Well, that’s good, then,” said Dan, “I’m happy you came straight home. It should be me.” 

Phil opened his mouth slightly, in shock or in awe, and then he stuck his tongue out just slightly and swiped the blood off of Dan’s face. Despite the fact that the wound came from Phil, Dan couldn’t help but feel taken care of. 

Dan witnessed the exact moment that Phil’s mood changed, that he lost the fight against his new instincts or maybe surrendered that fight on purpose. He supposed that it was the supernatural (was Phil supernatural now?) version of not realizing how hungry you were until you had the first spoon of soup. Dan wasn’t exactly thinking straight. He was thinking even less straight than usual. 

As Dan huffed out a slightly hysterical laugh, Phil put a hand on his chest, just below his neck, and pressed him to the couch. “Are you sure?” he asked. 

Dan couldn’t stop grinning. He imagined that he must have looked completely insane. He hoped that he did, because that was how he felt, and it was fucking wonderful. “Completely,” he answered. 

Phil pounced. 

The first thing that Dan felt was the same incredible, too-much shivering feeling that he got whenever anyone touched his neck. The second was a shooting pain as he was impaled from two points. He sucked in his teeth, and scrambled for comfort. Even then, he moved towards Phil, not away from him, digging his nails into Phil’s bony shoulderblades. He tried to say something, maybe Phil’s name or please, but he gave up before he had the chance to form the words. He wasn’t sure what he would be begging for, anyway. 

Dan could feel himself growing weaker, more lightheaded. Seconds tunneled into hours, into years, his whole universe narrowed into this one moment. The world got soft around the edges and his grip on Phil relaxed into something that was almost like a hug. Just when his audible heartbeat slowed into a languid sort of rhythm, Phil tore himself away. As difficult as it must have been, he stayed perched above Dan on the couch, kissing at the puncture in his neck. It was the strangest feeling in the world, to feel his skin knitting itself back together. Dan sighed happily. 

Dan let his eyelids stay closed, enjoying the feeling of the room tilting and lurching around him, safe in the knowledge that he was in Phil’s arms. He felt a bit like he felt in 2009, like the world had shifted on its axis. A rebirth. He didn’t say that out loud, would have hated to interrupt the flow of sweet nothings that Phil whispered to him, but the thought stayed with him throughout the next day. 

Finally, Dan opened his eyes. “Holy shit,” he breathed. 

Phil giggled, and Dan knew the difference by now between Phil’s happy laugh and his relieved laugh. Dan, too, was relieved. Because the Phil looking down at him had no hollows in his cheeks. His skin wasn’t drawn too tightly across his face, he didn’t look sick or tired or dead. He looked like Phil. Hell, he may have even been blushing a little bit. 

There was a ring of red around Phil’s mouth – he was ever the messy eater – and Dan reached up to clean it off as casually as he would wipe cappuccino foam off of Phil’s upper lip. Not as effectively, of course, because there was much more blood than there would have been foam, and because Dan was having trouble controlling his own limbs. 

“Huh,” he mused, “Dan juice.” 

Phil’s jaw dropped. “Don’t say Dan juice!!” 

“It’s my juice, I can call it whatever I want,” said Dan, “Can I turn the lamp on?” 

Phil made a face, but said, “You can try.” 

Phil closed his eyes as Dan flicked on the light, bathing the two of them in its golden glow, and yes, that was a bit of pink scattered across Phil’s cheeks. He looked beautiful, and when Dan angled up to kiss him (he still wasn’t entirely sure when or how they had flipped) his lips and cheeks were warm again. 

Dan beamed. “How do you feel?”

“Better,” said Phil, “Much better. I think I might even feel better than I did… yesterday.” 

He still didn’t say when I was alive, and that was fine. Dan would be perfectly happy if Phil never put that into words. “Yeah?” Dan said, “How so?” 

“I feel stronger,” said Phil, “And I think…” He reached up, pulling his glasses away from his face. “My vision is better!” he exclaimed, “Dan, my vision is better! Nothing is blurry anymore!” 

“That’s great,” said Dan, though he couldn’t help the way his heart sank, “I’m so happy for you!” 

Phil took a moment to look at Dan, to analyze exactly what he was thinking, then he leaned forward for another kiss. This was not exactly difficult. They had only separated by a centimeter or two the last time they broke apart. “I’ll buy a pair of fake glasses and wear them sometimes, if that would make you happy.”
Dan grinned. “It would. Thanks.” He tasted his own blood on Phil’s lips and was shocked only by how little it shocked him. 

Phil’s expression narrowed suddenly, his smile drooping. “Are you okay?” he asked softly. 

“Honestly?” said Dan, “I feel fucking great. I feel dizzy and weak and I love it.”
“You absolute freak,” said Phil. 

“Nuh-uh,” said Dan, waving one finger an inch away from Phil’s face, “You don’t get to call me a freak when you’re the one who sucked me dry.” 

Phil made a noise that was probably only audible to Dan and to dogs. “Don’t say that! This is not a sex thing.” 

Dan raised an eyebrow. “Philip Michael Lester.” 

“Daniel James Howell,” said Phil. 

“Wow, you remembered my name this time,” said Dan, “You really are new and improved.” 

“Shut up,” said Phil. 

“Phil, we both know that you used to write fanfiction about Buffy. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. You cannot write gay vampire fanfiction then pretend it’s not a sex thing when you get turned into a vampire.”
Phil groaned, this time from embarrassment instead of discomfort, and hid his face in the curve of Dan’s neck. “Bold words from the writer of award-winning vampire yaoi The Urge.” He kissed the spot that he had bitten. 

“At least I’m self aware,” said Dan.

“Dan,” Phil murmured. 

“Yeah, spoon?” said Dan. 

“What are we going to do?” 

The question sat in the air between them. Dan stalled by tracing his thumb over Phil’s pulse point. He expected to feel nothing, but there was the faintest rushing sound, which came, of course, from his very own blood. His blood, inside of Phil, fueling him. Keeping him healthy and strong. In some incredibly twisted way, it was something Dan had wanted ever since Phil started getting those horrible headaches.

“I think we’ve found a perfectly good solution for now,” he said. 

“For now,” Phil repeated, “But what about next week? What about next year? What about…” He didn’t finish his sentence. Dan wasn’t ready to think about the next century, or even the next decade, when he would get older and his hair would go gray and Phil wouldn’t follow him. 

“We’ll figure something out,” Dan offered weakly, “We always do.” 

“I can’t–” Phil cut himself off, casting a furtive glance around the room. He kept his eyes anywhere but on Dan. “I can’t kill people, Dan. And I won’t keep drinking from you. It was fine once, maybe, but you’re already paler than I want you to be and I couldn’t live with myself if I actually hurt you. Don’t tell me that I can’t. You may be right, but I don’t want to find out.” 

Dan shifted on the couch, tangling his legs with Phil’s. All of his extremities were tingling as his heart pumped blood back into his body. “Well, you may not have to kill people. There are always billionaires.”
“Dan,” Phil scolded, though he couldn’t hold back a chuckle. 

“Fine, fine.” Dan remembered that in certain vampire movies, the hesitant vampire could drain rats, cats, and other small animals, but somehow, he thought that Phil would hate that idea even more than he hated the idea of killing people. “We could find blood banks. We have enough money that we probably wouldn’t even have to rob them, we could just offer bribes and be on our way. Same thing with people. Plenty of people already give blood. We just have to find folks who would be discrete enough. Who knows? There might even be a few freaks — freaks with a ph, that is — who would let us drink some of their blood for free.” 

“Us?” said Phil. 

“What?” said Dan. His heart dropped as he realized his mistake. He had already referred to them as a unit, referred to them both being vampires. Now, any pretext that he wasn’t thinking about it had gone out the window. 

“You said us,” said Phil, “It’s just me, Dan.” 

Dan swallowed. Phil watched the movement again. “Sorry,” he said, “Misspoke. Force of habit.” 

If there was one thing that anyone who’d been on the internet between the years of 2009 and 2026 could tell you, it was that Dan Howell was not a particularly skilled liar. 

Phil, especially, could always tell when he was bullshitting, and he half expected some long winded speech about the curse that he just couldn’t inflict, about how Dan would never be able to follow him into immortal life, like in those cheesy Halloween movies directed by someone’s horny mum. But it never came. Phil just said, “Uh-huh. Sure.” 

There was only one way that Dan could think to interpret that: Phil knew that Dan was thinking about it, but he wasn’t going to talk him out of it, because he was thinking about it too. Dan got the strangest urge to jump up and down in glee. 

“I don’t know how I feel about drinking people’s blood, even if it doesn’t kill them,” said Phil.
“Phil, have you met our fans?” said Dan, “It’s not bad if they consent to it.”
“But isn’t there kind of a crazy power imbalance there?” asked Phil. 

“... We could pay them. And only ask people over 25 whose brains have developed. Look, that’s not the point. We can work out the details later. All I’m saying is that there’s no reason to panic or get all despondent about a problem that has multiple easily accessible solutions.” 

Phil smiled softly, then kissed Dan on the curve of his cheekbone, which was one of Phil’s favorite spots. He could feel the little bloodstain that Phil left behind. “I love you.” 

“I love you too,” said Dan. 

“And I love when you go full mental health professional out of nowhere.”
Dan laughed. “I highly doubt that most mental health professionals have ever had to deal with a situation like this before.”

“My point still stands,” said Phil. 

Dan hummed. “So, if we don’t have to panic about this now… what should we do? I’d estimate that we have a few hours until sunrise.” 

Until sunrise. The words felt unfamiliar in his mouth. God, this was weird. 

“You must be tired,” said Phil, “I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to go to sleep.” 

Phil’s tone of voice made it very clear that while he wouldn’t blame Dan for going to sleep, he didn’t want him to. He sounded small, and rather young for someone on the brink of living forever. Dan supposed that in some ways, he was a newborn all over again. Dan’s protective spirit reared its head. 

“Not a chance,” he said, “It’s not that I don’t trust you, I trust you 100%. I just don’t want you to be alone right now. You go to sleep at sunrise, and I’ll take care of myself then. For now, my only priority is taking care of you.” 

Phil sighed, but didn’t argue. He’d already lost his fair share of arguments tonight. “Well, I’m not really hungry anymore,” he said, “This might sound weird considering the circumstances, but… could we just have a regular night? Could we stay in and play Silksong? I could watch you play piano. We could order pizza. Or, I could order pizza and you could eat it.” 

Dan felt his heart break at the idea of Phil never being able to enjoy his favorite meals again, but Phil didn’t seem too bothered by it, so he said nothing. Maybe it was biology, not to crave something that you couldn’t have.

“That sounds perfect,” Dan said instead. 

And it was perfect. They curled up on the couch together in their matching fleeces and turned on an episode of Below Deck, because Buffy felt like it would just hit a bit too close to home. Dan lay behind Phil, enjoying the residual warmth from his own blood. He played with Phil’s hair until it looked like a quiff and marveled at the new marble-like coolness of his face. He kissed Phil everywhere, on his head, along his hairline, between his eyes, on his cheeks, partially to get the new lay of the land and partially just because he wanted to. His heart soared every time he confirmed his own suspicions that not that much had changed. 

Phil, for his part, occasionally nosed at the side of Dan’s jaw, right where his pulse kicked, but he didn’t ask to drink again. Dan couldn’t help but feel a bit disappointed. He wanted that bliss back. He wanted to feel like he was floating, only tethered to the earth by Phil’s hold on him. But Phil was right; they shouldn’t push the boundaries of what they could get away with just yet. Despite how he’d been acting in the face of Phil’s new abilities, Dan didn’t actually want to be left sick and helpless. At least, not for more than a few minutes.

Dan promised himself that he wouldn’t fall asleep, but with Phil curled to his chest and the soft support of the couch crease at his back, he didn’t have much of a choice. 

When he woke up, it was light outside. Luckily, they’d had the foresight to cover the windows with an assortment of blankets and paper before settling in, and based on how deeply Phil slept beside him, it seemed to have done the trick. 

Sleeping was probably not the right word for what was happening to Phil. He didn’t seem to have fallen asleep so much as dropped right out of the mortal plane. He was on his back, his arms crossed over his chest like he was dead. Dan picked up one of his hands — cold, but Phil’s hands were always cold — and let it go. It fell right back to his chest. Dan shivered. Phil wasn’t breathing. His heart wasn’t beating. Dan forced down his terror, tried to remind himself that it was normal. It was normal for Phil to seem dead, because he was. 

The thing that terrified Dan the most was not the idea of Phil being undead. It was the thought that Phil had gone somewhere he would not let Dan follow. 

Suddenly, Dan couldn’t stand to be in that room anymore. He covered Phil with one of their blankets. It may or may not have been the Legalize Catboys blanket, which had now lived more lives than most human people, draped over Phil like a funeral shroud. Dan kissed his head through the fabric, then left another kiss on his cool knuckles just for good measure. 

“I love you,” he whispered, though he was certain that Phil could hear him even less than he would in his usual heavy human sleep, “See you in a bit.” 

He checked the digital clock on their coffee table. 4 PM. Dan swore to himself. That was what he got for basically pulling an all nighter with his vampire soulmate. He took out his phone and googled, what time is sunset today london. It came up with 5:57 PM. Two hours, give or take a few minutes. That gave him plenty of time. 

Time for what? What was time worth now? He wanted to Phil-proof the rest of the apartment, so that Phil could walk through it uninhibited as soon as he woke up. They would be the lunatic neighbors, with their covered windows, but if Dan was being completely honest with himself, he could admit that they had already been the neighborhood’s black sheep, and that he also didn’t really care that much. What was worse, vampire neighbors, or neighbors who walked around naked by an open window at seven in the morning? Dan, for one, knew which house he’d rather be invited to a potluck at. Although, a vampire potluck didn’t exactly sound like the kind of event that one could just leave. 

Which led him to his next issue, the question that had him dropping fruits, vegetables, iron tablets and all sorts of health food protein powder bullshit into their blender. He wasn’t even sure why they had any of this shit — maybe leftovers from the last time Dan made a half-hearted effort to become an actual gym bro – but he was glad that they did. Until they resolved the question of how exactly Phil was to get… food, Dan would have to do. Which meant that he had to keep his strength up, because if he passed out one night and Phil struggled to wake him up, Phil would just go on hunger strike, and a grumpy, starving, human Phil was hard enough to deal with, thank you very much. 

The most important thing that those two hours gave him, though, was time to think. Dan kept himself busy by washing the dishes, but his mind was so far away that he didn’t even notice his fingertips pruning after twenty minutes, forty. 

He wished that Phil was with him. Chores were always so much more fun when he had Phil needling him, helping him (though that rarely happened), yapping with him, or just sitting quietly in the same room. He wondered if laundry and taxes would only be happening during the night, now. Dan could just learn how to do them, but he wouldn’t, more on a matter of principle than anything else. 

He couldn’t stand the idea of the two of them being out of sync, Dan just waking up right as Phil succumbed to the pull of the sun. One of the things that made their relationship so good for both of them, and that made Dan’s life so fun in general, was how compatible he and Phil were. If that was no longer the case, Dan wasn’t sure what he would do. Yes he was. That was a lie.

There were certain aspects of societal performance in which Dan already felt like a vampire. Sleeping until sunset wasn’t that much of a shift from what he was doing now, staying up past midnight and sleeping until midday. 

There was a scene in almost every kind of vampire media, especially the modern kind, where the new vampire, only a year or two old, returned to visit their mortal family. They were always regarded as an outsider, stared at like something within their soul had been irreparably changed. A severing of family ties, an unfamiliarity. Didn’t Dan already know all about that? Hadn’t he been the elephant in the room for years? 

He had to admit that it was tempting to put as much space as possible between himself and his upbringing. The concept of his family barely recognizing him, of them drifting apart, it wasn’t only tolerable. It felt like a promise, as guilty as Dan felt to admit it. After a hundred years, two hundred, a thousand, would his childhood feel like a dream? Would he finally forget the look of his hometown and the feeling of a hand around his neck?

What was blood besides another kind of dip? 

God, that was fucked up. A little chill danced up his spine, something decidedly pleasant. He wondered if Phil could still feel those kinds of shivers, and if Dan would, if… if he was turned. If Phil would turn him. 

Dan thought it over. The idea of forever. When they’d first started planning out the blueprints for their house, Phil had referred to it offhand as a forever home. The words were casual coming from him, as they logically would be, for someone who’d come from a home like Phil’s in Rawtenstall. But for Dan, that was the first time that the word forever hadn’t seemed terrifying to him.  

Before then, forever had only ever had connotations of the most awful kind. He would feel depressed forever. He would be in the closet forever. Forever was stagnation. It was something that he resigned himself to, not something that he treasured. In the past few years, he had started to see it in a different light.

Twenty hours ago, Phil could have called the Phouse a forever home as much as he wanted, but that didn’t make it true. They both would have grown old in it, and then it would have been over. Growing old and dying; two other ideas that had haunted Dan, had burrowed into his bone marrow and stayed there during the height of his depression. He’d made peace with both of them. Hell, he’d even been a little excited to grow old with Phil. There was something romantic about the idea of the two of them looking into a mirror in the morning and taking stock of their mutual gray hair.

But this was better than romance. Getting to keep something good forever was infinitely better than making peace with the fact that he would one day let it go. It wasn’t just about Phil, either. Maybe he wanted to stick around, to watch how the world changed, to see how it got better or to fight for it to get better if it needed a little push. It was ironic, but strangely perfect, that his stage show that had started with the moon exploding and killing everyone had filled him with such a fundamental love of humanity. 

He and Phil could see and do everything together. They could meet so many interesting people and go everywhere their hearts desired. Hadn’t that been one of Phil’s intentions for the year?  And wasn’t there a kind of poetry in Dan, of all people, deciding that he never wanted to die? 

So, here he was, twenty hours after everything changed. And yet, Dan thought, as he prepared Phil’s breakfast by downing his disgusting protein smoothie, everything was almost exactly the same, when he looked at the fundamentals of it. He became even more sure of this realization when the sun dipped definitively below the horizon, and Phil came up behind him, wrapping his arms around Dan’s waist. 

“Good mo– evening,” he said, “Thank you for taking such good care of me last night.” 

“Always,” said Dan, ignoring the little twinge that his heart gave at just how badly he wanted to mean that. Always. Always. “You hungry?” he asked, knowing the answer already from the telltale pallor of Phil’s face. Dan lifted his wrist in front of Phil, a breath away from his mouth.

Phil raised an eyebrow. “You’re genuinely insane, Howell.”

“Unironically, I’d rather you take my blood than take my cereal,” said Dan. 

Phil giggled, and Dan watched in real time as his trepidation lessened, as he seemed to give in to what both he and Dan wanted. “Okay. Just a little bit, though.” 

Dan nodded, and Phil latched onto his vein like a suction. Dan winced, but made no effort to pull away. If the first instance of blood-sucking was like putting their fingers in each other’s mouths, this was a kiss on the cheek. Phil broke away neatly after what felt like only a few seconds, but when he smiled at Dan, almost shyly, his fangs were stained. Dan didn’t even think he felt dizzy, until he took a step forward for a kiss and Phil had to grab his waist to steady him. 

“Careful,” Phil murmured. 

Dan just shook his head and leaned in, wrapping his arms around Phil. Phil brought his cool, soft hands to Dan’s cheeks. The way they were wound together was as familiar and as welcome as the feeling of falling asleep at night. Dan again tasted the metallic tinge of his own blood in Phil’s mouth, and he groaned. 

So what if Phil was a vampire? If Phil was a brick wall, Dan would drive right into it.

When Dan opened his eyes, he thought, at first, that Phil had grown. He quickly realized that Phil was floating a few inches off the floor. 

“Oh,” said Phil, who sounded minorly surprised at most, “Neat.” 

Dan laughed. “Do you want to try and go out? I feel like we’ve kept you inside long enough. Don’t want you to develop some heightened, nightmare vampire agoraphobia.” Though nervousness flashed across Phil’s face, he nodded. “It’s okay,” Dan said, “I’ll be here.” 

He wasn’t sure what that meant or could mean to someone who was going through what Phil was going through, but it was Phil, so of course Dan being there meant something. He smiled. 

“Okay.” Dan watched as Phil steeled himself, as he made the decision to be brave. Dan had been blown away by Phil’s courage before, of course, but it never got old. “You’ll be here?” he repeated, just to be sure.

Dan squeezed Phil’s stony hand. “I’ll be here. I’ll keep you safe.” 

They went out into the night. Dan wasn’t sure why he was expecting things to feel different for him, but they didn’t. As far as Dan was concerned, it was just another late, mild evening. He felt nothing special, aside from a slight chill and annoyance that he was outside in the first place. But Phil might as well have been glowing from the inside. It better have been Dan’s perception of him, because if vampires actually sparkled, Dan was going to murder someone. 

Phil moved swiftly through the darkness, turning back only periodically to exclaim “It’s so much better!” He was, of course, talking about his eyesight, which was even clearer in the open night than it had been in the house. Dan found himself smiling hopelessly as Phil skipped from one side of the alley to the other, forgoing the pavement altogether and holding onto the walls. 

“Be careful, baby,” said Dan. He jogged after Phil, just barely grabbing onto his wrist. “It’s not that late yet, someone could spot you.” 

Phil frowned. “Then maybe we need to go somewhere we won’t be seen.” He cast a glance up at the roof of their house. Dan had been under the impression that they were about to run the length of the city. The fact that they were right behind their home settled over Dan, a soft kind of comfort. 

Phil twirled towards Dan. “Kiss me,” he demanded.

Dan leaned forward and pecked Phil on the lips. “Why?”
“No, not like that. Kiss me like you’ve been in love with me for sixteen years. I need it to fly.” 

Dan snorted. “I hardly think you need me to kiss you to start levitating again. There’s no way that that’s an actual cheat code. And if it was, how fucked up would that be for the vampires who don’t have soulmates?” 

“I’m pretty sure vampires call them companions,” said Phil, “And, shut up. It might not be the only way, but it is the fastest way. And it’s what I want, which is much more important. Come on.” 

Dan scoffed, but it was mostly for show. He never genuinely needed a reason to kiss Phil, and even if he had, helping him unlock his immortal magical powers was reason enough. But when they pulled apart for the second time, Phil’s feet stayed firmly planted on the ground. 

“Hmmm,” Phil hummed, making his adorable concentration face, “Maybe if I just think about it really hard…”
He screwed his face up, looking more constipated than anything, and pulling a laugh from Dan. “Baby, I don’t think that’s work—”
In a puff of smoke, Phil was gone. Well, that wasn’t quite true. In a puff of smoke, the tall adult man commonly known as Phil was gone, and in his place was a black cat with startlingly bright, familiar eyes. 

Dan stared with his mouth open. Before he could think of two words to string into a sentence, the cat dashed away. Phil jumped from a dumpster to a drain pipe to the roof of the Phouse, leaving Dan on his own in the back alley. Dan’s first instinct was to panic about whether Phil knew what he was doing, whether Phil was still in there at all, whether or not he could turn back. 

That question was answered for him, though. As soon as the black cat curled up on the roof, there was another puff of smoke, and Phil was back, curled into an unlikely position for a human being. Still, he didn’t move. He stayed with his chin propped up on his forearms and laughed. 

“Not what I was trying to do, but I guess I’ll take it.” 

Phil’s joy took up residence like a physical thing in Dan’s chest. Someone who’d never felt this kind of exhilaration before would probably compare it to a butterfly, but Dan wouldn’t join them, because he hated butterflies, and he would die for this. 

“I like that your cat’s hair is black,” Dan called up, “Very vintage AmazingPhil.” 

“Yeah, I guess it is, isn’t it?” said Phil, “If your idea of vintage is three years ago.” 

“You couldn’t turn into something more useful?” said Dan. 

“I like my cat!” Phil protested. 

“That’s great for you, but now I’m stuck down here.” Dan started examining the side of the house for places he could hold onto or put his foot to get up to the roof with Phil. 

“You want me to come back down and get you?” asked Phil, “Not sure exactly how I would go about that, since I don’t really know how I did it the first time, but…”
“No, no. It’s okay. Let me handle it.”
It became very rapidly clear to Dan as he was trying to balance on top of the dumpster behind his house that if Phil was going to live out the rest of eternity as a supernatural being, Dan should probably stop trying to protect him from any kind of manual labor. 

By the time Dan completed step one of the climb, he was already huffing and puffing, so he decided to forgo the drainpipe altogether and use his impressive height to plant his hands on the roof. Dan definitely did not have enough core strength to pull himself up. 

That was where Phil came in. He held on to Dan’s forearms and, with a level of strength that was not at all normal and that he definitely hadn’t had the day before, he pulled Dan up. It was as if it took him no effort in the slightest. Dan yelped. 

So Phil could now lift him and probably throw him around. Hot. Strange that he was still twink-skinny, but still. Hot. 

“We need a training montage,” said Phil. 

“That’s not fair,” said Dan, “I’m the one who actually goes to the gym. You’ve just been imbued with irrational levels of strength. I don’t think any normal human person could do what you just did, especially not me.” 

Phil laughed. “I meant a training montage for me, Dan.” 

“Oh. That makes more sense.” Dan lay down almost flat on his back, his heart still racing from the exertion of the half-climb. “I hope that when I learn to turn into an animal, I can turn into something with wings. Like a bat.” 

He wasn’t sure what he’d expected from gazing up at the sky, but whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t what he got. The mythical clear night barely existed in London. Even on nights with no clouds, the light pollution and regular pollution obscured the stars. Dan focused instead on something much more interesting: Phil, who had gone from sitting up and gazing lovingly down at him to lying beside him. 

Dan shuffled to the side by a few inches, bringing him close enough to lay his head on Phil’s chest. But Phil stopped him, shifting away and looking at Dan with wide eyes. 

Dan knew what he was going to say before he could say it. “It’s okay,” he promised, “I’m not afraid of you.” 

Phil relaxed just enough to let Dan get close to him. I’ve got places to be, Dan thought but didn’t say. His theory had been right. Phil’s heart was not beating. He was greeted by quiet. Not silence, just… quiet. Like the sound of a deep breath, or a pause in a walk in the woods. Some of Dan’s favorite moments were marked by that kind of quiet. Like this one. 

When Phil spoke, his voice rumbled, sending vibrations where Dan was pressed up against him. Dan smiled to himself. It was familiar. Quiet and familiar. 

“Are we going to talk about it?” he asked.

“Hmm,” Dan responded. He knew what Phil was asking about, or at least he would have if he hadn’t been lulled away from his capability of conscious thought. 

“Dan,” Phil said, slowly, “Are we going to talk about how you keep referencing wanting to be turned into a vampire?” 

Dan sat up, pushing himself up on his elbows so that he could lie on Phil and look at him at the same time. The stone of the roof was uncomfortable under his arms. He wondered if Phil’s back was okay, if Phil still felt things like that.
“I mean it,” he said. 

“I know,” said Phil, “That’s what scares me.” 

“You can’t tell me that there isn’t a part of you that wants it, too,” said Dan, “Spending the rest of our lives – no, spending forever — just the two of us. Here, or anywhere in the world, because we could go anywhere, we would have time. It’s basically what we were planning on doing anyway, just longer.” 

“Dan.” 

Dan charges ahead. “Think about it, Phil. I wake up before you at sunset, bring you something that we robbed from a bloodbank the night before. We spend hours just frolicking together. And things wouldn’t even have to change much. We could still film podcasts and videos at night. It might not be smart to tell the fans, but I think we should talk about it anyway, because I’m really not in the mood to go back to keeping secrets. We could tell your family and never tell mine, it would be perfect.” 

“Dan.”
“You’re the one who brought up the idea of a companion, Phil. I know that you don’t want to do this without me.” 

“Of course I don’t,” Phil whispered like the mere thought of it was horrifying to him. 

“And on a more selfish note,” said Dan, his voice threatening to break, “I don’t want you to leave me here.” 

“Dan, do you understand what you’re asking me for?” Phil asked, his expression marked by an uncharacteristic seriousness, “You’re asking me to kill you.” 

Dan felt his heart flutter in his chest like Phil had just kissed him and decided, again, to ignore it. Or at least, he really did try. If his lips quirked up a bit at the idea, that was between the two of them.

“No, I’m not,” said Dan, “I’m asking you to let me live.” 

To that, Phil said nothing. There was nothing left to say. Dan thought that in some measure, they’d both known before this conversation even started exactly how it would end. Dan and Phil would find each other in any universe. If they were birds, they would sit on the same wire. And if they were going to be undead, they would do it together.

When Phil broke away, his mouth once again covered in Dan’s blood, he held Dan by the shoulders, making sure that he was okay. 

Dan stared back, saying nothing for a second, two. He just watched Phil with every sense heightened: the wind felt like feathers against his cooling skin, the colors in Phil’s eyes were more vivid, the unnecessary rise and fall of his chest guided Dan like an unfailing rhythm. 

When Dan smiled at Phil, a pair of fangs glittered in his mouth.

—

There were rumors about the house on the corner. The neighbors had all been tentatively excited when construction started, and even more so when they learned through the grapevine about the wealthy, eccentric, influencer gay couple who were moving in. But this couple was not as they expected them to be. They were reclusive, especially for influencers, and though that was definitely better than having preventable fires and entire filming crews taking over the neighborhood on a week by week basis, people had questions about their two neighbors who could be spotted almost exclusively through the open windows in their kitchen, eating cereal straight out of the box at midnight. They were almost never even seen outside, especially not during the day. Theories ranged from Dan and Phil being your typical millionaire influencers who thought they were too good for the communities they invaded, to them being vampires. It was easy for the two of them to pick which theory they preferred. 

To be clear, these were not new whispers. That was just how Dan and Phil were. Between the shifts to their filming schedule and Dan discovering the magic of nighttime workout classes, not that much changed in the domestic life of Dan and Phil. 

Even if there were whispers, it was hard to hear or to care at night. When the rest of the world drifted off to sleep, Dan and Phil did something that they almost never did pre-vampirism but that they had started to enjoy greatly: they went out on the town. 

Tonight, that town was Manchester. It was relatively easy to get there once they both learned how to fly. Another thing they enjoyed greatly; zipping through the thick UK cloud cover, the world providing no resistance as they moved from one place to the next, together. 

They sat on the roof of their old apartment building. Phil got up by levitating, and Dan got up by shifting into the animal form that he’d anticipated so greatly: not a bat, or even an intimidating hawk, but a pigeon. He’d been pissed about it, until Phil had cooed over him and asked him if he could communicate with the street pigeons for him. Turns out, he absolutely could. 

The sky was deep black. They only had a few more minutes to dawdle before the sun rose again. About twenty, if Dan’s eyes weren’t deceiving him. At first, it had made him a bit sad to think about how short the night was when compared with the day, but that sadness quickly dissipated when he realized how many more nights they would have, compared to how many days they would have had. It had been months since their mutual transformation. It felt like days against the eternity they still had left.

Phil was quietly whistling to himself, a tune that was either made up or a bastardization of Space Dementia. He sipped excitedly from a blood sample he’d paid a blood bank to give him, as casually as if he was drinking a Ribena. It was Dan’s idea to ask for AB blood specifically, since people with AB type blood could only donate to other people with AB type blood, while people with AB type blood could receive from anyone with either A or B type blood, making AB type the least requested blood type for donation and the least likely to cause a catastrophe if the banks didn’t have it. 

Dan, for his part, was still figuring out the mechanics of running his tongue over his fangs without cutting himself. He’d stayed up past sunrise the night before, stalking news sites and socials until he found a wealthy stock broker whose wife was filing for divorce on the grounds of domestic violence. The fact that this man had gone to high school with Dan, and had been as repulsive and violent then as he apparently was now, had little to do with anything. Or so he told himself. He dabbed blood from the corners of his mouth with a needless daintiness.

Dan turned to Phil with an expression on his face which told Phil that within minutes, his fangs would be attached to Dan’s neck. Even when they got their shit together and it stopped being necessary for Phil to use Dan like his own personal snack station, Dan still asked him to from time to time. He liked it. It was like some fucked up extension of his neck thing. 

For now, though, all Dan said was, “Have I ever told you how much I love you?”
Phil smiled. His tongue, sticking out between his teeth, was stained red. “You have,” said Phil, “But I wouldn’t be opposed to hearing it again,” 

Dan grinned. His dimples, though set in paler skin than they had been, were otherwise unchanged, and having recently drunk, Phil was perfectly capable of blushing. When their lips met, it was just as sweet as it had always been.