Work Text:
When the Great Big Disaster took place, Phil took comfort in being able to keep somewhat calm, follow the steps he himself traced to make sure everything was as smooth as it could be, considering the circumstances. He was anxious, and terrified, and still almost certain everything would fall from his grip, but still he relished in being able to be strong for Dan. He’s older, he was the one who dragged him into this kind of life, and as such he felt—feels—responsible for him.
They were mostly good these days, sometimes it all felt a distant memory, something that happened in a nightmare far away, something that couldn’t really touch them.
Other times, it still lingered like fog all around them.
Other times, Dan would read a comment that hit a little too close to home, or talk with his parents on the phone, or look up old colleagues on Facebook. Sometimes he would do nothing of the sort, and still that heavy dark cloud would appear, weighing down in his shoulders, making his eyes downcast and bloodshot, his appetite lacking.
And once again, Phil is glad to be there for him, he really really is. It’s not a burden. It’s not. At all. But he needs to send some sponsors videos they haven’t even filmed yet for approval, and their dishes are pilling up in the sink, and there’s bills they need to pay on the dining room table, and they’re out of milk—
And Dan’s in his room. He’s just gaming. Well, not just. He’s gaming with his online friends, and that’s great for him. Talking with people who don’t know who he is, what he does, engaging in his interests—all of that is genuinely wonderful.
It’s wonderful, but Phil is trying to write an email and all he can think about is how he doesn’t think Dan has eaten anything since they had breakfast together. He hasn’t either, but that’s neither here nor there.
Dan’s voice echoes through the flat, and he’s sounding more and more frustrated. Phil gives up on the email for now.
He throws some barbeque crisps in a bowl and almost gags at the usually pleasant smell. He thinks of making some Ribena for the two of them but that takes too long, so he instead he fills a large glass to the brim with cold water, brings it to Dan along with the chips. He’d knock, but the door is open, and his hands are full, and Dan has his headphones on so loud Phil can hear the game from the doorway.
He makes his steps heavier so Dan will feel the vibration under his chair and not get spooked. It works.
He glances at Phil, then back to the screen, then back to Phil, for a little longer. Then back to the screen. He keeps doing that. He lowers the volume and shifts the headphones so that one of his ears is out.
“You brought snacks?”
“Yeah.” The word scratches his throat slightly on the way out, and Phil realizes he hasn’t spoken since breakfast. Has he drunk anything but that coffee?
“Thank you.” Dans says, and he looks at him when he does. He looks better. Phil could ask him for help. But his eyes are still dull and red, his hair is still oily. His voice isn’t back to normal yet either. It’s fine.
“You’re welcome. Let me know if you need anything.”
He pats Dan’s shoulder awkwardly, like Dan’s friends could see him through a webcam he doesn’t think he’s ever seen on. There’s a film of dust over it. Dan should probably clean that. Phil grabs a t-shirt from the floor and wipes it, and the top of the monitor for good measure.
He waits until Dan takes a sip of water to leave the room.
They’re also out of laundry detergent. Dan’s t-shirt has a grey line of dust across the chest, and it sits alone in their washing machine. Phil would get the rest of their clothes, but there’s no point—they don’t have laundry detergent and there’s no difference in the laundry sitting dirty in the washer or sitting dirty in a hamper or in various assorted piles throughout the flat.
He decides to go back to the emails. Those do really need to get done. It’ll probably take hours. He receives an immediate reply in one of them to talk over the phone, and he accepts it. He gets up and presses his forehead against the cold rough wall as he takes the call, eyes closed and fingers white around the phone. Everything is fine. They’re fine with moving the deadline, some people just prefer talking over writing and the guy who got the email happened to be one of them. Everything is fine.
Phil shoves his phone in his pocket but stays in the same position long after the call has ended. They don’t have a clock but he can hear it ticking all the same.
He takes a deep breath and goes to stand motionless in the middle of the lounge. It’s dark out already. He should make dinner. Do they even have clean dishes? He should order food. His abdomen is painfully tight and his stomach feels heavy with stones. He kind of wants to throw up. He gets out his phone again and opens the food delivery app, repeats whatever was their last order without looking too closely at the words. Soon enough, his phone pings with the notification that their food is being prepared, and that David will be delivering it.
Phil could organize the envelopes on the table. That’d be somewhat productive. He goes to see Dan instead.
He looks like he hasn’t moved.
When Phil approaches, he doesn’t look at him, but does slightly move his headphones again.
“Hey. What’s up?” He greets, eyes still on the screen. He sounds a bit better.
Phil looks at his desk. The crisps are gone but the glass is still half-full. The next breath he takes comes out shaky. It’s apparently loud enough for Dan to notice. His head turns to look at Phil. Phil doesn’t know what he sees but it prompts him to click a few keys and turn to him completely. He places his headphones on the desk somewhat haphazardly. The water swings but doesn’t spill.
Phil is aware that he’s staring at Dan a bit like a deer in the headlights. He tries to inhale, then exhale, then again, and again, but it keeps coming out wonky. Why isn’t it working? Lungs are meant to work without consciousness.
“Hey, hey, hey.” Dan gets up. He grabs Phil’s shoulders with both hands, and then his face, looks all over him like he’s searching for wounds. “What’s wrong?”
“You didn’t finish the water.”
“I’m sorry?” It’s half-apology, and half-confusion.
“The water.” He repeats, like that’s the part Dan needed clarification on.
Dan moves to grab the glass, finishes it in a couple of large gulps. It wasn’t so difficult after all.
He’s back in front of Phil, his hands back on Phil’s shoulders. His eyes seem a bit brighter overall, though that dullness is still lingering in the dark on his pupils.
“Do you want to lay down?”
Does he? He’ll have to go get the door soon. There’s really no point. But his knees feel like they’re about to give out from under him. He doesn't answer.
“Never mind, lay down.” Dan gently manhandles him into the bed, adjusts the pillows under Phil’s head. The cold fabric against the nape of his neck sends a shiver down his spine and forces a sharp intake of breath. So his lungs do work on their accord.
“What’s wrong?” Dan asks again.
Phil forces his eyes shut, presses his fists over them. “I want to throw up.”
The fabric of the pillow feels too warm already.
There are fingers around his wrists, pulling his arms back down to his sides. The fingers leave and come back almost in the same breath, this time brushing the hair back from Phil’s forehead. He keeps doing it when Phil’s forehead is bare. It feels good.
At some point, Dan stops moving all his fingers together, instead buries his hand in Phil’s hair. His thumb stretches all the way to Phil’s browbone, traces lines from the little patch of skin between Phil’s eyebrows up to his hairline.
Phil doesn’t know how long they stay like that. He squeezes his eyes tighter when the doorbell rings. He tries to raise his head but Dan’s hand is still there, soft but firm.
“I’ll get that. Can you make it to the lounge?”
Phil doesn’t want to go back to the lounge. “Yeah. Thanks.”
There’s a kiss on his forehead before the hand in his hair leaves, Dan with it.
Phil opens his eyes in time to see Dan walk through the doorway. He takes a few more deep breaths and sits up.
Dan will want to talk about what happened. Phil really doesn’t want to do that. He doesn’t have an explanation, and doesn’t want to come up with one, real or false.
He slowly drags himself to the lounge regardless. It smells like garlic naan and chicken masala. His stomach rumbles. At the same time, bile rises to his throat.
“Sit down.” Dan orders, coming into the room. He’s holding a white plastic back in his right hand, a two-litre bottle of Pepsi under the same arm. On this left forearm, there’s a precarious-looking tower of plates, mugs, cutlery, a kitchen roll.
Phil sits down. The mugs are clinking against each other. Phil can’t look at them anymore.
Mercifully, Dan makes it to the coffee table. Nothing breaks, nothing spills, everything is fine.
Phil’s body still doesn’t know how to react to the smell—and now sight—of their food. He’s realizing that he’s much hungrier than he thought, but the thought of putting food in his mouth, of chewing, is daunting. He’s dreading that first bite, that’ll surely drop like a stone into his empty stomach.
He distracts himself by turning on the tv, putting on the last reality show they were watching. If Dan disagrees with his choice, he doesn’t say so. He’s busy ripping the top of the bag and taking out its contents. The sofa dips when he sits down next to Phil.
“Hey.” He repeats. “Are you still nauseous?”
Phil really doesn’t feel like talking. “A bit. But it’s fine.”
Dan hands him a plate. It’s warm and slightly damp over his knees. Dan must’ve washed it.
“Did you get white rice? You could eat some and see how you feel.”
Phil doesn’t know if he got white rice. He didn’t look at the order and doesn’t remember what they ate last time. Dan opens all the boxes without waiting for an answer.
Turns out he did order white rice. There’s too much food. That’s fine, Dan has barely eaten today. He spoons some rice onto Phil’s place, and doesn’t look away. Phil takes a bite and stares at the tv. As he expected, that first bite isn’t pleasant, but it does make him want to keep eating.
“You’re good?” Dan asks clumsily through a mouthful, when Phil leans forward to get more food in his plate, something that isn’t just plain white rice.
“Yeah.”
Dinner goes by smoothly. People are fighting on their screen. A middle-aged woman throws a martini into the face of another. The offended party barely gasps before she does the same.
Against all odds, they finish the food. Briefly, damnably, Phil notices that that means they won’t have leftovers for tomorrow. He pushes the thought away before it can occupy every crevice of his brain.
Uncharacteristically, Dan cleans up almost immediately after they’re done. He takes everything to the kitchen and Phil can hear him turn on the faucet. It’s not on long enough for Dan to be washing dishes. He’s probably rinsing the plastic containers before he throws them out. The sound of plastic rustling and a lid dropping confirm his suspicions.
Phil should get up. They could throw everything in the dishwasher. Is it still full?
His limbs feel heavy. He lies back down onto the couch, tries to catch why the two women are now hugging and cheering.
Dan sits down next to him. There’s a knee pressing into his thigh. Phil glances at him—he’s completely turned towards Phil. Phil looks back at the tv. He can’t focus with the evidence of Dan’s full attention in his peripheral vision. He squeezes Dan’s knee briefly and keeps staring ahead. It doesn’t work. He tries a quick glance, a small smile. There’s still a hole burning on the side of his head. He ignores the smoke.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
About what? He should’ve asked.
“Not really.”
There’s a hand squeezing his thigh. “Can you look at me?”
He should’ve chuckled, glanced at Dan and back to the screen. He looks at Dan instead, tries to gaze into his eyes but he’s too close to look at both of them simultaneously. He switches from one to the other and ends up focusing on a pink patch of skin by Dan’s chin.
“Can you tell me what’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.” Finally, he’s followed the script correctly.
Dan’s hand keeps stroking his thigh. The other one is suddenly under Phil’s chin. He’s forced to look up.
“Can you tell me what I did?”
“You didn’t do anything.” The reply is immediate. It comes out bitter. The words are right but it wasn’t supposed to come out bitter. Maybe Dan won’t notice.
He’s not so lucky. There are goosebumps on his skin, right on the patch Dan’s hand just left. He takes a moment before speaking.
“And you’re mad because I didn’t do anything?” There’s a line between Dan’s eyebrows. His tone has shifted slightly too.
“I’m not mad!” It echoes. This is all going wrong.
“I’m not mad.” He repeats. Without Dan’s hands on him he can lie back down again, close his eyes.
“Sure.” It’s flat, but it’s accompanied by two gentle taps on his knee. Phil can’t tell if they’re concerned or condescending.
Phil sighs and forces himself to look at Dan. He doesn’t lift his head.
“I’m serious. I’m not mad, I’m just… tired, I guess.”
“Tired?” Phil hates how Dan’s voice is still dragging, dull around the edges. There is softness there, though—curiosity too. That’s not so bad.
“Overwhelmed.” Why not. They’re already here. “The house is a mess. We have to pay a bunch of things until the end of the week. We haven’t even filmed the videos we were supposed to send to the sponsors by today, much less edited them. We have no milk. Or laundry detergent.”
Dan’s hand is back, this time tracing circles with his thumb on Phil’s knee.
“You could’ve—” Dan starts, then stops.
“We should figure out the sponsors first.”
“I did. The majority haven’t answered yet. One gave us another week.”
“Oh. That’s…That’s good.”
There are a few beats of silence. Phil doesn’t fill them. Dan’s hand is still on his knee but his leg is getting restless. He doesn’t know how to feel about it. He didn’t want to put any of this responsibility onto Dan, but he does prefer to see him tapping his feet and biting his lips than… than there being nothing there at all.
“So—” There’s more energy in that single word than there has been in his voice in days—frustrated gaming exclamations aside. “If you already did that, then there’s nothing that urgent that we must do today.”
Phil thinks he would’ve bristled at that but his body feels too heavy. It isn’t worth the effort to try to snap at Dan—especially because he didn’t say anything wrong. Dan stands up.
“You should go to bed. I can clean the kitchen. We’ll figure out the rest tomorrow.”
Phil stands up too. “No no no. I can do it. It’s fine. It’s just the dishes really—”
“Phil.” The name feels like an order. Dan could point out how moments before Phil was overwhelmed and upset Dan wasn’t helping, and now he was trying to stop him from doing so. He’s kind enough not to point it out.
“Can you come to bed with me, then? Please?” Phil tries instead, opening his eyes wider, angling his chin down. His lips form into a shape somewhat akin to a pout. It’s a request Dan is much more likely to comply with.
Dan sighs and takes a step closer to Phil.
“I know what you’re doing.”
Is it working? But he doesn’t need to ask. Dan is pulling him gently by the elbow.
“C’mon then.”
On the way, Phil thinks that maybe they should have sex. The idea is still there while he’s brushing his teeth, Dan already in the bedroom, but it is promptly forgotten the second he lies down. His limbs are heavy and their sheets are cold and comfortable and both him and Dan are a little bit gross. He moves closer to Dan regardless.
Dan puts his arm around him. He’s more propped up than Phil, likely so he can read or scroll on his phone—it’s earlier than they would usually sleep. Phil closes his eyes.
“Thank you.” The words come out almost unintelligible, his face all mushed into Dan’s torso. He startles a bit when Dan laughs. Well, it’s not really a laugh, more like a sharp incredulous exhale through his mouth, decently far from joyful.
Phil didn’t want to talk about his weird brain stuff earlier, and frankly right now he doesn't feel like examining Dan’s either.
“Shush.”
“I didn’t say anything!” Dan argues back, shrill and offended but—not really.
“I said shush. I’m trying to sleep.”
“Oh, are you?” Despite the grumpiness in the remark, it’s both mumbled and accompanied by a slight adjustment of both of their positions, so they’re more settled. It’s nice. It’s dark.
Phil feels as though there’s cotton in his ears, and he tries to tell Dan he loves him and not to do anything. He succeeds.
“Sure. Love you too.” He thinks he hears back, and there’s a brush of what must be Dan’s lips on top of his head. What else could it ever be? He falls asleep to the lull of that familiar heartbeat right under his ear.
He wakes up alone, and he would be grumpier about that if when he got up, he had tripped on the pile of clothes that was there by their bed the night before. It’s not there anymore.
On the hallway he thinks he can hear Dan by the front door. He would guess he’s making polite small talk with the Tesco delivery driver, and wishing to be doing anything but that. Phil smiles a little bit at the thought.
Phil half-expects for that panic he felt the day before to creep back in. At least for now, it doesn’t. He thinks of helping Dan carry up the groceries, but he goes to make coffee instead. Their kitchen smells fresh and citrusy.