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It’s Phil who spots them first, because of course it is. Dan is focused on what drink he’s going to order from the hotel bar, like a normal person is on their second day of vacation.
Phil is apparently scouting the room, something Dan is peripherally aware of but choosing to ignore because it doesn’t pertain to his current mission of getting something nice and fruity to quench his thirst from the heat outside.
To be honest, he’s still a little jet-lagged, which is what he’s going to blame it on later when he wonders how he didn’t see this bullshit coming.
All that being said, when Phil mutters, “Hot guy, two o’clock,” Dan does not immediately look up. Firstly, because Phil says this very often, and the guys are only hot about sixty percent of the time. Secondly, the direction is somehow never two o’clock, and he’s starting to think Phil believes this is just a phrase people say and not an actual directional system based on the numbers of a clockface. Thirdly, he is an adult with some decorum, and he’s not just going to stare at strangers in public just because his boyfriend pointed them out, thank you very much.
He waits exactly ten seconds before glancing up and following Phil’s gaze.
The guy is hot, he’ll give Phil that. Not like a movie star, but more like a guy you’d see on Instagram and linger over for a few seconds too long just to appreciate him. He’s holding a martini and talking to someone else at the bar. When he shifts a little to the side, Dan can see it’s another attractive man, slightly shorter, holding a matching martini and taking a bite from the decorative olive before wrinkling his nose at the taste in a way that reminds him, warmly, of Phil.
“Another gay couple,” Phil breathes.
Dan turns to look at him incredulously. “How do you know they’re gay?”
“They’re drinking martinis, Dan.” Phil gives him a look. “What straight guys drink martinis?”
“James Bond,” Dan answers immediately, and then can’t think of any others.
“He’s not real,” Phil says dismissively. “I’m talking about real men.”
“Normal men,” says Dan with a straight face. “Innocent men.”
“Shut up.” Phil is trying not to smile now, which means that he is in fact smiling almost completely, but looking put out about it. It’s one of Dan’s top ten favorite Phil Expressions. “I bet you fifty pounds they’re a gay couple.”
“I’m not saying they’re not gay,” Dan deflects, “I’m just saying you’re assuming. And you know what they say about assumptions, Phil. They make an ass out of you and-”
“I’ll make an ass out of you, Howell,” Phil interrupts nonsensically.
“Will you?” he answers flatly.
Phil holds up a finger. “Wait until I’ve had my cocktail, you fiend.” He finally looks down at the menu in front of him. “Hm, maybe a little snackie, too.”
“I was wondering when you were going to stop people watching and pick something,” Dan mutters, going back to his own menu.
“Don’t rush me,” Phil replies haughtily. “These things take time.”
“Time you’re spending eyeing man candy.”
Phil wrinkled his nose. “Ugh, don’t say ‘man candy’.”
“Why not?”
“Because it makes you sound like a perverted old grandma!”
“Well, you’re acting like a perverted old grandma.”
“I think I’m acting like a perfectly normal pervert, thank you.” Something about Phil’s delivery of this makes Dan’s self-control crack right down the middle, and so naturally, he starts giggling.
This causes Phil to also start giggling. And then they’re just a couple of giggling idiots at a table in the half-empty hotel bar, getting looks from other patrons and trying desperately to pull themselves together.
Dan will maintain that jet lag is the reason for this temporary loss of his faculties. It has nothing to do with Phil’s smile or the way his eyes crinkle. Not even the cheeky little sparkle in his gaze when he looks across the table at Dan like he’s the only other person in the world. Nothing at all.
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Dan is forced to concede that, yes, those men are in fact a gay couple the next day at the beach. (Not that he ever thought they weren’t gay, he mostly just wanted to disagree with Phil.)
“That man,” says Phil, “just kissed that other man. On the lips.” He says it like he’s the one who orchestrated the whole thing, the twat.
“He did indeed, Phil,” says Dan dryly (even though the kiss was barely even a peck, a brush of lips at most). “Now turn around so I can do your back.”
“Just let me gloat a little.” Phil takes the bottle of sun cream from him when he offers it and shakes it vigorously, even though Dan just did that five seconds ago. “I was right, and you owe me fifty pounds.”
Dan starts rubbing the sun cream in circles on Phil’s shoulders thoroughly, because there is no way in hell he is going to get burnt shoulders on Dan’s watch, even if he’s being an idiot right now. “I definitely don’t. I didn’t take that stupid bet. Besides, we share finances, idiot.”
“It’s not about the money.” Phil waves the sun cream for emphasis. “It’s about winning.”
“Good job, Phil, you won a one-sided bet about those two random men also being gay. Do you want a prize?”
Phil wacks him on the thigh with the sun cream and then cries out in protest when Dan snatches it back from him. “Hey! I need to do my arms!”
“I need another dollop, be patient. Besides. You weren’t even doing your arms, you were yapping.” He drops the bottle onto the towel after getting what he needs and resumes his methodical rubbing.
There once would’ve been a time when he would’ve done this as fast as he could with the least amount of touch possible (or maybe even not at all, not in public), but he barely even feels that tug anymore, in the pit of his stomach. The fear of eyes on them.
“You like my yapping,” Phil says, picking it up and squirting a much too large dollop into his hand pointedly. He wrinkles his nose at the smell but starts diligently covering his arms, before pausing and craning his neck around at Dan like he’s just had a thought. “Do you think they’re going to want to hang out with us?”
Dan blinks. “What?”
“The other gays! What if they want to hang out with us?”
“Why would they want that?” Dan has a sudden, visceral flashback to being in primary school and his mum trying to set him up on playdates with the other boys in his class. “Do you want that?”
“No!” Phil exclaims, waving the bottle around in his panic and sending a stray streak of white into the sand next to them. Dan sighs. “I’m just saying,” Phil continues, closing the cap on the bottle, “we’re gay, and they’re gay-”
“Foursome,” mutters Dan.
“-is it going to be like, a big gay elephant in the room-”
“Phoursome, with a ‘Ph’.”
“-or maybe there is no elephant, and they want to just be treated normal-”
“Foursome, and the elephant is in the cuck chair.” He’s really just trying to get Phil’s attention at this point. He’s done with the sun cream and is just sort of rubbing circles into Phil’s lower back with his thumbs. It’s the kind of casual affection they’ve never been able to have in public before, and Dan is relishing it now.
“Dan!” He wheels around, now wearing his you’ve-just-said-something-ridiculous-in-public face. It’s all eyebrows and pinched lips. It's also in Dan’s top ten favorite Phil Expressions. “No foursomes and no elephants in cuck chairs!”
Dan wants to laugh. Dan wants to kiss him.
He shakes his head. “Yes, dad.”
“Good boy, now turn around and let me do your back.”
“Fine, but don’t leave any patches like last time,” Dan snipes, handing him the bottle.
“That was years ago!”
“That was last year.”
✦•······················•✦•······················•✦
For someone who lives such a sedentary lifestyle most of the time, Phil is remarkably bad at sitting still and gets antsy after barely an hour of sitting on the beach.
After a few too many minutes of listening to him fidget, Dan says, “Do you want to go get us drinks or something? I’ll watch our stuff.”
Phil pauses, considering. “I don’t feel like getting up.”
“We should probably reapply sunscreen anyway,” says Dan, perfectly casual as he closes his book.
Phil hops up. “I’ll get drinks. What do you want?” Hook, line, sinker.
Dan waves him off. “You know what I like.” He’ll probably regret saying this later, but right now he can’t be bothered.
“As bitter and dark as your soul,” Phil replies before heading off, which means that chances of Dan actually getting a bitter drink are about fifty-fifty, depending on how silly Phil is feeling.
Dan sits back and closes his eyes, relishing the uninterrupted quiet.
Phil is downright pissy when he comes back, and Dan almost doesn’t even notice because of the downright delicious-looking spicy mango mojito Phile thrusts at him.
“Oh.” He licks some of the chili powder from the rim before taking a sip, and God, this is exactly what he needed. Refreshing and spicy all at once. “I love you,” he tells Phil, who momentarily gets a nice little smile on his face before apparently remembering he’s grumpy, and fixing his face back into a sullen pout.
He can tell Phil is absolutely itching to complain about something (fucking astronauts in space could probably tell, with how obvious he is), but Dan decides he’ll just have to wait a damn second because he is having a moment. He takes another sip of his drink and reclines back in his seat, closing his eyes and breathing the ocean air in and out.
Seagulls caw in the distance, the waves crash back and forth, and his tongue is burning from the chili.
This, he thinks, is so fucking perfect.
Phil lets out a very pointed sigh.
Okay, the moment is over. Dan opens his eyes. “What.”
“Harry and Jerry were at the bar!” Phil exclaims, “And they totally think they’re better than me- us! They think they’re better than us!”
Dan takes this all rather in stride because Phil quite regularly says incomprehensible bullshit and expects him to understand what he’s talking about, so he’s learned to just roll with it. “Harry and Jerry?” he repeats.
“The other gay couple,” Phil explains, like Dan just hasn’t done his homework and needs to catch up. “They completely mogged me at the bar just now!”
“Oh.” Dan settles back in his seat. “Are their names actually Harry and Jerry?” he asks after a moment of contemplation.
“No- why are you so focused on their names? What’s important is that they’re awful and we have to beat them.” He punctuates this statement by fishing the maraschino cherry out of his drink and biting it from the stem. Somewhere in Dan’s animal hindbrain, he registers this as attractive, maybe because he’s Pavloved himself into finding all of Phil’s weirdness hot, or maybe because he just likes when Phil is passionate about things.
Either way, he decides he’s on board with this. Or at least, he’s going to be supportive. “Beat them how?”
Phil’s eyes go squinty, and he purses his lip. “Um.”
Dan snorts. “Right.”
“Give me a minute! I’m thinking!”
“You do that, I’ll be over here on vacation.” Dan takes a generous sip of his drink.
“Dan,” Phil whines. “You need to help me! In sickness and in health. Remember?” He’s leaning towards Dan’s chair precariously, and Dan is sticking out a preemptive hand to steady him before he even thinks about it.
“Hm, nope, doesn’t drink a bell. Also, the only sickness you have is in the head.”
“Dan.” Phil gives him what he’s pretty sure are supposed to be puppy dog eyes, but really just make him look constipated.
“Ew, stop doing that with your face- if I say I’ll help, will you shut up?”
“Yes!”
Dan doesn’t believe him for a moment.
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After his drink, Phil rather predicably falls asleep. Dan thinks his legs are probably going to get sunburnt since Phil never reapplied sun cream, and their umbrella only covers them from the crotch up, but he doesn’t think it’s worth waking him up to nag him over it.
He jumps a little in his seat when Phil sleepily mutters, “Wouldn’t know what to do, anyway. Too many hands.”
“What?” He is utterly mystified and doesn’t even expect an answer, but gets one nonetheless.
“In the foursome.”
It takes him a moment to get onto Phil’s train of thought, and then he mulls it over for a little while before answering like he would if Phil were awake. “I think it could just be two couples going at it next to each other. Sounds less complicated than a threesome, at least.”
Phil cracks open an eye like a cat and meets his gaze. “Too many hands,” he croaks, “’m on vacation.”
A surge of fondness swells up in Dan, and he doesn’t quite know what to do with it. He wants to do something stupid, like hold Phil’s hand or squeeze his cheek. He settles for saying, “I know, bub, no one’s making you.”
Phil smiles softly, and it’s just for him. He thinks it might be his favorite Phil Expression of all.
✦•······················•✦•······················•✦
The next time he sees Harry and Jerry after the faking-laughing debacle and the subsequent Instagram stalking from Phil, it is at the end of the trip at about six in the morning when he’s standing on the balcony of their hotel room, gazing out at the water.
Phil is still asleep. Dan should be asleep too; he knows. They check out in five hours, and he’s probably not going to get any sleep on the flight home.
But there are tears in his eyes, blurring the purple-streaked sunset and the waves cresting the shore in the distance, and it’s so stupid, really. Everything is beautiful, and he’s so happy now. He’s the happiest he’s ever been in his life. And maybe that’s why, he thinks. Because it still sometimes feels like it could all disappear at any moment.
There is a certain kind of happiness to his tears, though, as they slowly slide down his cheeks and are cooled by the warm breeze. There’s a relief in being able to let his emotions out freely and just exist and process it all, instead of bottling it all up and saving it for his next depressive spiral, as he might’ve in his twenties.
He sniffles and wipes his eyes on his shirt sleeve. Inhales and exhales once. Twice.
He opens his eyes and notices two figures on the beach below him, walking through the sand hand in hand. He blinks, rubs his eyes, and blinks again before laughing softly to himself.
They stop and look out at the waves and the sky streaked with colors like paint running together. They’re talking about something, and then they’re leaning in and sharing a tender kiss.
Dan looks away. It’s too intimate to watch.
Phil was right, he thinks, chuckling again. They are such fucking twats.