Work Text:
2026
“Boob,” Phil mutters consideringly, looking at a display of plastic magnets.
Dan is squinting down at his phone next to him, trying to read it in the bright sun. Apparently, there was a problem with one of their reservations, and he’s trying to get it fixed before they have to tell Phil’s parents about it. Still, he takes the time to mutter back, “Free the nips,” which Phil appreciates.
He is still bored, though. Looking at plastic boob magnets at a tourist stall isn’t really his idea of a fun time, but they’re stuck here while Phil’s mum looks at little decorative spoons at another stall (she doesn’t even collect spoons) and Phil’s dad looks at art.
“Can we get a drink somewhere?” Phil groans after an impressive ten seconds of idleness.
Dan sighs. “You can, I need to focus on this.”
“But I want you to come with me.” Phil pouts.
“Phil, the website glitched when we made our reservation, and it’s-”
“What about the reservation?” Kath seems to materialize out of thin air next to them.
Dan startles before tucking his phone into his armpit in a way that he probably thinks is inconspicuous, but Kath’s eyes follow like a hawk.
“Nothing, Mum! We’re getting it sorted out,” says Phil, attempting reassurance but ending up sounding vaguely pained.
Kath narrows her eyes, making Phil feel like he’s about to be grounded. “Which one is it? It better not be my birthday massage or I’ll be quite cross.”
“It’s not the massage!” He looks to Dan for confirmation, and he nods imperceptibly. “It’s just…uh-“
“The place we’re eating at tonight,” Dan finishes quietly. He always gets sort of soft and nice around Kath, like he’s still afraid to disappoint her after all these years. He would find it cute if it didn’t make his mum like Dan even more than she liked Phil.
“Oh, dear.” She looks between them before coming to rest her gaze on Phil. “What are we going to do?”
Phil freezes, realizing they’re both looking to him for the answer. Or, more accurately, Dan has put on his sunglasses and has his face pointed in Phil’s general direction, and Kath is looking to him.
Oh God, he realizes. I’m supposed to come up with something right now. He has a flashback to the scene in Mean Girls where Cady realizes she’s in charge of the Plastics after Regina is kicked out.
“Um- we’ll find another place?” he squeaks.
Kath tsks under her breath. “You should always have a backup restaurant, love.”
He glances at Dan pleadingly, but he’s gone back to his phone. The traitor. Phil is going to get him back for this.
“I’ll find a place, Mum, don’t worry,” he says, voice a little more sure now. “I’ll use Maps, it’ll be fine, we still have several hours.”
“Alright, darling.” She smiles at him. “I trust you.” She pats him on the shoulder and walks over to where Phil’s father is looking appreciatively at intricate tapestries at a nearby stand.
“Thanks for the help!” Phil glares at Dan, who puts his hands up in surrender.
“It’s my job to book the things! Not handle inter-familial affairs!”
“Oh, right, ‘cause you’re ‘not part of the family’. Not like we’ve been together sixteen years or anything.” He automatically lowers his voice when he says the last part, before remembering that they don’t have to do that anymore. He should be used to it by now, he thinks. But it’s surprisingly hard to unwrite so many years of programming in his brain.
“No, because your parents think you’re the one who made the reservations!”
“They think we made them together!” Which they basically did, in that Dan would find a place, ask Phil if he thought it looked alright, and then book it unless Phil had a valid reason why it wasn’t. Their definitions of what constituted a valid reason weren’t always eye-to-eye, but that was a different problem entirely.
“You don’t know what they think!” Dan’s voice rises in pitch as he gets more and more hysterical. They’re starting to get looks from the other tourists.
“I would still appreciate it if you backed me up,” Phil grumbles, crossing his arms. He feels like a sullen child, and the heat is starting to get to him. He wants to mop at his sweaty brow like a Victorian damsel until Dan feels sorry for him.
“Phil.” Dan rubs his temple. “I mean this in the most loving way possible-”
Phil groans.
“-but you definitely should always have a backup restaurant on the table. She was right.”
There’s a pause. “We don’t have one, do we?”
“No, we do not.”
Phil sighs. “Can we get a drink now, at least?”
“Oh, fucking hell- yes Phil, we can get a drink.” Dan shakes his head at him, looking too fond for Phil to be worried he’s actually mad at him. “You just want a pitcher of sangria.”
“I’m dehydrated, Daniel!”
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2010
Dan glows in Portugal as Phil has never seen before, in a way he never did in England. The sun makes him more alive somehow, makes him shine. His brown eyes sparkle, and the saltwater makes his hair curl at the ends. Most of all, though, he’s smiling. He loves it when Dan smiles.
Phil is maybe feeling a bit more sentimental than normal. He decides it’s probably all the sun he’s getting.
“It is so fucking hot,” Dan groans, flopping onto the towel next to him. He’s a respectable distance away, about half a meter, and Phil suddenly wishes they were back in their hotel room so he could do...something. Climb on top of Dan like a starfish while he halfheartedly whines at Phil to get off him. Melt them both down like crayons and mix them together until they form their own color. Merge their souls.
He plays it cool, though. “Yeah, it is.”
There’s a pause, and then Dan says, “Are you hungry? I’m so hungry.”
“Why don’t you go catch a fish?” asks Phil.
“Oh yeah,” Dan gripes, “I’ll just waddle through the waves and grab one, Phil. Great idea.”
“If you were a crayon, what color would you be?” Phil blurts. His fingers tap against his thigh. Tap, tap, tap.
Dan blinks. “What? Black, I guess. Do you want to get lunch?”
“I don’t really want to move,” Phil says, lying back. After a moment of consideration, he adds, “I don’t think you would be a black one.”
“I would too be a black one!” Dan turns to face him. “What other color could I possibly be?”
There are a few answers Phil could give to this. Mahogany brown like Dan’s eyes and his hair, or golden like his skin after a long time in the sun. Instead, he says, “Hm... green, like an alien.”
Dan snorts. “No, that’s you.”
“What? No way, I’m blue!”
“You’ve just picked your favorite colors, you idiot!” Dan is smiling, and Phil feels warm in a way that has nothing to do with the sun. “Don’t even try to deny it, I’ve been in your bedroom.”
“Maybe you’re my favorite color, Dan,” he teases.
The grin drops from Dan’s face like a lit flame going out. He sits up and looks around, making sure nobody is in earshot in a way that has become a horrible sort of routine for them.
Other tourists mill about the beach. Families, couples, people, old and young keep up a buzz of chatter around them. Nobody could have heard. Phil feels stupid anyway.
He looks down at his lap, letting his black hair fall over his eyes. It’s like being a child again, like he just said something weird in a room full of people and now they’re all staring at him. Wondering why he’s so odd.
Dan clears his throat. “So, lunch then?”
Phil isn’t hungry anymore. He feels a bit sick, actually.
“Yeah,” Phil says, forcing a smile. “Lunch. Sounds great.”
Dan stands and brushes the sand from his swim trunks before turning to him, biting his lip like he’s thinking very hard about something. Then, as if Phil is an easily spooked prey animal, he slowly offers his hand to help him up.
Phil takes it. Dan taps a finger against his wrist. Tap, tap, tap.
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2026
Tap, tap, tap.
“Can I help you?” The glass barrier between them slightly muffles Dan’s voice.
“What are you looking at?” Phil says, his voice echoing off the tiles of the wide hotel shower stall as he rubs purple shampoo into his hair. “You’re supposed to be keeping me company!”
“I’m looking at an article for your next Here’s The Thing.”
“What? Dan! No work on holiday!” Phil fusses.
“This doesn’t count, it’s just reading an article. Maybe I would be reading it anyway.” He might, to be fair. Dan goes down weird internet rabbit holes even more than Phil does, but he still doesn’t buy it.
“You’re ruining the sanctity of our vacation!” he says, mostly for the sake of being dramatic. He starts to rinse the shampoo out gently, as it says on the back of the bottle.
“Fine, you can have nothing to present on the next episode then.” It’s an empty threat, and they both know it, but then Phil hears a creak as Dan gets up from the toilet lid, and the sound of footsteps heading toward the door.
“Wait! Come back,” Phil whines, peering through the foggy glass at Dan’s retreating form, which turns around and fixes him with what he assumes is an unimpressed look.
“You’re so- oh my God.” He giggles.
“What?” Phil snaps.
“Don’t put your face up to the glass like that, you look villainous.”
Phil huffs. “I will be villainous in a minute.”
“Calm down, you stinky baby.” Dan fumbles with his phone. “I’m taking a picture of this.”
“Perving on me in the shower now, Howell?” He can make out the blurry impression of Dan’s black phone in front of him, and then it’s gone. Phil puts his head back under the shower stream to rinse the rest of the soap from his hair.
“If I were perving on you, you would know,” Dan says ominously, sitting back down on the toilet lid and going back to his article.
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2010
They drink a lot of sangria. Phil doesn’t know what’s in it, other than a bit of wine and some kind of punch or juice, but it’s damn good, and they’re given a whole pitcher of the stuff when they order it with lunch. Naturally, they don’t waste a drop.
“I feel funny,” Dan mutters after a few glasses.
Phil also feels funny, but he decides to tease Dan anyway. “You drunk?”
He takes the bait. “No way! I’m not a lightweight!”
Phil giggles, which makes Dan giggle too.
“You’ve been drunk before, right?” Phil says, leaning forward over the table.
Dan scowls. “Course I have. I’m very experienced.” Phil raises an eyebrow, and Dan goes a bit red. “Shut up.”
“I didn’t say anything,” mutters Phil, taking a sip of sangria. The more he drinks, the more it just tastes like juice. Probably a bad sign.
“You talk with your face a lot.”
“Yeah,” says Phil, chagrined. “That’s why I’m such a bad liar.”
Dan gets a sort of faraway look in his eye, staring over Phil’s shoulder like he’s deep in thought. Phil thinks they’re probably not good thoughts.
“Hey.” He nudges Dan under the table with his foot. “You okay?”
“’M sorry,” Dan mumbles, looking down at his glass. He knocks back his last bit of sangria, exposing his long, golden throat to Phil for just a moment. He wants to bite him.
“Sorry for what?”
“Bein’ such a coward. You deserve better.” He’s still not looking at Phil. If he were, he would see the way Phil’s heart breaks at his words.
“Hey. Dan. Hey.” He wants to grab Dan’s hand. He wants to hold him, to press his hands over Dan’s ears and drown out every bad thought he could ever have. He can’t do any of that. His fingers tap against his glass. Tap, tap, tap.
“Can we go?” Dan finally meets his eye, and his gaze is hazy.
“Of course, bub.” The name just slips out, and Phil winces a little, expecting Dan to straighten and glance around, but he only blinks at Phil with glassy eyes, which is somehow worse.
Phil leaves some money on the table and sways a little when he gets up. He grabs the edge of the table and blinks hard. He doesn’t have time to be drunk right now; he has to help Dan.
They stumble back out onto the beach like zombies. The sun is too bright in his eyes, and the ground keeps moving under his feet, not enough to make him fall, but enough that he has to think about how he walks so he doesn’t faceplant.
Dan isn’t faring much better; his shoulder bumps Phil’s, and he wraps a hand around Dan’s upper arm to help him walk, but he shakes him off, still fiercely independent to a fault, even when pissed out of his mind.
He doesn’t know how long they walk down the beach. It feels like he’s moving too slowly, and everything else is moving too fast, including Dan, who somehow ends up ahead of him.
“Wait up,” Phil pants, stumbling in the hot sand.
“Slow poke!” Dan calls behind him with a cheeky smile.
Phil is running and tackling him before either of them even realizes he’s doing it.
Dan falls like a rock. “Oof.”
“Think about that,” Phil slurs. “Next time you…call me a slow poke…” He keeps almost losing his train of thought.
“Get off me, you oaf.” Dan goes to elbow him, but misses by a few centimeters, and his arm flops back down to the sand. “You’re the worst.”
“You love me,” Phil mumbles into his shoulder before climbing off and then stumbling back down right next to him. “Oh.”
“Maybe we should just stay here for a second,” Dan says into the ground.
“Yeah.” Phil turns over so he’s facing the sun. “Good idea. The sand is... spinning.”
Dan turns over as well and looks at Phil for a long moment, strands of brown hair falling into his eyes. “I think that drink might’ve had more wine in it than we thought.”
“Oh, definitely.” He can’t stop staring at Dan’s curls. He loves Dan’s curls.
Dan groans. “And we drank the whole thing.”
“All of it,” Phil sighs. He tries to make snow angels in the sand (sand angels?), but his arm is halted by Dan’s warm body next to him. Oh, right, he’s there. “You’re in the way.”
“What? Quit bopping me with your arm.” Dan’s eyes are squeezed shut from the bright midafternoon sun baring down on them.
“I want to make a sand angel,” Phil whines.
“Then scoot over there.”
Phil mumbles something incoherent even to himself. Dan snorts next to him.
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2026
“It’s a disposable thong.”
Dan groans. “Do not call it that.”
“It is!” Phil waves the offending object in Dan’s face. “It’s a bloody paper G-string!”
Dan rolls his eyes. “Just turn around and put on, you big baby.”
“You turn around! I’m not putting this monstrosity on in front of an audience! You’ll never find me sexy ever again!”
“You are such a drama queen.” Dan is clutching his own disposable thong to his chest like it’s going to be snatched from him. “I’ll turn around if you do too.”
“Deal.” Then, Phil smiles. “No homo, bro.”
Dan whips him in the shoulder with the paper G-string, but he’s laughing, and it’s totally worth it.
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After the massage, they walk around Albufeira for a bit before settling down at a local joint bar and cafe and ordering some passion fruit sangria. Phil doesn’t think he’s ever had a passion fruit, but it’s damn good in a cocktail.
The midafternoon sun is coming in through the window and lighting the strands of Dan’s curls gold. Phil is mesmerized by it despite having seen the sight a million times, because he’ll never get tired of seeing Dan glowing in the sun, and happy. Not as long as he lives.
“What?” Dan is wearing a smile that says he already knows.
Phil blinks. “You’ve... got something on your face.”
“Oh, really?” Dan says, unconvinced. “What is it?”
“Stupid... face disorder,” Phil states. “It’s terminal.”
“Stupid face disorder,” Dan repeats. Okay, when he says it like that, it sounds dumb.
Phil decides to double down. “Yep.”
“And it’s terminal.” Dan stirs his drink with his straw. “That’s a shame,” -his eyes flick up to meet Phil’s- “since you like my face so much.”
Phil’s mouth goes a little dry, and it’s not even his fault. Dan is giving him that look, like a cobra ready to strike. He doesn’t know what he did to deserve such a look, but apparently, he’s doing something right because Dan’s eyes narrow when Phil licks his dry lips as if he’s about to pounce.
Phil would like it very much if he pounced, of course, but also they’re in public, so he narrows his eyes right back and says, “Behave.”
“Make me,” Dan shoots back.
“Daniel!” he stage-whispers.
Dan rolls his eyes. “No one cares, we’re on vacation. It’s not like we’re going to fuck on the table. We’re just talking.”
We’re just talking. Phil doesn’t know why that makes his stomach sink, and his hands go clammy, but it does. We’re just talking. He feels like he’s on a boat, like the floor is rocking gently beneath him and making him motion sick. His mouth floods with saliva, and his eyes burn.
Dan’s smile drops. “Hey, I’m sorry, if you’re not feeling it, I’ll-”
“No,” Phil says. He shakes his head. “No, I just...” He grips the cold glass in both hands and takes a deep breath. “I just thought I would be over it by now. Hiding.”
“Oh,” says Dan. The sun turns his eyes into molten gold. “Oh.”
“Yeah.” He flexes his fingers and taps them on the table. Tap, tap, tap. “I mean, we hard-launched ages ago, right? I should be... I dunno... better now. But I’m not. It’s silly, right? I mean-”
“Sometimes,” Dan starts, looking down at his cup. “I want to- when we’re in public- I want to like put my arm around you, or something. Since you know, we can now. But,” -he looks at Phil- “I’m too scared.” He gives a sad smile. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that we’re both silly. Or, as my therapist would say, we both have lingering trauma from being in the closet for sixteen years.”
Phil wants to cry a little bit. We’re just talking, he thinks. But it’s never been just talking, has it? It’s looking and touching, and not looking and not touching.
“You can put your arm around me whenever you want,” he tells Dan. He can picture it so clearly and, God, he wants it. He wants it so fucking bad, and he had never even considered it a possibility until a few seconds ago.
“Thanks,” Dan says hoarsely. “I’ll try.”
“I’m proud of you.” Phil smiles. “I’m proud of us.”
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2010
Somehow, hours later, they get back to their room. Phil isn’t sure how exactly, only that it involves a lot of giggling, stumbling, and weird looks from passersby.
“Do you think they knew we were drunk?” Phil whispers to Dan once they’re in the elevator.
“No, Phil,” Dan deadpans at a normal volume. “How could they have ever guessed?”
When they get to the door, Phil fumbles with the keycard so badly that Dan snatches it from him and tries to do it himself, except he drops the card on the carpet between them. Neither of them can contain their giggles after that.
The room is bathed in the setting sun’s light because Phil forgot to close the curtains before they left. Dan goes and stares out the window without even taking his shoes off first, wearing a kind of open, slack expression that Phil feels mirrored within himself.
They don’t say anything for a few minutes, until Dan breaks the silence with words that feel too loud for this still space. “I don’t know how I’m going to go back home after this.”
Phil flops down onto one of the twin beds and stares at Dan’s back, light shining all around his figure like he’s something holy. He’s never been religious, but he feels like a worshipper in that moment. His fingers tap the headboard behind him. Tap. Tap. Tap.
“I mean, everything’s just so nice here,” Dan continues, swaying slightly on his feet. The light shifts around him where he moves, bending, breaking, and being born anew all around him, dancing across his perfect shoulders and anointing him in sunshine. “Your family’s nice, the food is nice, the people are nice.”
Through the fog in Phil’s mind, he thinks there’s probably something smart he could say right now, or at least something helpful. But his eyes are drifting shut as if pulled by magnets, so he just says, “Yeah.”
“You’re the nicest thing, though. You always are.”
Phil feels his face stretch into a goofy smile. “You charmer.”
“I love you,” Dan says. His voice is closer than before. Phil cracks open an eye. He doesn’t know when he closed them, and he definitely doesn’t know when Dan came to sit at the end of the bed.
“I love you too,” Phil breathes. “Love you more than... cake.”
“More than cake? Don’t know what I did to deserve that.” Dan’s voice is lightly self-deprecating now, and even drunk, Phil doesn’t appreciate it.
“Shut up and come cuddle me.” Phil makes grabby hands at him, and Dan sighs like this is some great hardship, but scoots down the bed and lies in his arms regardless.
“Bed’s too small for this,” Dan complains, not for the first time. “Told you we should’ve pushed them together or something.”
“Shut up,” Phil mumbles. “Too much work. Too much talking.”
“Sorry, sorry.” There’s a long stretch of silence where the only sounds are the whirr of the air conditioning and their breathing. He realizes Dan is slowing his breaths to match Phil’s.
“Cute,” he mutters. Or he thinks he does, at least. He’s on the very edge of sleep, and not completely sure everything around him isn’t a dream. Surely, it’s too good to be real, Dan’s breath on his face, his hair tickling Phil’s forehead, his warm body pressed against the length of him.
“Mm,” slurs Dan. “Love you.” He nuzzles his face into Phil’s neck. “Loved you since the moment I saw you.” Phil can feel the vibrations of these words against his throat. “Loved you every moment since. Always.”
“Always,” Phil repeats.
The last thought he has before falling asleep is that they’re going to be okay.