Work Text:
Dan had asked her to be his girlfriend over the phone. This was so, he had told her later, if she had said no, he’d just have hung up, easy, and they’d never have had to talk about it again.
She had said yes. He was very sweet, and he had such nice eyes and his dimple, god. And the few times their schools had gotten together for events, she’d noticed him looking at her. Her friends had certainly noticed; they’d nudged and giggled until he’d blushed and looked away. Then he’d gotten her Facebook, through friends of said traitorous friends, probably. They’d started talking.
He was wickedly funny and kind of lovely. He would act all… cool kid, and talk about an emo band he liked and natter on pretentiously about some French movie. She’d say something about a book and he’d come back a day later with some edgy opinion from some edgy forum, all obvious, see-through attempts to impress her that had never really worked the way he’d wanted them to. But when he did talk about something he was really excited about, like a video game, or he genuinely liked a song - even if she would never quite understand RPG or DDR or PS2 or whatever acronym they continued to invent, that was what she had fallen in love with, the sound of his voice when he talked about the things he loved.
And he was so shy with her. Like he was always a bit incredulous that she was talking to him, never could quite believe she liked him back.
They had had their first date on a Friday. She would probably always remember this, because Nara’s only had sundaes on Friday, and that was where he’d taken her, after school. Last class Geography: she remembered this too. Chocolate with sprinkles for her, and vanilla with caramel glaze for him. He hadn’t kissed her then; it had been a week later, during the last few minutes of a movie.
She couldn’t remember the movie anymore, which was weird, given how she remembered what her sister had been wearing that day (yellow sundress, terribly unflattering but Lucy hadn’t needed to know that). His palm had been clammy when he’d slipped it in hers, and she’d held it, firm, to assure him she was right here. It had been a nice, warm sort of romcom, and his eyes had been bright in the shine of the screen when he’d turned towards her.
He’d seemed to be asking permission, so she’d leaned forward to give it to him. It was awkward and tender and fumbling and there had been butterflies in her belly, low. When they’d pulled back, his eyes had been shocked-wide and terribly sweet. She’d had to touch, place her hand on his warm jaw, and then he’d leaned in again.
Dating Dan had been easy and safe and it had been a constant throughout the tumultuous years when nothing else seemed to be. Throughout the rocky months where her parents had done nothing but snipe at each other, throughout Hannah moving to Australia, throughout the phase where she’d realised she didn’t really know what she was good at, what she wanted, if she really wanted or was good at anything at all and the future seemed kind of terrifying. He had been there. He’d known her, and she’d known him, and he remained just as sweet, and not so shy, and she’d learnt how to bring that dimple out. She’d learnt what Muse was, even. And how to play Just Dance. He knew all about Rihanna now, and even had extensive knowledge on Julia Roberts movies, and no longer felt the need to talk like a forty year old bitter loser on a lame forum to show off to her. She’d known what to say to make him smile, and she’d never felt as safe as when she’d leaned forward, her nose in the dip of his collarbone, and he draped his arms around her. When he held her hand, she thought that she could marry this boy someday, and be perfectly happy.
She’d met his parents early on, a few months in. They were very nice to her at dinner, and asked her all sorts of questions about her parents’ health, her sister’s piano playing, and what she planned to study. Dan had fidgeted throughout, foot tense against hers. Adrian had been a snarky brat - he had never really bothered with her - and excused himself, complete with eye-roll, right after dessert. When Dan’s mum had left to clear the table, when his dad hadn’t been looking, she closed her fingers around his fist, and he looked up at her, gratefully.
She went to help his mum with the plates.
When they’d decided to- they had looked it up. She had insisted that porn would not be appropriate research, and so they had looked it up together, properly, and readied themselves accordingly and it had still hurt, a bit, but felt more funny and stretch-y more than anything, and then towards the end it had been quite good, a little taste of what it could be, and they had collapsed over each other and laughed, half-hysterical.
And then with practice it had been very good. With him she’d learnt how to use her mouth, and he’d learnt how to use his tongue, and teeth. And his fingers; he’d treated it like a subject that had frustrated him at first: psychology, or calculus. He’d gotten the hang of those things, and he got the hang of this. How to use his thumb on her clit and how to crook his fingers. And how to blow on her earlobe and make her squirm. In the cinema, in the library, in her room. All those hours studying. Studying this.
She remembered this: alone at her place for once, her parents away on a reconciliatory weekend, her sister at Grandma’s. Those fingers steady and graceful on the keys of her grandfather's old grand piano. That dimple sweetly dug into his cheek. Those eyes focused, sure, happy, lost in this music, something he loved. She’d sat beside him, and knew, then, that she could marry this boy, and be perfectly happy.
When he’d told her he loved her, she’d savoured the moment for a moment and several thousand beats, this. Under the stars the taste of his milkshake still on her tongue his palm slightly sweaty against hers. His eyes were anxious and he’d started, “You don’t have to say it back,” and she’d said, “I love you too,” because she really, really did. “I love you.”
And then school had ended. And then UWE, something she’d never imagined actually happening until it did, Digital Media, Jesus. Wokingham had been her whole life, and she’d never known what she wanted, how much she’d wanted this until she’d had it in her grasp. A whole world, Bristol a gateway to everything, everything.
When she’d kissed him, before rejoining her family, he’d promised her and her him: that this would work. He would stay a year to redo psychology. And then he would get into Law, of course he would. He was brilliant. And then the world would be everything to them, together.
The first couple of months were just heady and new, interspersed with the melancholy of missing her parents, Lucy, him. Tearful Skype sessions, visits up and back when they’d been able to. And then she’d started making friends, and the workload was getting to be more than she’d thought it would be. When she remembered the last few months she remembered it’d been very hard to see his dimple through a shitty, blurry uni line, and there had never been a quiet place to talk and actually listen to what had been going on with his day.
She had been glad he seemed happy, still. That he had friends who were there for him when he had blow-ups with his dad, who could listen to him properly without their roommates yelling excitedly in the kitchen and them having to say What? What, sorry, repeat that? Phil seemed really cool.
“As long as he’s not, like, a really old paedophile who lives in his mum’s basement,” she’d half-joked, on one of the rare occasions in the last few months that they’d managed to catch each other in a free moment. She’d been balancing her coffee and her books and her phone; it had been too many things to juggle, really, at a time.
“He’s not,” Dan had replied, sounding rather defensive.
“I’m sure he’s not,” she’d said. “It was-”
“Yeah,” he’d said, and changed the subject. “So, uh, Jen still leaving those filthy spoons in the dishwasher?”
“Jess,” she’d corrected. “Jess.”
In September, she’d been invited to a party back in Wokingham. Someone’s birthday. It coincided with a pretty free week slash weekend, and she’d told them she was coming back. She’d been looking forward to seeing Dan in person, feel his smile curve under her fingers, his jaw in her palm.
She was not sure that they had anything to say to each other, anymore.
But he had been dimply and already a bit tipsy and hugged her, and their friends let them be, catcalling. They sat out in the back, on the steps that led up the door, and he asked about her assignments, and Jess, and Bristol, until conversation died out and they could hear the crickets, hear the sound of the party inside. He had not kissed her yet, but this time she did not think it was because he was asking permission.
“How’s Phil?” she asked, to break the awful silence.
“Fine,” he said, something cautious in his eyes, gaze flicking slightly away. “He’s fine.”
“You said he was going to… make a choose your own adventure-type video,” she pressed on. “How did that go?”
“You don’t want to hear about it,” he said.
“I totally do,” she said. So he talked.
This was what she had fallen in love with: video game acronyms she did not understand and the way he would hum a piece of music in her ear, over and over, and tell her exactly how it fit into the album as a whole, what it meant in the story they were telling. The lilt of his voice when he was talking about something he loved.
Something hurt in her throat, and continued to, even as he finished.
“Dan,” she said.
She desperately wanted to press her face into his skin again. He had always been so warm and solid and constant. It had always been so easy for them. Like the expression on his face, a moment ago: easy, open. Happy.
“Oh,” he said. “Oh, no. Don’t cry. Please don’t cry.”
“I am not crying,” she insisted, as though saying it would make the tears stop. They sat, and looked out at Kevin’s backyard, and listened to her hitched breathing, and the annoying crickets, and the muted inside sounds of upbeat music, of people laughing.
“He sounds very nice,” she said, eventually. Her traitorous throat hiccuped again.
She watched his face as his brain raced through its options: denial, flippancy, honesty. She could see the moment his face, familiar to her, known, admitted defeat, and Dan said: "Yeah."
He cleared his throat. “He- he is."
How did you get over your first love? She had figured she would marry him. There was no way to do it but slowly; there was no way to do it but delete his number, and cry into her pillow for nights, and watch Pretty Woman a total of sixteen times, and listen to Keira and Jess shit-talk him, and cry some more into the ice cream they got her. It did not matter that this had been a long time coming, and they both had known it. It mattered that they had grown up together, and she would never get to see him smile at her like that again, open and sweet. She would never again feel the pressure of his fingers when they wrapped against hers, or the way they curved up inside her and made her gasp. She would not be by his side as he graduated uni and became the brilliant, beautiful man she had seen glimpses of, that she had always known he would be.
How did you get over your first love? By stalking all of his social media, stalking daily, obsessively, and hating the boy he would meet in a month, hating his hair and eyes and the smug bow of his lips. By telling her mum, and bursting into tears all over again, and letting her mum soothe her through it. By letting Harry and Keira and Lucy coax her out again, slowly. By saying yes to a cup of coffee offered by a boy in her Spanish class. By waking up one morning and realising she did not actually have to check if AmazingPhil had tweeted danisnotonfire when she had been asleep. With time and more Julia Roberts and taking up skiing and Adele, and chocolate ice cream and friends and exams and time.
And she woke up one morning and realised she would always love him and what he had meant to her forever, and that thought did not ache like a bruise.
When she graduated uni, he congratulated her. He was on radio, now. They had both become the brilliant, beautiful people they always were going to grow up to be. She typed back Thank you!! complete with smiley face, and, you, too! congrats on everything, rockstar, and meant it.
Owen had bumped into her on the street and she’d promptly knocked the expensive camera out of his hands, watched frozen in horror as it tumbled to the ground, before he stuck out his foot to break its fall. She’d started apologising madly and he’d started reassuring her at almost the same instant, and when she’d run out of apologies he’d still been there, standing in front of her with a very nice smile and laugh lines by his eyes.
“No harm done,” he’d said, showing her. “See?”
He had lovely, kind eyes. She had always liked that. And he liked skiing, and Drew Barrymore over Julia. Nobody’s perfect, she’d sighed to him, and he’d laughed.
She’d told Jess about him, a week later, after two dates, one to the cinema, one a picnic on the bridge under the moonlight.
“Ooh, the way you say his name,” Jess had said, fluttering her eyelashes dramatically, then made eye contact with her, and hurriedly went to lick off the jam on her spoon.
But she’d said, distracted, “Really?”
Had she ever talked about someone like that? Since forever, since Dan. Spoken someone’s name, and other people could just tell it was meant to fit in your mouth.
Dan still talked about Phil like that. She’d watched a video of his, a couple of months ago. He still talked about Phil the way he had, on those back steps, all those years ago. Like Phil’s name fit in his mouth, that lilt in his voice, that dimple.
“Really,” Jess had confirmed, smiling. “Like you really like him.”
She had only ever met Phil once. They lived on opposite sides of London, and Dan still wished her a happy birthday punctually once a year, and they had seen each other, a couple of times, at informal reunion things, a friend’s wedding. Phil had not been there, either time.
But she had been in a bakery that stocked Owen’s favourite croissants because he’d had a promotion today and deserved like five, which she proceeded to procure for him, and she'd been coming out of the place and would recognise Phil anywhere, even if she had never seen him outside a computer screen before. Sloping back, eyes bright in the wintery sunlight, furry hood. Something had prompted her to call out, before he walked on towards the end of the sidewalk, “Hey, um. Phil, isn’t it?”
He turned back, a practised smile probably for fans, before it turned a bit surprised. “Oh, wow, hi!”
“Wow,” she said. “Oh god, this would have been so embarrassing if you hadn’t recognised me.”
Phil laughed. “We’re Facebook friends, remember,” he said.
“How are you?” she said.
“Good, good,” he said. “We’re good- actually, Dan should be around in a second, do you want to see him? He said he was just getting the Ribe- speak of the devil,” and the decision was taken out of her hands as Dan rounded the corner.
A long time ago, he would have come to stand by her side, easy as anything, as she chatted to someone. Now he slotted neatly into place beside Phil, and exclaimed her name, and awkwardly hugged her. She said, “You look good,” and he did, eyes bright, hair slightly wavier than he’d allowed it to be for ages, shaved sides. He was absurdly tall now, even taller than Phil. They exhausted small talk, Owen’s job, Dan and Phil’s holiday to Bangkok, her mum’s late calling in life as a successful mediator of marriages.
“Well,” Phil said eventually, “we left dinner on, so you guys go ahead and talk, I’ll just have to check on-” and she said, “No, no, I’m taking up too much of your time,” and she and Dan hugged clumsily again. He was so tall; she did not fit as she used to, against his shoulder.
She watched them walk away. Dan said something she couldn’t quite hear, and “-mango cordial this time,” and Phil said “Dan,” fond, exasperated, the sound of your voice when you talked about something you loved.
That was years ago, now.
She stared at the invite on the table a moment longer, its curling black calligraphy and vanilla, candle-y scent wafting faintly from it, and then hollered Owen’s name.
He appeared at their kitchen door, looking vaguely alarmed. “Love?”
“Dan’s invited us to his wedding,” she said.
Owen, wiping the soapsuds dripping from his arms, said: “Dan? Your ex Dan? Internet famous Dan? Do you want to go?”
“That’s the one,” she said, and smiled, thinking about a boy who’d quoted Reddit on some ridiculous French movie he’d never watched in order to impress her. “Yeah. Yeah, I think it’d be nice. Actually.”
EDIT: totally accidentally fic-synced with dizzy on this, opposite POVs of the exact same story on the exact same day. We didn't plan it I swear but the fics complement each other perfectly. Here is her (Phil's) raw and gorgeous version of events. It is stunning.