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“Well, that hit the internet like a fucking bomb” was the first thought in his mind as soon as he opened twitter and found out his amazing days at uni had been released to the public by someone digging around. He was okay with that, he made peace with the thought that, despite saying over and over again, someone would always do some digging and find something to talk about,on the bright side, he looked good in most of them, he always did, especially back then.
He didn't mean to go down the rabbit hole, he rarely did it these days, it was more of a Dan job after all, but he couldn't help it, what started with an innocent look at old pictures of his emo-self quickly turned into obsessing over them, he was hot, that was a universal truth, everyone fell head over heels at his raven hair and flirty attitude on the internet, God, Dan fell head over heels for him and… that was the problem, wasn't it?
Dan's crush was the Phil in the pictures,the love of his life was the Phil sitting at the kitchen table, sure, he wasn't stupid enough to doubt that, but he couldn't shake the feeling of being a completely different person than the one that attracted his favourite person in the world.
He scrolled further than he meant to.
Seventeen-year-old Phil pouting at a camera in someone's room, twenty-year-old Phil with the ridiculous fringe and plaid shirt, screenshot over screenshot of his earlier videos, tongue poking out of his mouth, no shirt sitting on the floor, his years of being a menace, giving the people what they wanted, kissing the camera, showing off, getting the attention.
He remembered being that reckless. He remembered liking being looked at like that.
He didn't remember exactly when he stopped being able to picture himself as anyone's rockstar fantasy.
The platinum was truly Dan's idea, actually, or at least Dan had said "you'd look good" in that offhand way he had of planting a seed and forgetting he'd done it, and Phil had gone quiet and thought about it for three weeks before booking the appointment. He liked it now. He liked it most days, he needed the boost on his confidence and felt so right looking in the mirror. But scrolling through this through evidence, essentially, catalogued and timestamped, of a version of himself that strangers on the internet were in his mentions right now calling "the hottest man alive, no actually" it was hard not to do the math.
Eighteen-year-old Dan, hiding under his covers on a laptop that overheated if you looked at it wrong, falling asleep to skype calls with a guy who looked like that. Not this.
Not thirty-nine, not soft around the edges in a way he'd made peace with in every mirror except, apparently, the one in his mind, not hair the color of a hospital wall, not colourful shirts and shiny pants, not glasses and crinkly lines on the corners of his eyes.
He heard the kitchen door before he heard Dan's footsteps, and by the time Dan rounded into the doorway Phil had already flipped his phone face-down on his knee like a teenager caught somewhere he shouldn't be.
– Stop – Dan said, not even glancing at the phone, just reading it off Phil's face the way he always could.
– I’m not doing anything.
– You are. There's something upsetting you and you already convinced yourself it is definitely true and you're bracing for me to agree with you. – He put it simply, over pouring a glass of water, not sparing one glance back.
It was infuriating, how Dan could just go around reading every expression and catching each and every thought out of the air before Phil had the chance to think about it himself.
Like he was already in Phil's mind, like he owned the place.
– I hate that you do that. – Phil said it to the ceiling, not to Dan, arms crossed over his chest like that would hold anything in, creating a physical barrier between his heart and the rest of the house.
– You love that I do that. – Dan set the glass down and finally, finally turned around, leaning back against the counter, arms crossed to mirror him, except on Dan it looked like an invitation instead of a wall. – Show me.
– It's stupid.
– Show me the stupid thing, then.
Phil turned the phone back over more out of habit than surrender, held it up without looking at the screen himself, he already knew what was there.
Dan took his time. Scrolled slowly, actually looked, didn't do the polite scan-and-hand-back thing, he never did, even when it was actually a stupid thing.
Phil watched his face for something – pity, maybe, or that particular kind of gentle Dan got when he was about to lie to make someone feel better – and didn't find either.
What he found instead was Dan grinning like an idiot at a picture of twenty-two-year-old Phil posing at the camera, tongue out, room a disaster.
– God, you were feral. – Dan said it like a compliment, because to him it was.
– That's the problem.
– That's not a problem, that's a Tuesday. – Dan handed the phone back, and then didn't let go of Phil's hand when he took it, just held on, thumb moving over his knuckles like it was nothing, like it was everything, just the natural succession of things – What's the actual problem bub?
Phil looked at their hands instead of Dan's face, it was easier that way, if he looked into his eyes something deeper would crawl out without his consent.
– You fell in love with that. – He nodded at the phone, at the ghost of himself still glowing on the screen between them. – Eighteen and up all night talking to the star wannabe with emo hair and a god complex. That's who made you fall asleep smiling, who made you get on that train. That's not…I'm not –
– Finish the sentence, Phil.
– I'm not him anymore. – It came out smaller than he meant it to. – And I look in the mirror some days and I don't know if I'd have made teenage-you fall for this. Bleached hair and glasses and I laugh too loud at my own jokes now and I don't know when I turned into somebody's dad instead of somebody's wet dream.
Dan didn't laugh. Didn't do the thing where he'd crack a joke to defuse the situation, which was somehow worse, because it meant he was taking it seriously, which meant Phil had to sit in it a second longer than he wanted to, not just blurt it out and run away from his feelings like he used to do.
– Can I tell you something? – Dan said it quietly, approaching him, half a step closer, bringing to his lips the hand he still hadn't let go of, delicately placing the phone back on the table – I didn't fall in love with a haircut.
– Dan…
– I'm not done. – He said it soft but final, the way he did when he needed Phil to actually hear the next part instead of arguing with the one before it. – I fell for a guy who stayed up till four a.m. because he didn't want to be the one to hang up first. And then I fell for him again when he got quieter and softer and started making me coffee without asking when I felt depressed. And again when he went platinum and wouldn't stop checking the mirror for a week like he'd done something illegal. I've fallen in love with you probably a hundred different times, Phil, in a hundred different – whatever this is, phases, eras, I don't know what to call it. You keep changing and I keep –
He stopped. Looked almost annoyed at himself, the way he did when a feeling came out bigger than he'd planned to let it.
– I keep falling for whoever you turn into. That's not a design flaw. That's just what happens when you love someone long enough to watch them become six different people, and when you love every single one of them.
Phil pulled his hand back, not sharp, just enough to put a little air between them, like he needed the space to argue properly, to breath in the discomfort that dealing with a big feeling needed.
– Sounds like a nice thing to say but it doesn't make it true.
– Everything I say is true, I'm famously honest. – Dan said it dry, and it got the smallest twitch out of the corner of Phil's mouth, which counted as a win. – Okay. Fine. You want true? Here's true.
He reached over, took the phone out of Phil's line of sight properly this time, set it face-down on the counter behind him like it had done something wrong. It did, it gave power to the voices inside his lover’s head.
– I don't wake up every morning next to the twenty-year-old you fished out of my youtube feed sixteen years ago. I wake up next to whoever you are that day. Some mornings that's grumpy-you who won't talk before coffee, some mornings it's the version who's had a nightmare and pretends he didn't. Some mornings – most mornings, honestly – it's just you, doing something completely unremarkable, making toast, and I look over and go, Oh, there he is. Someone new. Again.
– I bet that's a song lyric.
– I know, I stole it, sue me, it's a good lyric. – Dan shrugged, unbothered. – Point still stands. I'm not in love with a photo album, Phil. I'm not comparing you to the archive every day and docking points. I fall for you fresh, every single day. That's not me settling for what's left after emo-you retired, that's just – that's what loving someone for this long actually feels like. You don't get to keep the one version forever, you get all of them. I got the lucky end of that deal, not the short one.
Phil was quiet for a second, looking at him in that way he did when he was deciding whether to let something land or deflect it, eyes lightly moving like he was trying to catch the right thought inside his head.
– Wow, just turned thirty-five and already in the dad-joke era.
– I waited ages for, especially, the dad-joke era. – Dan said it instantly, no hesitation, which was somehow the most convincing part of the whole thing. – Have you heard some of the shit that comes out of your mouth now? I married a man who does a bit about seagulls at breakfast. Sixteen-year-old me would've been so embarrassed but current me thinks it's the funniest thing I've ever witnessed in my life, every single time, even the fortieth time after you forgot you told that joke already
– We're not married, Mr. “I don’t believe in marriage”
– We're basically married, don't change the subject, shut up.
That got him, finally, something loosening in Phil's shoulders that had been wound tight since he'd opened Twitter that morning. He looked down at the counter, at the phone lying face-down, at all those flattened, frozen versions of himself trapped behind glass, and then back up at the one person who somehow never seemed to be looking backwards at them, the one who not once wanted to go back to the past.
– I still don't love how they talk about the pictures.
– You don't have to. – Dan stepped back into the space he'd given up earlier, easy about it now, hand reaching up to curl around Phil’s soft cheeks. – You just have to remember I'm not looking at them either, their opinions don’t matter to me. I'm looking at you. Present tense. Today's version. He's doing fine, by the way. Bit dramatic this morning, but fine.
Phil huffed something that wasn't quite a laugh but was trying to be one as Dan gave him the sweetest of kisses. He sat on the moment for a while, basking in the way his lover looked at him like he was everything important in the universe, like he would steal the whole solar system if he could and would make him happy.
Phil reached past Dan for his phone again, more out of restlessness than anything, thumb hovering over the screen before he actually turned it back on, fingers quick with experience of scrolling all day, yellow catching the light where Dan’s stupid photocard was still attached to his phonecase.
– You're doing it again. – Dan said, watching him, warning.
– I'm just checking, I'm not spiraling. – Phil scrolled, mostly on autopilot now, past the original post, into the replies, where the discourse had already fractured into a hundred smaller conversations. Somewhere in the middle of it, a reply from some account with a little picture of a Dan edit as its avatar – glasses,some white and red football jersey he didn’t recognise, very serious about it – had quote-tweeted the whole thread just to say “he was always this hot, what is anyone even arguing about, he can come around my house any time” forty-two likes and climbing, god bless auto-translate.
Phil turned the phone around to show him, mostly to make a point.
– See, this is what I mean, everyone's acting like –
– That's a fair take, actually. – Dan didn't even squint at the avatar, just nodded at the tweet like it settled something. – Whoever that is gets it.
– That's not the…Dan! That's not the point I was making.
– I know. – Dan took the phone out of his hand again, gentler this time, and set it down for good. – I just liked that one.
Phil let himself be pulled in by the shoulder, half-hearted resistance dissolving the second Dan's arm actually landed around him, curling over to wrap Phil with his entire body, shielding him from the world.
– Come here, drama queen. – Dan said it into his hair, and Phil let his forehead drop against Dan's shoulder, breathing out something that had been sitting in his chest since he opened Twitter.
– I'm allowed one emo moment a decade, you can't take this away from me. – He laughed getting up without breaking the embrace, he needed the closeness, Dan’s hands holding him together.
– Fitting, given the source material. – Dan reached blindly for his phone on the counter – his own, not Phil's – and a second later the tinny opening of a very familiar song started up, the one that had been playing at some party, years and one lifetime ago, the one Phil still couldn't hear in a supermarket without immediately texting Dan a single exclamation point.
Phil groaned, but didn't pull away. – You're not doing this.
– I'm absolutely doing this. – Dan was already swaying them slightly, badly, on purpose, the kind of dancing that wasn't really dancing so much as an excuse to keep holding on. He mumbled along under his breath, off-key, deliberately worse than he actually sang, turning the chorus into something closer to a wheeze than a melody. – Take me to your best friend's house, goin' 'round this roundabout, oh yeah
– You're ruining a perfectly good song.
– I ruin it with love.
Dan spun him, clumsy, socked feet catching on the kitchen tile, and Phil laughed for real this time, the sound surprised out of him. Emboldened, Dan kept going, voice climbing into something almost tuneful for a whole two lines before cracking again.
– Slumber party, pillow fight, my eyes and your eyes – he sang it right against Phil's ear, ridiculous and unbothered by it, – like Peter Pan up in the sky, my best friend's house tonight
– You do know that's about actual teenagers having an actual slumber party, right? Not two grown men in a kitchen.
– I know exactly what it's about, and frankly I think it's about us now, retroactively, that's how good songs work– Dan didn't even pause the swaying, just tightened his arm around Phil's waist like the correction had strengthened his case instead of the opposite. – Besides, we did the whole slumber party thing, sort of. Stayed up till stupid o'clock, wouldn't hang up first, my mum banging on the door telling me to go to sleep and now I AM in my bestfriend’s house.
– That's not the same as a pillow fight, and is your house too.
– Emotionally it's the same. – Dan spun him again, more confidently now that Phil wasn't fighting it. – See, that. That's the version I actually married.
– We're not married.
– We're doing the domestic bit where I pretend we are and you pretend to hate it, keep up.
Phil rolled his eyes, but he was smiling now, properly, the phone and the pictures and the whole ugly churn of the morning shrinking down to something small and manageable, background noise under a badly-sung chorus and Dan's hand warm at the small of his back, caring and possessive of what they had, the life they carved away from the bitterness of the world.
Dan spun him again, more confidently now that Phil wasn't fighting it, and Phil let himself be spun, let himself be led in this terrible, shuffling excuse for a dance that had no choreography beyond hold on and don't let go.
– You're doing the thing where you dip me now, aren't you. – Phil said it warily, already feeling the shift in Dan's grip.
– I would never do something so reckless with your fragile thirty-nine-year-old back.
– You're doing it right now, I can feel you doing it
– I'm not doing anything, I'm simply repositioning
He dipped him. Badly, and a half-second too fast, and Phil yelped, grabbing at Dan's shirt with both hands, and for one wobbling moment it looked genuinely unclear whether they were about to have a lovely romantic dip or end up as two bodies on the kitchen floor.
– Dan!!
– I've got you, I've got you, I definitely have a plan here
– You do not have a plan, I can see it in your face, you're improvising
– Little bit, yeah. – Dan hauled him back upright, both of them laughing too hard to actually be dancing anymore, more just holding each other up at that point, foreheads nearly knocking together. – Okay. In hindsight, bad plan.
– I could've cracked my skull open on the tile.
– You'd have looked very handsome doing it, very tragic, very rockstar, red hair and all.
– That's not comforting.
– It wasn't meant to be comforting, it was meant to be true. – Dan pressed a kiss somewhere in the vicinity of Phil's temple, missing slightly because neither of them had fully stopped moving, some residual sway left over even without the song still going. – You're allowed to laugh, you know. At the almost-concussion. It's funnier from where I'm standing.
– You're the one who nearly concussed me.
– And yet, somehow, still the funny one in this scenario. – Dan tucked a strand of hair back from Phil's face, unnecessary, entirely for the excuse of touching him. – Look at that. You're not thinking about the phone anymore.
Phil paused, actually checked, and found it was true – the tight, humming static that had been sitting behind his ribs all morning had gone quiet somewhere between the first verse and nearly being dropped on the kitchen floor.
– That was your plan all along, wasn't it. Distraction via mild physical danger.
– I contain multitudes. – Dan said it with his chin tipped up, entirely too pleased with himself, and pulled Phil back in against his chest before he could protest again, chin dropping to rest on top of his head instead, swaying them slower now, no real rhythm left to it beyond the two of them just standing there, holding on. – Rockstar management's a very holistic role. Physical therapy's technically in the contract.
– There is no contract.
– There's an emotional contract. Read the fine print sometime.
Phil huffed, but didn't move, just stayed there against him, breathing him in, letting the last of the morning's noise finally go quiet for good.
The song had ended somewhere behind them,phones forgotten on the counter, but neither of them moved to go find them, content instead in this slower, songless kind of sway, the kitchen light doing something soft and gold to everything it touched.
– For the record, – Phil said, mouth against his shoulder, more feeling the hum of Dan's chest than actually meaning to speak, – I liked the blonde idea. I wanted to do it for so long. I just needed someone to remind me why I did it.
– That's literally my whole job. – Dan kissed the top of his head, still swaying, slower now, barely moving at all. – Rockstar management. Very demanding position, terrible pay.
– The pay is my undying love.
– Yeah, see, that's the bit I signed up for, and the free access to your credit card.
Phil laughed, actually laughed with his whole chest, the anxiety from earlier nothing now but a soft memory of shaking hands. He felt Dan's arms loosen around him, not letting go so much as shifting, one hand finding his and tugging, gentle, toward the hallway.
– C'mon. – Dan said it against his temple. – Before you fall asleep standing up and I have to carry you, which, complimentary as that sounds for my ego, is genuinely bad for both our backs at this point.
– I'm not falling asleep standing up.
– You did the swaying-with-your-eyes-closed thing about ten seconds ago, I felt it happen.
– That was dancing.
– That was you clocking out. Come on.
The phones stayed forgotten on the counter, and by unspoken agreement they drifted out of the kitchen, Phil's hand caught loosely in his.
– Bedtime? – Dan asked, though it wasn't really a question, more a formality, the same way he always framed things he'd already decided.
– I just got up.
– Doesn't matter, you've had A Day. – He said it with the capital letter audible, the way only he could, steering Phil down the hall with a palm between his shoulder blades. – You get the full princess treatment.
– I don't need the full princess treatment, I'm not five.
– You absolutely need the full princess treatment, you've been performing emotional labour since ten a.m., your brain is soup. – Dan pushed the bedroom door open and went straight for the lamp, clicking off the overhead light and leaving just the warm low glow from the one on his side, the room dropping instantly into something softer, dimmer, kinder to look at. – There. Sanctioned goblin mode. Effective immediately.
Phil huffed out a laugh, already toeing off his socks.
– Sanctioned by who?
– By me, I'm the Secretary of Goblin Affairs, it's a very official title I gave myself. – Dan was already peeling back the duvet, patting the mattress like he was inviting a dog up onto it. – You get to lie there, say nothing, think nothing, possibly make a small guttural noise if you feel strongly about something, and that's the whole job description today.
– That's insulting.
– That's a reward, you've earned it. Sixteen years of service, exemplary conduct, occasional Twitter spiral. – Dan climbed in after him, arm already reaching, and Phil let himself be gathered in without any further token protest, head finding the spot on Dan's chest that had apparently been reserved for over a decade now. – Go on. Goblin out. I'll handle the rest of today.
– The rest of today is just brushing our teeth and watching tv.
– I said I'd handle it, not that it'd be impressive.
Phil closed his eyes, the last of the day finally uncurling out of his shoulders, Dan's hand moving slow and absent through his hair, blonde under his fingers, familiar under his palm regardless of the colour.
– Hey. – Phil said it quietly, almost asleep already.
– Mm.
– Thanks for today's rockstar management, performance review: Five stars.
– I'm putting it on my LinkedIn. – Dan pressed a kiss to the top of his head, and the lamp stayed on, low and gold, the world moved around them but neither of them was awake enough to care.
Just at the edge of sleep, Dan's voice came back, barely more than breath, half a tune he wasn't even trying to get right anymore.
– Take me to your best friend's house… – he murmured it against Phil's hair, unhurried, – I loved you then and I love you now.
Phil didn't open his eyes, but his hand found Dan's on the duvet, fingers slotting into the gaps like they'd been carved for it.
– Still ruining perfectly good songs.
– Still meaning every word of it, though.
Phil smiled into the dark, and let that be the last thing he heard before he fell asleep.