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It’s somewhere around two in the morning when a loud crash of thunder makes Phil bolt wide awake, fully convinced that he’s about to be struck by lightning.
Well. Maybe that’s a little dramatic.
But his anxious capybara brain has always been a little dramatic, and there’s an eerie staticky feeling in the air, setting his hair on end and making Phil feel more than a little concerned about his imminent death.
He looks over to his left. Without his glasses on, Dan just looks like a giant shadowy blur, but he can tell that he’s somehow still asleep, starfished out on his stomach and snoring softly into his pillow.
Phil shakes his shoulder. “Dan.” He doesn’t even feel bad about waking him up; god knows that Dan’s woken him up enough times with all his sleeptalking nonsense.
Dan grunts and snuffles, then opens one eye. “What?”
“Is it possible for lightning to come into the house and kill us?”
“What?” Dan repeats, now with a distinct whine in his voice.
“Can lightning go through houses? Like, through the power sockets or something? What if lightning struck our house and, you know.” He prods at Dan’s bare shoulder with his finger. “Bzzzt.”
“Phil, you… why’re you…” He makes a snuffling sound and rolls over to check his phone. “God, fuck, it’s early. We have to be up in a few hours for tour prep stuff. Why’re you waking me up over a little rain? It's London. We get rain all the time.”
“It’s not a little rain–” Phil starts, and then their bedroom is startlingly illuminated by a flash of lightning, paired almost instantaneously with a huge crash of thunder.
Phil makes a stupid squeaking sound, and Dan flinches into him, instinctually pawing around in the now-stark darkness to find him and draw him in closer.
“Holy fuck,” Dan says. “Okay, I get why you asked that now. That was fucking terrifying.”
“How’d you even sleep through that?” Phil says.
“Maybe ‘cause I’m used to you snoring like a feral hog every night,” Dan says. “A thunderstorm is nothing compared to you. Actual force of nature.” He nuzzles Phil closer, wrapping his arm around him and tucking his head under Phil’s chin so that they’re properly cuddling.
For as tactile as they both are during their waking hours, neither of them are really big on cuddling in bed at night. They’ll fall asleep in each other’s arms sometimes, especially after sex, but they always end up rolling away from each other at some point when they overheat or just need their own space.
Right now though, Dan’s making absolutely no move to roll away. It feels nice to just lay here, Phil thinks, listening as it absolutely pisses down rain outside in a way that they don’t experience very often in London. Most of the time, rain here amounts to a constant, annoyingly steady drizzle. But this is a proper storm, lashing against their windows and drumming furiously against the side of their house.
There’s another flash of lightning and a boom of thunder, even louder this time, if that’s possible.
“Can you feel the static in the air too?” Phil says into the darkness.
“What? No,” Dan says. “What do you mean?”
“It’s making my hair stand on end. My arm hair too.” He runs his hand along his own arm. Maybe it’s just his overactive imagination, but it really does feel staticky. “Bet I look like I’ve touched one of those plasma balls.”
Dan reaches up, carding his fingers through Phil’s hair. “No. Feels just like normal Phil bedhead to me.”
Phil leans into his touch, his eyes closing. “Hmmmm. I’m still worried it’ll come into our room and kill us.”
“I mean, it probably will somehow, just knowing your horrific luck with health stuff, and my luck with getting myself into fucking weird, improbable incidents. At least it’d make a fun new ‘Why We Almost Died’ video.”
“Or we might get cool lightning powers out of it,” Phil says. His mind always goes to strange places when it’s early in the morning like this. “Might be worth it. You could live out your dream of doing Pokémon battles in real life.”
“Phil used Thunderbolt. It was super effective,” Dan says, making them both laugh. Phil feels it more than hears it, because there’s another loud crash of thunder echoing throughout their room.
He presses himself closer to Dan. “What if it’s ball lightning again? It was raining about this hard when we saw it at my family home, remember?”
Phil can tell by the happy little exhale Dan makes that he’s smiling. “‘Course I remember. It was the coolest fucking thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“Remember how it was all green-ish instead of normal lightning-coloured?” Phil asks. “It was so weird. We didn’t even know what was happening at first.”
“Still can’t believe we saw it,” Dan murmurs.
“Me neither.” It feels like it was a whole lifetime ago now, but he can still clearly remember the giant balls of light hovering and crackling in the sky, looking more like an alien abduction than lightning.
It’d been early summertime, just after Dan’s birthday. They’d had the house to themselves for the whole of Dan’s visit up north, and they’d ended up intertwined on the bunk bed in the spare bedroom, the rain coming down just as hard as it is tonight.
They’d been only half a year into their relationship at that point, and every single second they managed to spend together had felt worth holding onto as tightly as possible. After all, seeing each other was a choice between pining over Skype and booking a whole three-hour train ride just to spend a few precious days together, surrounding themselves with each other.
At that point, almost everything about the future felt like a big question mark. (Except for Dan, of course. He’s always felt certain about Dan). Neither of them had known yet just how wonderful and difficult those first couple of years living in Manchester together would be when they saw that ball lightning together.
“We’re really lucky we actually did see it,” Phil says. “Because from what I remember, you were a lot more interested in making out with me than looking out the window at that storm.”
“Don’t blame it all on me, Mister ‘I’ve never made out in a bunk bed before, wanna try it?’” Dan says. “You’re lucky I was so gone for you that that line actually worked on me.”
“Hmmm. Didn’t hear you complaining though,” Phil says, nuzzling his nose against Dan’s bare shoulder.
“Yeah, well, I had a super hot new emo boyfriend who kept inviting me up to his place,” Dan says. “Not much to complain about, really.”
That’s not entirely true, Phil thinks, as another burst of thunder seems to shake their bedroom. Back then, they weren’t out to most people, and they didn't have any real idea what to do with their lives. YouTube was a niche hobby, not a viable career that could lead to them planning their fourth world tour together, sixteen years later. Things have gotten a whole lot better since 2010.
But he doesn’t say it, because it’s way too deep of a thought for two-something in the morning, and he’s feeling pleasantly drowsy as Dan’s fingers continue to stroke through his hair.
“Sometimes, I think I used up all my luck in my first year of knowing you,” Dan continues. “Like, not only did I meet you, I also saw the actual rarest natural phenomenon ever.”
“I think you still have plenty of luck left in you, Danny Boy,” Phil says.
“Enough to see ball lightning twice?” Dan says, and it’s not what Phil meant, but he hums thoughtfully anyway.
“Yeah, bet we could.”
“Maybe we could see it tonight,” Dan says, and he rolls out of bed, striding over to the window and opening up the curtains.
Phil grabs his glasses off his bedside table and watches as Dan returns to the bed, pulling the covers back over himself. In the dim glow of the streetlights outside, he can see that there’s a ridiculous amount of rain pouring down right now. “Really, really glad we’re not out in that.”
“Me too. Hope it lets up by the time we have to leave for the studio tomorrow,” Dan says. He gazes thoughtfully out the window. “Hmmm. Do you think anyone’s ever seen ball lightning twice?”
“Probably,” Phil says. “I mean, there’s billions of people. What are the chances that no one’s ever seen it twice?”
There’s another flash of lightning, brighter now that the curtains are open, and a few seconds later, a gentle rumble of thunder, this one quieter than the last few. Maybe the storm is moving away from their part of London?
The rain hasn’t let up, though. If anything, it seems to be drumming even more relentlessly against their window. As they watch several more lightning strikes flash across the sky, Phil’s mind drifts back to another storm, and the bunk bed in his parents’ old house, and he smiles. “Hey. Dan. Want to know something?”
“What?”
“I’ve never made out in a giant thunderstorm in our bed in the Phouse before. Wanna try it?”
It’s a little too dark to see Dan’s expression, even with the curtains open, but he just knows Dan’s rolling his eyes at him. “We totally have, you twat. There’s been loads of thunderstorms since we moved here.” But then his lips are on Phil’s, gentle and sweet, and maybe some things really haven’t changed since 2010.
It’s late and they’re too tired from tour planning and rehearsals to really start something right now. But it feels nice, kissing Dan in the middle of the night like this. Familiar, just like they used to do back in Manchester, when their sleep cycles were absolutely fucked and they’d regularly stay up until dawn.
Phil’s hand drifts up to cup Dan's face, stroking gently over his jaw a few times before moving back to tease at Dan's mullet. Dan smiles against his mouth, and his lips start moving a little more insistently, and oh, Phil thinks, maybe it's not too late after all, and he's not too tired, and–
A sudden flash of lightning illuminates their whole bedroom, and the loudest crash of thunder they’ve heard tonight echoes around their room. It’s so loud that Phil’s actually convinced their room is rattling in the aftershocks.
He yelps against Dan’s mouth in surprise, and Dan shrieks, his nose bumping into Phil’s and his knee lodging into Phil’s mid-thigh as he scrabbles around, tugging Phil closer. Instinctively, Phil pulls their covers over them like a shield, blanketing them both in complete darkness.
They huddle together for a few deafening seconds before Dan finally exhales. “Fucking hell, my heart is racing so fast.” His fingers are clutching vice-like on Phil’s bicep.
“Yeah, I can feel it,” Phil says. Their chests are pressed close together, and he can feel Dan’s heart fluttering like a startled moth. He laughs. “Oh my god. We’re actually so stupid, Dan. Why was that so scary?”
“You and your staticky hair had me convinced we were in mortal peril!” Dan argues. “Or that we were gonna get really lucky and actually see ball lightning again!”
“Maybe we still could,” Phil says.
“What, like, maybe it’s only activated by the sheer magical power of two twink soulmates kissing during a thunderstorm or something?”
Phil laughs and gives him a cheeky kiss. “You never know, it could be! You don’t know all the many mysteries of ball lightning.”
“Hmmm.” Dan runs a hand through Phil’s hair. “Does your hair still feel staticky?”
“Yeah, a bit, I think. But I’m not sure if that’s from the lightning or being under the duvet. Or maybe it’s just my imagination.”
“Well, there’s absolutely no way I’m getting up to shut that curtain now,” Dan says.
“Me neither,” Phil says. “I vote we stay hidden under this duvet for the rest of eternity so the lightning can’t get us.”
“There’s a lightning in the room,” Dan says. Phil laughs and nestles closer to him under the safety of the duvet, their own little shelter in the storm.