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If you'd asked Dan from way back in 2010, he would say he would never, ever, set foot in Manchester again.
He'd broken the oath a few times over the years, his comedy career leading him to places he wouldn't even go with a gun, but nothing even came close to this.
No. This was a whole new level of dangerous territory.
Heaving the last of his boxes into his hallway, he collapses down on to the floor, thoroughly exhausted by all the stairs and lifting and general exercise involved in moving house.
If only 2010 Dan could see him now.
-`♡´-
When it gets to mealtime, it finally occurs to Dan how little sustenance he has in his new apartment.
While, usually, he would just order something in, he doesn't even have coffee, for fuck's sake.
He sighs. This is going to be enough to warrant actually leaving the safety of his own space and venturing into a supermarket.
He practically shudders at the thought.
Putting on what he hopes is a socially acceptable yet entirely effortless excuse of an outfit, he opens up google maps, somewhat relieved when it turns out his nearest big tesco is only a 7-minute walk away.
He makes it there in five. Pros of having long legs, he supposes, as he grabs a basket from the stack and heads straight for the fridge aisles.
He picks up some basics - food he can make without practically any effort while he deals with the task of setting up an entire apartment. Ready meals, pizza, bread, eggs, pasta, that kind of thing. He gets tea, coffee, sugar, and a carton of oatly barista.
It's on the last minute detour to the cereal aisle on the way to the self-checkouts when it happens.
He rounds the corner, somewhat lost in his own little world as he mentally recounts the admittedly short shopping list he'd come in with, when all of a sudden he's bumping in to someone and locking eyes with their all-too-familiar pair of blue ones.
Phil.
Dan actually gasps out loud, a fact he's really not proud of, before he spins on his heels and makes a run for it.
He's left the scene before he even has a chance to witness Phil's reaction.
He even goes to a checkout with an actual person manning it, because even if it's been over fifteen years since they last spoke, he knows without a doubt that Phil will not be talking to someone in public unless he really has to.
He makes it home within four minutes.
-`♡´-
Dan is not sure whether it's the new apartment, his general wellbeing, or the stress of seeing Phil in the flesh for the first time in sixteen years, but either way, he can't get to sleep for the life of him.
The tiny alarm clock on the floor has long since ticked past into a new day, the arms nearing two in the morning.
It's after tossing and turning for about four hours that Dan makes his most impulsive decision in recent memory, second only to moving back to Manchester at all, if that.
Ripping it from the power cord, he opens up his phone and navigates to Phil's contact. He could never bring himself to delete it, even if the rational side of his brain knows it's kind of creepy to have it, even if Phil's probably changed his number by now anyway.
He types and deletes for longer than he'd like to admit before he finally settles on a message.
hey. sorry for freaking out earlier (and also like for being here at all?). i know you've lived here your whole life and probably weren't expecting to see me around any time soon. hope you're well x
He adds the kiss on the end in a moment of impulse, hitting send immediately after in yet another.
He closes the app and shuts his phone off before he has a chance to do anything else.
It doesn't help him get to sleep.
-`♡´-
"No, I'm just saying it's not normal, Phil. Like, scientifically."
"Since when did you care what was normal?"
It was a Thursday night, and they were already on their third argument of the week.
"I don't," Dan claims. "But this is different."
"How?"
"It just is."
"I don't see how-"
"It just is, okay!" Dan yells, and immediately regrets it when he sees the look on Phil's face. He takes a deep breath, rubbing his hands harshly down his own face. "I don't mean you."
Phil lets out a scoff. "How can you not?"
Dan sighs. "Phil, come on. I wasn't talking about you. I could never think that about you."
Phil actually laughs at that.
"Right," He says. "Yeah, okay. But if being gay is 'unnatural' and 'not normal'-" He exaggerates the words with lopsides air quotes. "-and I'm gay, then how can you not be talking about me?"
"Okay, well," Dan takes another deep breath. "Maybe it is for some people and not for others."
"That's ridiculous."
"Is it?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Dan. Come on. Listen to yourself," Phil sighs. "You sound like one of those people on the news who try to convince people that being gay is a mental illness, or something."
"Maybe it is," Dan says, voice small.
Phil's breath catches. "Dan."
"Maybe I'm like this for a reason. Maybe it's the same thing making me want to kill myself as well as making me a fucking fa-"
Phil tackles Dan into a hug before he can finish the word.
"No," He says. "I love you, but you're wrong. There is nothing unnatural about you. There is nothing wrong about you. Do you hear me?"
Dan, from where he's still trapped in Phil's arms, nods.
They both know he doesn't believe it.
-`♡´-
When Dan wakes up, he's granted about ten blissful seconds of his sleep-addled brain having forgotten what had happened the evening before.
At the 11th second, it hits him like a freight train.
"Fuck," He mutters, opening up his phone to confirm if his fears are true.
Sure enough, Phil's name sits at the top of his messages list.
"Fuck," He repeats.
It's then he notices the little blue notification dot.
He presses it before he even thinks about it.
hey! No need to apologise. Was nice to see you even if it was for all of three seconds lol
hope you're good too
wait this is Dan right
Dan feels his heart stutter in his chest.
"Fuck."
Not for the first time, not even for the hundredth, he laments himself for ruining something with so much potential with someone so genuinely lovely. If he could go back in time, knowing what he knows now and being who he is now, he would do it all so differently.
He hopes Phil knows that.
-`♡´-
"What's up?" Phil asks, tossing his bag down on the floor as he heads to the kitchen for a drink.
Dan doesn't respond.
"Hey, you okay?" Phil tries again, settling down on the sofa next to him.
Dan flinches. Phil tries not to feel too hurt.
"I don't think I can do this anymore," Dan whispers. It's almost so quiet Phil doesn't hear it.
He asks him to repeat it anyway.
"I don't think I can do this anymore," Dan says, louder.
Phil's breath catches, as if he had expected the volume to miraculously change what Dan was trying to say.
Still, he tries to cling on. "You don't think you can do what anymore?"
"This," Dan sighs, gesturing between them. "Us."
"Oh."
For the first time since they'd met, the silence that follows is tense and awkward.
Phil doesn't have long to process, before Dan is dropping another bombshell.
"I'm dropping out of uni," He says, like it's nothing. Like he's decided already and nothing Phil can say or do will change his mind. "I'm moving back to Reading."
"What?"
"I'm moving out. I'm leaving."
It's then that Phil notices the fully packed bag by the door. He's not sure how he hadn't spotted that earlier.
He's not sure when he started crying, but the sight of it only makes it worse.
"Why?" Phil asks.
"You know why."
Phil lets out a teary sigh. "Yeah, I do."
Another silence threatens to take over, but Phil acts before it does.
He throws his body across the sofa, pulling Dan into an embrace so tight it probably hurts the both of them.
"I'm so sorry," He says. "I'm sorry the world was so cruel to you."
He hears Dan sniffle in his arms, and a piece of his heart shatters even further - not for himself, but for the fragile boy he'd met on the internet all those months ago who'd been dealt a shitty hand at every step of the way and didn't know it could be any better.
"I know you're not ready to love me," Phil continues. "But I need you to know how much I love you, Dan."
Phil pulls away, pressing a final kiss to the top of his head, where the curls were just starting to peak through the straightening.
Ten minutes later, Dan was gone.
-`♡´-
For the next week, Dan is in intense-focus mode. He has an apartment to decorate, furnish, and organise. He has a city to relearn his way around.
And, last but certainly not least, he has an ex-boyfriend to try to forget.
The first two, as tedious as they were, have been significantly easier than the latter of the three.
Every night since The Tesco Incident, as it has since been dubbed in his mind, he's laid in bed, phone in hand, and done nothing but stare at the messages he'd shared with Phil.
Maybe that was creepy of him.
He didn't really care.
He never sent anything else - at least, not after confirming it was, in fact, him who had sent the message - and neither had Phil. They'd existed in a surprisingly comfortable silence given the years of distance that had previously stood between them.
This is why it's a bit of a shock when he slumps down on his sofa, exhausted after a day of trying to be a functional adult with a functional house, opening up the notifications on his phone to find Phil's name.
His breath catches, but he doesn't hesitate. He clicks the notification.
hey, dan. sorry if this is weird, but if you're still in Manchester maybe we could catch up some time?
Something weird settles low in Dan's chest at the prospect. It feels strangely reminiscent to the memories he has of 2009, the high moments in Phil's arms where it seemed like the two of them were untouchable, on top of the whole world.
Only this time, he's not the scared teenager anymore.
He types out a response.
i'd love to. x
He hits send.
-`♡´-
Two days later, Dan finds himself on the tram into Manchester with butterflies in his stomach.
He's not sure why he's so nervous, really. They'd gotten the hardest part done. They'd broken the complete radio silence. Now, all they had to do was talk. They could do that. Yeah.
The only thing comforting Dan is that even if it does go wrong, it can't possibly go worse than before, right? He feels awful even for thinking it, but it doesn't change the fact it's entirely true.
He's so in his own head that he almost misses his stop, scrambling off the tram at the last second before the doors close. As if that wasn't enough and years of living in London hadn't taught him well enough, he then forgets to tap his phone to the reader and has to do the walk of shame back to the platform when he remembers.
Finally, he's walking through the doors of the quaint little coffee shop Phil had suggested they meet at. He was early, by about 20 minutes at that, and if he knew anything about Phil, it was that he could not be organised to save his life.
A quick scan of the coffee shop confirms his suspicions, so he makes his way to a booth within easy sight of the door, for both of their sakes, and waits with bated breath for familiar blue eyes and bleach-blonde hair.
Phil, to his credit, gets there on the hour to the dot. He spots Dan reasonably quickly, gesturing to the tills as he walks in that direction instead of towards Dan.
He approaches reasonably quickly, though, armed with not one but two drinks and what looked to Dan like lemon muffins.
"I hope your order is the same," Phil says as he takes a seat, offering one of the drinks to Dan along with a muffin.
Dan is stunned. "You remembered?"
Phil meets his eyes and smiles. "Of course I did."
Dan blushes and looks down at the drink by his hands. "Thank you."
"It's nothing," Phil says. It feels like a lot more than nothing to Dan. "So, how've you been?"
They spend the next however long catching up on the different directions their lives had taken.
Phil was a movie editor and director now, which Dan somewhat shamefully admitted to knowing, praising several movies of his by name and even going so far as to mention the specific details he enjoyed the most. Phil is blushing by the time Dan finishes talking.
Dan tells Phil about his comedy career, about the world tours he'd done and about how it had really taken off in recent years. This time, it's Phil's turn to share a secret. Naturally, it's a little bit more unhinged than Dan's.
Apparently, for every gig Dan had done in Manchester, Phil had been there - but not as Phil. He'd come dressed in a different disguise every time, and had sat right at the back, needing to see Dan but not wanting to disrespect his boundaries.
At the last part, Dan goes from laughing in disbelief to almost crying out of appreciation.
The conversation twists and turns naturally, as if they'd spent no time apart at all.
When eventually it winds down, Phil sighs.
"Y'know, I really missed you, Dan." He says.
"Yeah?" Dan's eyes glint in the light. The highlights look almost like hearts.
"Yeah." Phil confirms.
Dan smiles. "I really missed you too."
-`♡´-