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Phil was a Christmas man. He was, in fact, Christmassy to a degree which slightly astounded his boyfriend slash housemate Dan, who had previously considered himself the most Christmassy around. Phil was Christmassy to the point that, in the past year, he’d long since eclipsed Dan with the amount of mistletoe kisses he’d managed to initiate. Phil Lester was Christmassy to a degree that had him balancing on the slippery roof in below freezing weather, sleeves rolled up to his elbows and a string of multicoloured fairy lights looped rather recklessly around his neck.
Dan Howell, self-appointed caretaker and all around catastrophe-deverter of and for Phil Lester himself, was not expecting to arrive home to be confronted by this sight. The moment the scene in front of him actually clicked in his head, he yanked his tragically ungloved hands out of his pockets and flung his arms up into the gathering dusk, breaking into a brisk, panicky jog down the treacherously icy pavement.
“Phil!” he choked out, voice nothing short of a shriek. “Phil, what the fuck―”
Phil pivoted at the sound of Dan’s voice―Dan cringed violently at the way he wobbled back and forth before regaining his balance―and waved, blatantly cheerful.
“Hello love!” he shouted back, the smile on his face evident even through the slowly increasing amounts of snow drifting through the twilight. “How was work?”
“A lot less stressful than watching this, I’ll give you that,” Dan managed, panting as he skidded to a halt in their front lawn. He shoved his hands back in his pockets and tilted up on his tiptoes, craning his neck to try and catch a solid look at the utter idiot on their shared roof.
“Listen,” said Phil, turning back to the task at hand. “The festive spirit is incredibly important to get in, I thought you were with me on this.”
“You know what’s incredibly important to get in? The house,” said Dan, “where it is warm, and not icy, and we can put up Christmas lights without me having to fear for your life.”
“You tell me you fear for my life on a near daily basis anyway,” Phil shot back, laughter underneath the concentration in his voice.
“This is a slightly more intense version of fearing for your life,” Dan retorted, bouncing anxiously on his toes. “You know, the kind where your life is kind of actually at stake.”
“Dan,” said Phil, exasperated. The eye-roll was audible.
“Fine! Fine,” Dan amended. “Just hurry. And don’t die. I’d be a little bit upset if you died.”
“Only a little bit,” Phil giggled at half volume, focus already shifted back to the strands of lights that were by now looped terrifyingly around his entire upper half.
By the time the lights were finally arranged to Phil’s incomprehensible satisfaction, Dan’s arse was nearly frozen off and the snow had begun to collect around his shoes. He tensed up as Phil took a step back to admire his handiwork, the heels of his boots coming dangerously close to the gutter behind him.
“Let’s go inside now?” Dan asked, trying to make his voice as hopeful and enticing as he could, and Phil started and turned as if he’d forgotten Dan was still there.
“You moron, you didn’t have to wait out here this whole time,” Phil told him, pulling the sleeves of his jumper down and crossing the roof to plug the lights in. They flickered to life, red and yellow and green and blue, and Dan couldn’t help a bit of a smile spreading across his face at the sight. Regardless of the stressful prelude, he couldn’t deny it’d been just a little bit worth it.
Tentative movement towards the edge of the roof drew his eyes away from the display. Shivering, Dan called out a tremulous “Wait!” and dashed over to the foot of the ladder propped up against the gutter. He yanked the sleeves of his coat down over his hands and braced himself against the cold metal.
“Okay, you’re good,” he called, turning his face upwards. Phil made a barely-audible noise, the tone of which was indistinguishable between exasperation and fondness, before shifting his body clumsily round and putting his foot on the first rung.
Dan, irrationally tense during the entirety of Phil’s descent, relaxed the moment a second pair of shoes hit the snowy pavement beside his. He let go of the ladder immediately and slipped his arms around Phil’s waist, resting his head on Phil’s shoulder. Phil, wrapping an arm around his shoulders in return, guided them back a few steps so they could appreciate his achievement.
“Don’t you have a liveshow tonight?” Dan murmured, lifting his head so his cheek was pressed against Phil’s and taking in the ambiance of the multicoloured lights against the pretty much total night at this point. He couldn’t deny the aesthetic appeal the whole ordeal had ended up having. He was, however, rather strongly inclined to find a less nerve-wracking way of getting from point A to point B next time.
“Oh shit, yeah, I do,” said Phil. “I don’t want to though,” he added, turning to press a kiss to Dan’s cheek. The tip of his nose was freezing.
“Jesus Christ, Phil, you’re gonna get frostbite,” Dan replied, pushing Phil’s face gently away from his own and turning to face him bodily. “Let’s go inside, you have a promise to keep to several thousand people.”
“Mmmmmmmm.” Phil’s freezing nose found its way to the warmth under Dan’s jaw. Dan gripped Phil’s waist a little tighter and let out an involuntary kind of giggle.
“We can make hot chocolate if we go inside,” he cajoled, light and inviting, and Phil grumbled a bit more but complied and let Dan maneuver him past the ladder, up the front steps, and into Dan’s half of the townhouse.
As the latch clicked shut behind them, Dan disengaged reluctantly from Phil and shook the snow out of his hair, shedding his coat and flexing his frozen fingers in the extremely welcome warmth of the great indoors. “I can’t believe I stood and watched you for that long,” he told Phil, voice soft but edged with a taunt. “I’m going to have to get all of my extremities amputated.”
“You’re not that cold,” Phil responded, taking Dan’s coat from him before he could toss it on the floor beneath its hanger like usual, and slipping it on himself. Dan couldn’t help but pause and grin at the sight.
“Says you,” he said, reaching out to fit his hands on either side of Phil’s face and tugging him in for what he meant to be a brief kiss. It ended up lingering a little longer than intended, and Dan only pulled away when the last reasonable course of action remaining was letting his hands wander into less demure places.
“Go set up for your liveshow, you idiot,” he said, letting Phil’s face go and flicking his (Dan’s) coat collar. “I’ll make hot chocolate.”
He did make hot chocolate, and brought a dangerously full mug of it to Phil just before he went live. “What do you want for dinner?” he asked as he set it down on the coffee table beside Phil’s laptop, leaning over to glance briefly at the display.
“Whatever’s easy,” said Phil, distracted by his efforts to steady the unreliable wifi. “Something Christmassy.”
“Absolutely not,” Dan replied sweetly, pressing his lips briefly to Phil’s temple before sauntering out of the room. “I’ll try and come up with a stir fry.”
“Thank you darling,” Phil called after him, sarcastic. Dan had to pause in the doorway to the kitchen to deal with the light, soft warmth filling his chest that made him feel as if he was going to burst with happiness. He sometimes still couldn’t believe how goddamn lucky he was.
After a moment or two spent recollecting himself, Dan turned to close the kitchen door. It was halfway shut when an upbeat “Hey guys!” came from the living room, followed by the beginnings of a fluent kind of rambling that Phil could somehow keep up for an hour straight. Dan ran his hands through his hair and ventured briefly out to grab his laptop from the dining room table, before closing the kitchen door completely behind him.
He had a setup for Sunday nights that was undeniably ridiculous, and yet he seemed to end up in the same position at the end of every weekend. 6pm, with the daylight already gone outside now that winter had set in, his laptop balanced atop the toaster and the kitchen door shut so he could watch the liveshow and cook dinner without being a disturbance.
It was barely five minutes before Phil’s voice faded comfortably into the background and Dan immersed himself in trying to make spiked eggnog as a stir fry of sorts sizzled loudly on a back burner. As soon as it was done, however, he propped himself against the counter to whisk his attempt at a holiday drink and properly listen to the liveshow.
“Actually, yes, I have been getting well into the Christmas spirit,” said Phil, grinning and shifting slightly in his seat. Dan’s coat was tossed carelessly over the back of the sofa behind him. “It’s in less than a week, if I wasn’t at least ninety five percent festive by now I think I’d have to disown myself.
“What have I been doing to get into the Christmas spirit? Well, papaya4you,” he waggled his eyebrows, “I may or may not have given Dan about sixteen heart attacks by climbing onto my roof to put up Christmas lights.
“Oh, you all want to see how Dan is? He’s off doing Dan things, I’m sure. I asked him to make a Christmassy dinner and he told me absolutely not, so we’ll see how that turns out.”
Dan, setting the eggnog aside, was sorely tempted to go out there and fondly tell him to shut the fuck up and eat the dinner he’s made. Instead, he muted the broadcast, put the eggnog in the fridge, and stretched up to take the mistletoe down from above the kitchen doorway.
It was a treacherous task to get all the way to the living room without stepping on any of the many, many creaky floorboards that littered the floor, but Dan managed it with minimal excess noise and strolled nonchalantly with his hands behind his back over to the sofa, where Phil was saying something about the many dangers of roller skating.
Dan leant over, lowering the mistletoe over Phil’s head and watching the screen as it crept into frame gradually. He couldn’t help but giggle at the live chat’s explosion. Phil paused mid-sentence as soon as he registered the all-caps barrage. He turned to look up at the plant above his head, and by extension, Dan.
“Really, Dan? Really?” His voice was sarcastic and laughing, and Dan grinned and leaned down to kiss him, quick and chaste.
“Get out of here, you brick,” said Phil as soon as they’d broken apart, and Dan smirked and snatched the mistletoe out of frame, dropping it on the coffee table instead.
“Gladly,” he replied, already making his way towards the back of the house. “Dinner’s ready.”
“You could’ve told me like a normal person!” Phil called after him.
“Since when have we been normal?” Dan shot back, closing the kitchen door behind him again.
The liveshow, still playing mutely on top of the toaster, went on for ten more minutes before Phil waved goodbye and bid his viewers some kind of quirky on-brand farewell, shutting off the stream. Dan, somehow balancing one enormous plate of stir fry and two mugs of mediocre eggnog in both arms, hip-checked the kitchen door open as soon as Phil disappeared from his laptop screen. Wobbling slightly, he made his considerably less stealthy way to the front of the house, where Phil had assumed a position of absolute apathy, belly-up on the sofa.
Dan dropped his cargo on the coffee table and picked up the mistletoe, straightening up and huffing out a half-laugh. “So this is what wears you out, huh? An hour on the icy roof does nothing to you, but an hour of talking to your devoted and adoring fans? Sorry, ladies and gents, but Phil Lester’s wiped out. You’ll get nothing else out of him for the rest of the ni―”
“‘s that eggnog?” Phil mumbled, intrigued, rolling over and propping himself up on his elbow. Dan rolled his eyes and made his way around the coffee table, standing in the cramped space between it and the sofa.
“You did ask for something Christmassy,” he offered, one hand on the back of the sofa steadying him as he swung one leg over Phil’s hips and sat back, straddling his thighs.
“And you delivered,” Phil responded, voice a little clearer as he reached over for the handle of one of the mugs.
“Hey, wait,” Dan interjected, hand leaving the back of the sofa and instead finding a place on Phil’s shoulder. He leant on it, and Phil fell back to his original position, looking up at Dan with a gleam in his eye.
“What for?”
“Me,” Dan said, tossing the sprig of mistletoe at Phil’s face. “I’m way more Christmassy than eggnog.”
“Debatable,” Phil replied, even as Dan’s lips met his, and then everything was far too distracting and pleasantly warm for Dan to formulate a response. Things were so distracting and pleasantly warm, in fact, that Dan got rather thoroughly lost in the gentle, incessant pressure of Phil’s mouth and hands.
Phil’s fingers found their way to Dan’s jaw and tilted his chin up, almost like an afterthought, so he could get his way with Dan’s throat right away. He mouthed his way down all hot and soft and teasing, and Dan inhaled sharply at the soft catch of lips on skin, gripping Phil’s jumper when tongue made a brief appearance against his collarbone.
Phil’s hands left Dan’s jaw for his waistline, rucking up his shirt and pressing softly into his lower back. Dan arched his back at the touch and Phil ran careful fingers up the curve of his spine, pausing to splay out halfway up and guide Dan back down to kiss him again.
This one was bordering on urgent, although the slip of Phil’s teeth against Dan’s lower lip still felt lazy, like they had all the time in the world. Dan let his hands wander lower until they found themselves under Phil’s shirt, fingers curled against the softness at his waistline as Phil coaxed his mouth open and slipped his tongue into the mix.
They kept it going, sweet and soft and languid, strung it out until Dan stopped keeping track of time and started keeping track of how many times Phil could make his stomach flip pleasantly (spoiler: it was a lot). At one point, Phil got both hands on his arse and pulled him playfully closer, and although Dan wasn’t even close to turned-on, he knew that if Phil kept that up he’d be a whole lot closer in a would-be embarrassingly short amount of time. He tried his best to communicate that with a soft gasp and a suck at Phil’s lower lip, and judging by the little involuntary-sounding hum that he got in return, his message was heard loud and clear.
It was a long time before Dan pressed a final feathery kiss to Phil’s chin and laid his head on Phil’s chest. They were both too long to fit completely on the sofa, which left Dan’s shins propped up against the armrest, and Phil was rather sharp and unpleasant to cuddle with in some places, but it was too nice in every other aspect to bother moving.
Phil slipped his fingers into Dan’s hair, and Dan pushed up into the touch, which made Phil huff out a breathy kind of laugh. “You’re like a cat,” he said, the vibrations that his voice made in his chest resonating up through Dan. Dan relaxed even more at the feeling, almost involuntarily, and made an effort to grumble at Phil’s comment. There was absolutely no conviction behind the sound.
Quiet filled the space around them, warm and comfortable and easy. Dan closed his eyes and focused on not thinking. He focused instead on the rise and fall of Phil’s breathing beneath him, and the reassuring weight of Phil’s hand in Dan’s hair, and his other hand on the small of Dan’s back, and the way their legs were tangled lazily together, and the way that Dan didn’t have a whole lot of memories in which he felt this happy.
“I’m kind of glad I fell off our roof a year ago,” said Phil, after an amount of time that didn’t really matter. The part that mattered was the deep, molecular-level kind of contentment that was filling Dan’s rib cage, inexorable and very welcome.
Dan snorted. “Oh yeah, just kind of glad, I’m sure,” he responded, shifting his cheek against the woolen collar of Phil’s jumper. He was going to have the knit pattern imprinted on his face by the time he sat up, he was sure. He couldn’t bring himself to care.
“Just a little bit, you know,” Phil replied, voice light and jokingly casual, although the way he tightened his grip on Dan as the words left his mouth said the exact opposite. Dan’s mouth curved into a smile he could feel all the way down to his toes. He closed his eyes, and pressed himself even closer, and focused on being in love.