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Dan is the one who cries that night.
Phil bans him from every device in the house, making a big show of setting his phone on a high kitchen shelf while Dan pouts. It’s silly, and they’re both playacting, and Phil hopes it stems the nervousness in its own little way.
He insists on being the one to double check. Once he’s sure that it’s good, that it’s public and available and real, that there are no mess-ups or erroneous copyright strikes, he shuts his laptop with a thud and sets it away on the table.
Dan stares at him across the sofa with big, pleading brown eyes.
“We’ll look later,” Phil gently answers the unspoken question, nudging his foot against Dan’s knee. “Give it time to marinate. At least three hours.”
Dan raises an incredulous eyebrow. “Oh, fuck off.”
“Alright.” The corner of Phil’s mouth pulls into a tiny smile. “At least seven minutes.”
It surprises a bark of a laugh out of Dan. He shoves at Phil’s knee while Phil giggles, incredibly pleased with himself. It never gets old, making Dan laugh. Especially when he’s so nervous.
They get Domino’s, because it’s a big enough day to justify ordering two pizzas between them. They eat, and watch a movie they’ve seen a hundred times before, and they don’t talk about it. Dan tries several times but Phil always makes a distressed noise to shut him up.
Phil gets up halfway through the movie to go piss, and when he steps back into the living room, Dan’s looking down at his phone.
His eyes flick up. Phil freezes in the doorway.
It isn’t hard to guess what he’s looking at.
“Danny,” he says, and hears his voice come out soft, so soft. Dan looks at him, phone cradled in his hand, face frozen in a stricken expression.
It takes less than ten seconds for his eyes to go glassy and wet.
Phil makes a beeline for the sofa. He sits next to Dan, settling gentle fingers onto his knee, because sometimes Dan hates being touched when he’s upset.
“Stupid,” Dan chokes out, closing eyes, shaking his head. “Didn’t even see anything. Just- that it was there, and…the views.”
“Did we flop?” Phil asks sadly. “That why you’re all teary?”
It’s a risk, and it pays off, because Dan bursts into watery laughter.
“Oh, you asshole,” he says in between stuttering breaths, and he cries, and cries. He hides his face in Phil’s neck like he hasn’t done since he was a teenager, and Phil holds him close and tight.
“Dan,” Phil whispers, squeezing.
Dan chokes on a sob. “I’m fine,” he says, voice muffled, “I am, honest, it’s just- it’s just-”
“Just what, baby?” Phil combs fingers through his hair.
It’s quiet. Phil feels his chest heaving.
Dan pulls back, sucking in a breath, furiously wiping his left sleeve over his face.
“It’s just that I used to think,” he says, looking at the floor, “that I’d never be able to do this.”
And the thing is that Phil has always known he would. It hadn’t really even been a question in his mind, not to him. And even if he wasn’t sure- even if.
Phil swallows. He wraps his pinkie around Dan’s.
“Guess it’s my lucky day,” Phil says, voice a bit husky, and he never knows the right thing to say in serious moments, doesn’t know how to do anything but deflect and turn it into a joke, Dan’s always on him about that-
“We did it,” Dan says, like he hadn’t even heard, words shaky with disbelief. “We did it. It’s…over.”
And it is, isn’t it?
Phil hugs him. Properly pulls him close. Dan gets two arms around his shoulders in return and clings for dear life.
“You’re really great, you know,” Dan babbles, voice still thick with tears. “I don’t know how you- I mean- I just mean…thank you.”
Phil holds one hand to the back of his neck. “Love you,” he whispers, because it’s the only thing he can possibly say.
***
“You didn’t cry that night.”
It’s weeks later. Phil makes a sleepy noise, rolling over in bed. He’d thought Dan was asleep.
“Mm?” he asks.
“I meant that you-”
“Oh. Yeah. I’m not really a crier, you know that.”
Dan hums. It’s too dark for Phil to see his face. “You are sometimes.”
“Over stupid things,” Phil protests. “Not, like, emotional catharsis moments.”
That was more Dan, which had always made their worst fights miserable. Back in much earlier days, when everything was fragile and unsteady, when Dan would burst into tears and Phil would just stand there and watch, pale, dry-eyed. It’s like you don’t even care, Dan would shout, or something like it, during the really bad ones. It’s like it doesn’t matter to you, not like it does to me.
(And then, the even-worse times, where Dan hadn’t been able to feel much of anything at all. There was a day, when something had snapped, when they’d been having the same argument for the millionth time and still getting nowhere, when Dan’s dull eyes and brittle tone had snipped a thread inside Phil and he’d cried, right there, ugly, insatiable. It had broken the numb caste of Dan’s face for the first time in weeks, and suddenly there was him behind his eyes, after so long an absence.)
Dan makes a dissatisfied noise. He tugs the sheets further up around himself.
“Was it wrong of me,” he mumbles, “to make your big moment all about me? Was that an asshole move?”
Phil is swiftly pulled from his thoughts. He squints, as if it would help him see in the dark, and tries valiantly to figure out what conversation they’re having.
“What?” he grunts.
“I asked if-”
“I heard. I just mean…what? Pretty sure it was a big moment that belonged to us equally, Dan. That’s kind of the point.”
Dan’s quiet. He blows out a frustrated breath.
“You know what I mean,” he says eventually. “It was…for you, it was more…you know.”
Phil’s heart twinges uneasily.
“Don’t start,” he groans. “Absolutely don’t start.”
“Hey,” Dan says, nearly offended. “I’m trying to be…courteous here.”
“You’re trying to be a twat.”
“Hey!”
“Dan.” Phil flops an arm over. It lands across Dan’s stomach. “Don’t micromanage my emotional responses. It was a big deal, for both of us, and we expressed it in different ways. You cried. I didn’t. There is literally nothing to read into.”
It’s quiet again. In his mind’s eye, Phil can clearly picture Dan chewing vigorously on his lower lip.
“Overthinking it,” Dan murmurs, barely audible. “It’s just. You know.”
And Phil does know. He knows exactly what’s going through Dan’s head. But I made him wait so long. I’ve had my shining moments, this one can be for him. I should have made it more about him.
Phil has never needed all that. It had all been worth it, to be holding Dan at the end of the day.
“Dan,” he whispers, stifling a yawn. “It was a moment for both of us equally. Yeah?”
Dan swallows thickly. “Yeah, bub.”
“So stop worrying. Go to sleep.”
Dan chuckles, a little. “Okay.”
***
Phil loves Portugal. He hasn’t been here in a while, too long, and it’s making him radiate with giddy energy. They check in at the hotel and don’t worry about the clerk, or what they say, or what things look like. And they really haven’t in years, but it still feels nice.
His parents leave for their own room down the hall and something hits Phil, suddenly, when they open their door. The bed in the center of the room is entirely nondescript and covered with a mildly ugly duvet and it’s nothing, really, the most unremarkable thing in the world. Phil smiles helplessly.
And again, it’s- it’s not new, not the first time, but it’s something. It’s special. And it’s so easy, and no one cares, and there’s not a thing in the world to worry about.
He glances over at Dan, still grinning, hoping to share the moment- look, look at this, look at all these things we get to have now- but Dan’s frozen in place, one hand tightened around a backpack strap.
“Dan,” Phil says, a question. Dan blinks, and blinks again, and Phil notices how watery his eyes have gotten in the past ten seconds.
“Just a bed, Danny,” Phil says softly, even though it really isn’t. Dan makes a sound between a scoff and a laugh.
“Shut the fuck up,” he mumbles, blinking away the last evidence of tears, and trudges forward. He dumps the backpack in one of the chairs. Because it’s Dan, he strips the bed down to just its sheets, and then falls back onto it with his arms splayed.
Phil hums to himself. He abandons the suitcase he’d been rolling and follows, flopping onto the bed next to him, shoving at Dan’s limbs.
They lay in silence. Dan’s staring up at the ceiling, teeth worrying his bottom lip, lost in thought.
“Nice bed,” Phil says lightly. “Four out of five.”
Dan blinks, and blinks, and raises an eyebrow. “Just four?”
“It’s comfortable,” Phil says with an exaggerated shrug. “But it isn’t my bed, so. Can’t in all conscience give it five stars.”
Dan gives him a look.
“What? I have a very nice bed. No others can compare.”
“Oh, ha ha,” Dan snorts. “And you mean our bed.”
“It’s really more my bed. Seeing as how you keep abandoning me for-”
“Oh, that was one time, you pillock!”
Phil smiles blissfully into the pillow. It’s always nice to wind Dan up. Especially so when they’re both feeling fragile and emotional.
“You know,” Phil muses, reaching over to trace a finger along Dan’s forearm. “I liked that we always used my room.”
He freezes after he says it, just a bit. He hadn’t even meant to.
“Hm?” Dan asks. He turns his head, looking at Phil curiously.
“Just,” Phil mumbles, a bit embarrassed. “You know. We used mine, instead of your depressing aesthetic room.”
“I used it sometimes.”
“Yeah. But.”
And it was just a silly little thing. Phil can’t quite articulate it. Something about covering Dan in blues and greens even when everything else had been bleak. Something about snatching Dan away from his own life and bundling him into Phil’s.
He’s blushing, a little. Dan is looking at him, as always, like he can see right through him. His eyes are crinkled and fond.
“Yeah,” he says. “I liked it too.”
Phil grins, a bit bashful. “That’s nice.”
“All my teenage fantasies realized and all that,” Dan says wryly.
They both look up at the ceiling. The neighbors in the room next to them laugh loudly at something. Phil sighs, content.
“I’m really glad we’re back here,” he says. Because Portugal’s special, like beds are special, like blue and green squares are special.
“Yeah.” Dan hums. “We’d better get up, or we’ll both fall asleep and your parents will have to go to dinner on their own.”
Phil chuckles. Neither of them move.
He remembers being here the first time, with Dan. He remembers there being two beds, remembers trying to squeeze into one of them because at that age they refused to sleep apart. He remembers being on the beach with Dan, just smiling at him, mesmerized, thinking here’s this place that I love, and you’re in it.
They really were so horribly young.
“Hey, Phil,” Dan whispers, after a minute. “I liked that your room was the real one. Not ‘cos it was bright, or whatever. But it was safe.”
“What was safe about it?” Phil asks. He remembers ceiling cracks, gas leaks, broken slats on the bedframe.
There’s a pause.
“You,” Dan says simply.
Oh.
“That’s nice,” Phil says again, and his voice comes out rather faint.
And maybe Portugal brings the sap out of both of them, because Dan chuckles somewhere deep in his chest and leans over to kiss Phil’s temple before sitting up and rolling off of the bed, reaching for their abandoned suitcase, starting to unpack. Phil lays on the bed for a minute more, lost in memories.
***
They go out one night to get drinks with friends. Phil ends up near enough to sober, while Dan’s properly pissed. Still, a very drunk Dan is much easier to deal with than a very drunk Phil, so he isn’t worried. The bar is too close to a tube station to justify calling a car, so they take the train home.
There’s no one else in the car, thankfully, except one guy at the other end wearing headphones. Dan keeps swaying slightly with the train movements. Phil can’t help smiling over at his flushed cheeks and big brown eyes. He’s never stopped being insufferably cute.
“What are you looking at, Lester,” Dan slurs, slightly too loud, but Phil giggles because he knows it’s Dan’s attempt at being funny.
“A guy who’s going to have a horrible day tomorrow,” Phil replies, amused.
“Having a horrible day right now.” Dan smacks at his forehead. “Head’s all spinny.”
“Mm. That’s usually me. You shouldn’t have had those last couple, maybe.”
It’s quiet. Dan squints into the distance, as if desperately trying to form a thought.
“You know I-” he interrupts himself, hiccuping. “You know I…”
Phil smiles, deeply fond. “What, Dan?”
Dan scrubs an aggressive hand through his hair. “You know I wish I was…there. When it all.”
He makes a few ambiguous hand gestures. Phil blinks at him.
“What?”
“You know. I left and everything was…Phil. Phil. I really, really hated it. The one time you needed me and I was…”
Dan trails off with a frustrated noise. The words are choppy, and slurring together, and he’s getting himself more worked up by the second. Phil takes a breath. His heart sinks, just slightly, because he knows what this is.
“What on earth made you think of that?” he asks, in a hushed voice.
Dan gives a half-shrug, jabbing a finger at his forehead. “Spinny head. Reminded me.”
“Okay. Well, okay. We’re both too drunk for this conversation, and I’m not even drunk.”
Dan pouts at him. “Won’t talk about this when I’m sober.”
“Exactly,” Phil says faintly.
Dan gives him an incredibly, unbelievably unimpressed look.
The automated voice announces a stop that isn’t theirs. The train doors slide open, and close a minute later. The headphones man stays in his seat. It takes all of that time for Phil to find something to say.
“It was ages ago,” he whispers, and hates how timid his own voice comes out. “We’ve talked and talked about it.”
“But we haven’t,” Dan protests immediately, reaching over a hand to shake Phil’s knee. “I came home and you got a bit better and you swore you’d rather just move on without reliving it and you haven’t let me talk about it since.”
Dan’s eyes are boring into his own, deep and imploring, asking for something Phil can’t give. Phil falls away and away, shrinking back, leaning his head against the wall of the train.
His eyes melt closed. The rattling of the tube against his skull is probably going to give him a headache. Dan’s fingers are warm on his knee.
It’s a curious thing, to feel so helpless. To live your life in between referrals to doctor’s offices you used to not know the names of. To be a stranger in your own body. Tests came back negative, and meds did nothing, and the horrible knowledge of it chased him around everywhere: you will feel like this forever. There was just misery and more misery, a carousel of panic responses, and Phil all on his own.
He tries not to think of it too often, because sometimes if he does he throws up and has to lie to Dan about bad takeaway.
“What do you want me to say,” Phil mumbles, a bit brokenly, eyes still closed. “It was fine. I wanted you out there.”
“It wasn’t fine.”
Phil sighs, face twisting into a grimace. “Dan-”
“You were hurting. It wasn’t fine. Don’t- don’t say it was fine.”
He’s upset. Phil’s eyes fly open. Because he knows upset Dan, like he knows happy Dan, or angry Dan, or bored Dan. He already can’t regulate emotions worth a damn when he’s drunk, and this time he’s- really upset.
“Okay,” Phil says, almost gentle. “Okay. So it wasn’t fine. There was still nothing you could do.”
Dan looks morose. Phil wants to reach out and touch his flushed cheeks, but he knows better.
“I could have come home,” Dan mumbles, which is probably what he’s been building to the whole conversation.
And- no. Just no.
Phil reaches over to cover the hand that’s still on his knee. He squeezes their fingers together.
“Look at me,” he says. “Hey. Never say that. I don’t- I don’t want to even think about that. I would never have asked you to do that. I would never have wanted you to do that.”
And he’s pretty sure he believes it. Phil can’t imagine a Dan who didn’t trek to every corner of the globe, rent out every dingy theatre, pour his heart out to anyone who would listen. There shouldn’t be a universe where Phil asked him to come home. Except Phil remembers. He remembers the emptiness of the house. Remembers planning his whole day around the thirty minutes Dan had free to call. Remembers kneeling next to hospital toilets, stumbling half the times he stood up. He remembers crying into Sophie’s hair, even though he didn’t cry in front of people, not ever, and it scared her and PJ so bad they made him stay another three days and baked him a whole kitchen full of pity banana bread.
Phil’s never been a very strong person. Maybe there’s at least one universe where he asked the question.
He’s awfully glad it wasn’t this one, though.
And, still. When it came down to it he didn’t have to ask at all, did he? Dan had booked a flight all on his own, when it had gotten bad.
“Fine,” Dan says, pulling Phil out of his thoughts. He’s gripping Phil’s knee so tightly, like a lifeline. “Let me say sorry anyway?”
“What?” Phil blinks. He huffs a laugh. “I…sure. Sure, okay.”
Dan’s curls have gotten unruly, mussed, spilling over his forehead. His cheeks are such a lovely red. He reaches for Phil’s other hand, squeezes them both in his, and looks straight into Phil’s eyes.
“Phil,” he says. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there when things went to shit. I really, really wish I had been. I know how hard it was. I’m sorry you were all on your own.”
And- oh. Oh.
Something unravels in Phil’s stomach. It’s- funny, a bit, how you don’t know how much you want to hear something until a person says it. He bites his bottom lip.
Phil’s not going to cry in this train car. He’s thinking of doing something else stupid, though, like kissing Dan, or pulling him close, or burying his face in Dan’s shirt.
Dan’s eyes are wide, looking at him expectantly, and instead of all that Phil lets out a hysterical little laugh. “Thank you,” he says, disentangling his right hand from Dan’s to cover his face with it. “I…thank you. You know I wish I had been there too.”
“Hm?”
“You know.” Phil nudges his foot against Dan’s. “I wish I’d been there. For every single show, not just one.”
Dan’s lips twitch into a half-smile. “Every show? You’d have gotten so bored of it.”
Phil just smiles. “Nah.”
“If you say so.”
Dan lets out a contented little sigh. He slumps over, leaning his head on Phil’s shoulder, nuzzling into him. Something goes cold in Phil, just for a nanosecond, and then he giggles softly.
“Dan,” he scolds, even while reaching an arm around him to tug him closer. “We’re in public, you know. Practically indecent.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Dan whines. “I can do this now. Who’s going to care, that twat in the corner?”
“Dan!” Phil shushes. “He’s right there!”
“He’s got headphones on, stupid. He can’t hear.”
Phil can’t stop giggling, despite being slightly scandalized. “Menace,” he says, entirely too fondly, and runs a hand through Dan’s curls.
Dan’s head doesn’t move from his shoulder the entire tube ride. The headphones man doesn’t glance their way once. And maybe it’s nice, just a little bit, that for once Dan and Phil can have an emotional moment on the tube without worrying about it showing up in tabloids the next day.
***
Phil’s nearly done loading the dishwasher on a lazy Sunday. Except they really haven’t had a ‘lazy’ day in weeks; it’s been all prep and writing and rehearsals, Phil waking up before dawn to call people halfway across the world, Dan darting out of rooms at a moment’s notice to jot down sudden ideas. He loves it. They both love it. It’s their favorite thing, really.
Nice, though, to get a moment of peace. Phil hums to himself, settling in the last of the plates. He hasn’t even closed it yet when there’s the pounding sound of Dan’s footsteps coming up the stairs.
“I’ve got it!” Dan practically slides into the kitchen in his socks, throwing up a triumphant arm. “Oh, I’m such a genius, this is totally it.”
Phil laughs softly, amused. “You’ve got what now?”
“The line!” Dan waves a bit of scrap paper in the air. “The lead-in to the big segment! And yes, I know what you’re going to say, it’s better when we improv blah blah, but this is the big segment, Phil. It has to hit hard every time, like, bam! Here we go! And it has to be a pun and it has to create the appropriate amount of buildup and you can’t just ad-lib everything every night, especially not the really important bits, but- anyway, I wrote the perfect line for the transition. It’s so good. I was just thinking that-”
Dan keeps talking, explaining his thorough creative process, but Phil isn’t really hearing him anymore. He’s just…watching Dan. There’s this look that Dan gets, giddy with pent-up energy, delighted and scatterbrained and utterly happy. Phil calls it the Tour Look, in the privacy of his own mind, because that’s when he sees it. No matter where in the world they are, no matter how long they’ve been awake, how many people they’ve had to speak to, how many immigration lines they’ve waited in, no matter what hellish thing decides to go wrong because something always goes wrong, Phil sees that look. Phil spends every day they’re not on tour desperately chasing down that look.
Here it is, right now, and Phil- Phil hadn’t even realized it, but he’s been seeing that look most every day recently. It isn’t such a remarkable thing, anymore.
Dan’s reading him the line. Phil isn’t listening in the slightest.
And there had been days, during the times they don’t like to speak about, when Dan’s eyes had been dull and empty. Where he hadn’t been Dan, not really, not Phil’s Dan, just a hollow shell of the bright-eyed boy he’d fallen in love with. Phil had scrounged for every ounce of happy Dan he could find back then. He’d promised himself he would never take it for granted.
Dan’s just smiling at him, giving him an odd look. “Alright?” he’s asking. “Phil? You listening to a word I’m saying?”
Phil blinks. And blinks again. And again, because suddenly he can’t see, and his breath his hitching dangerously, and his hands are shaking and-
“Phil!” Dan yelps, scrambling forward, “What is it? Phil?”
Phil laughs, a wet sound, because his face is damp now and his chest is heaving and he’s crying, isn’t he, right here in the kitchen, over absolutely nothing. He shuts his eyes, sending tears down his cheeks, and lifts a hand to hold it over his face. “Nothing,” he gasps out, still laughing at himself between tears, “It’s nothing, sorry, sorry, it’s…”
“Phil?” Dan sounds flabbergasted. He grabs loosely at Phil’s shoulder. “You’re freaking me out.”
“Sorry,” he chokes out again, shaking his head back and forth. Phil scrubs a hand over his face and opens his eyes. He gives Dan a stupid, toothy grin. “It’s just. It’s just- you’re happy.”
Dan looks at him like he’s got three heads. “What? I- of course I’m happy, you twat, I was telling you about how- what?”
Phil dissolves into giggles that occasionally morph into sobs, reaching over to shake at Dan’s arm. “Not that, you idiot,” he says. “I’m just…”
“Just what?”
Phil sucks in a deep, shuddering breath. He lays a hand on Dan’s jaw. “I dunno,” he says. “I’m just proud.”
Dan stares at him and stares at him, eyes boring into his like he thinks he really can read Phil’s mind through will alone. He looks, and looks, and his face does something complicated.
Dan pulls him close, wraps two arms around him, tangles his fingers in Phil’s hair. Phil cries a little more until he’s done, does nothing but cling, and lets Dan hold him.
“Really, really, really proud, Dan,” Phil mumbles into Dan’s shoulder eventually.
“Shut up,” Dan replies, voice thick with emotion. “Shut up. What brought this on?”
Phil shakes his head. “Nothing. It just hit.”
“Yeah, right. Was it my-”
“Not your stupid line, you oaf. Just…you. All excited.” He sniffles. “I’m really happy we did this.”
And he means- everything. I’m happy we told the truth, I’m happy we’re going on tour, I’m happy we bought a house, I’m happy we’re still doing this, together, after all this time.
Dan is quiet. He swallows thickly, fingers scratching gently at Phil’s scalp.
“Yeah,” he says faintly. “Yeah, I’m…pretty happy too.”
He’s happy, Phil thinks, and it’s so- stupid. Simple. The most basic thing in the universe. He thinks his heart is going to burst.
They stay like that for a while. Eventually Dan pulls back, swipes away the rest of Phil’s tears with his thumbs, leaves kisses in their place.
They stand there, looking at each other. Dan’s face breaks into a smile.
“You like me or something, Phil Lester?” he asks, and god, he’s cute.
“Nooo,” Phil says, giggling. “You’re the worst.”
“Mm. Convincing.”
“I’m somewhat of an actor, you know.”
Dan laughs, loud and melodic, and then Phil’s giggling too, and Dan’s shoving at Phil’s shoulders and Phil’s pulling him back in for a kiss. Phil thinks about asking him to repeat the line, and decides it can wait for later.
He’s happy, Phil thinks, giddy. We’re happy. There really wasn’t much else a person could ask for.