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Phil woke up feeling like someone had taken all the color from the world.
Their hotel room was still dark. The sun rose later these days, but outside the window was a darkness that told him to go back to sleep. They wouldn’t have daylight for several hours.
It smelled like hotel room. And sex. Dan must’ve fallen asleep in his arms, and Phil shortly behind. There was sweat on Phil’s body that he could tell was fresh, his neck slick and glistening, but there was also residual sweat from the night before. When he shifted slightly, it felt like there was dried cum stuck to several parts of him. The only thing it looked like they’d taken care of was the belt, no longer around Dan’s neck, but strewn across the foot of the bed.
Phil wouldn’t have ever let that slide. That could’ve been dangerous to leave on while sleeping. But everything else remained where they’d left it, a testament to how quickly the night had stolen all of their energy.
God, was that the only thing he’d done for Dan? An I love you, a cuddle, and preventing him from choking in the night?
A pang of guilt plonked its way through Phil’s empty torso. He was better than that, and he kicked himself for not acting with a basic decency before he let them fall asleep. Maybe Dan wasn’t choking in the middle of the night, but he would wake up just like Phil, sticky and crusty and feeling disgusting. He could’ve at least grabbed a damp flannel for him, for fuck’s sake.
He wanted a shower now. He’d had one a matter of hours ago, but that was hardly helpful. That shower had been an excuse to think and get himself ready. A lot of sweat and spit and cum had happened since then.
Only, Dan was still asleep, curled up against his chest. Maybe he wouldn’t wake up if Phil moved, or maybe he would wake up and join the shower with him.
But as Phil looked down on squished curls that swallowed the darkness around them, more than anything, Phil just didn’t want to bother him anymore.
There was something cold and oppressive about that darkness in the room. He didn’t feel well-rested or well-fucked or emotionally fulfilled like he normally did after a night like this. He felt hollow.
Dan’s chest rose and fell with the deep breaths of sleep. Phil normally found that sort of thing calming, even endearing.
But he couldn’t get up. Not now. He hadn’t done enough for Dan before they’d fallen asleep, not nearly enough for the amount of roughhousing Phil had put him through. He could endure a few more hours of discomfort just to make sure Dan had a full night’s rest.
Phil pressed a kiss to the top of Dan’s head. He cringed against a sudden memory of that hair fisted in his hand, of yanking him around and fucking his face like that. He didn’t want those memories. They made the hollow feeling in his chest constrict like an empty stomach.
Instead, Phil drifted back to sleep with thoughts of the morning. The feeling should be gone by then.
Phil noticed the sound of the shower first. And second, the empty bed next to him.
The room was brighter now. The sun hadn’t risen fully, but the first beams were snaking their way through the windows. There was a little bit of light emanating from under the door to the bathroom, as well.
Phil still felt sticky. And worse, he still felt empty.
It was weird, he thought, facing the feeling head-on. It almost felt artificial, not only for how strong it was, but how unfamiliar and quickly it had come on. Some sort of phantom had slipped an IV in his arm while he was sleeping and gave him the mixture that made him feel like shit.
He kept hold of that thought. It was weird because it was new. It was questionable because it was new.
Physically, he was fine. No migraines. No aches. No muscle tension or stomach issues or even dry eyes. He had reached his full physical potential at the moment he hit what felt like an odious emotional low, save for the stickiness.
And honestly, he wasn’t even sure he had the mental energy to figure this out. If it was unlike him to feel this way, then it probably wouldn’t stick around forever. In fact, the minor physical discomforts were probably a large part of the feeling, and he just needed a shower to sort himself out.
But when he thought about Dan in the shower, another wave of the sticky black feeling crested over him.
He’d dropped the ball hard last night. He could’ve handled it better. He could’ve reigned himself in a little bit more.
He knew exactly what Dan was doing by flirting with that guy at the bar. For fuck’s sake, he could tell Dan had been working him up for the last several months. And he let it happen; it was fine. He knew he got jealous, and he hated that he did, but they might as well have a little fun with it when they had the opportunity to. And they’d been enjoying it more, and more.
But something inside him had snapped a little bit last night. He hadn’t lost control of himself — a small comfort in the face of everything else he had to sort through — but he was peeved enough and horny enough to let his aggression out a little bit more than usual. He was rough with Dan, rougher than he’d been in a while, and far more than they’d ever been outside of their own home.
Phil curled around himself in the bed.
He’d been staring at the wall with unblinking eyes, and he shook his head now to escape feeling stuck.
Dan had enjoyed it, right? He certainly looked like he had. By the end, that boy was so deep in his own subspace that Phil had felt like he was handling a puppet. But then maybe that was its own problem. Maybe he was so deep into it that he wouldn’t have been able to safeword. Maybe Phil should’ve been paying more attention.
He hadn’t heard the shower water cut. Dan was half-humming a song to himself, which grew louder when he opened the bathroom door and padded into the room.
Phil kept his eyes shut.
He didn’t know where to start. He was lost. He hadn’t figured it all out yet, but here was Dan, and here was Phil. Both awake.
There were fingers brushing the hair away from his forehead then, followed by a kiss to his temple.
“Hi bub,” Dan said softly. Phil could smell the mintiness from his toothpaste, as well as a tinge of the same shower gel he’d used the night before. “Bus needs to leave in an hour. I’m headed downstairs for breakfast.”
Phil hummed. He still couldn’t bring himself to look at Dan.
“I’d get up soon if you want a shower,” Dan said, sounding farther away. “Otherwise I’ll leave you here and do Paris by myself.”
Phil thanked God for the small mercy that their next show wasn’t that night. They’d needed time to travel, and it had left them with two days off.
“I’ll be up,” Phil said.
He tried to mean it.
The voyage to Paris felt like a daze.
The shower in the morning hadn’t helped, despite the extra mile he took to feel clean. He’d even used some of the fancy shower steamers they’d picked up on the road, a lavender bomb going off in the stall that made every claim of relaxing him and settling his nerves. It had been a little less effective than Phil had hoped. He was relaxed, sure, but only externally, only insomuch as he wanted to sleep all the way to Paris, and then sleep a little more.
And he wasn’t even doing that. As the road rocked underneath them, Phil laid in his bus cot and tried to succumb to extra sleep with very little success.
He didn’t understand what the problem was. By all accounts, he was tired. His body was relaxed. His eyes were even a little bit droopy. But the lack of sleep, and even the lack of progress towards sleepiness, was frustrating him.
Maybe the frustration was the problem.
Dan had texted him about an hour ago to let him know they were stopping at some landmark, asking if he was awake and wanted to see. Phil ignored the buzzing of his phone at first, insistent to himself that he was actually getting sleepy by that point and that looking at his phone would destroy his progress, before he gave up and opened the message. No, he didn’t care to see the landmark, and he told Dan as much in a short text. It was all he could do to make sure he didn’t let his frustration show.
It wasn’t Dan’s fault anyway. Phil was just in a weird mood.
A weird mood that probably, indirectly, had something to do with Dan. But Phil refused to think about it.
Instead, Phil glared at the backs of his eyelids. It’s not like he wanted to do anything else. They would be on this stupid bus for the next several hours; his options were extremely limited. Even if he wanted to talk to Dan about last night, there was no privacy here. Thinking about things wouldn’t do him any good because there would be no outlet for them, and they might both be over it by the time they got to Paris.
But it didn’t stop the guilt from creeping in. He felt it settle on his body like a weighted blanket. It formed a stone in his chest until he felt like he couldn’t move, and then he couldn’t breathe. He wasn’t inclined to socialize, or entertain himself, or do anything but sleep – which he couldn’t even seem to achieve – nor did he want to face the sludge in his brain that made everything so cold and heartless. He just wanted to escape from it all.
So when he finally found himself dozing, right there on the edge after several hours, only to hear someone pull back the curtain of his cot, Phil tried not to scream in rage.
“Hey,” Dan whispered. “We’re stopping for food. Can I get you something?”
It was a kind thing to ask, Phil told himself. He screwed his eyes shut against the light from the bus shining in his eyes. Dan was being nice by doing this for him. He wouldn’t have known what he just ruined.
That assurance didn’t filter much of the irritation in his voice.
“No.”
Dan paused. “Are you sure? You didn’t have breakfast, either.”
“I’m sure,” Phil said with a tone of finality.
He thought that was it, but the light was still hitting his eyes, and he didn’t hear the curtain close shut. Instead, after a beat, Dan ran his fingers through his hair.
Phil wanted to wiggle away from it this time. He always liked Dan playing with his hair, but something about this was different. He had a wall up that he didn’t want down yet. The touch hit his scalp like worms.
Even that thought depressed him. What was so fucked up about him today that he didn’t even like Dan’s touch?
“Migraine?” Dan whispered, even softer than before.
“No.” Phil gritted his teeth, then relaxed. “Just…need sleep.”
Dan brushed his hair back once, twice, then pulled away. Phil hated the feeling of relief that swam through his body.
“Okay,” Dan said, still sounding small. “Text me if you change your mind. Or if you need something else.”
Phil grunted in response, something that was supposed to mean thank you when he couldn’t bring himself to actually say the words.
He felt regret hit him as soon as Dan walked away. He probably could’ve been nicer. He even could’ve gotten up and gone with them to get food – it might’ve made him feel better. In his mind, there was another Phil, one that could do all of these fun things like he normally did, and not have to deal with his stupid issues. He could see the Phil that got his spark back and had a great time travelling the world. It made it so much worse to snap back to the reality of a dark bunk bed.
He waved the thought away again. He still didn’t want to think about it. Instead, he steeled himself for another try at sleep, hoping this one would actually give him a break.
It was after dinner that Phil acknowledged that the entire day was ruined.
All day, every moment since he fell asleep, he’d wasted by feeling sorry for himself, sorry for the people around him, or irritated at both. He hadn’t had the patience to deal with any of it. The best feeling he’d had that day was when he was asleep or shortly thereafter, in the time when he woke up wondering if he felt better. But even acknowledging it brought it back.
Phil felt grateful, again, when they finally arrived at their hotel — a splurge for their second night off, but not a decision that Phil was going to question. If it gave him some peace and quiet, or at least a bit more room to stretch out, he would take whatever it required.
And maybe some space to finally figure out what his fucking deal was, he thought. If he felt up for it.
But hardly had they put their bags in the room before there was talk of dinner, and Phil had just taken his shoes off for God’s sake, but it didn’t matter — he was back out into the night, dragged halfway across the city for food he couldn’t pronounce, and made to pretend to be social for at least an hour.
At least Dan didn’t flirt with anyone while they were out.
The thought hit him towards the end of their dinner, right around the time most of their company had picked up on his mood and tactfully sidelined him from ongoing conversations. Dan included him, but that was probably because he wasn’t intimidated by Phil’s prickly energy. He would glance over when someone said something funny, or he would mention Phil’s presence in an anecdote of his own, but he never pressured Phil too much to join in. And Phil appreciated it. He appreciated that Dan wasn’t pressing his buttons, one way or another.
It wouldn’t have actually pissed him off if he had, he thought. He recalled the feeling from last night, whatever simmering rage that was that led them to their mess, and acknowledged it. It wasn’t fake, but it was mostly play. That, and indignation against the other man, flirting with Dan, who was his, thanks. Dan understood Phil and knew what he was doing. They both knew that Phil would’ve acted differently if he was angry or hurt in any legitimate way.
If Dan tried that shit again now, Phil would be upset, but not for the same reason. He’d be annoyed at the inability to read the room — to read Phil. Or he’d feel hurt that Dan had seemingly noticed, but went ahead anyway, just for another fun fuck.
But then what did it say that Dan wasn’t trying again for a fun fuck? Was that emotional intelligence, or had Phil really messed them both up last night?
Phil sat his fork down and rubbed his temples. Fuck if he knew.
And he took this devil-may-care attitude through the rest of dinner, and on the walk back to the hotel, and through his third shower in less than a day, and all the way to the moment his head hit the pillow and Dan turned off the light in the room, curling up beside him, but not touching.
Phil exhaled into the darkness. Some of the strain went out of his shoulders to finally have his own space and not infect everyone with his mood. He focused instead on the cool sheets and the softness of the pillow under his head.
He didn’t have answers. He had a heavy heart, a guilty conscience, a hollow chest, and a brain so tired of thinking, feeling, and processing that he couldn’t even try to start a conversation about it. Tomorrow he would wake up normal. Tomorrow they would do another show and finally get their groove back.
The room was silent. He was done for the day.
“Should we have talked about it first?”
Phil opened his eyes.
Had he actually heard that? Dan’s voice was so soft and small that he could almost trick himself into thinking he’d been half asleep and heard it from a dream.
Phil’s voice crackled when he spoke. “What?”
But his heart was hammering in his chest. He was more awake than he’d been all day.
He heard Dan take a shuddering inhale.
“I’m— I shouldn’t have talked to that guy. I’m sorry.”
Phil blinked into the darkness, something in his brain thinking that he’d be able to understand what Dan was saying if he could also see through the air in front of him.
“What, last night?”
“Yeah.” Dan was trying to sound blasé about it, he could tell. He’d always felt awkward about apologizing, even when he wanted to, even when he knew he was wrong. “That was…that was too much all at once. I shouldn’t have sprung it on you like that.”
There was a pause, and Phil was still trying to figure out where this had come from, when Dan continued.
“I didn’t want you to feel forced to…do what you did. For me,” he added awkwardly. “I thought we were on the same page, but…I think I should’ve asked first.”
Head still spinning, Phil sat up. He grabbed his glasses and shoved them clumsily on his face, then reached over to flick on the bedside lamp.
“What— what’s bothering you?” Phil asked, squinting.
“Whatever is bothering you.” Dan was still laying on his side, but turned to look up at Phil as he spoke. There were soft lines around his brows and the corners of his mouth. “You’ve been off all day. It seemed pretty clear that it’s a leftover problem from last night, and…I don’t know. I think I fucked it up.”
It suddenly occurred to Phil, with frightening intensity, what the day had looked like to Dan.
Of course he would think this.
“That’s stupid,” Phil said.
Dan gave the room an affronted look, as if there was someone to step in on his behalf. “Hello?”
“I mean, no. No,” Phil shook his head. “That’s not— you didn’t do anything wrong. I mean not actually. I didn’t care about that guy. Fuck that guy.”
Dan continued to look up at him from the bed.
“Like, I guess we could’ve talked about it, but we didn’t need to. I’m not actually mad at you. I knew what was going on.” Phil shifted, turning his whole body towards Dan. “Is that what you were worried about?”
“Well, yeah,” Dan said, tentatively. “You’ve sort of been in your head all day. I just wanted to make sure we were…okay.”
The last word was so quiet that Phil barely heard it. It knocked the wind from him, to think that Dan had also been pent up all day, but as a direct response to Phil’s mood, thinking he’d done something wrong.
Phil felt awful.
“Fuck.” He snuck his fingertips underneath his glasses and rubbed at his eyes. “Fuck. I’m so sorry. No. It wasn’t you.”
“No?”
Phil shook his head, dropping his hands and letting his head plonk sideways against Dan’s chest.
“I don’t know what happened, but it wasn’t you. I was fine last night. I woke up in the middle of the night feeling weird—” Phil intentionally swerved around the word depressed, not inclined to misappropriate it, “—and I didn’t feel better this morning. I kept thinking it would go away.”
Dan smoothed the hair at the base of Phil’s skull. It was the first touch Phil had felt all day that didn’t make his skin crawl.
“So it just…came out of nowhere?”
“I guess?” Phil huffed. The more he let himself sink onto Dan’s chest, the more askew his glasses became. “Everything has just been blah all day. I’m not sad, but I’m not happy, either.”
The hand in Phil’s hair slowed, and Phil knew it was because Dan was thinking. He had to finish before he was interrupted — he may as well get it all out now.
“I actually thought I didn’t really — I don’t know — treat you very well last night. Like maybe it was too much roughhousing. I wasn’t nice enough.” He paused, exhaling. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to bring that up. I’m sorry about that. Maybe that’s what you mean by talking about it first. Maybe I would’ve known if I’d gone too far.”
Dan’s hand stilled.
“You do know if you went too far,” he asserted. “I didn’t safeword. You acted well within your limits.”
“I still need to be careful,” Phil shot back. “I trust you, I just worry that you get pretty deep into it sometimes.”
“I don’t—” Dan started, but stopped himself. He sounded agitated. “Let’s put a pin in that. That’s unrelated. Have you felt like this all day?”
“Guilty? Or empty?”
“Empty.”
“Yes.”
“Phil…” Dan shuffled. “Can I take your glasses off? Can we have a proper cuddle?”
Phil lifted his head and Dan reached for his glasses, pulling them away and placing them gently on his own nightstand. Phil pulled the duvet back onto his shoulders, but returned to laying on Dan’s chest.
Both of Dan’s arms were around him then. One returned to cradle the back of his head, and one rubbed circles on his shoulder.
“So, empty?” Dan asked. “Maybe a little irritated sometimes?”
“Yeah,” Phil admitted.
“Feeling tired but can’t actually fall asleep because you’re thinking too much and you’re too irritated to do anything about it?”
“Well, yeah, actually.”
Dan huffed a small laugh. Phil’s head bounced a little on his chest from the sudden motion.
“Phil, I think you dropped.”
Phil’s brain halted on the word, unused to its use like this.
“What?”
“Do you remember last April?” Dan asked. “With the…collar?”
Phil remembered it well, though he was surprised to realize how long ago that actually was. They’d bought a collar for Dan in the middle of a fixation on petplay, and Dan had practically worn it for a week straight. Whenever they were home alone, and especially in the evenings, he’d have Phil put it on him and then either wander around the house in a daze or cling to Phil’s leg for the rest of the night.
And then, one day, Dan changed, like someone had flipped a switch in his brain. He didn’t touch the collar. He didn’t touch Phil. He interacted with everything in a cold, detached haze. Phil had thought it was a depressive episode at first, but Dan was out of it sometime the next day. When they went looking for answers, they found them on forums and Reddit posts. And it wasn’t a depressive episode.
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
Phil shuffled. “That can happen to me?”
Dan huffed a laugh.
“Well, not as often, it seems. But yeah.”
Phil was almost affronted to hear it. He wasn’t so self-important as to think he was beyond something like this, but to think that his whole shitty day was the result of a temporary chemical drop was so…annoying. And it made him feel ridiculous about how he’d let it get to him, how it had ruined most of his interactions that day.
But then, couldn’t he have done more? Couldn’t he have had the decency to be educated about this, enough to recognize when it happened? Or told someone that something was bothering him before it bubbled up like this?
He blinked against those thoughts. They were still fairly self-deprecating. Enough of that.
“I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you.”
And he was. Even if Dan was right and nothing had gone wrong last night, Phil was still responsible for the way both of them had felt today. His chest panged again to think of Dan cradling wounds he didn’t understand, forced to wait until they were nearly asleep to apologize for something he didn’t even do.
Dan’s hand moved again, brushing at the nape of Phil’s neck. Phil shivered.
“I’m not offended. I remember what it’s like,” he said. “But you probably could’ve saved yourself the trouble if you’d told me about it sooner.”
“Could’ve saved you the trouble, too,” Phil yawned.
“Probably, you big lump,” he said, and Phil could hear the smile in his voice.
Phil sat up just long enough to turn off the light again, then came back to the spot he’d vacated.
“I didn’t hurt you?” Phil asked. “I didn’t take it too far? You’re okay?”
Dan hummed, but it was the sort of hum that forms around the first bite of a particularly delicious dessert.
“You hurt me,” Dan whispered. “You hurt me really good. I had to have a wank in the shower this morning because my scalp was still sore.”
“Shut up,” Phil laughed. “You know what I mean.”
“I know what you mean,” Dan echoed, more serious. “No. You didn’t hurt me at all. You knew exactly what I wanted and you gave me exactly that. I appreciate you.” He kissed the top of Phil’s head. “I love you.”
“I love you too. And I’m sorry for anything I need to be sorry for.”
“Which is nothing.”
“Okay, fine,” Phil huffed. “Which is nothing.”
“And what should you do if you still feel shitty tomorrow morning?”
Dan’s voice was changing, mumbling more now than he was a few minutes ago. Phil understood the feeling. The both of them had spent all day pent up and worried about imaginary things, and now that the stress had been pulled from their bodies, they were truly exhausted.
“I’ll tell you.”
“Thank you,” Dan murmured. “‘S my job, y’know. Looking after you.”
Phil smiled.
“I know,” he said. “And you do an amazing job. Get some rest, buddy.”
Dan hummed, but didn’t respond.
As Phil felt Dan’s breathing even out underneath him, he let himself feel truly relaxed for the first time that day, and repeated the affirmations Dan had just given him. He had nothing to feel sorry for. He was going through something perfectly normal and outside his control. He didn’t hurt Dan. Dan loved him.
And before Phil’s thoughts went absurd in the way that dreams form, he had time to think, one more time, that he was right. Dan does a pretty great job at looking out for him.