#in the offchance i disappear for a while - this is why

[snailsnaps]

I lost a beloved pet today. We had no other choice than to put her down, and of course, it was so hard to say goodbye to her. She's been with me since I was so small, she's been with me through horrible times, through a horrible breakup........

She's resting now, but I miss her, I miss her so much. I'm trying to cope with loss through any means I can - i guess this is one of them

[riddlesrhymesandfear]

Tight Spots  | headcanons

Summary: Mad Hatter, Riddler, and Scarecrow with an s/o that can fit in small/tight places. (2nd person/ gender neutral)

A/n: cursing/ profanity.

||> Mad Hatter

"Oh? How'd you get here?"

The first time Jervis finds you tucked in some place not meant for being in, he's confused—amused, but confused nonetheless. While he's helping you out of the space (whether you needed it or not, despite your feelings on staying put) he's speaking to no one in particular, wondering aloud how you managed to get yourself in there, and why were you in there.

After the first couple times, he's more used to it. He's not against it, per say, but he makes a point to pull you out of such places, saying you might hurt yourself, or get stuck or break something. Sometimes he'll tut disapprovingly, chiding that you had no reason to get yourself into such places.

If you're on the taller or larger side, he may be more baffled, especially if you managed to stow yourself in a cupboard or tiny closet.

God forbid if you got yourself up somewhere he couldn't get you down from, like the top of the fridge or a high place in general. He's not sure whether to ask how you got up there, chide you for being up there, or how to get you down himself, and the longer he's staring up at you the more his eyes squint and his face wrinkles, more and more confused.

||> Riddler

"Anyway, as I was saying, if I'm gonna—what the hell?"

He will not be pleased to find you. Sure, he gets used to it, but that doesn't make him any more receptive. If anything, he'll just shoo you out of that spot he found you in. On the offchance he's not moody about finding you somewhere you shouldn't be, he'll brush it off, saying there's plenty other places to be than the cabinets.

Edward's considered putting locks on the cabinets and closets, but the last time he did that it was an inconvenience, so he doesn't. He'll threaten to though (not that it changes anything).

If he finds you in one of the cabinets or closets in his workspace, he'll be livid. Don't do it, please, it's not worth it.

If you're tall or large, he's going to probably take a second to respond to finding you. The questions don't need to be asked, it's written on his face, as he pulls you out.

||> Scarecrow

"Huh. That's where you've been."

Jonathan acts like this is the norm, but he just knows that if he ponders too much on it he might get a headache. The less he considers it, the better, and he's sticking by it. Even if he gets curious.

He treats it like it's part of the usual routine: get up, study or work on fear gas or previous notes, pull you out of the cabinets, eat, read, get ready for terrorizing Gotham, pull you out of the cabinets—it's not much, but it's honest work.

The only time he's baffled is if he just saw you, turned away for a second, then found you disappeared. He knows he's going to find you in one of those damn cabinets, he just knows it, but this is the one situation where he's not straight-faced.

Outside of that one case scenario, no matter how tall, short, large, or small you are, he's going to treat it like the usual.

Jonathan finding you holed up in the cupboards:

[tiefling-queer]

For D&D character ask, for any and/or all of your characters;

1, 5, 8, 15, 23, 29, 64, 65, 69(Nice)

i’m gonna answer these for whichever characters have the most interesting answers, skipping some for repeats:

1. why did they choose their class(es)? their subclass(es)?

kip (wizard, school of necromancy): crisis of faith midway through grave cleric training, spurred on by him sucking at the whole cleric thing (9 wisdom babyyy) while also being a nerd (18 int babyyyy)

baylock (shadow sorcerer/rogue): the sorcerer part is a side effect from being born dead during a cataclysmic event that tore portions of the material plane asunder. the rogue part is because he got in with a bad crowd as a kid. he’s been gaining levels in sorcerer as he traverses the freaky magic wasteland, utilizes his magic more, and gets a little closer to death each time someone hits his squishy arcane caster frame too hard

izak (gunslinger, graveslinger): sometimes you’re a jaded teen-equivalent runaway bumming around the river kingdoms and some dude comes up to you and is like ‘im a neutral evil mercenary, but if you take this gun and learn to shoot, i can also be your dad’. and then later you’re a 20-something equivalent who just realized that you don’t actually want to be an evil mercenary so you run away again and this time some dude comes up to you and is like ‘i’m a priest of sarenrae and an exorcist, and if you believe you can be redeemed, i can also be your dad.’ and then you learn how to shoot ghosts so you can be useful while this guy teaches you about being a better person.

5. do they follow a higher power? what are their thoughts on divinity?

izak: (deep lore dump) izak’s family was, at one point, pious people, and it was some ancestor’s warped perception of what piousness is and what was worth sacrificing in the name of good that led to the entire mess that is izak’s face. izak’s a devout worshiper of sarenrae now and hopes to maybe be the assistance someone needs to put themselves on a better path the way brak was for him, but there’s still a part of him that believes that, because he’s a tiefling, he’s never going to really be saved, and that his soul will eventually belong to the asura it was promised to.

8. what are three songs that suit them?

sydel: buckets of blood by rufus rex (tw for self harm, link goes to spotify because i can’t find this track on its own on youtube), thank god that i’m not you by himalayas, and bruises by fox stevenson (full playlist here)

15. do they trust their party? why or why not?

kip: he trusts them with his life, he just doesn’t trust them to understand where he’s coming from. he’s hiding some really heretical opinions that he knows at least maya (the celestial warlock) won’t agree with. he doesn’t like to talk about his family trauma, his past, or anything that he thinks the party can use to cleverly deduce that the notes he’s been scribbling are about raising the dead and theoretical conduits, prices, and replacements for the soul (he’s a little paranoid and might be giving them more credit than they deserve)

baylock: baylock might trust morgran, but he doesn’t trust surina at all, not since she and the (presumed deceased) swashbuckler tried to use him as a scapegoat when they were being interrogated by evil government warlocks. and even then, he only trusts morgran to not leave him for dead. baylock’s a fiercely loyal person by nature, so he’s been trying to keep his party at arms length so he won’t be betrayed again. the closest he came to starting to trust them was right before he found out that they told the evil government warlock that they’d turn him in in exchange for their freedom when they were captured a while back (whether or not they actually intended to do so is irrelevant for baylock - he spent 5 years in prison after being his old thieve’s guild’s fall guy, he’s not about to let it happen again)

23. how do they feel about nicknames, titles, or labels that have been given to them? how do they feel about their name?

kip: kip’s given name is joffric ravenhall. he’s been going by the alias of ‘greenbough’ on the offchance that people have heard of his family or knew his father at some point, since he really doesn’t want to explain why he’s not a priest of the raven queen by now. ‘kip’, however, is what his family and friends call him, so it was a bit of a big deal to him when he told the party to call him kip, since he hadn’t been around anyone he considered family or friend in a few years. kip’s reeling a little bit over suddenly being called an ‘adverturer type’ - to him, he’s still just a transient weirdo who picks up odd jobs.

baylock: baylock craft’s name isn’t actually baylock craft (not yet anyway lol), he stole his late cellmate’s identity to take advantage of the jailbreak that came a few days too late. his name, ekleipsis caldor, isn’t exactly something he identifies with so much as what he was once called. his father never wanted him but got stuck with him when his mother bounced, so ‘caldor’ is more a formality than anything. ‘ekleipsis’ is the greek root of ‘eclipse’, for the eclipse he was born during - but moreso, ‘ekleipsis’ doesn’t mean ‘to be covered’ - it means ‘a disappearance or abandonment’. an event where the sun abandons the sky. baylock is a walking abandonment issue. he hasn’t taken a virtue name because he thinks it’s performative (which is where him officially taking the name ‘baylock craft’ as his name and not the identity of someone he’s pretending to be comes in - it’s the equivalent of naming himself for the virtue of rebellion without naming himself something stupid and embarrassing like ‘rebel’.)

izak: izak just got done being haunted by a ghost wizard who’s obsessed with names, probably because he’s had 4. izak was born dalethiel oakleaf back when he was an elf, but when he ran away after waking up as a tiefling he went by dally. then he was a mercenary for a while and his edgy mercenary name was viper. and then, when asked for his name by the cleric of sarenrae who rescued him in the wilderness, he said he didn’t have one worth giving, so the cleric told him he’d just call him izak then. that’s who izak is now, as far as he’s concerned, or at least who he wants to be. as he told the ghost wizard who tried to torment him with his birth name, that’s not his name anymore. dalethiel oakleaf was a young elf who died on his 50th birthday. izak’s got a perfectly good name, given to him by a kind man, and he doesn’t want to think about the time in his life he went by dally or viper.

karif: karif always introduces himself formally with his full name, in the family-given-familiar name pattern - ‘ixenvari karifgethisk fraurirthos, er, but you can just call me karif.’ this is because karif’s nickname, fraurirthos, the one his childhood friends and family call him, translates from draconic literally to ‘breathes secrets’. his nickname is snitch. he’s a little embarrassed about it. but ‘karifgethisk’ is a bit of a mouthful for those who don’t speak draconic, so shortening it to ‘karif’ suits fine.

29. who would they save? who would they be saved by? 

this has been a tough one, i’m not sure how to answer it for anyone.

64. do they value mercy or justice more?

kip: this honestly depends on his mood and your definitions of both ‘mercy’ and ‘justice’. he’s very easily led away by his emotions - both pity and compassion that could sway him to lean more towards mercy, and rage that tends to harden his heart and clear his head. he’s more than down to torture someone if he deems them evil, and he’ll destroy creatures like aberrations, fiends, and undead without a second thought, but he views life as a very precious thing - even when torturing an evil demon-summoning spellcaster, he still was trying to find ways out that resulted in that spellcaster getting out alive. this has come back to bite the party in the ass, since it was kip’s insistance that the party not kill all the guards on their little anarchy stunt that got them blackmailed to infiltrate the evil army of darkness, which is something he most certainly DOES NOT want to do.

65. what is holding them back?

kip: kip’s hang-ups about the soul and how he was raised are holding him back from becoming a stronger necromancer, while his grief and refusal to accept mortality hold him back from possibly still being some flavor of raven queen follower.

baylock: baylock’s hesitance and confusion over what he wants are holding him back from either fully embracing the rebellion or ditching it to get vengence

izak: izak’s self-loathing and fear of himself hold him back from interacting with people and forming meaningful relationships outside of the handful of people who’ve found out he’s a tiefling.

69 (nice): how would they describe their party members?

kip:

maya is... complicated. kip admires her pragmatism and her faith - it reminds him of his older sister, and he’s been missing that rock in his life. however, he butts heads with her a lot, because he finds her cold duty-bound outlook to be pointlessly cruel.

meera is wicked smart and talented, if a little misguided at times. he’s very big brother protective of her, always trying to offer her his dagger because ‘it’s a nice dagger’ (it’s +1)

amity is a good kid, and smarter than some may give him credit for. he’s fun to be around, and usually a level-headed presence, which makes it even more surprising just how ok he is with killing.

baylock:

morgran is an asshole, but is also probably the only person in the group who believes in this whole rebellion thing, so that counts for something. he’s decent people, can probably be trusted to see a mission through and not do anything completely stupid, but since he’s decent people he’s probably going to insist on staying on this path of lunacy with delusions of ‘taking down the Summit’. also, morgran shouldn’t be allowed to talk to anyone they meet, because he’s an asshole, and doesn’t bother pretending to be personable like baylock does.

surina is insane. she’s deranged, like everyone who tries to live outside the sanctums is. also just racist at times. when their cover gets blown or when they get mixed up with people they should be talking down, she’s gonna be the reason they all get killed.

porthos is was an idiot and a liability and just proved him right by running off and doing something rash and probably getting himself killed and also maybe compromising the whole rebellion which baylock doesn’t care about, so why does he feel like he should have done more to stop Porthos’ demise?

[sllester]

Love and understanding in the time of coronavirus

An intensive care physician from Limerick has advised us to treat each other like pariahs in order to avoid spreading the coronavirus.  This may seem counter-intuitive at a time when a lot of people are confused, terrified and need, more than ever, human warmth. But look at her face, she’s not joking.  She’s not politely suggesting that you think about changing your behaviour the way Boris might tell you to refrain from going to the pub. She is saying: if you don’t practice social distancing people will die. In fact, she looks like she might kill you herself if you don’t comply.  But pariah is a confusing analogy here, because really what she’s also saying is: we are all connected and your actions have consequences beyond yourself. Care for others by not being close to them.

We live in an age of hyper individualism but it’s a fallacy that we ever believed we were individuals in the first place.

For the last few weeks I’ve been puzzling over why other people seemed to be far less affected by these warnings of a fast-approaching apocalypse.  I couldn’t figure out why there was little public outcry over the suggestion that over 60% of the population should catch this virus that we know little about (with a death rate estimated between 1% - 3%) on the offchance that we build up herd immunity to a virus that may in any case mutate. The herd immunity idea has since been retracted, and described instead as an unintended consequence, as opposed to a desired outcome. This shift in policy has been attributed to the results of a study from Imperial College, which showed that the original strategy would overwhelm the NHS many times over. Adaptive policymaking is to be expected when the science is shifty and uncertain and decisions are ultimately political, but the lack of transparency means that people in the UK genuinely don’t know if they should take it on the chin and get infected…or the complete opposite. When you need trust in a government above all else, that’s a pretty big problem.

As it happens, my anxiety around the potential knock on effects of coronavirus grew to such an extent that I naturally achieved a pariah-like status without even trying.  I’m not particularly worried about catching COVID-19 myself, but I’m terrified of unintentionally infecting people who have worse health than me, I’m worried about how our decimated public services will deal with the strain (even with the extra resources), and I’m haunted by the steepness of that exponential curve, fearing that we’ve done more to make it spike than to flatten it. I’m worried about the role state violence will inevitably play in keeping order. But more than any of those things, I feel a strange mix of terror and hope at the transformative potential to change the very way that we relate to the world and each other.  

People are coming together in amazing ways to navigate a new normal, but people are also divided, helpless and angry. We’re living in the wake of ten years of austerity and this crisis represents a decisive point – do we get better at understanding each other and changing our behaviour or do we refuse to think beyond ourselves?

“Selfish middle class bitch” shouts one woman in the street to another who is wearing a facemask “what do you think you’re doing?”. Assuming that this insult is aimed at her ‘selfish’ mask wearing – I wonder what makes the abusive woman assume she isn’t trying to protect others as much as she is protecting herself. She might be a healthworker or chronically ill or pregnant. She may be trying to protect her elderly friends and relatives. Please don’t shout at her, I want to say, but I keep my distance like the pariah I’ve become.

The regular homeless man who roams round our street looks on at the people kitted out in gloves and masks scurrying about with shopping bags in bemusement, a wry smile on his lips. Apparently, they are going to tell the contestants on Germany’s Big Brother, who have no access to news, about the coronavirus live on air. Will they go straight back into the house to quarantine? How will they know what reality is any more? How does anyone?

Meanwhile people send memes mocking those who are scared of food shortages, a recipe for a quarantini, or messages complaining about their kids not being allowed in nursery. I take a deep breath before responding to anything, consider the situation from all angles so as not to get upset that somebody’s take on it is different than mine at that precise moment.

I have a heated conversation with my Dad, who is 71, because he laughed off my suggestion that he might change his plans in order to mitigate the risk of catching or spreading the virus. Things go from bad to worse when he says he was pleased to hear Boris say he was led by the science. I get angry and say it’s meaningless. What is ‘the science’? At that point I couldn’t find anything to show what he was referring to, and this obfuscation leads me to speculate that he was planning a eugenics experiment inspired by Dominic Cummings. Children get infected to pass it on to grandparents and the ill. He chastises me for the Hitler comparisons, even though I didn’t mention his name directly, and we talk momentarily about the undesirables. “I’m not a fan of mass murder” my Dad says after a pause and the absurdity of the statement makes me laugh for the first time in what feels like weeks.

He asks how much we’ll need him over the coming months, and I tell him I have no idea, it’s difficult to quantify. I explain, wincingly, that I don’t want to put other vulnerable people at risk if he’s not going to change his behaviour. “If I’m expected to stay in my house for four months, you may as well give me an injection”, he concludes. My Dad may be stubborn but he’s not prone to dramatic outbursts. This made me sit up and listen.

So, in a weird reversal of my teenage years, I’m yelling at my Dad about not going out, and he’s telling me that he’d rather live life on the edge, ignore the public health advice and play tennis with his octogenarian friends. I realise on reflection, that while I’m worried about my Dad, I instinctively feel that he will be alright, but as my partner has a chronic illness and is on an arsenal of various opiates I am worried that he may be badly affected. An overwhelmed health service is unlikely to be able to deal with anomalies such as rare diseases should he need medical care. It’s all speculation of course, and my partners’ anxiety is mainly about protecting his parents, who I’m also very keen to keep safe too. So there is a web of connections and half-voiced concerns between all of us, and what I want for one of the people I love is not compatible with the free will and intentions of another person I love. One wants to bunker down and wait it out, and the other thinks this approach is laughable. In a way, in the case of such overwhelming uncertainty, both of them are right.

I save most of my emotional strength for the time I spend with my 3 year-old daughter, which is also the time that I should be working. My partner reminds me gently not to look at e-mails or the news when I’m playing with her. She gets upset when she doesn’t have my full attention and I’m grateful for the reminder. I’ve been obsessively streaming through commentary and evidence and opinion pieces, trying to form a balanced view of all this, to try and understand the rationale for certain decisions that have been made. It does me good to stop.

The more I talk to different people the more my views, which a week previously I’d been sure about, shift. I was convinced that we should be following China, South Korea and Singapore’s model: strictly enforced social distancing measures, contact tracing and an aim to suppress, rather than mitigate, the virus. This seemed logical to me, as somebody who lives with other people that I love. My Dad, who lives alone, saw quarantine more like a death sentence. I suppose solitary confinement is a punishment for a reason.

The next morning my wayward Dad jumps on the last plane (urgent travel only) to Germany to see his girlfriend. Once he’s settled there he calls on what’s app: “I’m embarrassed to say that I’m having a good time”. He puts me on his car insurance, says we can use his house which is up near Hampstead Heath and has a garden (=heaven) everybody is, in that moment, happy. We all need some fresh air.  We are physically distant but emotionally close. I ask him to send his address in Germany as I have a fear that the internet is going to stop working at some point. Can the internet disappear? Or would it just be temporarily suppressed?

The next day I call my 91-year old Nana anticipating she might be afraid after the announcements about the over 70s. Again, I am proven wrong. She appears even less bothered by all of this than my Dad. Maybe she thinks, at her advanced age, that she is in a different category altogether. She’s been working in her son’s DIY store that day, handling coins, riding on the bus. She’s been selling lots of toilet roll, she laughs.

 “It’s just a matter of luck, whether you get it or not” she says. In a way, she’s right. Many people won’t have the means to avoid it. But I tell her it’s a good idea to wash her hands all the same and to try and lie low for a while if she can. “I’ve had lots of phone calls lately” she says. The phone is making a comeback we agree. Yes, and there are dolphins in Venice’s canals and the birds seems to be singing louder than normal. And then she warns me that the phone will cut out because her phone battery only lasts for 25 minutes intervals. “We’ll just keep talking until it cuts out”, she says. And then it does.

We’ve all been rearranging our lives in light of a new virus, to accommodate something we don’t fully understand. A week ago, I was certain I had all the answers but that was because I had a very narrow view of the problem. It might seem obvious to do something from one perspective, but there are inevitably unintended consequences, both good and catastrophic. Every intervention (such as school closures) brings with it an array of unintended consequences (e.g vulnerable children not receiving free school meals; parents going insane from trying to work and look after their kids at the same time, rise in domestic violence).There isn’t such a thing as a single solution to something so complex, only a series of momentarily meaningful decisions made in the face of dizzying ambiguity. We are making it up as we go along, and we have to make sense of it together. Even when physically apart. 

[hobisexually]

Please talk about girl direction as types of tumblr users? Like what kind of blogs they'd have, how they write in the tags, if they write in the bloody tags, how they respond to asks and friendly anons, how they respond to not so friendly anons etc...x

This has been sitting in my inbox because I didn’t realise you meant girl direction and I was very uninspired, hahah. Imagine my glee when I saw girl direction, suddenly. SOOOO.

Alright, Niall is predominantly a music and food blog. She never posts recipes, just pictures of food that look good to her and she wishes she could eat right in that second. She’s a bit of a music snob and can endlessly talk about how good the Eagles were, or how she wishes The Beatles would bring out another album if all of them were still alive, and she visits a lot of concerts. Niall is the one who has a very elaborate tagging system so she can find back her food and concerts very quickly, and she’s just very easy going - she has a few anons that she just chats with for fun, about nothing, and she never really gets unfriendly anons. When she does get one, on the offchance that it happens,  she laughs and shrugs it off - however, when one of the other girls get an angry anon, she’s always immediately ready to defend all of them. She doesn’t really talk in the tags. 

Harry is that aesthetic blog we all reblog from that she puts a lot of thought into, and then she suddenly reblogs a ton of shit posts and puns in between. She writes long personal things in the tags about what the pictures and posts remind her of, personal anecdotes, sometimes she’ll posts some lyrics she wrote without context. She never posts selfies, only candids someone else took. When she gets an anon that she doesn’t like, she gets very passive aggressive, but mostly just sticks to ‘if you don’t have anything nice to say, please go bother someone else, yes?’. She doesn’t show it gets to her, but she’ll throw a hissy fit over it in private. When she gets anons that need help, she’ll be patient and loving and a support to them in the warmest way, and everyone loves her immediately. 

Louis posts anything she wants, tv gifsets, books (or fics) she likes, a lot about the band she is a fan of. It’s just a mess of all her interests. She would just drag her friends for the shit they said in the tags, especially Harry and her puns (’FUCK OFF, HARRY, I HATE THIS’) and she’d have constant commentary in the tags. She reblogs clothes she wants, people she finds hot, but mostly she just reblogs whenever Harry posts some candid someone took of her or when Zayn uploads a selfie, and then just cries about it in the tags (’why would you do this to me? I HATE YOU WHY DO YOU LOOK LIKE THIS THIS IS JUST UNFAIR’) and then posts an underwear selfie of her own as payback (which is when Harry dies). She roasts unfriendly anons with all that she has, she doesn’t have the patience to be diplomatic about it. When someone hurts her friends she’ll write long, angry posts about how everyone can fuck the hell off, but she’s unexpectedly kind to people that need the help. (unexpected to people that don’t know her, that is). 

Zayn is that blog that constantly posts her art and gets commissioned and she promises she will get to it soon, but then accidentally draws something else that she wanted to draw more, and then suddenly disappears from her blog for a while, only to come back with a masterpiece seemingly out of nowhere. She talks some bullshit in the tags all the time, and she loves posting mirror shots of her outfit because we all know how much pride Zayn takes in her clothes and aesthetic, so of course her blog will reflect that, and everyone will constantly lose their shit over it because this girl is not only talented but also hot as fuck (though secretly, whenever Zayn posts one, she just hopes Liam sees it). She loves people asking her about her art, and can talk about it for hours, and never responds to the unfriendly anons, but she thinks about it a lot (and then bitches about it to Louis in private, who will then make an angry post about it). 

Liam would be the one who constantly posts work outs she’s trying to complete, she reblogs Zayn’s art a lot, and there’s constant posts about how she just wants to be someone, a lot of personal post as well that are sometimes unfortunately worded, but everyone loves her anyway. When she gets angry anons, she tries to defend herself, but it never comes across right. She posts a lot of progress pictures of how her body is transforming thanks to her time in the gym, and it’s purely progress pictures for her, nothing else, but Zayn and Louis lose their minds over it on a frequent basis because HOLY SHIT, LIAM, HAVE YOU SEEN YOUR BODY? She posts a lot of pictures of her dogs as well and it’s always very clear what tv show she is obsessed with in that moment, because it will frequently pop up on her blog and then never come back again.  Finally, she always, always, always reblogs everything Zayn does when she pops back up online after a long time and she tries to be chill, but everyone sees right through her.

[danandphilsecretsanta]

Halfway to Monet

To: @spacehoephil

A/N: I hope you enjoy. Merry Christmas.

Summary: Phil feels sentimental and Dan reminisces.

The fireplace, bedecked in tinsel and Christmas lights, crackles and chases the chill from the air. Phil is sat on the sofa reading a book with a thick blanket wrapped around him. He can hear the tinkling of piano keys coming from Dan’s room.

It’s good to be home after their exhausting year. Before TATINOF, he’d wondered if spending so much time in close quarters with Dan would make them sick of each other, but it has only made them closer.

Phil looks around the room feeling grateful and fond for the home and the life they’ve built together. He smiles at how he has a memory associated with every item on the bookcase―the entire apartment, actually―and he knows who picked out what, on the offchance that they didn’t buy it together. Not that it really matters, since almost everything has become theirs, including the plants. Love has been intertwined throughout everything.

Taking the blanket with him, Phil pushes himself off the sofa and goes to stand at the window, watching the snow fall against the light of the street lamps below. He doesn’t think he’s ever felt happier in every aspect of his life.

The peaceful solitude and cold air emanating from the glass makes him miss Dan. He tightens the blanket around his shoulders and shuffles his socked feet down the hall to where Dan is playing the piano.

“Scoot over.”

With Phil sitting beside him like a warm, fluffy burrito, Dan continues playing Yuri on Ice. It didn’t take him as long to learn as he expected.

Phil waits until the song is finished before the beseeching begins.“That was beautiful and makes me want to watch skating but I want to hear some Christmas songs. Please?” He says the last word with a soft sweetness as he rests his head on Dan’s shoulder.

Dan starts with an impassioned O Holy Night and follows it with a more subdued Carol of the Bells which he lets build slowly. Phil hums contentedly, wanting to fully lean into Dan but knowing that would restrict his arm movement.

Playing the songs makes Dan think of their first Christmas living together. Specifically, the night they put the famed ‘rave tree’ together for the first time. It was the night he realized how much he was hopelessly in love with Phil.

—-

They had went through the shops looking for the perfect tree and everything for it. Many compromises were made.

“I want a tree taller than us.”

“We can’t get a 12ft tree, Phil. Our ceiling isn’t even that high. It would have our posture.”

“See? It’d be perfect.”

Living with another was more trying than Dan expected. It took time to adjust to the less appealing Phil quirks. He doesn’t think it took as much time for Phil to adjust to his negative quirks, few as they are, but he might be be biased.

—-

A few weeks after having decided on the perfect plastic tree, music played as they began to construct it. They told each other bad Christmas jokes as the tree took shape and they wound lights around it.

Since they’d made A Day of it, they had baked and decorated brownies for the occasion with santas, snowflakes, reindeer and everything one would expect on Christmas cookies, plus a few more scandalous designs.

Phil thought they were works of art. Dan nodded silently in agreement, thinking they must have been done in impressionist style since the further away you were, the better they looked.

When Dan had come back to the lounge after eating a brownie that bordered on abstract, Phil had a paper crown on from the cracker they pulled earlier, and he was singing and dancing to All I Want For Christmas Is You. He looked so comfortable and full of joy, Dan couldn’t take his eyes off of him.

It was then he realized just how in love and completely besotted with Phil he was. Dan loved him so much it hurt, and stole his breath.

His arms fell limply to his sides as he stared, mind reeling at the revelation. There was nowhere else he’d rather be, no one else he’d rather be sharing a Christmas with. Phil carelessly dancing in his pj bottoms and tshirt, singing off-key with Mariah as he helped to decorate Their tree was gorgeous and Dan’s chest ached with affection.

Before he could wonder how Phil felt about him, his legs had carried him to be stood a few feet behind the man.

“Dan, what ornaments do―” the question fell unfinished as Phil turned to look at Dan, who appeared unusually still. Phil’s grin wilted as his happy expression morphed into concern.

Dan took a few steps closer. Words failed him, he was at a loss for what to do. He wanted to remove the worry from Phil’s face but emotions warred inside of him. Love and hope were trying to overtake fear.

As he stood before Phil, with words stuck in his throat, he thought of all the little things about the man that meant so much to him.

The compassion and tenderness, the wicked sense of humor and deviousness. The way he became soft as he would laugh and wriggle when being tickled. He was so unlike anyone Dan had ever known and he was so thankful that Phil has allowed him to see who he really is, let him into his world and, in a small way, made him a part of it.

Dan wanted to reach out and touch him to see if he would disappear. He could feel his fingers flexing as the thought crossed his mind. Perhaps he was dreaming and touching Phil would make him dissipate like smoke, and he would be alone again.

Phil watched as the emotions played across Dan’s face. Concern became understanding.

With Mariah singing about how she doesn’t care about the presents beneath the tree, and their own tree looking decidedly naked, Phil smiled and took the red tinsel he’d been holding and placed it around the back of Dan’s neck like a boa, and gently pulled him close.

It was a short, soft pressing of lips. Phil broke away quickly and pulled back just enough so that he could see Dan clearly.

With Dan looking happily bewildered, he leant forward and grinned into the next kiss.He had to refrain from giggling because he could feel Dan smiling back.

“Hello.” Dan blushed from his neck to his ears, once they’d separated again.

“Hi.”

Dan initiated the next kiss and they both melted at the warmth of it. Dan tentatively wrapped his arms around Phil’s waist in a hug. Phil eagerly returned it and curled his arms around Dan’s shoulders.

Needing a moment after realizing he could taste the brownie in Phil’s mouth, he sighed happily as he hid his face against Phil’s neck.

“I love that you’re as tall as me. It makes for better hugs.”

“It being you is what makes our hugs best.”

“Are we really already at the soppy stage?”

“Shush, Dan.”

They held onto each other for a while longer before giving in to dancing and singing badly together. It was the best Christmas either of them had ever had.

-

That is why, when Phil wants to play the song for hours on end once during the Christmas season, Dan pretends to grumble and when Phil played it on the radio show, he couldn’t help but smile.

Dan nuzzles his face into Phil’s hair for a few moments before he starts playing All I Want For Christmas Is You.

“I like this song.”

“Me too.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too, talking burrito.”

“I would make mildly annoyed burrito sounds but that would only prove your point and I’m too contented by the Shrektacular piano playing skills.”

“You have proven my point by talking, and for that pun, you should change your name to Phillup B Messter.”

Phil stands up and shuffles behind Dan to envelop him in his blanket while making monster noises, pulling him off the piano stool and onto the floor where Dan lands on top of him.

“What did I do to deserve this food on human violence?”

“I have enrobed you in my floury tortilla.”

“Your dairy-free burrito of sadness. You’re on the naughty list for being mean to me.”

“I am reliably informed that I’m good friends with Danta Claus so I’m not worried. Since you love me, we suffer together.”

“Sorry, I don’t love you more than sour cream and cheese.”

“You are an ungrateful filling and condiment.”

Dan snerks at the use of grate. “Yeah, but your wrap is feeling toasty so I think I might be able to deal with being part of a Philrrito.”

“Behold the sacrifices one makes for love. Where’s the video camera when I need it to capture your noble declaration?”

Turning around in Phil’s arms, Dan murmurs before pressing their lips together, “I’ve given up cheese for you. That is as close to true love as you’ll get from me.”

“I guess I’ll accept that,” Phil replied as they broke apart. “It’s not slaying dragons but a man can’t have everything.”

“You know you’d want to keep a dragon, not have me slay it. Speaking of love, I was thinking about the night we conceived the rave tree.”

Phil’s face scrunches up in laughter. “I recall that night vividly and no conceiving happened unless trees are birthed by reaching second base and making out.”

“When were trees ever conceived at eighth base? You know that mostly didn’t happen until after we finished decorating.”

“I know the completion was delayed a few hours.” Phil smiles like he’s a cat that’s gotten the cream.

Dan hums as he returns a grin in kind. Phil manages to roll them over so he can move his arms and they can remain warm.

Dan reaches to slide his hands into Phil’s back pockets and belatedly remembers he is wearing pj bottoms so he’s caressing Phil’s bum for no practical reason. Not that the pockets weren’t a flimsy excuse.

“My world stopped when I realized you wiggling your hips and caterwauling was one of the most wonderful things I’d ever beheld and I wanted to always be able to witness it.”

“Who’s the soppy one now? That still might be the best kiss we’ve ever shared.”

“Might be? Best we’ve ever shared? This won’t be rectified until I’ve given you the best kiss you’ve ever had.”

“This is one of the few times I can fully enjoy your competitive nature but we’re missing the mistletoe.”

“Don’t need it.”

Phil ekes out a “A Merry Christmas to us all; God bless us, every one.” before Dan renders him speechless again.