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danfanciesphil · 6 years ago

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too high (can’t come down) by @danfanciesphil

Suspending himself 7,000 feet above the rest of the world seems likely to be a sure-fire way for Dan to escape normality, and isolate himself for the foreseeable future. The Secret of the Alps, a small hotel tucked into the side of the Swiss mountains is too niche for most avid adventurers to have heard of, making it the perfect place for Dan to work as he sorts through his problems. Unfortunately, privacy is a coveted thing, and as Dan soon finds out, the hotel harbours one guest who values it more than most.

Rating: Explicit Tags: Enemies to lovers, snow, mountains, skiing, hostility, slow burn, secrecy, longing, repression, nobility, classism, cheating, eventual sex

Ao3 Link

Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty (Final Chapter!) *NSFW*

[Three Months Later]

‘...on Friday, Philip Lester (formerly Novokoric) spoke at the Refuge Centre for Domestic Abuse Victims, where he opened up about his own experience with emotional marital abuse. Since his scandalous divorce from Sir Nikolai Novokoric of Switzerland, Lester has become a dedicated philanthropist, using his notoriety which arose during the controversial coverage of the split to spread awareness about domestic abuse, LGBTQ+ discrimination, homelessness, poverty, and many other important global issues. This Tuesday, Lester is expected to appear at the United Nations conference to discuss Third World Poverty…’

The folding seat beside Dan’s is wrenched down, and a young woman with badly-dyed pink hair plops into it, holding a Starbucks cup and an Urban Outfitters tote bag stuffed with books and papers. Dan lowers the lid of his laptop to shift some of his stuff out of the way of her feet.

“Is it just me or does it get more rammed in here every week?” the girl says. Dan stares at her in mild dismay; usually he projects such a cold, unfriendly aura that nobody dares sit within two seats of him. He’s seen this girl in a few classes before, but he can only barely remember her name. It’s something like Ramona, or Rowena... Or maybe it’s neither. She turns to Dan, brandishing a strong, confident smile. “I’m Roshina.” Ah. Neither. “You’re Dan, right? The guy who dropped out and then... dropped in again.”

She tips her head back and cackles for a second, then begins pulling various things out of the tote bag. Dan grimaces, staring at the little cacti prints decorating the bag. What is it with hipster girls and succulents?

Whilst he’s not thrilled that he’s apparently earned a reputation amongst the student body as the notorious failed quitter, he hasn’t the energy to challenge her on it.

“Guess so,” he replies in a mutter.

He opens his laptop again, hoping it might signal to her that he’s busy, and not up for a conversation. Of course, every line of the article is like having someone plunge a fresh, thin needle into his chest, slowly stitching the word ‘fool’ into his skin. But his need for information about Phil is as urgent as his need for water. He can’t look away.

“Ooh, I love that guy,” Roshina says, leaning in towards Dan to read the article as well. She leans her elbow on the back of his seat, the coffee in her hand hovering close to Dan’s nose; it’s something chai-spiced. Dan recoils as subtly as he can, pressing himself into the opposite edge of the chair.

The article includes a photo of Phil behind a podium, his glasses on, wearing an impassioned expression, mouth open halfway through some dramatic statement or other.

“If I were as famous as him and I’d just, like, lost my hot rich husband,” Roshina says, loudly, right into Dan’s ear, “I’d have no shame. I’d be applying to Big Brother or Love Island. Just shows there are some blokes willing to do the decent thing after all!”

Dan cannot imagine why Roshina thinks he’d care what she might hypothetically get up to in her fantasy version of Phil’s life. He imagines Phil sneering at this girl’s audacity, saying something snippy and derisive like: ‘And if I were as vapid as you, I’d perhaps rethink my decision to pursue a career in the legal field, as it’s highly unlikely anyone’s going to hire a solicitor with bubblegum pink hair.’ It makes Dan smile, just a bit, and then in the next second, he’s back to being a bitter old maid.

“I wouldn’t give him too much credit,” Dan grumbles, eyes stuck to the photo of Phil, spewing some boring line about domestic abuse like he didn’t need to be practically dragged to his own divorce settlement by the cuff of his ear. “He’s probably getting a buttload for all these appearances.”

She snorts at him, rather loudly and obnoxiously considering this is, as far as Dan remembers, their first conversation. “Don’t you read Perez Hilton? He keeps zilch. All profits from his public appearances go to the charity he’s promoting at the time.”

Dan throat suddenly feels very dry. All profits? What’s he living on? He scrolls down the page a bit more; Roshina jabs at his screen suddenly with a short, green fingernail. She’s pointing to another article advertised at the side of this one, with the headline: ‘Give and Thou Shalt Receive: Phil Lester spotted with Possible New Man’.

“Click that one!” Roshina squeals excitedly. “It was just posted!”

Dan is about to tell Roshina in a clipped, irritable tone that he would rather pick up her fluffy pen and drive it into his eye, but she’s already batting his hand away, apparently oblivious to social etiquette. He’s trapped in his seat, forced to watch as she clicks the baiting link. A photo pops up at once, taken through an open car door, of Phil crammed into the back seat with Martyn and a ‘mystery’ person. Except it’s not a mystery-person. Not to Dan, and not to the author of this article, who has, to their credit, obviously done their homework.

Dan shifts uncomfortably as Roshina laps up the photo, eyes round and gleaming. He feels nauseous, and the smell wafting from her latte is not helping. Not that anything helps the sickness that sits at the bottom of his belly perpetually nowadays. Ever since he re-enrolled, courtesy of his doting and quietly ecstatic parents, Dan has been off food, off socialising, off anything much except sitting in his room scrolling through the endless media cycle of Phil-related articles.

“Says here this dude used to be Nikolai’s photographer!” Roshina exclaims. Dan says nothing. He doesn’t want to entertain speculative notions that just because PJ, who used to work for Nikolai, has been papped in Phil’s proximity, that it means they’re dating. Even the idea of it has Dan gripping the hard plastic of his armrest to staunch his wave of paranoia. “PJ Ligouri is a UK-based photographer that jumped ship from Nikolai’s press team alongside his former PA Cornelia Dahlgren. The latter is currently dating Martyn Lester, Phil’s older brother. Suspicions of PJ’s involvement with the younger Lester were first aroused when he was noticed photographing Phil’s appearance at last month’s Climate Change Festival-”

Dan slams the lid of the laptop closed so suddenly that Roshina squeaks, yanking her fingers away just in time. “Battery’s low,” he mutters, folding his arms across his chest. He sinks down in his seat, intending to stay that way until the lecture starts, letting the white noise of Roshina’s indignant voice keep his intrusive and unpleasant thoughts of Phil and PJ, and all the things they might be doing, at bay.

“Hey,” Martyn says, “it’s Corn for you. She wants a private word.”

Phil frowns, not looking up. “Tell her I’m the wrong brother to call for that sort of thing.”

“She says it’s pretty serious,” Martyn says, ignoring him.

Phil lets out a frustrated sigh, letting the open file he’s been reading fall to the couch cushion beside him. The Red Cross have sent him a buttload of information that he needs to know inside out before his address at the United Nations conference later today. He’s been back and forth with the Red Cross for weeks through phone calls and emails trying to get up to speed, but there’s so much to know in such a short space of time. He has to look like he’s dedicated to this project, and he is, but the UN invited him last minute - he hasn’t had a lot of time to prepare.

He’ll have even less time if Cornelia keeps pestering him about schedules and meetings or whatever this is about. Of course, despite her constant bothering, Phil would lick the soles of her comfortable-but-cool sneakers to keep her around. She’s a scarily good Press Agent, Phil has no idea how Martyn ever took her on back when they were rivals. They work much better as a team, sharing the role for Phil on a voluntary basis, whilst working a few other part-time jobs.

“Something about a girl with blue hair?” Martyn prompts, and Phil’s heart skips.

“Hand it over.”

“Say please to your big brother,” PJ scolds from the other end of the couch, though he doesn’t look away from his phone screen, which he’s been Skyping his girlfriend on for the past half hour. He angles the phone at Phil, pulling his headphones out of the jack; Sophie’s round, sweet face fills the screen. “Soph, tell him to use his manners. You’re a lady.”

“Use manners,” Sophie says, then pulls up her nostrils to look like a snout. “But I’m no lady.”

Phil smiles at her, but his heart is pounding too violently to give her a proper response. He holds his hand out for the phone in Martyn’s hand instead. PJ plugs his headphones back in, voice lowering.

“Hey, Corn,” Phil says as soon as the phone is against his ear. “What’s up?”

“Hey,” Cornelia says, then clears her throat. She’s not diving straight in to whatever she has to say, so Phil immediately knows this is a sensitive topic. He stands from the uncomfortable sofa he’s sat on, moving over to the window, as far away from Martyn and PJ as he can get in this tiny room. “So, Mona Kemp just contacted me. You remember her? From The Secret of the Alps hotel.”

Phil rolls his eyes. “Yes, I remember the manager of my prison cell, funnily enough.”

She clears her throat again. “Right. Yeah. Well, apparently they’ve just rented out your suite for the first time since you left.”

Phil waits, but Cornelia seems to need prompting. “Uh huh…”

“And the new guests, um, found something.”

The tiny workers controlling Phil’s brain are suddenly thrown into uproar, frantically combing through his memory for any inkling of what incriminating item he might have left in that godforsaken place. His jaw clenches so hard he can feel a twitch, but he stoically stares through the glass pane to hide his panic from the other people in the room.

“Oh?”

“It was like a… recording device?” Cornelia says, and Phil wishes he could see her in the flesh, read her expression to know how bad it is.

Although they’re both technically in the same building, the United Nations Headquarters are impossibly huge. She’s downstairs somewhere amongst the thousands of behind-the-scenes worker bees, making arrangements with press and security for the conference. It’ll be hours before she finds her way back up to this bare, lifeless green room they’ve been given use of.

His eyes flutter closed, picturing Dan, stood defiantly at the foot of a four-poster bed in his wrongly-buttoned shirt, his soft cheeks pink from exertion, spewing garbled information about a thieving girl with blue hair, and how she’d recorded him arguing on the phone.

“Mona seemed to know who’d put it there somehow, I don’t know,” Cornelia continues in a harried voice. “She said it was the daughter of some family that won a holiday up there. Anyway, obviously this device is a serious breach of privacy, and I’m sure that if you wanted to press charges-”

“What’s on it?”

“Hm?”

Phil pinches the bridge of his nose between his forefinger and thumb, conscious of saying too much in case he alerts Martyn, who is already at maximum stress level, and probably listening right behind him. The seams of Phil’s head are bursting, still crammed with straggles of information about water filtration systems and monthly overseas school supplies. He can’t take this in right now, can’t be bothered to give an annoying fangirl brat with an inflated ego the time of day. And on top of that, he cannot listen to Cornelia pretend she hasn’t already listened to that recording, whatever it is, from start to finish.

“What’s on it, Cornelia? Don’t play dumb.”

There’s a pause; Phil looks over his shoulder and catches Martyn’s eye. He immediately tries to busy himself with meaningless tasks, neatening files and shoving PJ’s lighting equipment into the corner of the room. Phil turns back to the window, shaking his head. Martyn is just as much of a dirty snoop as his fiancé is. They’re made for each other.

At last, Cornelia speaks. She sounds like she’s moved somewhere with less people in the background. “There’s a few. They’re… mostly x-rated.”

A deep, dizzying flush sweeps down Phil’s body, and he feels his mind threatening to fold inwards on itself. Thanks to a herd of mediation and personal response trainers that Nikolai had him spend weeks with years prior, Phil is able to keep himself relatively calm. He breathes in through his nose, out through his mouth, and stays quiet for a minute whilst he thinks of something to say that will help the situation.

“Send the recordings to me,” Phil instructs after a moment. He keeps expecting a sudden surge of anger to well up inside of him - at the blue-haired girl, at Nikolai, at Dan, at himself even - but all that floods through him is a deep, swirling melancholy, dappled with peaks of intense regret. “And for the love of God don’t show anyone else. Especially my brother.”

“Okay, boss.”

“And tell Mona thank you for… being discreet.”

He doesn’t need to check that Mona had quickly and quietly taken the recording device down with a crisp, dismissive explanation to the new guests. He also doesn’t need to check that she hadn’t listened to them herself; Mona is an honest, rule-abiding woman, and would never dream of such a thing. He should send her a fruit basket one day. ...When he can afford fruit baskets again.

“I will,” Cornelia assures him. “What do you want to do about the girl?”

“What girl?”

“The blue-haired girl. She could have really messed things up-”

“Don’t do anything,” Phil says sternly. “She wants attention. Notoriety. Don’t give her any.”

“Got it.”

“Just send me those recordings. Then get rid of any copies you or anyone else has, for God’s sake.” He hesitates. “Perv.”

She giggles. “Sounds to me like you’re the perv, mate. Not sure I’d have let someone blindfold me on the first shag, he must’ve been really into you-”

“Fuck off, Corn,” Phil says tiredly, no venom in his voice, then hangs up.

He goes back to his case files with a weight in his chest. They’re suddenly a lot harder to take in.

The bed Phil currently calls his own is far less luxurious than the one he used to sprawl out in when he was a resident of The Secret of the Alps hotel. It’s barely even a bed, really, as it pulls out from a couch, but Phil never bothers folding it away, as he’s only ever in here to sleep. Sleep is what he should be doing right now, in fact, but there’s no way he could drift off right now, not after hearing what he’s just heard.

Phil stares at the battered play button on the audio player window that’s open on his laptop, which balances on his knee. If he clicks it again, it will be the fifth time he’s heard the final recording Cornelia sent over, which is far too many times to be reasonable. She certainly hadn’t been wrong in her description of the audio. X-rated is possibly even a little demure.

He worries his lower lip between his teeth, hand long ago having reached beneath the covers to ease some of the intense pressure between his legs. He shouldn’t click play again. The other person in this recording is long gone, and his quick exit was more than enough of a message that he doesn’t want to be found. There’s no point in torturing himself with Dan’s ghost. His... incredibly hot ghost. His fingers press more insistently against his crotch.

Just then, an email from Cornelia pings up in the corner of Phil’s screen. He whips his hand away from his pyjama trousers, feeling very weird about doing any such thing whilst his sister-in-law-to-be is contacting him. To distract himself from the urgent pulses of arousal coming from beneath the covers, he clicks the email.

From: Mona Kemp To: Cornelia Dahlgren

Fwd: Phil Lester

Dear Ms Dahlgren,

On my first attempt to send over the recordings, it appears the hotel’s rather dated computer system failed to include this final, rather short one. I’ve attached it in this email. Once I’ve confirmed you have received it, I shall dispose of the recordings altogether.

Please send Mr Lester my sincerest apologies again for the atrocious breach of privacy. I no longer have his contact information, but he is welcome to get in touch with me for a formal apology, and we would be more than happy to compensate him with a free stay whenever he might choose to return.

Sincerely,

Mona Kemp Hotel Manager of The Secret of the Alps

Upon reading the line ‘free stay whenever he might choose to return’, Phil lets out a loud snort. Poor Mona. He’ll never tell her, but he’d have to be dragged back onto that cable car kicking and screaming. Even then, he’d probably beg Kaspar to hurl him out of it before they reached the summit. He’ll see how he feels about another trip up there in a few years, perhaps with time his stint there won’t feel as traumatising.

He clicks the attached recording, readying himself for yet another auditory reminder of his sordid, expletive-riddled, excruciatingly hot fling with Dan. There’s a crackle as it begins playing, and Phil turns up the volume, straining to hear anything more than a few vague rustles. This doesn’t sound like the other recordings. Perhaps the device had just picked up Phil talking in his sleep or something.

And then, he hears Dan’s voice. “Phil?” It’s quiet, but clear as a bell. “Phil.”

Phil sucks in a breath. It’s not that three months have wiped the memory of Dan’s voice from his mind, but when he hears it echo through his eardrums, it’s usually the words he spat in that last argument, when he’d announced he was leaving, as if Phil wouldn’t give a damn. He hasn’t thought of Dan’s softer, sweeter voice in some time. He’d forgotten how Dan could sound, at times, without the strain of lust or fury warping his vocal chords.

Then there comes a muffled ‘thump’, followed by a grunt of pain.

“Wha?” Phil’s voice says.

Phil clicks pause and checks the timestamp for the recording. It reads 02:01am on 14th April. That’s the day Dan left. Early in the morning. How come he can’t remember this?

His heart thuds, coming to the gradual realisation that he’s listening to a conversation he’s never heard before. One he never even knew had taken place. Had Dan come to say goodbye to him after all? Has Phil been living under the impression that Dan had snubbed him, ran off without a word, when really…

Phil sits up straighter, turning the volume up to the highest level. He clicks play again.

“Did you watch the stream of your fave giving his rousing speech at the UN?” Roshina asks as she settles herself into the seat beside Dan’s again.

Silently, Dan begs her to sit literally anywhere else, but her mind is apparently closed to telepathy. He wonders if she’d believe he’s suddenly been struck totally deaf. Unlikely, but it might be worth a try if it meant he didn’t have to talk about Phil again today; he’s only just stopped crying for long enough intervals to make it to class.

“Yeah, uh, think I saw some clips on Twitter,” Dan replies, aiming for the sweet spot between vague and already-up-to-speed.

In truth, he watched it start to finish, at 1am because of the time difference, hunkered over his laptop in bed, tears streaming down his face.

“God, wasn’t he marvellous?” she sighs, hauling a load of books and pens she won’t use out of her tote again. Yes, he was. “He can hold a room for sure. I think it’s ‘cause you can tell he’s passionate about this. ” She grins at him. “Or maybe it’s because of his deep, sexy voice. D’you think?”

Dan stares back at her, wondering if she genuinely expects him to respond with words. “Uh...”

Luckily, she doesn’t seem too bothered about Dan agreeing. She pulls out her phone and begins cycling through her social media apps with the concentration of an atomic physicist. “Oh look,” Roshina exclaims just when Dan thought he might get a moment of peace, “our man is trending.”

Dan digs his fingernails into his palm. Don’t look. Just don’t look. “Can I see?” he asks, hating himself.

She angles her phone at him. There are two hashtags pertaining to Phil. The first is #AmazingPhil. The second is #PhilsUNSpeech. Roshina clicks the first, and scrolls slowly down a timeline of people enthusing about Phil’s fiery yet intelligent speech which he gave at the United Nations headquarters yesterday afternoon, about the poverty crisis in several African countries. He seems to have really knocked it out of the park, judging by the response he’s getting. Dan drinks the raining compliments down greedily, trying to glean, selfish though it may be, what Phil’s mental state might be right now, in reaction to all the sudden attention directed his way. One particular tweet catches his attention.

@nikolaischmikolai: saw #amazingphil at the airport after the conference! such a cool guy, didnt get a selfie cos he was in a hurry to get his flight but he signed my ticket with a Muse quote! #inspiration

Back at the airport, Dan notes. Already jet-setting off to his next glamorous public appearance. It won’t take long until people start throwing money at him for all this ‘charity work’. They’ll give him a Netflix documentary series, or a book deal, or any of the other wank that just gets handed to celebrities.

“Lucky guy, seeing him IRL. I wonder what he’s like in person,” Roshina ponders, scrolling through more tweets.

“An emotionally stunted, obnoxious adrenaline junkie with no filter on the silver spoon stuck in his gob,” Dan mutters, before realising he said that slightly too loud. Roshina is staring at him oddly. He shrugs, pinkening. “I imagine, anyway.”

Thankfully, before Roshina can respond, Professor Warren calls the class to attention, flicking the PowerPoint to the title page, which reads, ‘Marital Dissolution: The Litigation of Separation and Divorce’. The irony is stifling.

Sleep is closing in on Dan from all sides. He’s trying to resist the urge to slip into blissful unconsciousness, but Professor Warren’s baritone voice is making it so difficult to stay alert. His eyelids sag, then shut entirely. It’s just as the waves of promised unconsciousness are beginning to draw him out into that sweet, deep void that the door of the lecture hall opens with its hideous squeak. Dan frowns, inching down further in his uncomfortable chair to try and get away from the noise.

“Excuse me,” a loud, plummy voice calls, interrupting Professor Warren mid-flow. Dan frowns harder; the voice is instantly grating, as if it knows to burrow straight beneath Dan’s skin. It skims along the shores of his half-dream, splashing through the shallows in the distance, but Dan is too far out to be reached. “Is Dan Howell in this class?”

Dan’s eyes snap open.

“Young man, I am in the middle of a lecture!” Professor Warren replies in his gruff, incredulous voice, the one he uses in seminars to pick on students who haven’t done the reading. Dan’s been on the receiving end of this voice rather too often. “I must insist that you wait outside until-”

“I’m sorry, Professor, but this can’t wait,” the voice says, even louder. “Dan Howell? Dan, are you in here?”

A slight Northern tinge is detectable beneath the upper-class overtones. Chills course down Dan’s arms. This cannot be happening. He sneaks a glance at Roshina; her mouth is a round, pink circle, eyes bugged out so far it looks almost cartoonish. He looks left and right, noting that several people are also turning his way, alight with excitable intrigue. It’s no use. He’s going to have to confront this... situation. Dan sits up just enough that he can peer through the shoulders of the people in front of him, to the short flight of stairs that lead up to the lecture hall door.

It’s beyond surreal, to take in the sight of Phil, here, in this dingy light-less hall, looking exactly the same as ever, but somehow startlingly different. He feels as though the image of him has smacked sharply into the back of his head. In the next moment, Dan realises that Roshina has literally smacked him.

“You know him?!” she hisses, incensed. “Why didn’t you say?”

Phil lets out a suffering sigh that makes Dan’s teeth grit together. He’s gazing out across the rows of students as if he were surveying his Kingdom. Dan hunches over, trying to hide. There must be a hundred people in here, thank heavens. Suddenly, Roshina has her green-taloned claw on his upper arm; she hauls him up with surprising strength, though he does his best to struggle free.

“Dan,” Phil calls out a second time to the general room, ignoring the fact that Professor Warren looks to be on the verge of spontaneous combustion, “I kind of know you’re in here. Could you just… I need to talk to you.”

Dan swallows, feeling the back of his neck prickle from how many eyes are on him now. Phil isn’t wearing his glasses; perhaps he’s blinder than Dan assumed he was, as Roshina now has him in a vice grip, ensuring he stays bolt upright in the chair.

“It’s just dawned on me who you are, young man,” Professor Warren says then, cold, “and I’m sure in your world this kind of disruptive behaviour is tolerated. But this is an academic setting, not a press interview. Please leave my lecture. You may speak with whomever you like in an hour.”

“Dan, I know you’re in love with me,” Phil says, with a sweet, butter-wouldn’t-melt smile. “I think we should talk about that, maybe.”

Cheeks furiously flaming, Dan looks down at his folding desk covered in meagre study tools for some kind of murder weapon. The best he has is a laptop charger, which he might be able to fashion into some kind of lasso and choke Phil from afar if he really tried. Stifled snickers erupt behind people’s hands, and practically everyone is staring at him now. With little other option, Dan shoots to his feet, stuffing everything in his bag. He doesn’t give Phil the satisfaction of meeting his eye, but as he’s finally shut his gob, Dan reckons the dickhead has spotted him at last.

Bag slung over one shoulder, Dan forces his way past Roshina’s fishnet-wrapped knees, then past a few other amused students to the aisle. He stalks down the stairs as quickly as possible, head down. He can sense Professor Warren’s disapproving glare on him; this little stunt will not earn him any favours, and he’s already on the Prof’s list of ne’er-do-wells. Once he begins the climb of stairs towards the hall doors, Dan finally lifts his head to aim his icy expression at the infuriating human that has inexplicably decided to saunter in and humiliate Dan like no time at all has passed. The corner of Phil’s mouth is lifted just a tad. Dan had honestly forgotten, what with all the heartache, just how punchable he is.

He says nothing, just grabs Phil by the upper arm and marches him up the remainder of stairs, then through the doors. Once they’re outside the lecture hall, which opens directly onto the main outdoor campus, Dan lets go of Phil like he’s burning, and strides across the tarmac, feeling the burn of mortification stinging him from all sides. Of course it’s raining, Dan thinks as he walks, the scent of rain-soaked concrete misting the air.

It’s not long before he hears footsteps hurrying after him. “Dan, wait!”

Furious, Dan stops in his tracks and whirls around. “What are you doing here?”

Phil comes to an abrupt halt in front of him, eyes round. He blinks at Dan, mouth parted; for a moment, Dan is equally dumbstruck. Seeing him so close, after months of only glimpsing him through a screen, is disconcerting. Was he always this stunning? Did Dan really somehow grow used to the vivid, swirling blue of his eyes?

“I… could ask you the same question,” Phil says after a while.

The annoying non-answer immediately slaps Dan back from gooey-ville. He gives Phil a withering look. “I’m a student here.”

“Thought you dropped out.”

Dan grits his teeth again. How is it that Phil always knows to pick at the very knots Dan doesn’t want to unravel?

“Well, I dropped in again.” He folds his arms across his chest. To his utter dismay, a smattering of the students milling around the campus plaza have begun to look up from their phones and tablets. There’s a lot of pointing and murmuring going on, presumably because ‘Amazing Phil’ has appeared out of the blue to fight with some normie. “Why’d you have to announce to the entire hall that I’m ‘in love’ with you?” Dan demands, pointedly using air quotes to convey the ridiculousness of that concept. “I have to finish out the year with the people in there.”

“Actually, you don’t have to do that.”

“Don’t start.”

“What?”

“Don’t start with the whole ‘you gave up on giving up’ thing. I know, okay? I’m back exactly where I was before we met, hating every aspect of my life. But we can’t all be famous charitable heartthrobs.”

Phil smirks, his lowered eyelashes catching tiny droplets of rain. “Heartthrob?”

“Oh my God,” Dan says, one hand coming to his damp forehead, “what do you want?”

An actual crowd of people is forming around them, seemingly oblivious to the fact they’re all steadily getting soaked. Dan wants rather badly to bolt far away from this spot. But that would mean leaving Phil behind, again, and annoyed though he is, he just can’t wrench himself away a second time, not when he’s only just reappeared. Phil shifts, pulling his smart jacket tighter, eyeing the people gathering around them. Several of them have unsubtly pulled out their phones to film this exchange.

“I had this dream,” Phil says, inexplicably.

“That’s great, Martin Luther King,” Dan says dryly, “I’m sure your doting fans would love to hear all about it, so just look into one of these nice people’s lenses and remember to speak clearly-”

“I had this dream that you crawled into bed with me,” Phil interrupts, continuing as if Dan hadn’t spoken. An eruption of titters spills from their group of onlookers; Dan has to close his eyes and breathe to stop himself from stepping forwards and kicking Phil in the kneecap. “In the middle of the night. And you asked me to give you a reason to stay with me.”

Immediately, the backs of Dan’s eyes strain and ache, pushing tears into his ducts. He wills the rain to fall harder, to disguise his reaction in case he can’t keep the tears from spilling over.

“And in my dream,” Phil continues, “I couldn’t think of a reason. I just thought... you must already know how much I like you. I’d told you so many times that you were constantly on my mind. I’d done stupid, reckless things to be with you for just a few hours. I’d left my husband. But there you were, in my dream, asking me for something more. I couldn’t understand what it was you wanted me to say. I didn’t have anything left. Nothing I could think of that might stop you leaving.”

The rain is soaking through Dan’s t-shirt, sticking it to his skin. He shivers, trying to let the alien words fold into his drizzled, muddy mind.

“It’s too late for this,” Dan points out, toeing the tarmac with the tip of his trainer, watching the light grey slabs slowly pinpricking with dark circles. “And it was just a dream, like you said.”

“I’ve thought of a reason, though.”

Dan’s eyes lift. He wants to say he doesn’t care, that their brief attempt to grasp at the wisp of some connection that sparked between them was doomed from the start. The chance has passed them by - they’re no longer up a mountain with only each other for company, they’re back in the gritty rainy reality of their starkly different lives.

But he also aches, body and soul, to know that reason. The thing Phil never said, that Dan has imagined him saying every day since. God help him, he yearns to hear it more than he yearns for oxygen in his next breath. So he says nothing, lips pressing tight.

“I was really lonely,” Phil says, grimacing as a fat raindrop strikes his pale cheek. “I spent three years in a far off retreat nobody knew about, cut off from everything I’d known. The cold of that place, along with the isolation... I think it seeped into my bones. I just went numb. I forgot how to feel anything.”

Dan looks away, casting his gaze around the people on the periphery of this strange conversation, all of them listening intently, so ready for some dramatic story to add to their social media timeline.

“And then you came,” Phil says, apparently oblivious to the entourage. “Like you’d been flung up the mountain by mistake. You had no more clue why you were there than anyone else. And you were so…” he heaves a sigh, running fingers through damp, dark hair. “So fucking annoying.”

A ripple of laughter goes up around them; Dan chokes out a cough of indignation. “Isn’t this supposed to be a reason you wanted me to stay?”

Phil smiles, showing the barest hint of teeth. “You got on every single one of my nerves. It was like you’d specifically been planted there to piss me off. Everything about you was just… so frustrating.”

Dan cocks a suggestive eyebrow, because it’s decidedly his turn to embarrass Phil after the many things he’s inferred about Dan so far. On camera. “There were occasions where Louise had to pull me aside and cool me off so I wouldn’t beat you with your ski pole. So don’t think it was one-sided.”

“But that’s just it,” Phil says, taking a teensy step closer. Dan’s backpack strap is sodden, and his face is misted with moisture, but he can’t seem to make himself move an inch, because Phil - god damn him - looks fucking incredible all wet, in a Mr Darcy-emerging-from-the-lake sort of way. “You made me feel things again. Sure, most of the feelings were anger and exasperation, but it was still better than the void that was there before.”

“Wow. I don’t know what to say. This is all so romantic,” Dan says scornfully; their audience titters, and Dan feels a small surge of pride that this time they’re laughing with him. “Are you getting to some kind of point?”

“Yeah,” Phil says, laughing. “I was so alone, and I owe you so much.”

Dan snorts, turning on his heel. Enough. “That’s a line from Sherlock, you dick-”

“Hey, I’m fucking about, I can do better,” Phil pleads, grabbing his arm. Dan thinks about pulling away, but he settles for just turning to glare some more, very aware of Phil’s touch, how his warm, wet fingers feel even through the soggy material of his t-shirt. “How about…”

Phil is really close to him now, his deep thinking cutting a crease between his brows. The rain has deflated his quiff, making it stick to his forehead. Somehow, even with a makeshift emo fringe, he looks infinitely radiant. Dan imagines that in comparison, he resembles a drowned rat, his hair frizzed and unattractive, and it’s all being caught on film, which is fantastic. Phil drops his voice to a murmur, presumably so it can’t be picked up by people’s shitty phone mics.

“Arguing with you every day, up in the heavens of fucking nowhere…” Phil shrugs, smiling. “That was the most fun I’ve ever had.”

A droplet spills from Dan’s left eye, and he wipes it away, furious with himself for allowing it to leak out. “Wow,” he chokes out. “You must have been really bored up there.”

Phil nods, eyes trained on Dan’s traitorous smile. “Is that... your way of saying you don’t hate my guts?”

Dan feels himself tense. Phil’s hand is still on his arm, and his thumb strokes gently over the damp skin just below his sleeve. “You know I can’t provide you with, like, champagne or- or um, suites in fancy hotels or…”

He trails off, because he’s allowed himself to look into Phil’s eyes properly for the first time; they really are so many separate shades of blue. There must be dozens of colours in their depths. He’d have a job naming them all.

“I’ll settle for the occasional kiss between battles,” Phil replies.

Dan splutters softly, cheeks warm against the shivering rest of his body. His eyes flit to their audience, several of whom have their hands over their hearts and mouths.

“Not here,” Dan replies, taking a hasty step backwards. “Let’s, uh,” he glances around for a break in the crowd, “let’s go somewhere… less here.”

He turns before Phil can answer, pushing through a throng of camera-faced people, letting Phil find his way to catch up. They get halfway across the campus main square before Phil says coolly, “not to ruin the theatricality of this moment, but where are we going?”

Dan looks at him, then stops in his tracks. Crap. “Y-you can’t come back to mine.” He blushes, fidgeting. “I’m… living with my parents. At the moment.”

“Hmm,” Phil says, dithering. “Not ideal.”

“Where are you staying?”

Phil hesitates, and Dan has to prod him in his damp ribs to make him answer aloud. He sighs eventually. “Susan.”

Dan’s eyebrows shoot towards the rainclouds above them. “Your plane?”

“Yeah. S’all I’ve got to my name right now, pretty much.”

Dan nods, considering this for all of about five seconds. He can already sense that they’re beginning to be followed. Dan grabs Phil by the wrist. “She’ll do.”

Considering what a smooth, relaxed pilot Phil is, Dan is genuinely baffled by how terrifying he is as a driver. Phil has parked Susan on some farmland about two miles from campus; the owner of the plot had recognised Phil’s plane when he’d landed it in the local airport and practically jumped at the chance to offer him a place to stow it - presumably to earn himself some bragging rights for bestowing his hospitality on a semi-celebrity.

This suspiciously good samaritan also gave Phil use of his truck for the day, as the farm is in the middle of nowhere, and Phil needed a way to get to Dan’s university campus. The truck is an old, squeaky thing caked in mud; as far as keeping a low profile goes it does a grand job, but it doesn’t reek of safety. For most of the journey, Dan is clutching the ceiling handle, shrieking whenever another car comes the other way as Phil careers them down narrow country lanes at sixty miles per hour.

Eventually, after Dan has come worryingly close to crapping his pants, they reach the field where Phil’s plane is sat, less shiny than Dan remembers her, but just as intimidating. The rain is easing up, but it’s left the green countryside dripping and muddy; Dan is not particularly looking forward to trekking across the wet grass.

“I’m literally never getting in a car with you again,” Dan states vehemently, legs shaking as he steps out of the truck.

“Wimp,” Phil says dismissively, slamming his door closed. The sound echoes around them, bouncing off the trees that fringe the field. “I’m just a little rusty. There’s less traffic in the sky.”

As his heart settles back into its normal rhythm, Dan shuts his own door and follows Phil across the grass to the plane. Phil presses a button as they approach and a short set of steps protrude in a neat glide from Susan’s door.

“Missed you, babe,” Phil says, hopping onto the first step before it’s completely extended.

Dan blanches, nearly slipping on a patch of wet grass. “Uh, what?”

Phil looks over his shoulder, amusement coating his expression. “I’m talking to Susan.”

“Oh. Yeah. I- I know.”

Phil laughs and ducks inside the plane. Dan looks around at the vast, endless fields that surround them, startlingly green and lush from the burst of rainfall. There’s nothing for miles aside from a tiny farmhouse in the distance; they’re alone together again. It’s a different kind of deserted expanse to the snow-covered mountains, but a familiar sense of isolation hovers in the air.

Susan’s sleek interior has changed since Dan saw it last. For one thing, what little floor space had been at the back of the plane has been largely taken up by a pull-out bed. It’s unmade, the covers rucked and creased, which in the cramped area makes the whole place look messy. Phil shimmies around the bed to a what looks like the counter of a small bar, opening a neat pull-out contraption that reveals a sink. There’s a kettle too, which Phil holds under the faucet.

“Uh, so you live here? Permanently?”

Phil nods.

“Jesus,” Dan mutters, toeing the empty red bull can on the floor near the bed. “Quite the fall from grace. How are you coping without 24-hour maid service?”

“S’not so bad,” Phil says with no apparent hint at insincerity. He kneels on the bed and leans over to grab the red bull can, which he then throws into the bin, rather stylishly. “At least here I’m not in debt to anyone.”

“So you own the plane, then?”

Dan sits gingerly on the bed, mainly because there is nowhere else to sit apart from the two seats in the cockpit, and he can’t even look in that direction without blushing. It seems both long ago and entirely too recent that he was sat there with Phil knelt before him, high above the peaks of the Swiss mountains. He seems to remember, from his last visit, more seating in the back here, but as he studies the bed he’s perched on, he realises that this is the seating, folded out into a small double bed.

“Yeah,” Phil replies, pouring boiling water into mugs. “Nikolai let me have this and the ring.”

Dan’s eyebrows raise. “You’d think he could’ve spared a couple of… million.”

“I’m glad he didn’t, actually. It would’ve detracted from my trustworthiness, I think.”

“You mean about all the charity stuff you’re doing?”

“Exactly,” Phil affirms, lifting both mugs and carefully sitting on the bed beside Dan. He hands one over, and Dan takes it. He doesn’t particularly feel like tea, but then he is wet and slightly chilly from the rain, so it will probably help chase the cold from his bones. “So.”

“So,” Dan echoes.

They lapse into silence, blowing on their scorching drinks. Eventually, Dan abandons his, knowing it will be too hot to drink for some time. He places it carefully on the shelf beside the bed. “I need to ask you something,” Dan says.

“Yes, the theories are right, I am naturally ginger.”

“What?”

Dan shakes his head. “Not... what I was gonna ask. It’s about that dream you mentioned.” He hesitates, heart squeezing tightly. “Did you... remember anything else about it?”

Strangely, Phil shifts away from him. It’s a telling movement, and even though Dan’s not been around him for some time, he’s ninety percent sure that the expression Phil’s features are forming is something like ‘sheepishness’. He squints at the older man as a gut feeling blooms that he’s going to want to throttle him within the next few minutes.

Phil swallows tightly, placing his own mug on the floor. “Well. I don’t really need to, um. Remember.”

“What d’you mean?”

Phil grimaces, seeming wary of Dan’s reaction, then reaches beneath the bed, drawing out a Macbook. “This is Martyn’s old one,” Phil says when he catches Dan’s raised eyebrow. “Nik kept mine.”

A wave of sympathy washes over Dan from head to toe, swiftly followed by a surge of anger for Nikolai Novokoric. Phil opens the Mac and clicks around a bit, then turns to Dan, clear concern dressing his face.

“So, you remember that girl? With the blue hair?”

Ten minutes later, Dan is sat in gobsmacked silence, his own confession of love reverberating through the air. No use denying it now. “That little fucker.”

Phil winces. “Yeah. Well, anyway, Mona and Cornelia destroyed all the copies.”

Dan’s eyes bulge. “Except this one!”

“Well yeah,” Phil says. His mouth twitches, and Dan zeroes in on it. “But… I reckon I’m allowed to have one.”

“Oh, do you?”

“It’s sweet.” Phil nudges him with his elbow. “And, y’know…”

“No, please enlighten me.”

“It’s… pretty hot.”

Dan’s frown deepens. “That’s a strange choice of adjective.”

“Well, maybe not the part where you bear your soul to me in a largely embarrassing midnight confession,” Phil says, so Dan hits him in the arm, “but the other recordings-”

“Other recordings?!”

Phil pauses, caught out. “Oh. Uh, yeah. From what I can gather the recording device began recording any time it picked up noise, so there are a few…”

He trails off, and Dan buries his face in his hands for a few seconds, then takes a deep inhale, straightening up. “Show me.”

“Not sure this is the best time-”

“Phil, that’s a recording of me doing a variety of explicit deeds. Fucking play it to me.”

Phil hesitates, scanning Dan’s face, then shrugs, pulls up a different recording, moves the play bar to the middle, and hits the space key.

“Kiss me,” Dan’s voice says, husky and breathless. “Kiss me and then fuck me.”

Regret, regret, regret- Dan lunges for the laptop, slamming the space bar. Unfortunately, he manages to press another key as well, and a different recording pops up. Before either he or Phil can do anything to stop it, Nikolai’s voice is pouring from the speaker.

“...my God, don’t tell me you actually top in this-”

Phil slams the lid of his laptop shut smartly, two pink spots appearing on his high cheeks. “I’ll delete these, I think.”

Dan’s fingers push into his temple, massaging the spot. “So good of you to hang onto them until now, you wanker.”

Silence falls, and for a moment the tension is taut to the point of being unbearable. Then, Dan hears a quiet, barely audible giggle. He looks at Phil, incredulous, and immediately upon seeing the creases of laughter around his glinting eyes, feels a swell of laughter bubbling up in his own chest. The tension snaps, and they let their streams of laughter spill out. Phil cards a hand through his hair, reaching for his tea again.

“Y’know,” Dan says, eyes glazed as he watches Phil’s plump, pink lips seal over the rim of his mug, “you’ve already lured me into your…” he gestures to the plane interior. “Den. Kind of redundant at this point to play it cool.”

Phil looks at him quizzically, sipping. “What do you mean?”

“Well, as you have clear, recorded evidence of my unfortunate attachment to you right there,” Dan says, stretching out on the bed a little more, settling into the familiar atmosphere of mildly absurd, irritation-fuelled hysteria, “and I willingly endured your death-defying driving skills, then followed you into your plane in the middle of nowhere, it might be a reasonable assumption that I’m, like,” Dan waves a hand in the air between them, “D.T.F.”

Phil chokes around a mouthful of tea. He places the mug down sharply, eyes wide. It makes Dan laugh, and he leans back onto his hands. As it turns out, having every last scrap of his dignity laid out before them both is rather empowering. He has nothing left to hide, no reason to be coy, and it’s now up to Phil whether he takes advantage or not. Dan really hasn’t anything else to lose, at this point, sad though that thought might be.

“I didn’t want to assume,” Phil objects, scandalised, “I’m trying to be a gentleman!”

Dan nods gravely. “By playing me audio recordings of me asking you to ‘kiss and fuck me’?”

Phil’s mouth opens, as if he’s about to retort, but at the sight of Dan’s smirk, he closes it again, a laugh escaping. “If I do one of those things now, can you pretend I waited until, y’know, a respectable amount of time had passed?”

“I could pretend I had a sudden urge to shuck off my wet clothes,” Dan suggests with a hand thrown across his forehead for emphasis; he’s enjoying the unusual sensation of having the power over this situation, and as usual when he feels even a lick of power, his theatric flair rears its head. It doesn’t matter that his heart doubled in speed as soon as Phil hinted at physical contact. “And then,” Dan continues, voice as dramatic as if he were addressing a theatre-ful of patrons, “as you’re finding me a spare shirt to cover my immodesty, you can’t help your gaze lingering on my bare skin - you try to stop yourself, but your hand reaches out of its own accord to stroke across my chest - my breath hitches, and-”

Phil dives across the bed, pinning Dan to the mattress and kissing him. “Hmm,” he mumbles into the seam of Dan’s lips, “I forgot you never shut up.”

Dan’s arms come up to wind around Phil’s neck, a zing of pure joy ricocheting through his body as his familiar weight settles on top of him.

“I haven’t forgotten that you’re ten times more tolerable to listen to when you’re naked,” Dan says, turning his head to urge Phil to kiss along his jaw. “Please comply.”

Phil chuckles, leaning up to pull his shirt off. “Better?”

A punch of air leaves Dan’s chest; his hands spread themselves over Phil’s toned stomach, re-learning the crevices either side of his belly, the smooth curvature of his hips.

“Much.” His index fingers trace the line of hair that leads from Phil’s tummy button beneath the waistband of his trousers. He pulls at the waistband impatiently. “Even better without these though, I reckon.”

Phil sits back on his haunches, positioning himself on top of Dan’s thighs. “Yeah?” he asks, already sliding the zipper down. Dan’s cock pulses, still trapped by his jeans. Phil is putting on a show, but Dan no longer has the ability to call him out on it. His eyes won’t unstick themselves from the sight of Phil shimmying his trousers down his thighs, revealing a pair of black boxer briefs so tight that they might as well be nonexistent for all they manage to conceal. “How’s this?”

Dan shoots him what he intends to be a withering look that probably doesn’t come across very menacing. “I don’t remember you being this vocal.”

Phil smiles, using Dan’s shoulder to steady himself as he peels the trousers off entirely. “Shut me up, then.”

Not needing to be told twice, Dan grabs the backs of Phil’s thighs and manoeuvres him back until he’s sprawled on his back. He pulls off his own t-shirt, getting more impatient by the minute to entwine himself in Phil as deeply as possible; he’s been starving himself of this, for months, and now he wants to feast. As soon as he’s free of his t-shirt, Dan begins pushing his lips against the miles of bare skin covering Phil’s upper body. Phil’s breathing goes strange and stuttery, and his hand loses itself in Dan’s hair.

“Fuck,” he whispers as Dan seals his mouth over a nipple, “I’ve missed you.”

“Still talking to Susan?” Dan asks with a snort, and Phil smacks him lightly in the back of the head.

“Susan doesn’t talk back nearly as much.”

In response, Dan chooses to trail a line of kisses downwards, through the valley of Phil’s pectoral muscles, over the plane of his stomach, nipping gently at that tantalising rivulet of hair slicing through his pelvic region. When he gets to the boxer briefs, he pauses, lifting his gaze as he tucks his fingertips into the waistband.

Phil makes a sort of choking noise as their eyes meet, which is pleasant to hear. “Lift,” Dan tells him, and when his hips rise, pulls them off in a flourish. Dan had thought the thick, gorgeous shape of Phil’s cock was deeply ingrained into his memory, but even the image he’d conjured up in the dead of night, when he couldn’t stop himself from indulging in nostalgia, had been lacking in the exquisite detail of reality. He takes hold of the base in one hand, letting the warm, pulsing flesh push all thought from his mind. “I missed you too,” he says, and Phil whimpers.

Dan takes his time blowing Phil, letting him glide in and out of his mouth as he lifts his head and sinks down again and again. Phil’s body slackens, sinking into the hard mattress so totally that it’s as if he hasn’t relaxed once in all the time that’s passed since they last did this. The sensation of Phil atop Dan’s tongue is comforting in its thickness, stretching his lips wide, reminding him of how it feels to be so open. He would like for Phil to know this, wants to share the intoxicating power of utter vulnerability. He pulls off, suddenly alight with an idea, and sits up, crawling over Phil’s spread body until his face hovers above Phil’s.

“You know what Nikolai mentioned,” Dan begins, testing the waters.

Instantly, Phil’s hands stop wandering over his back. “Are you seriously bringing up my ex-husband right now?”

Dan chuckles, then sweeps a tongue over his lower lip, tasting Phil there, salty and sour; Phil’s eyes fall to the movement with obvious interest.

“I’ve just been thinking,” Dan continues, determined to persevere with the thought if it could lead where he hopes it might. To soften the blow of blindsiding Phil with Nikolai’s name, Dan dots a few light kisses over his jaw. “When we… did things before. Were you just indulging me, because I suggested we try it a certain way, and it was my first time?”

Phil arches his head backwards, wordlessly encouraging Dan to move his lips to his neck. “W-what do you mean? It was always amazing with you.”

“Hmm,” Dan says, sucking gently at the spot right below Phil’s ear. “So you never wanted to do it a different way? Like…” His hand, which has been resting on Phil’s hip, trickles over his thigh, dipping into the cavern between Phil’s legs. He lets his fingers wander even lower, past the swell of his balls. He watches Phil’s face intently, trying to gauge the reaction, and presses the tip of one finger to the tight, puckered entrance at his rear. “This way?”

For the first time, Dan is able to witness the crystal blue of Phil’s irises thinning and nearly disappearing entirely, swallowed up by the black holes widening in their centres. It’s not until Dan removes his finger that Phil is able to summon a response.

“I- I don’t have much of a preference,” he whispers, stammering. “Is… is that something you’d want to try, or-”

“Phil,” Dan interrupts, feeling the smile teasing the corner of his mouth as he sees through Phil’s poor attempt at nonchalance, “do you want me to fuck you?”

Phil is quiet for a moment, but Dan holds his gaze, one eyebrow cocked, hopefully looking far more in control of himself than he feels. The elbow he’s using to hold himself up begins to tremble, threatening to give way, but he holds steady, needing to hear Phil speak the words.

Then, Phil nods, just once. “Yes.”

Dan smiles, leaning in to seal their mouths together. The eagerness with which Phil responds conveys his excitement, and Dan lets him twine their tongues together, allows Phil’s arms to draw him in around the neck. After a few minutes however, Dan’s self-control is reaching its very peak, what with Phil’s cock trapped between their bodies still, and the anticipation of what it might be like to slip inside of him lurking so tantalisingly on the horizon.

Dan unwinds himself carefully, sitting up and reaching for the button of his own jeans. “Do you have, um, stuff?”

His question prompts Phil into immediate action; he sits up, peeling himself off the bed in order to stagger over to an overhead cupboard, which he reaches up to open. Dan’s fingers stumble on the zipper of his jeans, attention ensnared by the sight of the lean, naked body in front of him, stretched out in a delicious long line of pale, pure skin, hiding terrains of thick muscle, tightened by years of diligent workouts. His cock strains against the fly of his trousers, imagining what it might be like to bury himself inside of such a temple; his fingers work frantically to open the zip. Eventually, Phil finds what he’s looking for, and throws a bottle of lube and a four condom packets onto the bed.

Dan picks a few of the foil packets up, eyebrows raised. “I’m flattered that you presume so highly of my stamina, but-”

Phil shuts him up using the method he seems to be realising is the most effective - jumping back on the bed and kissing him hard. “Thought we could take it in turns,” Phil growls into Dan’s mouth, because obviously he’s intent on driving Dan to the brink of insanity.

A strangled noise escapes Dan’s throat, and he pushes Phil backwards until he’s astride him again, back to pulling off his jeans, which thankfully goes a lot more smoothly this time. He slides his underwear off too, then reaches for the condom packet, ten steps ahead of himself; Phil’s hand on his arm makes him pause.

“Woah, uh, it’s not my first rodeo but I’m probably gonna need a little prep before-”

“Shit,” Dan mutters, throwing the condom aside for a moment. He shakes his head, blood thrumming in his ears, and smooths his hands up Phil’s gorgeous thighs. “Sorry. Okay, what do I do?”

Phil sits up, reaching for the lube, and un-pops the cap. “Want me to do it?”

Dan snatches the bottle from him. “Fuck right off.”

He pours some of the gloop onto his fingers, remembering how, when they’d done this before, Phil had warmed the substance before letting it touch his skin. He copies the action, coating his hands with it, then looking to Phil for further instruction. Phil opens his legs wider, allowing Dan to fit himself between them.

“Have you ever done this to yourself?”

“Only since you did it to me,” Dan admits before he can stop himself.

Phil grins, unsubtly conveying his thoughts around this, and Dan only barely resists the urge to flick him in the balls. “Same thing, then,” Phil says.

“Will it hurt?”

Phil eases himself back down onto his elbows. “Doubt it,” Phil answers in a soft sigh. He lets out a little moan as Dan’s fingertips press against him. “Fuck. No, I don’t think this is gonna hurt at all.”

Dan’s fingers slide into Phil as easily as if he were pushing them into warm bread dough. The walls of hot, soft muscle close in around him, drawing each finger deeper as he adds them one at a time. Phil murmurs vaguely bossy commands, telling him to scissor and stretch, but half the words are lost to his groans of bliss, each one making Dan shudder more violently than the last.

“Ugh, Dan,” he says, voice desperate despite it seeming like barely any time has passed. He has one hand wrapped around the back of his right thigh, holding it up to allow Dan better access. Dan moves closer, brushes Phil’s hand away and lets the crook of Phil’s knee drape over his shoulder. “Fuck,” Phil mutters, but doesn’t protest. “Y-you can stop now,” he urges, but Dan keeps on, wanting to be totally sure. Phil seems so tight, so impossibly tight, and whilst it is maddening to picture thrusting inside of such tightness, the thought of hurting Phil without meaning to is terrible enough to keep Dan stretching with his fingers, just in case. He changes the angle just slightly when his wrist threatens to cramp, and Phil swears, louder than he has so far. “Fff-uck. Do that again.”

Dan does do it again. He does it many more times, pressing the pads of his fingers to that same spot until Phil is writhing against the covers, until his gasps sound more like gurgles, until his hands are scrabbling at Dan’s wrist to pull his fingers free.

“Fuck, Dan please, I’m ready, I’m ready,” he garbles.

For a long moment, Dan is too hypnotised by the wrecked, flushed mess that’s become of the Adonis-like man sprawled out naked before him to react. He stares at Phil’s reddened, slick lips, puffy from where he’s been biting them.

“Dan,” Phil chokes out, desperate.

The sound of his name slaps Dan back into coherence. He pats the space around him, searching for the condom packet he’d thrown aside before. It seems to elude him for a while, but eventually he finds it, and rips the packet with his teeth. Thankfully, condoms are a part of sexual experience that he is not out of his depth with, as Beth had insisted on him using at least one, sometimes more, whenever they slept together.

He rolls it on with ease, thankful for the many opportunities he’s had to practice for this moment, and takes hold of Phil by the hips, dragging him forwards with a sharp tug, until the head of his cock is aligned with Phil’s slick opening. Phil is staring at him in amazement, and Dan doesn’t blame him - he’s exuding a confidence born purely of adrenaline, and it’s making him into someone unrecognisable, someone composed and assertive. Someone hot.

“Ready?” he asks; his shaky voice somewhat shatters the illusion.

“God, yes,” Phil replies, apparently not noticing.

Dan inches his hips forwards, letting the head of his cock press past the outer rim; Phil’s head tips backwards, a sigh of ecstasy spilling from his throat. His hand releases its grip on the covers, and he brings his long fingers to wrap around his cock.

Even the sight is intoxicating. Ignoring all other sensation for now, Phil looks maddeningly good this way; Dan’s hips almost lock in place, just watching him feel. The thin branches of Phil’s neck bones are protruding beneath the skin, mottled from where Dan has nipped and bitten. His puffed chest is rising and falling rapidly, his shoulders trembling, misted with a sheen of rainwater and sweat. He ducks his head again, meeting Dan’s eyes, and Dan remembers he’s supposed to be moving, that he is supposed to be the one in control of this. He doesn’t feel very in control, suddenly, too shaken by the onslaught of sensation attacking from all angles.

As if he’s gleaned these concerns from Dan’s mind through osmosis, Phil says, “wait,” and Dan pauses, terrified he’s done something wrong. Phil sits up, glazed and sluggish, then pushes Dan backwards with a hand against his shoulder.

“What’s wr-”

Dan lands back on his tailbone, and suddenly Phil is astride him, piled in his lap like a huge, gorgeous, naked gift. He angles himself without needing to look, keeping his eyes locked on Dan’s the whole time, and sinks himself back down onto Dan’s cock, lips parted, eyes fluttering. A moan pours out of Dan’s throat as the unexpected bliss crashes over him, as the sensation of slick, hot, closeness grips him by the soul. He is buried inside of Phil’s pure, angelic body, as far as he can get. It’s agony, because Phil has gone still, letting himself adjust to the intrusion. Dan’s head falls against Phil’s chest, trying to keep calm when he wants so badly to shout at Phil to move even slightly, would trade everything he owns for the relief of it.

And then, miraculously, Phil does.

“Fuck,” Dan whispers, brokenly, as Phil’s hips begin rolling forwards.

His fingers dig themselves into Phil’s arms, and he buries his face deeper into Phil’s chest. Phil’s arms wind around his shoulders. He lifts his hips up until Dan almost slips out of him entirely, then spears himself back down with a shudder.

“God, Dan,” Phil groans, speeding up the pace. He uses his grip on Dan’s shoulders to keep steady, bouncing up and down in Dan’s lap faster and faster, barely letting Dan gasp even a snatch of air. “Dan- Dan, would you touch me?”

Delirious, Dan mentally berates himself for not having the common sense to do this before now. He reaches clumsily between their bodies, barely holding himself together, and closes a fist around Phil’s cock, which is hot and rigid to the touch. He pumps his hand in time with the thrust of Phil’s hips, and in less than a minute Phil is crying out, biting down on Dan’s neck so hard that Dan wonders if he might bleed. Phil’s come splashes Dan’s chest and stomach, coating his hand, and all Dan can think is how he wishes he could taste it.

Dan doesn’t last much longer after that, as Phil doesn’t so much as stutter in his rhythm. He manages to push his hips upwards a few times, to make the most of this miraculous moment, locked together with Phil in the most intimate possible way. As the tip of his cock presses once again into that spot that makes Phil weak, Phil jerks and gasps in his arms. That’s the moment that Dan is unable to hold on any longer. He squeezes Phil’s arm, groaning into the crook of his neck as he feels his own release fill the condom, a hundred white-hot stars scorching over his skin in a brilliant, blinding shower.

For a minute after, they don’t move, draped over one another in various ways, just reorienting themselves as they float back to this dimension. Dan pushes his lips against Phil’s damp skin in a way that doesn’t feel chaste enough to be kisses. Eventually, Phil leans backwards, slowly lifting himself off Dan’s lap, letting him slip out. With a shaky, fumbling hand, Dan pulls off the condom, putting it carefully on the floor because he’s too spent to dispose of it properly just yet.

In the next moment, he feels damp fingers around his wrist, and then Dan is being pulled, until he’s flat on his back, Phil’s arm stretched out beneath his neck. They both stare at the ceiling, listening to the sound of their own gradually slowing breaths.

Dan rolls onto his side towards Phil, trailing fingers up his ribs, then into the cavern of his underarm, twisting the snatch of hair there between his fingers. He’s sweaty, and it’s still confusing to Dan that it doesn’t gross him out; instead, the musky, heavy scent of Phil’s perspiration is intoxicating, makes him want to bury his face in Phil’s shoulder and lick the moisture from his skin. So he does.

Phil turns to peer at him, amusedly. “Perv.”

Dan smiles, not caring that it seems peculiar, because he knows Phil doesn’t really care. “Was it okay?” Dan asks, as if he isn’t fully aware of how beyond incredible the last half hour had been for both of them.

“Amazing,” Phil replies, rolling onto his side to kiss him.

“I don’t think I’m as good as you at… that.”

Phil’s mouth twitches, and he leans back to stare into Dan’s eyes. His pupils are returning to a more even size, though they’re still taking up most of the space in Phil’s irises. The ring of azure around them glimmers brightly.

“Wouldn’t sell yourself short, mate,” Phil says. “I had a very good time.”

Dan snorts, mostly at Phil’s use of the word ‘mate’. “So you prefer it, then? Being like… the one who… um.”

“Bottoms?”

Dan’s only response is a mortifyingly quick blush.

Phil laughs, prodding Dan’s red cheek with his finger-tip. “I mean it. I don’t have a strong preference for either way.”

“It’s just Nikolai seemed so, like, surprised when he found out-”

“Dan,” Phil says, already grimacing, “I’m only gonna address this once with you, because I don’t particularly want you thinking about this in detail, but having sex with Nikolai is a very different experience to having sex with you. And not in a good way. Could you ever imagine him being as considerate of my preferences as you’re being right now?”

Dan’s nose wrinkles. “You have a point. So… you’re good with either? Top or bottom?”

The flame in Dan’s cheeks is fanned even saying the words. “Hmm,” Phil says, then leans in to kiss Dan again, harder this time, knocking him backwards until he’s on his back again. “Think I might need a reminder of what it’s like to top again. Y’know, just so I have all the evidence before I make up my mind.”

“Jesus, you’re more of a horn-dog than I remember,” Dan laughs, though he’s already winding a leg around Phil’s to pull him closer.

They’ve been holed up in Phil’s tiny living space, at the back of a stationary plane, mostly naked, for almost twelve hours. They’d napped for a while, but now they’re awake, watching an episode of Parks and Recreation because Phil has never seen it and Dan simply cannot allow anyone he associates with to not get his references to the show.

Somewhere in the middle of one of Leslie’s rousing speeches, Phil’s phone beeps. It’s not the first beep they’ve both pretended not to hear, and it’s perhaps for this reason that now Phil sighs and reaches for it, his other arm around Dan’s shoulders, fingers tickling idly across his upper arm. He frowns at the many messages filling the screen, scrolling through a few, then placing the phone upside down on the bedside shelf again. The amusing dialogue of the show loses its potency; Dan waits, breath held, for the inevitable.

“I’m gonna have to get back to work soon,” Phil says, just as Dan predicted. “I kind of… ran off on Martyn and Cornelia and PJ after the UN thing.”

“I figured,” Dan says, already resigned. “It’s okay. It was, um. Good to see you, and stuff. Weird without all the snow and altitude. But good.”

“Come with me,” Phil says. From the way he has the offer so readily at hand, Dan knows he’s been holding it back for a while. He pretends he hasn’t heard, instead focusing on the screen, where Leslie has just fallen into a giant pit. Relatable. Phil nudges him beneath the blanket with one foot. “Dan, did you hear me?”

Dan sighs, struggling out of Phil’s embrace. They should have talked about this sooner. Now they’re going to fight, and one of them’s going to hurt the other, and then they’ll split apart again for an indeterminably long bout of miserable, awful separation.

“I heard you.”

Dan runs a hand through his still-damp hair. They’d had showers a while ago in Phil’s tiny closet-shower. Though it would have been extremely nice to have stood beneath the spray together, there was no possible way they could both fit, so they took it in turns. Dan had gone first, and when he’d emerged, Phil had made more tea, and produced a packet of biscuits. He’d given Dan a robe - stolen from The Secret of the Alps, he noticed - for him to dry off and set him up with the laptop to watch Parks and Rec until he’d cleaned himself of the evidence of their debauchery too. It had been wholesome and unusually soft behaviour; entirely too easy to fall into, and forget that their circumstances didn’t allow for such kind, sweet interludes without a price.

“You don’t even want to be a lawyer,” Phil says, like it’s as simple as that. “Just think it over a bit more-”

“I did that,” Dan snaps, then checks himself, breathing deeply. If he can avoid getting upset and defensive, that would be ideal. “I already did the freaking out and running off to re-evaluate my choices. It didn’t work. You were there, you know it didn’t work.”

Phil shuts the laptop, cutting off the peppy American voices of the Parks and Rec cast. “What exactly didn’t work, though? What did you expect to happen up there?”

Dan laughs humourlessly, gesturing between them. “Not this.” He winces. It came out meaner than he intended it to. “I mean, obviously I’m glad I met you and we dragged each other into a destructive pattern of secretly bonking behind closed doors...”

“Heartfelt,” Phil replies; even though it’s sarcasm, Dan can tell without looking over at him that he’s smiling.

“..but, even you have to admit it probably wasn’t the smartest decision on my part. Or yours, come to that.” Dan picks at the thin, messy bedclothes, frowning. “I don’t think I’m very good at the self-reflective stuff. S’just better if I crack on, stop fantasising that there’s some dream career waiting in the wings somewhere.”

“Having a job that makes you happy isn’t a crazy fantasy, Dan,” Phil says. He makes everything sound so easy. Dan kind of misses that about him, dangerous and seductive though it is. “You could come with me. We could work it out together.”

“Come with you where?” Dan asks, turning to him incredulously. “No offence, mate, but you’ve got no more clue than I have right now. You have no money or plans, you said it yourself. It’s very admirable, all the charity stuff, but what’re you gonna do when the public grow bored of you without all the divorce drama? How are you gonna fund your humanitarian schemes?”

Phil shrugs, a composed, slightly amused smile gracing his features. He looks entirely unbothered by these questions, and Dan is suddenly so envious of his ability to shrug off anxiety that it makes a spurt of anger shoot through his chest. He rolls his eyes, throwing the covers off his legs. He’s about to get up, to find his clothes and put an end to this brief day-cation from reality, when Phil’s hand on his arm, gentle and cautious, gives him pause.

He waits, the warmth of Phil’s fingers draining the frustration from his bones, easing the tension in his body. Phil shuffles closer, hands sliding to rest on Dan’s shoulders, then rubbing gently, thumbs digging into the knots of taut muscle. It's so glorious that Dan sinks back into him, immediately slackening, his mind abruptly washed of every concern that had just been plaguing it.

“Has anyone ever told you that you think too much?” Phil murmurs into his ear.

“I get the feeling you’re about to,” Dan retorts, then feels a satisfied sigh slip out as Phil digs his clever fingers in deeper.

“I’m going to Africa,” he says in a low, soothing voice that Dan knows is probably one he’s been trained to use in stressful situations, but works so well that he can’t be bothered to protest. “There’s a cluster of villages in Kenya that need a lot of help. Installing water filtration systems, building schools, that sort of thing. That’s where I’m going next.”

“Oh. Right.” Dan’s shoulders tense up again. Africa. Could he be jetting off further? “How long f-”

“You should come with me,” Phil says for the third time. His hands become still on Dan’s shoulders. “I’m serious. We could use you out there.”

Dan rolls his eyes, though Phil is behind him and can’t see. “As convincing as that is, we both know I have the muscles of a cooked noodle, so I doubt I’d be much use to you-”

“It’s not always about physical labour,” Phil interrupts, like he’s prepared this argument months in advance. He’s too good at debating, that’s the trouble. Dan’s never stood a chance trying to last in the ring with him. “You’ve got other hugely beneficial skills, I’ve seen it myself. You can fix pretty much anything you put your mind to. That’s kind of extraordinary.”

Dan blinks, not sure how to react to the unexpected praise. “Well... I don’t know about ‘anything I put my mind to’-”

“Even so, you’d probably have a hell of a lot more clue than I would,” Phil points out, and Dan has to admit, although he’s never witnessed Phil attempt to repair or even patch up anything beyond his own fragile ego, he doubts very much that he’d be particularly skilled at it. He tries to imagine Phil with a spanner in his hand, tightening the joins in the municipal pipe under the blaring, scorching African sun. He has to hide his bubble of absurd laughter.

“I’m not a fan of the heat,” Dan protests, weakly.

Whilst this is true, and he’d deliberately chosen the destination of his last runaway attempt to be the opposite of somewhere hot, Dan can feel his soul yearning for the adventure. For being with Phil, daily, their perpetual bickering exacerbated by the blazing sun, and then soothed by the cool night air, locked away in some dark room they’d built together, free to kiss each other’s sun-blistered skin all night long. His fingers itch for the fantasy, and he clenches them into fists, knowing he shouldn’t dare to so much as want it.

Phil places a kiss to his shoulder, then leans away. “Yeah, you’re right,” Phil says, making Dan’s heart sink. “I mean, when you’re so passionate about law, a little sunshine seems laughable doesn’t it?”

Dan rolls his eyes, but a laugh escapes anyway, so he turns to whack Phil in the arm. Phil lets him, then catches him by the wrists, holding Dan’s gaze. “I think you could be happy. I think we could make each other happy.”

One of Dan’s eyebrows arches. “I think we’d drive each other bonkers.”

Phil smiles. “Same thing, I reckon.”

Dan shakes his head, knowing in every cell of his being that this is completely mental, to abandon his life again for a man who infuriates him daily. But he also knows, perhaps even more strongly, that he’s as in love with Phil as he is exasperated with him. “If I leave again… I won’t be able to come back.”

Phil squeezes his hands around Dan’s. “No,” he agrees. “Me neither.”

Dan chews his lip, though his resistance has more or less melted away. “Are you only offering to take me with you because you feel sorry for me?”

“Yeah,” Phil says, teasingly. “I’m rescuing you from a life of paperwork and office parties.” A smile breaks across his gorgeous face, making his eyes soften, crinkle at the sides. His voice drops into its rare tone of sincerity. “Dan, I’m asking you if you’d come with me. Because I watched you attempt to ski away from me up a hill and fall straight down it, and somehow managed to fall tragically, pathetically in love with you in the same instant. I want you to come. Because don’t really fancy trying to stay away from you anymore.”

Dan’s not sure how it happens really. One minute, he’s in a lecture hall with the most annoying girl on the planet talking his ear off about succulents and her hot personal tutor, and the next he’s in the front seat of a fully-fuelled plane, beside a stunningly handsome philanthropist-slash-ski-enthusiast-slash-pilot, headed for a continent halfway around the world. He hasn’t told his parents where they’re going yet. Phil hasn’t told the public, or Pj or Cornelia or Martyn. It’s all a bit ‘up in the air’. They’ll tell anyone who needs to know when they land again, when the intense rays of sun are soaking into their pale skin, flooding their veins with Vitamin D.

Dan reaches across the chasm between his and Phil’s seats, letting his hand dangle invitingly until Phil notices and takes it, rolling his eyes and telling Dan he’s a “right sap”. But he threads their fingers together anyway, angling the yoke towards the sky, and Dan leans back in his chair as the clouds zoom closer, welcoming the oncoming oblivion. A wild thought swims at him from nowhere, as if it fell straight out of the Heavens:

He’d be just fine if they never had to come down.

The End.

(Yes, there will be an epilogue. Stay tuned for updates about that!)

#too high #enemies to lovers au #phan #phanfic

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colorguardian10 · 8 years ago

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Response to Mike Rose’s “Blue-Collar Brilliance”

I said I wouldn’t share this if another post didn’t show enough interest, but @yoursinfulsister asked to see it and I didn’t really need a strong excuse anyway.

For my Writing Seminar course, we were supposed to write a five-page response to this article. He wrote about how a lot of workers in low-class jobs are considered to not have intelligence, and about how it’s a gross misconception. I recommend reading it for the full context of this paper. Here was my response to his article:

Mike Rose speaks on the concept of most jobs fitting into one of two categories: the intellectual or “white-collar”, and the physical or “blue-collar”. Hearing these groups, examples come to mind: accountants, lawyers, teachers propped up against steelworkers, construction workers, or plumbers. We immediately categorize work differently in order to treat it differently. I’m not sure my first job could have been a more fitting example of this divide.

While I was in high school, my school district decided to try something new. Every student is given a laptop assigned to them to help with schoolwork and develop technology literacy skills, and every summer, they hire a few professionals to deal with the hundreds and hundreds of computers needing maintenance over the break. This year, they planned to hire a handful of mildly tech-savvy, and cheap, students instead. They also knew that they were short on janitors for cleaning each building while the students were out.

So, in the main library, applications were put out: you simply checked which of the two positions you were applying for, why you wanted to work there, and how many hours you would be available.

This turned out to be a grave mistake on their part. For starters, through some form of miscommunication, 12 “technology interns” were hired for the five open slots. For another, not a single person applied to be a janitor. Having relied on a boost of students to fill out their gaps, they were now even more short-staffed than before.

A solution was reached: the interns would rotate between the job they had applied for, and being janitors, to help even out the balance in each. Anyone unwilling to accept this could leave. (One quit, one threatened to sue for the position, and an additional two were later fired for committing crimes at work.) As much as I wasn’t happy with the arrangement, I knew that the administration was doing its best in an unusual situation, and certainly preferred it to not having a job at all. I stayed.

Working as an intern was repetitive, but concerningly easy. Our first task was to update the software on every laptop in the school and set up the school’s network (a process called “imaging”), which required first wiping them of personal data as a matter of policy. We simply had to memorize a series of hotkeys and administrator passwords and wash, rinse, repeat. All the interns of the day did for weeks was sit at a desk with two or three laptops in front of them:

ctrl + alt + D / ctrl + alt + D / ctrl + alt + D

Are you sure you want to reset to factory defaults? If so, provide credentials and press enter:

qu@k3r / qu@k3r / qu@k3r

Do you wish to download the latest software?

yes / yes / yes

You are using a private network. Please log in as a network administrator to continue:

qu@k3r# / qu@k3r# / qu@k3r#

Put them back in the computer carts, pick up three more from the “unimaged” cart. Repeat.

Certainly, it required basic computer skills, but it was pretty obvious why they didn’t bother to ask for previous experience on the form. Later, we were tasked with fixing broken hardware, which at least required the ability to unscrew the casing, identify and replace sensitive parts, and put the casing back on in one piece.

On the other hand, being a janitor was exhausting. Every summer, the entirety of every single building is cleaned from top to bottom: every desk, every chair, ceilings, walls, and cabinets alike. Furniture has to be removed so that all floors can get a new layer of wax. Outside maintenance is done, too. I was spared by only having to fill cracks in the tennis court with wet asphalt in the summer sun for just a few days. I was “accidentally” placed in the rotation for twice as much time as any other intern, though, so maybe not. I became very familiar with Laura, my immediate supervisor in this department.

I said it was exhausting. This was in part due to the fact that they were still short-staffed, and a quarter filled with unwilling teenagers to boot. I never got to stop. We had our 30-minute lunch break and two exactly-fifteen-minute breaks. The other eight hours were nonstop, moving, scrubbing, mixing solutions, lifting desks and slate tables, carefully picking up lamps, and putting everything back exactly how the teachers left it - they might complain about having to shift the desks again, I was told. Third floor to bottom floor, stripping the wax floors and re-waxing every room and hallway as we went. I could barely even interact with my family when I got back home from how mind-numbing it was on top of barely being able to move. I was given the “easy” jobs because I was young, and a student, and the other workers didn’t want me to “break something”. Laura had been working at my school longer than either of my parents have been alive. Despite this, I had never even heard of her.

My personal experience would support the notion that jobs come either physically taxing or mentally taxing (or perhaps physically or not at all). I might even have argued against Rose’s claims that they’re not so divided, but I have the sense to see that my examples are pretty far on either end of the spectrum, and that one came with very different pressures than the other. I know that the majority of “physical” jobs, such as a waitress like Rose’s mother, do require mental effort as well as physical.

Mike Rose mentions the complexities of something as externally simple as taking orders, one of many basic skills of a waitress - “Waiting on seven to nine tables, each with two to six customers, Rosie devised memory strategies so that she could remember who ordered what. And because she knew the average time it took to prepare different dishes, she could monitor an order that was taking too long at the service station.” (47) He goes on at length about the massive cleverness needed to keep your head on straight in the restaurant business.

Even being a janitor, which I’ve already stressed the physical effort of, came with its tips and tricks: solution #20 for the desks and the walls, #8 for the windows, but dab some #16 on first for stickers. Zizz-O® gets off permanent marker and mop in that white gunk to strip the floors – but if you actually touch it head straight for the chemical shower. And by the way, pour in some extra #20 in your bucket, here’s a bottle we popped with a screwdriver - the mixing machine dilutes it too much.

You might take Rose’s statements and counter that, obviously, waitressing must be a strange exception that really requires knowledge rather than endurance. He prefaces these remarks by describing her additional efforts simply navigating the restaurant, describing her as walking “full tilt through the room with plates stretching up her left arm and two cups of coffee somehow cradled in her right hand” and “weaving in and out around the room” when not holding dishes as a constant part of her work, “flopping” into a booth to take a break with him (Rose 46).

However, while I do solidly agree with Rose’s argument that the perceived division of jobs is untrue, I do not agree with the way he makes it. He states that physical jobs include a mental aspect as a way of giving them value. I believe they should deserve it regardless. Certainly my experience would suggest giving even more respect to physical work.

I do not agree with the notion of intelligence garnering respect, and the corresponding notion that roles not requiring it are not worth respect. To again apply it to Rose’s thinking, I agree that jobs are often divided into mental and physical, but I believe that this is an applied devaluing of jobs in the latter rather than a quirky misconception with side effects. Work not requiring a formal education is frequently devalued based on not requiring “intelligence”. Rose applies this to waitresses and argues that they deserve respect by showing that they need smarts to do their job well. I believe that he is trying to rise something up with an idea used to bring it down, and accepting his argument completely, to me, simply leads to the same problem he is addressing - just for other people.

The superintendent told us we might be getting paid less while janitors - for the same qualifications, for the same hours, technically even for the same job title! Why? Because it was “unskilled work”. So what kind of “skills” are we really talking about when considering pay scales? Rarity of required skills, and compensation of effort in gaining said skills, may be one factor, but who decided that removing an LCD screen was harder than removing an entire classroom? While certainly some work is worth more than others, efforts to funnel money out of working people’s hands has only been hitting those least able to get it back, resulting in a drastically unfair imbalance. Instead of trying to help each other, our society climbs over each other to get at the precious “fair” work left, and people who can’t compete with one-dimensional standards get work that’s even less valued. It’s not about “skills” or “effort” at all. It’s about your rung on the ladder.

Rose does make good points. He clearly shows through his examples that stereotyped categories of work (he also includes “pink-collar” or creative/empathetic work in his comparisons) are defective and out of touch. He gives examples of foremen and waitresses having aspects that obviously contradict the social divide. He even admits that intelligence doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with formal education – and then says that many jobs require intelligence even if they don’t require formal education. Even Rose can’t seem to separate himself from the root problem enough to denounce it. Most likely he is not conscious of this – few people knowingly perpetuate issues – but that doesn’t mean that I can suddenly agree with the underlying notion.

I believe that we should hold ourselves accountable when we notice ourselves keeping harmful ideas alive, at the most basic levels we can. That means, yes, don’t belittle work based on the perceived intelligence needed, but it also means don’t belittle work based on the actual intelligence needed. The original purpose of jobs and specialized work is so that everyone can provide for the needs of the populace. Roles are needed because no one can be their own doctor, and banker, and cook, and technician, and janitor. People simply can’t independently fulfill their own needs in modern society. We work to help each other. If someone is working in a position socially lower than you, then they are doing you a service. Respect them.

“Respect them.” What does that even mean? I know what I think that looks like, but I grew up in a rich neighborhood. I have more concrete examples of what respect for workers doesn’t mean. Do you remember Laura? I never even knew she existed until I had met her. When people are giving their time and effort for the sole purpose of making your life easier, we should appreciate that. Instead, we say these roles are “insignificant” or “low-level” and push them under the rug.

Have you ever had to wait in line at a fast-food restaurant because the service is slow? Think about this instead: the people behind that wall are working even harder than normal. Service isn’t being slow, demand is simply too high to keep up with. You have to stand still for a few minutes. They can’t stand still until everyone in there is gone, and probably haven’t for a while. I know far too many people who take a situation like this and complain, or leave pitiful tips. After all, you had to wait a long time to receive food you normally don’t have to wait for. To me, it always seemed that it meant the people serving you are doing an even better job working to fulfill your needs.

Part of recognizing that all roles aren’t divided into definite categories, as Rose and I argue against, is recognizing that work also can’t be categorized into quantifiable worth. The person making your Starbucks, the person making your sandwich, and the person wiping your floors are all working at least as hard as you are, and to your direct benefit. Treat them as such.

You may disagree with my earlier ideas, that work exists to help others. Isn’t everyone just working to provide for themselves? That’s how American society at least frames it. Rose shows his mother acting very differently. He says that many customers came in with a desire for human contact, and describes how she changed her behavior to suit that. Though he also says it was all to get a higher tip, this is an outlook we disagreed on from the beginning. One of the founding principles of a capitalistic society is that everyone has to compete to “earn” their right to live freely. And so, payment is phrased as points in some great unwinnable game and not as acknowledgement for doing your part. This is where the faults lie. We can’t ever be compensated properly when our compensation doesn’t treat our work as work. Beyond that fact, not everyone can “compete”. Certainly not everyone can compete in a system where your worth is measured by a singular quality. Waitresses have intelligence? Great. Why weren’t they respectable without it?

Again, I wish to state that Rose made a valid argument. I saw his article as halfway to getting at the true problem, but for many his view may be the first time they’ve seen it that way. I can think of a couple people back in my rich neighborhood who could have used the worker’s perspective. Maybe the girl who rented a stadium for her birthday, or my mother, who thinks that most of the janitors made minimum wage because they’re too lazy to get a degree. She can carry the accursed solid slate chem room tables for decades - then she can tell me what “lazy” is.

My experiences may be extreme, and my views radical. But I said above that it is necessary to prevent ourselves from perpetuating harmful ideals. That includes calling these ideas out when we see them. I know that the teenagers typing in passwords were placed at a higher worth than the full-grown adults working themselves to death. I saw Mike Rose’s criticism of a system that put those two forms of work on different pedestals, and I wanted to express what I meant by saying that this divide is unfair. Seeing so-called “white-collar” and “blue-collar” workers in different lenses is something we should recognize, and we should also recognize why we made that divide. Rose argued how inaccurate this difference is, and I argue that the difference shouldn’t even exist.

#this is phrased kind of like it was a learning experience but I was already aware of this kind of shit I just hadn't strongly experienced it #it was hard to keep myself from going on a full communist rant for a while there #also I tried to avoid pointing out the fact that I had my first job at 18 lol #mine #paper #I highkey suspect that the administration was taking advantage of me being the only one being nice about it #'my views may be radical' I can't believe I let myself write that sentence lol #yoursinfulsister

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junker-town · 8 years ago

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How Notre Dame went 4-8, and why things will get better in 2017

Get your jokes in now, because the turnaround is likely on its way.

This preview originally published May 9 and has since been updated.

We never had a problem with Notre Dame officials, but after the war, some of their fans began driving us crazy. They began writing letters saying that other schools should imitate Notre Dame, not just in winning, but by winning absolutely cleanly and honestly. Sure, who doesn't want to do that? But no one could get players like Frank Leahy could...

Also the fans said that Notre Dame sets an example that other schools could follow if those schools didn't like cheating so much. I really got angry when they started applying that to Purdue, as if we [Purdue] cheated.

— Lafayette Journal & Courier sports editor Gordon Graham, Onward to Victory: The Creation of Modern College Sports

One of the things I enjoyed about writing my latest book, The 50 Best* College Football Teams of All Time (and hey, if you don’t enjoy your own book, who will?) is how you can trace how perceptions of certain programs changed over time. Notre Dame is the best example.

There are two Notre Dame teams in the book (which, in anti-social fashion, isn’t actually about the best teams at all): the 1924 team that won the Irish’s first Rose Bowl and the 1947 team that is typically called one of the most talented of all time. In between the first and the second team, all of college football began to look at Notre Dame in a completely different light.

The 1924 team was a plucky squad, abused in some stadiums for the school’s Catholic backbone and going out of its way to put a good face forward for both school and religion. Look at these wholesome boys who will pray before the game and help you up after bowling you over!

The 1947 team was, by any account, no less wholesome. But the Irish were the heavyweight champion of the world by this point. Their connections with the Naval academy had helped to allow the school to maintain a high level of talent during World War II, and with loose postwar transfer rules and the name of NOTRE DAME lording over the sport, Frank Leahy was able to amass so much talent in South Bend that third stringers who never saw the field would find success in professional football.

Plus, as with any program or coach who purports to represent more than just football, the Irish brought some pretty irrepressible fans with them as well.

All of this is a long way to say that, even seven decades after that 1947 team and its fans lorded Irish perfection over all the land, when Notre Dame suffers a frustrating season — say, losing a ton of close games on the way to a 4-8 record — fans of other college football teams are going to enjoy it immensely. That’s just how things go.

Fun fact: Brian Kelly’s Notre Dame Fighting Irish went 4-8 last season. It really happened. Buy rings if you want. Definitely make posters and memes. Lord knows plenty on this little corner of the Internet have. But don’t expect it to happen twice.

I have long noted how, when you look at a given year’s S&P+ rankings, you can pretty quickly point out the teams that are likely to rise and fall the next year (from a records standpoint) by simply looking at the standout records. My favorite example is 2011, when both 7-6 Texas A&M (eighth in S&P+) and 8-5 Notre Dame (11th) seemed out of place, ranking much higher than their records suggested they should have. The next year, the two teams went a combined 23-3.

It doesn’t always work out in such a clean manner, but the bottom line is, sometimes your record doesn’t match your on-paper quality. That usually rectifies itself quickly.

That Notre Dame went 4-8 last year is certainly unique; it was only the second time since 1963 that the Irish won fewer than five games. The Gerry Faust era of the early-1980s is notorious for its mediocrity, but Faust’s Irish never went worse than 5-6.

That the Irish went 4-8 with a pretty good team is even more remarkable.

Best teams to finish with four or fewer wins (per S&P+), 2005-16:

2016 Notre Dame (4-8, plus-10.5 S&P+ rating, 26th)

2007 Washington (4-9, plus-9.8, 26th)

2013 Florida (4-8, plus-9.7, 33rd)

2005 Arkansas (4-7, plus-7.5, 33rd)

2012 Arkansas (4-8, plus-7.4, 39th)

2009 Virginia (3-9, plus-6.8, 35th)

2013 TCU (4-8, plus-5.1, 50th)

2008 Arkansas (4-8, plus-4.8, 41st)

2005 Washington State (4-7, plus-4.3, 46th)

2008 Baylor (4-8, plus-4.3, 42nd)

This list is both a warning sign and reason for hope. Of the nine non-Notre Dame teams above, five saw their records improve, sometimes dramatically, the next season.

In 2014, TCU’s Gary Patterson made some assistant coach changes, freshened up his offense, and went 12-1.

2009 Arkansas improved to 8-5 in Bobby Petrino’s second year in charge.

2006 Arkansas improved to 10-4.

2014 Florida improved to 7-5.

2006 Washington State improved to 6-6.

2009 Baylor didn’t improve because of a quarterback injury, but 2010 Baylor improved to 7-6, and 2011 Baylor soared.

At the same time, of the seven non-Notre Dame teams on the list that didn’t dump their coaches immediately, four had done so within two years. The bad feelings a season like this engenders are hard to overcome.

2016 in review

2016 Notre Dame statistical profile.

Here’s the most positive spin I can put on last season: Kelly didn’t lose the team. The Fighting Irish stuck together well enough that they continued to lose close games to good teams deep into the season. Sometimes a team collapses; Notre dame did not. In fact, it did the opposite.

First 4 games (1-3): Avg. percentile performance: 60% (~top 50) | Yards per play: ND 6.4, Opp 6.2 (plus-0.2)

Next 4 games (2-2): Avg. percentile performance: 74% (~top 35) | Yards per play: ND 5.6, Opp 4.4 (plus-1.2)

Last 4 games (1-3): Avg. percentile performance: 78% (~top 30) | Yards per play: ND 6.2, Opp 5.6 (plus-0.6)

After a dreadful defensive start, Kelly fired defensive coordinator Brian VanGorder four games into the season. That he hired him in the first place was a bit of an indictment, but there’s no question the defense improved after the change. The offense, meanwhile, remained mostly steady aside from a monsoon-addled 10-3 loss to NC State.

Notre Dame played at a top-30 level or so for most of the last two-thirds of the season. But the losses continued — by seven points to Stanford, by one point to Navy, by three points to Virginia Tech. The season finished with the first not-so-close loss (45-27 to USC), but even in that game the Irish created more scoring chances and won the field position battle, creating a decent opportunity for a win that didn’t come.

Kelly has had a fascinating relationship with close games at Notre Dame. His Irish lost five of their first seven one-possession finishes, then won 15 of 18. They lost three in a row and won five of six and have now lost eight of nine. Do the Irish have another drastic change in direction left?

Offense

Full advanced stats glossary.

Todd Graham has struggled the last couple of seasons as Arizona State head coach; after going 20-7 in 2013-14, he’s gone just 11-14 since. Defensive collapse has been the major cause — ASU ranked 114th in Def. S&P+ in 2016 — but losing assistants hasn’t helped.

Graham has churned out aggressive, speed-happy assistants throughout his career; he employed Chad Morris (now SMU’s head coach) and Gus Malzahn (Auburn) long ago at Tulsa, and it’s probably not a coincidence that his ASU offense regressed a bit in 2016 following the departure of longtime assistants Mike Norvell and Chip Long to Memphis. Norvell became head coach, Long became offensive coordinator, and despite losing all-world quarterback Paxton Lynch to the NFL, the Tigers continued to play at a top-40 level offensively last fall.

Long only has the single year of coordinator experience, but you could see how Kelly might be attracted to him as a potential energy booster.

With a pass-first attack, Memphis ranked 46th in Adj. Pace and excelled at creating one-on-one matchups and solo tackle opportunities. A trio of rushers (including two freshmen) combined for 1,838 yards at 5.9 per carry, and the combination of quarterback Riley Ferguson and receiver Anthony Miller combined to connect 95 times for 1,434 yards.

One could see similar numbers from Notre Dame this year. Running back Josh Adams combined decent efficiency (42 percent of carries gaining five-plus yards) with above average explosiveness, junior backup Dexter Williams was a bit all-or-nothing, and four-star freshman C.J. Holmes could be ready to play a small role.

Adams and company will be running behind a well-seasoned line that ranked 18th in Adj. Line Yards and returns five four of last year’s starters. Three of the four have started for two years, and the line could get a boost from young talent in the form of redshirt freshman blue-chippers Tommy Kraemer and Liam Eichenberg.

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Equanimeous St. Brown

Meanwhile, it’s easy to think that the Brandon Wimbush-to-Equanimeous St. Brown combination could thrive. St. Brown averaged 10.9 yards per target as a first-time No. 1 target, combining big-time efficiency (57 percent success rate) with high-end explosiveness (16.6 yards per catch).

Most of last year’s battery mates — sophomore Kevin Stepherson, junior C.J. Sanders, tight end Durham Smythe — return, as does tight end Alizé Mack, who averaged 10.6 yards per target in 2015 before missing last year because of academics. And if the spring is any indication, four-star sophomores Miles Boykin and Chase Claypool could be ready to play steady roles as well. [Update: Notre Dame also added Cameron Smith, a former 596-yard receiver at Arizona State, as a grad transfer.]

This offense should have all the pieces Long craves for creating mismatches and big plays. Wimbush’s only real experience so far came in going 3-for-5 passing and ripping off a 58-yard touchdown run against UMass in 2015. His athleticism is obvious, and if he’s ready to live up to his blue-chip status, this offense will hum. That’s still an “if” until proven otherwise, though.

Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images

Brandon Wimbush

Defense

It’s even easier to see what Kelly saw in Mike Elko. The longtime Dave Clawson assistant produced high-caliber defenses as Bowling Green defensive coordinator (31st in Def. S&P+ in 2012, 52nd in 2013) and found immediate, sustained success following Clawson to Wake Forest. While Wake’s offense hasn’t been good in what feels like decades, the Demon Deacons ranked 28th in Def. S&P+ in 2014 and 22nd in 2016.

With an experienced front seven and an ultra-young secondary, Wake created havoc up front and played things safe in the back. The Deacs also had one of the best red zone defenses in the country, allowing just 3.8 points per scoring opportunity (first downs inside the 40).

Elko inherits a defense that was so young last year that it’s still pretty young. He’ll be relying on sophomores in the front (tackles Jerry Tillery and Elijah Taylor, end Daelin Hayes) and back (corners Julian Love, Donte Vaughn, Troy Pride Jr., and Shaun Crawford, safeties Devin Studstill and Jalen Elliott). And while there are blue-chippers galore on the roster, few of them reside in the secondary. [Update: Star Navy transfer Alohi Gilman would compete for a starting safety job, if his unique eligibility waiver request went through.]

Still, this was a legitimately strong pass defense in the middle of the season, from when VanGorder was fired until the last two games against Virginia Tech and USC.

First 4 games: 64% completion rate, 14.3 yards per completion, 154.2 passer rating

Next 6 games: 57% completion rate, 10.8 yards per completion, 110.7 passer rating

Last 2 games: 69% completion rate, 11.5 yards per completion, 155.7 passer rating

Granted, that midseason sample includes the monsoon game against NC State and the Army and Navy games, but there’s still obvious potential here, especially the Irish can keep the same first string on the field for a longer period of time. Eleven different DBs averaged at least 0.8 tackles per game last year; only six played in all 12 games. That’s a sign of a rotation that is larger than a coach wanted it to be.

Matt Cashore-USA TODAY Sports

Drue Tranquill

The front seven only has to replace three contributors, but end Isaac Rochell, tackle Jarron Jones, and linebacker James Onwualu were maybe the Irish’s three best havoc guys last year, combining for 29.5 tackles for loss, six sacks, and 10 passes defensed. The linebacking corps is particularly experienced, and between Nyles Morgan, converted safety Drue Tranquill, Greer Martini, and Asmar Bilal, he should have the attackers he needs there.

Firing VanGorder had an immediate effect last year. After allowing 200-plus rushing yards in three of their first four games, the Irish only did so three times in the last eight, and two of those instances were against option-heavy Army and Navy, who combined to pass for just 61 yards.

Even without Rochell, Jones, and Onwualu, this should be a strong front seven. The question is, how quickly can Elko come to trust the secondary? I would expect him to play things conservatively in the back, as he did at Wake.

Matt Cashore-USA TODAY Sports

Nyles Morgan

Special Teams

Special teams didn’t really help the cause. After ranking 35th in Special Teams S&P+ in 2015, the Irish fell to 80th because of shaky place-kicking range and woeful punt coverage. Tyler Newsome averaged a booming 43.5 yards per punt (26th in FBS), but opponents averaged 15.1 yards per return (123rd).

Ace return man C.J. Sanders was able to make up some of that difference, but if Newsome can avoid outkicking his coverage quite so much, this could theoretically be a top-50 unit even if kicker Justin Yoon’s range doesn’t change much.

2017 outlook

2017 Schedule & Projection Factors

Date Opponent Proj. S&P+ Rk Proj. Margin Win Probability 2-Sep Temple 67 15.5 81% 9-Sep Georgia 20 3.8 59% 16-Sep at Boston College 76 14.7 80% 23-Sep at Michigan State 44 7.1 66% 30-Sep Miami (Ohio) 88 23.9 92% 7-Oct at North Carolina 38 5.7 63% 21-Oct USC 7 -4.7 39% 28-Oct N.C. State 27 7.8 67% 4-Nov Wake Forest 64 14.8 80% 11-Nov at Miami 18 -1.3 47% 18-Nov Navy 71 18.3 85% 25-Nov at Stanford 12 -6.3 36%

Projected S&P+ Rk 17 Proj. Off. / Def. Rk 24 / 25 Projected wins 8.0 Five-Year S&P+ Rk 14.3 (9) 2- and 5-Year Recruiting Rk 10 / 8 2016 TO Margin / Adj. TO Margin* -4 / 0.7 2016 TO Luck/Game -1.9 Returning Production (Off. / Def.) 57% (58%, 56%) 2016 Second-order wins (difference) 7.2 (-3.2)

In terms of trust with the fan base, it’s possible that having such a bad year with such a demonstrably solid team is harder to overcome than a random collapse like, say, 2016 Michigan State’s. Notre Dame lost close games in about every way a team can lose a close game. It’s a new year, and Brian Kelly has two new coordinators with him to right the ship. But until the Irish indeed turn things around, then they remain the absurd underachiever that went 4-8 last year.

Still, a turnaround is realistic at worst and likely at best. Notre Dame dealt with preseason turnover in the defensive backfield and was juggling freshmen and sophomores in the back all year. The Irish encountered setback after setback but were as good in November as they were in September. Kelly brought in an exciting new defensive coordinator and an offensive coordinator with energy to burn.

It’s really easy to talk yourself into a significant Irish bounce back in 2017, in other words, and the numbers have your back if you choose to do so. S&P+ projects Notre Dame 17th in the country, and despite a schedule that features five opponents projected 27th or better (and only one projected worse than 76th), the Irish are the projected favorite in nine games and are expected to win eight on average.

This is all well and good. But it’s hard to forget that Notre Dame was projected 11th, with a likely 9-3 record, last year. The Irish underachieved the rating by a little and the record by a lot. And seasons that are disappointing to this degree are hard to overcome.

I wrote in last year’s preview that, in overcoming quarterback injury and remaining in the Playoff hunt all the way to the end of the year, Brian Kelly had pulled off his best coaching performance in 2015. He followed that up with his worst. His recent performances have flipped as significantly as his close-game fortune. Can they both flip back this fall?

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