#And of course the whole song being about programming and rewriting the speaker

[alexis-royce]

Hi so um, as someone who's loving to read nonplatonic forms and got to the end of the 0.27 update, I just want to say that I think this fits Niles a lot rn

https://youtu.be/JB5gfmWQzSA?si=7wfyaFZqqpZYtcF4

Not only do the lyrics fit astoundingly well, the fact that this is a human cover of a vocaloid song nails it as appropriate for the end of 0.27. (Also I have a huge thing for vocalist + sweeping piano songs from people like Vienna Teng and Ben Folds, so excellent recommendation, thank you!)

[punkpoemprose]

I Hate You (And I Hate That I Don’t Really Hate You)- A Kristanna Oneshot

Universe: Modern AU Length: 3432 Rating: M (Mature, because there’s some sexy bits)

Notes: Happy Unbirthday @thesvenqueen! Sorry it took me a while to post yours. I’ve been rewriting and deleting and rewriting it all day. Enemies to lovers man, it’s just got to be perfect, you know? Hope you like it!

Her distaste for Kristoff Bjorgman had started early, when she was just five years old. He was the boy next door, with messy blonde hair and spirited brown eyes who was always playing outside, earning freckles on his nose from the sun. She’d despised him more than anything because he could do all the things she couldn’t.

She’d ask her parents, “Mama, Papa! Can I go ride my bike down the street?”

And in return they’d given her hundreds of reasons why it wasn’t an option. She was too small, it was too dangerous, what if she fell and hurt herself and they didn’t see? What if one of the other kids was mean to her?

No, they always said, better for her to take her little bike with its training wheels up and down the same short stretch of hallway in the house where they could keep an eye on her, or up and down the driveway for a few short minutes when her father could tear himself away from work long enough to watch her. And in the meantime, Kristoff would ride by the front bay windows, like he was taunting her.

He was three years older, he was a boy, and he wasn’t their son. Those were always her parent’s reasons when she saw him doing something she wasn’t allowed to do, and after a while she started hating him for those same reasons. He was older than her so he was able to do things that she wanted to do without having to have training wheels of any sort. He was a boy so he was allowed to get messy and do the things she and her sister could not in their nicely pressed little dresses. He was the neighbor’s son and that meant that all his rules were different than hers.

It was unfair, how he’d wave to her through the window with a smile on his face, telling her to join him like she had a choice, and walking away disappointed when she didn’t come out. She wanted to play in mud puddles and pretend to sword fight with sticks. She wanted to catch bugs and ride her bike down the road. She wanted to leave the house. She wanted to play like the other kids did.

She didn’t hate him so much on the days where Elsa felt well enough to play, the days where they’d play with their dolls in the front window and wave to the other children as they walked by. Those days his smiles and waves seemed a little kinder, almost like he meant he wanted to meet her.

She did meet him when they went to school. He was in Elsa’s grade, not that Elsa went to school very often. Anna hadn’t understood then, just a little thing herself. She didn’t know that being nervous could keep someone from living a life, for her being nervous was something that she just got over. Being angry though, being so angry she couldn’t think of anything else, was something she could understand.

She understood it when she would see him through the classroom window, playing on the playground with the other kids, and heading inside when it was her turn to go out with her class. They were polite enough to her, her classmates, but they didn’t pick her for kickball. They treated her like a china doll, not to be played with, but to be looked at in her little pretty dresses and perfectly shined Maryjane’s. She’d longed for clothes like Kristoff wore, jeans worn at the knee, t-shirts from the discount store with dinosaurs on them that were meant for playing in, that were meant to get dirty.

She’d see him get on the school bus at the end of the day when her parents would send a car to get her. Other kids would be talking to him and they’d laugh. She always felt like he was laughing at her.

When Anna had turned twelve, she’d been allowed a little garden in the backyard to grow flowers and strawberries. It was ladylike enough work to please the housekeeper and governess their parents had hired for her and Elsa when Anna had turned six. Gerda was a kind woman, but a strict one, with very specific thoughts about what Anna should do with her life. Those thoughts included a preparation and boarding school, but her mother hadn’t wanted to separate her daughters.

She’d go out to weed and neaten and harvest every evening in the summer months, and when school rolled around, she’d tended to it after finishing her homework. It was the dirtiest work she’d ever been allowed and she’d been so proud of it. Everything was meticulously neat, the opposite of the way she liked to keep her room, and she’d done such a good job of it that the house staff and even her parents had noticed and gave her a few quick words of admiration. It had meant everything to her.

One day when she returned home from school and finished her homework, she’d had her heart crushed to see the whole thing destroyed. Apparently, the neighbor boy had gotten a dog and he’d gotten out without them noticing and had dug up all her hard work. She’d cried over crushed plants, holding broken little flowers in her hands and blaming him, blaming Kristoff for what had happened. Afterall, she thought, if he’d just been better at training his dog, if he’d just kept track of him, she’d still have her garden. It had been her only comfort as Elsa had been locked in her room most days and her parents had been increasingly preoccupied with doctors, trying to figure out what had happened to her that she’d just stopped speaking.

He’d come over to apologize, but she’d made someone else answer the door. She hadn’t thought that she could accept his apology without telling him that she hated him and never wanted to see him again, and she knew that if she had been that rude, her parents really would have had her sent off to a boarding school to learn manners befitting a young lady.

So she kept on hating him, but she’d been quiet about it. The grounds staff had seeded over her destroyed safe place, grass growing where her flowers had to “beautify” the place that she’d once loved, and it was all his fault.

Her parents died in a car crash when she was fifteen. It had been bad weather, they’d slid off the road and hit a tree. She hated Kristoff for it.

Not because he caused the rain or because he told them to go out driving because he hadn’t. He had had nothing to do with the death of her parents, but he’d come to the funeral with his parents. He’d come through the receiving line where Elsa had stood shaking at her side, Anna’s broken sister and legal guardian at the tender age of eighteen and fresh out of a mental health counseling program that had only succeeded in making her functional, not the sister that Anna remembered from their childhood years.

He’d shaken their hands solemnly, eighteen himself and barely a man even in a legal sense. She still saw that little boy of eight in his face, in his eyes when he’d touched her. She’d hated how he still had his parents. How he still had someone who loved him while she and Elsa were all alone in the world.

He went off to college that fall, and Anna hated him for being able to leave while she was stuck in a too-dark too-quiet house with Elsa trying to manage the family business and go to school online and spend more and more time away from her and in her psychologist’s office.

She hated him for leaving. They hadn’t been friends. She’d hated him since she knew how to hate someone, but there was a comfort in seeing him through the window, a comfort in seeing him walk through the halls in school, and it was gone.

She was twenty-one when she saw him again.

Of course he’d come home, she’d seen him summers and on holidays walking into his parent’s house and down the street like he’d never left, but she’d tried her best to not pay him any attention. She hated him, and it should have been easy, but she’d really needed to put the effort in after he left to pretend that she didn’t care whenever he came home.

More accurately, she was twenty-one when she saw him in any context other than him visiting home. She’d been a senior in college, just finishing up her degree, and out at a bar with friends celebrating. She’d seen him, two beers in, and all the hate and pain and fear from an entire childhood spent hating him welled back up in her, but his hair was tousled just right and he was watching hockey on his phone and she was willing to pretend for a moment that it wasn’t him. Because of course she knew that he lived in the town she’d gone to college in. It had been an accident. She’d picked the school then heard through the grapevine that he lived near it and she’d just had the good fortune to not run into him in nearly four years.

But that was a lie and she knew it. Because she’d gotten into every school she’d applied to and she’d accepted the offer after she heard he lived there, and she’d looked for him in every shop, in the movie theater, at the gas station ever since. She’d told herself that it was because she hated him and she wanted to tell him as much, but that wasn’t why she crossed the bar and sat next to him, daring him to look at her, to see her, with her thoughts as she finished beer number three.

She hadn’t been drunk when she’d kissed him in the back corner of the bar. Not really anyway, at least she was sober enough to blame it on the beer. She kissed him with her mouth open, with something slow and soulful playing over the speakers as he swayed with her to the rhythm. She didn’t know the song, but he’d been humming it and she’d asked him to dance.

Waking up in his bed had been an accident. At least she told herself as much when the morning light found them both fully clothed in his bed with a dog, the dog that had destroyed her garden, at her feet. She’d slipped out while he was pretending to sleep, and she hated him for it. She hated him for not holding her tight and telling her not to go.

She’d patted the dog, Sven, on the head on her way out though.

The second and third times she’d wound up there, staying the night in his arms and waking up fully clothed, were mistakes too. Because she hated him, and she wouldn’t seek out a man she hated at the bars, she wouldn’t ask him where he worked so she could accidentally pass by wearing her Wonderbra under a tight shirt, so it had to be an accident.

It was an accident now too, with his mouth on hers, totally sober, pulling him toward his bedroom.  It had to be an accident, because she couldn’t put want and hate in the same room in her head and stay sane unless it was a mistake. She knew, she’d known for over a week, that she didn’t hate him anymore, but she was having a hard time letting go of it.

As she tried to pull him towards his bedroom, her motion was halted by his large hands scooping her off the floor. It felt all to natural for her to wrap her legs around his waist and let him carry her to his bed. Her fingers fisted into his hair as she resumed kissing him.

A groan in appreciation came from the back of his throat and his hands squeezed her bottom as he knocked the door open and then closed behind them.

She cursed when he dropped her to his mattress and immediately descended to kiss down her neck. Her fingers were already fumbling against his belt, tugging his shirt out of the waistband. She hoped that he’d unbutton it himself, because if not she thought she might just tear it off him.

He’d grown so much since they were young. His jaw had taken the set of a man and his beard scratched against her skin as he mouthed across her skin to the place where her dress’s top gave the slightest peek into her cleavage.

When his hand went for the zipper on the back of her dress, she leaned up into his kiss, giving him access and encouraging his mouth to dip down as far as her could under the fabric to kiss the tops of her breasts.

They’d been on a date. An honest date, because he’d said “we have to stop meeting this way” at a bar, and she’d understood it as “I need to stop bringing you home drunk because I want to do things to you I can only do sober.”

The dress was thrown to the floor quickly, along with his shirt and her bra and then her panties.

It wasn’t long before he was asking her, begging her, to let him go down on her.

She writhed under his attentions, his tongue first, and then his tongue and his lips, and then his tongue and his lips and his fingers curled in her just right. His beard had certainly helped the matter, and she wished she had been able to get a better look at him when he was between her legs, treating her so reverently, pulling the pleasure from her in waves. It had been over before it started. In fact it had been over twice within minutes. She thought that maybe he’d want to try for a third, but she’d pulled him up for air, feeling shaky legged and overstimulated.

His fingers in her had been so much better than her own, her own experimentations had been nothing compared to his abilities. She almost wanted to ask if he was experienced, but somehow she knew that the answer would be no, that this, all of this, had been just for her.

He’d licked her from his fingers, he’d kissed her open mouthed, letting her taste herself on his lips. It was as debauched as it was gentle.

In the aftermath he’d covered her with his bedspread, turned the lights out, and curled around her tightly. He hadn’t asked her to reciprocate, he hadn’t said anything. He’d just kissed her and held her for what felt like forever and no time at all until the mood shifted from heated to simply warm.

He’d kissed the crown of her head, and then down to her neck and shoulder, he’d pulled her in close, and then when he seemed content himself, he spoke.

“You hated me. I could always see it in your eyes. You hated me so much.”

It wasn’t accusatory. It was spoken like a fact, and she nodded to confirm it.

His fingers carded through her hair gently and she cuddled into his side. She couldn’t change the past, but she realized that she was starting to remember a hundred little things she’d made herself forget.

Kristoff at age eight slipping a paper airplane through her mail slot, and the pair of them playing, Anna tossing the paper plane out the window and him catching it, walking it back to her mail slot and repeating the process over and over until it started to rain. Kristoff at age fifteen leaving a potted peace lily for her as an apology for her garden, a lily she’d mourned the death of her freshman year of college when it had lived out the last of its longevity on her windowsill. Kristoff at eighteen holding her hand a little longer than necessary at her parent’s funeral, bringing her a glass of water and a slice of lemon cake at the wake, inviting her to his grad party. She thought about Christmas cards from his family every year, and how she’d watch him from the window, hand delivering them through her mail slot. She thought about the way he always looked for her in the windows and how his smiles and waves really had never been teasing or mean, but honest and hopeful.

“I had to make myself hate you,” she whispered into the stillness of the dark room, “Because it hurt too much to know that we could never be friends.”

His lips found her bare shoulder and pressed down gently, like it was natural, like they did this every night before they fell asleep.

“Because of your parents?” he asked quietly, pulling her back into him in a gesture she read as protective. She wondered how long he’d known she was unhappy, how hard he’d tried to do what he could. She wondered what might have changed if she’d just gone to his graduation party years before, whether finally being free to see him would have made her happy. She couldn’t quite imagine a whirlwind summer romance. She’d been too young for romance, but she could imagine him in that crap truck of his bringing her for ice cream or down to the lakeshore or them not going anywhere at all, watching crap movies in his living room. She could imagine a summer where she’d made him her friend, and then months of letters and texts and emails. She could imagine a few years of friendship, him coming to her graduation, him helping her pick colleges, him realizing that he was falling in love with her, and her picking her college because he’d be there to love her.

She nodded. “It wasn’t really their fault I don’t think… or at least I don’t think they meant to keep me indoors so much. It was just Elsa was sick, and then she had the mental health problems, and they had the business and her to think about all the time… it was just easier for them to keep me safe if I were inside and proper and… I think they would have been different if the situation was.”

His beard scratched against her skin, reminding her of the way his mouth had felt elsewhere. She only felt a little bad thinking about how he’d made her see stars now that they were having a serious conversation.  

“I can understand why you must have disliked me so much. Even though I was adopted I always had family, I didn’t have much for friends, but I had a few and I had Sven… and I can see how you probably wanted that.”

“I did… I do… A lot’s changed since we were kids, but not that. Elsa’s family now. She did her best for me those three years, she’s gotten better now. We talk a lot.”

He hummed, like he already knew. She wondered if he’d been checking in on them. His parents had always been good neighbors to them, especially after her parents passing, so she imagined that his mother had been able to update him on how they were doing.

“And I have some friends now, at school… and… I just I guess I’m realizing that it’s not too late.”

“Too late for what?”

She took a deep breath, taking in the way it felt easy to breathe for the first time in a very long time. She hadn’t realized how much baggage she’d been carrying around until she’d seen him that first night in the bar.

“I don’t think it’s too late for us to be friends.”

He chuckled and pressed his lips to her neck again, his body warm and solid against her back.

“I don’t mean to be crass Anna… but I think we might be a little more than friends already.”

“Lucky thing,” she said, blushing as she pressed her rear into him a little closer, feeling the press of his cock against her, “Because I think I want to get a little friendlier with you… it’s only fair after all.”

A growl of appreciation had her letting out an easy and warm laugh.

She felt light and warm, and for the first time since she could remember, she felt like everything was alright.

[imnotinclinedtomaturity]

Love Yourself (Chapter 27)

title: Love Yourself summary: A lot of things about Dan’s life are pretty great. He gets to make the music he wants, he’s got a great fanbase, and his manager is his best friend. A few things about his life suck a bit more. He’s currently lacking inspiration, he’s rather lonely, and he’s stuck in a rut. Dan’s been going to the same coffee shop for years. It’s quiet, it’s quaint, it’s near his home. Most importantly: none of the employees give a shit that’s he a world-famous singer. Things change when he meets the new barista. chapter words: 8.8k story words: 219.6k (so far) chapter: 27/? rating: m warnings: language, alcohol, sex mentions, some bi/homophobia, eventual explicit smut, some depression genre: singer!dan, coffee shop au, barista!phil, slow burn [[ao3]] [[first chapter]] [[previous chapter]]

a/n: thank you to everyone for being the best audience i could hope for. i appreciate how patient y'all have been, how understanding you've been that i needed time time off because of Adulthood and Mental Health. i'm not feeling particularly articulate right now, but know that i love and appreciate you all. back to our regularly scheduled programming now! updates should come every 1.5 weeks-ish again :) also, a massive thanks to @auroraphilealis as always, not just for editing, but also for being a great best friend and a wonderful cheerleader. ily xx

Loud, persistent buzzing pulled Phil sharply from his sleep. It took a few sleepy seconds before he registered that the buzzing was his phone on his bedside table — and it was apparently ringing. Still half asleep, Phil waited until it stopped vibrating before reaching for it. It was too damn early to actually talk to anyone, but curiosity was still getting the best of him.

He pried an eye open and looked at the screen, instinctively flinching away from the bright light. Without his glasses, he was too blind to see who had called, but he could just barely make out the time — half past seven.

Nearly an hour before his alarm was due to go off.

That was nearly an hour of sleep that someone was trying to take from Phil. And after the whirlwind of last night’s date, Phil wanted nothing more than to sleep in. It wasn’t like Dan was here to give him a reason to get up.

With a stubborn, tired sigh, Phil rolled back into his pillow. Whoever had called could wait — at least until he was ready to get out of bed.

Just as he was drifting off again, though, his phone rang again. Grumbling, Phil pushed himself onto his elbows and held his phone close enough to his face that he could just barely make out PJ’s name.

PJ? Why was PJ calling him? PJ rarely called Phil. They skyped, sure, but those calls were usually scheduled and were always in the evening.

No, if PJ was caling at this hour, he must need something. And, unfortunately, Phil prided himself on being the Reliable Friend who always answered when his friends needed him.

Reluctantly, Phil swiped on PJ’s name, immediately putting the call on speaker so that he could fall back into his pillow.

“What the hell do you want, Peej?” Phil grumbled as soon as the phone call connected.

“Did I wake you up?”

“It’s not even eight in the morning,” Phil complained. “Of course you woke me up.”

“Mmm,” PJ hummed dismissively. “Are you with Dan?”

“No, I dropped him off after our date last night.” Phil stretched slightly, his hands reaching up under the pillow and hugging it closer to his face.

“Oh… have you, er, talked to him since?” PJ didn’t sound curious, and didn’t sound like he was trying to get information out of Phil about his date. PJ sounded… worried.

Growing concerned by PJ’s tone, Phil pushed himself back onto his elbows. “No, why? What happened?”

“I take it you haven’t been on the internet yet?”

“No. Get to the point, Peej,” Phil huffed impatiently.

“Dan — well, I thought maybe he’d’ve talked it over with you. I mean, twitter’s — fuck, how —“

“What the fuck happened?” Phil demanded, cutting off PJ’s rambling.

Even through the phone, and on speaker, Phil could hear PJ’s deep sigh, could feel his hesitation, before he finally spoke. “You need to look at Dan’s instagram. He sort of… made a big announcement in the dead of night.”

Phil felt a wave of dread wash over him. He certainly wasn’t sleepy anymore. A jumble of incoherent, panicked thoughts were battering at Phil’s brain, but he did his best to push them aside. Worrying wouldn’t do any good right now.

“Hang on, I’m pulling it up.”

Phil hit the home button on his phone with a bit more force than necessary, and was finally confronted with a frankly obscene amount of notifications given that he hadn’t done anything online since the day before yesterday, really. With a concerned huff, Phil swiped his glasses off his night table and shoved them onto his nose, the red dots on his iphone icons coming into focus.

Four hundred and twelve notifications from instagram.

One thousand, two hundred, and ninety from twitter.

Six emails in his work-only account.

And seven text messages.

Despite PJ’s urging to look at Dan’s instagram, Phil opened his messages first. There were three from PJ, which Phil ignored since Peej had clearly gotten ahold of him. Below PJ’s thread, there was a message from his mother and brother each. And finally below them were two messages from Dan.

The preview of their conversation showed that Dan’s most recent text — and we should probably talk — had come in at 3:34AM. That message alone made Phil’s heart pound against his chest.

“You there, mate?” PJ asked.

“Yeah,” Phil confirmed with a strangled gulp. “He texted me.”

“Oh?” PJ sounded interested.

Phil didn’t respond. He didn’t open the text. He didn’t breath. He didn’t do much of anything, really. He was frozen, trying to process what we should talk might mean, trying to convince himself it didn’t mean something horrible.

“Well?” PJ prompted when the silence drew on for too long. “What’d he say?”

“Right,” Phil mumbled as he forced himself to click on Dan’s message, to see what his previous message said. To see if it could make sense of whatever the fuck seemed to be happening this morning.

Phil’s eyes skimmed over his own four messages — he’d somehow blocked out the fact that he’d quadruple-texted Dan last night — before reading what Dan had said.

Dan [3:31 AM]: before you look at your twitter and instagram and whatever notifications, you should probably look at my instagram

Dan [3:34AM]: and we should probably talk

Together, the two messages did absolutely nothing to quell Phil’s anxiety. In fact, Phil’s heart was just thumping louder and more aggressively.

“He just said to look at his instagram.” Phil swallowed roughly. “And that we should talk.”

A quiet hum was PJ’s only response — another thing that didn’t help to calm the panic in Phil’s veins. Phil didn’t like the thoughts racing around his head, didn’t like that the first place his mind had gone was Isabella — and Dan getting back together with her.

Not that Phil really thought that was a risk, but still. The insecure part of his brain liked to remind him that Dan’s last partner had been a model, even if she was a bitch.

With a steeling breath, Phil tapped on the instagram icon.

It seemed to take a million and one years for the app to load, and when it finally did, it opened to a picture his brother had posted of his girlfriend.

Not helpful.

Not wanting to waste time scrolling through his feed, Phil tapped the magnifying glass. Dan’s name was at the top of his recent searches, a small “one new post” written below his username.

Quickly, but shaking with apprehension, Phil clicked on Dan’s profile.

It seemed to take forever for the page to load, but when it did, the first thing Phil saw was a picture of Dan’s scribbly handwriting, made all the more difficult to read by messy highlighting.

For a second, Phil was annoyed at the highlights, frustrated that Dan had obscured his writing even further than his nearly-illegible handwriting. But then the colors of the highlights sunk in — pink, purple, blue.

They were the bi-pride colors.

Phil knew, obviously, and he was certain Dan’s audience would know that, too.

By this point, Phil knew Dan well enough to know that Dan didn’t do anything unintentionally. Not in his music, not on social media, and not in real life. If he’d gone out of his way to highlight whatever he’d written and posted — well, the colors of the highlights were deliberate.

Phil bypassed the words in the picture and flickered down to the caption, hoping for a quick and easy explanation.

the majority of this album is being written thanks to one person. this is the song that started the whole concept of this album and i think it deserves a bit of an update after he took me out on the best first date of my life tonight. he might not have agreed with the timing of when i decided to rewrite it, though ;) xx

“Oh shit,” Phil muttered, dumbfounded, when the gravity of Dan’s caption finally sunk in.

“Yeah…” PJ murmured, his voice carefully neutral.

Phil glanced back up to the picture and scanned over Dan’s messy handwriting as fast as he could. From what Phil could tell, it looked like it was, well, about him. If the caption didn’t convince him, the let’s stop running from love and the fact that Dan confessed to rewriting something because of Phil last night…

“He came out,” Phil mumbled, unnecessarily pointing out the obvious.

“And took you with him, mate,” PJ grumbled.

Phil cocked his head to the side, his brows furrowing as he read and reread Dan’s post, trying to pinpoint what PJ was referencing. Nowhere did it mention his name or even anything identifying. The most telling piece of information was the he — but that pronoun could apply to a large portion of the world.

“How do’ya figure?” Phil asked.

“Mate, you and Dan haven’t been very subtle. Look at twitter.”

Even without opening twitter, Phil knew what PJ meant. Him and Dan had been, well, flirting for weeks now. There really wasn’t any other way to describe their online banter.

But upon skimming through his twitter notifications, Phil realized just how confident their audience was as they jumped to the albeit somewhat obvious conclusion.

Tweet after tweet had responded to Dan’s instagram post, all tagging Phil, all speculating on exactly who the he in Dan’s post could be.

And every tweet Phil saw guessed it was him.

And every tweet Phil saw was right.

“They all know anyway,” Phil mumbled flatly. He was supposed to be feeling something right now — surely he was. His boyfriend had just come out, his entire audience was — correctly — guessing that he was in a relationship with a famous singer, his own mum had probably texted him about it. And yet, Phil couldn’t wrap his mind around what he was feeling.

He just felt… surprised.

“Yeah. Are you okay with that?” PJ asked gently.

“I…” Phil tried to process all of the new new new as fast as he could. “I guess it was never that secret that I liked guys. I mean, how many times have I mentioned finding male celebrities attractive?”

“That’s true,” PJ agreed. “But I also know that hinting and confirming are two different things.”

“I mean… yeah,” Phil finally relented.

“But you didn’t know Dan was going to do this?”

“No…” Phil chewed on the inside of his cheek as he thought through all of the conversations him and Dan had had about their public image. “He made it sound like he didn’t want to come out at all.”

“What changed?”

“I don’t know,” Phil responded tersely.

He should know.

“Do you think he wants people to know that you’re the guy?” PJ pushed.

“I don’t know!” Phil snapped

He really should know.

There was a beat of silence on the other end of the line.“Sorry,” PJ muttered, clearing his voice before he spoke again. “What do you want?”

“I… don’t know,” Phil finished lamely.

Turns out he didn’t know much of anything.

“Do you wanna talk about it?” PJ offered softly.

“I…” Phil tried to think about it, he really did, but his mind kept coming back to why why why. At the end of their date, Dan had pulled Phil into the bloody loo to kiss goodnight, presumably because Dan hadn’t wanted the waitstaff to see, and then just a few hours later, Dan had gone and done that. “I need to talk to Dan. To know what the fuck happened.”

“That’s fair,” PJ agreed. “Can I do anything to help?”

“No, I’m just… gonna call him.” Phil pushed his glasses onto his head and roughly rubbed his face — an attempt to both wake up and alleviate some stress. “Thanks for letting me know.”

“Ring if you need me, okay? And let me know how it goes.”

“I will. I’ll text you later,” Phil promised. “Bye Peej.”

Needing to cancel his ten o’clock meeting with his manager, Phil opened his work email to send off some excuse, only to find that Marianne had already emailed him. Along with three people from the BBC. And every single subject line contained the name Daniel Howell.

How the hell had all of these people been up and about and reacting to social media already?

Phil ignored the multiple emails from the BBC, but opened the one from Marianne. He skimmed through the message, where she basically just pointed out what he already knew — that his audience had drawn some pretty big conclusions based on something Dan had posted. At the end of her email, she suggested they “review possible responses” during their meeting that morning.

Not fucking likely, Phil scoffed.

Quickly, Phil typed out the most adult version of sorry for the late notice, but I need to cancel our meeting because my brand-new boyfriend went off the walls in the middle of the night and I have no idea what’s happening. He didn’t bother to read it over again — now wasn’t the moment for proofreading — and immediately dialed Dan as soon as the email was sent.

The phone didn’t ring though, and instead went straight to voicemail. “Dammit Dan,” Phil mumbled in aggravation, hanging up before Dan’s voicemail could start recording.

Chewing on his lower lip, Phil thought through his options. If Dan’s phone was off, then no amount of texting or calling or facetiming would do any good. It was frustrating to have no way to contact Dan after he’d dropped such a massive bomb.

Except, well, that wasn’t quite true, was it?

Dan had put Phil on his permanent visitors list, so theoretically Phil could just… show up. Which might be a bit of a rash move but…

But nothing.

Phil was confused and caught off guard and felt like he deserved an explanation. Despite the early hour, Phil threw off his blue and green check comforter and pushed himself out of bed with steadfast resolution.

He wanted an explanation and, goddammit he’d get an explanation.

On shaky, tired feet, Phil riffled through his drawers for suitable trousers while kicking off his emoji pajamas. No human being — especially not his fashiony, hot new boyfriend — needed to see him in those. The first somewhat acceptable option Phil’s hand landed on were a pair of rather tight joggers, but he couldn’t be arsed to care at that moment. They’d have to do.

He kicked all the way out of his embarrassing, yellow pajamas and pulled on the tight sweatpants in their place. His loose Friends shirt would have to do, because he didn’t feel like wasting the time to find a suitable replacement, and it wasn’t that awful of a shirt.

Phil’s hair was probably a right mess too, but he couldn’t be bothered to deal with that either at the moment. All in all, this was definitely the least effort he’d ever put into his appearance when he knew he was going to see Dan, but he was growing impatient. Doing anything other than pulling on a jacket and shoes felt like it would waste too much time.

Even the three minute wait for the uber felt like too much time, and Phil had to refrain from just starting to walk over when he got downstairs and the car wasn’t there yet. But the car arrived before Phil could do anything rash, and Phil climbed in with only the briefest of smiles to the driver. His five star rating might take a hit, but he didn’t particularly care at that moment.

On the drive to Dan’s flat, the impatience in Phil’s stomach grew into something… more desperate. The more time he spent longing for an answer, the more he felt like he should already have one — like he should have known about what Dan was doing before he’d done it. And of course, of course, it was Dan’s decision if he wanted to come out — and hell, Phil was downright ecstatic for him — but Phil couldn’t help feeling like…

Feeling like he should have been part of the decision if Dan was going to so nearly pull Phil out of the closet, too.

Not that Phil was hiding in the closet, persay. But as PJ had pointed out, there was a big difference between hinting and confirming, and what Dan had just done was suddenly pushing Phil to confirm. And that Phil couldn’t quite wrap his head around.

He wasn’t against it. Not quite. But — fuck. He really would have liked to have been a part of the decision.

The process of getting into Dan’s building was the easiest yet, this time. All Phil had to do was tell the doorman his name and that he was there to see Dan before he was getting ushered into the lift, the seven button already pressed for him.

The ride up to Dan’s apartment felt shorter than normal — so short that Phil didn’t have time to collect his courage and figure out exactly what he wanted to say. When the doors opened to Dan’s flat, Phil hovered uncertainly in the lift, suddenly worried that it was incredibly rude to just invite himself over to Dan’s flat. Maybe Dan’s phone had gone straight to voicemail because he’d turned it off so he could sleep. Maybe Dan wasn’t ready to tell Phil about what he’d done.

But no, that wasn’t quite right. Dan had texted Phil, had told Phil to look at his instagram and had even said that they needed to talk. So it wasn’t absurd that he was here, now.

The lift doors started closing, the sudden movement pulling Phil harshly out of his spiral of anxious thoughts. Phil’s body, for once, was a step ahead of his mind, because his arm flew out to catch the door before he processed what was happening. He hurried out of the lift and into the foyer before the door could start to close again.

Dan had put Phil on his permanent visitors list. This was fine. It wasn’t insane that Phil was here right now.

Determined, Phil pushed his way further into the flat, walking quietly towards Dan’s room. He only made it as far as the lounge, though, before he ran smack into someone.

Someone much shorter than him or Dan.

“Phil?”

Surprised, Phil’s eyes scanned down and he took in the young woman standing in front of him — he certainly hadn’t been expecting anyone else to be here, and now he really was feeling like just coming over might have been a dick move.

“Louise?” he asked tentatively, nearly positive that he recognized her from Dan’s instagram and pictures he’d shown him of Darcy and her mum.

“Yes!” Louise greeted, her voice hushed. “I’m glad it’s you, when I heard the lift ding I thought —” She cut herself off, glancing back over her shoulder into the lounge. “Well, nevermind. Tea?”

“Oh, er…” Phil glanced over her head, his eyes drifting back towards Dan’s room. As much as he knew that Louise was definitely someone that he should be trying to make a good impression on, Phil really didn’t want to sit down for a cuppa right now. His mind was still reeling from the whirlwind of this morning, and he could barely think straight, much less talk coherently to a stranger.

But regardless, he knew how important Louise was to Dan — and how much Louise’s opinion mattered to him — so Phil pushed back the swirling confusion muddling his head and forced himself to smile pleasantly. “I might just look for Dan if you don’t mind.” Anxiously, Phil rubbed the back of his neck and hoped that his smile wasn’t coming out too much like a grimace.

Louise’s eyes flicked behind her. Her tense shoulders and skeptical eyes gave Phil the feeling that she wasn’t sure if him seeking Dan out was a good idea. “He’s asleep at the moment,” she said, pursing her lips and staring at Phil thoughtfully, like she was trying to figure him out. “You sure I can’t interest you in tea? He’ll probably be asleep a while.”

“I…” Phil’s eyes darted around as he searched for an excuse out of socializing. Much to his dismay, he couldn’t easily find one. He opened and closed his mouth as he desperately tried to find a polite way out of making small talk with Louise — this certainly wasn’t the first impression he wanted to make on Dan’s best friend.

“I’m not really up for tea, right now,” Phil blurted out abruptly, settling on the truth and cringing at his bluntness. Phil shifted his gaze down to his feet, unable to continue meeting her eye. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “This morning’s just been a lot already, and…”

Louise sighed, and shot Phil an unsure look. Phil watched as her arms came up, and she crossed them over her chest. “Dan had a late night last night.”

“I know,” Phil admitted, anxiously shifting back and forth on his feet. “But I need to talk to him.”

“And you can wait until he wakes up,” Louise said with an air of finality, her arms still crossed in front of her.

Phil sighed and tugged on his sloppy quiff, aggravated — not quite at Louise, just more at… the situation in general. His phone felt heavy in his pocket, and he was hyper aware of all of the emails and texts that he needed to respond to.

Emails and texts that he didn’t know how to respond to because Dan hadn’t fucking talked to him.

“Look,” Phil said, keeping his voice as steady and calm as he could. “I kind of woke up to a PR nightmare this morning and —”

“Oh god, are you not out?” Louise interrupted, her eyes growing wide in panic.

“I — mostly,” Phil hesitated, unsure how to phrase it. The being out thing wasn’t exactly his main problem here. “Never in crystal clear words, but it was out there.” Phil shrugged that particular concern off. “But, like, I hadn’t told my manager — or even my mum — that I was dating Dan yet, and now they definitely both know because they aren’t idiots.” Phil gestured around wildly, his arms trying to convey how absolutely insane the situation was so that he didn’t end up shouting, despite his frustration. “I’m not sure who’s going to be more upset about not knowing. And I can’t even respond to them, because I have no idea what to say because I have no idea what the fuck happened. We haven’t even discussed if we want our relationship to be public or how to handle the media or anything!”

Phil’s arms fell to his sides, limp and useless, as his rant came to a sudden, frustrated end.

His little tantrum must have done some good, though, because Louise looked a bit more empathetic now.

“I get it,” she sighed, sounding resigned. “I’m a manager. And a mum.”

“Thanks,” Phil smiled tersely. “So then you won’t mind if I…?” he gestured vaguely over Louise’s shoulder.

Her eyes traced over him slowly, carefully appraising him. “Fine,” she relented after a minute. “Just… try not to be too hard on him, okay? I’m sure he’ll be in a touchy mood when he wakes up.” Despite her understanding words, Louise still looked wary.

Phil wondered how many stories of hot-tempered, passionate fights Louise had heard over the last year.

“I promise I won’t be a — I won’t be like Isabella,” Phil offered, hoping that the heavy, sincere weight of his voice would convince Louise that he was different.

Louise’s eyes grew wide, her jaw falling open just a hair — she looked surprised, but maybe also a bit… pleased? The tenseness in her shoulders melted — at least some — and she looked less wary. The assurance that not only he knew about Isabella, but was also determined to be different seemed to matter to Louise.

“Good. Because you’ll have me to report to if you hurt him,” Louise threatened, but there was a humorous glint in her eye and a hint of a smile ghosting her lips.

“I won’t hurt him, but that’s a deal.” Phil smiled weakly with an emphatic nod. “So is it okay if I…?” Phil pointed vaguely over Louise’s shoulder, trying to ask her to let him by as gently as possible.

Louise nodded, stepping around Phil towards the foyer. “Yeah, I’m going to nip out then. Tell Dan to text me at some point today, and be nice.”

Phil was tempted to make a sarcastic comment, but didn’t want to risk Louise’s trust. He couldn’t help feeling like he was on a very short leash as it was right now. “I promise I won’t even scream or anything, okay?”

“Good,” Louise said with a smile before heading for the lift. Just before she got to the foyer, she spun around to face Phil again. “Good luck with your mum. And manager.”

“Thanks,” Phil laughed with a genuine smile. “I think I’ll need it.”

Phil waited for the ding of the lift, wanting to make sure Louise was well gone before he sought out Dan, before gathering his courage and carrying on down the hallway. For a split second, he hesitated outside of the closed bedroom door, not completely certain that it was acceptable for him to just burst into Dan’s room and wake him up.

But the memory of the literal thousands of notifications was fresh in Phil’s head, so he pushed open the bedroom door anyway.

The bed, however, was neatly made, and there was no Dan in sight.

Weird. Louise had definitely said that Dan was still asleep. Maybe the guest bedroom?

Confused, Phil stepped backwards and turned back down the hallway, peeking his head into the next room. No Dan in that bed, either.

Phil couldn’t imagine that Dan would be in the music room, and he wasn’t sure where else to look other than the lounge. Phil made his way back, tentatively looking around the lounge entrance before entering.

Curled up on the sofa, still in his tight studded sweater from the night before, was Dan. Despite Phil’s confusion and anxiety, his heart melted. Dan’s hair — and the entire lounge, now that Phil was really looking — was a complete wreck.

There was glass on the floor, both large chunks and shattered shards, that Phil had to navigate around on his way to the sofa. The table — which Phil was accustomed to seeing in a pristine state — was covered in papers and — oh god was that the lube? — on one end. Dan’s notebook was open on the floor, surrounded by a hodge podge of markers. Phil had to bite back the urge to flip through it, to see what else Dan was working on, to pry just a little.

That wasn’t what was important right now, though. Phil turned his back on the mess and properly took in Dan’s lanky body curled up tight on the sofa.

Looking more carefully, Phil’s eyes lingered on where Dan’s trousers were riding down, a soft pale patch of stomach poking out. Dan’s hands were cradled near his face, and his phone was dangling from his fingertips. Phil hovered above Dan, rocking back and forth between his feet as he tried to decide if he really should wake Dan up.

Phil knew Dan had been up late — close to four, at least, and that was assuming he’d gone to sleep straight after texting Phil. Letting Dan sleep a little longer was definitely the nice, selfless thing to do.

But Phil was too anxious and desperate for answers to be selfless right now.

Before Phil could lose his nerve, he reached out and poked Dan’s shoulder.

The poke, however, didn’t seem to be enough to rouse Dan from his sleep. “Dan?” Phil tried, his fingers rubbing into Dan’s bicep a bit harder. “Babe? Wake up?”

“Mmmh,” Dan grumbled. Even in his sleep, Dan seemed reluctant to be roused.

“Please babe? I really need to talk to you,” Phil pleaded. He switched tactics and grabbed ahold of Dan’s shoulder, gently shaking until Dan started stirring.

“Louise?” Dan mumbled, nearly incoherent, without opening his eyes. “Wha’ d’ya want?”

“No, it’s Phil,” Phil corrected.

“Oh.” Dan’s eyes fluttered open, slowly drifting upwards to meet Phil’s.

They were red. Much redder than they normally were when Dan woke up.

The rawness of Dan’s eyes, and the way he rubbed at them, made Phil wonder just how late of a night Dan and Louise had had.

Blearily, Dan’s gaze fell from Phil’s, scanning the room before landing on his phone. Without saying anything else to Phil, he tapped the home button, only to sigh when it wouldn’t come on. “What time s’it?” Dan asked blearily.

“About eight thirty,” Phil guessed without actually checking a clock.

Dan nodded, his eyes drifting back to his phone. “Hang on,” he said, “Lemme plug this s’in ‘nd get some coffee.” Dan pushed up off the sofa, stretching slightly and making his sweater ride up even further. “Want some?” he asked, eyes bleary as he glanced at Phil before turning to leave.

Phil’s brows furrowed, bewildered that Dan was so casually offering him coffee.

As if nothing major had happened since they’d last seen each other.

“Wait—” Phil said as he reached out and caught Dan by the wrist, preventing him from going anywhere. “Are you not even going to acknowledge it?” he asked, annoyance starting to creep into his voice.

Dan raised his eyebrows, but didn’t say anything.

Phil blinked back rapidly, baffled by Dan’s lack of… well, anything.

“Oh come on, don’t play dumb,” Phil groaned, irritated. Dan’s eyes grew wide and he held Phil’s gaze for a fleeting moment before flickering off to the side. In the brief seconds that Dan had looked at him, Phil could see entire pools of emotions — emotions that he wasn’t quite sure what to make of. There was sleepiness, but there was also worry and… something else.

Something that Phil really wished Dan would just share with him.

“Your texts? Instagram? The internet?” Phil prompted, his voice growing more and more pointed with each suggestion when Dan didn’t say anything.

Dan ran his free hand through his hair, grabbing at the ends of his curls and tugging. His eyes drifted back to Phil’s, and he stepped minutely backwards, his hand nearly coming out of Phil’s grip. “I know, I know,” Dan finally sighed, sounding defeated “I just really need some fucking coffee first. I had a long night.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve had a long morning,” Phil countered; his fingers wrapped more tightly around Dan’s arm, his nails insistently digging into the soft underside of Dan’s wrist.

Dan flinched back, his hand yanking backwards out of Phil’s grip and curling protectively against his chest. “I suppose that’s my doing, then?” he asked meekly as he stared down at the space between them.

Phil shot Dan an unamused look, not that Dan was looking up to see it. A part of him was itching to reach out and force Dan to look up at him, but Dan didn’t look like he’d be okay with Phil touching him just now. “No, I normally wake up to thousands of notifications after a nice quiet day away from social media,” Phil quipped, unable to keep a sarcastic edge out of his voice.

Dan’s eyes clamped shut, and he drew in a sharp breath. His arms shifted to cross in front of his chest, his entire body crumpling in on itself. “Just… hang on,” Dan begged softly without looking at Phil. He sounded so small, so young. Guilt washed over Phil — he was responsible for making Dan look so vulnerable. “Let me get a cup of coffee. Please.”

Phil drew his hands back to his side, shoving them in the front pockets of his joggers as a silent promise that he wasn’t going to try to stop Dan. “Of course,” he nodded, trying his best to keep his voice soft and even. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

With a small shake of his head, Dan teetered away from Phil cautiously and backed out of the room without ever turning fully away. At the last second, Dan spun around, narrowly avoiding running into the doorframe as he exited the lounge.

It was an odd reaction, one that gave Phil the sense that Dan was afraid to turn his back on Phil. Self-defensive reactions like that weren’t usually natural — they were learned.

Phil swallowed thickly, suddenly wondering how deep Louise’s fears ran. Dan’s movements were shaky, guarded, and he seemed to be fighting the urge to not look over his shoulder. Not wanting to make Dan more uncomfortable, Phil trailed behind at a distance as Dan led the way.

In the kitchen, Dan went straight to start the coffee and Phil came to a rest at the opposite counter. Dan still wasn’t meeting Phil’s eyes — hell, he wasn’t even looking up — but Phil could tell that Dan knew exactly where Phil was by the wide berth he gave Phil’s spot along the counter.

The entire kettle shook when Dan filled it with water; his hands were trembling, but his jaw was set, rigid. “Coffee?” Dan murmured without glancing over.

“Sure,” Phil accepted quietly. He made an effort to keep his voice as soft and gentle as he could. “Milk —”

“And two sugars, same as your tea. I know,” Dan interrupted quietly. If something weren’t so clearly wrong with Dan’s behavior right now, Phil would have been touched that Dan knew how he took his coffee. Instead, Phil was hyper-focused on Dan’s shaky movements and watched carefully as Dan rummaged through the cupboards, finally pulling out a ceramic soup bowl that was nearly mug-like and — oh. Phil had forgotten that Dan only had one functioning mug.

Because Isabella smashed the rest. In a fight. A fight unlike any fight Phil that had ever had.

Regardless, Dan poured milk and sugar into the proper mug, adding only the smallest spoonful of sugar to the makeshift mug. That was so typical Dan — putting others first, always striving to make others happy. Phil’s lips twitched for a second, nearly quirking up into a smile at Dan’s persistent thoughtfulness.

Phil waited in silence for the kettle to boil, knowing that he wasn’t likely to get anything useful out of a sleepy Dan. Plus, he hoped that a bit of quiet — and space — would help calm whatever Dan’s fears were.

It felt like it took the coffee maker ages to brew their coffee. Phil was growing well anxious, and Dan didn’t seem to be in much of a better state. Eventually, though, Dan was pouring two cups of coffee, passing the polka dotted mug to Phil, and hugging the soup bowl close to himself.

Dan took a large gulp of his coffee, only lowering it a few centimeters when he was done. The mug was held up high, nearly obscuring his face, and his gaze was focused on the black liquid inside. Dan’s arms were tucked into his chest, and his shoulders hunched up. Again, Phil was struck by how small Dan looked.

“Well? Let’s hear it then,” Dan whispered without looking up.

“Hear what?” Phil asked, head cocked, confused.

“You’re mad at me, so let’s just… get the part where you yell at me or whatever over with.” Dan’s eyes flicked up, just barely landing on Phil, and looked back at his coffee so quickly that Phil would certainly have missed it if he wasn’t watching Dan so closely.

Phil’s heart plummeted into his stomach as Dan confirmed his dreaded speculations — all of this, all of Dan’s current behavior, had something to do with how fights had gone in the past. Phil opened and closed his mouth, sputtering stupidly like a fish as he tried to figure out what to say.

“I didn’t come over here to yell at you,” Phil tried his best to placate his boyfriend, even though he didn’t really know how. Not right now, not with this new, scared Dan.They’d only had one tiff since meeting, and then it’d blown over because Phil had dropped it. But it wasn’t a lie — no matter how desperate and confused and frustrated Phil was, yelling at Dan was never his intention.

“But you are mad,” Dan said simply, still addressing his coffee more than Phil.

“I’m not mad, I’m… in shock, I guess.” Phil blew on his coffee, stalling for time as he grappled for a way he could express his frustrations without unnecessarily startling Dan.

“Call it whatever you want, but I can tell you’re not happy with me,” Dan mumbled.

“Okay, fine,” Phil relented, swallowing his trepediations and deciding to speak his mind. “I was shocked when I woke up to thousands of messages on my social media talking about you coming out and speculating about us.” Dan nodded — a microscopic, subtle movement — but didn’t say anything, so Phil continued. “And I’ll admit that I was a bit miffed when I realized that Louise was here but you didn’t even try to contact me last night.”

“Louise is my best friend,” Dan pushed back, a hint of anger in his voice.

“And I’m your boyfriend now!” Phil insisted. “In order for a relationship to work, we have to communicate, Dan.”

“You’re not my fucking boss,” Dan barked. “I can talk to whoever the fuck I want to. And if you’ve got a problem with Louise, you can just leave now.” There was a harsh edge to Dan’s voice, but beneath it, Phil could just barely tell that it was shaking — shaking with what, he wasn’t sure. Anger, maybe. Or fear.

“I don’t have a problem with Louise,” Phil argued. “It’s just — I texted you four bloody times last night. You could have talked to me if you needed… I don’t know, help, or whatever.” Phil waved his hand in frustration as his words failed him.

Dan sat his mug down on the counter, a loud clack filling the kitchen as the ceramic made contact with the granite countertop. “Look I just spent a fucking year with someone who didn’t like Louise and hated that I went to her for stuff, and if you’re gonna be that way too, then just fuck off already,” Dan spat out harshly.

If Phil wasn’t already leaning against the opposite counter, he would have jumped back at that. As it was, his lower back dug into the counter as he recoiled from Dan’s words.

“Don’t fucking compare me to Isabella!” Phil snapped, disgust and horror holding tight in his stomach. “I don’t give a rat’s ass that you go to your best friend instead of me sometimes, but when you end up doing something that all but confirms that you and I are dating, yeah, I’d like to be a part of the decision!”

“You can’t control me Phil.” Dan’s shoulders drew up impossibly closer to his ears, his voice growing high pitched. “I can’t take the time to get written permission from you every time I want to say something about my album.”

“And I’m not asking you to!” Phil retaliated. “But couldn’t you have waited, like, a day so that I wasn’t completely blindsided by you basically outing me when I woke up this morning?”

“No,” Dan huffed, an edge of stubbornness cutting into his defiance.

“No?” Phil asked incredulously.

“No,” Dan repeated, his voice even more forceful this time. “You couldn’t have talked me out of it.”

“I wouldn’t have tried to!” Phil exclaimed before he could process what Dan had said — before he could process that Dan seemed to think that Phil would try to control him. In some ways, at least. “I get that given… your album…” Phil trailed off as he grappled for the right words, words that would capture how Dan’s album affected Phil’s life without him sounding ungrateful or overly important.

He took a deep breath before continuing. “I get that your album is going to take away some of the privacy and control over my image that I’m used to having online, and that’s fine. But couldn’t this have waited, like, a day so that we could talk about it first? And I could… I don’t know, tell my family we were properly dating first?”

Dan shook his head forcefully, his curls flopping down into his face. “You don’t understand Phil. There wasn’t time. It had to be now.”

“What is that even supposed to mean?” Phil huffed, his free hand lacing through his hair and pushing it further back.

“You wouldn’t understand,” Dan snapped, his arms crossing hotly in front of his chest.

“I’m sure I would if you would stop being defensive for five seconds and actually explained yourself!” The words flew out of Phil’s mouth before he realized what he was saying. They were harsh, yes, but they were true. It felt like all Dan was doing this morning was be overly contrary for no discernible reason, and he wasn’t fucking listening. Phil didn’t want to be angry right now, he really didn’t. It was just hard when Dan was acting like this.

Dan appeared to have heard that, though, if the way he flinched backwards was anything to go by.

“Excuse me?” Dan challenged. He sounded positively outraged, his tone just this side of livid. His shoulders were shaking, and Phil could see anger flaring in his eyes.

And something else, too. Something like… hurt.

Phil put his own mug down on the counter, dragging his hands down his face in exasperation. This wasn’t the conversation — well, fight, at this rate — that he’d come over here to have this morning. Phil hadn’t been wanting to argue, he’d just wanted to understand.

“I’m just trying to talk to you, Dan,” Phil pleaded, his voice coming out whiny and needy “I just want to know what the hell happened last night.”

“Right,” Dan laughed bitterly. “You want to know all about the part where I almost outed you, but you don’t seem at all concerned about the part where I actually came out.”

“That was your choice!” Phil insisted, voice raised.

“No it wasn’t!” Dan bellowed back.

Phil froze, his eyes snapping up to meet Dan’s again. Dan had pushed off the counter, and crossed almost half of the kitchen. He was standing rigid, his body leaning forward, his hands in tight fists by his sides. Dan’s eyes were blown wide — he looked shocked by his own words.

Phil certainly was.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Phil asked slowly, warily. Something happened last night — something big — that much was clear. What wasn’t clear, though, was why Dan hadn’t called Phil last night.

They could have talked about it. Phil could have helped.

“It means — it means —” Dan stuttered, before abruptly giving up. The tension melted out of Dan’s shoulders as he crumpled in on himself, retreating back to lean against his countertop. “It doesn’t mean anything. Can we just move on?”

“No we can’t bloody move on,” Phil huffed, his frustration growing. He’d passed impatient, passed needing answers; now, he was downright desperate. “Can you just tell me what the fuck you mean, already? What happened last night?”

Phil stared at Dan with pleading eyes, silently begging him to explain what he’d meant. For a moment, Dan just stared back at Phil. A loud silence overtook the room, neither of them saying anything else.

Finally, the tense silence was interrupted by a sharp sigh from Dan. Dan’s gaze fell from Phil’s, turning down to his own feet. An agitated hand ran through Dan’s hair, tugging on his curls.

A brief wave of relief shot through Phil, certain that he was about to get an explanation for Dan’s weird behavior. Phil pushed away from the counter, debating whether he should go to Dan, maybe tip his head up and kiss his forehead. Something small to make Dan feel more comfortable talking.

But then, Dan was crossing the kitchen in three big strides, coming to a halt right in front of Phil. Bewildered, Phil searched Dan’s face, trying to figure out what the hell Dan was doing. Dan’s eyes were wild, frantic, a panicked gleam shimmering in them. His cheeks were flushed red, his mouth drawn in a tight line. He was so, so close, so afraid.

And then he was gone.

Phil blinked rapidly, confused and unsure where Dan had disappeared to. One second he was there, and then poof he was gone.

Unsure, that was, until a sudden waft of cool air washed over his upper thighs.

Phil’s attention snapped down, finding Dan again. Dan’s hands were on Phil’s joggers — joggers that he’d managed to tug down to Phil’s knees before Phil had even realized where Dan had gone. He was still tugging, trying to wrestle them over Phil’s knees now.

“Dan, Dan, Dan, Dan, Dan,” Phil gasped, his voice coming out rushed and urgent. “What the fuck are you doing?”

Dan didn’t look up at Phil. Instead, his hands abandoned Phil’s joggers, leaving them wrapped around Phil’s bony knees, and latched onto Phil’s boxers. His hands pulled insistently, frantically — too frantic to be particularly effective, mercifully.

“Dan!” Phil implored. The shock of the situation finally wore off, and Phil finally launched into motion, his hands flying out to catch Dan’s and prying them away from his hips. His boxers were awkwardly a bit low now, but Phil didn’t risk letting go of Dan’s hands — Phil was worried that Dan would just reach back to pull them all the way over his arse. “Look at me!” Phil ordered forcefully.

Slowly, painfully, Dan’s eyes drifted up and came to rest somewhere around Phil’s neck.

Phil took a deep breath, calming himself down, before he hooked his fingers under Dan’s chin and coaxed his head the rest of the way up. “Dan, sweetheart, what are you doing?” Phil asked, careful to keep a gentle tone to his voice now that he had Dan’s attention.

“Making the fight go away,” Dan responded. His voice was small — so, so small — and he still wasn’t quite meeting Phil’s gaze.

Phil stared blankly, his eyes trailing over Dan’s scared face, as he tried to figure out what was happening.

Suddenly, Phil was assaulted with the image of Dan covered in hickeys and scratches, embarrassed and ashamed as he admitted to Phil that they were from angry sex — angry sex that came from a fight.

Phil’s jaw dropped.

It didn’t shock Phil to know that Dan and Isabella dealt with their problems through sex, but he was a bit astonished to find the effects so lasting, to realize that Dan still seemed to think that angry sex was the proper solution to an argument, even with Phil.

Phil shook his head forcefully — both in attempt to tell Dan no, and also to shake himself out of his head and into action.

“Babe,” Phil whispered. Looking down at Dan’s vulnerable, submissive stance, Phil felt his heart breaking. Desperate to make them feel like equals again, Phil sunk down to his knees, too. He let go of Dan’s wrists, reaching up to brush back his unruly curls from his face. “Blowing me isn’t going to make the fight go away,” he whispered softly..

“Oh,” Dan muttered, voice small. His eyes trailed down between them. Phil couldn’t see his expression, but his body language spoke volumes. “It’s well and truly fucked then, huh?”

Dan sounded so scared, so distraught, that Phil wasn’t sure what to say for a moment. Dan sounded like he genuinely believed that it — they — must be fucked if a blowjob wasn’t going to fix their fight.

Phil’s shock turned to horror when he saw tears leak down Dan’s face.

“Oh, baby. No, no,” Phil cooed. His hands flew from Dan’s hair to cup his cheeks, his thumbs swiping under Dan’s eyes and smearing the tears away. “No, nothing’s fucked baby.”

Slowly, Dan tilted his head up to look at Phil. “It’s — it’s not?” he hiccupped, his voice coming out higher and more crackly than normal.

“Of course not,” Phil promised, rushed and confident. His eyes were wide in horror at the very idea of them, this, their relationship, being over so soon. His brows were furrowed in confusion at the idea of Dan being concerned that this was over — that they were over. “But the way to make the fight go away is to tell me what’s going on, tell me what you’re thinking.”

Dan sniffled loudly, his eyes fluttering closed again. He was quiet for a moment, with the exception of a few residual hiccups, but then he nodded slowly, his eyes still closed.

“Yeah? You’ll talk to me this time?” Phil asked hopefully.

Dan nodded again.

“Without getting defensive?” Phil prompted, half teasing, half trying to encourage Dan to act more rationally this time.

“Yeah,” Dan agreed meekly. He fell forward, Phil’s arms wrapping around and catching him on instinct. The second Phil’s arms were around Dan, Dan burrowed into him, melting against his chest. Dan’s hands were smushed between them, crooked at an awkward angle, but Phil didn’t mind.

Silence settled between them as Dan calmed down. Slowly, gently, Phil started tracing his fingers up and down Dan’s spine, his fingers catching on the studs of Dan’s sweater.

After a moment, Dan mumbled, “Can we sit down?”

Phil pulled back and pressed a lingering kiss to Dan’s forehead. “Lead the way, sweetheart.”

Dan minutely leaned into Phil’s lips, pushing his head into the kiss for a moment before pulling back. He pushed up to his feet, and immediately offered Phil a hand up. Dan’s gaze trailed over Phil as he climbed off the floor; Phil felt his cheeks heat up in embarrassment as he remembered the state of his clothing.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” Dan muttered, his eyes meaningfully flicking down to Phil’s half drawn joggers.

“It’s okay,” Phil murmured back softly as he stood up with Dan’s help. Phil’s spare hand flew to his joggers, pulling them back up his hips as he stood. He tried his best to swallow down his embarrassment, to make his cheeks go back to a pale white; he didn’t want to call any more attention to Dan’s rash advances than necessary. Not right now.

For the first time that morning, Phil was thankful that he’d only been able to find the tight joggers that morning — anything looser would likely have slipped straight down Phil’s thin legs and likely made the whole situation more awkward.

Dan dropped Phil’s hand to turn and collect their coffees from their respective countertops while Phil fixed his pants and joggers,. “Come on,” Dan muttered, cocking his head out of the room.

Phil obediently followed Dan out the kitchen and towards the lounge, nearly smashing into him when Dan came to a sudden halt in the middle of the hallway.

“What?” Phil asked, alarmed.

Dan spun around to face Phil. “I don’t wanna be in the lounge.” His words came out rushed, his voice high. “It’s a mess.”

“I don’t mind,” Phil assured him, “But we can go wherever you want.” Phil stepped backwards, moving closer to the wall so that Dan could navigate around him and lead them somewhere else.

“I need something from in there, though,” Dan insisted; his words were vague, but his tone was determined. He thrusted their coffees at Phil without much more of an explanation. Phil grabbed the coffees in silent shock, his fingers barely wrapping around the mugs and steadying them before Dan let go.

“I’ll meet you in the bed,” Dan said with a note of finality.

Dan only made it a few paces down the hallway before he stopped and spun back around to face Phil. “If that’s okay, I mean,” he said quickly, his voice high and rushed. “It’ll be more comfortable than the music room and I swear I won’t, like, try anything again. Like, I promise I’ll talk, I’m just really tired and I —”

“Dan,” Phil interrupted gently. “The bed’s fine. Get whatever you need. I’ll be there waiting for you.”