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dan-whoell · 3 months

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Word count: 3915

Phil makes some changes and meets a boy named Dan.

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There’s a boy in Phil’s bed.

It’s Saturday morning and there’s a boy in his bed and he can only half remember how they got there. He knows it started late on Thursday night, scrolling through an ex-friend’s instagram, watching the two of them grow up side by side until it was only one of them changing. Not ex-friend in the sense that it ended particularly badly, but in the sense that phone calls and texts came less often, because as people grow older they often grow apart. They become different people and that’s just life, isn’t it? The friend cut his hair, started wearing proper adult clothes, has a beard. (Phil had one too, for a while, but then he no longer wanted to string someone along like that and so they broke up. He’s pretty sure she’s engaged now.) He watched years pass and appear in his friend’s face, and he watched himself plateau, stay exactly the same and never step outside of his comfort zone. Easier to remain perpetually a child than realize his evolution was wrong.

He has other friends, acquaintances, and they make jokes about how he hasn’t changed in over a decade. Okay, fine, his hair has gotten the tiniest bit shorter but it’s still the same style. A graphic tee and skinny jeans? Groundbreaking. He swapped his old shoes for converses that have rainbows on the soles, but he makes sure to keep his feet on the ground, always. It normally doesn’t bother him. Sure, there’s been an itch under his skin for several years now, a prickling sensation when yet another person claims to know him. That doesn’t mean that he isn’t fine. He is fine. He’s great. The itch comes and he ignores it and things continue on.

But that night. That night he let himself scratch it, nails digging into soil beneath his skin, down and down and down until he unearthed a version of himself that he’d long since buried. A version that was open, outspoken, unapologetic. A version that saw opportunities and seized them. A version that never asked can I but only how will I.

He thought that by Friday morning the itch would be gone, the desire mentally explored enough that he could move on. It wasn’t, of course. In fact, it was so much worse than it had ever been. All of his rumination had made it seem possible. He could make changes. He had the power to call a salon and make an appointment for an hour out. He could so easily get on the train afterward and find a store full of the clothing he’s fantasized about for years. Then a bar, have some drinks, maybe even meet someone. Truly embody the kind of confidence he’s only ever dreamed about. He had the power to do anything he wanted.

There’s a boy in Phil’s bed and yes, technically speaking he knows exactly how they got there. A mental spiral and a few too many drinks can take a guy anywhere, but the details are fuzzy. He can’t remember whose idea it was first, which of them plucked up the courage to suggest spending the night together, who insisted on it being Phil’s flat that they stumbled back to. All he knows is a dimple, warm brown eyes and knees pressing into his own. Glances from strangers gave him goosebumps, but a hand on a wrist and a soft laugh in his ear drowned out everything else. A night unlike any other that Phil has experienced.

But it’s morning now, and the person beside him is a stranger. He doesn’t know what the protocol is here. His first instinct is escape, slinking off to his kitchen to make coffee and pretend like he does this all the time. Maybe the guy would get the hint and they’d avoid interaction all together. Or should he say something, wake him and tell him to get lost? That seems harsh, and besides, he’s not entirely sure he wants to say goodbye just yet. There was so much laughter last night. So much light. And maybe some of it was nerves but not all. Part of him wants to see if there could be something here, something more than one night and an awkward morning.

Phil takes a breath, leaning heavily toward running away, but then the stranger stirs, blinking and looking at Phil through his eyelashes. Christ, who gave this guy warm brown eyes like that, a vat of chocolate he could fucking drown in and say thank you for the opportunity. Add it to the list of reasons they ended up here. In Phil’s bed. In the morning.

He has to get out of here.

“Morning,” the stranger says just as Phil manages to stammer out “Coffee!”.

There’s a beat of silence between them as they stare at one another, neither of them quite sure what to say. It becomes one of those moments when someone’s brain is screaming at them to say something, anything, but there are no words available. The silence stretches, and with every passing second it just gets more awkward. This right here might actually be the longest two people in this situation have ever gone without speaking. It must be. It’s fucking excruciating, and-

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to-”

But Phil doesn’t hear what it is the stranger didn’t mean to do, because the broken silence has propelled him from the bed, and the room, and before he even realizes he’s moving he’s in his kitchen. Thank whatever gods above that he’d at least worn boxers to bed. God, why didn’t he think this through? How had he failed so spectacularly in his stupid personal transformation? How the fuck did he think changing his clothes and acting out of character would actually change his personality? He’s anxious by nature and he hates unfamiliar situations. Of course, bring a stranger home. That should go well.

“Good job, Phil,” he mumbles to himself, shaking ground coffee into the filter a little more enthusiastically than is strictly necessary. He ends up with dried coffee all over his counter, which is pretty par for the course this morning. “This just gets better and better.”

From behind him comes the sound of a throat clearing, and when he spins around he finds the stranger, dressed, and with a small smile on his lips. “Everything alright?”

“Oh yeah,” Phil lies, figuring it’s better than the slight breakdown truth. “Made a mess, um- do you want coffee?” He hooks a thumb toward the aforementioned mess, desperate for something to do with his hands. He’s acutely aware that he’s in boxers and nothing else. Meanwhile the guy is in dark jeans and some kind of black and white lace print button down. There’s an image in there he can’t quite make out. A skull maybe? He’s hot, is the point, and Phil is wildly undressed for the occasion. “It- It’ll be a few minutes, but you’re welcome to stay and wait.” This is another lie, Phil would very much like to have his freak out alone, thank you, but he’s not really in charge of his own words at the moment. “Not stay, I just mean- you know, wait for coffee-”

“It’s okay,” the stranger cuts him off. “I have shit to take care of this morning, but thanks.”

“Right, of course.” Of course the guy doesn’t want to stay. Why would he? “Then I guess I’ll see you later…uh-” He’d been so ready to use the guys name, used the obvious intonation. Except he can't remember the guy’s name and he just feels like an idiot.

But his ineptitude only gets him a smile. “I’m Dan.”

“Dan,” he repeats like an automatic reflex. “I knew that, too, I just-”

“Sure you did.”

“I did, it was on the tip of my tongue!”

“Believe me, I know where it was, Phil.”

There’s a beat of silence before they both dissolve into giggles, and something like relief floods through Phil. He’s okay. They’re laughing, and it suddenly feels so easy. He can relax with this guy. With Dan.

Still, he has to explain himself a little.

“I- christ, I’m sorry,” he manages . “I don’t really do this.”

“Do what?” The corner of Dan’s mouth pulls up in a crooked smile. “Bring home random guys you meet in clubs? Or have conversations with them the next morning?”

“Neither,” he admits. “I was having a weird day yesterday-”

Dan nods, and for a brief second the tiny spark of hope he’d felt flares up in his chest. “Understood. I’ll go and we can forget this ever happened.” Just like that the flame is gone, snuffed out with just a few words. What was he thinking? How did he think he could be this person? The drinks and the clothes and the-

“Oh god.” He’d forgotten. Somehow, in all of the excitement of the new confident self he’d decided on, he’d forgotten about his hair. “I’m blonde, aren’t I?”

He’s met with a raised eyebrow from the boy who said he was leaving, but hasn’t. “You are. Is this news for you?” He gestures over his shoulder. “Should I call someone? Are you having a breakdown?”

“No, I-” God, how the fuck did he get here? A crisis of self, yeah, but how did that spiral become explaining his fucking crisis to a stranger in his home? A stranger who slept in his bed and kissed him breathless and touched him so gently he thought he might melt. He owes this man some sort of an explanation, but he cant bring himself to start at the beginning. “It’s new,” he says finally, like that explains anything at all. “I just had it done yesterday.”

“Yesterday?” Dan echoes, his eyebrows very nearly hitting his hairline. “You dyed your hair blonde then picked me up in a club?” Of course, Phil has to nod because that is the exact sequence of events, minus the crop top and leather jacket purchase. Dan just shakes his head. “Is this a crisis twink thing?”

“No,” Phil says quickly. Because it’s not. At least, he doesn’t think it is. His breakdown has very little to do with his sexuality he’s pretty sure. Okay, there is the undeniable fact that his breakdown directly lead to the stranger in front of him. But it’s not like he was having the breakdown about his sexuality, it was his entire existence that caused the problem, and part of the solution happened to be casual sex with a beautiful stranger. Dan is simply a side effect. Correlation, not causation. Something like that. “No, this isn’t a crisis twink thing.”

“Right…” It comes out slow, and he knows that Dan does not believe him. “Well we can unpack that later, right now I’m actually late and there are people who will kill me for such an infraction.”

Phil finds himself nodding. “Okay, yeah, don’t want to be responsible for your murder.”

It isn’t until after the door is closed and he’s all alone does he wonder what Dan meant by later. They have no way of contacting one another since they never exchanged numbers, and he can’t imagine Dan intends on randomly showing up at his door. What if Phil had some prior commitment and he won’t be home? He will be, of course, because he’s almost always home, but that’s beside the point.

It occurs to him that Dan might have said it out of habit, that he didn’t mean it literally. Yes, that has to be it. They had one night together and that was it. Odds are, he will never see Dan again.

***

A few hours later Phil’s phone buzzes in the middle of an episode of The Office. Initially he assumes it’s a family member checking on him, maybe a friend he hasn’t gotten back to recently. Basically, the usual. Instead it’s a number he doesn’t recognize but a name he does.

is dan

want to resume our earlier conversation? free therapy that’s worth what you’re paying?

howd you get my number?

can’t reveal my secrets unless i know you’re really cool

im very cool. remember my hair and my jacket?

i called myself from your phone after you fell asleep

why??

bc i knew we’d have that deep conversation this morning

really?

no you walnut i wanted to hook up again. then the conversation happened and now i want to see you for multiple reasons.

okay

do you want to meet somewhere?

i literally woke up next to you i already know where you live.

im at lunch now but i’ll text you when im on my way later

He sends a thumbs up then tosses his phone to the other end of the couch, hands shaking. There’s no reason for him to be so stressed out at the prospect of seeing Dan again, and yet. It dominates his thoughts all day, an ever changing monologue of what he’s going to say in regards to his mild breakdown this morning. The easy thing to do would be start at… not the beginning, exactly, but close enough. The instagram post and all the thoughts it dredged up. He won’t go into detail about every issue, or how long they’ve been going on, but he’ll give the general idea. Nonchalantly, he suddenly realized he wanted a change and he went after it. No big deal.

The important thing is that he’s prepared.

***

Some time after nine pm there’s a knock on his door, followed immediately by a text.

open up

Phil takes a deep breath, steeling himself for this. He can be cool. He can get his shit together and be a normal, regular person. He definitely knows how to do that. He starts pacing. There’s definitely not a pit of anxiety in his stomach, begging him to block Dan and pretend that he’s not home. Maybe he could move. The odds of his landlord noticing him leaving are slim, it would only become a problem when the guy doesn’t get his rent check. Could he manage pay another month and secure a new place to live? It’s possible. He could call his parents and have an extended visit, he’d figure it out-

His thought spiral is interrupted by his name being called through the door. “Phil? You know I can hear you moving around in there, right?”

Shit. Even with an entire day to have it together, he hasn’t thought it through enough. He should have said no earlier, he should have never gone out last night, he should never have let Dan think he’s someone worth getting to know. He’s too awkward and too anxious and-

Again, his name through the door. “Phil? Will you please let me in before your neighbors call the police?”

With no other choice, he opens the door to find Dan, but he’s different than he was earlier. Gone is the hot, put together guy from this morning, and in his place is a pair of black sweatpants and a black t-shirt that reads I think he’s gay with an arrow pointing up. Somehow this is even hotter than the lace print version of Dan, and Phil kind of has zero interest in exploring the state of his mental health right now. He has far more important matters on his mind.

“Hi.”

"Hi."

He doesn't know who reaches for who first, or how after one night together they've managed to get on the same wavelength where they don't even need to say words out loud to one another. But they are, and before he knows it they're horizontal on the couch, all kiss swollen mouths and wandering hands. With Dan on top of him, it's like nothing else matters, it all melts away into nothingness.

By eleven there’s a boy in Phil’s bed again.

“So,” Dan says, his head on Phil’s chest and his fingertips drawing idle patterns around Phil’s collarbone. “Are you gonna tell me about the blonde now?”

Right, the actual talking portion of this get together. He’d kind of forgotten about that part of the agreement, more interested in losing himself in sensation and fully ignoring any lurking anxieties. “It’s not as big a deal as I made it out to be. It’s just a change.” So much for his carefully prepared monologue.

“A change,” Dan echoes. “You dyed your hair blonde then took a strange man home, both things that are admittedly out of the ordinary for you. It sounds like more than just a change.”

Phil wants to ask if this is how casual hookups usually go. It had been awhile before Dan, and he’s never been great at the casual part of it all. He has a tendency to grow attached rather quickly, sometimes blowing things up bigger than they are. Making them more important than they are.

But this, the way Dan is curled into him, the way every touch is incredibly gentle and full of something akin to adoration- he can't be alone in how he's feeling. Can he? After all, Dan was the one to put the pieces together on Phil's crisis. He thinks of the text now i want to see you for multiple reasons. In twenty four hours they've made something here, and nothing good starts without the truth.

So he explains it all. The rotted ties and the instagram spiral and the itch deep under his skin. He tells Dan how he’d always wanted to go blonde, had even tried once but royally fucked it up. It happened when he was still figuring out his emo aesthetic, and it was such a brief period everyone forgets it ever happened. He feels ridiculous, pouring out all of his insecurities to this person he’s only just met, but there’s also a strange sense of peace. Dan has no preconceived ideas of him, so he can be really, genuinely honest and he doesn’t have to worry about the repercussions.

“Let me ask you this,” Dan says when he’s finished, and there’s so little judgment in his tone it’s almost jarring. He simply sounds curious. “The black emo fringe, graphic tee and skinny jeans thing- why’d you start doing it?”

Phil considers it, but the question doesn't make any sense to him. “What do you mean why?”

“Well, you started dressing a certain way when you were a teenager. Why that way? Why not a different aesthetic completely, or something like what you’re trying to achieve now?”

It still seems like a weird question, but he gives it his best shot. “Because I wanted to, I guess? I liked the look, I thought it was really cool.”

“And now you don’t.”

“No, it's still cool, it’s just-”

“Not who you are anymore.”

A beat of quiet. “Not who I want to be, I think.”

“Good news, Phil, you can be literally whoever you want. People change. You wanted to do the emo thing for a while, so you did. And now you want to do the blonde crisis twink thing, so you are. It’s fine.”

“It’s not a crisis twink thing!” he insists, but he can’t help the laugh that accompanies the protest. It dies down quickly though, thoughts of his family and friends’ reactions creeping into his head. “Is it weird that I’m worried about telling people? Like, it’s a joke that I haven’t changed, but also it’s not? I kind of feel like I should have just stuck it out, made more gradual changes.”

“It’s your life, Phil. You should be doing what you want.”

“See logically I know that, but in practice…” he lets the sentence trail off, skimming his fingertips up Dan’s arm. In practice he’s done it before, hasn’t he? He’d wanted to go blonde, so he did. He wanted new clothes, so he bought some. He wanted Dan, and now here’s Dan in his bed, encouraging him to continue being selfish. "I'm thinking about how they'll react."

"Does it matter? It's your hair." He reaches up to tousle it, knuckles dragging gently across Phil's cheekbone before his hand settles back to where it was. "You were who they wanted for long enough."

"I was who I wanted to be too, it wasn't just about them."

“At one point it was about you, and then it became about your brand-”

“No,” Phil protests . “I'm just a normal guy, I don't have a brand. ”

“Everyone has a brand, Phil. It's the way people perceive you.” Dan props himself up some, hand sliding from Phil's collarbone to his sternum, right in the middle of his chest. “Here's the thing, right, no one actually knows another person, they only know their idea of them. We get the bones of someone, standard facts and childhood stories or whatever, and then we fill in all the gaps. But we're just making shit up. We might get it close but it's never a true representation of who that person is.”

The way Dan presents it, he finds it hard to disagree. But. “What's that got to do with me treating myself like a brand?”

“You figured out how people fill you in, and now you're scared to tell them they're wrong. It sounds like you're doing the opposite, like you're leaning into the idea they have of you even though it's not who you really are.”

Phil cannot speak. The weight of Dan's hand feels enormous, pressing down into his heart. How is it that Dan, a virtual stranger, has cut so succinctly into him when friends he's had for years can't see it? Maybe it’s simply a matter of Dan’s outside perspective, maybe it would be just as obvious to anyone else hearing Phil’s story. Maybe his friends are too close to see him objectively. Maybe Dan is extremely observant and it’s a total coincidence that they’ve stumbled upon each other.

Maybe it’s more than that.

“To be honest,” he manages to say “I’m not sure I actually know who I am.”

Dan does not miss a beat. “You’re the person who picks up random guys in clubs then pours your heart out to them the next night,” he says, grinning. “And you’re blonde while you do it.

It cuts the tension in him like a hot knife through butter.“I am not the pick up random guys guy, I promise you,” he says, the words coming out around a scoff.

“Oh no?” Dan dips his head, ghosting his lips along Phil's jaw. “What makes me special then?

Truthfully, Phil doesn’t know the answer. But it is an accurate statement. Dan is special, somehow sees past the brand as it were and into Phil’s heart, right under where he has his hand. “I don’t know,” he says. “Glad it happened though.”

“Where else are you gonna get a free private therapist who will also have sex with you?”

“I could probably call around.”

Dan presses his face into Phil’s neck, his laugh warm and wet in the skin there. “Right,” he says, turning his head, gentle breath skimming over Phil’s throat. “Well if anyone answers let me know. Until then if you need help figuring shit out, I’m happy to be a sounding board."

It is quite possibly the greatest offer Phil has ever heard. “Might take you up on that.”

“Good. You’d better.”

There’s a boy in Phil’s bed, and he thinks it might be the start of something real.

#honestly fuck the text message portion of this evening #anyway. you ever write something bc it's what you need to hear? this is that. and i hope it reaches whoever else needs to hear it.#phan #phanfic #ks writes #ks talks

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