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There’s an itch under Dan’s skin, the way there always is when he goes to visit his mother. Just a little thing, uncomfortable, like the world has tipped gently sideways. It isn’t either of the houses he grew up in, instead an entirely unfamiliar place that feels like it doesn’t quite have room for him. Or maybe he doesn’t want it to have room for him. It’s his fault, after all; his mum has stopped asking him to visit entirely, instead pointedly not mentioning how long it’s been every time he deigns to show his face.
The infrequent occasions where he does go to visit, he nearly always goes alone. For obvious reasons.
Scratch that. It’s not just an itch. His stomach hurts, his palms are clammy, and his heart is thumping in an odd, rapid rhythm. It was all so fucking stupid. He was fucking stupid, but that was nothing new.
Dan rubs his hands over his bare goosepimpled arms. He hadn’t thought to bring a jacket. It’s normally so much cooler in London. He leans his head back against the brick of the house and lets out a sigh.
He doesn’t look over when the front door squeaks open beside him.
“Hey,” says Phil lightly, and god, wasn’t it strange to hear his voice here, like cognitive dissonance, “You taking a smoke break out here or something?”
Dan snorts. He tilts his head even further back, closing his eyes. “I could take up smoking,” he grunts, just for something to say. “Would add more credence to my edgy persona.”
“Well, you better not, or you’ll be kicked out of the flat. I value my lungs, you know.”
Dan hears the door swing shut. Hears Phil shuffle closer to him, scuffing his trainers in the grass of the front lawn.
“You wouldn’t,” Dan says. “Who would make the coffee?”
“I’m just saying. You better watch yourself, mister, or you’ll be off the lease just like that.”
“Like that, huh?”
“Like that.” Phil tries several times to sharply snap his fingers and succeeds on the fifth or sixth attempt.
It draws a chuckle out of Dan, from somewhere deep in his throat. He crosses his arms over his chest, eyes still closed, and heaves in a deep breath. Even the air smells different here.
“She working you to death?” Dan blurts, before he can convince himself to stall any longer. “That why you came out to bother me?”
Silence, for just a brief moment.
“Think she’s realized I can’t cook for shit,” Phil says, still lighthearted. Gentle. Dan hates that he has to be gentle. “So I haven’t been tasked with any chopping or anything. But I am good for fetching things! And doing dishes!”
Dan hums. There is no reason for his palms to be this sweaty. “I see,” he mumbles. “You came to recruit me for dishes, then.”
“Oh,” Phil says. “No, I finished them. Just wanted to come check you were okay.”
Dan opens his eyes, finally, tilts his head towards Phil. He said it so casually. Like it wasn’t a big deal. Like it was normal, that Dan could barely stand being in his mother’s house, that he was a grown man and had still ran away to hide outside. And wasn’t it funny, that Phil was so natural here, that he smiled and joked and did dishes for Dan’s mother and fetched spices and didn’t feel sick, not at all, not even nervous, and here Dan was unable to hold a fucking conversation.
He should feel happy. It should feel nice. Instead, because Dan’s brain can never calm down and act right, it just made his guts twist.
Phil watches him. Quiet. Waiting. Phil’s very good at waiting, isn’t he.
Dan lets out a little sigh. Before his brain can tell him he’s being stupid, he reaches over to grip gently onto Phil’s pinky and leads him forward, away from the house and into the front garden. Phil follows willingly.
They settle onto the decorative bench there. It’s not very comfortable, and definitely not designed for two people as big as they are. Still, Phil is sitting up straight, and keeps an entirely respectable amount of inches between their thighs. He folds his hands and squeezes them together, resting in his lap. He’s so careful. Dan loves him for it. A part of him wants to lean over anyway.
Quiet, and more quiet. Phil does not ask him what’s wrong. He knows better.
Dan leans his elbows on his knees. He takes a few breaths, trying to steady his frantic heart.
“Dan,” says Phil, again, so gently.
Dan just shakes his head, back and forth, looking at the ground. “How stupid is this,” is what he finds himself saying, just a few shades shy of bitter, “I mean, how- how completely and totally stupid.”
“Not stupid,” Phil says hesitantly. They’re both without a script for this. Eight years and Dan still doesn’t know how to have this conversation, not in daylight, not sitting in his mum’s garden.
But it is fucking stupid, utterly ridiculous, the whole pantomime. Dan doesn’t bring Phil around his family because this is always what happens. Phil is lovely and funny and talks as much as possible, all to cover up how Dan can barely get two words out. And Phil says wasn’t that nice, says it’s never as bad as you expect it’s going to be, says I’ll come with you more often if you want. And Dan says sure, maybe, before avoiding it as long as he can. He hates doing this to Phil. Hates it. The worst part is he could fix it at any time, couldn’t he. Easily. Quickly. But he’s Dan Howell, so of course he won’t, and here they are.
“Eight years,” he says out loud, ignoring Phil’s comment. He kicks one shoe at the grass. “I can’t even be in a room with the two of you at the same time. I keep thinking I’ll throw up right there in the kitchen.”
He steals a glance towards Phil, who looks just a bit stricken. Dan is honest, always, to a fault- at least when it comes to Phil. But he never talks about this. Not so…openly.
Phil swallows thickly. He rubs his palms together, looking out at the road instead of Dan. “I didn’t know it was that bad,” he murmurs, too careful. “I could have stayed home. Are you scared I’m going to…”
Phil trails off. He gestures with a weak hand. Dan can fill in the blanks easily enough.
He blinks. Squints.
“That’s not what I meant,” Dan says, bluntly. There’s a hurt kind of pinch to Phil’s forehead and Dan desperately wants to make it go away.
Phil’s eyes dart back over to his. “Then…what?”
Dan’s lips part slightly. He drops his gaze again.
“I’m not scared you’ll say something,” he mumbles. “Or whatever. Obviously not. I just hate that…”
Dan squeezes his eyes shut. The words are stuck in his throat.
“Dan?” Phil asks, and why does he have to be so soft, why does he have to take care of Dan even when he’s being ridiculous, why is he the one having to hold it together when it’s not his house or his family or his baggage-
The least Dan can do is say it.
“I hate that I make you playact.” He forces the words out. “It’s not fair. To you. It’s never been fair. And it’s one thing to- to pretend, when it’s online, or to strangers, whatever. But this shouldn’t be…this is…”
Horribly, untenably, Dan’s voice breaks. He can feel himself on the verge of tears.
This is private. This is family. This is my mum, for god’s sake, and we still have to go through the same-
“Dan,” Phil says again, almost pleading, still not touching, “don’t say that, it’s all okay, you know it’s okay.”
Dan just gasps in a shaky breath. “You never make me do that,” he says, and it’s so childish and stupid but there it is, isn’t it, the center of it all.
Phil goes quiet.
There was never any pretending with the Lesters. And there never really had been, had there? Phil brought Dan around his family happily, eagerly, and his mum sent him home with tupperware full of cookies and his dad picked his brain about films they’d both seen and Martyn and Cornelia treated him like a second brother and there were never any awkward questions, no confrontations, just the truth nestled safely out of sight, and it was all so easy it made Dan’s heart hurt.
Dan’s eyes are wet. He wipes them with the backs of his hands. If they were home, Phil would have already had two arms wrapped around him by now. It feels wrong that he’s still sitting so far away. That he hasn’t even reached over to touch Dan’s shoulder. But then, those are Dan’s rules, aren’t they. Dan’s hangups. Dan’s neatly planted fence around their relationship.
“Look at me,” Phil says, quiet but firm. Dan swallows. And looks up.
Phil looks surprisingly calm. Sad, yes, but not a mess like Dan is.
“Don’t think like that,” he says, and it’s as solemn as Phil ever gets. “Never think like that again, I’m serious. We’re different people, Dan, with different parents. That’s just how it is. If you never want her to know then I’m happy to play your best mate for the rest of our lives. Just stop making up this version of me in your head who is so bothered by it. That’s not me.”
There’s a lump in Dan’s throat. Looking Phil in the eyes becomes too much, so he stares down at his lap.
“Okay?” Phil prompts, gently.
Dan blinks away the rest of the tears and nods minutely. “‘Kay,” is all he says, barely a whisper.
It’s quiet, for a minute. Phil doesn’t push him. Dan tugs at a loose thread on his jeans. He wonders if his mum, still inside making dinner, thinks they got lost or something.
Eventually Phil sucks in a breath.
“I like your mum, Dan,” he says, quietly. He’s staring down at the tips of his shoes. “She reminds me of you, sometimes.”
Dan grunts, surprised.
He hadn’t liked his mum for a long time. She was too…sad. They were both too sad, and in the middle of all of it there was no room for anything else. But that was the Howells, he supposed. If they were anything they were a sad fucking bunch.
“You mean she’s miserable,” Dan mumbles, and the words come out hollow when he’d meant them to be wry. “And a spiteful bitch.”
Agree, he begs in his head, eyes down on his lap, just agree, go along with it, I can’t do this. Not today.
Phil is quiet for a second. Dan can feel him thinking.
“No,” is what he says eventually. Dan’s eyes flit over to him, and Phil gives a little shrug. “I mean she’s funny. She’s got like- that same dry sense of humor. You know. And she looks a lot like you.”
Dan’s heart feels crushed in his chest. He just…he just.
“She’s not funny like your mum,” Dan says, almost a whisper. He barely gets it out.
Phil laughs softly. “That’s cos my mum is funny like me. And your mum is funny like you. That’s how genetics work, silly goose.”
Dan huffs. A tiny smile pulls at the corner of his mouth. “Pretty sure humor isn’t genetic.”
“It could be. Isn’t it, like, encoded in your chromosomes or whatever?”
Dan just shakes his head.
He glances behind them, just to make sure the bay window curtains are closed. And- fuck it- he leans over, forehead coming to rest on Phil’s shoulder.
He hears Phil’s small intake of breath. His arm raises up on instinct- and then there’s a small pause, deliberating, before Phil decides it’s allowed and tangles his fingers in Dan’s hair.
Dan knows this thought process very well.
“Sorry,” Dan mumbles, turning his head into Phil’s neck and closing his eyes. “I dunno why it’s so- hard. I don’t know.”
“Hey,” Phil says, so, so softly. “You don’t have to apologize.”
“I want to,” Dan says. “I just. I get so guilty. It feels awful.” He swallows. “That’s why I don’t like bringing you with me when I visit, Phil, not because I don’t trust you. That’s stupid. I just feel all gross.”
“Well, stop that,” Phil says lightly. His nails scratch gently at the nape of Dan’s neck. “Personally, I am having a lovely time.”
Dan laughs softly.
And maybe it meant something, deep down inside Dan’s messy soul, that Phil liked his mum. That he wasn’t pretending. That he didn’t dread being around Dan’s family. That even though Dan came from this cesspit of gloom and dysfunction, Phil didn’t flinch away from it. It was just…a fact of him. Like his birth date, or his name. Dan and his mum are complicated. That’s it. Nothing to worry about.
Because there’s no one around to see them, Dan turns his head and presses a quick kiss to Phil’s jaw. And then he sits up, disentangling them.
“Guess we should probably go back in,” Dan quips. “Before our suspicious absence really does reveal our secret.”
Phil laughs. “We’ll just tell her we were admiring her garden,” he suggests. “Mums love that.”
“You genius, you,” Dan says with a half smile, as they both stand from the bench and wander back through the yard.
They go inside. “Hey, Mum,” Dan says, poking his head back in the kitchen, and it isn’t so hard to breathe anymore.