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“God,” Phil says. “God. Fuck. Jesus Christ.”
“Stop using the Lord’s name in vain so much,” Dan tells him absently. “All this blasphemy. My grandma would be so disappointed.”
He’s not really listening. He’s pouring water into the kettle and the splash against the sink feels louder than it actually is.
He hasn’t noticed the tap, tap, tapping of Phil’s finger against the kitchen counter. He hasn’t noticed if Phil’s any paler than usual - and he might not even be. Phil doesn’t know if it’s true that people go white when they’re in stressful situations. Maybe that’s a myth. But Dan hasn’t noticed the terse pull of his lips into a line and even his telltale words give nothing away and it’d be so much easier if he just noticed. If he knew now that things weren’t right. If Phil didn’t have to break the picture perfect image of domesticity: his boyfriend boiling the kettle.
Phil should let him make a cup of tea and let Dan kiss him chastely on the cheek before he leaves for a 9 to 5 job. They’ll do the same routine for ten years and never feel any less in love. In five, Dan will add, “remember the kids have swimming after school, yeah?” A little boy with Phil’s eyes will cling to Dan’s leg and they’re excellent dads.
That’s what should happen. Phil should let Dan boil the kettle and make him a cup of tea. But he’s not going to. The tea could be cold and it’d still burn his tongue. God.
“Dan,” Phil says.
Dan looks up and a droplet of water lands on his hand, on the skin between his finger and his thumb and it captures Phil’s attention more acutely than it should. At least it’s looking. The kettle fills a bit too much and Dan says “shit” and reaches to twist the tap, quickly.
His hair is sleep-mussed and his mouth has that subconscious curl that people get when they’re happy. And he’s so content, untainted. Like there’s been gold light fanning down over him for a while and he’s been basking in the sun spit.
A few years ago Dan would have been alert from the offset. Saying Phil’s name slowly and asking what was wrong so many times Phil could barely get an answer in. Each symptom on its own would have hit alarm bells from the offset a couple of years back, but now Dan is a doctor who has ignored an entire disease.
After things stopped being bad and they fixed themselves up with mental bandages and pretend plasters, it was an unspoken belief that things could never get that bad again.
It could never be as bad as Dan saying, “don’t talk to me. Please.” Or sleeping in the spare room. It could never feel as lonely as him playing the piano with the door closed, or Phil ringing his Mum at ten to midnight and not even knowing well. Or not being the first to know when Dan changed his pizza order or Phil meeting up with old friends for coffee without saying anything and feeling like he was having a sordid affair. It was always the little things, the cracks in the sun roof and the cobwebs between limbs and the blue between kisses that hurt the most. More so than “maybe we should break up” because saying is easier than doing.
(Is it? Phil’s not so sure now, standing in the kitchen with tap tap tapping fingers and a lump of salt scalding his tongue.)
But when they got better, that felt final.
In bed with fingers weaved like together like silk spiderwebs and bodies curled into each other and swept up dust. “I’m so glad I didn’t lose you.”
“In fifteen years,” a casual slip of the tongue over breakfast croissants. And then grinning because it didn’t feel like a possibility, it felt like a plan.
Hearing the same songs sung over and over in the shower. And never once getting bored.
Dan’s happy and Dan doesn’t get scared anymore and Dan doesn’t worry about them. Dan notices Phil’s tone of voice and the rhythm of his fingertips and he doesn’t panic because it can never be as bad as before. Whatever happens they can get through it because they did once and that was the mark of forever.
(“I’d give up the internet for you.”
“I’d drink milk for you.”)
Whatever happens it can’t be worse than before. Forever is already set in stone but of course it isn’t because it’s fucking sand and it slips and falls. Sand can cling to rocks and get caught in the edges but it’s never trapped forever.
“What is it?” Dan asks, finally. He meets Phil’s eye and there’s no panic, just curiosity. And that’s the worst part.
“Leave it,” Phil says when he places the kettle down, ready to hit the switch and boil. It feels uncannily familiar to something Phil’s insides are doing at the same time.
“What’s the matter Phil?” Dan asks. “You sick? Did something happen?”
Did YouTube inexplicably shut down forever? Have their bank accounts been hacked and drained? Are there pictures of them making out all over the internet?
Whatever happens, we’ll get through it. Phil can read the words on Dan’s lips before he’s even thought them.
“God,” Phil repeats, because it’s the only thing that he can think. “This is really hard. Like really fucking hard, Dan, you have no idea.”
(“Words are hard,” Phil had said and Dan ran a finger over his bare chest and looked like he wanted to kiss him. “I have so much I want to say to you to tell you how much you mean. It’s really hard.)
“You’ve already seduced me Phil,” Dan joked. “It’s okay.”
A nervous laugh spilled out of his lips like water when you choke as you take a drink. Phil murmured, “you have no idea,” and kissed him, and it was 2009, and he’d never felt like this before.)
“What are you talking about?” Somehow when Dan frowns not one fucking inch of the light ebbs away from his eyes. “What’s happened, Phil?”
He looks like he’s going to move forward, make a comforting gesture. Touch Phil’s arm. Take a hold of his hand or press a warm kiss on the top of his head or run a finger along his wrist and that’s the last thing Phil wants. He takes a step back for security. Dan’s covered in glue and if he touches him now Phil will stay and he’ll be stuck here forever.
There are worse places to stay. Phil wishes he could. But it wouldn’t be fair to either of them. There’s a broken lightbulb between them and Phil’s never been very handy. He lets it flicker and fade and pretends that dim orange is a bright enough source of light to read a whole novel.
“I just,” God. He’s thought of what he’d say a thousand times and only really now has come to realise he’d never been listening. “I just don’t think this is going so well anymore.”
“What?” Dan blinks. “What isn’t going well?”
Dan is wearing Phil’s hoodie and an old pair of red and white checkered pyjama bottoms. Phil is dressed and ready in jeans even though it’s early. His coat is by the stairs and his toothbrush is in his bag and his oyster card is in his back pocket. He’s a terrible person probably.
(“What is it?” Dan asks between kisses and he quirks up his eyebrow and he’s so gorgeous and Phil doesn’t know how he got this lucky. “What can’t you say to me?”
Phil doesn’t know if he blushes or not but he hopes he doesn’t. If he does his face is crimson and he kisses him again. He doesn’t say it but he thinks it hard enough for a blood vessel to burst.)
“You and me, I think, I dunno,” Phil says and his neck might be bright red and he isn’t tapping his fingers anymore. He wants to but he feels he can’t. He’s too scared he’ll look impatient, like he’s waiting for this conversation to end so he can be out and over this. To hurry up and get Dan out of his life.
And God that’s not what he wants at all. He wants Dan in his life forever and ever and ever and. Sometimes he thinks about not having anime nights and ordering pizza and never running out of things to talk about and sharing the shower and spooning and kitchen floor picnics and blanket forts and domesticity and inside jokes and his best friend and his throat constricts. The thought of not having that, not having Dan makes his heart beat sickly and his chest tighten and his eyes sting. The thought of losing his best friend hurts as much as it did in year five when he and his old friend Bobby argued by the swingset for the first time. Except Bobby never shared his crisps and Dan was supposed to be forever.
But none of that changes the fact that maybe he doesn’t want to wake up beside him every morning for thirty years. He thought he did but when he thinks of being old with wrinkled weathered hands, Dan’s not the one he sees next to him, in a matching rocking chair and a matching wedding ring.
Dan’s staring at him with planetarium eyes and Phil doesn’t know what else to say.
“You don’t know?” he says at last. His voice doesn’t crack and Phil is impressed.
“No, I-” Phil pauses and takes a breath and thinks: no more lies. “We are going well, theoretically,” he says. Too quickly to give Dan any false inclination of where this conversation is going, he hopes. He’s not cruel and he’s not going to play with Dan’s feelings like half-broken toys, it’s just. It’s hard.
(“It’s hard,” Phil whines when Dan’s pestering him again. His eyes shine ultraviolet like he knows.
“It doesn’t have to be,” Dan whispers.)
“We’d be fine if it wasn’t – you’ve not done anything. And nothing has changed I just… I’ve changed. I guess. I just. I don’t feel like I did before.”
Dan looks at him, warily hurt. “Phil,” he says slowly, like he’s trying to understand. He looks really young in the mornings when his hair curls of its own accord. It reminds Phil of a little boy struggling to finish his maths homework. “You’re not breaking up with me, are you?”
Phil wants to say no because it sounds too juvenile and immature and high school. But that’s exactly what he’s doing. He’s pulling them apart with unapologetic hands, tearing them into two separate paths and futures with redirected routes. Crumbling apart their channels and their money and their home and their things. Breaking it all up.
“That’s – kind of. I guess. I just. I don’t think,” he sucks in a breath. “I should go.”
“Phil, no,” Dan says. Eyes like white balloons. A voice that trembles like a child lost in the supermarket asking for reassurance and Phil is the stranger that brushes past and startles them instead of helping to locate the parents. “Please. We have to talk about this.”
“There’s not much to say,” Phil tells him desperately. “It’s honestly – I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what’s changed but I can’t do this anymore. It’s not fair on you, is it? Not when I don’t really. I don’t know. Feel the way you do anymore.”
(“You can say anything to me, you know,” Dan says. Being with him like this is making Phil dizzy. It’s not even overtly sexual. It’s just kissing and touching and closeness. It’s being close enough to hear his heart beat and knowing he’s the one who makes it race like that.
“Can I?”
“Yeah. Of course,” he looks a little shy when he smiles, bashful, and confesses quietly, “I probably feel the same way you do.”)
“Since when haven’t you?” Dan looks so hurt and Phil wants to tap the counters down into rubble and dust so that his fingers are more of a weapon than his tongue.
“I don’t know. I’m sorry. I just woke up one day and it was like everything had changed.”
“What are you trying to say Phil?” Dan looks him in the eye and Phil wonders when he’s going to start crying because Dan is the worst at hiding his emotions and the planets on his face are starting to shine. “Just say it to me. Just tell me. Make me understand.”
“I don’t know. I…”
“Stop saying that. Of course you know. You’re the one saying it, thinking it,” feeling it, Phil thinks. He can almost imagine Dan’s heart breaking into two comical cartoon halves. He wonders if that’s vain. Probably not because his own chest rips at the thought and it’s not at all comical, nor romantic. He wants Dan to take his heart back and wrap it in protective packaging.
Phil doesn’t reply.
(“Surely you know, anyway,” Phil mumbles. “It’s kind of obvious.”
“Nope,” Dan says. “You’re the one thinking it and feeling it, why would I know?” His eyes are twinkling and he knows and it makes Phil want to kiss him.
He lets it go. Distracted by wandering lips and soft murmured words and laughter against his collar bones but Phil doesn’t let it go. Phil is still feeling it. He feels it even when he’s not thinking it and Dan should be the last thing on his mind, and yet he pulls his way to first.)
“Have you stopped loving me?” Dan asks, and God. Phil thinks of a million swear words. He could build a city out of them. A whole country. A universe.
“Not. Not loving you,” Phil’s words come out in a tirade of strange strangled sounds and ums and breaks and mix-ups. “I still love you because how couldn’t I? Because you’re my best friend and I’ll always love you and you’ve always been there and I want you to always be.”
A pause. Waterfall-length and desert-stretching. Spanning all the planets of the galaxy. Each second passing marks the jump between Mercury to Venus, to Earth, to Mars, and so on. Right up to Pluto.
“But I don’t think I’m in love with you, I guess. I guess – I guess that’s what I mean.”
(Phil says, “I love you,” as the two of them fall asleep and the dreams are starting to cloak him and pull him into a world where everything is soft.
Dan’s hand gripping his isn’t soft, his fingers are bony and hard but everything feels oft, so Phil doesn’t mind being pulled out of dream world.
“Really?” Dan asks. “Like. Love-love?”
“Love-love,” Phil confirms. “I think. Like, in love. I think. Probably. Maybe. Shit.”
“You think or you know?”
Phil thinks of inside jokes and skype calls that last all night and almost falling asleep at work and smiling at text messages and holding Dan’s hand and Uma Thurman and train platforms and train tickets and distance and longing and yearning and here, now, the feeling of Dan’s breath hot against him and Dan and Dan and Dan.
“I know,” he says, and Dan kisses him as if he’s trying to keep him awake forever, until Phil feels dizzy.
“Also, I love you too,” Dan whispers and Phil smiles until his face hurts and says, “I hate you for this,” and Dan beams and says, “I know.”)
“You guess or you know?” Sarcastic dry choke cough laugh voice. The one Dan uses when he’s about to cry and before Phil opens his mouth Dan knows from the black ink look in ice eyes and that’s it. There he goes and Phil thinks about the splash of water dried on his palm and he wishes he could make these droplets go away just as quick.
He wants to step forward but when he does he remembers Dan’s voice from four years ago saying: don’t fucking touch me Phil.
“I know,” Phil says, and Dan says, “of course you fucking do.”
When Dan gets sad he gets angry and when he cries he gets angrier and the room is silent, but Phil’s fairly sure he can hear the beat of Dan’s heart bouncing off the walls and pushing tiny spears into Phil’s wrists.
“Why are you still here?” Dan asks, his voice thick. He turns away and Phil can’t see his face.
Dan reaches out to cling to the counter tops and Phil doesn’t have an answer. He wonders if this is how people feel after they’ve commit a brutal act of violence.
“I’ll go,” Phil says. He hasn’t seen Dan’s eyes yet. He remembers them crinkled and laughing and smiling, washed in light and shining beneath blue. He doesn’t want to see them.
“You do that,” Dan says. He’s not looking up and he’s holding the counter and Phil wishes he still loved him.
He turns around and he walks out of the room, and when he’s halfway across the hallway he hears the splash of the sink beginning to run. He wants to turn around, but he doesn’t have the right anymore.
So he doesn’t. So he keeps walking, and he grabs his coat, and he leaves his key on the little domestic mat that spells out ‘WELCOME’.
He turns the lock, and steps outside of the door, and tries to remember the look on Dan’s face when Phil told him he loved him and not the one when Phil told him he didn’t. He thinks of that moment, thinks of unprecedented happiness and it’s colour like gold corn and he aches for it. He remembers that feeling, distantly, but he doesn’t remember how he came to feel it. He doesn’t know how to get it back.
Outside it’s windy, and Phil can remember more of the moment he told Dan he loved him when he was only nineteen more vividly than he can the seconds just gone, where he took it all away.
Phil remembers being tongue-tied.
Telling someone you’re in love with them is hard, he thinks. God. It’s fucking hard. He looks at their door and he pictures domesticity and he turns around and walks away.
But telling someone you’re not in love with them anymore is even harder.