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Dan’s stomach hadn’t ceased its incessant whirling in hours. It landed him firmly between sick and something so much worse.
It wasn’t like he and Phil hadn’t talked about things. Feelings. They’d talked about Feelings with a capital F. Dan wasn’t particularly adept at discussing them or even understanding them when they winked to life in the deep cellar of his chest—the one he’d locked the door to when he was young. Before he understood the entity that resided there, down in the center of him. It scratched at the floorboards seeking a way out and he only had so much energy to delegate to filling the cracks when they appeared.
Hence Phil. Hence the trip to Phil’s family's house. Hence the train ride he’d barely survived without falling through his seat and being granted mercy by the unforgiving tracks below.
Phil had said there wouldn’t be any pressure. They’d just hang out, make a video, and the two would get to know each other better. Better. That was the word that kept swirling around Dan’s mind. Because obviously he and Phil knew one another. They’d been talking for months. Phil knew all of Dan, he thought, right to that rotten center of him. But better implied something more.
More.
More.
More.
His mind tripped over the word at the same time he lost his balance stepping over the threshold of Phil’s bedroom.
“Sorry!” Phil said, catching Dan’s arm as Dan kicked aside a pile of clothing.
“It’s a bit of a mess,” Dan said as he sniffed a laugh.
“What?” Phil glanced around the room as if taking it in for the first time. “Oh.” A hand cupped around his mouth. That mouth that Dan definitely hadn’t been staring at. Phil seemed to catch his giggle with his palm, and Dan smiled. There was something endearing about Phil in a way that even the camera hadn’t been able to capture. “I swear to god, it didn’t feel this messy when I left to get you. I would’ve tidied.”
Dan felt as if that might be a lie, but a rather charming one. He just shook his head. “I don’t mind.” And he didn’t. Really. It was like taking a look into Phil’s mind, this, being in his space. It was so strikingly different from what Dan had imagined. He had seen Phil’s room. Through video. But now he got to place everything in 3D in the space. A real bed. Walls that got to cradle this man inside of them every night. Phil—real, not a collection of pixels. A person. A colorful, funny, patient person.
That entity in Dan’s stomach did another somersault, and Dan pulled his arm away as he leaned against the doorjamb. His arms found a respectful place against his chest, folded and restrained from reaching out again. Sensing the retreat, Phil pulled back, a tight smile tugging at one corner of his lips.
“You want to sit down?” Phil asked, gesturing to the bed.
“Sure,” Dan said, finding the courage to take another step into the room, avoiding the clutter he now eyed as he walked. It was easier, looking down, than finding those piercing blue eyes. He had to avoid them, actually. That gaze could see veritably through him. Dan was used to being a mystery, a dark wall erected between him and the rest of the world. But the moment he saw Phil, he knew there was nothing he could keep hidden from him. He’d already read him from the inside out and now all Dan could do was collect the pieces Phil’s eviscerating stare had bled from him. Piece by piece.
He liked him. Dan really liked him. But that didn’t mean this was safe. He couldn’t just let Phil in entirely. That wasn’t worth it. Something would go wrong; it always did, and Dan would be alone. Again. Chastising himself for ever granting himself permission to check on that thing he kept locked away between his ribs.
That’s why Dan took the comfortable seat on the floor just below Phil as Phil sat at the lip of the mattress.
Distance. Distance was…safe. So Dan breathed a little easier, if only for a moment.
Then Phil slid from the bed, resting himself across from Dan on the floor, blue eyes peering into Dan’s warm brown ones. “You hate me?” Phil joked, nudging Dan’s knee with a socked foot.
“No,” Dan said. “I’m just awkward,” he said with comedic emphasis, but Phil didn’t laugh. Which was stupid, you see, because Dan always made people laugh. It was his thing. So why didn’t it work on this gorgeous man who—damn it, why wouldn’t he look away from him.
“I don’t think you’re awkward.” Phil nudged Dan again this time with a toothy smile. “Or maybe you are, and then so am I.” Phil's shoulders touched the bottom of his ears as he lifted them. “Who cares?”
“Lots of people?” Dan laughed awkwardly.
“Well then, fuck lots of people,” Phil said with a definitive nod.
“Do you?” Dan’s brows shot up as he snickered and Phil followed suit, tossing his head back, putting on display that pale column of his throat.
“No. Damn, you know what I was saying.” Phil shook his head with a toothy grin.
Dan rubbed his palms down the length of his thighs, drying them. “Yes. That you lure lots of men across the internet, treat them to a lovely day, and then use your dirty room as a ruse to get them into your bed.” This was easier. The joking. It made things one degree off the truth, and that is where Dan had been comfortably living his entire life thus far.
“And look how well that turned out?” Phil shook his head. “This one rathers the floor.”
“I prefer to be closer to the mess.” Dan picked up an errant sock, and Phil smacked it from his hand with a horrified gasp.
“Stop. Oh my god, I’m actually embarrassed.”
“It’s really growing on me,” Dan said. “Means you don’t really have a slew of men in and out of here.”
“Yeah?” Phil’s cheeks were turning a rather alluring shade of pink.
“One of them would have tidied up by now.”
Phil shoved at Dan’s knee, and Dan fell to his side with a laugh.
“You’re terrible!” Phil cried, and it only spurred Dan’s laughter.
“I’m joking!” Dan said, and he was only moderately disappointed when Phil removed his warm hand from Dan’s body. Sitting up slowly, Dan found Phil kneeling in front of the bed, flipping open a laptop and adjusting the webcam.
“What are you doing?” Dan asked, tilting his head rapidly to adjust the hair falling into his eyes, using his finger to guide it along.
“Should we film that video?” Phil sat on his ankles and turned to Dan, the hand previously on the keyboard twinkled its fingers toward the monitor.
Dan practically jumped at the idea. He hadn’t been awkward since meeting Phil until stepping into this room. If they could move past this, get where they were both most comfortable—on camera—then perhaps they’d return to the companionable energy rather than fixating on the strangeness Dan let fester between them.
Dan, though he thought it funny even to himself, was most comfortable when performing. In front of a camera, he could present a version of himself he chose to give the invisible eyes on the other end of the lens. Weirdly, it was the way he knew Phil best, too. Through his videos, through virtual messages, through the velvet-soft pathway his brain traveled from conscious to sleep—paved with thoughts of Phil. Everything one degree off from reality.
“Sure,” Dan said.
Dan read the questions from Phil’s Twitter and it was easy. Fun, even. It was several questions later that the two sat close enough that Dan could feel the heat of Phil’s face against his own.
“Why do you always make cat whiskers on your face?” Dan read and then spoke toward the camera.
The two erupted in a fit of giggles. Phil turned to him, a question in his eyes that Dan couldn’t help but accept the challenge of.
“You’re going to draw them on me, aren’t you?” He asked Phil, cheeks burning with blush and a smile.
“It’ll be cute,” Phil said, shifting his weight to reach across the floor for the discarded Sharpie under the desk.
Dan didn’t argue. Not when he could already imagine the feel of Phil’s fingers against him as he carefully drew.
The pop of the cap brought an onslaught of sensation. The strong, chemical-heavy aroma, not unlike paint, hit him at the same time as the rolling sensation in his chest. He tried to stuff that feeling into the pockets of his lungs with a little inhale, but it came out as more of a gasp.
“Come here.” Phil patted the little patch of carpet in front of him. Dan eyed the space as if it might collapse into the absence of matter and swallow him. But when his eyes found Phil’s again, he couldn’t say anything but yes.
The carpeting showed little resistance to his trousers as he pushed himself in front of Phil, but his already on-edge skin buzzed with the friction of the contact just under his thighs. He’d been like that all day—alert to every sensation.
Which is why it was no surprise that when Phil cupped Dan’s jaw, the world seemed to white-out momentarily. He buzzed with anticipation, with nearness.
Beyond the aroma of marker, there was something softer, something sweet and human, and it made that thing in Dan's chest rub against his ribs all wrong or right, or fuck it, he didn’t know. Because Phil’s smell was no longer theoretical, it was environmental. A fact of the room.
The touch of the tip of the Sharpie to his nose was a shock. One he instinctively recoiled from, lids tensing, lips pursing, neck pulling back with a force that would have possibly tipped him backward if Phil’s other hand weren’t there at the nape of Dan’s neck to stop him.
“Ticklish?” Phil asked, and with his eyes closed, Dan’s body picked up on everything so much stronger. The stirring of his hair when Phil spoke, the humidity of his breath as it hit Dan’s ear.
“A bit,” Dan admitted breathlessly, then internally chastised himself. “Is it too late to scream for help?”
“You can try,” Phil said playfully. Dan liked that. Not the words, but the realization that he could recognize the sound of a smile in Phil’s voice.
“Hel—” Dan’s words were cut off by the press of a warm palm against his parted lips, and it forced him to open his eyes.
Phil’s gaze was alight with impish joy as he shook his head. “Shut up!”
To which Dan licked a wet, hot stripe against the width of Phil’s palm. “Oh, that’s fucking sick!” Phil said with faux horror.
“You liked it,” Dan said, surprising even himself.
Something like a twisted pride filled Dan when Phil’s cheeks turned half a hue pinker.
“You’ve only got a nose.” Phil lifted the marker anew to draw upon Dan’s face.
“I’ve got plenty of other physical attributes you might find more appealing,” Dan jested, “but if it’s the nose you like, who am I to judge.”
Phil’s head shook, and, if Dan hadn’t completely been imagining it, so did Phil’s fingers. Which was silly because it wasn’t flirty or even suggestive. But Dan couldn’t entirely say he wasn’t buzzing with electric current just sitting there either.
Dan focused on each stripe as Phil’s hand guided the creation of all six. When Phil capped the marker, Dan finally felt he could relax.
“Do they suit me?” Dan asked.
Phil’s teeth reluctantly released his bottom lip. “Hmm?”
“I said, do they suit me?”
“Daniel ‘do they suit me’ Howell.” Phil rolled his eyes.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Dan asked with a full laugh. When he received no answer, Dan turned toward the camera.
“Meow,” Phil said.
Though amused, Dan leaned over and snagged the Sharpie from Phil’s hand and turned Phil’s face with a grasped hand under his jaw.
“Your turn,” Dan said before tucking the cap between his teeth and tugging it free. He spat the plastic barrel from his mouth, and it hit him in that small ball of his ankle before it retired to the strands of the carpet.
Phil’s skin was hot to the touch. Dan had pictured it against his hands before, in long and prolific detail, but he hadn’t accounted for this. The heat. The humanness of touch that made the furnace inside him double its measure in response. Their bodies, he thought, wanted to burn together.
Without thinking, Dan said, “You’re blushing.”
“Yes,” Phil said easily. “You’re close to me. You’re touching me.”
“Well, your mum’s touching me.”
Dan wished with a sudden swiftness that the world would fold in on itself and accept his body as the first offering to the black hole.
“What?” Phil’s eyes opened, humor alight in the irises, and it did nothing to quell the dire need for social absolution in Dan’s.
“Forget I said that.”
“Never.”
“Delete it from your brain. Now.”
“I can’t.” Phil gestured to the laptop. “It’s filmed!”
Dan turned to the camera with a straight face. “I’m going to kill myself.”
“Hey!” Phil flicked Dan’s shoulder. “Don’t say things like that.”
“Kidding!”
“Besides,” Phil said, before reaching out to turn Dan’s face toward him once more. “I can always edit it out.”
“True.” Dan’s shoulders relaxed. Knowing the failsafe was there was helpful. “This is the part where Phil kicks me out of his bedroom,” he told the camera.
“No. You still need to whisker me up,” Phil said, scrunching his nose twice to bring attention to it, and Dan took the hint, cupping Phil’s face again.
“Then you need to stop moving.” Dan carefully circled the marker at the tip of Phil’s nose, and Phil’s lips tugged at the edges. “It does kind of tickle, doesn’t it?”
“Something like that.”
Dan carefully drew whiskers in six strokes.
“Are you done?” Phil asked.
Dan hadn’t realized how long he’d been there, still holding Phil’s face, staring at his lips after he’d finished.
“Yeah.” Dan was aware that he needed to move, and to carefully lower his fingers into his lap after peeling them from Phil’s jaw. But he didn’t. Not when Phil’s eyes seemed to find Dan’s mouth equally entrancing.
“Do they suit me?” Phil asked, repeating Dan’s previous inquiry.
“You make it work, surprisingly.”
“Surprisingly?” Phil lifted a brow. “I’m a bit hurt by that,” he joked.
“Someone has to keep your ego in check.”
“Well, you’re certainly not helping it.” Phil’s eyes dipped to Dan’s mouth again.
“How is that?” Dan asked, surprised that his fingers were doing thinking of their own. His thumb traced the sharp angle of Phil’s cheekbone.
“Cause you’re looking at me like that.”
“Looking at you like what?”
“I don’t know.” Phil’s giggle was breathless. Close. Too close and not nearly close enough. It stirred Dan’s lashes and heated his skin. “Just like that. I don’t know what it means.”
His body was full of tiny electrical tremors, nerves threatening to jump out of his skin onto the carpet between them.
Dan tried to find his words. Roamed the cavern of his mouth with his tongue before deciding against speaking.
“I’m trying really hard not to make this weird,” Phil said. Which surprised Dan, because of the two of him, he was certain it was he who was making this strange. But they were two hands of this situation, each pulling one end of a string where the tension came together as a knot in between them.
“I think we passed weird about,” Dan looked vaguely toward the marker lying forgotten on the carpet, “cat whiskers ago.”
That earned him the smile he’d been hoping for. Small and crooked. One that seemed to belong exclusively to Phil.
“I suppose we did.”
“And like you said; if you’re weird, then I’m weird.” Dan’s shoulder shrugged. It was easier to say that then to feel the truth of it when Phil had said it to him before. But if he meant it half as much as Dan did…well that couldn’t be right. Dan searched the planes of Phil’s face, caught on the whisker marks, and smiled. “This is a bit silly, though.”
“Yeah.” Phil only beamed brighter. “It’s supposed to be.”
“What do you mean?”
Phil's face turned fractionally, bumping Dan’s nose with his own. “This.” And Dan might have been listening if it weren’t for the way he could feel Phil’s breath against his lips.
“Hmm?”
“It’s supposed to be silly.” Phil’s fingers were molten as they traced their way up Dan’s neck. “And fun. Doesn’t have to be the end of the world.”
Which Dan supposed is what Phil would take away from their conversations. It wasn’t that it would be the end of the world to kiss Phil. To kiss a boy in general.
But if he liked it?
Well, he couldn’t think of that answer anyway because it was the furthest thing from his mind when Phil’s lips brushed ever so carefully against Dan’s. It wasn’t forceful, just a tease to bring him back to the present moment. And it worked spectacularly well.
“Sorry,” Phil said, pulling back a bit.
And there it was. The snap of the thread in both of their hands. The moment that thing in Dan’s chest lept and crashed against his ribs hard enough to propel him forward.
Dan’s fingers swept underneath Phil’s jaw and into his hair as Dan closed the distance between them and finally, finally, finally pressed his lips to Phil’s.
There was a half-second, one long breath through his nose, that Phil did nothing. Then, with an urgency, his arms went around Dan’s neck and pulled him close, renewing the kiss with a breath in between.
Dan felt every hesitant adjustment as they learned one another. The uncertain angle of Phil’s mouth, the soft hitch of his breathing. Fingers tightening against the back of Dan’s neck before relaxing again, as if asking permission every few seconds without either of them having to speak.
When the two finally separated it wasn’t a lurch away from one another; it was light as a sigh. Enough room for both of them to take full breaths. Just enough that Dan could properly see the expression of Phil’s face.
Fear. Like he was waiting for something. Not of the kiss itself, but what came after it. Whether dan would laugh, make a joke of the entire thing. Pull away.
The world didn’t end. That was the first thing Dan’s mind caught on. Not how soft Phil’s mouth had been or the warmth he felt where Phil still held him.
The world had continued.
Dan could still hear the whir of the computer fan, the errant car or two as it passed by somewhere beneath them.
He had expected fire. Thunder. Punishment. Something.
But there was only Phil.
“Oh.”
The eloquence of Dan Howell was reduced to so little a word because Phil had just taken them all from him in languid kisses. He was left with monosyllabic phrases.
“Oh?” Phil echoed, a nervous smile threatening one corner of his mouth.
“I,” Dan’s brows furrowed, and he released Phil’s hair that he had just noticed he still had tightly in his grip, “I kissed you.”
“I was there.”
Dan barked a laugh and ran his fingers through Phil’s fringe, fixing it above his eyes. “Right.”
Phil’s hands were gentle, rubbing shapeless tracks over Dan’s shirt in a soothing way. Then Phil turned from him, toward the camera.
Dan immediately straightened, fixed his own hair and his shirt, and the very way he breathed. “Jesus, I’d forgotten.”
“I can edit it out.” Phil smiled and leaned over, pressing his lips to Dan’s cheek. Not searching for any particular reciprocity—just to make Dan feel seen. Less worried.
And maybe he should have been more stressed, because that devastating feeling he kept waiting for. The one he was certain would happen after he kissed a boy and liked it…it never came.
Phil bumped his shoulder against Dan’s, pulling his attention. “Have you got another question for me?”
It wasn’t until Dan had been home for several days that he received the email. It was an attachment and a simple note: lol :]
The replay of their kiss had Dan wondering how he could have possibly assumed he’d ruined it. On camera, they looked impossibly gentle. Like they’d known what they were doing.
It looked impossibly ordinary. It hadn’t felt that way at all.
And though no one else would ever see it, this was theirs.
So he rewound and watched again. Then dragged it quietly back to the beginning once more.