Work Text:
Phil’s absent rambling stutters for just a second and Dan looks up from where he’d been focusing on getting his skates laced up properly just in time for Phil to turn his gaze sharply to him and let out a stern, “No.”
It’s usually only really funny ideas that make Phil bother to act his age, so Dan abandons his skateless right foot in favor of looking around the skating rink to figure out what has Phil looking quite so steely. He spots the scene almost immediately, because people around seem to be having a hard time deciding whether they want to stare or politely look away.
Joe’s right in the middle of losing his balance, clearly having been trying to follow Caspar down a ramp, and Caspar’s laugh is hard to hear over the music and from across the room, but it’s clear as day when he ducks down and hefts Joe up in a fireman’s lift amid hooting and whistling.
Dan turns back to Phil and waggles his eyebrows and Phil shakes his head, serious expression still on his face, though he’s doing a terrible job at hiding his blossoming grin.
“Absolutely not.”
“Well not now,” Dan says petulantly. “Joe and Caspar have already gone and done it.”
Phil laughs and Dan goes back to yanking on his second skate, jostling Phil back when he accidentally bumps into him.
“Sorry, sorry!” Phil’s muttering, trying very hard to stand up, long legs wobbling cartoonishly. Dan shifts his weight and gets to his feet with some level of grace and holds out his arms so Phil can slowly clamor up from balancing against the bench seat to a more or less straightened-out position. They’re nearly to the entrance of the rink when Anthony shows up, glitter smeared around one of his eyes.
“There’s costumes and face-painting!” He announces excitedly, adjusting his truly fantastic orange hat so it rests at a more jaunty angle. The glitter almost completely disguises the jetlag exhaustion around his eyes, and Phil jumps immediately at the opportunity to put off actually skating.
“You look amazing,” he’s saying as Anthony goes over to his other side so he and Dan can help roll Phil over to the costuming area.
“It’s so cool that you’re one of the speakers here,” Phil continues, and Anthony laughs, looking a little embarrassed.
“You don’t really escape your first online brand, right, Dani Snot On Fire?”
Phil lets out another sharp laugh and Dan groans dramatically for effect, flipping over his Creator’s Summit pass so Anthony can laugh appropriately commiseratingly at his name on the card: DanIsNotOnFire (Dan Howel). With the single L in his last name and all.
“Wow,” Anthony says, snickering. “That level of wrong is usually reserved for your loving fans.”
“I think some of them may have been in charge of nametags,” Dan admits with a grimace for show, turning his pass back over and contemplating once again taking it off and pocketing it. He’s aware he’ll lose it in two seconds if he does, though, so he leaves it swinging around his neck.
“What color glitter are you guys gonna get?” Anthony asks once they’re in the small queue, and Phil tells him that it’s a surprise, but it’s going to be amazing.
“AmazingPhil,” Dan and Anthony say at the same time and Phil looks between them with a dubious expression on his face.
Phil makes Anthony coach Dan through letting a stranger touch his face, ostensibly for Dan’s benefit, but more likely so he can keep his own glitter plan a secret. Dan and Anthony decide that the silver looks best and the girl at his station narrates what she’s doing in a friendly, accented voice, because Dan’s shiftiness with strangers crosses languages and continents, apparently.
The pair of them take a twinning selfie and when they make to step nearer Phil to clear the second station for someone else, he yelps and tells them to wait.
“I’d like to see him even try and get to us after he’s finished,” Dan mutters and Anthony snorts in agreement before trying to convince Dan he needs a violet and lime paisley button down.
“Honestly, what are you trying to do to my brand?” Dan asks, trying for indignant but never quite making it through his laughter, trying to push Anthony and the shirt away without losing his balance in his skates. Anthony’s not wearing any skates, because he’s smarter than the rest of them, and it means he can lunge and try and force the shirt over Dan’s head with some level of success, even if he can’t get Dan’s arms through the sleeves.
“A model if I’ve ever seen one,” Anthony says, nodding with his lips pursed, leaning back and making a square with his fingers like he’s a photographer.
“Something really posh,” Dan agrees, smirking a little and shifting his shoulders so he can display his favorite three-quarters-profile instagram angle. Anthony whistles and so Dan repositions again, getting into it, laughing and badly-smoldering in equal measure.
They take a few more selfies together and then Phil’s on his way over, back bent a little at the hips, arms extended in front of him as he shoots past them and into the costuming shop, crashing into a rack of wigs but luckily not bringing it or himself down to the floor.
“Dan, I’ll cherish these selfies forever, but I don’t know if I’ll ever get over not having caught that on video,” Anthony says, and Dan can’t even answer because he’s laughing so hard he can barely make his way into the shop and over to Phil, who’s clutching at the rack with a white-knuckled grip, skates still slipping around a little.
“Are you ready to get on the rink?” Dan asks, trying in vain to smother a grin, and Phil pouts at him, stops moving so Dan can help him up without getting tripped.
“If I get through this night without dying it’ll be a miracle,” Phil says mournfully when Dan’s helped him stand up on his own again.
“We’re always dying, Phil,” Dan says in his best serious voice, just so that Phil can give him that great exasperated look even as he reaches out to grasp at Dan’s forearms so Dan can drag him out of the shop.
Dan and Anthony get the three of them to the rink entrance again, and they take a selfie with the three of them together for Anthony’s twitter post before Anthony’s called away.
“Don’t forget about us, Mr. Popular,” Dan jokes as Anthony skates away, and he turns around, still skating, to salute, like the dork he truly is.
“Okay,” Phil says, swallowing and shaking his head out like a lion, determined expression twisting his mouth. “I’m ready.”
Dan lets him hold onto his forearms for a half lap, some of their friends nudging strangers’ vlogging cameras away from the pair of them. After Phil manages a full lap, Dan passing him up twice, his smuggest expression on his face, the pair of them hobble into the seating area in the center of the rink, where Caspar and some others are lounging around.
Caspar’s watching Joe make his laps, faster and faster now that he’s halfway to drunk and on in-line rollerblades instead of the traditional skates. He may or may not win a race against Saffron, the verdict is unclear on all sides, and when he sees the three of them lounging in the centre he makes his way over as quick as he can, toppling over the back of the couch, bouncing on the seat, and landing in a heap on the red carpet at their feet.
Caspar and Dan are laughing too hard to help him up, but Phil slides along the couch so he can get closer to Joe without standing, trying to pull him up. Joe’s drunk and trying to get up on his own, though, and his feet keep giving out beneath him anytime he tries to make the transition from on his knees to standing.
“Just get on the couch,” Sebastian shouts over the music and Joe grumbles something unintelligible, but appears to listen to him after a minute of rest, dragging himself up onto the couch and twisting around for far too long until he’s mostly sitting upright, shoulder pressed against Caspar’s side.
“Your legs are going to hurt so much tomorrow, buddy,” Caspar says fondly and Phil mutters a disbelieving his legs? that makes the rest of them laugh even more, Joe smiling good-naturedly at them all.
“I watched your mystery ebay box video, Phil,” Caspar says after some rather laddish shooting the shit and a few people have escaped the centre seating to try and brave the rink once more.
“Still can’t believe he’s done that,” Dan scoffs, like he always does, and Joe laughs in agreement.
“I thought it was funny,” Caspar protests. “Could be a proper youtuber challenge!”
“Not after that third box,” Joe retorts, shuddering for effect and Dan nods.
“You only say that because of your thing with cotton wool,” Caspar accuses, rolling his eyes dismissively. “That’s not even a real phobia.”
“Phil’s got that too!” Dan says, a little astonished that someone else also has a (beyond absurd) problem with cotton wool. “Can’t stand the look of it—”
Caspar interrupts him with, “—the texture—”
And they meet each other’s eyes to say, eerily, together, “—the noise.” Before sharing a commiserating eye-roll.
“Oh no you don’t,” Phil says indignantly, laughing all the while. Joe’s more or less chanting that it’s a real, legitimate phobia in the background, but all Caspar does is sling an arm over the back of the couch, hand curled at the side of Joe’s neck in a way that looks casual enough to still hide under the all-too-familiar umbrella of plausible deniability.
“Oh no I don’t what?” Dan asks challengingly, and Joe stops chanting to watch them with curious eyes, even as Caspar starts to laugh.
“Don’t the pair of you share that aren’t we saints for putting up with our old-man people!” Phil yelps, changing the label automatically, but still getting his point across. Caspar’s slow laughter becomes honest-to-god cracking up and even Dan is snorting, and Joe leans away from Caspar to protest with a perfunct: ’m not old, you twat!, though who he’s speaking to is unclear.
“You and Joe lording it up with your beautiful young sugar babies,” Caspar says, tilting his head a little wickedly, and Joe manages a scandalized Caspar Richard George Lee in one of his character voices.
“That’s what I’m saying!” Dan says loudly and Phil groans, all-too-familiar with this line of joking. “Meets me, a young, untouched fan on the internet—”
“Invites you round his, hours away from your parents’ house—” Caspar continues, because the story is familiar to everyone in their friend group, since it’s about the only thing that makes Phil blush.
Phil smacks a hand over Dan’s mouth before he can continue and Caspar starts laughing again, eyes crinkling up at the corners, seemingly unaware that Joe’s gone from being indignant to just gazing at him with a small smile curling at his lips.
“Better than Zoella’s brother suddenly and conveniently wanting to move to London as soon as young Caspar needed a roommate,” Dan says, shrugging idly and pretending to examine his nails when Joe snaps out of it and yelps, offended and amused and still quite sloshed.
Dan glances over at Phil for a second just to make sure he’s not really annoyed, but Phil’s chuckling good-naturedly, his own arm mirroring Caspar’s casual position, fingertips slipping underneath the neckline of Dan’s jumper.
Caspar’s still joking about his own quote unquote sugar-baby situation with Joe: “—world’s smallest second bedroom, as though that was at all fair,” he’s saying, and Joe rolls his eyes so violently he almost loses his balance again, but Caspar manages to catch him and hold him steady, still while pretending to rant, in tune with Joe like he’s his extra limb.
They move on to talking about the four of them getting together at some point, mentioning a collab only briefly before Dan jokes “I don’t know, mate, I think you two might be a bit too laddish for our channels.” Eventually they split up with promises to meet up again at the end of the night for a selfie for Caspar’s twitter, since Joe’s already updated that afternoon and Dan and Phil don’t need to yet until the following day.
Dan helps Phil get back to the edge of the rink, and he hops up onto a wall to sit and wait so Dan can get a few more laps in, heart thumping hard at the exercise but exhilaration flooding his veins in a way he hadn’t quite expected at the thought of so much socializing in one go.
Phil watches him circle around the rink, and he joins back up with Anthony to take a silly little ironic video, and the night is so, so good.