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It’s been years, years . Twelve of them, by now. Thirteen, in October. They’re in their thirteenth year. God , he’s gotten older. Less than ten years to go before he’ll have known Phil for longer than he hasn’t.
He’s cleaning out one of his last boxes from the move that happened almost a year ago, but he’s procrastinated because he’s like that. His thought process was something like he wanted to savor the moments of opening a literal box of memories for as long as he could. Phil isn’t like that. He’s got no patience and opened all his boxes within the first week in between all their shared ones.
“Feeling sentimental?” Phil’s voice echoes from where he’s stood in the doorway of what they’ve deemed “Dan’s office.” They’re too connected to sleep separately but they’ve been together long enough to recognize that they needed their own spaces. The compromise was a shared bedroom and separate offices. Dan’s pretty proud of himself for that one.
Phil clears his throat from where he’s tapping his foot by the door, folding his arms over his chest. He’s wearing the OMFG! cat-printed shirt from god-knows how long ago. Dan glances at how it stretches over his torso, worn thin from years of being pulled over his head, from being taken to the couch in the corner of a Starbucks and scented vaguely like caramel macchiato. Phil blinks at him. “You’ve been in here a while, love.”
“Deciding if these were worth keeping,” he finds himself saying, holding up two llama plushies from 2010. His old branding will forever haunt him, but there’s a life’s worth of memories in the fraying, faded fabric and dim, beaded eyes. “Feels strange to hold them again.”
Phil comes to sit down next to Dan on the floor, stretching his legs and yawning. Dan watches his jaw open and close, watches the bob of his Adam's apple and smiles like he hasn’t memorized the sight a million times over. He remembers the first time, all those years ago, and feeling an assuredness in his heart as Phil blinked at him, slow and sleepy and naked and beautiful at four in the morning.
“What’re you smiling at?” Phil asks like he doesn’t know, like he can’t tell what Dan’s thinking just from the quirk of his lips.
“Nothing,” Dan says, looking back at the two plushies in his fists. “Missing back then, a little bit.”
Phil’s entire demeanor softens, and he scoots closer on his knees and plops down so he’s got Dan in between his legs, holds Dan against his chest. “I miss when you were shorter than me,” he says, and he really means I’m so proud of who you’ve become .
Dan understands. Of course he does. He pushes back a little bit, just to feel Phil a bit more solid around him. “Wanna kiss you,” he mumbles, shy all of a sudden in a way he never is. He’s always been the louder one, the more boisterous one. Phil smiles.
“Yeah?” Phil giggles against his hair. “You’re asking for permission, now? Usually takes a lot to get that out of you.”
“Shut up,” Dan immediately retorts, in that quicksilver way of his. “I’m not the one who tripped over his own feet trying to slam me against the door last night.” But he twists around to accept Phil’s puckered lips anyway (Phil in question is making loud, obnoxious lip-smacking noises because of course he is), and Dan thinks you look so stupid right between all the fond sappy feelings welling up in his heart. They kiss.
Phil isn’t perturbed. He never is. “You still got there, though, hmm?” he teases as Dan pulls away, arms circling Dan to squeeze his shoulders. Dan wiggles around until he’s leaning against Phil properly, back against chest. Phil grins into his hair.
“I guess so,” Dan hums noncommittally, tipping his head back to rest on Phil’s shoulder. Phil cranes his head to look down at him, and the angle is atrocious but Dan has never loved him more. “I don’t want to throw them out.”
“These old things?” Phil gestures at the plushies clutched in Dan’s large hands. “Then keep them.”
Dan grimaces. “But is it that simple?” he ponders, blinking hard. He feels like he’s got something in his eye.
“I don’t see why it can’t be,” Phil responds, kissing his temple and sighing softly, and Dan can hear him inhaling, breathing him in, just as he always does. Familiar, warm. “Is the nostalgia worth it?”
Dan contemplates this, bottom lip jutting out. He sucks his teeth, then lifts his head up off of Phil’s shoulder and maneuvers so they’re sitting face to face, knees touching. Somewhere, the air conditioner kicks in, something they never had in the apartments (any of them), and Dan takes this in, commits it to memory. Adds it to his growing, evolving definition of home .
The llama plushies perch between them, and Phil smiles gently, remembering some time or the other. Dan doesn’t press, but he has a fair idea of what Phil’s thinking. He’s well versed in everything Phil and he loves this man with his whole heart and it's been almost thirteen years . He picks up a llama plushie in one hand, grips it, squeezes. The other one sits on the wooden floor space between them, peering up at Phil.
They’re silent for a while.
“It’s been a while, Phil,” Dan says after this quiet spell, voice taking shape and filling the space of his office, the one he still thinks of as “ new office” because “ the office” is still frozen in that extra apartment in London, still nestled in that top floor with that god-awful sloping ceiling, still filling up the compact space that the gaming channel had died in. He misses the Sims, sometimes. Misses the hating-Erica-Pendleton bit they used to do. “It’s been a fucking while .”
“Dan,” Phil starts, but Dan has started talking and he needs to talk , needs to talk, needs to get it out .
“And it’s been thirteen years but why is part of me still stuck in 2012? Still stuck in the London apartment? Still stuck in Manchester? Still stuck in fucking 2009 Picadilly Station in October?” Dan squeezes his eyes shut, the emotions welling up inside him and threatening to spill over. “Why can’t I just live now and fuck off with… with all the rest!”
Phil covers Dan’s hands with his own, and Dan’s are larger and they look nice together. They always do, even if they’re a bit more worn with the skin around the knuckles than they were ten years ago. The llama plushie that Dan had been gripping just a little too tight drops in the space of wood floor between them.
“And I’m going on tour, Phil. It feels like we just moved in and I know I need this tour and it’s important and everyone I’m gonna meet is important and I want this so much but it’s going to be two and a half months when we’ve barely done two and a half weeks and here I am trying to move forward when part of me is stuck as fucking depressed danisnotonfire from BBC Radio One, from Winnersh, from the fucking closet .”
Phil squeezes Dan’s hands, just to feel him subconsciously squeeze back, just like they’ve been doing for years.
(Somewhere, in the depths of Dan’s mind, swims a vision of Phil, twenty two and grinning lopsided in an Apple store, squeezing Dan’s hands over and over just to remind them both that they’d made it.)
“Bear,” Phil says. Dan blinks wetly up at him, and feels stupid.
He tells Phil as much, tells him that he feels stupid and insignificant sometimes in the grand scheme of things. That he knows he can go on tour without Phil because he’s an adult but he’s really going to miss Phil a whole fucking lot. Phil nods seriously, listens intently, and Dan will always get slightly confused by the simple, non-judgemental expression across Phil’s face. He slowly begins to feel less stupid.
“Sweetheart,” Phil says in that tone reserved for the smooshy time of past midnight and before six in the morning, when the stars glow brighter just for them and the world holds its breath. Except it’s barely eight and they’ve yet to start dinner, but Dan supposes Phil could make the universe pause just for them in any timeline. “Those memories are part of you. And the ones you’re going to make are going to grow right alongside you. And I’m not going anywhere, Dan. I’m right here, always, made to love you.”
“I know ,” Dan whines, and he’s thirty years old with his eyes squeezed shut but he doesn’t feel childish, not with Phil. He feels safe, amidst all the chaos swirling in his heart. “I know , but sometimes it hurts so much, Phil. Sometimes I feel nineteen year old Dan inside, roaring at the world and screaming at everyone to look away because everything hurts too much and I’m sorry to my parents for never finishing university.”
Phil blinks slowly, assuredly, and he’s a mild hypochondriac and he’s prone to panic attacks but he’s calm when it comes to Dan because it’s been years, years .
“Dan,” he’s gentle, and his thumbs swipe soft circles over Dan’s knuckles. “Love, if you could go back in time, what would you change?”
Dan looks down at the llama plushies, back up at Phil, and then back down again. “What do you mean?”
“I mean what I say, Bear,” Phil says, and tilts his head to the side. “Look at your life. It’s all around you. You made this.”
Dan glances around them, at the new office, and sees hints of the old. The Dil head from TATINOF is placed on a mahogany shelf, because of course it is. There’s a copy of their first selfie from that old Apple store framed next to the one they took when they first moved into the new house placed on the wall opposite to the desk with that butt chair that Phil claims he hates. A framed old version of the Interactive Introverts poster, signed. A rainbow coffee mug that Phil bought him for the Pride thing he did, one to add to their (frankly astonishing) collection of themed mugs. The finalized We’re All Doomed branding portfolio opened beneath his keyboard, signed off by his manager and scribbled all over by both Dan and Phil.
“What would you change, Dan?” Phil repeats, and his voice is warm honey. “If you went back to when you were still playing Final Fantasy on my couch and mooching off my washing machine and Maltesers, if you went back to Piccadilly Station, what would you change?”
Dan makes eye contact with himself in that damn selfie from October of 2009, blinking at that kid smirking at the camera with that god-awful fringe, that stupid plaid-overshirt-and-graphic-tee combination. Young and naive and depressed but ready for the rest of his life.
Phil leans in, noses the side of his head, like he knows what Dan is thinking.
Dan turns his head back to Phil, blinks up at him, inhales. “Not a fucking thing.” The room smells like home.
Phil smiles, tilts forward, and kisses Dan.