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Phil is tall. It’s a fact that people tend to forget, partly because of his adorable personality and partly because of how much time he spends standing next to Dan, who is taller than anyone should be. The whole 6’3 thing is a joke that Wikipedia editors haven’t caught onto yet.
Dan, for one, never forgets that Phil is tall. Sure, they’re not exactly at eye level, and Dan has gotten used to looking at the top of Phil’s head, but Phil doesn’t have to hurt his neck to make eye contact. Besides, between Phil’s fantastic posture and Dan’s… less than fantastic equivalent, they pretty much even out most of the time. Phil is also made to seem taller by his life-altering hugs.
Today, Phil doesn’t seem tall.
He’s wrapped in his blanket with only his head and his arms sticking out. With his left hand, he’s scrolling on his phone in that distracted way that people only do when they’re not actually paying attention to whatever it is that they’re looking at. The other hand is turning red under the stress of the IV. It’s just a precaution, the nurses said when Dan first spotted the needle. A precaution against what? Just in case whatever magic blood transfusion voodoo they pulled didn’t work? Just in case the universe decides to be terrible and cruel?
There isn’t anything Dan won’t agree to if it functions as assurance that Phil will get through the night. That doesn’t mean that he has to be okay with it.
He’s pale – paler than usual, which Dan didn’t think was possible – and his lovely eyes are somewhere far away. He snaps back to attention when he notices Dan lurking in the doorway, and Dan realizes that it is well and truly time to stop feeling bad for himself.
“Hey,” says Dan in a hushed voice, “How are you?”
Phil groans. “I’ve been better. You?”
This man. “Don’t worry about me. You’re the one in the hospital bed. Is there anything I can get you?”
“I’m starving, believe it or not,” says Phil, knowing damn well that Dan would be actively putting his health in danger if he went and got food.
“I will go get you your feast of choice this time tomorrow, okay?”
Phil’s stomach audibly grumbles. “Don’t say feast!”
“Sorry,” says Dan, “But seriously. Anything from the shitty gift shop, anything from home, you name it…”
“Nothing from home,” Phil says adamantly, “Don’t leave. I don’t want to be alone here.”
“Okay,” Dan soothes, “Okay. I won’t go anywhere.” He sits in the chair by Phil’s bedside, running his thumb through Phil’s fringe, his hand resting on top of Phil’s head. Phil closes his eyes and leans into it, a bit like a cat. “I called your parents two hours ago. Martyn too. Told them what happened and what the doctors are doing about it.”
Phil exhales. “Thank you so much. I was so worried about my mum during the transfusion. I was just worried that this was going to leak somehow and that she was going to have to find out from Twitter or something.”
Dan laughs. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re too selfless?”
“You have, once or twice.”
“Yeah, and I’m always right,” Dan quips, “But anyway, your mum asked if she should come visit you in the hospital.”
“No,” Phil says quickly, “It’ll take too long, and Martyn’s working—”
“Okay, do you actually not want them to come, or are you just saying that because you don’t want to burden them?”
“Well, of course I want to see them, but it’s the middle of the night, this isn’t that much of an emergency anymore, and hopefully, I’ll be going home tomorrow anyway. If they want to come visit us at home, that’s fine, but there’s no need for them to rush out.”
Dan isn’t sure he agrees with the idea that there’s no need, but he is glad that Phil no longer sees this as an emergency. “Alright. Not sure you’ll be able to stop Martyn, though.”
“That’s fine. I miss him. He can use our spare room.”
Silence settles over them again. Not the comfortable kind. The damn machines won’t stop beeping, different tones every two seconds. Dan pets Phil’s hair, and he wonders how the people who work here keep their sanity, and he says nothing.
Phil breaks the silence eventually, his voice high and younger than Dan has heard it in a long time. “Dan?” he chirps.
“Yeah, bub?”
“I’m scared.”
Dan takes a deep breath in and lets it out, replacing his dramatic-internet-moron hat with his wrote-a-bestselling-book-about-mental-health hat. He reaches for Phil’s hand with the hand that’s not already in his hair. “That’s okay. It’s normal to be scared. You know fear is our evolutionary response to the times when we had to survive with predators in the wild.”
“I remember reading about that,” says Phil.
“You do?”
“Yeah, I actually have read your book, believe it or not. Our brains trick us into thinking we’re fighting sabertooth tigers.”
“That’s right,” says Dan.
“And, you know, if this is the closest I’m ever going to get to winning a fight against a sabertooth tiger, I at least want to try.”
Dan laughs. Phil must still be a little loopy from the drugs and the stress of the day. Or maybe he’s just Phil. “Good for you. You’re so brave.” It comes out a bit teasingly — sarcasm is his natural tone — but he means every word.
“I am God’s bravest soldier. And also God’s prettiest princess. The duality of Phil.”
Dan would feel bad about cackling so loudly if they weren’t essentially in a private penthouse suite. “Okay, Princess. You need to get to bed.” He considers saying big day tomorrow, but he holds back. Phil doesn’t need to be reminded.
“I am in bed.”
Dan rolls his eyes. “Phil, it’s one in the morning, you’ve had the world’s most stressful day, and you need to be well-rested.”
“The anesthesia is like a nap. I can just use that, it’s fine.”
“Maybe, but you won’t be able to emotionally regulate or follow important medical instructions if you’re a sleepless zombie.”
“Dan, I’m serious.” Phil’s voice suddenly becomes… well, serious. “I’m not going to be able to sleep here. I’m so freaked out, I–”
“Hey,” Dan gently interrupts. There’s a problem, though. He actually has no idea what to say at this point. So instead, he just sighs and climbs into bed with Phil, tucking him against his chest and under his chin. Phil sighs into his neck, and it tickles. There are certain contexts in which he doesn’t mind the feeling, and this is one of them.
There are probably a few hospital regulations against this, but Dan will break all of them ten times over just to revel in the way the tension releases from Phil’s shoulders.
He considers a few things to say. I’m here, it’s going to be okay… but they all turn to sand in his mouth. Instead, like the therapy-trained professional that he is, he asks, “Is there anything I can do?”
Phil looks up at him, all innocence and big glass eyes. Whatever he’s about to say, it’s going to be unhinged. “Anything?”
Dan lets out a shocked little laugh. “Philip Michael Lester, this is a hospital.”
“Fine,” says Phil, “How about a foot massage?”
He’s visibly teasing, calling Dan’s bluff, but Dan isn’t about to let him get away with it. He’s a competitive boyfriend. The UK’s next top boyfriend. In sickness and in health, motherfucker. He shrugs, feigning nonchalance. “Why not?” Granted, maybe he isn’t feigning. A hospital bed foot massage is far from the weirdest thing that either of them has done for the other.
Phil raises a single deadly eyebrow. “Really? I kind of don’t want to move right now, but maybe later…”
“Don’t push it,” says Dan, “The princess treatment ends the moment we leave this place.” Which, hopefully, will be sooner rather than later. Not that he’s fooling anyone. For Phil, the princess treatment is eternal, and Dan is perfectly fine with that. Phil knows it.
“I’ll go into the operation room with you, if they let me,” says Dan, the supreme loser of the IDGAF war.
“That’s definitely not a thing,” says Phil, “and I don’t think I want you to watch as a bunch of doctors shove stitches up my butt.”
Dan groans. “Can you not phrase it like that? And for what it’s worth, I don’t think that would even crack the top ten in terms of weird shit you’ve somehow gotten me involved in.”
“You love it,” says Phil.
“Of course I love it. I never said I didn’t, nor would I.”
There’s so much that he could say, so much that he should say, but it all feels hollow compared to the natural way his hand slides over Phil’s shoulder blades. They’re tethered to each other, keeping one another from floating into the void alone. Phil seems to think so too, judging by the way he giggles into Dan’s soft cotton shirt.
“What?” asks Dan.
“Nothing,” says Phil, still giggling, “It’s just… this is going to ruin the tour.”
For a moment, Dan’s heart drops, before he realizes what exactly Phil is playing at. Someone needs to invent a word that’s a cross between affection and annoyance. Because he loves this man, God help him. “What tour?” he plays along.
“The world tour.” Phil grins like a kid at Disneyland, and for a brief, shining moment, everything is okay. He angles up and kisses Dan, who wraps the hand previously in Phil’s hair around the back of his neck and deepens it, only slightly.
The incessant beeping noise is drowned out by laughter, followed by another few seconds of silence, followed by Phil, again. “It’s not actually going to ruin the tour though, right?”
Dan smiles to himself. After this whole day, he really needed a reminder that in a few months, he’ll be on the road with Phil, with their show, and hopefully without any catastrophic problems, medical or otherwise. If he’s being honest, he really just needed to be reminded that Phil will still be there when he wakes up in the morning. Not that Dan is ever going to sleep until he knows for sure that Phil’s alright.
And even if there are bumps in the road (which there inevitably will be because face it, it’s them) they’ll work through them together. Things as they should be.
“No, baby,” says Dan, “ Nothing is going to ruin the tour.”