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Phil reaches his hands up into the air, stretching out the muscles stiff from reading and writing emails all day. His laptop is starting to burn where it sits on his thighs. He’s still got about twenty messages to respond to and Martyn’s sent him some merch stuff to look at, but he needs a little break.
He thinks about getting up, making himself a cup of coffee, maybe even going for a walk and getting some fresh air, but he’s wearing sweatpants and glasses and his hair is a right mess and he can see tiny little wet snowflakes falling outside the window. He’s just not got the energy for it today, especially since he doesn’t have his partner in crime to keep him company.
Instead he pushes his computer off his lap and onto the the sofa cushion beside him and pulls his phone out of his pocket. He opens up instagram and is surprised by what he sees.
The first thing that pops up, right on the top of his feed, is a photo of Dan. Which is strange, for a number of reasons.
Just like the photo and caption suggest, Dan is on a train right now, on his way home from visiting his family for Easter. Phil knows he’s on the train because he’d gotten a text a few hours earlier from Dan telling him exactly when he had to board. Phil checks the time and sees that the photo had actually been posted very recently. It’s only been up a few minutes and Dan should be about halfway back to London by now.
He doesn’t usually do that. He doesn’t usually post a photo right after he’s taken it, especially not when he’s traveling. They’d learned that the hard way — if they post anything even vaguely suggesting where they are or where they will soon be, people will show up. And they both really hate that. Phil hates it a little more, but it’s definitely not something Dan likes to deal with if he doesn’t absolutely have to.
But really, it’s just the fact that Dan doesn’t usually post anything spontaneously anymore, ever. Their social media accounts have become a sort of extension of their content, little tidbits given here and there to appease a mass of people hungry for any little piece of the lives of the collective entity that is Dan and Phil.
When Dan posts a photo to instagram, it’s usually highly calculated and strategically timed. So yeah, this is strange.
It’s also just… a strange photo. It’s not something Dan is usually comfortable posting. He takes photos like this often enough, and sometimes he shows them to Phil, but he rarely posts them. Mostly he knows his audience is smart enough to tell when he’s posting something in hopes of receiving some validation.
He’s getting a little more comfortable with posting things he knows people will mock him for — another symptom of trying to live his truth and all that — but this feels different to Phil. It feels like an especially vulnerable moment captured digitally and shared with altogether too many people.
Phil feels a strange twinge of sadness and he can’t look away from that one brown eye, blurred slightly by a pane of glass and the velocity of the train. He can’t see the warmth in it that he likes to see, no flecks of gold and no laughter lines cradling it.
What he sees is his boyfriend’s face, gorgeous as ever but half-hidden, that one sad eye ringed with the blue evidence of a sleepless night. Maybe even more than one.
He can read so much in this photo, and he hopes he’s wrong about it all.
He knows he’s not.
He knows that Dan is listening to something sad in those airpods. He knows that Dan is looking out the train window at the wet green between Wokingham and London and feeling the kind of melancholy he so perfectly captured in his photo. He knows Dan had caught sight of his reflection in that window and gotten stuck on it, snapped a photo or two as evidence that even when he’s feeling like shit, he looks good.
Because he does. He looks beautiful, even when Phil can tell he’s trying a little too hard. Even when he’s pouting his lips just a little, angling his head in just the right way to best flatter the shape of his face. He’s gorgeous and he knows it, and that’s why he’d taken the photo, and that’s why Phil feels his stomach churning with sadness.
Phil feels sad because he knows that Dan only posts photos he knows he looks good in when he can’t feel it himself, when he feels numb and small and unable to accept what he logically knows to be true. It sounds shallow, but it’s not. Not really.
It’s just vulnerable. It’s honest, which is something that hasn’t always come easily to Dan. Not when it comes to stuff like this.
Phil feels a profound gratefulness that Dan is speeding towards home right now. He doesn’t double tap to like the photo, though he wishes he could. Dan doesn’t need that right now, doesn’t need the deluge of messages he’d get from fans pointing out that even Phil couldn’t help thirsting over this particular selfie.
Instead he types out a quick text and sends it to Dan.
home soon?
The reply is immediate. yeah
He goes back to his emails. He wants to be done with work by the time Dan gets home.
His hearts jumps when he hears Dan’s key in the lock, but he doesn’t get up. He doesn’t want to seem too worried, because he knows Dan doesn’t like that.
He looks exactly like what Phil’s expecting — hair curly and slightly damp from the snow turned rain, eyes tired and shoulders subtly slumped with things he’s trying not to think about.
And of course, beautiful as ever. Tall and broad and stoic and familiar. Phil’s the one who hasn’t gone anywhere, and yet watching Dan walk through the door and into their lounge makes Phil feel like he’s the one who’s coming home.
He’s holding a starbucks cup in each hand. Phil smiles at him. Dan doesn’t return it, but still somehow he looks happy to be there. Phil holds one arm up in invitation for Dan to come sit beside him.
He does, and Phil drapes his arm over Dan’s shoulders. Dan puts the cups on the coffee table and melts into Phil’s side.
“Hey gorgeous,” Phil murmurs, dropping a kiss into Dan’s curls. He smells just exactly like he always does, even though he’s been gone for days. It’s irrationally comforting to Phil.
“Hey,” Dan says back, voice just as quiet as Phil’s and a little bit raspy.
“You’re home.”
Dan nods, wedging one arm between the couch and Phil’s back, the other around his front and squeezing. He rests his head on the front of Phil’s shoulder and sighs.
“Bad day?” Phil asks.
Dan shrugs. “Missed you.”
Phil doesn’t answer but to turn his head to look at Dan, who tilts his own head up to catch Phil’s mouth with his.
It’s a sweet kiss, the kind that makes Phil’s chest ache with how much love he feels for this man. It’s a soft kiss, the kind that lingers but doesn’t really lead to anything but a second. Their lips make a quiet but wet smacking noise as they pull apart and Phil’s hand finds its way to Dan’s jaw, cupping it and stroking Dan’s cheek with his thumb.
“You hungry?” Phil asks, because that’s the best way he can think to say what he means, which is I love you.
Dan nods, leaning forward to pick up one of the cups. He hands it to Phil and says, “Tea first.”
So they sit there together on their sofa, quietly drinking tea and watching the rain fall. They don’t really talk at all and the tranquility is profound. Their afternoons of freedom and stillness are limited now, and Phil thinks they both feel it, the hum of fear and excitement that touring brings.
They’ll be gone a long time. Home will mean something different to them soon. It’ll be quiet moments in a tour bus or a dressing room. It’ll be hotel rooms and holding hands under the table at middle of nowhere diners. It’ll be little pockets of time and space that they have steal.
Home is always them, together, no matter where they are. But today it’s also this flat that they decorated together, that they go to sleep and wake up in together almost every morning. Today it’s Phil holding Dan in his arms because Dan’s sad and he doesn’t feel right when they’re not together.
And maybe Phil’s a little sad too, because he’s going to miss this place. So Dan holds Phil right back and they revel in each other’s warmth while they drink their tea and watch the rain.
“So,” Phil says after a long while, because he just can’t resist. “Train of thought, eh?”
Dan just laughs, the first one he’s done since he got back. “Oh, shut up.”