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Dan has never slept very well in beds that aren’t his own. Even this past year, when he’s spent most of his time bopping around from bed to bed (in a mostly platonic way) he ends up dragging his exhausted body back home on the train and crashing for a day in a space that’s familiar.
He wants Phil’s bed to feel different. He’s been so excited to be here. A year ago, this was a silly little fantasy daydream. But a year ago he still had a girlfriend he was too afraid to even touch, and wasn’t even sure if his parents would support him through a gap year if he wanted to take one.
A year has changed so much. Now he’s friends with Phil - more than friends, really, after what they did in this bed just a couple of hours ago.
Maybe that’s why he can’t sleep. Too zazzed up from sex, and knowing what Phil tastes like and feels like. All they did was wank each other off but it was so much hotter than any of the fumbling one night stands Dan has had in the past.
He tries not to toss and turn too much. Phil is sleeping peacefully, black hair flopped in front of his face and mouth open slightly. He has snored exactly twice, both times waking himself up just enough to shift himself around and then go back to sleep more quietly.
When sleep eludes him, Dan ends up just turning on his side and watching Phil. Maybe it makes him a creeper, but whatever. He's still obsessed with the fact that he's stared at that face made up of millions of pixels, and now it's right in front of him in flesh and blood. He can see everything; the faint blood vessels along Phil's eyelids where the skin is thin, the little spot forming on his chin.
He's beautiful. He's real. Dan's chest constricts. He looks and looks and looks until his eyes start to burn, and finally he falls into a restless kind of sleep.
-
Dan is dreaming.
He's aware he's dreaming, because he wakes up and everything feels just to the left of center.
He blinks his eyes open. They feel gritty and raw, like he hasn't had enough sleep. If he were home and felt this way, he'd roll right over and bury his head under a pillow until the world went away again.
There is a pillow under his head. He reaches one hand out, patting at it.
Definitely a dream, because this is neither his pillow nor is it the one of Phil's he fell asleep with his cheek pressed against.
This one is nicer, though. It's silk or satin or one of those materials that feel like cool water on your skin the first time you touch them. He lets the pads of his fingers trail down against it.
The room smells different, too. It smells - weird. Clean, but also scented faintly of pine. Not a strong scent, though. It's like someone is burning a Christmas candle in a different room.
Dan finally opens his eyes. The ceiling above him is white. He shifts in bed, and finds his back twinging in a strange way. He frowns. Why the fuck is his back hurting? What kind of dream actually makes you feel pain?
He sits up. The room is clean, except for a pair of pants flung on the floor near what Dan presumes is a toilet. He can hear water running from inside, though the door is slightly ajar.
He wonders briefly if this is going to be one of those sorts of dreams where Gerard Way or Alex Evans walks out and confesses their undying love then for some reason they do all of his school essays for him as well.
Or maybe it'll be one of those other dreams. Normally just the hint of it can get him going a bit, but for some reason his dick stays soft. But that's probably good, because part of him still knows he's in Phil's bed where he fell asleep, and the last thing he needs is to have a wet dream and cream AmazingPhil's sheets.
It isn't, though. The water keeps going, the room gradually getting a bit steamy. He hears a voice singing out, some stupid song that Dan has never heard yet somehow knows - and knows that whoever is singing it is getting the word wrong.
The water shuts off. Dan opens his eyes. The room around him is definitely something his mind has conjured up. He stares at the doorway.
A man walks out wearing only a towel. He has white-blonde hair and a familiar slump to his shoulders. Dan knows who he is, but he doesn't know. He must be wrong.
It's Phil. Phil with bleached blonde hair, Phil with lines in his face, Phil with eyes that crease when he smiles at Dan.
And then it's naked Phil, who drops his towel with zero shame. It's world away from the Phil whose face turned red and eyes cast down in embarrassment when Dan tugged his dick out of his shorts just a few hours before.
This Phil is different, too, though. He has more hair on his chest. He's softer at the hips and stomach and pecs, but he has bigger biceps than Dan's Phil does.
"What are you still in bed for, lazy bones?" Phil teases him.
It's the same voice. Maybe a little deeper, a little more gruff. But Phil's voice, Phil's face smiling and sweet.
"Um," Dan says.
Phil beds and steps into a pair of pants. They aren't green like the ones Phil had been wearing the night before, but a pair of basic black ones. They hug his ass nicely, and make a mouth-watering contrast to the milky white of his skin.
"Dan! Up. Up. Go make coffee," Phil orders. "And I'll start breakfast once I get dressed."
Dan gets to his feet and stumbles out of the room. He looks around once he's in a hallway, and yeah - this part definitely just feels like a dream. There are multiple doors and he doesn't know what's behind any of them.
He pushes one open. It's a dream, after all, what could it hurt?
He finds a basic bathroom, but it does remind him that he kind of has to piss. He steps toward the toilet but between himself and relief is a mirror.
A mirror.
He stares at the reflection.
It's him, but it's not him.
If anything, the reflection looking back at him resembles his dad more than the face that Dan is used to seeing.
He reaches up and touches one cheek. He can feel the roughness of stubble, an alien concept to Dan who is still waiting for that part of puberty to kick in.
He touches his hair next. It's curly, and the sight is slightly revolting to him. Then he touches the lines at his own eyes, letting his hand trail down. He isn't wearing a shirt, and there's more hair on his own chest than he'd expect since he's used to having none.
"Fuck," he whispers, and now he notices that the voice is deeper too, the sounds rolling differently against his tongue. "What the fuck?"
He pushes his pants down. His dick is the same, at least... though he doesn't think he's imagining that his balls are a bit saggier. He'd like a refund on that part of the dream.
He pisses, and then halfway through realizes with a panic that pissing in a dream usually means you're doing it in real life. If he just pissed AmazingPhil's bed, he's basically going to jump out of the window or like, move to Zimbabwe and live the rest of his life undercover. It'll be his only option, really.
He pulls his pants back up and leaves the bathroom, poking his head in every door he sees along the way. He finds stairs, and then a kitchen, and he really wonders what he ate the night before that made his imagination go so haywire as to think that he could ever live in a place this swish.
"I don't smell coffee..." Phil's voice sings out from another room.
Dan isn't even sure which of these contraptions is a coffee machine. He's used to a kettle and a pot of instant, none of which seems available here.
He starts poking around in cabinets but keeps getting distracted. In the back of one cabinet, he locates a half-empty jar of Nescafe. He thinks maybe he's solved the issue, but then he can't find a kettle anywhere. He'd also like to know who designed this fucking spaceman kitchen, because things keep opening when he bumps against them and all the fixtures and furniture seems weirdly shaped.
When Phil walks into the room, Dan is no closer to having coffee made than before. He turns, already feeling the anxiety rising.
"Dan?" Phil asks.
He sounds sweet, and concerned. Dan's face goes hot.
"I can't find the kettle," he blurts out.
Phil frowns. "What?"
"I don't - where is it?" Dan asks.
Phil looks at him very, very strangely. "We don't have a kettle anymore. We get hot water from the esspresso machine."
Ah.
Espresso machine.
So that's what the huge silver contraption that looks like it requires an engineering degree to operate is.
"Are you alright?" Phil asks. He presses the back of his hand to Dan's forehead. His fingers are cool against Dan's flushed skin. "You might have a fever."
"I don't know," Dan says, because Phil is still touching him, and he has different hair and an older face but those eyes - fuck, they're exactly the same.
"I'll make the coffee," Phil says. "You go sit in the lounge. Do you want something to eat? Cereal?"
Dan shakes his head. "I'm not hungry."
He's not, either. He and Phil put away two large pizzas just a few hours before. Or at least, what to Dan is a few hours before.
"Okay, well." Phil's thumb strokes Dan's cheekbone. Dan might actually explode. "Go sit. I'm your servant boy today."
Dan walks out into a lounge that looks ridiculous in a way he isn't sure if he loves or hates. It's not how he'd design a flat, anyway, but it has some cool stuff in it.
Like a piano. A huge, fuck-off piano that he's drawn to. He sits and looks at the sheet music in front of him. Classical, boring.
There are photos on it, though. He reaches out and picks one up.
It's himself and Phil, with Phil's family - even the girl Phil's brother, who Dan has only seen pictures of. There's a woman with red hair beside him, and a little girl with somehow even redder hair in his arms.
Dan puts it down and picks up another one. This one has a woman in it with them, both of their arms around her. She looks familiar in a way he can't place. There are a few more - a dog he doesn't recognize, and a photo of himself and Phil with Dan's own mum.
Somehow the way she looks older hits him harder than his own face had.
He puts it down and gets up from the piano bench, walking over to the bookshelf. There are more photos there, mostly just ones of himself and Phil or just one of them with other people.
There's one that makes Dan's stomach twist abruptly. It's him, but he's wearing a sequined top, and holding a pride flag. He's clearly at some kind of event, maybe even a parade.
At the very sight of it, he dismisses the idea that this is anything but a fantasy his mind has conjured up in the depths of a REM cycle. Dan can't even admit to his best friends that he likes boys. He tried, once, but it went so horribly that he went out and got a girlfriend the very next week. He's certainly not going to be attending a parade or announcing it to a crowd.
The only person that's ever not made him feel like a freak is Phil.
As if summoned by the thought, this brain candy version of Phil walks into the room holding a mug of coffee in each hand. "Here you go," he says. "I used that new oat creamer you bought. It's not bad."
Dan takes the cup of coffee and stares down at it. Phil is already off, across the room, settling his coffee on a little table. Dan turns to watch him.
When Phil realizes he's being watched, he frowns again. "Seriously, are you alright? Are you feeling poorly?"
"A little," Dan says. Phil reaches out for him and draws him in close. Dan's eyes linger on the brown roots showing through Phil's hair. "I like the blonde on you."
Phil gives him a confused look. "Thanks?"
"I... sorry," Dan says, the awkwardness heavy in his chest.
Should he be a bit cooler in a dream? Shouldn't he feel like more than just his normal, lame self?
Phil pushes fingers through Dan's hair. "Why don't we just go back to bed, mm? Have a little lie in? We can sort through that contract later."
Dan has no idea what contract Phil even means, but he nods. "Yeah," he says.
Instead of moving, though, Phil just pulls him in closer. Dan's eyes flutter shut and then he's being kissed.
It's not really like the kisses the night before. There's nothing hesitant about it. It's not even really that horny. There's heat there, but it's tempered by confidence and - something else. Something that feels awfully love-shaped. Not that Dan really knows what that feels like, not yet. He knows the promise of it, the threat of it, from how he and Phil have been recently. But that feels like standing on the edge of a cliff looking down.
This feels like falling, soft and sure, knowing he'll be caught. He leans forward, into it, and opens his mouth. The kiss goes deeper, not stoking a fire but ensuring something already lit keeps burning.
When Phil pulls away he whispers, "Love you, Danny boy. Come on. Let's get back in bed."
Dan allows himself to be led, back to the stairs and then down the hallway and into a room that still smells faintly of whatever candle was burning and Phil's shower products. He sinks beneath the covers and into the mattress and then has to remind himself to breathe as this Phil wraps himself around Dan's body like he's done it a million times before. Dan's head swims and he feels like he's floating.
He feels one kiss to his shoulder - and then he's gone, slipping into a deep dark place.
-
Dan wakes up.
He wakes up and he's in a room with lime green carpet. It smells faintly of teenage boy, and there's someone bouncing on the bed beside him.
"Wake up, wake up."
Dan groans and rolls over. His brain is scrambled. Two seconds ago he was kissing a completely differently person, except - the same person.
"Stop," Dan says, slapping a hand out.
Phil grabs it and uses it to turn Dan over. "Wake up!"
"What, why?" Dan says, squinting at him.
Phil smiles. "Because I missed you, silly."
Dan's heart explodes into a million pieces. He grins back stupidly.
"Also, your face was doing a weird thing," Phil says. "What were you dreaming about?"
Dan pauses, the gears of his mind spinning. He's forgetting, he realizes, in that way that sometimes dreams just disintegrate in your mind.
"I don't know," he finally says. "I can't remember."
Phil slaps his hand down against Dan's stomach. Dan reaches down and grabs it. Phil links their fingers together and smiles, "Well, whatever it was, this is better, right?"
Dan has a brief flash - blonde hair, a soft kiss. But then it's gone and he's looking at Phil and his smile and while the dream surely was interesting, he thinks Phil must be right. There can't be anything better than this.
For now, at least.