#2012 phan

“Hello, Bear.”

“Nana?” Dan tried to keep his voice from cracking, he really did. But it did anyway. His grandmother, of course, knew him far, far too well.

“Dan?” Of course, of course his nana was worried. “What is it, dear? Is everything okay?”

“It’s — yeah. I’m fine. I mean, I’m not, but like physically, I’m fine.”

“You’re safe?”

She knew him better than anyone, except Phil, probably. She asked you’re safe? in that caring tone, the tone that Dan knew didn’t just mean are you physically safe? She’d been around — more than any of his family members — and knew. She knew how the demons in his mind could be, how deeply he felt things sometimes, how wrapped up in his own thoughts he could get. By now, he knew that you’re safe? didn’t just mean physically. When she asked, she meant it mentally, too. Maybe even more so. Nana knew. Nana understood.

“Yeah,” Dan managed through tears. “I’m safe.”

“What is it then, Bear?”

“It's—” His voice cracked again. “It’s Phil.”

“Phil?” Nana’s voice was sharper. “What did that boy do?”

“Nothing. Nothing, I swear. Phil’s great. Too great. It’s me. I’m awful.” Dan ruffled his hair and dragged his hand down his face.

“I highly doubt that, sweetheart. Tell me what’s troubling you.” A tea kettle whistled in the background. God, what he wouldn’t do to have his Nana make him a cup of tea right now.

Dan sunk backwards into the couch. “I fucked up, Nana.”

His grandmother must have sensed how upset he was because she didn’t correct his language. Instead, she waited, patiently silent, until Dan chose to elaborate.

“Me and Phil… God, I don’t know where to start.”

“Anywhere is fine, dear. Just say whatever you need to say.”

Dan leaned forward, fiddling with the paperclips on the table. “You know how we do the YouTube thing?” He waited for Nana to make a noise of agreement. “Well, there’s this video, it’s from a while ago. Phil made it for me and it — it got out.”

Again, Nana waited patiently, saying nothing. Dan knew it wasn’t because she had nothing to say. She was waiting for him to finish.

“It’s been awful. I don’t — I don’t want to get into the professional stuff. That… that’s whatever. But our relationship. It’s tense recently. We had a fight last week. We both lost our tempers and shouted shitty things we didn’t mean and — and — it’s been terrible since.” The paper clip bent under the pressure of Dan’s fingers. “I don’t, I don’t even know what — I can’t remember what we even fought about at this point. Or who started it. But now everything is fucked.”

“I’m sorry.” His grandmother, while a woman of few words, said each word with such deep sincerity that Dan was more comforted by those two words than every mediocre friend he’d tried to talk to in the past week.

“It’s such a mess. We’ve been walking on eggshells all week. We’re barely talking, he won’t even look me in the eye. When he goes to bed, he locks the bedroom door behind him so I have no choice but to sleep somewhere else. And I know I haven’t been great this week either. I keep snapping at him for stupid shit. And I — I broke one of his favorite mugs and I’ve been so petty lately that I don’t think he believes that it was an accident.”

Dan stared at Phil’s discarded green jumper balled up carelessly on the armrest, eyes slowly unfocusing. Without his permission, his mind kept asking the worst possible questions. What if he doesn’t forgive me? What if he doesn’t think this is worth fixing? What if he packs all of his stuff up and I never see that damn jumper again?

Dan wasn’t sure if it was okay to be touching Phil’s stuff right now, but he didn’t care enough to stop himself from pulling the jumper off the armrest and holding it tight against his chest.

“I want to make things right.” Dan took a deep breath to ground himself. “Phil is it for me, I know it. I know I’m young. I swear I listened to all of your advice. But this is — I can’t lose this.” Dan let out a broken sob and buried his face in the jumper.

Nana waited patiently while the sobs wracked his body. Dan could hear her steady breathing through the phone, and he tried to time his breaths with hers.

When his sobs finally slowed down and his breathing returned to normal, she spoke again. “How can I help?”

“I want to do something nice. I was thinking a nice dinner at home, just us. Maybe some wine. But I want it to be nice, special.” Dan’s voice came out stuffy and thick.

“That’s a lovely idea, Daniel.”

“Phil’s always been one for gestures, and I’ve always been one for words and… I don’t know, maybe it’s time I made a gesture?”

“I’m sure he will appreciate your gesture.” She was still gentle, still didn’t rush him into explaining why he’d called her of all people to talk about this with. Dan was grateful.

“I want it to be something special. Your risotto — it’s always made things better. And I just need things to be better.” Dan took another deep breath, steeling himself to ask for what he knew was a big favor. “I know you said the recipe is secret, but could I have it?”

“Grab a pen, darling.”

Dan felt a wave of relief crash through him. One thing’s gone right.

—-

Dan got everything ready before he started to cook because his nana had impressed on him that once he started, the next hour of his life would belong to stirring the risotto. With shaky hands, Dan arranged a few candles on the dining table. Best to light those later. From the cupboard, he selected two bowls and two wine glasses, the nice ones that almost matched and didn’t have characters on them. He set the table, trying to remember the order of the silverware like his mum had taught him. The table looked empty still. It needed a centerpiece.

Flowers. He should have gotten flowers.

Fuck. Trying to detract from his mistake, Dan placed the bottle of wine in the middle of the table. That’ll have to do.

Dan looked at the clock. He had almost exactly an hour before Phil was due home. Time to start cooking.

Dan pulled the ingredients out of the Tesco bag, lining them up neatly on the counter. With painstaking precision, Dan chopped the onion and garlic. He added them to the pan, drizzling them with olive oil. Nana hadn’t been clear on how much oil he needed. He added a little more in. Better safe than sorry.

Dan tentatively poured the rice into the pan, hoping that he didn’t turn the burner on so high that it would burn immediately. It sizzled briefly in the oil but didn’t turn black. When the rice was properly toasted — or at least he prayed it was — he began the next step.

Carefully, Dan ladled the broth into the rice, waiting for each batch of liquid to be absorbed before he added the next bit. His hands were so shaky that each time he dipped his ladle into the broth and carried it towards his pan, bits of it spilled out across the stovetop. Phil was going to be so angry about the mess if Dan didn’t clean it up before he got home.

On second thought, maybe deciding to make such a difficult dish was a mistake. At this point, the last thing he needed was one more failure in his relationship.

But his nana had sworn that if he followed the directions and went slowly enough, his risotto would turn out soft and creamy, just like hers. So he stirred. He stirred and stirred and stirred, slowly adding liquid a little at a time, for half an hour.

Standing over the stove for so long was getting hot. He was almost regretting pulling on Phil’s green jumper, the one he always wore when he was sick, but he had been craving Phil’s embrace and the soft warmth of the jumper was the closest he could get. The warmth had grown almost uncomfortably hot, though, but he was here now and too scared to stop stirring to pull it off.

Dan was contemplating risking setting the spoon down for just a second so he could take off the jumper when he heard Phil’s key getting caught in the front door — they really should talk to the landlord about the sticking lock. Dan wasn’t expecting him back this early. He was supposed to have another half an hour. This wasn’t how things were supposed to go. Phil was supposed to come home at seven, not six thirty.

Fuck, I should have started earlier. Just in case. The food was supposed to be ready first. The wine was supposed to be poured. He hadn’t even lit the candles yet and the stovetop was a mess. He’d fully intended to change into nicer clothes.

Now what was he going to do?

“Dan? What’s that smell?” Phil’s voice drifted into the kitchen from the doorway, but Dan didn’t turn around. He was paralyzed in fear; the only movement he was capable of was the slow, steady dragging of the wooden spoon through the rice.

The next time Phil spoke, he voice was much, much closer, startling Dan just as he was adding another spoonful of liquid to the pan, causing more liquid to slosh onto the stovetop. Hopefully Phil wouldn’t notice.

“What’s all this, Bear?” Dan didn’t need to look behind him to figure that Phil was gesturing to the unlit candles on the table, the empty wine goblets, the closed bottle of wine.

Dan kept quiet. He hadn’t thought through this part. He’d been so focused on getting every single detail of the big gesture right that he hadn’t practiced what he was going to say to Phil when he came home. So he did the thing he was worst at: he said nothing.

Instead, he kept doing what he’d been methodically doing for the last half an hour. Ladle the broth, stir until it’s absorbed. Ladle another bit in, stir again. Don’t let it burn. Don’t let it stick. Don’t fuck it up.

“Dan?” This time, the question was accompanied by a tentative hand on his ribs. Dan felt a shiver run through him at the contact. That wasn’t where Phil’s hands normally fell. His hands were usually placed a little further down, and a little tighter, wrapping around his waist more firmly. But this. This was more than Phil had touched him in a week, and he was grateful for it. If Phil was touching him again, even if it was only barely, something had to be going okay.

“This smells good, what is it?”

Dan took a deep breath — more a gulp really — before he finally found the strength to speak. “Risotto. It’s my grandma’s recipe. She used to always make this when my grandpa or I were upset.”

“Hmmm.” Phil murmured, his voice still closer than Dan was expecting. “What inspired this?

Dan finally turned away from the stove. Not all the way around to face Phil, just far enough that his shoulder was pressing lightly into Phil’s chest and he only had to turn his head a few inches to look Phil in the eye. Methodically, he kept stirring the rice.

Phil seemed to take Dan’s change in body language as encouragement, though not necessarily to continue talking. Phil’s hand, which had slid to Dan’s mid-back when he’d rotated, slid down to his lower back, tentatively curling his long fingers around Dan’s side.

"I just — ” Dan’s voice cracked again. He cursed himself in his head. Did he have no control over his voice tonight? “I wanted to do something nice for you. For us. This week has been…”

Phil made a sympathetic noise but didn’t say anything. Dan added another ladle of broth to the slowly-cooking rice. He just needed to get one thing right.

“You’re home early.” Immediately, Phil’s hand recoiled from his waist.

That was the wrong thing to say. He should have known. He should have known how it’d come out. He’d been snapping at Phil all week, of course Phil would take that as a criticism.

Trying to fix his mistake, Dan’s free hand grabbed Phil’s and placed it back on his waist, leaning slightly into his chest.

Phil made a slight hmmm noise again, clearly confused by Dan’s mixed signals.

“I just meant,” Dan added a bit more broth, refusing to actually meet Phil’s gaze. “I planned this to go better. I wanted to have the wine poured and the food ready and the music on and everything before you got home.”

Phil was quiet for a minute. “I can turn some music on if you want.”

“No!” Dan’s response was sharper than he meant it to be. It was the tone he’d been using all week. That wasn’t the tone he wanted to use tonight. “I mean, no, it’s okay. I made a playlist. I wanted to put that on.”

Phil lifted his hand from Dan’s waist and placed it gently on top of Dan’s hand on the wooden spoon. “Then let me do this for a minute while you go.”

Dan didn’t move his hand from under Phil’s and kept stirring. “No, it’s okay. It’s finicky. I can’t mess this up too.”

Phil’s hand tightened over Dan’s, taking control of the movement. Dan sighed. This really would be nicer with music on. Dan slid his hand out from underneath Phil’s and finally turned all the way around. Phil was closer than he’d thought. Their chests were mere centimeters apart, their faces closer than they’d been in a week.

“You have to keep stirring, otherwise it sticks or burns or boils, I don’t know. But I know if you don’t keep stirring, it’s all ruined.”

Phil dropped a light kiss onto Dan’s shoulder. “It’s okay, Bear. I’ll keep stirring. Forever, if you want. Trust me.”

“I’ll be right back,” Dan promised with a squeeze to Phil’s waist. His hand lingered there for just a moment. He wanted to slip his hand under Phil’s shirt, to feel the reassuring warmth of Phil’s skin. But he didn’t know if Phil wanted that. And he had other things to do, other things to try to make this night perfect. So he withdrew his hand and slid away from Phil. Phil let him go without protest.

As soon as Dan was free from Phil’s grasp, he grabbed his phone and the wine opener. With more concentration than necessary, Dan pulled open the music app and selected the playlist he’d made for tonight: 2009-2010. He’d spent a while — more time than he was willing to admit — carefully selecting songs from 2009 and 2010, and just a few from years earlier, that perfectly fit his and Phil’s first year together. He wanted to set the tone, to bring Phil back to the best parts of their relationship tonight.

For once, he didn’t struggle with the wine opener. The one they’d bought when they moved in was finicky. It didn’t always grab the cork, and more often than not they had to push the cork into the bottle, rather than pulling it out like proper adults. But tonight, somehow, it popped out like it was supposed to.

The candles were cheap Tesco candles and they didn’t always light right. Sometimes they had to go through half a box of matches just to get them to stay lit. By some miracle, it only took three matches to light them tonight though.

Looking down, Dan fiddled with the hem of Phil’s jumper. He considered changing into the button down that he’d laid out on the bed. But he didn’t want to leave Phil alone with hisresponsibility for too long, so he pushed up the sleeves and went back to the kitchen instead.

When Dan walked back to the stove, Phil was meticulously stirring the risotto.

“It needs more liquid,” Dan muttered. He reached out and added a ladle full of broth to the pan.

“Sorry, I didn’t realize.” Phil kept stirring the pan in the slow circular motion that Dan had shown him.

“It’s okay, I didn’t tell you to watch it.” Dan wrapped his hand all the way around Phil, taking back the wooden spoon. “It’s okay, I’ve got it now. Have a seat, I’ll bring it over when it’s done.”

Phil didn’t move away though. He leaned back into Dan’s chest, just a little bit. His movement seemed hesitant, like he wasn’t sure if Dan was going to push him away. Dan hated that, hated that Phil was afraid of Dan rejecting him. It felt good though, to have Phil this close again. He wanted more — needed more.

Dan leaned in closer to Phil, burying his face in Phil’s hair and taking a deep breath. The hand that wasn’t stirring came up to rest on Phil’s waist. Phil must have understood Dan’s actions because he leaned all the way back into Dan, trusting Dan to support him.

They stood like that for a while. Dan stirred and added broth, Phil leaned his head back on Dan’s shoulders and closed his eyes. At some point, Dan’s hand nudged its way under Phil’s shirt, and he began tracing his fingers lightly up and down Phil’s side.

“That tickles,” Phil murmured through almost-closed lips. If Phil wasn’t so close to Dan’s ear, he would have missed it.

“Sorry,” Dan mumbled back, instantly stilling his hand.

“Don’t stop. It feels nice.” Phil muttered.

“Okay.” Dan resumed his slow caress, his movements in time with his deliberate stirring.

Phil’s head turned into Dan’s neck, his lips just grazing beneath his ear. “This seems like a lot of effort.” His voice was still hushed, almost a whisper.

Dan wasn’t sure if Phil was talking about the food or the gesture, or if they were even separate things at this point. “It’s worth it.”

Phil didn’t respond, but Dan could feel his lips twist into a smile against his neck. When he added the last bit of broth, he squeezed Phil’s waist tenderly, pulling Phil out of his reverie.

“It’s almost done, go sit.” Dan whispered, afraid that speaking at a normal volume would break the peace.

Obediently, Phil left the warm heat of the stove and moved to the table, hovering behind his chair. “Can I do anything to help?”

Dan brought a small bit of risotto up to his lips, terrified that it wouldn’t taste right. Terrified that he still might have fucked up. Miraculously, it tasted exactly like his nana’s. “No, everything’s fine. Have a seat, I’ll bring it over.”

Dan pulled on an oven glove and brought the pan of risotto over to the table. He carefully poured a generous helping into each of their plates. His ungloved hand brushed against Phil’s chest as he spooned the rice into his dish. Phil caught his eye and offered a tentative smile.

It had been too long since Dan had seen that smile.

When Dan came back from setting the pan down, Phil was staring at the food on his plate, fork in hand, but wasn’t making any movement to take a bite. Dan watched Phil, petrified that he was going to say he didn’t like it. After a moment of hesitation, Dan sat down and took a small sip of his wine.

“Dan?”

“Yeah?” Dan’s hand shook as he picked up his own fork.

“Thanks for cooking.”

Dan and Phil shared a small grin in the candlelight, both of their spoons halfway to their mouths. “You’re welcome, Phil.”

It wasn’t perfect. The meal hadn’t been ready when Phil had walked in the door, the wine hadn’t been poured, the candles hadn’t been lit, and the music hadn’t been playing.

But it was perfect now.

Now, they were sipping on nice wine that his grandmother had insisted on paying for, just to help, and they were listening to music from their early months that brought back memories, and they were eating lovely risotto that was bound to fix things.

“Dan?” Phil’s voice was soft, still not at full volume.

Dan looked up from his risotto, worried. His concern washed away when he saw that Phil had reached his hand across the table. It was resting face up, waiting for Dan’s hand to join it.

“I’m sorry.” Phil whispered when he had Dan’s attention.

Dan reached his hand out and grasped Phil’s, curling his hand and interlacing his fingers with Phil’s.

“Me too.”

thank you @auroraphilealis for helping make this better than the drunk rambling it started out as. because i’m pretty sure when i told the gc that i wanted to write a fic about risotto everyone thought i was crazy.

stay tuned for more in the Love is… series