Third Time Lucky
genre: fluff
word count: 6.1k
warnings: like one swear word, vague references to sex (nothing graphic)
extra tags: hooking up, getting together, the good ole
excerpt:
The guy’s laughter trails away as the flicker of recognition flits across his face. Dan slowly lifts his hands away from the man’s body, face slowly burning. The rain begins to flatten his hair against his scalp.
“You don’t happen to be, um,” he stumbles for words.
“Dan?” the man asks incredulously. “I mean, no, not me, but you – it was you, right? - You left a note saying your name was, um, Dan. And, um, I swear you look like him.”
“Uh,” Dan fiddles with his jacket zipper. “That’s me.”
“Oh.” he chuckles uncomfortably. “Right. Thank god. It might’ve been awkward if you weren’t.”
-
-
Dan wakes with a resounding throb inside his head, his eyes glued together, and his clammy skin stuck to a stranger’s arm. He takes a breath through his dry lips, slowly unpeeling himself. His breath tastes foul. He stirs, trying to find some evidence of working brain cells within the dull throb behind his skull.
It’s really cold. Dan can feel the hair on his limbs rising.
Dan’s eyelids crack open, and finds, mercifully, that the room is mostly in shadow, thanking any godly being of tequila, or maybe hangovers, that his hook-up at least knew what he was doing when he invited Dan over last night.
Speaking of – he tilts his head to the side slowly, a millimetre at a time, his stiff neck protesting like a rusty door hinge. He’s greeted with the lean torso of a pale-skinned man, the muscles in the back – slightly on the scrawny side – shifting every time he takes a breath. Tendrils of black hair scrape the nape of his neck. Dan can’t see his face, but woozy images surface of bright, lustful blue eyes and a sharp smirk, and those thoughts aren’t really the way he planned to warm up with, not at this moment anyway, so he shoves them right back down so the tightening in his stomach doesn’t go any deeper.
Not his worst catch though, his brain supplies helpfully. Definitely worth storing.
He cringes. God, I hope we used protection, he thinks. He peeks at the very naked body again with a small amount of regret. It passes slightly when he looks down through the barely-open slit in his eyes to see the thin fabric of his boxers still clinging to his hips.
Maybe we didn’t do anything. The thought lasts all of two seconds until his memory butts back in hazily. It could just as well be his imagination; he really can’t tell the difference at this point. It involved a lot of grinding. Also his mouth, and a crotch that almost definitely belonged to the man next to him and okay, repress that thought…
Dan flushes. He should probably leave before he woke up. It was pretty slack, but hell, he can’t even remember the guy’s name. He was terrible at socialisation when he was sober with people that he’d known for years. Dan doesn’t think he could handle a confrontation with this, admittedly probably extremely attractive man.
With that thought in mind, he pulls himself up reluctantly, running his hands through his hair. Through his slightly bleary eyes, he sees that the room was actually fairly bright in terms of colours despite the lack of light. A green and blue patchwork duvet was kicked to the floor at his feet, the bedsheets bright green. A Mac was arranged on a large desk in the corner, several wires attached to it. Dan was mildly impressed at the setup, considering that he doesn’t actually know anyone who had that kind of organised mess who wasn’t a youtuber. Maybe his hook up was a youtuber. Dan hopes they don’t bump into each other at VidCon or anything, because that would spark a lot of strange conversation, and he’d have to knock back more free champagne than he’s used to holding, in an attempt to keep his cool.
Dan rises carefully from the bed, making sure that it didn’t creak, and snuck around the bed, retrieving his jeans and the crumpled shirt strewn haphazardly on the back of his desk chair.
He wrinkles his nose as he pulls it on. He’s fairly certain he didn’t throw up on it, but there’s an acidic kind of smell to it that he’s either going to eradicate with excessive deodorant, or throw into the nearest bushfire. Dan orders an Uber – there’s no way he’s going to risk being seen by a fan in this state. He just hopes he didn’t get noticed going home with whoever it was in the bed.
Anyways, that was a problem he’d tackle later.
Dan doesn’t bother showering. He doesn’t trust himself to not wake up the other man in the bed with the patter of water. Clad in his less-than-fresh clothes, he borrows a pen from one of the brightly coloured tins on the desk. He looks around until he spots a stack of post-its, cut endearingly into the shape of a pixelated lion. Dan quirks a smile at it as he scribbles a quick apology and his number and name onto its orange mane. He was fairly sure he was clean, but better safe than sorry.
He sticks the note next to the sleeping man’s head, and tiptoes out of the front door.
-
The rest of the day plays out in the midst torrential rain, Dan nursing his hangover with mac n cheese made out of a box and a glass that was more melted ice cube than Ribena.
He swings his legs over the side of the armchair with his laptop propped up on his thighs, sipping thoughtfully. He was due for a video, but then again, he was always due for a video. Nothing was sparking in his brain. Maybe he’d call one of his friends – if he was desperate, he could probably come up with some kind of tag.
Louise arrives around an hour later, hair impeccable and donning a pair of sunny yellow boots. “RIghtio,” she announces, dripping water onto Dan’s floor. “What’s the emergency?”
Dan grins at the sight of the young mum and ushers her inside. “Do you need an emergency to hang out with me?”
Louise scrunches up her face. “Daniel-”
“Ok, so my apartment isn’t burning down,” Dan says sheepishly. “But I can’t think of any video ideas and I’m lonely.”
Louise squints at him. “Right.” She thrusts her coat and still dripping umbrella in Dan’s arms. “Be a gentleman and take my stuff.”
“Yes ma’am,” Dan carries them gingerly over to the kitchen counter, where he sets them down, without much grace.
She flops down onto his couch. “What do the youngsters like these days?”
Dan snorts. “You know as much as me.”
She holds up her fingers, ticking them off. “There’s that 100 layers thing trending, but everything’s already been done, unless you wanted to like, paint your soul or something. Which is a very Dan thing to do, but also-”
“Requires a lot of effort and is practically impossible.” Dan leans against the counter wistfully. “Have you eaten?”
“Yeah, I have,” she says. She studies Dan’s surroundings. “Have you?”
Dan laughs guiltily. “Um, I was kinda hoping you would say no so we could go out and I can procrastinate a little longer because I’ve barely consumed anything all day and I feel a little sticky and I can’t be creative while I’m sticky.”
“You do realise it’s pouring outside?” Louise sighs.
Dan nods towards her boots. “At least you’re equipped?”
Louise looks like she would’ve stabbed him with the end of her umbrella if she still had it, but she huffs in defeat. “You’re horrible. You’re lucky I love you, or I would’ve conked you over the head and run away by now.”
Dan giggles. “Thanks mum.”
“You don’t get to call me that, it’ll make me feel sixty,” she grumbles. She opens the door, looking at Dan expectantly. “Are we going?”
Dan grabs an umbrella from the stand near his door and bounds towards her. “Can we get brunch?”
“Its four pm, Daniel,” Louise rolls her eyes. “Though we can probably still find some French toast somewhere.”
The rain doesn’t show any mercy as they wander down the streets, battering down on the two of them as they laugh and talk about their lives like they hadn’t seen each other in years. Louise looks almost regal under her yellow umbrella, looking like she was born in a rainforest, but Dan completely regrets leaving the house at all, his stomach growling unattractively and his socks getting soaked through, squelching a little every time he walked.
It was also conveniently at this time that a particularly strong gust of wind knocks into them, full force, and Dan’s flimsy umbrella – he bought it for aesthetics, but he regrets that only now – cracks and flies off in the opposite direction of where they’re walking. He gives out an alarmed shout, partially dragged along with it. The bent wires tumble along the curb, and Dan’s heart sinks as it barrels straight into the chest of someone whose eyes only have time to widen behind their glasses before he’s tripping straight into a muddy pool of water.
Dan lurches forward, one of the few times he’s grateful for his giraffe-like legs, and catches the man around the waist, pulling him back up and only just stopping himself from teetering off the side and into the puddle himself. Somehow, he ends up with a face full of wool, and he shakes it off, only to notice how close he and the stranger were. He realigned his arms awkwardly so they weren’t wrapped quite so tightly around him.
“I’m so sorry,” he blurts. For some reason, his hands feel like they have a responsibility to rearrange the scarf back around the guys face, patting the fabric down. “Um,” the guy says. “I think your umbrella is blowing away.”
“No kidding,” Dan mutters. “I’m sorry – the wind, y’know, it kind of just hit me, I swear I didn’t just throw my umbrella at you, I mean, not that I’ve ever done that, but-”
The man laughs, a sunshiny kind of sound that makes Dan’s hands stop their fluttering and look at the ‘stranger’ square in the face.
If it was possible for his insides to plummet any lower, that’s exactly what they did.
The guy’s laughter trails away as the flicker of recognition flits across his face. Dan slowly lifts his hands away from the man’s body, face slowly burning. The rain begins to flatten his hair against his scalp.
“You don’t happen to be, um,” he stumbles for words.
“Dan?” the man asks incredulously. “I mean, no, not me, but you – it was you, right? - You left a note saying your name was, um, Dan. And, um, I swear you look like him.”
“Uh,” Dan fiddles with his jacket zipper. “That’s me.”
“Oh.” he chuckles uncomfortably. “Right. Thank god. It might’ve been awkward if you weren’t.”
It is a bit awkward.
“Er,” he scratches the back of his head. He notices that the other man mirrors him. “So. I guess everything was okay?”
Dan mentally kicks himself. Really smooth, Daniel. Ask the hot guy if he has an STI. Fantastic.
Just for good measure, he telepathically asks Louise to come and kick him as well.
“Actually,” the guy says, rain spatters on his glasses. He blushes. “I was just going to get checked now.”
“Oh!” Dan says. “Oh, well, um, have fun.”
Actually, maybe he should ask the universe to kick him out of existence.
“You too?” the guy says, his lips pressed firmly together like he was trying to suppress a laugh. “Thanks, by the way.”
“For the note, or for saving you from planting your face into mud?”
“For last night,” the man says, and then breaks out into laughter again. “I’m sorry, that sounded really bad. I should probably leave before I get a restraining order.”
Dan is too stunned to respond.
He sticks out a hand. “I’m Phil,” he says. “Just in case you didn’t remember. Which I totally don’t blame you for, because I completely forgot your- actually, never mind, I’ll just go.”
Dan takes the offered hand carefully, because just the reminder of his name brought a lot of not-safe-for-work memories to the surface of his brain, and he’s slightly afraid that they might somehow find their way to Phil if he so much as touches him. “Dan,” he says weakly. “But you already knew that.”
Phil smiles, blue eyes dancing in his pale face. “See you around, Dan,” he says cheerfully, and then he walks off, past Louise, who is either constipated or just desperately trying to wipe her face of emotion.
Dan ambles back to her, and plucks the umbrella handle from her hands, holding it over the two of them.
“Your hair’s wet,” she comments simply, and promptly dissolves into guffaws of laughter.
“Shut up,” he mumbles, shaking his head in an accurate imitation of a wet poodle, already dreading the noodle-like curls that were going to form.
“I think you just found a video topic,” she chortles.
Dan groans. “And what, talk about how I hooked up with a guy and then knocked him over with my umbrella within 24 hours?”
“You slept with him?” Louise near-shrieks, gripping Dan’s elbow.
“A little louder,” he says dryly. “I don’t think he heard you.”
“Oh my,” Louise claps her hands gleefully. “I can’t believe you had sex with Phil Lester.”
It’s Dan’s turn to look at her incredulously. “Okay, first of all, I didn’t have sex. I don’t think so, anyway. Also, you know him?”
“I’m only one in like, a million other people,” she laughs, until she catches his face, and it dwindles. Dan looks at her, baffled. “Dan, he’s one of the most popular vloggers in Britain.”
Dan stares at her. “You’re joking.”
“I’m not!”
“Oh my god,” Dan breathes. “Oh no.”
“I don’t even know how you don’t know him,” Louise chastises. “You guys have been on the same panel at Vidcon at least twice.”
“I never pay attention,” Dan wails.
“Don’t worry,” Louise says, patting his arm consolingly. “It doesn’t seem like he’s paying attention either.”
“I’m quitting YouTube,” Dan laments. “I can never go to another public event ever again.”
“Don’t be stupid,” she says. “He’s probably forgotten by now.”
Dan narrows his eyes. She shrugs. “It’s a possibility.”
Phil did not forget.
Dan’s phone vibrates with a message from an unknown number while he and Louise are tucking into a stack of crepes, Louise claiming that all the excitement boosted her appetite again.
was late for the appointment, but they said everything was fine. thought i would let u know :]
Dan groans aloud. Louise snatches the phones off of him before he could protest, not that he would’ve anyway.
She squees, her laughter sounding more like it came out of her nose than her mouth. “This is incredible.”
Dan spears a wedge of crepe moodily. “No. It’s mortifying.”
“Oi, at least you got your video plot,” she points out, stabbing her own fork in his direction. “That’s one problem solved, right?”
“Yeah, and like a million more made in the process.”
Louise calls for the bill, waving Dan’s half-hearted objections away. “You’re already suffering,” she claims. “I am a little empathetic.”
The rain had paused temporarily while they were inside the café, but the sky still looks threateningly heavy with grey clouds.
“Hmm,” Louise muses. “I left Darcy at Matt’s. Wanna come over to my place instead of going back?”
Dan runs his hands through his curly hair. “Looking like this?”
“I think it looks cute.”
“You and no one else, Louise.”
Louise tsks. “Your entire fanbase is in love with your natural hair.”
Dan sighs heavily. “Still convinced that they’re formulating some kind of humiliation plan.”
She bats at his arm. “Besides,” she continues. “We always film our collabs at your place. They’ll appreciate a change in scenery.”
“Okay, but all my filming stuff is at home.”
Louise is already drawing out her phone to call someone to pick them up. “I am a YouTuber, Dan, don’t be rude.”
Dan has the decency to look embarrassed. “Right, sorry.”
While Louise is speaking, and not paying any attention to Dan, he slips out his own phone and taps out a reply to Phil, even though he’s 87% sure he’s going to regret it. Which is why he picks a small, private moment to do it, so he can’t blame anyone but himself if it completely flops.
the world isn’t cruel enough to make this day worse tbh -_-
He sticks his phone back into his pocket, trying to convince himself that he was not waiting on the reply like a lovesick teenager, but jumping a metre into the air when it vibrates against his butt pretty much instantaneously. Dan tries ignoring it for maybe 3 seconds, before he fumbles the phone open in his attempt to open up the text.
true, it says, accompanied by a smiling poop emoji, and it’s so innocently inappropriate that his next breath gets caught in a snort and Louise catches him cracking up at his phone.
wait i just realised that was a really bad choice of emoji, the next message reads. sorry, says the next one. And then after that one; i guess it is a cruel world after all
Dan sneaks a look at Louise, who quickly pretends she’s still preoccupied. i think my friend is judging me because I keep laughing at my phone.
The ‘typing’ bubble pops up immediately. see, im funny
Dan lets out a small huff of humour. you wish.
He slips his phone up his sleeve without waiting for the reply, pretending that he can’t see the sly look Louise gives him.
“Estimated time of arrival?” he asks airily.
“Stop smiling at nothing,” she says instead. “I know the boyfriend in your phone is a charming fellow, but you’re starting to look creepy.”
Despite himself, Dan’s grin only stretches wider. He tries to hide it, but that only ends up in him sucking his lips in so he looks like some kind of slenderman hybrid. Louise tries to look disapproving, but fails miserably, and ends up heaving with silent mirth. Well, as silent as Louise can be, which is not really.
They settle onto the end of Louise’s bed to film, and Dan is actually glad they’re doing it here instead of at his own flat because he’s sure that it probably wouldn’t be done for another week at the least.
“Wait,” Dan says. “You said Phil’s a youtuber?”
“Ooh,” Louise teases. “Calling him Phil, now, are we?”
Dan ignores her, but his ears turn red. “He’s going to see this.”
“So is your entire subscriber count, which is what, two million, three million now?”
“Yeah, but that’s different,” Dan groans. “I don’t know them, and I mostly don’t hook up with them either. Also, this video is entirely about him. I am on texting terms with the same dude.”
He stands up, frowning. “Actually, this might not be that goo-”
Louise tugs him back down by his elbow. “Dan.”
“Louise,” he grumbles in the same tone.
“You won’t get another video up if you don’t”
“This one might get flagged anyway.”
“Does it look like he’d be offended?”
Dan furrows his brow. “Well, no…”
“Are you going to mention his name in it?”
“Of course not-”
Louise sits back smugly. “Then what are you waiting for?”
Dan looks uncomfortably at the camera. Louise huffs a sigh. “It’s not explicitly going to be just him, Dan, it’ll just be one of the iconic Dan&Louise failure compilations. We’ll throw in the thing with the maple syrup?”
He cringes a little, and then breaks out into a smile. “Okay, fine, whatever, let’s do it.”
Louise shuffles around to give him room, grinning to herself, and Dan really doesn’t trust the gleam in her eye, but he switches on the camera onto them both, squeezing into the frame.
“Hello internet,” he says, and Louise immediately cracks up. He looks at her, perplexed.
“Sorry,” she snorts. “I love it when you say that.”
Dan gives a theatrical sigh, gesturing to Louise. “As you can see, I have a very special guest in my presence today. Did you want to introduce yourself?
Louise smirks. “Hi everyone, it’s Louise.”
Dan rolls his eyes. “Anyways, so we were hanging out today-”
“Something that we should probably stop doing-”
“-I agree-”
“Because we are iconically-”
“-very bad at life.”
Dan nods his affirmation solemnly. “However, Louise is pretty much my other half-”
Louise pretends to gag.
“-I’m taking that back. Anyways-”
“Aw, I love you too,” Louise coos.
“Are you done?” Dan says, exasperated.
Louise giggles, and Dan pretends to push her off the end of the bed. “I’m cancelling you from my channel,” he complains, even as she springs back.
“Not if I take over it first.”
Dan makes to leave the shot. Louise swings her legs onto his spot. “Sprinkle of Dan,” she snickers.
“Louise is not on fire,” he supplies wryly.
“Actually,” Louise ponders. “That has a nice ring to it.”
Dan dives back into the shot, shoving Louise’s legs away. “Piss off.”
“Back to the video,” she yells. Dan flops back onto the bed.
“So we were hanging out,” he tells the ceiling loudly. Louise jabs his stomach, and he yelps, almost banging his head on one of the bedposts as he jumps back up to a sitting position. “No fair,” he grouses. “You would kill me if I did that to you.”
“You’re a guest in my house, Howell, get your dirty back off my sheets.”
Dan crosses his arms over his chest protectively. “That’s not even the worst thing that’s happened to him today,” Louise tells the camera.
“Evidently, if this video exists,” he sighs. “Ya’ll know that Britain has terrible weather, especially in December. So that should be a bad thing in itself, but then I make the bad decision-”
“Terrible, really.”
“-to call Louise. And y’know, I was finding it within myself to crave some fancy breakfast at what, 3? 4?”
Louise nods.
“As you do. But then we step outside, and I’m holding this umbrella – And I loved this umbrella, okay, it was my favourite umbrella. This umbrella is fricken tied to my soul. And then out of nowhere-”
“This giant gust of wind,”
“It was like a huge fart from God or something, it was that big-”
Louise dissolves into giggles. “A giant fart?”
“Do you have a better metaphor?”
Louise shakes her head, but takes a while to pick herself back together, trembling with her own laughter. “Alright. Okay. It was very big, moving on.”
Dan hmph’s, and then gestures helplessly. “This wind, it blows…it just whips my beautiful umbrella out of my hand, and it was all in slow motion, you know, like those moments in an action movie where no one breathes because the dude is about to get eaten or whatever. Yeah, my umbrella was about to consume me with humiliation and everlasting dishonour.”
Louise’s control on herself shatters, but Dan’s on a roll. “So my umbrella is tumbling along in some kind of graceful ballet routine, and it rolls right-”
“Straight in there.”
“It beelines right into this random guy’s chest, and he just kind of…teeters-”
“He slips,” Louise cackles. “And he lands right into Dan’s arms.”
-
“See, that wasn’t so bad,” Louise says, as they rewatch the footage. “Doesn’t even need editing.”
Dan grimaces. “No, it definitely does.”
He swivels around in Louise’s chair, opening his mouth to try and dissuade her, but it seems she’s too in tune with him for even this. “Nope,” Louise says. “Go home, slap on some comic sans, and post it, Daniel.”
“But-”
“Absolutely no buts. You’re gonna lose all your hard earned subscribers.”
Dan turns back to the silently playing video, ready to sulk, but a light in the apartment opposite to Louise’s catches his eye.
One thing about Dan: he prides himself on his near-perfect eyesight, despite his constant exposure to his laptops screen. It’s pretty rare that he doubts them. But right now, peering into the yellowish light of the – he thinks it’s his bedroom, shit, that was the bedroom he was in just that morning – he is very nearly certain that his eyes are either hallucinating, or have stopped working altogether.
Because he sees… no, that’s not possible.
“Louise,” he murmurs quietly. “Did you know you lived a building away from Phil Lester?”
Louise snaps her head up. “What?”
Dan points his chin towards the lit up window. “Please tell me that’s not him.”
She gapes at the said window. “What the hell.”
“You never noticed?”
“I knew he lived...like, around, but not here.”
“Are you saying you constantly bump into him on the street and you never said anything?”
She looks defensive. “Well, he never recognised me. And he never really mattered before today, anyway.”
Dan’s eyes are trained on Phil, guiltily. It’s creepy, but he can’t help it.
He can’t really tell his expression from here – but he’s moving around… pacing? But he wasn’t really stepping in any direction – oh, he’s dancing. Dan smothers the fluffy cloud of endearment rising like helium in his stomach, the light-headedness feeling like gas in his head. He didn’t exactly peg him for the type, but who was he kidding, everyone was the type. Dan has no idea what music it was, but he watches Phil wiggle around, completely untalented with his small bopping motions. A smile slips out before he can stop it.
With a start, he remembers that he’s completely forgotten to check his phone, and sure enough, when he types his passcode in, there’s a small (8) next to Phil’s number.
also just wondering do you have me saved as a contact
wait don’t do that you’ll put the poop emoji next to my name
i don’t want to be a poop emoji
can i be the sexy dancing lady
you know theres an emoji that looks exactly like you
i found it when i was looking for an emoji for your name
ive never used it before actually
and the most recent; is this too much this is weird isn’t it
Dan’s face softens dangerously, and Louise wants to turn herself invisible with how intimate the moment seems, squirming in the way only PDA was able to cause.
you need to earn the dancing lady philip smh
Instinctively, he looks up, not expecting a reaction at all, but to laugh at the irony of Phil’s ‘sexy’ moves. However, Phil seems hell bent on surprising him, because he immediately dives for something on his bed, and in the process, whacks his head hard against the ceiling and crumples on top of his blanket, clutching his forehead. Dan flinches in sympathy.
“Oh my god,” Louise squawks. “Is he okay?”
Dan cringes because he’s completely forgotten she was there. She slides her eyes towards him, and they make eye contact that lasts for a second before hers widen with mischief, and she flounces into her kitchen.
“Louise,” he warns. “I don’t know what you’re planning, but It’s a terrible idea.”
She rummages inside her freezer without a response, and Dan ventures closer, only to be nearly thwacked in the face with a bag of frozen vegetables. Louise holds them up triumphantly in front of him and then dumps it in his arms.
“What-” Dan mutters as Louise plants her hands onto his shoulders and begins to steer him to the front door. “Oh.”
It clicks in Dan’s brain. “No,” he states firmly. “Louise, you suck, you’re the worst, I’ve never heard of a more atrocious idea in my entire life, you cannot make me go out there,”
“It’s your fault the poor guys injured – Don’t even blame me, this is just, y’know, responsibility.”
“LouISE.”
“I’m not kidding.”
Dan squirms in her grip, but her hands might as well be made of steel because they just grip onto him tighter. “I’m gonna come back and murder you with peas,” he threatens, except his voice breaks and it sounds more like an undignified squeak.
She pushes him all the way down to the street, where she casts him out with a final push and disappears behind the door again just as quickly.
He finds himself outside Phil’s building. Of course. “Tell him he can keep the veggies,” Louise calls sweetly from her kitchen window. “I’d rather feed Darcy fresh ones anyway.”
Dan only flips her off, which, infuriatingly, only makes her blow a kiss towards him. “Fare thee well, Howell,” she calls. “Relieve your raven haired prince of his aching wounds.”
And then she closes her curtains.
Dan huffs, and looks down at himself self-consciously. It wasn’t the acrid-smelling shirt from yesterday, at least, but he hadn’t changed since the afternoon, and it was well into the night now. Also, he thinks his deodorant is running low, and it’s a really bad time to sweat, but he can’t stop his palms from steaming up the frostiness of the frozen peas.
“This is really creepy, Louise,” he mutters, knowing that she wouldn’t be able to hear him anyway. He sighs, and then heads up the stairs.
He thinks he probably stands in front of a door for maybe 10 minutes. A door, because he’s not actually sure that this is Phil’s door. He just walked to the side closest to Louise’s house on, maybe the third level. Dan didn’t really have time to count before Louise had unceremoniously dumped him outside.
Dan sighs, and hides the peas behind his back, using the other hand to knock on the door. There’s a pause, a terrible anxiety-inducing pause, and then a violent shuffling inside that makes Dan want to give the door a wide berth. The door cracks open to reveal a dishevelled man, black hair sticking up in tufts and glasses balanced on the tip of his nose, dressed in Star Wars pyjama pants and a black sweater hitched up on one side. In other words, undoubtedly Phil.
His jaw drops downwards. Dan’s neck feels warm, and he reaches up to palm a hand at the growing blush, willing it to go away.
A beat of silence.
And then they both start talking.
“What are you doing here,” Phil asks faintly, at the same time Dan thrusts his hands full of frozen vegetables forward with a rushed “I was sent with these.”
Phil looks down at the peas, bewildered. “What?”
“I was, uh, watching you through your bedroom window-”
Phil’s eyes widen, and he fumbles the peas briefly, almost dropping them.
“No, no, oh god, it’s just that my friend, um, she lives right opposite you, and I didn’t realise when I was here, er, earlier. And um, we noticed you, uh, hit your head.”
He sputters out unintelligibly.
Phil’s cheeks turn a dusty pink. “Oh.”
“Yeah, uh, she made me – um, she said it was responsibility,” he tries to salvage, in a sad attempt to save his dignity.
Phil still looks like a bird who desperately wants to take flight away from the situation, but Dan thinks he might see the shadow of a smile cross his face. He could be hallucinating, though.
“You don’t dance the same way you do in a club,” he says weakly.
Phil gives a perplexed laugh. “Different vibes, I guess. Less people to elbow and accidentally grind on.”
Dan’s ears burn up.
Phil doesn’t look as pale either. “Too much?”
Dan gives a halfhearted shrug, a nervous chuckle spilling from his lips.
Phil hefts the frozen bag. “Did your friend want these back?”
“No,” Dan says, too fast. He runs his tongue over his lips restlessly.
“Okay.” Phil proceeds to balance the bag on the top of his head, and its sort of ridiculous, but Dan isn’t that swayed.
“Well,” Phil says. “Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“Yep”
Phil begins to retreat back behind his front door. “I’m gonna…” He pushes the door a little.
Dan steps back. “Go ahead.”
Phil’s door clicks into place, closed.
He’s just wondering what he’s going to say to Louise when he walks away, but Dan doesn’t even have time to process the faint disappointment before Phil bursts through the door, wide open again, peas still balanced precariously on his head. “I don’t know if this is important to you in any kind of way,” he says, breathlessly. “But I busted my head because I thought you had finally texted me back.”
Dan’s smile grows, and under it, hope blooms along with it. “Yeah, I saw. It was kinda funny.”
Phil fidgets nervously. “I know this is probably weird and kind of uncalled for or either really late because we’ve known each other for a day and kinda done everything backwards but this is the third time I’ve seen you in the same 24 hours and I get the feeling I’m going to regret something if I don’t say something now.”
Third time lucky, he thinks to himself. Dan opens his mouth, and then closes it again, deciding it would be the best if he just stayed quiet.
“Anyways,” Phil continues, leaning subtly against his own doorframe and then bouncing back off it. “I was wondering, if you wanted to meet up again. Sometime. Officially.”
“Like as a date,” Dan says, barely daring to breathe.
“Like as a date,” Phil affirms, and Dan feels like whooping in relief, even if his insides are all jiggly and Phil is still watching him apprehensively for a reply.
“Yeah,” he nods giddily. “That would be cool.”
“Okay,” Phil squeaks. “That’s cool. I’ll text you?”
“Text me,” Dan says. His voice sounds distant to his own ears.
This time, when Phil closes the door, Dan is able to let out the breath he was holding, feeling light-headed all over again. He has the strange urge to punch the air, but he refrains from it only because he’s half expecting Phil to poke his head out again. He revels there for a few moments, until he whips his phone out of his pocket. A half smile strays on his lips.
ur officially a poop emoji B)
The reply is instant, and Dan fantasises about Phil sitting down on the other side of the door, waiting for his message.
I’ll prove myself yet ;)
-
Epilogue
“You talked about me in your video?” Phil screeches as soon as he trips his way into Louise’s door, jumpscaring the both of them. They freeze in the middle of trying to tape a wreath onto her wall, the pine needles threatening to stab them in the eye. Louise shares a glance with Dan that lasts too long, and then burbles with uncontrollable laughter. Dan stares unapprovingly at her, and jams a Christmas hat defensively onto Phil’s head.
“Yes,” he says. “So did you though, so you can’t complain to me about it.”
Phil glares at him, though it has about the same amount of ferocity as a marshmallow. “Yeah, for like 3 seconds.”
“Actually,” Dan points out, threading his fingers with Phil’s affectionately. “It was 14 seconds.”
“Ew,” Louise sniffs. “I can’t believe I invited both of you.”
“Get used to it,” Dan says, squeezing Phil’s hand.
“You’ve stolen my best friend, Phil,” Louise laments, but Dan notes, with some relief, that there isn’t any remorse in her tone. If anything, she sounds happier for him than she’s ever been.
“I still can’t believe you spent an entire video talking about me,” Phil says. “Now all of the internet knows I’m a flop.”
Dan laughs. “I didn’t even mention your name.”
“They’re gonna find out,” he says. “They’re going to match it up to the tall dude basically sitting in your lap because Louise’s bed is tiny.”
“Let them,” Dan murmurs, kissing the top of Phil’s head. “I don’t have any complaints.”
Phil snorts. “Fine.”
“This is going to get flagged,” Louise mutters, as they sit, trying to cram themselves into the frame with both of Dan and Phil’s giant 6ft bodies. They struggle, the bell on Louise’s hat snagging on Dan’s sweater, which results in a small scuffle where they all fall over each other.
“Oh my god,” Dan sighs. “Okay, hold on, I got this.”
He swings his legs onto Phil’s lap, who lets out an undignified noise, and props his arm up on Louise’s shoulder. “Okay.”
Louise laughs. “You’re going to spend the rest of the video like that?”
“Yep,” Dan says, eyes twinkling. “I’m going to regret it, aren’t I?”
“Yes,” Louise sighs. “Alright. Let’s go.”
“Hello internet,” Dan announces. “So, I’ve brought someone new today…”
-
Editing the video is a nightmare. They all squeeze in front of Louise’s desk, trying to point out pieces of it to clip out and keep, Dan sticking a Shrek into the corner at one point just to keep up with branding.
“Y’know, maybe we should just release the entire thing, without editing. People do it all the time, right?” Dan offers.
“It’s meant to be 20 minutes, Dan,” Louise groans. “It’s over an hour.”
“It’s all your fault for falling over like twenty times,” Phil says.
“It’s funny,” Dan responds innocently.
Louise rolls her eyes. “This is too much. Look.”
She points to different frames, keeping her finger on Dan’s face the entire time. “You’re literally staring at Phil like he’s the stars in your sky for half of the video.”
She looks accusingly at Dan. “I thought you wanted to be subtle.” She looks beyond Dan, and shrugs at Phil, who smiles bashfully.
“Well,” Dan says. “I can’t really help it, can I?”
-fin-
a/n; WHEW !!! I MADE A CHRISTMAS FIC !!!! ITS OVER IN AUSTRALIA BUT SOME OF YA’LL ARE STILL FESTIVE SO HOPEFULLY IM NOT TOO LATE!!!!! I hope you like it, have a heck of a time even if you don’t celebrate Christmas, and I’ll see ya with some fresh writing in 2017!!
writing is tagged /esmefics, last fic is here
