It’s been a long time since Dan has been properly drunk. 

Eyes glazed, speech-slurred drunk. Falling over furniture drunk, hanging onto Phil like a lifeline. It reminds him of a younger self, one huddled in the woods with a group of teenagers that he wanted so badly to impress; downing liquids that burned his throat and caused full-body shivers to shake his spine.

That type of drinking is such a juvenile thing now, in his mind, though at the time it seemed so grown-up. The summers that he spent playing spin-the-bottle with his emo friends were a nice break from the taunts and bullying that accompanied him like leeches within the school halls. Those words couldn’t touch him, though, when he sat by a bonfire and his numb tongue got to taste the vodka on each of his friend’s lips. 

There was no judgement in that group, not even when his mouth lingered on the other boys’ for longer than the girls. The lack of judgement may have been due to everyone being absolutely pissed, but it still counted. 

Then there were the university months, before his inevitable dropping out. Being in the law program and not being equipped with better coping mechanisms for it, he let himself go to way too many house parties with people he barely knew. The difference with those gatherings was that he had Phil, who was a voice of reason even if only via text. The most trouble he ever got into then was the occasional party being shut down by the hall staff or having to pay way too much for a cab to get back to his room. He doesn’t have much to regret from those times, besides being grossly hungover on exam mornings. 

Looking back from the present day, he thinks he hasn’t been fully drunk since their TATINOF party. It was the last occasion where he really let himself loose, sending out a nonsensical tweet with shaky fingers and even pulling Phil out onto the dance floor without checking for vlog cameras. The consequences of that night, as small as they were, put him off it for a while. That, paired with their stupidly busy schedule in the following years, made for quite the sober Dan. Phil hasn’t been drunk since then either, but Dan thinks that might have something to do with him being a nice, sensible man in his thirties. He usually respects and even envies the soft kind of reservation Phil holds about these things, but tonight it’s not going to do. 

It’s New Year’s Eve, and he’s going to be entering a whole fucking new decade with the man he loves. If that isn’t cause for celebration, Dan doesn’t know what is. It isn’t totally his fault that he got an early start on the night and now he’s seeing double at only 10 p.m. – the bottle of red wine he had been nursing while watching Youtube had emptied out with no warning. When the last few drops hit his tongue he was mildly confused, and when he stood up to put it away, his feet seemed to belong to another body. 

Phil wasn’t ready to start drinking until later, when tipsy, wine-fueled Dan thought it was a good idea to sneak a shot of their salted caramel flavored vodka. Even with the added sweetness it still made him let out a strangled cough as the nail polish remover aftertaste hit the back of his throat. That’s how Phil found him, standing in the kitchen with his face screwed up in disgust. 

“Getting started already?” Phil asks, grinning as if he’s in on some secret.

Dan tries not to let it show on his face that he just tossed an empty, kind of expensive wine bottle in the trash – however, he’s unsure what his face is showing. It doesn’t feel like it belongs to him. 

“Guess so. Join me?” 

His hands shake a bit as he pours another shot and hands it over, and Phil only looks marginally suspicious as he accepts. He doesn’t take it immediately but leans against the counter and holds the glass delicately between his fingers. 

“You look traumatized, is it that bad?” 

“Yeah, you suck at picking flavors. And alcohol in general.” 

Dan leans forward to poke him in the chest, miscalculating a bit and getting him sharply in the collarbone. He blinks slowly as he rocks back onto his heels, an apologetic look on his face. 

“Ow. I’ll be the judge of that. Your taste buds aren’t right.” 

“Okay, cheese-boy,” Dan snorts. 

He watches as Phil tilts his head back, barely hesitating as he takes the shot. The long expanse of his throat is weirdly appealing, Adam’s apple moving ever so slightly as he swallows it down. Even when he finishes it and his face scrunches up in the same way Dan’s had, he’s still weirdly pretty. His face is clean-shaven from his recent Christmas painting video and his blue eyes are bright, the way they always are after a nice trip to the Isle to see his family. Dan wants to kiss him very badly. 

“Don’t gloat about it, but you’re so correct. My love for sugar has failed me this time.” 

They end up pulling out a couple of Coke bottles to chase away the taste, and Dan makes it to his second shot of the night before he’s caught out. Half of it splashes down onto his Star Wars pajamas and when he disregards that to drink the other half, the glass rim hits his teeth in a way that makes his shoulders hunch up in a harsh cringe. The next thing he registers is a wad of paper towels being dragged across his leg and Phil’s other hand dragging through the hair on the back of his head. 

“Don’t gotta clean me,” he mumbles, letting his head fall onto Phil’s shoulder – he feels like he’s in the middle of the ocean, being rocked by insistent waves. 

“How much have you had?” 

“I’m okay, really. Doing good good great.” 

“That’s not an answer,” Phil laughs. 

Secretly, Dan thinks it’s his fault for not knowing – if he hadn’t spent all day in the office working on that comic thing, they could have shared that wine bottle and it would have been a romantic start to the New Years festivities. Instead, Phil is entirely too sober, and the floor is swaying even though they are grounded firmly on their barstools. 

“Worry about you, you need to catch up. I’ll wait.” 

“I have all night to catch up, it’s hardly half ten. Let’s go to the lounge, yeah?” 

“Or the bedroom,” Dan winks, but Phil only stands up and hoists him up from under his armpits. 

His legs are jelly, but eventually he maneuvers them to the sofa and collapses onto it. Phil disappears again into the kitchen, and he’s comforted by the sounds of him puttering around in there. 

“Take another shot at least! One shot is basically nothing!” He yells, probably a touch too loud. 

There’s the sound of clinking glass and he knows that Phil listened, which is nice. That reassurance doesn’t last forever because then there’s nothing – no Phil returning and little to no noise happening all throughout the flat. Dan sinks down into the sofa cushion and pulls a pillow to his chest; the decision to wait out the nothingness fails him as his eyelids start to weigh themselves down. Sleep has almost taken him by the time his shoulders are being shaken, jostling him back into reality. 

“Drink,” Phil says from somewhere above him. 

Dan reaches out, half-expecting his grabby hands to be met with the small glass from before, but it turns out to be a cold, larger one. He opens his eyes to see the water splashing around inside. 

“Not thirsty.” 

“You have to have water, Dan. I found the wine bottle in the trash. You’re sneaky, and you’re way drunker than I thought. Now take a sip.” 

Phil’s voice isn’t harsh, but there’s no wiggle room to argue with him. If he wasn’t incapable of feeling anything other than weird and sloshy, Dan would probably find it kind of hot. He opens his mouth when Phil guides the glass to his lips and drinks it down, not caring when some of it misses and dribbles down the side of his neck and onto the sofa. They can deal with that later. After what feels like a lifetime, Phil takes the cup away and sits next to him on the sofa. Dan immediately rests most of his weight on him, running his hands over Phil’s chest in little circles. “

I’m sorry, baby. I didn’t mean to have all the wine, wanted to share. You were busy, though.” 

“I told you I’d stop working before eleven. I just have a lot of deadlines looming in the distance.” 

“Please don’t be mad at me.” 

Phil laughs a bit at that, grabbing at Dan’s chin so he can kiss him from a better angle. The stupid salted caramel nightmare flavor is vividly present, lingering on his lips after Phil pulls away. 

“I’m not mad. I just need you to sober up a tiny bit before midnight.” 

“I’m plenty sober, bub.” 

“You sure are.” 

“Why should I be sober by midnight anyways? Don’t need to think to kiss your dumb face.” 

Phil huffs in amusement, then reaches for the bottle on the coffee table and pours another shot. It’s only half full, but Dan can’t tease him for it when he’s stuck trying to figure out when it was brought in here from the kitchen in the first place. Maybe he would like to be a little more aware of his surroundings for the start of a new decade. 

“You’ll feel better in the morning, for one. Secondly, drunk kissing is only good if both of us are unaware of how bad it is. We need to be on the same level so that I don’t have to deal with your sloppy mouth, mister.” 

“Whatever, drunk-Dan is sexy. Now excuse me so I can go piss for three minutes straight. I had a whole bottle of wine.” 

“Very sexy,” Phil quips. 

Despite his obvious slight annoyance, he hops off the sofa and helps Dan stand up by holding onto his arms and stopping the gentle sway that came from being vertical. They hobble off to the bathroom and bicker the whole way – midnight feels lightyears from now.

Midnight comes sooner than either of them could have kept up with. In a non-shocking turn of events, Dan had peer-pressured Phil into getting past buzzed and into flat-out drunk territory. It was a victory for no one, though, because that meant Phil spent about half an hour lying on the lounge floor with his eyes closed, trying desperately not to be sick. Dan couldn’t help him much, in his state, so he just played one of his Spotify playlists on the speakers and hoped that the chill vibes would drown out the whining. 

Phil tried to distract himself from the nausea with a game of I Spy, but from his place on the floor he could only see the white ceiling. Dan guessed it correctly every time, each round sounding more dead inside. 

Some more time passed with reluctant snacking on microwave popcorn and leftover Domino’s straight from the refrigerator that kind of helped them sober up some. Dan was sitting at the dining table with his head resting against the cold surface when he heard a sharp gasp from the lounge. 

“Whaaat?”

“It’s 11:58, Dan!” 

“Ugh,” is all Dan could muster, turning his head to the side so that his cheek would get some of the coolness instead. 

He squints his eyes, watching Phil climb off the floor and stumble way faster than he should be moving into the dining room. His cheeks are flushed, and his stupidly pretty eyes are suddenly all wide and excited. It’s hard not to let that excitement hit him as well, but his head is just so fucking heavy right now and Dan never wants to move. He decides to gather up as much strength as humanly possible though, because Phil is now bouncing on the balls of his feet impatiently, lower lip jutting out. 

“11:59! Come on, we gotta do the thing!” 

“Alright, fuck, I’m up,” Dan grunts, holding onto the back of his chair once he’s at eye level with Phil. 

They huddle closer together and suddenly Dan is hit with just how much this moment means to him. His heart is working overtime, hammering away in his chest with what feels like a weird mixture of nerves and genuine happiness. He smiles at Phil in a way that hurts his cheeks, watching him intensely as Phil stares down the phone screen to check the time. 

“We’re supposed to kiss while it’s changing, not after the moment has passed, you weirdo,” he laughs, bringing his hands up to circle around Phil’s shoulders. 

Phil shoves the phone into his pocket and lets out a nervous giggle. 

“Sorry. I love you,” he says, and then he’s finally kissing Dan in the way he’s been thinking about all day. 

It’s uncoordinated and messy, but it feels so right with cheesy smiles pressed together and roaming hands sliding beneath shirts. If Dan had more brainpower to think about everything they’ve been through and experienced in 2019, he’d probably be having a little bit of a cry right about now. He’d probably do something sappy like kiss Phil through his tears and get choked up while telling him about he proud he is of them. As it is, though, he just squeezes Phil a little bit and buries his head in his shoulder. 

Phil’s arms come down to wrap around his waist and they stay like that for a moment, swaying back and forth. The music is still playing from the lounge and even though it’s some obscure indie artist that Dan doesn’t even like that much, it feels fitting and floaty and far away.

He lifts his head and kisses Phil on the cheek. 

“I love you so much. We’re going to have so many decades together if humanity gets its shit together and stops global warming.” 

Phil laughs and reluctantly pulls his hands away from Dan’s hips. 

“Even if they don’t, we can go to the moon. I’ll be right back.” 

Dan hadn’t missed the way his face had gone a bit pale since the end of the kiss, or the miniscule twinge of fear in his boyfriend’s face that grows more impending by the second. 

“You need to be sick?” 

“Very much.” 

“Right, run to the bathroom. Go!”