#knick-knacks

“What are you doing?”

Phil felt the sofa dip next to him before his brain registered what Dan said, too focused on his laptop.

“You’re supposed to help pack,” Dan grumbled.

Phil gave a non-committal hum, earning himself a poke on the arm.

“Ow!” he glared at the object that jabbed his arm.

“If you don’t help me sort all the shit out, I’m gonna throw them all away,” Dan threatened, waving the pickle in his hand and pointing it at Phil threateningly.

“Not my yodelling pickle!” Phil tried to snatch the item from Dan, offended that Dan could even suggest such a thing.

Dan couldn’t help chuckling at Phil making grabby hands, all attempts at being stern gone. He glanced over at Phil’s laptop.

“I swear to god, Phil.”

“What? Don’t you think this is cute? I think we should-”

“If you buy it. I swear to god I’m gonna find the CEO of Wish and beg him to ban you from their website.”

Phil blinked at Dan in shock for a moment, before a smirk crept on his lips.

“Then I’ll just find stuff on Firebox instead.”

“Phil!” Dan yelled indignantly, “we’re supposed to be getting rid of stuff, not adding on to our pile of crap!! What happened to a ‘fresh start’? Didn’t we settle on minimalism? I’m not having yet another Useless Box on our shelves! I thought we agreed that having a clean space is-”

Phil giggled throughout Dan’s rant, unable to take Dan seriously with the way he was waving the pickle around while he monologued. He let Dan go off and patiently waited for his turn to finally speak.

“Yes I know I have a problem,” Phil admitted, “I promise I’ll help get rid of shit, but... you gotta agree with me that we need a new talking fridge pig?!”

“Our fridge pig is doing just fine,” Dan declared.

Phil sighed and leaned back into the sofa, staring at Dan. A small smile crept on his face.

“What?” Dan asked suspiciously.

Phil continued to just look at him. With the soft smile on his face and his wide adoring eyes like he’d never been happier in his life than in this moment when they were arguing about adding talking miniature animals for their refrigerator.

“Oh no,” Dan shook his head, despite feeling warmth bloom in his chest, “you’re not getting your way with your silly puppy dog eyes.”

“I wasn’t even doing anything!” Phil whined in protest, but his smile grew wider. And the warmth in Dan’s chest spread up to his cheeks.

“Okay okay,” Phil conceded, “I won’t get our poor lonely fridge pig a friend...”

Dan knew there was a condition before Phil even continued. He jabbed Phil’s arm with the dreadful pickle.

Phil giggled, Dan knew him too well. But he continued anyway.

“If I can get my dinosaur lamp a friend.”

Dan stared at him incredulously. Phil giggled even harder at Dan’s reaction, and switched tabs on his laptop to show Dan the triceratops figurine he found.

Phil’s eyes were still on his laptop when Dan attacked his side with the pickle.

“Hey!” Phil squeaked, but it tickled more than caused any hurt. And Phil couldn’t stop the high-pitched laugh that followed.

Dan poked him again, and grabbed his hands that came to protect his side.

“I’m gonna tickle you with this pickle if you don’t stop trying to fill our new house with useless things,” Dan threatened, going to poke Phil’s other side and making Phil squirm under his grasp.

“Dan stop,” Phil said in between laughter, attempting to free his wrists from Dan’s grasp and save his laptop from sliding off his lap.

“Not until you promise,” Dan persisted, moving the laptop to the couch before he started to full on tickle the side of Phil’s ribs, “to stop going on Wish!”

“If you don’t stop,” Phil struggled to speak, “I WILL buy those things!”

Phil was wheezing, feeling out of breath as he struggled under Dan’s relentless fingers. Dan was already sitting on his lap, effectively trapping him underneath with no escape. He tried freeing his hands from Dan’s, but Dan was somehow stronger.

Dan was sniggering along too, almost like he forgot why he started it and was just enjoying having Phil at his mercy. The yodelling pickle rolled off and onto the floor, forgotten.

There was only one solution, Phil thought, and he wasted no time. He craned his neck up and kissed Dan.

Dan groaned, but he couldn’t resist kissing back. At once, his tickling slowed. He was never good at multi-tasking if Phil was kissing him, and Phil knew it. He pulled back quickly.

“Nuh-uh, you’re not gonna distract me like that,” Dan chided, giving Phil a deserved poke.

“But that will distract me from Wish,” Phil puckered his lips, “better than the pickle tickles!”

Dan narrowed his eyes. He lets Phil get his way too much. But Phil knows exactly how to make Dan give in to him, and Dan doesn’t mind after all. Phil was still puckering his lips up at him, eyes wide and inviting.

So, with Phil’s wrists still in his grasp to be sure that Phil wouldn’t take revenge on him, he gave in and kissed Phil.

Phil’s fingers twitched with the need to touch Dan, so he compensated by kissing Dan harder, licking into him when Dan parted his lips. Dan was leaned backwards by the sheer force of Phil kissing him.

“You know what would stop me from going on Wish?” Phil muttered when they finally broke their kiss.

“Stealing your laptop and phone?” Dan deadpanned.

“No,” Phil smirked, barely able to contain his laughter before he even made his joke, “if you tickled my pickle.”

Dan’s mouth fell, rendered speechless by Phil’s humour, “I-”

Phil couldn’t even breathe he was laughing so hard, so delighted by his own joke.

Dan huffed in disbelief at what he just had to hear.

“Just for saying that, you’re not getting anything more!”

Phil knew Dan was feigning being offended since the corners of his mouth turning up gave him away.

Dan released his grip of Phil’s wrist to grab the yodelling pickle from the floor to throw it at Phil, but it was a mistake he should’ve seen coming. In an instant, Phil’s fingers were attacking his sides and reducing him to a squirming mess of laughter.

“Okay how about if I tickled your pickle?” Phil suggested in the most serious tone he could muster while poking Dan’s tummy.

“Stop saying pickle!!” Dan yelled in between breathless laughter.

Phil didn’t give him a chance to breathe at all. When he finally stopped the tickles he was back to kissing Dan.

“But I asked so nicely,” Phil persuaded, twitching his legs to get Dan off of him.

Dan shook his head fondly, getting up and pulling Phil up with him.

“Promise you won’t add more crap to our already huge pile of crap,” Dan murmured, walking backwards as he continued pulling Phil away from the couch and to their bedroom.

“Promise,” Phil answered, coming so close that Dan could feel his breath against his lips.

“And-” Dan abruptly paused when his heel hit a box on the floor. He carefully moved aside, still manoeuvring his way backwards.

“And promise to stop being on your laptop and help me with clearing all this mess! Just look!” Dan gestured to the minefield of boxes all over their apartment.

“I promiseeee,” Phil dragged out, chasing Dan’s lips to catch them between his own.

In hindsight, it was probably a bad idea for them both not to look where they were going. On the way to the room, the back of Dan’s legs hit about three boxes. Fortunately, Phil’s firm hold on his waist kept him from losing balance.

“Ohmygod-” Phil gasped, breaking their kiss when he almost slipped on some bubble wrap.

Dan laughed, finally it was Phil’s turn to trip up. But they were still going strong, almost reaching the bedroom already.

Their bedroom was bare besides the bed and one bedside drawer. And the miscellaneous crap on the floor that Dan was painstakingly sorting into ‘Throw’ or ‘Keep’ piles. And two empty boxes for the piles that he brought in before finding Phil chilling on the couch looking at Wish of all things.

In the heat of their moment, Dan had forgotten all about the piles on the floor. Phil continued walking Dan to the bed, his fingers already at the hem of Dan’s tshirt, ready to pull it off at any moment.

It all happened so fast that Phil had no time to catch Dan this time. He barely knew what happened; one moment he was mouthing at Dan’s jaw, and the next moment there was a loud thump as Dan left his grasp, a hurt noise from Dan, and a random metal ball rolling away from Dan’s foot.

“Wha-” Phil said, confused.

Dan groaned from the floor.

Phil reached his hands out to pull Dan up, brows knitted in confusion and worry.

“Why do you even have that ball?!” Dan griped as he got up with Phil’s help.

“I don’t even remember getting that,” Phil answered, finally taking in their surroundings.

The ‘Throw’ pile was strewn all around after Dan landed on it, with many items making their way to the ‘Keep’ pile.

“Fuck,” Dan lamented, “Now I gotta go through the pile again.”

“I’m sorry,” Phil felt guilty seeing all the things from his impulse buying habit.

He held Dan delicately like Dan was fragile, but also firmly like Dan could fall again at any moment. He gently sat Dan down on the bed.

“I promise I’ll help,” Phil said, more sincerely this time.

He immediately sat on the floor and looked at the ‘Throw’ pile - or what was left of it - wondering where to even begin.

“So all it took was for me to fall on my ass for you to help,” Dan remarked sarcastically, but he smiled when Phil looked at him apologetically.

Dan slid off the bed and joined Phil on the floor.

“No more tickling of pickles?”

Phil chuckled, but he shook his head.

“After I help you clear what you’ve started.”

Dan smiled, happy that Phil was finally helping, and they slowly went through the mess together.

--------------

“Hey! You were gonna get rid of the cactus magnets?! How could you!!”

Dan shook his head in defeat. They’d already debated on whether to keep or throw - no, yeet, as Phil had insisted to call it - five other things prior.

“Maybe I should’ve done this on my own after all,” he sighed, “we’re never gonna be done.”

“Oh we’re gonna be done alright! There’s still unfinished pickle business after this!” Phil said with conviction.

Phil would never tell Dan that he thought Dan was a bad actor, because no matter how much Dan sounded annoyed or upset with Phil, he could never wipe the fond smile off his face.

“Fine we’ll yeet the magnets,” Phil sighed, before quietly adding, “I already bought new ones from Wish anyway.”