Title: If I get home before the rain you're mine, but I won't bet
Summary: In which there are first meetings and Ferris wheels
Warnings/disclaimer: Possible warning for OCD (better safe than sorry.) I do not claim to have real knowledge about the disorder, but the fic touches on the subject of what I'd like to call mild obsessions (if that's even a thing), which I do have some personal experience from. This is fictitious. Inspired by the song "If I don't write this song, someone I love will die" by Hello Saferide.
A/N: I write slightly weird things between midnight and 6 in the morning, being delirious from lack of sleep. Oh and the gingerbread thing turned out to be something specific for Sweden at last minute research but I decided to include it anyway. Weird, local traditions, yay.
Dan remembers a conversation he had, a much younger version of himself talking to someone else's teenage self. He doesn't remember exactly whom it was he was talking to, or rather how and why this unknown boy was spending time talking to Dan in the first place. Neither does he have any kind of explanation as to why the memory is so fuzzy now even though the conversation somehow strikes him as significant. Maybe there was alcohol involved, stolen from their parents' cabinets little at the time or bought by older siblings who lightly handled over bottles of liquid promises of holding keys to whole new worlds. He doesn't remember any fuss though, as part of the memory. There's no loud music drowning out significant words or interruptions in the form of friends or strangers who's had any sense of privacy and tact being thrown out the window long ago. But he does remember eyes and features that he hadn't quite figured out yet. He remembers not being sure what that glint in the other boy's eye means and being unsure if that little quirk of his head was something he unwittingly did out of concentration or a highly witting but subtle way of communication a disagreement with what Dan was saying. The arrival at this point of the conversation is as unclear as the setting of it, but a few sentences are etched in Dan's mind (he says etched, but really they're probably altered and inversed and very far from their original state by now) as a kind of turning point, a new awareness that wouldn't leave him alone.
"It's like those childhood games you used to play. The ones where your feet couldn't touch the cracks in the pavement and you had to call out 'Jinx' every time you said the same thing at the same time as someone else. Or how you just couldn't eat a gingerbread cookie without making a wish and hope it would break in exactly three pieces in your hand so that your wish would come true. It seemed important then, it truly mattered."
And now it's this fragment of a conversation completely disconnected to any type of context that seems important, he has the feeling of it truly mattering while he watches the scenery rush past the train window. Those few sentences uttered by the boy who made Dan's heart beat harder and made him wish with every little beat that he would come across as a little bit more interesting, that he had a striking appearance and matching confidence – this boy made him realise that for him it wasn't just childhood games. Perhaps it wasn't about cracks in the pavement or Christmas treats anymore but other things. Either way, to Dan those things certainly still mattered long after he'd made the transition from child to teenager. Even now he still makes wishes; he makes them at even numbers of the clock. Now and then his eyes will land on the clock precisely at 11:11 in the morning and he'll make a wish, and then another if the same thing happens at night and it's not as much that he believes that the wishes will come true as it is that he's filled with a unsettling feeling of something going terribly wrong would he choose not to make that wish. Numbers are central, he's grown to realise. And there's something almost shameful about the way his hand will shoot up almost on instinct when his mother nonchalantly presses the volume bottom of the car stereo and leaves it on 27 or 33 or something equally uneven. He curses himself while he quickly changes it to an even number and hopes his mother will settle for a confused look this time as well and leave it at that. If asked, he couldn't explain why a single press of button on a panel would make any difference. The only explanation he could perhaps provide is that it's something soothing about things being either right or wrong, good or bad, a win or a loss. Uneven numbers are wrong, and therefore also bad. Making stupid wishes that means nothing because they grew meaningless the day they stopped being optional is somehow right, and therefore also good. Constantly searching for little challenges to give yourself is a must; they're accompanied by rewards and you either win, or you lose. Sometimes you win, but the reward is still conspicuous by its absence. Dan's learned by now that the real life events doesn't always play out the way he promises himself they will, because it's all in his head but it feels right and good and perhaps even like a win and fighting those constant urges is wrong and bad and more than anything fucking terrifying. So he keeps playing his childhood games, even now that they have lost any charm and it doesn't even feel like they meet the requirements for a light-hearted game anymore.
Hours pass quickly when you spend them listening to music – with volume set to a comfortable 24 – and watching the scenery constantly change outside the comfort of the compartment. Every now and then he'll scroll through messages, months of interaction that kept getting more and more frequent, and then increasingly personal until they've passed so many lines and knocked down so many walls Dan worries it'll be a problem rather than an advantage now when he's about to see Phil in the flesh for the first time. He wonders if they're supposed to hug, it feels important right in this moment to know but as far as he can tell there's no protocol for how to greet someone you sort of maybe want more than you've ever wanted anyone, and all that before you've even met them in person. Dan doesn't know how Phil's hair feels between his fingers, he doesn't know his smell, how he takes his coffee, how he acts when he's completely at ease with someone or even how he looks when he's not made up by pixels on a screen. Dan's pretty sure none of this will matter to him, he can't imagine any of these things changing the way his heart flutter with anticipation in his chest at the thought of the older boy, but at the same time they still matter a great deal because he has an easier time imagining either of those aspects of himself being a reason for Phil to regret this decision to invite Dan into his life. With the exception of his coffee preferences, maybe. Dan might be too much of something or not enough of just about anything and it's scary and uncertain in a way that makes him want control. Not just want, he needs control. It looks like it's going to rain, the dark clouds is the only sight that won't change with the movement of the train. If he steps out on Manchester Piccadilly Station and not a single drop has hit the platform, then it'll all turn out good, he decides. But it's not specific enough, and before the train slows down for the last time before Dan's getting off he has made up more dares and promises that he can possibly keep track on.
His breath is hitching in his throat but his heart is sinking for a moment, because just when the train start to drop in speed the first raindrops land on the window. They fly past, like they're all heading towards something predestined and that's something that Dan would want. Some certainty.
Phil is a head taller than a lot of people on the platform, and his eyes are searching now and any second he'll spot Dan getting off from one of the last carriages. If Phil calls out his name upon seeing him everything will turn out okay, Dan reminds himself, because that was one of many deals he made. Phil doesn't end up calling his name, but he waves, and his smile is a lot brighter than the low quality camera has prepared Dan for even though he has spent hours trying to memorize it because even when two dimensional it was a smile that would make something in Dan's stomach turn in a mostly pleasant way knowing he was the cause of it. When they're finally in front of each other the earlier worries about the being or not being of the hug doesn't feel unnecessary but those past inquiries have rather completely vanished. Perhaps there's some nerves getting in their way, sneaking in between them, it feels like a mess of limbs everywhere and the placement of Dan's bag is unfortunate because it's right in between them now and it's the cause of a slightly awkward positioning. But the feeling of Phil's hair and breath against Dan's skin makes him forget all this. When they finally let go Phil's voice is just as sonorous as it was over telephone lines.
"So you are real after all?" he says and he sounds so happy about that, Dan for a moment forgets all about rain or the calling of names or any other win or lose scenarios.
Things in fact turn out to be pretty easy, just as easy as it was when they both were just pixels on a screen. Probably even more so because Dan's had training in connecting every little expression or change of tone with an emotion, and while he sometimes hesitates at a certain wording or an animated expression he feels hope in that he'll get those down one day too, if he gets the chance to stick around long enough. It's a stupid thought, he's well aware, but if Phil would be a number, he'd be an even one because he's right, and he's oh so good and for very short periods of time Dan almost feels like he's winning without remembering having made a winning deal. They're walking through the city, and Dan would pay closer attention to the surroundings if it wasn't for the fact that every little piece of his mind that isn't focused on their conversation is occupied with keeping track of the distance between their shoulders, their elbows, their skin. Every other step they will inch a little closer and brush against each other, and it feels like some kind of charged electricity going through Dan then. It's like a lightening switch. Except it's never really switched off, it's on and then right between on and off in that position that you as a child would try to balance the switch in and never succeeded in doing, but the light bulb would give away a quiet buzzing with the electricity flowing and you'd end up getting yelled at by your mother because "you'll break the light blub if you keep doing that." The switch hasn't been off since they first hugged and Dan tries to fall into the same rhythm as Phil, and quietly settles that if they keep walking in the same rhythm like this until they reach the Manchester Eye, this will actually lead to something real. Something like any of those fantasies he's allowed himself to be engulfed in every now and then before he's roughly brought himself back to reality.
Dan somehow messes up already half way there, and doesn't succeed in falling into the exact same rhythm again on the rest of the way.
It's a grey day in Manchester, even when it's not outright raining anymore, with tiny droplets kind of hanging in the air like they can't decide if they're going to fall or not. The queue for the Ferris wheel is almost non-existent and they're on their way up before Dan has even had time to process it. His hands are definitely gripping the rail in the capsule a lot harder than necessary. As the city is laid out in front of them, their words decline while Dan's will to tell Phil something increases at the same pace they're moving. Whatever it is that's stopping him, whatever doubt it is that's hedging around him Phil brushes that aside as he lets his fingers wander over Dan's whitening knuckles.
"I'm so used to everything feeling wrong. But this… doesn't. It feels good. Right." he mumbles, eyes still fixated on the dwindling buildings beneath them. In the corner of his eye he watches Phil, but his eyes are still downcast, traveling Dan's hands along with his fingertips. Dan makes one final deal with himself. One final win or loss, bigger than any of the other; look up, and I'll do it. If you look up, Phil, I'll kiss you. Perhaps this is a first date and he shouldn't be giving himself this freely, or perhaps this isn't a date at all and he will end up a fool. It's been the most confusing months of Dan's whole life, he's been shaken to the core and he's been winning quite a lot, he realises now, but it will mean nothing if he will lose this round. Just give me something, Phil, he pleas silently. Look up. Look up, look up, look up.
And when he does, Dan makes sure he wins – wins for real, this time. It's not just in his head now, it's corresponding with their reality this time because Phil's lips are slightly cold and just a tiny bit hesitant, and Phil's hair is soft between Dan's fingers.