Title: New York I love you, but you're bringing me down
Summary: In which they're in the city that never sleeps and Dan can't really sleep with six stories separating him and Phil.
Warnings/disclaimer: I believe none whatsoever (seriously, not even a swear word, what's happening?) This is purely fictional. Title borrowed from the LCD Soundsystem song.
A/N: This is what happens just when I'm about to go to bed at a reasonable time. I don't even know. I might have a thing for writing existential crisis Dan…
Looking out from a window forty-seven stories up, the yellow cabs and the people treading the pavement are reduced to tiny little puppets. Insignificant even. Forty-seven stories up Dan feels like a giant hovering over them, like a God looking down on their creation but with the appropriate sense of power being replaced by a melancholic feeling in the back of his mind. It turns out even when forty-seven stories up, if alone, a person can feel both tiny and like the carrier of the weight of the world simultaneously. He's in the city that never sleeps, but it does slow down at this time of night and it leaves Dan with all too much room for contemplation. Earlier than day he'd been standing in the middle of Times Square, amazed, and the atmosphere had been filled with the kind of hustle and bustle that left little room for the downwards thought spiral he is engaging in now, with his forehead resting against cold double glazing.
He somewhat wishes that there was a windowsill broad enough to fit his huddled up figure. But this isn't an exclusive suite, he's not in Japan and he's certainly not a character in Lost in translation. There's no Bill Murray to meet him at the bar when he finally stops waiting for sleep to embrace his body. But there is however a Phil six stories up, probably off in his dreamland and wrapped safely in his covers to keep out the cold that always creeps up on him during the nights. Technically, Dan could call him. It may be almost four am, but Phil is a light sleeper and more importantly used to having Dan wake him up at odd hours when he has finally found enough peace of mind to give sleep a chance. But this is just for a few nights and this particular night is only the first; surely a grown man like he supposedly is now must be able to handle sleeping alone in a strange city? Anything else would be pathetic.
He is pathetic.
Four years ago he'd wanted to scream from the rooftops that the semi internet famous northern boy was his and only his after months of shameless flirting and tentative approaches. At the same time he wanted to savour that information, keep it in a safe only the two people it involved had the key to. The conflict lead to a stream of cryptic-but-public messages and give-away looks shared, telling a story but leaving out any detail. Much like a puzzle with only the edge pieces placed down and leaving the content of the picture up to everyone to guess for themselves. Over the years the amount of people taking interest in them rapidly grew and they were at the same time closing in on them. Sometimes Dan feels like every time he looks away, they have taken another step closer. When he was a child he hated so many of the games that most of the other children joyfully played. Any tag game would make his heart beat so hard he could feel his pulse in his ears, and it wasn't just from the physical effort of making sure he wasn't caught up with. His heart hammered away in unfiltered fear, his eyes shining with panic instead of glittering with laughter the way the other children's eyes would when they toppled over in an attempt to laugh and escape at the same time, to no avail as their uncoordinated bodies would fail them. The same fear grabs him every so often at age 21. He finds himself pressed against a wall. He will close his eyes for a second and when he opens them again he is standing face to face with a mass of people demanding answers, explanations, details. Heart is racing once again. One two three, knock on the wall. Closer now. One two three, knock on the wall. Time to tell the truth, Dan. In a futile attempt to save himself and Phil, to save them, he starts to pick apart the frame of the puzzle. Only problem being that so many had figured out and put together the overall picture of the puzzle, so Dan thoroughly removing and hiding away the framing pieces makes little difference in the end. It only serves to put yet another strain on their relationship. Still he can't stop doing it. One two three, knock on the wall. Tag, you're it.
It's not that he can't physically sleep without Phil's breath tickling his neck and his arms slung around Dan's waist. He probably would fall into an uneasy slumber anyway, much later than he usually would (and that is saying something) and have a few hours of decent sleep. Only he doesn't want to. He doesn't want to curl up in bed and cuddle up to his demons whispering things that make his mind work on overdrive. He wants to sleep cuddled up to Phil who acts like a shield for these kinds of things. It's not that Phil doesn't have any demons of his own; he just doesn't arrogate them the importance that Dan can't help to arrogate his. And it's not that Dan is completely unable to handle some time away from Phil. But he likens it to that time when he was 11 and stupidly rode his bike down a steep hill because they all taunted him for always being too scared to ever do anything. One of the boys having the biggest impact on his decision to be brave for once had been Dan's first male crush, 13 years old and a thousand times cooler than Dan himself, and when he had said "just do it, Howell"; how could he not? He earned a broken wrist and an impressed look from that boy who would never know that the shy Howell kid was discovering a whole new side of himself because of him. Life with a broken wrist wasn't unbearable. But it did make everything harder. The dull pain was nagging him; a constant reminder of his slight handicap and the cast slowed him down significantly. But it wasn't unbearable, life was moving on although made a bit harder. That's what it's like being away from Phil momentarily. Dan functions. Dan copes. It's just harder.
Dan knows that this is the night time melancholia wrapping itself tightly around his thoughts and more so he knows that when he and Phil goes out to find the most typically American pancake place in the morning he'll feel slightly more on top of things again. But right now he's nothing but, and so he calls Phil and tries to not consider it a defeat. Phil picks up after the third signal, voice laced with sleep but still not losing its attentiveness.
"Mm?"
"It's me."
"I know. You're the only one who ever calls me past four in the morning."
"Sorry."
"Don't be."
They both fall silent, revelling in the familiar sound of the other's tranquil breathing.
"How did we ever manage when you were in Manchester and I was in Wokingham?" Dan eventually spills, genuinely wondering. He remembers the skype calls he refused to end at a reasonable time and how Phil would coo over him when his eyes gradually became heavier and he'd peer at Phil through thick eyelashes. How his eyes would be glued to his phone screen at any of the last parties and gatherings with his secondary school friends, earning a nudge of an elbow or a smack in the head every now and then because while he was physically present, it was obvious to anyone looking that his mind was elsewhere. They just didn't know it was in Manchester, with a 22-year-old man he was yet to have even meet in person, and despite curious questions and attempts to snatch the phone from his hands he kept this information to himself. With a mixture of embarrassment and fondness he even remembers their first fumbling attempt at phone sex where his pulse had been racing and his cheeks had been tinted a deep red in the darkness of his bedroom. All this he remembers, but he fails to recall how he actually managed in between all this. How did he handle the numerous and dreadful goodbyes at Manchester Piccadilly Station? The times when he wanted nothing more than hearing Phil's deep voice but didn't dare to call him because it was no more than an hour since he last heard it, and surely there must be some kind of limit of how much of Dan Phil could take before having had enough? All the times when he was yearning to feel Phil's hands, his lips, his teeth, his everything but had to settle with a far less exciting option. Dan doesn't remember how, not now when Phil's ever present in his life.
"Not sure. You were all I ever thought of." Phil says it like it stands to reason, because that's Phil; never one to guard his words like Dan is.
"Same."
"I know. Now will you please stop doing that thing you do, where you worry way too much for one person? Perhaps get your ass up to my room and let me go back to sleep?"
"I'm not even dressed."
Like it wasn't Dan's sole intention with the call; to get an invite to Phil's room and the safe haven that is next to Phil. Like he wasn't already searching the room for a decent pair of trousers for sneaking through hotel corridors at four thirty in the morning.
"Then get dressed. Or walk up here in your boxers if you prefer, I honestly don't give a damn. I just want you to get here, Dan, alright?" Spelling it out for Dan because Phil knows he will inevitably fear being considered clingy for showing any kind of dependence of the other.
"I love you."
"I know. Same."
It takes him less than five minutes to find himself outside Phil's door. Another few minutes to make themselves comfortable; Dan hiding from the world in the crook of Phil's neck, keeping Phil awake a bit by tickling him with his eyelashes as his eyes flutter tiredly, like there's an internal fight between the part of his mind that's keen to keep worrying and the part that just wants to stop altogether and invite sleep in. Phil is closely pressed to Dan and has the blanket pulled up to their ears, letting the constantly warmer Dan know he'll wake up boiling. They're both a tiny bit uncomfortable due to the other's preferences. And they're both falling asleep feeling infinitely better than they were before.