Title: The nights were merely made for saying things that we can't say tomorrow day
Summary: In which one person building walls and the other wanting to knock them down can make distance grow endlessly between people
Warnings: Non graphic mentions of sex.
A/N: You can find me at tumblr as still-in-blossom, where my fics go up first (since I tend to forget to post here) and where you are more than welcome to talk to me!
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The sound of thunder rolls in through the open window at 2 am, and Dan would like to say that it corresponds with his mood. Perhaps a bit presumptuous, to put oneself down to such importance as to having the world revolve around you and your feelings. On the other hand, people once felt no shame thinking the sun revolved around their earth so he may get away with blaming the inherited longing for some kind of importance to assign oneself. Maybe it's nothing more than his mood being altered by the blackness of the sky and the drumming of hard rain against the windowpane. There's something utterly satisfying with this setting, and he leaves the window open letting the unusually cold summer air wrap around his naked form. It's a welcome change from the heat wave they'd been enclosed in for so long now, and Dan sprawls out on top of the sheets as much as he can without disturbing the sleeping figure with his back turned to him. Seeing the room light up for a fraction of a second, there's a strange feeling of calm, like he's in the eye of the storm and in there he's unceremoniously alone, for good and for worse. Good because it's as if the world has been momentarily paused and in the dead of the night, in the middle of a thunderstorm, he finally has a chance to catch up with it. At the same time terrible, because all this time on his hands is making him edge dangerously close to things he has made great efforts of tucking away somewhere beyond his conscious mind. They're filed under "leave alone" and "it's what it is" and are not to be touched, but sometimes, nights like these, it's easy to wear down the resistance he's spent days and weeks – or half a lifetime – building up. Suddenly there's the idea that maybe, if he would just reach for these neatly filed cards, he'd be able to lay them out in another pattern, one that he hasn't already tried and that ends up working out. Like a detective in a generic crime movie, in a moment of clarity his eyes will fall upon a piece of evidence and suddenly it all seems so clear, so obvious. How he ever could have seen past it will seem like a mystery in itself, then. It's just that it's better if he keeps seeing past it. What he'll discover is sure to be a sea of tangled feelings that he shouldn't dip his toes into.
In another time Dan had been sleepless like this, too. Mind split in half between agonizing over it and relishing in it. The sleepless nights, the sounds of Phil's breathing evening out and his grip on Dan loosening gradually until his hands and arms and limbs were merely just there, limp and heavy over Dan and serving as something to hold him in place when he's at risk of drifting too far away following his convoluted thoughts. There had been other nights spent with open windows and the sound of rain beating down, and Dan had apologised profusely and frantically wiped tears away when Phil woke with skin littered with goose bumps at a particularly loud clap of thunder. Phil's hair had been mussed up and his movements sleep ridden and lingering as he put on a kettle and listened to Dan pour his heart out, perched on the kitchen counter, his long legs dangling and drumming against the side of the counter like an impatient child. At times it was something other than thunder that woke Phil up, a whimper falling out of Dan's lips despite being tightly pressed together or a dip in the mattress when Dan climbed back into bed, and sometimes it was a bottle of wine being retracted from the cupboards instead. Every so often Dan would end up laughing through his tears; at himself, at how lost they both were in life and how maybe, just maybe, that was okay. Sometimes at the absurdity of getting tipsy over barely even a shared bottle of wine because it was 5 in the morning, and they had nowhere near enough sleep in their systems to handle their drinks with much grace. And then there were the best times, those when they somehow ended up having slow and slightly drowsy sex right where they were, widespread on the living room floor and the moment caught in a time capsule Dan liked to think they would hold on to forever.
"Are you still sad, Dan?" Phil would ask in between kisses, without once touching on being condescending. Breathing into his ear, "still sad now?" and "how about now?" and he'd keep on asking until it became ridiculous and they'd fall apart laughing in each other's mouths.
Years later, and Phil still wakes up. From a particularly loud clap of thunder, or more likely from Dan repositioning himself to curl up against him. For a minute Dan forgets himself and almost smiles when he sees the familiar disoriented look on Phil's face, but his voice, still as testy as it was when he had left Dan and a half finished cup of tea at the kitchen table hours prior, precedes him.
"Jesus, Dan, why is the window open? The carpet will be ruined if you keep doing that."
They rarely used to talk about those nights afterwards. They were little moments isolated in time, separate from anything else in their relationship. Phil would wake up next to Dan and kiss him before searching him for any traces of the late night emotions, sighing when he found none. Finding no trace of it meant nothing other than Dan having once again hidden away every slither of a problem in the back of his mind for it to build up towards the next impending crisis. Phil holds on to the hope of a day – latches onto it like it's the one thing keeping the relationship afloat – when Dan will trust him enough to not feel the need to. But with every piece of the puzzle falling into place in Phil's own life as time passes, the lengths Dan will go to prevent himself from breaking down and spilling over become greater. Phil will forever have the advantage of a few years and of having a mind less set on twisting and turning things into absurdity and Dan will do everything and anything in his power to keep him from seeing past dimpled smiles and a sharp tongue to see the mess he still is. With every stiff "I'm fine, stop fussing" he pushes Phil a little further away, while thinking he is preventing the same.
Dan doesn't cry anymore. If Phil were to wake up again, this time it wouldn't be to see Dan wipe away tears. It would be to see him curling into himself, shaking with the effort of keeping everything contained within. His teeth sinking into the flesh of his hand to keep himself from letting out the sound you make when you've somehow missed the crying part and gone straight to the part that has a daunting resemblance to a silent scream. Sometimes, these times, Dan scares himself.
They share too many things in life to start splitting them apart, they say. It's easier to bring up the radio show, the expensive shared flat that neither, for practical and sentimental reasons, could keep alone, and the countless mutual purchases, than to bring up the fact that their lives are so deeply entwined, they'd end up cutting off their own limbs by mistake in an attempt to separate one from the other. They blame what their lives has become; it's their busy schedules, they tell each other, how they're constantly stressed and how they've forgotten how to function together in a context that isn't work anymore. Because it's easier than admitting it might be Dan's obsessive building of walls around him and Phil's constant striving for control that get in between them, strands them on either side of a sea with no real means to approach each other. "Build a bridge and get over it." Dan once exclaims, hands thrown in the air, hearing how childish he's being even before his lips has fully wrapped themselves around the last words, but still unable to take them back. And Phil just looks at him dejectedly, because he'd build the eighth wonder of the world if it'd bring them back where they used to be, but they ran out of materials to build any type of connection between the both of them a long time ago.
They try to distance themselves. Dan retreats to his own bedroom some nights and Phil stops himself from kissing Dan's naked shoulders when he's slouching in the office chair in a tank top while struggling with the heat and yet another deadline. But sooner or later they'll fall into each other, into each other's beds and into the same pattern of Phil pushing forward and Dan retreating. They don't seem to be able function in their two separate but parallel existences, but neither is happy when they share the same bed and the same life without knowing what went wrong and why the other person has started to feel a bit like a stranger. A substantial one, but a stranger nonetheless. They can be physically as close as two people can be during night, pent up frustration making things between them desperate and rough, a poor replication of how they once had been equally close in another sense. Phil looks ashamed upon seeing red marks standing out on the gradually paling skin on Dan's back in broad daylight. Dan however studies them in the bathroom mirror minutes at the time before and after long showers, like they hold clues of what went wrong and how to make a wrong into a right again, loving them because in the moment they were created they were in harmony again. Like they once were, only not at all. Neither comment on them, not even when Dan's back is flush to Phil's naked chest at night and he's sure to feel the faintly elevated scratches made by eager hands. Dan's tongue is tied in a thousand tight knots and the same thing goes for his stomach. Obsessively he tries to calculate the amount of days until Phil will finally give up on them, figuring there'll still be more days this way than if he lets Phil into his head; letting him see how he's brought with him every bad feeling, every fear and the lacking sense of a self worth into adulthood, while Phil just seem to have left all his behind. There's times when he hates Phil for that, red-hot envy splattered over his vision what with Phil being able to make that transition without taking Dan with him. They were supposed to stay together, "face things together from now on" Phil had promised with eyes so wide and sincere Dan had only dared to meet them seconds at a time, but then he just left, anyway.
"Why can't you let it go, why can't you accept that I'm actually fine and there's nothing to tell? Do you have to be the strong one? Always the one to take care of me, is that it? Because maybe that was cute when I was still a teenager but it's not anymore." Dan pushes mid argument one morning where they're sat at each side of a table that feels big like the sea, each of them clutching a mug like it's something to hold on to in an emotional tempest like the one raging between them. The steam emitting from their cups, Dan thinks, is the result of the unmistakably icy atmosphere clashing with hot beverages. There's a science to the way they fight now. The arguments and words he doesn't particularly believe in himself come natural in the same natural way his hand used to find its way under Phil's shirt whenever he was leaning into him on the couch, and they're following a recurring pattern just like Phil's fingers used to do when they danced over Dan's side during those same moments. Dan casts down his eyes when he sees how his words hit Phil, how he's fumbling for words with a look of hurt confusion on his face. Like a child being reprimanded but not understanding what for. His mouth opens and closes again. Dan has an apology on his tongue that just won't roll off of it. Yet another cup of tea is left unfinished at the table.
On the edge of Dan's sharp jaw is a patch of skin that insists on going bright red when he's just the slightest bit flustered. Phil used to smile at the sight of it, tracing his fingers over it only to have them swatted away by Dan who rubs it like it does him wrong just by being there, making the colour intensify and leaving him in a huff. Lately Phil has only seen it when they've been fighting. He curls his fingers into fists and pretends he doesn't remember.
It has to get worse before it gets better, Dan's aunt used to say, tilting her head and smiling kindly at him with eyes that crinkled lightly at the corners. It was an odd way of comforting an angry teenager who had just spent the past hour on a tirade of why school and parents and life was being unfair on him, but paired with a quick squeeze around his upper arm and a second serving of Dan's favourite food that she always carefully started to prepare the minute he stomped into her kitchen it somehow worked. Many years later Dan and Phil spends almost an hour trying to pretend like the other person isn't choking on tears – or letting them fall freely but quietly. Perhaps they need space, but getting up from their shared bed, even if only to move to the next room, would be putting a full stop to their relationship and that knowledge is weighing heavy on them both. Still they don't reach out to the other, no words, not even the most horrible ones they've ever aimed at the other, are retracted. Dan's eyes are fixed on a spot on the ceiling. Even though there's no whitewashing the choked sounds coming from Phil. Dan refuses to look at him, like a child convinced they'll be invisible if only they closed their eyes at the danger approaching, Phil isn't laying broken next to him as long as he keeps his eye on the spot on the ceiling. By not reaching out, but also not getting up, they're retaining the oxford comma that their relationship has turned into. The realisation that he's at a point in life where things maybe doesn't get better as much as they're made better slowly, very slowly, starts to sink in. This has to be worse, so he tries to find comfort in potentially having the better part in front of them even though his throat aches with many weeks worth of tears held back. He idly wonders if his aunt forgot to tell him that part, or if she counted on him coming to the realisation himself, even if he had to reach his 22nd year before he got there.
"Sorry." He eventually whispers, not knowing if the word is big enough to wrap itself around all the other much sharper ones still littering the room. He gets his answer after a breathless silence, when Phil rolls over for the first time that evening to overbuild some of the distance between them.
"I am too." He mumbles as he carefully intertwines his fingers with Dan's. And Dan suddenly has a new and different set of tears burning behind his eyelids, because once upon a time in those early days when they both needed to take a step back because everything moved to fast and so many first were covered so quickly it left them both feeling lightheaded and slightly scared, they'd fall asleep like this; under the same cover with thumbs brushing over knuckles as the only form of contact, but the next morning they'd wake up without any resemblance of space left between them and with a newfound sense of certainty. Dan falls asleep praying for sleep to work the same magic once more.
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They lasted a year on the radio, with two sets of papers with sloppy signatures on them promising them another, and the high they experience when the last song of the season fades out is like all the emotions and excitement of every show of the year combined and it's threatening to burst out of their tight chests while they nod and shake hands and smile their way through a brief meeting before they hurry through the corridors, occasionally slowing down upon meeting someone with an air of importance before almost breaking into a run yet again. The second they're out the back door Dan grabs Phil's arms so hard he can feel Dan's nails even through his winter coat, spinning him around so that they're facing each other with the same giddy smiles etched upon both their faces.
"Can you believe we lasted this year?" he says breathlessly, leaning as close to Phil he dares and then a tiny bit closer, because adrenaline is still pounding in his ears and cautious is the last thing he wants to be right then. Phil's smile, if possible, widens even more when Dan's fingers loosen their grip on his arm and slides down it, catching his fingers momentarily – not taking his hand, but merely letting his fingertips play against Dan's for a second before he answers.
"We always had it in us, didn't we?"
They're making an effort. The usual after-show takeout is replaced by a home cocked meal that Phil is bossing over, and any attempt to meddle – whether it be sticking a spoon into the pot or actual help – is firmly shooed away. Dan ends up setting the table, with napkins and odd candles he finds around the flat because they're making an effort and it's working, they're both smiling and they're both touching each other in passing because they can't stop themselves from it and the smile they earn from the other sends a jolt right to the heart, like it used to. Dan ends up perched on a kitchen worktop, for lack of a breakfast bar to dangle his legs from, and he's far too tall to fit comfortably with the cupboards against his back and his hands grasping the edge to keep him from sliding down, and he's probably making cooking a lot harder for Phil who has to reach over him for ingredients, but it's familiar and the adrenaline from before has quieted down to a comfortable and more manageable buzz.
"You know, I spent a lot of this year being frustrated and maybe even a bit jealous because you're so sure of everything." Dan pipes up after minutes of silence. "It's probably stupid, but I felt like if you knew how messed up I've been in my head this year, you'd eventually get tired of me. I've just been so fucking lost and you're just moving forward, you know, when I'm not. I was mad at myself, and maybe you and everything. It's so stupid." He trails off, looking at his feet that he kicks back and forth, heart pounding because this is the most honest he's been in months and honesty is always correlated with risk. Phil stirs the pots in silence a few more times before turning everything off, positioning himself between Dan's legs and stopping their restless motions.
"You're not stupid. Only the fact that you thought I'd get tired of you, and that you think I'm so sure of everything. I still don't know what I'm doing half of the time, Dan. And maybe it's a little bit stupid that you didn't just talk to me about it." His hands find their place on Dan's hips, thumbs stroking slowly. "I still love you pretty damn much, though."
The kiss is careful, like they're testing waters; it's soft but still eager and only broken by Phil reaching for a bottle of wine behind Dan.
"To 2014 being our best year yet?" He offers, making Dan let out a small laugh.
"That's not for a few weeks, Phil."
Phil waves his hand dismissively before pecking Dan's lips again.
"Technicalities. Let's eat."