Work Text:
“I think I’m gonna go green tonight.”
Phil says this as he’s kicking his shoes off in their entryway, and Dan is gently nudging him aside so he can toss his keyring into the shallow dish sitting on the table next to him.
“Yeah?” Dan says absentmindedly, starting to unwind the scarf from around his neck. “You gonna Shrek it up, are you.”
Phil puts on a breathy voice — “Yeahhh” — which makes Dan laugh through his nose.
“Okay.”
Going green is Phil’s code for sleeping in the green bedroom. Which, given the day they’ve just had, makes complete sense. Working on a new project always does this. They’re used to spending most of their time together, but creative work means they’re also constantly, actively interacting with each other; brainstorming and arguing and making important decisions from day till night. On days like this, having their own space at home can be vital. Interviewers are always asking them how they make it work, being partners in work as well as in life? This is it. (Though they’d never say so, lest the fans deduce from this that the nature of their relationship, in the absence of the work aspect, would not require two bedrooms. C’est la vie.)
“Do you need to get anything from my room?” Dan asks. Phil has been sleeping with him for the past week and a bit, meaning more and more of his things have been migrating to his bedroom.
“I think I’ll just get my towel and shower in the guest bathroom.”
“Alright.”
Phil leads the way. He flips the room lights on by the door, then heads right into the bathroom as Dan heads left, into the walk-in. He needs to get his accessories off. Rings, choker. In the background, the white noise of Phil puttering around the bathroom. Dan looks, and then wanders over to the door of the walk-in as he fiddles with the stopper on his earring.
“Don’t forget your contacts case,” he says.
“Oh yeah,” comes the reply, which Dan takes as a sign that he can safely abandon his post and retreat into the closet again. A few moments later, Phil’s voice comes from by the door. “Night.”
He has his towel — swamp-coloured — slung over one arm and various other toiletries crushed into a claw-like hand. His hair is a little flat from a full day out in the rain. Dan’s chest pulses with a familiar affection.
“Goodnight,” he says, taking two steps forward to give him a kiss on the lips. It’s just a brush and then gone. They’re tired. There’ll always be tomorrow. Phil smiles at him, then disappears out the door.
Dan’s shower is heavenly. He cranks it near-full heat and does nothing but stand in the spray for about ten minutes. Then he speed-cleans himself for the last five and gets as quickly as he can into floor-length pyjama pants (incredible find for a 6’3” man) and a T-shirt.
But his bed, when he sinks into it, is an even greater revelation. A proper ouahhh sound escapes him once he’s horizontal. This is his favourite mattress in the house — just the right amount of fluff and firmness to send him into a baby’s slumber. Phil is agreeable to it, but he prefers the one in the green bedroom, which he got sole voting rights over since Dan wasn’t going to be the one crashing in there when they grew sick of each other.
If I’m gonna get kicked out of your room whenever you like, I’d better get to choose the mattress I want, was what Phil had said. Dan had argued that since his was the default “shared” room between them, it was also the room of compromises — a mattress both he and Phil could agree on, a desk chair that wouldn’t give Phil back pains too, etc — so he was paying the price already.
You love sharing a room with me, Phil had said dismissively, already turning back to the digital drawing board on his laptop.
Dan had made a face at that, but also said nothing.
The Dan of now just smiles at the thought. They’re a long way from Manchester now, when choosing furniture was less a question of preference than absolute necessity. He can hear water running through the pipes in the walls as Phil showers in the guest bathroom. The rest of the house is quiet. Their house, their home.
He sends Phil a message. It’s nothing at all to do with what he’s thinking. Just recalling a random anecdote from this morning, when one of their team members spilled coffee all over his beautifully put-together agenda. Phil won’t see it for another ten minutes yet (60% of the water bill in this establishment is attributable to Phil), so Dan leaves it for him to find and doomscrolls quite comfortably until the pipe noises die down.
Ding!
Dan swipes over to iMessage.
i felt so bad, Phil has replied.
his agenda was so beautiful
it was printed and bound, Dan replies.
thicc
agendussy
They go back and forth. Talking about their project. The government. Whether polar bears are capable of getting hypothermia. (Phil goes quiet for 10 seconds, then sends him a link with a list of reasons they can’t get hypothermia, one of them being their small tails. Dan gets weirdly emotional about that.)
They never really run out of things to say between them — haven’t since 2009 — but Dan can feel the moment when the energy of the conversation starts to flag. The messages start getting blander, the words monosyllabic, and then utterly nonsensical. Communication becomes reduced to animal noises. Phil even sends single letters once or twice.
But Dan isn’t willing to be the one to end it. Funny how he’d just thought they were so far from Manchester, but at times like this he feels like the same young boy who clung onto AmazingPhil’s every word, except before he did it with some measure of incredulity and burning gratitude. Now he does it with a warm insistence in his chest, nothing he won’t die without, but everything he wants for the rest of his life. The best part? He knows Phil wants the same.
When Dan finally sends the snail emoji with gentle effect, and Phil sees it without immediately responding, Dan gives it up.
can i green as well
A moment later, Phil replies with:
🟢
Dan smiles. Then rolls out of his perfectly comfortable bed and flips the lights off on his way out. He could’ve asked Phil to come to his, but it didn’t seem fair, given Phil had been the one to retreat to his own room himself. Dan would go to him. (Wouldn’t he always?)
Once at Phil’s door, he does an unnecessarily fancy knock before pushing it open.
It’s a warm, green haven in here. The overhead lights are off, leaving just the bedside lamp to cast its golden glow and fantastical, stretched-out shadows across the walls. The bamboo paintings Phil’s dad did for them to commemorate their magical trip to Japan hang tranquilly over the bed. Beneath them, Phil is on his phone under the covers. It would all be very serene if there wasn’t the insane sound of someone screeching wildly coming from Phil’s phone.
“What the fuck are you watching?” Dan asks, closing the door behind him.
Phil throws him a glance, mid-laugh. “I’m watching a goose steal someone’s wig.”
Dan makes his way over to the far side of the bed. “Do you mean that in like a, wig snatched—”
“No, I mean a goose actually stole someone’s wig. In a park.”
Phil turns his phone screen towards Dan as he’s pulling the covers back and climbing in next to him. There is, indeed, a goose fully clamping onto some poor woman’s beautiful blonde wig and escaping with it. Dan finds himself laughing stupidly.
“What the fuck,” he snorts. Phil giggles as well, watching him watch the screen. “Absolutely brutal.”
“This is why I don’t feed geese in the park.”
“Because you’re scared they’ll steal your wig from you?”
“Yeah.”
Dan gets comfortable beneath the blankets, and Phil goes back to the never-ending stream of animal content that is his TikTok For You page. Dan watches some with him, shaking his head at the things that make him laugh like a maniac. It’s far from the bedtime atmosphere podcast bros would recommend for optimal sleep, but this is exactly what Dan needs right now. Just Phil being himself. Next to him. He turns his own phone on and browses the news. Like a seesaw, he reads some depressing news about the state of the world, and then Phil will shake with the giggles at something he’s watched, and the gloom will be balanced out. This is why they work. This is why they win. 15 years and going strong.
Dan is still reading about some prime minister’s fumble when Phil’s side of the bed goes quiet. Distantly, he registers the sounds of Phil putting his phone on the table beside him, the light clatter of him taking off and folding up his glasses, the clap of its case shutting.
Then Phil’s arm comes to rest over his torso. Dan feels a gentle exhale ruffle the curls by his ear, and smiles. Phil doesn’t say anything — he might already be asleep, honestly. And it doesn’t sound like a half bad idea. After finishing up reading whatever he’d been reading before, Dan switches his own phone off and slides it onto the table by his head. Reaches up to turn off the light.
-
The mattress is really, honestly, subpar. And Phil snores like a feral hog throughout the night.
It’s worth it.