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“You are a fucking mess, Howell.”
“Your mum’s a fuck’n mess.”
“I’ll be sure to tell her next time I see her.”
Dan stumbles over his feet and crashes into Phil’s side for the thousandth time that evening. He giggles low in his chest and grasps the fabric of Phil’s button-up for dear life. Phil’s glad they’ve made it to their street for the absurd idiot hanging off his arm. He fishes in his pocket for his phone to disable the security alarm.
“Who’th fuck’re you texting, you are a taken man, you bitch,” Dan screams into his ear.
“Ow,” Phil complains, jerking his head away from Dan’s obscene loudness. “I’m letting us into our home, you jealous cow.”
“Fuck you!” Dan trips again and finally goes down. Phil does his best to catch his elbow before he hurts himself, but Dan relents to gravity and lets it take over control of his body. He cackles as his knees hit the pavement hard and slumps back on his heels. He grins stupidly up at Phil, who just shakes his head.
“I have never seen you this drunk, Daniel, can you please not die before I can get you home to properly enjoy this?”
“I’ll properly enjoy you!” Dan struggles to stand and Phil’s mostly sober coordination is hardly helping.
“I’m sure you will, dear, now fucking stand up!” Phil’s face is pink and his lungs hurt from the hours of shared laughter during their spontaneous evening outing. His head’s just floaty enough that he can’t remember exactly what they’d been celebrating, but he’s glad whatever it was had been worth celebrating.
He drags Dan to his feet and throws an arm around his waist to keep him upright. Dan leans into his side heavily and hums a happy tune to himself as he’s led down the pavement.
“I didn’t think you even drank that much, how are you this pissed?”
“‘S just ‘cause I love ya!” Dan’s voice goes back to that deafening octave and Phil pretends to be annoyed.
“Stop screaming at me, you obnoxious oaf, I’m already half deaf in this ear ‘cause’a you!”
“You love me too, don’t pretend, Lester.”
Phil rolls his eyes and fishes his keys out of his pocket once they’ve made it to their walkway. “If you insist.”
“Oh, I insist.” Dan does almost nothing to aid in getting himself up the stairs and Phil groans at the effort required to manhandle his very large boyfriend.
Phil unlocks the door and scoops up as much of Dan as he can and hauls him over the threshold before someone calls the police on his drunken shouting. Dan trips yet again and sprawls on the floor next to the shoes, face down. His shoulders shake with the force of his giggling and Phil’s heart swells with adoration of this absolute fucking mess at his feet.
“I’m gonna get you water, don’t move.”
“I am a rug.”
“Sure, Bear.” Phil toes his shoes off, one landing almost gracefully on top of Dan’s ass, and ascends the stairs toward the kitchen. He’s significantly less drunk than Dan, knowing one glass of water will sober him right up, and loves his ridiculous partner to pieces. He remembers with a smile what they’re celebrating and his heart blooms with affection once again.
In a few days is six months since they revealed their relationship to the world. Six months since they altered the course of their collective history forever. Six months of weightlessness after the impossibly heavy burden of keeping their love a secret.
Phil buzzes with the love in his heart, the gratitude, the relief. It’s been six months of freedom to say what they want, express their fondness for each other, and already he doesn’t remember what it had felt like to hold all that back. To prevent himself from saying all the sappy shit in his heart when it strikes his fancy. To no longer hold back from the unhinged things he’s always said with the camera off.
He’s had the privilege of loving Dan for sixteen years and now it’s been six months with permission to be loud about it. He couldn’t imagine a better trajectory for his life.
“‘ave I told you ‘ow much I love you?” comes a slurred voice across the room.
Phil whips around and Dan is swaying on the spot at the top of the stairs, not even fully in the kitchen yet. “Jesus Christ, Daniel,” he squeaks, rushing over to grab Dan by the arms and pull him up the last step. “Why are you climbing stairs when you can’t stand on your own two feet?”
Phil drags him by the hand to a barstool and he sits heavily upon it with a big dopey grin. Phil shoves a large glass of water into his hands and watches him down the entire thing. He ends up with a not insignificant amount sloshed down his front, but doesn’t seem to notice.
He sighs dramatically as he slams the empty cup down onto the island, wiping his face with the back of his hand not unlike a toddler. Phil loves him something terrible and presses a lingering kiss to his temple.
“I love you, too, Bear. You and your silly ridiculous drunken ass.”
“I know you love my ass. It’s not as good as your ass, though,” Dan says with a reverberating smack to Phil’s aforementioned ass. It stings a little too deliciously for as helpless as Phil is to presently relieve his swelling attraction toward his boyfriend.
“You’re hilarious.”
“And you’re beautiful.” Dan tilts his head back and gazes up at Phil, his big brown eyes sparkling with absolute adoration. Phil melts at that look every single time. The Internet’s name for that look is extremely accurate, he thinks.
“Are you feeling okay?” Phil drops his voice and runs a hand through Dan’s frizzy hair.
Dan leans his head against Phil’s side and his impossibly soft eyes soften even more with his grin. “Mhm,” he grunts.
That’s it. Phil can’t take it. Dan is too goddamn adorable and he connects their lips together without a single moment of further hesitation. Dan sighs against his lips and laces his fingers together at the backs of his thighs.
Dan tastes of vodka and cherries and lemon and whatever spice had been in that last cocktail before Phil finally cut him off. Dan parts his lips and Phil really shouldn’t let it go further than this, but allows himself to get just a little lost in the way their tongues tangle together.
He pulls away when he knows he’s supposed to and presses his lips to Dan’s browbone instead, his head spinning from more than the alcohol.
“You’re no fun,” Dan complains, stroking his thumbs up and down Phil’s legs.
“You’re beyond pissed and you know it. No sexy times for you, buster.”
Dan makes a noise of distaste. “Don’t call it sexy times.”
“Sexy times!” Phil yelps before taking Dan’s cup to the sink to refill it. “You realise you’re going to be violently hungover tomorrow?”
“Shuddafuckup.”
“Before we left, you told me not to let you get this drunk.”
“And now I’m this drunk and you’re taking the blame?”
Phil rounds on him, an eyebrow raised. “And it’s your own fault, you literally smacked me in the face when I tried stopping you from getting those last three drinks.”
Dan’s eyes well with tears. “I didn’t mean to hit you.” His voice is so small and pulls at Phil’s heart.
He steps back over into his partner’s bubble and lets him squeeze his arms around his middle in a vice grip. “I know, Bear, I’m not upset.” He chuckles and sets the glass of water on the island. “I am gonna bring it up on the next podcast, though.”
“Noooo,” Dan groans into the softness of Phil’s tummy. “We can’t have two stories of me smacking you, makes me sound like a horrible partner.”
Phil’s smile widens and his stomach flutters as it always does at that word. Partner. Six months of this new label and Phil still gets giddy every time. They’re partners. They’ve technically been partners the entire last sixteen years, but they never properly said it before. Partners. He likes it so much he says it aloud.
“Are you sure you’re not drunk, too?”
“Never said I wasn’t, I’m just being the responsible one so you don’t kill yourself.” Phil pushes the water against Dan’s cheek and he splutters at the wetness.
“Haven’t wanted to do that for a long time, bub, I think we’re safe.” He takes a big swig and spills more water down his front and onto Phil’s leg.
Phil swats his shoulder. “Shut up, rat.”
Dan sighs loudly and rests his chin on Phil’s tummy to gaze up at him. “Don’t think I will. You like when I yap.”
Phil strokes his thumb over the smile lines next to Dan’s beautiful eyes. “Yeah, okay, I do.”
“And I like you.”
They smile at each other and Phil’s heart is fit to burst from the fondness. He loves drunk Dan almost as much as Dan hates the hangovers after nights like this.
“I like your eyes and I like your face and I like your hair best right now, just before the Phrips.”
“Phrips,” Phil repeats fondly.
“Frosted tips with a ‘ph’,” Dan annunciates.
Phil grins at him and kisses his hairline. He does it again for that little purr Dan does when he’s really happy.
“I love you,” Dan says again.
“I love you, too, sap.”
“I’m a fuckin’ maple tree tonight, baby.”
“How about you be a maple tree who drinks his water so we can go to bed?”
Dan rolls his eyes and mocks Phil’s words in his nonsensically slurred way. Regardless, he does as he’s told and slowly downs the rest of the glass. Before Phil can take it back to the sink, Dan tightens his grasp and pulls him closer.
“Not ready for you to leave,” he says into Phil’s shirt.
“I’m just going to the sink.”
Dan shakes his head. “Not allowed.”
Phil makes a noise of mock annoyance and tangles his hands in Dan’s waves. His eyes well with tears at the sight of a single hair near his crown that’s slightly different from the rest in that it’s bright silver. Phil takes it between two fingers and leans closer, confirming it for what it is. A telltale sign that the love of his life is growing old with him. He presses a lingering kiss to the source of that beautiful hair and holds Dan tighter.
“I really, really love you, you know,” Dan says after a while of comfortable silence.
“I know,” Phil whispers, afraid of giving himself away with the quaver of a louder volume.
“I like you, too.”
Phil grins wider.
“You’re fun and you’re silly and you put up with my bullshit even though you don’t have to, and you let me do stupid shit all the time and break your heart and still you let me stick around.”
Phil frowns. “Hey, none of that, don’t be getting all sad when you’re this drunk. I can only handle one abnormal Dan at a time.”
“I’m always abnormal.”
“Yes.”
“Walked into that one.”
They share a breathy chuckle.
“I like you, too,” Phil whispers into Dan’s hair. “Now, come on, let’s go to bed before you do something stupid like cry.”
“Rude.”
“If you cry, I’ll cry, and they still don’t know why my eyes are broken, I can’t afford to cry.”
Dan rolls his eyes and tilts his head back for Phil’s kiss. He leans in without hesitation and it’s all teeth and tongue and giggles and Phil has to physically pry Dan off him to get him to follow him (extremely carefully) down the stairs. They brush their teeth in their own bathrooms and Phil has to help Dan strip down to his pants and not strangle himself when he falls into the bed.
“Bloody menace,” Phil whispers fondly. He fetches the bottle of paracetamol and places it on Dan’s bedside table for its inevitable necessity in the morning. He crawls into bed next to Dan, who is already dead to the world, and Phil makes a mental note to tease him about his snoring when they record the next podcast. Payback will be sweet.
Phil presses his chest against Dan’s back and breathes in his scent for as long as he thinks he can get away with. He privately yearns for their early years, when they couldn’t stand to not be in some kind of constant contact as they slept. Over time, the insatiable need to be touching at all times faded, and they almost never cuddle in the night anymore. Only on the rare occasions that Dan falls asleep first does Phil get away with a few minutes of sleepy spooning.
Dan makes a sleepy noise of contentment and squeezes Phil’s arms around his front. “Love you,” he murmurs.
“Love you.” Phil starts to pull away but Dan tightens his hold.
“Don’t go.”
Phil smiles as bright as the sunshine that emanates from Dan’s beautiful soul and does as he says. He doesn’t let go until the morning, and won’t for as long as they both live.