Chapter Text
Dan froze upon turning the corner, the figure standing on the front porch far too recognizable.
“Something wrong?” Phil hadn’t seemed to have noticed Dan’s mother watching them from the porch, and she must be able to see them, coming home together long after dark, and somehow she must know , what the two of them had done written all over him.
“I’ll… talk to you later,” he muttered, speeding up his walk as steadily as he could with the alcohol coursing through his veins.
He heard Phil say, “O-Okay, sure.” and continue walking past. He reached out to grip Dan’s hand for a brief moment, giving him a comforting smile before continuing on to his house, luckily dark inside.
“Daniel James Howell, where have you been ?” his mother began scolding him the second he was within earshot, her foot tapping angrily away against the wood.
He winced. “Hey mum. Just out with a friend.”
Of course it wouldn’t be that easy, he should’ve known. Just as he tried to push past into the house, she grabbed onto his arm. Holding his breath did nothing when he let it all out in surprise, his mother’s eyes widening suddenly.
“Have you been drinking ?” Dan tried to pull away only for her to yank him back into the house. “I can’t believe it, was it with that boy ? What’s he done to you?”
“Phil didn’t do anything, gettof me.” She couldn’t take Phil away from him, not now.
Then she called up the stairs for his father, and Dan panicked. The footsteps came closer and closer, Adrian’s door opening and his father’s voice telling him to go back to bed, but Dan couldn’t get away no matter how hard he tried. He just wanted to have this one thing without getting in trouble, why couldn’t things just work for once?
Carry on, carry on, as if nothing really matters
“What’s going on?”
Dan winced as his mother explained, “He’s been out drinking with that neighbor boy all night, that’s what’s going on.”
“Drinking?” his father repeated, Dan refusing to look at him in case he somehow could tell there’d been more than just a bit of drinking. He couldn’t know, Dan knew how he felt about that kind of person, people like Dan , and he just couldn’t . “Where’d you get it from?”
“Didn’t steal it, if that’s what you think,” he spat out, his mother finally letting his arm go.
“Don’t take that tone with me-”
And suddenly, he didn’t care anymore. “‘S none of your bloody business what I’m doin with my own friends. Phil cares about me more than you do, so leave me the fuck alo-”
Smack!
Dan felt his head whip to the side before he actually felt the slap. He heard his mother gasp and Adrian’s door open again, the sound finally registering with the pain. His father was holding his hand and looking away when he brought his head up a few moments later. Dan lifted his hand to his cheek, wincing.
“Go to your room,” was all his father said, still looking away. Dan couldn’t bring himself to do anything other than race past and up the stairs before anything else happened.
“Dan?”
He turned at his door to see Adrian standing just outside of his own room with wide eyes. “I’m fine, Adrian. I just got in trouble for something. Go back to bed, yeah?”
“Dad hit you, I heard it,” Adrian insisted anyways. “Why?”
“I messed up, that’s all. Night, Adrian.” He walked into his room and shut the door behind him. How the hell was he supposed to explain something like that to his little brother? ‘Hey, Dad’s just mad at me because I was drinking. Oh yeah, I’m also gay, so I’ll probably be kicked out once Dad knows. You want my comics?”
Dan rifled through his records, flipping to The Game and put it on. He turned the volume down at least, if only so Adrian wouldn’t be too bothered by the noise.
Open up your mind and let me step inside. Rest your weary head and let your heart decide.
Oddly, he didn’t really care if his parents found out how he felt about Phil. Dan absentmindedly raised his hand to touch his lips for a moment, remembering the kiss, and couldn’t help but smile.
It’s so easy when you know the rules. It’s so easy, all you have to do is fall in love~
That was it, wasn’t it? He’d been crushing on Phil since they met drawn to the brightness of his personality like a moth to a flame. Phil understood him, unlike anyone else ever had.
Plink
Dan rolled over, staring at his Hot Space poster and the London one beside it. They could go there, him and Phil, find a flat maybe. Phil could go to university, and Dan could get a job somewhere until he figured out what he really wanted to do. They could even have a dog to play with and take on walks.
Play the game, everybody play the game of love, yeah.
“I love you, Phil,” he whispered to the darkness of his room, testing the words out.
Plink .
Just as the song ended a few moments later came the third tap at his window, finally gaining his attention. Dan sat up, stopping the record and creeping over to the window.
“Phil?!”
Sure enough, Phil stood on the ground below his window, arm raised as if to throw something, a small pile of rocks by his feet. He waved, gesturing at Dan to open his window. Dan glanced behind him, no noise coming from the rest of the house, and slid the window open as quietly as he could.
“I was about to get bigger rocks,” Phil said, a lopsided grin spreading across his face.
“You would’ve broken the bloody window.” Dan shook his head with a smile. “What are you doing here? It’s late, and you’re definitely still drunk.”
“I know, but I have a question for you,” Phil replied. “And you’re drunk too.”
“Okay, shoot.”
Phil glanced around him, then stepped closer to Dan’s house. “Come with me to London. I’ve already found a flat to move into whenever we want, and it’s only one bedroom, but I don’t care if people think it’s weird we share a flat that small because I love you, Dan , and they can think whatever they bloody want, I just want you to come with me. You can play your Queen records as loud as you want, a-and maybe we can go to concerts in London all the time.”
“I…” Dan started, still stuck on those four words that had brought his heart to a standstill. “I… you don’t think it’s weird, what we did? I don’t want you to lose your family because of me, Phil.”
“They know already,” Phil replied. “Dad’s still a bit weird about it, but they all know I’m gay. I told them during my birthday dinner this year when Martyn and Cornelia were over. I don’t really care anyways but I think they know I can’t change that about myself. Just… move to London with me, Dan.”
It might’ve been the alcohol, or the memory of the stinging of his cheek, but Dan grabbed the coat nearest him and crawled out of the window onto the pipe below. He hadn’t quite gotten his window closed, but he couldn’t really find it in himself to care about that. Phil’s footsteps scurried neared just in time for Dan to let himself go into the other boy’s arms with a short laugh.
“Are you bloody mental, you could’ve gotten hur-”
“Yes,” Dan said as Phil gently set him down on the ground, though he kept his hands on Dan’s waist. “Sure, let’s go to London. Just let me pack my records first, yeah?”
Phil stared at him for a moment, looking rather like a confused fish for a moment with how his mouth kept opening and closing, then grinned bright as the moon above. He yanked Dan close as both of them started giggling, tapping their foreheads together. “Yeah, okay. But really, you’ll go?”
Dan shrugged, the giggles tapering off. “What have I got to lose? I’d rather be in London with you than here with my parents. You’d better make good on that concert promise,” he teased, jabbing Phil in the chest with his finger.
“As long as it makes you happy,” Phil answered, smiling timidly.
And that was it, really. Dan yanked Phil into a kiss, for once not giving a damn what the neighbors might think if they saw. He had Phil now, the rest of them didn’t matter anymore.
-
The next day, his parents and Adrian left to visit family while Dan stayed behind in his bedroom with the door locked and himself tucked away into Phil’s arms. Unsurprisingly, his parents didn’t so much as knock on the door, but Adrian did.
“Yeah?” Dan said as he cracked the door open, hoping to get back into bed as soon as possible.
Adrian shrugged. “I just wanted… You’re leaving, aren’t you?”
How… Dan furrowed his brow. “How the hell did you know that?” He hadn’t said anything to his brother since their brief conversation the night before, so how the hell did Adrian know?
“I had my window open last night to sleep,” Adrian rushed to explain, “and I heard you talkin’ to Phil outside, and I heard you packing your stuff after that too, and I just… I didn’t want you to leave without saying goodbye.”
“Adrian…” For a moment, he felt bad about leaving his brother in a place like this, with their parents being the way they were, but Adrian wasn’t considered wrong like Dan was. He’d be fine, and he would leave for uni or something one day, and they’d both be free. Dan pulled his younger brother into a hug as he said, “I’m not abandoning you. I’ll just be in London, yeah? Come out anytime you want, if they’re being too much, and we can make space for you. I have to get out of here, you know that right?”
Adrian nodded against his shoulder, letting out a quiet sniffle. “I know,” he whispered. “You promise?”
“Pinky promise,” Dan swore as he pulled back and held out his pinky finger towards Adrians’ for a moment in the familiar gesture they’d had for years. Adrian nodded again and stepped back as their mother yelled up the stairs for him.
“Okay, I’ll see you later. You’ll have to show me around London, swear?”
Dan grinned as he replied, “Definitely. The whole tourist route and everything.” Adrian smiled, then dashed down the stairs with a ‘bye’ shouted over his shoulder. Dan yelled, “Bye, nerd,” and couldn’t help but smile at his brother’s bark of laughter from downstairs.
He sighed as he sunk back into Phil’s arms to wait until his parents left. “We’re just leaving from here, right?” he asked after a moment of silence.
Phil nodded against the back of his head. “Yup,” he replied, popping the ‘p’. “The moving truck’s at my house already since I’ve been packed up for a while, and I sort of figured you’d come with me, and I wanted to get to London soon for, uhm… something.”
Dan whipped around. “For what?”
“It’s supposed to be a surprise,” Phil complained as he stood up and reached into his coat’s side pocket. “But here, sort of a late birthday present I guess.” He held two pieces of paper out to Dan, almost blushing.
Dan grabbed the papers, tickets he now noticed, and his jaw dropped when he read them.
Harvey Goldsmith Entertainments proudly presents QUEEN plus Special Guests STATUS QUO and Guests - see Press. Friday, 11 July, 1986. GATES OPEN AT 2p.m. Concert starts approx. 4 p.m.
“No way ,” he breathed in awe, reading that one name over and over again. “How did you… I tried to get tickets but they were all out, I… I literally love you for this.”
“No other reason?” Phil asked as he stepped closer and pulled Dan close. “Just because I got us Queen tickets. Martyn and I camped out all night to make sure we got those, but you don’t love me because of anything else?”
Dan pretended to think for a moment, then shrugged and admitted, “Wellllll, maybe you’re a little fit I guess.”
Phil grinned, his tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth in that way that Dan couldn’t help but adore (even if he made fun of Phil for it). The two of them returned to the bed until his parents car was long gone and Martyn had arrived with the almost full moving truck. Loading his boxes of things didn’t take long, though Dan couldn’t decide if that surprised him or not. Once he was sure his records were secured (Phil might’ve thought he was being ridiculous for tying the boxes with some bungee cords he found in the house, but he’d be damned if he let anything happen to his precious records), they were off.
Dan spared one last glance behind him just before they drove out of view, back at the town that he’d grown up in, the town that had raised him. The church where his parents had dragged him to so that they could try to ‘fix’ him, the church that he’d had his first kiss in, the playground he’d taken Adrian to when he had to get out of the house… all of it faded out of view.
Things wouldn’t be perfect in London, Dan wasn’t that naive to think that he and Phil could just be open about their relationship and not expect issues, but at least they could have a shot at having a life together there.