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He’s standing in front of Phil’s door with his suitcase and he’s feeling stupid as fuck, which is why when Phil opens, he pushes rudely past him into the flat rather than say anything.
“Sooo, are you moving in already?” Phil’s joking, he knows, and he doesn’t look mad, he’s smiling and a bit confused and maybe somewhat pleased and Dan feels bad.
He should have called and asked. He should be nicer. He shouldn’t have been too much of a coward to do his own fucking laundry in the first place.
“Ha. Ha,” he over enunciates instead of apologising.
“Dan.”
It’s not a question but he answers anyway: “Phil. I need to do laundry. Don’t ask.”
“Alright.” A shrug, still smiling as he goes to take Dan’s suitcase handle. Dan’s hand holds on to it tighter.
“I can do it! No need to bother yourself.”
“Do you know how my washing machine works?”
And yeah, alright, he doesn’t. He doesn’t know how to use the machines at the student housing laundry room either for that matter, which is another reason why he chickened out and never did actually do his laundry. The rugby lads who seem to be loudly haunting the place were bad enough, but walking in there with no idea how the machines work and having to ask someone about it, and really just the audacity of Dan Howell to think he could just waltz in there and do laundry like a regular person who exists in the world, and…
Phil, bless his goddam soul, cuts off the internal monologue like he can hear Dan tie himself into knots.
“I’ll do it for you, it’s no bother. Hello, by the way.” He takes the handle, and wheels the suitcase behind him in a dramatic gesture while his other arm goes in to hug Dan.
Dan jumps back before he can stop himself, and now Phil’s smile is wavering.
“Sorry, I, uh, I stink,” he reaches up and brushes his fringe into his eye, then back off his face again. “It’s really overdue”, he adds, nodding toward the suitcase.
Phil cocks his head to the side then steps closer into his space, not to touch him but to take a big cartoonish whiff near his neck.
“Meh, I’ve smelt worst-smelling boys in my days!”
“Phil!”
“Dan!” Phil laughs, like a dickhead, and Dan is so, so relieved. “D’you want to take a shower while I run the machine if it bothers you that much?”
“Literally all of my clothes are in that suitcase. This is the least gross shirt I had left.”
Phil smirks. “Good thing we’re basically the same size then, uh Howell?
Which is how he emerges from Phil’s tiny bathroom, smelling of Phil’s coconut body wash and citrus shampoo, wearing Phil’s clothes, boxer shorts and all. He still feels like an idiot, but at least he’s a clean idiot now, and he feels more ready to face the world. Or to face Phil at least.
He finds him in the kitchen making coffee and to make up for his jumpiness earlier he snakes his arms around Phil’s waist from behind.
“Hi.”
“Waaait, you’re going to make me spill!”, Phil exclaims while putting down the kettle. “Idon’tcare”, he mumbles into Phil’s hair. Yeah this is miles better.
“You will when I have to go to A&E! And who will be doing your laundry then, Danny boy?”
His voice is light, he’s joking, he’s good, they’re good.
“Well,” he pretends to ponder, “the machine’s on now so I don’t really need you anymore, do I?”
Phil gasps with fake outrage and turns in his arms, hugging him back and getting immediately distracted.
“Mmm, you smell good.”
“I smell like you, you weirdo. And I look like you in all that plaid! You narcissist!” He playfully hits Phil’s shoulder but Phil just laughs into his neck. It tickles but he’s held too securely for it to properly freak him out.
“I have great taste you mean.” And to make his point he bites him right there, and Dan’s mind goes mercifully blank for a little while.
It’s late in the day now. They’ve played Mario Kart for a while, and Dan did let Phil win a little bit because he deserved it, and then Dan folded his own laundry thank-you-very-much, he does have some pride left. And in between there was a healthy amount of making out on the couch, which did do wonders for his mood.
He feels like two people at once, one Dan all warm and comfortable and flirty, one Dan brittle and raw, and mortified at having had to come here in the first place.
“Do you want pizza?”
“Uh, I should maybe go? I did come here uninvited.” It’s properly dark out now and leaving is the last thing Dan wants to do.
“I know, very rude, which is why the least you could do is have some pizza with me!” Phil winks. He’s really bad at winking, which is annoyingly endearing. And so they order pizza.
Quiet fills the room while they wait on the couch, and after a while Phil grabs Dan’s legs at the knees, ignoring his outraged yelp, pulls them over his lap, using the momentum to get Dan very, very close and closes his arm around him to trap him there.
“So.” He doesn’t ask. “Do you wanna tell me?” He doesn’t quite ask.
“It’s stupid.” He puts his forehead against Phil’s shoulder, folds his legs in to trap him right back.
“I don’t mind,” he answers mildly. And Dan believes him is the thing.
“There were lads.”
“Lads?”
“Rudgy lads. In the laundry room. They’re always in the laundry room! I tried three times!”
Phils laughs a little. “Very clean rugby lads.”
“Don’t laugh”.
Phil’s right hand is tracing a pattern against his back, it’s meant to be soothing he thinks, but it just tickles. He doesn’t say anything about it.
“Dan. Did they do something?”
The thing is, Dan hadn’t meant to tell Phil about the bullying when they first started talking. He was trying to be cool, he was trying to impress, he was trying to be sexy, and snivelling about poor little Danny getting beat up at school was none of those things.
But they spent hours, hours on Skype, talking about anything and everything and it just came tumbling out of him, because by hour four of the call the idea of not telling Phil something had become simply ludicrous.
Phil had listened, sad, and angry, and not quite surprised. (He had had his own bad experiences, even if he insisted they weren't as bad as Dan’s). And Dan had tried to keep his tone light, and almost managed it until Phil had said: “I wish I’d been there back then.”
And, oh, the idea of having someone like Phil back then, that nearly broke Dan.
“No, they didn’t get a chance.” He laughs bitterly. “Not that they would have, I don’t know, I didn’t get in. I couldn’t make myself. Pathetic, I know.”
Phil’s hands are back around him and holding on fiercely, while he keeps his voice even.
“Lucky for me though. Got a surprise Dan out of it.”
“Yeah what a fucking prize…”
“Mmm, best prize.” He nuzzles his face into Dan’s hair, stepping lightly over the sarcasm like it wasn’t even there.
“Here’s the thing though. It’s actually the worst thing when you feel… bleuarg, and I can’t do anything about it. Now I get to hug you about it. Do your laundry about it and feed you pizza about it.”
Dan swallows hard and refuses to cry.
“I hate the dorms”, he confesses softly instead.
“Easy, move in here.”
“Don’t say that. I’ll do it.”
“That’s the point.”
He won’t. Not yet. But for now his own clothes smell like Phil’s laundry detergent when he finally makes it back to his room.