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Loud music and animated talking fill the spacious living room. The smell of alcohol and salty snacks is permeating the air. Empty bottles of all kinds of alcohol line the shelves.
Dan and Phil are sitting on one side of the small sofa—practically glued together like magnets—making polite small talk with some of the other guests.
It’s their friend Jacob’s birthday party today, which means they actually had to leave the house for once.
Normally Phil would carry the conversation in these situations, as Dan’s social battery tends to run out really fast, but due to the slight headache that’s begun to take form in his head, Dan decided to take over for him today.
The flickering lights and loud noises are certainly not doing anything to help the pain, but they decided to at least stick around until midnight to celebrate their friend’s special day.
As the clock strikes twelve, everyone around them starts to loudly cheer and raise their drinks to give a toast to the birthday boy.
Due to the ibuprofen he took earlier, Phil decided it’s best not to have any alcoholic beverages tonight but rather have some water instead. And Dan, being the thoughtful partner that he is, opted for the same in solidarity.
He simply doesn’t want to flaunt a fun cocktail right in front of his boyfriend’s face and risk the stinky baby coming out. Not tonight. Lest he says something crazy like “I hope you die on your birthday.” Jacob just doesn’t deserve that.
Dan begins to raise his glass, ready to clink it with Phil's and join the others in their celebration. He even widens his eyes and looks directly into Phil’s blue ones so that he doesn’t get scolded for once again not following his stupid superstitions.
But before their glasses can touch, Phil swiftly pulls away his drink with a loud and dramatic gasp.
“Dan, are you crazy?? You can’t cheers with water. It’s bad luck!”
Dan’s smile drops from his face. “Oh my god, you've got to be shitting me. I swear, you make up a new fucking rule like this every three days. There’s no way this is a thing!”
“But it is! It means bad sex forever. Didn’t you know?”
Dan groans, snatches Phil’s wrist, and pulls him closer to smash their drinks together.
“Nooo, what have you done?” Phil’s face morphs into one of utter shock. “We’re never ever going to have good sex again, Dan. You don’t even know what you've just started!”
“Relax, Phil! That’s just some dumb thing some random bored person once made up to scare gullible people like you for absolutely no reason.
“It’s going to be fine,” Dan says with absolute certainty.
–
It’s not fine.
Two days later they have their next schedule-free day. No filming, no editing, no social obligations. Just pure rat and relaxation time.
After waking up, Dan lovingly serves a tired Phil his morning coffee in bed, and they both spend some time doing the Wordle just like they do every day. Since there is nothing on the agenda today, they both take a long shower and decide to go back to bed for a cuddle.
Cuddling slowly turns into making out, which turns into lazy morning sex.
Both of them are lying down sideways—completely lost in pleasure.
Phil’s head is buried deep into the pillow, his fists tightly gripping the sheets. Dan lazily thrusts into him from behind. His left arm is positioned underneath Phil’s head, holding his torso close while his right hand alternates between squeezing his hips and the meat of his thighs.
With his back arched and ass pushed back, Phil pulls his legs up higher for better access. “Mmmh… right there.”
Shallow thrusts become deeper as both of them get closer and closer. They have been going at it for a while—not in any hurry, as they have all the time in the world. Or so they thought.
The doorbell rings. Dan’s movements instantly come to a halt, making Phil let out a protesting whine.
“Who the fuck is at our door this early in the morning?” Dan asks. ”Let’s just ignore it. It’s probably just the postman. He can leave the damn package outside,” he grumbles and continues moving his hips in the same tempo as before.
All of a sudden, Phil’s phone starts going off on his nightstand.
Dan throws his head back in annoyance. “Ugggh, fucks sake.” He stretches out his arm and clumsily feels around for the phone behind him. After unlocking it, he picks up without even looking at the screen to see who’s calling.
“Yeah, hello?”
His face pales in an instant. “Kath, hello!...You’re at our door right now?”
Phil’s mouth falls open as he processes what Dan just said. He involuntarily tenses up, making Dan, who’s still inside him, let out a groan and then dramatically try to overplay it with a cough.
“A surprise visit? That is amazing! I was just in the shower, so I didn’t hear the door ring, sorry. But I will be right out; hold on just a second.”
As soon as he hangs up the phone, Dan shakes Phil’s body and whisper-yells, “Your fucking parents are at our door trying to get in!”
“Shit,” Phil says. Phil loves his parents, but this is not how he wanted their free morning to go.
Dan carefully pulls out and tries to stand up on shaky legs. The blood in his body rushes from his head to his feet at once, making him stumble and bang his knee against the bedframe. “Fuck!”
He quickly collects himself, grabs some discarded clothes from the floor, and dashes to the bathroom.
He comes back out, fully dressed with dripping wet hair, because if there’s one thing Dan Howell is going to do, it’s commit to a lie, no matter what.
Once he has adjusted himself in his pants, Dan sprints out of the room, jumps down the stairs, and opens the door to greet his in-laws, leaving Phil naked and alone in their bed. Ugh… great, he thinks.
Later that night, while the Lesters are deep asleep in the guest bedroom, both of them are once again cuddling in their bed.
Phil is lying on Dan’s chest, glaring daggers at his partner.
“What?” Dan asks.
“It’s because of the water,” Phil frowns.
“The what?”
“You put a curse on us by cheersing with water!”
It takes Dan a second to realize what Phil is talking about.
“Oh, not that shit again,” he rolls his eyes dramatically. “Your parents accidentally cockblocking us by deciding to give us an unannounced visit has absolutely nothing to do with me clinking our two glasses of fucking water together, Phil!”
"Yes, it does!! Our sex life is now ruined because of your ignorance.” Phil lets out an exasperated sigh. “You’ll see!”
“Phil,” Dan pinches his nose, “the superstitions you believe in are not real. So what? We got interrupted this once. Your parents are going to be gone by tomorrow afternoon, and then I promise, I’ll fuck you so good you won’t even remember it happened, okay?
“I didn’t bring some weird sex curse upon us. This is just a one-time thing.”
-
It isn’t.
A couple days later they have sex again. Or at least they try to.
They have dinner plans with friends scheduled for later today and decided to use the hours before that to get rid of the sexual frustration that’s left after their failed attempt last week.
The two of them have been making out for a while now, both hard and desperate to release some tension before going out.
After undressing, Phil grabs the lube from the beside drawer and also pulls out a condom from the unopened box, which he hastily throws into Dan’s face. “Put that on.”
“What? Why?” Dan starts to protest.
They don’t really use condoms anymore. After 17 years it’s just kind of gotten redundant. Unless they absolutely want to avoid making a mess, they just leave it be. Much to Dan’s satisfaction.
“We have to leave in two hours. I already showered, and I don’t want to have to clean up again. So just put it on,” Phil tells him again.
“I can just pull out,” Dan whines.
Phil simply lifts one eyebrow and stares him down.
“Okay, okay, I’m on it,” Dan throws his hands in the air in surrender. He hastily opens the pack and rolls the condom on, giving his dick a few strokes to relieve some of the pressure, then pushes in.
A while later, Phil is on his back with Dan hovering right above him. They can barely tell where one of them ends and the other begins.
Phil’s already come once, splatters of cum slowly drying on his stomach. And Dan is so so close. The hot sensation in his lower stomach starts to build.
“Fuck, can you turn around for me?” he manages to choke out as he quickly pulls out.
After mumbling some incoherent complaints, Phil hoists his body up to flip around onto his stomach.
As Dan grabs his hips and spreads his cheeks—ready to go back in—he looks down at himself.
“Uh oh.”
With half of his face smushed into the mattress, Phil barely registers Dan’s words. His mind feels heavy and filled with cotton. “Wha… what’s goin’ on?”
A few seconds of silence go by.
“The condom is gone.”
Phil’s brows furrow. “Huh?” He hears some frantic rustling behind him.
“The fucking condom isn’t on my dick anymore!” Dan says with clear distress in his voice.
Phil whips his head around and frowns at his boyfriend over his shoulder. “What are you talking about?”
Dan groans and rubs his palms against his face.
Now that he's mentioned it, Phil does feel a strange squishy sensation inside. “Oh my god… Dan, I swear to god.”
Phil starts to panic, visions of being splayed out on the operating table in the emergency room as they cut him open to retrieve the condom already filling his head.
“Don’t panic, okay? Everything’s fine." Dan sets his own worry aside and softly reassures him.
“Just hold still and relax.” He puts some lube on his fingers and moves them to Phil’s entrance. “It must have slipped off or something, I don’t know.”
Dan inserts his fingers with furrowed brows and fishes around to find the missing item.
Phil, who's already overstimulated from his orgasm, keeps wiggling around. “Dan, hurry up!”
“I’m trying! Stop moving so much!”
Despite not being able to see him, Phil can clearly hear the frustration in his tone. Dan was already so close to coming, his dick still hanging hard and heavy between his legs.
It takes him ages to locate the condom, let alone grasp onto it and pull it out. Phil’s incessant squirming and whining doesn’t really help either. But he guesses he can’t complain about it since he’s not the one who’s got the damn thing stuck inside of him.
By the time he’s got it successfully removed, Dan has gone completely soft. Any trace of a sexy mood has completely vanished.
Dan sighs deeply as he slumps down onto Phil’s body—left sexually frustrated once again.
“What have I done to deserve this?” he mutters under his breath.
“I can tell you what you have done,” Phil replies.
This time it only takes Dan two seconds to put it together. “Jesus Christ, it’s not the water, Phil!”
“It so is! This is the second time this week, Dan.”
“Stop being an idiot! It’s… it’s probably just the new condom brand I bought. They ran out of the ones we usually buy, and I just grabbed the next best thing. Maybe they're like extra slippery or something…” Dan tries to explain the situation away. “Or maybe it’s your fault, Mr. Grippy. Your body sucked that thing right back in.”
“Oi, don’t turn this around on me!” Phil protests. “That’s victim-blaming!”
“At least you came! My dick doesn’t even know what that’s like anymore,” Dan wistfully says and sighs.
“Look, all I know is that it's not a curse, okay?” Dan moves up the bed, pulls Phil closer into his arms, and presses a kiss to the crown of his head.
“Mmh mmh, keep telling yourself that.”
As Phil starts to peacefully doze off, Dan keeps lying away, staring at the dark ceiling with slightly furrowed brows.
Superstitions aren’t real, he reminds himself. They’re made up. Having unfulfilling sex twice in a row isn’t some supernatural intervention. It’s just a coincidence.
Next time they have sex, things will be completely fine again, and Phil will realize that it is all just hocus pocus. Because that’s what it is.
Right?
-
Wrong.
The next time they want to have sex, Dan makes sure that everything is perfect. No spontaneous disturbances, no condom gone rogue—just the two of them finally spending some well-deserved time alone together.
It’s close to midnight. Dan is lying down on their lovely big bed while Phil is sitting prettily on his dick.
His wide palms move up and down the sides of Phil’s body. Being so deeply engrossed in pleasure, he doesn’t even know where to hold onto first.
As he looks up, he sees ocean blue eyes looking down right back at him. The warm lamp behind him casts a halo around Phil’s fluffy blond hair, making him look like an angel. An angel that’s currently bouncing on his dick.
Fuck, this is the height of luxury, Dan thinks.
Phil’s soft thighs are tightly squeezing Dan’s sides, as he’s riding him. The bed is shaking and loudly banging against the wall from all the movement.
Dan is so close. And judging by his high moans that are leaving his lips, Phil is too.
Taking advantage of his pliable body, Dan pulls Phil down by his hips until there’s absolutely no more space left between them.
It can’t get any better than this.
Dan catches a slight movement in his peripheral vision. Before he can react, something smashes into his face. Something very heavy and sharp.
“Ouch, what the fuck!” he yells.
Phil gasps and covers his mouth in shock. “Oh my god, Dan! Are you okay?”
Due to the incessant bed-shaking, the small picture frame that’s placed above their bed came crashing down and landed directly on Dan’s face. The same picture frame that Dan had hung up only three days ago.
“Fuck! Shit!” Dan loudly says.
Phil looks at him with concern written all over his face and leans in closer. “Let me see.”
Dan is clutching his right temple with both hands, a nasty bruise already beginning to take form. That’s going to be fun to explain on the next episode of the pod.
Thankfully the frame missed his eyes, or this would be a completely different situation entirely.
“Hold on, I’ll get you an ice pack.” Phil gets off of Dan’s dick with a suppressed whimper and tries to stand up on unsteady feet. He quickly grabs a robe that's lying around to cover himself up and scurries to the kitchen to get something useful for Dan’s bruise.
By the time he returns, Dan’s already calmed down. He is now scowling at the picture frame lying on the ground next to him. “I almost got blinded by that fucking thing. Once I can see again, I will rip that thing apart with my bare hands. Ugly piece of shit.”
Phil rolls his eyes with a smile. So Dan’s already feeling better then.
He gets back into bed and softly touches his boyfriend’s temple. “I’m really sorry that happened.”
Now that the initial shock has worn off, Dan notices that despite having gone soft, he is still incredibly horny. Left high and dry yet again.
“I can’t believe it. Am I ever going to come again? What is fucking happening with us?”
Phil looks down at this lap and remains silent. With only one glance to his right, Dan can tell that he is dying to say something.
“Ugh, just spit it out, Phil.”
“It’s the curse.”
Dan closes his eyes and sighs dramatically. “Phil.”
“No, listen to me!” Phil looks him in the eyes with the most serious look he can muster. “Ever since we toasted Jacob with water at that party, we have been unable to have proper sex. That’s never happened to us! We are great at sex!”
Dan’s lost deep in thought. Phil is right, they are amazing at sex. They are the best, actually. They’ve got that shit down.
So what is going on?
Maybe Dan just didn’t do a good job at installing that picture frame on the wall. But that wouldn’t make sense because he is one-hundred percent sure that he did everything right. He even double-checked that it was secure by banging against the wall a few times. So it can’t be that.
Dan doesn’t want to admit it, but he is starting to have his doubts.
He is the skeptic. He is the one who doesn’t believe in anything supernatural. Let alone some silly superstition.
Phil is the type of person who believes his childhood home was haunted and that he has psychic abilities, which got passed down to him from his grandma. Dan doesn’t do that. That’s how it’s always been.
But quite frankly, Dan is getting desperate here. If he doesn’t get to come in the next few days, his dick might actually fall off.
He’s got Phil dancing around him all day in the tightest little booty shorts known to mankind. He doesn’t know how much time he has left in him.
Dan takes a deep breath. “Okay so, I’m not saying I actually believe in some sort of curse, but… obviously there is some entity out there in the universe that has something against us having sex.
“I mean, how is it that I’m getting my shit rocked by my beautiful and sexy boyfriend and then a fucking picture frame almost takes me out??”
“Friday night, am I right?” Phil says.
“Phil…”
“I’m sorry.”
Dan lets out a deep sigh, still pressing the cold ice pack to his temple. “So… what if it is a curse? What could we even do about that?”
Phil's entire face lights up at the question. He seems elated by the fact that Dan is giving his theory a chance and doesn’t immediately dismiss him again.
“I will see what I can find.”
-
The next day Phil tells Dan to come to the living room. He makes him sit down on the sofa and gives him a proud smile.
“I have the solution.”
Dan’s eyebrows shoot up. “You do?”
“Yes! This morning, I found an article on superstitious sex curses online. There is a really simple ritual that can be done once you’re affected by one,” he excitedly says, clutching a piece of paper in his right hand.
“Well, what do we need to do then?” Dan looks at him expectantly.
“Not we. You. It only has to be done by one of the two parties. And it needs to be you.”
“Why does it only need to be done by me??” Dan asks incredulously.
“Don’t question my methods!”
“Okay,” Dan grumbles.
Phil places his hands on Dan’s shoulders and moves him to the middle of the room. He then sits down on the sofa with the paper in his hand.
“I’ve got the instructions right here. You just need to follow the steps correctly and we’ll be curse-free by tonight,” he says, directing a sweet smile towards him.
“Alright, that sounds good. What should I do then?”
Phil looks up at Dan, the corners of his mouth twitching up when Dan isn’t looking. This ought to be good.
“Okay, so first you need to spin on the spot 20 times.”
“... Seriously?”
“Yes! Just do it!”
“Okay, okay,” Dan says with his hands raised defensively in the air.
Phil leans back on the sofa as he watches Dan spin around without stopping. After exactly 20 spins he comes to a halt, trying really hard to stay steady on his feet and not topple over.
“Alright, great, now you need to drink a full glass of milk while standing on one foot.”
“What??” Dan stares at him. “Ugh, fine.” He goes and grabs a glass of milk from the kitchen. “I really don’t see how this is helpful in any way, but okay.” He raises his left leg and starts chugging the milk.
And what a sight it is. Phil bites down on his cheek to suppress a smile.
“Okay, last step. You need to keep holding that position, but now circle your head with your free hand and say, “Please, free me from the heavy shackles of this horny curse and let me come in peace” exactly three times.”
Dan blinks twice. How did he end up in this situation, he thinks to himself.
If you would have told him a week ago that he’d be standing in the middle of his own living room, downing a glass of milk while standing on one foot and circling his head with one hand to reverse a sex curse caused by a glass of water, he would have choked on his own spit and laughed in your face.
The things a man does for a piece of ass.
So he lifts his arm and starts repeating what Phil told him to say, because what else is there to do.
While Dan is reciting his chant, Phil looks down on his empty piece of paper.
Of course, he made that shit up. As if there would actually be any Google results for “how to get rid of a supernatural curse put upon my sex life because I cheersed with water once.” That’s just silly.
Honestly, Phil just wanted to see Dan do something stupid. He’s kind of like his personal court jester in a way. Entertaining him while feeding him the occasional grape.
And perhaps Phil does feel a little bad, looking at Dan, hopping around on one leg, and sporting a full-on milk-moustache. But it’s nice to see how far Dan is willing to go to have sex with him. Really makes him feel desired.
It’s also nice to see Dan take his belief in superstitions a bit more seriously for once.
Now that he thinks about it, he doesn’t even really know whether the water thing is an actual thing or just something he once heard as a child and just decided to run with… Anyways.
Phil gets pulled out of his thoughts as Dan finishes his last words.
“Well done! You did everything right,” Phil claps. “Things should go back to normal now.”
Dan looks at him—out of breath and honestly slightly humiliated but also quite happy about the praise.
“Fucking great.”
-
As expected, their sex life returns to normal.
That same night, Dan gets his long-awaited orgasm. Two actually. And Phil is happy to have a few more images of Dan looking like a fool saved in his head forever.
Everything is back to how it was.
Both of them are closely huddled together—all tangled up in bed. Dan has his arm around Phil’s waist, gently stroking the small of his back.
“Maybe you were right. Maybe we did actually have a curse on us,” he says, yawning and closing his eyes contently.
Phil looks up at him with a smug smile. “Of course. I’m always right.”
It’s safe to say that next time someone comes up to Dan at a party to cheers with water, he will immediately make a mental note to buy some milk later.