[fic] all the light we cannot see
warnings: implied/referenced sexual harassment
summary: "Hello, we met for two minutes at a party last weekend and I left because I assumed you were a twat but I’ve been stalking you online and have realized the error of my ways. I’m entranced by your portraits and am desperate to know what it’s like to be photographed by you also you have nice eyes and the memory of your smile helps calm me down so I think I might like to get to know you better would you also like that?"
or, the one where phil is the only person to have ever really seen him.
a/n: you asked for more, luckily i live to serve. thank you for loving this ‘verse as much as i do. more to come.
The upstairs of Phil’s studio, as it turns out, is nothing like the downstairs.
Like the studio space, Phil’s flat is open and well-lit by a plethora of windows. As they come to the top of the staircase, they come upon what Dan presumes was meant to be an office area, but the desk has been positively overrun with papers and filing folders. This appears to be a running theme throughout the apartment, as Phil proceeds to trip over a stack of books lying on the floor on his way to put the kettle on.
“Sorry for the…mess,” Phil says, gesturing to the general disorder of the space. “I don’t like to keep things downstairs where clients can see.”
“Thought I was a client,” Dan remarks, eyebrow raised.
Phil’s tongue does that thing again, poking out from behind his smile. “Right. Yeah. ‘Course. Quite cold today though, it wouldn’t be proper of me to send you off without some tea first. Make yourself at home.”
Dan picks his way through the towers of books, which seem to be preparing for their impending invasion of Phil’s lounge. “You’re someone who cares a lot about propriety them, hm?” he says as he reaches the kitchen.
Phil pours water into the kettle. “Of course! I’m a professional, after all,” he says, in a tone that somehow indicates the exact opposite.
Dan rummages through the cabinets in search of some mugs. “So you wouldn’t dream of say, digging up dirt on your clients via their friend-slash-manager in order to determine the best way to entice them to stick around after a shoot, would you?”
It’s forward of him, he knows, but something about the events of the last half hour has given him a surge of bravery.
He squirms a bit under the intensity of Phil’s gaze, his brain already compiling a list of ways he can backtrack out of that sentence.
Phil is suddenly very close to him, pressing a warm mug into his palms and covering Dan’s hands with his own. “Are you accusing me of trying to seduce you, Daniel?”
Bravery, let it be bravery.
“Maybe,” he breathes out.
Phil makes a considering noise, soft and low, stroking a thumb over Dan’s knuckles. An eternity passes, just like that, before “I want to show you something.”
Dan mind is reeling as Phil steps away, picking up his own mug of tea before disappearing back towards the lounge. What else can he do except follow?
Phil is kneeling in front of what Dan presumes is his coffee table – it’s hard to tell any of Phil’s furniture apart with the way papers and books and stuff is precariously stacked on every surface. Despite the overwhelming clutter, Phil seems to know exactly what he’s looking for as he rifles through a pile of thick fashion magazines. Dan takes a seat on a nearby sofa, reaching out to save Phil’s tea from its imminent demise on the edge of one of the paper mountains.
“Aha!” Phil exclaims, waving one the magazines triumphantly above his head. “Found it!”
He catches a glimpse of the cover as Phil starts flipping through the pages, still in pursuit of whatever it is he wants to show Dan. It’s the winter edition of a small fashion journal that he’s pretty sure is no longer even in business. Why does that feel familiar somehow?
He’s racking his brain for answers when Phil suddenly appears next to him on the sofa, shoving the glossy paper into his hands. He takes a sharp inhale of breath when he sees what’s on the page in front of him.
It’s a profile of him that’d been shot nearly a year ago, one the first projects PJ had arranged for him. He remembers now – the journal had been doing a series on “emerging fashion icons,” pairing new designers with young models in an attempt to highlight up-and-coming people in the industry. His designer had been quite lovely, actually. Amelia. Her line had consisted of lots of violet and black florals, because things can still flourish, Dan, even in darkness. Dan had rolled his eyes when she’d told him that but asked if he could keep one of the pieces anyway, a soft black jumper with lilacs delicately stitched onto the sides. He’d snuck eighty quid under a paperweight on her desk when he’d picked it up at her studio, although it was probably worth much more.
Dan’s wearing that piece in the main shot of the spread, his right arm tucked up behind his head in order to accentuate the pattern. His eyes drift off to the side of the shot, seemingly focused on something in the middle distance. He remembers now, though, that he just couldn’t bear to look the photographer in the eye (or anywhere close, for that matter). Not after he’d fiddled for ages with the hem of the jumper, pulling it down over Dan’s too-prominent hipbones and letting his hands skirt over Dan’s ass while he did so.
“This was the first photograph I ever saw of you,” Phil says, startling Dan out of his memories.
Dan’s mouth is bone-dry. He takes a shaky sip of his tea. It doesn’t help.
“It’s not a very good photo,” he manages to croak out. That’s not quite true, objectively speaking. But he’ll allow himself some bias.
Phil seems to mull Dan’s opinion over, sinking back into the sofa cushions and propping his feet up on a stack of nearby novels. He leans across Dan to take back the magazine. Dan finds it a bit easier to breathe without it in his hands.
“Well, it’s not how I would have gone about getting that shot, personally,” Phil says. He tilts his head back and studies the ceiling, like he’s trying to arrange his next words into the correct order. “I was in Paris, doing all this avant-garde stuff, you know? And it felt like I didn’t belong there, like I was in way over my head. Which I totally was, by the way.” He turns his head to look at Dan, the corners of his mouth twitching upwards.
(your smile helps calm me down)
“And I got this in the mail one day, I used to get all the London journals sent to me while I was away. And I saw you and I just…I thought…”
“Thought what?” It’s hard to speak above a whisper, here.
“I thought it looked like you didn’t belong there, either.” Phil is whispering, too. “I looked and looked and I…wished for you to just appear in Paris so that…so that I could…”
The quiet stretches between them and Dan reaches a hand out into it before he can stop himself, connects with Phil’s knee. Leaves his hand there, warm and grounding, in the place where the fabric of Phil’s jeans is soft and worn through.
“I don’t know!” Phil exhales something between a laugh and a whine. “I don’t know. It know it sounds ridiculous. But. It just. Feels like I’ve been waiting for you.”
Dan, admittedly, has not kissed anyone in a while. But kissing Phil feels like second nature, a reflex. Like the way you can pour just the right amount of milk into your tea without thinking.
How he got here is a bit of a blur really, with a thigh on either side of a fucking photographer, for Christ’s sake. But somewhere in the last hour, Phil has stopped being a photographer and started just being Phil, Phil with a house full of other worlds and a laugh that erases dullness and hands rucked up under Dan’s jumper.
“Dan.” Phil breaks away from his mouth in favor of pressing kisses along Dan’s jaw. “Can I tell you something?”
“What?” Dan breathes out, preoccupied with chasing after more of Phil’s skin.
“I was – oh – earlier, I was trying to seduce you.”
The laugh bursts out of him, bright and airy and full and Phil is dumping Dan out of his lap, still consumed by giggles, pulling him up by the hand and tracing a delicate path through chaos.
It feels like I’ve been waiting for you, too.
