this is what i drew for the meet up!! this is the first pride thing i've participated in and i think it's very fitting that it's phandom related. thank you so much @amazingphil @danielhowell and everyone who has created this safe place on the internet. without it i wouldn't have accepted my queer identity as quickly (even though it took me a long ass time lol). y'all have taught me so much ♡
Summary: It’s difficult to breathe lately with the current state of the world. It’s vital to help how you can, but it’s also important to look after yourself. Phil reminds Dan to breathe.
Warnings: Briefly mentions coronavirus and protests/riots
Word count: 2.4k
A/N: A fic to remind myself (and maybe anyone reading this) that it's okay to take a moment to breathe when the world feels very overwhelming.
Read on AO3 or below
It’s a hot and sunny day. The sky over London is free of clouds. The air of summer can be felt in the light breeze.
It’s a picture-perfect day.
It’s the start of Pride Month.
The world is falling apart.
A world-wide pandemic is running rampant and forcing everyone to stay apart. Rampant racism and blatant murder have rightfully forced protests and riots, starting in America and spreading all over the world. Unemployment is on the rise and people are losing their livelihood. Many people are struggling with their mental health worse than ever. The news is a circle of one tragedy after another. It feels like too many things at once, like looking into a supernova and being blinded.
You wouldn’t know what’s going on in the world, if you only looked out at the sky. It seems quiet. Content.
It’s late afternoon and Dan and Phil had a busy day, helping where and how they could, but now the rest of the day is just for them. Dan is standing on the balcony watching the sky, feeling the sun and the breeze on his skin.
He’s fine.
He tries to repeat it, again and again, remind himself that he is okay.
Phil comes up behind him, moving to hug him from behind without a beat of hesitation. They are always so aware of each other’s personal space, but after all these years they know where the line goes without asking. They know what days, they need to keep a little more distance, and what days that they can’t get close enough.
They’re allowed into each other’s spaces, fully and wholeheartedly, and Dan lets himself lean back against Phil. His mind is too loud today but Phil has a very special ability to be able to quiet it.
Dan needs the quiet right now.
It’s important to help, donate, share, protest and do everything that you can do, but you need to take moments to breathe. You can only keep diving under the water for so long, before coming up from air.
It’s undoubtedly important that you jump into the water and you try to pull people out, but eventually your legs can’t hold you afloat anymore and your lungs can’t do without oxygen. Maybe you can’t swim and then you definitely shouldn’t dive in. You can help in other ways.
You’ve got to allow yourself a breather. It’s vital to be able to function. It will do nobody anything good if you collapse from exhaustion or mental overload. Then you’ll just need people to take care of you.
Dan breathes deeply.
Phil’s hand comes up to curl around Dan’s hip. It’s a firm grip and a steady one. Grounding in a way that Dan hadn’t known he’d needed until Phil is there. Phil had probably seen him and known before Dan even realised. Phil is like that sometimes. He can read Dan better than Dan can read himself.
“Remember a year ago?” Dan asks, still looking out over London. His eyes catch the specific blue of the sky. It’s similar to azure blue but not quite. Phil loves this shade of blue.
Dan finds it fitting. He can find that shade of blue in Phil’s eyes when the light hits them just right.
“You mean, do I remember you shooting the best video you’ve ever made?” Phil asks, leaning in to plant a small kiss on Dan’s cheek.
He smiles, and he knows Phil would be able to see his dimples, if he wasn’t behind him.
“That’s quite a statement,” Dan says, even if Phil might be right.
Basically, I’m Gay might have been the best video he’s ever made. Yet. He’s not done with YouTube, even if it’s been a year. He’s just allowed him to do other things. Things that the whole world falling apart has pumped the breaks on. It’s okay. It will be okay. It’s only a small thing, even if it sucks.
“Most impactful video then,” Phil corrects.
Phil’s hand is still on his hip. When Dan leans backwards even further, he can feel Phil’s heartbeat through his back. It’s a little fast.
“Yours too. It’s our first day of pride month as out and proud gays,” Dan says, and just the fact that he can say the words brings forth a little giggle from him. He can’t help it.
He’d been scared of the word for so long and now he just gets happy whenever he says it. He loves that he can say gay jokes, he loves that he doesn’t have to censor himself, even if he hardly did it at the end. He wants to shout it from the balcony, and he might do it, if he wasn’t scared of getting a noise complaint from the neighbours.
Phil seems to have no such reservations.
“A couple of gay boys on a gay day,” Phil says, loudly and he’s laughing now. Dan can feel how the movement transfers and soon Dan is laughing too. He’d never really been able to resist a Phil laugh. His least extreme reaction is a fond smile.
His most extreme is doubling over laughter, which is what he almost does right now.
“I feel guilty,” Dan confesses. “Like I’m not doing enough. Like, it’s silly for us to have a happy, a gay day when we know what’s going on in the world.”
“Dan,” Phil said and the hand on Dan’s hip move now, it’s twisting him around so Dan can come to face him. Dan follows easily; it’s always been so easy to follow Phil. Dan would follow him to the end of the earth.
“Phil,” Dan says, trying to match the serious tone that Phil used, but it doesn’t work. He’s smiling too wide, and in turn Phil smiles too.
It’s a wonder they ever get anything done, even if Dan know that they can be serious when they need to be. There’s just something about the hot air, and the feeling of letting go off the weight on his shoulders for a moment that just has him unexplainably giddy. He feels like a kid.
Phil is looking at him so fondly and for a moment, Dan is transported back into his teenage mind when he’d first heard about pride parades and thought that he’d never get to do that.
But he did. He walked pride last year. He won’t be able to do it this year, but there will always be another. Dan can come back. The community embraced him so tightly in a way that he’d never expected. He’d been slightly scared, feeling like he wouldn’t fit in but he couldn’t have been more wrong.
He wants to walk a parade with Phil one day, when they’re older. He wants to be able to take Phil’s hand and look out into the crowd of onlookers and see some young kid watch them with shy wonder.
He wants to show young kids that a love like this is alright. He wants to tell them that they can get it too. They can get a home here too and they can find people like them. They are not as alone as they might feel.
“You shouldn’t feel guilty,” Phil says, and Dan has to focus on him. Pull his mind out of the past and the future. He has to be here, right now, with Phil.
“I know,” Dan says, “but it’s easier said than done.”
“We just have to keep going what we can,” Phil says.
“Had you ever imagined our first out pride month would be like this?” Dan asks, moving his hands up Phil’s arms to wrap around his wrists. Dan can get his hands closed around Phil’s slender wrists and he hold him tentatively. Trapped but only because Phil wants to be. He loves when Dan grabs him, he melts into the touch.
“No,” Phil says with a snort. “I don’t think I could have imagined this; I’d probably have said alien invasion above worldwide pandemic, but… I don’t mind it.”
“Huh?”
“I mean, I hate everything that’s going on right now, but I also can’t help but be happy that we are out now. You can never control the circumstances, but I’m so happy to finally have waved goodbye to the last bit of that closet. Aren’t you?”
“Yeah, I am,” Dan admits. “I wouldn’t take it back, not for the world.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Phil says, moving his arms to hold Dan’s face.
Dan lets go of Phil’s wrist in favour of winding them around Phil’s torso. He pulls them tighter together.
Phil smiles into the kiss, like he still does so often. Whenever Dan kisses him like this, moving in slowly and making Phil anticipate it before the press of lips against lips, Phil will smile. Dan isn’t even sure that Phil knows that he does it.
It’s just instinct.
As if knowing Dan is about to kiss him is still something that he can’t help but smile about, even all these years later.
“Do you know what I was thinking about before?” Dan hums against Phil’s lips.
The kiss is soft, barely-there brush of their lips. Dan pulls back a little to speak and Phil chases after him, just a tiny bit.
“No, tell me,” Phil demands softly, one of his hands moving up to Dan’s hair, fingers between his too-long curls.
Dan hadn’t let Phil take the clippers to his hair, after he’d watched the disaster that was Phil doing is own hair. Dan had tried to help clean up Phil’s hazardous haircut but it still looks very ridiculous. Despite how bad it is – and it is really bad, it’s not alright, Phil – it somehow suits Phil. He’s back to the black hair, and while Dan also loved the brown, he isn’t going to deny that he’s also always had a soft spot for black-haired Phil.
He fell in love with Phil while his hair was black. He didn’t realise that he missed it until he saw it again.
“I want to go to pride with you,” Dan says and he sees the surprise in Phil’s face. He leans in to kiss it. “Not next year, maybe not even in ten years, but at some point, you know? I want to walk down, in the sea of gays, and hold your hand. I want to stand in a crowd of too many people, without worrying about social distancing or authority figures being racist and homophobic. It seems almost impossible to imagine it now, but…”
“The future is bright?” Phil asks, poking his tongue out the side of his mouth. It’s a quirk that Phil hadn’t even realised he had before Dan pointed it out to him.
He’d tried to deny it for a long time, claiming that he did no weird tongue thing, just like he’d said he did no weird hand thing. It had been in the beginning when Phil hadn’t fully realised that Dan only loved him more because of all his little quirks. He revels in every single one that he discovers.
“The future is bright. The youth is smart and passionate. Things continue to get better. Think where we would have been if it hadn’t been for Stonewall. There’s still a long while to go, but things are getting better for us now. It’s our turn to help out others, as well. You know?”
“I love you,” Phil said, so out of the blue that it catches Dan by surprise.
He knows that Phil loves him. Phil reminds him of it every single day with one gesture or another. Little acts of thoughtfulness, or a reassuring touch, or the way he looks at Dan with love in his eyes. He doesn’t normally just blurt it out like that.
“What?” Dan says, still trying to catch up.
Maybe the summer heat has gone to his head, or the mental exhaustion of being around people for the protest has made him hard of hearing.
“I’m not going to repeat it,” Phil says, rolling his eyes and then leaning in to disprove his own statement immediately. He doesn’t say it again, not with words, but still with his lips. Dan can feel the love in the kiss, deep and affectionate in a particular way that still steals Dan’s breath away.
He clings onto Phil a little closer. Sometimes, out of the blue, he’ll realise how lucky and fortunate he is. He’s got issues, and his mental health is a huge struggle at times, but he’s got so many good things too.
Phil is right at the top of the list, or rather he’s exceeding any list Dan could make. He’s not a thing that Dan has - he is a wonderful, kind and creative human being who somehow decided that he liked Dan as much as Dan liked him.
Dan really does want to go to pride with Phil in the future. He feels the last of the guilt leave him. It will come back, undoubtedly, but right now he needs to take this breather. He can take this rest of the day for him and Phil to celebrate their first pride month as out. He makes a mental note to post a tweet later, but for now he wants nothing more than to be wrapped up in Phil’s presence.
“The sky looks beautiful,” Phil says, after he’s pulling back from the kiss. He’s still so close, breathing the same air as Dan. “I love that blue.”
“I know,” Dan whisper, and he smiles in a way that makes his whole body feel hot.
“Let’s go celebrate the beginning of pride month,” Phil said, taking Dan’s hand and starting to pull him back into their home and out of the hot summer air. Phil wiggles his eyebrows in an attempt to appear sexy but Phil is overdoing it completely and Dan just smiles fondly and rolls his eyes.
Still, he stumbles in after Phil, keeping a tight hold on him. The world might feel like it’s on fire more days that not lately, but it still important to carve out little moments for yourself where you can just exist and breathe. A time to do something for yourself.
Dan wants to do anything and everything with Phil. He knows the feeling is mutual. He smiles brightly, just for himself, as he gets pulled along by Phil.
To everyone and anyone who's out: I am so so so proud of you! Live your truth, and never let anyone tell you that to be who you are is a crime.
To everyone and anyone who's not out: It's okay. It will be okay. There's no rush. Our world might not be ready for you yet, but we're going to fight until it is. Be brave, and just know that there's people out there like you. You're not alone, and we're cheering you on.
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🌈happy pride month, phandom!! 🌈 i was really looking forward to go to the pride parade this month but the pandemic happened 🤧 nonetheless, i'm so glad this pride phandom meetup is a thing so we can collectively come together as the LGBTQA+ community in the phandom!! 🏳️🌈
