#this is like watching people say that skiing in the alps is an expensive rich thing lol

[siryyeet]

I'm reading a fanfiction atm and I forgot people think of austria as this rich people vacation country🫡

[danfanciesphil]

too high (can’t come down) by @danfanciesphil

Suspending himself 7,000 feet above the rest of the world seems likely to be a sure-fire way for Dan to escape normality, and isolate himself for the foreseeable future. The Secret of the Alps, a small hotel tucked into the side of the Swiss mountains is too niche for most avid adventurers to have heard of, making it the perfect place for Dan to work as he sorts through his problems. Unfortunately, privacy is a coveted thing, and as Dan soon finds out, the hotel harbours one guest who values it more than most.

Rating: Explicit Tags: Enemies to lovers, snow, mountains, skiing, hostility, slow burn, secrecy, longing, repression, nobility, classism, cheating, eventual sex

Ao3 Link

Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

The television is on, but Dan muted it some time ago. He’d tried to watch a weird Swiss documentary on sustainable farming, but the language barrier had been too difficult, even with subtitles, mostly because Dan kept getting distracted by the swirling patterns of the enormous snowflakes outside the large balcony windows. He’s curled in a beanbag chair, clutching a mug of hot chocolate that tastes slightly too weak. His eyes are fixed on the outside, his view of which has been largely obliterated by the storm. It’s unforgiving, and harsh, and totally surreal, being up here in the thick of it.

Driven mostly by the idea that he’ll probably never experience anything so wild and dangerous up close again, Dan finds himself moving to the balcony doors. He opens one cautiously, and immediately the agonised howl of wind screeches through, bringing with it a slice of paralysing cold. Before he knows it, he’s stepping out onto the balcony, his shoes tamping down the thick layer of snow. He shudders, immediately immersed in an icy blanket; he can’t see two feet in front of his own face. He knows the tables and chairs must be out here, silently stood waiting out the extreme weather, but they’re invisible amongst the flurry of snow.

Dan stands there for as long as he can stand it, marvelling. In the instant before he heads back inside, he imagines he hears, on the cry of the winds, a man’s voice, low and soft, like crushed velvet. He pauses, ears straining, to see if it will repeat itself, but it doesn’t. He feels a twinge in his chest; it had sounded so close.

*

Dan wakes up in his beanbag chair, gazing disorientedly at the pulsating static of the TV in front of him. He checks the clock on a nearby wall, which reads 10:14pm. He must have dozed off. Bleary-eyed, he unfurls his tight, cramped limbs from the chair and stands, then starts hobbling around the mezzanine to switch off lights and lock doors. The blizzard is going stronger than ever; he’s starting to wonder if it will ever be calm again.

He already locked up downstairs, so Dan just decides to head up to bed. His ankle is slowly feeling less excruciating as time ticks by, but it still takes him an age to make it to the top floor. As usual, he pauses in the hall, listening out for any sounds that might indicate what Phil is up too, whether he’s died of pig-headedness or possibly starvation, but there’s nothing. Only the thin strip of light under his door that presumably means he’s still awake.

Dan gets ready for bed slowly, his impromptu nap having made him sluggish and worn. As he brushes his teeth he stares at the bath, remembering how he’d laid in it last night, and what he’d done. It seems an age has passed since then, and also like it could just as easily have been tonight.

He climbs into bed, sure he’s tired enough to slip straight back into unconsciousness, but the howling outside of his window is verging on a scream. Dan fears for the glass, which rattles precariously in its pane. He lies back on the pillow, wide awake but almost delirious with tiredness, and with the slow, creeping dread of his own ominous sadness inching closer with each second. He can feel the tears on their way, and just hopes that the storm will be enough to drown them out, as Phil surely won’t be in any mood to play soft music tonight, judging by his earlier hostility.

Just as the moisture crests the rims of Dan’s eyes, there’s a knock on his door. Dan’s head snaps towards it, stunned. He waits, wondering if it could somehow have been a noise of the blizzard, projecting across his room. A minute passes, and the knock comes again, not loud, but somehow insistent in its slow, even pattern. Bemused and still half-asleep, Dan swings his legs out of bed, and limps over to the door.

On the other side of it is Phil. Dan blinks in surprise, then wonders who he had been expecting. Possibly nobody, given that he’s only half sure he’s not dreaming.

“What?” Dan asks.

There are faint frown lines nestled into Phil’s forehead, below the flop of his fallen quiff. He’s also wearing glasses - squarish black frames with ‘Dolce and Gabbana’ written on the arms. Dan is momentarily thrown by the sight of him in spectacles, and thinks that in an odd way they complete him, that they seem as if they should always have been there. He’s got what Dan assumes are pyjamas covering the rest of him, though they’re long-sleeved and made of an expensive, starchy material that doesn’t look particularly comfortable.

“Come for a drink,” he says, croaky and quiet. Then he starts moving back towards his room.

“Um,” Dan says pointedly, loudly. “No?”

Phil stops, turns. “Come on,” he says, like this will persuade him.

“Why would I want to come for a drink with you?”

One of Phil’s shoulders shrugs towards his jaw. “S’not like you’re sleeping.”

Dan wants to roll his eyes, but doesn’t think he has the energy. “So what? You just assume I’d prefer to hang out in your room while you verbally abuse me?”

Phil runs a hand through his hair, sighing deeply. “Dan-”

“No,” Dan interrupts, hackles rising. “I have to deal with you bossing me around all day, but I’m off duty right now, so I-”

“If I try and go to sleep I’ll just end up jerking off thinking about you again,” Phil says, wearily, like that wasn’t an utterly absurd thing to say. Dan’s eyes widen; suddenly he feels more awake than he has ever felt in his life. “Would you just… come on. The storm’s keeping us up anyway.”

“I…” Dan tries to say, but Phil is already disappearing back into his room.

For a good twenty seconds, Dan is proud to say he is able to keep himself rooted to the spot in his open doorway. He attempts to calmly, rationally do a methodic replay of that conversation, and to substitute various likely things Phil might have said, or meant to have said, instead of what Dan heard him say. Palms about to pour rivers onto the hotel carpet, Dan is, unfortunately, stumped. So, for lack of a better sense of judgement, he blunders into the hall, then pushes Phil’s door, which is ajar.

Dan has only seen the room from the hall before now, but as he steps inside, he realises even that only showed a fraction of it. Mona sometimes refers to this room as the ‘suite’, which Dan had assumed was just her way of indicating it’s the nicest room they have. Now, Dan sees it truly is like a small apartment, complete with a seating area, flat screen TV, a small kitchenette with a microwave, mini-fridge and stove-top, and of course a huge four-poster bed. He also glimpses an ensuite bathroom, but only through the sliver of the almost-closed door. The most eye-catching features of the room are the windows near the bed, which are enormous and imposing, stretching from floor to ceiling. There are some thick, weighty-looking curtains hanging either side of them, wide open, so the roaring blizzard is an unsettling and rather present third character in the room.

Phil is in his small kitchen-y area, reaching into one of the cupboards. Even from here, Dan can see that the only items filling the cupboard are bottles of liquor. He watches Phil pull out a bottle of whiskey.

“What’s your drink?”

“Uh,” Dan says, trying to think of the least pathetic answer, given that he detests most spirits with a passion. “I don’t really...”

Phil’s mouth twitches. “What about a gin and tonic?”

Dan’s shoulders sag in relief. He can tolerate that, at least. “Sure.”

Awkwardly, Dan shuffles a bit further into the room, pushing the door closed behind him. He watches Phil dig in the freezer drawer of his mini-fridge for ice, which Dan can’t help but think is an unnecessary luxury to have given that they live in ice-world. Phil pours Dan’s drink, then sloshes a decent amount of whiskey into his own glass, no mixer.

Something tugs at Dan’s more prudish nature as Phil swipes the drinks from the counter without screwing the lids of the bottles back on, or closing the cupboard door. Still, Dan doesn’t say anything, just accepts the drink Phil hands him, and follows him to the armchairs clustered around a coffee table, which is littered with unopened mail, Phil’s macbook, and a lot of coffee mugs.

They sit opposite one another, listening for a few minutes to the sounds of the storm desperately trying to break through and join them. Mostly in an attempt to shatter the awkward spell, Dan’s finger taps against the side of his glass. All of a sudden, Phil sighs.

“Okay, I’m sorry.”

Dan blinks. “You are?”

Phil tips some whiskey into his mouth, then wipes it with the back of his hand. “I feel like I should explain why I sometimes come across sort of…”

“Dickish?” Dan supplies, already tired of this conversation. “Save your breath. You’re a spoiled rich brat whose lost all sense of manners to anyone without a title.”

Phil’s mouth twitches again; he sips more of his drink. “People used to say I was nice.”

“Yeah, yeah, you mentioned. You were a real gem back in the day.”

“I was sweet, people said. And funny.”

“What happened to the sweet part?”

Phil smiles. “So you think I’m funny?”

“Of course that’s the part you zero in on.”

They share a look that Dan doesn’t really understand, despite being on one side of it. Phil slings one leg over the other. “I can’t be sure, but I’d guess that my sweet side was beaten out of me somewhere in the midst of the rigorous Royalty training.”

An image blasts into Dan’s mind: Phil sat at a table with masses of silverware in front of him, being showed the salad fork by a Lordly gentlemen in a tux. “Like in the Princess Diaries?”

Phil snorts. “Not quite.”

Dan waits, sipping a fragrant and startlingly delicious gin and tonic, for Phil to elaborate.

“It’s like you’d imagine, but way worse,” Phil says after a moment’s pause. “My accent was wrong, so I had six months of voice coaching to strip the Northern out of me. Didn’t entirely work as I’m sure you’ve noticed, but you should’ve heard me before. I sounded like Peter Kay.”

“Seriously?”

“That’s only the tip of the iceberg,” Phil says, grimacing. “I learned how to bow, how to eat properly, how to address people, how to let Nikolai walk ahead of me into a room. I was told what I’m allowed to publicly like and dislike - music, cinema, art. Nothing too controversial, nothing too political. My favourite band used to be Muse.”

Dan’s mouth drops open. “But you said-”

Phil just shakes his head. “They’re not on the okay-list. I have to pretend I don’t ‘care’ for them. Matt Bellamy is ‘eccentric’ and ‘unpredictable’, apparently.”

“That’s…” Dan shakes his head. “Who’s on the okay-list?”

Phil shrugs. “I only remember a few. Ed Sheeran. Michael Bublé. The Beatles- though they’re on thin ice.”

Something of Dan’s horror must show on his face, because Phil laughs.

Reeling, Dan says, “so, they told you how to act, what to like, what to say…”

“And there were the physical changes, obviously.”

“I’m afraid to ask.”

Phil taps a fingertip lightly on the bridge of his nose. “Used to have quite a bump here.”

The hand holding Dan’s drink slowly lowers. He tries not to be too obvious about peering. “You’ve had plastic surgery?”

“Just the nose job.” Phil is fighting a smile at Dan’s expression. “But I also got a whole new wardrobe, teeth whitening…” he tilts his head to the side, thinking, “oh, and eyebrow and eyelash tints of course. I had black hair when I met Nikolai, dyed myself, but I’m more gingery naturally. He wasn’t having that secret get out.” Phil chuckles to himself, bitterly.

“Fuck me,” Dan breathes, then blushes. To avoid garnering Phil’s reaction, he downs the last of his gin and tonic - the expensive gin is going down a bit too easily. “I don’t know how you put up with it.”

“By expelling all my rage on unsuspecting hotel attendants,” Phil replies in a murmur just loud enough for Dan to hear.

“Oh,” Dan says. “Right.”

“I’m not making excuses for myself, Dan,” Phil says, standing from the chair. He wanders over to the kitchenette and plucks the bottle of gin and the bottle of whiskey from the counter in one, large hand. “It’s just…” he walks over, face contorted in a frown, and refills Dan’s glass - no tonic, this time. Once he’s refilled his own, Phil sits back down, and looks at Dan. “I got used to the idea of being alone up here. Or at least that I wouldn’t have anyone I could be… close to. The guests always leave, so I barely speak to them. There’s just no point in getting to know people that will be gone in a few days.”

Dan opens his mouth to point out that the guests aren’t the only people up here, but Phil gets there first.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he says. “Mona and Louise are great. But they’re older, and kind of… work for me, or make it seem that way.”

Dan’s struggling to put himself in Phil’s obnoxiously big designer loafers, but he thinks he might just about be on his way to eventually understanding. If he really tried. “And then I showed up?”

Phil nods, something like guilt flashing over his features. “Before you came there were a string of people that had your job. They did it poorly. Eighteen year olds wanting to be ‘chalet girls’, elderly men wanting an easy, slow-paced job in the mountains. They were all here for about two weeks and couldn’t hack it. But you…”

“Stayed.”

Phil nods again, distant. “Yeah.”

“Can’t pretend it hasn’t been tempting to run back to reality at times,” Dan says; he’s suddenly growing very warm. 

This conversation feels like he’s walking on the icy surface of a pond, hearing the splinters of it breaking whenever Phil speaks. He glances at the window, wondering if the storm might be dying down, but it’s just as fierce as ever. He must be growing used to the noise. The window pane rattles and shakes, as if reminding him of what lies just beyond.

“I’m ashamed to say,” Phil continues, “that I hated you for staying. I still do.”

Unsure of how to respond, Dan simply stares. 

"You hated me,” Dan echoes. It’s not fair, he wants to say. I didn’t even know what I was doing wrong. 

“You had freedom and opportunity and a life,” Phil explains. “Friends, university, the ability to walk to the corner shop and buy an ice cream whenever you wanted. Do you know what I’d give to have that again?”

“It’s really not that simple,” Dan says tightly. 

“No, I know,” Phil leans back in his seat, sighing. “It never is. But you’re so young, and irritatingly cute. I just look at you and get pissed off, thinking about what you gave up.”

There’s an adjective in there that’s unlike the others. “...cute?”

Phil cocks an eyebrow. “Don’t act dumb, it’s unbecoming. You know you’re pretty.”

Dan blanches, the heat in his cheeks swelling. “Um… w-what?”

“Really, that just makes it even worse,” Phil says ruefully, sipping. “I got used to the idea I’d live in forced isolation up here, wallowing in my unhappy marriage and never experiencing any kind of attraction again. But you…”

Dan begs, silently, desperately, for him to finish that thought. But he doesn’t. His tongue, unscrewed by four fingers of gin, pushes the next words out of his mouth, mostly because he feels like he’ll explode if they’re kept inside. 

“Before,” he blurts, “in the hall. You said… did you say…”

Slowly, Phil’s eyes refocus on him, and a smile spreads over his mouth. “Hm?”

Dan swallows more gin, then places the glass down so it won’t be obvious he’s shaking. “Do you really, like, think about me. When you… when you…”

“Yes.”

Dan isn’t really sure which answer would have been preferable. “That’s… strange.”

Phil laughs. “Stranger to do it in the bath.”

Mortification whips through Dan from sternum to gut - surely, no. Surely life isn’t that cruel.

“Fun fact,” Phil says, still smiling. “Our bathrooms share a wall.” Dan’s eyes close, and he prays for the storm to finally break through that damn rattling window and sweep the two of them away. “I picked a really good moment to pee last night…”

“That was…” Dan tries, floundering. “It’s not what you think.”

“Relax,” Phil says, as if Dan could possibly ever be in with a chance of relaxing again. “I did exactly the same thing two minutes later. Possibly less.”

There’s a volcano erupting in either of Dan’s cheeks. He grips the arm of his chair tightly, avoiding Phil’s eye. “You just… you caught me off guard. Kissing me. It was so…”

“Dumb,” Phil finishes, though that was not the word Dan had in mind. “I know. I’m sorry about that. Wasn’t… planned.”

“So why’d you do it?” Dan asks, voice barely a whisper.

Phil shrugs; Dan can just about see the movement in the corner of his eye, given that he’s focused resolutely on the carpet. “I was a bit drunk. Inhibitions were M.I.A, and all that.”

“Does that mean... you want to kiss me all of the time, but you just usually are sober enough to stop yourself?”

“God, no,” Phil says, letting out a laugh so abrupt that Dan’s skin sizzles in humiliation. “Most of the time I want to kick you in the shin. But occasionally…”

He trails off, but Dan doesn’t need him to finish the sentence. Occasionally, for some mad, inexplicable reason, Dan is apparently irresistible to the man in front of him. The information won’t settle properly into his brain, so it floats about in the membrane, distracting and beguiling.

Suddenly, Phil yawns. It’s such a perfect segue into running away that Dan almost weeps. “I should get to bed,” he almost shouts. He’s feeling more than a bit tipsy, worsened by the quickening of his pulse; hie eyelids are drooping, and his limbs drag as he moves, though he feels hyper-alert. “Thanks for the, uh, apology and everything, I’ll see you in the morning-”

“You should sleep here.”

Dan stiffens, dragging his eyes up to meet Phil’s. “Sleep… where?” Gently, Phil inclines his head towards the enormous four poster; Dan turns to stare at it, already intimidated. “You want me to sleep in your bed?” he squeaks. “With you?”

“It’s massive. You could roll over twice and never touch me.”

“But why?”

Phil gets slowly to his feet; his joints click as he moves, but somehow he manages to look graceful about it. “Look, Dan, the way I see it, we could both go back to our separate beds, lie awake listening to the horrendous storm until you start bawling your eyes out and I start… using other methods to lull me to sleep.” Another eruption of lava in the volcanic region of Dan’s face spills over, and he tries not to squeak indignantly. “Or,” Phil continues, and Dan, traitorously, latches on, “we could do the mutually beneficial and probably inevitable thing, and sleep here together, under controlled conditions.”

“What do you mean ‘probably inevitable?” Dan demands, heart thumping wildly. 

Already his mind is there, in the bed beside Phil, letting their body heat seep between them through the shared bedclothes, listening to Phil’s quiet breaths, the twitches of his body as he dreams... He shakes his head forcefully, trying to expel the weird fantasy; it doesn’t help much, he’s still longing for it, desperate to say yes, yes, yes, for a reason he cannot explain.  

Phil doesn’t answer, just arches one sculpted eyebrow and waits. Dan chews his lip, attempting to mull this decision over with the appropriate amount of common sense. Given that he’s two strong G & T’s in, and bone tired to boot, it’s not going well. On one hand, sleeping in the same bed as a married man, especially one he doesn’t even like, is bordering on madness. But on the other, Phil is completely correct that there’s no way Dan could get to sleep alone, now that he knows precisely what Phil would be doing in here - whilst picturing him, no less.

“I’ll even play music for you,” Phil goads, acting the Saint; he’s wearing that irritating smile he seems to save just for Dan, like he’s already won.

Damn it. “Whatever, fine. But we’re on separate sides. No, like, cuddling.”

Phil pulls a face, then reaches for his phone. “As if I’d try that with your bony frame. I’d probably wake up bruised from all your pointy limbs.”

“You might still wake up bruised if you don’t shut up,” Dan mutters, then realises the sexual interpretation of that statement. 

Luckily, Phil says nothing, just taps something on his phone screen, and then in a beautiful cresting wave, music swims through the air. Phil pockets his phone again, then walks around to switch off some lights. Dan stands gormlessly, watching him gather glasses and half-heartedly tidy up, until finally he heads over to the bed and climbs in. 

“Water’s fine,” he says, removing his glasses and patting the covers beside him.

Dan hesitates, but quickly decides it’s preferable to be beside Phil in the bed, where the other man’s short-sightedness will likely make him just a shapeless blur, than to be dithering in the middle of the room for Phil to scrutinise. He moves slowly and awkwardly to the other side of the bed, ankle stiff and unaccommodating, then pulls the covers back, and slides in. Phil is, mercifully, correct. There are acres of space between them, even though Dan is acutely aware of their proximity. It’s somehow worse that Phil seems completely unbothered by the peculiarity of this arrangement, and doesn’t even pay Dan much attention as he settles into a more comfortable sleeping position.

“Night, then.”

“Uh, night,” Dan replies, and Phil reaches out, and switches off his bedside light.

In the silence that ensues, Dan can feel the liquid awareness they have of each other soaking into his skin. He wonders if he should turn over, face away from Phil and squeeze his eyes closed, listen to the sweet sounds of the music and will himself into unconsciousness.

Before he can move, Phil speaks. “Dan?”

“Mhm?”

“I… probably shouldn’t have said that stuff about, y’know… jerking off to the thought of you.”

A lance of something akin to embarrassment, but tinged with a sharper, more electric pulse, shoots through Dan’s pelvic region. “It’s, er, fine. I won’t, like, leak it to the papers if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Yeah, thanks. But I meant… if it made you feel weird-”

“No, uh, I don’t… I don’t mind-”

“You don’t mind?”

A very low string instrument, possibly a cello, begins weaving a slow, gradual crescendo through the melody. 

“Um.” 

His heart is racing, and he’s lost track of what he’s even saying. He should shut up, he should roll over and shut up, but his mouth is unstopper-able when alcohol is involved. Plus… there’s something about being so near to Phil but not actually able to see him that makes him almost tolerable. Without his smug smile in view, it’s even possible to pretend that he’s just a reasonable, young, attractive man. A man that lies in this very bed sometimes, conjures up an image of Dan’s face and-

“Dan?”

“No, I don’t mind,” Dan blurts, glad of the shroud of darkness obliterating his highly-pigmented flush from Phil’s ridicule.

“So you wouldn’t mind if I just did it right now?”

Is it too late to back up? “Uh… no. Do what you want.”

In the next second, it becomes painfully clear, due to Phil’s responding stunned silence, that he’d been joking. The cellos increase in number; possibly there are some double basses involved. 

“Let me get this straight,” Phil says, voice a bit hoarse suddenly. “You’re telling me that you would be totally fine with me indulging in some self-love, right here beside you.”

Dan shrugs, face on fire, then remembers that Phil cannot see him. “Sure. Go ahead.”

“Even though I’ve previously told you,” Phil continues, because apparently the gods don’t grant prayers of sudden and unexpected meteors ploughing through the roof, “that I’d be thinking about you the whole time?”

“None of my business,” Dan manages, then presses his lips together in a vain attempt at shutting himself the fuck up.

The ensuing pause is weighty and brimming with Phil’s utter astonishment. Some high strings are audible now, slicing through the darker, deeper sounds; the sound of them set are making Dan’s pulse quicken. There’s a bit of shifting, and the mattress wobbles, jolting Dan. Confused, Dan turns his head, able to make out the shape of Phil on his back, wriggling around beneath the covers. He’s about to ask what the hell he’s doing, and then, like a switch flicking, it becomes painfully, excruciatingly obvious.

Phil’s breaths start soft and shaky, like tiny gasps and sighs, regulated by the slow scissoring of the violins. As if they’re a guide for his movement, he times the pump of his hand to their rhythm, and Dan drowns in the knowledge. It’s entirely dark in this room - Phil’s blackout curtains are an unexpected revelation - but the longer Dan stares at Phil’s profile, the more his eyes adjust. The more he looks, the more he can pick out - Phil’s sharp, bump-less nose, the convex curve of his parted lips, the shudder of his chin as he draws jittery breaths. His shoulders are out of the covers, and his right one moves deliberately, up and down as the crescendo builds, working the hand he has wrapped around his-

“Ah-hh,” Phil shudders on an exhale; at this point, Dan is so light-headed from the lack of blood reaching his brain that he thinks he might pass out. All he hears are Phil’s breaths, intermingling with the agonisingly gradual build of the song. He’s definitely pacing himself to it, must know the dips and troughs of this piece; perhaps he’s even done this before, as Dan has listened right next door.

Instead of rolling over, instead of fleeing or doing anything remotely sensible, all Dan can do is fixate on the sight in front of him - a sight that nobody, not even himself twenty minutes prior, would ever believe was really happening. Just as he’s certain he’s about to burst into flames, Phil rolls onto his side, and those eyes, somehow still crystal clear even in the darkness of the night, lock onto his.

“Fuck,” Dan says inadvertently, under his breath.

A sudden burst of percussion splashes into play, and Phil speeds up the movement of his hand. “Say something else,” Phil says, voice desperate as Dan’s never heard. 

Dan is too hard to dare consider refusing, so just remains rigid as his mind flounders- words? What are words? He stares straight into Phil’s glazed eyes, able to only think of one. “Phil,” he says, like he’s in agony. “Phil.” 

“Dan,” Phil whispers back. By now the crescendo is almost at its climax. Dan has heard enough classical music to know that soon, the peak of the refrain will crest, and it will slow, then peter away. He wishes it wouldn’t. He wishes, fervently, that the song would never end. Phil’s eyes flutter closed, and it’s awful. Dan can hardly bear for the sight of those blue whirlpools to be stolen from him. “Dan,” Phil says again, and it’s more beautiful than any song Dan’s ever heard.

The music swells into a brief cacophony, like a wave crashing over them, soaking their skin, their hair, the sheets. Phil shudders, hard and violent, lip caught between his teeth. He makes little noise, but his breathing is erratic, and then he rolls onto his back, and slackens. The music seems to loosen him, limb by limb, until he is boneless, ragged. 

Beside him, Dan lies stiffly, so aroused he can’t think, can’t speak, can’t move; as Phil is drifting to shore, Dan is still far out in the midst of the ocean, slipping under the salty water with each breath he draws. Is this the end of it? Is Phil expecting Dan to just roll over and go to sleep after watching that?

“Night, then.”

Apparently yes, that’s exactly what he’s expecting, the git. Dan bites the inside of his cheek, trying to guess how many hours it will take to will away his powerful erection, given that he can still hear the echo of his name in Phil’s voice as he came. The song isn’t over; it continues dragging sweet, soft notes across Dan’s mind, keeping him lucid. There’s no use playing with an alternative solution to Phil’s apparent desire to just leave things there. Phil might be a willing exhibitionist, but Dan certainly is not.

“Okay,” Dan whispers, surrendering to an agonising and likely sleepless wait for morning to come. “Night.”

(Chapter Ten!)