Daniel

Good Love

He stretches out his arms toward Dan, but no one is there.

The sheets are sweaty, and they cling to his legs as he turns for the hundredth time to face the empty side of the bed. There's been no one but him in this bed for months now, but he had closed his eyes and conjured a warm weight beside him and a soft sound of breathing, and for just a split second Dan had been there with him in this bed he'd never once slept in.

He opens his eyes but doesn't focus. His alarm clock is just there, across the bed from him. If he looks too closely, he'll see the time, and he doesn't want to know just how long he's lain like this, barred from sleep by a swarm of buzzing thoughts.

There's work tomorrow, and he needs to sleep, but instead of sleep there are Dan's restless fingers, picking at the hem of the shirt he'd worn that afternoon. There are Dan's fidgeting eyes, flitting their gaze toward Phil's face and away and to Phil's hands and away and towards Phil's eyes and away. There is Dan's voice, tripping and stumbling through a conversation that Phil is almost sure was dead upon arrival.

There is an aborted attempt to reach for each other at the end of the day, a shift of the shoulders, hands half-raised, a jerk of the neck to the side, and uneasy laughter.

They're three months into this thing, whatever it is, and Phil is wondering if he's kidding himself. Three months in and they can't so much as manage a hug.

He closes his eyes, breathes slowly out and in, slowly out and in, slowly out and in. He needs to just let go. All the questions will still be there when the sun comes up. He smooths a hand across the bare bed sheet, focusing on nothing but the slight tickle of the cotton against his fingertips. What if it were skin, he wonders? The warm skin of Dan's back stretched across the bed beside him. He would draw his fingers up and over the blunt jut of his shoulder blade, slide across and down the back of his arm. And Dan would squirm away and make a laughing protest.

"You know I'm ticklish there!"

He knew, or rather he remembered.

"You're one to talk. All the times you've tickled me, and yet you dare--"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

He can just see the way the corner of Dan's mouth had lifted. Most of his face had been buried in one of Phil's pillows, so it was just the left side he could see. One mischievous eye scrunched up and staring at him, and the corners of the lips curled up in a smirk.

"Liar!" he'd cried and pounced, fingers digging mercilessly into Dan's sides, searching for a ticklish spot. But Dan had just lain there beneath him, body shaking with laughter.

"It's not fair! It's like you turn it off when you don't want to be tickled."

Dan had rolled onto his back unexpectedly then, smirk still in place, eyes still fixed on Phil.

"I'm sure you'll find a way to turn me back on again," he'd said and winked.

Phil hadn't breathed for just a moment, but then Dan was reaching for him, arms open and eager, and Phil had fallen in between them, down to Dan and his parting lips and the breath he breathed into Phil's hungry mouth.

But that was ages ago. Before everything. The sheet is cold beneath his fingers, and he refuses to raise his eyelids because on the other side of them time is steadily pressing on toward the morning.

When his alarm clock sounds, there will be work. There will be stark daylight and all the questions still to be answered. Dan's name lighting up his phone with another cheerful text, "But is it forced?" he'll wonder. "Are we just pushing on in hopes that eventually we'll get there?" You can only hold the match to the candle's wick for so long before it burns your fingers and you have to let go.