100 Ways To Say I Love You

16. "I couldn't sleep anyway."

Dan was mumbling again. Phil could hear him from his room; the sound of his feet hitting carpet as he paced frantically from one side to another. He couldn't sleep either, but for a different reason than Dan. He had gotten so sucked into a book he was reading, he barely seemed to notice it was 3am. He had stopped reading, and now lay in bed, wide awake in the dark.

The mumbling and pacing stopped and the door to his room creaking open, flooding in the light from the hallway. There stood Dan, wrapped in a blanket like a child who had been awoken from a nightmare and was wandering into their parent's bedroom.

"Phil?" He clutched the blanket tighter. "Are you awake?" He whispered into the darkness.

"Yeah, I'm up." Dan moved closer to the bed.

"Did I wake you up?" Dan worried.

"No, no, no, of course not, I couldn't sleep anyway." Phil reassured him.

"Well then... um... Can I sleep with you?" He was a little nervous in asking. They'd been together for almost a month now, but they'd never slept together. They'd never slept together either. Sure, they'd cuddled before, but never something as intimate as sleep.

"Bear what's wrong?" Phil cooed. Dan climbed in next to him. He began to stroke Dan's curls.

"Life. The inevitability of death. Questioning existence. That kind of stuff." Dan sighed. Phil wrapped his arm around Dan's shoulder.

"You wanna talk about it?"

   "Umm... I guess? Maybe? Sure. Why not." Dan turned his body towards Phil. "Why do we even exist?"

"There's no really true answer I can tell you about what the meaning of life is," Phil replied after pondering over it for a minute, "but I think it's to feel. To feel joy and sadness and pain and anger. To feel love. " He intertwined his fingers with Dan's. "Yeah. To feel love is definitely the most important."

"So you're saying we exist to love?"

"We exist to feel." Phil corrected him. "Love is a feeling, though it doesn't always mean romantic."

"Can you love someone in more than one way?" Dan looked at him with his big brown doe eyes.

"Definitely. I love you in many ways. I love you like a best friend. I love you like family. I love you like a lover." Phil kissed Dan's forehead. "Especially like a lover."

Dan cuddled up to Phil, allowing himself to drown in Phil's chest. Phil stroked his hair until he could hear Dan slow breathing which meant he was asleep. And then, he too, drifted off.