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I.
There’s a man hiding in the stairwell. He is very mysterious, in all black with his head bent down. It’s like the beginning of a horror story that Phil would definitely read.
(And is the start to a story - just not that one.)
“Hi?” Phil says, voice cautious.
The man’s head shoots up. He’s got a phone in his hand, Phil realizes. He’s also got very nice eyes. They’re brown. “I actually just shit a brick.”
“I.” Phil has no idea what to say. “I’m sorry?”
They stare at each other.
“Can I.” Phil starts. “That is, do you.”
“... know how to finish a sentence?” Mysterious Stranger With the Nice Brown Eyes says. “I do, actually. Can teach you, if you’d like.”
“Hey.” Phil frowns. He stands a little straighter. “I was just going to ask if there’s somewhere you’re meant to be. It’s not generally acceptable for strange men to lurk in the halls at schools.”
The man blanches. “I’m meant to be here. Maybe you’re not, for all I know.”
“I’ve taught geography here for seven years,” Phil says. “And I’ve never seen you here before.”
“... just started,” the man admits, not sounding happy about it. “Today, in fact. This is my off period, and I wasn’t sure where to go. They said I was meant to have an office but where they sent me is just an ancient desk all piled with operating system manuals for machines that I think qualify as actual historical artifacts by now.”
“So.” Phil wants to make sure he understands. “You’re a teacher here?”
“Yes, I’m a teacher.” The man shows his school badge, flashing it quickly but not before Phil reads D. Howell.
“And you’re lost?” Phil asks.
“... yes.” The man admits again, even more displeased than the first time.
Phil steps back, and throws open the door to the hallway. “And you couldn’t have just said so? Come on, I can show you where we shove all the old books and paperwork so no one has to deal with it. I’m Phil, by the way. Or Mr. Lester if you’re under this tall.” He holds his hand to waist length, indicating the typical height of his students. “And you are not, so Phil will do just fine.”
“Which I am not,” D. Howell says. He follows Phil out of the stairway.
“No.” Phil glances back at D. Howell. They’re of even enough height that he doesn’t have to look up, but he thinks Howell might be the faintest bit taller than him. “You’re not.”
They don’t speak again until Phil shows him to the storage closet.
*
Phil, being in with the hot gossip crowd, finds out all the information by midday. Daniel Howell has never taught anywhere before, but he was a student at the very same school not ten years before. A few of the staff are older and remember him quite well.
“An utter hellion,” one says.
“Never shut his bleeding mouth,” another contributes.
“Looked like an angel,” a third adds. “But looks are quite deceiving.”
“You’re too good a lad too fall in with his sort,” the eldest of the bunch tells him, wagging her bony finger. “I know you’re a mite lonely for company since Hazel took up with Jack, but I expect he won’t be be here a half term.”
Phil heeds all the warnings exactly as much as they expect him to, which is to say - he doesn’t at all.
*
The thing is, it’s not a large school and there’s only four teachers under the age of forty even employed. The other three are women, and on any given week the over forty crowd are trying to predict which one he’ll end up wedding off to.
The correct answer is none of them, but for the sake of obfuscation he puts up with the rumors and the gossip, is equally nice to every single person around him, and doesn’t bother pointing out that Hazel’s all but engaged to her Jack, that Lex could probably crush him into the ground without breaking a sweat or smudging her lipstick, or while he loves Louise dearly she’s enjoying playing the field since her divorce.
Beyond all of that is the simple truth: he just isn’t into girls. But for all that the world is marching into progress, Phil is a small town teacher in a small minded school and he doesn’t fancy losing his job just because the parent of one of his students equates being gay with fondling little boys.
It’s sad when he stops to think about it, but he manages that well by putting it out of his mind and focusing on the fact that at least he gets to do a job he loves.
*
At least, that’s what he always did before.
Before what?
Before Dan.
It seems Dan realizes after only a couple of days of employ that if he wants to talk to someone his own age and not have betrothal immediately put on the table then Phil is the only game around.
“How do you put up with this?” Dan hisses, sliding into the seat beside Phil in the lunch room.
“It’s not so bad.” Phil pokes at the lump of mystery meat. “It’s cheese casserole day that I really can’t stand. I tried it once and it didn’t taste half bad, which means it wasn’t cheese at all.”
“Not what I meant,” Dan says. “I mean all the people looking at you and whispering about you and prying into your life like stepping foot onto grounds gives them total license to make you live your every painful childhood memory?”
“Well, if you’re going to be dramatic about it.”
Dan pauses. “I do teach drama.”
“Good fit, then.” Phil smiles a little and looks at Dan. “It’s not so bad, though. You’re fresh meat. They’ll lose interest soon. Let Hazel have one good fight with her boyfriend over mobile where everyone else can hear it, you’ll be yesterday’s news.”
“I don’t want to be yesterday’s news.” Dan stabs at his lump of meat. “Or today’s news. Or tomorrow’s news. I don’t want to be fucking news.”
“It’s already dead,” Phil says, reaching out and gently taking the fork from Dan. “Or incapacitated, at the very least.”
Dan looks at Phil, right at him, and sighs in the most subject-appropriate way. “There are no sane people at this school, are there?”
Phil smiles happily at him. “Afraid not.”
*
Sexuality is a little box that Phil has kept a tight lid on most his life.
His parents ask him every time he visits if he’s got any girls in Reading he’s courting. He finds some way to fend it off with a laugh and a joke, and tries not to let them see how the question gets more exhausting every time.
His brother will offer a more carefully worded, “Seeing… anyone?” to which Phil still says no, but appreciates somewhat more.
He’s not entirely inexperienced. Uni was - it was a thing. It existed. He had experiences. Enough to figure out what was what and he what he liked and what he really did.
But then he was done with uni and moving to the south for the teaching appointment and things seemed at once to move too fast and too slow. There might have been a moment in the very start where he could have been honest. There’s no policy rules against it. It’s just - there weren’t any other out teachers. And their eyes were so judging and he wanted to be liked so much.
So he hadn’t said a word and time has gone by and now he doesn’t feel like he can. That entire part of his life is just shuttered off. He doesn’t want to be spotted around town by a student or a student’s parents so he doesn’t date. He spends his nights playing video games and binging Netflix and browsing twitter and masturbating to porn he always feels guilty about even seeing, because those men have mothers too.
Or at least he did.
But then, Dan came along.
II.
It’s like one day Dan just looked at him and decided, “You’ll do.”
Phil still hasn’t figured out how or when or if he even really had a say in it. He understands it in isolated moments, but not the big picture overall.
They started eating lunch together in Phil’s office every day because Dan said the big lunch room was too noisy and he couldn’t hear Phil speak.
They started each bringing their DS to school because they discovered they both loved Pokemon, and Dan immediately wanted to show off his whole collection to Phil.
They started texting because Phil mentioned watching The Walking Dead and how he was losing interest and Dan went on a rant so long that it bled over past their lunch period and he told Phil the conversation wasn’t over (in that adorably threatening voice, the same one he’d tried to use in the stairwell that first day that Phil’s now grown completely immune to.)
They hang out for the first time outside of school because Phil mentions his anime collection and Dan’s eyes practically grow to chibi proportions at the thought of all those series he doesn’t currently have access to.
“You and Dan, eh?” Hazel asks, sat beside Phil at a staff meeting.
Phil has a conflicting response, caught somewhere right in the middle of ‘startled’ and ‘terrified.’ “Me and Dan what?”
“Are… friends?” Hazel says slowly. Her voice is friendly but her eyes are calculating. “Dan told Louise you were watching some sort of magic cartoon show together, at your house.”
*
Dan at his job is a person who walks around with a shroud of tension.
Phil doesn’t even realize it until they’re alone in his lounge. It’s like someone’s cut all the strings holding Dan up. He slumps with lazy comfort over Phil’s sofa, drinks Phil’s soda and asks if they can open that bottle of wine Phil’s had for about three years now, mostly for show. He peruses Phil’s book and DVD shelves and doesn’t ask permission.
Something in Phil soars at the comfort Dan is showing. He feels trusted, feels wanted. Dan wants to be here spending time with him. They watch long into the night and Phil doesn’t want Dan to leave, not ever. He likes the sight of Dan sat beside him, the way Dan can’t sit still and leans forward at the best parts, the way Dan turns and grabs Phil’s arm and practically vibrates with excitement.
He feels -
He feels like a kid with a crush.
It’s dangerous, but it’s wonderful. It means he wants to do stupid things like listen to Dan talk about his hopes and dreams and childhood and how he doesn’t even really want to be a teacher at all and how some days it’s hard to get out of bed but lately he’s doing better - and oh, that little smile he gives Phil, and Phil is - he’s so in trouble.
*
“I’ve got a question,” Phil says.
He’s having lunch with his brother. At least twice a month either Phil travels into London or Martyn takes the train to Reading. It makes their mum happy, or at least that’s their excuse to avoid admitting that they actually like to spend time together.
“Forty-two,” Martyn says. “It’s always the answer.”
“What if.” Phil starts, then stops. He has to gather his thoughts sometimes. “How do you know when you really like someone, and it’s not just that you like that they like you?”
“Like, or like-like?” Martyn asks.
“How do I know if I like-like them.” Phil thinks another moment. “Or if I just like-like them because they regular-like me?”
“Aw, little brother’s growing up.”
“I’m almost thirty!” Phil says. “I’m grown.”
“Age is just a number. You put googly eyes on your light switches,” Martyn says, as if that concludes the argument. (Dan likes the googly eyes.) “I think instead of figuring out if you really like-like them, maybe you work on finding out if they really like-like you first? Because if they don’t, then what does it matter?”
Older brothers really are troves of occasional wisdom.
*
Phil decides after a week that Dan almost definitely does like-like him.
Normally he’s not one to assume, but they start to watch American Horror Story and on three separate occasions Dan brings up things he’d like to do to Evan Peters - so that checks off the ‘does he actually like men?’ box.
Then, as if responding to the suddenly increased amount of attention Phil is paying to the matter, he begins to give Phil random little compliments like what jumpers Phil looks best in and how Phil’s eyes look particularly ‘trippy’ with their flecks of multiple colors, and on one notable occasion he fondles Phil’s tie and think loosely wraps it around his wrist and winks at Phil.
Phil actually wonders if maybe Dan’s been doing this all along, and Phil just wasn’t paying attention to it. He’s spent so long whittling that kind of want out of his life that there’s a chance it was, as his grandmother was saying, trying to bite him right on the nose and he still didn’t see.
Which is how Phil comes to blurt out, “I like you,” in a fashion much more suited to his students than himself.
Dan laughs and he smiles so wide his mouth looks like it hurts and his dimple pops beautifully. “Fucking finally.”
They’re in the middle of the teacher’s lounge, because Phil has impeccable timing or maybe just no patience at all. Dan all but drags him to the same stairwell that they met him then pushes Phil up against the wall and snogs him until they can’t breathe.
*
And that’s how the story begins.