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Taking Responsibility




“Phil! I think I may be dying.”

I look up from my laptop to my boyfriend, fully expecting to see him looking perfectly fine and just being his usual drama-queen self. Apart from that’s not what I see; I see Dan slumped in the doorway of the bedroom, skin horribly pasty and pitch-black bags underneath his eyes.

So maybe he’s not dying, but he’s definitely sick. And I’m the only one around to look after him, poor guy.

Without putting any thought into it, just letting my body react how it naturally should, I place the laptop on the floor and reach my arms out, gesturing for him to join me on the bed. As sappy as it may sound, as I know it sounds, seeing him sick genuinely makes me feel bad too; because our degree of love is so high that it physically hurts me when he’s hurt. Like I can’t be happy unless he is.

He doesn’t even stop to hesitate; he just flops over to me, the force of his body knocking me onto my back so that we’re cuddling on my bed. The first thing that hits me, even before the actual impact of his body, is the heat he’s radiating. He’s hot, and not in his usual ‘Dan-is-a-God’ kind of way. Hot as in sweltering, sweat sticking his hair to his forehead despite the fact that our apartment is near-freezing at the moment. A sure sign that he really is poorly.

A sure sign that he needs my help.

“You don’t look so good.” I mumble, propping myself up so that he can lean back on me as he nuzzles into my Pac Man t-shirt.

“Thanks.” He deadpans, raising his eyebrows in a way that tells me I’m really not helping. “You’ve really boosted my self-esteem.”

“You know what I meant.” He just nods, daring to give me a little smile. A smile that gets rudely interrupted by a violent string of hacking coughs, forcing me to pull him into a sitting position, patting his back in a feeble attempt at some form of aid. “Easy there, Danosaur. You sound like the Big Bad Wolf.”

He snickers slightly, which only evolves into another set of coughs and back-patting, before groaning like an overused door. Poor thing looks exhausted, another tell-tale sign of illness; Dan normally stays awake into the early hours without getting tired, yet now it’s only six in the evening and he looks absolutely exhausted. The usual light in his eyes has been dulled with an aching throb of pain and a slight hint of misery, leaving the usual richness of his chocolaty eyes as some kind of dull wooden colour. Lifeless; lightless.

I want the light back into his eyes. Want it like a child wants Christmas.

“I’m sick.” He croaks in a voice that sounds pathetic, the pathetic-ness of it amplified by the way he’s making it into a shameless beg for sympathy. “Philly, I’m sick.”

“Call me that again and you’ll have a broken arm to go with it.” He smiles a little, clearly supressing a giggle through fear of another coughing fit, and I press a tiny peck onto his lips, not caring that whatever he has could be contagious. He blushes in that adorable way only Dan can pull off without looking like an idiot and I rub my hands down his tummy in a mad bid at comforting the sickness out of him. “Want anything?”

“To not be sick.” I roll my eyes at his response, but am unable to resist a fond smile all the same. “But sympathy huggles are just as good.”

In response to his request I lean my body over him and swamp his tiny, weak form with my own; glomping him completely but gently at the same time, feeling his breath ragged and strained against my cheek.

All of a sudden, I feel him stiffen against me and hear a small, agonized groan crawl out of his wondrous lips. Somehow understanding him without the need for words, I untangle myself from him and watch as he sprints for the bathroom; wincing at the sound of him gagging helplessly.

Before I can process it, my feet have forced me to sprint to his side and I’m kneeling next to him on the harshly cold tiles of the bathroom floor. Now he’s shivering, shaking even, and slumped against the wall dejectedly; twenty times worse than he was just twenty seconds ago. I reach over to flush the toilet, emptying it just as Dan has just emptied the contents of his stomach into it, and then pull Dan in for a hug; us two on the floor, him panting and me just stroking his hair, patiently waiting to be told what to do to make it better.

Then it hits me; I have to know what to do to make it better all on my own. I’m his boyfriend and he’s sick, it’s my job to be able to deal with this sort of thing without needing him to tell me what to do.

So I stand up, scoop Dan into my arms bridal style and offer him a soft, but reassuring, smile.

“I’m going to take you back to bed, okay?” He nods, his head lolling against my arm and his eyes shutting as his energy hits rock-bottom; out cold. “Don’t worry, I can look after you. Honest, I can.”

I carry him back through the apartment, my steps a fraction of their usual speed through fear of causing Dan anymore wretched discomfort, until I reach my bedroom, where I proceed to place him in the bed and tuck the covers snuggly around him. He looks so weak and helpless lying there, like a small child in need of a parent to make everything better. But Dan doesn’t have a parent; he has a Phil instead.

A Phil who will stop at nothing to make sure his boyfriend gets better as soon as possible.

He murmurs something unintelligible in his sleep and squirms around a little bit, making himself as comfortable as he can possibly be. That position turns out to be knees bought close to his chest, one arm under his head like an extra pillow and his thumb resting loosely in his mouth. I think I’d probably melt at the cuteness if it wasn’t for the fact that he’s clearly got some kind of sickness bug.

What can I do to make him better? He doesn’t like swallowing tablets, so I won’t force him into that unless it gets really bad, and he’s too old for Calpol to be any good which is the only thing we have by the way of medicine because, and I quote Dan here, ‘it tastes good’.

Of course! Soup.

Dan told me once, during a video, that his mum always used to give him soup when he was sick; and if his mum, someone who cares about Dan as much as I do, used it as a cure, then it must be the right thing to do!

Feeling thoroughly thrilled with myself for having come up with such an ingenious plan, I run into the kitchen and start tearing through the cupboards for a tin of soup, or even just a sachet of that stuff you add water to.

Nothing. No soup whatsoever, largely because I despise the stuff as much as Dan despises noisy people in cinemas.

I feel my heart sink in defeat, like a ship going down in a sea of disappointment; I’m Dan’s boyfriend, I’m meant to be able to deal with stuff like this. I know he would be able to if I were the sick one. He’d probably know how to make some magical cure out of Malteser’s and teabags; the two things we do have in abundance.

Hang on. Teabags. Tea!

I’ll make Dan a nice hot cup of tea; it’s practically the same as soup, right? I mean, it’s hot and you drink it and it comes from teabags, which are pretty much the same as a sachet.

Yeah.

So I get to work, filling the kettle and putting it on to boil with eager hands. I grab his favourite mug out of the cupboard and chuck in two teabags for extra healing powers. Whilst the kettle boils I make sure to listen out for Dan, for any sign of him needing help in any way, shape or form. It’s my duty to help him, you see; like it’s Mario’s duty to rescue Princess Peach, no matter how many times she manages to get herself into trouble.

I guess Dan is my Princess Peach. In a weird, but true, kind of way. Because I’ll look after him no matter how much he needs it, just like he would do for me. Like he constantly does do for me.

The kettle pings, knocking me out of my thoughts, and I pour the boiling water over the teabags. I contemplate adding milk and sugar, but then decide that I don’t want to mess with the healing powers of the tea. So I let it brew for a few seconds before stirring and finally removing the teabags.

Smiling happily to myself, because I’m doing something useful to help Dan, I return to the bedroom and perch on the edge of the bed so that I’m leaning over Dan’s face. The poor thing doesn’t look any better than he did five minutes ago, if anything he looks worse, but that’s okay; because I’m here now and I know what I’m doing.

I know that I am Mario and I have to rescue Princess Peach.

With tea.

“Dan? Hey, Dan.” He stirs a little, eyes blinking open slowly and then smiling feebly when he sees me; just like he always does, apart from normally the smile is a beam the size of Totoro. “I bought you some tea.” I help him sit up, wincing at how positively nuclear his body is, and then press the mug to his lips. “I was going to make you soup, because you said that your mum gives it to you when you’re sick, but we don’t have any and I couldn’t go out to buy some because you need me here. So I made tea instead. To make you all better like the soup would. It’s the same thing, right?” My voice comes out sounding more than a little bit desperate through want of having done the right thing. “I even made it extra strong, to make you better extra quick! Soup and tea are practically the same. Right, Dan?”

His eyes meet mine, softening from a dull wood into a silky cushion, and I know at once that I’ve done the right thing. Slowly, like the movement hurts him, he leans up and presses a kiss to my cheek. His lips are icy in comparison to the rest of his body, but the kiss is still as sweet as the chocolate of his eyes.

“Yeah, Phil. It’s the same; I feel better already.”







A/N: Just some pointless Phan fluff based off of the prompt ‘tea’. I know this kinda sucks, but I wrote it fuelled on an endless supply of coffee and chocolate; what d’you expect? Anyways, thanks for reading and please let me know what you think! :)