Mr Howell opens his son's bedroom door. He's been knocking for the past five minutes, and besides, what's the worst his teenage son and his friend - boyfriend - could be doing?

Dan is sleeping soundly, wearing a pair of rocket pyjamas which are obviously not his (far too tight) and his old Queen t-shirt. He is snuffling into his pillow, blond hair crinkled around his face and mouth gaping in silent snores. It's almost normal, almost, but his eyes trail over to the figure sprawled across the bed alongside Dan and shudders.

Laying there in all of his glory is none other than Phillip Lester, half naked and shivering. He stares for a moment, soaking in the boy's appearance. His lipstick is smeared along his jawbone, black hair fanned around his face in a dark halo. There's a dark trail of bruises down his neck and collarbone (god, they're not are they?) that are obviously love bites. Mr Howell shudders because it's no doubt that his son is responsible for them. He is cringing more and more as he looks at the boy's bare chest (wow, he's a skinny little bastard) and then his eyes settle on the (fucking fuck fuck) lacy (shit fuck bollocks) thong that he is wearing. He averts his eyes as quickly as he can, but he's damn sure that the image is engrained on his retina forever. He tries to avoid looking at the garter that is around a stocking clad ankle, tries to ignore the way the boy's arm curls around his son's waist, the lipstick staining Dan's lips.

Mr Howell wants to leave (fuck, if he could just disappear completely he would) but Dan's window is open and it must be almost sub-zero and he is very aware that Phil is most probably freezing his tits off. He picks the duvet from Dan's floor up, draping it over the couple and quickly stepping back.

His lips twitch almost unconsciously when Phil shuffles closer to Dan, burying his face into his son's brown hair and whispering, "thank you."

Mr Howell is closing the window when he hears Phil murmur, "love you Dan" and suddenly he doesn't mind having to sort the pair of them out so much anymore.

#

Phil wakes up nuzzled into Dan's side. He's warm and comfortable and blissfully happy in the embrace. The blanket over them is heavy and warm, heavy and warm, heavy and warm.

He's too hot.

He turns over in bed and promptly throws up-

Dan wakes up and recoils, flailing a bit and cringing at the retching noises Phil is making.

-into the conveniently located bucket that he's nothing short of thanking god for.

Dan scrambles closer, scraping the hair from Phil's forehead as he throws up, giggling when Phil hisses at him to move.

Phil flops onto his back, shivering slightly with a sheen of sweat collecting on his forehead. Dan wrinkles his nose at the bucket and busies himself with dumping it in the bathroom (dad can deal with it) and getting a flannel to clean Phil with. And a toothbrush, because if Phil's mouth is anywhere near as fluffy as his own then he'll need it. Plus he just vomited, so his mouth probably tastes like something died. (His dignity).

But when he returns Phil is snoring softly, sprawled across the bed with his limbs each sticking out at a fairly awkward angle. Dan rolls his eyes and pushes him over, slapping the cold flannel to Phil's head before curling up beside him again, this time with the covers off.

#

Phil wakes with a groan, a stretch and a banging headache that starts somewhere in his eyeballs and ends in his little toes.

So yeah, maybe this is the hangover from hell that he was kinda expecting, but also not completely prepared for.

He rolls over and pokes Dan in the side, right in the rib where it tickles, and Dan swats him away, fumbling around on the bedside table for something. He murmurs a quiet, "aha" and then grabs Phil's phone. He attempts to type the password in with his eyes shut twice before realising that he's undoubtedly gonna fail and end up locking the phone.

Phil pads out of the room, muttering something about his head and Dan grunts a half-hearted response, because he doesn't have the faintest what Phil just said. Like, really.

The screen of the phone looks blurry with one eyelid cracked open, Dan realises, so he dismisses the little message that says "Facebook: 108 new notifications" until he realises that, shit, that's right. All previous exhaustion is expelled almost instantaneously and sharply replaced with curiosity, tapping at the screen until Facebook pops up.

He's almost surprised that the whole timeline is talking about the party, but then they're all teenagers, there's nothing more important that the newest gossip.

Now, what's the source of all of those notifications?

As it turns out, it's a video, a fucking video, of Phil and Jonas' encounter (jesus christ it's hilarious). There's 89, no, 90 likes and counting (Dan does the maths, that's over half of their whole year) and a shitload of comments and god, is there anyone who isn't talking about it?

Dan scrolls through the comments for a bit, likes almost all of Kels' (fuck u motherfuckers i am fucking out u homophobic cuntflaps u wanna mess w/ someone mess with me or even better yet fuck with chris i dare u motherfuckers i will dickpunch u so hard) and then pauses at a certain one.

Marilyn Lester: I see you had a good time last night, Phillip.

It is the most popular comment on the video. Dan can't help sniggering into his hand because, oh Lord this is good, Phil is really in for it.

When Phil comes back, glass of water half empty (it's one of those days) and swallowing a paracetamol, still shirtless and stockinged, Dom has to admit that he is kinda worried about what's gonna happen to them.

Like, sure, it's all fun and games until someone gets punched. Which, when he thinks about it has already happened, so really it's not fun and games anymore anyway. He's more worried about Phil than himself, if he'd ever admit it, because Phil won't let anyone say shit about him. It's normally a great trait to have, but Phil will undoubtedly get himself into far too much trouble in this case. Trouble that his scrawny little arse can't hold off himself.

He's also worried about Phil, but for a completely different reason. Oh yes, Phil's mother has left a lasting note on the video, which means she knows what last night was like. She also called him Phillip. iPhillip/i. That never happens, as far as Dan can tell and as Phil has told him, which leads him to the conclusion that Mrs Lester is very, very pissed off.

So far: everything has gone tits up.

So, naturally, Dan laughs.

#

He has to explain to Phil exactly why he's laughing, down to the smallest detail, which would be annoying even if it wasn't Phil. But it is Phil, who sits and fidgets and daydreams and makes him repeat himself an unholy number of times. Phil is annoying, fullstop.

When he's done explaining (forty-fucking-five minutes later) Phil groans and throws his head back, "I am so annoyed."

"What? That someone filmed you and put it on Facebook?" Dan questions, almost smirking.

"No, what I'm saying is that I'm vaguely pissed off that I'm alive." Phil replies and when Dan laughs and calls him melodramatic, he glares and replies, "you try dealing with my mum when she's pissed off."

Dan decides really quickly that he doesn't quite feel like that, like, at all.

#

Phil is grounded for a month, even if his mum can't quite keep a straight face when she explains why she is disappointed with his behaviour at the party.

That night Phil shoots Dan a final text: ok my phone is being taken in like 5 but she's pretty annoyed, but not cos i was a fabulous (she was quite proud actually) she's more upset that i let it get so out of hand but whatevs i'll see you at school or smth, bye for a month sorry bout grammar bye and then hands his phone over to his mum, and yes, okay, maybe he pouts a bit, but then who wouldn't?

He spends the next three hours pissing about on his guitar, writes some poems (he sounds like a teenage girl oh my god) and then crosses them out again, bins them and then retrieves them. By the end of the evening, when he's laid in bed trying to get comfortable, the words drifting in his head set. The words seem to float from his subconscious, blossoming into metaphors and burning into his brain.

He falls asleep with the words iim sick of being your stereotype, maybe im someone else, got your head in the skies, leaning back, take that back drifting somewhere between his brain and his lips.

The next morning the words seem almost stupid, far too angsty and personal to ever do anything with, but he writes them down all the same, reads them through and decides that they're good for nothing but proving to himself what he stands for.

More than anything he doesn't want to become the stereotype. He wants to be Phillip Lester and he wants to be a weatherman or a director or a photographer and he just happens to be gay. It seems like a burden, sometimes, when he's sad or Dan isn't around, but it isn't, not really. That's why he wants everyone to know; because it's like a part of himself, something he can't change, like a quirk to his personality or which is his dominant hand. He wants to be extravagant because that's part of who he is, not because he's gay. He hates it, hates it so much, but there's the worry on his mind that he's going to become that "fairy boy" because that's not what he is. Because, first, nobody is a fucking fairy boy, nobody, and secondly, he knows when to tone it down, because even though he can sometimes be the loudest little shit in the room, he can just as easily be the unnoticed one with his head down and a thin blush on his cheeks. Because he's shy, too.

He is Phillip Lester, undefinable because you cannot define a human being, and he vows to himself that above anything, his aim in life is to prove that to everyone he ever can.

#

Half term passes in a blur of boring, empty, Dan-less days, dull and quiet. It is no different from how he spent the whole six weeks of summer, he reasons with himself on a particularly lifeless day, but summer was before he knew Dan.

On day five he manages to sneak his phone while his mum is out and checks Facebook.

The storm has passed.

Some girl has had a sex tape since the party of doom, as he's taken to calling it in his head, and no one seems to care about that awkward guy with a totally hot boyfriend. Which is good going, he figures. Sometimes he's far too thankful for the quick spread of high school gossip.

#

On day six his mum is sick of him moping and ungrounds him for the weekend. He showers for the first time in four days, puts on a new pair of jeans and a clean Muse shirt and heads to Dan's, little leaps in his steps. He feels he's just been released from prison or something (and, okay, he kinda has because his mum is pretty strict with the rules of grounding) and knocks four times on Dan's door.

Mr Howell answers with a smile and explains to him that Dan's staying at his mother's over the weekend, "last minute thing," he says, "she hasn't seen her Dannykins," (he shudders), "in far too long."

Phil drags his Converse along the ground on the way home.

In the end, the day ends up alright. He calls Kels and she brings junk food and movies and they curl up together in the duvets and she hugs him and makes jokes about being "a Dan replacement". He rolls his eyes and hits her on the arm and she punches him, then feeds him a piece of popcorn.

He falls asleep halfway through Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure and has a weird as fuck dream in which it's him and Dan that's so vivid he has to pinch himself when he wakes up.

At breakfast, Kels wipes the butter from her crumpet onto his cheekbone and laughs manically for a good ten minutes while his mum watches them both fondly.

All is well.

#

It doesn't last, of course.

He gets a text from an unknown number, and he feels his stomach twist a little as he reads it.

hey it's ellie, me and lara would love to take you up on your offer, especially if dom is involved ;)

If you haven't seen Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure then you should. Like now. Dear lord it is one of my favourite films ever oh wow.

as always, thanks lots and lots for reading friends, it means a load and load that you'd check this out so thank you!

[this is being edited from a muse fandom work so if there is a random matt/dom name drop, please point it out or ignore it, thank you!]