A/N: it wouldn’t surprise me if the person who sent this prompt in has forgotten they’ve sent it in given it was so long ago but it was too cute to pass up alright

it’s funny cause these are pretty much my own thoughts at night lazily fashioned into a semi-romantic duologue

prompt: college au, d&p sharing a dorm room and at night dan is afraid of the dark so he talks and talks and phil is extremely annoyed until one day he tackles dan in bed “would you shut the fuck up already” “make me” and they kiss 

words: 2,440

——————

It’s like sharing a room with an eight year old, to be honest.

“Phil?”

Silence.

“Phil…?” Dan nibbles his lip, stirring in his bed to face his roommate’s bed.

Followed by another expected silence.

“Are you awake?” Dan whispers again, his voice penetrating the heavy quietness between the two beds in the dimly-lit room, with only Dan’s laptop screen with Netflix as an effective enough nightlight, although Inception had finished hours ago.

“I am now.” Phil hisses, and Dan doesn’t need the light to sense Phil’s glaring the shit out of him.

“You went to sleep ten minutes ago.” Dan narrows his eyes. “No-one can fall asleep that quickly, surely.”

“When you’re tired as fuck, it’s surprisingly possible.” Phil replies through gritted teeth, his sleep deprivation due to having to go through this every fucking night finallygetting the better of him. In all honesty, he can’t remember the last time he’d slept solidly for longer than half an hour the nights Dan’s in the room, and he aches with the memory of how heavenly his bed had felt when Dan visited home for a weekend. “Anyway, seeing as it has only been ten minutes, you’ve barely given me any chance. ”

Dan gives him a tentative smirk, although he’s unsure if Phil’s looking at him or not. “What’s the time?”

“Late enough for you to go the fuck to sleep.” Phil mutters, followed by a brief, obedient pause, and a quiet shuffling and moment of a glowing phone screen. “Two forty-five.” He sighs, horror flooding his voice as he remembers it’s only four hours until his lecture and the only attempts at sleeping he’s made are undeniably very pathetic ones.

“You know what’s weird?” Dan breaks his own silence. Phil waits. “-How ‘quarter to three’ sounds so much later than two forty-five, but they’re exactly the same time, right?”

“Nice observation.” The sarcasm in Phil’s reply is biting.

“No but-… it’s like, you know prices on stuff?” Dan begins.

“I’m familiar, yes.” Phil grits his teeth, the sarcasm refusing to budge.

“Like-… do you not find it strange how, let’s say; something for £2.99 looks cheaper than £3.00, regardless of the fact we’re fully aware it’s 1p difference? You would’ve thought with knowing this, we would be able to overlook this obvious marketing scheme, but-… it still seems to catch us out.” He frowns thoughtfully.

“How else can we keep 1p coins in use?” Phil counteracts. “They need some purpose.”

“I vote they should be banished. What does anyone ever get out of waiting for 1p change apart from crippling awkwardness?”

“That’s why they have charity boxes in nearly every shop.” Phil mumbles.

“It still won’t make much; 300 1p coins will only give you three quid, and that’s barely enough for a coffee.”

“I think charities generally have more important focuses to spend their money on than coffees, Dan.”

“Still; it’s only a tiny amount of money compared to how much of it there always is.” Dan sighs, reflecting on the repressed childhood memory of how many broken china shards he’d had to sweep up after overloading his piggy bank with copper money then attempting to carry the heavy object across the kitchen floor. “They’re such a useless coin when they’re not playing mind games with us.”

“Marketing and advertising is one big mind game.” Phil says. “That’s the point.”

“I know, but-…” Dan narrows his eyes. “It’s weird to consider the fact it is just a mind game. It’s such a good mind game you always seem to forget that that’s all it is. Taking 1p off prices, colour schemes, typeface-…”

“Mental, isn’t it?!” Phil remarks sarcastically. “It’s almost as if people are paid to consider these factors when mass producing products and brands!”

Dan pauses, repositioning himself with a quiet shuffle. “There’s no need to be rude about it.”

“Stop asking stupid questions, then.” Phil sighs. “I’m tired.”

“It wasn’t a question.” Dan contradicts. “Just a thought.”

“That I don’t need to hear right now.” Phil checks the time, and his heart sinks at the addition of digits.

“It’s important to consider the wider spectrum of human life, Phil.” Dan mutters. “Self-awareness is essential.”

“Sleep is also essential, believe it or not.” Phil nestles his head as far as it will go into his pillow, as if he could physically escape the world of semi-darkness and Dan’s voice and enter a cotton street of blissful silence.

Well, he can dream.

“”That’s questionable; have I ever told you about the Russian sleep experiment?” A voice pipes up about a minute later.

Only he can’t, because Dan won’t fucking shut up.

“Yes.” Phil lies, rubbing his eyes wearily.

“Isn’t it weird how at the end of the fifteen days, the people were so reluctant to return back to reality to the point of resorting to suicide?” Phil feels Dan frown. “They put up a surprisingly fierce fight in the process of being removed, like-… they screamed to be left back in the chamber and demanded to have the gas turned back on. Even when the three surviving subjects got taken to a medical facility, the remaining two with working vocal chords continuously begged for the gas to be kept awake…”

“Did you pay attention to anything else in that experiment?” Phil exclaims. “I don’t think digesting your own flesh is a particularly healthy repercussion of having no sleep for fifteen days.”

“Well, at that point I think it was only abut ten days, but-…”

“Stop spending so much time on Creepypasta, for the love of god.” Phil rolls his eyes, having all to much knowledge of what Dan tends to scare himself with in order to stop himself from falling asleep.

“Why Creepypasta?” Phil can feel Dan tilting his head on one side in the very same contemplative expression that’s nearly constantly written on his face.

That’s the thing with Dan; he always has to turn everything into a question. One more than often Phil finds either very difficult or impossible to answer.

“Ask the creators.” Phil dismisses

“Why not Creepypizza?” Dan considers, ignoring him.

“That sounds like some kind of gothic Italian restaurant.” Phil can’t stop himself from snorting slightly despite his tiredness wearing nearly unbearable.

“Creepylasagna…” Dan giggles to himself.

“Okay, I get the message.” Phil replies to his mild self amusement.

“Creepyravioli?”

“That’s even less impressive.” His voice is overlaid with a deadpan tone.

“Creepyrisotto.”

“Creepy go the fuck to sleep.” Phil hisses, the frustration quickly returning.

“I’ve never heard of that dish before.” Dan jokes weakly, although he can sense Phil’s irritation growing, despite his uncomfortable guilt. “I’m not tired, anyway.” Dan lies, trying to hide an oncoming yawn from his rooommate despite him lying under a metre away from him.

“Bullshit.” Phil doesn’t even need to see Dan’s yawn to sense his tiredness, that, to be honest, is probably around equal to Phil’s.

Due to Dan’s lack of direct response to Phil’s contradiction, he’s safe in assuming he’s right.

After a few quiet minutes (although he’s so tired he couldn’t care less if it had been thirty seconds or an hour) Phil’s tired mind takes a daring risk of assuming maybe, just maybe, he might actually be able to-

“Are you asleep?” The one and only voice Phil’s the least prepared to deal with hearing, pipes up (although they’re the only two in the room, so he figures anyone else’s voice would probably be slightly alarming.)

For fuck’s sake.

Nevertheless, he’d probably rather deal with a stranger than Dan. At least they’d shut up quicker.

“Yes.” Phil hisses, the frustration really beginning to reach its boiling point. “Fuck off.”

“What have I told you about rudeness?” Dan jokes, despite the fact Phil probably couldn’t reach a more negative dimension of a remotely joke-y mood if he put effort into it.

“What have I told you about shutting up and letting me sleep?” Phil snaps. “What is it now?”

“Soaps are so unrealistic.” Dan mutters after a couple of deadly-silent seconds; probably the most silence Phil’s experienced since Dan had visited home.

He’s about to roll his eyes and turn over, before he hesitates. “The cleaning product, or TV programme?”

“TV programme.” Dan answers. “I can’t really find anything particularly unbelievable about handwash right now.”

Phil wouldn’t put it past him to pick out something.

He sighs, shutting his eyes and considering how many coffees it will take him to function for more than an hour tomorrow. “What, then?”

“Eastenders-” Dan begins. “Why the fuck does no one own a washing machine?”

Here we go. Phil doesn’t open his eyes.

“They’re not that expensive; I’d give it an estimation of £200 from Argos at best. I’m sure they could all chip in and gather up a bit of money together and buy one, I mean; they have stable jobs and a reasonable income, don’t they?”

“What’s the point when you have a laundrette literally in the Square?” Phil retorts.

“Phil, this isn’t the eighties anymore.” Dan rolls his eyes. “No one goes to the laundrette anymore apart from my grandma.”

“Why doesn’t she go get a washing machine from Argos, then?” Phil tests, although he’s beyond belief as to why he’s still talking; it’s only encouragement for Dan to continue this verbal leakage he’d been trying for so long to fix. He can’t give up now.

“Everyone on Corrie seems to own one.” Dan narrows his eyes. “Why can’t they donate a few?”

“They live in the middle of London, they’re hardly in need.” Phil frowns at Dan’s use of the word 'donate’. “Not mentioning it’ll be a bit of a journey for the washing machines; 300 miles from Manchester down to London.”

“I used to do it all the time, to see you.” Dan smiles contentedly, and if he’s not mistaken, the small noise Phil responds with is a chuckle, not a sigh.

“You’re not a washing machine.” Phil mumbles a few moments later.

“The distance is still the same.” Dan shrugs. “Not being a washing machine doesn’t equal 299 miles.”

“Doesn’t that seem like a lot less, though?” Phil raises an eyebrow, backtracking on Dan’s previous musings.

“It does, actually.” Dan thinks. “Although we’re talking miles, not prices, aren’t we?”

“Hm.” Phil responds with the most effective conversation closer he can think of aside 'k’.

The following silence might actually have lasted a few seconds longer than the previous.

“They all seem to have dishwashers though, don’t they?”

“For the love of god.” Phil shuts his eyes again, pulling his duvet over his head.

Dan chuckles, rolling over to face Phil’s bed. “These are the important questions of life, Phil.”

“Okay, I’ve got one.” Phil says. “How many pillows to the face would it take for you to shut up?”

Dan chuckles, his tone laced with mischief. “Well, I think you should-” The rest of his sentence is cut off by a slap to the face with one of Phil’s pillows, and it’s surprisingly forceful.

“One down, three to go.” Phil mutters.

“How did you aim so well?” Dan frowns.

“Instinct.” Phil replies. “Plus, it’s never completely dark in this room, is it?” He sighs at the constant glow of Dan’s laptop, actually in awe it hadn’t melted yet with the amount he leaves it on at night.

“It’s not that much light.” Dan contradicts, taking the pillow Phil had thrown at him and snuggling into it, breathing in the comforting scent of his shampoo. “Just enough for me.”

“Certainly enough for me, too.” Phil repositions himself on his slightly flatter sleeping quarters, beginning to regret sacrificing his pillow for silence that he isn’t even getting.

They begin to descend into another potential silence, although Phil doesn’t have the strength to hope for anything more than five minutes.

“I wonder what the sunset looks like from Jupiter?” Dan mumbles to himself.

That’s it.

There’s another silence, and Dan braces himself for another pillow to the face.

A few tense moments of nothing later, he’s unexpectedly tackled by something that’s deems considerably heavier, and stronger than a mere pillow, and he finds his arms pinned to the mattress, and Phil’s face centimetres away from his.

“Would you shut the fuck up already?!” Phil hisses; although it sounds like more of a threat than a question, and the lack of distance between Dan’s lips and Phil’s makes his stomach flutter.

Dan could respond with a chuckle and a remark something along the lines of 'you’re cute when you’re angry’ to antagonise Phil even further, although when he eyes the boy above him with his black hair framing every flawless crevice of his face, he can only mutter two words; which, in all honesty, are probably going to lead to a lot more bad than good.

“Make me.”

Phil’s caught off guard for a couple of disorientated moments, and only one strategy can come to mind.

He nibbles his lip in a brief moment of inhibition, although being so beyond the point of tired, it barely lasts longer than three seconds. And, even if it’s for a minute, an hour or maybe even longer, it’s the only resolution he can foresee pointing towards the direction of shutting Dan up.

Without wasting a single second longer, he leans down, finding Dan’s face with his apparent 'instinct’, and presses their lips together in such a clumsy fashion it’s a blurred line between a kiss and a lip-crusher.

He instantly feels Dan grin into the kiss, and Phil feels the reciprocation in the form of Dan’s fingers lacing into his hair, kissing him back with equally as much force.

A couple of minutes pass and neither of them make any effort in pulling away; it’s not even a strategy of shutting Dan up anymore given that Phil had lazily rolled into the space beside him in bed (claiming his lost pillow in the process) and they’d descended from some car-crash kiss into gentle, affectionate pecks. Dan’s fingers were still lost in the black tangle of Phil’s hair, but they’ve exchanged their desperation for gentle caressing.

And maybe Phil doesn’t want to stop. Or go to his lecture tomorrow.

Or back to his own bed.