Chapter Text
Dan is six years old when his family moves to the big house on Walnut Street.
It’s larger than their old place, an apartment in the heart of downtown where there was no backyard and Dan shared a room with his mom and dad. He was too young back then to know the difference, to understand the gravity of what the change meant. He just knew that he had a bigger yard, a real yard, with a swing set and everything, and his own bedroom.
They had moved because Dan’s dad had gotten a better job, but, again, to six year old Dan, it made no difference. They moved in the middle of summer, Dan sweating in the plastic-y backseat of his parent’s car, clutching a cool can of soda pop in his hands as they repeatedly made the long drive, hauling boxes and clothes and Dan’s toys, from the apartment to the new house.
“You can play in the yard if you want,” Dan’s mom says to him as he ambles out of the car, feeling just a tiny bit car-sick from being cooped up for too long. Dan nods, bouncing through the green, green grass and heading around the left side of the house, toward the backyard. There’s no fence separating their new houses from the one next door, just some fat bushes that are easy enough to step over.
“Just don’t go too far!” Dan’s mom calls after him.
“Okay!” Dan calls back. He’s already excited. There’s a breeze in the air and it tickles at Dan’s curls, brushing his cheeks. The backyard is huge and the swing set is thick and wooden. Dan’s dad said that the other family that moved out couldn’t take it, that it was stuck here, but Dan is secretly happy about that.
He sits on the swing, the chains rattling lightly. There was a park by the apartment that they used to live in, and Dan’s mom took him there sometimes. It was always crowded, though, and the older kids always took all of the swings. Now Dan doesn’t have to worry. He’s got his own swing and he doesn’t have to share it with anyone.
Just as Dan kicks his legs up, starting to feel the wind catch him, lifting him as he pumps his legs, that’s when he sees a face peeking at him from the next yard over. Dan stops the swing as he focuses on the big, brown eyes looking at him. Once he’s settled and can see, he realizes that it’s a kid just like him.
The kid’s got dark-brown hair and big, brown eyes and he’s smiling a little, kind of shyly. He’s a little chubby, too, sort of soft, making him look younger. Dan smiles back, digging his toe of his sneaker into the dirt.
“Hi,” Dan says, trying to sound nice because his mom always tells him to be polite.
“Hi,” the kid says back. His voice is small and as shy as he had looked, but he’s still smiling.
“I’m Dan,” Dan says, getting off of the swing. “What’s your name?”
“Arin,” the kid says, his hands twisting in the fabric of his t-shirt.
“Do you wanna play with me, Arin? I got a swing set now!” Dan says, hoping that Arin understands his enthusiasm for this new toy and just how cool it is.
Arin’s smile widens and he nods. He glances back at his house for a second before he steps over one of the bushes and then he’s in Dan’s yard, shuffling towards the swing. There’s a twin to Dan’s swing right next to him and Arin takes it easily.
Dan kicks off again, hollering a little as he tries to gain that air again. Arin is right there next to him, swinging and laughing. He loves swinging, feeling the world shift around him and how, if he’s going high enough, it looks like his feet touch the sky, the soles of his shoes grazing the clouds.
As much fun as swinging is, Dan still loses interest pretty fast.
“Hey, Arin,” Dan says, and he sees a dark head turn to look at him. “Wanna see how far I can jump?”
Arin nods. “Yeah!”
Dan feels enthused, motivated by the eager smile of this new kid and how he’s watching Dan intently, like he’s about to witness the coolest thing ever. When Dan reaches the peak of his next swing, he launches himself out of the swing. He has that flying feeling then, soaring through the air before he lands roughly in the grass, losing his balance and rolling a little, getting his knees dirty with grass stains.
Dan’s on the ground for a moment to let the world slide back into focus. He hears the jangle of chains and sees a pair of sneakers by his face. He sits up to see Arin standing in front of him, looking worried.
“Are you okay?” Arin asks.
Dan nods, standing up and rubbing at his green knees. “I went far, right?”
Arin nods, his eyes lighting up. “It was so cool.”
Dan grins. Behind them, further into the yard, he spots a beat-up old soccer ball. Dan darts to it.
“Hey, come play with me!” he calls, urging Arin to follow. Arin does, and he and Dan end up a few feet away from each other, kicking the half-deflated ball around Dan’s new backyard.
“How old are you?” Dan asks because kids don’t really have much to talk about.
“I’m five,” Arin says, puffing out his chest, like he’s extremely proud of this fact.
“I’m six,” Dan says with a smile.
Arin looks awed, like it’s amazing to have a six year old neighbor.
“This is my new house,” Dan says. “We moved from the city.”
Arin glances at the house, distracted, and misses the ball when Dan kicks it back to him, letting it roll pass him and into the yard.
“The boy that lived there before was mean,” Arin says seriously. “He bit me.”
Dan’s eyes widen. He jogs up close to Arin.
“I’m not mean,” Dan says, like it’s the most serious thing ever. “I won’t bite you ‘cause you’re my friend!”
Arin smiles again. “You’re my friend, too,” Arin says.
Dan’s glad that Arin says that they’re friends because, when he moved, he left behind his old best friend, a six year old boy in his class named Tommy. Dan and Tommy would have sleepovers and Tommy’s parents would let them stay up really late. Dan misses Tommy, but Arin could be a good best friend.
“Dan! Come on, honey! We gotta go back to the apartment for more stuff!” Dan’s mom calls from the front yard.
Dan frowns and he glances at Arin. “I gotta go! I’ll come back, though!”
Arin nods. “Okay.”
“Dan!” Dan’s dad calls.
“I’m coming!” Dan yells back. He smiles at Arin. “Bye, Arin!”
“Bye!” Arin says brightly.
Dan has to hustle to the front yard, but he turns back just in time to see Arin stepping over the bush, crossing back into his yard.
Dan’s dad is already in the car, the engine running. His mom is leaning against the open door, waiting for him. She smiles as he skids to a stop in front of the car. He climbs inside and his mom shuts the back door for him, Dan reaching for his seatbelt as his mom slides into the car and they take off again.
They drive pass Arin’s house and Dan feels a smile on his face.
“Did you have fun exploring the backyard, Dan?” his mom asks from the front seat.
Dan nods. “Yeah! I made a new best friend. His name is Arin,” he says, beaming wide with pride at the fact that he already has a new best friend.
--
Since the first day that they met, seven years ago, Dan and Arin have been inseparable. The rest of that first summer, Dan’s first summer in his new house, had been spent hanging out in Dan or Arin’s backyards, playing games, eating popsicles, sticky, sweet juice running down their arms. Arin had a Nintendo 64 and, when Dan spent the night at his house, they’d spend hours playing it, Dan laughing each time Arin died on a level.
That fall, they had gone to the same elementary school, though Dan was a grade ahead of Arin. They still got to play together on the playground and ride to school together in the mornings, though, because Arin’s mom offered to start taking Dan to school with Arin.
Even now, Dan thirteen and Arin twelve, they’re practically inseparable. You can hardly find one of them without the other far behind. Dan prefers it that way. Arin is his best friend, the coolest person that he knows, and being around him makes Dan feel good, feel right.
--
“I got something to show you,” Dan says as he leads Arin to the back of his house.
Arin rolls his eyes, “You’ve been saying that for, like, the last hour. Can you just tell me?”
“I have to show you,” Dan says urgently. He’s smiling, though, and Arin gives him one in return.
Dan’s chest kind of feels funny. That’s been happening a lot lately, this odd feeling, weightless, sort of like jelly. He doesn’t really understand it.
They reach the back of the house and Arin looks around expectantly, his arms crossing against his chest.
“I don’t see anything,” he says.
“Right here,” Dan says, reaching out and steadying the thin wooden ladder that he had dug out of the garage, his dad’s old one, barely used anymore. Dan had pulled it from the garage to the backside of the house, leaning it against the cream-colored siding.
“A ladder?” Arin asks with a snort.
“No, asshole, it’s what’s up the ladder that’s important,” Dan says, putting a foot on the bottom rung and pushing himself up. “Come on.”
“That thing is old as shit,” Arin says, giving Dan a skeptical look.
“Come on, Arin. You trust me, don’t you?” Dan asks, leaning back and grinning at Arin, offering him his hand.
Arin sighs, but he grins and takes Dan’s hand, letting Dan pull him toward the ladder. Arin’s hand is warm, way softer than Dan would have thought that it’d be. They haven’t held hands since they were kids, maybe seven or something. It feels like an eternity to Dan. How weird it is that he can know Arin so well, know almost everything there is to know about him, but not this, not how soft his hand feels when it’s joined with Dan’s?
Dan coughs and releases Arin’s hand, focusing on climbing up the ladder, turning his face away from Arin so that he can’t see the pink blush forming on Dan’s cheeks. The ladder rattles noisily as the two of them climb. Dan’s house is one story, not too tall, but it still feels that way as Dan and Arin scale the side of it. Dan finally reaches the top, the black scratch of the shingles under his hands as he hefts himself up and climbs on top of the roof.
“Seriously?” Arin calls from below him.
Dan kneels on the roof and peers over the edge, the wave of hair around his face making it hard to see Arin as he climbs up to meet Dan. “Don’t be so quick to judge,” he says.
Arin finally makes his way to the top. Dan scoots backward to give him space to join him on the roof. Arin does, ambling across the roof, scanning the immediate area around them before finding Dan’s gaze again.
“There’s nothing up here.”
“I know,” Dan says. “That’s the point.”
“Dan,” Arin groans. “You dragged me up here for nothing.”
Dan shakes his head, moving across the roof slowly and carefully before he sits down at the center of it. He pats the spot next to him. Arin rolls his eyes, but he’s moving just as slowly and carefully until he drops down next to Dan.
The day is still warm, the sun dipping low on the horizon. Arin’s thigh is against Dan’s and a heat burns through Dan where their bodies touch.
This weird heat isn’t new. Dan’s mom likes to say he’s going through the “change.” Dan’s had the sex-ed class in school, as mortifying and embarrassing as it was. Dan blames this heat filling him on the “change,” how sometimes when girls at school laugh at his jokes or his mom’s friends smile at him, he’ll get that same rush, that excitement and heat.
So why did he also get that feeling when Arin grinned? When Arin looked into his eyes or their bodies brushed together?
Dan swallows thickly, suddenly nervous.
“Dan?” Arin says quietly, tugging Dan back from his thoughts.
Dan meets Arin’s gaze, raising an eyebrow. “What?”
“You got all…quiet?”
“Sorry, I, uh…I was thinking? I just…I wanted to show you this view. You might think that it’s lame, maybe it is, but I came up here the other night when you were at your aunt’s place and I was bored out of my mind. As soon as I saw the view, I knew that I wanted to show you…”
Dan trails off. It had seemed cool at the time, Dan sitting up here alone and seeing the neighborhood spread out in front of him, but he had been missing Arin that night, feeling lonely, feeling stupid for feeling lonely when Arin was only gone for maybe ten hours tops. Maybe his judgement had been skewed, but, that night, all that he could think about was getting to share this view with Arin.
The sky starts melting into various dreamy shades of red and purple and then Dan hears Arin suck in a breath next to him. Dan turns his head, a smile forming across his lips. Arin’s eyes are a little wide, a little awed, and, in that moment, it makes him look younger than he is. Dan is glad that it seems like he appreciates it, that maybe Dan was right after all.
Arin meets his gaze. “Whoa, you can see the whole neighborhood from here.”
“I told you!” Dan says with a laugh, his chest feeling all tight as Arin elbows him a little, leaning into his space. Dan catches the scent of that shampoo that Arin likes and dirt and sweat, all pieces of Arin that he’s more than familiar with after all of these years of friendship.
The sky changes rapidly around them, the sun fading, dropping behind buildings and tree lines. All of the wonderful daydream colors blend into a soft blue. Streetlights start to pop on around them. Like this, it almost feels like he and Arin are in their own little world, totally inhabited by just the two of them. Dan is fine with it, a private world for just he and Arin.
“Okay,” Arin says. “You were right. This is pretty cool.”
Dan smiles. “See! I told you!”
Arin leans in again, knocking his shoulder against Dan’s. That warmth spreads through Dan’s body. His heart doing this funny flip. Arin is his best friend, his very best friend in the world. There isn’t a single person that Dan trusts more than Arin, no one he wants to be around more than him. He’s used to feeling this rush of fondness of absolute happiness when he thinks of Arin, but the warmth in his belly is new, the way that his heart flops like a fish, how his fingers tingle when Arin laughs. How, right now, with the sky darkening around them, the dying light finding Arin, highlighting the curve of his jaw, his profile, the dark of his hair…
Arin turns his head and smiles at Dan and then, all of the sudden, the thought hits him like a punch, like a freaking truck slamming into his form.
Dan panics suddenly on the roof of his house, his mom inside, making dinner and his dad still not home from work yet. Dan is spiraling right next to Arin, the city spread out before them because now the thought is there and it won’t leave him, spreading through him like a truth that was always there, in plain sight.
Dan is in love with Arin.