Chapter Text
There is a stretch of rooftop between Dan Howell’s house and his neighbour’s. The previous owners of the house - a rather old, married couple - had got a garage extended off of their kitchen, and it had meant that for the last three years, Dan had a small platform of fibreglass roofing laid out next to his bedroom window.
He didn’t go up there often; and when he did he was cautious, but it was a nice space, hidden by a slope of tiles at the front and a patch of trees clambering skywards from his garden.
His room directly faced into the office of the other house. This was absolutely terrible design in his opinion. He couldn’t imagine how many times somebody could have seen him shirtless, had he ever forgotten to close his blinds. And what if that had been the old couple’s bedroom? He didn’t want to see that. Ever.
As luck would have it, it wasn’t a terrible issue. No-one seemed to spend any time in the office. At least, not since he’d had that room.
The house had a For Sale sign outside of it for about a year before a family bought it. Its owners seemed happy with this. Finally, it would house a group of people fitting of its size. It hadn’t been as loud and buzzing and chaotic as it was that moving day in a long time.
Dan barely noticed any of the commotion. He hadn’t the need to. Most people on the street couldn’t name anyone who lived three doors down. They weren’t like that. Besides, Dan was busy doing school work, then playing Metal Gear Rising, and then sort of just lying on his floor and staring at the ceiling mournfully, because summer was nearly over.
Unlike a majority of his peers, Dan found summer pretty shit. As much as school wasn’t great, he hated how infinitely more useless he felt in the six weeks of absolutely nothing. Every day he woke up to no plans, didn’t do a single productive thing (apart from the occasional homework) and then went to sleep feeling like the worst person ever for not doing a single productive thing.
And the heat. The heat was awful. It didn’t feel like “holiday weather” as his mum called it, it felt like Hell. He was probably going to start a water shortage at some point because of how many showers he was taking to stop himself feeling so sweaty all the time.
At least autumn was coming. It would be September in a few weeks. Which was maybe worse considering how completely crappy he was sure Year 11 would be. He had done his mocks last year, after the week off that he had spent thinking enviously about the great escape from school that the year above him had made. Now, he desperately wanted to be back even further, with years and years to go.
Anything to postpone the horrifying decision that was Sixth Form. You’d think that with at least a five year run-up, he’d have made a choice by now.
One more thing that would make the next nine months the most stressful thing in existence. He sighed from his desk, slumping downwards in his chair until his hips were slanted precariously over the edge. He wondered how long he’d have to sit like this before his entire spine just shattered completely. He figured that wasn’t up for experiment and shuffled back upright, his pen spinning in his hand as he stared at his paper on sediment deposition and transportation.
Blah blah, constructive waves, blah blah, longshore drift. Why did he pick geography of all things? He didn’t even care about geography. Why had he chosen to spend two years studying geography?
His hand rubbed over his face in frustration and his eyes flitted across his room, settling on his window out of habit. Except, he wasn’t staring at the back of a pair of curtains. He wasn’t staring at an empty room either. There was someone there, staring right back at him.
Ah. Right. He had new neighbours. He was pretty sure his mum had gone to speak to them yesterday, when they’d moved in. Which probably did not help in any way at all with the efficiency of the whole unpacking thing.
He recognised this someone, though. It was a boy from his year. Philip? Frank? Something like that.
They had gone to different primary schools as far as he was aware, and their year had about 300 kids in it. He didn’t think they were in any of the same lessons, probably different bands and options.
Dan felt briefly sad about that. He gave him a half-smile to say ‘hello’ and the boy’s gaze suddenly dropped. He looked slightly embarrassed and turned back into the room he was in.
Dan frowned and returned his focus to his paper. The paper looked blankly up at him. He really hadn’t written much at all.
He started trying to work again, tapping his foot against the ground and struggling furiously to concentrate.
He challenged a final glance at the window. It was hard to tell from the distance, and the reflection of the sun, but it seemed that the room was empty once more.
Dan tipped his attention to his ceiling.
~~~
Phil was pretty annoyed.
He had chosen this room specifically the moment he had seen it (to absolutely zero protest from his family due to the massively visible neighbouring window).
He had spent three months fantasizing about sitting on the roof, taking photographs from the height, stargazing without his view being obscured by light pollution.
He had told PJ about it, and they’d imagined creating a fort against the protruding roof that lined the section of house facing the road. PJ had been excited to try to experiment with his watercolours, and Phil had sent him a picture of the sprawling hills behind the rows of houses beyond his back garden. He was ecstatic at the idea of painting it.
And everything was completely ruined within one day.
Okay, so maybe there had been some holes in his daydreams anyway. Roofs are pretty unpredictable. You can walk on them, until you can’t. He didn’t know how stable it was, or that it would be able to support the both of them.
Still. It would have been nice to have been able to find out, at least.
Now he knew that it was right in the sightline of some teenage boy, who Phil was nearly 100% sure went to his school.
For some, maybe illogical reason, he was immediately put off. What if this boy saw him lying on the roof of his garage at 1am? What if he saw him building a fort like he was seven years old? He was totally sure he’d be judged.
He was well aware that this was perhaps an overreaction. It wasn’t like those were the most embarrassing things a person could do. Unfortunately, when you’re 15, most people your age seem to think everything is the most embarrassing thing a person could do.
It also wasn’t like Phil was particularly picked on or bullied. Maybe occasionally taken the piss out of, but mostly, keeping to himself had kept him fairly safe from all that.
He thought about where he’d seen this guy around school.
Phil knew who the super awful ones were, and also that his new neighbour wasn’t one of them. Still, he didn’t seem to be doing that badly on the social hierarchy, which meant that if he wasn’t an asshole, some of his friends probably were.
There was no way he would be doing any roof-frolicking while he still cared about being respected. Or, you know, just left alone.
He sat on the floor, just beneath the window, where he knew he couldn’t be seen. He’d already been spotted staring anxiously across the garage. Pretty weird behaviour if you ask anyone. He scanned his new room, his bed and desk were assembled from their respective flat-packs. Shelving sat half-constructed in the corner, next to three boxes of posters.
The room was too bare. It didn’t feel right.
Maybe he didn’t want this one anyway. Or maybe he could just hang on a year, until most of the idiots had left his school, and then he could fort-build and cloudgaze to his heart’s content.
He couldn’t wait until all of these things sounded ridiculous to worry about. He couldn’t wait until he was done with GCSEs and being subjected to whatever bullshit all the kids that were cooler than him gossiped about. To go to school and know for sure that no-one would throw anything at him, and that he didn’t have to do maths.
Only a year. Though part of him wanted it to be summer forever, he wanted to be back at school. The sooner he was back at school, the sooner he finished and started A-Levels and university and started living properly. He just had to hang on until then.
He hauled himself to his feet and looked out of the window again.
The boy was leant back in his chair, eyes fixated above him, hair flopped over his face, seemingly fidgeting with his hands.
Just a year.