Not On Fire (Phan AU)

05 | an intervention

                He's partially right. Sitting at his desk is none other than Louise, and Louise is definitely capable of staging an intervention by herself. She turns to look at him with her signature disappointment present on her face.

                "Where do you sneak off to all the time?" she asks. "Your parents were worried sick when I got here, going on and on about how you disappeared after dinner. You can't keep doing that, you know."

                "Nowhere," Dan lies. "I was just walking around the block?"

                "For a few hours?"

                "I wanted to clear my mind."

                "In this weather?"

                "I wore a coat, so I wasn't even that cold."

                "Whatever," Louise says, sighing. "We'll talk about this later, but I thought we were going to have a sleepover today."

                The thing about Dan's parents is that they're perfectly fine with Louise staying the night and sleeping in his bed. Part of this is because they know there's nothing going on between the two of them, but Dan's always wondered if part of it is because they want them to get together. Or, at the very least, they don't want them to stop being friends, so allowing Dan to hang out with Louise is there way of making sure they keep in touch.

                Dan had completely forgotten about the sleepover, which isn't an uncommon thing in the least bit. In fact, it happens all the time. It's honestly a miracle Louise puts up with him, but either way, she constantly has to remind him that they're supposed to hang out or he'll forget all about it and it won't happen.

                "I'm sorry for forgetting," Dan says apologetically. "It won't happen again." Dan knows Louise doesn't believe his words, but she doesn't say anything about it.

                Dan walks over to his bed and collapses onto it, staring at his ceiling, with his feet hanging off the end of it.

                "What do you want to do?" Louise says, getting up from the desk and sitting down right beside him. This is a common question at their sleepovers. Sometimes they play video games or watch movies. Other times, and this is probably the most frequently done, they do their own things on their own devices, with Dan browsing Tumblr and Louise doing whatever she does.

                Dan's more in the mood for the latter, but his heart is heavy with guilt from forgetting about Louise coming over, so it's probably better if he goes with a movie marathon as he knows it's Louise's favorite thing to do.

                "We can watch movies."

                "The Perks of Being a Wallflower?"

                "Naturally."

                If there's one movie that Dan loves the most in the world, it has to be The Perks of Being a Wallflower. There's not a lot of fire in it, but it's so raw that Dan doesn't even mind. And it's the movie they almost always watch during their movie marathons. It's one of the things they initially bonded over, so it's become a staple of their relationship.

                "I'll go get it and put it," Louise says, a smile on her face that was not present a few moments ago. "You can go make the popcorn."

                "Okay," Dan says, getting off the bed.

                The light in his parents' room has been turned on since he got home, and when he gets closer to it, he can hear hushed words through the door. He presses his ear up against it, but it doesn't improve anything. It doesn't matter. They're probably talking about him anyway, and he can tell that without listening in.