Not On Fire (Phan AU)

01 | the first day

Dan wakes up to the shrieking sound of his alarm clock and rolls over in his bed to cover his head with a pillow. If there is one day that he hates just as much as the first day back to school after summer break, it's the first day back to school after Christmas break. In both cases, he gets used to staying up all night on Tumblr and sleeping all day long with the occasional fire sometime after dark. And he absolutely hates waking up earlier than ten o'clock when he usually waits until noon to roll out of bed.

His alarm clock is unfortunately placed on his desk which is too far away from his bed for him to lean over and hit snooze, so he listens to the ringing as the pillow is unsuccessful in blocking out the horrific noise.

Soon, the sound of loud knocking on his door mixes in with the ringing and he huffs in protest when he hears his mom say, "You need to get up or you'll be late for school."

Most of Dan's motivation to do well in school flew out the window the same day that he decided setting fires was a great pastime. Sure, he wants to go to a college far from here and to do so he needs good grades and other outstanding qualities. Well, the only one he's got covered is the good grades part. He doesn't do any after school activities—unless you count arson as one and something tells him most people don't—and he doesn't volunteer anywhere. He doesn't even have a good attendance record, for God's sake, and he definitely doesn't feel like starting one today.

"I don't care," he groans into his pillow, his voice muffled because of it. "I don't want to go to school."

His mom throws open his door, the knob hitting the wall loudly, and marches over to what he assumes is his alarm clock as seconds later, the sound of its insistent ringing is gone. He sighs, appreciating the silence of the room for a few seconds before his comforter is rudely ripped off of his body, the pillow following suit. He rolls over in his bed to look at his mom, who has an angry expression on her face and doesn't look impressed in the least bit.

"Dan, you have this semester left and then you can be done with school for all I care, but please, for the love of god, get out of bed and get ready. I don't want to be late to work," she says, crossing her arms over her chest.

He looks at her, blinking lazily, barely processing the words that she's saying. "You don't have to be late to work; I don't need you to take me to school."

One of the things that he hates about his parents is that they refuse to get him a car. For some reason that he totally doesn't understand, they don't think he's responsible enough to own one and they're not even willing to let him borrow one of their cars from time to time to drive himself to school. This means that even though he's a senior with a driver's license he's still stuck being driven to school by his mom. This also means that he has to walk to whatever place he wants to burn.

"Yes, you do. I don't trust you to get to school if I don't," she says angrily. "Hell, I don't even trust you to get to school when I bring you myself."

Another thing about his parents is that they don't trust him with anything. They used to be too trusting and he took advantage of that trust and he took advantage of the fact that they would do anything to connect with them, but once they caught on to what he was doing, it was game over. Their relationship hasn't been the same since. They still care too much about his social life and his school career, but they aren't willing to do anything to prove this to him. If they were, he'd probably have a car.

To be honest, they were considering buying him a car for his seventeenth birthday, but that was also around the time when they were catching onto how he was taking advantage of them, so he never did get the car.