A/N: hey guys!! i get christmas break real soon, and then it's back to WRITING YES. i've been super busy, my choir's been performing in DC at the White House and the National Gallery and we've been travelling and i've had projects and concerts and UGH IM DONE
this story isn't really an AU but neither Dan nor Phil are youtubers, just ordinary ppl. word count is 776, no swearing, minor mentions of smut, Dan and Phil are caught in one of the largest and hottest heatwaves in London in all of history. Dan would've wanted the sweltering summer to go by in a snap, if it wasn't for Phil's company.
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Summer was never this hot, but many can recall heat rising up into the cool parlors of flats a couple stories high off the streets, from pavement boiling below. Citizens attacked by the heat could be found throwing open their windows, hoping to cure the sick summer sweat that poured down everyone's back. Salt, from dripping pores... ice cold cherry popsicles that dripped down children's fingers, and ice creams that melted before you'd even had a lick. Pink bubblegum that fried stuck to the bottoms of your shoes from the sizzling sun.
Dan Howell was so bored in this sweltering heat. He couldn't remember a time London had had a heatwave this bad. Englishmen weren't used to the sun's rays beating down on them until long into the night, Dan knew. No one had ever seen anything as hot as this summer's terrible heatwave.
Some nights he couldn't fall asleep because the heat was a nagging monster at his tired body, penetrated with heat, so he'd wind up stuffing his head in the ice box until he fell asleep.
Nothing was worse than getting out of the shower. Facing another day without an ice cold shower was miserable... and then the cold water supply almost ran out...
Children weren't even allowed to be out in the streets to play. It was disastrous.
Without a doubt it was one of Dan's worst summers in history. It would have been the worst, if it wasn't for Phil Lester.
Phil Lester was staying next door to Dan's flat. Dan didn't know Old Mrs. Lester very well, but she was kin to Phil, hearing him call her "Granny" and turning on her soaps. Phil told Dan later on that he had always been quite fearful of his grandmother, 89, dying from heatstroke. It could happen. In this weather, anything seemed to be possible.
In the late nights, watching orange and purple sunsets drip from the sky and hang up stars and moons, Dan found Phil on his balcony, attempting to play taps and jazz from an old brass trumpet. There was a cold drink in his hand, and it wasn't like any Pepsi Dan had seen before. "Hey, Lester," Dan said, greeting the lanky boy, perched on his balcony.
Phil Lester was tall and pale and everything Dan thought was beautiful... and he didn't find many things beautiful. Phil was never one to boast, and instead it sounded like birdsong each time he opened his mouth to tell a tale.
The hot summer nights changed him. In the day he was indoors, fanning himself with The New York Times or The Telegraph, whichever Dan had laying around, and when he wasn't assisting his grandmother, took lazy catnaps in Dan's lap. Dan didn't mind. He played with Phil's midnight-black hair until he himself fell asleep, which was seemingly hard to do.
Funniest thing was, Dan found Phil in his flat more and more that summer. Dan originally would've wanted September to come in a heartbeat, but he never wanted the summer to end, as he found Phil, pressing kisses to his fingertips and talking about dreamy things that only sounded good in the hot daytimes.
He would rest his chin in the crook of Phil's neck, screaming out "I Love You"s as Phil made sweet love to Dan, in the nights when sirens blared and there was no rest. And Dan stargazed upon plastic stars he had plastered to his ceiling years ago when he moved in, but never paid any mind to, until they were the background to Phil's flushed foreground. Phil was undone in front of Dan, and was never as beautiful as such a time. Not even when the sun shone on his face, and Phil glowed. Phil had an even brighter glow to him now, when the moon was out, and he and Dan were kissing and touching and holding and moaning into the summer sunrise.
The heatwave came to an end, as all things do. And finally, to Dan's dismay, September was right at his door, knocking. The curtains no longer blew in with the thick breeze. No longer did Phil play taps for Dan on his balcony of five stories, or pepper Dan's stomach with kisses in the nights. Phil was there, in Dan's flat, frowning. It wasn't until Phil walked over to Dan to wipe his face that he realized he was crying.
Dan remembers the London Heatwave. He remembers the impatience he found growing large inside him at two in the afternoon, but Phil calming him down and serving them both some beer. He remembers the ice creams and the daydreams and the catnaps and how Phil tastes sweet and he can't forget.
The memories hang as heavy as the air did back in June at the beginning. Dan Howell is probably the only person who dealt with the heatwave who would give anything to relive it all again.
