Turn Back Time - phan au

1

The year is 2017, and danisnotonfire and AmazingPhil have never met.

Dan

Dan cowers in his bedroom, hiding behind his laptop. He refreshes Tumblr. Nothing. He refreshes YouTube. Still nothing. He sighs. Perhaps I should have stayed at university, thinks Dan, what am I doing with my life? Soon enough, he finds himself face down on the tattered carpet of his shabby apartment, questioning the meaning of life.

Somewhere in the distance, a siren blares, and Dan jumps up, startled. He brushes himself off, closing the lid of the laptop. He wanders over to the bathroom, staring at his blank expression and messy hair. He grabs a comb and battles with the unwanted curls, but his hair doesn't seem to want to obey him. Dan gives up, and walks into the kitchen, grabbing some burnt toast from earlier and picking at it, avoiding the black patches, and sits on his sagging sofa, before switching on the TV.

The news headlines scream at him, tearing his soul, making him long for something he'd never had - fame. Flashing images of the YouTube's most popular celebrity: Phil Lester. His striking blue eyes and well-styled hair made Dan glow with envy.

"PHIL LESTER HITS 1,000,000,000 SUBSCRIBERS!"

The headline makes Dan's lip curl in anger and jealously. He'd watched Phil rise to fame, watching his subscribers, likes and watches crawl up into their hundreds, thousand, millions. To say that Dan hadn't had his chance to join in with Phil's videos and become his friend, maybe even meet him face-to-face wouldn't be true: Phil had messaged Dan several times, asking to do a collaboration. Dan never understood why Phil was interested in collaborating with him. From Dan's point of view, Phil was too important and popular to like someone as unpopular as himself. So he had ignored Phil's messages, and instead made his own videos, alone. He was very alone.

Looking at other people's smiling faces, other people's happiness, other people's success - it was too much for Dan. He flicked through the channels on the television. Cooking channel - nope, too productive. Dan wasn't in the mood for doing something productive. What's the point, he thinks, It'll just give me something new to fail at. He didn't bother trying to look for anything else to watch. Instead, he yawned, putting what was left of the toast onto the coffee table, and falling into a restless sleep, not bothering to get move from the couch into his bed.

He didn't know it, but someone was watching him from behind the TV. Someone with striking blue eyes and well-styled hair...