'There isn't a ****ing Inter-Dimensional Vortex behind every piece of furniture!' Dan informed the camera. His viewers would see it later. He'd been 'dropping things behind things' for years and later finding stuff when he or Phil decided to rearrange the furniture. He knew for a fact that there weren't hidden portals laced through his flat. Though that still didn't quite explain the sock goblins.

Oh. He didn't know how wrong he was.

The New Year was in full-swing. It was that time when people started losing motivation to actually achieve their resolutions and the gym's car park's crowd started to dwindle (for example).

On what should have been an uneventful morning, Dan woke up at about ten-fifteen to the very loud CLANG of Phil dropping a saucepan in the kitchen. He instantly planned on going back to sleep in his cocoon of warmth, but something in the back of his mind—that was probably just Phil's grunt of pain indicating the pan had landed on his toe—told him it was time to get up. Maybe it was that vision of himself demanding to know if he was a wuss. Which he wasn't.

With a moan of complaint, he rolled off his mattress and crashed ungracefully to the floor. Disentangling himself from the sheets and covers, he got up and picked out some clothes, having showered the night before after somehow ending up covered in glue. Black jeans coupled with the stupid belt that never worked, mismatched socks, Converse the same color as his trousers, and one of his many black T-shirts—he didn't quite get a good look at it because he wasn't paying attention but he was pretty sure it was the one with stars near the collar.

'Good morning,' Phil greeted as Dan staggered into the kitchen with one eye closed against the light and rubbing the other one where it was still heavy with sleep.

'Whoever says the morning is "good" should be forced to prove it,' he grumbled.

Phil rolled his eyes. 'Sounds like someone didn't sleep very well,' he remarked sarcastically, putting the saucepan back on the rack and rummaging through the cupboards for cereal, mugs, spoons and bowls.

Dan nodded. 'Sounds about right.'

'Why didn't you sleep well?' There was more humour than concern in Phil's voice.

'Really weird dream,' Dan replied, shaking his head to try and knock some normality back into it. Phil's eyebrows lifted a bit higher.

'What was it about?' he asked.

'It was one of those nights where I was asleep and dreaming, but also awake and thinking. So it mostly consisted of Doctor Who, Pokémon, a band concert, Delia Smith doing the Macarena, and a lot of other celebrities doing bizarre things. Also me riding a llama through Manchester,' Dan answered, groggily pouring cereal into his bowl. Phil was quite visibly trying not to snicker. 'Go ahead and laugh. It really sounds kinda funny when you say it like that.'

'Yeah, it does,' Phil agreed with a smirk.

Dan leaned his head back to stretch his neck. Several of the vertebrae popped. It felt pretty good. 'I don't like dreams like that. I don't feel rested at all,' he complained, stumbling—carefully—out of the kitchen and into the lounge with his cereal and mug (that he didn't realize was empty because he was so tired) in his hands. Phil didn't tell his flatmate that the mug was empty because he wanted to see Dan's reaction when he took a swallow and found out that he forgot to fill it. That would be amusing. Maybe he'd get out his phone to film it when Dan wasn't looking…

The TV was already playing the World News, but with a tired grunt Dan bumped the remote with his elbow and switched it to the DVD input. 'What's in?' he asked, pressing play. The Lord of the Rings theme started drifting quietly from the speakers as Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring popped up. 'Oh, lovely!'

As soon as Dan finished his cereal he'd fallen asleep again in his sofa crease with the bowl on his lap—the hobbits hadn't even gotten to Rivendell yet. Phil snorted and wondered if he should doodle on Dan's face with a felt tip and post a picture on Twitter. He eventually decided against it after a good five minutes of debating and went off to the kitchen to clean up his breakfast. And to be a good friend, he took Dan's bowl with him (partially because if Dan moved in his sleep he'd knock the bowl off his lap and spill residual milk all over the sofa).

At around eleven-twenty-five Dan woke himself up. Shaking his head again, he reached for his mug and lifted it to his face. Tilting it back, his waiting mouth was greeted with… nothing. 'Did I forget to fill my mug?' he demanded.

Phil started laughing from in front of the fireplace. 'You were really tired,' was all he said.

Dan sighed. 'Right. Well now that I've suffered that early disappointment, I'm going to go tidy my room because there are shirts everywhere, and then I'm going to do… something. Probably browse Tumblr or something.'

When he reached his room, he started to put his T-shirts back in his wardrobe—not as nicely as he could have done, but he was still pretty fatigued—when he caught sight of a random miscellaneous plastic object near the headboard of his bed. Still feeling exhausted, he picked it up and dropped it behind the bedside cabinet with a sigh instead of putting it in his drawer of miscellaneous crap.

'Oi!' a voice exclaimed after a moment.

Dan about jumped out of his skin. 'What the—‽' he exclaimed loudly, pulling the cabinet away from the wall with an extremely lost expression on his face.

'You okay?' Phil asked, poking his head around the door.

Dan was completely frozen in both shock and utter confusion. He had good reason to be.

Where there was usually a normal bit of wall, a purple vortex was spinning, glittering with stars like the cheesy wallpaper pictures they used in their videos. Dan stared at it with the violet reflecting on his dark brown eyes. Phil came a little farther into the room to better examine what had his friend so completely perplexed.

Before Phil could do anything, Dan pitched forward—seemingly involuntarily—and went down the vortex tube. 'Pppppppphhhhhhhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiilllllllllllll!' his voice shouted. 'What the—' Some other noise drowned out whatever word came next. '—is going on‽'

As much as Phil didn't want to get closer to the freaking magic thing on Dan's bedroom wall, Dan was his best friend and he owed it to him to take a peek. He took a few tentative steps…

And promptly tripped on the Pikachu Dan had left lying on the floor.

'Great,' he mumbled.

His head was in the vortex.

Before he could try and scramble away, he was spinning down a tube with weird lights and purple colours headfirst. He could feel his stomach churn as he got dizzy. This was definitely not the start to the day he was hoping for. What in the name of Delia Smith was happening‽

End Note: I've had this in my head for a long time. Because I'm pretty sure there actually is a portal behind every piece of furniture, because if I drop something behind something else, it disappears forever.

This is the prologue so it's in third-person, but the rest of the story will be in first-person.

Hope y'all liked the references. I'm American, but I'm trying to make it sound as British as possible. Also, being American, the word "bloody" isn't vulgar (doesn't really mean anything actually), but I know it is in Britain, so this is rated T for uses of it in later chapters.

Thanks for reading!

~Cass

PS: I know in British books they use 'this kind' of quotation marks for dialogue instead of "this kind," so for the chapters from the British POV (it switches off - fair warning) it will be 'this kind' but for the American chapters it will be "this kind." Just thought I'd mention so people don't get too confused. Love you all!