Chapter Text
The night was cold and bleary, and Todd sat hunched on the edge of his bed, head in his hands, praying.
It wasn’t something he did often. In fact, Todd couldn’t remember the last time he had prayed (probably slumped in a pew beside his parents, gazing up at a figure imbued with waning faith.) But here he was anyway, desperate as a madman and shivering in the winter cold. He hadn’t bothered to shut the window since he was dragged back to his room—their room—by the rest of the Poets, still hysterical and bleary-eyed.
He hadn’t moved since.
At first, the Poets came and went. Charlie and Knox were the first to retrieve him after his…outburst, way out in the snow. Todd didn’t really know how long he was out there, frostbitten and numb, but when he was returned to the warmth of the dorms the sky had lightened and the sun was barely peeking through the clouds.
They had all gathered together, and for a long time, no one wanted to address the elephant in the room. Or, the lack thereof. The Poets’ sniffling and shifting coupled with Todd’s racking sobs every so often made for quite the chorus of misery, however.
Meeks was the first to go, mumbling something through swipes at his nose about meeting his parents for afternoon mass. Pitts followed him, a hand on his shoulder and a look of sympathy and pure sorrow weighing down his features the only goodbye the silent boy offered.
Charlie popped out of the room to grab his blanket and bottles of water, and then the four of them sat, cried, hydrated, then cried again.
Todd felt so helpless. It was all he could do to just cry. Silent tears violently racked his body, and no amount of reassuring pats on the back from Knox or seemingly infinite tissues offered by Cameron could calm him down. He had tried to bottle it all up like he always had, shove his feelings so deep down they couldn’t get a chance to hurt him. And Todd knew they would hurt. Badly.
But nothing seemed to work. Every time Todd would try to compose himself, at least try to pretend he wasn’t feeling every goddamn feeling known to man they would surge back to the surface again every time he looked up and oh god it was all so overwhelming, and, and—
And he’d look up and see Neil’s shining face, like the lingering impression of the sun after you closed your eyes. He’d imagine the boy sitting on his bed, script in hand, animated so freely it ached Todd’s chest like someone was trying to wring it dry, squeeze every last teardrop out of him just for the fun of it.
Charlie, after providing blankets that did little to block out the cold emanating from the still-cracked window, just stared blankly at the opposite side of the room, unmoving from his spot propped up against the wall on Todd’s bed.
Nobody dared to cross onto Neil’s side. To even close the window. To Todd, it would have been like breaking a sort of seal, ruining the perfectly preserved life on the other side as if Neil would come back and be mad that they tampered with his things.
If Neil would…
But it was a foolish thought, a stupid, idiotic, wishful thought. His father would tell him it was childish. His mother would look at him with worry. Jefferey would just stare, quiet but speaking volumes with his silence.
And Todd would still cry.
Knox was next to go after Pitts and Meeks. They had struck up a gentle conversation about Neil when Todd agreed he was ready, his tears still miraculously flowing in spite of his exhaustion. Charlie was the most talkative, somehow broken out of his spell of silence by the topic, and spoke about all his fondest memories with Neil. It didn’t make Todd feel any better in the slightest, but he still laughed and cried and sat in silence with each story about his roommate. Knox got up about halfway through Charlie’s retelling of the previous summer, where apparently Neil had convinced him, Charlie, Pitts and Spaz to all raid their fathers’ liquor cabinets and get drunk in the woods. Knox seemed so caught up in laughter that when he must have realized that he would never get wasted with Neil again—that Neil was never coming back—his joy quickly turned to sorrow. He was gone in a blurry blink, out the room, through the hall, down the stairs.
Todd could almost envy him. He had somewhere to escape to, and Todd…
Well, Todd was stuck here. Stuck with the memories and smells and aching, crippling waves of grief that threatened to consume all he was and ever would be.
Cameron left soon after Knox. Whether it was the awkwardness of falling back into incomplete silence, the overwhelming masculine pressure not to cry, or just from the cold alone, Todd would never know. He just stood up after a while as if he had been debating so in his head, gave both boys a pat on the shoulder (though he lingered on Charlie’s for a second longer; Todd tried not to notice), then disappeared out the door.
Charlie cried in earnest then. He hadn’t shed more than a stoic tear here and there for the entire three or four hours they sat in the dorm, but as soon as the rest of the Poets had cleared out, he turned to Todd and cried.
An hour or so later, the boy on his shoulder waned off his tears and settled into a slow, agonizing story.
It was, of course, about Neil.
“You know, Todd, I really liked that guy,” Charlie started off, his tone reminiscent and weakly lighthearted like he was talking about someone long since lost to the past. “Neil and I…we were close, you know? But he never looked at me the way he looked at you.”
Todd opened his mouth but only a wet-sounding hiccup escaped. He tried again. “What—what do you mean?”
Charlie laughed, swaying them lightly, but the noise was obviously void of mirth. “Man, c’mon. You know exactly what I mean. Neil was crazy about you from the start.”
Todd shifted, frowning severely. Charlie’s tone took a dive toward bitterness at the end. “Now’s not a great time to tease me, Charlie. If—if it’ll make you feel better, you can make fun a-all you want later. Just not…not now.”
Charlie elbowed him, and Todd gave an uncomfortable grunt, looking away. “No, that’s not what I’m saying at all, Todd. I’m not making fun of you, I’d never. I just…you had to have seen it, right?”
Neil had always had the ability to look into his soul and coax out the real Todd. Especially in the cave, where they were transformed from parentally-controlled teens to remarkable, liberated young men. Neil had always read his poems aloud for the whole group to hear, while Todd mostly just watched from a distance, content but silently yearning for the warmth of that brilliant spotlight to turn to him again. He had never been keen for attention, but when Neil was on stage—in that prominence—to Todd, nothing seemed impossible.
And he was right.
“I…I saw Neil. He was the only thing I could–could look at. Nothing else ma-mattered when he was around.”
Charlie hummed, taking Todd’s raw confession for what it was. “I felt the same way. He was so…captivating, in the way that if you dared to look away, even for a second, you’d miss something spectacular. But you,” Charlie paused, tapping Todd’s shoulder for emphasis. “You and him were onto somethin’ special.”
The worst part? Todd already knew that. Had known from the moment Keating took his hands off his eyes and it was like seeing anew. Neil’s bright smiling face looking at him in awe. Every eye in that room was trained on Todd, but Neil’s? It was completely different. Neil looked at him like he was something rare, like he had discovered something that had been right under his nose.
Todd had just been too much of a coward to ever acknowledge it.
“Neil seemed like he was drifting away until you arrived. He’d always be cowed by his father; everything he liked that that awful man didn’t would be thrown out the window, trashed, shredded, whatever. It made him so distant, so…sad. If I’m being honest, Todd, I was jealous of you for a long time for being the one to pull him back into our orbit. Everything I would try would just…end up failing.”
To Todd, meeting Neil had been a random occurrence that had irrefutably changed the course of his life. To Charlie, though, Neil must have been a lifeline that was quickly fading away. Welton was not built for friendships to survive, and especially not the kind of friendships that were more than just that. So, it stood to reason that Charlie would have done anything to get Neil back. He could only imagine how the guy felt now.
“Neil used to be so…happy. God, sometimes it was insufferable how positive he was all the time.”
A chill breeze blew into the room, and both boys shuddered. Todd bit back another sob, sucking a quick breath through his teeth that were clenched down on his lower lip. He could feel the dried saliva flake off, but he couldn’t even muster the energy to swipe it away with his thumb.
“I’m really gonna miss him,” Charlie choked out after a long, contemplative pause. Todd could only nod.
“It was his father, Charlie…He wouldn’t have done it, not when he–”
“No, Todd, don’t think like that. You can’t think like that. It’s not good for you. It’s not right.”
“C’mon, Charlie!” Todd hiccupped, revitalized with a sudden burst of energy. “You can’t seriously believe–”
“It’s over with, Todd, it’s done. There’s nothing you or I or any of the other Poets can do now. Doesn’t matter who done it or how or why or, or…whatever. There’s nothing we can do…”
Charlie looked at him then, really looked into his eyes. Todd stared back. Couldn’t make out what he saw in those dole-dark pits.
Todd sniffled. Nodded, if only to satisfy Charlie for the time. It didn’t seem to work, but Charlie must have been too tired and strung out to push it any further.
Charlie looked out the window for a long moment. Todd stared at Neil’s empty bed. Soft, cold light highlighted the rumples and peaks and divots in his friend’s blankets, making it look like a raging, stormy sea. Untouchable. Dangerous to conquer.
Soon after, Charlie finally succumbed to his emotions and had to leave the room. His excuse—if Todd could call it that—was that poor Cameron was probably a mess without him. It didn’t go unnoticed to Todd that the two of them, Charlie and Cameron, had been growing close in the way that Neil and himself had been getting on to. It was possibly the only respite in the sea of heartache that Todd could recognise.
So, there he sat, perched on the edge of his rickety, squeaky bed, head in his hands like a sinner on Sunday. Had been for hours. It was dark outside, snowfall illuminated by scarce lamplight. He could tell someone was talking outside his window, but Todd could hardly hear it through the static buzz in his ears.
He hadn’t been thinking of many things for a while, his mind set on one thing only. It was irrational, completely unlike him, but wasn’t that what people did while enduring a crisis? Was it not the instinct of man to preserve oneself by changing in the moment?
It was worth a shot, at least. Todd took a shallow breath, his lungs filling in short, shaky bursts.
“N–”
No, no no no. This is stupid, it’s dumb, you’re so stupid, Todd–
“Neil…?”
God, why did he have to be so idiotic?
Todd shook his head, dispelling those thoughts. He was alone, there was no one peering in on his solitarity. It didn’t matter if it was stupid, he could allow himself to try and find some kind of peace.
The silence was loud in his small room. It felt like it was condensing, shrinking itself like a pressurized chamber, building and building in tension, waiting to just explode into noise. Todd’s heart began to pound and pound, faster and faster, waiting and waiting for something.
The window creaked when a long, cold gust of winter wind blew through it. Todd hiccupped in surprise, whipping his head to look.
Nothing.
Of course. Todd hung his head, exhaling in a long, loud, grief-filled moan. His eyes—hell, his whole body—was heavy with exhaustion. But the tears kept coming.
And the wind did, too. But Todd didn’t close the window.
A glimpse through an interstice caught,
Of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a bar-room around the stove late of a winter night, and I unremark’d seated in a corner,
Of a youth who loves me and whom I love, silently approaching and seating himself near, that he may hold me by the hand,
A long while amid the noises of coming and going, of drinking and oath and smutty jest,
There we two, content, happy in being together, speaking little, perhaps not a word.