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Todd was straddling the space between alert and asleep that night, alone in he and Neil’s dormitory. He had been halfheartedly trying to keep himself up, long anticipating a door creak or a window slide, something to signal his roommate was home. But there was nothing. The Welton grounds were silent; it was all business as usual.
Ever since the scene at Henley Hall Mr. Perry caused, Todd had been twisting with frustration, tossing with restlessness. He was alight with himself, overturning the same thought against the cogs in his brain. Why hadn’t he done something? Why had he let Neil get dragged off like that? If his father had punished him, Todd didn’t know if he could forgive himself. It almost felt as if he were complicit in the most heinous of crimes. God damn it.
Rain pattered down hard against the roof, as Todd lay unsatisfyingly awake. Not only was he plagued by the question of Neil’s whereabouts, he begrudgingly found himself wondering if he’d ever come back. Wondering why he wasn’t able to drift off without his roommate’s calm, paced breathing, sound asleep on the other side of the room. And then wanting to smack himself for making it out to be a bigger deal than it was.
With nothing but the empty silence to carry him off to sleep, he turned over for what must have been the hundredth time and shut his eyes.
But the endeavor of sleep didn’t seem to feel like entertaining Todd Anderson that night. There was a rhythmic rap at the window just then that gave Todd such a start he almost fell off of his bed. Tap tap tap.
He straightened himself up, back against the wall, and peered over the radiator at the drawn curtains. He thought he was hearing things.
The knocking came again. Three times in quick succession. Tap tap tap.
“No way,” Todd murmured under his breath, mouth slightly ajar. He pushed himself off of his bed and, after a moment’s hesitation, yanked back the curtains. The grinning face of his roommate came into view, who waved at him childishly from behind the glass. He looked almost Cheshire-like. Considering this, Todd managed a disbelieving half-smile as he slid open the window.
“Neil,” he simply said, as if attempting to articulate his presence into existence, “you’re here.”
“Did you miss me?” Neil’s perfect smile grew wider as he hoisted himself up onto the windowpane.
“I—What, why are you here?” Todd was stuttering again. How often he tripped over his words was truly abominable.
Neil reached out to find his arm, signalling to his roommate to help him through the slippery window. His clothing was drenched and his hair a mess.
Todd offered his hand, which Neil took, now able to slide through and land on solid ground. He, noticeably, was stifling a laugh.
“I live here, Todd.”
To that, Todd was the one trying and failing to bite back a laugh now. “Well, yes, but...”
“Come on, Todd, be proud of me!” Neil giggled and placed his hands on his roommate’s shoulders, shaking him with excitement, “I made it back here, didn’t I?”
“But I thought your father—“
“—embarrassed me in front of my friends and dragged me home by the ear like a misbehaved child? He most certainly did,” Neil was still grinning wide; his face so ablaze with exhilaration, it almost seemed that being this near him could very much expose one to his level of energy. It felt quite dangerous.
“But I thought you—“
“—successfully carried out a daring escape from the home of one Thomas Perry?” Neil whirled around, treading water as the center of their dingy little dorm became his stage, “I most certainly did!”
Todd was trying to process all of this, but someone like him could only handle so many emotions at once. And the pure relief and elation he felt at Neil being back, being safe; spinning and laughing and getting rainwater everywhere; was a feeling strong enough to reduce anything else he may have been feeling prior, to nothing but ashes.
He wanted to dance on those ashes.
Even still, even despite everything, Todd remained anxious about Neil’s father. But he didn’t want to ruin this. Unfortunately, for once, his lips decided to work faster than his brain, “Will he allow you to stay at Welton?”
Neil seemed to stop short and freeze, sending an awful feeling shooting up through Todd’s body. He’d upset him. Of course.
Before he could take what he said back or internally berate himself, Neil slowly sat down on the edge of Todd’s bed. He didn’t seem mad, but Todd had never been skilled in the art of reading people, and Neil Perry was certainly no exception.
“Let me have this, okay?” he said, substituting his usual radiant grin for a solemn, soft smile, “I’ll tell you everything when time suits it. Just let me have tonight.”
“Okay,” Todd nodded; a whispered word. For some reason, Neil saying that managed to calm him down like nothing else. His smile was still there, too, “We can... we can do that.”
Carefully, Todd sat down too, leaving a generous amount of space between them; or at least, trying to. Outside, the storm was worsening, rain dripping through the window they had forgotten to shut.
Against the rain, wind seemed to pick up as well, sweeping the collection of papers on Neil’s desk and sending them into a frenzy.
Instead of answering, Neil simply reached out and ruffled Todd’s bedhead. He no longer looked solemn—moreso dorky, really. It was sort of endearing. Todd allowed himself an extra few seconds before averting his eyes, unable to properly hide a smile.
Then reality hit him, and he remembered he was supposed to be the practical one in their friendship, “Neil, you’re—you’re drenched.”
Neil suddenly paused and looked down at his soaked attire, making a face that seemed to say “I hadn’t even noticed”, without actually saying it.
“Oh. That I am.”
“That you are,” Todd managed, having to cover his mouth to keep from breaking out in laughter, “And you’re dripping on my bed.”
“Let me go fix that.”
Grinning again, ear to ear. He was honestly a nuisance.
“You do that,”
Neil stalked over to his wardrobe, sifting through the drawers for a fresh set of nightclothes. Behind him, Todd reached under his bed and pulled out a spare towel, crouching down and mopping up the puddle Neil had carried in with him. It wasn’t a perfect job, but it was the best he could do, aided only by the scarce moonlight streaming into the room.
Todd pushed himself to his feet and went over to the window, shutting it, but not completely. Hastily, he wiped off the sill, which looked as if it had been hit by a sea tide.
On the other side of the room, Neil was getting dressed, marked by the plop his wet clothes made as they hit the floor, which made him laugh. Todd chuckled silently and shook his head. Such a kid sometimes.
A minute or two passed before he spoke again, “Decent, Perry?”
Neil snickered, “Affirmative, Anderson. What’s this now?” He leaned down and scooped a piece of paper up off the floor, which had been blown in his direction by the wind. Todd turned around, catching a glimpse of whatever it was that Neil had in his hands. And almost in perfect sync with a thunderclap outside, Todd’s heart fell to his stomach when he realized it had been the very same paper from atop his nightstand.
“What?” A sudden frozen feeling encapsulated Todd. He raced over to Neil and tried to pry the paper from his hands, who retaliated by whirling around, keeping it out of his reach, “Neil, wait—“
“We were like heroes—Verse!—heroes in a world,” Neil gasped, twisting his body to ensure Todd couldn’t snatch the notebook paper from him, “heroes in a world with far too many heroes”—“Give it back to me!”—“You wrote another poem and didn’t tell me?” Ignoring the frantic interjections of his roommate, Neil twirled, holding the poem high above his head, “Whitman strikes again!”
“Neil—Neil, stop! Why ar—why do you always do this?” Todd stumbled over his words, finally grabbing hold of the paper and crumpling it into a ball. Neil had been laughing, but now he was frowning at Todd, who felt very seen.
“I don’t know, Todd, why do you always destroy everything I love?” His tone was flat, unimpressed.
Hastily, and with careless fingers, Todd shoved the poem into the pocket of his shorts, “Stop being ridiculous...”
“I’ll think about it,” Neil said, obviously not going to think about it. Todd let out an aggravated sigh and turned to face the window, his back to Neil, “Meanwhile, you need to learn to stop scrapping the entire poem because you don’t like how the first stanza came out,” It was raining harder.
“That’s cute, Neil, now you want to be my father?” Todd blurted out suddenly, not knowing why, or even how. He was angry. Trembling with it from head to toe. Not with Neil; with himself; Neil just happened to be on the receiving end of his pent-up anger.
Neil, who always cared too much. Neil, who looked entirely out of words, “You know that’s not what I’m trying to d—“
The question pushed through and out of Todd before he could silence it, “God, can’t you just—can’t you just leave me alone?”
It hung thickly, with all the intensity of a poisonous gas that had been released into the air. Todd wished he could swallow the words back down, but that wasn’t something he could say out loud.
“No,” Neil said simply, unsmiling.
“Why?”
“I don’t want to.”
Todd scoffed, “How profound...”
The only sound Todd could clearly hear was his own, slow breathing, an adjunct to the pouring rain outside.
“Plus, the process of applying for a new roommate is quite tedious...” There were remnants of a smile in his tone. Todd groaned but didn’t face him.
“It’s—Neil, it’s not the time for jokes.”
“Not a joke,” he insisted, stepping around Todd and into his line of sight, blocking the window. When he saw the look on his face, he added quietly, “Okay, half a joke. But really. I doubt any candidate they could throw at me would be nearly as enjoyable as you.”
Todd looked up, staring at him. His gaze carried a considerable level of skepticism, “...Enjoyable?”
“Of course,” he smiled, “Ever since the first time we made eye contact, Todd, I could tell that...”
Todd could feel heat rise to his face as Neil suddenly leaned in close, lips barely inches from his ear.
“You needed therapy,”
Todd may have frowned then, but he would have been lying if he said he easily contained his laugh, “Wow, Neil. Very funny.”
Neil, who was cracking up, seemed to agree, “Thanks. I came up with it on the way over here,” his voice shook with amusement.
“Anyway, sorry, Todd,” The grin was back. Perhaps Neil Perry was too giddy for his own good, at times, “It’s going to be a lot harder to get rid of me than you had probably originally thought.”
“Hmm.”
A brief yet pregnant silence followed, wherein Todd tried his best to look at everything in the room not named Neil.
“But why do you think I came back here in the first place?” Neil asked him suddenly, his tone dumbfounded. And yet, he was still smiling at him, “To please my father?”
That stopped Todd’s thoughts in their tracks. Oh. They were still on that subject.
He knew Neil wasn’t the kind of person to run away from home in the middle of the night, embracing reckless thinking and risking a beating or expulsion. He seldom disobeyed his father; at least, to his face.
Todd turned to return Neil’s gaze, exasperated. “I- I don’t know.”
“Todd, I came back to this shithole because of you.”
Oh. Oh.
Of all the answers his wretched, over-assuming brain could have raised to fit this situation, the answer Neil actually provided was definitely not on that list.
“...Oh,” Todd mouthed, mirroring his thoughts. He felt suddenly knee-deep in reality. The waters were murky and he was terrified in the best way possible.
“Is that okay?”
Todd nodded, slowly, testing the waters, “It’s—yeah.”
Neil smiled; that pearly white little parting of the lips that Todd swore could wake the sun from a thousand-year slumber.
He reached a hand out, brushing a stray piece of hair away from Todd’s eyes. Todd thought his heart might dislodge itself from his coronary arteries with how quickly it was beating. His mind felt clouded in a thick black smog, but still, he fought to ground himself in the here and now.
“You really do have nice eyes,” Neil spoke quietly, as if he were thinking aloud.
“Y...Yeah?” Todd repeated, because it was apparently the only word available to him.
“Yeah. I mean, Charlie had mentioned it before...” Neil said, pausing to push more of Todd’s hair out of his frame of vision, “...but I never really noticed until now.”
Todd didn’t know what embarrassed him more. The fact that Neil Perry thought his eyes were nice, or the fact that Charlie Dalton was the one who said it first.
The silence swelled, punctuated only by the continuous stream of rain outside. Todd was just thinking it could be nice to stay locked in this moment forever, when Neil suddenly exclaimed “Ha!” and whipped around triumphantly.
A cold chill ran its course through Todd’s body—from his throat to his ankles—as he shoved his hands in his pockets and found no wad of paper there. Which was, of course, because it was now unrolled and sitting in Neil’s hand.
“Neil, what are you—“ Todd was immediately silenced by a finger to his lips, “Shhhh! Let me have this,”
Todd turned a shade of red so bright he was almost positive it was visible, even in the moonlight. But all the same, he kept his hands glued to his sides and simply watched as intent brown eyes scanned his poetry.
When he finished, Neil looked up and saw Todd on his bed with his head down. He was sitting with his back against the wall and knees up to his chest.
Slowly, Neil began walking toward his roommate. The only thought in his mind, a mesmerized that was beautiful.
“Hey.”
Todd looked up. He probably hated it, he thought.
“Hi.”
“Mr. Keating was right,” Neil said, just above a whisper; slowly lowering himself on the edge of Todd’s bed. He set the paper down—it was a collective of chicken scratched, crossed out lines.
“There really is a poet in you yet.”
He looked solemn again. Honest. Sincere. Todd stared at him in awe, not realizing he was already next to him; the both of them now sat against the paint-chipped wall.
“...Neil?”
“Yeah?”
Todd felt terribly motion sick.
“Could—could you kiss me?”
It sounded even worse now that it was out of his head, “What?” Neil asked, but his smile remained.
“If, um... is that o—“ Todd began to say, but Neil‘s lips happened to already be on his, and the rest of his sentence dissolved into the dusty air surrounding them.
It was like an electroconvulsive shock. Todd felt as if voltages were buzzing underneath his skin, finally awakened for the first time in his life. One of Neil’s hands was affectionately cupping his cheek, the other against the sheets between them, keeping himself propped up.
Against the kiss, Todd inhaled sharply. He didn’t know what to do with his hands. He didn’t have enough metaphors at his disposal to describe just how perfect this was. Gingerly, he raised a shaking hand to Neil’s head, letting his hair slip through his fingers.
When they finally pulled away a few seconds later, Todd felt like he’d just come up from underwater. Neil was grinning at him like a madman, a grin that only widened when Todd gave into his racing heart and kicked any rational thought aside. He pushed Neil down against his pillows and kissed him again, and again, and again. Thunder echoed high in the sky outside, and Neil laughed into each and every kiss.
The two of them laid there for a long while, holding each other’s faces in their hands, pretending like they were so much more significant than they actually were. The rain never let up that night.