Work Text:
It’s hard. Harder than anything to keep his eyes open.
Todd blinks hard on purpose, curls his hand into a fist and digs his roughed-up, chewed-to-bits nails into his palm. All he gets for his trouble is perfect crescent moons pressed down into the skin and it doesn’t get any easier to keep his eyes open.
The candles burn soft in the dorm room, flickering nervously in the drafts. He leans back against the wall, settling into the corner. He looks down at his notebook without seeing it, the tousled blankets soft underneath him. Sleepiness settles over him like a warm, comforting, suffocating blanket. His vision fuzzes and his skin tingles and a gentle numbness permeates like the chill of a frost.
He tries to muffle a yawn and fails; his eyes are still so, so heavy. The scrawled verse on the notebook in his lap blurs into a smear of meaningless ink before him. Before he knows what he’s doing, his head is tipping to the side ever-so-slowly before coming to rest on Neil’s shoulder.
Every brush with Neil’s skin lights him up like a Christmas tree, dances its way up his arms making the hair stand on end like the legs of a spider tickling its path over him, but now there’s nothing but a sudden dull burgeoning of warmth in his chest. It’s comfortable and easy and it feels like - and it never feels like, not for Todd - like he belongs there.
Neil’s arm wraps around his shoulders and squeezes, gentle, accepting, and Todd’s eyes fall shut slowly, and at last they don’t drift open again.