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I.
Charlie doubts he would have known about the funeral if it weren't for Stephen. He hasn't spoken to Pitts since he left Welton. Not because he felt any malice toward him, or at least, not especially. Knowing that everyone else had signed Keating's death warrant had made him hate them all for a few days.
Well. All of them except Todd. He felt a lot of things about Todd, but never hatred, oddly enough.
The point is, Charlie probably wouldn't even have known Pitts had gone to Vietnam if it wasn't his old room he was sleeping in at Stephen's house.
He only goes because Stephen asks him to, calls him out of Pitts' room because he can't bring himself to look through the door yet, and Charlie finds him just standing there in the kitchen in his freshly pressed black suit, not a curly hair out of place. He looks perfectly put together, but also like he's falling apart.
Charlie says, "You'll have to lend me a jacket."
*
It doesn't fit quite right, of course, but at least it gives him something to do, he thinks, as he plays with the cuff as the minister drones on about God and Heaven and Duty and other shit Charlie doesn't believe in.
Stephen reads from some of Pitts' favourite poems, and even though at this point he's doing his best not to listen he can't help but catch a few snippets of "Ulysses".
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world
that which we are, we are
to strive, to seek, to find
and not to yield
Words he last heard on Neil's lips.
Fuck you, Meeks, he thinks. Fuck you for dragging up his ghost along with Pittsy's. All of ours, really.
But he feels strangely devoid of bitterness. Maybe it's because he's been reading poetry again, for the first time since high school, and feeling it even more deeply than he used to back then. America when will we end the human war?
Stephen is leaving for Saigon in a month.
Charlie has learned that he doesn't do well alone. Home is not an option. It hasn't even really been home since he was expelled from Welton. But that's not really true, he's been homeless since long before then, when everything he was felt too big to fit in any of the places or relationships that tried to house him. Except for one.
Neil didn't break him. Truth be told he doesn't believe anything could ever truly break him, and maybe as long as he thinks that it never will. But what he does feel is too small for everything, like he's rattling around in boxes, always trying to push up the sleeves of feelings too big for him so he can finally use his hands again.
He's not broken, but he needs somebody.
So he's going to New Haven to live with Knox.
II.
He goes to the theatre because it's beautiful. Because art is better than alcohol, or so he can believe when Knox is there to tell him so on a daily basis.
Before Keating and Neil he couldn't understand why anyone voluntarily went to the theatre. He remembers being dragged along to plays with his folks and his sister, but to him it was only marginally better than being in church. And Charlie had hated church, possibly because it all seemed like even more of an act than the plays.
But between Keating's readings and the only production of A Midsummer Night's Dream he has ever seen and, he is sure, will ever see, Shakespeare became more than just an ancient dead guy who talked funny. And while the words still don't always make sense, he believes now that they're worth trying to understand. Because somewhere in all Bill's thee's and thou's there's truth like he's never found in the Bible's.
He goes to a production of The Comedy of Errors while Knox is holed up in his room studying one afternoon. He wasn't really expecting it to be hilarious, but it is, and he laughs and feels normal. Normal is how he felt that last night. Normal is not, truth be told, a very common feeling for him anymore.
After the production he tries sketching a few of the actors. He's still not great at drawing, but that's okay. He doesn't need to capture beauty with a pencil. He just needs to catch enough of it to remind himself, to be able to take himself back to normal on the days when everything feels wrong.
The women in his sketchbook have no faces. The men are nothing but. He has long stopped thinking about what this says about him.
III.
When he's fourteen he comes back to school with Knox and they find themselves showing Charlie's new roommate around, because Charlie had taken one look at the scrawny kid, with his bright eyes and brighter smile, dark hair that falls into his eyes despite obvious attempts to keep it in line, and felt a need somewhere in his gut that he convinced himself was the urge to be protective, the way he felt about his sister.
But it wasn't really anything like that at all. Not if his myriad attempts to liberate the kid from his rather worrying devotion to the Four Pillars are any indication.
Getting Neil to try a cigarette is hard work. Getting Neil to kiss him is even harder. It takes great patience and weeks of planning, and he doesn't think Neil even understands what's going on until Charlie's pressed up against him, but once he finally gets it, when their lips finally meet, it's... well, it's strange and bit clumsy. It's Charlie's first and also, he suspects, Neil's. But somehow it works.
They never put a name on what they have, but whatever it is, it goes on for two months. He thinks Knox might know, but he's not sure and he doesn't really care, because for two months he's so damn happy. Charlie thinks he must not have understood what happiness was before then because nothing he's ever felt before has come close to the way he feels when he finds unsigned notes in Neil's spikey handwriting stuck between the pages of his textbooks, when he opens his eyes during grace and sees Neil looking back at him from across the table, when the day is over and it's finally just the two of them alone in their room again.
And then it's summer. And there isn't one letter.
In September Neil is as sunny and collected as he always pretends to be, and Charlie actually has to dig through his trunk and pull out the notes from last year, compare the handwriting to an assignment of Neil's he stole that afternoon, before he's satisfied he didn't dream the whole thing.
After a week Neil finds him sitting in the corridor outside their old room and he sits down beside him. As soon as Charlie realises who it is he tries to get up and leave, but Neil puts a hand on his forarm and that's all it takes, that's all it ever takes is one touch and Charlie will do whatever Neil wants him to. Which in this case is listen to Neil tell him reasons why what they had last year can't possibly go on, and the excuses are maddening and also meaningless, because Charlie knows Neil wants to kiss him, he can see it. But he won't. He never will again.
In future he will avoid letting any part of his body come into contact with Neil's whenever possible. This is more a matter of principle than self-preservation, because he does trust Neil, even though he thinks he may be an idiot for doing so. But that doesn't matter, because Neil is still willing to be his friend, and Charlie is unwilling to be completely without him, so they pretend none of it ever happened and life at Hellton goes on much as it did before.
But he can always feel Neil and those two months in what he might call his heart, if he were the kind of person who talked about hearts, and sometimes it hurts terribly but somehow, sometimes the memory of that bliss is enough to hold him together. And the thought that he might feel it again someday is enough to keep him holding this half-embarrassing heart-like thing just behind his comfortable snarkiness, itching to give it away again.
He finds himself fascinated by his new roommate, Meeks. His odd grace and dignity, the intelligence that radiates off him without a hint of the arrogance that accompanies Cameron's, the adventurous spirit he only shows his friends. Charlie does his best to woo him. Maybe his first mistake was attempting anything with a name like "wooing". For ages he's not sure Meeks even notices. Eventually he comes to the conclusion that for all his undeniable genius, Meeks wouldn't know a come-on if it presented itself to him as a labelled diagram in a textbook.
Finally Meeks tells him gently that he's known all along, but he really isn't interested in sex. At all. He doubts he ever will be.
And Charlie doesn't know how to tell him that sex isn't really what he's after.
*
Todd isn't anything like the lightning storm that was Neil, or the quiet aha of Meeks. He's more like a cavity, sweetly working his way into the deepest part of Charlie's consciousness without any idea he's doing it.
He watches Todd fall in love with Neil, and maybe it isn't obvious to everyone else, but for someone who's been there it is, and it's not fun, watching someone else get caught in that trap.
He decides he needs to talk to Todd, so he sneaks into his and Neil's room one night and shakes him awake with a hand over his mouth. Todd flails adorably until he recognizes Charlie and then follows him quickly enough out into the corridor and down it to an alcove where they won't be overheard.
"Don't fall in love with Neil," he says, having decided that a direct approach is probably best, and Todd splutters. "Just... don't."
"I--wasn't--" Todd starts to protest, but Charlie cuts him off.
"Yes, you are. And he's falling for you. Hard. Trust me. But it's not going to happen, he's never going to let it happen. It doesn't matter what he wants. What his father wants is always going to come first." It's something he's finally managed to put together over the last month, and he doesn't feel any better for having figured it out.
*
Around the time Neil gets the part in that play, Charlie can tell something's happened. And for the first time he hates Neil a bit, because Todd looks so happy, or at least so much less uptight, and it won't last, he knows it won't. But he decides to let Todd have it for as long as he can.
IV.
The wedding is in the winter.
Knox believes Charlie is better now, and Charlie lets him, because if anyone deserves to live happily ever after it's Knox, and Charlie doesn't really believe he will, doesn't really believe any of them will, but he believes in giving people a chance.
Chris looks incredible coming down the aisle in a dress that puts the fresh blanket of snow outside to shame. He expects Knox to look proud, but the only expression on his face is love and Charlie has to look away.
The ceremony is perfect and beautiful and even though the relationship they're celebrating has been far from it over the years, he manages to catch a bit of the hope that's thick in the air around them, and the deceptively witty speech he's prepared as best man falls a little flat because now he feels earnest, of all things.
When the dancing begins, Charlie is just thinking that maybe it's time to slip away and start driving the car outside, loaded with the few material possessions he truly values, down the highway to the first motel he finds when he hears his name. He turns around.
It's Todd.
But it can't be Todd, because Todd lives in Canada, went to McGill to study English, writes books now, whole books of poems that people read. Todd has fought with himself and won. Todd is not interested in a man who peaked as a class clown at prep school.
But he's acting like he is.
"How are you, Nuwanda?" he asks brightly, clasping his hand, and Charlie laughs, because Nuwanda's been AWOL for ages but maybe he's just been waiting for a hand to pull him out of the sea.
"Not bad," he says, and it doesn't even feel like a lie. "How've you been?"
"Good," Todd says. He's smiling, and his smile is relaxed and open, and it's either more proof that this can't possibly be Todd or evidence for a case that maybe the Todd he knew at Welton was just a foreshock. "I'm living on the west coast now."
Charlie nods, as if the west coast is something he has any familiarity with. His parents' idea of a vacation was grand hotels in New York or Europe or the Caribbean, and since severing ties with them he's lacked either the funds or the will to leave New England.
Somehow they manage to talk through the entire dance, wandering around the place as their conversation meanders through any subject that comes to mind, and they're in the parking lot when Knox finally finds them, says, "Todd, you made it!" and hugs him like a long-lost brother. Charlie stands nearby, choosing to practice cool nonchalance instead of awkwardness as they chat for a few minutes before Knox and Chris get into the limo that's waiting for them.
"That's the first time you've talked to Knoxious since you've been back?" Charlie asks when it's just the two of them again. He's both incredulous and amused.
Todd ducks his head, and for the first time that night Charlie is able to reconcile this new, confident Todd with the timid boy he used to know.
"I didn't really... come here to see him." He meets Charlie's eyes again, and suddenly the feeling that's been growing inside him ever since he first met Todd shows its face. It still won't let itself be named, but now Charlie knows what it wants. It wants him to bury himself in Todd's everything, tuck himself right into his poet's heart beside Neil, he wants to be welcomed. And he wants to never, ever leave.
It's too much to do all at once, and it may never happen. If there's one thing he's sure of, it's that many things never will.
But he can start trying now.
*
They're nearly at the place where Todd says they'll be able to cross into Canada when he pulls over, parks the car, and steps out into the gray dawn light. Charlie watches him walk about ten paces into the virgin snow of a meadow before he opens his door and follows him. It's a scene that is at once painfully familiar and perfectly so.
"'The woods are lovely,'" Todd says when he knows Charlie's in earshot, "'dark and deep,'" and Charlie smiles in recognition and then looks at the trees at the edge of the field, and they are, they really are. Todd turns around to face him, looks at him like he's something worth choosing to look at. "'But I have promises to keep. And miles to go before I sleep.'"
Charlie nods, looks back at the car, waiting for them. Smiles at the idea of what that car might think about the two queer boys standing in an empty field in the middle of winter. Just one of many who wouldn't understand. He takes the line he knows Todd left for him.
"'And miles to go before I sleep.'"