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“And you’re sure that you’re being haunted?”
An invisible laugh vibrates the air around Todd. He can’t hear the joke but the punchline is all the same.
“Yes.”
He’s 17 when he officially meets his first ghost. John Welton, so nothing unexpected. Floating at the shoulder of headmaster Nolan, the ghost seemed to be lost in deep contemplation.
“Ah you see ole’ Johnny aye,” Nolan had smiled at Todd and his parents. “Right of passage.” He’d joked.
Todd coughed out a laugh at the gentle nudging of his mother. He’s terrified of ghosts, always has been, but you don’t attend schools or frequent buildings with centuries of history without encountering a few. Todd can only count his blessings that he managed to avoid them for most of his younger years.
‘Ole’ Johnny’ hovered closely to Nolan as though he was haunting him instead of Todd.
“He’s welcoming you boy,” Nolan clapped him on the shoulder. “Do you feel welcomed?”
“Y-yeah, I do,” his father this time, hand on his shoulder, squeezing out a response. “Feels like home already.”
10 years and 3 hauntings later, Todd explains to Lucy, the school’s witch, that this time the haunting feels different, not worse. Just different.
“Is he a former student?”
He is.
Todd thought he’d be an older alumnus, perhaps a great one lost to time and memory. But he has the same uniform Todd did and the alumni ring Todd wears, the same lustrous gold and curled W. He knows it’s the same as his because his brother’s graduating class ring is a far more practical one, made of sturdier gold and less flashy. Apparently the design is changed every five years.
Lucy’s taking him seriously like she did back when he schooled at Welton. “What’s different about him?”
His smile. The creases in his face when he laughs. The way he doesn’t really look dead. How he’s staring through Todd instead of at him as if Todd is the ghost.
Todd couldn’t be a writer so he teaches English. And he teaches it the way he was taught by his English teacher.
His methods are a glimpse into the past when boys would yell half formed poems behind the shield of closed eyes. When they would stand on desks and see the world. When Carpe diem floated through the halls and into their boyish hearts.
He once saluted a great man, o captain, my captain. Now his boys jokingly call him Cap instead of sir.
“Ghosts can attach to a person, place, or a feeling,” Lucy tells him as she stirs her tea. “You’ve got the third kind,” she explains.
“And that means...” he peers at her over his own mug cupped between freezing palms.
“He’s haunting you and he’s not asking for help or a sacrifice or anything of that sort. He’s probably just attached to his own time at this school. Quite a few of the ghosts here are.” Lucy grins.
Somewhere in the distance he can almost hear a boisterous laugh ringing out followed by a jovial whistle of the 1812 Overture.
“I mean look at you,” Lucy continues. “You’re back.”
“Yeah,” Todd whispers.
“I know there’s a certain sense of camaraderie here. Maybe he misses it and he wants to live it again through you.”
Lucy reaches over the side of her armchair and pulls out a small clear bag of dried dill, pine and rosemary.
“Dried herbs,” Todd peered suspiciously at the bag.
“It’s the meanings that are important,” Lucy said knowingly, dropping the bag into his hand. “Give the usual gifts, flowers, candles, prayers and whatnot. Come back in a week if nothing’s changed and come back earlier to chat. I like our tea in the evenings.”
So that’s it then. He’s got a ghost living vicariously through him. He borrows elements of Todd’s life— the ring, his old uniform— to cope with his longing for ‘camaraderie’.
It makes sense.
Todd only sees him on school grounds. And he can relate in a way. He is back again after all. So are Meeks and Pitts, Cameron too. His friends. He thinks he’d do the same. Haunt Welton. He might also do the same.
(Except he doesn’t want to. There must be more to seize in life than dead poets and this school.
He doesn’t know what it is yet but he’ll find it one day.
But for now, he quite likes teaching English, it keeps the memories alive)
Nothing changes. The ghost, a stubborn one, stays very firmly put. He sees him everywhere now. He’s in the faculty cafeteria, in his rooms, in Meeks and Pitts shared office that connects their adjacent classrooms. When he’s in staff meetings, the ghost nods at the exact moment Todd needs validation or encouragement.
He doesn’t respond though. Of course he doesn’t. He’s living his own life, just with the added complication of Todd being a voyeur.
Todd starts treating the ghost— Neil, Todd learns after hearing hey, I hear we’re gonna be roommates, I'm Neil Perry — as a coworker and if he’s feeling slightly more daring, a friend.
He starts knocking on doors in rooms he knows Neil frequents. He begins leaving out empty chairs for Neil in case he wanders in. Neil for whatever reason, follows a schedule reminiscent of his when he was a student. They sit together when he meets up with Pitts and Meeks and when Cameron rants about rowdy students in his Latin class, he and Neil hide identical grins.
From what Todd can extrapolate, he and Neil seem to have similar friends. That’s the creepy part. When they laugh at the same time yet again, Todd almost swears that they’re having the same conversation.
He’s not though. He can’t be. Neil is just an echo of a time past. He used to be a student here. He’s died. Now he’s a ghost.
And there’s no record of him anywhere.
For a school that can boast two centuries of educating boys, there’s surprisingly not been a single one named Neil.
When he tells Lucy this she hums thoughtfully around a mouthful of tea. “Maybe his energy is just distorting the files. Give it some time, they’ll turn up. Nothing to worry about.”
“I’m not worried.” Todd blows on his tea. “Just curious I suppose.”
Neil is in regular clothes today, a deep green sweater with a red checkered button up peeking out of the collar. The colour suits him. It makes him look alive.
It was only a matter of time before Neil appeared off campus too.
Knox is concerned when they meet up, just the two of them in the small town a twenty minutes walk from Welton since no one else could make it. “Ghosts and take energy from the people they’re haunting. Are you eating well? Sleeping enough?”
It’s strange, talking about Neil as if he’s not there, especially since he seems to nod and smile at all the right times as if he was. But he technically isn’t even though Todd can see him. He’s got an elbow planted on the table, eyes glinting as he talks to an unknown person. His roommate perhaps.
Neil had been smiling extra brightly for the last thirty minutes, talking animatedly to someone, "How are you funnier at night. We'll never get any sleep like this."
“He’s not really haunting me,” Todd toys with a small piece of croissant he ordered from the cafe they’re in. “He’s haunting the school.”
“Why does he follow you around then?” Knox raises a brow.
Todd pauses.
“Your eyes are shifty,” Knox sighs.
Sometimes Todd thinks Knox is too nice to be a lawyer. Too sweet, too gentle, too naive and too much of a romantic to be standing cold faced and harsh in court. But he had this way of pulling the truth out of you and peeling back layers of concealment to find what’s underneath. Maybe he's just right.
He’s never been able to hide things from Knox anyways. Not that he was trying to hide Neil from Knox. He couldn’t even if he wanted to, everyone knows about his ghostly situation after Cameron blabbed the last time they all met up.
From the edge of his vision he can see Neil grinning at someone fondly and sending them off with a cheery wave.
“He’s just saying bye actually,” Todd says. “And besides, he’s not sapping my energy or anything like that.”
“Yet.”
Todd wants to defend Neil to Knox. As far as hauntings go, this one’s incredibly peaceful. There’s nothing to worry about. Sure it’s all a bit strange, but nothing violent. It’s the small mercies that matter.
Neil’s concept of privacy is sorely lacking and it’s more trouble than it’s worth to set salt boundaries everywhere.
He’s on the floor of his lodgings in the staff wing at Walton. The school has been remodelled between the years of Todd graduating, going to university, struggling it out as a writer before settling into a decent paying teaching job at his old school and his old dorm room is coincidentally now his teacher’s lodgings. A few feet away, scrunched up in a ball is a passive aggressively begrudging letter from his parents inviting him home for Christmas dinner. He replays the words in his head.
You should come home this year. Don’t disappoint us again with your absence this time.
He can visualise the comma his father must have fought with himself not to include.
Somewhere under all the expectations he’ll never meet his parents do love him. Probably. Just not enough to accept the life he chose instead of the one they planned for him. Family dinners are an awkward affair. He doesn’t attend if he can help it.
When he opens his eyes, Neil is there, sitting perpendicular to him with his legs passed through Todd’s hips.
Under the garish lighting Neil looks less corporal than usual. He tethers Todd though, and brings him out of his head.
“Thanks I guess, for listening,” Todd smiled weakly. “Neil,” it feels familiar in his mouth as if he’s had a lifetime of saying it.
“Is he here?” Charlie asks with a comically loud whisper.
“The entire cafe can hear you,” Cameron says. “Is this about Todd’s ghost?”
“Yeah. Apparently he’s sort of an actor,” Charlie grins. It’s a testament of his maturity that he can talk to Cameron without slinging an insult first. “Did Todd tell you how he figured it out?”
“Shakespearean death threats,” Meeks grins, smile turning sheepish when Todd gives him a look.
“ What ?” Cameron’s brown furrows in confusion.
Charlie grins like a cat. “I heard it from Pittsie who heard it from Meeks who heard it from Toddie himself that his ghost started going on this whole old English insult rant only for Toddie to discover that he was reciting lines from Shakespeare.”
“A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats. ” Neil had declared abruptly, face clouded over with rage, arm raised as though he's about to strike. “ Knave, beggar, coward, pander, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch: one who I will beat into clamorous whining if though deniers the least syllable of thy addition. ” He’d continued after a series of statticy sounds that were near inaudible. He’d broken character immediately after and laughed, maybe with his roommate, until tears began streaming from his eyes.
“It wasn’t an insult rant,” Todd huffs, sharper than he intended. “And he’s not my ghost. His name is Neil.”
Four pairs of eyes blink at him.
“Sure Toddie,” Charlie pats his shoulder patronisingly. “He only appears to you though.”
Todd wants to throw something at Charlie’s head. Something solid. Something that would hurt him. Keating’s never appeared to you, has he?
And all of a sudden Todd wishes their get together was over. He wishes Knox was here. He wouldn’t let him be teased or make him talk when he doesn’t want to. And Charlie listens to him. Sort of. Or at least more than he listens to anyone else.
He stands and mutters about getting more coffee before speeding over to the counter. When he returns to the table, Cameron is being merciless teased for sitting in the wad of gum a student left in his seat.
The worst part of the haunting is Neil’s voice. Or really the lack thereof. Sometimes he speaks so crystal clear and that Todd can almost make out the exact way his voice sounds, it’s cadence and sometimes it’s a garbled statticy mess that sounds like when Pitts and Meeks tried to build a radio back in their school days before they managed to make it work.
It doesn’t stop Todd from making attempts at communication though.
“Blink if I should mark another essay and laugh if I should go to bed.”
Neil collapses into the kind of belly laugh that leaves your stomach aching for minutes after the joke stops being funny. It’s too late for him to be anywhere else but in his room. His roommate must be hilarious and they must be close if they’re making jokes in the dead of night.
So maybe he’s just using Neil to make decisions for him but honestly it’s the least Neil can do after haunting him for months.
“Knox would be pleased,” Todd mutters, cracking his back as he stands and readies himself for bed. He’s delivering a lecture on creative writing tomorrow. It’s the lesson he cares the most to deliver well on.
And deliver well he does. He gets the boys giggling at the word ‘yawp’ and when he grins at them from his vantage point in his desk he wonders if this is what it feels like to be possessed by the spirit of a great man.
Neil must have liked it too because he’s sat with eyes glittering in an empty desk near the front with an awed smile.
When it’s a week before Christmas he begins burning incense and leaving Lucy’s herb mix out for Neil. They won’t see each other for the four weeks that make up winter break.
The evening of his last day he finds Neil leaning against the doorway. “Merry Christmas,” he grins. “Give ‘em hell.”
He knows Neil isn’t talking to him but he still squares his shoulders and grips his suitcase tighter. Christmas dinner is only a few hours long. He can survive a few hours.
He wonders what Neil’s like outside the Walton halls. Somewhere out in the world where he gets to be himself.
He knows Neil likes Shakespeare and acting, that he laughs with his entire body and talks with his entire face, he knows he likes spaghetti for dinner with extra sauce and extra garlic bread. In fact he’s fond of anything as long as there's enough ketchup on it. He’s confident when he speaks, talks like he knows someone always will listen. He likes poetry too and dead poets. Speaks fondly of a club with meetings in the woods.
But he doesn’t know Neil’s favourite colour, favourite song or even his favourite poem, play or poet. Neither does he know where Neil goes when he’s not in the corner of Todd’s eye. Where’s home for Neil? Does he go home? The world is a big place after all.
It’s funny in a sad way how little you can know about someone who’s tethered to you.
Something. Neil’s a something. A ghost. A flame from the past reignited in the present.
He’s not even tethered to Todd according to Lucy. Just the school. He trails along the flow of students and the hum of boyish voices calling.
Can ghosts miss people? Can Neil miss Todd when Todd isn’t the one he haunts?
“He’s still here?” Lucy frowns into her tea. They haven’t spoken in a while as work has been piling up for Todd and exam season is inching closer, and with it the summer holidays.
“He’s never left.” Todd sighs. It’s not a sad sigh, he’s grown used to Neil. Misses the space he leaves when he’s not around. “Last time I checked he was in my classroom.”
Neil is rather attached to that English classroom. Chooses to spend a lot of time there it seems because he’s always there whenever Todd enters the room. He keeps to himself there though, at the back of the class, quiet in a way that makes Todd feel like Neil knows he’s not meant to be there.
“Have you made any offerings?”
“The herb mix you gave me,” Todd grins a little, “Incense, poetry books, spaghetti, garlic bread ,” he answers with exaggerated disgust. “He likes garlic on his bread Lucy.”
Lucy hums contemplatively. “You haven’t asked me to exorcise him yet.”
“I didn’t know you could do that.”
“I could. He’s been around for so long that it would knock us both out for a few days though.” Lucy grins.
Todd frowns “Oh.”
Lucy snorts, “Oh,” she repeats. “The last time I performed one of these I started a small earthquake.”
“We’re definitely not doing any exorcisms then.” Todd says resolutely. “Glad we’ve established that.”
“Apparently someone new is being hired,” Todd tells Neil one night as he’s eating dinner in his room. It’s been a long day and he doesn’t really feel like talking to people. Neil doesn’t count.
Neil is beside him, nodding to whoever he’s talking to, ignoring the steaming plate of spaghetti Todd has brought for him in favour of giving his full attention to whoever he's absorbed in conversation with. Probably his roommate from the snippets Todd is able to hear through the static.
Neil spends most of his time with his roommate it seems. Todd used to when he attended Welton as a student. That’s why he and Knox are so close. But this feels more than just roommates who have become friends.
His old room as a Welton boy which happens also to be his new room as a Welton teacher has been remodelled to fit a bigger bed and a bigger desk instead of the two beds two desks layout that he and Knox used to share. He sleeps as a teacher now on the same side he did as a student.
The space Todd occupies isn’t Neil’s. It’s Neil’s roommates.
“The contract isn’t final according to Cameron but they’re getting there. I think the new guy is joining my department. I’m not sure how I feel about that.”
Neil folds into giggles, body rocking slightly with the force of it.
Every moment they share feels like a life unlived.
“Good chat.” Todd sighs. If it comes out fondly it’s nobody's business but his.
That picture of uncle Walt up there. What does he remind you of? Don’t think. Answer. Go on.
It’s a continuation of his last creative writing class. There’s a boy, brown haired and shy. Big shiny eyes, a poet in a cage.
Free up your mind. Use your imagination. Say the first thing that pops into your head, even if it’s total gibberish. Go on, go on.
Todd brings him to the front of the class. Has him face the blackboard. The word YAWP is written in bold across the board. The rest of the boys he has sit on their desks facing the wall.
“Go on boy,” he says softly, hands barely resting against his shoulders. “First thing that comes to your mind, even if it’s total gibberish.”
“I see a mad man,” he begins with a slight tremble to his voice.
This moment feels like remembering a memory you’ve never had of events that never transpired and a place that doesn’t exist.
“Go on,” Todd encourages. “What else.”
“A crazy madman,” the boy continues.
Someone behind laughs and someone shushes the boy before even Todd can. He had a feeling he knows who it was. A boy with deep brown hair, glasses when he reads and a smile that illuminates all corners of his face.
“No you can do better than that. Free up your mind. Use your imagination.”
“A sweaty toothed madman. And his image floats beside me.” The boy’s voice swells.
Good God boy, there’s a poet in you after all.
The boy continues. It’s brilliant. It’s beautiful. He’s proud and he knows Keating would be too.
A voice that sounds suspiciously like Keating wafts by when he whispers to the boy “ Don’t you forget this.”
Among the black lined with red of the boys’ uniform, Lucy stands out starkly in her white dress.
“Is everything alright? I thought you hated being out here?”
And she does. Usually. Messy with her spirit or something like that. She mentioned it over seven years ago. He can’t remember now.
“I think we need to talk.” She threads her arm through his and tugs him in the direction of her rooms.
He knows the answer before he asks, “Is it about Neil?”
Lucy hums. “I’m getting concerned. The usual protocol is to wait for the ghost to establish contact.”
“I know. And I haven’t tried to contact him.”
“Yes but he’s been around you for so long and so consistently I’m a bit worried that you will try to.”
“I haven’t. No rituals, no nothing. Just chatting. Or am I not allowed to talk to him?” He opens her door for her and she nods her thanks before flicking the kettle on and settling into her usual armchair.
“I know but I’m here to protect you Todd.”
He follows her and sits. “From what?” Not Neil. Neil wouldn’t hurt me . His skin prickles.
Lucy stares at the air just over Todd’s shoulder. Her room wasn’t where it was when he attended Welton as a student. This used to be a study room. She’s staring directly at the space Neil occupies.
“I know Neil wouldn’t hurt you,” she smiles at his unimpressed eyebrow raise. “But I don’t want you to hurt yourself trying to reach him. I know you say you won’t but these things have driven people mad before. I’d hate for it to happen to you.”
She pats his hand like he’s a child and it should upset him but he just wants someone to hold his hand. Neil can’t. “Your faith in him is so strong I can taste it. Ketchup.”
There’s an hour between his classes and he spends it outside with a copy of King Leer on a bench in front of the lake. The rowing team is slowly stroking across the water accompanied by occasional shouts from the coxswain.
He can see Neil’s shadowy figure in the fog by the edge of the lake.
He wants to go to him. To touch him. He’s longing after a dead person, of course he’s aching to his bones.
He wants to ask him so many questions. How did you die? Out of morbid curiosity. But more importantly How did you live?
Home has always been more people than a place to Todd. He’s at home in Meeks and Pitts’ shared office among scraps of metal and notes for the various things they’ve attempted to build. He’s at home in the cafe in the quaint little town by Welton that the gang as Charlie calls them meet in every few weeks to catch up and mock each other. He’s at home in Lucy’s rooms with a cup of tea that never gets cold and her wise and comforting voice. He’s home in Knox’s apartment that he lives in with Knox when he’s on break from teaching. The dorm room he and Knox used to share is probably the only physical location he considers home.
He shoulders his room door open, the boys trailing in behind him.
“This brings back memories,” someone comments behind him.
Neil’s already standing in the middle of the room.
He turns with a grin, “How was your summer, slick?”
He’s not talking to him but Todd smiles anyway.
“Keen!” Charlie crows pointing to a framed photograph at the top of Todd’s suitcase laid open on his bed.
It’s not that old of a photo but camera quality has drastically increased so it looks a lot grainier than it should. It’s the six of them crowded around Mr Keating. There’s a space in the front of the picture, one that could perhaps have fit another person. The only person he could see taking up that space is Neil.
There’s cool air blowing in from somewhere. Maybe he left the window open again.
And there he is, within arms reach, illuminated by the moonlight, Neil. He’s staring out the window as if something in the distance holds all the answers. There’s something in his hands that Todd can’t make out but from the way it’s pointed at his temple there’s only one thing it really could be.
“Neil?” He must be dreaming, imagining things. If only he could touch him.
Neil’s hand snaps down and he meets Todd’s eyes. Which— shouldn’t be possible.
“Todd, why are you up?” He gasps. “Sorry,” he shuffles awkwardly, recovering, shoving his hands behind his back. “Did I wake you?”
He just— did he just—
Neil just said his name.
He stumbles away from the window, out of his room, a ghost trailing behind him “ Todd— ” and calls everyone he knows.
He requests a change of rooms, offices and classrooms. It doesn’t help. Neil still hovers on the edge of his vision.
Todd digs his nails into his palms. “You said he wasn’t haunting me .” He swallows. “You were wrong.”
Lucy doesn’t apologise. Just waits for him to continue.
“Get him out. I need you to get him out. Do whatever you have to but I want him gone.”
Lucy says it’s too risky to exorcise now. They’ll both be out of commission for a month. So they burn and pray and sacrifice. Candles, blood, incense, a copy of Leaves of Grass , a school uniform, his alumni ring.
He’s haunted but he doesn’t want to be. Not anymore.
There’s a line between alive and dead and Neil’s crossed it. He keeps crossing it. In a moment of weakness, Todd breaks the salt barrier and lets Neil slip closer than the edge of his vision. “Quick. Before I change my mind.” He lifts his covers and Neil slides in like it’s something he’s used to.
He hates Neil. Hates how he consumes his thoughts. How he’s always in the corner of Todd’s eye. How all he wants from Todd is a smile. How he’ll see a mop of brown hair and think of Neil before literally anyone else.
He hates Neil’s roommate. For the sole reason that Neil is his and not Todd’s.
“How’s everything with Neil?” Charlie isn’t teasing this time. Todd must look awful if Charlie managed to notice and be concerned. “You haven’t mentioned him to anyone in a while.”
“Everythings fine,” He shrugs.
It’s not like Charlie would get it if he started telling him about being haunted by someone who feels alive. Or missing someone he’s never had. He’ll survive. He knows what it’s like to not have the things he wants. He knows how to deal with it. You just have to live with what you can’t have.
“So it’s not all bad then.” Charlie nudges him with a grin.
But how does Todd tell him that it’s the good parts that makes his head want to spin off his shoulders.
Lucy disappears into the woods for answers. She’s gone for a week. When she first let Todd know of her plan he wanted to tell her not to bother. If there was an answer to this problem the universe would have spat it out by now.
When she returns it’s with flushed cheeks, a grin and a folder in her hands.
“I have the answer to your problem.” She’s ecstatic. “There was no ghost. Never been one all along. No one to mourn.”
“What?” He breathes.
She hands him a file. The small square photo makes him flinch back. Opening it will be another line crossed. But he’s willing to do it. Isn’t that the problem? There’s seemingly no line he won’t cross for Neil.
“My ghost,” he touches the face in the photo with the tip of his finger. He’s never been this clear. This solid. This real.
“Meet Neil Perry. He’s been alive this whole time.”
Neil Perry is the newest teacher at Welton Academy, straight off of broadway after a Tony Award win and into teaching. He’s dedicated, intelligent, charismatic and fun or so people say. He used to attend Braden Military School. He’s boisterous.
He can open up even the shyest people.
He collapses in half when he laughs.
He douses all his food in ketchup, even if it’s weird.
When he smiles his eyes light up from within.
There’s a small knock against the frame of his open door. It’s quite late but he’s awake. He looks up to see Neil, the real one, alive and in the flesh leaning against the doorway. He’s grinning the way Todd knows he does, with glittering eyes. “Hey. I hear we’re gonna be sharing offices, Neil Perry.”
I know
His voice is so real. There’s no echo. Some version of them have already met, shared a life together.
“Todd Anderson.”
Neil’s grin widens. “Have you ever been haunted, Todd?”
A smile slips onto his face. “A few times, yeah. The most recent one was particularly notable.”
Neil’s face shifts. Todd can already read him like an open book.
“How’d you get rid of the ghost?”
Somewhere in the night there’s a boyish voice reciting Shakespeare lines, laughing in all the wrong places because his roommate can make the best things better.
“ Put more into it ,” The voice scream-laughs. “ Yeah .”
“I didn’t. I couldn’t.”
Relief is the look on Neil’s face. “Me too.”
“What am I like? For you?”
“Almost the same.” Neil grins, scanning the menu. “Better.” Todd knows that Neil will order spaghetti with way too much sauce because he likes the tartness of tomatoes and extra garlic bread because it’s what his mom used to make for him when he got sad. “I thought you were— you know,” Neil looks at him. “ You know.”
He does know.
“I thought you were dead this whole time,” Todd says.
“I was playing Puck. In—”
“‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’” Todd whispers.
Neil grins and nods.
He doesn’t get spaghetti and garlic bread. (You don’t like garlic). Todd orders chips with extra ketchup. (You like ketchup)
The other Neil, the ghost, disappears with the same grin he appeared with. One day he just stopped appearing. He was turning around a corner one day, laughing, saying to his Todd it's a play dummy , and then he was gone. And the silence that followed was a ghost of its own.
Wherever that Neil’s gone, Todd knows he’ll be just fine.
Neil is as loud as he’s always been. The first time he actually enters Todd’s room he stubs his toe and exclaims a curse. He curses too, in the morning, when he has to be up early to teach his drama classes. He pounds on doors before he enters rooms. When he laughs the movement rocks both him and Todd. Todd can feel his smile pressed into his skin.
When Todd reached out for him, across the bed, in their home, his hands always meet warmer fingers and lock in tight. Solid. Real.
Neil groans softly into his hair.
“Sorry did I wake you?” Neil trails gentle circles on Neil’s arm.
Neil grumbles pulls Todd closer until he’s sprawled out across Neil’s chest, head resting above his heart.
“I can hear your heart beating,” he mumbles.
He can feel Neil’s answering grin against the top of his head. “Yeah, they tend to do that don’t they.”
“It reminds me you’re alive.”
Neil clutches him even closer.
In the morning he’ll regret lying like this when his back hurts. And so will Neil when his entire lower body feels numb. Neil will mutter a creative slew of curses, mostly Shakespearean and Todd will laugh. They’ll leave each other with a gentle kiss and a quietly whispered ‘Carpe diem’ and it will sound like the voice of different man who’s touched his life. It’ll be the day the shy quiet poet in a cage steps out and into the waiting arms of the boy who will shush anyone who makes the world too loud for him. It’ll be the day he brings Neil to meet with the gang after work and they laugh so loud they receive dirty looks from the cafes other patrons. It’ll be a day he wishes he could replay but he can’t so it’ll follow after him like a ghost. He won’t recall the details, only the feelings. The memories will turn fonder down the lines, soft and worn at the edges, like a tired smile.
But there are worse things to be haunted by and worse ways to be haunted. Todd knows that now.