Chapter Text
Todd wakes before his alarm most days. Not out of ambition or eagerness. Just because sleep slips through his fingers now, sand-like. The nights are long and dreamless—sometimes not dreamless, exactly, but worse: fragmented flickers of things he can’t hold onto, or else doesn’t want to.
He lies there, blinking at the grey ceiling of his apartment, cataloguing the cracks, the paint bubble near the window, the way the radiator clicks like it’s breathing.
He counts the clicks like heartbeats. Pretends they mean something.
The alarm goes off anyway. A shrill, sterile sound. He lets it ring for a few seconds, then silences it.
His phone buzzes. A flicker of hope. He checks it. But it’s nothing—email junk, a weather notification, spam. Never the one name he wants it to be. The one he still dreams about. The one whose number he never deleted.
But he hasn’t texted back in years.
Todd gets ready in silence. The kind that grows vines around your ribs. The kind that wraps around your lungs and waits. Cold tile under bare feet. The same half-warm shower that never quite washes the heaviness away. He shaves mechanically, cuts his chin, doesn’t bother with a plaster. Pulls on a button-up he doesn’t bother ironing. He used to dress better. Back when he thought people were looking.
He walks to the corner deli for a bagel he won’t eat and a black coffee he won’t finish. His shoes are wet from the puddle by his building. It’s Wednesday, but he checks his calendar twice like he doesn’t trust time anymore. The days bleed together.
The subway is late. The platform smells like piss and rain, sour and sharp. He stays near the edge, but not close enough to worry anyone. Not close enough to worry himself. The train pulls in with a shriek of metal. Todd doesn’t look up from his boots until he’s packed inside with a dozen other strangers, all of them weary in different ways. A woman with smeared mascara. A teenager staring blankly into space. A man with calloused hands and a bouquet of crushed flowers.
He used to imagine the city would feel like electricity. Like breathlessness and promise.
Now it feels like a hallway he can’t turn around in.
Todd works as an assistant editor at a mid-tier publishing house in Midtown. Which is a poetic way of saying he mostly proofreads travel cookbooks and emails authors about deadlines he has no power to move. He has a desk near the copier. A nameplate that says Mr. Anderson , which he tried to laugh about once before realising no one in the office knew what the joke was. He writes, sometimes—fragments on receipts, poems in the Notes app, titles with no story. But none of it sees the light. He used to think he’d have a novel out by twenty-four. He’s twenty-seven now. All he has is a Word doc titled First Draft and a blinking cursor that feels like a dare.
It’s not what he wanted. Not what he promised.
Back at Welton, they’d whispered dreams into the air like spells. Neil would act on Broadway. Todd would publish poetry collections with covers like pressed flowers. They’d get a loft apartment with high ceilings, tall windows and exposed brick. They’d leave shoes by the door and make pancakes on Sundays. They’d live loudly. Honestly. They would not become men who forgot how to feel.
“Carpe diem,” Neil had grinned once, throwing a crumpled leaf at Todd’s head. His cheeks were flushed pink with cold and adrenaline. “We’ve got one life. That’s it. We live it.”
And Todd had smiled, flushed, and believed him. Had looked at Neil like a miracle and said: “I will. I swear. ”
If you jump, I’ll jump too.
But Neil had jumped alone.
And Todd stayed behind.
Now, he eats alone. Works late. Comes home to an empty apartment where nothing smells like autumn and everything is too still. He thought about getting a cat once, but never did. Edits commas. Avoids mirrors. Drinks too much on weekends and never calls his parents back. There are days he forgets to speak until noon.
There’s an ache in him that doesn’t go away, only changes shape. Some days it looks like Neil’s smile in a yearbook photo. Some days it looks like a theatre ticket stub tucked inside a book, or like Neil’s name in a message thread that ended too soon.
Todd’s not living. He’s surviving. And even that feels generous.
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He eats lunch at his desk most days, even though there’s a park nearby. But today, he walks. Not because he wants to. But because sitting feels like sinking. Like if he stays in that chair any longer, the grief might finally catch up and swallow him whole.
Outside, the city moves without him. Yellow cabs streak by in angry flashes. Neon signs pulse from behind steamed-up windows. A street performer plays saxophone near a corner café Todd’s passed a thousand times but never entered. The sound is mournful and too alive all at once.
He stops at a bench with flaking green paint and cold metal arms. The kind that creaks when you shift too much. He doesn’t sit so much as fold into it. The phone comes out like it has a will of its own.
He shouldn’t open the thread. He knows that. But grief has its own muscle memory, and his thumb betrays him.
Neil Perry.
Still in his favourites. Still saved with the heart emoji, because he’d been too shy to ever use words.
The unread messages are there, just as they always were—waiting like a trap, like a wound that never closes.
Neil 💕
1:27 am
it’s over
he’s sending me to braden
what?
are you serious??
i’m going tomorrow
neil that’s insane he can’t just erase your life like that
you belong at welton with us
i finally felt like myself tonight
and now he’s closing the curtains for good
you can fight this
mr keating would say you have a voice
use it. say no.
you don’t know him todd
there is no "no" with my father
he says, i do
that’s the way it’s always been
then break the deal
i’ll help you, we all will
don’t let him steal who you are
you saw me tonight, didn’t you?
that was the real me
he’ll never let me be him again
he doesn’t get to decide that
you choose who you are, you already have
you’re an actor
you always believe in me
more than i ever knew how to believe in myself
because i see you neil
and i care, more than i can explain in a stupid text
i’m gonna borrow knox’s bike tmrw
morning and see you, ok?
if anything ever happens, just know tonight was the
best night of my life
and it was because of you being there for me
neil
don’t phrase it like that
what are you saying?
nothing
i just wanted to say thank you
you’re scaring me
1:29 am
reply to me. please
neil?
2 missed calls from Todd
1:36 am
todd
i love you
promise to not blame yourself
5 missed calls from Todd
NEIL
PICK UP
ANSWER THE PHONE
JUSY LET ME KNW YOURE OKAY
PLEASE
NEIL
They’ve been there for ten years. Never deleted them. Just there , embedded in his phone like marrow. He scrolls past them now like they’re broken bones buried under skin, aching but unreachable.
He doesn't cry anymore when he reads them. That’s worse, somehow. The numbness. Like even his grief has decayed.
Sometimes he scrolls not for the texts, but for the contact itself. Neil’s name. The stupid little heart. The profile picture from junior year — blurry, soft-eyed, grinning with half a bagel in hand.
He’s still in his favourites. Has been all this time.
He thinks about calling. Just to hear the voicemail. Just to remember the voice he’s already forgetting.
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That night, the subway feels different.
Sure, it’s loud, fluorescent, and full of strangers as usual. The metal shrieks of the rails echo like distant howls. A group of teenagers laugh too loudly at the other end of the car. Someone’s eating something greasy. The whole place smells faintly of metal and old snow. Todd finds a seat near the end, next to a poster peeling at the corners, and pulls out his book. But he doesn’t read it. He just stares at the page, words blurring like static. The letters look like a language he’s forgotten how to speak.
The train rattles on. The hum beneath his feet seeps into his bones.
Maybe it’s the storm rolling in—fat snowflakes brushing the windows like ghosts, soft and silent and gone before you can touch them. Maybe it’s the flickering lights overhead, the stuttering rhythm of it. The lurch of the car at every turn. The way the shadows stretch and bend, giving everything that surreal, half-dreamed quality. Or maybe it’s the faint hum of someone across the aisle. A melody, quiet and imperfect, like they’re humming out of habit..
And then he sees a blur of green in his periphery.
A man. In his late twenties, maybe. Same as him.
Standing by the opposite doors, wearing headphones and a dark green sweater—the exact mossy shade Neil used to wear in winter.. Something in his face—the way his mouth curls slightly, the arch of his brow, the way his dark brown hair curls at the nape of his neck—makes Todd freeze.
Neil?
No. It’s not. It can’t be.
But the resemblance is close enough to be cruel.
The man sits across from him and pulls out a book—something paperback, well-worn, creased at the spine. He doesn’t notice Todd at all. Doesn’t glance his way. He’s just another stranger on the subway, another shape passing through the night. But for Todd, the car has narrowed to a single point. A single person.
His chest tightens like a fist inside his ribs.
He should be here, Todd thinks. Neil was supposed to be here. This was our city. Our life.
The man adjusts in his seat, and that’s when Todd sees it: a small mole on the left side of his face.
The wrong side.
Neil’s was on the right. Just beside his mouth. Small, circular, perfectly placed. You could miss it if you weren’t looking properly. But Todd had memorised it. The feel of it beneath his lips. The way Neil smiled when Todd kissed it first thing in the morning, like it was their own secret ritual. Their mark.
Once, Neil had whispered to him: “They say moles are where your lovers kissed you in a past life. Like someone loved you so much, they left a mark so they’d find you again.”
He’d said it with his mouth pressed to Todd’s shoulder, in the dark, the kind of late-night honesty that only comes when you’re half-asleep and entirely in love.
Todd kissed that mole every time. Like it was a promise. Like he believed they’d always find each other.
Now, the sight of one—mirrored, reversed—is enough to split him open. Not Neil. Not even close. But for a second, in the flickering subway light, it’s enough.
He swallows. The back of his throat burns.
The train jerks as it brakes. Everyone shifts, some reaching for the poles. The man laughs softly—surprised, bright. And then he glances up.
Their eyes meet.
And just like that, the spell shatters.
The eyes aren’t quite right. The wrong shade, the wrong shape. His mouth too narrow. The laugh fades, dulls into something generic. The light in him is just... normal. No sharp, golden joy. No Neil.
Todd looks away immediately. His vision swims. He clutches the pole like it’s the only solid thing in the world. His eyes sting.
The train rocks beneath him like a cradle, like a coffin.
When the doors open again, Todd stumbles out. Two stops early. No plan, no thought. Just the instinct to leave. To run from the ache blooming in his chest like a bruise. Anything to get away from him. His legs carry him up the station stairs and out into the cold without checking where he’s going.
The cold presses against him, numbs his fingers, his ears, his grief. Neon signs blink in and out like heart monitors. Traffic rumbles past. Everyone keeps moving.
But Todd stands there, a single still point in the churn of the city that never sleeps, with tears threading down his cheeks, hot against the cold.
He walks the rest of the way home in silence.
The version of their life that never happened plays behind his eyes like a looped reel: Neil in rehearsal, Neil stealing fries from Todd’s plate with that lopsided smile, Neil curled in their too-small bed reading Shakespeare out loud, Neil whispering “Love looks not with the eyes…” as Todd hides his blushing smile.
Neil, alive.
Instead:
The funeral Todd couldn’t speak at.
The poetry he never read out loud.
The version of himself that died with Neil.
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Back home, Todd shrugs off his coat with numb fingers. The apartment is dark except for the soft yellow glow of the lamp on his desk. He doesn’t bother turning on the others. He just stands in the stillness, listening to the muted throb of city traffic below, the wind shaking the windowpanes. The storm has picked up. It’s the kind Neil used to love—snow thick as silence, a world turned soft and blurred and unreal.
Todd moves toward his desk. Opens the drawer.
Inside: his old notebook. The dark blue one. The spine is cracked, corners frayed, pages swollen with humidity and time. He runs his thumb over the cover. Hesitates. Then pulls it out.
It opens to the last page he touched.
A list. The kind that makes your chest tighten the longer you look at it.
If I’d visited sooner.
If I’d answered faster.
If I’d said something.
Each line is written in different ink. Different moods. Different nights.
He picks up his pen, hand shaking slightly.
He adds one more line:
If I could stop seeing you in every stranger’s smile.
He stares at it and doesn’t try to write anything more.
A long breath escapes him, and for a moment he feels the subway again beneath his feet—the sway, the sudden jolt, the stranger’s laugh. That green sweater. That mole on the wrong side. Neil in everything and everyone and no one at all.
He flips to the inside cover of the notebook. The part where Neil once doodled stars and wrote something in Latin just to make Todd roll his eyes. It’s faded now, but Todd knows it by heart.
Amor vincit omnia.
Love conquers all.
Liar.
He closes the notebook. Places it gently back in the drawer, as if it’s something fragile. Precious.
Then, without meaning to, he says it aloud—just to the empty room. Just to the ghosts.
“I saw you on the train tonight.”
A pause.
“I wanted it to be you.”
His voice is quieter now. Barely above a whisper.
“I wanted it so badly it hurt.”
He shuts the drawer and stands there.
Listening to the snow fall.
And the silence that follows.