Work Text:
It was cold and raining when Richard moved into Neil and Todd’s room. That was in itself the very first problem: that he kept referring to it as Neil and Todd’s, when it was just as much his now as anybody’s. When he was done it looked as if he had lived there all his life – his textbooks on the desk, his satchel lying propped up against the foot of the bed. His rugby kit draped over the back of the chair. His chair. But there was still an indefinable trace of Neil which would not leave. The books still slouched very slightly on the tiny shelf and even after the fifth time he rearranged the bed linen, the corner of the sheet still fell untucked. There was a little insolence to it which irritated him, and the irritation took him by surprise, and that – unluckily – was how Todd found him when he walked inside.
He didn’t say anything. That was to be expected; Todd had never been the type of person to say anything, and especially not since – well –
He wasn’t the type. That was all. He even moved quietly, like a cat, padding across the floor and scaring the hell out of Richard, sometimes, when he wasn’t looking. What he did do and did much of was look, with his big eyes, big luminous eyes that changed colour like running river water and were sometimes as eloquent as entire orations. Those eyes had always creeped Richard out a little, although he would never admit it. Now he was on their receiving end as they swept across his side of the room – their room – taking it in, categorising the changes he had made, flitting like fireflies from object to object. “Hey,” said Richard, when the silence grew too much. The irritation seeped into it and it came out, “Hey!”, like he was looking for some kind of fight, so he repeated it and tried to make it softer. There had been enough fighting for now. His nose still ached.
Todd inclined his head. It wasn’t enough of a response. “Hopefully there’s still enough space for all of your things,” Richard continued, even though he knew there was. Another nod. “I’m not untidy, so you don’t have to worry about that.” Again that slow sweep of his eyes, a blink, the impenetrable stare. “I didn’t – ” said Richard. He forced a laugh. “I brought my pillow from the other room, which turned out fine, actually, because I couldn’t find any on the bed when I came in. Isn’t that funny?”
“No,” said Todd. He shut the door behind him and began to hang his blazer up in his wardrobe.
Well, there was no point talking to a guy who clearly wanted nothing to do with you. This hadn’t stopped Richard’s face from flaming up in embarrassed crimson, like a billboard of shame, but Todd said nothing more and in fact spared him not a single glance as he put his books down on the desk, himself down in his chair, and began scribbling onto a notepad. “I’ll just…” said Richard, and still there was no reply as he gently extricated himself from the bed, eased past the back of Todd’s chair, and left the room.
He went out. Not to the cave, of course; not to the lake, no point; not to the rugby pitch, training in progress. It was frustrating, directly in view of the big windows of the common room, lit up all in that warm yellowish light. He could imagine what it was like inside, the clumps of boys studying, playing cards, holding court with every confidence in the world. He had had that confidence once. It had come on quickly and left that way too. It had warmed him directly through, like a fire, like a laser’s beam of light, like a warm common room lamp… he shook the thought from his head, mainly because it sounded a little too much like poetry. Silly of him, to be writing poetry in his head when it was nothing to do with him. A bad habit. It was cold and darkening fast outside, and there were a few boys traipsing back up the main lawn giving him strange looks. He put his hood up and fastened another button of his coat.
His thoughts – kept straying back to Todd. He tried to think of other things, prosaic things, laundry and going into town Saturday morning and writing to his mother who would worry despite everything, but at the end of every thought was a flash of blue-green, wide eyes full of accusation. Todd blamed him, Richard knew. Todd blamed him and it was easy to tell. He had never said anything but at this point Richard would have preferred anything else – Meeks telling him not to sit with them at class, Pitts kindly but firmly moving his things to the next desk over in the chemistry lab, even the impact of Charlie’s fist, that bright starburst of pain – to this obvious devastation. He could almost see the fine cracks in Todd, running from hairline to ankle, the minute tremble, as if he was hollow-boned and only waiting for the wind to carry him away. He even stood now with his arms a little closer to his sides, his feet tucked inwards, as if to make it easier to get off balance, and fall headlong into flight. Flight metaphorical, or flight – you know, they had never been told exactly how Neil had –
Todd blamed him. Yeah, well, so did everyone else. “Big deal,” said Richard out loud, into the air in front of him, so thickly black he could not tell how far away the trees were. It didn’t echo as he hoped it would, or sound as defiant. “Get in line.”
By the time he crept back inside, the halls were silent, and the only light that came in was from under the closed room doors. He was embarrassed, and worried, and a little selfishly glad. Over the last couple of weeks he had felt strangely for the first time: powerful. An odd power. A power that made other boys whisper when they saw him; a power that had left empty places behind the teacher’s desk in the classroom, and at the pupil’s desk behind his. A power that emptied out corridors, even. It was a stupid joke and a stupid way to cope and he wished, sometimes fervently, to be once again small and insignificant beneath the notice of others, but then again that was what that old saying was talking about, wasn’t it? About the grass, how it was always greener on the other side.
It was January. Everywhere you turned the trees and hedges were bare.
Neil and Todd’s room – his room – their room – was the only one with no light pooling, like melted butter, underneath the door. Richard opened it noiselessly and slipped inside, wishing for a torch, but there was no need: Todd had not drawn the curtains. The moonlight cut between the two beds like a huge beam of rivetless metal, silvery and silent. There was an eerie blue tinge to everything in the room, not least the messy hair just visible above the thin heap of blankets on Todd’s bed. Richard stood for a while and, uncaring, fascinated, watched. In wakefulness Todd’s shoulders were usually up around his ears, or else stiffened defensively, like some kind of rampart. But under the blanket he was a curving slumped line, like a swan’s neck or a heron’s in profile, and the fabric smoothed his edges, softened him into reality. He was a boy again and not a block of ice. His breaths came easier.
Suddenly Richard was tired, very tired, and Neil’s bed with the untucked sheet and his lone pillow looked impossibly inviting. He shucked his coat and scarf, toed off his shoes, and lay down, moving quietly. The bed squeaked anyway but Todd didn’t stir. He rolled over and faced the wall, thinking of other things; what was for dinner tomorrow, whether he might be able to sneak into the common room one of these days, whether… he slept.
“Fuck!”
It was accompanied by a soft dull thud. Richard woke slowly and unsure if he had dreamt it but that all went out the window as soon as he rolled blearily over and saw through blurred eyes Todd sitting up in bed, furiously sobbing. There was a pillow on the floor, another one half-folded beneath his elbow. He had had two, then. Richard hadn’t noticed.
The adrenaline cleared the rest of his vision, but did nothing to help the sudden wooziness when he leapt to his feet. He gripped the headboard for support, feeling simultaneously embarrassed and aghast. Todd was doing the kind of crying you didn’t usually want other people to see, it was – red and open-mouthed and ugly, great fat tears streaming down his face, mixing with snot. His hair was slicked back from his face and damp and the blanket had fallen down to expose his throat, heaving, underneath the standard-issue flannel pyjamas. He was almost glowing; he was burning, somehow. It was like watching a star die. He could almost see a phosphorescent trail around Todd’s fingers where they were gripping his knees, an imitation of the crimson afterimage left when you rubbed your eyes too hard. “Why…” said Richard. “You…”
He left the words to dissipate unfinished and stayed there, tilting slightly, as Todd’s sobbing began slowly to taper off. It was ugly as the rest of the tears had been, heaves of shuddering breath that convulsed through him as if he would vomit. Finally, the fight seemed to leave him. His shoulders slowed, then stopped, their shaking. So did Richard – the perceptible shaking, anyway. Todd still wasn’t looking at him. He lurched forward, thought briefly about getting back into bed, shook off the shameful flush that crept to his face at the thought, and sank to his knees on Todd’s mattress to do – what? He did not know. He put one hand on Todd’s back and one on his shoulder, and knew instantly that it had been the wrong thing to do.
The skin was warm, unnaturally so, through the fabric, and he yielded to his touch with an audible slump of relief. But it only lasted an instant, half an instant; then Todd locked up beneath Richard’s palms as if he was ice again. The change was so sudden he almost snatched his hands away. There was the faintest of tremors running through him, like earthquake aftershocks. The spindly iron frame of the bed was a poor dampener for these kinds of things and the room felt like it was rocking. He didn't know what to do. “You – ” he began, and then realised he didn’t know what to say, either.
They sat there for a moment in silence. Todd was still looking away from him, at somewhere else, the dark forbidding beckoning outline of the door. He tried again. “You – ”
“I’ll hit you,” said Todd quietly. “I’ll knock your goddamn teeth out. Take your hands off me, Richard.”
“I don’t,” said Richard, “I’m just trying to – ”
“Your goddamn hands.”
He removed them. Todd appeared to sink inwards, into himself, become denser and more corporeal. He let out a little gasp. It was as if, until now, he had been trying to breathe underwater. “Thank you.”
His throat loosened unexpectedly. “It’s that bad when I touch you?”
“Don’t ask stupid questions,” said Todd sharply, and he shut his mouth. “Yes. No. I don’t know. Don’t ask me that.”
The sudden thought flashed through his mind that maybe, very briefly, Todd had thought it was somebody else – that he had thought it was – even thinking it was blasphemous, somehow. Richard shut his eyes and said a silent prayer. Then aloud, “Sorry.”
“Don’t.”
“Apologise?”
“Pray.”
“How did you – ”
“You have a pious fucking face,” Todd snapped. “Get out of my bed.” The order registered before the words did and he stood up so fast his calves cramped in protest, mouth working but no sound coming out. Todd smiled at him, a sardonic smile with no mirth in it, and said, “Thanks, prefect.”
“Go fuck yourself,” said Richard. This, too, had been done without thinking. He sat back down on his own bed, a little horrified, a little guiltily triumphant. The smile remained on Todd’s face, but he clearly didn’t know it had: his eyes sparked. They were large and still somehow clear in the moonlight, when before they had been hooded. There was an itch crawling across Richard’s neck. Then Todd laughed.
“There you go,” he said. “I thought Charlie had knocked it out of you.”
Relief was a heavy cross on his shoulders. “You’re crazy.”
“I’m very sane,” said Todd mildly. “My mother had me checked, just in case. Did yours?”
“Seriously. Are you even – ”
“Normal?”
“Alright?”
That made Todd look at him. “Alright?” he said, a little bemused.
“You were crying,” Richard said awkwardly.
“Thank you, Holmes. Yes,” said Todd, but the sharpness was faltering. “Why do you care?”
It was relieving – relief upon relief – to feel indignant; this was an emotion he could name, not something shadowy and indistinguishable in the dark. “What d’you mean, why do I care? What do you want me to do, turn around and ignore you?”
Todd shrugged. “Most people do.”
“Yeah, well,” said Richard, kicking halfheartedly at the floor, “guess I don’t.”
There was a long and awkward silence. The moon-rays stretching across the floor were flickering as clouds raced across the sky, caught in the grasp of distant, muffled wind; they darted from one side of the room to the next, cast their faces in an everchanging unearthly light, as if there was a film projector aimed at the both of them. God, he hoped there was no audience. Todd said, “I haven’t forgiven you.”
He snorted. “Join the club.”
“I’m angry they made us room together.”
“Right, because I’m overjoyed.”
“I’ve never seen you act like this before.”
That brought him up short. He shrugged, then opened his mouth, then closed it, and said finally, “Well, it’s been a hell of a first semester.”
“What do you know,” said Todd, and he sounded very, very tired. “There’s common ground after all.”
Silently, in unison, they began to settle back down again. Richard tucked the blanket up underneath his armpits and folded his hands together over his sternum, staring hard at the ceiling; this dark it could have been any distance away, just above the tip of his nose or a hundred miles in the air. He could hear fabric rustling and one or two final, slightly teary sniffs as Todd lay back down. He said, “I have one question.”
“Only one,” said Todd.
“The other pillow. That’s – is it…”
“Yes.” That one syllable was warmer than Todd had sounded at any point over the last few weeks. In itself, it was answer enough.
“Alright,” said Richard simply. “I’m glad you have it.” There was no answer, but some kind of imperceptible easing in the air nonetheless. He loosened the grip of his hands on each other, and closed his eyes, and slept.