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The boys laugh while Mr. Keating steps away, just barely gone, but at their laughter, Todd's focus is broken, his train of thought, too, when he opens his eyes and isn't in the dark anymore. Mr. Keating rushes forward to shut Todd's eyes once more, throw him back into that zone, and orders, "forget them, forget them!" Hands on Todd's lapels, the captain continues, "stay with the blanket. Tell me about the blanket."
Neil can only watch with wide eyes. He's scared that if he'll blink he'll miss something even though Todd's poem is purely auditory. His thought process is visible on his face, the strained features as he thinks of the direction he wants to push his words in. Todd takes a breath, and it spills out with a stutter.
"You can push it, stretch it, it'll never be enough. You kick at it, beat it, it'll never cover any of us."
Mr. Keating steps away. Todd's passion only grows, fervour behind his words. Neil can't look away. He can't.
"From the moment we enter crying to the moment we leave dying, it'll just cover your face as you wail and cry and scream."
Todd finally opens his eyes to look down at the kneeling captain, breath having escaped him. The classroom is incredibly silent beneath the buzzing ceiling lights. No one moves, no one speaks. Nothing, and Neil still can't tear his eyes away. He's the first to bring his hands together in applause, many following his lead, clapping and hooting for Todd, for the poem he'd created. Todd smiles at the attention, but his eyes only fall away from Mr. Keating to reach Neil's across from the room, as if he'd known it was him who started the congratulating uproar.
Neil is still awestruck by the time the class is dismissed. He turns Todd's words over in his head, over, and over, like a faulty vinyl stuck looping the same two verses. He can barely remember the words past the rushing memory that is Todd's spirit behind each word. He hightails ahead of his peers to catch up with Todd.
"A sweaty-toothed madman?" Neil asks, tailing behind Todd, who has made it his personal mission to outrun him at a coy speed-walk beeline down the hall. It does not work.
Their ajar door allows sun to bleed out unto the wooden floor of the corridor as a beacon of light, beckoning them indoors as they approach, yet being stuck in a room with the vibrant Neil is the last thing on Todd's mind, especially after that class. He doesn't want to recall the poem. He barely knew what it had meant until he'd said it. Now he only braced for the full force of those who applauded him turning to ridicule him for what was said.
Some kid, younger, yells "MARCO!" down the packed hall. Neil, obviously messing, hollers back, "POLO!" just as Todd pipes up.
"Yeah, yeah, you don't have to rub it in…" Todd tries to duck away from Neil's pursuant chasing of him, splitting a pair of friends in half by squeezing between them, attempting at losing Neil in the crowd. Again, doesn't work. He is followed by his energetic counterpart into their room.
Neil acts as if he hadn't just sent a boy chasing a false 'polo'. He's completely sobered of that antic and shuts the door softly behind him while Todd refuses to look back. "Rub it in? Todd, you're fantastic!"
Todd screws his eyebrows and falls against his bed in disbelief. He meets Neil's prodding eye. "What?"
"You heard me!" Neil pounces on Todd's bed, just missing his legs as he jumps, barely sticking the landing on the mattress. "You're fantastic!"
"It didn't mean anything."
Neil drops his jaw, scoffs, looks incredulously at his friend. Todd doesn't entertain it and glares at him instead. "Don't say that," Neil insists, shuffling impossibly closer to Todd, arms touching, matching one another's curve against the wall to the bed. "How couldn't they mean anything, your words?"
Todd shrugs carelessly, toeing off his shoes for lack of a better thing to focus on. They clatter to the floor. "It was just talk."
"How can you say that?" Neil presses, crestfallen at Todd's denial, as if it were his own. He leans away from Todd just to sit up properly and look at him, turned and resting on his elbows rather than being pressed up against his friend. Todd can't tell which is worse: Neil's intense stare or his burning touch. "Your words, they were…" Neil huffs a sigh when he can't find his own words. "They were powerful. More passionate than I've ever heard them spoken from you. I knew you had it in you, all that writing, planning, scrawling, and crumpling, all for you to say you never wrote a poem?"
Todd opens his mouth a few times during Neil's tangent to speak but he is rendered speechless, which he finds incredibly ironic as they're speaking of how well he'd yielded words moments prior. He doesn't dare interrupt after that, not with his uncertainty.
"Your words were poetry, your delivery was art. You became someone else, then, not the Todd Anderson we know, but the Todd Anderson you are." Neil shifts on his elbow, definitely falling asleep beneath his weight, but he persists. "What you said wasn't just talk. That came"—Neil lifts a hand, presses against Todd's chest with little hesitation—"from here. And so help me God, Anderson, it was fantastic!"
Todd can't speak. It's like his mouth has run dry, Neil creating a desert through his veins as he spoke. Unblinking, he finally shatters the eye contact he was so nervous to uphold to look outside the window and at where the golden sun comes from, the inviting yet blinding quality of it nearing its duck behind the horizon. He mulls over Neil's words in his head, now, rather than the other way around. Neil could've written his speech as a poem and got a grade A* for it, Todd doesn't doubt. He swallows past the trepidation masked as dryness in his mouth before turning back to those beckoning brown eyes, still staring, still searching.
Todd likes to think his expression doesn't give him away, but he's sure it does. He looks as worn in as an old leather couch and as timid as a stray, but his eyes tell a different story… confidence returned. As though it were halved from Neil's resolve then delivered to him through those words. The electrifying jolt it sent through him was what bloomed the soft smile now creasing his face.
"I'll be the poet," Todd starts, voice unsure, but it captivates Neil all the same, "and you'll be the actor. I'll write stories through rhymes and rhythms and you'll breathe life into them… 'cause you're pretty fantastic, too."
Neil guffaws: "you're just saying that." He pushes off of his elbow before Todd can retort and spins once more to be bundled up against the wall and supported by Todd's side. "But thank you."
"I mean it," Todd stammers slightly, jumping at a halt in conversation, "and I should be the one thanking you."
"No," Neil grins in that godforsaken smirk, "I should be thanking Mr. Keating."
"For what?" Todd smiles with him: he can't beat the contagious urge. Their faces are unbearably close when they look at each other but neither makes a move to turn away. The golden atmosphere of the room in both colour and emotion is incredibly thick.
Neil's smirk grows into a full smile, foolish with his canines and sappy, of the sort. Todd likes this smile better than the last. Neil finally says, "for spinning you 'round like a wind-up doll, that's what,"
Todd and him laugh for a moment, just the two of them on Todd's unmade, rumpled bed, and the sun peeking in from outside. After drawing a long breath to rid of the mirth, Todd is still grinning from ear-to-ear when he says, "he tumble-dried the words outta me."
That prompts another laughing fit. A laughing fit so long the golden sun turned to but slivers of burning orange past the horizon and Neil's head became held up by Todd's jumping shoulder, both keeling over with laughter, adding onto the joke and saying meaningless anecdotes just to keep the hilarity streak going. So long that the next sound heard that wasn't laughter was a loud rap on the door before it had been pushed open. It revealed Charlie's flushed face, as if he'd been running for God knows how long.
"Hey, fellows," Charlie greets, breath slowly catching up to him. "Ready for dinner?"
Todd can feel Neil's head rise only by a bare fraction of an inch, and does so just to wipe tears from his eyes before it burrows deeper against his shoulder. "Not hungry," he proclaims, but Todd can tell he is, largely because his own stomach has been turning in hunger for a while he hadn't realised it had been.
"What're they serving?" Todd asks, face still flushed from laughter. He has to clear his throat to save his voice from crackling.
Charlie slumps against the doorframe, head lolling back, baring his neck with a frustrated groan. "Pesto pasta." A faux shudder rolls through him as his face theatrically contorts into disgust.
"Hey!" Neil scolds, grinning, "don't badmouth pesto."
Todd knows they're going to have to go down for dinner. He knows. No matter that it's Hell-ton schedule-mandated, both he and Neil are hungry enough to eat for a family rather than two teenage boys. He just doesn't want the moment to end. The scalding heat of Neil's face pressed against his shoulder tells him that Neil might not want it to end, either.
Todd recovers from his reverie in time to answer Charlie before he'd drag them to the dining hall himself; "we'll catch up in two seconds," and with that, Charlie's off with a shrug and "suit yourself."
Neil's head rolls against Todd's shoulder following their watching of Charlie shutting the door in silence to look up at Todd, who looks at him from the corner of his eye. Mainly all he can see his auburn hair, and thank God it isn't Neil Perry's open-eyed stare. "What?"
"Nothing," Neil says, tone terribly soft. "Just…" he swallows, "did you mean what you said? You; the writer, and me; the actor?"
Todd's face already hurts from smiling so hard but he can't help it when he breaks into another. "Yes." He can feel Neil's exhale against the fabric of his shirt. Light and barely ghosting the surface, but it's there and it exhilarates him.
Neil swallows again, combating the nervousness bubbling up, threatening to spill over, as if he were a can of pop shaken too hard. His anxiety is rubbing off on Todd: he doesn't know if it's the close proximity or the feeling that something was bound to happen, but it hits him fast. He eventually leans away within the silence to properly meet Neil's gaze. His eyes sparkled in the remains of the sun, turned to dregs along the edge of the earth. They were more red than they were brown, now.
"What?" Todd whispers, unable to find his voice.
Neil runs his tongue over his lips before fitting the bottom between his teeth. When Neil replies, it is too, spoken in a whisper. "I really want to kiss you."
"Oh." Todd expels, face growing hot and body prickling with goosebumps, like a swarm of colourful dragonflies sweeping across his skin.
"Can I kiss you?"
Todd rights his posture and Neil does the same, both sitting up, jaws equally dropped open with flushed cheeks and awaiting eyes. "Yes."
Instead of Neil leaning in, it is Todd. Todd, with that borrowed confidence, pulls himself forward and the gravitational force that is Todd Anderson reels Neil in, who meets him in the middle, with Neil sighing into his mouth the breath he didn't realise he'd been holding. They're shy and inexperienced, but it's not awkward nor does it not feel good to finally do what they'd been skirting around for a while longer than the one they'd just spent in silence. With their lips overlapping one another, each kiss a reconnection better than the last, they move in tandem and suddenly everything feels so easy.
Pulling away from the kiss, Neil watches as Todd's lips continue to follow him before, lethargic to follow, his eyes open with a question in them as to why Neil stopped. "You told me you didn't like to read."
Todd deflates slightly. "It wasn't a lie. I'd rather write."
Neil smiles, deeming the answer acceptable. "I should've realised." This time, he takes one hand against Todd's jaw, thumb going along the line of his cheekbone, and looks at his lips.
"Kiss me," Todd says, sick of the wait. Soon enough, they'll have to trudge downstairs for dinner and until they get into their pyjamas and brush their teeth, the next kiss they share might as well be hours from now. He doesn't want to let this equilibrium go.
Neil only smiles and kisses him over the lips, bringing Todd's to his own with that hand on his jaw. They kiss for what seems like an eternity before Neil moves on to grasp Todd by the other side of his face with his other hand and Todd, malleable beneath Neil's embrace, lets him kiss him over the face. His forehead, beneath his eye, the tip of his nose, the corner of his lips. Between said fervent yet sweet, gentle kisses, Neil voices, still almost-whispering, "you don't know how long I've waited to do this. Listening to your poem today… I knew I had to tell you."
Another knock on the door. The two boys are quick to shoot up and out of one another's space, faces flushed pink, clothes ruffled. Todd's hair is messy from Neil's hands. There's a distinct wrinkle in Neil's shirt where Todd hadn't even noticed he'd grabbed him.
Meeks peeks past the door. "Are you guys coming to dinner?"
"Yes," Neil says, jumping away from the bed and clearing his throat of the tender voice he'd used on Todd, "yes, we'll catch up with you."
Meeks nods in goodbye and disappears down the hall without closing the door. Neil takes one step and closes the door over for one last time that night. Todd stands up to be right behind Neil and right in front of him when he turns back to him. "I don't regret anything."
Neil grins widely. "Me neither."
"How long?" Todd asks, fiddling with the sleeve of his sweater.
Neil raises a brow. "'How long' what?"
Todd shifts his stance, smiling coyly, trying to keep it back by biting his cheek, "how long have you waited to tell me that you wanted to kiss me?"
Neil purses his lips in thought before chuckling shyly. "I…"
"No, wait," Todd corrects himself, stepping forward to stand between Neil and the door, back to the door, hands falling to the knob behind him. He twists it open to reveal the deserted hall, once bustling, now left to gather dust as everybody feasts. It's quiet but the hum of conversation from the lower floors. "Don't tell me now."
Neil follows Todd out into the corridor. He's laughing slightly, puzzled. "When do you want me to tell you?"
"Don't tell me. Write me a poem."