Chapter Text
14 December, 1969
If you would have asked Todd Anderson nine years and three hundred and sixty-four days ago where he would be in ten years, hiding alone in his bedroom is not what he would have answered.
Nine years and three hundred and sixty-four days ago he had a newfound confidence given to him by the Dead Poets Society and his dear friend, Neil Perry. He would have said that he’d be living lavishly in a big city. He would be a successful English professor, sought out by hundreds of exorbitant schools. While teaching, he would change the lives of many. Just like his own professor, John Keating.
However, nine years and three hundred and sixty-four days have not been kind. Todd has a teaching job at a normal high school and he, at the very least, lives outside of a big city. But there is someone missing that he would have never accounted for being missed all those years ago. Tomorrow is the ten year anniversary of the death of Neil Perry. Though Todd had still planned on his successes after this event, there was only so much therapy and swearing over and over again to your friends that you had moved on could do.
And Todd Anderson is hiding alone in his bedroom. The lights are shut off and, for lack of a better word, it is hot. It is three in the afternoon, eleven days before Christmas, but sweat has beaded up behind Todd’s neck. It drips, drips down, begging Todd to open the poor window less than a foot from his bed. Despite this, Todd keeps his comforter wrapped around his body and buries his face into his uncased pillow.
Hours tick by and sweat continues to pool under him. It’s six o’clock that evening when Todd finally decides he can no longer take the nagging from his own conscience. He opens his eyes, which are bloodshot, and tries to sit up. By the time he can do so, the window has already been opened by someone else. Charlie Dalton.
“W-When...how long…” Todd has to clear his throat, voice not at all warmed up from a day absent of speaking, “how long have you been in here?”
“Two seconds,” Charlie rolls his eyes. Once the window is opened, he leans against Todd’s wall, arms crossed with interest over his chest. “Air conditioning’s been out. I thought I would come check on you.”
It wasn’t uncommon for Charlie to come in unannounced to check on Todd. It was a habit that was formed years ago when he and Charlie started living together.
Yes, they live together. And they have been ever since their graduation from Welton Academy. It’s a spectacularly small apartment, their two bedroom, in the suburbs of New York City. The space has seen them through to their college graduations, the beginnings of their careers, and now it would see them through the ten year anniversary. At this rate, Todd thinks it might see them through to their own deaths, too.
Along with seeing them through, this apartment is where Charlie and Todd can pretend that everything is okay. They can pretend they’re living the lives they always wanted. One where food is always on the table and the water pressure is decent. People always visit. The simple needs, really.
When Todd’s parents bother to call him on the first of every month, he’ll keep up the act of acting like that is the case. He’ll tell them that everything has gone according to plan. His English degree was not a waste and being a teacher has filled his life with meaning. The pay doesn’t matter, but he has more than he needs. That’s what he says.
His parents don’t know and they don’t need to know the truth. They don’t have to know that Todd will talk a bit louder every time his stomach starts to growl or whenever Charlie yells from the living room that the water shut off again. They don’t need to know that money continues to get scarcer, depleting from Todd’s wallet faster than he can keep up. His teaching job is nothing more than exactly that. He isn’t inspiring or changing people and, some months, Charlie’s bank job is the only thing that keeps them afloat. No, they don’t need to know that.
And they don’t need to know that Todd is hiding alone in his bedroom nine years and three hundred and sixty-four days after the death of Neil Perry.
Todd always ends the call before they can know anything like that.
“Todd?”
Oh. Charlie is still in his room.
“Huh? Yeah?” His eyes fall onto Charlie’s face, which seems to be in much better shape than Todd’s own, but not by much. There’s dark circles under his eyes that are very telling in knowing how much sleep Charlie has been getting these days. His hair, nearly long enough to cover those circles, has not been combed, but Todd almost wants to applaud him because he can tell that it’s been washed.
Todd revisits Charlie’s hands, which are slightly hidden in the way Charlie keeps his arms crossed. Todd can still see the scar on the fingers of his right hand, which connects into a clean line when he forms a fist. Charlie had punched a window the day Neil left and Todd supposes he’s remembering that now, too. He stands up straight and hides his hand behind his back.
“You all right? You haven’t left your room once today.” Charlie accuses him and it feels mean because obviously he isn’t doing okay. But it isn’t mean, is it? Not really. Charlie really is only checking on him and, no matter how many showers he takes, he feels the same way too.
The difference is that Charlie can hide it, how he feels. He can go to work and fake it. He isn’t good at being alone, at finding comfort in sadness. Todd can’t go to work and he can’t fake it. But, he can be alone. There’s positives and negatives to both of these, both Charlie and Todd. It’s why they live together. Charlies takes care of Todd. He opens the windows Todd can’t bring himself to. Todd takes care of Charlie. He stays in the apartment and Charlie can always find him for company. Because Charlie can’t be alone. Not this week, not today, and not tomorrow.
Todd tugs his blanket off of himself. Both he and Charlie catch how he sighs audibly in relief when he allows the cold air from the outside to fully hit him.
“You know...You know the answer.” Todd eventually replies, pointing out the fact. He, again, has to clear his throat. This embarrasses him because there’s far less bite to your words when they have to push their way past the tightness of your windpipe. In an attempt to ignore it and focus on something else, Todd slips a hand into his short hair, kept mostly shaven over the past decade. He keeps it shaved as, when money is tight and the sadness takes over, his hair is the only thing he can control. No matter what. “I’m fine, Charlie. I am, I promise.”
“Pfft. Sure.” Charlie responds, voice rough and coming out from somewhere deep in the back of his throat. “You’re fine and that’s why you haven’t-”
“Left my room once today, I know.” Todd finishes the sentence for him and, for a long while, he cannot bring himself to say anything else. He starts to pick at the hangnail that protrudes from the ring finger on his left hand. When it begins to bleed, he speaks again. “I’m really tired.”
Charlie bites his bottom lip harshly and steps closer to Todd’s bed. “Listen, Todd…”
“I took the last few days of the semester off.” Todd, with urgency, explains himself before Charlie has any chance to berate him. “There’s a substitute. And I’m still getting paid, so don’t worry about my part of the rent or anything. I’ll get it to you.” Todd shifts uncomfortably in his bed and a loud creaking is heard.
“You can’t really think I’m going to ask you about rent right now, right?’ Charlies huffs like he’s annoyed, but there’s a gentle smile that curls the corners of his mouth up.
“You’re not…?” Todd, face now red with more than just what he assumes might be the edge of heat stroke, grabs his blanket and pulls it up to his chin to hide.
“I’m not.” Charlie attests. “Like I said, there’s no air conditioning. I’m checking on you. It’s a difficult time of year.”
Charlie mutters the last sentence out and shifts his gaze down to Todd’s bedsheets. The light pouring in from the window does little to compliment them. The once white sheets have an obvious yellowing to them, stained from years of neglect. There’s a corner of his mattress that becomes more and more bare with each of Todd’s movements, the sheet peeling away from it. There’s also a stench to the room that Charlie wants to believe is the natural smell of the aging apartment. But he knows that Todd hasn’t changed in days.
“I know,” Todd just about rolled his eyes, but decided it wasn’t a good time. “I know it’s a difficult time of year.
Charlie curses under his breath, like Todd has just bared some deep, indescribable wound to him. In a way, he had. When Charlie looks up at him, Todd has lied back down and hidden his face again. It’s unlikely Charlie will see him rise for the rest of the day.
That’s fine. He’ll give Todd the rest he needs. There’s always tomorrow.
He steps away from his place in front of Todd’s bed and heads for the door. “Eat when you can, okay?” He says, not unlike an order.
“Hm?”
“There’s a plate for you on your desk. Eat when you can.” Charlie repeats in a softer tone of voice, shutting Todd’s door with a final sounding click.
“A...huh?” Todd throws the sheets away from his face, curious as to what Charlie could have left for him. Surely, across the room and sitting on the center of his desk is a dish holding buttered toast and a bundle of purple grapes. A half-full glass of water is next to it.
Todd scowls, knowing well that Charlie had placed the food there because he knows Todd will have to get up to get it. That’s something else about Todd: he can go days without eating if he distracts himself long enough but if a plate full of food is in the room, he has to have it.
With a loud groan, Todd pulls himself back up, setting his feet on the floor. Slowly, he stands, struggling to balance with a body that hasn’t moved in hours. He treks to his desk and slumps down in the wooden chair. Protective over the meal now, Todd hunches over the plate and lifts a piece of bread to his lips. More animalistic than he intends, he rips off a chunk with his teeth, chews, and swallows.
It’s only out of appreciation for Charlie that he eats. It’s for Charlie and not the painful rumbling in his belly that yells ‘ food, please,’ .
Once the bread is gone and the ache has faded, Todd slowly pops grapes into his mouth. He lets them sit on his tongue before crushing them between his molars. The juice delightfully spills into the back of his throat. The plate is eventually cleared and Todd sees a warped image of himself in the glass, staring back at him.This plate is one his mother had given him some Christmas after he received his degree.
‘For you and the future Mrs.’ His father had said.
‘It’s a fine glass, Todd, my mother gave me a plate just like it once.’ His mother had squealed in delight.
He thinks, Todd does, that he wouldn’t mind if it broke. He could accidentally drop it. He could tell his mother it was an accident if she ever asked.
He doesn’t. Instead, Todd takes a deep breath, placing his finger on the plate and moving the tip along the glass. He presses the now coated finger on his tongue and licks off all the leftover crumbs and butter. Then, he licks the flavor off of his lips. And he guzzles down the glass of water.
Todd doesn’t know when he starts crying, only that the plate now has droplets of water hitting it. He wipes his eyes, palming at them in desperation to get the wetness away. He hates crying, hates how puffy his face looks after and how he feels much like a toddler when he does. It’s not a fair thing, crying. He wishes he was a toddler then. There’s no point in crying as an adult when you’re not even allowed to fall on the floor and beat your fists against it like a toddler gets to.
As Todd cries, the world is very quiet and he feels very alone. There’s a cricket singing somewhere in one of the shadowy corners of his bedroom and, for some reason, the thought that he’ll never find it makes him cry harder. Could Neil have felt like that cricket? Like he had to hide, like people, like things like him could only ever live in the dark?
His crying ceases and he thinks that, maybe, crickets don’t think as deep as humans do. Neil was a lot bigger and a lot better than a cricket.
At some point. Todd does make it back into his bed. He falls asleep on his stained sheets, under his old comforter, on a pillow with no case. It sounds rather meaningless, but things always sound like a lot less when they’re described exactly as they are.
He dreams of bigger things. Of a life where the sky is a lot more blue than cities have to offer. Of a world where there’s rivers to swim in and caves to take refuge in. Of a place where Neil is.
It takes no time at all for Todd, the part of him that is aware that he’s dreaming, to realize he is dreaming of Welton Academy. A place he never thought he could be comforted by, now acts as a setting in his dreams. What all that means, he’ll never be able to say out loud.
Around five that next morning, on the ten year anniversary, Todd wakes up with dry eyes and an even drier throat. He wants nothing more now than another glass of water. Eyes still closed, Todd gets up and rests his feet against his bedroom floor. When he does this, there is an extreme wave of deja vu that washes over him; a sudden feeling that his feet have touched this floor before when he was much younger and much less wise.
He shakes the thought out of his head because of course he’s been here before. He lives here and has for years.
But Todd opens his eyes and nearly jumps out of his skin at what he sees. This is not the bedroom he fell asleep in the night before. This place is familiar but not where he was. He shuts his eyes and tells himself he’s simply still dreaming. However, the bedroom does not change when he opens his eyes again.
“What the…” Todd shakily says, afraid because this is the bedroom he grew up in. He looks around and immediately remembers he had a map of the world above his bed for the first sixteen years of his life. There’s a desk right next to his bed instead of across the room like he has in his apartment with Charlie. And his pillow has a case on it.
“Oh, my God. Oh, my God…” Todd cries, his voice coming out gentle and much higher than he remembered it sounding. Like he sounded when he was a teenager.
He’s about to touch his head, just to check if he has the hair to match his teenage self when there’s a knock on his door.
“Todd?”
He doesn’t know if it’s a good idea to answer, but he does anyway, without thinking. Like he’s supposed to answer. “Yes?’
“Come eat breakfast, honey, we have to leave soon.” The door opens and Todd is met with his mother, about ten years younger than he remembers her looking.
“Leave? Wha-Wha-What do you mean?” Todd can’t stop the words from coming out of his mouth. “We’re going somewhere?”
“Todd!” His mother shakes her head, “pretending you don’t know what day it is won’t get you out of school. Now, come eat. You don’t want to be late for the opening ceremony. Welton Academy is not the place for tardy students.”