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Chapter Text

The campus radio station always smelled faintly of coffee and old cables—something half-forgotten, half-comforting. Todd Anderson let the door swing shut behind him and stood in the stillness for a moment, listening to the low hum of the building as if it might speak first. It didn’t.

He slipped off his coat and hung it on the peg by the soundboard, careful not to knock over the tiny ceramic owl perched on top of the bookshelf. Someone—maybe Charlie Dalton from the Tuesday rock hour—had glued a pair of headphones onto it. Todd thought it was ridiculous, but in a way that made him feel less alone.

The booth itself was small, the walls lined with egg-crate foam that had long since started to peel. He’d wrapped fairy lights around the rim of the window at the start of the semester, the soft gold ones that made everything look a little warmer than it was. They were dim tonight, flickering like fireflies holding their breath.

He checked the clock.

11:58 PM.

He had two minutes.

Carefully, methodically, he set up. Mic test. Audio levels. Open playlist tab. Pull up the analog backup in case the internet crashed again. He flipped open the small green notebook he carried everywhere and stared at tonight’s lineup. He’d written it in pencil, each title soft and smudged. Poetry had a way of bleeding like that.

Tonight: a little Whitman. Some Ocean Vuong. A short piece from Tracy K. Smith. A scattering of Dickinson dashes. A few anonymous fragments from a worn-out anthology of German Romantic poems he found on the free shelf in the lit building. And maybe— maybe —something of his own.

But probably not.

The red ON AIR light blinked on.

He inhaled through his nose, steadied himself, and leaned into the mic.

“Good evening,” he said, voice pitched low and gentle. “You’re listening to Between the Lines . I’m your host—T.A.”

No last name. No first name either. Just letters. A set of initials drifting through the dark, a voice without a body.

There was a pause.

Then he began.

“I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”

He let the words of Whitman spill slow and deliberate, like honey from a spoon. The room felt smaller when he read, not in a suffocating way, but in a comforting one—like he had wrapped himself in something invisible and sacred.

“I am large, I contain multitudes.”

That line always caught somewhere in his chest. He never really believed it about himself, but it was a kind of aspiration. Maybe, if he kept saying it aloud, he’d start to feel it. Maybe the voice he wore like armor in the booth could become real.

He closed the book, let silence linger.

Then flipped to Emily Dickinson. He read a few pieces without titles. One of his favorites:

“I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you—nobody—too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! They’d banish us—you know!”

He allowed the smallest hint of amusement to thread through his tone. It was hard not to. Dickinson’s dry wit always felt like a shared secret.

He read:

“I dwell in Possibility—
A fairer House than Prose—
More numerous of Windows—
Superior—for Doors—”

Todd thought about those lines, how Dickinson had made a poem about poetry. The possibilities of poetry. Todd paused, the silence stretching, not because he didn’t know what came next, but because he wanted—needed—to let those lines breathe.

There was something about Dickinson’s words that always struck him in a place deeper than thought. He read them again, slower this time, letting each syllable unspool like thread in the dim-lit studio.

I dwell in Possibility.

Not certainty. Not fact. Possibility.

Todd’s voice softened, reverent. As though the poem weren’t just something he was reading, but something he was remembering. Something he lived.

He thought about how she compared poetry to a house—not made of bricks or wood, but of language. A house built with openness. With windows, not walls. With doors that opened not into rooms but into dreams.

He imagined that house: wide, quiet, made of light and air. A space where things could exist without having to explain themselves . Where contradictions could live together and no one would question them. Where he could live without always shrinking to fit someone else’s expectations.

He swallowed.

Prose was rules and grammar and structure—clauses stacked like bricks, everything in its place. Prose was the essay his English professor marked up in red, the family Christmas letter filled with things unsaid. Prose was standing at a podium and reading aloud something safe.

But poetry—poetry let him be uncertain. Be messy . Be real .

More numerous of windows. Superior for doors.

Todd blinked, feeling something tighten in his chest. Dickinson wasn’t just writing about writing. She was writing about living . About how poetry made room for things that prose never could. That maybe, just maybe, there was a place for people like him—quiet, afraid, aching to be known. A place with enough windows to see out and enough doors to leave when it got too hard.

He didn’t know if anyone listening would understand what he meant, or why it mattered so much. But maybe, in the dark, someone else was sitting there, headphones in, heart cracked open just enough to let a little bit of poetry in.

He cleared his throat, softly, and added:

“This is what poetry is, I think. Not a perfect answer. But a house with windows. A place to breathe. A door that opens inward.”

Todd imagined the lines reaching someone. Anyone. A late-night janitor with earbuds in. A student on their third cup of coffee, typing furiously in the library. Someone curled in bed with the lights off, eyes open to the dark.

He liked to think he was reading to the loneliest people—the ones who couldn’t sleep because the world didn’t quite make sense when the lights were off.

He liked to think he was reading to himself , before he started doing this. The version of Todd who lay in his dorm bed at night with his chest full of noise and no words to tame it. The version who scribbled lines in the margins of textbooks because saying them aloud felt dangerous.

Now, he said them aloud all the time. Just… never with his name.

Next, he turned to Ocean Vuong. He always saved Vuong for the halfway point. It felt like a hinge in the night, like turning the page between evening and early morning.

“Because the sunset, like survival,
exists only on the verge of its own disappearing.”

His breath hitched a little at that one. He let it go, moving on.

Todd didn’t look at the clock. He didn’t need to. The words tethered him better than numbers could.

“The most beautiful part of your body
is wherever your mother’s shadow falls.”

His throat closed slightly on the final syllables. He paused, then sipped from his thermos. The tea had gone cold. He didn’t mind.

He took a moment to shuffle his pages. To breathe.

12:36 AM.

He flipped to Tracy K. Smith’s Life on Mars . He read slowly, reverently:

“Perhaps the great error is believing we’re alone,
That the others have come and gone—a momentary blip—
When all along, space might be choc-full of traffic,
Bursting at the seams with energy we neither feel
nor see, flush against us, living, dying, deciding…”

He let it hang there. Then whispered:

“If loneliness is a signal, not a state, then maybe I’ve been waiting for someone to answer.”

That wasn’t from the poem. That one was his. But he said it anyway.

And still, he felt invisible.

Poetry had always been easier than prose. Poetry forgave stammering. It welcomed silence. It let you speak in metaphor and breath and not-quite-truths. No one asked follow-up questions.

He checked his list again. One more left. A short one. Handwritten. His.

He stared at the page. The pencil mark where he’d nearly erased the entire second stanza was still visible.

He should skip it.

He read it anyway.

Some people wear masks to hide,
I wear mine to speak.
A voice without a face is a safer kind of truth—
You can’t flinch from what you never see.

I don’t know who I’m talking to.
Maybe no one. Maybe the moon.

But if you are listening—
if you are out there—
don’t try to find me.
I’m braver this way.

The last line escaped him in a whisper.

“That’s all for tonight. Thanks for listening. Or... maybe not. Either way...”

He paused. “Goodnight, whoever you are.”

He switched off the mic.

The red light blinked out.

In the quiet, the weight of what he’d just said settled on him like fresh snow—beautiful, cold, heavy. He didn't expect to feel so exposed.

Todd leaned back in the chair and stared at the ceiling. He imagined his words floating through the airwaves like paper lanterns, each one drifting farther and farther away, never quite finding a landing place.

His fingers ached.

Packing up became a ritual: unplug headphones, stack books (Dickinson, Plath, Rilke), tidy notes, shut off the mixer. He turned the fairy lights off last. The booth, now dim and silent, felt smaller.

As he stepped into the hall, something caught his eye. The bulletin board by the station door had a few new flyers: lost cat, missing scarf, someone advertising guitar lessons.

But in the center, bright yellow and unmistakably fresh, was a sticky note.

Todd frowned.

He stepped closer.

It read, in slightly messy, looping handwriting:

“Dear T.A.,
Your voice kept me company last night. You made me cry, in the best way.
Please read Neruda next?
—Neil (the 8AM guy)”

His heart stopped.

Then stuttered.

Someone listened.

Worse—someone knew.

Worse than that—someone had felt something.

The reality that someone had listened was far more intimidating than just the idea of someone listening.

Todd stood frozen, his breath catching in his throat. His first instinct was to rip the note down. Pretend it wasn’t there. Pretend it had been meant for someone else.

But instead… he reached out and touched the edge of the paper.

The ink was real. So was the name.

Neil Perry.

The golden boy of Welton College. Host of Rise & Shine . Morning radio king. Sunshine personified. Campus celebrity. The kind of person who knew everyone’s name and always smiled like the world was just a game and he knew how to win it.

That Neil.

Had heard him ?

Had cried?

Todd backed away from the board like it might catch fire.

His pulse thundered in his ears all the way back to his dorm.

And still, the words followed him:

“You made me cry, in the best way.”

Todd didn’t sleep.

He lay awake in the dark, eyes open, hands clenched in the sheets, heart aching with something he didn’t know how to name.

But for now, Todd just lay there, wrapped in the echo of a stranger’s voice, the barest hope taking root somewhere deep in his chest.

Someone was listening.

Chapter Text

There’s a kind of ritual to Neil Perry’s mornings. A performance before the performance.

He’s up by 6:00, even when he doesn’t need to be. The dorm is dark and quiet, the world still caught in sleep, and Neil is already halfway into his day.

He showers with music blaring—Elton John or Queen or whatever musical CD he’s borrowed from the drama club cabinet this week. Today, it’s Blondie. Yesterday it was Wicked . He styles his dark brown hair just right , and emerges from the bathroom in a cloud of steam and cologne, humming a tune that doesn’t exist yet.

His dorm room looks is organised chaos: a desk cluttered with half-marked scripts, notebooks littered with doodles and set lists, Playbills pinned to the wall like trophies, and a little corkboard labeled GOALS with polaroids of friends and neon Post-its tacked to it — Get cast in mainstage show , Ask Professor Carmichael about internship , Send demo reel . The polaroids show smiles, arms slung over shoulders, fake crowns and glitter eyeliner, the backstage magic of teenagers pretending to be gods.

By 7:15, he’s bounding across campus, balancing a bagel in one hand and closing his leather satchel in the other, bolting toward the student radio building like his life depends on it.

Because, in some ways, it does.

The station is tucked away behind the arts quad, a squat brick building with bad insulation and posters from every decade peeling off the inside walls. It smells like old coffee and soundproof foam.

Neil loves it.

He slides into the booth, slipping the headphones over his ears like a crown.

By 7:59, he’s on .

“Good morning, Welton College! This is Neil Perry, and you’re listening to Rise & Shine — your daily dose of chaos, coffee, and curated hits to make your 8AM lectures suck slightly less! Today we’ve got 70s classics, Chappell Roan, and a very special segment called ‘What Did My Professor Say This Week That Made Me Reconsider All My Life Choices!’”

The red ON AIR light blinks above him. His voice pours through speakers across campus — dorms, dining halls, headphones on the backs of bikes.

And Neil Perry becomes Neil Perry.

The charismatic host. The golden boy. The guy with jokes and a perfect playlist and a joke for every awkward silence. Professors nod to him in the halls. Freshmen stop him on the quad to compliment his show. The theatre department adores him. Journalism majors pitch him ideas for crossover segments. Even the Dean once referred to him as “a student of promise.”

His best friends—Charlie, loud and endlessly loyal, and Knox, thoughtful but endearing—are convinced he’s going places. “You’re going to be famous,” Charlie tells him constantly. “Like Ewan McGregor but gay.”

Neil always laughs. That’s what’s expected.

And yet.

There’s always a point after the show, when he pulls off his headphones and looks at the empty booth around him, where it all feels…hollow.

He’s used to being looked at. Admired. Noticed.

He’s not used to being seen .

There’s a difference, and it digs at him in quiet moments — after rehearsal, alone in the booth, walking home with earbuds in and no one beside him.

It’s not that he’s fake, it’s that people fall in love with the version of him that’s curated. Chosen. Theatrical. He gives them Neil-on-a-platter, and they eat it up.

But he doesn’t know what he’s left with when the lights go down.

He lies awake some nights wondering if his friends would still like him if he stopped being funny. If he dropped the performance. If he let himself fall apart.

So he doesn’t.

He keeps showing up.

Big grin. Loud laugh. Radio-perfect voice.

But sometimes, it feels like he’s performing even when he’s alone.

──────────────────

“Dude, you sounded insane today,” Charlie says between bites of a cafeteria apple. “That whole bit about ‘Coffee as a Radical Act of Defiance’ — hilarious. Even my journalism professor was laughing.”

Neil grins automatically, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Yeah, well. Gotta keep it interesting.”

“Are you okay?” Knox asks later, when he’s helping Neil go through his lines and he misses a cue. “You seem kind of distracted lately.”

Neil brushes it off with a joke — must be the weather , must be midterms , must be his horoscope . He’s good at dodging.

──────────────────

It happens on a Wednesday night.

Rehearsal ran long, and he’s still buzzing with adrenaline. They’re doing A Midsummer Night’s Dream , and Neil’s playing Puck — all mischief and moonlight, a trickster flitting through tangled lovers and enchanted forests. The role demands everything: boundless energy, a sly grin that hides something sharper, and a kind of queerness that no one says out loud but everyone feels. It’s fun. It’s freeing. It’s a little too revealing, if he’s being honest — the way Puck exists on the edges of things, always laughing, never choosing a side, always playing a part.

He’s back in his dorm with a mug of chamomile tea (he’s been pretending to like it lately — part of his “wellness era,” as Meeks calls it). The script lies open on his lap, but the words are swimming. He can’t focus. His body’s still vibrating with too much unspoken energy.

On a whim, he reaches over and flicks his radio on.

Static.

Then a pause.

Then—

“I don’t know if anyone’s listening tonight.”

A voice. Low. Careful. Masculine. But not performative — not like his. Like whoever it is believes what he’s reading matters, even if no one else is there to hear it.

“But I needed to read this. It’s Rainer Maria Rilke. Translated, obviously. I think it says something I've been trying to say without knowing how.”

The words echo through the quiet like a spell being cast.

Neil doesn’t move.

Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage.

Neil feels something pull inside his chest — sharp and sudden.

Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.

Neil stops moving. He doesn’t even realise the script has slipped from his fingers to the floor.

The voice pauses. It’s not a dramatic pause — it’s a human one. As if the speaker is trying not to fall apart. As if the words are fragile, and he’s afraid of breaking them.

“This is T.A.Thanks for listening, I’ll be here again tomorrow. Same time. Between the lines.”

The show ends in soft piano music — nothing flashy, just a few quiet chords. It’s… intimate. 

Neil sits still for a long time after. His tea has gone cold.

His room feels different now. As if the air has shifted.

As if someone just cracked open a part of the world he didn’t know he needed.

──────────────────

The next morning, everything looks the same — sunrise through the blinds, coffee in hand, Gerard sketching buildings and bridges over a bowl of cereal.

But Neil feels different.

It’s like someone whispered in his ear while the world was sleeping and said: I see you.

He keeps thinking about the voice. It was quiet. Uneven. Honest.

Like a secret you’d risk everything to hear again.

It felt like truth.

And in a life full of masks and microphones, that’s the most intoxicating thing of all.

“Okay, what gives?” Charlie says as they walk across campus. “You’ve been weirdly soft-looking all morning. Did you hook up with someone?”

“No!” Neil says, maybe too fast.

Charlie narrows his eyes. “So you did meet someone.”

Neil just shrugs, smiling to himself. “Sort of.”

He doesn’t say I met someone’s voice.

He doesn’t say I think I heard something real for the first time in weeks.

Instead, he files the name away — T.A.

He starts leaving the radio on late at night.

He begins to wonder.

And for the first time in a long time, Neil Perry isn’t chasing applause.

He’s listening.

Chapter Text

Todd returns to the radio station. The sky is pale and pearling with dawn, the kind of soft, aching colour that makes everything feel both too much and not enough. The building hums with emptiness. 

He debates replying to Neil’s note.

It sits there in the corner of the radio station’s shared bulletin board, chirpy and yellow and impossible to ignore. The handwriting is loose and loopy, like it had been written in a rush of feeling, like Neil couldn’t help it. The message is short, but it echoes in Todd’s chest like a struck bell.

Dear T.A.,
Your voice kept me company last night. You made me cry, in the best way.
Please read Neruda next?
—Neil (the 8AM guy)

He’s read it five times. He pretends it’s only been twice.

His first instinct is to ignore it. Pretend he never saw it. Leave the thing untouched like a relic or a trap. Because that’s what it feels like—a trap for his careful little world. For the silence he’s built around himself like insulation.

He doesn’t want to be heard , not really. That’s why he does the show alone, at midnight, faceless. Why he doesn’t take calls. Why he uses only his initials, like a ghost.

But then again… someone heard him.

Not just anyone— Neil Perry . The boy who practically radiates through campus. The boy who speaks in exclamation marks and walks like he’s dancing inside his shoes. Todd’s seen him before, of course. In the quad, outside the theatre building, once laughing in a café with a group of friends Todd would never dare to approach. Neil Perry, who says things and people listen. And now Neil has listened to his voice. Quiet, careful, anonymous.

That thought alone nearly sends Todd fleeing from the station. But he doesn’t run. Not yet.

He stands at the corkboard for what might be an hour. Maybe more. Time warps when you’re busy arguing with yourself.

He tries. Fails. Writes something. Crumples it. Another. Same fate.

And after a dozen false starts and five crumpled-up notes shoved deep in his coat pocket—Todd scribbles something down. His pen moves faster than his doubt can catch up.

Only if you stop playing ABBA every morning.
—T.A.

He hesitates only a second longer before sticking it underneath Neil’s note and bolting. His footsteps echo in the empty hallway, too fast, too loud. His heart feels like it’s trying to escape his ribs, pounding like he’s done something illegal.

It’s only after he’s halfway back to his dorm that Todd realises he’s smiling.

──────────────────

Todd arrives at the radio building the next evening at 11:00 sharp. He tells himself it’s not because he’s eager. Not because he’s hoping. Just routine. Habit.

Still, he nearly trips on the stairs.

The corkboard is waiting.

So is a new note.

ABBA is joy, Mystery Boy. But fine.
Compromise: no ABBA before 8:10.
Neruda incoming?

Next to the words is a doodle of the sun wearing sunglasses, grinning like an idiot.

Todd stares at it, and something inside him stirs—a warmth that curls slowly through the ribs. He can’t remember the last time someone teased him like this. Not cruelly, not performatively. Just for the joy of it. Just to talk to him.

His lips twitch in reluctant amusement. 

Pulling a pen from his coat pocket, he scrawls a reply beneath Neil’s message.

One minute earlier and I’m reporting you to the FCC.
— T.A.

Beneath his initials, he draws a small crescent moon.

Sun and moon. It feels like a private joke only the two of them know.

He steps into the booth, gently shutting the door behind him. The world falls away like snow. The soundproofing absorbs everything but his own breathing.

Todd’s fingers tremble as he flips through a well-worn anthology of Pablo Neruda’s poems.

He clears his throat, adjusting the microphone’s angle, and watches as the ON AIR light flicks on.

A soft hiss filled the booth as the live broadcast began.

Todd’s voice came out low, tentative at first — a raw thread of sound weaving through the empty halls of the school and out into the night.

“ Tonight, I want to share a poem. It’s by Pablo Neruda. Maybe you know him, maybe not. I don’t always understand poetry. But sometimes… sometimes it says what I can’t. ”

He paused, swallowing the lump in his throat, then began to read with growing confidence, letting the rhythm carry him:

I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.

The words felt alive, blossoming between him and the listener. He pictured Neil somewhere out there, maybe curled up in his dorm room, the same poem reaching him like a secret message.

Todd flipped the page carefully, reading another Neruda gem — this one softer, aching with longing:

Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

His voice cracked a little, but he pressed on, warmth growing in his chest despite the chill in the booth.

In one kiss, you’ll know all I haven’t said.

There’s a gravity in it now. A kind of orbit he’s been pulled into, steady and unafraid.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

He felt the weight of the lines settle over him, the loneliness, the hope, the quiet ache of things unspoken.

Then, almost shyly, Todd added:

So I wait for you like a lonely house
until you will see me again and live in me.

He let the last line linger, the silence stretching in the air between the words and the world outside.

“That was for the boy who left a sun on the corkboard.”

──────────────────

Far across campus, in a room filled with books and mismatched socks, Neil sits cross-legged on his bed, radio humming quietly in the background. He isn’t smiling in his usual broad, animated way.

It’s softer than that.

The kind of smile that sits behind the eyes.

He doesn’t reach for his phone. Doesn’t write anything down. Just listens. And lets his heart answer.

──────────────────

Back in the booth, Todd leans back, fingers loose, breath slow.

For the first time, the radio doesn’t feel like a shield or a mask.

It feels like a bridge.

And maybe someone’s on the other side, waiting to cross it with him.

Chapter Text

Neil reads Todd’s note sometime around 7:48 a.m., and laughs so hard he nearly drops his coffee.

He nearly forgets to turn on the mic. Nearly.

But he doesn’t forget the note. The moon, drawn in ink, makes his chest tighten in the best, most ridiculous way. He traces it with a thumb, eyes brightening.

At exactly 8:11 a.m., he hits play.

ABBA pours out of the sound system with glittering vengeance. "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)" .

As the chorus kicks in, Neil spins in the chair, laughing like a lunatic.

"This one’s for Mister Midnight," he announces on air. "Keep the moonlight coming."

Todd hears it on his radio and groans. But even with his face pressed against a pillow, he can’t contain the grin that escapes him as he imagines how proud Neil is of the song choice.

Neil leaves a new note before heading to class. Sunny yellow, of course:

For Mister Midnight: Thanks for Neruda. You made my day.
P.S. Compromise honored. But ABBA is forever.
— Mr 8AM

He draws a heart wearing sunglasses underneath.

The sticky note war begins.

At first, it’s silly things—music debates, dry sarcasm, tongue-in-cheek challenges.

Todd writes:

Your music taste is a crime. But thanks for the heart, Sunshine.
— T.A.

Neil replies:

You wound me, Mystery Boy. Don’t make me retaliate with Mamma Mia.

Todd shoots back:

Try it and I’m switching to Gregorian chant.

Neil reads the note and smirks, writing:

Honestly? Go for it, I bet you could make it work.

There’s a pause in the pattern. Then, a pressed violet appears, tucked inside the edge of Neil’s note.

Todd stares at it for a long time before replying:

I used to pick these with my brother. They always wilted before I got home.

Neil doesn’t press. Just leaves a book rec the next day:

Try Giovanni’s Room. The library copy smells like dust and heartbreak.

Neil starts leaving notes tucked under the booth console or hidden inside CD sleeves. 

Todd finds one inside his worn copy of Leaves of Grass , and another folded gently into a compilation CD of The Smiths .

They trade music. Books. Inside jokes.

Today’s song challenge: one that makes you feel like you’re seeing clearly. 
—Mr 8AM

Try “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” by Elton John. Feels like finally stepping away from illusions or expectations—rejecting a glamorous, artificial life for something more honest and grounded.
—Mister Midnight

When Neil reads the note, he sits in the booth for a long time, headphones dangling around his neck. He plays the song in full during his show, no commentary. Just lets it bloom in the silence.

He feels like he’s being seen.

One afternoon, Neil presses a tiny, dried daisy into a folded square of yellow paper and leaves it beside the mic. The note simply reads:

For Mister Midnight. Thought this was your kind of flower.
—Sunshine 

Todd finds it during his late-night slot and doesn’t stop smiling for the entire show. He tucks the flower into his notebook, between the pages of Neruda.

The next night, he returns the gesture—a dried, curled maple leaf taped to the back of a blue sticky note.

For Mr 8AM. Autumn is underrated.
—Mister Midnight 

The symbols—sun and moon—start to appear everywhere. In corners of notes, in doodles. Todd draws constellations once. Neil adds shooting stars.

Each note is a brushstroke of a friendship being painted in secret.

Somewhere along the line, the sticky notes start shifting—becoming something weightier, a map of questions and the beginnings of truths.

Neil writes late one night after rehearsal, words messier than usual:

Favourite book?

Todd’s response arrives the next day.

Dandelion Wine. Ray Bradbury. Don’t laugh.
I read it every summer.
What’s something you’re afraid of?

Neil stares at the last line for a long time. Then writes back:

I’m scared of becoming someone I hate, just to be loved. I sparkle so no one notices the parts of me I don’t want them to see. And some days, I feel like a disco ball in a room with no music.

Todd replies back.

I’m scared of people watching me. I think I vanish when no one looks. Also, I’ve never read my writing in front of anyone in personbefore. I don’t think I’m brave enough.
—Mister Midnight

One Thursday, Todd reads Rilke on Between the Lines. He doesn’t say who it’s for until the end.

His voice is steady, but only just:

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.

At the very end, he adds, "For the boy who makes the mornings brighter."

The mic clicks off. Todd stares at the red ON AIR light as it dims.

He thinks of sunshine. Of sunglasses doodled on paper. Of someone dancing in his studio chair.

And wonders if it’s okay to want.

──────────────────

One Monday, Neil leaves something different.

A quote, not a joke. No doodles. Just the words in looping ink:

“I am half agony, half hope.”
—Jane Austen

It doesn’t need context.

Todd doesn’t write back with a note.

Instead, that night, he reads it aloud.

No explanation. No commentary.

Just the line, simple and still:

I am half agony, half hope.

And somewhere, across campus, Neil hears it—and smiles.

──────────────────

The bulletin board grows cluttered. Their corner becomes a riot of notes—yellow, blue, pink—curling at the edges with time. Some have faded ink. Others are layered three deep. Some are taped up lovingly when they threaten to fall.

They start leaving longer messages. Small confessions.

I hated my voice until I started this show.
Now... I think I like it. A little.
—Mister Midnight

I auditioned for something today. It was terrifying. I didn’t let myself think too hard about why.
—Mr 8AM

Sometimes I think I’ll disappear after graduation. I’ve spent so long trying not to take up space, I’m not sure what’s left when no one’s measuring me anymore.
—Mister Midnight

You do take up space.
I notice it every time I walk into the station and see a note waiting. Every time your words make the world feel sharper, quieter, better.
You’re not invisible, Mystery Boy. Not to me.
Sometimes I think the hardest part isn’t disappearing. It’s letting someone really see you and hoping they’ll stay. I’d still listen to you, even if the world went silent.
—Mr 8AM

──────────────────

They don’t text. Don’t email. Don’t meet.

But it doesn’t feel distant.

It feels like they’re whispering to each other across a canyon—two voices learning the shape of their own echoes.

One night, Todd lingers in the station long after his show ends. The world outside is ink-dark, and the studio smells like dust and late-night coffee.

He leaves one final note before slipping out into the cold:

Sometimes I wonder if this would work in daylight.
Or if it only exists in the in-between.
—Mister Midnight

Neil finds it the next morning and presses his forehead to the edge of the booth desk, breath catching in his throat.

He doesn’t reply with words.

Not yet.

He takes a sun-shaped sticker from his planner and sticks it next to the moon Todd drew weeks ago.

And below them both, he writes:

Still shining. Still waiting.

Chapter Text

Sandwiched between his annotated script of Twelfth Night and a half-crushed bag of sour watermelon gummies, Neil keeps a little black notebook tucked into the bottom drawer of his desk. It’s unassuming on the outside—no stickers, no scrawls—he bought it on a whim from the campus bookstore, charmed by its soft black leather cover and ribbon bookmark. He only ever opens it in quiet moments, when the dorm is empty or the world feels still.

But inside: chaos. Controlled, affectionate chaos.

There are quotes, in Todd’s voice, transcribed as best as memory allows.

Some are poetic and melancholy:

Every day is a canvas, and sometimes, the best thing you can do is let the rain ruin it.

I think hope is just love in future tense.

“It was at that age… Poetry arrived in search of me. I don’t know, I don’t know where it came from, from winter or a river.” – Pablo Neruda

If you’re listening to this, I hope you know that quiet isn’t the same as empty.

I read once that the moon is just a rock that reflects someone else’s light. Some days I feel like that, too.

Others are sillier and catch Neil off guard as he listens to Between the Lines while lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling. He dubs them “T.A.-isms”.

Man, I really want soup right now…

I tried to read Rilke in a candlelit bath once. Do not recommend. Paper and water are not friends.

Do you ever want to lie face-down on a cool tile floor and listen to The Cranberries until your soul evaporates? No? Just me?

If this poem ruins your night in a beautiful way, I’ve done my job.

I wanted to be mysterious and brooding when I read that, but I think I just sounded cold and forgetful.

Neil writes down lines like spells, afraid they’ll disappear if he doesn’t trap them somewhere permanent.

There are scraps of sticky notes, carefully flattened and glued beside little margin doodles: stars, constellations, a moon half-shaded in ballpoint pen. Some are responses Todd never got. Others are lines Neil couldn’t let fade.

A page labeled Guesses about T.A. is a messy mix of half-joking theories and sincere wonderings:

• English major?
  
  
• Writes poetry like it’s breathing.
  
  
• Wears scarves unironically.
  
  
• Definitely likes rainy days.
  
  
• Has never once taken the aux cord at a party. Probably doesn’t like parties anyways.

One page is just a list titled Things I Want to Say If I Ever Meet Him .

And then, there are doodles.

They aren’t good—Neil's quick, messy sketches never are—but he tries. An angular jaw here, thoughtful eyes there. A boy with soft hair leaning into a mic. A mouth shaped like something tender. Always half-hidden. Always imagined.

Neil doesn’t show the notebook to anyone. He doesn’t talk about it. But it lives in his backpack, always within reach. Like a secret radio signal only he can tune into.

He didn’t mean to fall into this routine. He didn’t plan to make a shrine out of a stranger’s voice. But then again, T.A. isn’t a stranger, not really.

Not anymore.

──────────────────

The next Monday morning, Neil sits behind the mic with a grin you can hear through the speakers. His voice is espresso-shot bright, a sunrise breaking over the campus.

“And now, a dedication. This one’s for the voice I heard last night… You know who you are.”

He queues up Starman by David Bowie, then leans back with a grin that’s all mischief and maybe, just maybe, something like longing.

Across campus, people chuckle over their coffees. The girl in the art studio calls it “radio theatre.” The philosophy major who always wears turtlenecks rolls his eyes but never changes the station.

And in the midnight hour, when the campus is hushed and the world has gone soft, Todd sits in his booth with the lights dimmed low, his anthology dog-eared and ready. His fingers hover over the fader.

“I don’t usually take requests,” Todd says quietly, his voice like a shadow you lean closer to hear. “But someone inspired me to read a favourite of mine, so… here’s The More Loving One by W.H. Auden.”

He doesn’t rush. Each word lands like a fingertip on glass — deliberate, careful, as if any louder might break the silence he’s come to treasure.

“Looking up at the stars, I know quite well

That, for all they care, I can go to hell,

But on earth indifference is the least

We have to dread from man or beast.”

There’s a flicker of something unsaid in his voice — not bitterness, not quite — more like a tired hope folded into quiet resignation. He reads on, softer now, the next lines almost an offering.

“How should we like it were stars to burn

With a passion for us we could not return?

If equal affection cannot be,

Let the more loving one be me.”

He lets that line linger. The smallest pause. Like he’s trying to decide if he believes it — or if he is praying that the other person will return his affection as well.

“Admirer as I think I am

Of stars that do not give a damn,

I cannot, now I see them, say

I missed one terribly all day.”

The corners of his mouth tug at a half-smile that never quite reaches his eyes. The words come out with the barest tremor.

“Were all stars to disappear or die,

I should learn to look at an empty sky

And feel its total dark sublime

Though this might take me a little time.”

It aches with restraint. It hums with the pulse of want — quiet, unclaimed, enduring. A love that asks for nothing back.

When he finishes, there’s a hush. Just the soft hum of outro music, like the sky still holding onto dusk.

He adds, just barely audible over the outro music:

“I liked your song choice. And your sun still makes me smile.”

No name. Just T.A. , whispered like a secret stitched into the static.

──────────────────

The contrast between them is almost comedic.

Neil is golden-hour joy, exclamation-point energy, the voice of campus optimism. He greets listeners with a jubilant “ Good morning, folks! ” He makes every song sound like a celebration, like a new day is worth waking up for. He talks about nothing and everything: the squirrel he met outside the library, his theory about how ABBA could end wars, a midnight pizza mishap that involved a stolen traffic cone. His laughter on air is contagious. People listen to his show while brushing their teeth or cramming last-minute for class, just for the way he makes mornings feel survivable.

Todd is quieter, deeper, like a warm night wrapped in thought. He’s dusk and dream-logic, speaking in the pauses of a comma. He plays ambient jazz and obscure indie tracks, the kind that feel like unsent letters. He ends shows with, “Take care of your heart. It’s later than you think.” He speaks like every word costs something—but when he reads, people stop what they’re doing. His silences speak, too. A held breath before a line of poetry. A pause before a song that says more than a whole playlist. No one knows who he is, and that’s part of the magic. The students on campus start calling him the Welton Phantom . Rumours sprout like weeds: he’s a ghost. A professor. A recluse who lives in the bell tower and speaks only in metaphor.

Neil knows better. He’s sure now—T.A. is real. And afraid. And brilliant.

He just doesn’t know who he is.

Nevertheless, they balance each other. AM and PM. Sun and moon.

──────────────────

On a rainy Thursday, Todd finds a new sticky note.

It’s simple. Just three words in Neil’s handwriting, smudged slightly at the edges.

“Don’t disappear, please.”

Todd tucks it into his notebook, next to his favorite line from Persuasion :

“You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope.”

He circles the word hope in ink.

Twice.

──────────────────

Neil starts saving sticky notes.

He presses them flat in the notebook now, layering blue over yellow, hearts next to stars. Some days, he opens it just to reread one line from a week ago. Or to trace the way Todd writes his M’s and N’s—always with that little curl at the start.

He leaves one new note the night after Todd reads Auden on air:

You have the kind of voice people wait for. The kind that makes silence seem like a favour. I don’t know who you are, but I want to. Even if it’s just through static and scribbled ink.

The next night, Todd slips a reply under the booth console, folded three times:

I think I know your laugh better than I know most people’s names. It’s ridiculous. And kind of perfect. Don’t stop.

──────────────────

One night, after a long rehearsal, Neil opens his notebook and adds a new page.

At the top, he writes:

Signs I Might Be Falling for a Voice.

Underneath, he writes:

• I keep lingering around the booth even when I know he won’t be there.
  
  
• I smile at poems about stars. Even the cheesy ones.
  
  
• I hear songs and wonder if they’ll make him think of me.
  
  
• I save everything he gives me.
  
  
• I started writing poetry again.

He ends the morning show with a new dedication:

“Tonight’s last song is for the boy who makes midnight feel like morning. I think if you ever said my name, I’d forget how to speak. Here’s There Is a Light That Never Goes Out. ”

──────────────────

Back on air, Todd reads The Summer Day by Mary Oliver:

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”

There’s something in his voice that catches, a crack in the calm.

Then:

“For the boy who makes me want to answer that question.”

Chapter Text

Todd knows exactly who Neil Perry is.

It’s impossible not to. On a campus that mostly feels like a grey wool cardigan—soft, sensible, a little too quiet—Neil is a thunderclap of colour. People set alarms just to tune in to Rise & Shine , half-asleep and hopeful. They sit on dorm floors, drinking terrible instant coffee and humming along with whatever Bowie or Blondie or Joni track he spins next.

Neil Perry has a voice that makes you believe blossoms could bloom in an arctic wasteland. 

And Todd thinks if he ever even tried to talk to him—outside of the safety of his midnight booth, outside of “T.A.”—he’d forget how to speak entirely.

So, of course, Neil walks into his English elective. 

It’s a Monday. The first real chill of winter has crept into the air, and the window panes fog slightly from the breath of twenty or so students pressed into the old lecture room. The chairs creak. The walls are lined with fading prints of Shakespeare and Sappho and someone’s forgotten coffee stain.

Todd’s in the back, as usual. Hoodie up. Annotations sharp. He’s circling a line from Dickinson when the door opens mid-roll call and—

Neil strolls in, late and grinning.

“Sorry, sorry,” he says, flashing a smile that’s all white teeth and mischief. “Got a little lost. Wrong building.”

The professor grumbles, gestures toward an empty seat in the middle row. Todd lowers his eyes immediately, heart lurching. Of course. Of course. As if the universe could resist this kind of cruelty.

Neil slides into the seat. Drops his bag. Looks around like the room is a party he’s just arrived fashionably late to.

He doesn’t even glance back.

Todd spends the entire hour not looking at him. Which means, of course, thinking about nothing but him. The way Neil spins his pen between his fingers. The way he tilts his head when the professor reads aloud. The way he nods enthusiastically when they get to the Yeats discussion.

He knows Yeats. Of course he does. Of course the sunshine boy knows poetry.

When class ends, Todd waits until most students have filed out before he stands, gathering his things slowly. Neil is still talking to the girl next to him, something about how the “wandering Aengus” line sounds like it should be sung. He laughs. Todd’s chest tightens.

He slips out the door unnoticed.

That night, Todd sits in the dim quiet of the radio booth, legs curled under him, script pages splayed out like fallen leaves. He thinks about Neil— Mr 8AM, Sunshine, Mr I-Know-Yeats —and wonders if he has any idea who he sat near to today.

──────────────────

The next class, Todd is early. Neil is late. Again.

But when he slides into his seat this time, he gives Todd a nod. Not a big one—just a quick little up-jerk of the chin, casual, barely-there. Todd blinks. Nods back. Then immediately looks down at his notes like they’re a sacred text.

Midway through the lecture, the professor calls on Neil to read a section aloud. He reads with that same warmth he uses on the radio—animated, earnest, like the words are friends he’s introducing to the room. Everyone listens. Even the kid in the back row who’s usually playing sudoku stops and looks up.

Todd stares at his own copy of the text, eyes scanning words he’s read a hundred times before but now mean something else entirely.

After class, as students shuffle out, Neil bumps shoulders with Todd. Light. Barely a graze.

“Oh– sorry, man,” Neil says. “Didn’t see you there.”

“It’s fine,” Todd mutters, wishing his voice didn’t crack slightly at the end.

Neil smiles at him. “You’re Todd, right?”

Todd nods, the movement small, almost reluctant.

“I’m Neil,” he offers, unnecessarily.

“I know,” Todd says—too quickly.

Neil tilts his head, curious, but amused. “Yeah?”

“I… heard you read before. In another class.” A lie, sort of. A cover-up. A way to say I listen to you every morning and you listen to me every night and you don’t know that I’m T.A. and I might be falling for you? without sounding completely unhinged.

“Well, cool,” Neil says. “I liked the way you annotated that Whitman bit today. You’re good at close reading.”

Todd flushes. Actually flushes.

Neil gives a little wave and disappears down the hall, calling over his shoulder, “See you Thursday, Todd!”

Todd stands frozen, blinking.

He noticed my annotations?

He walks out in a daze. For once, the air feels less cold. The trees less skeletal. There’s a warmth creeping into his chest that has nothing to do with the weather.

──────────────────

In the coming days, the pattern holds.

They don’t sit together, but they start talking—briefly, awkwardly—after class. Neil asks about books. Todd stammers out answers. Once, Neil compliments his handwriting. Another time, he says, “You’ve got one of those voices that makes people lean in.”

Todd wants to die. Or melt. Or both.

He wonders if Neil has any idea that the voice he’s been listening to at midnight is the same one answering him in class. That the quiet guy with the scribbled margin notes and the too-long sleeves is the one who whispered:

And your sun still makes me smile.

He doubts it. And maybe—maybe that’s okay. Maybe it’s enough, for now, to be almost seen.

The next week, Neil slides into the seat next to Todd like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

“Morning,” he says, a little out of breath, cheeks tinged pink from the cold. “There were no good spots left.”

Todd glances up from his notebook. “You’re twenty minutes early.”

Neil grins. “Okay, fine. I wanted to get away from my dorm. Someone across the hall plays acoustic covers of Post Malone at full volume. It’s a hostile learning environment.”

Todd huffs a laugh before he can stop himself. Neil looks pleased with that.

From then on, it becomes a thing. They sit next to each other. Not always. Not deliberately. But more often than not.

Neil talks a lot—about books, about his dreams, about how his friend Charlie was the one to stick the traffic cone on the spire of the Finance building last year. Todd listens. And sometimes, when the mood is right, he replies with something that makes Neil laugh loud enough to turn heads.

It’s surreal. Todd has spent months hearing Neil’s voice through static and speakers, disembodied and golden and untouchable. Now, here he is, in the flesh, nudging Todd with his elbow when the professor mispronounces “Phaëthon” or scribbling increasingly absurd annotations in the margins of his book just to make Todd raise an eyebrow.

Todd doesn’t know what’s happening. Only that it feels like it matters.

──────────────────

On Thursday, the professor announces a group analysis assignment. “Pairs,” she says, “You’ll be given a poem today. A short one. I expect annotations, discussion, and a short response. You’ll share your findings with the class next week.”

Todd looks down. He’s already half-planning how to escape early when Neil leans over and says, “Want to team up?”

Todd blinks.

“Please?,” Neil asks, clasping his hands together and looking at Todd with big, brown puppy eyes. “We’d make a great team.”

“Sure,” Todd says, heart galloping like it’s chasing something it’s not ready to catch. “Okay.”

Neil beams. “Perfect. Want to meet after class? There’s a cafe near the music building that does pretty good coffee and semi-passable brownies.”

Todd swallows. Nods.

They get assigned Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College by Thomas Gray. Neil snorts.

“Wow. Real uplifting stuff,” he says as he reads the lines.

Where ignorance is bliss,
’Tis folly to be wise.

Todd shrugs. “There’s something quietly devastating about it.”

Neil glances at him. “Yeah. I guess it’s that whole… look how sweet everything seems before you realise it’s not thing.”

Todd nods. “It’s about youth. And how joy is fleeting.”

They sit in companionable silence for a while, scribbling notes and sharing the occasional quote aloud. It’s not much. But it’s easy. Easier than Todd expected. He keeps waiting for the moment where the air shifts, where Neil glances over and says, Wait. Aren’t you—? But it doesn’t come.

Neil treats him like a person. Not a voice. Not a mystery. Just Todd.

The cafe is all chipped mugs and mismatched furniture. Todd orders an Earl Grey and Neil gets a hot chocolate so covered in whipped cream it looks like a dessert.

“Don’t judge,” Neil says, taking a dramatic sip. “Life’s too short to drink anything bitter.”

Todd lifts an eyebrow. “You’re in an English Lit class.”

Neil winks. “Yeah, but I draw the line at sad tea.”

They sit near the window, where late afternoon light pools over the table in soft, buttery streaks. Todd finds himself relaxing, almost forgetting how famous Neil is. How his voice fills a hundred dorm rooms before sunrise. How he said “let’s pair up” like it was nothing.

“How’d you get into radio, anyway?” Todd asks, too casual.

Neil shrugs. “Accident, really. There was an opening. I signed up on a dare. Then I fell in love with it.”

Of course you did, Todd thinks. You were made for it.

“It’s kind of freeing, you know?” Neil continues. “You say things, and people listen—but no one’s looking at you. You don’t have to perform the whole time.”

Todd knows exactly what he means. He studies his tea. “So even you don’t always want to be seen?”

Neil leans back. “I don’t mind being seen. I just want to be understood.”

The words sink deep. Todd doesn’t say anything for a long time. He’s not sure he could, even if he tried.

──────────────────

That night, Todd slips into the studio with no poetry. 

His voice is steady, though his hands tremble.

“You ever get the feeling someone is too good for this world?” he asks into the mic, softly. “Like they’re lit from within. Like they’re singing even when they speak.”

There’s a pause. Just ambient static and the hum of the booth.

“And you’d tell them all this,” he adds, “but you’re afraid the moment you do, the song stops.”

He plays “Across the Universe” next. Lets Lennon’s voice do the talking.

──────────────────

The next class, Neil slaps their shared paper down on the desk, dramatic as always.

“Look at us,” he says. “Poetry nerds in action.”

Todd huffs a laugh.

They didn’t need to write much, but they ended up with two full pages—Neil’s notes scattered and enthusiastic, Todd’s neat and quietly brilliant. It’s not flashy. It’s not loud. But when the professor glances at it, she smiles.

They present their response at the end of class. Neil speaks first, animated and unafraid, pulling the poem apart with ease. Todd only speaks a few times, to explain how Gray uses euphony and juxtaposition to mirror memory—but Neil looks at him the whole time, nodding along like everything Todd is saying matters.

When they sit down, Neil leans over and whispers, “You’re good at this. You know that, right?”

Todd’s ears burn. “Thanks.”

Neil bumps their shoulders. “I told you we’d make a good team.”

──────────────────

That night, Neil doesn’t mean to tune in.

He tells himself he’s going to sleep early. That he’s going to rest his voice, stop thinking so much, stop hoping so much. But his mind won’t still.

It whirrs, restless and relentless, caught in a loop of static and maybes . 

T.A. Who is he?

Endless possibilities churn through Neil’s head as he lies in bed, hands folded over his chest like he’s trying to keep something from spilling out.

Tommy Ashcroft. Tuan Anh. Tristan Applebaum. Tobias Alvarez. Tarun Anand. Travis Allen.

The list goes on.

Why were there so many people on campus with those damn initials?

He’d even started eyeing anyone who carried a poetry anthology in their bag with suspicion. As if one of them might drop a line of verse and reveal everything. As if one of them might meet his eyes and say, That poem last night? That was for you.

He doesn’t mean to tune in.

But at 11:58 p.m., his fingers reach for the dial anyway. As if they’ve memorised the frequency. As if some part of him was always going to end up here.

The room is dark. The only light comes from the clock by his bed, glowing faintly blue. He closes his eyes. Listens.

The voice is already there, murmuring through the quiet:

“I keep thinking about stars,” T.A. says, his voice low and deliberate. “How they burn themselves out just to be seen.”

Neil’s breath catches.

“And I think… maybe it’s enough to just shine, even if no one knows your name.”

A pause.

“But some of us know. Some of us are always looking up.”

Then the opening guitar riff hums into the static—bright, unmistakable. A burst of sound and feeling.

Oh, my life… is changing every day… in every possible way…

Neil’s eyes flutter open. His heart lifts and twists all at once.

He knows this song.

Dreams , by The Cranberries.

It’s not just any song. He remembers once, during a late-night ramble about favourite albums and running-away fantasies, telling someone—he can’t even remember who, maybe Charlie or maybe just the booth walls—that this song felt like falling in love on accident. Like stumbling into sunlight after days of rain.

And now it’s playing. At the end of Between the Lines . Right after that voice. Right after the stars.

He swallows, hard.

It’s probably nothing. Just a coincidence. A beautifully timed one.

But it doesn’t feel like nothing.

It feels like being seen. Almost.

He lies back on his bed, arms crossed under his head, letting the song wash over him like light through half-closed blinds. A secret, sent out across the airwaves. A maybe. A question.

He doesn’t know who T.A. is. But he knows how this feels.

And somewhere, deep in the part of him that hopes too easily and loves too loud, he thinks:

God, I hope it’s you.

Chapter Text

The campus is still when Todd steps into the booth. The kind of stillness that hums, heavy and full, like a breath held too long. Snow whispers against the windows, the world outside blurring into white static. The wind sighs beneath the door like it's trying to get in.

Inside, the booth is dim. ust the little lamp above the desk glowing amber, casting warm rings of light on the console. The foam-padded walls drink up the silence like it's holy. The faint scent of old coffee, graphite, and dust lingers in the air.

Todd stands motionless for a long moment, staring at the chair. His backpack droops from one shoulder. His coat is unzipped. He doesn’t know when he stopped walking.

Eventually, he sets his bag down and lowers himself into the chair like it might shatter beneath him. It doesn’t. It just creaks familiarly.

He breathes out.

His palms are damp. He wipes them on his jeans, twice, then again.

The low whirr of the equipment is the only sound besides the steady ticking of the clock on the wall. 11:57. Three minutes to midnight.

His fingers hover near the mic switch. He doesn’t touch it. Not yet.

Usually, he’d start with something gentle—a piano loop, a quote, a musing in his usual soft-spoken rhythm. 

But not tonight.

Tonight, the playlist sits untouched in the queue. 

There’s only one file open on his laptop. A voice memo. No title. Just the timestamp from when he recorded it: 3:14am, five days ago.

He'd whispered it into his phone, curled up in bed with his blanket pulled over his head, hoping the dorm walls wouldn’t carry his voice. He hadn't planned to use it. He’d just wanted to know what it would sound like—to say those things out loud. To hear himself be honest. It had felt like confessing to someone, even if that someone was only his phone screen glowing blue in the dark.

He stares at the mic now, heart thudding against his ribs like it’s trying to claw its way out.

He told himself he wouldn’t do this. That it would be too exposing. Too real. That it would ruin what Between the Lines was meant to be: a little pocket of comfort, of quiet.

And yet he wrote the poem anyway. Rewrote it six times. 

Whispered it to himself in the dark, listening to the cadence until it felt like blood in his mouth.

Tonight, he wants to read it aloud. 

Not with the safety of someone else’s words.

Just his own.

The booth feels sacred in this moment. Small. Dim. Like a church of sorts. He’s scared he’s about to say something he can’t ever unsay.

11:59.

He breathes in shakily and clicks the mic on, watching the red “ON AIR” sign hum to life.

He leans forward, lips brushing the mic foam, and says, “There’s something new tonight. Something of mine.”

There’s a pause. It’s long enough that someone tuning in might think he’s finished. But then he begins.

Flicker
By T.A.

I don’t want to be looked at.
But I want someone to see me.

I want to be noticed in the way dawn notices rooftops—
silently, slowly, without fanfare.

I flinch when the light finds me,
but ache when it doesn’t.

I am not made for daylight,
but I burn for it all the same.

I want to be chosen.
I want to be left alone.

I speak in parentheses.
I wear silence like a second skin.

I am contradiction in a cardigan.
A question mark with a pulse.

If I spoke, would anyone hear it?
If I stopped, would anyone notice?

Sometimes, I imagine a voice answering back.
Saying: I see you. I hear you. I know.

I wait for that.
I write for that.
I flicker for that.

The last line hangs in the silence that follows, like a lit match held in trembling fingers.

Todd sits back, throat tight.

He fumbles to cue the outro music— Clair de lune , soft and slow, like snowfall—but his hands are trembling too hard.

Before the track can fully fade in, he leans back toward the mic one more time, barely audible.

“If you heard this… pretend you didn’t.”

He switches the feed off.

The red light dies.

And the booth is quiet again.

He doesn’t move for a while. Just sits there, arms crossed tightly over his chest, the sound of his own breath too loud in his ears. 

It feels like something has cracked open inside him—a rib, maybe, or something deeper—and now he’s just… sitting in it. Raw. Exposed.

What if no one was listening?
What if someone was?

His mind spins, as it always does, too fast and too loud and too cruel.

You shouldn't have done it.

You should have played it safe—read another Auden or a fragment of Rainer Maria Rilke and tucked your thoughts into the margins like you always do.

This was stupid.

This was selfish.

But there was also… something else.

A sliver of stillness. A kind of release. Like he had finally let the light touch something inside him he had spent years trying to hide.

He breathes out again and packs his bag.

As he leaves the booth, he doesn’t look back.

──────────────────

Somewhere across campus, Neil Perry hears the click of the mic dying.

He doesn’t realise he’s been holding his breath until that moment. The poem—the voice—had stopped him cold. 

He sits in bed, wrapped in his duvet, headphones still snug over his ears. A book lies forgotten on his chest— Leaves of Grass , pages fanned like a sigh. He hasn’t turned a page in ten minutes.

The moment the show began, Neil had felt it in his bones.

The voice didn’t open with a quote. There was no playlist. No wry commentary. It was just… him. Soft. Tentative. Unmasked. Like someone speaking from the underside of their heart.

The poem is so honest it feels like trespassing. Like he’s overheard something sacred. Neil finds himself mouthing the lines as they’re spoken, not because he’s memorised them—but because they feel like something he might’ve written in a different life. Or maybe something he wished he could.

The voice had trembled on some lines. Tightened on others. There was no performance to it. Just someone telling the truth and hoping someone, anyone, was listening.

And Neil was.

Now he’s sitting upright in bed, his heart hammering so loud it feels like it might drown out the silence.

He wants to say something. To do something. But there’s no comment box, no reply button, no name to write down.

Neil doesn’t know who T.A. is.

But in this moment, he has never wanted to more.

Desperately.

──────────────────

Todd walks home with his scarf pulled high around his face, the wind biting at his cheeks. The streets are slick with ice, and the air smells like snow is coming.

He tugs his coat tighter around him and passes the darkened windows of the library. Glances up, just once. Wonders—not for the first time—if anyone out there was listening.

If his words found someone.

If someone heard them and didn’t look away.

He doesn't dare to hope.

But part of him—some aching, stubborn ember—wants to believe they did.

That maybe, he isn’t flickering into the dark alone.

Chapter Text

The snow’s still falling when Neil leaves the booth.

It’s the soft kind — feathery and slow, each flake drifting like a secret through the dark. He pulls his coat tighter around him, breath blooming in pale clouds as he steps back into the cold. The campus is hushed and hollowed out, the kind of winter silence that feels like the world is holding its breath.

Snowflakes catch in his lashes and cling to the folds of his scarf. They glitter under the amber halo of a nearby lamppost, melting on his skin like the ghost of a touch. He’s barely aware of the cold, though. His thoughts are still spinning back inside the booth, to the note he left behind — still warm from his hands, resting under the coiled mic cable like a secret waiting to be discovered.

I don’t know who you are, but I think I’m in love with your words.
And maybe your voice too.
—Sunshine

He hadn’t meant to say it like that.

Or maybe he had — maybe the truth had been building for so long inside his chest that there was no other way it could come out. The words had poured out of him in a rush, before he could sand down the edges or make them safer. They felt too big, too soon. Like holding out his heart in cupped hands and asking someone to see it, to not flinch away.

As he walks, boots crunching softly in the fresh snow, the adrenaline that carried him into the booth has faded — leaving something raw in its place. His heart hammers with the echo of it, like he’s just shouted into a canyon and is still waiting to hear what bounces back.

What have I done?

What if it’s too much?

His fingers twitch with the phantom shape of the pen. He wonders if he should’ve said less. Or said it differently. Or not said anything at all.

But alongside the fear — nestled beneath it like the warm undercurrent of a too-cold lake — is something else.

A stillness.

Not the panicked stillness of fear, but the quiet clarity that comes after speaking something real into the world. The kind that changes you, even if no one hears it. Even if it doesn’t change anything else.

Neil tilts his head up, watching snow spiral down from a night sky the color of spilled ink. The campus is empty — no footsteps ahead of him, only his behind. Just him, and the snow, and the strange, glowing hush of something unfinished.

For the first time in weeks, the weight he’s been dragging behind him — all the unsaid things, the almost-confessions, the wanting — lifts, just a little. Like something invisible has unknotted inside his chest.

He doesn’t know if the voice on the radio will read the note. But the act of writing it — of leaving it — feels like proof that something inside him is still alive.

Still brave enough to reach, even if he doesn’t know what he’s reaching for.

His steps slow as he passes the edge of the quad, eyes drifting back toward the faint silhouette of the humanities building — where the booth waits, hidden and quiet behind glass and static and walls.

He thinks of the boy behind that voice. The one who read a poem like his soul was unraveling. Who ended it with a whisper: “If you heard this… pretend you didn’t.”

Neil doesn’t know his name.

But he knows the sound of his ache. It matches his.

And somehow, impossibly, that’s enough.

He walks on, leaving only footprints behind. Snow covers them almost as fast as he makes them.

But for once, he doesn’t feel erased.

For once, he feels seen — if only because he dared to show himself.

──────────────────

Todd doesn’t sleep that night.

He lies in bed, eyes wide, heart hammering against the inside of his ribs like it’s trying to spell something in Morse code. His room is quiet except for the occasional soft creak of the radiator, and yet it feels loud. Too loud. Like the air itself is saturated with the things he didn’t mean to say.

He keeps hearing himself—his own voice—crackling through the memory of the booth speakers.

If you heard this… pretend you didn’t.

But he knows someone did.

He knows who did.

By the time the sun rises, pale and watery through his window, his body feels wrung out. Hollowed. His brain won’t shut up, a slideshow of what-ifs and maybes looping behind his eyes.

He doesn’t know what he was expecting when he opens the door to the booth that evening. Nothing, maybe. Emptiness. The quiet hum of electronics and the smell of dust and leftover coffee. Routine.

But the moment he steps inside, he feels it.

Something’s different.

The air is the same—warm, still, humming with that low hush like the breath before a prayer—but something presses at the edge of his senses.

He walks in slowly, coat still on, scarf loose at his neck.

And there, waiting for him on the desk, tucked just beneath the mic cable—

A sticky note.

Bright yellow.

It’s folded in half. Small. Simple.

His heart stumbles in his chest.

He stares at it, not daring to move for a moment, like it might vanish if he breathes too hard.

Then, finally, his hand reaches out.

The paper is smooth beneath his fingertips. He unfolds it carefully, like it’s something fragile.

He already knows what it says before he reads it.

He knows who it’s from.

But the words still steal the breath from his lungs:

I don’t know who you are, but I think I’m in love with your words.
And maybe your voice too.
—Sunshine

Sunshine.

Neil.

It’s the same person that underlined a line in The Bell Jar and whispered “God, that hurts” like he meant it. The same person that once lent Todd his pencil with a little smile and said “keep it” like it wasn’t just about graphite and wood. The same voice that said “I love how you read that line” after Todd stammered through a poem in class and made him want to cry from the shock of being heard .

It’s Neil.

It’s always been Neil.

Todd sinks into the chair before his legs can betray him completely.

His hands are shaking. His chest feels like a storm barely held in.

He reads the note again.

And again.

It doesn’t change.

It doesn’t go away .

Todd presses the note to his chest, fingers curled tightly around the edges, like it might disappear otherwise. Like he might.

And then the fear sets in.

It rushes in like cold water. Flooding every space that had dared to feel warm.

Because—

What if Neil doesn’t know it’s him?

What if he wrote that note to some version of Todd that doesn’t exist—just a disembodied voice on the radio, poetic and invisible? What if he’s in love with a mask ?

Or worse—

What if he does know?

What if he recognized the voice? The cadence? The cracks in between?

What if he knows that the person behind the mic is Todd Anderson , cardigan-clad disaster, king of awkward silences and half-swallowed words?

And still wrote this?

The thought is unbearable.

Todd doesn’t know which possibility is worse—Neil loving a phantom, or Neil knowing the truth.

His stomach knots itself tighter. He grips the edge of the table like it might hold him upright.

Because Neil is… Neil .

Bright-eyed, brilliant, golden Neil.

Neil with his ink-stained fingers and his endlessly annotated paperbacks. Neil who once brushed his hand against Todd’s when passing back a book and didn’t flinch. Neil who laughs out loud, and looks at people like he’s memorising them.

Todd can’t let himself believe that this is real.

He won’t .

He can’t be the person Neil meant.

He can’t be wanted like this.

He pulls out a pen with shaking fingers.

Fumbles for a blank sticky note.

Stares at it.

What is he supposed to say?

Thank you. I—

No.

He scratches it out.

I’m not who you think I am.

Too harsh. Too final. He scratches that out too.

He writes:

You shouldn’t say things like that to people like me.

Then crumples it before the ink is dry.

His hands are shaking too hard now to keep writing.

He presses his forehead to the console, breathing shallowly.

What is he supposed to do with this? With hope ?

Eventually, he folds Neil’s note again. Carefully. Lovingly. Like a paper heart too fragile to keep beating.

He tucks it into the inside pocket of his coat. Feels it rest against his chest like a secret.

He doesn’t go on air.

He doesn’t touch the mic, or the soundboard, or the stack of cassettes someone left neatly sorted by genre.

He just sits in the dark.

Not thinking.

Not yet.

Trying to hold onto something soft in a world that still feels too sharp.

And when he finally stands and leaves the booth, the door clicks shut behind him so quietly it feels like the world agreeing to keep his secret.

──────────────────

Days pass.

The world keeps moving.

Finals week descends like a cold front, creeping into corners, weighing everything down. Campus grows quieter, students scattering like leaves. The library is always full. So are the coffee shops, the study rooms, the hallways lined with people reading with their heads in their hands.

Deadlines loom. Lights stay on too late. Sleep is rationed.

And somewhere in all of that—Todd starts to disappear.

But not completely.

He still shows up to class. Still takes notes. Still walks the same halls. On the surface, he’s fine—quiet, focused, head down. Just another overworked undergrad in too many layers and not enough sleep.

But something’s shifted.

He doesn’t go back to the station.

He tells himself he’s too busy, that there’s no time, that other things matter more. But that’s not the truth.

The truth is folded in his coat pocket.

A sticky note. Yellow, crumpled at the edges now, softened from too many times being smoothed open with careful fingers. He carries it like a talisman. Reads it like it might change, like it might explain everything.

What if Neil meant it only in the moment? What if the voice he loved only worked in the dark, behind glass, through static? Not the boy behind it. Not the one who stutters when nervous, who overthinks, who can barely say what he means in person.

What if it stops meaning anything the moment they speak face-to-face, T.A. and Todd Anderson being one and the same?

So he keeps the note close.
Keeps his words locked away.

At night, he lies in bed with the sticky note held between his fingers, reading it like scripture.

And across campus, Neil does the same—with the silence.

With his headphones on. With the volume turned all the way up.

Listening for a voice that might never return.

Waiting for someone he never really knew to come back to him.

──────────────────

Todd pulls away. Withdraws. Not entirely, not overtly—but in the quietest, most brutal ways. 

He stops sitting in their usual spot in English. Moves a row back, slightly to the left. Enough that it could seem coincidental.

He avoids Neil’s eyes during discussions. He lets others speak first. When Neil raises a point, Todd writes it down in the margins of his notebook but doesn’t respond.

He comes in just before the bell and leaves the moment class ends.

He tells himself it’s not avoidance. It’s self-preservation.

But every time he catches even a glimpse of Neil—shoulders hunched over his desk, pen twirling between his fingers, smiling at something the professor says—Todd feels the ache of it.

Of what he’s choosing not to have.

Of what he’s too afraid to reach for.

──────────────────

Neil notices.

Of course he does.

At first, he brushes it off. Finals are brutal. Everyone’s scattered. He assumes Todd is just overwhelmed like everyone else.

But the patterns are too clear to ignore. The shift too obvious.

Todd won’t look at him. Won’t sit near him. Won’t speak unless directly asked—and even then, it’s quick, careful, distant.

It hurts in a quiet, bewildering way.

And on top of that, he doesn’t know who T.A. is. Doesn’t know where they went, or why the voice that once felt like a lifeline has gone silent. But the absence lingers. It scratches at the edges of his days.

Especially after the note.

Especially after what Neil wrote and left behind in the booth—that moment of terrifying honesty, still burning quietly in his chest.

He keeps replaying it.

It had felt like stepping off a ledge. Like saying something real into the dark and trusting the world to hold it.

But now—the silence feels like an answer.

And Neil doesn’t know what it means.

Did the note scare him away? Did he even read it? Was it too much, too soon, too raw?

He doesn’t know.

And that unknowing gnaws at him. Makes him feel like maybe he imagined the whole connection. Like maybe the voice in the dark was never meant for him after all.

Still, Neil tunes in at midnight. Waits.

The mic stays dead.

No voice.

No poems.

No soft, earnest rambling about books and the way winter sharpens sound and loneliness and hope.

Nothing.

So he leaves a few more notes.

Short, spare things. Nothing dramatic. Just—

Are you okay?

And then:

You don’t have to reply. Just come back.

Later:

The world’s a little too quiet without you in it.

No response.

The booth starts to feel like a kind of confession box. Sacred, but empty.

He walks past it every evening, hoping for a light in the window. A figure behind the glass. Some sign that what passed between them was real.

But the silence stretches longer each day.

In class, he tries not to look over. Not to reach. But it’s impossible not to see Todd—so still, so withdrawn.

Once, after a lecture on Virginia Woolf, Neil almost says something. He waits after class, heart hammering, but Todd slips out quickly, hoodie up, headphones in.

Gone.

And Neil’s left standing there like a question with no answer.

Chapter Text

The last lecture for the English elective arrives.

The sky outside is a muted gray, clouds heavy with the promise of more snow. Inside, the room hums with low conversation and rustling papers, the scrape of chairs, the muted clatter of pens against desks. Radiator heat clings to the air, thick and too warm, smelling faintly of old pipes and dust.

It should feel like any other class. But it doesn’t.

There’s a tension in Neil’s chest that’s been growing all week—sharp and restless, like something is about to end before it really began.

Todd is already seated when Neil arrives. Three seats away, same as always. Hunched over, shoulders drawn in, dark blond hair hanging a little longer in his eyes than usual. He hasn’t looked up.

He doesn’t look at Neil.

Not once.

Neil takes his usual place, but everything feels wrong. Off-balance. The silence between them isn’t new, exactly—but now it crackles. Now it aches.

Todd doesn’t open his notebook. Doesn’t tap his pencil like he usually does when he’s anxious. He just sits there, hands tucked into his sleeves, spine tense.

Neil risks a glance his way. Just a second. Just enough to see how pale he looks under the fluorescent lights. How he’s trying to make himself small.

And something in Neil twists.

Because this—the distance, the coldness—it wasn’t always like this. There used to be glances, quiet laughter, little smiles. A strange sort of gravity between them. Something unspoken, but full. Now, there’s only the space between seats. The silence.

He wonders when the light in Todd dimmed. When that quiet curiosity in his eyes became avoidance.

And he wonders—miserably—if he was the one who smothered it.

He thinks of the note again. His note. His heart, scribbled in ink and left behind like a match struck in the dark.

The professor’s voice drifts through the haze of Neil’s thoughts, bright and efficient. “Alright, that’s it for the semester. Good luck on finals. Be kind to yourselves, and don’t forget—you can rewrite anything but time.”

Chairs scrape. Bags are zipped and slung over shoulders. Someone drops a folder, and papers flutter to the floor.

Neil stays seated a moment longer, throat tight. Heart a drumbeat in his ribs.

He wants to say something. Anything. He doesn’t want to leave this class—this quiet, strange almost-connection between them—with silence.

When he finally stands, it’s like stepping off a ledge.

Todd is just ahead, gathering his things in that careful, mechanical way people do when they’re trying to avoid looking up. His jacket is too thin for the weather. His hands tremble slightly as he zips his bag.

Neil walks toward the door slowly.

He passes Todd—close enough that their bags brush. Just that slight contact sends a jolt through Neil’s chest.

He turns his head. Just slightly. Just enough.

“Hey,” he says, gently. “Good luck with exams.”

His voice is soft. Careful.

For a second, Todd doesn’t respond. His hands freeze on the strap of his bag. His head stays bowed.

And then—barely—he lifts his gaze.

“You too,” he says.

It’s barely more than a breath. Rough and tired and not quite looking at Neil.

Then he’s gone. Shoulders hunched, slipping through the door like he can’t leave fast enough.

Neil stands frozen. Watching.

It shouldn’t feel like this.

Like something hollowed out his chest.

Like he just lost something he didn’t know he had until it slipped between his fingers.

Like he missed the flicker by a second too slow.

He doesn’t know what he expected. A smile, maybe. A pause. A reason to stay.

But all he’s left with is the echo of Todd’s voice. The empty space he left behind.

And the feeling—aching and final—that the door has closed.

──────────────────

At lunch the next day, the group crams into a corner of the campus café like they always do when someone needs a break from the library. The table is sticky. The overhead lights are too bright. It’s perfect.

Charlie arrives last, triumphantly carrying two trays stacked high with fries, three ketchup packets tucked between his fingers like knives.

“Behold,” he says, sliding one tray to the center of the table. “Lunch of champions.”

Knox immediately snatches a handful. “You are a benevolent god.”

“Blasphemy,” Pitts mutters, already mid-sip of his coffee. “Poets don’t have gods. Only metaphors.”

“That’s not what you said during midterms,” Meeks says, adjusting his glasses. “I believe your exact words were, ‘Please, God, let me pass this exam and I’ll never make fun of Wordsworth again.’”

“Temporarily religious,” Pitts mutters, and Meeks grins.

Meanwhile, Knox is trying to steal from Charlie’s tray now, which sparks a soft, lazy slap-fight between them that ends with a packet of ketchup exploding tragically on someone’s sleeve.

Neil doesn’t notice.

He’s got his hands wrapped around a mug of tea that’s gone lukewarm, staring into it like it might steep an answer. His bag is slumped on the floor beside him. There are papers poking out—half-finished poems, maybe. Or old notes from someone who hasn’t written back.

Charlie watches him for a minute. Then, underneath the table, gives Neil a gentle kick to the shin.

“You good, dude?”

Neil blinks like he’s surfacing from underwater. “What?”

“You’ve barely touched your food.”

“I wasn’t hungry.”

“You’re never hungry lately,” Charlie says, nudging a fry toward him. “You don’t eat unless someone reminds you. Whoever you’re pining over, just remember that what you’re doing isn’t romantic, it’s sad.”

Pitts snorts. “It’s very main-character-of-a-French-indie-film sad. Like, black-turtleneck-smoking-clove-cigarettes sad.”

“Brooding-in-a-cemetery sad,” Knox adds.

“Existential-voiceover sad,” Meeks supplies.

Neil lets out a soft laugh, but it fades quickly. He shrugs. “Just finals stuff.”

There’s a pause. It’s not awkward, just quiet in that way that means people are choosing not to push. Meeks gives him a small, supportive look. Pitts offers a cold fry. Knox raises his eyebrows like, you sure?

Charlie just leans back, crunching thoughtfully.

“I’m serious,” he says eventually, more softly. “You don’t have to keep disappearing just because you’re sad. That’s not a rule.”

Neil opens his mouth—maybe to argue, maybe to agree—but the words don’t come.

They let it go. The conversation shifts. Pitts and Meeks go back to the E.E. Cummings debate—whether he’d have posted poems as Instagram captions or run an anonymous meme page. Knox tries to balance a fry between two sugar packets. Charlie swipes a napkin through the ketchup casualty zone.

But later, when Neil is walking home alone, snow starting to fall in light, almost bashful flurries, he hears Charlie’s voice again:

Just remember that what you’re doing isn’t romantic, it’s sad.

──────────────────

Todd doesn’t sleep much.

His room is dim, lit only by the soft amber glow of his desk lamp. It throws long shadows across the walls, puddling in the corners like secrets.

He’s writing again—longhand, the old-fashioned way, because typing feels too fast, too sharp. His pen moves slowly, carefully, like if he goes too quickly, the words might slip away.

There’s a letter on the desk. Not his first. Not his last. Most don’t make it past a paragraph. But this one… this one gets farther.

He writes:

Dear Neil,

I don’t even know what I’m writing anymore.

It’s late. The kind of late where even the radiator hum feels loud. I should sleep. I should stop thinking. But you’re still in my head. 

I keep wanting to say something that matters, and then I talk myself out of it. You’d think I’d be better at words, but somehow the more I care, the worse I get.

I wish I could tell you things I never say out loud.

Like: I’m afraid of being seen and even more afraid of being missed.
Like: I used to think quiet made me safe, but now it just makes me lonely.
Like: You made me want to speak.

And now I don’t know how to stop listening for you.

Every morning, there you are—steady, brave, speaking like someone who doesn’t realise he’s a lifeline. I sit in my room and pretend I’m not waiting. But I am. I wait for your voice like it might save me if I let it.

It’s not fair, I know. You keep showing up. You keep being kind. You keep offering pieces of yourself, like a map I’m too scared to follow. Like it’s easy for you. Like I didn’t ruin something we never even named.

And I sit in silence. Like a coward. Like maybe if I don’t move, none of this will be real enough to hurt.

And I don’t understand it. I don’t understand you.

Because the truth is, I don’t think I deserve it—any of it. You talk like the world might be beautiful. I talk like I’m apologising for taking up space in it. How does someone like you even notice someone like me?

I keep thinking you’ll stop. That one day, I’ll tune in and the voice will be gone, and I’ll think, “Well, that’s fair.” Because it would be. I’ve given you nothing back. Not even a name.

I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry for all of it.

But I don’t know how to be seen by you without breaking something important. I’ve been small and quiet for so long it feels like armor. You look at people like you see them. Like they matter. And I think if you really saw me, you’d take it back. All of it. The voice, the hope, the softness.

I wouldn’t blame you.

I wish I were braver. I wish I were enough.

But I’m not. 

So I sit here. I write. I don’t send. I listen. I don’t speak.

I’m sorry.

That’s the truth I keep folding into corners of paper I’ll never mail.

—T.A.

Chapter Text

The weather report sounds almost apologetic.

A cheerful, too-chipper voice on the student-run news segment says: “Heavy snowfall expected to start Thursday evening and continue through the weekend. We recommend all students prepare for possible power outages. Stay warm, Welton Wildcats.”

No one feels like a Wildcat.

Classes are ending. Finals have shifted, pushed up or postponed depending on how generous the department chairs are feeling. One by one, the dorms thin out—people leaving early for the holidays, or just leaving to avoid getting snowed in. Even the library feels quieter, like the building itself is holding its breath.

The radio schedule gets suspended. Safety reasons. Technical reasons. No one really argues.

But Neil keeps going to the station.

He shows up each morning like it’s muscle memory, flicking on the lights even when the boards stay dark. Some mornings he brings tea. Some mornings he just sits on the floor of the booth with a notebook open in his lap, staring at a page he never quite fills.

The silence starts to feel sacred.

He thinks about T.A. constantly. About the voice he misses like a phantom limb. About how it was never really anonymous—not to him. He’d started recognising the curve of each pause. The hesitations. The things left unsaid.

Now those absences ring louder than any broadcast.

──────────────────

That afternoon, Neil dozes off in the station.

He doesn’t mean to. One minute he’s tracing the edge of an old sticky note, the next he’s somewhere else entirely.

He’s curled in the recording chair, legs tucked up, arms wrapped around himself. His coat is still on, half-zipped. His head lolls back against the headrest.

Sleep takes him softly.

Then, he dreams of a voice in the darkness.

Quiet. Familiar. Threaded with that hesitant steadiness he knows like breath.

I keep trying to speak in full sentences, but I always lose the ends.

I say, ‘I’m fine,’ when what I mean is: I want to be found.

I say, ‘Good night,’ when what I mean is: please don’t go yet.

Neil stirs.

In the dream—or maybe memory—he’s in the booth again. But it’s brighter. Warmer. The mic light is glowing. The voice fills the space, gentle and low.

Neil says something he doesn’t remember upon waking, but it makes the voice laugh—soft and real and close enough to touch.

Neil shifts in the chair, eyes fluttering. For a moment, he smiles in sleep.

He startles awake around 3 p.m. The station is empty. Cold. Silent.

But something in his chest still hums. Like he heard something important.

He heads back from the station, snow brushing softly against his coat sleeves, already turning his hair damp.

He cuts across the quad—and slows.

Charlie is there, leaning against the side of the science building like he’s waiting for a train that’s never going to come. He’s holding a to-go cup in one hand, steam curling up from the lid.

Neil stops a few feet away. “Are you following me?”

Charlie lifts the cup lazily. “Nah. Just figured I’d catch you. You keep disappearing.”

Neil raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t argue.

“Pitts made tea. Cinnamon and… some other brown stuff. It’s pretty good though”

Neil takes it.

“Lot of static on the radio lately,” Charlie says.

Neil’s fingers tighten a little around the cup. “Yeah.”

They walk in silence for a while. The path is slick but familiar. Lights glow through frost-glazed windows.

“You ever think about how weird the concept of radio is?” Charlie says after a moment. “Like—you throw your voice into the dark and just hope someone’s out there to catch it.”

Neil doesn’t say anything.

Charlie doesn’t need him to.

They pass the edge of the quad, where the trees begin, their branches outlined in snow like ink sketches. The wind bites, gentle but sharp.

“You’ve been doing alright lately?”

Neil shrugs. “Sort of.”

Charlie nods. “You should hang out with all of us soon. Knox has this poem he wants us to do for open mic night. It’s so bad it might summon ghosts.”

Neil exhales something like a laugh.

Charlie nudges him lightly with his shoulder. “There he is.”

They stop in front of the dorm. The sky above them is heavy, swollen with unshed snow.

Charlie looks up at it. “It’s strange,” he says quietly. “How even when everything’s still, it can feel like something’s about to happen.”

Neil swallows.

Charlie doesn’t push further. Just gives his shoulder a brief squeeze and disappears into the warmth of the stairwell.

Neil stays there a while, the tea cooling in his hands, the air sharp against his cheeks. He watches his breath curl into the sky like smoke.

──────────────────

Meanwhile, Todd doesn’t sleep much.

His dorm is dim—lit only by the soft amber pool of his desk lamp. The light doesn’t quite reach the corners of the room, where shadows hang heavy like folded coats. His desk is cluttered with the familiar: a tangle of books with dog-eared pages, uncapped pens, old notes scribbled on napkins and margins. And there’s the sticky note.

It sits folded beside the lamp, worn down at the edges from too much handling. The ink has smudged faintly in places—just enough to make the words feel older than they are. He doesn’t open it again. He doesn’t need to.

I don’t know who you are, but I think I’m in love with your words.

And maybe your voice too.

—Sunshine

Across the room, the radiator groans, spitting out heat that barely touches the window glass. Frost has gathered at the corners of the panes, soft and silver like breath held too long. Todd stands in front of it for a while, his arms crossed, forehead resting lightly against the cold.

Outside, the campus is disappearing inch by inch, snowfall smudging the familiar landmarks until all that’s left is a quiet white world. The trees bend under the weight of it. The lamplights glow like distant stars. It’s beautiful, he thinks. And it feels completely unreachable.

His boots are by the door. They’ve been there for hours, dry and ready. He keeps glancing at them like they might offer an answer.

Eventually, he moves.

He opens the bottom drawer of his desk. Not with any great ceremony, just the quiet motion of someone who’s already made up their mind. Inside: a small flashlight, the one he took camping once in middle school; a blanket folded tight; a thermos, still warm from earlier; a single tea packet tucked into the thermos lid like a secret. And a book—poetry, of course, spine softened with rereading.

He adds each item to his bag with care, not quite ritualistic, but almost.

Then his hand hovers over one last thing.

A letter. The one he started three nights ago. The one that says too much in too few words. The one that knows his voice and his fear and the truth of how close he came to saying everything.

His fingers brush the edge of the paper, trembling just slightly.

And then he leaves it behind.

He zips the bag, pulls on his coat—pausing briefly to fix the collar like it matters. The air inside the room feels warmer than it did a moment ago, and somehow, harder to breathe.

Before he leaves, he takes one last look around.

Everything’s still in its place. The books. The lamp. The mug. His bed, sheets rumpled. It all looks so normal it makes something twist in his chest.

But Todd doesn’t feel like he’s in the room anymore.

He steps out into the hallway. The dorm door clicks shut behind him with the soft finality of a full stop.

The world outside greets him with wind and snow and silence. The path ahead is already half-covered, but he knows the way by now.

If I’m going to feel alone , he thinks, I’d rather do it somewhere the silence gives some comfort .

And then he walks into it.

The snow begins to fall a bit harder.

Chapter Text

The storm comes fast.

By late afternoon, snow is falling sideways, thick and slanted like white noise. The wind howls between the dorms, rattling windowpanes and whistling through the cracks. Classes are cancelled. The dining hall closes early. A few brave idiots (Charlie) try to toboggan down the hill behind the biology building on lunch trays.

By early evening, the power flickers once, then again—and then goes out across half the campus.

Neil lights two candles. His dorm glows faintly amber, shadows dancing across his posters and bookshelves. Somewhere, someone is strumming a guitar. A voice down the hall shouts about losing Wi-Fi. Pitts and Meeks have turned the common room into a nest of quilts and torches, their silhouettes flickering against the curtained windows.

But Neil can’t sit still.

He keeps looking toward the window, toward the dark smear of snow-covered campus beyond.

Something’s off. Something’s missing. Or out there. 

He throws a coat over his nightclothes, and steps into the hallway. Charlie’s sitting there, for some reason, playing his saxophone, the sonorous notes bouncing off the walls.

“Dude, where the hell are you going? It’s literally a blizzard.”

“I just—” Neil hesitates. “The station. What if someone’s still there?”

Charlie frowns. “They’d have left. No one’s dumb enough to wait out a blackout in a freezing radio booth.”

“Yeah,” Neil says. “Maybe.”

Charlie sighs. “If you’re gonna go, at least take a torch. And don’t die.” He throws one at Neil.

Catching it in one hand, Neil flashes him a weak grin. “No promises.”

Then he’s out the door, boots crunching through the fresh snow, wind biting his cheeks raw. The radio station is barely visible through the storm—just a low shape at the edge of campus, dark against the swirling white.

He doesn't know why he’s so sure someone’s still inside.

He just knows it feels like the right kind of quiet.

And someone might need to not be alone in it.

──────────────────

The door to the station sticks from the cold. Neil has to shoulder it open, wincing as it scrapes against the frame and groans into the quiet. Inside, the air is cold and still. He clicks on the flashlight—its narrow beam carves through the dark, catching on dust motes and stacked papers, posters curling off the walls, a discarded pair of headphones dangling from the corner of a chair.

“Hello?” he calls, voice low, uncertain.

No answer.

He steps inside.

The station hums with the kind of silence that’s almost alive—thick and close, broken only by the occasional creak of old pipes. He sweeps the beam of light across the mixing desk, the cabinets, the low couch tucked against the far wall.

Then, just as he’s about to call out again, he hears it.

A breath.

Soft.

He angles the light toward the booth.

The glass window is fogged from the inside. The door’s ajar.

Neil pushes it open gently.

And there—curled on the floor, knees drawn up beneath a thick blanket, head resting against the base of the desk—is someone. A boy. A quiet figure in the half-dark, sleeping beside a still-warm thermos and a worn copy of Leaves of Grass .

For a moment, Neil just stands there.

The blanket has slipped slightly, revealing the edge of a familiar sleeve. The boy’s dark blond hair is messy, flattened on one side. His face is turned just enough that Neil catches a glimpse of it in the light.

His breath catches.

Todd?

A second passes. Then another.

He kneels down slowly, careful not to startle him, and sets the flashlight down so the beam falls softly across the floor.

“Todd,” Neil says quietly.

Todd doesn’t stir.

Neil reaches out, hand suspended for a moment in the space between them. He hesitates—not wanting to startle him, not wanting to break this—but then, gently, gently, he places his hand on Todd’s shoulder.

Todd’s eyes flutter open.

For a split second, there’s nothing but confusion between them—Todd blinking into the light, Neil crouched above him, snow still clinging to his coat.

“What…?” Todd murmurs, voice hoarse with sleep. “Neil?”

“What are you doing here?” Neil asks, not accusing, just bewildered. “You— You didn’t go back to the dorms?”

Todd sits up slowly. The blanket falls from his shoulders. He looks so small like this, like something unfinished. His eyes are tired. Shadowed.

“I just needed somewhere quiet,” he says. He gestures vaguely to the poetry in his lap. “Didn’t think anyone would come in.”

Neil’s gaze flicks to the book. The tea. The radio booth. And then finally, back to Todd’s face. Open, vulnerable, unguarded.

Something inside Neil sharpens with recognition.

He sees it now. The quiet that always carried weight. The voice he’d been falling in love with one poem at a time. The constellation of clues that had never quite added up—until now.

Neil suddenly feels foolish. How could he have not seen it? The answer had been right in front of him all along.

“It’s you. You’re T.A.”

He breathes it more than says it, like the words have been waiting on his tongue all along.

Todd doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to.

He looks down, gripping the folded sticky note in his lap like it might anchor him. Shame rushes in fast and hot—his worst fear. That someone would find out. That Neil would find out. And that once he did, it would ruin everything.

“I wasn’t trying to trick you,” Todd says quickly. “I—I just didn’t think anyone would care. It was easier, being no one.”

He braces himself. For the silence. For the anger. For Neil to walk away.

A long moment passes where neither of them speaks. Outside, the storm hurls itself against the walls, wind moaning through the trees.

Neil finally shrugs off his coat—wet at the shoulders and half-dusted with snow—and sinks down beside him, back to the cabinet, shoulder brushing Todd’s.

“I thought…” he begins, then shakes his head. “You didn’t reply to my sticky notes. I thought something happened.”

Todd’s voice is quiet. “Something did.”

Neil turns to look at him.

But Todd doesn’t explain. He just sits there, the silence curling softly between them, thick and warm and full of all the words neither of them quite knows how to say.

Then, almost shyly, Todd nudges the blanket toward Neil.

He doesn’t meet his eyes.

“I’ve been waiting to meet you,” Neil says, and the corners of his mouth lift, just barely. “I just didn’t know it was you.”

And somehow, that’s worse—and better—than anything Todd could have prepared for.

He shifts slightly, pulling his knees up tighter, blanket tucked beneath his chin like armor. His voice, when it comes, is small but steady.

“Sometimes it’s easier to speak when no one’s looking at you.”

Neil nods. “I get that.”

They fall into silence again, but this one isn’t strained. It settles around them like the snow building against the windows—soft, slow, inevitable.

“You brought tea,” Neil says.

Todd nods. “Wasn’t sure if the power would be out.”

“You packed for a siege,” Neil teases, and Todd smiles faintly.

Todd draws the poetry book closer to his chest, like it’s a shield, or maybe a secret. The spine is worn soft from use, the pages feathered at the edges. His thumb rests on a familiar dog-eared corner, the way someone might reach for a talisman in the dark—something steady. Something known.

Neil shifts beside him, tilting his head just enough to glimpse the title.

“Frost,” he says quietly. “ The Road Not Taken ?”

Todd hums a quiet affirmation.

Neil smiles faintly, but there’s a trace of melancholy at the edges. “I used to hate this poem,” he says.

That surprises Todd a little; his head lifts by a fraction.

“I mean, not because it’s badly written. Obviously not. Just... people always talked about it like it was some brave anthem, you know? Taking the harder path. Marching to your own drum.” He huffs a dry laugh. “My dad loved it. Used to quote it like scripture. Said it was about ‘courage in the face of conformity.’”

He glances down, voice dipping low.

“But it’s not really that. It’s... uncertain. It’s someone standing at a crossroads and admitting they don’t know what the right thing is. That they’ll never know what would’ve happened if they chose differently. And maybe—maybe that ache stays with them.”

Todd’s hand tightens slightly around the edge of the book. He shifts his gaze sideways, eyes flickering toward Neil.

“Yeah,” he says softly. “That’s the part I always saw, too. The ache.”

Neil shakes his head. “Frost says both roads were the same. Worn about the same. That’s the part everyone forgets.”

“Exactly.”

Their voices are quiet, almost reverent now. Like the poem is something fragile they’re holding between them, both afraid to crush it.

“I think,” Todd says slowly, “it’s not really a victory. It’s a confession. That he made a choice, and he’s trying to believe it mattered. Even if he’ll never know if it did.”

Neil is silent for a moment, considering that.

Then, more quietly than before: “Do you ever wonder if you picked wrong?”

Todd looks down at his hands. His thumb brushes the corner of the page again, back and forth. His voice, when it comes, is almost a whisper.

“All the time.”

The admission hangs in the air between them. Heavy. Honest.

Neil doesn’t try to fix it. He just lets it be.

Then he reaches into his coat pocket and pulls something out—a little weather-worn notebook, corners curled and soft.

“I, um—” he hesitates. “I started writing things down. From the broadcasts. Things you said.”

He hands it over.

Todd opens it. There’s pages and pages of handwriting—quotes scrawled in different inks, lined and underlined, some circled, others with little comments or doodles in the margins. There are the sticky notes. T.A.’s words. Todd’s words.

Poetry isn’t about performing for someone else’s approval. It’s about expressing yourself, even if you’re scared.

Below it, Neil had written in cramped handwriting: “ Who are you? ” and a tiny doodle of a radio mic.

“You kept them,” Todd says, breath catching.

Neil looks away. “They helped. When I didn’t know how to feel something without breaking apart.”

Todd’s fingers brush the edge of the page. His touch lingers.

“I thought you’d be disappointed,” he says. 

Neil’s brows pull together. “Why?”

“If you knew it was me.”

“I’m not.”

Todd lets out a short, dry breath. Not quite a laugh. “But you liked T.A. more than me. I was afraid that once you saw…” He trails off, unable to look at Neil. “You’d take it all back. All the things you said.”

He hesitates.

“All the things I felt.”

Neil’s voice is soft, almost fierce. “Todd, T.A. didn’t exist without you. It was always you I was listening to. You’re not two people.”

Todd closes his eyes for a moment. He just breathes.

Outside, the storm pushes harder against the windows, a distant, relentless hush. But the booth itself feels suspended—its old walls holding them in like cupped hands. Warmth from the blanket seeps in gradually, unnoticed until it’s everywhere. The air smells faintly of dust and thermos-steamed tea.

Inside, it’s still.

Safe.

Neil shifts, just slightly, so their shoulders touch.

Todd doesn’t pull away.

After a long pause, Neil says, “You feel like something I wrote before I ever met you.”

Todd blinks, startled. Turns to look at him, heart in his throat.

But Neil’s gaze doesn’t waver. He says it with the simplest kind of certainty, no flourish or expectation.

Something in Todd softens. Unknots.

He leans in—tentative, as if waiting for something to stop him.

Nothing does.

His head comes to rest against Neil’s shoulder, uncertain at first, then anchoring there with a quiet sort of finality. The kind that says: I want to stay.

Neil exhales, slow and content. He leans gently back against him, and the weight between them becomes shared.

There’s no grand declaration. No next move. Just the soft rhythm of their breathing, synchronised by proximity, and the hum of silence holding them steady.

For the first time in a long time, neither of them feels alone.

They sit like that for a while—shoulder to shoulder, sharing warmth under the old station blanket. Todd doesn’t move, and Neil doesn’t ask him to. The silence feels fuller now, no longer heavy or echoing, but settled. Like the final line of a chapter.

Then, slowly, Todd shifts his hand. Just a little.

His fingers brush against Neil’s.

It’s not an accident.

Neil glances down, and Todd is still looking straight ahead—blue-grey eyes a little wide, jaw tense like he’s bracing for something. Like even this small gesture might be too much.

But Neil turns his palm up. Waits.

And Todd—almost without breathing—lets his hand fall into his.

Their fingers link together, quiet and certain. Todd’s hand is cold. Neil’s is warm. He gives Todd’s a gentle squeeze.

Neither of them says anything.

The storm thuds against the roof now and then, but it’s background noise. A different world. Here, there’s only the soft, shallow rise and fall of breath. The occasional creak of the booth as it settles into the night.

Neil doesn’t know how long they stay like that. Ten minutes, maybe more. But eventually, he feels it—Todd’s weight tilting just slightly heavier against him, his hand loosening in Neil’s without letting go.

He looks over.

Todd’s eyes are closed.

There’s a faint crease between his brows, like even in sleep he’s still thinking. But his breathing has slowed, steady and even. His head rests more fully on Neil’s shoulder now, face tucked half into the curve of Neil’s neck.

Neil stares at him for a moment. At the impossible closeness of him. At the fact that he’s here.

And something in Neil unclenches too. Quietly, he lets go of Todd’s hand with care and lifts his fingers instead to Todd’s hair—fingertips brushing through it gently, smoothing it back with something close to reverence. It’s so soft.

He strokes once. Then again.

Todd doesn’t stir.

Neil smiles, soft and stunned. Because he can feel it now, in his chest like the pluck of a chord: the realisation that he hasn’t been falling for two people after all. The boy with the notebooks and downcast eyes. The anonymous voice who read poems in the dark like he was trying to give them away.

They were always the same.

It was always Todd.

He leans his cheek lightly against Todd’s hair and lets the moment wrap around them, quiet and full.

Outside, the storm keeps raging. But in the booth, it’s calm.

Held.

And for the first time in days, Neil doesn’t feel like he has to perform anything at all.

Chapter Text

The storm passes in the early hours of Sunday morning, leaving behind a world remade in white.

Snow crusts every rooftop, branches sag under its weight, and the paths across campus vanish beneath drifts that glitter blue in the pale light. The air holds its breath. It's the kind of quiet that follows upheaval—a hush that feels earned.

By midday, power is restored. The dining hall opens again, albeit with cold toast and cautious optimism. Someone shovels out the front steps of the humanities building. Pitts and Meeks unearth their textbook fort with solemn reverence.

And at midnight, in the radio station—where the walls still remember the storm and the warmth of two boys beneath a blanket—Todd Anderson sits alone behind the mic.

The studio is aglow with candles. They line the desk in little flickering pools of gold, casting long, shifting shadows. The overhead lights are back, but Todd doesn’t use them. He doesn’t want this moment to feel sterile, or performative. He wants it to feel like a secret whispered in the dark—only this time, he’s not hiding.

He clears his throat.

Leans forward.

And speaks.

“Hello to anyone who is listening right now, and welcome to Between the Lines . This is Todd Anderson, formerly known as T.A.,” he says.

No alias. No distortion. Just him.

“And for once… I don’t want to hide.”

He pauses. The booth is warm, but his palms are cold. There’s a tremble in his fingertips he tries not to let reach his voice.

“There’s a poem I want to read,” he continues, glancing down at the page in front of him—creased, ink-smeared, entirely his. “It’s not by Frost or Whitman or Neruda. It’s… mine.”

He smiles, just faintly.

“It’s for someone. Someone who waited for me, even when he didn’t know who I was. Someone who reminded me that being quiet isn’t the same as being invisible. And that sometimes, the scariest thing isn’t being misunderstood—it’s being understood too well.”

He draws a breath.

And begins to read.

Almost, Until You
By Todd Anderson

I left my voice in pieces—
scattered syllables,
a sentence here,
a breath between stanzas.

I didn’t know how to speak to you
with my eyes open.
Didn’t know how to be
anything
but almost.

You waited anyway.

Waited in silence,
in candlelight and static,
in the corner booth where poems go to hide.

You left me notes like open windows.
Sang Bowie like the world might end
if no one listened.

I was afraid to be heard.
You listened like it mattered.

And now—
now I want to speak
without hiding my face.
To say my name without flinching.

I used to write for no one.
Now I write for the boy
who heard me
before I even knew
I was trying to be found.

And if you're still listening:
I’m here.
Not just the voice.
Me.

The poem ends. The booth is so quiet Todd can hear the candle wax melting, the low hum of the heating system, the flutter in his own chest.

He exhales.

There’s no applause. No audience in sight. But he feels it anyway—something loosening inside him, like the last chord of a song that’s been trying to resolve itself for weeks.

He leans toward the mic one more time.

“Thank you for listening,” Todd says, his voice steady but soft. “This was the last broadcast of the year. And maybe the last time I’ll ever be T.A.”

He pauses.

Looks at the candles flickering low around him. At the notes and scrawled poems scattered across the desk. At the empty chair across from his.

“But I think… I’m okay with that.”

He flicks on the outro music, a quiet instrumental piece with soft guitar and low brass. Something he picked weeks ago, not knowing why, only that it felt like a goodbye that didn’t hurt.

And then—

the phone line crackles.

Todd freezes.

The light blinks green. 

One call.

He stares at it, heartbeat rising into his throat. Slowly, carefully, he lifts the receiver to his ear.

“Hello?”

There’s breath on the line.

Then a voice—familiar, clear, grinning.

“I’m here listening, and I always will be.”

Todd’s breath catches. His whole face goes warm.

“Neil,” he says, almost laughing out the name. “You—are you—?”

“I’m outside the station,” Neil says. “Come find me?”

Todd doesn’t hang up. He just bolts—chair scraping back, nearly knocking over a mic. The blanket falls from his lap in a heap. He yanks on his coat and doesn’t even bother with shoes. Just socks and a jumper and the wild, impossible certainty that someone is waiting for him.

He runs barefoot through the cold corridor, out the heavy station door—

—and into the snow.

The world outside is washed in silver and gold. The storm has passed, but the air still smells like snow and static and new beginnings.

Neil is waiting beneath the old lamppost across the path. The light spills over his hair, illuminating his dark locks in gold like a halo. He’s something out of a dream—his coat undone, scarf crooked, hair windswept. Snow clings to his lashes, catching the light like salt and stars.

He’s grinning in that infuriating, wonderful way—like something finally fits. That same wide, crooked grin that undoes Todd from the inside out.

Todd doesn’t hesitate. He runs full tilt across the clearing, socks soaking through in seconds, heart slamming in his ribs. His dark blond hair is a mess. His face is flushed. 

He has never looked so beautiful to Neil, who opens his arms just in time.

Todd crashes into him, breath hitching, legs nearly giving out as Neil catches him tight. His arms wrap around Todd, steady and sure.

And then—Todd kisses him.

It’s instinct more than decision. Cold lips. Warm hands. Todd reaches up, one hand curling into Neil’s collar, the other buried in his hair like it’s the only thing keeping him anchored to the earth.

Neil responds without pause, like he’s been waiting forever. His hands cradle Todd’s jaw, thumbs brushing snowmelt from his cheekbones, lips firm and sure and just slightly trembling. The kiss is messy—frozen noses, snowflakes on eyelashes, teeth bumping once—but it’s real. And it’s them. And it’s everything.

Todd’s heart is hammering. He doesn’t know where Neil ends and he begins. He doesn’t want to.

When they finally break apart, they’re both breathless, flushed pink from the cold and from each other. Neil leans their foreheads together, eyes fluttering shut.

“Hi,” he whispers.

Todd laughs, giddy. “Hi.”

They stay like that for a second too long.

And then—

A whoop cuts through the quiet.

“YES!” Charlie’s voice, loud and triumphant, echoes across the quad. “FINALLY!”

Neil pulls back just enough to glance over Todd’s shoulder.

Up in the dorm windows, half a dozen silhouettes are pressed to the glass. Pitts and Meeks are waving a blanket like a victory flag. A girl in a band tee throws her hands in the air and yells, “Called it!” A random guy in a turtleneck does a solemn thumbs-up like he’s been waiting all semester for this.

Knox blasts music from a speaker. ‘Take On Me’ , maybe. Neil can’t even tell—his brain’s full of Todd.

Todd, flushed and wide-eyed, hides his face in Neil’s scarf. “Oh my God,” he mumbles. “This is mortifying.”

Neil just laughs—light, heady, real. “They’re happy for us.”

“They’re cheering .”

“They’re right .”

Todd groans but doesn’t move away. Not even a little. “I’m never going to live this down.”

“Probably not.” Neil leans in, smiling against his temple. “But I think you’ll survive.”

A beat passes. Then—

“Oh god. My feet,” Todd groans suddenly, pulling back just enough to lift one foot, then the other. “I’m literally going to lose toes. I’m wearing socks. In snow.”

Neil blinks. Then bursts out laughing.

“You didn’t wear shoes?”

“You said ‘come find me’! I was panicking!”

Neil looks absolutely delighted. “You romantic idiot. You confessed your love on the airwaves and then ran through the snow in socks.”

“I’m not kidding,” Todd huffs, wobbling. “They’ve gone numb. I can’t feel anything below the ankle.”

Neil smirks and crouches slightly. “Well, good thing you’ve got me, then.”

“What are you—”

“Get on,” Neil says. “You’re not walking back like this.”

Before Todd can argue, Neil turns and hauls him onto his back with annoying ease. Todd squawks, arms winding instinctively around Neil’s shoulders.

The crowd in the dorm windows loses their minds .

Charlie’s shouting something about true love. Meeks is doing a drumroll on the window panes. Someone throws glitter (where from? no one knows).

But Todd doesn’t notice any of it.

Because Neil is looking at him like he’s a sunrise, even though it’s the middle of the night.

And for the first time, Todd lets himself believe he deserves it.

Neil just adjusts his grip and says, “Ready?”

“You are enjoying this way too much,” Todd grumbles.

“Unclear,” Neil replies. “You’re freezing. You weigh almost nothing. I’m carrying you back to the place where you read me poetry on-air and made half the campus cry. It’s honestly kind of the highlight of my life so far.”

Todd buries his face into Neil’s neck to hide the ridiculous smile there. “Shut up,” he mumbles. But he doesn’t mean it.

He holds on tighter. Lets Neil carry him through the snow, the lamplight, the trailing cheers from dorm windows.

And when they reach the station door again, Neil doesn’t set him down right away.

He just turns his head slightly and says, soft and certain:

“I’m really glad it was you.”

Todd rests his chin on Neil’s shoulder.

“Yeah,” he says. “Me too.”

The door creaks shut behind them.

The world stays cold.

But inside the booth, it’s warm again.

And this time, it’s not a secret.

──────────────────

A few months later

Spring arrives in soft increments.

First, it's the crocuses cracking through frostbitten soil, stubborn and radiant. Then, it's the hum of bicycles on wet pavement, the laughter spilling from open dorm windows, the way the sunlight finally starts feeling warm instead of just bright. Students migrate to the lawn with their books and bare ankles. 

Inside the campus radio station, the booth looks different too. A new patchwork of sticky notes fan across the corkboard—student quotes, favourite lines, inside jokes. One says simply: "Still listening."

And every Sunday at 2 p.m., Carpe Diem Radio goes live.

The new co-hosts have become a campus staple—an unlikely duo, now inseparable. Neil and Todd sit side by side in the booth, sharing one mic and an endless supply of banter. Neil's in charge of music, of course, spinning Bowie and The Cure, throwing in the occasional absurd listener request just to hear Todd sigh at him. Todd reads poetry—sometimes published, sometimes his own. Always in that soft, steady voice that makes people stop mid-errand just to listen.

Their corner of the studio has changed. The candle stubs are gone, but pressed flowers remain, tucked behind the station clock. Their old sticky notes are taped to the wall above the console in a loose constellation of yellow and blue. There’s a Polaroid of the two of them now—taken by Charlie on a Saturday afternoon, Neil mid-grin, Todd pretending not to smile.

Today, the show opens like this:

“Good afternoon, you glorious dreamers,” Neil says, cheerful as ever. “Welcome back to Carpe Diem Radio —the only campus show where half the music is emotionally devastating, and the other half is Elton John.”

Todd snorts. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“I’m just saying, we played ‘Tiny Dancer’ and then immediately followed it with Edgar Allan Poe. The emotional whiplash is going to get us sued.”

“And yet, they keep tuning in,” Todd says dryly.

Neil grins. “It’s the voice. They’re here for you , Mr. Midnight.”

“Don’t call me that on-air.”

“Too late.”

They move effortlessly through the hour—Neil teasing, Todd dry-witted and secretly warm. They trade song recommendations like secrets, answer anonymous listener messages, read each other quotes from Neruda and Vonnegut and random things they’ve underlined in library books.

At the halfway mark, Neil spins his chair toward Todd. “Got a poem for us?”

Todd, cheeks faintly pink, nods. “Yeah. This one’s… new.”

Neil leans back with an exaggerated sigh. “Am I emotionally prepared for this?”

“Absolutely not.”

This is Love (at least for me)
By Todd Anderson

I used to think love happened in the dark—
in silence,
in secret,
in shadows that kept the real things safe.

But here we are,
windows wide open,
sunlight on the mic cords,
your voice skipping like stones over the airwaves.

Love, it turns out,
can sound like laughter between playlists,
or you saying my name like it’s
a song you haven’t gotten tired of yet.

You bring me daffodils
from the campus lawn,
half-crushed in your backpack,
and I press them into my notebook
like proof:
Yes. This happened.
Yes. You stayed.

I don’t write in hiding anymore.
Not when you're beside me,
pen tapping the desk,
grinning like you know something I haven’t said out loud.

Maybe love is this:
not a grand confession,
but a quiet
everyday
yes.

Todd reads, and Neil listens with his whole body. He doesn’t look away, not even once.

Afterward, there’s a beat of silence.

Then Neil, soft and with a faint blush: “Still writing for me?”

Todd pretends to consider. “Maybe. You haven’t made me run barefoot through snow recently, though, so I don’t know if you deserve it.”

Neil cracks up. “You’re never letting me live that down, are you?”

“Nope.”

They go on. The show meanders through music and sunlight and easy laughter. At one point, they bicker about whether or not it’s acceptable to eat a croissant with a fork. (Todd: “It’s flaky!” Neil: “It’s a croissant !”) A listener texts in a poem recommendation. Another dedicates ‘Friday I’m in Love’ to their roommate. Neil plays ‘Heroes’ just because he still can’t resist Bowie.

When the hour nears its end, Todd glances out the booth window.

The quad is bathed in gold. The trees are blooming. Students sprawl across the lawn in circles, laughing and alive.

He turns back to Neil, and for a moment, says nothing.

Then: “Do you think we’ll keep doing this next year?”

Neil looks over. He doesn’t answer right away. Just reaches out and threads their fingers together over the mixing board.

“I’d broadcast every Sunday for the rest of my life if it meant I got to hear you read poetry next to me,” he says simply. “So yeah. I think we will.”

Todd squeezes his hand.

“Okay.”

Neil lifts their joined hands to kiss Todd’s knuckles, then leans back into the mic one last time.

“That’s all from us today,” he says. “Thanks for spending your Sunday with us. This was Carpe Diem Radio , reminding you to read something lovely, and maybe—just maybe—say the thing you’ve been too afraid to say.”

Todd adds, “Take care of your heart. It’s spring.”

The song that plays them out is ‘Kiss Me’ by Sixpence None The Richer.

The booth glows.

The world keeps on blooming.