marginalia: xiao zhan looking through movie camera (Default)
yiling matriarch ([personal profile] marginalia) wrote2004-08-26 02:27 am

fic: everything looks perfect from far away. neil/todd

title: everything looks perfect from far away
pairing: neil/todd, dead poets society
archive: .: marginalia :.
disclaimer: i own nothing. but i'd like to know if peter weir makes gay movies on purpose. this is the big gay boarding school movie. erm. but that's redundant.
notes: by request for [livejournal.com profile] randomchef's birthday. really, painfully late. i am very tired and this is unbetaed, so yell if there is something wrong and i will blush like mad and fix it. title and cut text from the postal service.


Nights that the Society didn't meet were becoming more and more common as the year wore on and novelty wore off. On those nights, when the common room was too noisy and his room was too small Todd would escape again to the roof, where Neil had let him fly on his birthday. Where Neil had let him laugh. Where Neil had found him.

Neil had a knack for finding Todd, though Todd suspected this was because Neil was the only one who ever looked for him. Perhaps he was the only one who saw him at all.

That wasn't true, though. Even Todd wasn't so maudlin as to believe it. It didn't matter anyway. The point was that Neil had a habit of finding him, and if some nights he found him while bearing two mugs of hot chocolate nicked from the kitchens, well, so much the better.

Tonight Todd suspected that there was more to the chocolate than usual, something secret, probably from Charlie, loosening his tongue and spinning through him warm. They sat with their backs against the cold stone wall, as close as they could be without touching, and Neil wouldn't let Todd answer, "How are you?" with "Fine".

Todd pulled his knees in closer to his chest and said everything all in a rush, to get it out and maybe past Neil before he could catch the words flying away on the night air, said everything about walking through it all and being but not belonging.

Neil tilted his head back, looked up at the sky, and asked, as if part of quite a different conversation, "Do you know anything about constellations? Because I don't."

"You don't know the stars?" Todd was surprised. "It's valuable information. I understand girls find that sort of thing terribly impressive."

"That's assuming," Neil pointed out calmly, "that I'm interested in impressing girls."

Which Todd had to admit was an excellent point indeed, but all he said was, "Er."

"From down here they look so quiet. Not burning or spinning or anything. Just glowing. I wonder how we look from up there."

Todd was fairly certain that even from up there so high Neil would glow, but the words stayed in the back of his throat where they would not sound foolish.

"Anyway. We'll catch our death." Neil scrambled to his feet. He put out a hand to help up Todd, who, drawing on every last ounce of courage he possessed, stood and kissed Neil swiftly. So fast he didn't know if he tasted of dinner or of chocolate or of something indefinably Neil, but just slow enough to know that Neil's lips were soft and that he was not stepping back.

Neil still held his hand, but Todd pulled away to collect their mugs. His heart thumped painfully, twisting shame, and he would not meet Neil's eyes.

He knew he looked better from far away.

[identity profile] snarkhunter.livejournal.com 2004-10-03 09:08 am (UTC)(link)
Oh, God. See?! THIS is why there needs to be more DPS fic. So that stories like this would have a home, where it could be with others of its kind, and we wouldn't have to marvel at how beautiful it is while we feel bereft because it's the only one of its kind!

Um. Yeah. Somehow, that wasn't what I was going to say, but oh...I love this.

Oddly--or not so oddly, really, b/c everything comes back to Harry Potter for me, these days--the boys really remind me of the Marauders here...of course, I'd already mentally cast Neil as Sirius and Todd as Remus when I watched the movie again last week, so...

Thank you!

[identity profile] marginalia.livejournal.com 2004-10-05 06:46 pm (UTC)(link)
thank you so much! there needs to be so much more.

and, great. i totally needed that to eat my brains, since i have an s/r thing -anyway-! :)