What We Stay Alive For

Chapter Eighteen: Finality, A Good Sense of It

16 December, 1959.

"Neil?" The name pours out of Todd's mouth like a dam's been broken. His arms reach out in front of himself, trying to reach for that being in his bed. "Neil!" Todd says again, louder. His tone is a distant cousin to the desperation he had given the name, Neil, the night before.

Neil rises from his sleepy positions, rubbing his eyes with curled up fists. When he looks at Todd, he first seems calm. Then, the alarm sets on his features. It's like he's been slapped with clarity; last night was not a fabricated fable of the mind.

"Todd!" Neil's croaky, tired throat says.

Todd falls forward onto his knees. The pain that visits him in his kneecaps shoots up and kisses the bottom vertebrae of his spine. He doesn't care. Neil is here. Neil is alive and nothing else matters- nor bursting bones, not shattered spines.

Neil nearly trips twice getting to Todd. There's too many sheets and bed posts to knock him off balance. But, when he does make it, Todd bands his arms around Neil's legs. Neil sets one hand on the back of Todd's scalp, the other on Todd's shoulder.

They sit like that for a long time. If anyone passes by their open door and catches them like this, they don't notice. It's too early to be concerned and too late at the same time. It's the sixteenth of December.

"You're here," Todd breathes, his voice muffled. His face is nuzzled against Neil's waist and stomach. "You came back."

Neil nods. "Of course I did."

If it was a better moment, one not so heavy with unsaid words and memories Todd cannot explain, Neil might've added a joke to that. He would have quipped something like "Of course I did, we have finals soon" or "I promised Charlie I'd sneak him extra toast at breakfast this morning." He doesn't. Instead, he adds this:

"I promised you I would be back in the morning." Like he's asking permission, Neil slowly moves the hand on Todd's scalp down to his jaw. He guides Todd's head up with his fingers so they can look at each other.

Todd professes, "I couldn't be sure."

"I know," Neil says and Todd thinks, for a short moment, that Neil does. The moment passes, however, when Neil smiles. Todd's glad for it. It means that Neil will never have to understand the depravity, the truisms that cut and bleed when you're not completely sure someone will be alive at dawn.

To Neil, the one that's here now, death is not an unstoppable force. Todd believes that might be how he feels now too because, really, death isn't. Not this time, not here. Death is not something to pick and choose, no matter how lasting it felt in front of Neil's father. The only thing Neil has to choose is who sits in front of him now, nervous on his knees.

Neil taps Todd's arms with the tips of his fingers. When Todd's grip falls, Neil lowers himself down so that they are on the same level. Neils sits, criss-crossed legs, and Todd mirrors that position. Taking his hand and pulling it into his lap, Neil rubs comforting circles into Todd's palm with his thumb.

Suddenly, Neil asks Todd, "You know I had to go, right?" The circles under Neil's eyes look dark and deep. The half-moon shape gives the impression that eclipses have appeared here before. Sun in eyes, moons beneath them.

Todd knows. "I didn't want you to."

For some reason, Neil smiles at this. He laughs a little, too. Looking into Todd's eyes, Neil's stare sits somewhere between contempt, loveliness, and graveyard memory. "I know you didn't. I didn't want to go either, but I knew that it was important that I did." He raises Todd's hand to his lips and kisses his knuckles, one at a time; like it'll soften everything, every blow. It works because, by the last kiss, Todd is smiling, too.