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burningvelvet · 2 years

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Here are a lot of the biographical sources I’ve used in studying the second generation Romantics (mainly just Byron, Mary and Percy Shelley, and their friends). If anyone else has recommendations, etc., feel free to reply!

Note: the Internet Archive & Project Gutenberg have most of these resources for free, & many can be easily found on other websites or at libraries. I also recommend reading the literary works of these writers first and foremost, since a writer’s work often reveals the most about them!

For biographical research, primary sources are sometimes the best: the letters and journals of Mary & Percy Shelley, Claire Clairmont, John Polidori, Edward Trelawny, Leigh Hunt, Lord Byron, John Hobhouse, Jane & Edward Williams, John Keats, etc. These are always the most entertaining resources as well. It’s amazing to read what they actually wrote and see things from their perspective — it also allows you to formulate your own original opinions. But remember that people are biased and forgetful by nature, and some more than others!

Young Romantics: The Shelleys, Byron and Other Tangled Lives by Daisy Hay — this is basically a condensed biography of all the members of the Byron/Shelley Romantic squad but it does provide a lot of good info, especially on Leigh Hunt & Claire Clairmont who are less talked about. It skips over some important stuff imo but it has a wonderful thesis (that the Romantics should be studied as a whole instead of individually) and offers interesting perspectives, and neatly shows how all the figures were tied by their similar ideas/interests. Perfect as an introduction!!

Byron in Geneva: That Summer of 1816 by David Ellis — all about the gang’s summer of 1816; extremely fascinating and historical! It doesn’t go into Frankenstein because that’s covered in so many other books.

The Making of Mary Shelleys Frankenstein by Daisy Hay — a brilliant companion piece to the above! It may be helpful to have alongside this Charle’s Robinson’s The Frankenstein Notebooks (though the Frankenstein manuscripts are available to be viewed here -> http://shelleygodwinarchive.org/).

History of a Six Weeks' Tour by Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley (1817) — travel book; series of letters/journals from their travels with Claire in 1814 and in 1816 when they were with Byron in Geneva; Byron is only referred to as their “companion” since he was extremely famous and didn’t want attention drawn to his private life. For similar reasons I believe Claire is left out a lot too; her affair with Byron was being kept quiet due to his recent separation from his wife, and many people were spreading reputation-ruining rumours that Claire and Percy also had an affair (which was probably true), etc.

Mary Shelley by Miranda Seymour — Seymour has written a lot about the Romantics and this is a pretty decent biography imo.

The Collaborative Literary Relationship of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley by Anna Mercer — very important and interesting, fits into Daisy Hay’s thesis above. Anna Mercer is a major figure in Romantic research/work!

Romantic Outlaws: a parallel biography of Mary Shelley and her mother Mary Wollstonecraft by Charlotte Gordon: it explores Mary Shelley alongside her mother Mary Wollstonecraft, who was also a famous writer and pioneered feminism. She and her husband influenced the philosophies of Mary and Percy Shelley and are insanely interesting in their own right.

Works by Mary Shelley’s parents: Mary Wollstonecraft’s works A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and Thoughts on the Education of Daughters; and William Godwin’s works Political Justice, Caleb Williams, and Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (a biography of Mary Wollstonecraft).

The Life and Letters of Mary Shelley by Mrs. Julian Marshall, two volumes via Project Gutenberg— a treasure trove of letters with writing by Marshall that is never boring imo. I think Mary’s letters and journals after Percy’s death are some of the most haunting I’ve ever read.

Byron: A Portrait by Leslie A Marchand — he’s one of the top Byron scholars and it’s probably one of the most thorough biographies. Marchand also edited the monstrous multi-volume series of Byron’s Letters and Journals, one of the definitive resources in Romanticism, often shortened by academics as “BLJ.” It’s the foundation of Byronic Studies/“Byronalia”. Byron was a prolific and beloved writer and his letters are some of the most studied, and more has been written about him than any other romantic figure by far, so I’ll try not to make this post too Byron-centric, but it is a struggle!

The Journals of Claire Clairmont by Marion Kingston Stocking — one of the best sources for Claire letters, which are sometimes hard to come by. Stocking is wonderfully sympathetic to Claire who is often neglected by historians. Claire was Mary Shelley’s step-sister and lived with Mary & Percy, and she had an affair with Byron which produced one child. Unfortunately, Claire’s diaries from 1814-1818 (when she was living with Mary & Percy + had an affair with Byron) were all destroyed. It is thought they were not destroyed by her but some other relative. This is likely because many people believe that Claire/Percy had an affair, and as blunt as she was, she would have surely written down tons of other reputation-ruining information. But her later journals and letters reveal invaluable insight into her companions lives. She was one of their main muses because she was extremely firey, funny, and fascinating.

The Clairmont Correspondence: Letters of Claire Clairmont, Charles Clairmont, and Fanny Imlay Godwin, 1808-1879. By Professor Marion Kingston Stocking. - on Claire and her siblings. Claire was Mary Shelley’s step-sister so she had her own relatives too.

Shelley, the Pursuit by Richard Holmes — considered the best biography of Percy Shelley. Extremely comprehensive. Holmes also wrote about Coleridge, and several autobiographies on what it’s like to be a Romantic biographer — very interesting!

James Bieri's biography of Percy Bysshe Shelley (two separate volumes; one edition has both volumes together) — this is the other best biography of Percy Shelley and I refer to it along with the Holmes one.

Shelley at Oxford by Thomas Jefferson Hogg — Shelley’s dorm roommate writing about their time at college. Some of his accounts are exagerrated but many are believable — he was Shelley’s best friend (aside from Peacock). Also, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley by Thomas Jefferson Hogg (two volumes) — same person as above. This work was boycotted by the family because it portrayed Percy as having flaws (lol) but it may not be totally accurate in other regards.

Thomas Medwin’s Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron and The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Medwin was Shelley’s cousin. His Byron book was publicly boycotted by basically everyone who knew Byron. Even Byron’s exes and servants were writing scathing reviews of it! This was partly for factual errors. However, Medwin does capture some of Byron’s personality, though the more controversial and tacky sides, which is the primary reason it was boycotted. His biography of Shelley was disliked for similar reasons. Mary wrote to Mrs. Hunt of Medwin’s Byron biography: “Have you heard of Medwin’s book? Notes of conversations which he had with Lord Byron (when tipsy); every one is to be in it; every one will be angry. He wanted me to have a hand in it, but I declined. Years ago, when a man died, the worms ate him; now a new set of worms feed on the carcase of the scandal he leaves behind him, and grow fat upon the world’s love of tittle-tattle. I will not be numbered among them.” This shows how Mary and others viewed tell-all biographies; much the same way they are viewed today.

The Diary of Edward Williams — short diary kept by Williams who drowned with Shelley and lived with him - interesting accounts of their life before death!

The Diary of John Polidori — he was Byron’s doctor and also a writer. He wrote The Vampyre, the first ever vampire novel, which was based on the story Augustus Darvell, an unfinished vampire story Byron began as part of the 1816 Geneva story competition in which Mary wrote Frankenstein. Whew. Any way, Byron’s publisher John Murray wanted to pay Polidori to keep a record of his & Byron’s travels… which he failed to follow through with, but some of his entries remain. However, most of his diaries/journals were burned by his sister for being “indecent” (likely LGBT+) & he took his own life at age 25.

The Lord Byron / John Polidori relationship and the foundation of the early nineteenth-century literary vampire by Matthew Beresford — this is actually someone’s doctoral thesis and can be found here: https://uhra.herts.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/2299/22626/13090610%20BERESFORD%20Matthew%20Final%20Version%20of%20PhD%20Submission.pdf?isAllowed=y&sequence=1&fbclid=IwAR3uN505R2nuvS1mTlUY3MEn5YRUYJn7hgmKXy9FGO0wooh6xwpXfqJTfME

Poor Polidori : a critical biography of the author of The vampyre by David Macdonald — sometimes harsh, bu the writing is truly entertaining and the intro alone is so so so insightful! “The study of a marginal figure like Polidori - indeed, of many marginal figures like Polidori - is necessary if literary studies are to be rescued from the ahistorical canonization in which they have been entrenched since before the days of the New Criticism. Even apart from the unquestionable need for a larger context against which to understand canonical authors, it may be that marginal ones provide clearer examples of certain kinds of intertextual phenomena.” Yes! He gets it.

John Keats: The Making of a Poet by Aileen Ward — one of the best biographies on Keats

Letters of Fanny Brawne to Fanny Keats and Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne. Fanny was John’s fiancé & muse.

Lord Byron's Jackal: A Life of Edward John Trelawny by David Crane and the Letters of Edward Trelawny — Trelawny was a brief part of the squad. He’s buried next to Shelley although he only knew him for 6 months. He was a writer, sailor, adventurer, and went into the Greek War with Byron. He kept in touch with Mary and Claire until the end of their lives. He proposed to Claire multiple times and they possibly had an affair.

Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron by Edward Trelawny — He wrote this decades after he knew them and the details in some of his stories tended to vary. In later years he became biased against some people so it can be taken with a grain of salt. But it’s very interesting and some of it must be true. Gives details of Shelley’s funeral.

Life of Byron by Thomas Moore — very well researched and Mary Shelley contributed a lot to it including accounts of the 1816 Diodati trip. Moore was a famous writer as well and he knew them all. He was one of Byron’s best friends. Biased, of course!

Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries: With Recollections of the Author's Life, and of His Visit to Italy by Leigh Hunt — Extremely entertaining if not unbiased. Hunt was a key part of the movement and knew everyone well, including Keats, and especially Shelley. Like all biographies written by people who were involved, it is very biased — especially since Hunt and Byron had a big falling out, which Hunt blames Byron for (which isn’t entirely fair; for example, Byron gave Hunt money which Hunt was ungrateful for, & Byron gave Hunt money to give to Mary when she was living with Hunt because Byron knew she wouldn’t accept it from him out of shyness, but Hunt kept the check for himself source: Young Romantics by Daisy Hay). Many people dislike Hunt because of this book and several things he did, but it is still interesting!

Shelley and His Circle; Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection: a collection of manuscripts with notes and expalanations - best for research!

The Shelley-Byron Conversation by William D. Brewer: explores their influences on each other and literary connections. Several books have been written just on Shelley and Byron. Another one I like is Shelley and Byron: The Snake and Eagle Wreathed in Flight by Charles E. Robinson which examines how for example Shelley plagiarized some of Byron’s work (this isn’t an attack, it’s true, and he did it out of appreciation!)

His Very Self and Voice: Collected Conversations of Lord Byron edited by Ernest J Lovell — basically a compilation of people sharing their memories of Byron and the others— some are biased but some seem super accurate, and you can tell by the details that overlap in everyone’s stories lol!

Lady Blessington's Conversations of Lord Byron edited by Ernest J Lovell — same as above. Taken from diaries she kept.

Byron’s Ravenna Journal — short diary he kept while living in Ravenna, Italy.

Byron’s Correspondence as edited and collected by top scholar Peter Cochran: much of it is available on his website here with notes —> https://petercochran.wordpress.com/byron-2/byron/

The Last Man by Mary Shelley — a fictional book, but the characters are all portraits of people Mary knew so it’s very biographically interesting. She wrote it when she was feeling l lonely after Byron and Shelley died, Claire moved far away, and the whole group was disbanded. It takes place in an apocalyptic/dystopian future. Lord Raymond is Lord Byron, Adrian is Percy, Perdita is Claire — the characters form a group she calls the “Elect.” She wrote in her journal: “The last man! Yes I may well describe that solitary being's feelings, feeling myself as the last relic of a beloved race, my companions extinct before me."

My Recollections of Lord Byron by contessa di Teresa Guiccioli — this is a book by Teresa, Byron’s gf in Italy who he lived with for years; his longest partner. She was madly in love with him and worships him to an insane extent so most of it can be taken with skepticism since it is biased, but it is entertaining.

The Last Attachment by Iris Origo: this is about Byron’s relationship with Teresa. It can be paired with the above. It is one of the only books written about Teresa and is very well researched.

The Secret: The Strange Marriage of Annabella Milbanke and Lord Byron by Ashley Hay and In Byron's Wake: The Turbulent Lives of Lord Byron's Wife and Daughter: Annabella Milbanke and Ada Lovelace by Miranda Seymour — Byron’s daughter Ada is also fascinating. She was a wild rebel like Byron, but she’s considered the mother of computer science, the inventor of coding, and was the first computer programmer ever; her and her mother were both mathematicians. Lord and Lady Byron had a horrible marriage; he was an absent father, and Annabella was a bad mother.

Journals/resources: Other important journals/resources for articles + scholarly study: 1) the Newstead Abbey Byron Society (Newstead Abbey was his ancestral home; now a museum). 2) The Byron Society, which runs The Byron Journal, which is a major resource—there are many offshoots of the Byron Society for different countries (ie Byron Society of America), that make up the overall International Society, and they have fascinating conferences and whatnot for Byron scholars to share research. 3) The Shelley Conference— they have a series of recorded interviews with scholars for the #Shelley200 anniversary celebration (found here: https://theshelleyconference.com/shelley200/). 4) the Keats-Shelley Journal— an amazing resource for all things related to them, their work, and their circles. They post a lot of work about Mary/Byron/Claire/Hunt/etc. and a lot of their past publications can be found online for free! It’s probably my favorite journal tbh.

Notes: I’ve read lots of other books and academic articles, especially if I’m searching for something on a particularly niche topic. The good thing about the Romantics is that they’re all so well-researched and so widely written about, so practically any question has already been asked before—there have been whole essays written about these writers diets, wardrobes, sexualities, health statuses, bills and bank statements, philosophies, sleep schedules, etc.! However, I’ve found a lot of newer biographical books about these writers simply rehash what others have written, and are poorly researched or not researched at all, and a lot of them are published only because it’s an easy topic to profit off of due to how interesting these people were. I ran into this problem a lot when trying to learn more about Lady Caroline Lamb, Byron’s half-sister Augusta Leigh, and his wife Anne Milbanke. There aren’t that many good books written about them because they’re considered secondary figures in the Romantic canon, and most of the books on them read like copies of each other—so individual essays online written by rogue academics are really your best bet for info instead of the books, or to otherwise supplement what the books lack!

Closing notes: I would never tell anyone not to read something, but beware that a lot of authors have written tantalizing, dramatized portraits of these writers to cash in on their scandals without actually fact checking anything. Many people in the circle had disagreements and falling outs, some understandable and some petty. It’s important to remember that everyone is explictly and implicitly biased. Byron started a feud with Keats, Claire and Mary had multiple falling outs, Hobhouse hated Percy, almost everyone hated Hobhouse, etc… so it’s good to keep a relatively open mind and to remember that these are all complex people and we shouldn’t stereotype them; they were human, and they had strengths as well as flaws. They all despised critics, and they would probably be annoyed if they knew how many biographies they all had, so the least we can do today is to appreciate their work as writers and muses, and to be respectful of their individual opinions and experiences.

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angelsaxis · 2 years

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A WORD is its uses, as William H. Gass shows in his rollicking conspectus, ''On Being Blue,'' although he might have ogled ''purple'' as well. Purple does seep into his bluebook, however, here tinting some ''spent body like a bruise,'' there leaving a ''lavender thumb''-print of ''broken veins.'' In fact, as well as being a book on the uses of ''blue'' - in talk, literature and the dictionary - ''On Being Blue'' is a prime, up-to-date example of purple prose, not so much a patch as it is a pyramid, a pandemonium, a seething nuclear pile of words.

(rest of article under cut)

Infatuated with ''blue,'' its optical resonance and its metaphorical range, Mr. Gass picks up samples from far and near, reveling in the word's every appearance, teasing and inciting and delving until the little tome glides off on its own like emancipated lava, announcing I Am Words, I Am Language, I Am Style. The book is elaborate without being ornate, ambulatory without being pedestrian, and, for those whose tastes run to purple, a definite joy. It reminds us that the almost lost art of phrasemaking attracts the scorn only of those who have never made up a stylish phrase in their lives, as if style had become taboo, a menace to people, gods and cars.

Of course, purple is not only highly colored prose. It is the world written up, intensified and made pleasurably palpable, not only to suggest the impetuous abundance of Creation, but also to add to it by showing - showing off - the expansive power of the mind itself, its unique knack for making itself at home among trees, dawns, viruses, and then turning them into something else: a word, a daub, a sonata. The impulse here is to make everything larger than life, almost to overrespond, maybe because, habituated to life written down, in both senses, we become inured and have to be awakened with something almost intolerably vivid. When the deep purple blooms, you are looking at a dimension, not a posy.

Consider Paul Cezanne's famous doubt, eloquently pondered in an essay by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the French thinker. Was what Cezanne saw, and painted, in his hand or ''out there''? Or was it in the paint itself, the fine-ground lumps of geology he painted with? Plump for all three, in a mood of feckless empathy. You can see what nagged at him, as I think it must have nagged at such masters of purple as Sir Thomas Browne, Macaulay, Joyce, Faulkner, Dylan Thomas, Wallace Stevens and Nabokov. Is it something lacking in you that makes you want, in your visionary versions of the world, to load every rift with ore? The phrase is Keats's. It implies that the ore in the ordinary isn't enough. He wants ore-dinary. It's not a lack, though, but a lack's opposite: that powerful early-warning system of the sensibilities we call imagination, the system Coleridge called ''esemplastic'' because it fuses the many into one. SOME creative heads, in order to see the world at all, and to find it worth representing, need to begin by putting it in gaudy colors. More sternly, in a mood of utmost reverence, they recognize that what you bring to the act of perception is often just as important as what you perceive. ''We receive,'' wrote the same Coleridge, ''but what we give.''

The gist of it all is that a mind fully deployed, and here ''mind'' includes imagination, will find the merest thing an inexhaustible object of wonderment, itself included (in a fit of modesty, of course). A carrot. A wart biopsied. Take the bald, blank end of a stem from which a hibiscus bloom has dropped, and you can feel the rough ends of the dried-up tiny tubes that fed it - microstraws bound together by nature's clamp, like fascias, along which streamed the fuel of display. That's how a purple paragraph itself might start to bloom. The urge is more than the yen to make a well-upholstered paragraph that connoisseurs will clip and paste into albums of such things. Purple is a homage to nature and to what human ingenuity can do with nature's givens.

Certain producers of plain prose have conned the reading public into believing that only in prose plain, humdrum or flat can you articulate the mind of inarticulate ordinary Joe. Even to begin to do that you need to be more articulate than Joe, or you might as well tape-record him and leave it at that. This minimalist vogue depends on the premise that only an almost invisible style can be sincere, honest, moving, sensitive and so forth, whereas prose that draws attention to itself by being revved up, ample, intense, incandescent or flamboyant turns its back on something almost holy - the human bond with ordinariness. I doubt if much unmitigated ordinariness can exist. As Harold Nicolson, the critic and biographer, once observed, only one man in a thousand is boring, and he's interesting because he's a man in a thousand. Surely the passion for the plain, the homespun, the banal, is itself a form of betrayal, a refusal to look honestly at a complex universe, a get-poor-quick attitude that wraps up everything in simplistic formulas never to be inspected for veracity or substance. Got up as a cry from the heart, it is really an excuse for dull and mindless writing, larded over with the democratic myth that says this is how most folks are. Well, most folks are lazy, especially when confronted with a book, and some writers are lazy too, writing in the same anonymous style as everyone else.

How many prose writers can you identify from their style? Not many have that singular emanation from the temperament or those combinations of words all of them characteristic for a certain gait, a certain tone, a certain idiosyncratic consecutiveness of thought and image. Stone the crows by all means, but let the birds of paradise get on with the business of being gorgeous. Even Hemingway, who has much to do with this vogue for the flat, breaks his own habit in certain rapturous, long sentences in which he seems to recognize that although being alive is just one damn thing after another, there is no ultimate sum, no total; you just go on adding as long as you live, which is perhaps why a medieval monk, illuminating one capital letter for months, say, was living as full a life as Brother Busymitts, who rushed through a dozen in an hour.

It takes a certain amount of sass to speak up for prose that's rich, succulent and full of novelty. Purple is immoral, undemocratic and insincere; at best artsy, at worst the exterminating angel of depravity. So long as originality and lexical precision prevail, the sentient writer has a right to immerse himself or herself in phenomena and come up with as personal a version as can be. A writer who can't do purple is missing a trick. A writer who does purple all the time ought to have more tricks. A writer who is afraid of mind, which English-speaking writers tend to be, unlike their Continental counterparts, is a lion afraid of meat.

After all, it is the mind that stages such apparently incongruous and impossible things as making a stone talk, speaking up for posthumous narrators and dead characters, and, as in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's ''Autumn of the Patriarch,'' tuning in to the collective imagination of an island's islanders as they begin to confect the myth of its dead dictator. Mr. Garcia Marquez lets the reader listen in on an unwieldy, ramshackle process that nevertheless is going to get where it is going. The islanders want an image: potent, nasty and attractively damnable, and they are willing to lie, to fudge, to get it.

The only way of being a demiurge is to fashion a material world out of the one already on hand, not allusively but close-up, so much so that things the words denote seem right on top of the words, on top of the reader too. The ideal is to create a complex verbal world that has as much presence, as much apparent physical bulk, as the world around it. So you get it both ways: the words evoke the world that isn't made of words, and they - as far as possible -enact it too. The prose, especially when it's purple, seems almost to be made of the same material as what it's about.

This is an illusion, to be sure, but art is illusion, and what's needed is an art that temporarily blots out the real. So, reading Thomas Mann's description in ''The Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man'' of a delicatessen window should, for a while, be nearly the same as staring into a comparable deli window in Manhattan. It's when the words blot out the real, and displace it, that prose comes into its own, conjuring, fooling, aping, yet never quite achieving the impression that, in dealing with an elephant, it is actually working in elephant hide. There lingers always, just out of view, on the conjectural fringe of vision, the fact that what's going on is verbal. The prose will not turn to the sun, like a plant, or wither without actually falling off its stem, or spawn tapeworms in its interior. Yet it has mass, texture and shape. It calls into play all the senses, and it can interact at the speed of ionization with the reader's mind. HOW extraordinary: our minds loll in two states, ably transposing words into things, things into words. What goes on in this hybrid mental shuttling to and fro is something passive but active, a compromise in affairs of scale, dimension and abstraction. The phrase ''teddy bear'' is smaller than the toy animal, which in turn is smaller (usually) than the big bear from the wilds; is almost entirely flat (a printed phrase stands up a little from the surface it is printed on); and lacks physical attributes conspicuous in any bear. The words represent, but they also re-present, and when the wordsmith turns to purple various things happen. The presence of the supervising wordsmith becomes more blatant, but the objects being presented in words have a more unruly presence. They bristle, they buzz, they come out at you.

Purple isn't quite onomatopoeia, whose modern meaning is different from what it meant in Greek. Now it means making a word sound like its referent (''hiss,'' ''crack,'' ''cuckoo''), but it used to mean ''word coining,'' which is wider. When it isn't just showing off, purple is phrase coining, an attempt to build longish units of language that more or less replicate sizable chunks of Being in much the same way as the hiss-crack-cuckoo words mimic a sound. There is language that plunges in, not too proud to steal a noise from Mother Nature, and there is language that prides itself on the distance it keeps from nature. Then there is purple, which, from quite a distance, plunges back into phenomena all over again, only to emerge with a bigger verbal ostentation.

This plunge is almost like revisiting our ancestors. After all, words must have begun as acts of abstract approximation, a simultaneous closeness and removedness that nabbed the essence of a thing in a shout, a grunt, a hiss, but partly in order to refer to it in general. Take the word ''muscle,'' for instance, which comes from some Roman's impression that when a muscle flexes, a small mouse -a musculus - seems to be running underneath the skin. We have all but lost that mouse, and I am not saying that purple will retrieve it; it might, it might not, depending on how much etymology the purplist has. But purple will perhaps restore the shielded, abstracted modern reader to that more atavistic state of mind in which the observer can imagine a subcutaneous mouse. It is not a matter of coming up with new words, but fiercer - of coming up with new and more imposing combinations of words.

Purple is certainly a long way from the clinical doting on particulars we find in the French New Novel, but is quite near to Latin American magical realism, which is both a literary and a sociological thing. What might seem a literary flight of fancy exists already in part of Brazil, where birth certificates actually name freshwater dolphins as the fathers of certain children. Purple relishes that sort of thing, zeroing in on it or concocting it as part of the thing it loves to make: a paste as thick as life itself, a stream of phenomena delighted in for their own sake. And it is not a matter of inventing something out of nothing, for that cannot be done; everything is derivative, so there is no getting away from what might be thought the bases of life, of art. The farfetched always takes you home again, never mind how strained its combinations, how almost unthinkable its novelties. The color we have never seen, the smell we have never smelled, the mind we have never known, can only be made from the colors, the smells, the minds, we already know.

I am suggesting that purple prose reminds us of things we do ill to forget: the arbitrary, derivative and fictional nature of language; its unreliable relationship with phenomena (''cuckoo'' is close, but ''indri,'' meaning ''look!'' in Malagasy, got tagged on to the monkey of that name by mistake); its kinship with paint and voodoo and gesture and wordless song; its sheer mystery; its enormous distance from mathematics and photography; its affinities with pleasure and luxury; its capacity for hitting the mind's eye - the mind's ear, the mind's very membranes - with what isn't there, with what is impossible and (until the very moment of its investiture in words) unthinkable.

All this may sound like the latest variant of the old Classical-versus-Romantic quarrel, and maybe it is; but, even more, it is the quarrel between those who know what literature is allowed to be and those who want to let it evolve. If you write in stripped-down prose, you will probably do better commercially than if you, as the idiom has it, indulge yourself. What's a self for, anyway? For every hundred people with a hair-trigger response to what they think excessive, there are a few with a hair-trigger response to prose stripped down. The objection is empirical, not moral. It says life is infinitely more complex and magical than we will ever know unless we stop trying to pin down feeling in pat little formulas or sentences so understated as to be vacant, their only defense the lamebrain cop-out that, because they say so little, they imply volumes.

I have heard it said that writing that ponders things in detail, takes its time and habitually masticates its object until a wonder leaps forth, is ''Victorian,'' no doubt because the word evokes portly self-satisfaction or finicky dawdling. It makes more sense, though, to think of purple as Elizabethan or Jacobean: fine language, all the way from articulate frenzy to garish excess. Purple, it seems to me, is when the microcosm fights back against the always victorious and uncaring macrocosm, whose relative immortality we cannot forgive.

A wide net will bring in such treasures as the Gass book I began with, and the same author's ''Omensetter's Luck''; Faulkner's purple masterpiece, ''Absalom, Absalom!''; Lawrence Durrell's witty, crafted velvet; the mesmeric ripeness of Jose Lezama Lima's novel ''Paradiso''; the holistic, crackling bravura of Mexico's Carlos Fuentes; the poignant narcissisms of Juan Goytisolo, whose prose has a cutting edge, whereas his fellow Spaniard Juan Benet sometimes turns a sentence into a closet oratorio. There is Dylan Thomas's prose - letters and broadcasts and stories; the erotic skywriting of Guy Davenport; the quiet verbal accumulations of Walter Abish; the rapturous, almost mystical fiction of the Brazilian Osman Lins, whose exquisite formal, visionary novel, ''Avalovara,'' deserves a wider audience; Julio Cortazar, Michel Tournier, James Purdy, Richard Howard, Evan S. Connell, Jean Genet, Arno Schmidt, William Gaddis, the John Hawkes of ''The Passion Artist,'' the Witold Gombrowicz of ''Ferdydurke,'' the Thomas Bernhard of ''Correction'': they all partake of this plume, this flambe, this pageantry of the mind. T HEY tell us, these authors, that it is headily terrifying to be alive, we have no choice in the matter. We are like Lucky in ''Waiting For Godot,'' when that bewitching mishmash of data and names, echoes and useful things to remember, pours from him like expedited ectoplasm. Purplists write in appalled fascination, wondering what chemistry prompts the style. In order to be reverential of life, people do not have to work overtime to pin down the world outlook of the nasturtium, but we may try to; nor must we linger too long on the curious aroma of mulled disappointment that hovers in the hallways of university literature departments, although we may. We simply have to heed the presence of all our words and the chance of combining them in unprecedented and luminous ways. Prose is malleable, not ordained. Phrasemaking is often a humble, almost involuntary virtuosity. And purple, whatever it may seem to catcalling wallflowers as it flaunts by with eloquence raised to its highest power, is bound, because of what it does so well, to cause exhilaration. It is also bound, however, because of what it cannot ever do, to deepen the sense of metaphysical fear. And what it cannot ever do is start from scratch.

#angel posts #in defense of purple prose #adding to the list of articles ill always point to excitedly #on writing #angel reads #required reading

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letter-from-the-refuge · 2 years

Text

newsies dream cast, part 1

if newsies is in a constant cycle of new productions, it’s about time we get a perfect cast! this is who I’d want as the characters in a remake in the round in 2022

Jordan Fisher as Mush Meyers

livesies was racist and cast a white guy as mush, who was an actual real mixed racial historical figure who was more than likely forced to live on the streets because it was illegal for him to even exist. therefore he gets first on this list just to make up for that even though it could never be enough to make up for that great disservice. perhaps he gets a new solo too because frankly he has always deserved one. I think Jordan would suit the role well with his astounding voice and positive attitude similar to that of a puppy, just as Mush always has.

Max Casella as Joseph Pulitzer AND Mr Wiesel

Max also deserves so much better than what disney gave him. He continued to do disney movies and their broadway shows for twenty years and is an accredited stage actor who helped earn them some 13 Ed’s Tony’s for the stage play of the lion king which is still Disney theatricals biggest gross to this day. He actively asked to be in newsies on broadway and they wouldn’t give him a job! He loves the film so much that he was the only actor from it to show up to the broadway red carpet as well. He deserves every role. And!! Most importantly Pulitzer will finally be portrayed by a real Jewish man!

I also just think it would be very funny to see him as the man he was heckling with as Racetrack, very funny 10/10

David Moscow as Mayer Jacobs

This is the clearest choice on the list and needs no explanation. David is still an activist in workers rights (among other things like sustainable food) to this day! (I did consider putting bernie. sanders on this list for shits and giggles but would never consider him for an actual production.)

Giuseppe Bausillo as Racetrack Higgins

This is the only member of the stage cast I would consider hiring back. He fits the role very well and Bob and Noni’s “Italian beanpole” description. He did excellent before and frankly deserves more credit for it.

Ann-Margret as Medda Larkin

She is still out here thriving today!

Brendan Fraser as Bryan Denton

You can 100% accredit this and the next one to @maggs-is-a-muppet but they’re right and I’m saying it louder for the people in the back.

Josh Sundquist as Crutchy

Please look up his stand up comedy if you’ve not seen it. Very funny man and, importantly, we do not fake disabilities in this house!

On that note, do you of any young visually impaired actors who would be applicable for Kid Blink? I would gladly support them but after quite a bit of searching I’ve only found Johnny Depp, who happens to be blind in his left eye (though I think any visual difficulty would be applicable) but he is much too old for the part. I thought the thirty somethings on broadway were too old but he’s twice their age and i do think that would detract from the plot, sorry Johnny.

Ele Keats as Esther Jacobs

You guys had to know this one was going to be on here.

Matt Bennett as David Jacobs

I’m not saying every Jacobs needs to be a major proponent of bernie but maybe I am. Anyways his album Terminal Cases is iconic.

Auli’i Cravalho as Sarah Jacobs

Auli’i is so talented she got most adults lifelong goal of voicing a disney princess at merely 15. She knows how to make a strong female character also nice and kind.

Christian Bale as Teddy Roosevelt

From his initial hatred of newsies and musical kind to doing three more the next year despite swearing off them, to earning awards for the largest online following from the sheer number of newsies fan sites alone, to becoming possibly the most well known Welsh actor of all time, to singing Santa Fe every time he sees Bill Pullman in the wild, CB has gone on quite the journey of accepting his love for newsies, and it’s time that journey comes full circle. Yes we’re going to spend half the budget paying him for less than two minutes of screen time. Yes, this is very much only in the absence of Robin Williams.

#newsies #newsies musical #livesies #newsies 1992 #west endsies

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teddy06writes · 2 years

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Charlie Dalton Friends to Lovers hcs

requested by this anon: "charlie dalton x reader friends to lovers??"

{Yessssssss friends to lovers is one of my favorite tropes}

{finally some good fucking food /j}

Charlie Dalton x reader

trigger warnings: some swearing

premise: hcs for Charlie falling in love with his best friend

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

okay so

you and charlie have been friends since like forever

your families had been friends, and so naturally, you were introduced at a young age.

you'd easily become friends

and as time went on, you became friends with Neil too

you three ended up like a package set

{cause you know charlie and neil were friends from the moment they popped out or something}

Now, because your family was alot like Charlie's you both ended up going through the same sort of stuff

The usual high expectations, responsibilities, yada yada

but mostly you started growing even closer when you turned old enough to start attending family events/dinner parties/ boring adult functions

Your first one had happened while you were on winter break, finally away from welton. You'd been excited to hang out with Charlie outside of school for the first time in what seemed like forever

but then you got dragged along to some gala or something

you'd been bored out of your mind, lost in the sea of plane evening dresses and black suits

that is until Charlie appeared out of no where asking

'well is that ms/mr (y/l/n) I see? hhhhhmmmm?'

so basically you snuck out of that party together, and that became tradition whenever you were stuck at boring functions

sneak out and go to some diner in town, still all dressed up for the event, and honestly just live your best life

Now, for the most part, as the years go by, charlie's feelings for you were totally platonic, and yours for him were the same

until one day they weren't

it was the middle of summer before junior year, and yet again you'd been dragged to a going event

yet again, Charlie had also helped you sneak out, and you'd wandered all along town together, before returning to the party, right before people started leaving and your parents would've realized you were gone

the adrenaline rush had still been on as you managed to sneak back into the building, and you'd just been headed back to the main area when someone called Charlie's name

he'd grinned at you, 'well- just in time- call me tomorrow, okay?' 'sure thing Charlie' in the distance someone called his name again and he laughed 'well duty calls'

and as he disappeared again you couldn't help but think, 'god I love that boy'

bam from then on your smitten

Junior year starts, and things are a lot different than normal

your friend group, which over the years had grown to fit Meeks, Pitts, Knox and surprisingly Cameron, added yet another with Neil's new roommate , Todd

There was a new English teacher that year too, Mr. Keating

he wasn't like any teacher you'd ever had before, and that was fantastic

then the dead poets society was uncovered, and Neil decided that it had to be brought back

it was that first night in the cave that Charlie's feelings for you changed

you'd volunteered to read, standing up with the book and acting out a poem by Byron, and seeing you there, laughing at lit by firelight- something about that was it for Charlie

it took him until he'd made it back to his dorm for him to realize what that new feeling was

he loved you

It took a while for either of you to confess

but after a long talk with Neil, some months after he'd realized, Charlie finally decided to do something about it

In the moments after Hagers warning of lights out, Charlie had slipped a note into your hand

you chuckled, reading the scribbled, 'meet me in the senior lounge- midnight'

it wasn't entirely uncommon for the two of you to sneak out of your dorms, hanging out in the senior lounge until the early hours of the morning

but something about the look he gave you seemed more earnest

So you waited anxiously until midnight, before creeping out of your dorm

Charlie had already been waiting for you

'what's wrong?' you'd asked quietly

'I just- i need to tell you something' he said, biting his lip nervously

you frowned, 'what's wrong Charlie? is everything okay? is it your parents again?'

"I just-' he sighed, cutting himself off before looking at you properly in the moonlight that swept through one window, 'i think i'm in love with you'

you had frozen up, a flurry of realizations hitting you at once- but the biggest one of all had to be that your feelings weren't unrequited

'(y/n)? god- i'm sorry- I shouldn't have said that-'

you ended up cutting him off by pulling him into a kiss

when you broke away the only thing you could think to say was 'about time... I love you too.'

#dead poets society #dead poets society x reader #charlie dalton #charlie dalton x reader #charlie x reader #teddy06 #teddy 06 #teddy06 writes #teddy06writes

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evis-gossip · 3 years

Text

Grenades. Atomic Bombs.

Couple: Todd Anderson x fem!reader

Key words: Y/N your name · y/e/c your eye color

Warning: kissing (if you see anything I slipped, please let me know), not proofread

Summary: A walk through the beginning of a first love

Category: tooth rooting fluff

Word count: 1.8k

A/N: This work was my first ever, so please be gentle, although I would love to see what you think. This was a first part to this. Byee<333

Masterlist

______________________________

Y/N. Y/N was her name. Back then I had only heard it because Mr Keating asked it during the first class. Y/F/N Y/L/N. It was a beautiful name, the most beautiful I’ve ever heard in fact, and it made my brain mush coming from her angelic voice. Y/N. She was beautiful. She had a beautiful smile that took my breath away every time I saw it, a pair of y/e/c orbs that pierced through my soul like knives to my chest. She had y/h/c hair that framed her face so perfectly and she was just tall enough to fit amazingly in my arms, about which I daydreamed quite often.

Y/N was in most of my classes. That’s how I learned the things I’ll never forget. Like how she was the one that responded to Mr. Keating when he asked who knew where O Captain, My Captain! came from, because she was the only one who knew. Of course the first girl to attend Welton had to be this smart, even though later on I found out it was more of a disciplinary action. When Neil insisted on me going to the cave the first time, I refused at first.

“You know Y/N is going right? I’ve noticed the way you look at her so I told Charlie to invite her” Neil whispered sitting next to me in the common room. I glanced at her, just a few tables over focusing on her Math homework “The others have no problem with it, but unless you want Charlie to be the one flirting with her I highly suggest you come along” he winked

“But, Neil, what if I mess up and say something dumb? I can’t do that” I whispered back shaking my head

“Well, if you say something dumb at least you’ll make her laugh. Come on Todd, you can’t waste your life away in fear” he insisted. I suppose he was right, but I was so awkward i I couldn’t bring myself to even talk to her directly

“I tell you something. I’ll stop you before you can get the chance to embarrass yourself” he offered

“Okay” I sighed as I turned my head to the book

And that is how I found myself sitting next to her, our knees barely touching, my face blushing intensely. She talked vividly and read a few poems. She said she’d like to bring her favorite poetry book, but it’s in Spanish, “La realidad y el deseo” (“Reality and Desire”) by Luis Cernuda. And that is how I got to find out that she was a second generation immigrant from Spain. She can read, speak and write in Spanish just like in English. Every little detail I had the pleasure to find out about her was all the more fascinating. She could speak French and German, but not as well. She was a master in Latin and classic Greek. She knew every other Greek myth and she studied Arthurian romance just for fun. She was a genius, like Meeks. She was funny like no one else, she always had a way to cheer everybody up. She sat with us at lunch. She would always complain about the food missing something, she always knew just what it needed.

“How do you do that?” Charlie asked her one of these times

“Do what?”

“Always knowing what the food needs, are you also a professional chef or something?”

“Oh, well… my mom cooks really well and as a daughter I’m expected to learn from her all sorts of things about cooking and cleaning whether I want to or not. She always said, and I quote, “A good wife must know everything there is to know about the kitchen”. Sometimes I hate her.” she said simply shrugging

“That’s sad. I guess it must be hard to be women when everyone is constantly telling you what to do and how to be” Neil said with an understanding look

“Well, it’s what got me here in the first place” she said excitedly. Up to this point I had been solely looking at my food avoiding here eyes, I couldn’t help but look out when she started talking about this topic “I was pissed at being put down and dismissed if I wanted to do something related to typically masculine roles, like going to a real college! So I started a riot. I convinced a bunch of girls in my area to stand up against what’s wrong and to fight for what they believed in. It became a problem when my parents started receiving complaints from other parents saying I corrupted their daughters. And soon, I became a problem” needless to say I was astounded. Here I was, barely able to speak up when I was uncomfortable while she was starting riots for her rights.

Y/N was in my room. That was the day Neil told me to better study Spanish some more “cause you’re falling behind” he said. And that same day, there she was, leaning on my door, looking around my room like she was discovering a brand new world, with her gentle smile that never failed to warm my heart. She looked at me directly and for the first time I looked at her without fear or shame. She gazed past my skin and right through me. I was so sure I was blushing like hell but she simply chuckled.

“Neil said you needed help with Spanish cause you’re falling behind or something like that” Neil and I are going to have some words, but for now, god bless him

“Yeah, yeah, I, um” I started gathering the papers around my bed while she walked slowly towards me. She seemed as if she was approaching a stray cat to pet it. I kinda wished she would have run her fingers through my hair, as if I was the cat. “So, I- I don’t q- quite understand the whole c- conjugation and verbs thing”

“Oh, it is difficult, don’t worry” she sat on my bed next to me, our shoulders touching, almost making my hands shake “so, we have three groups, and every verb is part of one of those groups depending on how they end in infinitive, which is the base form. First group are verbs ending in -ar, like cantar…” she kept explaining, but soon enough I was completely distracted by the way her eyes would shine while explaining and how beautifully her hands would sway and wave to express what words couldn’t. Somehow through the tangled web of thoughts about her the information had stuck to my brain forever. Suddenly, I was an expert in Spanish conjugation. “See, all that’s left for you to do is practice” she chuckled

“I will get on that-“

“What’s this?” she interrupted innocently pointing to my poor attempt of poetry

“It’s- it’s nothing r- really, I’m- I- just. I- It’s not that- It’s really nothing i- important”

“It is something, I’m sure of it, Todd. You just gotta believe in yourself” and as she put her head on my shoulder we fell in a comfortable silence. I leaned my head on top of her, the soft smell of her floral shampoo flooding my senses. This was so far the longest we had spoken one on one, the first time we were alone together, and for the first time in my life I felt truly happy, content, like breathing after being submerged underwater. There was no way in heaven someone like her would have noticed someone like me. Y/N was just too perfect to notice me. Suddenly, the loss of contact with her head broke the moment. She smiled warmly as she lifted her hand to brush a few strands of hair out of my face. It felt like electricity wherever she touched ever so lightly

“You know, Todd, you have beautiful eyes. And they’d look so much greater if you stopped continuously looking at the floor” she said calmly, like complimenting my eyes was the most normal thing in the world, like she couldn’t feel my skin burning under her fingertips now running across my cheeks

“They’re not that-“ I interrupted myself when in the middle of an act of bravery I looked straight into her eyes just to realize that I had fallen in love with her. That I had broken the very same promise I made myself before starting Welton, I swore I wouldn’t fall in love, but here I was madly and completely forever hers.

And when I thought I couldn’t be more happy, I got to live the exact same thing I deemed impossible. She switched her hand to the other side of my face and cupped my jaw as she leaned in slowly and kissed my cheek. I felt like I was about to cry when she spoke again “I kinda like you, Todd. I- I don’t know you that much, but I would like to” as she finished speaking I felt my soul leaving my body. I couldn’t think straight, my heartbeat was too loud in my ribs to let me focus on my words

“Can you kiss me?” I asked to which she chuckled, of course I had to go and ruin it. But contrary to my expectations, she cupped my face with her tiny hands and pulled me closer. I closed my eyes and before I could even brace my arms around her, she pressed her soft lips against mine. All those butterflies I had been feeling up until that moment became fireworks. Grenades. Atomic bombs going off in my stomach. I had died, gone to heaven and come back just when she slid her hands across my neck to run her fingers through my hair. Gods, angels and divine beings couldn’t compare to her. Our lips moved in sync, devouring each other with passion. All my thoughts were blurred out as her body was pressed against mine. I don’t know how much time we remained like this, but it felt like a whole eternity, at the same time just a second, and not enough before we pulled away in need of oxygen. She kept our foreheads pressed against each other, and even with my eyes closed I could feel her smiling. I only opened my eyes when I felt the warmth of her skin leaving mine. I was still wrapped around her, and within the safeness of her embrace I allowed myself to show a full smile.

“We should have a date” she proposed

“Yeah, we should”

“Tomorrow’s Saturday, so, tomorrow 6 pm?” I nodded to her suggestions. Much to my dismay she got up, away from me “I should go. I’ll see you tomorrow” no, I wanted her to stay, stay with me forever. She leaned in and kissed my cheek before leaving my room. So, there I was, alone in my room, laying back in my bed, wondering what did I do to deserve something so perfect like what had just happened.

#todd anderson x reader #dead poets society #todd anderson #dead poets society x reader #Todd Anderson x Y/N #dead poets x Y/N #dps x reader #dps fic #Todd pls marry me

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that80sslytherinwrites · 3 years

Text

Missing Sketchbook, Please Return to Artist (Neil Perry x fem!reader)

requested by @i-am-lost-and-need-a-map

Welton was pretty quiet once classes were done for the day, at least it was quiet in the school where the classrooms were as all the boys were either studying or goofing off with their friends outside.

The dead poets trailed after Neil as he went down the empty and quiet halls in search of Mr. Keating. They rounded the corner and Neil knocked on Mr. Keating’s classroom door. They didn’t get a response, but the door wasn’t full closed, and it swung open at the force of Neil’s knocking.

Neil poked his head through the opening of the door. “Mr. Keating?”

No response.

“Mr. Keating?” Neil called again, slowly opening the door farther and stepping inside the classroom.

“I don’t think he’s here, Neil,” Meeks said.

Neil walked into the classroom, through to Keating’s office. The door was shut, and Neil rapped on it, which elicited no response. He tried the handle, only to find it locked.

“What do you have to talk to Mr. Keating about so urgently anyway?” Cameron asked and sat down at one of the desks.

Neil shrugged. “Nothing.” He wandered back down the aisle between the desks, heading for the door when he spotted a book flopped open on the floor of the classroom, nearly hidden from sight. He bent down to retrieve the book, flattening the pages back to their original state.

“What’s that?” Todd asked.

Neil shrugged. “I just found it on the floor. It looks as though someone dropped it without noticing.” He flipped open the cover in search of a name. Instead of a name he found intricate and beautiful sketches of himself and his friend on the first page. Curiosity getting the better of him, Neil flipped the pages of the book, inspecting the several sketches of him and his friend, but mostly him he noticed.

“Woah,” those a really good,” Meeks commented, poking his head around Neil’s shoulder to look.

Neil placed the book on top of a desk, and they crowded around it as he flipped through the pages.

“That’s kind of creepy,” Pitts stated. “Whose sketchbook, is it?”

“I don’t know,” Neil said. “There’s no name in here. It just says ‘if lost please return to artist’.”

“What’s written next to the pictures?” Charlie asked.

Neil inspected the swoopy lines next to a picture of Todd. “It’s poetry.”

“Original?” Knox asked.

He shook his head. “No, this one’s Shakespeare. I guess it’s just whomever drew these felt fit the pictures.”

Knox flipped the page of the sketchbook to a page covered in sketches of Neil wearing his glasses, lines of poetry were scrawled between the photos. He leaned in further to read them. “These are all love poems.” He looked at Neil and smiled. “Looks like you’ve got a secret admirer.”

Before Neil could respond they heard voices in the hall.

“We should go,” Cameron said.

The boys agreed and shut the sketchbook. Neil felt only a minor burst of a conscience to leave the sketchbook in the room where they found but as Pitts called that the hall was clear, and they sprinted out of Mr. Keating’s classroom he tucked it under his arm and shut the door behind him.

After dinner, the dead poets crowded into Neil and Todd’s room where they saw the sketchbook sitting on Neil’s bed.

“You took it?” Cameron exclaimed. “Now they’re going to know that someone was in there.”

“Relax Cameron,” Charlie said. “A. no one will know it was us and B. it was on the floor, whoever forgot it probably doesn’t even know where they left it.”

Neil opened the book again to a page with a picture of himself drawn beautifully in the centre and surrounded by flowers and lines of romantic poetry. “Don’t you want to know who drew all of these?”

“You only want to know because whomever it is, is completely head over heels in love with you,” Charlie stated and flopped onto Todd’s bed.

“I want to give it back to them,” Neil corrected.

“Sure,” Meeks said and gave Neil and wink.

“I’m sure they’re looking for it,” he argued. “If it were mine, I would want it back.”

For a week it was nothing but teasing as Neil searched desperately for the owner of the sketchbook. Neil had tried matching the handwriting with no avail, and then he began checking the art classes, he even asked Knox to ask Chris if she knew anyone who could draw well. She couldn’t come up with anyone that she knew had as good of skills os the one sin the sketchbook.

“Still carrying it around I see,” Charlie said as Neil walked into the study room where the rest of them were procrastinating their math homework as Cameron slowly became more and more frustrated that they couldn’t understand this one problem.

“Maybe you should just put it back where you found it,” Todd suggested. “Wouldn’t this person be looking everywhere they’d been recently to find their sketchbook?”

“Probably,” Pitts said.

Neil sat down at their table and placed the sketchbook on top of it. “Maybe I should put it back.”

“But?” Charlie prompted.

“But these drawings are really good, and I just want to meet whoever drew them,” Neil said.

“Well, while you’re deciding on what to do, can you take a look at this question?” Cameron slid the textbook towards Neil.

Neil glanced down at the problem before shaking his head and reaching for the sketchbook again. “I’m going to go put this back. Maybe if Mr. Keating is there, he knows whose it is.”

“Won’t he just then know we were snooping around his classroom without him there?” Cameron asked.

“Mr. Keating probably won’t care,” Meeks stated. “And I figured the question out.”

Cameron’s attention was immediately diverted to math as Meeks showed him the solution.

“Do you want me to go with you?” Todd asked.

Neil shook his head. “I’ll be back soon anyway. Mr. Keating probably won’t even be there, and I’ll just put it on his desk.”

Neil left the room and wandered down the near empty corridors of Welton until he reached Mr. Keating’s classroom. The door was once again unlocked, and Neil stepped inside. It was dark in the room except for the fading sunlight streaming through the windows.

Neil called out for Mr. Keating but received no response. Just as he suspected Mr. Keating wasn’t there. He walked up to the front of the classroom and placed the sketchbook on the desk just as the door of Mr. Keating’s office opened. He looked up and saw a girl standing in the open doorway.

She glanced down at his hand that was still holding the corner of her sketchbook. “You found it,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

“This is yours?”

She nodded.

Neil picked the book back up and held it out to her. She grabbed the book hurriedly and tucked it up against her chest.

“You’re really talented,” Neil said.

“Thanks,” she muttered.

“Can I ask when you drew all of those? Those ones of my friends and I?” She blinked widely at him. “I sometimes sit on the lawn by the trees where you never notice me and draw you guys as you study outside. I hope you don’t mind. I just find it’s best to work with real—”

“It’s fine,” Neil interrupted her rambling. “I really like them.”

They fell into a bout of silence as they stared at each other.

“The poems,” Neil started. “Are they a reflection of your feelings or are they just things you like?”

“Both,” she replied.

“What’s your name?”

“Y/N.”

“I’m Neil.” He held out his hand for her to shake it.

She shook his hand, her fingers cold against his warm ones.

“How come you’re here inside Welton?”

“Mr. Keating is my uncle,” she answered.

“Oh, so that’s why we found your sketchbook in here,” he said.

“I have to go,” y/n said. “They don’t want me spending a lot of time in here.” She walked past Neil, towards the door to the classroom.

“Wait.” Neil ran after her, meeting her at the door where she had stopped for him. “Can I see you again?”

She nodded, her lips slowly creeping into a shy smile.

“This weekend?” he asked.

She nodded again. “I’ll leave the address with my uncle.”

Neil nodded, face hot, and watched as y/n turned and left the classroom. He let out a sharp breath of air as he left the classroom, shutting the door behind him. Only three more days until he saw her again. He barely knew her, but after studying the pages of her sketchbook for a week, he felt he did and he was looking forward to seeing her again.

#n.ruby writes #neil perry x reader #neil perry imagine #neil perry imagines #neil perry headcanons #dead poets society #dead poets society x reader

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padfoot0216 · 2 years

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Fandoms if they were in marching band a small segment I have decided to include

Starting with DEAD POETS SOCIETY

Mr. Keating - the band director who is chaotic and has a weird obsession with poetry. One time they were playing and he just stopped conducting and started recited poetry as they played. Everyone loves him.

Charlie - Would obviously play the saxaphone. He would have an intense rivalry going with the clarinets. The clarinets would insult his instrument and he would respond with "WELL MINES MORE SONOROUS THAN YOURS" And for some reason he always hangs out with the drumline.

Neil - Would be drumlone for marching band and percussion for concert band. He would fit the depressed overly dramatic theatre kid aspect of drumline. He would interact with everyone in the band but would get very serious once he needs to play. No one has ever seen someone play the triangle so intensely. The only time Charlie has ever been scared of Neil is when he distracted him from counting his rests. Let's just say a trombone can be used as a weapon and let no one tell you otherwise.

Todd - Even though Todd is an anxious boy he would be a drum major. Once be gets over the fact that he is around people he makes a great leader and his hands are always in time. He is very loud and energetic and seems to enjoy the fact that they are dying in band camp. One time Charlie complained about needing a drink of water, and Todd immediately picked up his water bottle almost offered it to him and then drank the whole thing. His only statement was that Charlie should have remerbed his.

Meeks - Would play the sousaphone. The all comment on how small he looks compared to the large instrument. He takes band seriously and practices daily. He helps everyone else practice, except for Neil. "Neil I will not play another 20 measure just so you can hit the triangle once."

Pitts - he would play trombone. He would be unsure of every note he played therefore playing quietly but he would love band. He would name his instrument. He wont let Neil near his instrument anymore " I don't care what Charlie did you are not going to use Harold as a weapon again"

Camreon - he plays the clarnet and is directly involved with the saxaphone feud. One time he switched out the water Charlie was soaking his Reed in with vinger, and things have been escalating from there. Even the trumpets are sick of them.

Knox - He would be a trumpet. He would be loud and ob-knox-ous but would be one of the best students in the band. Although he never pays attention the flats or sharps causing Mr. Keating to become very irritated. "Its and a sharp mr overstreet. You know what [insert poets name here] says about mistakes" Knox rolls his eyes everytime but loves it at the same time.

That is all for now. :)

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baezdylan · 2 years

Note

Hey jo!

I did the mbti personality test again! I knew I had to because the last time I did it was years ago way before lockdown and everything! I was probably 14. So the only thing that's different is that I'm more introverted than extroverted now (which is obvious). I'm officially an infp, which tbh seems to fit me more. I still don't know much, but I read the description. I am not sure how I feel, it's surely more relatable and well, realistic! I don't know what to think, but that's me!! (Yes I am making a deal out of this, sorry?)

Anyway I wanted to tell someone, i hope you don't mind your overthinking friend venting here. Love you so so much 💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗

I so love this gif.

Mais, I am an overthinker and a rambler and an incredibly annoying nerd, why. would. I. mind?????????? INFP I THINK EMMA IS AN INFP OMG @the-girl-who-cried-wolf ?????? This is one of my favourite personality types, there's Todd Anderson, Peter Parker, CHARLIE KELMECKIS, Luna Lovegood, JUST SOME EXCEPTIONALLY AMAZING PEOPLE WHICH MAKES SO MUCH SENSE CUZ YOU'RE AMAZING!!!!!!!!! I'm an INTJ which is ✨A Curse (TM)✨, but I'm working on it!!!!! (I have Greg House, Beth Harmon, Mr. Darcy and Kat Stratford in my corner and I also think Doctor Strange? I think Kaz Brekker too? And that I'm not too thrilled about even tho I haven't met him yet dhsjdjsjdj + some famous people which I'm taking with a grain of salt, such as Nikola Tesla, Jane Austen and Emily Bronte, tho Emily does make sense to me because the way Wuthering Heights is written kinda fits my mindset???? *end geek rant*). You know you can be and are both, right? I always say that, one personality type doesn't have to "fit" you exclusively and this is all for fun (+ it actually helped me with some of my issues because: self awareness!!!!!), so I'd keep the ENFP one too (I mean Jo March is formally an ENFP I think, but I relate to her So Much and see her as an introvert and am probably projecting a little, but she's My Character in mine and everybody else's eyes apparently so who cares! + I have Neil's (ENFJ) energy. See my point? ✨Interpretation✨), then you get something close to the whole picture. My MBTI fits me very well and I don't know what's my second "diagnosis" but it's probably something completely contrasted with my current one, that's how humans function I guess. The only thing that must be the same is probably the Thinking >>>>>> Feeling part.

It's just that I have lots of Todds to bully into confidence now.🧙‍♀️ *evil laugh* YAY! (Yep, Dash (don't even try ok, I NEVER gave up) and Emma, this is about you 🧐, I think Stella also? I remember her mentioning it in the tags?)

And it's more than ok to make a big deal out of things!!!!! I try to ignore emotion and live outside of myself and here I am, with Greg House and Jo March as my fictional counterparts... *sad emoji* I view that as an admirable quality, making a big deal of things, you inspire me! Keep being you whoever that is or might be and just be, exist, write poetry, dance, it's called Keating-it-up! OMG ANNE SHIRLEY CUTHBERT IS AN INFP, MAAAAIS!!!!!!

- Your Friendly Neighborhood (Spider)Witch 🧙‍♀️🔮☀️

#my lorelai ❄🎶✨#restless wind inside a letter box💌

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curiousconch · 3 years

Text

Chase You / Chase Me (Pt. 3)

Part 3: Remember when everything was different

Catch up here: Series Masterlist

Chapter Summary: Aislinn, Gigi and Alex find friendship in the midst of the competition. One discussion led to another, pushing Alex to take a trip down memory lane, revealing the moment in her past where she and Gabe's paths crossed for the first time.

Book/Pairing: Choices - Laws of Attraction / Gabe Ricci x MC (Alex Keating)

Words: 1.7k+

Rating/Warnings: Mature (16+) / alcohol consumption, language. Scenes/themes may trigger trauma for some, reader discretion advised.

Disclaimer: Most of the characters as well as some dialogue belong to Pixelberry. I am merely borrowing them.

Sunday, downtown New York

"Wait, can you back up for a moment," Aislinn said across Alex, who was scooping the remains of her melted banana split. Gigi was sipping her ice-cold mimosa, their brunch table full of plates with scrapes of leftovers. The sun was out and so were they, dining al fresco under the shade of a huge white parasol and the gentle breeze cooling them every now and then. It was a perfect day so far.

The trio has agreed to meet up that Sunday to discuss what went down with the Rothswell case as well as to prep for the conference Sadie had invited them to. They were on some kind of a peace pact, all of them sharing the view that pitting women against women in the corporate world is just shitty business.

Alex has enjoyed their company. They exchanged imaginary one-liners that would have made Martin frown his heart out or Beau McGraw chortle his head off. And speaking of McGraw, they all concluded that the best strategic course of action was to let Beau enjoy his moment in the sun. One day, Alex would make sure to remind him that he tried to rain on her parade.

It was a refreshing and enlightening discussion, though she will forever be traumatized with how many swears Gigi can cram in a single sentence. But the sight of a flustered Aislinn while Alex and Gigi engaged in a battle of pick-up lines with their waiter was a strong second contender.

As their drinks flowed, the conversation naturally led to rhetorical questions, now settling at why they became a lawyer. Aislinn shared first, surprisingly, stating that her knack for analysis was just a natural fit to the demands of a career in law. Gigi's answer was simple - she can leverage her eidetic memory to earn herself some serious dough, allowing her to live it up and take impromptu vacations to Bali.

Alex tried to dodge the question. She had never needed to discuss her reason of leaving pre-med behind to attend law school. It wasn't a pleasant memory, and she doubted it will ever be.

The two ladies were quick to see her attempts of evasion. But together, they finally wore her down, Alex left laughing with their shenanigans as they cornered her to tell her story. So she told them that she knew Gabe Ricci. And that it was because of him why she was a lawyer. Alex decided that revealing the truth was worth it, seeing how their jaws just dropped to the floor.

"Girl, you have to explain yourself right now," Gigi demanded, to which Aislinn seconded.

Alex snorted as she went back to skimming what was left of her dessert. "It's a boring sob story, and I don't want to turn this lovely morning into a snooze fest."

"We're not going anywhere, right Gi?" Aislinn turned to Gigi beside her, who nodded whilst sipping another glass of cocktail.

"Fine, but only if you swear this won't leave this table," she said. The two held up their hands invoking a half-smiling Alex, sensing nothing but sincerity. So she drank down her glass of bloody mary and took a deep breath, composing her tale.

"Buckle up, ladies, you're in for a ride."

10 years ago, in a town near Boston

Alessandra Keating had never felt more alone than she did that day.

They said she needed to just move forward. But how can she, when every day since the crash, she felt nothing but emptiness? How can she feel alright, when the only life that she knew was suddenly taken away from her?

It wasn't long before she found out that the car accident was caused by someone being reckless, by someone who thought they were above the law. Then, she imploded. No way could she let her parent's deaths be forgotten. No fucking way.

For the past three years, she invested all of herself into this endeavor. Researching, studying, choosing the right counsel, even raising funds. It was what kept her breathing, what gave her purpose. Ultimately, it was what kept her sane.

From filing the lawsuit to attending mediations, to numerous settlement meetings and colliding with every legal roadblock possible - Alex made sure to see them through. Only for everything to be decided that day - the bench trial.

One sweltering summer morning in her hometown's courthouse, Alex sat on the side of the plaintiff, with her long brunette hair tangled in waves. She let her senses wander, taking in the dark wooden panels and pews, her sense of smell invaded by the scent of old mahogany. She sealed her lips into silence, hiding her nerves by straightening the bargain khaki suit that she borrowed.

She barely held it in as her eyes travelled to the table beside them, catching a glimpse of the man that caused her immeasurable pain. With jet black hair and looking as young as her, he sat with an almost mocking expression. He was wearing a crisper set of suit, creating an illusion of trustworthiness that Alex can easily see through.

Maximilian K. Cornell. The green-eyed teenager who swerved his sports car onto the same slippery road Alex and her parents were passing through. The very same boy who got out unharmed, but left Alex's family to die in the snow. Her opponent was a slithery snake who managed to screw the justice system so many times over, just because his parents had the grease to do so.

But after the crash, the town decided they can no longer turn the other cheek. Alex's decision to sue was propelled by the support of the countless friends and families whom her parents have helped in their hour of need. But that still proved not enough.

Her mind whirled back to the proceedings, and to how every strategy, every plan of attack was being thrown out. With every whip from the defense, she started to grow impatient. As another traffic expert from her camp was dismissed, Alex just snapped inside. She leaned to Mr. Leroy, a withering man on the brink of retirement who was her lawyer, asking for them to convene outside.

"I'm sorry Mr. Leroy, but your strategies were just scrutinized and torn into pieces," Alex said in a low voice the moment they stepped out into the hallway.

"Alex, I am doing my best here. We clearly don't have the upper hand, lacking the incriminating evidence that we need," the man replied, exasperated.

"Have we dug up his previous records? I mean, why on earth would he have a sealed history? Doesn't that mean something?" she continued.

She continued to dictate her litany of better-positioned moves, but even Alex knew she wasn't getting through. So she excused herself from the conversation, hoping a cup of iced coffee will somehow mitigate her frustrations.

As soon as she came back, she found Mr. Leroy convening with a much younger man in a dark navy suit. His aura screamed "big city hotshot", albeit the exhausted look in his brown eyes. Not wanting to interrupt, she held off from approaching. However, her curiosity didn't stop her from eavesdropping.

What she heard the charismatic man say was a legal precedent that would have opened the sealed records in question. And with all the mind-boggling legal jargon, that's just about what she understood.

"Gabriel Ricci? I'm looking for an attorney named Gabriel Ricci?" a female voice from a nearby window called out, which made the young man raise his head. She saw him end the conversation abruptly, where a flustered Mr. Leroy hastily thanked him. Alex took that as her queue to approach her lawyer.

"Alex, we might be able to turn things around," she heard Leroy say.

And by some miracle, things did turn around. With her lawyer using the precedent offered by the young attorney earlier, their side gained the needed momentum to tip the scales in their favor. By the end of the trial, the verdict was out - Cornell will never be able to drive another vehicle, along with paying her a hefty amount of damages and fees.

They won.

Alex had to pinch herself before the victory sunk in. When it did, she felt an immense burden lifted from her shoulders.

After a long, long time, Alex can finally breathe.

Broken free from her nightmares, she asked herself what's next? The answer came to her almost immediately. Right there and then, she decided what she wanted to be. Like that man from the courthouse, she will become a lawyer.

Fueled by this new sense of mission, she saw a future for herself. No longer held by the past, she finally was able to move forward.

Indeed, Alex became what she set out to do - a lawyer who took on hopeless, even impossible cases and won them. A lawyer her parents would be proud of.

A damn good lawyer, just like Gabriel Ricci.

Present Day, at a New York Penthouse

Gabe sat in his home office clad in nothing but his white bath robe, holding a worn manila folder.

Five years ago, Gabe saw this case as his opportunity to make Robbie proud. The defendant had all the parallels with his brother - a teenager, incarcerated young, where the punishment had presumed to be too harsh. He now knew it was rightfully just.

But at that time, he was blinded by passion and ambition. He wanted to prove to himself and to Sadie what he can do. Taking on this case that was practically unwinnable would give him more power, more control over the pro bono cases he wanted to take. Actually winning this though, that proved to be his fatal mistake.

Your cockiness got the better of you again, Ricci.

His mind went to Alex. That was the direction his every waking moment drifted to nowadays. Whether he liked it or not, he'd answer some other day.

He had to let her know. If he didn't, Alex would eventually find out herself. Once she discovers that he was the one who had set this man free, she would hate him.

Gabe can't bring himself to think of that happening, of losing that chance with her, or of losing Alex's trust.

Hell, I'm going to lose her entirely if she finds out.

These realizations devastated him.

But how can they both escape the looming shadows of the past unscathed? Even he couldn't figure that out.

Sighing, he rubbed his hand on his face, reeling at his lack of options. He then stood up, slamming the open folder on his desk as he turned to face the window, simmering in his own regrets. Papers slipped out to the carpeted floor, including a full-page mugshot of the defendant.

It was Maximilian Cornell.

Author's Notes: With Sadie being shady AF, I feel like we all need some dose of female friendship right? Also, this is my HC why Gabe constantly pulls away from MC, not only because of their working relationship. Did the reveal live up to the cliffhanger? Let me know in the comments! 👇👇👇

Tag list: @adiehardfan @pixelnutrookie @starryjieun @latinagiraffe @sarcastic01lily @spookycolorpeanut @ophrookie @suitfer @thegreentwin @mkatschoicesblog @made-of-roses

@choicesficwriterscreations

Thank you for your continued reading!

Want to be added or removed to the tag list? No problem - just let me know 😊. Reblogs are also much appreciated! 💕

#laws of attraction #choices laws of attraction #choices loa #laws of attraction fanfiction #choices laws of attraction fanfiction #choices fic writers creations #fics of the week #gabe ricci x mc #gabe ricci #aislinn tanaka #gigi sinclair

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akechi-gf · 2 years

Note

i saw ur post about saiki k dead poets society au and i would LOVE to hear about it i love both of those things

HELP IT'S A VERY UNFLESHED AND UNDERDEVELOPED IDEA but yes. Yes of course I will let the world know.

SO: Let me paint the scene out for you. PK Academy is a boarding school. I've written about PK being a boarding school before on Ao3, but I've kinda given up on that. So, basically, it's a co-ed school where you can be a day student or one that actually lives on the school grounds. Other than that change to the school it's basically the same- same clubs, same students, same dumbass events happening every other day, but it becomes a DPS AU because of Teruhashi.

She's in the library, and she's piling up on the books because you know her. Perfect pretty girl needs the perfect pretty girl grades! And she picks up this book on American Literature by sheer accident but doesn't put it down because, in her head, she thinks perfect pretty girls should probably be educated on poets and such. She sits next to Saiki, because of course she does. The whole gang is sitting by Saiki, anyways- Kaidou, Nendo, Hairo, Chiyo, Mera, the Psykickers, you know, the whole lot.

Kaidou's already pretty interested in poetry, so he sees the familiar book and stutters through questioning her about it like "O-Oh! I didn't know you were interested in that stuff! I have a lot of other books that you might like!" Of course, Teruhashi doesn't decline because she is a little interested in it, and Chiyo is suddenly interested in it, too, and then Akechi insists on a study group that soon evolves into an illicit pseudo-poetry club held outside of the school grounds almost every night.

So there's the Dead Poets Society Aspect of it. (Aren most probably thought up the name "Dead Poets Society" in this AU, because, well, you know.)

As for characters, some of them would have roles like those in the movies. I haven't fully assigned them roles, really, and they wouldn't all be rewritten to fit into the roles that the boys had in the film, because every character in Saiki K is rightfully distinct in their personalities. There'd be no Mr. Keating type of character because the PK teachers aren't really all that notable, and the group would gain the "Carpe diem" type mindset from each other. Saiki would be the "Todd", less anxious and more reclusive in nature, eventually stepping up in the same way he did with the meteor. Akechi the "Neil", the one who had been adamant about creating the DPS in the first place, also kind of forcing Saiki to tag along with promises of sneaking coffee jelly on campus. Kaidou and Aren the "Meeks" and "Pitts". Toritsuka the "Charlie Dalton". Y'know, that kind of thing.

#saiki dps au #that's gonna be my tag for if i ever talk about this again #saiki k #kenny is dumb #akechi touma #saiki kusuo no psi nan #long post

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noelliza · 3 years

Text

The Pursuit of Two Left Feet Ch 2 - Anderperry

Hey guys! Here‘s the final part of the fic. I hope you enjoy it! You can also read this on ao3 here.

Summary: Neil made the mistake of telling Charlie about his feelings for a certain poetic blonde, and in true Nuwanda fashion, he got up to some mischief. Now, stuck in a plan to sneak out of school to go to an underground swing dance club, Neil has to make the best of it and pray to God his father doesn’t find out. Hopefully, Neil will get something out of this excursion, perhaps the heart of the object of his affection. He believes it’s nothing more than a dream, a wish. However, Todd Anderson falling for Neil is more likely to happen than he thinks.

Part 1

Neil, Todd, you two ready for tonight?” Charlie asks, wiggling his eyebrows as he peeks his head into their room Friday morning.

“As ready as ever,” Neil says, the pit in his stomach growing at the reminder. He still doesn’t know what he’ll do if and when his father finds out.

Charlie pats the doorframe and winks at them before disappearing down the hall.

Neil turns to Todd who’s putting his sweater on, not phased by Charlie’s appearance. “This is not gonna go well,” Neil grumbles.

Todd laughs as the two grab their bags and decide to head down to breakfast.

The whole school day Neil’s thoughts are directed to the vision of sitting in Nolan’s office with his father, his life officially over. If this goes south, Neil’s father will never let him down for it. He wants to have faith in Charlie, but part of him struggles to. Charlie doesn’t care about getting in trouble, he wants to get kicked out. Neil just doesn’t think he’s really thinking this whole thing through.

During english, Neil notices that Mr. Keating shoots him a couple knowing looks, a flash of a smile that’s gone before Neil can process it. It makes him nervous, wondering if somehow he found out about their plan and therefore so did Nolan. Keating would never fink, but Charlie isn’t particularly great at keeping his mouth shut.

That night, Charlie grabs Neil’s suit and drags him to the bathroom, shoving a hair comb and gel into his hands.

“Charlie, aren’t we making this a bit obvious if we’re getting ready in the bathrooms? Hager is gonna see us.”

“Relax, there’s no reason to hide. This is allowed,” Charlie says. “But I won’t be getting ready here, I have a new suit to give Todd, so we’ll be in my room. See ya!”

Before Neil can object and question his motive, Charlie is out of sight. Neil shakes his head and begins changing into the suit, trying to push back the looming anxiety of his father finding out about this scheme.

As he's combing his hair into place, he hears two pairs of feet barge into the bathroom, and in the reflection of the mirror is Charlie with Todd in tow.

“Perry! Lookin’ like a dreamboat!”

Neil nods in thanks before turning to Todd, whose mouth is open slightly, his eyes roaming up and down his body. “Um, you… you look… really nice,” Todd mutters with a gulp.

“Thank you, uh, so do you,” Neil replies distractedly, his eyes unable to focus on a single part of Todd as he takes in the sight of him. Todd looks incredible in his suit, and he’s surprised Charlie did such an amazing job dressing him. It fits him perfectly, as if it tailored to his exact measurements—he wouldn’t be surprised if that was intentional on Charlie’s part. The coat, tie and slacks are a rich navy blue with a white button up underneath, and the color makes his eyes gleam. His hair is slicked back with gel, revealing more of his face, his cheekbones appearing more prominent. It makes him look more open, soft, and Neil is completely stunned. He’s always thought Todd is handsome, but right now he’s completely mesmerizing.

“Earth to Neil?” Charlie calls, waving a hand in his face. Neil blinks rapidly and clears his throat. “Hey, your bow tie’s crooked. Todd, fix it for him, yeah? I’ll be right back,” he says, giving Todd’s shoulder a firm pat before swaggering over to Meeks who’s combing his hair at the other side of the bathroom.

“Uh, sure,” Todd stammers a beat late, his eyes darting around nervously. He steps up to Neil, reaching out with slight hesitation. Neil holds in a breath as he adjusts the tie back into place. He inadvertently stares at Todd's focused face, tempted to press a soft kiss to his now exposed forehead.

“Alright, let's head out!” Charlie shouts, motioning for them to head out into the hall. Todd pulls back, ducking his head and walking out of the bathroom in one swift motion. Neil sighs, turning his head and catching Charlie’s knowing gaze as he heads towards him. He throws an arm around Neil’s shoulder and leads him out.

Together, the boys make their way outside into the cold night, all of them chattering excitedly. Awaiting them, leaning against his car looking ready for a night out, is Mr. Keating.

Neil gapes. “Charlie, how did you…”

“Amazing, right?” Charlie says proudly, stalking off to the car.

“Hello boys, you all look fetching. Ready?” Mr. Keating greets the noisy bunch, a wide grin on his face as they approach him.

Before Neil can even say anything, he’s being shoved into the backseat, smushed between Todd and Charlie in the third row. Knox lays himself across the boys, his face right in front of Charlie’s.

“I’m liking this view,” Charlie smirks.

Knox rolls his eyes, slapping Charlie’s shoulder. “Shut up.”

“Wait, Captain, are you coming with us to the club?” Pitts asks as he slides into the second row after Meeks, closing the door.

“Oh no,” Keating chuckles, turning the car on. “I’m much too old for a hullabaloo. Don’t sweat it, this old man has plans of his own with a special lady tonight.”

The boys all holler and whistle, making Keating flush in embarrassment. “Yes, yes, your teacher has a real life too, I know it’s surprising. Let’s get rolling!” He calls, putting the car in motion.

“Captain, how did the school allow this?” Neil can’t help asking. Charlie gives him a look, but he ignores it.

“Well, they think we’re off to see an invigorating show about the life and work of William Shakespeare. As illuminating as I imagine it would be, that is not on the itinerary for you boys tonight. You’re off to a much more exciting endeavor filled with music, dancing, and a bit of romance,” he says, and Neil swears Keating meets his eyes through the rear view mirror. He looks away hastily.

“Aww, that actually sounded pretty interesting…” Cameron mutters, trailing off forlornly and glancing out the window.

Charlie elbows Neil in the ribs to make a point, and he makes an effort to hold in a groan. “We can drop you off there if you’d like Cameron?” Charlie smirks.

Neil returns the elbow in reprimand and Charlie squawks indignantly. “We can all go see that another time. I’m sure it’s quite interesting,” he says, sending Charlie a glare that he responds to with sticking his tongue out childishly. Knox snorts, resulting in a jab in the ribs courtesy of Charlie.

“Good idea,” Cameron says, his face lighting up. “You know, something interesting about Shakespeare is that there was a seven year period between 1585 and 1592 where no one knew—”

“I’m going to claw my ears out before the end of this car ride and you’ll be next,” Charlie whispers aggravatedly in Neil’s ear.

“You’ll forget that as soon as we get there and you spot someone attractive,” Neil says wryly.

Charlie leans back, taking a deep breath with a startling, fierce look in his eye. Oh God…

“Thou doth thinketh I'm a predictable young squire? I willith kick thy bosom!” Charlie pronounces, sticking his finger in the air. Knox rolls his eyes.

“Charlie, a bosom is a woman’s chest,” Neil chuckles.

“Thine ears will suffer great of mine Shakespearean drivel until a most suffering death graces itself upon thee when mine fist meetseth thy cheek,” he says, folding his hand into a tight fist.

“I feel like you speak Shakespeare a bit too well for you to hate it as much as you say you do,” Knox prods with a crooked smile.

Charlie turns to Knox, leaning into his face. “Thou wilist meet a fate much alike if thou speaketh onward.”

“Bite me, nerd,” Knox grins.

In a blink, Charlie attacks Knox with his fingers, tickling his armpits and ribcage fervently as he cackles wickedly. Knox yelps and squirms fiercely, kicking his legs erratically, his arms flailing.

“Boy, boys, I’m all for a bit of roughhousing but please settle down until we get there,” Mr. Keating cuts in.

Charlie lets off, allowing Knox to catch his breath, and they both call back a low ‘yes, Captain.’ Neil feels Todd’s quiet laughs beside him, the breath hot beside his ear. He tries not to shiver at the sensation by focusing on the road ahead. They pass by trees lining both sides of the street, and in the distance he can see the beginnings of the town. As they proceed, he can make out the buildings, growing larger with each passing second. The illuminating signs on the buildings shine high above the people walking merrily down the sidewalk, contrasting the subdued ambience of their school. Neil thrums in excitement, and he tries to stay hopeful, pushing down the looming anxiety that this will all suddenly go wrong.

“I-I guess Charlie was right. This is working out.”

Neil looks at Todd, an amused smile gracing his face. “Yes, for now. Though any minute I anticipate something to blow up,” Neil jokes, knowing Charlie can hear him.

“Hey now, we’re off to fill our minds with the knowledge of the legendary William Shakespeare. If anything, Nolan is happy that a select few of Keating’s students seek such a riveting educational opportunity,” Charlie says in his most dramatic tone, and Knox sends him an exasperated look.

“Right.” Neil scoffs, earning poke on the cheek. Neil responds with a quick pinch on Charlie’s thigh, eliciting a yelp from him. Knox cackles as Charlie attempts to attack back with jabs to his arm and ribs, Neil giving a harder pinch on his arm. Before he can continue the attack, a hand wraps around his wrist, stopping his movement.

“I- we can’t until we get there. Captain’s orders,“ Todd says, flushing.

“It’s alright, trouble is what I live for,” Charlie says though he lets off, leaning over the seat to pull Meek’s hair. “Right Meeks?”

Neil hasn’t moved, his brain still frozen at Todd’s touch. “I- right.” Neil laughs faintly. He shakes his head and pulls his hand into his lap, ignoring the looks he’s getting from Charlie and Knox.

Neil stays silent the rest of the car ride, tuning out everyone’s voices around him. He’s fighting to ignore the feel of Todd’s leg pressed against his, the slight shake of his leg as he bounces it anxiously, the sight of his fingers tapping on his leg in repeated patterns. It’s also impossible to forget the feel of Todd’s hand circling his arm, his touch soft, almost like a caress. Neil aches to place his hand in Todd’s lap and let him hold it how he wants, yearning to feel his palm against his skin, perhaps in his own hand, once again.

Eventually, Keating pulls over in front of a lit up, cozy diner, with a neon sign hanging up titled “Leggy’s Breakfast Town.” Next to it is a smaller sign that reads, “Open 24 hours.”

"Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say good night till it be morrow,” Mr. Keating says as the boys all climb out of the car.

“Romeo and Juliet!” Knox calls back proudly, closing the door once he steps onto the pavement.

“You got it Mr. Overstreet! Have fun!” Mr. Keating drives off, waving at them through the window before disappearing down the street.

Suddenly, Neil hears a car door open. He turns to see a green car parked up ahead, and stepping out of it is Chris in a flowy, emerald dress reaching her knees, fit slim on her waist. When Knox catches sight of her, he stares, drooling.

“Hey Knox,” Chris says with a radiant smile as she walks over to the group, her heels clicking on the sidewalk with each step.

“Chris… wow, you look…” he stumbles.

“Knox, save it for the club, come on buddy,” Charlie cuts in, clapping his shoulder and steering him inside. The other boys and Chris all tumble into the diner, following Charlie and Knox into the diner. The place is packed, filled with loud families and couples, eating burgers and dipping their fries in milkshakes, so no one bats an eye as the group crowds in the entrance.

Charlie stops and looks around before spotting a waiter cleaning behind the counter. He approaches the counter and leans over, resting his elbows on the surface with his famous Charlie smirk in place. “Hello, we’re here about your duck special,” he says in a low yet overly casual tone.

The waiter, a long haired boy looking about their age, holds Charlie’s gaze for a moment before nodding. “Yes, right this way,” he says, walking toward a long hallway. Neil glances at Todd who looks just as confused as he does before they walk after them. They reach a door that opens to a flight of dark, descending stairs, and the waiter leads them down, instructing the last person to close the door behind them.

“Isn’t it a bit noticeable when they take a bunch of teenagers to the back room that they’re not here for dinner?” Neil whispers furiously in Charlie’s ear after catching up to him.

“Relax, everyone here knows about the club, but no one says anything about it. They make major dough, so no one complains. The customers get good food, and the city makes capital. It’s a win win.”

Neil shakes his head as they reach the bottom, and the waiter opens the door, revealing a huge, bright room buzzing with life. It’s packed with people dressed in their most fancy attire—women in stunning, flowy dresses and men wearing fine suits. He sees numerous couples dancing across the expansive dance floor and others chatting away with cocktails in hand and wide smiles on their faces. Neil stares in awe, taking in the sight, unable to fathom that he’s standing here right now. He’s half expecting his father to appear any moment to shut down the place, ready to drag Neil home and give him the reprimand of his life. Abruptly, he feels Charlie pat his shoulder, which brings him back to himself.

“Alright mates, I’ve got some ladies to charm and men to woo, enjoy yourselves,” he says to the group with a wink before disappearing into the fray.

Neil stands there dumbly as the other boys start wandering off into the room. Since when does Charlie say ‘mates’? he wonders bemusedly. He hears someone clear their throat beside him and he turns to see Todd still standing there, looking at him with a nervous but expectant expression. A flash of panic shoots through him. This is it, the moment he’s been dreading and waiting for this entire week. He opens his mouth, the words on his lips, and panics.

“So… a drink?” Neil suggests, hating himself.

“I- uh, yeah sure. I’ll come with you..?”

“No, no. I’ll go. Find us a table?”

“Yeah sure,” he says, looking almost disappointed.

At that, Neil flees to the bar to get away from Todd, his heart crying more the further he goes. As he approaches, he schools his features into a more mature, serious look and straightens his posture. He leans over the counter until the bar man catches sight of him.

“I’ll have your strongest, please, and something sweet,” he says hastily as the bar man walks over. He frowns slightly, but just nods. “You got it.”

When he turns around, Neil releases a long breath, slouching over the bar. He’s such a fucking coward. Charlie put too much faith in him, there’s no way he can do this. Todd is just going to reject him and that’ll be the end of their friendship. He can’t afford to lose it.

Soon, the bar man returns with the drinks before turning to another customer. Neil grabs them and turns around, taking a step away from the bar to scan for Todd. He walks listlessly as he looks, but stumbles when he catches Todd on the dance floor with some random guy.

Suddenly, he collides into someone’s chest, and he returns his gaze in front of him to see his drinks spill right onto a man’s shirt, staining the white button up red. Neil pales in horror. “Oh my— I’m so sorry, I—”

“No! Don’t worry about it, nothing I can’t get out later,” the man says, sending Neil a reassuring smile. Neil’s face heats up at the sight—he’s quite attractive. He’s tall and lean with golden hair and a charming smile. His eyes are a blinding blue, shining in amusement.

“Want this one? I have an extra. They’re not the best here, but they sure do the trick,” he says, holding out a small, dark colored drink.

“Sure, thanks,” Neil says, putting his emptied drinks onto the bar with a grimace and accepting the glass. He takes a quick sip and has to withhold a cough at the strength of the drink, not wanting to embarrass himself.

“What are you doing on your own? Come here with anyone? Surely you didn’t have two drinks for yourself,” he chuckles softly.

“Yeah, my friends,” he says solemnly, his eyes glued to Todd across the room, having a grand old time with some stranger.

“Where are they?” he asks.

Neil watches dolefully as Todd is swung around the dance floor, his smile bright, blinding. He feels the man follow his gaze and soon he makes a noise of realization.

“Ah, I get it. You like him?”

Neil flushes, almost choking on his drink. “Wha— um… it’s…”

“No judgement, that charming fella over there is my boyfriend,” he says, pointing to the far corner of the dance floor where he’s dancing with a woman around his age, tall and gorgeous. They’re moving together like water, twirling around the floor without missing a single beat. It’s incredible. “Plus, this place is meant for people like us, so don’t sweat it,” the man adds.

People like us, Neil repeats internally. He supposes the man’s not wrong. Neil has come to accept that he isn't like most other boys his age, especially not the kind his father wants him to be. He relents with a sigh. “Well, yeah, fine. I do. Like him, that is.”

The man hums understandingly, taking a swig of his drink. “Does he know it?”

Neil shakes his head. “No, it’d ruin… everything.”

“Why’s that?”

“Well… I don’t think he’s…” Neil trails off, a part of him still terrified of saying the word.

The man laughs, which makes Neil frown. “I’ve been there too. I get that it’s scary, risking your friendship like that. But that’s the thing about life, sometimes it’s worth taking that leap. What’s that one saying… carpa dem…”

“Carpe diem,” Neil corrects, hiding a smile.

He snaps his fingers. “Yes! Carpe diem.”

Neil huffs a laugh at the irony. “Yeah, I try to live by that every day, actually.”

“Well, then why is this any different?”

“Because… he’s the most important person in my life. If I lost him…” Neil swallows, looking away.

“I see,” he says, taking a breath. “Well, I’m not gonna sit here and force you to do anything, this is your life. But take it from someone who was in your shoes once. If he’s meant to be in your life, telling him won’t ruin a thing. If not, then it means there’s someone else out there who’s meant for you.”

Neil simply nods. This man doesn’t understand that no one could ever replace Todd, but he doesn’t bother explaining it. “Yeah, well my father wouldn’t be pleased by this either.”

“Not accepting?”

“That’s putting it lightly,” Neil says. “He’s trying to take hold of my entire life, insisting I have to go to Harvard, go to medical school and become a doctor.”

The man sighs sympathetically. “That’s a tough situation, what do you want to do instead?”

“Act, but that’s never going to happen,” he snorts.

“You know, my boyfriend said the same thing when he was around your age.”

Neil whips his head towards him in shock. “Really? He’s an actor?”

“Yeah, and he loved it. Now, he owns a small, local theater for children and teens in New York.

“That’s amazing,” Neil breathes.

“It is, I’m proud of him,” he says with a fond smile.

A part of Neil wonders if that future is possible for him, that despite everything, he has a shot. But even that doesn't overpower the voice in his head telling him it’s impossible, so he moves on from the thought. “What do you do?” Neil asks, taking a large sip of his drink, ignoring the burning in his throat as he swallows.

“Nothing nearly as exciting. I’m a lawyer,” he laughs. Neil nods. “Do you like it?”

The man shrugs slightly with a smile. “I do now, but I didn’t at first. Too much paperwork and talking to a bunch of stuck up people in overpriced suits. But then I got a case where I was defending this girl who was getting abused by her boyfriend. We won the case, and when I saw her face, it reminded me why I wanted to do this in the first place, to help people. It’s cheesy, but true.

“That’s really great,” Neil says.

“Thanks. But just know I’m not saying that to make you feel bad for not wanting to be a doctor,” he clarifies.

“Oh, no of course, I get it,” he says, not offended. He understands that helping others that way is their calling, but in Neil’s heart he knows it's not meant for him.

“My mother wasn’t very accepting of my choice of career either. Growing up, she wanted me to take over the family business. We own a restaurant in town called “Leandro’s Italian Restaurant.” My grandfather opened it, and after he got old, he passed it onto my mom. But let me tell you, I’m the last person you want in the kitchen. I manage to burn anything I lay my eyes on. Andrew won’t let me lift a finger when making dinner,” he chuckles.

“But she let you pursue that career instead when you told her?”

“Yeah, but I know it’s only because it pays well,” he says regretfully. “Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. Andrew’s parents were horrified at the idea of him becoming an actor. He told me about how they fought all the time, his father insisting he needs to have a real career with a steady income, but my stubborn Andy refused, of course. He worked as much as he could in school, saving up his money. Once he graduated, he got a second job and worked day and night until he was able to support himself and move out. It took him a few years to get it together, but eventually he made it onto the stage. He told me it was gruesome in the beginning, but that he’s never regretted it for a second. Such an optimist he is,” he says admiringly.

Neil nods absently, completely absorbed in the story. It’s possible, a small, hopeful voice in his head says. But that was one person… what if he’s not so lucky?

“Alright, I’ve chatted your ear off enough,” the man says, breaking Neil out of his thoughts as he pats his shoulder. “Go out there and dance! You’re young, enjoy it!”

“Okay. Thank you though, Mister…?”

“Emerson. But call me G.”

“You like poetry?” Neil asks with a playful smile.

G laughs, throwing this head back. “I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who hasn’t asked me some version of that question. I do, but not Emerson, funny enough. I’m more into the beat poets like Gary Snyder. Some powerful words, I’ll say. You?”

“Nice, I prefer Whitman,” Neil smiles. “Thanks for the drink!” He says, swallowing the rest before placing the glass on the table.

“Of course, don’t go too crazy though! Enough of those and you’ll wake up in the alleyway next to the diner. Trust me, I’ve been there,” G says slyly.

Neil laughs with a nod, holding G’s gaze for a moment longer before striding to the dance floor in pursuit of Todd. He supposes there's truth to the phrase “liquid courage,” because with just a glass of alcohol in his system, he feels unstoppable. Carpe fucking diem.

He taps on his shoulder and Todd spins around, his face lighting up at the sight of Neil. “Neil, you’re here! Oh, I-I’m so glad. I missed you!” Todd shouts, clearly very drunk.

“Sorry to interrupt,” he says, not feeling sorry in the slightest, “but Todd… will you dance with me?”

The guy Todd was just dancing with gives him a nasty look, but doesn’t protest. “I- of course! I’ve been waiting all night for you to ask!” Todd beams, stumbling over to him.

“Well, here I am,” Neil laughs, taking in Todd’s smile.

“Y-you should try the drinks I had. They sucked b-but my anxiety, it went POOF!” He says, making an exploding gesture with his hand, swaying closer to Neil.

“I’m glad, but I’ll try it later. Come on,” he says, leading Todd gently to an open spot on the dance floor with a guiding hand on the small of his back.

Neil takes deep breaths, trying to control his nervousness. He may have learned ballroom dancing, but swing dancing is a foreign concept to him. He’s going to embarrass himself and Todd will laugh at him. He darts his eyes around, trying to see how the other couples are dancing. As he’s about to begin his attempt, Todd takes hold of his arms, leaning in close.

“Don’t worry,” Todd says, “I-I think I have the hang of it. Follow my lead.”

Neil gasps as Todd pulls him around, bouncing on his heels a bit unevenly. Neil copies his movements, trying to let his body feel the music. The pair are off beat to the music, but Neil doesn’t care. They could be tap dancing to an opera ballad and he would be over the moon, just happy to be dancing with Todd, holding his hand and moving around the space together.

At first, Neil fumbles a bit, tripping over his feet a few times and moving his limbs in awkward motions, but eventually, he starts getting into the groove. Todd still misses a few steps every so often, but he laughs it off and warmth spreads through Neil’s chest at the sound. He laughs breathlessly, boldly deciding to pick Todd up by his hips and swinging him around his body. Todd lets out a surprised gasp, giggling as Neil moves him through the air, holding on for dear life. Neil keeps a firm hand on his waist and places him back on his feet carefully. Once Todd finds his balance, he haphazardly reaches out for Neil’s hand again, losing his grip a couple times, and twirls him around, pulling him into his chest and spinning him back out again. Neil’s heart is soaring, and he can’t hear anything besides the music ringing in his ears and Todd’s unrestrained laughter.

They dance song after song, and Neil loses track of how long they’ve been there, moving under the flashing lights and through the bodies of the crowd, throwing one another into the air. Eventually, Todd leans close to his ear, clutching his shoulder to keep balance. “‘ve gotta go to the bathroom,” he mumbles, his words slurred and breathy.

“Oh, ok! Want me to come with…?”

Todd shakes his head smiling, placing his hand on Neil’s chest. “No, no, ‘m alright. I’ll be… right back,” he slurs.

“Alright, I’ll be at the bar. I’m gonna get another drink,” Neil says.

Todd nods, staring at him for a moment before stalking off the dance floor towards the bathroom. Neil breathes out, trying to settle his nerves down. Adrenaline is coursing through his body, and his heart is thumping out of his chest. Dancing with Todd is exhilarating, and Neil could do it for the rest of his life—even as an old man in a wheelchair.

He walks off, ready to drown himself in liquor until he can gather enough courage to tell Todd how he really feels. But he’s quickly intercepted by Charlie who jumps in front of him, placing a hand on his shoulder.

“Having a good time?” He asks smugly.

“Yes!” Neil shouts. “I feel… I feel so alive!”

“That’s what I like to hear!” Charlie cheers. “Next thing you know you’ll be getting at it like bunnies in the bathroom stall,” he winks.

Neil tries not to choke on air as he stares at Charlie, his eyes wide. “Charlie, stop! But it doesn’t matter, Todd was dancing with someone earlier. I don’t think he… he can’t.”

Charlie rolls his eyes, letting out an overly exasperated sigh as if Neil is out of his mind (which he isn’t). “Oh sit on it Neil, did you miss the way he looked at you? He looks like a lovesick puppy.”

“You’re exaggerating,” Neil mutters.

“Not now no, if anything I’m understating it. Go over there and swap some spit with him before I do it myself.”

“Charlie! It’s- you don’t understand. He’s my best friend, besides you of course. We… it’s not like that,” Neil stresses.

Charlie doesn’t look the least bit swayed by his words, giving him a wry look. “Neil, Todd only wants to dance with you. The only reason he was with that chump was because I made him. I know how possessive you can get.”

“Nuwanda…”

“Hey, I needed something to push him onto the dance floor, loosen up a bit, you’re welcome. Later, lover boy!” Charlie hurries off into the crowd, and Neil sighs. Of course Charlie would meddle like that.

Neil heads to the bar, already plotting Charlie’s murder when he spots Cameron leaning against the counter talking to a young, gorgeous blonde woman.

“Hey Cameron! Who’s this?” He asks as he approaches them, clapping his shoulder and turning to the woman with a smile.

“Neil! This is Caroline, she goes to Ridgewood,” Cameron says. He looks happier than Neil has ever seen him.

“Neil, nice to meet you! Cameron’s such a charmer isn’t he? I could just drown in those freckles,” she says dreamily, kissing his cheek.

Neil refrains from laughing as Cameron’s face turns beat red, more fiery than his hair. “I’m glad you’re having a good time!”

“The best! Thanks for inviting me, I know Charlie didn’t really want to,” he says.

“Oh, it’s nothing, you know how Charlie can be, he doesn’t really mean it,” Neil says with a nervous laugh, feeling guilty at how transparent Charlie’s disdain has been. He doesn’t think Cameron deserves it.

“If you say so, but you’re cool, Neil. So thanks,” Cameron says gratefully.

Neil gives a quick nod, feeling a bit embarrassed at the praise. “Course, don’t mention it. Anyway, Caroline, it was lovely to meet you, but I’ve gotta get a drink before my… friend returns from the bathroom.”

“Ooh, Todd?” Cameron ribs, elbowing him and raising his eyebrows with a smirk.

“Uh, yeah,” he stammers. Neil turns to the bar man walking in their direction as a distraction from this topic. “Excuse me, can I have—“

“OH!” Cameron lights up with a thought, cutting him off. “Get a pina colada, they’re really good!”

“You might also like a dirty martini!” Caroline chimes in, winking at him.

Neil blinks and looks back at the waiter who’s waiting patiently. “I’ll take both,” he says. The bartender nods and promptly grabs a glass and a vodka bottle.

Not even a moment later, Cameron and Caroline start making out passionately next to him. Neil turns away awkwardly, hoping that Todd comes back from the bathroom soon. He looks at the dance floor and spots Knox and Chris together, laughing as Knox spins her in the air. Off to the side, he notices Meeks and Pitts dancing to the music at their own speed, away from the throng. Charlie, however, is nowhere to be seen, which is never a good thing.

After what feels like an eternity, the bartender slides his drinks across the bar, and Neil hands him a few dollar bills. “Keep the change,” he says quickly and turns away from the bar, desperate to get away from their slobbering and moaning. As soon as he takes a step, he crashes into someone, once again spilling the drinks he was just holding. He refrains from cursing, almost choking on air when he recognizes the victim of his clumsiness as G’s boyfriend.

“Oh, hey, you alright bud?” He asks, his voice deep and warm. He’s tall with curly, brown hair gelled back, and his smile is friendly, his green eyes soft and benevolent. The drinks drip down his cream colored suit, the large stains prominent.

Neil lets out a long breath and closes his eyes. “I’m so sorry, I’m not having the best luck with carrying drinks tonight.”

“No it’s alright, now my boyfriend and I can have matching, stained shirts,” he says with a hearty laugh. Normally, Neil would feel like he’s being made fun of, but from his sincere expression, it comes off lighthearted.

“Yeah, that was me…”

His eyes widen in recognition. “Oh! He mentioned you. Neil, right? Potentially an Armstrong?”

“Yes, I’m Neil, but no, unfortunately not related,” he says with an embarrassed laugh.

“Damn, that’s too bad. I’m Andrew McDorman,” he says, holding out his hand. Neil grips it, Andrew’s handshake solid and firm. “Giovanni told me you act!”

“Well… I’d like to, yes. But, my father wants me to become a doctor,” he says, pausing as a thought hits him. “And he told me he goes by G.”

He laughs. “Yeah of course he did. He’s been trying to sound younger now, but I refuse to call him that. He’ll always be my Giovanni, even if I always butcher the pronunciation, according to him,” he says with a sappy expression. Neil can tell they both truly love each other, and it makes him ache to have this with Todd, speaking of one another fondly, others sensing how close the two of them are.

“And about your father,” he adds, going back to the original topic, “mine wanted me to become a dentist. It’s not easy, I know. You feel like you’re stuck, that there’s nowhere to go. But trust me, Neil, there is.”

“Thanks, I’m glad you were able to pursue your dreams, but I’m not sure if I can…”

Andrew sighs with a smile. “Okay, you got me”eks planning that” an idea has dawned on him. “Tell you what, you wanna follow your own path, get away from your shitty father? Our door is always open, alright? I know, I know, stranger danger, but the offer is there. Actors gotta support each other, and I wanna be able to help out someone who’s in the same situation I was,” he says earnestly, the unspoken homosexuals falling between them.

Neil stands there completely speechless, his mind whirling in a million directions. This sounds too good to be true, because there’s no way he could escape his father’s grasp. He’d track him down, make him come home and ensure he makes it to medical school. But… what if…?

“No pressure kid. Here, let me replace those drinks. On me,” he offers kindly before Neil is able to respond. He’s left with his mouth hanging open as the man passes him, walking up to the bar to order.

“Neil!”

Neil turns to see Todd walking towards him, and his distress melts away as his eyes lay on Todd. His hair is slightly disarrayed, a few hairs drooping down his forehead, his cheeks still red from the dancing. He’s absolutely perfect. “There you are,” he says breathlessly.

“Hey, there was a guy in there who said I looked like uhh Nikola Tesla,” he giggles.

“Huh, not a bad guy to be compared to I guess,” Neil says, amused.

“Here we are!” Andrew says, holding out the drinks.

“Oh! Pina colada, I had one earlier and it was great!” Todd shouts gleefully, taking the glass and sucking the drink down, practically inhaling it.

“Ah, is this your boyfriend?” Andrew asks, directing the question to Neil, handing him his martini.

“N-no I wish,” Todd answers, swallowing his drink before returning to it promptly, the glass already halfway empty.

“I- he’s had a lot to drink…” Neil says, taking a big gulp of his drink.

Andrew gives him a knowing look. “Don’t fret, I’ve been there,” he says quietly so only Neil can hear him. “Alright cool cats, I gotta scoot, have fun and stay safe!” Andrew says to the pair, giving them both a wide grin before walking off.

As Neil turns to Todd, getting the nerve to ask him to dance again, a voice booms through the room.

“All the lovers to the dance floor! For this next song, we’re going to slow things down a bit. This is a special request from a man who goes by the name Nuwanda, and this is dedicated to Neil and Todd,” the singer announces.

Neil stares at the stage, noticing Charlie standing nearby with a shiteating grin. Charlie catches his eye and winks. Bastard.

“Um, Neil?” Todd asks, his voice cracking.

Neil turns to him and stops breathing at the look on Todd’s face. His eyes are wide, appearing anxious but hopeful, like he’s placing his heart in the palm of Neil’s hand for safe keeping. Neil hopes to God it doesn’t slip from his grasp.

“Yes?” He says, almost in a whisper.

Todd slowly reaches his hand out, palm up. “W-will you dance with me?”

A smile grows on his face. “Always.” Neil accepts his hand, placing his glass down on the table beside him, and allows Todd to walk him to the dance floor. He can’t tell if it’s the alcohol or his nerves, but Neil can’t feel the floor beneath his feet as he moves through the crowd, almost like he’s floating.

When I fall in love it will be forever

Todd positions them both, placing a gentle hand on Neil’s back. His face heats up inadvertently at the touch, his back tingling at the sensation. Todd looks at him, his eyes steady. “I’ll lead,” he says.

Or I'll never fall in love

Neil smiles in response, and it doesn’t wane even the slightest as Todd stamps right on his toes. Neil breaks out in a laugh, resting his forehead on Todd’s shoulder. Todd doesn’t move or make a sound, so Neil pulls back and gives him a reassuring smile. “It’s ok,” he says softly.

In a restless world like this is

Todd looks down at his feet self-consciously and Neil tilts his head back up with a finger under his chin. “Don’t worry about it, really.”

Love is ended before it's begun

Todd takes a hesitant step, breathing out as he manages to avoid Neil’s foot. Slowly, he takes another, and another, and Neil follows, feeling gratified that Todd is so dedicated to this.

And too many moonlight kisses

Neil revels in the feel of Todd’s hand in his own, his fingers wrapped around it firmly as they step around. Until this moment, Neil hasn’t realized how desperately he needs Todd in his life. How he wants to wake up beside him in the morning, make him breakfast in bed, go on walks with him through a park full of birds and laughing children, listen to him read poetry as they sit by a toasty fire. These images flood his mind, and he’s overwhelmed by how much he craves for this to become reality.

Seem to cool in the warmth of the sun

Neil gazes into those soft, blue eyes, never wanting to escape their grasp ever again. As they stare at one another, drowning in each other, their movements slow. Neil is too distracted by the sight to acknowledge it. His body is moving on his own accord, leaning in to take in his face, the scent of strong cologne he assumes Charlie sprayed all over him.

When I give my heart it will be completely

“Todd—”

In a blink, Todd grabs both sides of his face and in a singular movement he crashes their lips together, cutting him off with a bruising kiss. Neil doesn’t react at first, completely stunned by the feel of Todd’s lips. He quickly comes back to himself, sliding his hands behind Todd’s neck, cradling it as he moves his lips, taking him in. Todd places a hand on his cheek, which sends a shiver down his neck. After a moment, they slow, and Neil gradually pulls back to look at him, aware that he’s now plunged in the water, completely head over heels for this boy.

Or I'll never give my heart

“Todd,” he breathes.

A flash of worry crosses Todd’s eyes. “Y-yeah?”

Neil stares at him before speaking. “You have no idea how long I’ve been wanting to do that.”

“O-oh sorry you can—”

“Todd,” he laughs fondly.

And the moment I can feel that you feel that way too

Before Todd starts to ramble, Neil shuts him up with another kiss, slotting his lips between his with a hmph. This one is softer, more tender than the last, yet just as remarkable. He pours out every emotion he can into the kiss, wanting Todd to understand how he loves every inch, every quirk, every fiber of his being.

Is when I'll fall in love with you

As the last note rings through the room, Neil hears a sudden whoop. He turns, watching in horror as Charlie barrels towards them in glee. “Fucking finally you nimrods!” He shouts, giving Neil a quick noogie. “I thought I was gonna have to smash your faces together myself.”

Neil can’t hold back a grin as he rolls his eyes. “Get out of here, you’re kind of ruining the moment, you know,” he teases.

“That was the most romantic kiss I’ve ever seen!” Charlie exclaims, completely missing the hint, or purposefully ignoring it. “Knox wishes he could be on that level.”

“Charlie, I heard that!” Knox calls, pacing over to them.

“That’s my queue to leave, see you!” Charlie says, dashing away as Knox chases after him.

Neil laughs and looks back at Todd who’s smiling dazedly at him. He swipes his thumb across Todd’s cheek, and leans in for a quick kiss. “Sorry, I just can’t help it now.”

Todd blinks. “D-don’t apologize for that. Ever,” he breathes.

“Okay,” Neil says, recapturing his lips in a searing kiss. He doesn’t care that they’re surrounded by a bunch of strangers, any care in the world is lost among the feel of Todd’s lips between his own. After a moment, Todd pulls back, his eyes taking in every feature of Neil’s face.

“What is it?” Neil asks, smiling. He hears the lively music pick up again, everyone dancing around them, but he doesn’t move.

“I- nothing I… just never thought you’d…”

“I thought the same about you,” Neil admits.

“But.. how?” He asks, astonished. “Y-you’re… you’re literally perfect, Neil.”

Neil shakes his head. “No, I’m far from it. But Todd, you’re incredible. You’re better than any dream I could ever fathom, you’re single handedly the best thing that’s ever happened to me. You always listen when I rattle nonsense to you as if every word I say is meaningful, you’re there for me on my low days, ready with an open ear and a shoulder to lay on, you write the most outstanding poetry known to man. How could I not be completely in love with you?”

Todd gapes at him, disbelieving. “You… you love me?”

Neil laughs. “Of course, dummy,” he says affectionately.

“I- I do too. Love you. I… I love you,” Todd says.

An overwhelming sense of joy floods through him, and without thinking, Neil wraps his arms around Todd’s waist and picks him up, spinning him around as he shouts in elation. Soon, Neil sets him back down and brings him into a tight embrace, nuzzling into his neck. Todd returns it, sliding his arms around his back, holding him close.

Suddenly, someone bumps into Todd’s back as they dance, shouting a quick apology as they pass, and it seems to send them both back into reality. They pull back and glance around, watching as everyone is jiving to the upbeat music. Neil looks back at Todd who returns his gaze and they break out into a fit of laughter, making their way over to a table.

They collapse into some seats, breathing heavily. Neil is relieved to have a break; he’s starting to come back down from his rush of energy, and his eyelids are getting heavy.

“Neil,” Todd says, shaking his shoulder lightly.

He lifts his head and looks at him questioningly.

“Don’t fall asleep yet, wait until we get in the car.”

Neil makes a noise of complaint. “I’m tired. Be my pillow, Todd?” He asks, leaning his head over onto Todd’s shoulder.

Todd sighs defeatedly, raising a hand to card through Neil’s hair. They stay like that for a few minutes, relaxed and at ease, until Charlie approaches their table.

“Seems it's a general consensus that it’s time to go,” Charlie says, plopping into the seat across from them and taking a swig from his drink. “The others are starting to get tired too. They wanna grab a bite upstairs before Keating comes. What do you say?”

Neil lifts his head, sitting up in his chair. “Sure, Todd?” He nods in agreement.

“Alright, perfect. I’ll go grab the others, be back in a flash,” he says, darting away.

“Tell Charlie to wait up, I got to say bye to some people first.”

Todd’s eyebrows raise in remembrance. “Oh, that man who gave us the drinks?”

“Yeah, and his boyfriend.”

“O-okay I’ll tell him,” Todd says.

Neil leans over and kisses his cheek before walking off in search of G and Andrew. He goes toward the bar first and doesn’t see them, so he looks through the crowd of the dance floor. After a few seconds, he feels a hand clap his shoulder. Neil whips around.

“Hey kid! How you doing? I saw you and that boy earlier, I’m proud of you,” G says. “And you’ve got one hell of a friend to request a song for you two like that.”

“Yeah, that was more romantic than our first kiss,” Andrew adds, sliding an arm behind G’s back. “You’re gonna have to step up your game.”

“Hey, don't you forget my proposal, I spent weeks planning that!”

Andrew sighs with a smile. “Okay, you got me.”

G gives him a quick peck before returning his attention to Neil.

“I’m- we’re great. I’m… really happy,” Neil says, beaming. “And yeah, Charlie is not one to be subtle about anything.”

The couple laugh. “Well, I’m glad it worked out,” G says sincerely.

As Neil nods in thanks, Andrew gasps in realization. “Give me your hand,” he requests.

Neil complies, pulling back his sleeve. Andrew pulls a pen out of his pocket and writes on the back of his hand. Once he’s done he releases his arm and caps the pen. “In case of anything, don’t hesitate to call us. If things don’t bode well with your father, we’ll be here for you, okay? Any hour of any day. I never really sleep anyway,” Andrew says with a crooked smile.

Neil looks down at the phone number written on his hand, and holds in the tears welling up in his eyes. “Thank you,” he croaks, keeping his eyes down and wiping them surreptitiously.

“Any time,” G says, a smile in his voice.

Finally he looks up at them both, feeling fiercely grateful for them—despite the unideal introduction of Neil ruining their clothes.

“My friends and I are heading up to the diner before we leave. But it was great to meet you both. Sorry again for spilling the drinks on you. Both of you,” he says, wincing as he peers at their stained outfits.

“Oh, don’t even stress it. It’s a good thing you did now, isn’t it?”

Neil laughs. “I suppose it is.”

There’s a beat of silence between them before they bid each other good night, Neil returning to his table. Todd looks up at him as he approaches. “They’re all waiting by the door. Ready?” Todd asks, standing from his seat.

“Actually, I wanted to ask you something first,” Neil says, his heart pounding out of his chest.

Todd blinks. “Okay,” he says, anxiety creeping into his features. Neil reaches out and strokes his cheek in reassurance.

“I just wanted to know… now that we’ve… you know, told each other how we feel… where are we?”

Todd’s eyes widen in understanding. “Um, I mean what can two guys be to each other?” He asks.

“Boyfriends?” Neil tries, unable to breath.

Todd’s face lights up, and it sends a flood of relief over Neil. “Uh, Yeah.”

“Yeah?”

Todd nods, beaming, and Neil can’t resist leaning over to give his nose a quick peck. He never thought this would ever be possible, and yet here he is, able to call Todd his boyfriend. With Todd by his side, he’s willing to take anything his father tries to throw at him.

Neil slots their fingers together and the pair walk over to the other poets who are standing by the door. Upon seeing them, Charlie grins. “The new lovely couple has arrived! Let’s go!”

The boys make their way up to the diner and slide into a booth, ready for a late dinner before Mr. Keating arrives to pick them up. Todd seats himself beside Neil, and he wraps an arm around his shoulder, kissing Todd’s forehead.

“Alright, as happy as I am that you two finally got your act together, please don’t be necking each other and being all lovey dovey in front of me. I don’t need it getting in my food,” Charlie says.

“No promises,” Todd says.

Neil laughs breathlessly, at Todd’s bold comment and the way Charlie gapes, shellshocked. “Yeah, don’t be a hypocrite. If you had someone you’d be slobbering all over them any second you could.”

“I guess you’re not wrong there, but it makes me wish I did.” Charlie winks. Neil and Todd grimace, and at that the subject is dropped.

“So Cameron, who was that girl I saw you all cozy with?” Meeks asks, his eyebrows raised suggestively.

“Cameron was with a girl?” Charlie asks, nonplused. “Did someone give you drugs, Meeks? You might have been hallucinating.”

“No, I saw. They were locking lips,” Neil adds.

“No way!” Charlie calls, his eyes blown wide.

Cameron blushes, staring down at the table, “Yeah, I did. I saw her at the bar and we started talking. She’s… great.”

Knox leans over and high fives him with a proud smile as Charlie chokes on air. Once he recovers, he shakes his head and huffs a laugh. “Well… atta boy Cameron!” Charlie hollers, smacking his back.

Cameron looks at him for a moment before smiling back. “Thanks, Charlie.”

Soon, the food arrives and after much more rowdy laughter and chatter, the boys pile back into Keating’s car.

“Enjoy yourselves boys?”

The boys all agree and over the rest, Charlie shouts, “Hell yeah!”

“Thank you for your exuberance, Mr. Dalton,” Keating deadpans, chuckling.

“Enjoy your date, Captain?” Pitts asks.

“Yes, thank you,” he smiles.

“What’d you do? Spend any cozy alone time together,” Charlie asks, grinning mischievously.

“If you’re insinuating what I think you are, then I am not at liberty to discuss that with my students. However, we went for a nice dinner and afterwards we walked along a nearby lake. They’re quite a lovely spot to bring your significant other, actually,” he says, and Neil catches his eyes in the rear view mirror. Neil’s face flushes and he looks away, unable to hold back a smile.

Multiple different conversations among the other boys pick up after that, but Neil stays quiet, taking time to enjoy the moment. A few minutes later, when Todd lays his head on his shoulder as he dozes to sleep and Charlie gives him a smug look, Neil feels truly grateful for his friends, Keating, and Todd. He looks down at the number scrawled on his hand and realizes that he’s no longer dreading the future. His future. It won’t be easy, but with Todd by his side, Neil can do anything. And he wouldn’t want it any other way.

#dead poets society #anderperry #todd anderson #neil perry #todd and neil #dps fandom #dps #anderperry fic #dps fic #dps fanfiction

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