snippet from my anderperry fic on ao3, “We Nearly Drowned, For Such a Silly Thing.” link is below!
Todd woke up.
Someone was knocking on the door. It took him a moment or two for the sound to register as the one which had seized him from his dreaming and forced him back into reality. Todd's head spun as he swung his legs over the edge of the bed, idly sweeping his hands through his hair to smooth out the bumps and creases before stumbling outside of his bedroom, bleary-eyed and irritated. Something about that rhythm against his door, which hadn't encountered anyone's visit other than the postman last week, was slightly unsettling. It was unusual, at the least, to hear, but Todd was too tired to register the simmering of his dormant anxiety as he reached for the handle, opened the door.
"Todd."
Todd blinked intentionally. He had to have been asleep, still.
There was no other explanation for why Neil Perry would be standing outside his door.
Neil blinked back, eyes wide and chest heaving, and Todd's heart sunk into his ribcage and didn't surface again.
"I'm sorry if this is a bad time. I just - I've been trying to call for a while but I think Charlie gave me the wrong number."
Todd couldn't fit a single word of reply through his windpipe. They were stuck, taking petty stabs against the base of his throat.
Todd knew it was Neil the very instant he'd set eyes on him, because he looked exactly how Todd remembered. Each singular feature on his face appeared as though they'd been preserved from seven years ago. The same high cheekbones and strong jaw, sculpted without blemish, and hair swooping over his forehead that was a little longer than before. He could've counted the moles on his face and they'd have been the same as they were when he'd last counted them, back in Welton. He looked older, like Charlie had said, but didn't they all? It looked good on him. He looked mature. But there was something distant about his eyes, something different that Todd couldn't place, only that it was like looking in the eyes of a complete stranger.
"I wouldn't put it past him," he finally forced out, voice thin and worn. He didn't recognize the sound at all.
Was Neil thinking the same thing about him? Did he recognise him immediately, or was he a perfect stranger, too? Todd asked, "Did he tell you where I lived?" before remembering that Charlie would never have given his address out to Neil without asking him first, ever.
"I looked up your address in the phone book."
"Oh."
"I'm sorry."
Todd didn't know what to say, wasn't sure what he was sorry for in the first place. Anyone could look up anyone in a phone book. Even if he hadn't wanted him to, he had no authority on the matter at all.
Neil sighed, and suddenly, he looked very, very tired. "Can we talk?"
The words struck Todd with an ironic thump. He'd imagined this interaction more times than he could count. Imagined Neil saying those very words, and imagined himself walking away from them. Sorry, you missed your chance, you're seven years too late.
But the view from his high horse wasn't so satisfying, and he hadn't counted on Neil looking at him in the way that he was. With hollow wells for eyes and a seriousness set in the slope of his eyebrows.
Todd, against his better judgement, found himself opening his door wider. "Well. You're already here."
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
