Todd is tired and is about to allow himself to creep crouch-shouldered into the Dr. Hager's classroom when Neil mock-sidles blithely up to him and kind of uses his shoulder to nudge him off the course he's set towards the door.

"Hey!" he chirps. He takes Todd's books and stows them under his arm, resting them nonchalantly on his hip. It's then that Todd notices that Neil doesn't even have books with him. He's about to ask about this when Neil answers the question for him. "We're not going to math today." Instinctively, Todd looks around to make sure a teacher – or Cameron – didn't hear.

"What? Neil are you – "

"Todd have you even seen the weather? It's incredible!"

"Yeah but won't -" Neil fixes him with the look he usually saves for Pitts when he's being charmingly melodramatic.

"Todd. Come on. It's trig. I've got a Super A in that class and if you really need it I can catch you up on whatever we missed tonight.

Todd briefly considers telling Neil that, after watching him stumble through study session after study session with Cameron – ever the perfectionist, trying to unlock the difference between Neil's perfect scores and his not-quite-perfect ones – , he knows that, although Neil may have an uncanny talent for scoring hundreds on math examinations, he doesn't know actual math for shit. Being able to regurgitate formulas is completely different from comprehension, after all. He knows that if he allows himself to depend on Neil's tutoring, he'll fail the quiz for this unit he'll miss the lesson for. But when Neil grabs his hand so casually that nobody in the emptying hallway even notices, he suddenly doesn't care anymore.

It's like he'd been wearing a muddied yellow vail over his head that had just ceased to exist. The world is clear and Neil is leading him by the hand down the hall, and their gait winds itself steadily to a brisk, marcato trot. He finds himself watching Neil from behind as he practically jogs down the hall, his hand still firmly clasped around Todd's. For the first time he really notices that one unruly lock of hair on the top of Neil's head, flipping up and down up and down up and down as he lopes and bounces. At a double arm's-length he's at the perfect distance from his roommate to at last notice the smooth counter-swing of Neil's shoulders – firmly, solidly out and down with electric and carefree anticipation – with his lithe hips. The effect is a self-encapsulated rotation. For an instant Neil is a fluidly running, delicately contained dynamo. All Todd can see is the back of Neil's head and through that he can feel the pureness and baseness of an absolute animal focus. The small rebellion ahead of them has stripped Neil to the core and this side of him fascinates Todd. Nothing could ever make him look away.

And then for some reason Neil is reminded that Todd is there, that their hands are clasped together and there's a weight behind him. There's a brief moment when Neil begins to turn his head and Todd is terrified that somehow he's broken the spell. But then Neil looks at him and Todd's breath comes so full and rapid that his lungs expand down to their depths in a second in a stretch that feels glorious. Neil's eyes are like sunshine reflected through an oak's leaves onto clear water. They're so sharp as they crinkle with his open-mouthed smile and monosyllabic yap of laughter that Todd is sure his pupils have contracted at their brightness. Todd's presence hasn't snapped him back to school and the weight of his body behind the hand Neil is still gripping hasn't pulled him back down to earth. Rather, it's as if Todd's grasp is pumping a rushing wind into Neil that's sending him soaring over the trees with the flocks of songbirds they've been watching returning all week for the spring. And on the momentum of that one great gust Todd is swept up too.

He doesn't remember Neil stowing his books hastily in a dark corner by the door. All he knows is that he and Neil are suddenly bursting through with a thump of palms and scuffed leather uppers on dark wood, out into the open air and the sun flashes white in their eyes as they bolt out from under the awning of the covered walkway between the math wing and the main building. All he knows is that he and Neil are barreling down the hill towards the lake. Somewhere in the back of his head he cogitates briefly on how they're running far too fast for the angle of the hill. But their hips are rolling out to the sides with their speed and he can feel the motion hot in the muscles of his legs and Neil's hand is still grasped tightly in his and they're counterbalancing each other so perfectly that he isn't actually worried about falling anymore anyway. He knows that Neil is screaming at a pitch that's high and rough and that that other pitch vibrating almost musically with Neil's voice must be his own. They throw their battle cries into their head voices as they charge onward to the dock, and Todd can already feel the rawness in his throat but he knows the hurt is wonderful.

–

A/N: I actually just wrote this a second ago. (Proofreading? PSHH! Don't need that ever.) It took about 45 minutes. I was on some kind of (superrare) writing high. I feel like this fandom needs a little life pumped into it, and I think this is alright, so I decided why not? Carpe diem, right?

Anyway, this just kind of came to me in the shower just now. Spring is springing here in Philly, and I REALLY need to shake off the winter, because it was really tough. (Blizzards are actually REALLY unpleasant when you live in the city...) I've been burried really deeply in the KurtxBlaine ship (from Glee) because I feel like they're the "actually gay" version of Neil and Todd. (The parallels are INSANE. Ryan Murphy totally owes Peter Weir royalties.) I feel like they're a more high-concept version of our Poet darlings, so I wanted to come back to my roots!

SO. This is from a HUGE long-form fanfiction I'm ACTUALLY WRITING called The Throstle. (This fandom needs more multi-chapter stories.) It's comin' slowly, but it's comin'. I'm not sure of the context of this scene yet in the whole thing, but it'll find its way in somehow. I'm kind of writing scenes as I think of them with the idea of fitting them together later. I've got a word doc on my computer that's like 12 pages of single-spaced drabble right now. It's gonna be a fix-it fic (Neil lives, because I CAN'T write springtime without him) and it WILL be NeilxTodd. A slow burn NeilxTodd. (It takes them a while to get together romantically.)

Read and Review, please! :) I will personally ask Cloudy to shower you in Pittspoints! 1,000 Pittspoints for every word in your review! (Haaa 'cause I can TOTALLY do that.)