shadows_have_offended | (no subject)

Classes were back in session, and Neil is pretty sure he's about to go insane. The classes aren't hard, and he's doing well, but everything has just been the tiniest things, one after the other, and he's not entirely sure how to deal with any of it. So he just tries to keep everything quiet and still in his chest. For the most part it works. For the most part it's actually pretty easy.

And then he gets a paper back in a class. One of those reflective things, tell us what you did over vacation, for English, and it's all marked to hell. Inappropriate features prominently on the second page, over and over again. Neil doesn't really understand. He wrote about going to Mass on Christmas with Gabriel, and about the morning after. There was nothing inappropriate about it. Except that it's queer.

It flames in his chest. Something related to his father telling him to quit the play. Something related, even, to Keating telling him he wasn't trapped. Darrow has been so good. Now it's just the same as everything else, and it hurts.

Inappropriate.

He winds up in front of Goodnight's door because something draws him there. He knows what draws him there. It takes him a minute to knock on the door, still clutching that damn essay in his other first, feeling stupid and hurt about it. But it's better than hiding in his apartment, or the end of the dock, or somewhere worse. He knocks again, heart in his throat.

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Neil was quiet. He was awful good at resigning himself, these days, but this wasn't so bad, after all. A bit of clever maneuvering, more than anything else. Some self-editing. He hated that. But it wasn't the worst.

He made a quiet noise when he suddenly had Mercy Beau's wet nose pressed up against his palm. He hadn't heard him move over from his little bed. But there was the dog, big square head pressed in close like this was exactly what he needed right now. Neil supposed it wasn't bad to have.

"Beau's got a knack for knowing when someone needs something," Goodnight said with a small smile.

"Here, stay a while. You want some tea or coffee?" He wanted to take care of Neil for a bit, if the boy would let him.

Neil sighs and scrunches at Beau's ears a bit, which the dog tolerates gallantly, big face split in an easy, happy sort of bull dog smile. It eases Neil a little bit, and he finds himself a little more relaxed. He supposes all he really needed was someone else to know that he failed the paper. That means a lot, in the end, he thinks.

"Coffee," he says. Then, a bit sheepishly, "With some scotch in it, if you won't give me a lecture about that. I'm old enough to have it."

"Son, I was younger than you when I started putting alcohol in my drinks," he assured. He headed into the kitchen to start a cup of coffee and he found a good bottle of scotch.

When the coffee was ready, he poured a mug for each of them, spiked both, and brought the mugs over on a tray with the cream and sugar.

Neil adds a fair amount of sugar to his, and just a little cream, until the coffee changes colors. He curls up a little bit, but Beau is still giving him attention and he doesn't really want to dislodge the dog because it's comfortable and nice. He sips the coffee after a moment.

"We didn't even do anything," Neil says, after a long, protracted silence. It's sullen and bitter to say. "I didn't even have to cut anything I wouldn't want to talk to with a teacher out, because we didn't do anything that night, after church. We just went back to mine, and in the morning I tried to make breakfast like my mom always did, because I thought that'd be nice, because he took me to church."