I'm chasing down my demons, I can hear them breathing

[shadows_have_offended]

When Neil gets the curricular assignment for his Senior summer courses, he feels a little fragile about it. He's grateful, at least, that the teachers are listed, that the English teacher is not the one from this term, and that the History one is. He still feels awful about throwing a spanner in the works of everything, about decimating his chances of just getting out of this whole situation and getting on with his life already; at least he'd managed to resurrect the corpse of his Science and Math classes, and hadn't needed to, amazingly, with his non-core classes.

But when he got the assignment, he was raw and fragile in a way that felt very dangerously like when he'd first arrived in Darrow--or, more realistically, like when he'd sat in his English classroom in Welton and lied to Mr. Keating and told him that his father was letting him stay in the play.

Neil walks for a long time after he's given the assignment, glad for the end of his day. Tries to clear his head, or at least think. And when he finally stops, it's because of gentle hands on his shoulders.

"Mr. Perry," Billy Rocks says, voice low and calm. He's still in uniform--and for good reason, it seems, since Neil has walked all the way from Darrow High to the police precinct where Billy works at. How embarrassing. "I was just off," he says. "You can escort me home."

Neil knows, from mornings running into Billy returning home from work when Neil's leaving the Bramford for school, that Billy does not go home in uniform. But in this moment, when he feels a bit like he's been run over with sandpaper, or something like that, he appreciates whatever lie it is that allows for this structure.

"Yes, alright," Neil says, and nods.

They walk in silence, in part because Billy has never been particularly talkative with Neil and in part because Neil is not feeling overly talkative with anyone at the moment.

But they don't head straight for the Bramford, which takes Neil a moment to notice. By the time he does, Billy is steering them into a booth at a cafe that, once, Neil went to on a double date. The memory feels strangely far away as Neil sinks into the seat.

"Call whoever you need," he says. "Order whatever you want."

Mostly, Neil just feels like breaking into a hundred pieces.

Comments

[goodnight_robicheaux]

"Heard you kidnapped someone," Goodnight said when he saw Billy, and then just beyond him, Neil Perry sitting at a table. "What happened?"

He'd gotten texts from both of them: one from Billy to say he'd found Neil wandering, and one from Neil to say that Billy had picked him up and brought him to a cafe. Goodnight worried, since Neil had a rough spring and summer was shaping up to be a slog.