Work Text:
1967
When he wasn't haunting the streets of San Francisco, he lived in a nice place just north of campus entirely on his father's dime. Charlie felt no compunction in spending his family's money. God knows they had enough of it to drown in. Being an artist was one thing, but being a starving artist was something else entirely. He was, at his core, a hedonist, and the pleasure that good food, wine, and music could bring was more important than pride or misplaced principle. So he lived in an apartment that would under no circumstances be described as student housing and lived the good life in San Francisco when he wasn’t working toward the doctorate he had every intention of achieving... someday. What was the rush?
Campus was ebullient and liable to erupt sooner rather than later. Welton's Rebellion would be re-enacted at grand scale and not so easily quashed by snitches and parental pressure. Berkeley students were a different beast entirely… all were refugees from constipated America who’d come to find their voices and themselves. They would not be so easily silenced. They were of age. Seven years ago, he’d been sixteen years old and summarily dismissed from Hellton like a ladies’ maid. Without reference. Not that it made much of a difference. The Dalton name and checkbook was good enough for the second-most prestigious boarding school in New England to open its pearly gates without even glancing at his disciplinary record.
1960
Graduation arrived. He didn’t engage in public spectacle to the surprise and delight of his parents. They rewarded this sudden display of maturity by showering him with a great deal of money that he was happy to take off their hands. Before taking off for the parentally-financed, Yale-deferred year abroad (not just Europe, too predictable), he went to Welton to cheer the boys. Headmaster Fuckface’s frown was as nasty and disapproving as expected, but he could take his disapproval and his goddamned paddle and shove them directly up his ass.
He sneaked into the holding pen where the soon-to-be graduates were milling and baa-ing like good little sheep. Cameron spotted him first, awkward and alone in a corner as the other boys clustered together, despised by friends and strangers alike for his disloyalty. Charlie felt not an iota of sympathy; ritual shunning was a mild punishment for the blasphemy he spewed after Neil’s suicide. He allowed his eyes to skip right over his former roommate without acknowledgement.
And there they were, the remnants, the revenants of the Dead Poets Society. Meeks was fastidiously adjusting Pittsie’s tie, while Knox, insouciant as always, braced against the wall with one foot. Todd no longer hovered uncertainly at the fringes of their group, but occupied the central position and held himself more confidently than Charlie had ever seen him. Their eyes met and a frisson of excitement shot down his spine at the determination in Todd’s face. Innocence lost, intentionality found. Seize the day, boys.
“Charlie! You made it!” Knox used the wall to vault toward Charlie and wrap his arms around his neck.
“‘Course I did! Couldn’t trust you to execute The Plan without my gentle and expert guidance, could I?”
Knox mussed his hair and grinned. “Definitely not. Come and see!”
Meeks and Pitts’s radio had been relocated to sit unassumingly in a corner beneath the raised platform where the Welton headmaster would award the diplomas. A veritable riot of cords cunningly twined along the platform’s supports and attached to a pair of loudspeakers.
“Everything arranged with the radio station?”
Knox’s grin was wicked. “Oh yeah.”
Charlie clapped him on the shoulder. “Well done, old boy. Well done indeed.”
Knox bowed at the waist. “Quite the compliment, coming from you.”
Knox returned to the staging area to be organized, alphabetized, civilized, and eventually legitimized as an adult. Charlie made his way to the back of the hall where few families had settled. He deliberately avoided eye contact with anyone, fiddling with the ring he wore on his pinkie and imagining kinkier alternatives to the likely banal conversations taking place ahead of him.
“Is this seat taken?” asked a good-natured baritone.
Charlie murmured something polite and gestured to his side.
“Congratulations, Mr. Dalton.”
His head jerked up at his surname. It was Mr. Keating, still bright-eyed and slightly disreputable in a tweed suit.
Charlie laughed out loud, genuinely, unexpectedly, not expecting anything positive to result from this return trip to Hellton, other than the embarrassment The Plan would surely cause Headmaster Fuckface.
They talked intently before the ceremony began, catching up on the news of the last six months. Keating had filled in for a friend on sabbatical at CUNY and was heading back to London after graduation to be with his lady love. Charlie told him about Loomis and his plan to see the world. It was his first properly adult conversation and once again he was reminded of how Mr. Keating (“My first name isn’t Mister, it’s John.”) differed from every other person in his life. Their chat was interrupted by the godforsaken bagpipes and Charlie hoped he had a chance to tell the Captain just that before the Poets descended on him en masse.
“Tradition.” Travesty.
“Honor.” Horror.
“Discipline.” Decadence.
“Excellence.” Excrement.
He didn’t realize until Keating snickered quietly that he’d recited the much-improved motto aloud.
“Outstanding vocabulary,” he said sotto voce.
Charlie half-smile was laden with grief. “Neil came up with it.”
The headmaster completed the usual droning, self-congratulatory bullshit and commenced awarding the diplomas. Todd Anderson, magna cum laude, ducked his head shyly, taking a deep breath, then lifting his chin. He shook hands with Nolan and said something to the old man that caused what little color he still had to drain out of his face. Charlie would have given his left testi— no, actually, no, he really wouldn’t— to know what had been said that elicited such a reaction, but perhaps Anderson would indulge his curiosity later. Cameron received no less than a hearty, two-handed handshake from the undemonstrative headmaster, while Meeks, Knoxious, and Pitts disdained to exchange pleasantries with Nolan at all. McAllister, seated at the other end of the stage, received more warmth than the other teachers combined (and if he was slipped dirty Latin limericks by the Poets, well, he was the good sort, wasn’t he?).
Nolan’s closing speech, exhorting the almost-graduates to uphold Welton’s four pillars out in the world, was interrupted by a screech of static.
“This one is for Robin Goodfellow at Welton Academy. With love from the Dead Poets Society,” came roaring out of the loudspeakers.
1967
His dearest friend and roommate leaned against the bookcase next to the turntable and smiled when Charlie’s eyes popped open.
“One of these days you’ll have to come with me. The tacos tonight, man, they were decadent. Juicy, dripping, spicy, redolent, divine. And Kenny was on fire. No, literally on fire. The beautiful, beautiful firemen had to come and extinguish him. And then…”
“Charlie, you know bacchanalia is not really my scene. Besides, I see enough of you here. So much so, in fact, that I know precisely what you’re thinking.”
“Do you now?”
He tapped on the glass cover to the turntable. “I rest my case.”
Charlie pushed himself up out of the chair and stalked toward the other man, removing his tie as he walked. “I love it when you speak lawyer. Tell me what I’m thinking now, Carnac.”
Charlie caged Todd's hips with his hands and swooped in to kiss his neck. Tugging gently on the left lobe with his teeth, his roommate gasped and let his head fall back with a thud. “You’re not very subtle, Nuwanda.”
“You don’t like subtle, Anderson,” Charlie breathed into his ear, insinuating a thigh between his legs.
Todd smiled and pushed Charlie away. “I don’t swoon so easily. Go brush your teeth. You taste like pork guts and tar.”
“Vegetarian,” he jeered.
Todd cocked his head to one side. “Waiting.”
“Point taken.”
“And take a shower!”
1960
It was an appropriately decadent celebration, with wine and beer flowing freely, and whole rolls this time, a pan of yeasty buns wheedled out of the kitchens and hastened to the cave. The spring night was perfect and damp with promise, fireflies flickering out in the woods. Many toasts were drunk - to Neil, to Keating, to the Dead Poets, to the death of Nuwanda, to the Beats, to Brubeck, and to jolly old Hellton for bringing them together (May it fall down tomorrow. On top of Nolan. Amen.).
The boys drifted off as inclination or exhaustion kicked in, Meeks with an early train to Boston, Pitts attached to his hip, and Knox to partake in Chris’s bounty. Charlie and Todd remained, idly passing a bottle of cab back and forth as they shared lines of Byron, Shelley, and Keats. Charlie introduced him to Dryden as the night wore on and they giggled drunkenly.
It grew comfortably quiet in the cave and Todd drowsed with his head on Charlie’s shoulder.
“I miss him,” Charlie confided. “There wasn’t anyone like him.”
Todd breathed softly and steadily. Probably not asleep, but not liable to interrupt, either.
“He knew what he wanted. He figured it out. He followed his dreams, like the Poets, but he couldn’t follow through. How can I do it if he couldn’t? He was the best and brightest of us. The best of me.”
Todd shifted and twined his arms around Charlie’s neck. “There’s no one like you either, Charlie.”
He pulled back and looked Todd in the face. His eyes were shiny with tears, but determined, and his face was as pretty as ever. Charlie carded his fingers through his dark hair and the other boy’s eyes fluttered closed.
“When did you grow up?”
Todd thought about it for a moment. “I climbed on a desk.”
Charlie leaned forward and kissed him.
1965
Todd was quiet, though that wasn’t particularly unusual. He was a quiet fellow by and large, but surprisingly voracious in the sack.
Apparently his thoughts showed on his face because Todd’s thoughts showed on his face and he was clearly wishing he had something to hit him with.
“The kitchen’s nice,” Todd offered mildly.
“I suppose it is.” He didn’t mean to sound grumpy. It was an acceptable place to heat up leftover Chinese food, he supposed.
“The bedroom’s also nice,” Todd continued.
“Is it?” Charlie perked up.
Yeah, it was okay. Todd’s little smile made it better still.
Classes would start soon. Todd would begin at Berkeley Law and Charlie was studying under Lawrence Levine in the Department of History. Levine was young, radical, and eager to explore culture and ordinary people and their roles in shaping history. The road to a PhD was long (Literally. He was going to write a book. Go stuff yourself, Nolan.) and potentially boring (Two words: Undergraduate. Essays.), but looking around the apartment, neutrally and minimally furnished, he thought it likely that he was about to embark on the best years of his life.
“I think we should get an enormous leather chair. Right there. What do you think?” Charlie asked, slinging an arm around Todd’s shoulder.
“I think we need some more lamps. You’re entirely right. The light in here is awful.”
Charlie dipped him into a dramatic kiss and returned him to an upright position. Todd laughed breathlessly and dragged him by the tie.
“C’mon you. We’ve got a bed to break in.”
“Desecration. Most excellent plan, sir!”