Practicing lines on the dock was a common thing for Neil and Todd. At night, less common.
But Todd was having trouble sleeping, and Neil distracted him in the best way he knew how: by having him read Juliet's lines and give him something to focus on.
If Todd was focused, that was a win, because Neil most certainly was not.
"Let me stand there till thou remember it." Neil was saying, but his mind was entirely elsewhere.
There were too many factors. The gentle crash of the waves against the moonlit shore. The feel of the script, rough from being folded up and tossed into a messenger bag. The warm breeze that drifted through the early summer night, wafting Todd's hair in just the most satisfying way.
But Todd, (Todd! Bless him!) was the focus of Neil's main attention.
Everything about him sparked emotion. The way the moonlight carved out his features, making him look like an ethereal marble statue sprung to life. His active, royal stance. The way his eyes lit up almost subconsciously every time he unearthed a new stanza, de-coded one of Shakespeare's puzzles of poems. The way the breeze tussled his hair, but more importantly, the way he messed it all up, running a hand through it over and over.
Neil watched him. The curl of his perfectly pink lips as he spoke, the cadence of his voice: a timid but harmonic sound Neil could wallow in forever.
"Neil? It's your line," Todd encouraged.
"Wherefore art thou Todd?" Neil asked softly, almost trance-like.
Todd checked his script in confusion. "I'm pretty sure that's Juliet's line."
"No, wherefore art thou Todd?" Neil said, slightly clearer.
Todd paused. "Why am I-?"
"Why do you have to be Todd? Why...Why do you have to stand there, and look so beautiful in the moonlight, but I can't say anything because you're not Tina or Chris, you're Todd, my perfect roommate who I can't fall in love with."
Todd stood silent, slack-jawed. Could this be happening?
Neil lowered his voice, every word he said felt personal. "I have to pretend that I don't notice that your favourite colour is blue, or that you crack your fingers when you're nervous, or that you go to bed with socks on. I have to live every day like I don't know all these little things about you and like they don't make you even more perfect. Why do you have to be Todd? Can't I just be in love with you?"
Neil let out a big, huffy breath. Todd still stood silent.
"Todd? It's your line," Neil encouraged, nervous as hell.
"How about," Todd said slowly. "I don't have to be Todd, and you don't have to be Neil. And we can be just two people reading Shakespeare on a dock, and you can come over here and kiss me right now?"
Neil smiled. "You have no idea how much I'd love that."
And for that night, Neil wasn't Welton's golden boy, the future doctor and top of his class. And Todd wasn't the nervous recluse, overlooked and invisible.
They were just two boys, kissing in the moonlight. Perfectly in love.