Attachments (Tronnor AU)

Allay

transitive verb

       • to lighten, alleviate; to pacify or make calm.

Troye likes the routine they've fallen into. It's odd, buzzing himself into an apartment by way of a pass-code he's been entrusted with and knocking on a door that belongs to someone he knows, someone he likes. It's even stranger to step into a familiar home of sorts and find a warm meal waiting for him (or in the process of being concocted). It's weirder still to curl onto a plush couch with the heat of a furnace blasting as he falls asleep.

Weird, but welcome.

He doesn't spend every night at Connor's, but the amount of time he does gradually increases with each passing day until it's almost like he lives there, like the streets are his place of work and Connor's apartment his home. As much as he tries to shake that thought, he can't.

He feels settled in a way he never has. Maybe it's just the effects of a full night's rest on a make-shift bed of sorts, but it seems like more than that. They've created a kind of rhythm that is nearly the complete opposite of what it was when they first met nearly three months ago now, time spent together slipping from afternoons and evenings to mornings and nights.

They talk, too. More than they used to, despite the increase in comfortable silences that seems to have occurred. They fold themselves onto the couch with full bellies and a movie rolling that neither are really paying attention to and they talk, they talk about everything and nothing all at once.

Troye doesn't really talk about his past, doesn't feel like it's important at this moment in time, but Connor tells him dramatized stories of his childhood, of dragons and knights and a few broken bones here and there, and Troye listens with a boyish fascination as the differences between their upbringings come to quiet light. It's not like it was when he first stepped into his apartment, either, with their contrasts sending him tumbling into a pit of uncomfortable self-deprecation and bitter resentment. It's okay. It's-

It's like they've led two very different lives but somehow both ended up here, perched on a grey leather couch together, and their dissimilarities are nothing but a cause for fascination. After all, opposites attract, don't they?

Troye didn't used to think so, but he's almost certain of it now.