Jacob woke up before Troye, the blanket around them forcing them together in a hot mess of limbs and sweat that Jacob didn't seem to mind. He twisted out from underneath Troye, who he let lay gently on the couch.
He yawned and looked down at the table a cupcake looking up at him, the ones Wanda promised from last night. He smiled effortlessly picking it up and devouring its sweetness as if it was the only food he would ever eat again.
He happily looked down at Troye before he walked up the stairs and to the room he hadn't been to in a while. He felt the cold marble touching his toes as he descended the stairs. The same feeling that swept over him that very night seemed to be leaking from the walls and trotting behind him as he grunted when he passed the family portrait.
He stopped in front of the double doors and let his mind wander away for a moment. He hadn't been inside since the incident, the bookmark of his life, the moment that gave him a before and an after, an after that felt much like a new before, Troye being a second bookmark. Not covered in bloody red but sweet, welcoming blue the before not being a moment; his before, his beautiful after all circulating around a feeling. A feeling he had never felt, love. To love and to be loved in return to Jacob was the most beautiful gift he could ever receive. No car, dollar amount or home could overthrow this feeling. The same feeling that made his hands grip the handles on the very doors that held his greatest failures and rip them open so they all tumbled to his feet and surrounded him, his own mistakes pooling at his feet.
The room was cold, empty, it almost felt haunted or abandoned. He stood in the doorway for a while just breathing, feeling the air fill his lung and leave his body. His eyes closed as his mother's perfume trailed up his nostrils and his father's aftershave swirled in the air around him. It was like a box of memories cascading down a mountain, all of its contents spilling out rapidly.
"Jacob?"
His eyes snapped open as the distant sound of Troye's voice woke him from his daydream. Or his flashback, he wasn't quite certain as to where he was but he knew what he wanted to do.
He turned around to see Troye standing at the end of the great hall, his pants hanging low on his hips, his hand rubbing at his eye as he looked at Jacob with curiosity and concern. Concern, a look very new to Jacob. A look that could make him do incredibly stupid things.
"I want to show you something."
Troye didn't move for a moment but Jacob's hard eyes told him to disobey the only rule of the house and to venture over to the censored room that Jacob kept locked up tightly and away from Troye's eyes.
Jacob watched him walk, hesitantly and slowly, his eyes growing bigger as he moved closer, never leaving Jacob's but also roaming everywhere else. Where Jacob was he was, that's just how things were now. Troye couldn't help it when his eyes darted past Jacob into the dark room, unlit and unwelcoming.
"Hold my hand."
It was a statement, a command, unnatural and raw on his tongue he never begged or pleaded but maybe with a warm hand in his he could make it past the doorway and into his nightmares.
"You don't have to bring me in there Jacob."
Jacob let his fingers feel the skin under him, the warmth the life that flowed through Troye that didn't seem to flow through him anymore. A light and a heart that was beating for something more than Jacob could understand.
"I need you. I need you to help me."
Troye let his hand squeeze harder around Jacob's, a silent okay, or go. His smile never appearing but not exactly missing as one corner of his mouth perked up at he absolutely crazy notion that he was needed by someone in this dark and scary world.
