escort

1.1

When Troye was seven, he wanted to be a policeman. It was only for a few weeks, some time between wanting to be an astronaut and a superhero, but he was besotted with the idea. He even had a police badge, a gold plastic thing that he would flash at his sister when he was told to call her for dinner or when he caught her standing on the kitchen counter trying to reach the Parma Violets their mother had hidden at the back of the cupboard. (Actually, the first - and only - time he did that, Sage was so startled she fell and broke her arm. Something Troye still repents for by sending a pack of Parma Violets to Singapore every month with a note that reads, Eat them all before dinner - T x)

It was so easy back then. All he needed was the right costume and he could be whoever he wanted to be. His mother would spend hours indulging him. She would use up the tin foil so he could be a robot and cut eyeholes into old sheets so he could be a ghost. He just had to say it - I want to be a pirate - and a few hours later he would be one, his voice rough from singing Drunken Sailor and his eyes stinging from the black eyeliner he made his mother put on him. Now it's a lot harder. He doesn't even know what he wants to be. Actually, he does, he just doesn't think he can be, and he doesn't know when that changed. When that restlessness - that insatiable curiosity to be everyone he wanted to be - was sated and he became content to be no one at all.

Or maybe it isn't sated. It doesn't feel like it sometimes, when he loses an afternoon writing in his Moleskine, or when he reads a poem so beautiful he can't catch his breath. It's moments like that that make his heart itch, that make him want to pack a bag and run. To where, he doesn't know. Maybe that's the point, though: he's not supposed to know. Perhaps that's why he wanted to be a policeman when he was a kid - and an astronaut and a superhero and a ghost and a robot and a pirate - because he didn't know what he wanted to be. Now he does and he supposes he should be happy. Some people never know and while away the rest of their lives daydreaming in meetings and stacking tins of beans in supermarkets. Troye did that when he moved to London, he worked in a pub at night and in publishing during the day, photocopying and reading manuscripts so awful he had to give it up otherwise he would never have written again. Not that he's written much since, but there's the rub. When he didn't know what he wanted to be, it was fun. He could be anything, but now he only wants to be one thing, what's he got without it? At least now he has hope, but if he tries and fails, where does he go from there? How can he go back to pulling pints and reading other people's manuscripts?

So he's decided that it's better not to try because the next time someone comes in his mouth without warning him or pulls his hair hard enough to bring tears to his eyes he can tell himself that it isn't forever, that one day. He catches himself writing it across his forearm with his finger sometimes - one day - when he can't sleep because the night feels too long and his bed feels too big. Last week he wrote it across Charles' back in small steady letters and now he thinks it as he bends down to pick his Moleskine off the floor. One day, he thinks as he sits on the edge of the bed and looks at it, at the thin strip of black elastic wrapped around it, straining to keep the pages together, the leather cover warping around the beer mats and napkins that he's stuffed between the pages. He almost opens it, almost lets it all spill out of him, the wonder of that first kiss, Jacob's eyelashes catching with his a second before Troye tilted his head, followed by the agony of Jacob calling him Nathan. But he doesn't and it's not just that he can't, that he'll never find a word big enough - brutal enough - to describe how he's feeling, but because he doesn't want to commit it to paper forever. He won't need to remember that feeling; he feels it every time he looks in the mirror and hears that small voice ask, Is this it? Because that's worse than never being who you want to be, he knows.

No one letting you be.

+++

When Troye hears the knock on the door, his heart stops. He stands up and looks across at it, his fingers curling around his Moleskine. He's been so careful, not even turning on the light in case anyone is watching and has been wandering around in the near dark of his flat all morning with only the murmur of light falling between the gap in the curtains to guide him. His toes curl in the rug when he hears a second knock as he looks desperately around his flat for something to defend himself with. He's eyeing a hefty looking hardback of The Hobbit that could probably do some damage if flung when he hears his name and paces over to the door, opening it to find Charlotte arching a perfectly plucked eyebrow at him.