stockholm syndrome - tracob

sixteen

"Steele!"

Troye heard the nervousness in his father's voice. He had been home for a few weeks now and had just gotten back from therapy about an hour ago, which meant he had been sitting in his father's office drinking tea and talking with him. Talking about nothing and everything at the same time; about life, death, about his mother and about his father's youth. It was what they had been doing every time after Troye got back from his therapy sessions, and Troye enjoyed it. They had just been in the midst of discussing whether religion had had a positive or negative effect on humanity when they had been interrupted by a knock on their door, and Steele came in.

They hadn't heard anything from him since Troye was back. Not a word. Not even a call, an email, a text. Nothing.

Troye turned around and looked at his older brother, feeling no love nor hate towards this stranger in the room. Steele was wearing a black leather jacket and still had his motor helmet in his hands.

"Hello old man. Hey Troye," Steele said with a separate nod for the both of them. "What's for dinner? I'm starving."

"Well..." Shaum looked at Troye, scratching the back of his head. "I guess we were about to order some pizza, right son?" Troye nodded. "I suppose you could join if you-"

"Great! I'll just drop my stuff in my room. Margarita for me. Call me when it has arrived!"

Shaun sunk back in his chair and sighed, shaking his head. "Could the both of you have turned out even more differently?" Troye smiled softly. "Well, I suppose I'll order us a pizza then. Which one do you want to try out this time?"

Troye got up out of his chair and walked around the desk so he could look at his dad's laptop screen, which had a tab of Square pizza's open. He skimmed trough the images and names of the different kinds of pizzas quickly, and then pointed at one he knew for sure he hadn't ordered before.

"Alright," Shaun said, adding it to their cart. "You go read for a bit or something, son. I'll let you know when it's here." Troye nodded, smiled once, and went to his room where he had the fourth book of Wheel of Time laying, he had one text from Hari, asking him if he wanted to grab a cup of coffee. He ignored it for now, deciding he wanted to read instead.

It wasn't like he didn't want to go with her. It was more like he was sick of 'grabbing a cup of coffee' with someone. He had done it too often - four times last week alone already - and he didn't even like coffee. He felt like he needed his time alone. It was exhausting to go from only seeing one person for such a long time to spending his afternoons in crowded coffee shops and busy streets.

Or, perhaps it was more like no one's company could really compare to one certain someone's company.

The past few weeks had been difficult for Troye, and strange. For some reason he still waited for someone to wake him up in the morning, and usually got disappointed when it wasn't Jacob. In the evening he watched Disney's The Little Mermaid every time before he went to bed but he knew it just wasn't the same as it could have been.

He missed Jacob. He actually missed him.

He had never exactly told the police what had happened either. He had never told any names, and said some of them wore masks all the time. One time he had to go and see if he recognized any of the men they had taken into custody he had indeed vaguely remembered most of them. When they had given him Jacob's picture however, Troye had felt as if he would almost faint.

Jacob Bixenman, the card had read. Troye had stared at the boy's picture for what felt like hours, drinking in the curves of his nose and the soft fall of his dark brown hair, studying his lips and wondered how they would've felt if they would have been pressed against his own...