Furtive | Tronnor

t w e n t y

connors pov

Drowning.

That was the only way Connor could describe his current state of mind. It was dark and his lungs were filled with something that wasn't oxygen and everything was fragile and tender and on the verge of completely breaking and his voice had become a non existent sound under a sea of smoke and blood and sweat and tears.

And yet, in possibly the most messed up kind of way, he felt calm; serene almost.

He had found solace in his happy place again. He had become positively numb.

It took him a while to determine that he had actually entered what he chose to refer to as 'the quiet' - the place more commonly known as the centre-point between living and dying.

He was hanging on a tether in the living world, the invisible thread dangling looser between life and death, and he had one of two options to approach the situation. One would be to accept that he was going to break away eventually, enter the light and accept his true fate. Another option was to hold on for dear life, do everything that he could to prevent the fall from grace and pull through miraculously to the current state of his real life; lying on the ground whilst trying to be desperately saved by a medical team and a hysterical Troye.

Connor knew in a part of his heart, his pounding and ever-weakening heart, that it was time to do the former. This had all, it seemed, been a part of a bigger plan, a greater story, his true path from the start.

It was meant to end this way, wasn't it?

Letting go meant so many different things to Connor. As the thread slipped through his fingers and he found himself drifting towards the glow, the whitenoise almost exploding in his eardrums, he found fear coursing through his veins.

This was it. This was what goodbye truly was.

It was the final breath, the last supper, the curtain call, the big finale. It was a safehaven, a sanctuary, his paradise and heaven. This was Connor finally accepting that his life was not entering the next chapter, or neither was it a work in progress; it was the conclusion to the book. The end of an era.

This, dying that is, had been the thing he had craved for so very long.

So why now, why when it was actually happening, did it feel so wrong?

'Please. Stay alive for me.'

The words echoed through his head. Troye's words.

It was so obvious that was the reason why.

Troye, the person who was probably being held back by a medical team who was trying to breathe the life back into Connor's body. Troye, who had admitted that he felt for Connor something that was indescribable but the best kind of feeling. Troye, who had stuck by Connor through every little thing, who had helped him escape a fate of working in the trade forever, (though it had admittedly gone slightly pear-shaped) who had promised to save Connor and was going to resent himself for not being able to. Troye, who had the perfect family, the perfect friends, who was perfect himself, and yet still wanted someone as imperfect as Connor in his life.

Troye, who he wanted to hold, touch, kiss, talk to about all the things he wanted to keep hidden away.

Troye, who he had somehow managed to save in the most warped kind of way from a selfish and self-centred kind of life.

Troye, the person who he needed. The one he wanted, craved, desired, couldn't be without.

He couldn't let that slip through his fingers.

He couldn't accept this for what it was, his fate. He wanted to defy fate, shame fate, flip fate off as he found his tether again. Only this time it wasn't a piece of thread; it was memories and thoughts and dreams of a person who had cared about him in ways he'd never even thought were possible.