A Touch of Courage (Troyler AU)

Chapter 37: Into the Silence

It's strange that words are so inadequate. Yet, like the asthmatic struggling for breath, so the lover must struggle for words.

- T.S. Elliot

***Trigger warning***

Troye's POV

"I need to tell you something."

Troye felt as though he stood beyond himself. Something had taken control of his tongue and was shaping his words. He'd never told anyone this before. Half the time, he refused to admit it even to himself.

"Troye? What's going on?"

Troye heard the question, but for a moment he couldn't make a sound. Vertigo came for him, sharp and crackling. His mind stopped on the brink of an abyss that extended in every direction at once, and then it paused. Like it was awaiting instructions.

Troye made his way slowly to the couch opposite Tyler and sat down. Tyler sat up straighter, looking at him quizzically.

"I...." He stopped.

Now that he had decided to speak, he had no idea how to start. The space his mind was trapped in was too thin to allow words.

What was thinner than words?

Maybe the feelings that usually skimmed along deeper than words could reach. Maybe the kind of truth he hadn't even know how to feel until Tyler showed up.

You're the bravest person I've ever met.

Words, okay, but the way they had wounded him-they were also something more than that. Something thinner than paper, sharper than glass, that got between his skin and the flesh beneath and made him feel himself, outlined in bright pain. Something that made him savagely aware, again, of the Troye who had gone so numb.

"Tyler," he started again, trying a different angle. "What's the biggest question you ask yourself every day?"

Tyler closed his laptop slowly and stared at him.

"What?"

"Every day," he said again. "Do you ask yourself a particular question that you can't really answer? Like...what the meaning of life is, or if there's a God or...something like that?"

Tyler frowned and seemed to think it over. "Not really...do you?"

"Yes." Troye took a deep breath. "I always ask myself, if I had a magic wand, what would I do with it?"

His eyes drifted down to his hands, curled in his lap. "Would I do good with it, or would I do evil?"

Tyler looked at him, the light skewered on his spiked hair. There was something in his blue gaze that made it seem to take forever, crossing the air between them, as if his thoughts were enough to slow light to a crawl.

"Have you answered it?"

"I...Do you think you're a good person?" Troye asked, not looking up.

Tyler didn't comment on the seeming non sequitur, just frowned in thought as he thought over the question carefully.

"No," Tyler said after a lengthy pause. "But I try really hard to be."

Troye nodded, not taking his eyes from his lap.

"I think I would do good." He said. "But I might be selfish instead. I might materialize a new family for myself. Or a new home. Or..."

"Or what?"