Attachments (Tronnor AU)

Capable

adjective

       • able or skilled to do; competent, efficient; susceptible (of); adapted to.

Connor goes home. He checks his bags and assures Troye for the billionth time that the apartment's his while he's gone and kisses his boyfriend on the cheek, on the top of his curly mess of freshly washed hair, on the hands he laces together before letting them go. He boards his flight and taps his foot against carpeted airplane floor and assures the stewardess for the billionth time that he doesn't need anything and checks his phone obsessively until he's forced to turn it off.

He sits and he waits and the five hours he spends on that plane are just as long as the five months he spent condensing his baby sister's life, as the two years he spent thinking she wasn't going to have one any longer than that. He sits and he waits and the five hour flight is the eighty years she was promised, if she was careful, and the two minutes she was guaranteed, if she was reckless.

The plane lands. Connor checks his phone again.

He swipes his bag from the trolley as he disembarks from the aircraft, wipes his sweating hands off on his jeans, smooths the worried creases across his forehead away, and wraps his mother in a hug the minute he sees her. She smiles when he lifts her as high as he can, arms clinging tightly to her waist as he gathers every morsel of strength in his being just to fake a smile back.

It comes out a little shaky, but he's got time to work on that before he sees his siblings.