Attachments (Tronnor AU)

Heart

noun

       • the hollow, muscular organ that circulates the blood; the central, vital, or main part; the human heart as the center of emotions, especially sympathy, courage, etc; a conventional design representing a heart; one of a suit of playing cards marked with such a symbol in red.

The mug clanks against the coated steel sink with a piercing noise, Connor's soft sigh the only counter to its harshness. It's empty, no bitter brown liquid left to spill over the edges, but he still winces when the motion comes out sharper than he'd meant it to.

He breathes in the fresh scent of nostalgia and a childhood he's never thought to miss and breathes out a warm gush of longing for a different home so many miles away.

His sister's fine, he tells himself. He'll be headed back soon. Everything's fine, the world isn't falling apart, it doesn't always take a miracle for things to be okay.

"Daydreaming?" his mother's voice interrupts softly from behind him, her hand resting gently on the base of his spine as she comes to stand beside him. Her features are gentle and loving, affection ringing in every crease of weathered skin and a knowledge Connor's always admired glinting brilliantly in her eyes. He smiles down at her just as sweetly, turning his gaze back out the window before them with another deep breath.

"Something like that," he says, watching what's left of autumn float away with the wind.

Connor's mother hums at that, sounding both thoughtful and understanding as she lets her hand fall from his back to the sink they're both leaned up against. "You get lost in your head a lot, you know?"

Attention successfully enraptured, Connor darts her a curious glance. She isn't looking at him, her own eyes dancing with the leaves outside, and her expression is unreadable as he tries to translate it. He doesn't really understand what she's getting at here, Connor's not usually the type to daydream, but he knows her well enough to realize that she's a thousand times more insightful than he's ever learned to be.

She smiles, small and infinitesimally pained. "In your own little world, I mean. You rush through your life with all these goals in mind, places to go and things to do, and you pack everything you can into every moment you can. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, making the most of every moment, I just worry sometimes that you'll miss the simpler things in life. You know, all those tiny, meaningless minutes that make the rest of them so much more worth it. I worry you'll waste the world away without ever really seeing it, without taking the time to look around and see all the beauty around us."

His mother pauses, smile stretching thinner as she turns her gaze back to him, resting a gentle hand on his cheek while he stares down at her in silence. Everything inside of him feels heavy, even the backs of his eyes where waterfalls have always feared to flow. "I worry that one day I'm going to blink and my beautiful baby boy will be all grown up and gone. Like you're going to live and live and live and leave the rest of us behind because you were so busy living that you forgot to really breathe."

The words hang even heavier than Connor's sinking heart, crushing down on both their shoulders as his mother's raw form of beauty takes on a tired tone. He gets it, he does. He gets that he lives life too fast and never slows down, gets that the world around him starts to blur when he picks up too much speed, gets that the things he does take the time to appreciate can only be captured so sufficiently through the limited lens of his camera. He gets it, he just never really thought about it until now.

Taking in a deep breath of familiar air and the home he left what seems like a lifetime ago, Connor gently covers his mother's hand with his own. He doesn't say anything, just squeezes her narrow digits and gives her a look that says everything she needs to hear and more.

Her own breath doesn't tremble the way his does, is steady and smooth and full of the ground she's always swept so easily beneath his feet to keep him standing tall.

"I think this boy of yours is good for you," she tells him, gently folding him into her waiting arms. "If you've got something to come back to, you'll never float too far away. And if you do, then maybe that's okay, too. At least I know you won't be all alone, that you'll always have a hand to hold when your breaks stop working and a shoulder to cry on when the car crashes."

And Connor doesn't get that, not entirely, but he understands the general premise behind her words.

"I love him," he tells her, because it's the truth.

"I know you do, sweetheart," she says, because she always knows.

"He doesn't like fast. He scares easily. He hates it when I try to give up pieces of myself, my life, for him and- I need that, Mom. I didn't know I needed that, but I do."

She smiles, rubs at the base of his shoulders and kisses at the hair just behind his ear. "You're good for him, too," she tells him, because somehow she knows.

"I know," he says, because he honestly believes it.

"Next time you come home, you bring that boy with you, yeah?"

Connor grins, laughs a little as he buries his face into the mess of blond hair tumbling over her shoulders. "Yeah," he mutters, because his mother always has the answer to questions he hasn't even asked yet.