A Touch of Courage (Troyler AU)

Chapter 21: This Moment Changes Everything

"Touch. It is touch that is the deadliest enemy of chastity, loyalty, monogamy, gentility with its codes and conventions and restraints. By touch we are betrayed and betray others ... an accidental brushing of shoulders or touching of hands ... hands laid on shoulders in a gesture of comfort that lies like a thief, that takes, not gives, that wants, not offers, that awakes, not pacifies. When one flesh is waiting, there is electricity in the merest contact."

― Wallace Stegner, Angel of Repose

Troye's POV

Troye sat in his creative writing class, ankles crossed, staring out the window at the field of dewed grass glistening like tinsel, the sky a wrinkled sheet of blue tissue, the world wrapped up and still, waiting for something to tear it open. Troye stared at a squirrel running across the pavement, letting the drone of his teacher's voice fade into the background and resisting the urge to drum his fingers or tug at his shirt.

Then he heard words that peppered his gauzy consciousness like poison darts.

"The love poetry of Keats."

A sharp unease spasmed across his shoulder blades and he flicked his eyes towards the front of the class.

Ms. Thompson began reciting a short poem and Troye inhaled, concentrating on the rush of oxygen in his blood. He turned his eyes back to the window and tuned out the class entirely. It was a physical effort not to fidget. He hummed with a frenetic sort of energy, the kind that came when someone saw light at the end of the tunnel and realized that maybe it wasn't an oncoming train; that maybe it was oncoming hope, even happiness.

Troye stared out at a crystalline-blue sky without a single cloud, everything so bright he regretted not grabbing sunglasses. Just a few days ago it had been snowing. Now the air was vivid and crisp, like biting into an apple.

Despite his efforts to stay still, Troye shifted slightly in his seat, his hand tightening unconsciously as he continued to stare out at the beautiful day. He couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong. There was a small inner voice, a nagging suspicion, that there was something he was missing in all this beauty and perfection. This feeling had been with him for days but he couldn't put it into words because he didn't understand what this tiny voice, more a whisper in a language he didn't know, was saying. He had no real explanation for why he'd been struggling to sleep lately-no explanation for the anxious buzzing in his head.

He watched as a breeze shifted a few leaves out of a tree and suddenly it hit him. None of this was real. The day looked warm and inviting, but if he were to step out there would be a sharp, frost-toothed bite to the air. The sun might have been out in force, but the world around him was shivering in the death throes of autumn, the last remaining green flesh being torn from the Earth. It was all an illusion.

The more he thought about it, the more he understood the lingering unease he'd felt the last few days. This possibility of happiness was still so new and felt impossibly fragile, like he could drop it and break it. Everything felt so precarious. He had started to settle into something of a rhythm with his friends, and that was a relief in some ways. In other way, all it did was throw into sharp contrasts all the changes that had already happened in such a short amount of time, and foreshadow the changes that were yet to come. Everything was coming together in the best possible way and he felt as if his brain was on overload. Relocating somewhere new, starting a new school, forming new relationships. It felt like he was juggling glass balls and if he let any one of them drop, they would shatter into a million pieces. It was making it hard to breathe.