Love, In Orbit (Tronnor AU)

Anemoia, Volume I

They met when they were young. When race car sheets still mattered and sticky fingers were still met with fond smiles. Their beds still felt too big and their hands too small, with shoes that were always caked in mud and skin resilient enough to bounce back from a dozen falls. Time was evanescent, moments overlapping and then forgotten, unimportant to the present. Decisions didn't matter past the minute they were made, left behind with pacifiers and finger paint.

(But was this the start? Or did it start before this - Did the pacifiers matter? Did the finger paint ever really dry? What about bottled milk and Game Boys? What if they were first, antecedent to the end, to the middle, to juice boxes and the limited edition DS? Or, oh God, or did it start after this? Were the Hot Rods really the beginning? The back-to-school lunchboxes? The scooters? Oh God, oh God, oh God - what if all of it was? What if the beginning wasn't a moment? What if it was so much more, went on for so much longer - what if the beginning is all there was?)

When they tell it now, it has much more character. Isn't it funny how much more charming a story can be when it's had years to twist into shape? Troye goes from a whiny brat to a sensitive boy and Connor morphs from an obnoxious bully to a protective brother.

Brother. They use the word a lot, now. They used it a lot then, too, at the start. The middle? Somehow it got lost.

At eight, Connor was the toughest kid on the playground. There weren't many kids on the playground, the decrepit old thing that it was, but he was most definitely the king of their plastic jungle. At five, Troye wasn't on the playground, but he was the fair and quiet ruler of the sandbox just beside it.

Their kingdoms had never intersected. The border was clear and well-manned - a rotted wooden barrier guarded by over-protective parents - and the stretch of grass between them was a moat ready to drown them if they dared to cross.

But little boy-kings grow up and get sent off to foreign lands, undiscovered territory, to see if their reign expands beyond their dynasty or if their monarchy is bound for gravitational collapse instead. At five and a half, the border patrol plucked Troye from his castle and flung him into alien territory, where he was the smallest kid climbing up the monkey bars and the only one still crying when he stumbled down the slide.

It was not a love story waiting to happen, but the rulers of unfriendly nations banding together in a bond of brotherhood is just as appealing to the masses. People like an underdog story. People like a hero.

(How many have built their lives off the idea? How many underdogs have risen out of little white lies? How many heroes have been made just so we could have one?)

In the original tale, Troye slipped while climbing up onto the taller platform and banged his knee. It wasn't bleeding, but the next day there'd be a bruise to show for it. Kids are resilient, though, and childhood pains often hurt less in the moment than any other, so he didn't do anything but frown in confusion at the offending step. Was his foot too big to fit? Where had he miscalculated?

Connor, swinging down from the monkey bars, had raised his eyebrows and offered a hand to help him up. Troye took it, though theoretically he could have still made the step on his own, as he had every time before that. Yet something must have changed since yesterday, if the playground was betraying him now. He wasn't going to take any chances.

"I'd ask you to play manhunt with us, but you're probably too clumsy," Connor told him. Troye nodded.

They parted ways, but it opened a dialogue so that each time they saw each other thereafter there was a nod of greeting and a wave of acknowledgement.

In the modified version, Troye slipped and fell and scraped his knee so bad it bled all over the damp wood chips. Connor swept in when he heard him crying, crouching down beside him in concern and asking if he was alright. When Troye shook his head and sobbed out a no, Connor held him close in a comforting hug and called out for his mom, louder than Troye could have yelled because he was so much bigger than him.