noun

       • a feeling that what is wanted will happen; the object of this; a person or thing on which one may base some hope.

transitive verb

       • to want and expect.

intransitive verb

       • to have hope (for). 

Troye doesn't sleep on the couch that night. Instead, Connor curls their palms against each other and gently tugs him down the hall, soft smile in place and soft kisses to his cheek. They're in Connor's room, then, with a wide window stretching before them and a wide bed stretching before them and a whole realm of uncharted territories stretching between them.

Troye has a brief moment where he thinks 'beds creak', but it passes as soon as Connor collapses onto his back with a sigh, eyes closed and sheets sinking around his lethargic form. Troye shakes his head, rolls his eyes, crawls onto the mattress beside him until he hits the pillows. He ignores the boy sprawled effortlessly at the end of the bed, tucking himself under the covers without a second thought and settling down amongst clean sheets and memory foam.

Connor mumbles something inaudible, not moving from his place atop the duvet at Troye's feet. Troye huffs, pretending to be equal parts annoyed and exasperated but secretly wondering if he'll be able to kill the butterflies in his stomach with the heat from this new way of life he's somehow fallen into.

"Are you actually going to sleep there?" he asks after a moment, turning over until his back hits the mattress and he can see the white ceiling above him.

"The pillows are so far," Connor whines, inchworming his way a little higher up the bed. Troye rolls his eyes again, kicks at him a little from under the covers, before sitting himself up straighter and reaching to help pull Connor under said covers with him.

Humming gratefully, Connor settles in the middle of the bed with a muttering that seems to have something to do with smelling like an airplane, but it's far too exhausted for Troye to really understand. So he sighs, pulls the duvet up over his shoulders, and turns on his side to face his boyfriend's passed out form.

Frowning, he traces a hand across Connor's where it's sprawled on the pillow between their heads. They're sharing a bed instead of a couch and it shouldn't be different, not really, but it still kind of is. It feels like a step over the eggshells that are slowly being swept into the trash, feels like they're a million miles and a lifetime away from the first time they fought, back when Troye left with a door slammed behind him and didn't return for a month. It feels like the sword of Damocles from the night they don't talk about is no longer at their feet, like the ground no longer holds any imprint of its shape.

He should be afraid or wary or hesitant, should worry that all of this is too good to be true and he needs to be careful because everything always goes wrong. He should compare the callouses of their hands like it's second nature and feel like he's tainted Connor's clean sheets just by laying across them. He should be waiting for the other shoe to drop.

He should, but he's not. Instead, he feels safe in the knowledge that both shoes are tucked securely away in Connor's front closet and he showered just that morning. He likes how soft Connor's hands are and tracing the tendons that string across the back is oddly comforting. Sometimes things go right and end up just how they're supposed to. Connor would never do anything to hurt him and some beds creak, yeah, but Connor's doesn't.

Instead, he feels a strange kind of fluttering in his chest, like his heart's grown wings and is trying to tumble its way into Connor's gentle palms. He feels happy, as foreign as the sensation may be, and content with the way the memory foam promises to remember this feeling forever. The fluttering in his stomach is different from that in his chest, is exhilaration and a tiny smile he can't fight off even when Connor accidentally kicks his shin in his sleep.

Troye takes a deep breath, closing his eyes. Apparently, butterflies are fireproof.