transitive verb

       • to hold or squeeze tightly with the arms; to cling to; to keep close to.

intransitive verb

       • to embrace one another.

noun

       • a strong embrace.

Troye wakes every morning of the following few weeks to imprinted foam beneath his back and the delectable aroma of freshly-made breakfast wafting through a pristine apartment. He stretches and fights off a smile, doesn't have to uncurl himself from neither nook nor cranny, and has the freedom to take moments to bask in the feeling of no sore muscles and substantially more than two hours of restless sleep.

He wakes slowly, comfortably, to a soft bed and the warmth of a home and even the practiced neurons of his mind can't trace back down pathways of uncertainty or the cynicism they've always clung so willfully too. Instead, they find their way down newly constructed alleys of bright glass buildings full of hope and uncracked pavement coated in care.

He wakes leisurely, pleasantly, with soft sheets slid away and the warmth of sun-baked floorboards beneath his feet and he doesn't have to worry about a keyboard tucked beneath a bridge or whether the woman down the street will be there to lend him her hat. Troye feels almost content, in a foreign and unidentifiable way that settles deep into his bones. To be honest, he's not entirely sure what he feels, but he knows with every fiber of his ever-changing being that it's something to be prized.

Connor's bedroom door is always open when he wakes, the clanging of pans and a stove and perhaps a dropped egg or two sounding loud and clear from just down the short hallway. He slips through it silently, slips into the kitchen quietly, slips his arms around Connor's waist tenderly.

This beautiful phenomenon of a man never fully turns, though his smile always stretches wider and the hand that isn't holding some form of cooking utensil always come to rest on top of Troye's. They never really say much, Troye's head pressed into the crook of Connor's neck and Connor's humming soundly suspiciously similar to Troye's most played bars of Bach's Goldberg Variations.

They're close but not suffocating, basking in a presence that does nothing to diminish their own. They're content and comfortable, falling into a routine that does nothing to confine their separate lives.

They're kind of perfect.