adjective

• unhurt; out of danger; reliable; secure; involving no risk; trustworthy; giving protection; prudent; sure; incapable of doing harm.

noun

• a locking metal box or compartment for valuables.

Love, Troye has discovered over the course of the past year, isn't something earned so much as it is something shared. It's impossible to receive without offering the same in exchange, and it's almost never an equal barter. The rare occasion where it happens not to tip the scale to favour either side is an occasion made to be treasured, to hold close and cherish like nothing else.

It wasn't his fault that his childhood was a mess of abuse and abandonment, that love was something scarce and made for the fairy tales he taught himself to read. There wasn't anything he could have done to change things, wasn't anything he did to deserve the treatment he grew up enduring.

Love, when he was young and bandaging bleeding wrists, was not something he had to earn. Or, at least, it shouldn't have been. That feeling, that affection, isn't really something as complex and unattainable as he'd thought back when he was ten.

Back then, all he knew was that love wasn't sexual abuse or child neglect, cynical and uninformed as he was passed from bad situation to worse to unimaginable. He'd remained convinced that love was something twisted into fiction for the media to swallow up and regurgitate all over the place for so long that, after seventeen years, it'd been difficult to realize otherwise.

Now, Troye is still all too aware of what love isn't, but he also knows what love is.

It's the way Connor looks at him first thing in the morning, when he's yet to stretch or roll over or get out of bed. The way he smiles like Troye's everything without even having done anything yet. It's knowing Cheryl is probably going to call them that night to go over the details for their visit again this Christmas. Knowing that Nicola is well at the moment, not confined to a bed going out of her mind, and feeling happy for her. It's the brush of soft, uncalloused fingertips drawing him from his early morning thoughts, tangling in his hair and pulling him in for a kiss. The brush of their lips against each other and the skin of jaws, of necks, of collarbones and dips of taut muscle.

Love is forgetting about the scars on his wrists where they used to bleed with his foster mother's nails any time he failed to meet her expectations. It's replacing the memory with the motion of Connor's hands smoothing down the vertebrae of his spine as he settles on top of him. He leans down to kiss him even harder, with tongue tracing lips and teeth and their breaths no longer distinguishable from each other, and the feeling of her skeletal hand gripping his arm is erased.

It's the bed creaking as they rock against each other and the sound meaning nothing but pleasure in this moment. It doesn't matter that it means more in other moments because, as long as he has these, it's okay. It's enough. It's the beginning of a future that erases the past.

It's safety in an inexplicable way, a way he doesn't know how to convey to Connor when he says that he wants him and his boyfriend asks if he's sure. Safety like how sometimes he comes home and Connor isn't there and he doesn't worry. Safety like how sometimes he's in the bedroom and Connor drops a glass and it breaks and he doesn't freak out. Safety like how sometimes he can't sleep and he can't breathe and he can't exist and he's allowed to have that, he's allowed to pull his knees up to his chest and disappear for awhile without worrying that something horrible will happen to his body while he's gone.

Love is that couple when he was seven. The only one that ever treated him like the child he was. Sometimes, he wonders if they still worry about him.

It turns out that love isn't that complicated after all. It's an effortless kind of feeling, the kind that comes with no real cost but reciprocation and the need for acceptance. It takes work to keep it healthy, to pull the weeds from around its roots and prune it back to full fecundity, but it will continue to grow no matter how much care is provided. Troye thinks his version of love is probably a mangrove, burgeoning in a hostile environment and adapting to the harsh conditions until it's grown roots like an island and an intricate web of branches sprouting healthy green leaves.

He doesn't have to lock the door anymore or sneak out to sleep on the porch. That's love.

Connor sinking into him and his heart not stopping is love. It's also trust, also strength, also proving to himself that his past hasn't destroyed him, doesn't define him, isn't going to be hanging over his head like a noose for the rest of his life.

Connor's sweet and attentive and so, so careful - not moving an inch as Troye presses a hand to his chest and sets the pace. He grinds down against him and it feels like taking control of the things that have always wrapped their hands around his neck and squeezed until he's out of breath. It's giving in a little, moving on a little, letting go a little.

It's Connor with his hands on his hips and his moans in his ear, and the scent of the sandalwood soap they share. He has a mantra on repeat inside his head that gets more insistent every time the creaking of the bed springs starts to drag him away from the man beneath him.

Love is this. The safety to be able to do this without having another PTSD episode. Connor eradicating the ingrained idea that bottoming would only ever mean his foster father hovering over him and tearing him apart in every meaning of the word. The building heat in his groin destroying the notion that giving it would be the same as having it taken.

He didn't have to earn this. Didn't have to jump through hoops to have Connor say his name the way he does right now. He didn't have to remember to wash the floors or not leave his room after dark or stay out of the living room when he gets home from school. He didn't have to do anything but be himself and love Connor back.

Maybe, though, he did earn this in a way. Maybe he earned all the sudden good in his life by enduring all the bad.

Either way, the ideas he had about love when he was ten have all been turned on their heads. It's okay to want it now, to unfurl himself beside Connor and not bury his face in the pillows when he cries. He doesn't have to muffle the sounds of his sobs with anything but the sweat-soaked skin of his boyfriend's shoulder. For the first time since he was born, he has someone to hold him when he can't fight back the tears he's always been told not to shed.

It feels like a cleanse.