Half way through the day, as it sometimes happened, this heaviness, deep and painful like the cramp you get when someone hits a little too hard, settled into your chest and the tightness you were all too familiar with gripped at your throat the way your eyes do as they work to pull sadness from deep inside; mind fraying at the edges a little as the result of a rogue train of a thought that had fallen off the tracks a little too close to your heart.
Sometimes you could push that thing on your chest away with thoughts more in line with how your heart ached when you looked at the sky on a clear night or when he smiled and his eyes lit up just like the bright points of your favorite constellations.
But sometimes you couldn't.
Sometimes you had to let it win.
That thing, it got heavier and your throat got tighter and your eyes pulled harder and no matter what you did to just get through the day long enough to make it to that safe place where you could let that monstrous thing do its worst, it ravaged your body and bled the creek beds of your soul dry, and any energy you could have possibly mustered from all of those rivers running through you was spent on conjuring a mask so that no one could suspect that you were being crushed by violent waves.
A mask that he knew and could see through, but yet still let you keep; identity a secret until you were ready to pull it over your head.
You just had to make it to safety; to a cold room, where it was quiet and no one asked anything of you and you could just let it rage until the hurricane of emotion passed and you could assess the damage in calmer seas.
And then after, he'd be there with nebulous eyes full of starlight and life, all warmth and things known and unknown, but familiar and comforting like the moon.
It was because of Peter that you could, every so often, let that thing win, because after it all, he would be there to remind you that it was OK to feel. He would remind you with sunset eyes and sunrise words that most of the time, feeling was good and happy and kept your chest floating in the weightlessness of him.
As soon as you'd gotten home you'd collapsed. The weight of the day, this terrible day that really wasn't truly so terrible, but felt like it, to you, and always did when that troll of a thing dwelling inside crept out from under that bridge; like the world had exhausted itself of every bad thing, forcing the thick, acrid gas of gloom into every crevice of your brain. Eyes wet with salted hurt, pained chest dripping from dark lashes and down heated cheeks before you'd even made it to your shared room; shoes and clothes flying every which way so that you could crawl into battle unencumbered, settling yourself beneath fox-hole sheets as gun powder black flak burst in the sky of your mind, and machine gun fire pounded at your heart.
Under cover, you detonated, and the tears flowed and sounds you couldn't really keep from coming out of you filled the humid space of safety until eventually, you had nothing left to cry and instead just drew in deep, shuttering breaths of mustard gas air and trembled and stared off into deep space, not really looking for anything, but looking for starlight at the same time.
In the aftershock of battle, as the smoke had cleared and the sky started to reveal itself, you'd failed to notice the stars had been there all along; had been witness to nearly the whole scene, quietly observing with a pained expression like dark clouds burnt with purple and white from the flashes of lightning raging from their cores.
He'd let you cry yourself out and steady your breathing before he took a slow step towards you; you cringed a little as the man who was made from only the greatest parts of the Universe, walked cautiously towards you the way you did when walking across a mine field in deserts with winds that whipped sand across soft, delicate freckles like biting sandpaper.
The sun was blazing in his glossy eyes as he knelt by the foot of the bed, fingers reaching underneath covers to find the cold tips of yours, "Oh, sweetheart," he whispered, voice sweet and warm and enough to create whole new galaxies inside you, "are you OK? Do you need more time?"
And even though you were exhausted and nearly drained of everything, the morning star in the brown of his eyes was enough to spark at the plug in the pit of your chest, uncorking it and draining the rest of that heaviness from you; that safety you'd been waiting for since that air raid siren had blasted at your brain was suddenly right in front of you, tickling at rapidly warming fingers.
No, no you didn't need any more time away from the star you gravitated around; the further you drifted away from him, the more erratic your orbit became, and in the end, you couldn't escape the pull he had on you, his gravity always stabilizing, always safe.
You gave him a tiny, watery smile and lifted the covers in invitation, in answer.
"Right, OK," he nodded, voice still soft, as he kicked off his shoes and crawled in next to you.
When the firm planes of his chest met your back and his hips pressed into yours and knees pushed at the backs of knees, an almost straight nose finding its way home behind your ear, your entire body restarted and the nerves in all of the places you touched pushed the rest of that dark thing out of you in one, big, relieved sigh that pushed past full, salt-stained lips out into the blackness of the night outside your window in the form of a name.
"Peter," you breathed, and the rings of his arms wrapped fully around his planet and then lips that knew how to paint the atmosphere of your chest with all of the colors imaginable kissed any place they could land on; hot impact craters of feeling peppering your body.
You breathed that name into the night again and again, sounds and syllables you couldn't really keep from coming out of you filled the humid space of safety with brightness and heat; molten core of you glowing as calloused fingers walked across the battle scarred moon of your skin not for the first time, but in all of the ways that were necessary and essential to the creation of those good feelings that reminded you of what you had, what you knew, what he knew.
