Breathe (Tronnor One-Shots)

Equinox

Genre: Hurt/comfort with almost fluff and a touch of not really angst. (I may or may not come back to this one some day and continue it.)

Word Count: 1k

You love him, you do.

You love him more than the galaxies that stretch across the dark night sky, more than the warmth that seeps in through your open window when summer stretches into September. You love him in the same way you love the fire burning wild amongst the trees; careful, secret, worried, strong.

He loves you, he does.

You know this in the aching rhythm of his heart as you lay next to him at night, in the heat of his body pressing against you after all the lights have gone out, the flush high on his cheeks when he smiles shyly your way, the flutter of his fingers checking the beat of your chest every time you tell him you feel just as he does, though he's never actually said the words.

You don't need them. The words are just that- a string of syllables and vibrating vocal chords that don't really mean a thing without the feeling behind them. And the feeling is there, it is, in everything he does. You don't need words to understand that.

In fact, you don't really need words at all when it comes to him. So much of what he does, what he says, is in the non-verbal communication of haunted blue eyes and pale calloused hands. You may have thought it strange at first, always having being one who used his voice as both a sharpened sword and a thick iron shield, as a truth serum and easy manipulator, the only way to express yourself that wasn't styled hair or tight jeans. You don't anymore, though. Now, you think you'd probably find it strange if the words suddenly carried more meaning than the actions.

He's good at the actions, too, good at putting so much more meaning into them than you ever could. The tilt of his lips from where he leans across the counter isn't just a gentle smile, it's a sweet reassurance that he doesn't mind waiting for your shift to end, a whisper of how much just being in your presence is important to him. The brush of his calloused fingers down your spine as you flutter your eyes closed against the pillow in satisfied bliss isn't just a mindless gesture of affection, it's a quiet 'I love you, you're beautiful, I can't live without you'. He could, you know he could, but it's a nice thought to keep when he leaves to visit his childhood home every few weeks.

Sometimes, you wonder if he knows how much you love him.

You're not the same as he is, not as good at knitting your feelings into every twitch of your finger. You love him bright and burning, like the angry ocean crashing back to shore, and your gestures aren't stars, they can't hold that fire or a small blip of the galaxy that is your heart.

He doesn't love the same as you, maybe that's why it seems so easy for him to speak through the wrinkles of his eyes and the curve of his spine. He loves you strong and steady, like the moon hitching its way across the sky each night, and his gestures are planets, they hold wonder and life and things you don't understand, a constant state of being on a different plane of existence.

And this isn't a problem, not really, the motions meaning more than the words, but it's almost a trouble. You need the words to tell him of the supernova erupting through your heart, feel like he won't understand if you don't. It worries you, scares you, hurts you to think he might not know that you love him just as he does you.

You can't say them. You know this. You see it in the way his smile wanes when his sister tells him he's everything to her, in the way his fingers twitch at his sides when his brother praises the paintings cluttered through his apartment- his talent, his passion, his escape. He doesn't like words. He's heard them twisted too violently too often.

Sometimes, you find yourself comparing the both of you to the sun and the moon. You burn bright and obvious, the biggest star to stretch across your galaxy and never burn out. He's a softer glow, a sad spark of waning light trapped inside a field of black, and you watch the blips of radiance around him flicker in and out of existence so easily you worry he might do the same some day. Sometimes, you think you die each night to let him live, retreating into a quiet form that does not burn so bright, so obvious, so that he might let himself come fully into being for even just a single moment.

Because you love him, you do. You'd give anything to teach him the meaning of safe.

He hasn't learned it yet, this much is obvious in the stains of dark colours on his palette when he's finished a piece. He knows love, you know he always has, and this you see in the bursts of gold and violet he uses to paint you both into the sky. He knows hope, this is the sunflowers growing unsteadily in a field of grey, and understanding- the soft blue on the nails of a muddy hand. He knows passion and drive- the harsh curl of dark toes into the darker dirt underfoot -knows happy and content- thin white curtains fluttering away from an open balcony. He knows all of this and more, but he does not know safe.

You can't teach this to him, either, can't learn it for him and wrap it across his shoulders like you do blankets when he's cold. It's something he has to learn for himself.

You worry often that he never will.