Peter couldn't quite keep the frown from spreading across his face. It was an unbeatable disease, a curse, a raging all consuming emptiness, throbbing in the core of who he was, spreading to overtake every crevice of who he was.
He could hardly remember who he was and how it felt to not feel this gaping disgusting hole where it felt like he used to hold his heart.
Around him, the sun shone with a cold, unyielding presence. The blue skies seemed steeped in gray, and the green grass blinded. He could find no pleasure on the shores of the great lake. The Prospect of two days of no homework, of this lovely nearly warm spring day, the laughter of those he called friends in the air, nothing could seem to fill the hole he felt. The damp and festering nothing.
One laugh, the throaty growl, its freedom as it released and sped away, stood out amongst the others. A laugh usually held back by shyness, and propriety
finally let loose. The owner was too happy, too relieved to ever dampen his joy again. Peter could almost imagine how it feels. The freedom to revel in the love and loving and being loved by the one who mattered most. The calling of two hearts, the joy of meeting, of understanding.
God, but he hated. He mourned. His heart gone, taken, stolen, and yet discarded without care. Without even having a chance to try and take, to earn its own happiness, its own happy ending.
He never should have hoped, never loved. Peter had always known, always suspected that he was just a distraction, a means to an end, not simply for HIM, but for everyone he called friend. Why else would he, with his world dark and cold, and his entire self be draining out of him through the gaping maw of a hole in his chest, be left here alone? Peter could only dig his fingers into his thigh, it didn't hurt, he had almost no nails left unbitten after all. The pressure was a grounding force, but when he didn't exist, what was there to ground?
What he wouldn't give, for one of them to turn, to look, to glance at him. To see that his heart has broken, that he was on the brink, and quickly losing. Why couldn't they hear the absence of his own laughter, why could they not hear the absence of a fourth voice, if they truly and wholly did believe that he was a part of them? Did his own efforts, the trials and tribulations, the struggle and humilation he has suffered mean nothing to them? The late nights comforting, the detentions serverd, the times he sacrificed to make them smile?
The sacrifice, when he swallowed his own truth, to be the friend he needed to be, to encourage and push, and celebrate the man he loved finding his own love.