Break and Enter. [Alex]

The general perception of Alexander was that he was not very smart. Honestly, he might even agree with that assessment. One thing he was capable of doing, however, was adapting. Whereas sudden visits out of nowhere to his room at first flustered the hell out of him, he was now completely prepared for their eventuality. It was extremely early in the morning, and Aki ended up actually waking Alex up by shaking him a bit and already starting to drag him out of bed.

”Aki!” he pleaded rather than yelled, bleary eyed but fully aware and honestly kind of expecting something like this might happen. ”Let me change real fast, I laid out clothes yesterday. Just turn around for a sec, please.” he managed to get out somewhat clearly as he stumbled his way like a zombie over to the clothes he had laid out on the ironing board. He didn’t need to be in U.A. gear, so he decided to just wear stuff that looked cool and he would feel confident in. A light grey shirt, a leather jacket, some thicker denim jeans, and his signature aviators were pretty quick to slip into. He also put on the deerskin gloves that Aki made for him, because why not and finally did a quick pass at the mirror to use his fingers to comb his hair a bit as he got dressed and listened to Aki bouncing up and down with the excitement and anticipation clear in her voice.

”All right, Aki, I’m ready.” he said when he was finished, and the wildling girl turned around and immediately grabbed his arm and dragged him out of the room, still talking at a mile a minute about the military bear and how she was going to make an even better pair of gloves for him. He realized that he made a big mistake in comparing the military to a bear, but he quickly decided he would just let Aki jump up and down in excitement the entire way there and explain to her what it actually was once they got there.

The door was still open, so it was a simple matter to be out in the hall and close the door behind them before they were off to the races. ”We gotta hit the train first, and I think I know the way once we stop. The news had the location, and I can always look it up again if I forget.” he said as he pulled the arm that Aki was gripping up a bit so he could grab her hand with his own and lead her out of the building. He didn’t know why exactly that he did it, other than it felt right for some reason. With him holding his arm, it was almost like she was… dependent on him somehow? It just didn’t feel equal, and he wanted this to feel equal. Aki was a girl who could go out into the Amazon rainforest and survive for the rest of her life if she really wanted, she wasn’t some damsel in distress and he sure as hell didn’t want her body language to look like it. If anything, he was the one closer to being a damsel between the two of them so them posturing as equals was just fine to him and indeed probably a compliment.

”All right, Aki. We said we would talk later, and now is later. Any questions you have, just sho--” he said, turning and looking at Aki as he talked until he walked into one of the pillars in the dorms. Not very hard, thankfully, but enough to cause a yelp and a pause in his sentence. ”Okay, I’ll just keep looking ahead of me from now on. Stop distracting me!” he teased with a laugh as he pulled her along outside the dorm and onto campus grounds. This was an odd feeling, because most of their interactions so far had been Aki dragging him around and he relished the opportunity to do the opposite for once. So much so that he started lackadaisically swinging his hand forward and backwards as they walked, dragging her hand along for the ride as well in contentment.

He had thought a lot about what he wanted out of this, but he didn’t really reach any solid conclusions. The fact of the matter was, he didn’t know what he wanted. Moreover, he didn’t know what the wildling wanted either. If she knew what she wanted, then maybe Alex could help her get it. If neither of them knew what they wanted, then they were probably just fucked. Somebody had to finally be decisive, or they would tiptoe around being whatever they were for the foreseeable future. That honestly wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, and the American certainly was in no rush. After the outbreak of the Quirk Enhancement Drug at Yuuei a while ago and what had happened there, he was honestly just fine in just seeing how this went and going as slow as it was meant to go. Even if it eventually led nowhere, he liked spending time with Aki and honestly had started looking forward to her surprise visits after a while. They livened up some boring days, if nothing else, even if it meant that he got even less homework than he usually did completed. It was a small sacrifice to pay, honestly, and he’d pay it any day of the week.

Alex had moved in and transferred too late to really participate in the festival, but he did find it interesting that Aki had only been on the train once. The American used it quite a bit to travel to Tokyo and other places, which made him blurt out a question: ”So you’ve never been to Tokyo, then?” he asked casually, mostly because he didn’t know he was thinking out loud. ”Because if not, I’ll have to take you next weekend or something.” he added on, only a bit flustered when he realized he had been talking out loud with his first question.

Aki did in fact try to pull him away from hitting the pillar. Alex, being himself, just thought he knew better and ran right into the damn thing. ”It’s OK, Aki. You tried but I didn’t listen. It happens sometimes, boys are dumb.” he commented with a smile. Yup, it was boys who were dumb, not just him. All of them. As one singular entity. That was just how it worked, right? Sure! It wasn’t like he was going to admit that it was just him that was dumb. She could figure that out for herself if she had not done so already! There was no point in helping her understand the negative parts about himself! There were only positives when it came to the Number Five Student at U.A., Alex Deraine!

The conversation soon changed, though, and Aki started asking about relationships and whether they were good or bad. There was a bunch of talking in the chat with a bunch of awkward teenagers trying to explain to the wildling girl what a relationship was, and Alex would be the next in line of many awkward teenagers to try his hand at it. It wasn’t because he was good at things like this by any stretch, it was just that Aki had made the questionable decision to trust him to explain to her things like this for some reason. Whether it was fortunate or unfortunate for them both, the American took that responsibility pretty seriously because he knew whatever he told her would be taken as gospel and repeated back every single time the concept showed up again. It was too much responsibility, honestly, and while he didn’t exactly want that responsibility he was stuck with it now and would do his best to make sure that she understood a very important concept for high schoolers as much as possible.

”Relationships are like… You remember when I told you about marriage and how that’s how humans pick who they mate with? They have this big old ceremony and a holy man says some fancy words and boom they’re married? Relationships are like what happens before that. Humans normally only mate with one other person, and relationships are like how they check to see if a person they like is mate material.” he tried to explain as he walked, his speaking pace even slower than usual before he was struggling to find out how to explain this in terms Aki could understand – or that he could understand, for that matter. He stopped swinging both of their arms up and down at this point and just kinda started making circular motions with his thumb on her hand out of instinct and didn’t even really realize he was doing it.

”If you’re in a relationship, you go on what are called ‘dates’, which means you and your potential mate go out and do activities like go on hunts together to see if you mesh. To see if you still like each other after spending a whole bunch of time and doing a whole bunch of different things together. The marriage thing I mentioned earlier can only be done with one person that you want to mate with and have everyone be okay with it, so you have to make sure you won’t get sick of them before you do the marriage.” the American continued, trying to convey his own limited understanding through a medium that the wildling girl could comprehend and thus probably messing up some stuff in the process. At least it would be better than the understanding she had started with, and at least he was trying.

”So relationships are like making sure you won’t get bored of the person because marriage is hard to get rid of. You can’t just pick someone else and have the holy man do the magic words and the whole big ceremony again. It costs a lot of money and there are a bunch of rules about it. It also takes a lot of time, so if you mess up you have to do the whole thing over again with someone else. You do the whole thing to pick your one mate that you choose, so if you get sick of them and leave the whole thing just starts over. That’s the best way I can think of to explain it, if you have more questions I’ll try to answer.”

One question that had run through Alex’s mind for the first time was how it was possible for Aki to not know of a bunch of things that normal society did. Was she actually raised by wolves in the forest or something? He had never asked, mostly because he never really had that question before and had just kind of accepted it without question. Now he was more than a little curious, but asking about that could come later. It was better to have these answers out the way now rather than later, and it might also let him sort out his own feelings and what the American himself wanted.

”Yeah, the first bit of a relationship is less serious. Basically it’s like, the first time or two that you go out and do stuff you just make sure that you like the person. Like, it’s a bunch of stages. First you go out for a first date, right, and then if you like them you do it again. Then if you like them still and want to move onto next stage it’s called ‘Going Steady’ I think. I don’t know why it’s called that, it’s kind of weird. At first, you can hang out with other people and kiss and all that sort of stuff because there’s no like commitment. You’re not agreeing to anything. After like the second one, generally people commit to that one person and basically saying okay, I think you would be a good mate so I’m not going to do mate stuff with anybody else. Just that one person.” Alex responded to the wildling’s first question, his tone very detached because in his mind the conversation they were having was completely separate to whatever situation they were in now… which was complicated and he didn’t want to think about it, but Aki’s next questions kind of forced him despite his best efforts to think about it.

”I guess… I guess hanging out and having fun is what you do if both people aren’t interested in each other as a mate. Like, for example,” he paused, trying to come up with words to make this very important distinction. ”I hang out with Risaka a lot. I like her as a person and we train together a lot to become better heroes. But I’m not interested in mating with her, so it’s not a date. It only becomes a date when both people go in with the interest of seeing if the other person could be a potential mate.”

”What would change… I guess being in a relationship and going to that next stage is kind of like marking territory on a person and kind of claiming them I guess. Like, if we were in a relationship what would change is that neither of us would be like allowed to find any other potential mates. It would just be you and me and uh…” he trailed off, growing noticeably flustered and changed the subject to something less associated with them and particular. ”But yeah, announcing you’re in a relationship is like making them off-limits for anyone else looking for a mate. You can still decide to back out if you decide you don’t want to spend time with them anymore easily, but there’s more commitment where both of you are like I choose you. It means you can do things like kiss or hold hands in public all you want without anyone getting upset and stuff.”

His face turned red after this, because it was only now that he realized he had been holding hands with her this entire conversation and swinging her arm around without a care in the world and just equated holding hands with being in a relationship. Oh no. Now, for the first time, there was this very real fear of rejection and honestly that terrified him more than a bit. He liked Aki, and he liked Aki a lot. Maybe he did see her as a potential mate, and maybe he would like to be in a relationship with her. Maybe he’d even enjoy that a lot! Maybe he’d even like to kiss her right no----actually, just the thought of that made him even more red and his breathing started to quicken again despite himself. Why was he effected this much by just the mention of a relationship? He was going to be a hero, damn it, he shouldn’t melt at just talking about things!

But at the end of the day, that wasn’t his choice and this was the first time that their personal relationship with each other would complicate and blur that line because he had grabbed her hand without a care in the world just a bit earlier. It wasn’t his intention to be super forward, on the contrary it was just to more efficiently lead the way! But now that she likely equated it with relationships she might pull away with disgust. She might laugh at him. She might give him that nasty snarl that some of the more pretentious and uppity members of U.A. like Akio gave him. That upturned nose and snarl that indicated that they were too good to associate with him. Being treated like the scum of the Earth, like because of his differences and lack of abilities in some areas it made him worthless in their eyes. Like he didn’t matter and would never be able to matter. It would cut extremely deep if someone like Aki looked at him that way, and in that moment his only hope was to not feel that sting of rejection. Red eyes turned to his classmate, filled with trepidation, awaiting her final response in the matter.

Aki blurted out a question that temporarily made Alex’s brain just completely stop working out of embarrassment. ”No, Alex has never been in a relationship. U.A. is the first ‘normal’ school that I’ve ever been in since like kindergarten, and even then it’s not super normal.” he explained, his face and tone betraying wholeheartedly how embarrassed the comment made him. ”I’ve mostly been in classes alone and haven’t really had a whole class filled with other students in like – almost ten years.” he didn’t count the grades in his head, but to him that sounded right. He was pulled from public school in America during the first grade, so it matched up at least mostly.

When Aki asked if that, and to indicate what she meant she held up both of their hands meant that Alex had claimed her, the American couldn’t find words. He just kind of stared blankly at the redhead as the silence to him seemed to stretch about seventy years. The delinquent could almost feel his hair turning from black to grey to white in that timespan, it was so damned long. Basically every awful scenario possible was running through his head in those moments, and a several shades of something very foreign to his dumb face appeared just briefly – and that something was fear.

Physical threats were something that he could face down. Maybe not well with his own body, but he very rarely got scared from the threat of physical injury. Some people like Kanna had noticed this and asked very rudely if he was too stupid to feel fear like a normal person, and perhaps he was when it came to stuff like that. Every living thing has a weapon against which it has no defense, though, and to Alex that weapon seemed to be the woman in front of him. The American was a person who hated being on the back foot, but the wildling had forced him to that position from the moment they met and he had never recovered.

When the girl finally responded, Alex visibly and audibly let out a shaky breath that he didn’t realize he was holding in. She didn’t pull back, and she didn’t let go. She just asked if she could kiss him and it was fine and no rules would be broken. ”Almost.” he stalled, in his usual state of being flustered around Aki once again and panicked for a completely different reason. ”You haven’t claimed me yet. If only one person claims, there’s no relationship. If you claim me, it becomes okay.” he explained, forcing a bit of a smirk on his face despite his breath continuing to be as shallow as ever and feeling like the sun had taken up permanent refuge in his face with all of the heat that was radiating from it at the moment.

”It’s only okay if both people claim each other. For humans, you can’t just decide to relationship with someone without them claiming you too. That’s not okay and is very bad. Both people have to want it for it to be okay.” he continued, mostly to stall. It was an important distinction, and one that he had to make sure he added in if they were going to do this. Alex himself couldn’t just decide they were together, Aki had to want it too. There was no point in even trying to deny that he was extremely attracted to the girl, so he was basically doing his thing and in the most awkward way possible for a human being asking the redhead if she was attracted to him back.

When Aki began explaining how she grew up, Alex just gave her hand a little squeeze and for once shut the fuck up and let someone else talk freely. It… explained a lot, actually. So she lived in a tribe at the edges of society, like the nomad people they learned about in history class. They didn’t live in towns, but in the wilderness and hunted and gathered food and stuff to live. He didn’t know too much about them other than that, but the way that Aki was describing her life prior to going to U.A. it all clicked in his head. That was why she didn’t have any social skills, because like him she had never learned.

She was also much more used to animals than humans, that made sense. She had accidentally gone into a farmer’s field and killed some of their cattle, and she got arrested. At the mention of the place with bars and no freedom, Alex winced but didn’t say anything yet. Not only arrested, but thrown in jail. He squeezed her hand in what he hoped was a reassuring way as she continued explaining that she was at Yuuei – and another thing clicked into place in the boy’s head as well. Aki would be considered by most to be a bad fit for school, and likely considered herself to be too. But to her U.A. represented the opposite of what it represented for him. For him, it was a freedom he had never known before in his life. For her, it was just a bigger cage with more space and tons of people who looked, acted, and sounded strange to her. It must be like being thrown into a foreign country without even really knowing the language or the customs, which was something that Alex could relate to much more than most.

Still, at this point he kept silent. This was the most he had ever heard Aki talk at once, and he wasn’t about ready to interrupt her while she was on a roll. Not even when she swapped subjects back to relationships. He nodded along to her explanation of how things worked in nature, but he had no idea how that applied to them specifically until she pulled him in close and kissed him on the cheek. He was still confused, until the redhead asked him if they were in a relationship now that she had claimed him back. Instead of responding verbally, Alex released his hand from Aki’s and cupped her face with both hands and kissed her properly on the lips. ”It is now.” he breathed as he pulled away after one good one and reached to grab her hand again. ”Also, I think it’s only fair that I tell you where I come from since you trusted me enough to tell me where you came from.” he continued, his voice much lower than usual so that even if anybody else was around they wouldn’t be able to hear. ”You can’t tell anyone, though, okay? You’re the first person I’ve ever told. It’s a secret. People would do a bunch of very mean things if they found out.” he added, his tone deathly serious to impress the gravity of the situation to the wildling.

”My mom is actually in that place you mentioned with bars and no freedom right now. I don’t know where, but that’s the last I heard a few years ago.” he paused for a second, and seemed to just stare off in the distance for a few seconds before continuing. ”I might be from the city, but I didn’t grow up in a normal city way. My dad was uh… Well, my dad was a villain. Same powers as me, actually. Real strong. Real angry. Gave me the scar on my face when I was really small, cut me to the jaw bone. They took me out of public school after that so people wouldn’t ask questions, and while Mom did her best uh… The homeschool thing didn’t turn out too good. That’s why I’m so bad at normal school stuff, I never learned. I had a house, but it was basically just a bunch of big rooms with bars and no freedom instead of one small room.” he continued, shrugging a bit as he finally stopped staring out in space and looked back to Aki for a second.

”Dad ended up getting killed by heroes back in America, and me and Mom fled the country over to Japan. We were both locked up in the small rooms with the bars and no freedom for a while, but since I was so young they let me go into what they called ‘foster care’.” the visible shiver and grimace that went through the American’s features told Aki all she needed to know about that, as well as the tone of absolute disgust with the term. ”Basically the adults think that kids can’t fend for themselves, and since my dad was dead and my mother was in jail they considered me an orphan who needed supervision. So I got thrown into this big house with adults who didn’t care, and mind you I didn’t speak a lick of Japanese at this point either. The person in charge was this old lady who hated everyone, all I did was mostly get beaten with sticks and yelled at in a language I couldn’t understand. I eventually got out of there to bounce around to a couple of more normal houses with foster parents, but none of them really cared anyway and I never stayed in one place longer than three months after the mean lady house.” he continued, the disgust lingering in his voice.

”U.A. was the first time I’ve had any freedom, really. It’s weird. I’ve never lived outside the city, or really ever went at all before this. Heck, I barely even got to go outside at all. It’s weird, but we’re learning.” he finished awkwardly, squeezing the redhead’s hand a bit as he said the word ‘we’. ”It’s kinda the opposite for you, isn’t it? U.A. must feel so small compared to what you’re used to.”

There were very few instances in Alex’s life where he wanted to talk but couldn’t find any words. There were even less instances where he didn’t even know broad strokes what he wanted to say even if he could. He was new to this whole being emotional stuff, because his whole life it was kind of just suppressed and not really talked about. God, this was weird.

He legitimately had no idea what he was supposed to do. Did he hug her at this point? Did he kiss her again? Did he cry? Did he just squeeze her hand more? He was already doing that a lot… He listened without interrupting when Aki talked again, mostly because he had no idea what to say. He did realize something very clearly just then, though, and that was anyone who called Aki dumb was an idiot. The fact that she was able to take concepts that even the American didn’t fully understand and convert it to a medium in which she understood so quickly was quite frankly extremely impressive. She was able to pick up those concepts within a single conversation what probably took him years to internalize and research, and that was super cool.

Honestly, that bit on heroes was something to really think about. Is that was heroes were? Was that the role that they supposed to take up? Is that what their duty was, at the fundamental level, to prevent the promises that the government made to society from being broken? Were they just the evolution of law enforcement into the modern era? If that was true, then were villains just the next evolution of the violent psychopaths of yesteryear? He had never really thought about this before. The American had always equated heroism with the military really more than anything, seeing their purpose as to violently put down threats to society when all else was insufficient.

”So does that mean heroes are like police, then?” he asked aloud, his tone making it extremely clear he was asking a question rather than explaining something. ”If heroes keep promises, then the promise they keep would be to keep people safe, right? Because I don’t think anyone ever made a promise to beat up all the villains, just to keep innocent people safe…” he trailed off, not making a point because he really didn’t have one. He had never thought about being a hero like that before in his life. He had always just kind of assumed that beating up villains was the primary duty of a hero, and that was what he had focused most of energy to get good at.

Was that wrong?

His red gaze fixed on Aki, looking at her for the first time wondering what other giant surprises like being a goddamned genius she had in store for him. It may have been a trick of the light shining down on her just right, but she also seemed to become even more beautiful than she normally was in that moment. When she talked about the differences between U.A. and her home, Alex actually sniffled a bit and when she was done talking he stopped walking forward and turned towards her to wrap her up in the biggest hug he could possibly give her. For all of his faults, he knew all too well the feeling of being painfully alone in the world. He could relate to feelings of isolation, of having no friends or people to do anything with, and nobody to talk to. What he wanted to do in that moment was to make sure that the girl in his arms knew that she didn't have to feel that way ever again. She didn't have to learn to suffer in a crowd like he had to, no. He would prevent that from happening.

”Hey Aki,” he said, basically whispering in the girl’s ear at this point. ”Since heroes stop promises from being broken, I’m gonna make you a promise ok?” he continued, his voice as smooth as silk in that moment. His heart was absolutely racing and he had no doubt that she could feel just how fast it was beating when they were this close. ”I want you to remember this, okay?” he stalled, trying to think of how he wanted to word this. When he initially hugged her he had absolutely no plan of what he wanted to say, but realized suddenly that anything he said would be held to like it had the force of law.

With that in mind, Alex let himself speak with no filter because it just felt right for some reason. ”You are never going to be alone again, okay?” he started, sniffling and clutching the redhead close with renewed vigor. ”No matter what happens, I’m on your team, okay? Neither of us have packs, so we’re gonna make our own. We’re making our own pack, and you’re in it. You’re in it forever, okay Aki?” he said, continuing to sniffle to try and hold back the tears that were forming in his eyes. Oh god the emotion. Oh god he had no idea how to deal with this so he just continued to hug Aki tight to his chest so she couldn’t see him struggle not to cry. ”You’re getting all the pillowfights. You’re getting all the pranks. You’re staying here, okay? You’re gonna stay here and become an awesome hero, Aki. You’re gonna be super awesome and you’re gonna keep all the promises. You’re gonna keep all the promises, Aki.”

Dammit, why were his cheeks suddenly hot? Were those tears? God dammit why was he crying? Why did his heart feel like it was pounding seven thousand times per minute? Why was his breathing so shallow all of a sudden? Dammit. Couldn’t he just spend one day with Aki just feeling normal? What the hell was wrong with him? Why couldn’t he just be normal for one fucking day that he could have fun with a beautiful girl in? Why did he always have to be like this, ruining nice moments with his stupid emotions and feelings?

What Aki said about Glave-sensei made a lot of sense. Nobody could do literally everything it took for an entire team of active heroes to do. Like, it would be reasonable to assume that Darkshine was the strongest hero out of all of them at the moment because of her handling of the Tokyo Hospital incident and an exceptionally powerful villain that would have wiped the floor with almost any other hero with his devastating quirk in a one on one scenario. Her quirk, though offensively absolutely devastating and perhaps the most powerful offensive quirk in existence period would be next to useless in a lot of situations that a hero may encounter, though. What could she do with her quirk if people were drowning in a river, for example? She would need assistance from heroes with quirks that fit the situation better, just like most heroes would be unable to respond to the hospital incident.

A hero would then be useless in a bunch of different situations outside of their niche, so it made sense for them to focus on one particular area to be really good at and focus on saving as many people as they could in that area. That was a whole new way of looking at it, and it was a lot to chew on. Did that mean he would in fact be a terrible fit for Darkshine’s sidekick because they had too similar styles, or would the versatility of his quirk outweigh that doubling down of weaknesses? There was no time to think about this now, though, all it would do is confuse him and hurt his head a lot more than it already hurt trying to get all of these new concepts and way of looking at the world through his thick skull. He wasn’t always the best with new concepts and stuff, but this would be a lot to take in for anyone he thought simply because it was an entirely new way of perceiving the world and not simply a new idea or two.

Emotions overwhelmed him, as they always seemed to at some point, as he wrapped the wildling out in an embrace. He wasn’t the most perceptive in the moment, so he completely missed the step back and instead almost leaned into her more than he normally would have. When he got done pouring out all fot the words he had to say, he resigned himself to just letting the tears stream down his face as he struggled to regain composure and a steady breathing pace. In response, Aki shoved forward against him with force and buried her head into his chest as she exploded with excitement that was crystal clear from her tone. It just made him choke up all the more hearing how excited she was about the prospect, mostly because he had no idea if he could live up to it. No idea if he was even capable of keeping the promise that he had just made.

He had just set the bar insanely high for himself, and it meant that he had essentially committed to not only being in a relationship with Aki but to be her rock forever. Impulsive, absolutely, but it was what Alex thought was right to do at the time. ”Yeah, Aki.” he ended up choking out in between belabored gasps between sobs, ”Always part of the pack.” he paused again before managing to finish: ”I’m not leaving, not now and not ever.”

He didn’t know what to do, honestly, so just held Aki as close to him as possible as he just let the wave of emotion wash over him for as long as it took to actually become able to think, to be able to breathe again. He definitely felt a new weight on his shoulders, though, one he wasn’t used to at all. If the job of a hero was to keep promises, he had just made a big one that he had no idea if he could actually follow through with. What if she was taken back to that discipline school again? What if he couldn’t make the grades and was forced out of the school? What if she ended up hating his guts in a few months? What if he simply wasn’t good enough for all of this trust that Aki seemed all too willing to place in him?

He wasn’t even that great of a person, not really, not like some others at Yuuei who had truly noble reasons for signing up. There were way better people, way more trustworthy people she could have latched onto but didn’t. He didn’t know why that was, but he had made a commitment in the here and now and was going to do his absolute best to see that commitment through if it was the last thing that he ever did. A hero who couldn’t keep the promises that they made was a useless hero, and Alex was never going to settle for being useless. He had already mentally accepted he wouldn’t be the best, but the very least he could do was put himself on the map. A hero’s job as to save people, and if he could save Aki as his first… Well, that would be the most fitting, wouldn’t it?

That’s the entire reason that some people became heroes, right? To protect the ones that they loved? Did making a promise like that, such a permanent promise mean that he loved Aki, then? Was that the source of the feeling of warmth in his chest and the unsteadiness in his legs? Was this what love felt like, then? He sure hoped not, because he couldn’t stomach feeling like this all the time forever. He hoped love felt lighter than this, and a heck of a lot happier to boot. At least, that’s what he hoped it felt like because he didn’t know if he could handle feeling as heavy like he did currently for another second – let alone forever! God, why couldn’t he just stop crying for two seconds?