Once, Aliver had asked his parents what it felt like to be in love. They hadn’t had a solid answer to give, nor a good way for him to definitively find it or to know what he was feeling as love. But, as his mother told him, he’d know it when he felt it.

He certainly felt it with Calloth. He felt it whenever Calloth would turn his head away, whenever he’d avoid Aliver’s persistent attention with an uncomfortably-crinkling brow, when Aliver gazed at the hand that brushed him away as carefully as possible.

He felt the agony of it. The thought that he was not Calloth’s first choice, not the person who Calloth thought he would be in love with. He was an interloper who swept out of nowhere, saw a pained face in profile and just couldn’t help himself. Aliver was weak to people who needed help and Calloth needed it--if not in the most conventional of ways.

He’d never had someone resist his help so hard and for a reason he couldn’t understand. At least, that he couldn’t understand at first.

Maybe if Aliver had been quicker, if he’d arrived sooner, Calloth would’ve believed Aliver was the one who was meant for him. Then he could’ve prevented this heartache and disappointment altogether.

But he hadn’t been, so he had to live with what he had.

If only love could be easier.