I don't need you to do anything like that. You don't have to take care of me, or date me, or do anything you don't want to. [ Akira pulls away, just a little, to give Akechi a sort of half-smile. It's strange -- that Akira, of all people, has trouble imagining a future in which he gets what he wants; in which he's allowed the kind of things everyone else is.

For all that he seems to have hope for the future, he tries not to imagine what he wants too much. He can see it in his mind -- lazy mornings with the smell of coffee in a small apartment, the sleepy sound of bare skin on sheets, the rustling of paperwork and typing of keys. It feels so natural that it aches inside of him, because he wants it more than anything, and he's afraid that it means that this -- this thing, this one desire that he has -- is just going to be wishing for someone to come in when he was a child having nightmares. ]

So -- can you just let me love you? Just until you can leave. When you can, you can go as far away as you want. But until then.