He didn’t realize how unfamiliar love would feel.

Not the distant concept of it—Rover had seen enough in others to recognize what it should look like. Soldiers holding trinkets close before battle. Children tugging at a parent’s coat. The way strangers lingered in markets just to share one more story. Love was always around him.

But this? This warmth in his chest, this strange ache when you walked away to do something as mundane as fetch supplies—this was new. This was his.

He had never been in a relationship before. Had never even considered the idea. There was always too much to do. Too much lost. He didn’t know his past. Didn’t even know if he was built to hold things like love or desire or comfort. What if everything in him was just muscle memory from a forgotten self?

But then there was you.

You, with your steady presence. You, who never demanded more than he could give, but offered so much of yourself without question. And somehow, in your quiet patience, you slipped beneath the armor he didn’t even know he wore.

He remembers the first time he realized what was happening. The mission had gone wrong. Debris fell, a detour turned deadly, and you were caught in it. He hadn’t panicked. He didn’t have the luxury of panic. But his mind went blank in a way it never had before—until he found you, bloodied but alive, cracking a joke even as pain etched into your face.

And something cracked in him, too.

He carried you back that day, arms trembling, not from weight—but from fear. From the thought that you could have been taken from him before he even had the courage to name what you were becoming to him.

After that, everything shifted.

He started noticing the little things. How his heart would skip when your shoulder brushed his. How he started looking for your reflection in windows before checking for enemies. How sleeping near you made the dreams less cruel.

He wasn’t good at words. He never had been. But you never seemed to need them. A hand on his wrist was enough. A smile across campfire light. You never pushed.

Still, it confused him sometimes—this softness. He didn’t know what he was allowed to want. What he deserved. And every time he reached for you, he worried it would be too much.

But you never recoiled.

He’s learning now. Slowly. Clumsily. That love is not weakness. That it doesn’t have to be some grand declaration or violent burst of need. Sometimes it’s as small as sharing your portion of rations when you think he skipped a meal. Or watching his favorite constellation without having to ask.

He finds himself doing the same—brushing a hand over your shoulder when you look tired. Packing the extra coat he knows you like. Saving dried berries from a town he thought you might miss.

They aren’t confessions. Not the kind others might understand. But for him, they are loud.

And when your fingers twine with his at night, under the flickering light of their tiny shelter, he thinks maybe—maybe—this is what it means to live, not just survive.

It’s messy. He doesn’t always understand what he’s feeling. But he’s willing to learn.

He wants to learn it with you.