Romantic?

Love; cliche and overused.

Romantic?

Feeding an ego, perhaps.

Romanticism; poetry and stories and music.

Beautiful?

Maybe.

It was like suffocating.

He'd try to breathe, slowly at first.

He'd start slow, speed up, but there wasn't enough air still. There was too much; it took up the space where oxygen was supposed to go. He didn't think he'd try to stop it. It was painful, sure, but he wouldn't have traded it for anything.

You steal my breath away, Kusuo-kun.

His lungs would fill, still empty. Air. It didn't register correctly.

Dyspnea.

There was air, Akechi knew there was air, yet he didn't feel it.

Faint.

He'd faint.

It wasn't true, because oxygen was entering his lungs.

Causes: Anemia, asthma, anxiety, heart or lung problems, a history of smoking, etc.

He didn't smoke. Seeing his grandfather coughing and wheezing scared him away from it quickly. He wasn't sick. He wasn't anemic.

He knew the symptoms, he knew the signs, he knew himself.

Anxiety?

Love.

Love made no sense.

He was healthy; at least, healthy enough.

You cause me to suffocate.

But that's not romantic.

His stomach hurt sometimes.

Takashi was long gone; it wasn't that.

Full. Or was it empty?

Either way, it was wrong. It seemed wrong. It hurt him. Akechi could feel the pressure; the strange phenomenon every time he thought about Saiki.

I can feel the butterflies in my stomach.

Butterflies.

What an odd choice.

Butterflies were light and airy; delicate and graceful. They fluttered softly and sweetly, all around, swirling. It almost tickled.

But this didn't tickle. It wasn't soft and sweet.

It was more like...

Bugs?

Wasps.

Wasps stung.

Acetylcholine.

A chemical in a wasp's venom.

It causes pain. It makes it hurt.

Noradrenaline.

Raises your blood pressure. The physical symptoms were different than he'd imagined.

Love can do this?

Love can do this.

They flew and fluttered, sure, but they hit the edges, the walls of his insides, stinging again and again.

But Kusuo-kun hates bugs.

Phospholipase B.

It breaks down the membrane of a cell.