He had heard the humans call it a crush, and he had to agree that it was an appropriate term.
There was a weight to it, this thing that sat in his chest. A weight and a warmth and a pull that he could not quite deny. He had felt its callings before, singing sweet songs into the void that would always go unanswered, dancing along the edges of their orbits. And then the warmth would turn to something sharp, twisting within his chest. Like swallowing knives. Like swallowing heat.
It was a peculiar problem of the potals, he knew. Among his people, such weighty things were rarely ever carried, their romances light and fleeting as air. It was a quirk of his gender that allowed him to bond, solid and lasting, a feeling that formed a connection that required more than distance to sever. He carried the weight of many such bonds, even long after they had been severed. They sat within his chest and lined up on his dash, rock after rock that twisted sharply within his chest but that he was never strong enough to put down.
He lived for them, really. Collected them in secret.
The heavy press of lives he had touched and loves he had held, collected like memories in his albums.
And his heart sang of its treasure into the darkness, unanswered always.
Until she came.
His heart called and she answered and it was a startling thing, startling and strange. Here then was a person who did not run from the weight but who helped him to shoulder it. She helped him to nurture it, her heart harmonizing with his own, turning the warmth not to jagged heat but to something that suffused his whole being, something that lit up the night. Something that felt… whole. At peace.
With her hands and her kiss and her breath, she lifted the crush up into something so much brighter, a beacon of hope, a beacon towards home. A beacon, he thought, the humans called love.