Alekai's breath came in heavy pants, white puffs of air bursting with each exhale into the frigid night. His legs burned from running, his lungs more so, but they were nothing compared to the slowly breaking pain in his chest as he replayed what happened only 30 minutes ago over and over again.

He pushed himself to go faster even as exhaustion begged him to stop, to rest, to breathe...

He didn't want to.

Against his own instincts, he licked his frosty lips, stumbling when he tasted the familiar copper tang that surrounded his mouth. The cut on his lip was still fresh, still tender, and a smudge of reddish brown was swiped against his cheek from earlier desperate attempts to get rid of the evidence.

It didn't work.

His throat constricted as he turned a corner, skidding in the middle of the street as he ran down it's dim lamp post lit concrete and gravel. No one would be awake at this time of night to care about the boy running through the streets anyways, and if they saw it was Alekai Boyce, the resident drunk, first born, let down then they would've ignored him anyways.

Usually, he crazed those drinks... the ones that burned the entire time you drank them but made your mind hazy and impossible to filter through. He treated alcohol as a barrier against things he didn't want to remember and it usually worked... until he woke up. Right now, there was that familiar yearning for whiskey, but there was something deeper that he wanted, something that couldn't block the memories but could keep him afloat as he swam through their dangerous torrents.

And that something was her.

With her house in sight, Alekai's desperation slowly dwindled down until he was stumbling towards her front door. His dead legs shook with the effort to keep him up, and he actually tripped on the first step to their door, landing hard on his knees and hands. He coughed - hacked, really - as his choked up throat tried to swallow gulps of air. "Fuck.", he whispered, shivering against the cold air that blew past. He lifted his head, his face pale and wet with thin trails of tear, the dried blood on his lips and cheeks stiff and sticky as he stared hard at the door to her home.

He was so close, damn it. Two feet from the only person who could help him right now. Two feet from someone who could stop the shattering in his chest. Two feet from the from the girl who could make it all better with only her voice.

His head dropped down slowly in acceptance, pushing against the freezing ground as he punched the concrete angrily. The tears he had held back as best he could were flowing freely down his nose, the muffled choked sobs pushing their way past the fingers that tried to keep them in.

"Alekai?"

His head snapped up at her voice. Her short hair was flowing and tangled, her jade colored eyes still droopy from sleep. She wore a large t-shirt and some sweats that used to be her dad's... she was like an angel, he thought to himself.

His throat constricted once more, and somehow, someway, he found the last ounce of strength he had to push himself to him feet and stumble towards her, his numb fingers wrapping around her warm waist and pulling her against him as he buried his face in those tangled waves.

The girl was shocked to say the least. She tensed just like she always did when they had minimal contact, her arms locked to her sides, and her cheek pressed hard against his shoulder. He knew that she was confused, maybe even a little pissed that he was on her doorstep in the wee hours of the morning, but he also knew that she wouldn't send him away.

When she finally pulled back, her hands firm against his waist to keep him from toppling over, those fiery, stubborn eyes raked over his form, taking in his state. He could see the mild surprise in those orbs as they settled on the deep cut on his lips, and hesitantly, with an ever so feathery light touch, she ran her thumb under the mark. Finally, their eyes met again and there must've been that she saw that told her that something about this was breaking him more than anything else had, because the next moment, she was helping him to her room and giving him a pair of her dad's old clothes to replace the bloodied shirt and ripped jeans he worse.

The process was silent and quick, neither one of them questioning each other, and neither one mentioning her dad and what he would say when he saw his daughter and this boy under her sheets in a warm embrace.

His hands were locked around her waist, his face stuffed beneath her chin as she hesitantly wrapped one hand around his shoulders and the other ran through his hair. It wasn't ever something that happened to Alekai, being held in a manner such as this that wasn't leading to some drunk sex session, and he knew that this was why he felt the desperate need to see her rather than a bottle like he usually did.

"He punched me.", Alekai finally said, an hour of silence passing between the two before he finally whispered these words against her collarbones. He could feel her shiver, his breath gliding over her warm skin like frost. "It's not the first time.", he admitted as well, the words pouring from him, "but this time it was different... what he said was different... He and I have never had a good relationship. Im not the son he wanted as his first born, and he's not the father I need but- fuck, Leo-", he choked, his whispered voice breaking, "no one should be told something like that, especually from their father no matter how fucked up their relationship is."

His grip around her tightened, his breaths choppy and deep like he couldn't breathe around the ball in his throat. He swallowed thickly, waiting for her to say something, anything that could chase away these dark thoughts swirling in his head.

He sucked in a breath, feeling her play with a strand of his hair, twirling it around and around her fingers and when she finally did say something, he barked out a shocked, choked laugh.

"I still haven't told him yet.", she had said, her voice cool and controlled like always.

A small smile hinted at his lips as he tilted his head up to look at her, breaking the concentration she had when she was playing with his hair in order to look down at him. "Your dad's gonna kick my ass when he finds out, isn't he?"

Leo hummed in response, her fingers brushing against his cut just like they had earlier, "I'd say there's a 50/50 chance, yeah."

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DISCLAIMER
Leo does not belong to me. Any and all creative credit for this oc is to PokechuBirdie. She created this character and allowed me to create a short story between these two after she had created her own! The last part of this story is meant to entwine with her own version so I would highly recommend you go check hers out! It's in her short story book under the chapter with Leo's name.

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𝙿 𝚕 𝚊 𝚢 𝚕 𝚒 𝚜 𝚝
"𝙲𝚊𝚗 𝚈𝚘𝚞 𝙷𝚘𝚕𝚍 𝙼𝚎" 𝚋𝚢 𝙽𝚏 𝚏𝚝. 𝙱𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚝 𝙽𝚒𝚌𝚘𝚕𝚎