He's not as clueless as everyone thinks he is…well maybe sometimes, but not about this.
"Are you two close?"
"Well kinda I guess"
He knows about this, he's known about it longer than he's ever let on. She loves him. He'd have to be a bigger fool than he feels most of the time not to realize it. She's followed him to the end of the world and back and never complained.
In some respects he feels the same way.
Before all of this started he would lecture her about being absentminded. He cared even when all he was trying to protect her from was herself.
"Just watching her makes me tired, I hope she's ok"
A long time ago and what feels like very far away he was just another 15 year old boy.
"At home all you would talk about was Kurosaki"
She cuts to the quick of him in a way no one since his mother has, he's never felt like he's disappointed and failed anyone else as much as he has the both of them. It's ironic that they are the two people in the world he knows would never see it that way.
He's never met a stronger woman, sometimes he thinks she should know but he'll never tell her that. She does from her heart what the others do from obligation. If he hadn't already loved her that would be enough.
If he were a different boy maybe they would have a different story, one that involves movies and parks and video games. But he's not a different boy so instead she suffers.
He ignores it; he ignores the pointed looks from Rukia and the meaningful glares from Matsumoto. The accusing looks and thinly veiled hostility from Tatsuki, ignoring those are the hardest...she is his oldest friend
His greatest fear is that one day she'll ask him…one day she'll be as brave with him as with everything else and force him to answer. Sometimes he aches for that day so that this can all be over …mostly though he fears the look on her face when he has to lie to her.
No matter how he may or may not feel she'll never know. He'll never do anything to tie him closer to her. He has seen what just being near him has cost her…someday maybe she'll walk away and live happily ever after. He's smart enough to know he's not going to. He can't make her walk away, he isn't sure he's strong enough to do it even if it were possible. But he won't be the reason she stays.
Title: Clueless
Author: Nimacu
Disclaimer: Not mine, never has been.
A/N It's three in the morning and this was bouncing around in my head asking to be written.