A/N: I've become a big fan of Lody lately. Never thought I'd say that, but it's true. Anyway, I ended up writing something. Not much to it, but I figure I'll put it up anyway.
I don't own The Suite Life series.
Summary: Sometimes the things left unnoticed are the most obvious.
She was stunning. That was the only way to describe London Tipton. She lit up a room the second she entered. But guys like him weren't supposed to want girls like her. She was rich and ignorant, self-centered and superficial. She was everything he'd never wanted in a girl. Her conceit and shallowness drove him crazy most of the time. And smart wasn't a word anyone would ever use to describe her. While Cody knew that she wasn't as dumb as most people assumed, he also knew that she wasn't exactly a genius either. Which is why this made no sense. It made no sense that he was standing here with his arm around Bailey and unable to take his eyes off of London. It wasn't logical and it wasn't sane. But that's exactly what was going on.
Bailey was the kind of girl he'd always imagined himself with. She was his equal in academics, she was independent and kind. But there was just something missing between them. There was no spark.
He felt plenty of sparks when he was with London. She had a radiance that drew him in. He found himself making excuses just to spend time with her. Her inky black hair made his fingers itch with the desire to touch it. The sparkle in her eyes when she was happy made him go out of his way to make her smile. That led him to the discovery that she had a fondness for raspberry hard candies which caused him to generally have a supply of them in his pocket. As they neared graduation, London had decided to actually try to bring her grades up and Cody had slipped into the role of tutor. It became routine to spend an hour or two on the sky deck every day, studying and talking. Cody was surprised to find that London was actually capable of carrying on a rather intelligent conversation if it was something that she found interesting. Her interests were actually far more varied than he had previously given her credit for. She was quite knowledgeable about art and he found that after reading Pride And Prejudice back at the Tipton, she had actually developed a love of Jane Austen. She wasn't lying when she said she never read; she'd simply discovered that she could listen to them on her MP3 player. At Cody's suggestion, she had expanded her tastes to include a few other classic novels, although she insisted that they all had to have happy endings or she wouldn't bother. And somewhere in the middle of all that, he'd come to the realization that he was crazy about London Tipton. The feelings had come along slowly, so that he hadn't even noticed it was happening until it was too late to stop it. One day she had been his ditsy friend from Boston and the next she'd become the girl he couldn't get out of his head. And that had left him with one hell of a problem. A problem that he really had no idea how to solve.
He knew that Zack had his suspicions about what was going on. He'd made a few well-placed comments to remind Cody that he already had a girlfriend. A few others reminding him that said girlfriend was way out of his league and he should be grateful that Bailey even looked at him. One less subtle comment involving physical pain if he broke her heart that left Cody wondering if Zack might be harboring some secret feelings of his own. These were all things that Cody knew and understood. The one thing Zack never mentioned was the one thing that was truly holding him back. Cody knew that even if he ended things with Bailey, even if he told London how he felt, it wouldn't lead anywhere. So he stayed with Bailey, the girl he should have fallen in love with in the first place. And he made sure everyone else stayed oblivious to his feelings, especially London herself. He wasn't really worried about her figuring it out herself, but he wasn't going to take any chances.
London was unattainable. She was the girl who would never see him as anything but a friend, a tutor and more than likely, a child. She was twenty years old now. He was still seventeen. He was awkward, not as smooth or charming as his twin, and he certainly wasn't rich. Those were all pretty much deal-breakers for the young heiress. It didn't keep him from having these feelings for her, but it did help him keep things in perspective. There was no point ruining what he did have by going after someone he'd never have. So he smiled and laughed, whether he felt like it or not. He held Bailey in his arms, and it was her that he kissed goodbye at the end of the night. For all appearances, he and Bailey were the perfect couple and he would make sure it stayed that way.
Cody seemingly never noticed that long after she had ceased to need his help with her studies, she still came to him daily for their tutoring sessions. While he thought it odd that she rarely dated, he never mentioned it and she never explained. The fact that she was rarely around when Bailey was got written off as a coincidence. It wasn't like the two of them had ever been close anyway.
Later in life, when things would become much clearer, Cody always cursed the things left unnoticed for keeping him away from London for so long.
A/N 2: Damn, what a weak ending. I couldn't get it to come out right. Oh well, I may come back and edit it at some point if I can come up with something better.