AN: Hello and welcome back to Gormiti Love! I'm glad to see that you guys are enjoying it and I hope you will enjoy this week's oneshot!

Prompt(word): stay

Couple: BlizzardStormshipping

Set during: This wasn't specified but it will be set between 2x15 "Crushed" and 2x16 "Wingless.

Ages: Toby and Jessica - 13


I couldn't help worrying about her. After we had returned from our latest mission in the Gorm, she had been all smiles but I couldn't help feeling like she was putting on an act.

Could I blame her for that after everything she's been through? No, not really. If I had been horrified by what had happened to her, I couldn't even imagine how she must have felt.

At the moment, I am heading upstairs to find her. She hasn't been herself lately and I want to help her in any way I can.

"Are you okay?" I ask as I open her bedroom door. To my surprise, I see that she is on the verge of tears, a huge contrast to how she's been acting lately. "I-I can come back later if you want?" I say, moving back towards the door.

Her voice is quiet as she whispers, "Stay...please!" I turn around and look at her. She looks so...so broken. It makes my heart ache to see the sorrow in her eyes.

I find myself moving towards her bed as I let out a choked, "Okay," in response. I sit down on the edge of the bed and watch as she scoots along to get closer to me.

"I was scared..." she admits when I feel the weight of her head on my shoulder. "Toby, I was so scared..."

I gently rub her back with one hand while saying in as reassuring a tone I can manage, "I know, but it's over now."

Her eyes widen as I take one of her hands in my own, lacing our fingers together. "I was scared too," I admit.

"Y-you were?" she asks in surprise. "B-but why?"

My thumb starts stroking the back of her hand of its own accord as I try to think of the best way to answer her.

These feelings I've been experiencing for her are still fairly new to me yet they feel so familiar and so...right. Any time she had been in danger in the past, I had been worried about her, like any friend would be. But this time had been different...

I recall vividly seeing her trapped under that wretched dome along with a couple of Air Gormiti. I remember the jolt of horror I felt when we discovered that the dome would shrink until it crushed everybody trapped inside. I had felt sick to my stomach watching her hands pound uselessly at the magically-resistant material from the inside and even more so when I had attempted to do the same from the outside.

It's true what people say: you don't realize how much someone means to you until you nearly lose them. It definitely applies to Jessica and I...because I didn't realize how much I loved her until I almost lost her forever. And I have no intention of ever losing her.

If need be, I'll stay by her side forever if I have to. Maybe as her love, maybe as her friend - I don't yet know. I have no clue which I am to her at the moment. All that matters to me is protecting her from all the evils in the world.

"Because I almost lost you and I don't think I could handle that," I tell her eventually. She gives me a curious look, her head tilted to one side. "Maybe I'll tell you why someday."

I can hear my mom calling us down for dinner. I reluctantly go to remove my hand from hers as I stand up. "Come on," I say to her before thinking for a moment and adding, "that's unless you don't want to."

She shakes her head and stands up. For a brief moment, she slips her hand back into mine and I feel my heart swell with happiness. She has no clue what she's been doing to me lately. She can't have.

Her lips form words that both excite and terrify me. "Will you stay with me tonight?"

My mouth feels dry. Does she not know the hard time I have trying to stop myself from showing her exactly how I feel about her? I don't have a lot of self-control to begin with but I think it's impressive that I'm managing to hold off the possessive, hold you close all the time phase of my feelings so well. But if she keeps this up, my resolve will eventually break. There's only so much I can take when it comes to her - not that I think she knows that.

It's all I can do to nod my head slowly. I know I shouldn't but I'm in too deep now. This girl makes me feel so much that if she asked me to stay with her forever, I'd accept in a heartbeat.

But forever is still a long time away and for now, tonight, it will be the two of us. Skirting around feelings, whispering words of comfort. I won't let her feel any hurt. Not while I'm around.

She wanted me to stay because she needed me, she tells me later on. Little does she know that I agreed to stay because I needed her too.

It wasn't so much Need for me as it was Love, though. It makes you want to stay by somebody's side no matter what they say or do.

I have to wonder: did she ask me to stay because she loves me too? And what would it mean if she did?


AN: And that's the end of this oneshot! I apologize if it seems short but I hope you guys like it, regardless of length. I headcanon that Toby realizes he is in love with Jessica in Crushed, in case this didn't make that obvious already

Don't forget to send in requests for future oneshots and I'll see you back here after the next ROTLON chapter has been written.

See you next time and thanks for reading!