A/N: I was really surprised that a few of you actually added this story to your alerts! It gave me an extraordinarily warm and fuzzy feeling. Happy authors = more updates! I was also surprised at how this story took a darker turn, because I didn't really have a plot planned out, but I guess I'll just go with it :P If you enjoy it please review! Yyyeah. Love, Jessica.

"I'm not doing it," said Juushiro, running a hand through his hair. It had turned white his second year at the Academy during a particularly bad coughing fit, and he had had to go back to Ugendo for an entire month. Though white hair in itself wasn't a bad thing, as he'd mused to himself occasionally, it was a constant visual reminder of his illness. Everyone who had seen him before and after the incident knew that there was something wrong with him, that he had a strange disease that made him cough up blood and his hair lose its natural black color.

"I'm not doing it," he repeated again, watching Shunsui out of the corner of his eye. "The coughing. I can't do something to someone like that."

Shunsui lounged on his bed on the other side of the long room, riffling through the pages of the book as if he couldn't care less about their contents. "It doesn't matter, Juu. You're always too serious. Have some fun, kiss a few girls, learn to laugh a little more."

"You think I don't laugh enough? I've pulled enough pranks with you. And I'm not worried about myself, it's about Unohana—Retsu, isn't it? She's nice, I suppose. I don't want to get myself tangled up with her, though. The illness—didn't I tell you already? It scares people, and I don't need her to think that some sort of diseased man is trying to force himself on her."

"Whoever said anything about you forcing yourself on her?" Shunsui grinned naughtily, one end of his uneven smile peeking out higher than the other. "Get your mind out of the gutters, Juu-chan. Retsu's not a stupid girl. She'll probably know a good man when she sees one." They were getting to a dangerous topic, and despite his grin, Shunsui wasn't sure if his push had turned into a shove.

Juushiro took a deep breath and sat down, coughing lightly into a handkerchief. Shunsui was right about so many things—Retsu was pretty and nice and probably smarter than himself. It wouldn't hurt to be friends with her, but a girlfriend? A girlfriend was the sort of thing that Shunsui would have. He'd always viewed himself as the more calm and collected type, whereas his best friend was the fiery and passionate one of the two—not to mention the biggest flirt in Shino Academy.

"Do you really think that would happen?" he asked no one in particular, though he knew full well that Shunsui was the only one listening. Was he supposed to feel something for a girl he had never met? Blue eyes that tilted down at the corners, a thick braid down her back, a book and a shady seat during break at the academy: that was all he really knew about her. Juushiro snuffed out the lamp and the room was suffused in the gray-blue darkness of night, evening breezes brushing the roof. "I can't imagine it at all."

Shunsui was silent. He was eager to play the part of the matchmaker for his friend—though he made a resourceful prankster and a fun accomplice, there was something darker and more private about Juushiro, a part that he rarely talked about. "It's really the disease, isn't it?" he asked quietly, wondering if he'd gone too far this time.

Juushiro had been expecting a witty comeback, but he just sighed and cleared his throat. "I'm the oldest one in my family, and I feel like I have to protect everyone else. Up until I came here and met you, I always thought I would be the weakest." Images flashed through his mind in the darkness: As a young boy, herding his siblings back inside the estate and feeling the sharp cut of breath in his throat as he ran behind them. The crying of a sister during Seireitei's last huge thunderstorm as he wrapped himself in a blanket, coughing and coughing as if the pain would never end. White shapes and figures of light moving around through closed eyelids, and when he'd woken up, the blankets heaped at his feet. "I shouldn't have to be the one who everyone else has to take care of. When I figured out that I could fight, there seemed like there was a chance for me, other than an invalid." He paused, trying to untangle the mess of words that stuck in his throat like phlegm. "I don't want… to have to burden anyone else."

"Juu-chan." The voice was barely a whisper. "That doesn't mean you don't need friends. Just—just give it a try, all right? Sleep on it. Figure something out. If you really feel that bad about yourself, then you goddamn deserve to be in love." Juushiro heard Shunsui roll over in his blankets, pulling the curtain shut against the window. "Good night, Juu."

Juushiro did not—could not—sleep all night.

The moon made playful shadows on the wall by his pillow, and he felt unbearably warm in his blankets. Shunsui was probably right—he'd come all this way, four years at the academy, so why not have some fun at it? He flipped his head over, nudging the mass of white hair to the side, the one blatantly obvious sign of his disease. Juushiro couldn't visualize what it would be like, living in perfect health—would that mean he wouldn't have to carry a handkerchief wherever he went? Would he be a stronger fighter, a better student? Would he have turned out like Shunsui? As much as he loved his friend, he could never imagine what it felt like to be him.

He couldn't tell if it was the beginning of another coughing attack or simply discomfort over the thought, but Shunsui's playful matchmaking had hit something in him that he wasn't sure he could handle. Him, of all people, with a girlfriend? It wasn't an outlandish idea—most of the students at the academy played around at some point, stealing a kiss or flirting. That said, it wasn't as if Juushiro hadn't had his fair share of female attention—as Shunsui had so kindly reminded him, though, everything he'd done in the past few years apparently did not count as "enough."

So what was "enough?"

He didn't know how to act around girls. Naturally, Juushiro tried to be a nice person, and from what people occasionally said about him, he had been fairly successful. Shunsui, being the flirt that he was, could fit at least twenty cheap pick-up lines, half of them outright sexual, into a two-minute confession of love. Loath as Juushiro was to admit it, Shunsui made it look so easy.

Maybe, then, it wasn't that he couldn't flirt with girls in "the right way." Maybe he just hadn't had enough experience. But then how exactly did one go about getting girls to fall in love with oneself?

More importantly, Juushiro wondered, how did one go about falling in love with a girl?