A/N don't own em, nope. None of them. This one I've puposely left the "I" kinda unknown cause well, I can see both Nigel and Garret in this posistion. And props if you get where the self-preservation line is from. (Still can't believe no one got Bill McCai in White Knight...) anyway, last thing you'll see from me in a week. When I get back thoguh I will finish For Harry, With Love and Steele AND have a new fic (possibly two!) up.

It's funny how you can spend your entire life, or what feels like it, hiding the one thing you want most. You can think about it, fantasize about it, have it completely take over your dreams, but yet, you never show that its what you want. You act like it's the furthest thing from your mind. But it's still always there to tease you, to tempt you, to make you try and show your feelings. But you always keep them in check.

I know that feeling all to well. Watching the one thing I want most day in and day out, always completely oblivious to my feelings. There's not a single person in the world that knows how I feel for her, no one. I'm fairly sure there's more than one person who suspects it, but if they ever ask, I never tell, I always write it off as just friends, as only friends, nothing more.

I know that I'm not the only one though, I know that there's three of us that love her. But two of us are of the noble sort who won't show our feelings for her, if only because we want her to be happy, and if she's happy with Woody, so be it. She loves him, he loves her, she's happy, that's the important thing right?

So the two of us, we act like it's nothing to us, that we don't care at all that the two of them are the perfectly happy couple, we act like we're glad for them, when in reality the two of us go home and drink ourselves into oblivion Neither of us tell the other, but we both sense it.

Neither of us want to admit that we've been in love with her since she waltzed into the place a decade ago and waltzed out with our hearts. I know I don't, I don't want to admit the way that she just stole my heart right out of my body, taking it and shattering it into a billion little pieces. But I act like it doesn't mean anything to me. That I love her only as a friend, as my best friend, nothing more.

It doesn't mean I don't want more, I've always wanted more from her, I've always wanted to be the one that's standing next to her, the one that she leans her head against when she's tired, the one who's always running around doing everything for her, at her beck and call, the one who loves her and that she loves.

But neither of us will ever tell her how we feel. It's a self preservation thing. The less she knows the less she can hurt us. If she doesn't know we love her, she can't use it against us. This way we don't get her pity, we don't get her saying that she loves us, she really does, just that she loves Woody more.

The most ideal situation would be that we just act like we don't care at all, that she's just another person, that we could act like we hate her, but we can't. She depends on us. So I'm forced to be her friend, I'm the one that she turns to, the obligatory dinner date, the one she calls when she doesn't want to be alone. I have to care.

And so she teases, she tempts, not knowing what she's doing. She doesn't know, it's not her fault, she doesn't know what her teasing does to me. To her, it's just innocent teasing, just fun that she's having, if only she knew what it did to me. But I have to act like it means nothing, that it's just that-innocent teasing, it's a self-preservation thing.