Summary: Enzan/Netto pairing. Incredibly low spoilers for EXE 6. (Not even plot-related, here.) Based on one line from EXE 6. Response to a challenge to a friend to do a story based on a single canon line.

Disclaimer: If I owned them it's doubtful Meiru would still be alive. If I owned them there'd be shonen-ai. Look at the games and tell me honestly that you think I own it. It's Capcom's.

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Enzan's POV

I can't believe I let that slip out.

You weren't supposed to know, Netto. You weren't supposed to know I had feelings for you.

Hell, I barely knew that I did.

It was a little while ago I realized it, though. I felt it but ignored it, probably from the first time we met. At some point between you declaring your intention to stay in a room filled with radiation and helping me out at the N1, I knew how I felt. And through all of this, I keep teasing myself with the possibility that you might feel the same way.

I should have realized it when I started trusting you to help me. I never trust anyone, Netto. Not even Blues can get to me the way you can.

It's probably stupid of me to think I could ever have you, though. You're so friendly, everyone likes you. You could probably have anyone you wanted. Why would you want me when I've been so cold to you in the past, when you thought you had to do so much to get me to warm up to you?

That was my way of defending myself, even though I know you'd never intentionally hurt a friend. You're not like that. You're always in such danger though, I don't know how you're still alive.

The number of times you've saved me doesn't even compare to how many times you think it has been. In every way I live for you now. I have so few things to hold onto now, and you are one of them…

I can't tell you all this, though. I'll just have to hope that you figured out how difficult it was for me to tell you that you're important to me at all, and imply it from that.

I wouldn't blame you for being uncomfortable with it. There are a million things running through my mind every time I look at you.

Netto, you are my strength and my weakness. I only hope that you can understand what I could never be able to say to you.

Netto's POV

You shocked me, Enzan. I didn't know you could care about anyone.

No, that's harsh. I know you want to care about people. I just didn't realize you knew how. Most people would say you don't, but you've had so many chances to just go and never come back, and you haven't.

I don't even know where you live, Enzan. You could get away from me if you really wanted to. You haven't, though.

After we got back from WWW Isle, you stood on the side and encouraged me to go to Meiru. Am I imagining it, or did I see a spark of jealousy in your eyes? I interpreted it as being for her back then, but was it of her? I know you couldn't have done anything then, but…

It's odd to think about as I look back on it and re-interpret everything I thought I knew about you. There's a whole other side to you I didn't know about.

You don't have to be jealous of Meiru. We've been friends so long that it wouldn't be right, to me, to think of her in any other way. When I think about you though, I'm filled with an emotion I don't understand. You irritate me like no one else can.

You see through me, too. You know I'm not as dense as I pretend to be—that's why you get annoyed when I do it. You know that about me when my own brother is still trying to figure me out. That spark in your eyes, when you say I was important to you…

Were you worried about me?

Wait…

Are you in love with me?

…As well as that…am I in love with you? I don't know. I'm partially afraid of what I might find out, at what we might find out, about ourselves and each other.

So I'll bide my time for a bit, make sure before I ever try you out on this. We keep running into each other, I'll have the chance.

And maybe, just maybe, I'll figure this out and we'll finally be able to breathe again. Maybe I'll tell you that you're important to me, too.

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Read and Review, please. Flames will be used to increase my mage's attack power.