Had she assumed he would never bring a woman home to meet her -- no, that wasn't quite right. That made it sound like she didn't want him to be happy, or didn't think he could be happy.
"Of course you already know Bridget." His smile so small and soft and secret and not for her.
Lenalee did know Bridget. Her brother had complained about the woman over dinner, too forceful -- too domineering.
She forced herself to smile, and of course she was happy, but deep down Lenalee knew that she was also disappointed. Her brother's perfect woman had turned out to be nothing like her.
The first time she'd met Orihime, Rukia had thought the other girl a little strange -- a little off -- but nothing that merited Ichigo's casual dismissal of her.
The second time, strange had changed to oddly endearing.
She would have had more trouble quantifying the feeling now. Breaking it down into one word, two, even ten -- was difficult. She only knew that the thought of Orihime in danger was like a wrench to her heart.
That attacking Aizen's base might get them all killed was such a small price to pay to make that feeling stop.
No; the world wasn't ending, because they were ending.
Asch -- the real Luke -- was going cold in his arms. He pulled the body closer, buried his face in broken armor, and tried to tell himself it would help.
"This should be you," he told the other boy softly. "Should've been me full of arrows. Should've been me who stayed behind in that damned room. Didn't I tell you...?"
The skin beneath his lips was still cold, but Luke -- the fake Luke -- held tight, pressing closer in the most intimate way he could, and willed his flame into those ashes.
They sat together, facing away, which said everything about what they had become. Flynn looked out at the gently-stirring waters of the oasis, feeling too intensely the warm line of Yuri's back against his. He had no way of knowing what Yuri was seeing; all he could do was imagine, wistfully, the way he'd been imagining all along, like a lovesick schoolgirl.
Finding out that Yuri was a murderer, a criminal, should have made the feeling go away. But it only ached more, twisting in his chest until he felt like he might break. The stubborn boy he'd secretly admired all his life had done some unforgiveable things, and Flynn was the one who felt like a bastard for taking him to task for them.
But if he stayed quiet just a little while longer -- enjoyed Yuri's presence just a little while longer -- maybe he'd remember that he was not trying to punish Yuri for the path he'd chosen, but to save him from the rest of the world.
The rest of the world could never see in him what Flynn did.
What an idiot, she thought. He went out in the rain all day fussing over people he couldn't help and now he was the one who needed fussing over, laid flat and sick and ridiculous.
Anise didn't do charity. She didn't believe in donating to the poor or praying for strangers or giving away her stuff. She also didn't believe in working unpaid overtime. So she definitely wasn't sitting by Ion's bedside, nursing him through the night on a weekend, because she was just that charitable. She was getting paid, as far as she was concerned.
Payment enough when Ion opened his fever-hazed eyes and smiled at her with a distracted sweetness -- even more precious than his usual smiles.
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