Same dude. Same chick. Different look on their relationship. This one probably takes place before the first chapter (confusing, I know, and I'm sorry for it, but I'm writing these as the inspirations come). Oh, and for anyone who's wondering C..B means Cold. Insensitive. Good for nothing. Bastard. Just 'cause I was desperate for names. This one was a bit harder for me to write than the first one. There were some points that I've been wanting to make for a while, but have never quite found to words to do so. Also, an experiment with writing styles. Normally I'm past-tense third person. This one is present-tense third person.

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She finds it funny (no, not haha funny, but ironic funny) that the more time she spends with him, the less she notices his appearance. One would think that taking advantage of the eye-candy he provided would have become second-nature, but instead she finds herself caring less and less about it. It doesn’t change the fact that she still thinks he’s the handsomest man she’s ever met. He is. And she can acknowledge that—if only begrudgingly. It’s not as if she doesn’t notice it; it’s more as if it doesn’t matter.

The more she spends time with him, the more she sees the face created by his asshole tendencies and the less she sees of the face sculpted by skin, cartilage and bone. Never judge a book by its cover. Once a dickwad always a dickwad. No amount of good looks can change his personality. She thinks that, put in this particular context, those statements have yet to be proven wrong, and she can’t help relishing that one small triumph.

Take the cloud-watching incident for example. She’d only been trying to do something fun and recreational with him by pointing out a cloud that looked a lot like a hiking boot. He had refused to use his imagination enough to acknowledge that the cloud was anything but a cloud. He hadn’t been able to wrap his mind around the concept that it was anything but cloud-shaped and had completely slaughtered her attempt to do something nice with him for once. He had insisted that making remarks about the nonexistent similarity between clouds and shoes didn’t constitute as doing something nice because the observation was, quote/unquote: “inaccurate and unintelligent.” Bah! He had been the stupid one because he didn’t have enough brains to register when one shape resembled another.

She wonders why she even tries sometimes. He isn’t exactly what you term an “exciting person.” Far from it. His idea of fun was working, working out, or listening to Harvard lectures on quantum physics because they were only partially correct. He thinks games are a waste of time and he doesn’t know or care about sports. He doesn’t have a music preference because he doesn’t know anything about it, and motion pictures don’t grab his attention. He doesn’t read for fun and food is just something he prepares and eats to survive. She likes to think that the only reason he concerns himself with general facts about fashion was because society requires he do it—and heaven forbid somebody try to strike up a conversation with him. He’s smart, she knows he is, and she knows that he has opinions on a lot of interesting topics, but he’s too closed to share anything, even if it’s brought up.

So, to put it bluntly: he’s boring. Unattractively, appallingly, boring. He has to be the most uninteresting human she’s ever met. And it doesn’t help that on the occasions that he does open his mouth, the only things that come out are some sort of cynical, asshole-ish or business-related crap. On a scale of one to ten (one being the worst and ten being the best) she would have to give him a negative ninety-three for his shitty social skills.

She doesn’t understand why, despite all of his boringness, he still intrigues her. She really doesn’t get it. Perhaps it was in the discovering that he was more than just a pretty face, if only barely. That when she asks him a direct question he has no choice in answering he doesn’t seem to mind telling her exactly what he thinks, as long as it doesn’t come out nicely. Despite the fact that he doesn’t seem to appreciate it, he never stops her from chewing his ear off—figuratively speaking, of course.

Perhaps it was because he has what could be loosely termed as a Past and Emotional Baggage (or lack thereof, depending on how you look at it) and she can’t help but feel inclined to help him, even if the only help she could give consisted mainly of her presence and one-way conversations.

Maybe it’s because his power and penetrating gaze fascinate her, or that she feels encouraged when she finally manages to speak civilly with him about something, even if that something was trivial.

Perhaps it’s because that even though he really, truly, and honestly doesn’t care about her he still helps her out when she needs it most. It can just be the thought of him, of how he would handle a situation. She finds that things he’s actually said or done rarely come into play, but when they do, they come in that much stronger. He can be as much of an inspiration as he can be a hindrance. It all depends on the moment, the thought, the time of day.

Her favorite explanation for her interest in him is because he’s so boring. How can someone live their life so monotonously? Why is he so content with it? Why doesn’t he seem to care that he could do so much more?

What she doesn’t like to dwell on is the niggling thought that resides in the back of her mind, the one that tells her that maybe the reason she’s so intrigued by him is because she thinks she loves him. For all he’s done, for all he hasn’t done, for everything she thinks he is and everything he’s proved himself to be. For everything he can and cannot do, she thinks she loves him, and she doesn’t really know why. Sure, he’s gorgeous. Sure, he lets her vent to him. Sure, he helps her when she needs it, whether he knows it or not. Sure, she wants to return the favor and make him a little more sociable. Maybe it would stand to reason that she likes him a little bit—but love? It makes no sense, but she can’t shake the feeling. Her friends tell her that she’s jumping to conclusions, that she doesn’t know him well enough to love him, that it’s probably a crush at the most, and she tends to agree. How could you love someone who never fails to get a rise out of you? How could you love someone you barely know anything about?

But the thought remains, and the more she learns about him, and the less she sees his handsome face when she looks at him, the bigger and more insistent it becomes. It makes her think that she can see him warming up to her, that she’s growing on him so that her presence is less of an annoyance and more of a pleasure. The thought gives her hope that perhaps there’s a chance he could like—might even love—her back, or at the very least consider her a friend.

She doesn’t think he’s going to accept her overnight, and she has a feeling that if she refuses to give up on him and move on she’ll end up dedicating the rest of her life to him. She doubts he’ll care one way or another, but she also believes that he doesn’t see the point in someone helping him when he’s such an impossible person. She has to agree that he is stubborn. But then again, so is she—and she’s not about to give up just because the task before her is challenging. Even if she wastes her life trying to prove to him that he’s not a lost cause, because he’s only a partially lost cause. If she finally manages to do it then it would be a life well spent to her, despite the fact that it’s only him and he wouldn’t appreciate it anyway, because it would mean she hadn’t given up. And if there’s even a chance for him to look at her as something more than a pest, then when he let her hold his hand all her efforts would be made worth it.