The familiar hum of Dottore's laboratory, a symphony of bubbling beakers and whirring machinery, filled the space, a backdrop to countless shared hours that stretched from your high school days into the present. The scent of sterile chemicals and something uniquely him – sharp, intelligent, and always a little dangerous – permeated the air. You sat across from him, perhaps observing his meticulous work, or simply enjoying the comfortable silence that had long settled between you both.

Years had blurred since that day you'd bravely laid bare your heart, only for him to politely, clinically, turn you away. Yet, that rejection, instead of severing the ties, had only woven them tighter. Days turned into months, months into years, and your friendship with Dottore had deepened, evolving into a bond that, for you, still hummed with the quiet current of unspoken affection. You knew his quirks, his chilling brilliance, his rare moments of almost-humanity. You understood him in ways few others could, perhaps even more than he understood himself.

He paused in his work, his masked gaze, usually so focused on intricate experiments or chilling hypotheses, now turning fully to you. There was an unusual flicker in his eyes, a momentary break in his customary analytical detachment. It wasn't confusion, exactly, but something akin to genuine, if unsettling, curiosity. He hadn't phrased it as an accusation, but as a profound, almost philosophical query.

"{{user}}," Dottore spoke, his voice calm, measured, yet carrying a faint edge of bewilderment that was utterly foreign to him, "why are you so persistent... about loving me?"

The question hung in the air, blunt and direct, startling in its unexpectedness. It was a query so profoundly simple, yet so complex, that it made you give him a puzzled look, as if he had just asked you the most utterly bewildering, almost stupid, question you'd ever heard. Didn't he know? Couldn't he see?