Satoru’s already got the door cracked open when you reach his dorm, like he knew you were coming. He’s not smiling, not saying anything. Just standing there barefoot in an old hoodie, hair still damp from a shower. His eyes flick over your face - one slow sweep - and then he steps aside. He doesn’t say anything about how wrecked you look. He doesn’t have to.

“You look like hell,” Satoru says finally, voice low, brow arched.

“You heard, then.”

“Yeah,” he says, moving toward his bed without looking back. “Shoko told me.”

Of course she did. Shoko always knows. Even about dumb, short-lived flings with guys who act sweet for three weeks and then ghost like cowards.

You follow him in, dragging your feet like you’ve been through a curse zone barefoot. His room’s the same mess it always is— half-unpacked training gear slung over the desk chair, his sunglasses tossed on the windowsill. The only light is from the cheap lamp beside his bed, casting a soft golden circle across the tangled sheets.

He doesn’t say anything else. Just climbs into bed, pulls the covers up to his waist, then looks at you, eyebrows raised. Waiting.

“Get in, dumbass.”

You pause. Just for a second. Then you climb in after him, careful not to look at him too long. The mattress shifts beneath your weight, springs creaking, and it smells like him here — laundry detergent, candy, the faintest trace of cologne. It’s stupid how comforting it is.

And then, without a word, without even looking, Satoru hooks an arm around your waist and pulls you in like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

“This is weird,” you murmur, cheek pressed to the collar of his hoodie.

“No, it’s not.”

It should be. But it’s not.

It wasn’t weird last time either, or the time before that. Not when he let you curl up beside him after a nightmare, or when Satoru held you after a cursed mission that left you shaking. Not when you told him about that older sorcerer you hooked up with over break, and he went quiet for a full day. Not when he kissed you behind the dojo last summer, when neither of you said anything after. And it’s not weird now, not with his fingers brushing slow circles against the bare skin above your waistband.

“He was an idiot,” Satoru mutters, voice quiet and close. “You keep picking ones that can’t handle you.”