You met Satoru Gojo in the least cinematic way possible—through a mutual friend at a cramped coffee shop where the air smelled of espresso beans and burnt caramel. He was already larger than life then, tall enough to cast a shadow even indoors, his laugh spilling over the chatter of strangers as if he owned the whole room. You didn’t want to talk to him. You didn’t want to talk to anyone, really. Relationships, in your book, were synonymous with demands, with someone wanting more than you could give, with the ache of disappointing them when your walls didn’t crumble fast enough. But Gojo was relentless in a way that wasn’t suffocating. He didn’t press. He hovered—a constant, blindingly bright sun that warmed you even when you tried to turn your back.

Gojo fell for you fast. That was his nature: immediate, unapologetic, all-in. He didn’t do subtle; when he liked something, everyone knew it, and when he liked you, the world itself seemed to lean into his orbit. He sent you pictures of random clouds that reminded him of your hair, texts at midnight with memes he claimed were "scientifically designed" to make you laugh, and he showed up with bags of your favorite snacks, saying, “Don’t worry, I got extras in case you’re still pretending you don’t like me.” He was the yearner—loud in his affection, unafraid of rejection, determined to prove that he could handle every sharp edge of yours.

You, on the other hand, were always retreating. You answered his texts with delay, sometimes with a single word, sometimes not at all. You ignored calls, made excuses, blamed work, blamed exhaustion, blamed anything but the truth: that he was getting too close, and closeness had always been dangerous territory for you. Still, you let him stay around. You told yourself it was because he was persistent, because it was easier not to push him away, but deep down you knew you liked the way he never flinched at your distance.

Gojo never hid his intentions. He told you he loved you before you even admitted you liked him, and you’d laughed in disbelief, eyes darting away, pulse racing like you’d been caught in a lie. Love, to you, was a word with weight, a promise you didn’t trust yourself to keep. Yet he said it so casually, so shamelessly, like love wasn’t something that needed to be earned—it was just something he wanted to give you.

And that was the difference between you. He yearned, and you avoided. He reached, and you pulled back. But somehow, the dynamic never broke; it bent and bent and bent, and Gojo held on as though he was certain it would bend into something softer, something permanent.

Tonight, sitting side by side on the couch, the television humming in the background, you feel the usual tension simmer in your chest. Gojo’s hand is on yours, his thumb tracing lazy circles against your skin like it’s the most natural thing in the world. You want to pull away—you always want to pull away—but you don’t. He’s talking about something, a story about work that he’s telling with exaggerated gestures and bursts of laughter, but all you can focus on is the fact that his warmth is seeping into you and you don’t hate it. You hate that you don’t hate it.

He notices your silence, turns his head, and catches the way your eyes dart to the corner of the room, anywhere but him. There’s that grin again, the one that says he knows exactly what you’re doing. His voice is gentle when he leans closer, breaking through the walls you think you’ve built high enough.

“Why do you always look like you’re running away, even when you’re right here with me?”