Sunlight Through the Cracks
Roommate!Nerdjo x Fem!Reader
Synopsis: After catching your boyfriend of three years with someone else, you need a fresh start. A cheap shared apartment leads you to Gojo Satoru, a physics student with white hair, round glasses, and way too many space facts. He's messy and chaotic, but you you're quiet and still healing. You're supposed to be just roommates, but between his terrible cooking, the sticky notes in your books, and the night he shows you the stars from the roof, the lines start to blur.
Tags: roommate au, slow burn, fluff, mild angst, happy ending, NERDJO, mutual pining, hurt/comfort, getting over an ex, yearning , stargazing, domestic fluff, first kiss on a rooftop, reader is healing, they're both idiots, soft nerdjo content
Autor notes: this took me way too long....
You learned, after three weeks of apartment hunting in this city, that "cozy" meant "barely big enough for a twin bed" and "charming" meant "the radiator hasn't worked since 1998."
You'd seen eight apartments in seven days. You'd smiled at landlords who looked at your student ID like it was a joke. You'd nodded along as they explained that yes, the water pressure was "character-building" and no, the mouse problem wasn't really a problem, more of a community situation.
But you couldn't afford to be picky anymore.
The breakup had happened two months ago. Two months since you'd come home early from your study abroad trip, who were cancelled last minute, to find your boyfriend of three years in your apartment with someone who wasn't you.
Two months since you'd packed everything you owned into garbage bags while he stood there saying it didn't mean anything and couldn't you just talk about it. Two months since you'd realized that the future you'd been building, the carefully organized plan for your life, was built on nothing.
You'd stayed with your cousin for a while, sleeping on an air mattress that deflated every night. Then you'd crashed on a friend's couch. Then another friend's floor.
You were running out of friends, and more importantly, you were running out of the ability to look at yourself in the mirror without seeing someone who'd been so completely, utterly fooled.
So when you saw the listing
"Roommate Wanted: $400/month, utilities included, must be okay with weird hours and space facts"
You messaged within thirty seconds.
The address led you to a building that had seen better decades. The elevator had an out-of-order sign taped to it with so many layers of tape it looked like a modern art installation. You took the stairs to the fourth floor, your bag bumping against your hip, already calculating how many calories you'd burn doing this every day.
You knocked on 4B. No answer. You knocked again. Nothing. You checked the text from the landlord.
He knows you're coming. Just go in, he's probably just lost in a book or something.
You turned the handle, the door swung open. The first thing you noticed was the light. It poured through the large, plain windows in the late afternoon, painting the worn wooden floors in shades of gold and amber. Dust floating lazily in the golden like slow-motion snow. It was a good sign, you thought. A warm welcome after everything that had been cold and grey.
The second thing you noticed was the absolute chaos. Books were everywhere. Not just on the bookshelf, which was overflowing to the point of hazard, but stacked on the floor in wobbly towers, piled on the coffee table, wedged under the sofa to keep it from wobbling. Most of them had titles you couldn't pronounce. Introduction to Quantum Mechanics. Astrophysics for People in a Hurry. The Elegant Universe. A Brief History of Time.
There was a poster on the wall, and not a cool one, a detailed diagram of the electromagnetic spectrum, complete with light frequencies. There was a telescope by the window. Not a cute little hobby telescope. A serious one, all black metal and lenses, pointed at the sky even though it was the middle of the afternoon.
The third thing you noticed was him. He was laying on the only piece of furniture in the living room that wasn't covered in books, a faded navy blue sofa that had definitely been here since the 90s.
One long leg dangled off the armrest. The other was bent at the knee, a thick textbook propped against it. White hair, not blonde, not grey, but genuinely white, was laid out against a old cushion. Round glasses with thick black frames had slipped halfway down his nose. His lips were slightly parted, his breathing slow and even. He was asleep. With a physics textbook open on his chest.
You stood in the doorway, your single suitcase in one hand, feeling like you'd stumbled into someone else's life. Someone who owned three different models of solar system mobiles, all hanging from the ceiling at slightly different heights. Someone who had a blackboard mounted on the kitchen wall covered in equations you couldn't even begin to understand. Someone who had, inexplicably, a life-sized cardboard cutout of Carl Sagan in the corner.
You cleared your throat. Nothing. You tapped your foot, the floorboards creaked. One of the book towers wobbled dangerously. Still nothing. With a sigh, you dropped your suitcase, the sound echoed.
A soft snuffle, the textbook slid, the glasses slipped further. Then one eye opened, it was the most brilliant, startling blue you had ever seen. Like if you took the clearest winter sky and bottled it. Like if the universe he clearly loved so much decided to make a point.
He blinked slowly, focusing on you, a lazy, impossibly wide grin spread across his face. He didn't move, he just lay there, looking at you like you were the most interesting thing he'd seen all day, which, given the state of the apartment, wasn't saying much.
"Five more minutes," he said, his voice a low, sleep-rough murmur. Then his eye closed again. You waited, he didn't move.
"Excuse me?" you tried. The eye opened again. "Still here? Impressive commitment."
He sat up slowly, stretching like a cat. His shirt rode up, revealing a sliver of pale stomach. He didn't seem to notice or care, he pushed his glasses back up his nose and squinted at you through them.
"You must be the new roommate. I'm Gojo Satoru." He patted the space next to him on the sofa, sending a puff of dust into the air. "Welcome to mission control, want the grand tour?"
You looked around the apartment. From where you stood, you could see the entire thing, living room and kitchen. Two doors, one slightly open, revealing more books and what looked like an actual star chart on the wall.
"It's a studio?" you asked.
"Two-bedroom, actually," he said, grinning. "The other one's yours. It's smaller. Has less books." He said this like it was a selling point.
"I'm Satoru, by the way. Did I say that already? I'm still half asleep. There was a meteor shower last night, didn't get to bed until five."
"You watched a meteor shower?"
"I took pictures." He pointed vaguely at the telescope. "They're probably terrible, they're always terrible, but sometimes you get one good one, you know? Makes the sleep deprivation worth it."
You didn't know. You'd never watched a meteor shower, you'd never had time, you'd been too busy building a life with someone who'd thrown it away. He was looking at you now, really looking, and something in his expression shifted. The grin didn't disappear, but it softened. "You look tired," he said. "Wanna sit down? The sofa's ugly but it's comfortable. I've tested it extensively."
You should have said no, you should have asked about the lease, about utilities, about his schedule and your schedule and all the practical things that mattered. Instead, you walked over and sat on the edge of the sofa, as far from him as possible while still technically sharing the furniture. He didn't comment on it. He just leaned back, tucking his hands behind his head.
"Ah, a words person." He nodded sagely. "We'll balance each other out, you can tell me when my sentences make no sense, and I can explain why the sky is blue."
"I know why the sky is blue."
"Do you? Most people don't, they just accept it, it's called Rayleigh scattering. The molecules in the air scatter blue light more than other colors because it travels in smaller, shorter waves. That's why we see a blue sky instead of, like, green or purple." He paused. "Sorry... i do that, info dump, i guess you'll get used to it."
You looked at him, at the white hair that defied explanation, at the round glasses that made him look like a cartoon professor, at the long limbs folded awkwardly into the too-small sofa. He was strange, he was messy, he was nothing like the polished, put-together person you'd spent three years trying to become. It was the most relief you'd felt in months.
"I'm not looking for a friend," you heard yourself say. "I just need a place to live." Something flickered in his eyes. Disappointment? Understanding? It was gone before you could name it. He shrugged, easy and loose. "Works for me. I'm not looking for anything either. Just someone to split rent with and maybe water my plants when I forget."
He gestured vaguely at a collection of sad-looking succulents on the window edge. "They're succulents, you basically have to try to kill them. I've managed to keep them alive for six months, which is a personal record."
"In the kitchen drawer. The landlord's a family friend, he doesn't care about much as long as the rent shows up. I'll text you his number." He stood up, suddenly all motion, crossing to the kitchen in three long strides. "Want tea? I have normal tea and also space tea."
"It's just normal tea but I named it that because the box has a picture of a galaxy on it. Marketing works on me." He was already filling a kettle, moving around the tiny kitchen like he'd done it a thousand times. He had. This was his space, you were the intruder. You followed him, leaning against the counter. The kitchen was small but functional, the blackboard covered in equations was on the wall to your left. You squinted at it. "What's all this?"
He glanced over, tea box in hand. "Quantum field theory, i'm working through a problem set. It's probably wrong, it's always wrong, but it's fun to look at, right? Like abstract art, if abstract art was about particle interactions."
"You can understand that?"
"Barely. That's the fun part." He poured hot water into two mismatched mugs. "You spend your whole life trying to understand one tiny piece of the universe, and just when you think you've got it, the universe goes 'psych' and throws a curveball. Keeps you humble." He slid a mug toward you. The galaxy box was, indeed, just normal chamomile. "Here, for the tired." You wrapped your hands around the warm mug, it felt good.
"I'm sorry," he said quietly, not looking at you. "For whatever happened, the thing that made you look like that."
You stiffened. "Look like what?"
"Like someone who forgot they're allowed to want things." He shrugged again, that easy motion that seemed to be his default. "None of my business, forget I said anything, but the offer stands. Sofa's always available, tea's always hot, and I promise not to talk about space unless you ask."
He paused. "I will probably fail at that last one, fair warning." You almost smiled. Almost.
"I'm not sure I know how to want things anymore," you admitted, the words slipping out before you could stop them. He considered this, head tilted. "That's okay, you can borrow my enthusiasm until you find your own. I have enough for like, five people."
He grinned, bright and genuine. "Welcome to the chaos, roommate."
The first week was an education. You learned that Gojo Satoru did not believe in alarm clocks because "the universe doesn't operate on human schedules." This meant he woke up anywhere between 7 AM and 2 PM, depending on when the previous night's stargazing had ended.
You learned that he owned exactly four plates, three of which were usually in his room holding books. You learned that he could, and would, talk about dark matter for forty-five minutes straight if you made the mistake of asking a single follow-up question.
"You see, the thing is, we know it exists because of gravitational effects, but we can't observe it directly. It's like, okay, imagine you're in a dark room and someone throws a ball at you. You can't see the ball, but you can feel it when it hits you, right? That's dark matter. It's there, it's doing stuff, we just can't see it."
You were eating breakfast, you were trying to read a novel for your Victorian literature seminar. The novel was currently face-down on the table while Satoru gestured enthusiastically with a spoon.
"Fascinating? Mind-blowing? A little scary?"
"Actually I was going to say a weird analogy, but sure." He grinned like you'd given him a compliment. "I'll take it, weird is my brand."
He pointed at his white hair. "Didn't even dye this, born this way, my mom says I looked like a tiny angry cloud."
You snorted before you could stop yourself. The sound surprised you. You couldn't remember the last time you'd laughed. Satoru's eyes lit up. "Did you just, was that a laugh? I heard a laugh. Quick, somebody mark the calendar."
"Historical moment, roommate deigns to find me amusing. I'm framing this spoon." You threw a napkin at him, he caught it one-handed without looking, still grinning.
"Physics student," he said by way of explanation. "Good reflexes, also I was obsessed with baseball in high school. The physics of a curveball is actually really interesti—"
"Please let me read my book."
He made a zipping motion over his lips, but his eyes were still smiling. He returned to his cereal, which he ate with the enthusiasm of someone who'd forgotten to eat dinner. Again.
You'd learned that about him too, he got so focused on whatever problem he was working on that basic human maintenance got forgotten. You'd found a half-eaten sandwich in his room on day three. When you'd asked about it, he'd looked genuinely confused. "I put it down somewhere. Did I not finish it?"
"You put it down on top of your keyboard."
"Huh. That explains the sticky keys."
The thing about Satoru was that he was impossible to stay mad at. You tried, sometimes. When he left his textbooks all over the coffee table. When he used your favorite mug and left it in his room for three days. When he started explaining the physics of microwave radiation while you were just trying to heat up leftovers.
But then he'd do something, like notice you'd had a bad day and make you tea without being asked, or leave a sticky note on your door with a terrible pun about literature, come home with a used copy of a book you'd mentioned wanting to read, because "I saw it and thought of you."
The book was Wuthering Heights. It had notes in the margins from some previous owner, and Satoru had written his own notes next to theirs in tiny, precise handwriting.
"Page 47: Heathcliff is literally me when I don't get enough sleep."
"Page 112: This energy? Unhealthy. Obsessed with it though."
"Page 201: Okay but why didn't she just TALK to him?? This could've been avoided."
You'd laughed so hard you cried a little. Real tears, not the sad kind, the kind that came from somewhere warm. You didn't tell him that, you just left a sticky note on his door the next day that said "Thank you for the book terrorism."
He wrote back: "You're welcome. There's more where that came from. I have opinions about Jane Eyre too." You were starting to look forward to the notes.
The first fight happened in week three. You came home from class exhausted, your Victorian lit professor had assigned a 20-page paper due Monday, your feminist theory seminar had been particularly intense. Your ex had texted you
"Can we talk? I miss you."
You'd deleted it without responding, but the damage was done, you could feel the old wound throbbing, the familiar ache of someone who'd made you feel small. You just wanted to sit on the sofa, maybe watch something mindless, definitely not thinking about anything.
You opened the apartment door, the living room was a disaster zone, not the usual organized chaos of books and star charts. This was something else, blankets were everywhere, draped over chairs, pinned to the walls, creating a complex system of fabric tunnels. String lights were tangled through it all, blinking in different patterns.
In the center of it all, Satoru sat cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by empty candy wrappers and what looked like schematics drawn on notebook paper.
"Welcome home!" he called, not looking up. "Don't step on the wires."
"What," you said flatly, "is this..."
"Fort." He said it like it was obvious. "A really complicated one, i'm testing a hypothesis."
"A hypothesis about what?"
"Whether you can create stable light diffusion using household materials." He pointed at one of the string lights. "See, I'm trying to simulate the effect of atmospheric scattering on a small scale. The blankets create the enclosed environment, and then the ligh—"
He finally looked up. His glasses were sliding down his nose, there was chocolate on his cheek. His eyes were bright with the particular mania of someone who'd been working on something for too long without sleep. "Yeah?"
"Can you not..." Something in your voice must have registered. His expression shifted, the excitement dimming. "Oh. Sorry, did you need the living room? I can.." He started gathering blankets, moving too fast, knocking over a tower of books.
"I just wanted to sit down," you said, and your voice cracked on the last word. Stupid. You were so stupid. It was just blankets, it was just a messy roommate being himself, why were your eyes burning? He stopped moving, he looked at you and you hated it. Hated that he could see you like this, hated that you couldn't hide it.
"Hey," he said softly. He stood up, carefully stepping over the wires. "Hey, what's wrong?"
"Nothing. I'm fine. Just tired."
"I'm not." You wiped your face, your hand came away wet. "It's allergies."
"Winter allergies are a thing." He didn't argue, he just stood there, close but not too close, giving you space. After a moment, he said, "Okay. But for the record, you're allowed to not be fine. In case anyone forgot to tell you that."
You laughed, it came out wet and broken. "That's very philosophical for someone who built a blanket fort to study light diffusion."
"The fort was for you, actually."
He rubbed the back of his neck, suddenly looking awkward. "I heard you talking to your friend on the phone the other day about how you used to build forts when you were a kid. Before..."
He stopped. "I don't know, i thought it might make you smile, but I got carried away with the light thing. I always do that, i start with one idea and then suddenly I'm calculating refractive indices and forgetting the point." He kicked at a blanket. "Sorry, it's stupid."
You stared at him. No one had built you anything since you were a child, no one had listened to a random phone conversation and thought I want to make her smile. No one had ever tried so hard and missed the mark so completely and still, somehow, made you feel like you mattered.
"It's not stupid," you said quietly. He looked up, hopeful. "It's the nerdiest thing anyone's ever done for me," you continued. "And that's saying something, because last week you gave me a diagram of the solar system with little notes about which planets you think would have the best weather."
"Jupiter would have terrible weather, for the record. The storms are insane."
"I know. You wrote that in the margins." He grinned, tentative. "So... you don't hate it?"
You looked at the fort, it was ridiculous, it was chaotic, it was absolutely, completely him. "I don't hate it," you said. "But I'm not going in there until you check for spiders."
"I'll do a full security sweep." He saluted. "Also I have snacks, Candy, chips, and..." He reached into a bag you hadn't noticed. "Freeze-dried ice cream, the astronaut kind, because obviously."
"You bought astronaut ice cream?"
"For the full space fort experience, obviously." You laughed, a real laugh, the kind that came from somewhere deep. His face broke into a smile
You spent the next three hours in the blanket fort, eating freeze-dried ice cream that tasted like cardboard and childhood dreams, while Satoru explained the difference between a meteor and a meteorite and you pretended to be annoyed but actually listened to every word.
At some point, you fell asleep, you woke up to find a blanket draped over you and Satoru gone. There was a sticky note on your phone.
"Went to get real breakfast. You looked peaceful. Don't move, I'll be back.
-Your favorite roommate (I'm the only roommate but still)"
You pressed the note into your book when you got back to your room, you weren't sure why, you just knew you wanted to keep it.
Somewhere along the way, without you noticing, Satoru stopped being just your roommate and started being your friend. It happened in small moments, the way he started making enough tea for two without asking, the way he'd text you pictures of clouds with captions like "this one looks like a duck. thoughts?"
The way he learned your schedule and started leaving the apartment quiet on days you had big exams, the way he noticed, always noticed, when you were slipping.
"You're doing the thing," he said one evening, looking up from his laptop. You were curled on the sofa, supposedly reading. You'd been on the same page for twenty minutes. "What thing?"
"The thing where you smile but your eyes don't, where you go somewhere else in your head and it's not a nice place." He pushed his glasses up. "You wanna talk about it?"
He went back to his laptop, you waited for the pushback, for the come on, tell me, for the insistence that always came with people who said they cared. It didn't come. He just let you sit there, silent, present, after a while, you said, "He texted me again."
Gojo didn't look up. "The ex?"
"That he made a mistake, that he wants me back, that I'm the only one who ever really understood him." The words tasted like ash. "Same thing he said last time, and the time before that."
"You've talked to him before?" You hesitated, this was the part you didn't tell people, the part that made you feel weak. "A few times. After the breakup, he'd call and I'd answer, and he'd say all the right things, and I'd think maybe..."
You stopped. "It never went anywhere, he never actually changed, he just got better at lying." Satoru was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was gentle. "That sounds really hard."
"It was stupid, i knew better and I kept going back."
"It's not stupid to want to believe someone you loved." He closed his laptop, giving you his full attention. "It's human, we're wired for connection, the problem is when people exploit that."
You looked at him, the low light from the lamp caught his glasses, making his eyes hard to read. "You're very wise for someone who eats candy for breakfast."
"Candy has essential sugars, the brain runs on glucose. I'm basically optimizing my cognitive function."
"You're deflecting." He grinned, unrepentant. "Yeah, a little, but I meant what I said. It's not stupid. You're not stupid. You're just someone who loved the wrong person, and that's a really easy thing to do."
He paused. "For what it's worth, I think you're way too good for him. And also, if he shows up here, I have a telescope that doubles as a blunt object."
"Are you offering to hit my ex with your telescope?"
"I'm offering options." He spread his hands. "Violence, discussion, passive-aggressive staring from the window. I'm flexible." You laughed, you couldn't help it. "You're ridiculous."
"I prefer creatively supportive.'" He stood up, stretching. "Come on, let's watch a movie, something terrible. Something with explosions and bad dialogue and absolutely no emotional depth."
"You just want an excuse to watch your space battle movies."
"Obviously. But also I want you to stop thinking about him." He held out a hand. "Deal?"
You looked at his hand, long fingers, pale skin, a small scar on his thumb from some long-ago accident. You thought about taking it, about letting him pull you up and into his world of explosions and bad dialogue and genuine, uncomplicated care. You took his hand.
His fingers closed around yours, warm and solid. He pulled you up gently, not letting go immediately. For a moment you just stood there, close enough to see the tiny flecks of darker blue in his eyes.
"You're going to be okay," he said quietly. "I know it doesn't feel like it right now but you are."
You didn't know how to respond to that so you just said, "What movie?"
"Armageddon. Obviously. It's scientifically inaccurate and I have opinions."
"Of course you do." He grinned, finally letting go of your hand. The absence of his warmth was immediately noticeable. You ignored it, or tried to.
Two hours later, you were both yelling at the screen. "That's not how gravity WORKS!" Satoru threw a pillow at the TV. "You can't just—the physics—I can't—"
"It's ENTERTAINING LIES." He slumped against the sofa, defeated. "This is why people don't understand space, they watch movies like this and think you can just... hear explosions in a vacuum."
"NO. Sound needs a medium to travel through. Space is a vacuum, there's no sound, it would be completely silent." You considered this. "That's actually kind of terrifying."
"Right? The universe is way weirder than movies give it credit for." He perked up. "Want to see something cool? Like, actually cool, not movie cool?" You should have said no, it was late. You had class in the morning, you were still tired from everything. "Okay," you said.
He lit up like you'd given him a gift. He grabbed your hand again, he was very hands-on, you'd noticed, always touching, always close, and pulled you toward the window. Not the one with the telescope, a different one, smaller, leading to the fire escape. "Come on. Bring a blanket."
You grabbed the throw from the sofa and followed him out onto the fire escape. The metal was cold through your socks. The city spread out below you, a map of lights and movement. Above you, the sky was surprisingly clear, pockets of stars visible between the buildings.
"Okay," he said, settling onto the metal grate and patting the space beside him.
"Look up, tell me what you see." You sat, wrapping the blanket around both of you without thinking, he was warm against your side. "Stars. Not many. Light pollution."
"Good, now look at that one." He pointed. "The bright one, slightly to the left. See it?"
"That's Jupiter, and if you look really closely—" He squinted. "Okay, you probably can't see them without a telescope, but it has moons. Four big ones, Galileo discovered them, changed everything."
You looked at the bright dot, it was just a dot. But knowing it was Jupiter, knowing there were moons circling it, made it feel different. Bigger. More real. "It's weird," you said slowly. "Thinking about how small we are."
"Right?" His voice was soft, awed. "Everything we do, every stupid fight, every heartbreak, every happy moment, it's all happening on this tiny rock in the middle of nowhere. And out there..." He gestured vaguely at the sky. "There's so much we don't know, so much we'll never know, it makes the small stuff feel smaller. But it also makes the good stuff feel more precious, you know? Because we get to experience it at all."
You turned to look at him. The city lights caught his profile, the curve of his cheek, the line of his jaw, his eyes were on the stars, full of wonder. "Why do you like space so much?" you asked.
He was quiet for a moment. "Because it's honest," he said finally. "It doesn't pretend, it doesn't lie, it just... is. And no matter how much I study it, no matter how much I learn, there's always more, always something new to discover, it keeps me going."
He glanced at you, suddenly self-conscious. "That's probably really nerdy."
"It's really nerdy," you agreed. "It's also really beautiful." He smiled, not his usual grin, something smaller, softer. "Yeah?"
You sat there for a long time, wrapped in the same blanket, watching the stars. You didn't talk much, you didn't need to. The silence was comfortable, filled with the distant sounds of the city and the occasional soft observation from Satoru about which constellations were visible.
When you finally went back inside, your feet were numb and your cheeks were cold. But your chest felt warm, fuller than it had in months, you didn't think about your ex once.
Spring came slowly, reluctantly, like it wasn't sure it wanted to commit. You'd been living with Gojo for four months. Four months of shared meals and late-night study sessions and his terrible attempts to teach you basic physics. Four months of him leaving his socks everywhere and you leaving him passive-aggressive sticky notes about it. Four months of something growing between you that you were trying very hard not to name.
It was getting harder, the problem was the small things. The way he'd brush against you in the kitchen and you'd feel it for hours, or the way he'd look at you sometimes, when he thought you weren't paying attention, with an expression you couldn't read.
The way he remembered everything, for exemple your coffee order, your class schedule, the fact that you hated mushrooms but loved bell peppers. The way he'd leave new sticky notes in your books, comments on the margins, jokes only you would understand. The problem was that you were falling for your roommate, and you had no idea what to do about it.
"You're staring," Gojo said one afternoon, not looking up from his laptop. You snapped back to reality, you were supposed to be reading. Your book was open in your lap, you had no memory of the last three pages.
"I was thinking," you said.
"Nothing." He looked up then, one eyebrow raised. "You have a very specific face when you're thinking about nothing, that wasn't it."
"The 'I'm somewhere else' face., the one you make when you're thinking about something you don't want to think about." He tilted his head. "You know you can tell me stuff, right? That's the whole point of being roommates, orr friends, or whatever we are."
Whatever we are. The words hung in the air between you. "We're friends," you said quickly. Too quickly. Something flickered in his eyes.
"Right. Friends." He went back to his laptop. "Well, friend, you left your tea on the counter and it's probably cold by now." You got up to get it, grateful for the excuse to move. Your heart was doing something complicated in your chest. You didn't like it.
That night, you couldn't sleep. You lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, replaying the conversation. The way he'd said "whatever we are." The way you'd jumped to "friends", how he'd looked at you afterwards, like you'd confirmed something he'd already suspected. Your phone buzzed.
me too. meteor shower in twenty minutes. roof access?
best time for meteors. less light pollution. fewer people. bring the good blanket
You stared at the message, you should say no, you should stay in bed, get some sleep, maintain the careful distance you'd been trying to build. You grabbed the blanket.
The roof access was through a door at the end of the hall that was supposed to be locked but never was. You'd been up here once before, with Satoru, on a night that felt a lot like this one. The roof was flat, covered in gravel, with a low wall around the edge. Satoru was already there, lying on his back on a picnic blanket, his telescope set up nearby.
"You came," he said, not looking away from the sky. "You said meteors."
"I said a lot of things, you could have ignored me."
"I considered it." He patted the blanket beside him. "Lie down. Best viewing angle."
You lay down, leaving a careful six inches between you. The blanket you'd brought was draped over both of you. The roof gravel dug into your back through the picnic blanket. The sky was huge above you, more stars visible here than from the fire escape.
"Any minute now," he murmured. "The Perseids, well, technically not the Perseids, those are in August. This is a smaller shower, but still cool."
"How do you know all this?"
"I pay attention." He shrugged, the motion shifting the blanket. "Also I have an app that alerts me to celestial events, it's very dramatic, lots of exclamation points." You laughed softly. "Of course you do."
Silence. The city hummed below you, a siren in the distance. The wind carried the smell of something cooking from a nearby apartment. "There," Satoru breathed.
A streak of light across the sky, gone in a second. "Did you see it?"
"I saw it." It had been small, fast, almost easy to miss., but you'd seen it.
"I don't believe in that."
"Neither do I. Do it anyway." You closed your eyes, the wish came easily, too easily, something you'd been holding in your chest for weeks. You opened your eyes and didn't say it out loud.
"What did you wish for?" Gojo asked.
"If I tell you, it won't come true."
"See, I don't think that's how it works. I think that's just something people say to keep wishes private." He turned his head to look at you, in the dark, his eyes were deep wells. "I wished for something stupid."
"More nights like this." He said it quietly, almost to himself. "More moments where everything feels right." Your heart stopped. Then started again, too fast. "Toru..."
He blinked. "You called me Toru."
You had, you'd never done that before. It was always Satoru, always his name, never a nickname, always a little distance. But in the dark, with the stars above and his eyes on you, just his name felt wrong.
"Sorry," you whispered. "I didn't mean—"
"Don't be sorry." He was still looking at you, not moving. "I like it, from you."
The space between you felt electric, six inches that might as well have been a canyon. You could reach out, you could close the distance. You could—
Another meteor streaked across the sky, neither of you looked.
"Can I tell you something?" His voice was rough. "Okay."
"I've never had this before." He swallowed. "This... whatever this is, i've never had someone who just... sits with me. Who lets me talk about space for hours and doesn't get bored, who laughs at my stupid notes."
He paused. "I don't want to mess it up."
"You won't," you whispered.
"You don't know that." His voice cracked. "I'm messy. I'm annoying. I forget to eat and I leave my socks everywhere and I talk too much about things no one cares about, and you..." He stopped. "You're so put together, you have your life organized. You're healing, and I'm just... me."
"I'm trying to say..." He took a shaky breath. "I think I like you. More than a roommate, more than a friend, and I know that's not what you signed up for. I know you said you weren't looking for anything., and I get it, I do, you're still hurt and I should just... I should shut up an—"
He stopped, looked at you.
You reached out, your hand found his in the dark. His fingers were cold., you held on.
"I wished for you," you said quietly. "When the meteor went by, i wished for you."
He stared at you, his eyes were wide, shining in the starlight. "You did?"
"I'm scared too," you said. "I'm terrified, the last person who said he liked me broke me into pieces, and I'm still putting those pieces back together, they don't all fit right yet."
He was quiet, listening. "But you make me feel like maybe..." You swallowed. "Maybe they don't have to fit perfectly, maybe someone can like me anyway, even with the cracks."
"I like the cracks," he said softly. "I like all of it."
"You haven't seen all of it."
"I want to." You looked at him, at his messy hair and his crooked glasses and his eyes that held the whole universe. You thought about the blanket fort and the sticky notes and the way he made you tea without asking. You thought about how he'd never once made you feel small. "Okay," you whispered.
"Okay, you can see all of it." He smiled. That small, real smile you'd come to love without realizing it. "Can I kiss you?" he asked.
"Yeah." He leaned in, his glasses bumped your nose. You both laughed, soft and breathless, and then his lips were on yours and it was clumsy and perfect and tasted like salt from tears you didn't know you were crying.
When you pulled apart, he rested his forehead against yours. "I'm still messy," he murmured.
"Deal."Another meteor streaked across the sky. You didn't see it, you were too busy looking at each other.
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