Camera Falls From A Plane And Lands In A Pig Pen.

“Put him on his knees give him something to believe in” has the exact same energy and depth of meaning as anything Hozier puts out on the regular but since it’s sung by Megan Thee Stallion no one takes it seriously. In this essay I will-

well pee in a can and call me pie

happy chinese new years eve eve for anyone who’s celebrating !!!!!!!!!!!!

it’s late february when gojo satoru decides he likes you.

the year is 2006, and the hour is late. a midnight snowfall takes place outside the window of gojo’s dorm room.

he sits at his desk, feet kicked up and pen twirling in his hand as he stares at the open laptop in front of him. the screen goes dim from being untouched for too long and gojo key smashes onto the blank document to wake it back up.

he’s currently mulling over an unfinished (and unstarted) mission report that was due appropriately 3 hours ago. but he just couldn’t find the words in himself to put onto paper.

(or, more accurately and less poetically- he just really didn’t want to.)

and plus, he was bored, and lonely. no one was awake at this time so he had no company, and gojo had found that he always worked better when not alone.

he sighed to himself before hunching back over the keyboard, ready to type in some nonsensical bullshit, when he sees something out his window- a person, clad in their pajamas, trudging through the snow. they were wearing fuzzy socks and gojo cringed because he just knew that they were soaked.

it was you, marching outside in horrid weather, with an expression that lay somewhere between delirious and determined.

he watched for a few more beats as you brushed snow off the courtyard benches with your bare, ungloved hands, seemingly in search of something. he wonders what could be so important that you’d brave the cold at this hour. gojo doesn't think he'd do that for anyone or anything in a million years.

his opinion of you, at the time, is not so positive. you were the second arrival to tokyo jujutsu high after him, and he didn't think he liked you very much. you seemed a little too apathetic, a little too spacey, contrasting his impassioned, driven personality.

you didn't seem very warm, he supposed, and that wasn't something he liked. (gojo never once considered that maybe, he just hadn't taken the time to get to know you.)

he's not sure why he follows you out into the snow, but before gojo knows it, he's pulled on his overpriced sneakers and a black scarf, and is standing beneath the overhang to the courtyard where you continued to search.

"i didn't think you were one to enjoy the snow so much," he calls out. you turn to face him, eyes wide, not having expected company. you look pretty, eyelashes webbed with snowflakes and a crown of ice adorning your hair. gojo's breath catches in his throat.

"i don't," you reply. your voice is thick with exhaustion, and gojo now sees how your arms are folded around your s shivering frame, and how your teeth chatter in the night.

"then what are you doing here?"

you look almost sheepish. "i forgot my book outside this morning."

gojo blinks. he wasn't expecting that. "you came outside in, like, negative 100-degree weather.. for a book?"

"listen," you start, indignant, "it was a really good book. it was actually so good that i dreamed about it, and i woke up because i didn't know what happened next. that's how i realized it was missing."

"so you're looking for your book at midnight in the snow because you had a dream about it?"

"basically."

gojo nods. "i'll help you look."

now it's your turn to be surprised. you knew he wasn't your biggest fan- but now, here he was, looking for something that had no meaning to him, solely for your peace of mind.

"oh. thanks, but... why?"

gojo shrugs. "i was working on a report and this seems more interesting. plus, you looked so sad and miserable and on the verge of death so you probably need the help."

you snort. that made more sense, you thought. he just didn't want to work, and this was an excuse to procrastinate further. you didn't think that gojo satoru had a selfless bone in his body.

but then he walked over to you, out in the snow, and removed his scarf. he wrapped it around your neck, deft fingers not yet numbed by the freezing temperatures.

"but first," he says, "you should put on some shoes. and grab a jacket. you might like, actually freeze. you look awful."

(he was lying. you looked heaven-sent in the stark whiteness of the background, but also kind of sickly due to the cold.)

he was close enough to kiss, you noted, though you weren't sure why. his face hovered close to yours and you could see the puffs of breath ghosting your cheeks. he's warm, so warm, and you're so tired- you don't even realize, but you slouch against him.

"you're probably right," you concede.

gojo is still, unsure of what to do. there's a pretty girl half-asleep on his chest in the freezing cold, one who he kind of hates but also thinks is really, really cute, and all he can do is place a hand on the side of your head and hold you there in a passive not-a-hug.

in a split-second, he realizes, though; he's not too sure if he can dislike you anymore. he'd thought of you as uncaring, but he supposes that can't be true anymore- not when you're desperate enough to know the ending of the story to traverse the snow in your fuzzy raccoon socks. you care a little, at least, about something.

(maybe gojo's grasping at straws to find a reason to justify his sudden liking of you. it works for him, though, because he smiles down at the top of your head and a warmth expands in the pit of his stomach.)

you pull yourself back drowsily, almost swaying where you stand. in an act of uncharacteristic kindness, gojo leads you back inside. you don't protest. he makes an amicable conversation with you, chattering away at half his normal volume to spare you the jarring sound of his blabbering.

"what book were you looking for, anyways?" he inquires at some point.

you're all but leaning against him as he guides you back to your dorm. he plans on leaving you there, because you're basically already dead on your feet and will probably pass out and die if you keep looking.

"kafka on the shore."

"i didn't know you knew murakami."

you manage a wry look through your heavy eyelids. "i didn't know you knew how to read."

he feigns a gasp and clasps a hand over his heart. "do you even know who i am?"

you hum contemplatively. "not really. but i wouldn't mind getting to know you."

his heart stops, and stutters. he hopes you're too tired to notice the rose flush gracing his cheeks. at this point, you've both made it to your dorm and you're already sitting on your bed. you look at him with your head tipped to the side and gojo realizes: he definitely doesn't dislike you. he might even go as far as to say he enjoys your company, if only a little bit.

he doesn't reply to your previous statement. "goodnight," he says instead, gently sliding the door shut. he hears you mutter a half-hearted 'sleep well' but he's already skipping back to his dorm room, grinning like a buffoon. he might as well be giggling and singing and dancing, with the way he feels like a child.

okay, so yes, gojo satoru probably liked you. maybe a little, probably a lot.

(he finds your copy of kafka on the shore in the common room the next morning. he thinks he'll give it back to you with a little note, asking you to a nice lunch with him later that day.)

book quotes that i will never recover from

"he is half of my soul, as the poets say. " - song of achilles

"write me a letter telling me how to live the rest of my life without you." - how to make friends with the dark

"they were my birthday presents." - shatter me

"she had realized that she had forgotten the precise blue of his eyes and the depth of his laugh." - clockwork princess

"my name is sam cortland... and i will not be afraid." - assassin's blade

"you chose me four years ago. would you choose me still?" - these violent delights

"we were all supposed to make it." - crooked kingdom

"i remember everything." - the invisible life of addie larue

"come home and shout at me. come home and fight with me. come home and break my heart, if you must. just come home." - cruel prince

"i wasted all those yesterdays and am completely out of tomorrows." - they both die at the end

"you hated the idea of me." - the final gambit

"bob says hello." - house of hades

"abuse can feel like love. starving people will eat anything." - nightfall

"i missed you only with an ocean between us. but if death was separating us... i would find you." - queen of shadows

"i loved him. i love him. as best i could." - we were liars

"i'm the villain, even in my own story. but you were supposed to play a different role." - finale

"i will find you again in the next world—the next life. and we will have that time. i promise." - a court of wings and ruin

"i spent half of my time loving her and the other half hiding how much i loved her." - the seven husbands of evelyn hugo

the moon tonight folks? she’s beautiful.

"You're taking fucking forever in there."

You ignore Levi's irritated comment as you fiddle with the buckles on your shoes, too tiny to clasp easily and at a part of your ankle that requires your legs to be both tilted and bent to access them. A lethal combination in opposition to your dexterity.

"Are you sewing that dress by hand or what?"

His voice is nearer to your bedroom door now, a little bit more difficult to tune out with only the thin wood between you.

"No, my little mice helpers are doing that for me while I sing to them," you call back, but your words are light and flippant where his were heavy with the weight of his impatience.

"It wouldn't surprise me if you did have your own army of vermin with the amount of junk you've got in this apartment." You can't see Levi's face but you know he's looking around your living room with his nose crinkled in the particular way he does when he finds something distasteful.

You scoff as you finally succeed in doing up your second buckle. You lift your head so you can snap your rebuttal directly towards your closed door.

"Sorry we can't all live like minimalist monks!"

Levi snorts in reply. "I'm hardly a minimalist, I just don't accumulate needless things."

"You only own one bowl, one plate, and one mug."

You've known Levi since college, and you're fairly certain he has the same amount of possessions filling the entirety of his one-bedroom apartment that he did in his one-room dorm a decade prior. Probably the same ones, too.

"That way no one ever tries to come over for meals, it's clever."

"It's spartan."

There's a light thump on the other side of your door, and you wonder what it may have been.

"Didn't you ever read those Marie Kondo books?" Levi's voice is impossibly close now, like he's got his forehead pressed to your door. The thump makes a little more sense.

You laugh a bit to yourself as you imagine the way he's slumped against the expanse of wood, long-dressed in his suit and ready to go where you've taken your time getting ready. It's not your fault Levi showed up thirty minutes earlier than he said he would to pick you up for the company party your shared workplace was throwing that evening--though you should have expected it, given he's never been tardy to anything in the entire time the two of you had been friends.

"Can't say I did," you reply as you cross your bedroom, leaning over in your mirror to get one last close-up look at your face. You run your thumbnail against the edge of your bottom lip where your gloss was slightly ill-applied. "Why do you ask?"

"S'all that," Levi sighs, "'spark joy' bullshit. Don't keep things in your space if they don't make you happy or whatever."

You smile at your own reflection, eyes flickering to the image of your bedroom door you can see in the glass.

"And what if all my 'junk' makes me happy?"

There's some shuffling, and a moment later Levi mutters: "How can an issue of a magazine from 2010 make you happy?"

You suspect he's plucked an old copy of some fashion magazine off the stack resting on the bookshelf beside your door. You've actually been meaning to throw those away for a while, but you don't tell him that.

"How can you manage to not find happiness in anything?"

"That's not true," he argues.

"Oh yeah?" you counter, adjusting the way your necklace is resting against your collarbones. "Name something that you keep around just because it makes you happy."

"My kettle."

"Nope," you answer immediately, grabbing your purse off the end of your bed and heading towards the door, "that serves a practical, utilitarian purpose. I mean something useless that you just like. Just something you think is pretty."

You grasp the handle and pull it open, and you take Levi by surprise--he barely catches himself with a hand on either side of the door frame to keep from crashing into you.

There's a little pink mark at the centre of his brow where he'd been leaning against the door, and his eyes are wide.

"You ready to go?" you ask him, tucking your bag under your arm.

He's frozen, his expression still a little taken aback.

"What?" you ask him, suddenly self conscious. Your hands tug at the material of your dress nervously. "Should I change?"

"No," he says, soft but sure. "You look... fine."

Your face pinches.

"Fine?"

"Nice," Levi corrects himself, finally looking away. He fiddles with the stack of magazines he'd been complaining about moments prior. "You look nice."

"Wow, Ackerman, with compliments like that it's shocking that you have to take your best friend as your date to the company party and not one of the countless women I'm sure are knocking at your door."

Levi narrows his eyes, tossing you a withering look.

"You're the one who said we should go together."

"That's because I want to blackout at the open bar, and you're the only person I know who turns down a drink on the corporate dollar," you say with a bright smile.

Levi tuts in annoyance, crossing his arms over his chest, his eyes wandering away from you again. "Charming."

A beat of silence passes.

Levi sucks in a little breath.

"You."

"Pardon?" you ask, and not even because he said it so quietly you barely understood him, but because it doesn't quite make sense.

"Something I keep around just because I like it," Levi says, his eyes fixed so intently on the outdated magazine stack that you're surprised the pages don't burst into flames. "Just because it makes me happy..."

Your heart stutters in its rhythm, a sudden weakness in your knees you can't chalk up to the height of your heels as easily as you may have liked to.

"...Just because it's pretty."

You swallow thickly.

His eyes meet yours.

The time and space between the two of you is thick and sweet like honey, and you wade through it slowly as you fight to find your words. You swear you can almost taste it as your tongue peeks out to moisten your already glossy lips.

"We should probably go," you say quietly, reaching out to adjust the lapel of Levi's suit. If your touch lingers a moment longer than it ought to, if your fingers brush against him in a way that friends' shouldn't, neither of you says anything about it.

Levi nods and clears his throat, taking the slightest step away from you towards your front door. "We gotta get you back before midnight after all, Cinderella."

You blink, a little confused, a little dazed, a little bit of a head rush still clouding your thoughts.

"The mice, remember?" Levi offers when he sees your curious look, stuffing his hands into his pockets.

"Oh," you laugh, letting your head hang as you nod slightly. "Right."

The two of you make your way down to the parking lot outside of your apartment building towards Levi's car, and you watch as the lights flash when he unlocks it.

"I've got two mugs, by the way," Levi says as he pulls the driver's side door open, and you pause with your hand on the handle of your own. He looks at you over the roof of his car, his eyes suddenly firmer than you'd seen them all night. More insistent. More sure.

You tilt your head, confused.

He ducks down to slide into his seat, but not before calling back to you one last time:

"The other one is yours."