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Three words, eight letters, a simple phrase. And yet it carries so much emotion, so much meaning behind it. It can feel feather light, a gentle caress from the wind across your cheek. Or it weighs down heavily on your chest, pressing until it gets harder to breath.
Gojo Satoru is a hard man to love. But that doesn’t mean you won’t. You’ve watched him grow, from the extra cocky teenage boy who kicked his feet up on the desks and tossed a wink to any student who walked past, to the teacher he has become today, burdened with the weight of the world on his shoulders.
You want to say those words, to let them tumble from your lips and cling to him. You want to let him know through three little words, the extent of the emotions that overtake you when you see him. You don’t know how long it’s been since you’ve noticed this shift in feelings. It felt like you were stumbling, grasping at the empty air in front of you until he was right there, kneeling when you fell, gentle eyes asking if you were alright. He doesn’t like to show his eyes very often and you know why. You understand the extent of his power and why he keeps them wrapped beneath a blindfold nearly everyday. You wanted to reach up to hold his face and stay mesmerized by his eyes, and to maybe finally admit the secrets at the tip of your tongue. But they bubble in your throat and make you choke, leaving you to sputter out innocent lies built upon years and years of waiting, of hoping. It feels like there’s roses growing in your chest, thorned stems digging into your throat and squeezing each time you speak. And you let pretty little lies fall from your lips. Rose coloured words that reassure him that you’re fine, that the thoughts clouding your mind will go away in just a few days.
But they don’t. They linger like a foggy mist, shrouding you in the cold, blocking him from view and pulling you just out of his grasp. The chill wraps arounds you, brushing against your skin and whispering the ugly truth in your ears.
“He doesn’t love you. Not the way you want him to.”
You scoff. You know that. Love. What a silly little emotion, coated with false hopes and empty promises of something more. It hurts to admit it, hurts to accept the fact that he’s in love with someone else, and no matter how much you wish, how long you wait, he’ll toss you those three words without any meaning behind it. But that doesn’t mean you’ll stop wishing, stop hoping, stop waiting for him to open up just a crack.
Gojo Satoru doesn’t love, not the way you wish he would. He’s climbed to the top of the world and came crumbling down, watched his best friend stumble down the opposite path and die at his hands, watched his students grow yet suffer with every mission he isn’t present on. He’s watched as the people closest to him, left, the blindfold over his eyes seemingly blocking out his vision for good as he stumbles blindly in search of them.
He knows the weight of words, knows that when you whisper them to him with a forced smile on his face, that you mean every syllable, every bit of those three words. He basks in them, selfishly grasps onto them as he pulls you close, tilting his head away so you can’t see the pained expression that crosses his face.
Gojo knows he can’t give you everything. The world already demands so much of him, pushes him closer and closer to snapping, but he still tries. He won’t let you know that he indulges in every moment that you spend with him, memorizing the shape of your smile, replaying your laughter, locking your words in his head to cherish forever. He’s being selfish, taking more than he should and holding it close to him. Nanami’s warned him multiple times to stop playing with your feelings, to stop stringing you along when he himself can’t even be honest with himself. But he doesn’t care. Well, he does but he doesn’t want to. He just wants to keep you with him, and if burying the feelings that rise to his cheeks is what he’ll be forced to do for now, he’ll endure every painful second of it until the time is right.
Three words, eight letters, a simple phrase. And yet it feels so hard to say. You both hold two ends of a rope as the middle begins to fray, on the verge of snapping at any moment. There’s too many unsaid words between the two of you, too many lies and forced smiles, a dance to a waltz that can only end in heartbreak. But time, and perhaps time apart might help to stitch together the wounds you’ve torn into each other. And maybe, sometime down the line, when things seem a little brighter and warm, you’ll both let three words, eight letters, a simple phrase, fall from your lips, and mean it.