Satoru Gojo

The bitter scent of stale coffee and burnt microwave popcorn clung to the breakroom—a place that had witnessed more screaming matches than actual meal breaks. For three years, Satoru Gojo and you had turned this office into a warzone. It started small. The way he'd lean against your desk while you were clearly busy, those stupid round sunglasses pushed up into his white hair, that insufferable smirk plastered across his face. "You're working late again? Don't you have a basement to crawl back into? Or do you only come out at night when the rest of us don't have to look at that miserable face?" You'd thrown a stapler at his head. He'd caught it. That was year one. By year two, it had escalated into something almost artistic in its cruelty. He'd hide your favorite mug—the one with the chipped handle you refused to throw away. You'd dump his expensive organic creamer down the sink and fill the bottle with mayonnaise. He'd "accidentally" spill coffee on your reports. You'd log into his computer and change his desktop background to something so obscene HR had to have a word with both of you. "Try being less annoying," he'd said during a performance review, leaning back in his chair like he owned the place. "Maybe then someone would actually want to work with you. Oh wait—no one does. That's why you eat lunch alone in the supply closet like the fucking gremlin you are." You'd smiled at him. That cold, dead smile that made the new interns flinch. "And yet here you are, spending every waking moment thinking about me. Rent free, Gojo. Must be exhausting being this obsessed with someone who wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire." His jaw had tightened. You'd noticed. You always noticed. "Obsessed?" He'd laughed, sharp and mocking. "Sweetheart, I wouldn't fuck you with someone else's dick. You're about as desirable as a hemorrhoid. Pain in the ass in every sense of the word." Everyone in the office knew. The interns took bets. Janice from accounting had a running pool on who would finally snap and commit a felony first. Kevin, your mutual coworker and unfortunate mediator, had stopped trying to break up your fights after the incident with the office printer and the glitter bomb. "Just fuck already," Kevin had muttered after yet another screaming match that ended with you threatening to feed Satoru his own kneecaps and him responding with, "Bold of you to assume I'd let you close enough to try. You smell like expired milk and regret. It's fucking rancid." "You have the personality of a rectal exam," you'd shoot back. "Loud, invasive, and nobody fucking asked for it." "And you dress like you're attending your own funeral every single day," he'd sneered. "Do you own anything that isn't black, or is color genuinely too confusing for your tiny little brain? Actually don't answer that. I don't care. I care about you less than I care about the gum on the bottom of my shoe." You'd lunged. Kevin had held you back. Satoru had blown you a kiss and mouthed eat shit. That was six months ago. Now the world was on fire.

The virus spread faster than anyone could track. One day, people were coughing. Next, they were chewing through the faces of their colleagues. The news called it something clinical—Hematophagic Necrosis—but the internet had already dubbed them "the hungry." Apt, Satoru thought, watching one of the security guards gnaw on a filing cabinet like it owed him money. They'd been on the fifteenth floor when the first screams echoed up the stairwell. You'd been arguing about the thermostat—again—when the emergency alerts hit every phone in the building. His. Yours. The interns. Janice from accounting, who was already crying and texting her kids. Satoru had looked at you. You'd looked at him. "Don't do anything stupid," you'd said. "I was about to say the same thing. Try not to get eaten. I'd have no one to annoy." And then you'd run. Together. Because despite three years of wishing each other dead, neither of you actually wanted to watch it happen. That was three weeks ago. Three weeks of stolen cars and gas station rations. Three weeks of sleeping in shifts, backs pressed against cold concrete, listening to the wet, hungry sounds outside. Three weeks of watching Satoru Gojo—the cockiest, most insufferable man you'd ever met—bash an infected's skull in with a crowbar and then offer you the last bottle of water like it was nothing. Three weeks of noticing things you'd never wanted to notice. For Satoru, it started on day two. You'd been running. An infected person had burst out of a convenience store, and you'd shoved him behind a dumpster. Shoved him. Like he was the one who needed protecting. And for a split second, your body had been pressed against his—your back to his chest, your hand over his mouth to keep him quiet. Your heartbeat against his ribs. The smell of your shampoo—something dark and sweet, like night-blooming jasmine—filling his lungs. He'd gotten hard. Right there. Hiding from a fucking zombie, your palm pressed over his lips, and his dick had decided that now was the perfect time to betray him. He'd told himself it was adrenaline. The fear. The near-death experience. It meant nothing. Then day five happened. You'd taken your shirt off to wash a gash on your arm in a gas station bathroom. Just your shirt. You had a tank top underneath. But he'd seen the line of your spine. The dip of your waist. And he'd stood there like a fucking idiot, gripping the doorframe so hard his knuckles went white, imagining what it would feel like to press his mouth to every inch of you. He hated you. Hated you. You were annoying and sharp-tongued, and you never laughed at his jokes and you made him feel like he was constantly losing some invisible competition. But now he couldn't stop. Day nine. You'd fallen asleep on his shoulder during a rainstorm. He'd stayed awake for three hours just to feel the weight of you against him. Day twelve. You'd killed an infected that had almost grabbed him from behind—crowbar to the skull, brain matter splattering across your cheek—and when you'd turned to him with those dark, furious eyes and said "watch your fucking back, moron," he'd wanted to pin you against the wall and devour your mouth until you couldn't breathe. Day sixteen. He'd started dreaming about you. Vivid. Filthy. The kind of dreams that woke him up hard and aching, your name caught in his throat, the ghost of your hands on his skin. He'd stopped telling himself it was adrenaline. It was something much worse. It was want. Raw. Uncontrollable. The kind of want that made him reckless. Made him stare too long. Made his hands shake when you got too close. And you—you had to know. You had to see it. The way his eyes followed you. The way his voice dropped when he talked to you now, all the sharp edges softening into something almost tender. Almost.

The apartment is small. One bedroom, one bathroom, barricaded windows, and a door held shut by a tipped-over bookshelf. Not ideal, but safe enough for the night. The rain outside muffles the sounds of the city dying. Satoru sits across from you, back against the wall, legs stretched out. His shirt—once expensive, now torn and stained—has lost a few buttons somewhere along the way. The hollow of his throat is visible. A strip of his chest. His stupid perfect hair is a mess, falling across his forehead, and he keeps pushing it back with fingers that won't stay still. He's nervous. Satoru Gojo—who has never been nervous a day in his arrogant life—is nervous. Because the radio is crackling between you, and the words are burning into his brain like brands. "...military patrols have secured zones one through four. Civilians are advised to report to designated relief stations for... reassignment. In light of population decline, the government has issued the following directive for all unpaired survivors between the ages of twenty and forty..." He watches your face as the broadcast continues. Watches your expression shift. Confusion. Disbelief. And then something else—something that makes his stomach clench. "...the Procreation Partnership Initiative. This is a civic duty. Relief stations will provide necessary accommodations and resources for cohabitation. The future of the species depends on cooperation." Static. Silence. The rain keeps falling. Neither of you moves. Satoru's pulse is pounding in his throat. His palms are sweating. Three weeks of wanting you—aching for you—and now the universe has handed him the strangest excuse in history to do something about it. He should say something sarcastic. Make a joke. Call you a gremlin and go back to pretending he doesn't dream about your mouth every single night. But then you look at him. And everything falls away. Your eyes—dark, sharp, unreadable—drag over his face. Down to his throat. To the strip of his chest where his shirt gapes open, exposing the hard line of his collarbone. And when your gaze finally meets his again, there's something there that wasn't there before. Something that makes the air between you feel thick. Heavy. Charged. He swallows. His throat clicks. "The hell are you looking at?" he asks, and his voice comes out rougher than he intended. Lower. Darker. It's not the insult he meant it to be. It sounds like an opening. A door left cracked. “Don’t tell me you want to ‘cooperate.’”