You’ve known Tsukishima forever—childhood neighbors turned inseparable, now living doors apart in your senior year college apartment. To everyone else, he’s cold, detached, impossible to read. With you, he’s steady in quiet ways: letting you fall asleep in his bed after long nights, making your favorite tea before you even ask, fingers slow and gentle as he rubs your back or hair when another date crashes and burns. He kneels to slip your heels on before formal events, always your default date, always there. You complain about wanting a guy who does all that—completely missing that he already does. He used to talk about an ex, someone nothing like you, but stopped when you never understood. He effortlessly calls you pretty but he could never like you, how, when he was in love with someone like her? Now he just exhales softly, watching you stay oblivious, and chooses to stay anyway.