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Gojo Satoru died one year, eight months, and twenty-nine days ago.
You knew it was that length of time exactly because you considered each day, each week, each month to be its own little miracle, all worth tracking with a stomach-knotting sort of wonder, and you knew he was dead because you’d been the one to kill him. It sounded more dramatic than it was, really. He was determined to keep you, and you didn’t want to be kept. He’d been off his game, distracted, and you’d stabbed him so many times, it’d hardly made a difference when the blade of your knife broke off in his rib cage. He did what he wanted to, and you did what you had to. Anything to know he wouldn’t always be around the next corner, eyes locked onto you like he was never going to look away.
There was more fallout with the higher-ups. The idea of executing you was floated, but quickly abandoned. No one liked the idea of letting it get out that a civilian had been the end of their strongest sorcerer – a civilian he was keeping as a live-in hostage, at that. In the end, you were given a house in the countryside, an annual stipend, and strict orders to keep to yourself. You weren’t sure what story they made up about Satoru, but you weren’t sure you cared, either. You knew he was dead. That was really all you needed – to know he was dead.
And you did know. At least, you had.
It was a lot harder to be so sure when Gojo Satoru, less than entirely dead, was standing in your living room.
Except, it wasn’t Satoru. It looked like him, but in the way that a scarecrow looked human, in the way that an office cubicle looked like a house. He was too tall, head nearly scraping against your low ceiling. His silhouette was defined by absence – pitch-black, tar-like void forming the shadow that still haunted your worst dreams and dripping onto your carpet at the fingertips. Two additional pairs of arms jutted out from his sides, hanging limply where they had been grafted on. Not being able to see his face might’ve been a relief, but he’d never been so kind. Blue eyes, too bright and too focused and too many, circled what should have been his head, forming halos of voyeuristic intent. Watching. Waiting. Taking.
You dropped the paper bag in your arms, groceries scattering across the floor of your entryway. Your mind was caught in the same loop, attempting to weigh what was happening in front of you against how it could be happening at all, but your body was more reactive. Hand planted on the doorframe, you moved to sprint in whatever direction took you away, but Satoru was faster, just like he’d always been. Something damp and cold wrapped around your elbow, jerking you back and to the ground. Another tendril reached out, shutting the door you’d left ajar. That made sense. Satoru had always made it a point to corner you when he was alive, too.
The entity, the shadow didn’t move. You stayed where you were, staring up at him, trying to think of an impossible next move. There were knives in the kitchen. Would stabbing a dead man work? You couldn’t scream, the nearest neighbor was twenty minutes down the road. Maybe you were dreaming. If you hurt yourself, you might—
“My love,” he rasped, voice emerging from too many places all at once. He cocked his head to the side. “My love?”
You knew you were supposed to respond, but you just couldn’t seem you. The shadow seemed to take your silence as answer enough, ambling towards you on legs that never seemed to move. “(Y/n)?”
You forced yourself to swallow. “I’m here, Satoru.”
“That’s not what you call me.”
“Sorry, ‘toru.”
A deep purr sparked somewhere deep in his chest. He raised an arm, fingertips melding into one long, black tendril as he brought them together. This time, he didn’t grab or pull. The tendril made contact with your wrist, slipping around your forearm and winding up your bicep. It felt warmer than you’d expected. There was a strange, static buzz where he touched you – electricity playing just underneath the skin. Like the fibers of your being couldn’t decide whether or not to tear themselves apart.
“Waited for you, wanted—” Another tendril found your waist, slipping underneath your shirt. Your breath hitched as it circled upward, running over your chest. “It was dark. I couldn’t find you.”
“I’m sorry, ‘toru.” You straighten your back, doing your best to ignore the tapered point now idly circling one of your nipples. “If you let me go, I can explain what—”
“No.” His right hand – one of his real hands – lashed out. This time, his fingers kept their shape as they curled around your throat and shoved you back to the ground, cutting off your airway. You tried to gasp, regardless, clawing at his wrist, and Satoru’s grip loosened immediately. Monster or otherwise, he still didn’t seem to like the idea of hurting you. Not so directly, at least. “Not yet. Missed you.”
Your heart dropped. It wasn’t hard to guess what he meant, but the tendril now slipping off of your arm and down to your waist cleared up and ambiguities there might have been.
You made the mistake of trying to resist, of grabbing for the snaking limb slipping underneath your waistband. There was a surprising ruthlessness to the way he dealt with you – a single hand spared to gather up your hands and haul them above your head, spreading you out for his evaluation. You kicked at his body as he explored lower, but your foot only sunk into darkness. It took more effort to pull out again than it should have, like you were fighting a secondary gravitational force. Like you were skirting along the edge of a black hole.
Satoru didn’t seem to notice. All of his many, many eyes were focused on your body, the length of midriff exposed as your shirt rode up, the curve of your waist, your hips as his tendril nudged your skirt low on your thighs, taking your panties in the same motion. There was no pretense of teasing, of foreplay. A limb snaked around your thigh, squeezing gently as its tapered end found your clit. The texture was smooth, slick, wrong. The feeling of Satoru’s eyes burning into you, even more so.
His tendril drew slow, curious patterns into your clit. At the same time, another fell to run over your slit, easing itself as your body relented to his invasive touch. That was the worst part, really – how quickly you gave in. This wasn’t alien, as unnatural as it felt. You knew Satoru. You recognized him. And your body, however stubbornly your mind refused to, recognized this.
“I was gone for too long.” He trailed off, his remaining hand coming up to cup your cheek. The tendril inside of you bucked shallowly, experimentally, savoring the way you spread open around him. Your cunt clenched and above you, Satoru seemed to shutter, to lean closer. “You were alone. I left you alone.”
“I—” Your breath hitched as he fell into a steady rhythm, pushing himself that much deeper with every thrust. You could feel it curling against your walls, searching for something that made you shake and moan underneath him the same way you used to. Acting on habit, you guessed, and it was working. Despite yourself, pleasure sparked in your core, your body twitching in his hold. It reminded you a little of the first night Satoru spent with you, of the day your life ended. He’d held you just as tightly, albeit with fewer hands. “I wanted to be alone, you—”
“But you weren’t supposed to be.” The tendril coiled around your chest tightened. There would be bruises for weeks, if you survived this at all. Again, your nipple was his main area of concentration – circling it, swiping over it. For a moment, it almost seemed like his tendril split apart again, forming something not unlike a hand to palm at the curve of your breast, to dig his fingertips into plush flesh. That awful, beating buzz only made things worse, forcing your back to arch and your breath to hitch whenever he made contact with something more sensitive than skin. “I’m going to take care of you, I—”
His many arms went still.
“I remember, now. I love you.”
Whatever reprieve he might’ve offered you was brief. When he started moving again, it was with intention; pounding into your cunt with the same writhing force, bullying your clit, groping your chest. You tried to scream, but the head of yet another tendril forced its way past your lips and to the back of your throat, settling there as something hot and bitter seeped onto your trapped tongue. Your climax – because this was always going to end with your involuntary submission – was abrupt, strained, and prolonged. Your mouth fell open, but any protests were muffled into senseless noise by his makeshift gag, and your legs could only spread that much wide, to welcome him that much deeper. Satoru’s constant purr deepened into a full-throated rumble, the reverberations pulsing into your clit, your core. That was enough to tip you over the edge a second time, then a third. Satoru nursed you through the worst of it, then his pace slow.
It was more out of necessity than kindness. Even a monster had to know more so quickly would’ve broken you. The tendril inside of you drew back, curling your thigh, while the arm teasing your chest settled around your midriff. He hauled you up like that, keeping your arms above his head and your body limp in his hold. One of your hands was allowed to slip out of his grasp, and you made a desperate attempt to reach his eyes, to claw them out before he could—
A void-black hand caught yours by the wrist, drawing it close to his chest. The darkness seemed to slip apart, pull to either side, uncovering a heart – red and beating and fractured. White light spilled from the cracks, swallowed up almost immediately by his shadows. Even then, it was too bright. Even then, you knew it was going to burn through you.
Satoru cupped your hand against it, the atrophied muscle pulsing against your palm. “I love you.” And then, again, “I love you.”
It was astonishing, really.
Somehow, even with your hand pressed against his beating heart and obsessions puppetting what should’ve been his rotting corpse, you still couldn’t make yourself believe him.