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The last age Gojo Satoru remembers being when he dies is twenty eight. He might be older. It doesn’t really matter all that much.
The last day he remembers is October thirty-first, twenty-eighteen, and that doesn't matter all that much either, but he’s always been too sentimental about these sorts of things.
Satoru could tell you the day and month the first time Megumi had managed fully corporal demon dogs, if you wanted to know. The hour, the minute, the second, that Suguru had first let their fingers tangle in a way that he could no longer hide behind the pretense of accidental, Satoru could tell you that, too.
But, October thirty-first. Unremarkable, in every way except that he’d marked a mental note to start keeping an eye out for the kids' Christmas gifts, and that it had been a particularly chilly Halloween in Japan.
Surely, it could’ve been a little more noteworthy, if it was going to be his last day on earth; if Satoru’s the strongest, if his very being shattered the scale of power that regulated existence, then he should get more than Halloween, but-
It’s the last day he can recall in the never ending black-hole of time the prison-realm creates. And…that’s it.
Satoru never quite worked out how time functioned in there, because if there had been tangible gravity, a mass enormous enough to warp the seconds into thick, viscous minutes, he would have been able to feel it. It would have crushed his bones into his flesh until the cells were flattened back into the atomic void, would have warped his own being into nothing without the shell of limitless to resist it.
But there was never anything to feel in the prison-realm. No way to mark the minutes except the fluttering of his own untrustworthy heart, pulses that fibbed with every thrum through his veins.
He doesn’t know how long he was suspended there. Maybe, long enough to drive him mad. Long enough that it killed him.
The facts of it don’t matter now that he’s dead, he supposes.
And Satoru knows, without doubt or uncertainty, that he is dead because the only person that he’s ever loved in the grand, horrible scheme of it all sits beside him, sat back on his heels with his knees folded beneath him. Patiently, he waits beside where Satoru lays flat on his back in the sweet grass, dark hair unbound and rippling in the faint breeze as Satoru blinks back into something he’s not sure is existence.
There is nothing remarkable about the scenery around them, no heavenly choir that waits to apologize for everything they had become, for the fate they’d been dealt. There is no thank you for the endless sacrifice of all that you are, little lamb, for the blood of everyone you have ever loved, what a job you have done-
Satoru only knows he’s dead because there is only them, and that is something he was never allowed.
Suguru kneels beside him on a hillside like any other, green and flowering and warm in a springs heat. Crickets chirp and sing in the dewy warmth, sweat pricking on Satoru’s brow. In their song is the absence of a sound Satoru had spent his last life intertwined with; the space where Six Eyes had existed within him is gone, and with it, the inescapable flood of knowledge.
Everything is quiet, and it is just them, and they’re dead because this is all he’s ever wanted.
“How long was I out?” Satoru murmurs, once he finds his tongue. His voice is quiet, barely there, as if careful not to disturb the infinity all around them.
The corner of Suguru’s mouth quirks in the ghost of a smile, expression softening into something terribly, awfully fond. “...Awhile.”
Awhile, Satoru thinks, rolls the word around in his mouth like a handful of marbles, considers what it means in this space.
An oak tree towers above them, casting dappled shade along the panes of Suguru’s face with the weave of its leaves. He blinks as a patch of sunlight catches his eyes, turning the amber in liquid gold. For all his tan skin, his eyelids are pale enough that Satoru resists the urge to reach and trace the web of blue veins with a thumb.
He may have, in this life.
Satoru’s lips try to tremble at the echo of a memory, and he purses them, throat suddenly thick. “Did you wait long?”
Suguru meets his gaze and hums a short, quiet sound. “I knew you were going to be late either way.”
And then, the infinity around them changes, the world rippling like sunlight on water into another scene, another life long passed or one that has yet to.
In this one, the sky above them shatters with pinpricks of light.
Fireworks, in all their glory and endless colours, explode into the ink dark sky far above where the two of them sit back on a rooftop in what Satoru knows, inexplicably, is sometime in the seventeen hundreds. It’s simply another one of their many, many lives.
This time, Suguru is close enough that Satoru can feel the warmth of his shoulder from where it almost brushes his own. He’s still watching him, face cast in the multi-coloured glow, ignorant of the sky above.
There are a dozen things that wait to spill from Satoru’s mouth, a million variations of quips, and pokes and garbage that well up from their most recent life past,
t h e s t r o n g e s t
but what escapes his mouth, what he chokes on, is “I’ve missed you.”
Suguru smiles at him again, so unfettered and easy, and the sight of it hurts so badly Satoru think’s it might tear his soul in two. The worst of it, the best of it, is the lack of pain on his partner's face.
It has found them in every lifetime, but it has never been privy to these moments of inbetween.
“I know,” Suguru whispers, like it’s a secret only they share. Satoru supposes it is.
Then, his smile edges on mischievous, and he bumps Satoru’s shoulder with his own. His tone lightens, just a smidge. “That last one was pretty fucked, huh.”
And every part of him pulses with how awful it had been, how it had ached. But, there is joy here too, with Suguru’s soul pressed steadfast against his own, a balm to the wound. Despite himself, a snort bubbles up from deep inside his chest, warring with the sobs he grips with both hands, and he leans back on his palms, feeling the rough press of the tiles against his skin. His eyes burn; just the two of them, now. “Tch. Fuck that guy, for real. A skinsuit, I-”
The words fail him, because for however awful it had been for him, his soul hadn't been the one pinned like a butterfly to existence in the body Satoru had failed to burn. The sin of it, the sacrilegious heat of it all is bitter in his mouth.
Satoru looks away from him, suddenly unable to bear the unmarked flesh of his handsome brow. His throat burns, aching with what wants to break free. Again, the weight of that life soaks him. His students, his kids, but above all-
“Satoru,” Suguru chides, and Satoru cannot look at him but knows all the same. The tiles he's perched on are crumbling red between his knees, weather worn clay.
“It was one of the worst ones, Suguru. That was heinous.”
And it was, by far, one of the worst. For Satoru to say it, and mean it from so deep inside himself, when they’ve seen more than their share of awful things over their infinite life's-
Suguru sighs, a short, quiet thing as the words settle between them. “It wasn’t all so bad. Shoko, me, you. We had a little while.”
Satoru drops his head between his knees, saying nothing. The silence yawns between them, a mouth without teeth, simply a chasm. Hollow purple, Satoru thinks without humour.
“I missed you, too.” Suguru says, after Satoru doesn’t break it. “I miss you each and every time. Every life, every death, I miss you. But, yeah. That one was one of the worst.”
Again, the world melts into something new.
In this lifetime, they spin hand in hand, sock-footed and silent in a too-small kitchen while the walls glow amber, caught in the streaming light of the morning sun.
Quick-footed shadows of children pass by into the living room just out of his line of sight, and there’s picture frames scattered about the walls around them that Satoru doesn’t let himself pick apart. ABC magnets litter the shitty old fridge, a plant that's sort of dying waits in the windowsill.
The two of them waltz, slow and sure to a beat that likely never existed at all as breakfast sausage sizzles in the skillet behind them, listening to the crackling pop of oil leaping from the pan and onto the stove.
He remembers wiping it, the paper towel tucked beneath the sink.
Suguru’s free hand, the one not leading his own, slips from where it’s settled on his waist to skim up the skin of Satoru’s back, featherlight. It’s warm, compared to the thin, cool fabric of the well-loved t-shirt he dons, but goosebumps still trail in its wake as Suguru brushes the notches of his spine.
Satoru sets his cheek on Suguru’s shoulder, nose tucked tight to his throat as he breathes in the scent of something that's decidedly him and that stupidly expensive coconut shampoo. The arm round his ribs tightens, flattening their bodies together until Satoru can feel each of the breaths Suguru doesn’t need to take.
He exhales the words into the flesh of Suguru’s throat, lips brushing the soft skin. “I love you.”
And somehow, the worst part of all of this, is that Satoru does. He has, in every lifetime, loved and loved and loved Suguru in all that he is. It’s suffocating, how much he loves him, and it is both the best and worst thing in all that exists.
Their fates, the red string, whatever it deigns to be called, leads them back to each other every time. There has never been a moment when they weren’t each others, but just as awfully, they have never been each others.
There is joy in every lifetime they’ve shared, and there has never been a time they’ve gotten to keep it.
Satoru blinks, and they’re enveloped in the gentle darkness of their quiet uptown home. The sheets are soft and overly puffy, because Satoru had, of course, enjoyed going a little overboard. They’re a clean, creamy white, the most expensive cotton the store had had to offer.
Suguru had never liked them, of course; too easy to stain with four kids in the house, much too hot in the summer and not warm enough in the winter.
Satoru hooks a chilly foot across Suguru’s calf, just to revel in the simple luxury of knowing it’ll make him squirm.
Suguru does, shivering just a tad at the press of his cool skin. He doesn’t shy away from it, though.
It’s fall now, if Satoru were to check the calendar pinned above the dresser, the season not too hot and not too cold for their silly blanket, but they’ve left the window beside the bed cracked just because.
The smokey scent of an earlier backyard fire dusts the room.
Satoru had loved this life. Laundry and taxes. Taking the kids to school and feeding the fish. Grocery store runs. Marshmallows catching fire and sticky, happy little hands. Suguru's bed head.
Suguru lays across from him now, their hands linked between them. There’s a chocolate brown mound of what Satoru remembers to be a cat by their feet, its weight long gone and ever present.
Faint moonlight spills in from the window, colouring Suguru the palest he’s ever been as he lays in its frigid light.
The warm, uncalloused hand of this life squeezes Satoru’s own. Its skin has never known more then pencils and button ups. “I loved you too. Each time. S’stupid of you to not know that by now, that I’ll love you in every one of them.”
Slowly, Suguru takes the hand clasped in his and turns it palm up. He brings it close to his mouth, dragging the smooth skin of his lips over where Satoru's heartbeat would have thrummed beneath the thin skin of his wrist. Here and now, Satoru imagines the flutter of it as it pulses through his arteries, the blood streaming away from his heart to get as near as it possibly could be to the focal point of his universe.
Faintly, he wonders if Suguru is remembering it too. Wonders what a heartbeat would mean in this moment of never ending.
It has been ages since Satoru has died again, and no time has passed at all.
“Suguru,” Satoru says. He lifts his free hand to settle against the sloping lines of Suguru’s face, thumbing the healthy, rested skin of his under eyes.
The man across from him says nothing, pressing into the touch.
“Su-gu-ru,” He repeats, feeling the syllables. Gently, he tries to draw his arm back to his chest. Suguru’s grip tightens in answer. He shakes his head, eyes closed, and lips still pressed to the would-be pulse point.
His mouth is warm.
The noose of their interwound fates tightens with the motion, growing taut between their throats in a strain tight enough to choke. Satoru can’t breathe through it, but he doesn’t exactly need to.
He can admit too, in the part of him that bleeds and aches, that he doesn’t want this life to end either. Down the hall, the children are sleeping. There is a load of whites waiting to be washed.
“We’ve never make it past thirty.” Satoru breathes, voice wet. Suguru blurs in his vision where his head is pillowed on the stupid, expensive white cushion, hair splayed around him in a dark halo. Satoru blinks, refusing to let the blur of tears distort the precious moments from this life.
Suguru’s throat bobs. There’s a thread of something ugly in his tone. “And what of it?”
Satoru traces Suguru’s jaw with the hand that’s held captive, feeling the brush of stubble against his fingertips. “I want you to.”
Suguru brings Satoru’s hand down to his chest, cradling it against his sternum. The world around them begins to shimmer, and something burns hot and ugly and awful inside him with the knowledge that none of it ever works, because the other half of his soul, his achilles heel, his everything, is never his to keep.
“You’re mine,” Suguru says thickly. “You think I’d trade that? For a measly thirty-one?”
Satoru smiles at him, soft and aching. “I would like you to.”
Because when it comes down to it, it’s Satoru at the root of it all. At the base of the agony, and pain. Suguru is his blessing, and he remains Suguru’s downfall.
In every lifetime, he’s caught in the dredges of Satoru’s wake, dragged to a new life where he’ll walk bare-footed along the knife's edge just to stay by his side.
They’re locked in a heavenly bargain that Satoru doesn’t recall making, and could not fathom why he would’ve. He’s blessed in every timeline, in every way but the one that matters. The strongest, the honoured one-
Maybe, they burst into existence already on fire, already a tragedy. Always an open wound.
The bedroom is melting, baby blue moonlit walls slipping into the worn wood-grain of their first-year classroom. Jujutsu highschool hasn’t been updated since the eighteen hundreds at least, and it shows with every dust mote and knife-carved name.
The chalkboard is a faded, cloudy white, something or other written in a scrawl that belonged to someone he’d loved. There’s cigarette ashes on the floor.
Suguru’s school uniform still sports the gold button, his long hair drawn back in the bun he’d worn all throughout their first and second year. He opens his mouth, standing from the desk beside Satoru to reach out, to touch but-
The true spiral begins, and then they’re falling through infinite universes, from one moment to the next, an endless them. The two of them dance and spin around each other, caught in a gravity, caught in a noose, always drawn back to the north star of one another.
They’ve been here before, and will be again. It would go on and on, as it has since the dawn of time and that has been enough. When Satoru thought he could change it, it was enough, but Suguru suffers in loving him each and every time.
And Satoru doesn't understand the endless glimmering horizons he passes through side by side with the love of all his lives, not without the burden of six eyes, but it doesn’t matter.
Satoru loves Suguru in each.
Everything bleeds by, the two of them the only constant in a spinning matrix of colours and love and joy and agony, souls at the center of a centrifugal spin.
“I should have loved you better,” Satoru tells him, knelt on the blood spattered tile of a highschool locker room. His knuckles throb.
Suguru sits on his ass across from him, crimson streaming from his nose and decorating his chin. When he snarls, his bared teeth are stained red. It’s not an expression from this past life, but from now, and the heat of his anger pulses, resonates between their souls; Satoru wants to cup it in between his hands like something precious.
“Then do it, and do it again and again-”
“I should have loved you better.” Satoru repeats, crouching to wipe the blood from his chin. His knuckles bruised from the hit, his fingers slick with blood. “I couldn't have loved you more, though.”
They kneel at the altar, a traditional wedding. Suguru’s kimono is such a dark green it’s nearly black. The only reason Satoru know it's not, is because Suguru's truly ink dark hair is down and slips over the lovely fabric.
It’s about to rain. Satoru loves him.
There are dozens around them bearing witness, and still no one at all. Ironically, there has never been a better time for vows.
His throat aches, burns. I love you. I love you. I love youIloveyouIloveyouILOVEYOU
The words Satoru manages are unexpectedly soft. "It's just never enough to save you."
And that, of all things, draws a laugh from the man across from him. It doesn’t come out right, too hitched and breathless and harsh, all the while something wild and terrible creeps into Suguru's eyes. "You don't get to decide that. It does, it does, because what else would I have endured for?"
"Suguru." Satoru whispers.
"Satoru," Suguru retorts, brows drawn.
Thunder rumbles in the distance, the sky a rolling sea of grey. They’d had to cut this ceremony short, and had spent the remainder tucked under the lip of the roof to watch the deluge. Suguru had died three months later when a samurai had discovered he’d married a man. They had been much too human in this lifetime to stop it.
The blur of the crowd moves away as the downpour begins, but they remain, water soaking into the fabric of their handsome clothing, slicking their hair to their scalps.
Between them, catching and trembling in the rain, the silverfine thread that joins their souls blinks into existence. It’s so silver it sort of glows in the dimming light, trembling like dew heavy spidersilk, a cat's cradle of knots between their souls.
It’s not smooth, more of a tangled, tightly wound, effervescent mess. It’s woven so taunt, it’s no wonder that every lifetime between them ends the way it does; death and death again. "You die and suffer-"
“And I don’t care.” Suguru tells him, the edge of his mouth lifting in the hint of a smile. He blinks, water slipping from his lashes, and there's such honesty in his face that Satoru’s chest feels like it might cave in. “I’ve gone into every life knowing that, and I don’t care.”
They’re still kneeling before the altar, soaked to the bone. They’ve knelt beside dozens.
The wild thing in Suguru's eyes hasn't gone, but it's been subdued, bound with adoration and a peace Satoru can't fathom. "I know your love won't stop that. I know."
And, he understands what Suguru is saying. He could mark each and every word Suguru does not say in this space of in-between where their souls thread and weave and dance. He knows Suguru chooses him every single time.
He thinks about pooling blood, about shattered bones, about a bargain he doesn't want. How in each of their infinite, short life's, tragedy waits around the corner. And now matter how Suguru chooses that, chooses him, Satoru wants him to live.
Satoru is still choosing him. He'll always choose him.
When he pinches the thread between them with a thumb and a finger, the world goes quiet. Like the vacuum of space, it's the total absence of sound. The thunder is silent. The rain, the children, the absence of everything but them in that heartbeat. It lasts both a millennia and a moment.
When Suguru blinks back into existence, a few meters away on a swing set Satoru thinks might have been in Miyagi, his face is round with childhood, and grief.
One of the homes where they had spent their youths looms behind them, a place haunted with the shadows of sunburnt and reckless kids. The thread sits precious and taunt between his fingers. The midday sun beats down overhead, searing with summer heat.
Satoru loves him. He wants him to live well.
He plucks the thread, feels the thrum of the chord pull against his trachea. It sings at his touch, the melody only one other soul in the entirety of everything knows, beautiful and sweet and, and
He lets it catch on his thumbnail.
The noose pulls taunt, something behind his naval dropping into freefall at the touch, the intention.
I love you.