Work Text:
They’d agreed on the blindfold beforehand, so Guy cannot see what is coming, nor is he at liberty to brace himself for it. He barely hears the movement of Utsuki’s hand before he feels it, the impact of a flat palm sharp and stinging on his skin. It connects with a slap that sounds louder than it feels, leaving the area of his upper thigh warm but not bruised. Hard enough to leave a memory, but a bare fraction of Utsuki’s full strength. This body may be human, but Guy can easily take more than that.
Utsuki continues with several experimental taps along Guy’s thighs, never breaking skin or vessels but enough to get blood rising towards the surface. Guy can feel himself growing accustomed to the unnatural pose, on all fours with his hips raised above Utsuki’s lap, most of his weight distributed between his forearms and his knees. It’s not a strenuous pose by any means when compared to his previous training. But it’s certainly exposed and very vulnerable, something that Guy is acutely conscious of with the all-new awareness of his own mortality. He feels something grow heavy in his chest, though he cannot think what feeling it may be or why it might manifest there of all places.
It’s careless of him to grow so complacent, caught up in his own thoughts of flesh and blood and circuit-like synapses, that when the strike comes, he isn’t prepared for it. Faster, stronger, landing right on the meat and muscle between his buttocks and his thighs. It hurts, the pain of it unfurling through his body like the bloom of a bruise, and the force of it knocks the breath out of his lungs in a low hiss. There is no time to recover as he’s dealt blow after blow in punishing succession on one side, then another, then lower, then back again. Guy could count the hits, predict a pattern, mentally mitigate the damage and how long repairs may take, but he doesn’t, he doesn’t think, only letting himself feel the shock and pain and strange warmth of every meeting of Utsuki’s palm against his skin.
It hurts, he can feel the bruises swelling beneath the surface where they’ll stain for days because his organic, fleshy body is weak, he is so weak. It isn’t just the strikes anymore but the full-handed groping of tender skin, the soothing rubs in between blows, the ghosting trail of fingers down the back of his knees. Utsuki’s hands are all over him, one delivering the blows and the other set firmly on his waist to hold him from flinching. He’s too overloaded with sensation to function, barely regulating his stuttered breaths and grunts. Guy doesn’t even notice that his legs have been buckling under his weight, hips sinking ever lower, until his entire torso is cradled in Utsuki’s lap.
The tears leak out without his authorization, and Guy knows that there are many emotions that can accompany them, but he’s unable to search himself for the exact one for this occasion. What he does identify is the pain and the contact, so far from so much of the agony that he’s been through in the past, but so much more deeply felt now that he knows this body is real. That it’s his.
Utsuki’s hands stop, and the momentary lack of contact is almost as terrible as any blow, until it returns, with a low, slow rub up the incline of Guy’s spine. “That’s enough for today,” Utsuki says, as he undoes the knot of the blindfold, slipping it off his face to the thankfully dimmed light of the room. Guy keeps his eyes closed as Utsuki’s other hand reappears with a warm towel to soothe his battered thighs. “How do you feel?”
Guy isn’t able to respond yet, still unable to derive the swirl of chemicals within him into tangible words. But between the heaving of his shoulder, the gasps of his breath, and the way his entire body gravitates towards wherever the towel goes, whatever Guy’s feeling must be human enough for Utsuki to recognize.
“You did well, Guy-san,” he says, and at the sound of it, something in Guy relaxes, slumping against Utsuki’s hands and over his lap. “You did well.”