Work Text:
Ijichi isn’t a fighter. He’s never been inclined to violence, despite his chosen line of work. Given the opportunity, he prefers to talk through problems rather than physically settle them. He’s always been this way, ever since he was young, if only for his own benefit; he grew up thin and lanky, struggled to put on weight and keep it, and never grew out of his fragility. He bleeds easily, and bruises even easier. For people like him, it’s better to be a people-pleasing coward than to get tangled up in a fight he can’t win.
Even when Gojo holds back, the pain of taking his hits is so shocking that it blinds him. It’s not rare that Gojo hits him; Ijichi will get a thump on the forehead or a mean slap across the face whenever he’s caught slacking or getting messy with his work. But that’s all work-related and done for his own benefit. Whatever happens outside of work is purely for the fun of it.
Gojo backhands him across the cheek, using the most minuscule amount of his strength imaginable, and it still sends Ijichi lurching to the side, dizzy and nauseated. He would’ve taken a graceless swan-dive over the edge of the bed if Gojo hadn’t grabbed him, Ijichi’s humerus groaning under the force of his grip, tight enough to bruise. If he had been wearing his glasses, he’s sure they would’ve shattered and scattered broken pieces of glass all over his bedroom floor and into the flesh of his cheeks, but Gojo isn’t that careless—at least that’s what he tells himself.
A gag fights its way up his throat and he swallows it down, tasting blood in his mouth. His lower lip is busted, and he’s vaguely surprised the swing didn’t dislocate his jaw.
His vision doesn’t want to come back to him, his head still spinning. He wheezes and chokes on his own saliva, and he can already feel the bruise forming on his cheek in the shape of Gojo’s hand. Gojo only ever hits him with a slack, open palm, yet he always leaves these sessions bruised and bloody. He always has to get to work extra early the next day to see Ieiri, before any students get a glimpse of him. She never asks questions, but he knows that she knows. Nanami tells him that he should grow a spine. He’s not sure which is worse.
“You look good like this.”
He’s still trying to blink away the blur in his vision, but he feels Gojo shift beneath him, feels his erection pressing against his thigh. Gojo’s hands pull him down so he can lick up the pen line of blood trickling down his chin, his lips so soft and uncharacteristically gentle when they kiss over his bruised cheek.
When his vision clears, he can see Gojo’s blissed grin, the smear of blood on his teeth. He’s lying back on the pillows, looking like something innocent, something divine, with Ijichi’s blood painting the corner of his mouth.
“Don’t hold back,” Gojo tells him, that sickening grin still plastered across his face. “Put some force behind it, pussy. I want bruises to jerk off to later.”
Ijichi huffs, breath shaky, hands trembling. Gojo only hits him open-handed, but Ijichi grips his snow-white hair in his left hand and balls his right hand into a fist. If he doesn’t, Gojo will just hit him again. Gojo never gives him more than he can handle, but Ijichi can never give him enough, it seems.
The first time he swings is a test to get his aim right, his knuckles smacking dully against Gojo’s cheekbone, which only makes him laugh. Ijichi shifts his position, straddles Gojo’s chest, uses his grip on his hair to work his head into a better angle. The second swing has more force behind it, and he hits Gojo’s nose dead on from the front. Still not enough, so again. The third time, Ijichi grits his teeth and strikes him hard at an angle, finally feels the crunch of Gojo’s nose breaking, the hot gush of blood from his nostrils, the way his hips grind up against him. He hears the whorish moan it gets out of him. The fourth and fifth times he brings his fist down, Ijichi feels the shooting pain of his two middle fingers breaking under the force, his knuckles busting open from the impact, and yet he still swings three more times for good measure, ignoring the pain of broken bones in favor of Gojo’s ragged panting. When he’s done, he goes limp, feeling sick to his stomach.
Ijichi rolls onto his back beside Gojo, his bloodied hand trembling, knuckles swollen, fingers turning purple. He can hardly feel the pain from the adrenaline rushing through him, can’t distinguish the throbbing of his busted lip from the throbbing of his cock in his slacks, and he hates it, and he hates himself.
“Is that all you’ve got?” Gojo’s voice is muffled by the blood in his sinuses, and when he comes into view again, hovering over him, his face is looking worse off than Ijichi’s. His lips are split, his nose bruised and bloody and crooked, the lower half of his face caked in blood. The red makes his eyes look even more haunting, even more unsettling, accentuates the lust hazing them over. His voice is laced with affection, as if he’s complimenting his lover, when he says, “I let you get a few hits in, and that’s all you got? You’re such a pussy. You really are weak.”
Ijichi knows this. He knows it better than anyone else.
When Gojo kisses him, it hurts—for how aggressive it is, for his bruises, for his busted lower lip. When Gojo sinks onto his cock, the only lubricant he uses is the blood on his hands and the sweat cooling on their skin. Ijichi used to find the drag of dry insides unpleasant, but now he thrusts up to meet Gojo’s movements, holds onto his hips with one good hand and one that’s bruised and misshapen.
Gojo isn’t interested in pleasure unless there’s pain. Ijichi doesn’t understand it, but at the same time, he does; how long could he be untouchable before he starts begging to be touched at all, before violent stimulus starts to feel like a love language? How long could he feel nothing before pleasure becomes too soft of an experience? He’ll never know. He has no choice but to take Gojo’s word for it, like he does with so many things in his life.
“Oh, god.” It comes out through grit teeth, and Ijichi is only half aware that he’s mumbling through near sobs. “God, oh god.”
Gojo groans in the back of his throat, his eyes rolling. Bouncing on his cock, moaning and drooling and dripping globs of half-congealed blood onto Ijichi’s chest, the picture of perverted ecstasy.
“Yeah, say it again,” he pants, eyes brighter than Ijichi has ever seen them. “Call me that again. I’m close.”
Ijichi wasn’t calling him anything, and he’d never in his right mind call Gojo anything like that. But he’s not in his right mind, and he’d be lying if he tried to tell himself that Gojo isn’t something like a god to him, that he’s not devoted, that he doesn’t bow easily to him. He can’t convince himself that Gojo didn’t save him.
“God, please,” he sobs, already so close, right on the knife’s edge. “God, please, make me cum, make me cum–”
“Good boy,” is what he’s offered in return, accompanied by a gentle stroke to his hair that he leans into, like he’s starved of it. Gojo wipes the tears off of his cheeks, pets over the bruises he gave him. “Such a good boy.”
Ijichi isn’t a fighter. He’s whatever Gojo wants him to be.