Work Text:
Kiyotaka Ijichi was a man of many fears.
Leaving the stove on; taking the wrong bus and being forced to get off in the middle of nowhere; discovering that the apartment he already paid the deposit for was not only haunted, but also surrounded by families with screaming kids…
His fears were mostly caused by anxious retellings of his past experiences, and for that exact reason, there was no right way to exorcise them: they were fueled by logic . That evening, his nightmare factory decided to obsessively remind him of how dangerous it could be to make Nanami wait.
It’s not that he feared the sorcerer in itself: he was a good man, the kind that you felt safe standing next to. It was also much better than dealing with Gojo, since Nanami had no interest in flirting or getting him to drink after work. Their relationship was strictly professional, formal and simple, it started and ended on the clock -
Until it didn't.
The air in the room felt unbelievably tense. Nanami was seated in his chair, glancing at his wristwatch like a concerned parent. "It's 6:45." The man huffed out of his nose, annoyance barely masked by his goggles. "We're talking about 50 minutes wasted for your fault."
Ijichi’s hair stood up. The electric current of shame suggested one and only thing: bend in a deep bow, so deep that he almost banged his head against the desk in front of him. "I'm- I'm terribly so-sorry for being so late!" He barely stammered, strands of straight hair trembling and pointing to the ground.
If it was true that some sorcerer could smell fear, then he must have reeked.
"I warned you about overtime." The drag of Nanami’s chair could only mean that he was standing, now. Ijichi closed his eyes, deeming the sorcerer's shadow to be scary enough. "I told you that it'd come at a high cost, didn't I?"
The black haired man squirmed in place. "Yes sir…"
"Straighten your back and look in my eyes when you talk to me, Ijichi."
Somewhere in his stomach, an ulcer opened. "Y-yes sir!" He said with more purpose, standing up and opening his eyelids and oh, no, Nanami took his goggles off. That was one hell of a bad sign.
"What's your excuse this time?" The sorcerer seemed to relax a little, genuinely interested, "Did something dangerous happen, perhaps?"
"T-traffic, sir."
Nanami’s sneer was badly concealed. "For fifty minutes?"
Well, at least Ijichi tried. "...and earlier incompetence, sir." He clarified, gaze dropping in shame.
"That is to say that you went against my recommendations again?"
Ijichi nodded through a nervous gulp. He knew what came next, he shouldn’t have been surprised, but for however times he heard them, it was impossible for Nanami’s words to not make an impression -
"That's all I need to know, then. Assume the position."
Ijichi’s heart was beating too fast for any coherent thought to form. He just turned on his heels and obeyed, like he should have when Nanami gave him directions in the first place. With his face red all over, the man reached a nearby armchair and knelt on its soft seat, crossing his wrists on the plush top. Somehow he managed to hold his head high, but his gaze was unfocused.
"Further, Ijichi."
There was no need for Nanami to explain what he meant: Ijichi bit an ashamed groan and scooted back onto his knees, back arching to expose his clothed backside. It still wasn’t enough. Nanami pressed down on his lower back so that it could be presented properly, almost giving poor Ijichi a heart attack.
"What did we agree on?" The sorcerer asked, picking at his wristwatch to take it off.
"O-one swat for every-" Ijichi swallowed mid sentence, voice quivery but somehow still alive, "For every minute I'm late after hours…"
Nanami let out a satisfied hum, then went to lay his watch on the desk. “I need you to keep count of them,” he instructed, now rummaging through a drawer, "It doesn't need to be out loud. What's important is that you'll be able to tell me if I ask you. Are we clear?"
Something else was laid on the desk, but Ijichi did not have the heart to turn and investigate, especially since the only thing he could see at the corner of his eye was Nanami methodically rolling up his sleeves.
"Yes sir…" He sighed, averting his gaze.
The first swat came down brisk, immediately throwing Ijichi off balance. Another quickly did the same on the opposite side of the first and he blushed even harder: even with his trousers in the way, he could feel the clear outline of Nanami's large hand far too well.
When the sorcerer coughed, Ijichi returned to a proper position as if responding to a practiced signal. "Ah- sorry, sir-" He could not even finish apologizing; the third and fourth swats were delivered in somewhat of an upwards motion, catching the undercurve of his backside and leaving him with no other option but to grip tightly on the back of the armchair. The sting was still dull but the impact made him shiver all over, making it difficult to maintain the position. It was not that Nanami’s hands were too rough, quite the opposite: he seemed to take his sweet time building up the spankings in a precise pattern.
It was just that… really, Ijichi’s knees were so weak! Sometimes they wobbled and trembled when he was anxious and standing , so supporting his weight on them as he got spanked was not easy.
The sound of Nanami’s hand colliding against the seat of his trousers was enough to fill the room, so he tried to keep his lips pressed as tightly as he could to not let any sound escape -
Failing, because ever since the eight spanking hit him, Ijichi could only yip in a hushed voice and hope to not be heard. The sting only built meaner from there.
Nanami’s voice forcibly pulled him out of his thoughts. "Number?"
"Eleven, sir…"
"Undo your belt, Ijichi."
Again, nothing out of the ordinary, but Ijichi jumped a little at the command anyway. He fiddled with it briefly before finally unclasping it, but did not take his hand off the button at his front yet. "Should I…?" He briefly looked back to catch Nanami’s nod, all the confirmation he needed to slide his trousers down and let them pool around his knees.
"Good," Nanami commented, "you're getting acquainted with it, I see."
Ijichi’s ears turned scalding red, both for the praise and for being reminded that that kind of punishment was becoming far too frequent. That was the third spanking in a month, a little record that he was not proud of.
As frequent as it could seem, the most Ijichi got was ten or twenty if the day had been strange; at most he got thirty, and that one time was partially to cover for Itadori’s mistakes.
Fifty was unheard of.
The back of Nanami's hand, still chilly, zapped Ijichi as it came between his knees to spread them apart further. "One would think that you should know best, at this point." Smack , came the first spank on the flimsy fabric of his underwear, "But you don't yet. Is it that this method is not effective enough?"
Ijichi shook his head as the only answer, then yelped when another spank came down, and another, and another - to leave him panting, his chin sinking on the plush back of the chair. It was more than effective, just- he couldn't say it now, could he? How was he supposed to explain it? When he took that shortcut earlier that day, deliberately going against Nanami’s advice, he had immediately started dreading the consequences. And it wasn’t just for work, either.
It was worse, like when the other day he found out that a whole pack of yogurts had expired in his fridge, he actually began fearing that Nanami would knock at his door and spank him for wasting food. If that wasn’t proof that these punishments kept him on his best behavior, then what was?
"Number?" Nanami asked, and for the love of all that was sacred, Ijichi’s blood stopped flowing in his body.
"I- huh-" He stuttered, petrified and surrendering when he felt the sorcerer sigh at his side. Maybe he should have just faked his death from the start.
"Did you space out? Just what I told you not to do?" Oh, he was fried. Mashed potatoes. Mush, glop, sludge of a man that tried to mumble a random number, but Nanami wasn't having any of it. "I'm spanking you for wasting time, and what do you do?" He reprimanded in a steel cold tone.
"I'm sorry! I'm so sorry, i-it's just-!"
"Get up. This isn't working, after all."
Ijichi was mortified. The beginning of dismayed tears rolled inside his eyes as he got up, hand reaching down to pull his trousers back in place - but the sorcerer stopped him with a quick gesture. "Sir…?"
"Was the armchair comfortable?"
Even if Nanami wasn’t one for trick questions, Ijichi gulped anyway before telling the truth. "It was."
"Then, that's the source of the problem." The sorcerer said pragmatically, as if every problem of the world could be easily solved like that. "I need you to focus on the punishment." Slowly, he adjusted the shape of his sleeves and then sat on the armchair. His bare hand ominously tapped against the outer of his own thigh. "Come lay here. We'll start from twelve again, and you better not lose count this time."
Wait, could he mean…?
Ijichi’s apparent paralysis was interrupted by the sight of Nanami’s hand, extended towards him not in an hostile way, but as an attempt in helping him. The black haired man took it reluctantly, trusting Nanami’s better judgement; as expected, Ijichi was quickly pressed onto the older man’s knees without any accident. He laid there with his spine as stiff as granite, awkwardly trying to figure out how to breathe when literal fire was in his lungs. What did not help at all was the sorcerer’s hand, intruding in the picture again to adjust the position.
How could a sane man come to terms with being tipped forwards like that, bottom raised and laying at Nanami's mercy? The blood sloshing in Ijichi’s head made it difficult to hear the words coming out of the blonde’s mouth, but he must have said something among the lines of "tell me when we reach thirty" before his hand crashed down again.
It didn’t change much pain-wise, right? So why did it hurt more?! Was that his pride was spanked alongside his body? His dramatic train of thoughts ceased pretty quickly under the treatment of Nanami’s hand. Ijichi was so on edge, overwhelmed by how the skin rippled underneath his underwear at every spank, and nothing could take him out of that. Could he even grip onto something? Was he allowed to touch the armchair again? Nanami’s thighs were hard and firm, and he didn’t risk sinking his fingers into one; instead, he tried to reach the cold floor with his fingertips, in the hopes of cooling down just a bit...
But by the time they reached twenty, Ijichi retreated the hand and used it to press it against his mouth; anything to smother the demure sounds he sighed while taking his punishment. Something that he could not control was how his ankles moved and trembled, letting the tip of his shoes tap weakly against the floor. His backside throbbed and burned, and as they reached twenty three, a wet yelp escaped his lips. Other two were forced out of his throat and at twenty six, the same number of his age, draped over the knee of someone-
He openly yelped. The hand on his mouth made his glasses ride up and press uncomfortably against the bridge of his nose. They fogged as he mewled through another swat, deciding to shut his eyes to not witness that shame.
"What are you doing?" Nanami stopped at twenty eight, fingers still on the warmed backside. With his left, he brushed Ijichi's hair off of his forehead and then delicately took the black haired man’s hand from his face.
Ijichi was too ashamed to answer, so he shook his head instead. The sorcerer didn’t judge that, limiting himself to pick the other’s glasses by the stem. "You'll dirty them like this," He sighed, pocketing them in his shirt. "and you'll end up hurting yourself. Give me your hand."
Ijichi quietly wiped his face and then reached back to meet Nanami’s touch, giving up at the way the sorcerer pinned his hand against his side. Other than the inevitability of that position, the silence that lingered there was peaceful - calming, even. He had time to even out his breathing.
"This isn't a contest to say who can stay silent for more, hm?" Nanami said, a soft edge to his voice - or maybe it was just exasperation?
"I didn't- I didn't want to bother."
"Ijichi, we're alone. There's no one to bother." The sorcerer patted his backside a couple of times, "Number?"
"Twenty eight…" Ijichi said, but was quickly proved wrong by two spanks in quick succession. "Thirty-!" He yipped.
The little caresses over the back of his thighs could have been mistaken for affection, but what mattered to Nanami was to make the other relax for what was coming next. “Good.” He praised again, this time letting his palm travel upwards to hook a thumb in the waistband of Ijichi’s underwear. It made the man over his lap start. "I hoped we'd never reach more than thirty. That's well over late, it's simply unacceptable."
Ijichi didn’t need to take a guess to understand where the sorcerer was trying to go. Agreeing to these words, he could only duck his head in unspoken agreement. "I'm sorry…"
"You will be." And with these brisk words, his underwear was pulled down. Ijichi whimpered but did not protest it: Nanami was right, it was a shame and a waste of time and-
When the sorcerer’s hand slapped down on his bare, the loud sound reached Ijichi quicker than actual pain. He jumped and whimpered, but he did not have time to feel the outline of Nanami’s fingers getting tattooed on his reddened skin: again and again, without letting up for a second, the spankings rained and confused in the same throbbing heat.
"Stop me at forty."
"Yes sir-" Ijichi’s lower lip wobbled and his eyes filled with tears again. It was so much, too much, and he stopped trying to mask his sounds: now unashamed, the black haired man openly gasped and sobbed, little ‘ow’s taking over his speech. "Forty- forty, stop-"
Nanami caressed Ijichi’s straight hair with an open palm, scratching lightly at his nape. "Ten more, I'll need you to count them out loud." He said, then added, “You’re doing well.”
Was he really? The man stared at the floor through blurry eyes, but that little piece of praise made the guilt more bearable. He hissed when Nanami moved forwards to reach the desk, and he didn’t think much of it until he felt something poke at his backside.
Flat and… wooden?
This time, he could not remain blind to his faith. Timidly, Ijichi looked over his shoulder to see Nanami wielding a ruler, and it was not the plastic type he used for actual work. Did that mean that the sorcerer kept one just for these kinds of occasions?!
Oh, he was going to perish then and there.
The ruler brushed over his bottom quickly, as if to sweep dust away, and the motion made poor Ijichi’s ache reignite and his legs tremble. "From now on, everytime you surpass thirty minutes, you'll get the ruler like this from the very start. Understood?"
The black haired man nodded. “Y-yes sir.”
Nanami’s left hand rubbed at his hip, then he patted Ijichi’s backside with the ruler. Shallow little swats, just enough for him to take proper aim. "Now, why am I spanking you?"
"Because I was late, sir."
"And how many do you have left?"
Ijichi gulped. That hint of fear did not want to leave, but he could do it! He just took forty, how bad could it be now?! Better get it done quickly, right? "Ten sir, please." He said as fast as possible, like ripping a band-aid.
Silence fell again.
Please? His eyes widened in realization. "I mean- I meant- please, huh-" Ijichi uselessly scrambled for words, legs crossing and uncrossing in a fit of embarrassment. He really had to make a fool of himself, now?!
"Ijichi?" Nanami’s calm voice calling for him stopped that useless dilemma. "No need to panic, I'll take that you were being polite. Ready now?" The blonde asked, letting the ruler tap against his thighs to cease their little jerks.
"Yes sir-”
The evening was busy. What hour was it, even? Ijichi could hear trucks passing on the streets, the shrill horn of a motorcycle, and somewhere in the condo, a tv was playing loudly. It was the sound of the end of work time.
Ijichi shifted slightly in his half asleep state. He was spent, exhausted, and his bottom was still throbbing from the little welts that the ruler left behind. Fortunately, it was not touching the armchair.
He was straddling Nanami’s thigh. If the position looked awkward or not, Ijichi couldn’t care less after crying his eyes out. He kept his cheek pressed on top of the sorcerer’s shoulder, lazily looking at the display of his phone. Was he checking his emails at a time like that?
“You’re awake?” Nanami’s voice was too close to Ijichi’s ear, making him nod with a jolt of his chest. The blonde reached in the pocket of his shirt to take out the glasses and gently place them on top of Ijichi’s nose. “There.”
Did… did Nanami polish the lens while he was asleep? His cheeks dusted of a pink color. “Uh, thank you sir,” he awkwardly said, ready to get up and away - if the sorcerer hadn’t clung to his waist, that was.
“Don’t move.” Nanami grimaced, no… winced?
“Is everything alright?”
“My leg got numb. If you move too much now, it will be painful.”
“Oh.” Ijichi suppressed the need to smile: even someone as powerful as Nanami got cramps like normal people, it seemed. Well, his weight on a single thigh was to blame, but he wasn’t going to apologize for that.
Whatever that half hug was, it wasn’t really cuddles , just… human contact, the kind that Nanami would agree to without cringing. Fortunately, nobody was there to witness it, because it would have been difficult to explain what he was doing on his lap in his underwear, red peeking out of it, sharing space and breaths and-
“Na~na~mi~” Came an annoyingly recognizable voice from the corridor.
The two looked at each other with an equally resigned face.