Chapter Text
“. . . And the last orbital element we’ll be learning about is the true anomaly, which tells us the angle between the planet’s periapse and its instantaneous position . . .”
Gojo Satoru listened to the lecture listlessly, not quite sure why he’d decided to pursue a master’s degree in astrophysics instead of just doing what his parents had insisted (almost threatened) him to do. It was just the first semester and whatever Yaga was rattling off, Satoru already knew about from all the time he had spent casually reading books on astronomy in his previous years. He knew the professor had probably noticed him nodding off but after last incident where he stood Satoru up and asked him a bunch of questions regarding their current topic (and then some) and Satoru had answered everything to near perfection; he guesses that his teacher will probably just leave him alone now.
“I need a drink tonight,” Satoru muttered to himself, a headache starting to build the more he listened to words and equations and symbols. He whipped out his phone and sent a quick text to Shoko asking if she’d be free tonight. While Shoko may be just slightly cheating her way through medical school, there was no doubt she still had a shit ton of work to do and memorize.
One side of his mouth tugged up when he got a simple thumbs up in response, forehead falling back down onto the table.
“. . . Now, regarding this, Joseph Lagrange found that in the circular restricted three-body problem, there are five points where test particles placed at rest . . .”
And Satoru was out like a light.
***
“Shoko, I feel like there’s nothing in life for me,” Satoru whined, the bottle of beer in his hand sloshing around gently. “I don’t know what to do, I don’t know how I’m going to get through this degree. On top of that, I’m not even getting laid! Me, Shoko! Look at me! How am I not getting laid?”
The brown haired doctor-in-training turned tired eyes upon her best friend, who was currently gesturing to his face as if it were a natural treasure that was going unnoticed. She snorted. “Yeah, I can think of a few reasons.”
Satoru just whined some more, taking a couple of swigs of alcohol in the process. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you’re too much work, princess. Most people can’t spend that amount of time and effort in you, despite whatever your face might look like,” Shoko drawled on ruthlessly, Satoru’s mouth hanging more and more open with each word coming out of her.
He gasped, hand dramatically clutching his chest. “Are you saying I’m not worth it, Shoko?”
Shoko simply raised her eyebrows, not even bothering to point out that Satoru didn’t deny being a pain in the ass to date. “That’s-” A hiccup “-that’s exactly what I’m saying.” She waggled her finger at Satoru as if reprimanding a badly behaved dog.
Satoru let out a high pitched noise and latched himself onto Shoko. Well, here came the clingy part of his drunken stages. “Shoko, I’m so gorgeous, my eyes are like . . . like eyes of blue! Um, oceans! Yeah, that. Why won’t anyone date me? Shoko, why don’t you do it, fuck me Shoko~”
Shoko merely took another shot of vodka, ignoring the 6’3 koala bear hanging onto her. “You already know I’m a lesbian and that I have a girlfriend, Satoru.”
“Technicalities!”
“Satoru, I don’t even know why you’re so stressed about your life. The amount of generational wealth you have will keep you covered for 12 lifetimes straight, what kind of pressure is on you?” Shoko grumbled, knocking back another shot of vodka.
“It’s not about money,” Satoru replied, voice barely comprehensible with how much he was slurring his words. “It’s about feeling . . . fulfilled, yeah that’s the word. I’m not going into my family’s boring bank business, I barely feel like I enjoy physics or astronomy anymore. I don’t know, I feel lost.”
Shoko closed her eyes, thinking of a way to reply to that, to offer a solution. And she thought . . . and kept thinking . . .
“Shoko, stop sleeping, I’m pouring my heart out over here!”
She jolted back into the world of the living, finding Satoru’s eyes watching hers reproachfully.
“Why don’t you just pay someone to fuck you?” Shoko said, shrugging. “If money’s not a problem.”
“Prostitutes are illegal in Japan, last I checked. And it’s not just about getting laid, my life is falling apart Shoko!”
“No, it’s not, you just think it is,” Shoko fired back. God, it felt like she’s had this conversation with him before. Had she? Had they both? Were they just going around in a never ending cycle of drunken complaining from Satoru? “God . . . just go get a dom, I don’t know. I do not want to have this conversation again.”
“A what?” Satoru’s drunken confused voice asked.
“A dom. A dominant. Come on Satoru, don’t act like you don’t know what bdsm is.”
“I mean, I do, but what’s got to do with anything? I’m not looking to get whipped or whatever,” Satoru frowned.
Shoko lifted up one of her leaden arms with great effort, all to flick him on the forehead. She ignored his whine of protest. “You fucking idiot, a dom doesn’t just hurt you physically. They take . . . take care of you.” Woah, the world was starting to spin around.
“And you know that how?”
“Because I’m not an ignorant idiot like you. Also, I have a friend in my class who’s in that kind of agreement and she’s doing just fine,” Shoko explained.
Satoru stared off into space, considering Shoko’s words. “I don’t even know if I’m a sub.”
Shoko snorted. “You’re always bottoming, cry during sex, and want to please others. Not to mention, you’re a total brat. If that’s not a sub, I don’t know what is.”
“How do you know all that?”
“You’re the one who tells me all the details when you get laid, dumbass. Against my will, by the way.”
“Oh, right.”
The more Shoko thought about it, the more she believed it would work in making Satoru just that tiny bit more tolerable. She will close her eyes for a minute, and then she’ll discuss this further with Satoru. Yup, just a minute.
It was not a minute.
***
Satoru slowly woke up with a pounding headache greeting him. He blearily opened his eyes, finding Shoko passed out on his couch. He himself was draped over the armchair sideways, limbs falling over both sides. He lightly groaned, he could already feel his neck and shoulders being sore on top of the headache. God, wasn’t this just fantastic.
He rearranged himself in a manner that didn’t kill his fucking neck and stared up at the ceiling, thoughts slow and lazy since it was a Saturday and he had nothing to do all day. No assignments, no tests. Just pure weekend bliss. Satoru’s mind slowly wandered over to the conversation Shoko and he had (unlike the former, he actually remembered his drunken rants and talks).
He wouldn’t lie and say the idea wasn’t appealing, and now that he was sober and able to think clearly, he was aware that dominants’ main purpose was actually just to take care of their subs. He’d heard about how some actually guided their subs to have a productive schedule or just helped them relax. Satoru could use that, he could use someone telling him what to do and offering him praise and affection for doing even simple tasks.
God knows he hasn’t exactly ever had verbal reaffirmation ever in his life.
And hey, if he got laid in the process, why the hell not?
Steeling his mind, he lifted his right leg and reached across the coffee table to shake Shoko awake with his foot. It was almost half a minute before she finally groaned loudly and got up, eyes still closed but ears clearly listening.
“What! It’s Saturday, let me sleep motherfucker.”
“You said I should find a dom. Well, I’m willing to find a dom. Where?” Satoru asked, crossing his arms even as he wiggled into an even more horizontal position.
Satoru felt Shoko simply stare at him for about ten seconds. “You seriously wanna do this at the asscrack of dawn, Satoru?”
“It’s almost 1 pm!”
“Your point being?” But nevertheless, Shoko still sighed and finally opened her eyes, lightly slapping her face as if that would help her in waking up. Who knows, maybe it did. The first thing on her to-do list wasn’t to answer Satoru’s question apparently, because all she did was reach into her pocket and take out a cigarette. She puffed on it for a few quiet seconds before finally looking Satoru in the eyes.
“I suggest instead of just finding random strangers on some seedy unofficial bdsm site, you find a professional dom you can actually trust, like my friend did,” Shoko explained, one hand scrolling through her phone while the other held the cigarette between her pointer and middle fingers. “You’re gonna have to pay for the services, but money’s not a problem for you obviously. At least you’ll be able to rest assured you won’t get scammed or taken advantage of.”
Satoru barely kept the phone from smacking right on his face when Shoko throws it to him, the screen already open to a website. He sends a glare at Shoko but she’s already busy indulging in her daily nicotine, so he just goes back to the matter at hand. The website displayed a service for doms, different needs and kinks meant getting assigned different doms. He noticed they didn’t offer switches or subs, which he thought was weird. He posed the question to Shoko.
She simply shrugged. “Not sure, I guess they don’t want to put people working under them in vulnerable positions. You never know what strangers might actually do.”
Satoru thought this over for a minute and started getting nervous. Wasn’t he the one getting himself into a vulnerable position with a complete stranger right now?
His sudden change of mood must be showing on his face because Shoko seemed to read his mind. “You don’t need to worry, though. These are all completely trustworthy and background-checked people working, they’re under contracts and shit. You’ll be safe, Satoru.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m positive. Now, I think you need to make a profile, have your documents uploaded and verified and then we can get on with everything. I don’t think it takes too long though, about an hour, from what Saori told me?” Shoko explained.
“Why did she tell you all of this, anyways?” Satoru asked, eyes narrowing suspiciously.
Shoko’s lips quirked up at the corners, one shoulder lifting in a shrug. “I don’t need to tell you everything going on in my life, Satoru. Now, you get on your laptop and fill whatever it is out and I will be taking a nice hot bath in your ridiculously gorgeous bathroom. I’ll also be borrowing your smallest clothing, be right back.”
Before getting to what Shoko had told him to do, Satoru decided to take some aspirin first in an attempt to quiet down the pounding going on in his head. Soon enough though, he was staring at a blown up version of the website on his laptop. The policy said that after you filled in the form, you’d be contacted by some live 24/7 chatbot that would ask the most basic questions regarding what you needed, and then they’d assign you a dominant depending on that after your credentials were verified.
That’s it. You don’t get to choose who you get matched with but the chatbot apparently does ask questions about what kind of physical appearance and build you’re looking for in your dom, so that was something, he guesses.
He explained his situation to the bot, which he felt pretty fucking stupid about but his answers were being saved to be sent to an actual human being eventually so whatever. For physical appearances, he emphasized he didn’t really care as long as the man was at least 5’11 or up because he really didn’t want it to be too awkward with Satoru himself being 6’3 (also okay, maybe Satoru liked being manhandled, sue him).
When all that was left was waiting for his papers to verify, Satoru decided to be useful and cleaned up the empty bottles and washed the shot glasses, scrunching his nose at the ash Shoko’s cigarette had left behind on his coffee table. He also ordered some pizza for them to eat since they’d basically ingested all that alcohol on an empty stomach last night. No wonder he felt like utter shit.
Half an hour later, Shoko came out wearing clothing way too big on her. He physically had to restrain himself from laughing at how many times she had to roll up the waistband of the pajamas lest she throw something heavy at him. She squinted suspiciously at him, trying to pick out even a miniscule ounce of mirth on his face but he merely pointed to the pizza and coke that had arrived and was sitting on the coffee table.
“So did you do it?”
“Yup, said it’ll take an hour, just like you said,” Satoru replied, words muffled from the pizza stuffed in his mouth.
“Mm, hopefully it’s someone hot,” Shoko said, eyes knowing and mouth tilted into a smirk.
Satoru sputtered, flecks of seasoning getting over his shirt. “I don’t care about that!”
“No? You don’t think it’d be easier to get it up if he’s hot?”
“Shoko!”
The aforementioned simply laughed. “Okay, okay, you’re just so fucking easy to tease. Not like I’m wrong though.”
And they continued like that for the better part of an hour, talking about their classes, encounters, and just bickering when a small ding sounded from Satoru’s phone. He halted the conversation to check the notification and his eyes widened when he saw the contents.
“What? What is it?” Shoko said, getting up and sitting on one of the arms of the sofa and leaning over his shoulder to get a peek.
“They assigned me someone already, they’re telling me to go check his profile and to approve it if I’m okay with it,” Satoru explained, waking his laptop up from its sleeping state to check the website.
He refreshed the page and clicked on the pop-up notification, from where he was directed to another page with a man’s profile and buttons at the bottom of the page that said APPROVE and DECLINE. What jumped out at Satoru first was the gallery of pictures the page had provided of the man. Tall obviously, broad from what he could tell, wearing a suit, and silky long black hair with the top sections tied off from his face in a ponytail. The man’s face itself was gorgeous; sharp jawline, honey eyes so light they were almost golden, strong eyebrows and a gentle smile playing about his lips.
Oh, Satoru was so gone.
“Geto Suguru,” Shoko read off the page. Right. A name. Satoru had forgotten all about that. “It’s a nice name, suits yours actually, isn’t it funny? 27 . . . so only four years older than you . . .”
Satoru looked over the actual words on the profile, it was all very basic information, the more complex parts to be discussed with each other in person. Oh, and he was 6’1, so they did actually listen to his one request. Satoru was still going to be taller than him but with how broad this Geto Suguru looked, he didn’t think it was going to be much of a problem.
“What do you think, Shoko?” Satoru asked, feeling as if he was on another plane of existence.
“Well, you’re the one making the puppy-dog eyes at him, you tell me,” Shoko responded dryly.
Before Satoru had even taken a second to think about it, he had already pressed the ACCEPT button, the page redirecting him to a notice that said his dominant had been given his phone number and would contact him shortly.
Those words started making Satoru break out in a nervous sweat. “Oh god, Shoko, I’m not ready. What if I’m not a sub, what if I’m a disappointment, what if he doesn’t like me, how do I talk to him?”
“Hey, hey,” Shoko said in a loud voice, grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him. As much as Shoko teased him, she still hated to see her best friend in distress. “Who cares if you turn out to not be a proper sub, you’re paying him, not the other way around. You won’t be wasting his time because it’s already been compensated for, don’t worry so much. Just . . . have fun and be safe, alright?”
Satoru took a deep breath, processing Shoko’s words. She was right, at the end of the day, Geto was a stranger he had paid for that didn’t have any expectations of him. At least, not right away. “Yeah, you’re right, thanks Shoko. What would I do without you?”
“Crash and burn, probably,” Shoko grinned, hitting Satoru upside the head lightly.
The quiet comfortable silence (which was rare with Shoko around) was broken by Satoru’s phone dinging yet again. This time, it wasn’t a notification but a text from an unknown number. His eye twitched with anxiety as he opened it up, wondering if it was who he thought it was.
It was indeed who he thought it was.
Hello
This is Geto Suguru, is this Gojo Satoru’s number?
Satoru’s heart was beating so fast, it might as well jump out of his chest. Okay, deep breaths, it’s just a text. If he couldn’t even text Geto back, how the hell did he expect to have sex with the guy? . . . Oh god, he was going to have sex with this Geto Suguru. It wasn’t a matter of if or whether, but an inevitability if Satoru so wanted. Oh god. Right.
hey, yeah it’s satoru!
Satoru so desperately wanted to write back something else, anything else, because he felt like he left the conversation so stiff and closed but try as he might, he had no clue what to say. He decided to quickly type out a sentence letting Geto know that his responses had nothing to do with him. In hindsight, Satoru may be a tad bit overthinking this considering it’s been one singular line of conversation.
sorry i haven’t really done this before so i don’t know what to say
It’s alright, I get if you’re nervous
I wanted to set up a date to meet, preferably by next week?
I can get a reservation at Rose Café but if you have somewhere else in mind, i’ll be happy to accommodate
Satoru recalls Rose Café; he’s been there a few times himself, it’s a very upscale café and perfectly quiet with a lot of privacy, especially with the reserved tables. Their desserts and coffees were amazing too, just thinking about their devil’s food cake makes Satoru’s mouth water.
rose café sounds good!
Alright, when would you like to go?
i hope this doesn’t sound forward, but can we meet tomorrow?
i’m free and i’m kind of anxious to at least start some discussion?
Of course, I’ll book reservations for tomorrow 12 pm, sound okay?
Also relax, nothing’s going to happen, it’s very casual for now
Satoru let out a deep breath of relief, feeling lightheaded from the possibility of meeting Geto tomorrow. His dominant. He actually had a dom. He was still having some trouble wrapping his head around it. He suddenly let out a cough as Shoko blew a large cloud of smoke right onto his face.
“Are you going to tell me what you guys talked about or what?” She asked exasperatedly. Satoru rolled his eyes but showed her the texts, asking her to confirm that he didn’t seem too desperate. Shoko assured him that he didn’t, albeit grudgingly.
“You do know you’re allowed to be clingy as a sub, right?”
Satoru shifted in his seat. “Of course I know that. But I don’t even know the guy yet, he’ll think I’m a loser, Shoko.”
“No, he fucking won’t, you drama queen,” Shoko said, flicking Satoru’s forehead again. “Again, you’re paying him, I think you should start acting a bit more entitled.”
Satoru merely grumbled in response and finished the last of his pizza slice, hand automatically moving to grab another. He’s just stress eating at this point and he internally groans, putting the fifth slice down, although quite reluctantly.
His headache was still mostly intact so Satoru told Shoko to leave whenever she felt like it, and he himself goes into his bedroom to hopefully nap the pain and anxiety away, Shoko waving him off with a snarky 'don't die in there.' He basically pounces onto his bed, face smushed into his pillow and muscles relaxing.
Tomorrow. Geto Suguru.
Satoru almost immediately passes out with those words swirling around in his mind.