𝐂𝐎𝐑𝐎𝐍𝐀 • jackass oneshots

𝐒𝐖𝐄𝐀𝐓 𝐓𝐔𝐑𝐍𝐒 𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐎 𝐁𝐋𝐎𝐎𝐃 • johnny knoxville gen, mature

Getting hit was awful. Johnny had done enough stunts to be very closely acquainted with pain, and getting socked in the face was one of the more exquisite types of pain.

And as much as it hurt, there was something addicting about it. The crunch of knuckles cracking against his cheekbone. The stinging, bright in his nerves and flashing across his skin, and then the dull throb he was left with as he stumbled back. Few things were more satisfying to Johnny than getting punched.

That's how he found himself in the basement of an old bar, sweaty bodies crowding around him and a slender buzz-cut twenty-year-old as they stepped in a lopsided circle over taped-down trash bags, mildew squelching beneath.

The cheering of the mean around them was faint, Johnny could hardly hear them over the blood rushing in his ears. The guy in front of him spat onto the sweat-soaked plastic. He steadied himself and squared up, his clenched fists partly blocking Johnny's view of his wild, dark eyes. This guy may have been skinny and just a bit uncoordinated, but he lived to fight, Johnny could tell. After a few visits to this club, you learn how to size someone up with a glance. Read them like a magazine, splashed with gasoline and lying, ink running like the blood gushing out of Johnny's broken nose, on the coffee table of a blown-up condo.

The skinny guy took a swing at Johnny, a quick right hook that Johnny probably could've blocked or avoided, but he took it. Absorbed it all and let himself stumble backwards. He didn't touch it in an attempt to dull the ache, just let it pulse under dingy lighting with every pump of his blood.

Johnny stepped forward, hitting the guy right in the left eye and kneeing his abdomen. He hunched over, hissing, and hit Johnny in the jaw with a swift uppercut as he returned back to standing. Johnny bit the inside of his cheek, hard. His saliva turned metallic. His head was thrown back and his opponent just about tackled him, knocking them both onto the ground.

Johnny's head hit the concrete with a sickening thud. The man above him pinned his wrists above his head with one large, spindly-fingered hand and slugged him in the nose. Over and over and over again. He tangled his sticky fingers in Johnny's knotted hair, freeing his wrists for Johnny to make a poor attempt at punching him back. The guy's right fist came down again on Johnny's nose, sending his head cracking back onto black plastic and the cement underneath.

The guy paused for a half-second as the crowd around them went wild. The gathering of men looked equal parts thrilled and concerned. Johnny peered at them through his swollen eye and felt a hot, twisted feeling curling in his gut. He was in heaven. The guy straddling him was God.

Johnny looked up at a black and purple face, smattered with red like a Jackson Pollock painting and his eyes a dark umber with just a hint of sadism. Johnny was sure that he, himself, was quite a sight too.

He imagined what he'd see in his rearview mirror later. He saw day-old stubble tinged copper. He saw his lip split wide open and his jaw cut down to his neck. He saw the dark circles under his eyes puffed up and, if he was lucky, he might have a bit of a shiner to show off at work the next day. Oh, it's nothin'. Oh, some guy picked a fight with me in a bar. Oh, I fell down the stairs. Oh, I tripped on the sidewalk.

Heat pulsed through him. Dark and thick. He took a shuddering breath in, his favorite smells flooding his lungs. Sweat. Blood. Salt and mold and sticky concrete and torn plastic.

He looked into his opponent's eyes, and smiled. A genuine grin, one that made his face all that more punchable, that screamed mischief and sex and come on, hit me. Like you really mean it.

So the skinny guy wailed on him one last time. And in the split-second between his fist raising and colliding with Johnny's face again, crunching bones between layers of skin and bursting blood vessels to form bruises Johnny will press on later, sending his mind into spotted darkness, Johnny felt as alive as he'd ever been.