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The best fights feel like worship, some disengaged voice might narrate.
Jabber thinks that particular phrasing is bullshit.
Worship ain't soft. Ain't kneeling. Sure as hell ain't clean.
But if worship is anything, it’s this: blood in the air, bones aching and sweat slick on the knuckles.
That's devotion, baby.
Mankira sings pretty when Jabber parries with a hard crack, sharp enough to split the moment in two. Precise as a bonfire. She likes it when he moves just right. When his wrists snap to it and the fight becomes a dance with extra steps. There's a real sweet note in here when metal tongues metal, something nice and sweet and just for Jabber.
Maybe not literally, maybe it's just him and another thing in this world he holds in both hands and wishes on because the alternative is uglier.
Zanka swings back, of course, eyes sharp glowing enough to make this whole thing real. Like someone lit a fuse behind them. The air shifts around them when baby moves. No hesitation or wasted motion. Zanka fights like he was born mid-swing, perhaps he was. With this bone deep, rattling rage. A boy tryna break the world in half with a stick.
Lovely, lovely, Assistaff makes this clean, violent whooshing sound when Zanka cracks her through the air. Like wind tearing past a blade.
Hits Jabber hard enough to rattle his teeth in is skull. Knocking together at the vibrating, aching impact. For a second, a shockwave shivers down his spine and the world goes all white at the edges. Something gives. Red gushes from the crater a molar leaves behind. Jabber feels the hollow space before he tastes it. Coppery. Then he laughs. Low then wider. Open in euphoria. It tastes so good. Then wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, smearing read across his lips like some kind of war paint or lipstick.
For a moment, here, it's music. It's metal. Impact and recoil. The rhythm when a breath and a heartbeat and a strike collide.
Home.
A home in violence-
Or?
A home in Zanka-
The way Zanka moves and he doesn't flinch. The way he keeps coming forward like Jabber won't put him on his ass again and again and again.
The thought settles heavier than the hit. Jabber just laughs, shaking it loose like animal hair on a sweater.
"C'mon, Bad Attit-ude," Jabber ducks under a whipping slide, voice all loose and easy like this whole thing ain't growing dangerously close to cracking his ribs open, "quit playin' with me! I know you got more than that."
Zanka takes it, the words and the weight under them, takes the taunting in both hands. He knows what it is.
That's-that's good, that's great, that's perfect.
C'mon.
It's perfect when they crash together like this, all ugly and intimate. No choreography here. Ain't pretty for no one watching.
Their shoulders slam together, knees knock and shins scrape. Two dudes collide, chest to chest, and it ain't fighting so much as friction. Heat. Fabric, first, fights tight when they bundle into it. Then wrists, Zanka grabs to try to slow Mankira's claw. Hair, then, Jabber gets a good handful of blond before he's shooed away with snapping teeth. Then bone, finally, fingers digging like Jabber's searching for the seam in Zanka's skin. Trying to pinpoint that place where all the rage leaks out and let it free. Zanka is most beautiful this way.
Every hit is a conversation, almost. One neither of them know how to speak aloud.
You mad? Show me.
You gonna break? Try me.
You see me?
Yeah.
And Jabber feels….Jabber feels seen here.
Not understood, oh no. Zanka don't understand him. Don’t untangle him. Don’t soften him up into something polite and explainable.
More so, witnessed. Sees all the sharp edges, the bits that cut and rot away. The way Jabber leans into pain like a welcome mat. Like someone shoving fast-food wrappers off the passenger seat, all sorry about the mess, so there’s room for it to sit. The way Jabber's smiles get tight, or how sometimes he wishes like his skin were a suit jacket so he could shrug it off.
Heh. Clocked. Bullseye. Bingo, sucker.
It's a real scary thing, that. Zanka is the only one clocking the real ugly shape of him. The raw nerve of the whole ordeal that makes one Jabber Wonger.
There's a sudden twist, a shift, a snap in the tension. One second they're vertical, mid-smack, and the next the world has tilted. Zanka has him on the ground, precise and mean with it. Snap! And the air's gone. Jabber's back hits the ground hard enough to knock the laugh right out his lungs. Kicking up dust in the aftermath.
And Zanka's there, straddling. Assistaff keeping Jabber there. Pressing hard enough to promise worse should he push. It's a real sexy threat, Jabber thinks. Hungry eyes, Zanka's got. Wild like an animal. Grinning like his lip isn't split and bleeding. Like pain ain't a language he speaks, just one he likes the sound of. Zanka looks good when he's mean. Victorious. Like this.
Jabber's heart is trying to punch its way out of his ribcage. It's throwing hands in there. Wrecking about his organs with this loud boom, boom, boom. All sick and tired of being contained. There's a high in Jabber's blood stream. Earned and not borrowed. Jabber feels lightheaded with it, almost. A part of him so euphoric, tripping on the thrill, that he thinks if Zanka wasn’t pressing him down, metal at his collarbone, knees bracketing his hips, he’d just float up outta himself and leave his body grinning on the dirt like a fool.
Is this the peak? Is this that note he chases?
He laughs right in Zanka's face.
Something in that laugh cracks open, too big, and too loud to function. Jagged at the edges.
Zanka's expression twists, confusion or annoyance or both, and that hits the sweet spot! The proof that Jabber exists. In his eyes, sure, but under his skin. Jabber's living under there, warm, blanketed in Zanka's cells, taking a neat swim in Zanka's bloodstream.
Jabber lives for that. Lives for the moment someone looses their footing because he pushed too hard. Lives for the moment when someone pushes back, harder, harder, harder.
Jabber loves this.
Jabber-
"I love you!"
It bursts free from his chest, hot, reckless and unfiltered. No filter, no warning, no little voice in his head raising a hand like hey, maybe don't. Ripping it's way free from his core like it's clawing its way into daylight. He grins when he says it. Wide and bloody.
Jabber's love is a punchline, a dare, and the best damn joke he's ever told.
I love you? The fight?
I love you? The thrill?
I love you? Zanka, Zanka, Zanka-
Jabber says I love you and laughs, giddy and vibrating with the power of his own glee. No drugs needed this time. No toxins or mystery gas. No borrowed bliss. Just adrenaline and violence and Zanka's full attention.
Face close enough to kiss.
To bite.
Jabber's grin is still wide in the aftermath. Still bloody. He rides the high, chest buzzing and loud with his own happiness. Every breathless exhale escapes with this little noise, throat too caught up in his own feelings. Staring right into Zanka's eyes like it's part of the game.
For one second-
Two, then-
T-three.
Zanka freezes. Froze when the words punched free from Jabber's lungs. Doesn't pull away, but stills. Stills and stares straight back.
Jabber keeps smiling. He doesn't drop it or backpedal or swallow it down. That smile starts to…pull at the corners of his mouth. Tight, too tight over his teeth. Laugh trailing off with this awkward, heavy note. Jabber keeps his gaze locked on Zanka. Hungry and waiting in a way he refuses, absolutely refuses, to unpack.
Four.
Five.
Zanka doesn't say it back.
It lands in Jabber's chest like a delayed impact. The seconds after a hit when your world is rocked and you're trying to orient yourself. The pain is not explosive, blocked through adrenaline and lack of any real surprise. But it's sharp. Not the comforting sharp of Mankira's claws, or a blade in his forearm. Clean sharp. A precise pain that knows exactly where to hit. A knife between the ribs.
Still, the grin holds. Cracks.
Oh.
Oh. Oh, no, oh! T-that's-that's how it is!
Jabber's laugh comes back forced, loud, a little too quick.
"Ay, man," Jabber pants, pushing his palms into the dirt just enough to test the weight of Zanka on top of him, see if he’ll let him shift, "relax. Lookin' at me all funny."
Zanka swallows, then, "Jabber-"
"Nah, nah," grin's still on and it'll stay on, even if it jitters, shakes, cracks, "I said it, and I'll own it."
The words feel too big. Enormous in his mouth.
"Jabber's…grown."
Too big and too naked and too honest.
Jabber's never played the That whole 'love' game. It's a word other people use. People who are all soft in the middle.
Obsession, he spares time. Obsession got teeth, heat. That he can excuse because it comes with the rush, the thrill of the kill.
But love? It's a prettier name for something mushy Jabber's never quite had or given to anyone except the girl he kills with. Even then, it's a bond, a soul tie, love is too weak a word.
To let a person, a thing with a pulse, get close enough to matter.
Nah.
Jabber don't do 'mattering'. He does noise, or violence or chaos or swagger. It's dumb, he thinks, to sit around and build something that can break you.
But with Zanka? He's been feeling something for a while now. Not a clean thing, or a tidy label. Not something he can package up and put away whenever Zanka sets his skin on fire. It's this hum, not dissimilar to the way his Jinki soothes him when he's scared-struggling. Like a second heartbeat that simultaniously does and doesn't live in his chest.
Jabber notices it in stupid ways. How a fight feels empty if Zanka's not in it, how the silence after bloodshed is a little colder, when he's stuck down and been done with it. Jabber doesn't feel it like promises and candles and shit. He feels it sharply, loudly. All too much. Throw a ball into an empty room and watch as it thunk, thunk, thunks on every wall.
He wrote it off as obsession, or adrenaline, or at the very least familiarity. Some kind of, what, mutual damage agreement? Or at least he did, up until minutes ago, in the heat of the moment, when the word, the world, ripped free from his chest:
I love you.
And the second it left his mouth, his brain goes:
Oh.
Huh.
That's what that is.
Jabber didn't decide to love Zanka. It's worse. He's been doing that shit accidentally. Care, thrill, hunger, loyalty, fascination, dependence, all tangled up into something he didn’t bother naming until it forced its name out of him.
Love is this: a tight, painful pressure in his chest. Silly, reckless urge to stay. A stupid hope he refuses to look at directly.
And also this: silence.
Hah…hah…hah.
Jabber can't cope with all that, with that realization, that ugly truth. So he does what he does best and dresses it up in swagger instead of acknowledging that it hurts so bad. Not because he's brave so much as, now he's seen the shape of it, love, he realizes that thing's been there all along, clawing about inside.
I love you, Jabber says, because then it's true, then it's real, then it's reaffirmed even in repudiation. So he doesn't melt into the rejection and gaslight himself into thinking it never existed.
Zanka's grip shifts momentarily, just enough that Jabber feels a weight released. He can't get up just yet, still straining against Zanka's muscle. It's like an adjustment, almost, like he's holding a fragile thing in his hands and trying to write it off as the lines between punches and kicks.
"Jabber," Zanka says again, accent curling around the words, the shape of them, "man, I-"
It's too careful and too fragile to be slapped haphazardly on the thing that exists between them. Zanka's inhaling all deep, like he's about to say something honest, like he knows something Jabber doesn't.
"Hey, don't force it," Jabber says quickly, way too quickly, because he wants better than Zanka's verbal pity fuck. He can take rejection. Jabber said it himself. "Ain't gotta hold it in y'mouth, man. Dancin' around it like it's a dirty word."
Zanka doesn't. It's worse somehow. Doesn't rise to the ribbing but doesn't say it back either. It's a mixed up thing. What he does do, though? He dips, just so, leans some weight on Assistaff so he can lean into Jabber's space.
Then, his forehead dips, just slightly, until it nearly, nearly, brushes Jabbers.
And their breaths tangle.
It makes Jabber a bit sick. Scares him more than the silence. The thought that Zanka might just rip his heart out of his chest. Maybe Zanka isn't going to tease. Maybe he's going to-
Oh. No.
Because if Zanka says it now, soft, hesitant, Jabber might realize he needed it immediately.
And that’s a weakness he is not prepared to own.
So he shoves.
Hard.
Knocks Zanka off balance, rolls them both in the dirt. Tackling Zanka's legs in a roll, curse, grunt, roll. Jabber laughs, bursting free like a leak from a pipe. And the moment shatters into a thousand tiny little fragments Jabber will hurt himself with later.
The best fights feel like worship, a disengaged voice continues to narrate.
Jabber knows that phrasing is bullshit.
Worship ain't soft. Ain't kneeling. Sure as hell ain't clean.
But if worship is anything, it’s this: blood in his mouth, something sharp and aching lodged behind his ribs, offfering something up and pretending he doesn't care if it's taken.