Work Text:
You can’t hold the belt forever. That’s the point of the belt: someone is the best. It’s you until someone beats you.
And then you don’t have anything. Hard to have any friends but the belt when everyone wants what you have, what you aren’t willing to give up for health or love or pride.
So Rek has Parrot. Parrot and the belt. And one of them is on the line tonight.
The timekeeper hits the big bell with a little hammer very hard. The bell doesn’t break, because it never breaks, it just signals the beginning of the match and it has to be in one piece by the end of it every time. Every time. Planet bounces on his toes across the ring. He keeps trying to make eye contact that Rek avoids. There are no friends in the ring.
The crowd bays for Rek’s blood at this point. It doesn’t matter. He has the belt, and no one will take it from him. No one has for a long time.
Lockup in the middle of the ring. They trade waistlocks. Rek drives Planet into the corner, trapped, like a rat on a sinking ship. The ref tries to break it up, c’mon boy, out of bounds.
Planet’s skin thuds when Rek hits him. Rek hopes by the end of the match his chest is as purple as his leggings.
Space. Rek’s hand smarts. He grins at Planet, vicious. There can’t be more than three feet between them.
Planet glares back. His voice is hoarse with exertion. “You can’t win forever.”
“Good thing I just need to win today.” Rek takes a step forward, chops Planet right along the pink impact mark on his chest.
A tidal wave of boos rushes through the crowd. Planet flinches, but he steadies himself. His answering chop is harder than Rek expects. The crowd roars, pleased. It’s fine, because Rek doesn’t flinch. No weakness. No vulnerability.
Planet hits him again, somehow even harder. The air floods out of Rek’s lungs as pain lances through his chest.
He chops back, but he knows it’s weaker. That would be fine, except Planet knows it too, and now a flurry of chops collides with Rek’s chest and his lungs forget how to work and the lights seem less like stage lights and more like faraway stars Rek needs to flee to to get away from the screaming impossible fire on his chest.
His skin hurts, impossibly so. He drops to a knee without thinking about it, a wounded animal covering up.
“Just need to win today, huh?” Planet tilts Rek’s chin up as he rears back. Rek’s hands are too clumsy to move him. “Too bad.”
The chop connects. Rek’s vision goes smeary. He toppled over, head thudding onto the canvas.
Distant scrabbling sounds. Planet must be getting on top of the ropes to jump down on him. It all feels so faraway, so impossible to change. Planet’s body collides with his in a horrible crack of rib cage on rib cage and forearm on collarbone. He pulls Rek’s leg out. Dots connect very very slowly in his brain.
A one. A two. Rek shoves his shoulder up with a furious burst of adrenaline.
Planet’s off him. He didn’t win. That’s the important thing. Three means winning. Two isn’t three. The wounded animal lives another day. He holds the belt another few precious minutes.
Rek drags himself to the ropes, uses each one to pull himself up until he’s standing against the turnbuckles. Everything aches. His head feels like a gong being rung and rung. One more good hit and he’s down. Planet rushes him. Rek steps neatly to the side so Planet brains himself on the steel post holding the turnbuckles in place. He just needs to avoid the final hit. Planet’s back is open as he slumps against the turnbuckle. Rek kicks him in the kidney.
But then, the impossible: fast, so fast it doesn’t even register in Rek’s head that he can stop it, Planet scrambles up the turnbuckles again. He turns, feet at Rek’s eye level and only a foot away.
On instinct, Rek stumbles backwards, away. Planet’s legs flex. Dread washes over Rek.
And then Planet flies.
There’s a way finishers feel that’s different from taking normal hits. It’s the hours of practice, maybe. Love that comes with being the only person to do this thing, this way. Maybe it’s just that people only use them when they’re pushed to the limit, when the need to win outstrips everything. Maybe finishers hurt because they taste like greed.
Planet’s knees collide with Rek’s chin.
The crowd screams a joyous goodbye.
Lights out.
Planet thuds down nearby. It doesn’t matter. Rek won’t be kicking out of this three-count pin.
Shuffling sounds near him.
And then — Parrot’s music hits. Rek can’t do more than blink. The stage lights gradually come back into focus. Then the ropes, only a foot to his right.
Then the timekeeper’s table. The steel ring bell only a few feet away.
Rek’s thoughts shoot past at light speed. The referee is distracted, has to be if Parrot’s shown up. Planet might be, too.
He rolls out and snags it, all twelve pounds, and clambers back in the ring on adrenaline-fast legs. Planet hears him coming. Turns. His mouth starts forming a word — no, or please, or I thought you were better than this.
Rek brings the bell down on his head with a horrifying wet thud swallowed by the crowd’s boos.
He shoves the bell sloppily outside the ring to drop to the floor, hidden. The referee finally pulls Parrot’s folding chair away from him — oh. He’d brought a chair. Rek hates that he has to wonder who Parrot was planning to use it on. On the other hand, he has plenty of time to wonder. Planet doesn’t look like he’s getting up soon.
The pin is clinical. Rek hooks the leg just to make it a little more dignified for Planet. He’d put up a good fight. He just wasn’t ready for a wounded animal.
The bell rings to end the match. It sounds more discordant than usual, but it’s still not broken. Rek almost misses its heavy assurance in his hands.
The referee hands him the title. Rek lifts his hands in triumph.
One more match with it. One more match with a target on his back, takes all comers, knows no allies. Not even Parrot.
That’s the part that stings. Parrot, with a chair, when Rek hadn’t asked for help. And if Rek asks after the match, this will have been the plan: distraction. Win. But you don’t bring a chair unless you’re planning to hit someone with it.
Someone like Rek.
A seed of guilt curdles in Rek’s chest. He has a target around his waist in shiny gold and leather. And he can’t trust a single person to help him keep it.