Work Text:
Love.
What a concept it was.
The poets deemed it beautiful—something soft, like silken petals of a rosette, cascading gently down into waiting hands. Lilted lighter than a cloud, feathered breaths weighed down by the ambrosia of fermented honey—temptation, desire… sin. Half-lidded eyes circling desperate irises, watching daisy petals delve into bubbles of plummeting wine. Slender fingers absently plucking each floret with a rhythm that drummed along to your own heart—a whispered song of ‘he loves me, he loves me not’ until it reverberated in the hollow of your skull, until it was the last thing you’d ever wonder.
The writers lamented it as a tragedy—an ache dressed in velvet, a promise that learned too late how to bruise. They called it fate when it lingered, cruelty when it did not—as if Love had hands of its own, gentle enough to cradle a chin yet sentient enough to drive a blade through begging flesh. A figure cloaked in lustful red, beckoning and beckoning until you lost your last tether of control and dove through changing shadows, swallowing teeth and sound and copper.
To Jamil, it was a game.
A careful one, played with weighted dice and rules learned far too young. Affection was something you cultivated, measured, rationed—smiled into existence with the right tilt of the head, the right words said at the right time. You learned quickly which pieces to move, which tells to hide, how to let someone believe they were winning while you kept the board beneath your palms. Love was not a miracle; it was leverage. A currency. Something people gave because they wanted to, and something you accepted because refusing it had never been an option. And if someone claimed they loved you—truly loved you—then the only question worth asking was never why, but what, exactly, they thought they were loving.
His mother whispered, “I love you,” while pressing two gentle fingers between his shoulders, guiding him down into a bow before a sun-written boy. Her hand was warm and steady—affectionate, even—as she reminded him where his eyes should rest, how low his spine ought to be, how being a Viper meant knowing when to lower his head. Love, she taught him, was instructional—speak softly, move carefully, never shine brighter than you were supposed to. Protect the heir of Al-Asim. Smile so no one sees your teeth. Shave down your fangs and swallow your own venom. Don’t let anyone see you down.
His father told him, “I love you,” while Jamil trembled as he held his palms out and watched the man who raised him unfurl a thin rope. It seared lines into his skin like a snake who had forgotten how to bite, pain measured and precise—never enough to maim, but enough to teach. Love was discipline. Love was endurance. Love was learning to keep your voice even while your hands burned. Love was learning to thank someone for the lesson while you shook, to bow your head and accept the punishment as proof that you still belonged. A Viper does not strike without a cause; a Viper does not bare his fangs unless commanded. He learned to coil himself smaller, tighter, to shed ambition like old skin and wear the new one like it was devotion.
Was that really all Love was?
Jamil had heard it all too many times.
Kalim exclaimed, “I love you,” whenever Jamil succeeded—when meals were flawless and schedules were immaculate, when disasters were averted before they could stain the Asim name. The words spilled from him so easily, bright and unguarded, like he was tossing coins into a fountain without ever wondering how deep the water ran. Kalim loved loudly, generously—and Jamil had learned to accept it the way one would accept a wage. Gratitude came first. Loyalty followed. Love, in Kalim’s world, was a gift freely given. In Jamil’s, it was payment for a job well done. And every time Kalim smiled at him with that unthinking warmth, Jamil couldn’t help but wonder if he knew—if he could ever know—that even Love could become a debt when one was never allowed to refuse it.
Ace tossed an “I love you” his way whenever Jamil sank the winning shot during practice, grinning wide like it was nothing more than a joke that tasted sweet on his tongue. It was loud, careless, easy to retract—Love as punctuation at the end of a good play, something said because it cost nothing to say it.
Deuce said, “I love you, man,” with earnest eyes whenever Jamil stayed late to help him study or straighten out his plans. His gratitude was sincere, heavy with admiration, and Jamil learned to accept it carefully—like a fragile thing he was afraid of breaking simply by holding it wrong.
Cater chirped, “Love ya~” with a wink and a flash of his phone, immortalising Jamil in photos filtered soft and bright. It was affection meant to be shared, liked, passed along—Love as an aesthetic, something warm and fleeting that never lingered long enough to ask for anything real.
Ruggie laughed and clapped him on the shoulder, calling it Love whenever Jamil covered a shift or slipped him extra food. It was practical, honest in its own way—Love as survival, a mutual understanding that favors were meant to be repaid.
And each time, Jamil smiled. Each time, he filed that word away with the others—proof that love was spoken most freely when it was the easiest to give, and the easiest to take back.
That was how love worked.
Jamil was certain of it.
It was spoken when something had been earned, when usefulness had been proven, when the balance tipped neatly into place. Love arrived with reason. With cause. With a ledger, even if no one bothered to write it down.
And then there was Azul.
Azul said, “I love you,” like it was a greeting. Like it was punctuation slipped carelessly into conversation, offered without preamble or expectation.
“Jamil! Need some help? I love you.”
“Jamil! The professor wants to talk to you—also, l love you.”
“Jamil! Will you visit the Mostro Lounge today? Just saying. I love you!”
The words followed him down hallways and between tasks, light and unguarded, never attached to a demand, never framed as payment. Coming from a man who monetized favors and breathed contracts, it made no sense at all. Azul, who never gave anything without securing interest, spoke love as though it cost him nothing.
Jamil waited for the catch.
He listened for the hidden clause, the fine print tucked beneath the warmth of Azul’s smile. He braced himself for the moment the words would harden into leverage—when I love you would finally mean you owe me.
But it never came. The ledger remained blank. The affection stayed infuriatingly, impossibly free. And that was what unsettled him most of all.
Because if Love could exist without instruction, without punishment, without price—then what, exactly, had he been taught all his life?
…
The kitchens of Scarabia were usually a sanctuary.
There was comfort in repetition—the steady rhythm of a knife against wood, the measured heat of the stoves, the certainty that if he followed each step correctly, nothing would go wrong. Jamil had learned long ago that control lived in the mundane. That as long as his hands were occupied, his thoughts stayed where they belonged.
Today, they did not.
The plate slipped from his fingers without warning, shattering against the tile with a sharp, ringing crack that echoed too loudly in the empty room.
White ceramic burst outward like a startled thing, fragments skittering across the floor. For a moment, Jamil simply stood there, staring down at the mess as if it might explain itself. He exhaled through his teeth.
Idiot.
He crouched to gather the pieces, moving on instinct. One shard bit into his palm before he noticed, a thin line of red blooming against his skin. He watched it well for a second longer than necessary, distant and unmoved. Pain, at least, made sense.
Schrödinger's plates, he thought dully. Whole until observed. Broken the moment you looked too closely.
“Jamil?”
He stiffened.
Azul stood at the kitchen entrance, sleeves rolled neatly to his elbows, eyes sharp behind his glasses. He looked out of place among the spices and steel, like a polished thing that had wandered into the wrong ecosystem.
“Kalim asked me to check on you,” Azul said lightly. “You didn't answer him.”
“I'm fine,” Jamil replied, too quickly.
Azul’s gaze flicked to the shards. To the blood. He frowned. “You’re bleeding. Do you need help? I love you, but you’re going to get tetanus if you keep doing that.”
Something in Jamil snapped.
“Stop saying that.”
Azul blinked. “Saying what?”
“That you Love me.” Jamil rose to his feet, the broken pieces clutched too tightly in his hand.
Another cut opened; he barely felt it. “Just—stop.”
Azul hesitated, confusion knitting his brow. “Why? But it's true.”
Jamil laughed, sharp and humorless. “Is it really?”
Azul opened his mouth. Then closed it again.
“Do you Love me,” Jamil continued, voice low and trembling despite his best efforts, “or do you Love the idea of me?”
Silence pooled between them.
Jamil felt it then—the memories rising unbidden, stacking one atop another like plates that had never been allowed to tall.
He thought of his mother’s guiding hand, warm and firm between his shoulders.
Of his father’s rope, measured and precise.
Of Kalim’s laughter, bright as a coin tossed carelessly across a table.
Love was instruction.
Love was discipline.
Love was debt.
“And you,” Jamil said, eyes fixed on Azul now, searching for the trick, the angle, the inevitable reveal. “You Love control. Don't you?”
Azul stiffened. “That's not—”
“My magic gives you that,” Jamil pressed on, words spilling faster now, blood dripping onto the tile in soft, rhythmic dots. “Order. Obedience. A way to make the world behave if you just say the right thing. So tell me—do you Love me? Or do you Love what I let you do?”
Azul took a step forward. Jamil stepped back immediately.
“Don't,” Jamil said, sharp as a warning hiss. A Viper who learned to rattle his tail, how crude.
Azul stopped.
For the first time since he’d known him, Azul looked… unsure. Stripped of polish. Like something pulled too far from the water.
“You’re wrong,” Azul said quietly. “I don’t—Jamil, I never—”
“Everyone says that,” Jamil replied. His grip loosened at last, ceramic clattering from his hand. “Everyone swears they're different.”
Azul swallowed. “I don’t want anything from you.”
Jamil shook his head. “That’s the lie that scares me most.”
Because if Azul wanted something, Jamil knew how to pay. He knew how to bargain, how to bend, how to survive. But Love without a price—Love offered freely by a man who never gave anything away—felt like standing too close to the tide.
Azul was a sea creature who collected what drifted too near, who smiled with too many teeth and promised safety in exchange for stillness. An anemone in reverse—beautiful and unmoving, letting others convince themselves the sting was their own fault.
“I can’t be that,” Jamil said hoarsely. “Whatever it is you think you see.”
“I don’t want you to be anything else,” Azul whispered.
That was it.
Jamil turned away before the words could sink their hooks any deeper. He brushed past Azul, shoulder clipping his arm, pushing him back toward the doorway.
“Leave,” Jamil said. “Please.”
Azul hesitated—then nodded, once. The door closed softly behind him.
The kitchen was quiet again.
Jamil sank to the floor amid the shards, pressing his bleeding palm to his chest as if he could still the ache there. His breath hitched, then broke, and suddenly the tears came—silent, shaking, uncontained.
He cried for the plates he could not put back together.
For the Love he had never learned how to hold without cutting himself.
For the one person who had offered it without a leash—and the terror that made him push it away.
Somewhere deep inside, something stung.
And for once, he did not know whose fault it was.