Chapter Text
Maybe there's something twisted about the way Zanka's mind works. But one thing is solidified, carved from stone and deep, like scar tissue clawed across ones development phase. Strength equals legitimacy. And legitimacy equals acceptance. Proof you are what you say, that you deserve what you spend your life clawing for.
Wanting someone who can put you on your knees?
That scrambles the whole thing. Disables the part of Zanka's brain that remains constantly, unforgivably, obsessed with the hierarchy.
Attraction, maybe. It's worse when Zanka puts a label on it. Because he does not experience attraction as warmth, as butterflies, as flushed cheeks. He experiences it as destabilization. Something that throws his world off course, leaving him wobbling on baby-animal legs and wondering if it will ever right itself.
That same thing is what spikes his pulse whenever they fight and fall in that easy rhythm. Exhilaration, too, but mostly the tilting of his world on its side. Suddenly, Zanka finds himself noticing the way Jabber moves. His muscles when he swings. His smile. The way he leans into pain like it's some kind of reward.
And instead of thinking: I want him.
Zanka's brain says: I'm losing control.
I'm losing control. I'm losing control. I'm losing control-
The control is oil slick, yes? It keeps the wheels spinning, Losing it is unthinkable. Being aware of that loss in real time is worse. So Zanka's left with nothing but the blooming shame, hot and sharp, in his belly and his chest and behind his eyes. Not because he believes in some moral failure, not necessarily, but because the sheer existence of desire beyond ambition disrupts his concept of self.
Zanka's built this thing. This identity around being a certain kind of person. Someone who fights. Someone who works. Someone who's useless until proven otherwise. It's all scrambled in his mind now his body's decided to betray him. Zanka feels it. The focus slipping like dirt between his fingernails. He finds himself replaying fights not to study technique, or fixate on everything he did wrong. But to linger, oh-linger, on the way Jabber gazed up at him from the ground, all bloody teeth, like Zanka hung the stars or the little particles of falling crap that functions the same.
The replay disgusts him.
Zanka digs his fingers into a random injury. From fighting or not, it's difficult to seperate.
Disgusts.
Dig. Dig. Dig.
He'll reframe it as disgust at Jabber, later. It's easier than aiming it inward.
Bloody fingernails.
Because, because-
This is what weakness feels like, Zanka might tell himself, this is why men fall.
Meanwhile, through all Zanka's pain and realization, Jabber?
Jabber's never once paused to categorize himself.
Jabber's sexuality is a stimulus response. More rough and primal than any label. It's comprised of several truths and minimal fanfare. Violence excites him. Control excites him. Someone matching his energy excites. And the parts attached to the opponent barely register when he's wrapped up in the thrill of the fight.
Labels don't exist. They're noises tied to exhales. Spoken and useless.
But sensations, on the other hand?
There's almost something amoral about the whole thing. How unburdened Jabber is with this. Jabber has never considered changing himself because the idea of changing for the comfort of others or, fuck, even the comfort of himself, doesn't really compute in his mind. If something feels good, he leans, he wants, he takes. And if it feels bad? Jabber leans into that too, the more, the merrier.
So when he makes a comment mid-fight. Something spat out alongside bloody saliva with something solid mixed in, a molar or a grill, he does it shamelessly. Jabber'll tell Zanka this fight's getting him rock-hard and he won't spiral, no. Just grin, just bite. Push the filthy comment further because why would it matter. It's intensity. It's stimulus.
Jabber doesn't understand shame in that context.
And it's worse. It's worse because it makes Zanka's shame burn hotter in comparison.
Jabber isn't hiding. Jabber's never hidden. Not for one second.
There's none of this mutual denial. No 'our little secret', shared. Just Jabber Wonger. Saying something blunt and obscene with a bleeding nose and wild eyes. And one Zanka Nijiku reacting with rage, not because it's untrue but because it is and he's so, so ashamed of it. And isn't that just it? Zanka's sexuality is his weakness because it makes him react. Makes him emotional. Makes him hesitate.
Makes him think about being wanted instead of the win, the win, the win-
That hard, aching, internal belief becomes its own self-fulfilling prophecy. That shame creates surveillance. Suddenly, Zanka's watching himself while he's fighting. Monitoring every part of him that aches and wants and stomping them out in the moment. It costs him hits. Makes him waiver.
Zanka stares at Jabber, tilting his head and giggling at his own 'hard-on' joke, and thinks, with an abject horror:
If Jabber were a woman, I wouldn't feel this wrong.
This gross.
This oh-so-filthy.
Maybe if Zanka took a second to ask, Jabber would tell him that the very thing he's trying to amputate is the reason these fights thrill him. That the way he craves Jabber more than any other win is an addictive little drug. That the shame he carries only makes him more reckless. Toxic.
Bang, crash, flash, and they end up on the floor as they always do. With concrete under their backs and blood, slick, between them. Undistinguishable origin. The walls still crumbling from the impact of their tirade to kill-and-never-kill.
Zanka stares at the ceiling, eyes dead. Even when Jabber turns his head and kicks up the same routine, same attempt to tease. Lips splitting around wounds and dryness. Zanka can see it in his peripherals but he won't look. He won't, he won't, he won't.
Jabber laughs softly under his breath, almost affectionate, probably crazy. And after a second, he's reaching over. Not rough or claiming. Just fingertips, gently brushing the back of Zanka's hand.
Zanka pulls away, twitching like a live wire.
Several seconds of silence.
Then Jabber rolls back to face the sky and laughs. Head cracking into the ground when he throws it back, just a tad. It's this loud, echoing, crazed thing. Unhinged to its fullest definition.
"Ah-ha-ha!"
Zanka exhales. "What."
Jabber keeps the laughter up just a second too long, then it's tapering into a wheeze, then several hefty breaths.
"Man…nothin," Jabber says, "I got you all figured out, that's all."
Then, he turns his head to Zanka again. There's something about Jabber that's too, scarily perceptive. He's easy to dismiss as a lunatic and he's painfully aware of it. He knows he gets to play crazy so nobody notices he’s actually paying attention.
The gaze bores into the side of Zanka's head.
"You're all wound tight 'cause I got a dick."
The words hang….dumbly.
Zanka blinks up at the sky. And he's suddenly come to the realization that he's never said it aloud before. It's always just been this rot that lives inside of him. Like a radiating, cancerous disease. There's a cut on his ribs, beneath his shirt, and Zanka presses his thumb into it slowly. Just to feel something clean and controlled. Pain as proof.
"That's ain't-"
"Yeah, it is," Jabber says, then lists on his skinny fingers like he's counting change. "Y'don't flinch when I bite you. Or break your arms, or put you on your knees.
He vaguely gestures to the place Zanka's hand was. "But this? A touch from lil ol' Jabber? Got you actin' like the world's ending."
Zanka's throat works. And suddenly he's blinking several hard bats, trying to will away the moisture building in his eye lines. If he says anything his voice will betray him, and he knows this.
Jabber continues, not knowing or not caring. Voice quiet and thoughtful like he's examining a bruise. "Weird, ain't it?"
Then.
"I-I mean weird for you," a breathy laugh, "Not for Jabber."
Shame sits heavy on Zanka's body. Like a cloud, fat with rain. It shadows over him and he does that thing. That tension thing. Where he holds it inside his body with clenched muscles and a neutral face like he's preparing for war.
"And I don't get it, man," still conversational. "Jabber don't care what's attached, yeah? If you fight good? You look at me like you wanna kill me? Make it real fun? I'm in," a shrug, wincing with achy ribs. "Guy, girl. It don't matter to me. You're the one I wanna tear apart. That's the whole thing. And you?"
Jabber rolls, so his body is facing Zanka rather than just his face. Brows furrowing like Zanka is a science experiment. He props his head up on his hand so that he's high enough that Zanka is forced to look at him.
"You treat it like it's a disease."
Zanka's voice hurts, "cause it is."
It's not as strong, not as resolved, as he'd like it to be. Fraying around the edges.
And Jabber doesn't argue. Just takes that in with several, slow nods.
Then, "nah, I don't think so."
He grabs one of Zanka's arms, the one closest to him, Zanka let's it rag doll. "You wanna know what Jabber thinks?"
Jabber adjusts the arm so it's out flat, neatening it up and setting it straight like Zanka's a starfish. "I think yo scared. You're scared cause you think wantin' me means you already lost."
Then, he lays down, forcibly close now. Using the adjusted arm as a pillow when he tucks himself in close enough to mix their blood further. Ritualistic, that. An accidental contamination. An exchange of bodies. Blood is supposed to say inside, a private, personal thing. And now it's spilled with vulnerability neither of them consented to. Accidentally anonymous. Zanka becomes viscerally aware of it, the way the blood interwines and cuts ties. The way it can't cut himself clean from Jabber. The physical manifestation of their sickess drying, sticky, between them.
Jabber leans in, Zanka can feel his breath on his chest. Like a permanent thing. A maker. Carved in stone.
"Ain't that silly."