val 💌

“And you,” Robby starts, and Jack can hear irony cocking a gun somewhere nearby. “Walking in every night with red knuckles and feigning openness, but you don’t tell me shit. What about that? Any righteous new coping skills you feel like sharing, Jack?”

Jack’s words catch between his teeth and die on his tongue. The phantom taste of gunpowder fills the space around his gums and lips where sound should be, and he can only sit in quiet wait as he anticipates the firing of the same gun that killed the thoughts he meant to speak.

Robby takes this silence with a cynical scoff. “Practice what you preach, brother, then we’ll talk.”

Langdon is the first to volunteer to fight Jack.

At first, neither makes a move, as if they’re both afraid of actually facing the reality of a tangible fight.

The first blow is hesitant, like a soft kiss planted on the lips of someone you’re uncertain of. Jack knows he’s holding back, and the strike at Langdon’s chest is almost a confession of doubt muttered softly from his fist into his skin.

Langdon doesn’t take this well—in a split second, Jack reasons that the other man must’ve taken this as Jack calling him weak; some demeaning attempt to go easy on him. Langdon jolts forward towards Jack’s throat, his brows tensing in tandem with his muscles. Jack’s second blow is fierce and intentional, all-consuming like a kiss you can’t break from. Jack doesn’t think of hurting Langdon; he thinks of holding Robby.

Langdon fights back with a shared intensity. He fights as if he really means the bruises he leaves on Jack’s abdomen, as if the anger that spills from his hands is meant for Jack alone. At first it’s animalistic, clawing and grasping without aim or reason, but grows to be almost a dance the way they swing at each other in a synced rhythm.

Jack spits a taste of metal off to the side, and a spray of spit and blood hits the tiled-floor at the same time Jack’s anger does.