Chapter Text
Without meaning to, Zanka ran his thumb underneath Jabber's eyes.
“Y'look tired.” That also came out without meaning to.
“I feel fine. Worked hard on my mission, though.” Jabber yawned, “I let’em wail on me a little before I finished up, though.”
Zanka tensed, stomach clenching at the abrupt reminder of who just- who he was in the presence of, “Who’d you finish up, Jabber.”
“Relax, bad-boy, they’re some other syndicate stepping on the boss’s toes. Think they just finished ambushing some Cleaners on the way into… uh. Rrrrinlan? Maybe. I dunno. Your people weren’t even putting up a fight, Zanka, they floored it out before we could play, left me alone with the small fries-” Jabber whined, plaintively, “I deserved a break, no? Walked straight to the river after I was done. Anyways. You owe me a fight later, the way your guys left me to dry.”
Zanka’s stomach, already clenched, found yet another cause to drop. The story checked out. Yes, they sent an expedition out to Rinlan on the border between the North and East Wards. Yes, Team Eager, plus some independently contracted Givers, had been ambushed by opportunists on the way in. Someone had caused a ruckus, giving them time to escape.
That site of attack was at least a three hour drive, on a main road, at a good speed. In terms of walk, Zanka wasn’t precisely sure, but his mind was making the ugly calculation without permission. He also knew that the Rinlan mission was two days ago.
“You walked the whole ways?”
“Mhm! I like the hike.”
“... Jabber. How fuckin’ long’s it been since you slept.”
“Eh?” Jabber looked up from his spot on Zanka’s shoulder, buried his face back in his chest, “You do the math, if you’re curious about it. What's that matter?”
He didn't need to ask. Zanka's brain had reflexively spat out forty-seven hours, and he grimaced. It all added up. Forty eight hours, plus what Zanka knew what ‘wailing’ on Jabber ‘a little’ entailed. He had drifted for two days, sleepless and maskless, through a Polluted Zone to dip in the toxic water like some migratory bird. Jabber's bizarrely pliant mood slotted into context. Zanka huffed, irritated for no reason he wanted to delve into.
When they made it into the city, his mind circled the burns like a scavenger might carrion. He wanted to wrap Jabber's feet and hands with the bandages from the pack he took on missions. He wanted to pull over at a rest point and buy a lighter and burn them further to replace what the river had done. He wanted to pour isopropyl all over, shove his nails underneath the peeling skin.
… He wanted a fucking concussion is what he wanted.
Unwilling to stop at the Cleaner’s headquarters with his guest in tow, he pulled over on a sidewalk that’d allow him some buffer time, let him walk, clear his head. He thought of Jabber’s shoes. Well. If Jabber didn’t come with him, he didn’t come with him. If he followed, pavement digging into his soles, then Zanka hadn’t forced him to do jack shit. He got out of the car. Didn’t say anything to Jabber, didn’t tell him to go anywhere, do anything, but he did wait. Jabber got out easily, trotting to Zanka’s side with the occasional limp falling out of him. Zanka told himself that he would have offered to carry Jabber on his back, if he couldn’t already hear the laughter in his mind’s ear. One of them took the other’s hand, at some point.
One of them, Zanka didn’t know which one. In the back of his mind, he wondered how many times that he needed to keep telling himself before his memory buckled under the force of denial, allowed him to believe.
By increments, his grip increased. Their fingers snarled together until Mankira’s pressure hurt Zanka in turn. Jabber yelped delightedly, increased the tempo and force of their swinging hands like a child elated over a reciprocated crush. How could Zanka beat him across a room and screw him on a hardwood floor, but feel sick heat rising to his face over holding hands in the street while walking to nowhere in particular. Maybe the next question was carried by the need for distraction from that motion sickness.
“Hey, Jabber.” He muttered, “Ya ever-”
In the same instant that he spoke, he wanted to devour the words right back into his mouth. Jabber looked at him indulgently, eyes bright. Zanka swallowed and kept speaking, “Ya said no one can beat ‘cha anymore, yeah?”
That wasn’t necessarily different from his initial question. The hateful heat had run out of real estate on his face and migrated down his neck to the collarbones, “It's just me right now?”
“Eh? No, the boss can. And Fu… or, uh, Hii. As he calls himself!”
Zanka knew these things in regards to combat, which had not necessarily been what he was referring to. His pride had jammed its foot directly into his mouth.
“... So. Have you. Uh.”
“Have I wh- holy shit, wait! Are you asking what I think?! Wait! It's embarrassing if you're not!” Jabber grinned wildly, tone indicating that said embarrassment was more a hope than a fear, “But are you?!”
Zanka's ears reddened, which was as good as an answer for both.
Jabber started cackling, reminding Zanka of when he’d asked if Mankira could heal, “Fu turns into his doll, man, I don't even think he can!”
"I wasn't askin' about him! You don't even know what the fuck I was askin', y'didn't let me finish-"
"Am I wrong?!"
More red-faced silence. Zanka tried to ignore Jabber crashing their shoulders together, made some effort not to lean into it. The question, which had been pressing against the back of his teeth for longer than he cared to admit, felt weakness in a barrier and made a mad break for it.
“... Zodyl?”
Jabber's eyes went as round as dinner plates.
At least one of them was having fun. After about three minutes, Jabber's lungs gave out from laughing, collapsing to soundless wheezing. He'd tugged their hands apart to hold onto his stomach, wincing at the spasming of his muscles as laughter valiantly kept struggling out every time Zanka dared hope he was finished.
“Hah, holy shit- okay, okay, you're not the only one who can beat me, but you're the only one ripping my clothes off afterwards, Zanka, way to take half an hour to ask. Would it-” He paused to wipe a joyful tear from his eye, giggling, panting, and starting over, “-would it make you feel better if I told you that you're one of my favorite fighters, too?” He tilted his head into Zanka's field of view, “Zodyl only fights me if I've done well, and Fu can't even think about his own strength without turning into his action figure. I think I like you the best.”
“For now.” Zanka grumbled.
“Hm.” Jabber looked at the sky while turning the words over in his mind, then nodded in breezy agreement as if Zanka were pointing out the weather, “For now!”
Even if hearing the agreement felt like stepping on a nail, that didn’t mean he was jealous. He wasn't, just lagging behind one of their strongest enemies and… Fu Oroster. Who wouldn't get pissed off. Nothing had changed from Zanka’s original goal, anyway- he just needed to get stronger. Signing on with the Cleaners, sparring with Jabber, volunteering for the difficult missions, all for strength. ‘For now,’ the words almost made Zanka laugh. As if Zanka had any intention of allowing his strength to cease upward growth. As if there would be an inch of soil he wouldn’t tear into working to uproot his weaknesses. Zodyl, he thought bitterly, was stagnation himself, wasn’t he? Locked onto the Watchmen, the Sphere, his strength quite literally dropped on him from that which flooded the world with their garbage.
Another chilling image doused his mind, of Jabber’s eyes staying distant as they drifted over him as if Zanka was a grain of sand on the beach. Of Mishra using Zodyl’s teeth to-
‘I’d kill him first,’ Zanka thought desperately, not for the first time.
Jabber had sped up his gait, walking ahead. His hair hid the teasing curve at his mouth, eyes glittering, saltwater that’d found a sliver in the skin to trickle inside of and sting. Unaware of the why or how, only recognizing that Zanka was pissed off for one reason or another. Jabber liked him that way. Without thinking, Zanka trotted to catch up to him until they were shoulder to shoulder, caught the profile of Jabber smiling like a siren at a sailor. His jaw locked.
And hell, Zanka’s teeth had hurt since he’d seen Jabber in the rain. His hands had ached since hearing of Jabber’s birthplace. As naturally as he wrapped a hand around Assistaff, he caught Jabber by the wrist and tugged them both along, beyond sick of whatever game that Jabber was trying to play.
“Where we going?”
“A hotel.”
Jabber’s expression seemed far too self-congratulatory for reasons that Zanka refused to think about. The sparring didn’t start when Zanka made a show of being gracious to the clerk, nor when he was pulled down the dim hallway. When they approached the door at the end of the dusty hallway, though, Zanka felt himself yanked back as if he were an overeager dog on a leash. He glared back at Jabber, who was leaning back with an innocent grin. Zanka pulled on him. Jabber put his weight in his blistered heels, smile curling to show his teeth. If anyone saw them, they would see the stark opposite of foreplay. Through his polite demeanor, Zanka had known what the clerk thought when her eyes flickered warily to Zanka white-knuckling Jabber’s burned wrist, while Jabber’s eyes drifted impassively in what some would assume was pure emotional divorce. Zanka knew Jabber’s venomous apathy too well to make that error.
For some reason, Enjin’s words in regards to consent and talking to his partner and reading them sprung into mind, ironing in Zanka’s hyperawareness of what this looked like. The right thing was, ‘do you want this,’ ‘what’s wrong,’ or maybe, ‘are you nervous.’ Going home. Zanka grabbed Jabber's hood where it was attached to his collar and flung him into the hotel room so hard that Jabber staggered back a few steps, Zanka lunging after him. Guilt couldn’t take too much hold when Mankira emerged in her smaller form. The real claws were sheathed. A cat spat and swiped at her mate, all while crouched in heat.
In exchange, Jabber wanted another beat down because of course he did. Because he'd been up for 47 hours and beaten and burned and maybe choked (by who), yet still puppetted his body around using his toxins and that brilliant, horrible mind that wouldn't stop its tailspin until his body finally crashed through the railing off the cliff.
(Back into the ocean, Zanka thought a little hysterically-)
He felt heady with the ease that Assistaff could field Mankira’s retracted state by now. Some part of him, the strategist keeping an obsessive catalogue, recognized that Jabber knew damn well how easily Zanka could deal with the little claws. It was as close as Jabber could come to indulgence. Take a few swipes, but let the snarling thing mate with him, poor thing, all its fur was standing on end because it’d smelled another animal on its person-
Jabber swam into close range. Zanka twisted Assistaff upside down and slammed her into the ground, the tremor breaking Jabber’s stance just enough to let Zanka grab his elbow, knee him in the ribs, and twist him so that his back was exposed for Zanka. He kneed him again, square in the small of his back.
They wrestled to the floor. The more they had fought, the more intimately aware Zanka was of how the difficulty in overpowering Jabber came not from his strength, but his utterly bullshit endurance. Zanka was physically stronger by pure technicality. However, getting Jabber down was one thing. Making him stay down was about as effective as suppressing the rising tide with the lid off a pickle jar.
Throw him, he was crashing back up like a wave.
Slam him against the floor, up he surged. Pummel him into the ground, throttle him unconscious, then redouble the cage of fingers around his neck after he went slack and just-
keep-
squeezing-
-that perhaps bought 2 minutes of respite before Jabber was resurfacing under him. Not that he was short on time. Long grown out of fumbling with his shame, Zanka dragged Jabber out of his clothes with brutal efficiency, a familiar nuisance that he was all too well versed in. Some odd sense of duty had Zanka hauling them both to the shower. Eosian rain, skin contact, wash within six hours of exposure, the clock in his mind chimed, they had been driving for four, walking for one. Once the water turned warm, he laid Jabber in the tub, stripped himself, and ducked under the stream.
When Jabber drifted back to awareness, his eyelids fluttered, pupils swimming somewhere in back of his head. Zanka knelt with Jabber on his lap facing him, not inside him, though Jabber's thighs were splayed around his hips. Zanka's own nails were in Jabber's lower back and his teeth were in their comfortable space of gnawing away at that scar on his chest. Jabber's hum betrayed that he was awake. A note of confusion to the sound, Jabber squeezed his thighs, huffed insistently.
Zanka sat back and grabbed his face by shoving three fingers into his mouth and his thumb under his jaw, used that as a handle to both shut him up and twist his mouth to the side. Jabber whined gratefully, eyes rolling when Zanka tore inside him. Lacking the conscious strength to bring Mankira to the surface, still foggy from passing out, he squirmed and kneed Zanka in the ribs. Zanka bared his teeth like a tomcat swiped by an aggressive mate, lifted both of their torsos in a swift motion, and slammed Jabber's back into the shower wall. Jabber hiccuped weakly, contentedly.
“Remember-” Zanka breathed, “-I’d had her claws in my mouth, too, ‘s payback-”
Eyes warming at the memory, Jabber found it in him to bite down.
(Stay down-)
Zanka’s hand redoubled in grip-
(Don't go anywhere-)
Underneath him, Jabber squirmed and keened, jostling with Zanka’s thrusts. His head fell back, jaws finally releasing as half closed eyes rolled to the ceiling. His mouth looked as if he was making to scream, though only able to let out raspy, cut off exhales.
(Look at me-)
Zanka couldn’t resist gnawing his neck. Digging his teeth down, Jabber found enough of a voice to pitch into a yelp. Zanka sat up again to see Jabber’s face slack in blissful agony, glazed eyes fixed aimlessly above him. His hand moved before his mind, twisting Jabber’s wrists and elbows down in a position that both thrust his scarred chest out and dragged a weak cry from him. His muscles locked up again, then finally relaxed.
The first time that they had done this, Zanka recalled, both of them had- they’d finished things up at around the same time. Second time around, Jabber kept on passing out in the middle and Zanka didn’t feel right when he did, he’d waited until Jabber woke up the first time and the second, he’d pulled out with a cold pit in his stomach and finished in his own hand on the bed next to Jabber, nauseous. Somewhere between the third and fifth, Jabber had finished well before him. Zanka had pulled out, and Jabber had giggled at him and asked where he was going.
(“... You’re not- it’s not-” Zanka had muttered, beginning to move again, “Look, you fuckin’ freak, you gonna go again, or-”
“Hnn, ‘s mostly not about that.” Jabber had slurred and giggled, fallen too far out of his own skull to elaborate, “‘Mmm, ‘s a bonus point, lots’ve bonus points- soooo many for you, my good boy, but ‘s not just that-”)
Zanka stayed inside of him. Jabber squirmed, before going rigid. Zanka had laid a hand on Mankira’s band around his thumb. All their differences aside, for all the ways that Jabber pissed him off, they were both Givers and their viewpoints inevitably intersected at odd crossroads. Zanka rubbed a hand over Jabber’s spine, “I’m not takin’ nothing from you, dumbass.”
He started to twist the ring around the knuckle.
Jabber was holding very still. No purple glow foretold Mankira’s emergence. One of the rings moved, and he made a strange, high pitched sound unlike any that Zanka had heard from him. Zanka would have never believed that he’d experience such a feeling towards Jabber, but the sincere confused note might’ve been a harder stab than anything that he'd ever gotten from Mankira.
“I wouldn’t.” He murmured. Even given their history, the thought of Jabber's separation from her seemed unthinkable. For some reason, he found himself in the memory of an afternoon where Eishia, caring for a stray, informed Rudo how some families declawed pet cats. Rudo had been distraught with every word, how it wasn’t like human nails, how it was like amputating the tips of their fingers.
Jabber tensed again.
Zanka ran a thumb over Jabber’s lumbar spine, “‘M washin’ under ‘em. I told you, I’m not takin’ your house off, ya' sea snail. Yeah?”
Jabber wordlessly started to chew Zanka’s shoulder.
Even if Jabber read Zanka better in the beginning, he had started to gather that Jabber soaked up information like he picked up his plants, honed in on patches of favor- toxins, strategies, battle potential, pools of Thought, the hidden brutality in people. Zanka didn’t have that uncanny deduction. Instead, average as he could be, he learned people individually when he met them, studied them, knew them as he saw them. He could feel Jabber staring at him from the corner of his eye. With each finger, he pushed Mankira up slightly, letting the water get to the burned portion and hopefully washing off what was underneath. Unintentionally, he shifted his hips.
“Hk-?!”
Jabber’s voice was hitched up as if in surprise. Not a ragged scream or a delirious laugh, a tone that Zanka had never heard from him before. Faintly curious, he started to move again. His movements were less urgent this time around, rocking them together in no particular rush. As he twisted Mankira’s final ring for the water to get beneath again, Jabber twitched against him and started to pant.
Based on the lack of laughter, Zanka wondered if both of them were surprised about growing hard again.
“-t’ps-”
“Huh?”
“Fingertips, my fingertips, pinch them-” Jabber hissed, “Put your nail under my nails or- just- fucking, pinch them, scratch ‘em, do something-”
Zanka found himself obeying without spite, for once. Both of his hands went to Jabber’s, and he started hooking his nails into Jabber’s cuticles, the tips of his fingers, raking- his nail suddenly slid and he smelled the blood before he heard Jabber’s yelp. Both of them came embarrassingly quickly. Even Jabber, staggeringly, had little to say beyond slurring, “Good boy.”
Perhaps his silence came more from everything leading up to that point, because-
“Lord, you are eight tons of worn-out in a ten pound sack.” Zanka rubbed his finger underneath the bruise-like circle under Jabber’s closed eye again, keeping him sitting up on the bed, “Look at you.” He breathed, almost to himself, “Need you good’n tuckered out more often.”
“Mmgh.” Jabber’s eyes cracked open, “Could wake myself back up-”
“Don’t do that.” Zanka snapped, wondering if Jabber’s exhaustion was contagious somehow, “Jabber. Just. You’ll really end up-”
Why did he kid himself into thinking that would make Jabber stop a goddamned thing.
“... I think you’re kind of alright like this, okay? Fuckin’, leave well enough alone for once in yer goddamn life. Lemme get your hair dry.”
Afterwards, just so as not to stain the sheets with blood and burned skin, he ended up bandaging Jabber’s hands and feet while the other slept.