Chapter Text
When Zanka had left the truck to mark off areas where Trash Beasts were predicted to begin formation, he had noticed the familiar white haze in the sky. Though most would see it as perfectly justified to rush through the markings in an effort to outpace the weather, Zanka made no such allowances for himself.
The mission had taken him to a sparsely populated portion of the East Ward. Scouting assignments in the area were unpopular, based on the difficulty of setting up base or establishing support. Communication was frequently patchy due to the violent weather conditions that the area was notorious for, and combined with the sparse population, months could go by without adequate information on the status of the residents. Zanka had just been brought on board when a lapse in communication from a town, Yuma, had gone unnoticed for three months. When a support had pointed out the lack of updates, a team had been rushed together and sent out to verify.
Yuma had been abandoned for three months, overrun with swarms of small, rodent-like Trash beasts. Residents from the next town over, four hours away by car, had admitted that their neighbors had been lured into a false sense of security due to the small size of the beasts, had not seen it as an issue that Cleaners needed to be called for. There were barely any spotted. They appeared to manifest infrequently in the beginning.
Survivors stared at the ground. Some managed to speak of what they had seen in the late stages. When people started hearing scratching in the drywall, in closets, in basements, when they opened long closed doors and saw the darkness on the wall rippling like a lake surface stood up on its side. The expression on Enjin’s face was engraved in Zanka’s memory as an epitaph for the residents that he would never know.
Yes, the scouting missions to this corner of the East Ward were unpopular. Riyo had nudged Zanka when he’d volunteered for this sector for the seventh time in a row, teased him and asked if he wanted the incentive pay for his ‘rich boy’ standards. Zanka had not found it particularly amusing.
He took his time posting new markers and replacing old ones if they had become worn, regardless of the notorious weather, regardless of how just about anyone would take it as an excuse to rush the warning markers then get the fuck out of there, and regardless of how he was absolutely going to get caught up in an Eosian rain.
There was a reason besides Trash Beasts as to why Givers were tasked with placing the warning markings on the border of the East Ward. To Zanka, drilling himself in academics as violently as he had in battle while training as a Hell Guard, the complications of the geography had come as no surprise. The cliffs characteristic to the East Ward had been formed by the presence of numerous rivers, but the principal rivers, Rhodo and Erigen, had sculpted the land in tandem before joining at Lake Eos. Saturated with as much pollution as it was, with the detritus carried across the Ward from both rivers, Eos in turn sculpted the sky while it condensed.
Skin contact with the rain itself was not harmful- that would, without question, be enough to qualify the area as a No Man's Land. Even still, the guidelines recommended washing within 6 hours of skin contact with rain. Assume that there’s been skin contact, Semiu had added, even in full face.
The real issue laid in how the contents of the rain turned the ground hazardous to bare skin. While Zanka was not quite acquainted with the geological minutia, the rocks would begin to flake off in odd, chalky looking pulp as they got wet- when the substance got onto skin, it felt like soap, a slippery coating that refused to wash off. Next came the burn.
Even when he had volunteered for his third mission, the Eosian rains had always sent chills up his spine. The transformation of the landscape into a massive open wound left him on edge. Easy to say ‘just don't touch the ground or rocks bare-skinned’ until the Trash Beasts emerged or a civilian without Cleaner garb was caught in the mix.
Bizarrely, since sparring regularly with Jabber, Zanka's nerves had been a great deal more at ease during his sixth and seventh excursions. The pain of a chemical burn and the poisoned ground had never seemed more mundane. Zanka was also far more amenable to identifying his disadvantage and retreating, mostly because it presented him with the rare opportunity to genuinely piss Jabber off.
Loathing to admit it, those had not been the only improvements. Zanka felt an active increase in his skills every time he and Jabber scuffled. He was faster on every front.
Case in point, despite not feeling that he was in any particular hurry, he had gotten to the final marker long before expected. Clear, crisp lettering, sturdy reinforcement to the post, battery of the orange warning beacon charged- the indicator for normal power consumption blinked on, giving him a clear picture of when they were due next.
A rain drop pecked at his shoulder and bounced off the impermeable fabric.
He opened the back side of the metal box and took out a sheet, meticulously scratching in his name, ID number, and the date of service. Identical to the last seven. Two more drops knocked at his full face mask.
He held the test button for the emergency communication line. One, two, three tones. The raindrops went one, two, three, four-
Seeing the success of the first brave few, the rest of the rain got tired of single file and swarmed down with a dull roar.
Zanka didn't flinch. He waited out the tones, closed the box, and, once more confirming that the orange beacon was functional, turned tail and darted to the car. Though he did not feel it touch his skin, the damp seemed to hover around him. It felt strange in ways that his body just faintly comprehended, some instinct of a long extinct lizard screaming that whatever was in this stuff, it was absolutely not meant for humans.
He had expected to spend the last half an hour caught in the deluge. His time was shortened by 23 minutes from his last mission here, two months prior. Two months before that, he'd been down 34 minutes. Enjin had taken him by the shoulder, told him privately how he was fastest at the service by a long shot, praising Zanka's continuous training and thanking him for continuously volunteering.
‘Whatever you're doing, you're doing it right.’
His chest had felt impossibly warm, because Enjin said it. Because Enjin said it, guilty claws tore up the lining in his throat.
His continuous training had been ongoing since he'd joined the Cleaners. Traitorously, he'd received praise that he by no means deserved, because the only change he'd made in that time frame was Jabber. The ritual of waking in the morning, caring for his staff, polishing it, testing its heft, its reach, running through different drills, hitting it to hear different tones that it made, speaking to it through the entire process-
Even as he scoured his memories as he went to sleep, Zanka could not pinpoint the moment when he had stagnated. He pushed the stone up the hill, and at some point, without his knowledge, the incline had turned into a hamster wheel. Perhaps he had known subconsciously. He clung to Enjin's praise, his victories and his illusionary progress. Then came the examination. Another one like Hyo. The moment of truth, a benchmark, what had Average Joe's hard work done for him.
After fighting Jabber, his drills, his rituals, his assessments, all fell under the category of work. Obligatory, precious, necessary work, which needed to compound with the real work of gritting his teeth, calming his heartrate, and beelining towards Jabber Wonger in their next clash with the Raiders.
On their third battle, he lost again, but both retained his consciousness and realized his error. In cloying to playing defense, Zanka had very few opportunities to observe Jabber’s techniques while the opponent was attacking. Simply put, Zanka had given himself no chance to learn the rhythm to Jabber’s actual techniques. His stomach had plummeted at the most straightforward means of learning, which necessitated fielding the range advantage that Mankira gained in its true form.
Stay close, but not to the point where it negated Assistaff’s own range advantage over the short claws. Keep Jabber at a distance, but not to the point where he was vulnerable to Mankira’s extended claws. Based on their last fight, Zanka gave himself the tentative range of two meters of workspace, though he had low-balled his estimate to be safe. With his number in mind, he threw himself into training with the strict limitation. Two meters to dodge, two meters to attack, two meters to guard, two meters to finish an opponent. The strategy took solid shape. Stay on Jabber’s flank, in constant motion, and circle him. Under no circumstances allow Jabber to escape to a range. If he managed it, chase him down to flank him again.
Hit the ground when he spotted Jabber gearing up for that damned spin attack- not in the sense of staying low. Quite literally slam Assistaff into the ground, shatter the earth, and throw off Jabber's balance before he could even start with that horseshit. Once he managed to turn himself into that whirlpool, the only real choice that Zanka had was to take to the ground and sweep him before Jabber got close. Oh, sure, he had tried waiting that attack out at a range. All that had taught him was how to serve Jabber the upper hand on a silver fucking platter.
He’d thought of his eldest cousin’s dogs while practicing. All legs, all teeth, a hunting dog trained for long distance chase, built to stay on the heels while dodging the hooves and the horns.
Their fourth fight stalemated. Jabber’s eyes started lighting up differently when he saw Zanka, and Zanka could still pretend that his heart didn’t pound.
Number five, he won by the skin of his teeth. He’d been ecstatic, every cell in his body roaring in triumph. Only, his mind and body did not react as planned. Somehow after winning, he had-
Sure, he’d screamed in triumph after neutralizing a trash beast or gaining praise from Enjin, but-
He’d never been a poor sportsman when he curled comfortably, smugly, on top of his class. Always stopped when he put an opponent down. Always offered a hand up. Good job (loser). Better luck next time (it won't help). Thank you for sparring with me (you're welcome for the chance). No, he had never even thought to drill his heel into anyone’s diaphragm, certainly never gotten a painful erection in the act or grew hot under the collar at the memory.
Jabber was still ahead, but they were running nine to six in terms of true fights between factions. In terms of private battles that led to them having sex on whatever flat surface he managed to pin Jabber on, Zanka told himself that he simply couldn’t be bothered with running the numbers in order to avoid the fact that he’d lost count.
(His brain's agitated calculations, which concerningly never shut the fuck up or stopped, spat out: weekly basis, five months, four weeks in a month- Zanka’s odds of winning were usually decent, so that was in the ballpark of thirteen-to-fifteen. Give or take, he’d had sex with Jabber thirteen-to-fifteen times. He thanked his brain and considered concussing it on the steering wheel.)
If he lost, Jabber, free of orders from Zodyl, usually paralyzed him, seated himself crisscrossed on Zanka’s back like he was a damn cat, and perched there yammering about what he did wrong during the fight. Recently, though, he’d given them both a generous dose of that fucking venomenal hallucinogen. Zanka had woken up face down in an abandoned building and proceeded to puke up just about everything he ate over the past week. From the floor, Jabber had giggled and managed a ‘good morning’ before resuming his dry heaving, bringing up next to nothing. Zanka tried not to think too hard about that.
With Zanka holding the win for now, two weeks had uncharacteristically passed since any word from Jabber. For completely unrelated reasons, his irritation had been crawling up in small increments. Despite the fact that he generally managed to keep a handle on his temper for the purpose of maintaining face, his training sessions and Trash disposals had been the primary targets of his frustration.
Rudo had recently stared at the hole in the ground that Zanka had made, using the combination of Assistaff and a Trash Beast. Said beast was roughly van sized. Both Rudo and Zanka were acutely aware of Zanka using the force necessary to level a beast the size of a several story building.
He was not pent up.
Rarely did he call Jabber first, as Jabber lived by his whims, many of which currently happened to include Zanka. It was just easier to wait. If Jabber had not called yet, what the hell did Zanka care. He’d been getting along perfectly fine without jumping a crazed masochist on a weekly basis.
And it had only been two weeks, Zanka reminded himself, drumming fingers on the wheel.
… Maybe Zodyl was plotting something, sending Jabber off to accomplish God knew what in the middle of fuck knew where. With that line of thinking, there was actually a strategic benefit to getting in touch first, Zanka realized- Jabber freely admitted to seeing factions as suggestions, at best. His fingers had inched over to tap restlessly at his choker.
Before he could make use of his ingenious excuse, an outline in the passenger side gave rise to an extremely reasonable question.
“The FUCK?!”
Through the sheer curtain that downpouring rain made on the windshield, a small, blurry human figure was visible downhill from the main road.
Zanka slammed his foot on the brake so hard that his ankle yelped in protest, threw his full face back on, and jumped out of the car like he’d been bitten by the seat. Rain battered his mask and uniform. Furious questions sparked in his mind, the most blaring of which revolved around what kind of fucking moron went posting themselves out in an Eosian rain. The irony was entirely lost on him. A familiar scent nestled unpleasantly in the back of his throat, muted by the mask. Eosian rain had a sickeningly floral smell. Zanka’s family had acquaintances wealthy enough to treat themselves to real flowers, the scent was most similar to one of those… what were they called, roses?
Jabber might know about what mix of chemicals produced that scent and why. He shoved the thought to the other side of his brain.
Downhill from him, Zanka couldn't tell whether the figure was on the bank or in the water itself. The rain blended the ground into wet uniformity with the river, and his only path down was a steep, jagged slope- otherwise, piles of staggered vertical rock formations boxed the river in. Most of them were speckled with faded pink and white mineral deposits against a backdrop of muddy greyish-red. The river barely had a bank to begin with. If it did, it was a careless afterthought of dull, off-white sand and stones.
Altogether, the arrangement gave the sense that one was surrounded by uneven flights of stairs built by giants with a very poor understanding of architecture. It must have been decided that one flight would look nicer as a slide made out of sharp rocks.
Stomping down said rocks as quickly as he dared, Zanka decided that Jabber had to know about a place like this. Hell, based on those stories of travelling before recruitment to the Raiders, he could very well be traipsing through one of those old haunts.
He once more shoved the thought to the side. Getting to the bottom of the slope and judging that he was in hearing range of the waterlogged idiot, he hollered twice as loudly to compensate for the roaring rain, “Hey! What do you think y-”
Incidentally, through raindrops on his mask, he had gotten within recognition range of some extremely damning characteristics. Long, dark locs, each with a golden band, reached the small of their back. Loose sleeves sweeping around wrists and fingers circled in silver, the rain painted Jabber's lithe figure by soaking him to the skin.
Zanka almost laughed out loud. No choker necessary. His mercurial bastard could apparently be summoned by thought alone.
The second thing that Zanka realized was that Jabber was fucking barefoot. Ankle deep. In the river.
“JABBER!” His roar was tragically muffled by his mask and the rain, “HAS ALL THAT SHIT FINALLY MELTED YOUR BRAIN, YA CRAZY SUN’VABITCH?!”
There was no indication that Jabber was listening to him. In fact, his only response was stepping deeper, bottoms of his pants brushing the water's surface. Both hands dangled at his sides as if their existence was forgotten by their owner.
This was not going to kill Jabber, because, disturbing durability aside, Zanka decided that the right belonged to him. He jumped the rest of the way down, using Assistaff to stick his landing. In the same instant that he bolted into range, Assistaff's spines were hooking into Jabber’s clothing and hauling him into arm's length like a speared fish. Once he was able, Zanka snared a hand in his hood and dragged him onto land.
Jabber’s eyes opened. For a terrible moment, he stared right through him. Zanka’s stomach dropped. Though never directed at him, he knew that expression all too well. Jabber often looked at people like that.
Rudo saw worth in everything, to the point of rooting through garbage, fighting with a damned plunger. His eyes focused on every object as it passed, no matter how briefly. Easily distracted, Zanka assessed, but worth honing into an eye for detail- eyes that paused on everything, took them in, curious, open.
Then there was Jabber Wonger. Zanka had never seen such eyes.
Outside of battle, looking at those who did not meet those qualifications for the strong, Jabber Wonger stared at the world through the tip of a claw. He was searching for an interesting shell among grains of sand, leveling disinterested eyes at a featureless collective until he found something worth his curiosity. When Zanka came into his view, Jabber would unfailingly perk up. His eyes brightened, as if he had finally discovered something alive in his search through that sand, and they lingered, waiting for Zanka to do something interesting.
In the rare moments when they were in public together, Zanka found himself apprehensive. A sourceless suspense wound tighter in his chest as Jabber's eyes traced closer and closer to him- they would make eye contact, Jabber's eyes brightened again, and the fist in Zanka's chest would unclench. This cycle repeated itself until they were alone.
Three nauseating seconds of that aimless stare passed before Jabber's eyes focused. His feet planted themselves on the ground, like he was remembering that he wasn’t dragged around by habit.
“Zanka?” He perked up as if, three seconds late, he'd spotted a friendly acquaintance at the shop, “To what do I owe the pleasure, my friend?”
“Who's supposed to be yer friend?” Zanka snapped out of himself to scour Jabber’s body- the skin on top of his feet was shiny, mottled. His ankles had gotten off a little easier, though he imagined that the soles would be another story, “For fuck’s sake-”
Teeth bared, Zanka grabbed him by the waist and started dragging him back to the car. No thought was given to preventing further injury. His aim was far more spiteful, to deprive Jabber of his precious pain for the trouble that he was putting Zanka through. As if intuiting Zanka’s motivations, Jabber squirmed unhappily in his grip. Far too aware of how he might unsheath his claws and rake him full of neurotoxin if his frustration reached a tipping point, Zanka left one hand free to crush both wrists together while pulling. Some ugly part of his revelled when he remembered how Jabber fought against Cthoni when she dragged him away from their battles. While he squirmed against Zanka, he didn’t snarl or lock his stance.
“Hold still.”
When he looked, shimmering, burnt skin also decorated Jabber’s hands to the wrists. Zanka could only imagine how, adorned with raindrops, he must have trotted to the shore with glee and splashed his hands through the running water. Under Mankira, the skin under the rings was still damp, looking slightly more inflamed.
“Zanka, you’re going to drive me nuts.” Jabber whined.
“Ha.” He said, quietly, “You don’t need none of my help with that.”
When struggling didn’t net him any progress, Jabber let himself go limp so as to drag his scalded feet against the uneven terrain, snickering whenever he was pulled over a particularly jagged stone.
Zanka got them both to the car, releasing Jabber’s waist to open the door of the passenger’s side. A tug of resistance made Zanka dig his nail into a fresh blister, right to the angry skin underneath. Jabber’s forehead thumped into his shoulder and rubbed against him like a cat nudging his person, and if anything twinged in his chest at the action, it did nothing to prevent him from gracelessly packing Jabber into the car.
While circling around to the driver’s side, he had the thought that Jabber might try to open the door and fall out. He promptly decided that a display like that would be more than enough cause to knock his ass out to throw him in the trunk.
Thankfully, Jabber seemed to be in one of those loopy moods that took him sometimes.
Once he recognized it, Zanka was able to relax in regards to that detached look- not, as he’d initially thought, apathy. Jabber had come unplugged from his power source in that way that he did when he’d successfully overloaded with pain, like a lamp plug that had been hit too hard and jostled from the socket. Or maybe, Zanka thought distantly, more a bulb in a power surge. Zanka was usually privy to it if they’d been at it for a good while. One of their bad… good… one of those times when neither of them had anything pressing in the morning. A day off would align, they’d have nowhere to be, and Zanka found himself unable to hold off from seeing how fine a grain Jabber could be ground to. When he got Jabber there, Zanka felt like a man who’d struck a cyclone to a sunshower.
He was all too aware of the fact that Jabber could use his own poison to wake himself easily enough, but, small mercies, he currently didn’t seem to feel it necessary.
Slipping behind the wheel, Zanka tugged his mask off and started the engine. Jabber lifted his legs to curl up, misty eyes half closed, humming an unfamiliar song to himself. After a few minutes of listening to rain pelt the windshield, silenced by the image of that reveller at rest, Zanka found it in himself to begin grumbling.
“You keep this shit up, you’re gonna die.”
Jabber yawned, “When?”
“That's not-” Zanka took a deep breath, “How often you do this?”
“It’s been a while. Work’s kept me busy, plus I’ve been seeing someone.”
“What?!” He swung to glare at him, “The hell you been seein’?!”
Jabber started snickering, letting his head fall to the side, “That would be you, bad-boy.”
If Zanka turned as pink as the strange mineral deposits in the rocks, no one needed to say a damn thing about it.
“I- right.” He said, weakly, scrambling for a change of topic, “Ya used to visit here?”
“Mhm. I used to travel all over the place, challenge whoever I wanted to a fight, get into anything that I thought might be poisonous, get bit by anything I thought was venomous. Wish you knew me back then.” Jabber sighed, wistfully, “Now I’m all employed. Contributing to society, man.”
“... Some contribution.” Zanka said dryly.
“Never said it was positive.” Jabber huffed, “What about you? Come around these parts often?”
“For work.” He furrowed his eyebrows as he tried to recall- there had been something that he wanted to ask- he straightened as it came to him, “Hey, actually, I was wondering if you knew anything about the Eosian rain.”
“The what-now?”
“You know, how the rocks turn into burning soap when it rains ‘round here?”
“Ooooh.” Jabber absently pressed his nail to a cracked, shining burn on his thumb’s cuticle, “That’s not rocks turning into soap, your skin’s what’s turning into soap.”
Zanka paled.
Jabber chattered on happily, “The rain’s got stuff from that big-ass lake south of here-”
“-Lake Eos-” Zanka corrected automatically.
“-sure. And when it touches those pinkish white rocks, it turns into the same stuff that- that, uh, you know that cleaner that comes in the yellow bottles? At the stores? Not the green ones.”
Zanka’s eyes flicked from the road to Jabber then back, not sure if he liked where this was going, “... Yeah.”
“Same stuff! I know ‘cause I've tried both, but Mankira didn't get anything new…? Turns your skin into soap when you touch it, ‘s why it burns. And when you mix it with vinegar you make poison gas! Pretty cool!”
“Uh-huh.” He had been correct in predicting that he would not like where that went, “Cool’s what ‘cha call that.”
Jabber either did not register the sarcasm or ignored it, murmuring on as if speaking a single long word, “‘s actually nastier than a lot of the acids that I’ve picked up, like, remember the nice stuff I got you with in the Trash Beast, not the venomenal hallucinogen or the neurotoxin, the first one! I threw it at you?”
“... Trust you me, I recall good’n clear, Jabber, don’t’cha go worryin’ about that.”
“Perfect!” Jabber’s eyes closed most of the way, though he kept muttering, “Only burns, but doesn’t make any more of itself and you can wash it off pretty quickly, I’m so nice to you-”
“Yeah fuck right off-” He broke in politely.
“-the stuff that turns you into soap’ll just keep sinking through and you wash your skin off with it.”
“I- that’s, really. Interestin’.” Brows furrowed, Zanka couldn’t help follow along with what Jabber was saying. Even if he felt bitterness spike at how obvious it was that Jabber had figured this all out for himself. Obviously, why would he need to consult any educational institutions when Mr. Toxin-Genius could just figure out what everything did, all by his venerable lonesome? Mr. ‘I Know What Things Are, Not What They’re Called’ because who needed those useless names or reference points.
Bastard. Zanka spotted a stray water drop trickling down the middle of Jabber’s forehead to rest under his eye, and reached to the side to wipe it off. Back to humming some tune, Jabber leaned into his hand.
More and more, Zanka touched Jabber without issue. Something else must have shifted in his demeanor as well, because one night out with his colleagues after a mission, Enjin had asked if he was seeing someone. The question was vague enough for Zanka to answer truthfully.
(“Oh? Good for you!” Enjin perked up, eyebrows raised, “What’re they like? Are you two official?”
“Uh.” Zanka’s lips pursed, fixing his gaze on his food, “They’re… I mean, we’re not really official. Or exclusive.”
“... Nonexclusively seeing each oth- ohhhh.” Enjin hummed, “That’s kind of surprising for you, Zanka, would’ve imagined you being kind of uptight about that kind of thing.”
A cold worm of shame had wriggled up in his stomach- Enjin must have seen it on his face, since he raised both hands, “I don’t mean it in a bad way, just ‘cause of how you might’ve been raised.”
“My family didn’t bring it up, much.” Zanka tried to regain a bit of face, squaring his shoulders, “We were just going to be married off when a convenient family rolled around.”
“... Did they ever talk to you about…” There was a pause. Enjin suddenly also squared his posture and slapped a hand down on Zanka’s shoulder, “Zanka, I have gotten myself into a lot of situations in my time, and I have a lot of things that I wish I knew at your age!”
Of everyone on the list of people that Zanka would give anything, save his staff, to not have this goddamned conversation with, he had to be having it with the first on that list. His larynx felt like it’d been stopped by a giant wine cork.
“First of all! Is it anyone who you can get pregnant?”
“...”
Zanka’s mortified speechlessness was immediately misinterpreted. Enjin’s voice went deadly serious.
“Zanka. I understand how this is for you, but it’s a common thing that young people experience, and you need to understand the importance of birth control. I get it. At this age, it’s easy to get overenthusiastic, but there’s a lot of complications that can arise from a young man not using protection, and trust me, it’s the responsibility of both parties, which means you need to come prepared, it’s nothing to be embarrassed about, but you can get contraception for free at-”
“I.” Zanka had finally croaked, physically incapable of tearing his eyes off the table in front of him, “I. No. Risk. Can’t. Get. Him.” The word would physically not pass his lips, “... Like. That.”
Enjin perked up, “Oh, alright! Protection is still important, though.”
For fuck’s sake.
“Next! Do not do it outside or in cars.” Enjin said, firmly, “You think you won’t get arrested, but you do it enough times, and you will get arrested.”
“I’d- we’ve- I wouldn’t.” He choked out.
After what seemed like an agonizing eternity, Enjin had mercy, even as he was smiling in guilty amusement over Zanka’s mortification, “Okay, okay, I’ll stop- sorry. But listen, Zanka, I get that you can hold your own, but if you ever want to come to be for advice, I’m here, yeah?”)
Zanka remembered how the mad urge to ask his mentor had come surging up at the same instant as he held it down.
‘Can I be angry if he's gone for too long or if someone else might- even though we’re not just nothing, we’re less than nothing- worse than nothing, I get off to him draped in nothing but his death throes-’
Yeah, that’d go over well. Vagueness would be a decent shield for all of two sentences before it buckled beneath the combined weight of Enjin’s people skills and Zanka’s guilt. If Enjin had doubts over the fact that Zanka’s stiff silence was only caused by embarrassment, he didn’t push any further over it. Before Jabber, he had not paid much attention to his libido for more than five to ten obligatory minutes. On occasion, he would just ignore it.
After the first instance of doing- that, with Jabber, his suppressed hormones came screaming up like a landlord demanding the rent owed from months, no, years, back. Recall stomping on Jabber’s diaphragm, he was aching. When Jabber’s shirt came up while they were fighting with each other, he was experiencing a pressing urge. There was no intention of making a habit out of it, even though the memory sent his body screaming into arousal so rapidly that he felt himself get lightheaded.
Once became twice became three times and Zanka didn’t know which number they had hit before he stopped telling himself that he had absolutely no idea how it kept happening.
Jabber was distinctly different from anyone Zanka had in his life. Not quite his friend. Not quite Hyo- Jabber gave him the time of day, even liked him, in his strange manner. They helped each other get stronger, but didn’t need to. Zanka had taken Jabber, blindfolded, in the back of a long-wrecked car at 3am on the still-breathable cusp of the Polluted Zone. Jabber, dopey from pain, had lapped more than his fair share of blood off splitting callouses on Zanka’s palms. They didn’t know anything about each other.
Did he like talking to Jabber? He was beginning to develop the horrible suspicion that he did.
Pulled back to the present by Jabber yawning, Zanka turned to watch him shifting to his other side.
“Jabber?”
“Mhm?”
“Where’re you from?” The question had slipped out of Zanka's mouth before he could stop it. Most people asked that question within minutes of knowing one another, not months of- what they did.
If Jabber had an issue with it, there was no sign in his face. His eyes remained closed, “I grew up near the ocean.”
Zanka blinked. He’d heard about rare coastal towns, but his knowledge of them was minimal- for one reason or another, Trash Beasts seemed infrequent around the ocean. Perhaps due to the detritus from the Sphere sinking to the bottom?
“What’s it like?”
“What’s what like?”
“The ocean?” What else would he be talking about.
Jabber’s eyes opened halfway, but a bizarre, bright curtain had drawn over them, his smile fixed in place, “Fun! It’s like a place from a picture book! Our ocean was gorgeous, hm, like, a- a rainbow? Sort of. The water turned colors. It turned green sometimes, or red? Yellow, then there was this one time that it was this nasty shade of orange- I thought that was so ugly. At night, the water would glow! It was brighter than the sky, ‘cause of all the smog. I liked when it was night.”
Zanka could not even begin to picture the scene in his mind. A foreign apprehension rose in his stomach at the idea, as if some long useless instinct warned him about the water like his skin did the Eosian rain. Jabber’s smile glowed with nostalgia, but his eyes remained unfocused, fixed on some point beyond Zanka (he hated that, just a little).
“-sometimes when the water turned, huge things washed up dead!” His sore-looking hands spread to demonstrate, “The different colors did different things- when it was red or green, more animals died, but sometimes it was just plain ol’ blue and everyone got really sick all over the city. I counted. But the fishermen were always washing up, they died everywhere. And then I’d also count- oh, hang on, when we ate dead fish from the red or yellow, that made us sick. So did green- it was… a cough, maybe? Fish died then too-”
He came unplugged without apparent cause- the smile hung lank in its place, as if tacked up by the edges using pins. Zanka raised an eyebrow, “... Jabber?”
The light flicked back on- Jabber perked up, suddenly, “Sometimes I used to go down to the beach at night, wade to my neck, then I’d put my head underwater and hold my breath for as long as I could. I think- I think I used to do it until morning?”
His smile suggested the recollection of a day when he’d been into town for a festival. With the same tone, Zanka might have told Enjin about a day when he’d first walked into the city alone. Without thinking- no, unwilling to allow himself to think about any reason why, his hand reached out and twined Jabber’s burnt fingers with his. Mankira dug into the sides of his knuckles.
Jabber looked down at their hands, back up, a strange tint to his smile. Slowly, he leaned forward to breathe the next word, lips to Zanka’s shoulder, “I figured out there was a lot of metal in the water and when the fish ate it, people did too. But sometimes chunks of it fell whole and people’d melt them to try to reuse ‘em and I used to count how many days people who did that took to- you know what I mean, don’t you? You understand.”
Zanka wanted to yank his hand away like he’d been burned himself. He also wanted to use his fingers like a vice, squeeze downward. Despite his greater number of losses, he had noticed that while Jabber was faster and more resilient (or perhaps just pain tolerant) by leagues, Zanka was the physically stronger of the two- at least, his grip strength was ahead. Probably helped that he trained with a staff until his palms bled, whereas Jabber had soaked his nerve endings with toxins that long since left his fingers tingling and burning in waves. Not that Jabber's grip was anything to sneeze at whatsoever, considering the whole… climbing up solid stone walls thing.
Zanka just took what he could get.
Jabber’s eyes slid half closed and a purr rose from his throat when Zanka’s fingers bore down to claw between his knuckles, even as Mankira dug in, “Ouch, ow, thank you~ ow- what about you?”
“What about me?”
“Where’re you from?” Smile tinged with faint bemusement, Jabber seemed to be testing out the words like he might dose himself with a new toxin. Zanka got the sense that this line of conversation was somewhat novel to him.
The old threat of ‘Nijiku plus location equals-’ talk succeeded in taking Zanka’s mind away from the prior topic, into a brand new topic that he didn’t feel much better about, “... 'm from Kamuatari.”
“Yeah that figures!” Jabber giggled, “Anyone who’s heard you talk for five seconds would know.”
His ears felt like struck matches glued to the side of his head, “Shut’cher ass up!”
Predictably, the giggling went on. Jabber leaned to the side and returned the squeeze of Zanka’s hand experimentally, “You go to Mero’s Festival, then?”
“Uh-” Zanka stopped short, distracted from his apprehension regarding the whole ‘nepotism-baby’ conversation, “You know about Mero?”
Of all the people to be aware of the festival days of obscure regional deities, Jabber was not high on the list. Nor was he on the list, period.
“Besides where I grew up, Kamuatari has the only shrines to Mero, so I head on down during the festival. Have to fight some Hell Guards on my way in and out, there’s the other bonus!”
“Huh. Bet’cha do.” Zanka smiled a little, unable to help it, “I didn’t know there was any other place ‘round that had much to do with Mero.”
Not that he’d considered Mero much outside of the little figurines along some walls on the edge of the district, a dark haired girl shrouded in silver with closed eyes. Abashed, he recalled how Mero’s shrines were more common along the outskirts, lining the neighborhoods shoved against their wall. Zanka knew next to nothing about her.
At least he was vaguely aware of her festival involving a procession to their ‘river’ (more like a decorative moat leading nowhere), where they dropped something in. He hadn’t really gone beyond buying that fish cake soup that got sold everywhere while it went on.
His eyes flitted from the road to Jabber’s face, muttering, “I mean, since my family’s sorta’ big in the Hell Guard-”
“Ha, I know-”
He ignored that, “-we mostly had to do with-”
“‘Sorta,’ loooord Nijiku?” Jabber stretched the mock-title, leaning to the side with his eyebrow arched delicately, “‘Sorta’? I try my best not to stay informed on current events, but there's some shit that not even I can tune out-”
The matches on his ears caught and spread their fire to his face. He glared at the road.
“-on account of not being born in a deep sea cave, mmmm, god,” Jabber nuzzled his shoulder suddenly, “I love watching your blood pressure go up-”
“Look.” He finally snapped. Burning awareness that he had no right to be defensive had somehow made him feel exponentially more defensive, fucking incredible how that worked, “I trained under ‘em but it’s not like I’m rollin’ around in the dough anymore, yeah? Lemme tell ya one Real Big Family Secret, you can take a wild fuckin’ guess who’s name’s off that will.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Jabber snickered, though he reached forward with his free hand and poked Zanka in the cheek, “Down, bad-boy, your family had to do with…?”
Zanka furrowed his eyebrows, briefly thrown off his course by the impression that Jabber had actually been engaged in what he was saying.
“I- just, we had a bunch to do with Jorosan and those shrines, events'n all. You know about him?”
“Kinda. The horned guy with the four heads? Big in town?”
“Ha. Yeah!” Zanka perked up without realizing it, “Shit, Jabber, I wouldn’ta really pegged ya for you knowin’ this kinda thing.”
He’d honestly thought the only religion that Jabber knew anything about was pain and the worship of it.
“I always wondered,” Jabber said, “why do your landlocked asses have shrines to Mero, anyways?”
“We don’t really have her as a sea god. Didn’t know she was one.” Zanka hummed, “I always thought the people visitin’ her shrines were like, the couriers, smiths… uh, undertakers? Then there was that one bunch’a travelling Vianders, y'know those guys who specialize in that good quality meat? Fish too, now you mention it- and… I wanna say carriage drivers.”
None of whom, he did not say, Zanka had any degree of direct interaction with.
His rush of self consciousness did not go unnoticed by Jabber, whose grin had widened by yards, “Definitely not the shrines for you, eh, baby-warlord?”
“We didn't just sit around soakin’ up the prestige on our name, y’know! We'd fund all his shrines and statues, my folks'd be commissioning real blades for those, all eight. Real waste of money.”
As words came out, his brain blared them back to himself. His ears somehow burned hotter. Their hands remained locked despite it all, though one of them was growing significantly more damp.
Jabber drawled, grinning, “Please go on. I'm enthralled.”
Zanka valiantly ignored Jabber's suppressed laughter, which somehow made said laughter all the more pronounced. Which he felt like Jabber was doing on purpose.
“... we’d send one of us to be present for his stuff all the damn time. Painted him everywhere in our houses, embroidered him all over our ceremonial clothes, represented at his festivals. Shit, my family made me do that damn sword dance at the Sun Festival every year from eight to ‘til I was twelve. Embarrassed the hell out of me, and I wasn’t any good at it either.”
He tacked on the last part by reflex. His younger self’s pantomime of humility, nestled in the praise piled all over him.
“And-” He added, grimly, “You did that whole thing in those damn robes. Eight layers, Jabber. One for each’a Jorosan’s swords. For the Sun god. At the Sun Festival.”
“Yeah, you sound like you really had it rough!” Jabber finally cracked into giggles, “Didn’t anyone fan you once you were done?!”
“Didn’t say I was in dire straits! I mean. We were comfortable.”
“Aha, is that what they call it?” Still, a spark of interest had lit from beneath Jabber’s combined amusement and pain-haze, “Didn’t know that you could use a sword.”
“Hell, I could use anything.” Zanka rolled his eyes, “I been trained in everything from guns to killin’ a man with the bulb off a skinless onion.”
Here was where ‘but you use that stick’ usually got lobbed at him to join its cousins: ‘so why’s that your Vital Instrument,’ ‘why do you use that worthless thing,’ and his personal favorite, ‘so you could be using anything but that.’ They all landed all in the heap to which the universal response was, ‘Yes, I Use This Wonderful Goddamn Stick, And If You Keep Running Your Mouth You’re Gonna Learn How.’
Jabber only hummed appreciatively, free hand reaching to play with the tassel of Zanka’s earring.
Mankira’s cool metal a relief against his burning earlobe, Zanka relaxed unconsciously as he spoke, “Anyways, sword fightin’ and sword dance’re two different things, and the dance’s nothing like you’re probably thinkin’, Jabber. ’S a slow ass martial arts demonstration. You get up there for two hours to show yer immaculate form to the Same’Ol’Venerable Coot Club and pretend not to sweat your ass off in the midday sun while everyone else sits around pretendin’ to know what in the hell they’re lookin’ at.”
“Oh! So you were good at it, you were just bored to hell by it.”
“I-” … What was the point in even trying. He sighed, “Yeah. I guess I was.”
“Mm, god, ‘s a good thing that you found Assistaff.”
The purr of delight (dare he say, relief) felt like it impaled the side of Zanka’s head and stayed jutting out like a giant stupid horn.
Jabber went on, oblivious, “Good for you, good for her, good for me~ I bet you fight with her better than you’d have ever managed with anything, no? Close call, with all those weapons vying for your attention, what if you’d missed her?”
Heat came scrambling back up his collar. He was far too well versed in following Jabber’s eyes to pretend that this went unnoticed.
“And she pushes you harder than you’d have gone with anything else, hm, she's so good to me.” The free hand that had been playing with Zanka’s earring trailed downward to dangle off the zipper of his collar, “I owe her, don’t I?”
“Jabber.” He pushed out, “I’m drivin’.”
“I was just talking.” Jabber leaned out of the passenger’s side to put his chin on Zanka’s shoulder. His eyes flicked downward, and he sniffed laughter against the side of Zanka's neck.
Swallowing, Zanka’s throat went too stuck to protest the tug of his collar's zipper. Any reprieve from the high collar being open was negated in full by Jabber's mouth replacing it, tongue massaging the site clamped between his teeth.
Zanka's voice hitched, throat caught on calling ‘bullshit’ and telling Jabber to behave his damned self. Something about Enjin’s old lecture involving ‘not doing it in cars,’ rang in his brain, and then Jabber kept talking, lips shaping the words on Zanka’s neck, “I owe this to what you put into Assistaff. It’s just common courtesy, no?”
“Oh, sure!!” Zanka squeaked when Jabber’s lips trailed up to kiss his ear at the same time as his hand trailed down to cup his groin. He at last released their joined hands to white knuckle the wheel, “‘Cause you're a regular fine source on that! I think ‘common courtesy,’ ya know who pops up is Jabber Wonger- hnn-”
Jabber's hand had squeezed.
“You know how sad I got when I couldn’t find anyone to play with anymore?” He cooed, “How many Givers that Mankira and I’ve tangled with? And you outclass ‘em with a staff and take all the time to learn how to dance with us, you should be making me do this. Take what I owe you, mm?”
Jabber bit the spot under his ear while Zanka suffocated in his own stupid fucking multilayered uniform.
Releasing their hands had been a terrible move. All the better to loosen Zanka’s waist sash. The shimmering twin burns, the clear pain in moving them- if he wasn’t such a piece of shit, he’d have told Jabber to stop, don’t hurt his hands. Instead, Zanka burned hotter with every flinch highlighted by the light caught in Mankira.
“I gotta focus on the road.” He tried, weakly.
“I don’t.” Jabber had already leaned over to the driver’s side and his stomach was draped over the middle glove compartment and his back was arched-
Road! The road was beautiful, so he should look at it, not at the absolutely-not-beautiful man pushing his sash downward or working on his belt, hands skimming down to stroke-
No actually just using his hands to hold the pants out of the way so he could press his lips to the tip of Zanka’s half hard cock, before licking it into his mouth. Because this was a known benefit for people trying to drive in a straight line.
Zanka released some choke-yelp hybrid that he would deny making for the rest of his life, ripped a hand away from the wheel to grip the back of Jabber’s neck, and pulled over with a truly legendary level of finesse that he had never accomplished before and would never accomplish again and no one would believe him because he would never tell them as that required explaining how he was proud of the smoothness of this specific parking job because a beautiful man had contained Zanka’s dick in his mouth at the time.
“Jabber-” He gritted out, doubling his grip on Jabber's neck.
It wasn’t just the sensation itself, but the idea that Jabber seemed unable to stop himself from crawling all over Zanka in gratitude to and admiration for Assistaff. Furthermore, Zanka was getting his dick sucked at an inconvenient time, in an inconsiderate place, at 8pm on a Wednesday on the way back from work.
He moaned like the air was punched out of him. Scratching over the short hair of Jabber’s undercut, the other hand moved to Jabber’s chest to dig his nails into his midline scar, scratch into it so that his back arched further. In turn, Jabber moaned around his dick, choked, somehow sunk further. Why the hell was that allowed. Why could Zanka not mentally prepare himself for a single movement his tongue made. Many questions in life.
When Jabber looked up, there was a watery line to his eyes- Zanka made a wretched sound, hips jerking up without his permission. Jabber, putting the ‘sado-’ in the ‘sadomasochist’ equation, managed to pull off with a grin, kept his lips on the tip of Zanka’s cock, and moved his hand.
And shifted the gear into park.
“Now get your foot off the brake.” He chirped, then descended again.
Whatever shrieking embarrassment reared up in Zanka’s brain was drowned as Jabber’s mouth was back around him. When Zanka thrust into his throat, Jabber shivered. Happily for the both of them, Jabber’s gag reflex had somehow survived the sheer volume of punishment it'd been put through. All the better for Zanka to punish it further. He kept his hand on the back of Jabber’s neck, pinned him through the rigid, aborted spasms of his diaphragm and throat. At times, he allowed there to be hope of air, pulled him up enough for a sip that only highlighted the lack when he shoved him back down.
Jabber’s words still vibrated through Zanka’s mind. There wasn’t a single note of unintentional forgiveness for Assistaff- it was his Vital Instrument and he was so often told how ‘he used it so skillfully for being just a stick.’
Jabber thanked him for finding Assistaff. Would have thought it a shame if Zanka picked something else, what if she never made it into the bunch by mistake, never made his way into his hands.
He’d have picked his weapon without incident. Gone back to chasing a genius, deluding himself, inevitably failing every patch of weakness that he never would’ve spotted without Assistaff. She had broken him from the bunch, as she was broken from her poisonous pine tree. Without the painful break, she’d have stayed a nameless branch. Without the painful break, Zanka would have been no different.
Choking forced a tear out of the corner of Jabber’s eye, still trained up. Hand trembling on his neck, Zanka shoved downward again. He couldn't seem to get enough contact. Pulling his other hand from Jabber's chest, he hooked his thumb into the corner of Jabber's mouth and dug his nail to the inside of his cheek, ran his thumb along the bottom teeth. Jabber keened.
Broken under Assistaff time and time again, shattered under, sliced on her, Jabber had thanked her for it. In matches that Zanka didn’t win alongside her, there was never a hint of triumph. Only confusion- exasperation, even. He trusted Assistaff to crush him as much as Zanka did.
With a stuttering shout, Zanka shoved as deep as he could force himself. Jabber’s throat fought every step of the way, entire body locked in a painful spasm for air. Ten seconds, fifteen, the heaving tension gave up on itself. Jabber’s shoulders slumped, hands curled limp against the blue sash. Frenzied, brain pickling in adrenaline and actions surging on it, Zanka pulled out of him and used his left hand to hold his mouth open while a painful screech of a breath forced its way down Jabber’s throat. His right hand manipulated a nonresistant, burnt palm into stroking him until cum pooled on Jabber’s tongue.
Holding back a cough just long enough to swallow, Jabber collapsed into a painful hacking fit, head in Zanka’s lap, cock against his face, and adding to the saliva dripping from his mouth. Drifting in the sound of their panting and Jabber's occasional coughs, Zanka's half-conscious self consciousness gave one last kick of motivation to his addled brain. Ignoring Jabber's noise of complaint, he pulled his pants back up and shut his eyes.
Then opened them again.
“Jabber?”
“Mm.”
“I forgot’cher shoes on the bank. Uh. Sorry?”
Jabber's eyes opened, still wet, wonderfully destroyed. He smiled, but his lips were curved at an angle Zanka had never seen before. He buried his head against Zanka's stomach and started to laugh.
It was a strange laugh. Zanka distantly realized that while he'd heard practically every pitch to Jabber’s laughter, from howling ecstasy to a sniff of disdain, he'd never heard a pure note of joy from him before.
He found himself unsure what to do. Whether to move, rise to anger, to spite, unsure if Jabber was mocking him or-
Gentling to a chuckle, Jabber shuffled, winced, and threw himself over Zanka's shoulders. With Jabber's face in the crook of his neck, Zanka didn't see the light in his eyes, the scientist drawing breath for ‘eureka-’, the raving oracle under a blood moon, the reflection of quicksilver in the eyes of an alchemist.
Jabber wrapped him in his arms as a siren might pull a sailor to water, “You are something else, Zanka.”
Zanka furrowed his eyebrows, “... What’re you on about? ‘cause I forgot your shoes?”
Jabber snorted. Slowly, his hand rose, coming to rest on top of Zanka's head. Mankira's metal was cold against him, “Sure. Let's go with that.”